Five Time Rufus Told Lily He Loved Her (and the one time she said it back)
Five Time Rufus Told Lily He Loved Her (and the one time she said it back)
Gossip Girl. Rufus/Lily. R. 2,087 words.
Later, Rufus will tell her that she was a terrible actress.
Lily will laugh; that modest, intimate thing that he maybe, sort of loves, and ask him what he means.
He’ll tilt his head; stare at the table, at his plate in mock-thought (it’s leftovers tonight, always is at the Humphrey household, and Rufus will spend forever trying to convince Lily it’s better this way, two days old and microwaved back to edibility) before gesturing with his fork. He’ll say, after a mouthful of cold chilli, that she was never anything like Carol; that playing the struggling, down-trodden artist in a city full of them didn’t fit her; that her hair and her eyes and her dirty, designer jeans gave her away.
Lily won’t say much, she’s not as young as she was then (just as angry at her mother, just as beautiful, intelligent, interesting, but not as young, not as easily taken away by false promises or Rufus’s double-edged flattery). She’ll ask him why an artist shouldn’t be allowed a few luxuries, and he’ll just shake his head, tell her that a camera doesn’t make her an artist.
She’ll reply that one hit single won’t make you one either.
So you admit I had a hit single?
She’ll laugh at that, throw her head back and say that she would never have slept with him in the first place if he hadn’t. He’ll be mock-outraged for the rest of the evening, and Lily will be happy until he sobers up, looks at her like they’re both nineteen again, the world at their feet and their hands clasped painfully together. He’ll tell her that it’s the artist’s job to chase, to catch, to love. He’ll tell her she couldn’t be the artist when she was always the chased, the caught, the loved.
She could never be the artist, not when she was always the art.
i. yours is the first face that i saw, swear i was blind before i met you
It’s too easy to get lost in Rufus’ cheap sheets, to curl up, naked and raw beneath them, to toe at her panties where they’re hanging off one ankle. Rufus is half-asleep, always is after they fuck, and when she reaches over, traces at one of the hickeys on his neck with a bitten-down fingernail, his eyelids flutter open. Lily purses her lips, before finally just grinning, leaning in to kiss him.
This will be the second time he says it.
“Anyone would think you were a rock star,” she mumbles, eyes half-lidded as he shifts beside her, sleepy smile stretching along with his arms and legs.
“What makes you say that?” he asks, and she just grins, amused, says, “Oh, come on. You’d have to be something impressive to get into bed with me.”
His laugh is easy, hoarse with sleep, and he turns away, rubs at his eyes as Lily sits up just enough to lean over the edge of the mattress, grab at where her bra is on the floor of the bus. She pulls it over her arms, and when she glances round to do the clip, Rufus is watching her, eyelids heavy and pupils dilated. She tilts her head, arches an eyebrow, “See something you like, Humphreys?”
Rufus snorts, rolls his eyes, and flops back down into the bed, face-first into the pillow, and Lily has to resist the urge to ruffle his hair.
The “Always,” rolls off his tongue as easily as it ever does for him, and he doesn’t sober up, doesn’t get anymore serious (any less honest) when he tilts his head out of the pillow, says, “So, I think I’m in love with you,” eyes flicking from her face to her collarbone to where the sheets fall around her hips.
The silence is almost grating, white noise burning in Lily’s ears, and maybe it’s the same for him, because he looks at her properly then, grin still wide, but tenser now, less easy, and he shrugs. “Or something. I don’t know.”
Lily arches an eyebrow, purses her lips, says, “Well, I am very good in bed,” but the humour catches in her throat, where her trachea feels too much like sandpaper, and she leans over him then, goes to kiss him instead, but he stops her, holds her in place as he pulls away.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” and he can’t meet her eye, can’t quite face her anymore. His hair’s long enough to hide him away, and Lily sighs, glances up at the roof of the bus and says, “I know, but - fuck, Rufus” and Rufus just looks away, looks embarrassed and tired and so fucking young, but he doesn’t take it back.
There’s a lot she could say, but the I love you too sits in the back of her head, last in a line of excuses, statements, questions. Instead, she hesitates, sighs, rolls her eyes and tries to resist the urge to reach for a cigarette.
“You barely know me.”
