Until the Last Moment
Title: Until the Last Moment
Pairing: Clameron
Rating: PG
Synopsis: Some things are not meant to last.
Authors note: Still trying for that tormentingly unhappy ending. I think I managed something approximating it this time. Written as a fill for this prompt over on the meme.
Many thanks to insatiable_nick for the beta.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Didn't really happen and is unlikely to. Full disclaimer in my userinfo.
It's not that it's over - it's that it began in the first place.
That's the thing that really stings. That it had happened, despite his best efforts not to let it. The ending was expected, welcomed even, but the beginning - the soft, slow creep into a world he had no right in knowing about - that's the part which makes him feel empty.
The tightening of his heart in his chest is a necessary part of this, whatever this is. Regret? Maybe, but it feels deeper somehow, cuts more fiercely within, hurts more than any regret he has known before, or can imagine knowing in the future.
Grief? He doesn't think so.
There are no tears shed, no keening moans of a heart torn in two, only anger. A bitter fury that bites and tears and scars, until he feels like he hasn't a heart left with which to feel grief.
It's his own fault, of course. He could have said no, should have said no; refused quick captured moments and sly kisses, ignored the heated, woven thread of his desire. Dwelling on that fact won't make a difference, but somehow he can't move his thoughts away.
'We shouldn't be doing this.'
'Do you want to stop?'
'No.'
The truth in that one word frightened him. 'No.' Naked and unashamed, a perfect revelation of his longing. He wonders now how he'd ever found the courage to say it, to let it escape his lips and sigh into the room. When the mouth pressed to his own again he made no protest.
He learned to accept the limitations; it was, after all, the way things had to be. Always secret; hushed and carefully choreographed, at intervals of days, or weeks. Whenever time and privacy could be found.
He'd grown to expect it, like he expected fresh coffee when he woke, or the morning papers to be on his desk each day.
'David, could we talk privately for a moment?'
That same calm voice, the same carefully constructed sentence every time, and it always stopped his heart from beating, and he always replied:
'Of course, I'll be right there.'
Now it is over.
That shouldn't bother him, but it does. It does.
Never knowing that touch again; never feeling the quickening breath that the touch causes; never holding on for just one more moment in his company, one more second of stolen bliss.
'How can you act like this has meant nothing?'
'Because it hasn't, David, I thought you understood that.'
There is the answer that chips at his chest and opens the well of his heart into a cavern. He'd like to say it meant nothing, he tells himself it didn't, but a voice inside answers more candidly than he will ever be able to: I thought you loved me. His mouth tangles on these words even as the door closes behind the retreating figure.
Those are the words that collapse his frame into the chair as the shuddering sobs force their way from his body and the tears sting his eyes into submission, before escaping down his face. He presses his hands against the salty wetness, willing it to stop. It doesn't. The tears seep through his fingers and drip-drop to the floor below, blossoming outward through the carpet pile in fuzzy, flower-like circles. Miniature daisies of despair arranged in a floret of finality.
The knowledge that this decision had been forced on him makes the tears fall harder. They flood from his eyes, washing over his hands and obliterating the delicate carpet bouquet, until there is nothing but a wet smudge.
How was he reduced to this?
To be weeping like a broken-hearted teenager in his own office; it's humiliating.
The anger wells again then, like a sharpened dagger stabbing at his mind. It's enough to make him clench his hands into fists and say the words I hate you through his gritted teeth. Except he doesn't mean it, or maybe he does; he's too blinded by sorrow and too perilously close to something like heartbreak to know how he feels beneath it.
Does he hate Nick?
Does he love him?
Is it really the beginning or the ending that hurts the most?
It all seems too overwhelming. To plumb the depths of his emotions seems a task too great and difficult to achieve, and he is too weary; too heart-sore with the whole thing.
All this is keeping him from his work.
He takes a handkerchief from his pocket and dries his eyes and face, and when George pops his head round the door twenty minutes later the only comment he makes is that David looks tired.
When he sees Nick again the pain of unshed tears returns, and David realises that this will take a long time to heal. Every time Nick looks at him, every time he touches his shoulder - every casual conversation that comes and goes without the now expected sentence - is like a new wound over an old one that has yet to heal.
And David bites his lower lip until the physical pain has drowned out all the heartache, because each fresh hurt stings just as violently as the first.
