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[ Blue
Hawaiian ] AUTHOR:
Isabelle Kennedy FEEDBACK: [email protected] WEBPAGE: http://www.geocities.com/retroeighties CATEGORY:
Corday/Romano. Corday POV. SPOILERS:
Anything up to & including ‘Lockdown’ RATING: R
(Language, Sexuality) DISCLAIMER:
All characters are the property of Michael Crichton, John Wells, NBC & Warner Bros. No copyright infringement intended.
Title and summary are courtesy of Pavement. Archive anywhere; just drop me a
line first. SUMMARY:
“Aloha means goodbye and also hello/It’s in how you
inflect.” Peace. Silence
broken only by waves, by water lapping around the edges of consciousness.
Palm trees wafting in the breeze, like myriad biblical fans. The scent of
summer heavy in the air. You shut your
eyes and try to forget. When you open them again, the city is sticky and humid, the
oppressive heat of early summer pushing down on your shoulders like a leaden
weight. And yet it isn’t as hot as Hawaii; it couldn’t ever be that hot, that
peaceful and languid. You wonder what it must be like to live somewhere that
doesn’t experience seasons, or at least not in the same way. Somewhere static
and stationary, where the variation in temperature and climate is barely
perceptible. Nothing like England, with its unpredictable weather and
omnipresent rain. Certainly nothing like Chicago. You’ve been here for nearly
six years and you still don’t think you’re accustomed to the extremes, to the
blinding heat and the searing cold. You don’t think you ever will be. And
you’re not sure that it even matters. You stand in
the centre of your office, absently tapping your foot against a box of
medical texts. The room doesn’t look any bigger now that you’ve removed all
your possessions. If anything, it looks smaller, as though the walls are
closing in on you. Maybe they are. You aren’t used to feeling this way;
helpless and impotent and knowing that, in the end, your years of medical
training meant nothing. Knowing that there was nothing you could do to save
your husband, that there were only so many drugs you could prescribe to
alleviate his pain. And he was in pain: death is not as it appears in films.
In real life, there is no gloss or tasteful fade to black. Death is humanity
in the raw; the fear, the senses disappearing one by one and the body losing
its control. Sometimes you
thought that dying was an art, a play that you’d seen too many times for it
to shock. But not this time. You can’t
remember how often you’ve given bad news to relatives, said ‘I’m sorry, they
didn’t suffer’ and known it was a lie. And you’re just glad he was spared
that final indignity, that final denigration of death into something
palatable, understandable and wholly unreal. In a way, his suffering helped
you, allowed you to feel that he was being freed from further agony. For
that, at least, you can be thankful. But,
sometimes, alone in the dark, you wonder if the only reason you went back to him
was because he was dying. That, in the end, the least you could do was watch
him die like a good wife should. If you were religious, then you might think
that this was your punishment for abandoning him. Except you haven’t been to
church since you were at school and, anyway, you aren’t sure if Anglican
guilt exists. Maybe you
should have been Catholic instead. You did love
him, though and you aren’t sure why you need to keep reminding yourself of
that. You loved him, but it wasn’t what you thought it would be. There was no
pain or hunger, none of the exquisite agony of loving someone, of wanting
someone so much that it hurts. It was never about pure, unadulterated
passion, but then your parents had that once and you saw where it got them.
You truly believed that it was better to have someone who made you feel safe
and protected and loved, than someone who had the capacity to both complete
and destroy you. Because you’re
not a romantic, you never have been. You’ve spent too long with men who hurt
you, men you couldn’t trust and men who didn’t care, for that. And you’ve
hurt them and betrayed them too; it was never entirely one-sided. Despite
everything you knew, despite everything you aspired to be, you used your
sexuality as a weapon. It grates, this realisation. And because it
wasn’t just about sex with Mark, because he made you think that you had more
to give, it blinded you to the reality that he might not be enough. He loved
you and he made love to you. He treated you with respect; something that you
weren’t used to, something you didn’t think you always deserved. But,
ultimately, you didn’t want that, you didn’t need someone who would let you
fall because they were too afraid to stand up to you. You needed an equal. And sometimes
you just needed to be fucked. When the door
opens, you don’t turn around. You know who it is already. “Last minute
packing, Lizzie?” His voice is
sharp despite the words, sharp enough to wound. “I don’t want
to talk about it.” But he steps
into the room, shutting the door. “Well, that might be a problem since your You feel
trapped, suddenly, in the office, in his presence. “I’m not
flitting back to England, as you so charmingly suggest.” “Oh?” You turn
around. “I’m going home.” He snorts.