Rufus snorts, looks almost angry, but when he opens his mouth to say something else, his guitarist barges in, all loud voice and clenched eyes, hung over as fuck, and Lily laughs, loud and hard and overly deliberate and shimmies down the bed to pull her panties up.
ii. girl, put your records on, tell me your favourite song
Rufus tumbles off the stage, guitar awkward around his back, and he knows her too well already, can pinpoint where she’ll wait backstage, surrounded by too many people, the flower to everyone else’s honeybee, the Venus Flytrap to Rufus’s dumb bug.
He’s so fucking jittery though, so energetic as he grabs her around the waist, picks her up and Lily’s not sure if its adrenaline or heroin, but he’s almost vibrating, high, pupils blown and she grins down at him, kisses him hard. “You sweat on me, Humphreys, and I’ll break your face.”
When he laughs, he throws his head back, exposes the long line of his throat. His Adam’s apple bobs, and Lily can’t help herself, leans in and kisses it so that she can feel it against her lips when he says, “You’re all talk, Rhodes. Always have been.”
Lily rolls her eyes dramatically, and Rufus doesn’t leave her side the entire night, arm heavy, warm and possessive (safe, loving, desperate) around her waist, and he’s loud, grabbing the roadies that cross their path and yelling “I love Lily Rhodes” to anyone who will listen. It’ll be perfect nostalgia for her when she’s thirty, and she’ll remember grinning wide, laughing and playing along when Rufus talks about heading to Vegas and getting an Elvis impersonator to marry them.
She wakes up the morning after with a plastic engagement ring on her ring finger that she’ll wear for the rest of tour. (And after her first, second, third divorce. Slips it on to replace the million dollar ones that she puts into storage, drinks herself to fantasy and imagines that they really did marry in Vegas and she didn’t spend the next eighteen years trying to find someone that would fit into the gaping hole that he left her with.)
iii. don’t think we’re okay just because i’m here
They fight, and it’s big and it hurts, and it’s dumb, because they’re not even together, but Lily makes out with Rufus’ drummer, and Rufus gets drunk and fucks one of his other groupies for a change. Lily will remind herself that she really doesn’t have any right to be mad, she doesn’t, but she can’t stay when they tumble out of the bathroom, the slag’s lipstick smeared on his collar like a verdict, a condemnation, confession.
She can feel her heartbeat, the ba-dum, ba-dum of it hard behind her eyes, in her ears, and the ache in her chest isn’t like anything she can explain, justify. Her fingers shake as she empties her pockets, finds a couple of quarters to call Carol from the seedy payphone down the street. She trembles for the three rings, and she cries when Carol answers, voice hoarse with sleep, because there’s only so much fucking up she can do before she just wants to go back to her Mom’s holiday house in Malibu where everyone does everything for her, even all this feeling bullshit.
Carol makes promises that Lily doesn’t think she’ll keep, and when she hangs up, she throws up in the bushes and the snow, stays hunched over until tears drip into the mess she’s left, and the ache in her chest (head, heart, legs, fingers) has dulled enough that she can stumble back to her shitbox car, wondering if maybe she did drink too much tonight.
She locks herself in the driver’s seat because she doesn’t have the money for a hotel suite, and she’ll be woken up at three in the morning, not by room service, but by Rufus’ knock on the windscreen, looking too-thin and cold in the bitter winter. Lily will watch the way his chest moves as he breathes too hard, the way his mouth forms around the pleases and the sorrys and when he writes I love you backwards in the condensation on the window, Lily just turns away and cries.
By the time the sun rises, light breaking between the buildings surrounding the car park casting long shadows across the vehicles, Rufus will be asleep on the pavement. Carol’s coming to pick her up in a few hours, and Lily’s aching for coffee and for Rufus, and as she steps out of her car, as she tries to walk around him, past him, she stops, stilts, lets her eyes slip shut. Lily has maybe never been strong enough, not as independent, stable as she tries to paint herself to be, and it’s easier this way, to turn around and curl up against his back and pretend that this isn’t everything she needs.
iv. it was so dark i just don't know what i kissed and i couldn't even see what i missed
The seventh time Lily will think is the fourth, because somewhere along the line Lily’s mom starts calling again, and the fights stop being so infrequent. Rufus drinks with the guys until late, and only comes to bed when he knows Lily’s asleep.