Pairing: Clameron
Rating: PG
Synopsis: Some things are not meant to last.
Authors note: Still trying for that tormentingly unhappy ending. I think I managed something approximating it this time. Written as a fill for this prompt over on the meme.
Many thanks to insatiable_nick for the beta.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Didn't really happen and is unlikely to. Full disclaimer in my userinfo.
It's not that it's over - it's that it began in the first place.
That's the thing that really stings. That it had happened, despite his best efforts not to let it. The ending was expected, welcomed even, but the beginning - the soft, slow creep into a world he had no right in knowing about - that's the part which makes him feel empty.
The tightening of his heart in his chest is a necessary part of this, whatever this is. Regret? Maybe, but it feels deeper somehow, cuts more fiercely within, hurts more than any regret he has known before, or can imagine knowing in the future.
Grief? He doesn't think so.
There are no tears shed, no keening moans of a heart torn in two, only anger. A bitter fury that bites and tears and scars, until he feels like he hasn't a heart left with which to feel grief.
It's his own fault, of course. He could have said no, should have said no; refused quick captured moments and sly kisses, ignored the heated, woven thread of his desire. Dwelling on that fact won't make a difference, but somehow he can't move his thoughts away.
'We shouldn't be doing this.'
'Do you want to stop?'
'No.'
The truth in that one word frightened him. 'No.' Naked and unashamed, a perfect revelation of his longing. He wonders now how he'd ever found the courage to say it, to let it escape his lips and sigh into the room. When the mouth pressed to his own again he made no protest.
He learned to accept the limitations; it was, after all, the way things had to be. Always secret; hushed and carefully choreographed, at intervals of days, or weeks. Whenever time and privacy could be found.
He'd grown to expect it, like he expected fresh coffee when he woke, or the morning papers to be on his desk each day.
'David, could we talk privately for a moment?'
That same calm voice, the same carefully constructed sentence every time, and it always stopped his heart from beating, and he always replied:
'Of course, I'll be right there.'
Now it is over.
That shouldn't bother him, but it does. It does.
Never knowing that touch again; never feeling the quickening breath that the touch causes; never holding on for just one more moment in his company, one more second of stolen bliss.
'How can you act like this has meant nothing?'
'Because it hasn't, David, I thought you understood that.'
There is the answer that chips at his chest and opens the well of his heart into a cavern. He'd like to say it meant nothing, he tells himself it didn't, but a voice inside answers more candidly than he will ever be able to: I thought you loved me. His mouth tangles on these words even as the door closes behind the retreating figure.
Those are the words that collapse his frame into the chair as the shuddering sobs force their way from his body and the tears sting his eyes into submission, before escaping down his face. He presses his hands against the salty wetness, willing it to stop. It doesn't. The tears seep through his fingers and drip-drop to the floor below, blossoming outward through the carpet pile in fuzzy, flower-like circles. Miniature daisies of despair arranged in a floret of finality.
The knowledge that this decision had been forced on him makes the tears fall harder. They flood from his eyes, washing over his hands and obliterating the delicate carpet bouquet, until there is nothing but a wet smudge.
How was he reduced to this?
To be weeping like a broken-hearted teenager in his own office; it's humiliating.
The anger wells again then, like a sharpened dagger stabbing at his mind. It's enough to make him clench his hands into fists and say the words I hate you through his gritted teeth. Except he doesn't mean it, or maybe he does; he's too blinded by sorrow and too perilously close to something like heartbreak to know how he feels beneath it.
Does he hate Nick?
Does he love him?
Is it really the beginning or the ending that hurts the most?
It all seems too overwhelming. To plumb the depths of his emotions seems a task too great and difficult to achieve, and he is too weary; too heart-sore with the whole thing.
All this is keeping him from his work.
He takes a handkerchief from his pocket and dries his eyes and face, and when George pops his head round the door twenty minutes later the only comment he makes is that David looks tired.
When he sees Nick again the pain of unshed tears returns, and David realises that this will take a long time to heal. Every time Nick looks at him, every time he touches his shoulder - every casual conversation that comes and goes without the now expected sentence - is like a new wound over an old one that has yet to heal.
And David bites his lower lip until the physical pain has drowned out all the heartache, because each fresh hurt stings just as violently as the first.