“You haven’t been home for six years.” “Exactly.” And then his
eyes narrow slightly. “Are you really prepared to leave all the memories of
the dear, departed Dr Greene here?” You meet his
gaze steadily. “Fuck you, Robert.” But you don’t
really mean it, not enough. It sounds weary and trite, even to your own ears. “You’ve no
idea how long I’ve been waiting for you to say that.” As does his
response. “Please don’t
presume that you know anything about my marriage,” you say stiffly. There is a
slight smile at the corner of his mouth. “I know more than you think,
Elizabeth.” And he’s
probably right, even though you’d never admit it. There is a long silence and
you sit on the couch, partly so that you don’t have to face him. Eventually
you speak. “Nobody knows
how to act around me anymore. They don’t know what to say to me, so they
don’t say anything.” He kneels in
front of the couch and you can sense his presence now. “They all came
to the funeral, they all told me how sorry they were, how
it was a tragedy,” you say, realising how banal those words of comfort
seem. “But it didn’t happen to them.” Your voice
cracks. “It’s not fair.” When you raise
your head, he is close, too close, in the darkened office. And it’s both
minute and immense, like being trapped under ice with only a cigarette
lighter. “No, it
isn’t,” he says softly, reaching up to stroke your cheek. You flinch
slightly, but don’t move away. “It’s not fair.” This is too
dangerous, too volatile and you know that you should leave now. But the sexual
attraction has, perhaps, always been there. You’ve just never allowed
yourself to think about it before. Not really anyway, not seriously. He was
the type of man you might have slept with before Mark; arrogant, focused and
deliciously obnoxious. It isn’t this that bothers you: most of the time, you
find it amusing. But sometimes you wonder how much of that persona is real.
Sometimes you wonder what it would take to learn the truth. And it makes you
laugh, this notion that, if you went to bed with him, you’d discover that he
isn’t really a bastard. Because he is and that’s part of the attraction. You know that
you should leave, but you can’t. Instead, you lean down and kiss him. At first, he
is unresponsive; his mouth tight with surprise, his fingers frozen on your
face. You want to smile at this, at his shock in getting what he wanted. Then
suddenly his hands tangle in your hair and his tongue slides over your lips
and you forget everything. But only for a
moment. Then, just as suddenly, you’re pushing him away. “I’m sorry, I
shouldn’t have...” His hand falls
from your cheek. “It’s okay.” And you know
that he means it, that it won’t change anything if you leave, only that if
you do, it has to be now. But you can see the desire in his eyes and, at that
moment, it’s all that matters. After everything, it’s that simple. You reach
out for him again, not caring how inadvisable it is and kiss him hard. It’s
what he’s wanted for six years and it amazes you that he has waited this
long. And when he slides his tongue over the roof of your mouth, you wonder
why he did. If someone had
told you six hours ago that you’d be begging Robert Romano to fuck you, then
you would have laughed. Now you aren’t sure you can even breathe. You think
wildly that maybe you have a fetish for bald men. But this is completely
different from being with Mark; it’s raw and primal and passionate. It’s
tear-stained lust, unstoppable and inevitable. Because,
really, there’s no aphrodisiac quite like loneliness. Your mouth is
slick against his throat as your hands unbuckle his belt and you stop
thinking why this is a bad idea. Instead, as he presses you back against the
couch, you focus on the one reason why it is. It’s sweat and straining and
bodies sliding together. It’s life in the midst of death, the most basic
affirmation of life in the face of your own mortality. Afterwards, sitting
on the couch, you look down at your hands, twisted together. “This was...” He interrupts
you, one hand raised. “This didn’t mean anything. It was just grief.” You know that
he is offering you a way out. A way to claim that this was all a mistake, that you’re too screwed up to understand what
you’re doing. “No, no it
wasn’t.” And you leave
then, forcing yourself not to look back. But later,
when you close your eyes, you find that you can’t forget. End. |