thank you, sara bareilles.
i'm not gonna write you a love song: tom brady/peyton manning. fifty sentences theme set delta. g-r. 1, 922 words.
one: air.
Tom shows up with wind tossed hair and rain soaked pants and he looks so pissed off, so frustrated, that the air rushes from Peyton's lungs in a wheezing, drawn out laugh.
two: apples.
He's not supposed to know what Peyton's hair smells like but it's hard for Tom not to catch the orchard-scent of apples when Peyton falls asleep with his head nestled on Tom's shoulder.
three: beginning.
Everything that has a middle and an ending must have a beginning and the one he has with Tom is almost too rough for Peyton to care about the rest.
four: bugs.
"It's a moth," Tom says, shivering at the frosty wind that breezes in through the rolled down window, but Peyton refuses to roll it back up until the bug is gone.
five: coffee.
There's a broken coffee cup in the middle of the kitchen, rivers of black running in broken lines across Peyton's floor, and he really can't be expected to hold onto something when Tom's tongue is doing that.
six: dark
"Don't tell me you're afraid of the dark," Peyton grumbles, somewhere between awake and asleep, and Tom's not ashamed of the white knuckled grip he has on Peyton's knee when he says, "I just don't like it when the power goes out."
seven: despair.
It's a little weird with a sharp edge of dangerous to have Tom Brady playing sleepover in his house, but what really bothers Peyton is opening his cabinet to discover a now empty box of Cheerios.
eight: doors.
Labels don't really apply to what they have but when Tom brushes his thumb, followed by his lips, against the bruise on Peyton's forehead it titters on the edge of something.
nine: drink.
Tom's talking only it's not really him talking but the whiskey that curls through his system like waves at high tide and Peyton listens with a sort of half-amusement until Tom slurs, "you know I love you, right?" and he takes to biting blood from his tongue.
ten: duty.*
After the Super Bowl Tom gets hammered and makes cookies and draws these lopsided penises on them and presents one to Peyton with a drunken grin and says, "if I ate a dick on the field, I might as well eat one off it too, right?"
eleven: earth.
Peyton is singing in the shower in a voice as shrill as nails on a chalkboard but Tom has to laugh when he picks up a few of the lyrics -- "ooh heaven is a place on earth."
twelve: end.
Tom says, "are you breaking up with me?" and it's so saturated with ego that Peyton wonders how they made it this far in the first place.
thirteen: fall.
Four walls trap in a heat that's all consuming, blazing to settle heavy in Tom's stomach, turning his skin slick, and he wants to choke out no when he feels the press of Peyton's fingers but instead he sinks his teeth into his lower lip and rests on the edge of falling.
fourteen: fire.
Piercing pain shoots from the base of his spin to the back of his neck and Peyton realizes he's really fucked something up when Tom reaches him before anyone on his own team.
fifteen: flexible.
Sometimes Tom and Peyton do this thing where they watch porn together and often times it ends with laughter and "there's no way anybody's that damn flexible" instead of sex.
sixteen: flying.
They're in an airplane, soaring above blue water in an even bluer sky when Gisele says, "you keep lying to me" and Tom tastes the copper tang of realization and he thinks he might throw up and he wishes he'd taken those air sickness pills and then she's grabbing his wrist and she's smiling and she's saying, "Peyton is a nice guy."
seventeen: food.
Peyton doesn't expect a lot from people -- even less from Tom -- but he wonders if it was asking too much for him to chew with his mouth closed.
eighteen: foot.
"She used to like to suck on my toes. It was weird," Tom is saying, making grand sweeping gestures to point down at his wiggling toes, completely ignorant to the fact that Peyton has tuned him out with loud humming.
nineteen: grave.
Deep sweeping carves in gray stone spell his father's name in a beautiful flourish but Peyton isn't quite solid on his feet so he's glad Tom's there with a hand on the small of his back and steady fingers to place the flowers on the ground for him.
twenty: green.
Jealousy is an ugly word and Peyton doesn't like feeling it, he doesn't like living up to the phrase "seeing green"; but he does when he watches the way Tom is around Randy.
twenty-one: head.
Tom lives for those moments when he can catch Peyton off guard and it's a battle against twitching, itching to smile lips when Peyton does this startled laugh over the suggestion that they play rock-paper-scissors to decide who blows who.
twenty-two: hollow.
He's been dumped before, sure, but Tom's never felt this sort of hollow sickness in the pit of his stomach and he thinks about calling Peyton but instead he shreds a few pages of a magazine to keep his fingers busy because Tom Brady's never begged anyone.
twenty-three: honor.
"I hate this game," Peyton says, "don't we have anything better to do?" but his protests don't stop him from giving a triumphant shout of "ha!" when he sinks Tom's battleship.
twenty-four: hope.
Rich colored leaves in brown and yellow and orange spin around his feet in a quiet breeze and watching them makes Tom realizes that maybe, just maybe, it's okay to hope with Peyton.
twenty-five: light.
