vyncapervynca (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} vyncapervynca) wrote,@ 2008-03-13 11:41:00 |
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| Current mood: |  melancholy |
| Entry tags: | fanfic, lately, pushing daisies |
Lately (II)
Disclaimer: I know that I don’t own Pushing Daisies or Lee Pace… But I can dream.
Ranting: NC-15, just to be safe.
Summary: That pleading, hushed and broken tone made Charlotte Charles want to kiss him to death.Literally.
Paring: Ned/Chuck
Dedicated to my patient and lovely Beta; thank you for the magic.
Spoilers: Everything until Corpsicle is fair game.
Title: Lately
Chapter Title: Secrets (II)
By Lylou
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-“…We've all done things we're not proud of.
We all have secrets.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Since the first time she entered the Pie Hole -- the very same night that Ned brought her back to life and drove her there, Chuck had loved the mixed scents of flour, fruit and baking powder floating in the surprisingly familiar air of that place.
And without knowing really why, she had loved that place immediately; some nights after that Chuck came to understand it was because every corner, every booth, every floor tile and everything there, was somehow attached to Ned.
Everything in that place was Ned.
But above all, what Chuck would remember from that first night and many after, later while she was trying to sleep in a strange bed, would be the savory and hot scent of the pie maker above all the others tempting smells there. She’d remember the way he smiled at her from behind the bar; as if he wasn´t really saying with that warm and gentle tone of his, the one that always seemed warmer and gentler when he was talking to her, that they would never ever touch, or she would be dead. Again. Forever.
But that first night in a closed pie shop Chuck didn’t pay too much attention to his words; of course, she had understood what he had said about the touching issue but all that seemed blurred and vague to Chuck while he was speaking and looking at her with that strange beautiful blend and trade mark of shyness, charm, sweetness, magic, that was, above all, Ned.
And Chuck would remember later that then had been the very first time of the many, in which she had thought that it was almost unfairly easy to fall in love with that man.
Now, almost four months after that night, but still under the spell of his voice and his warm glance upon her, Chuck could sense his now familiar savory scent mixed with all the other sweet smells in the Pie Hole; even today, the day after she returned from her lonely one-way journey.
The faint white light, typical of a snowy day, slipped in through the circular windows of the still closed local and spilled everywhere. It gave it the look of something frozen and solitary that Chuck instantly hated with all her heart; the Pie Hole always had seemed bright, busy, warm and safe to her, and she needed that this morning more than ever.
Chuck needed small slices of what was familiar and known to her; she needed the bitter smell of the fresh coffee impregnating everything there, or the soft conversation from the booths, the bells clinking in the door, Olive fluttering around Ned… Ned.
He was busy now in that cold and small room at the end of the kitchen, the one she always had secretly hated, bringing fruit back to life at the other side of a locked door.
Chuck didn’t like when he acted like that. Actually, it disgusted and saddened her so much that sometimes she couldn’t help to wonder if she really knew the man she loved.
Because the Ned she knew wasn’t the distant and cold man locked in a narrow room filled with rotted fruit, that had left her outside, alone, peeling apples and staring at an empty restaurant knowing that she hated being alone.
The Ned she knew was the man who knew how she felt, and didn’t care to wake up half hour earlier everyday to take all the rotted fruit out of that damn room and to bring it back to life in the large and warm kitchen, only so that she won’t feel lonely.
Like now.
Chuck felt hot tears forming fast behind her eyes and clouding her vision, and she didn’t realize that she had cut the back of the hand instead of the apple until blood appeared, dark and intense, through her wet vision:
“Damn it.”
When she moved the blood dripped, staining the elastic of her green cashmeresweater, and a few drops fell upon the wooden counter; Chuck sighed, frustrated, in the empty kitchen, left the guilty knife and looked for the paper towels.
She watched, mesmerized, as the paper strip turned red immediately upon contact with her blood, and without knowing really why, she couldn’t help but think: There is something different in your blood now and forever.
A faint trace of ozone and death poisoning you, and stopping you painfully from going to that narrow room and crushing your mouth against the man you love --from kissing and touching him until he stops looking at you in that heartbreaking way that makes you feel guilty. That kind of difference.