This way when he mumbles I love you into the nape of her neck, down her spine, into the curve of her breast, he can pretend she says it back.
v. and i hope you have more luck with this than me
Lily never counted the pictures she had of him, but when she leaves him that night, young and aching, a baby Rufus can never know about heavy in the pit of her belly, even if she’s not showing yet, she leaves her favourite one of him on her side of his pull-out bed. Try not to miss me too much. L. scribbled on the back in eyeliner because she couldn’t find a pen.
“Please don’t,” he mumbles, and Lily blinks over at him, her hand on the door handle. He’s only half awake, eyelids still heavy as he watches her. He hasn’t even sat up, but his fingers are clenched around the photograph.
“I’ll be back in a few days,” she says, because she will. Because she’s got all of this planned out, she’ll go, abort the baby with her mother’s money, and then she’ll be back, and Rufus will still be here, just like he says. Just like he always is.
“I love you,” he mumbles, and Lily can’t explain the ache in her chest, the one that pries open her ribcage and tears apart her heart, as she says, “I know. I’ll see you soon.”
Later, she’ll think the ache was because she knew.
Her mom was never going to let her off (let her go) that easy.
+ You are the spotlight girl
The first time is in some nameless venue somewhere between boarding school, New York and the rest of the world, between her mom and dad, and Rufus is on stage, larger than life behind the microphone and not like anything Lily’s ever seen before. Perfect, and it’s not love at first sight, but in another reality it might have been. Rufus, emotional and beautiful, too easily touched and affected (always), wipes his forehead on the back of his hand, says, “Fuck, you’ve been great,” to the crowd at large, says, “I love you all,” and Lily, she yells, loud and honest, calls back, “I love you too, stud,” just to hear her sister laugh.
I should have given you a reason to stay.
&
i. First Day of My Life - Bright Eyes
ii. Put Your Records On - Corrine Bailey Rae
iii. Warwick Avenue - Duffy
iv. Shadowland - Youth Group
v. Your New Twin-Sized Bed - Death Cab for Cutie
+ Talk to Me, Dance with Me - Hot Hot Heat
A Lack of Colour - Death Cab for Cutie
Gossip Girl. Rufus/Lily. R. 2,087 words.
Later, Rufus will tell her that she was a terrible actress.
Lily will laugh; that modest, intimate thing that he maybe, sort of loves, and ask him what he means.
He’ll tilt his head; stare at the table, at his plate in mock-thought (it’s leftovers tonight, always is at the Humphrey household, and Rufus will spend forever trying to convince Lily it’s better this way, two days old and microwaved back to edibility) before gesturing with his fork. He’ll say, after a mouthful of cold chilli, that she was never anything like Carol; that playing the struggling, down-trodden artist in a city full of them didn’t fit her; that her hair and her eyes and her dirty, designer jeans gave her away.
Lily won’t say much, she’s not as young as she was then (just as angry at her mother, just as beautiful, intelligent, interesting, but not as young, not as easily taken away by false promises or Rufus’s double-edged flattery). She’ll ask him why an artist shouldn’t be allowed a few luxuries, and he’ll just shake his head, tell her that a camera doesn’t make her an artist.
She’ll reply that one hit single won’t make you one either.
So you admit I had a hit single?
She’ll laugh at that, throw her head back and say that she would never have slept with him in the first place if he hadn’t. He’ll be mock-outraged for the rest of the evening, and Lily will be happy until he sobers up, looks at her like they’re both nineteen again, the world at their feet and their hands clasped painfully together. He’ll tell her that it’s the artist’s job to chase, to catch, to love. He’ll tell her she couldn’t be the artist when she was always the chased, the caught, the loved.
She could never be the artist, not when she was always the art.
i. yours is the first face that i saw, swear i was blind before i met you
It’s too easy to get lost in Rufus’ cheap sheets, to curl up, naked and raw beneath them, to toe at her panties where they’re hanging off one ankle. Rufus is half-asleep, always is after they fuck, and when she reaches over, traces at one of the hickeys on his neck with a bitten-down fingernail, his eyelids flutter open. Lily purses her lips, before finally just grinning, leaning in to kiss him.
This will be the second time he says it.