This is what bars always are--bad lighting and too much smoke and too many people all wrapped up in the smell of strong beer and whiskey and Peyton's thankful when Tom says, "we can walk to my hotel from here."
twenty-six: lost.
They have no idea where they are but that isn't what Tom's really thinking about because he's maybe a little focused on the fact that for some reason they've been holding hands (warm against the leather armrest between them, Peyton's fingers folded neatly with his) for the last thirty miles.
twenty-seven: metal.
Tom bites his lip once and Peyton's a little amused that his first though is well that's obnoxious and then he's tasting metal-blood and his lips are slick and Tom doesn't stop kissing him.
twenty-eight: new.
7-11 isn't exactly a hotbed of activity at three forty-five AM and Tom doesn't even know why he's awake -- and he's not really -- but Peyton's still loading his arms with junk food and talking ninety miles an hour and Tom is cataloging everything to add to the "list of things you owe me for" he'll give Peyton some day.
twenty-nine: old.
"You're bored with me," Tom says and Peyton finds it off putting that he's smiling.
thirty: peace.
Tom's somewhere else when he should be in Hawaii and he's not surprised when, no matter how many times he sends the same, tedious text (im sorry), Peyton doesn't bother trying to deal with him.
thirty-one: poison.
Maybe what they have really is love because never before Tom was Peyton with anyone he gave serious consideration to poisoning.
thirty-two: pretty.
It's all sharp angles and glittering paint and the inside smells like the sweetest leather and Tom laughs when Peyton says, "think your car's actually prettier than you, Brady."
thirty-three: rain.
Wind blows rain against his window and Peyton's listening to the quiet sounds Ashley makes when she dreams and it's kind of funny in that not funny way when he realizes he's comparing them to Tom's.
thirty-four: regret.*
"I had that dream again," Peyton says, "you know, that one where I'm you instead of me," and Tom flips him off when Peyton does an exaggerated shudder of disgust.
thirty-five: roses.
Buying Tom roses was really a fucking stupid idea so Peyton's grateful when a stray rock trips him up and he falls, mashing them against the side of a building.
thirty-six: secret.
His lips brush against Peyton's ear and Tom's whispering things that he has no business even thinking but Peyton's body is pressing back against his in this sweet, slow way and so he says more, even when pleasure starts slurring his words.
thirty-seven: snakes.
Rough isn't anything new to them and Tom's nails leave angry red lines that look like snakes on Peyton's back.
thirty-eight: snow.
Tom's driven in snow before -- more snow than the dusting that covers the roads leading from Peyton's house -- but he uses it as an excuse and it's sort of okay when things get weirdly domestic and they fall asleep watching old movies.
thirty-nine: solid.
Peyton says, "admit it--I kicked your ass," and Tom glares at the black controller in his hand and says nothing.
forty: spring.
It's perfect in Brazil and Gisele is reclining against him, back to chest, and she smells like coconut and feels like sun kissed warmth and she should be his dream but instead Tom is staring at his phone and waiting.
forty-one: stable.
How the hell they end up at a stable -- a real life stable that smells like dusty hay and horses and makes Tom sneezes -- is anyone's guess but Peyton is excited like the five year old he really is and so while Tom sniffles and scowls he moves from stall to stall, scratching velvet nose after velvet nose, and asking an endless stream of questions.
forty-two: strange.
Tom remembers why they never share anything when it's been six weeks after he makes a passing comment about noises in his basement and Peyton's still making fun of him.
forty-three: summer.
Summers always had ice cream and the smell of fresh cut grass when Peyton was a kid and now it's trying to find five minutes to himself while pointedly not reading about Tom in gossip magazines.
forty-four: taboo.*
Eli finds out about Tom by accident and Peyton cuffs the back of his head when he says, "he gave up Gisele for you?"
forty-five: ugly.
Tom's thirty-seven when he has surgery on his knee and spends half a season on the sidelines nursing an ugly jagged scar that still burns no matter how cold Peyton's fingers are when they press against it.
forty-six: war.
War is declared when Peyton leaves something in his bag, tucked away in the bottom, that Tom doesn't find until it rots and turns into a wafting smell in his face when he unzips it one morning.
forty-seven: water.
The water in the shower turns cold by the time they're finished.
forty-eight: welcome.
Peyton does the crossword in pen and it's weird that Tom's watching him and even weirder that a night together has eased into a shared breakfast.
forty-nine: winter.
Every winter Tom gets this cold that lasts for weeks and no matter how much he whines Peyton limits him to phone calls and text messages until it's gone.
fifty: wood.
The basement at Tom's parents' house is filled with the finished and half-finished wood carvings his dad made a habit out of for a few years and after Christmas one year he takes one, some elaborate clock that never served any purpose for the Bradys, and when he gives it to Peyton he has time to say, "make fun of me and I swear--" before Peyton kisses him
10. I know it doesn't exactly fit.
17. Carrie bb this one's for you~
34. Yeah, again, I know it doesn't exactly fit.
44. I'm sort of sucking at making the sentence fit with the prompt...