“Anyone would think you were a rock star,” she mumbles, eyes half-lidded as he shifts beside her, sleepy smile stretching along with his arms and legs.
“What makes you say that?” he asks, and she just grins, amused, says, “Oh, come on. You’d have to be something impressive to get into bed with me.”
His laugh is easy, hoarse with sleep, and he turns away, rubs at his eyes as Lily sits up just enough to lean over the edge of the mattress, grab at where her bra is on the floor of the bus. She pulls it over her arms, and when she glances round to do the clip, Rufus is watching her, eyelids heavy and pupils dilated. She tilts her head, arches an eyebrow, “See something you like, Humphreys?”
Rufus snorts, rolls his eyes, and flops back down into the bed, face-first into the pillow, and Lily has to resist the urge to ruffle his hair.
The “Always,” rolls off his tongue as easily as it ever does for him, and he doesn’t sober up, doesn’t get anymore serious (any less honest) when he tilts his head out of the pillow, says, “So, I think I’m in love with you,” eyes flicking from her face to her collarbone to where the sheets fall around her hips.
The silence is almost grating, white noise burning in Lily’s ears, and maybe it’s the same for him, because he looks at her properly then, grin still wide, but tenser now, less easy, and he shrugs. “Or something. I don’t know.”
Lily arches an eyebrow, purses her lips, says, “Well, I am very good in bed,” but the humour catches in her throat, where her trachea feels too much like sandpaper, and she leans over him then, goes to kiss him instead, but he stops her, holds her in place as he pulls away.
“I didn’t mean it like that,” and he can’t meet her eye, can’t quite face her anymore. His hair’s long enough to hide him away, and Lily sighs, glances up at the roof of the bus and says, “I know, but - fuck, Rufus” and Rufus just looks away, looks embarrassed and tired and so fucking young, but he doesn’t take it back.
There’s a lot she could say, but the I love you too sits in the back of her head, last in a line of excuses, statements, questions. Instead, she hesitates, sighs, rolls her eyes and tries to resist the urge to reach for a cigarette.
“You barely know me.”
Rufus snorts, looks almost angry, but when he opens his mouth to say something else, his guitarist barges in, all loud voice and clenched eyes, hung over as fuck, and Lily laughs, loud and hard and overly deliberate and shimmies down the bed to pull her panties up.
ii. girl, put your records on, tell me your favourite song
Rufus tumbles off the stage, guitar awkward around his back, and he knows her too well already, can pinpoint where she’ll wait backstage, surrounded by too many people, the flower to everyone else’s honeybee, the Venus Flytrap to Rufus’s dumb bug.
He’s so fucking jittery though, so energetic as he grabs her around the waist, picks her up and Lily’s not sure if its adrenaline or heroin, but he’s almost vibrating, high, pupils blown and she grins down at him, kisses him hard. “You sweat on me, Humphreys, and I’ll break your face.”
When he laughs, he throws his head back, exposes the long line of his throat. His Adam’s apple bobs, and Lily can’t help herself, leans in and kisses it so that she can feel it against her lips when he says, “You’re all talk, Rhodes. Always have been.”
Lily rolls her eyes dramatically, and Rufus doesn’t leave her side the entire night, arm heavy, warm and possessive (safe, loving, desperate) around her waist, and he’s loud, grabbing the roadies that cross their path and yelling “I love Lily Rhodes” to anyone who will listen. It’ll be perfect nostalgia for her when she’s thirty, and she’ll remember grinning wide, laughing and playing along when Rufus talks about heading to Vegas and getting an Elvis impersonator to marry them.
She wakes up the morning after with a plastic engagement ring on her ring finger that she’ll wear for the rest of tour. (And after her first, second, third divorce. Slips it on to replace the million dollar ones that she puts into storage, drinks herself to fantasy and imagines that they really did marry in Vegas and she didn’t spend the next eighteen years trying to find someone that would fit into the gaping hole that he left her with.)
iii. don’t think we’re okay just because i’m here
They fight, and it’s big and it hurts, and it’s dumb, because they’re not even together, but Lily makes out with Rufus’ drummer, and Rufus gets drunk and fucks one of his other groupies for a change. Lily will remind herself that she really doesn’t have any right to be mad, she doesn’t, but she can’t stay when they tumble out of the bathroom, the slag’s lipstick smeared on his collar like a verdict, a condemnation, confession.
She can feel her heartbeat, the ba-dum, ba-dum of it hard behind her eyes, in her ears, and the ache in her chest isn’t like anything she can explain, justify. Her fingers shake as she empties her pockets, finds a couple of quarters to call Carol from the seedy payphone down the street. She trembles for the three rings, and she cries when Carol answers, voice hoarse with sleep, because there’s only so much fucking up she can do before she just wants to go back to her Mom’s holiday house in Malibu where everyone does everything for her, even all this feeling bullshit.
Carol makes promises that Lily doesn’t think she’ll keep, and when she hangs up, she throws up in the bushes and the snow, stays hunched over until tears drip into the mess she’s left, and the ache in her chest (head, heart, legs, fingers) has dulled enough that she can stumble back to her shitbox car, wondering if maybe she did drink too much tonight.
She locks herself in the driver’s seat because she doesn’t have the money for a hotel suite, and she’ll be woken up at three in the morning, not by room service, but by Rufus’ knock on the windscreen, looking too-thin and cold in the bitter winter. Lily will watch the way his chest moves as he breathes too hard, the way his mouth forms around the pleases and the sorrys and when he writes I love you backwards in the condensation on the window, Lily just turns away and cries.
By the time the sun rises, light breaking between the buildings surrounding the car park casting long shadows across the vehicles, Rufus will be asleep on the pavement. Carol’s coming to pick her up in a few hours, and Lily’s aching for coffee and for Rufus, and as she steps out of her car, as she tries to walk around him, past him, she stops, stilts, lets her eyes slip shut. Lily has maybe never been strong enough, not as independent, stable as she tries to paint herself to be, and it’s easier this way, to turn around and curl up against his back and pretend that this isn’t everything she needs.
iv. it was so dark i just don't know what i kissed and i couldn't even see what i missed
The seventh time Lily will think is the fourth, because somewhere along the line Lily’s mom starts calling again, and the fights stop being so infrequent. Rufus drinks with the guys until late, and only comes to bed when he knows Lily’s asleep.
This way when he mumbles I love you into the nape of her neck, down her spine, into the curve of her breast, he can pretend she says it back.
v. and i hope you have more luck with this than me
Lily never counted the pictures she had of him, but when she leaves him that night, young and aching, a baby Rufus can never know about heavy in the pit of her belly, even if she’s not showing yet, she leaves her favourite one of him on her side of his pull-out bed. Try not to miss me too much. L. scribbled on the back in eyeliner because she couldn’t find a pen.
“Please don’t,” he mumbles, and Lily blinks over at him, her hand on the door handle. He’s only half awake, eyelids still heavy as he watches her. He hasn’t even sat up, but his fingers are clenched around the photograph.
“I’ll be back in a few days,” she says, because she will. Because she’s got all of this planned out, she’ll go, abort the baby with her mother’s money, and then she’ll be back, and Rufus will still be here, just like he says. Just like he always is.
“I love you,” he mumbles, and Lily can’t explain the ache in her chest, the one that pries open her ribcage and tears apart her heart, as she says, “I know. I’ll see you soon.”
Later, she’ll think the ache was because she knew.
Her mom was never going to let her off (let her go) that easy.
+ You are the spotlight girl
The first time is in some nameless venue somewhere between boarding school, New York and the rest of the world, between her mom and dad, and Rufus is on stage, larger than life behind the microphone and not like anything Lily’s ever seen before. Perfect, and it’s not love at first sight, but in another reality it might have been. Rufus, emotional and beautiful, too easily touched and affected (always), wipes his forehead on the back of his hand, says, “Fuck, you’ve been great,” to the crowd at large, says, “I love you all,” and Lily, she yells, loud and honest, calls back, “I love you too, stud,” just to hear her sister laugh.
I should have given you a reason to stay.
&
i. First Day of My Life - Bright Eyes
ii. Put Your Records On - Corrine Bailey Rae
iii. Warwick Avenue - Duffy
iv. Shadowland - Youth Group
v. Your New Twin-Sized Bed - Death Cab for Cutie
+ Talk to Me, Dance with Me - Hot Hot Heat
A Lack of Colour - Death Cab for Cutie