But of course, she could never ever do something like that. So she was left with the certainty that she would never feel Ned’s careful hands upon her skin, despite hours spent studying and memorizing every line of them, and the sureness that she’d never know how her nickname would sound among broken whispers, with his hot breathe in her ear, underneath him and feeling nothing but his touch…
All that was like a dull ache in her side – she was learning how to life with it, like an open wound that kept her bleeding, painfully, but still alive… but some days, that wound was too deep, too painful.
Chuck looked again at the small blood drops on the counter and a dark and dangerous idea crossed her mind… What if there was an antidote to that particular poison hers of being alive, but perpetually infected by death?
She was lost and darkly mesmerized with those thoughts , so she didn’t heard the door of the small room opening behind her. She didn’t even notice that Ned was in the kitchen until he was at her back, watching her intensely -- but when Chuck turned and saw him, all the thoughts of the antidote, death, and the man in the sewer fled from her mind.
“What…Are you okay?”
All kind of distances between them seemed to disappear when Ned’s concerned and alarmed voice flooded the empty place, and even more, when he quickly tore more paper towels and pressed them carefully against her wounded hand.
Suddenly, she couldn’t remember exactly why they were that far-away or the misery and guilt she’d felt wandering during two days, knowing that he was feeling miserable and guilty too. She even forgot that if his long fingers accidentally touched her, she would die instantly in front of him. Suddenly the only thing that mattered was Ned’s almost touch in the warm kitchen.
It mattered so much that Chuck could almost felt the warmth of his skin through the layers of paper and blood.
Almost.
She cleared her throat and whispered, overwhelmed by his nearness and the faint scent of the after-shave that Chuck secretly wished would cling her hair and her clothes: “It’s nothing…only a superficial wound.”
Liar. It’s not superficial wound. You’re bleeding to death, because even with him so close, looking at you with that dangerous mixture of love, guilt and concern, the only thing you want to do is to run away and break his heart again.
Because you still think that he deserves it, just a little.
Chuck looked at his big hand covering hers completely through layers of paper towels, and felt his sad gaze fixed on her, as if somehow Ned could read her awful thoughts, but loved her anyway.
Well, maybe he can -- maybe after he brought you back to life there is something small of you inside him, too; maybe that could be enough. It used to be enough… But not now.
Not while you’re still willing to hurt yourself to hurt him.”
To avoid betraying her destructive mindset, Chuck closed her eyes slowly, and felt the heat radiating off Ned’s body beside her own, his hot breathing against her loose hair, and her hand underneath his.
This is real. And the not-touching-thing doesn’t make it, or him, less real and painful.
Before she opened her eyes again, Chuck heard a faint sigh in her ear before he released her hand and separated from her painfully; taking his warmth with him.
Ned spoke in a polite but authoritarian tone that he didn’t often use with her. “The peroxide is in the other room… I’ll go to find it. Stay here.”
It wasn’t a question and he didn’t want an answer, so Chuck spoke up anyway. “It won’t be necessary, I’m…”
But Ned had already left her alone in that lonely kitchen for a second time that morning.
Chuck looked at the bloodstained and crumpled absorbent paper upon the wooden counter top with infinite hate before throwing it to a corner in a rage.
Ned appeared again in the kitchen with a small white plastic bottle that seemed smaller in his hands.
He looks even taller when he is upset. Especially when he is upset with you.
Chuck felt small, fragile and above all, lonely then; she sank slowly to the cold, green tiled floor, leaning her back against the cabinet door.
Ned walked to her and looked at her in silence a few seconds before sitting down next to her, leaving a gap between them. He bent his long legs and looked at her with his lately habitual mixture of care and guilt in his eyes; there was no trace of the authoritarian and distant Ned there.
Chuck stretched her wounded hand and Ned smiled lightly before opening the bottle.
Cold, transparent and burning drops of peroxide fell in her open wound and made her to groan low. Peroxide in her open wound was a painfully apt metaphor for the way she felt now.
But then Ned blew a puff of air in her wound carefully, in that intimate and charming gesture that broke Chuck’s hear. It reminded her of the good times, and of how far away they were now.
“… Sorry. I know it hurts…”
And without even thinking what she was doing, Chuck answered. “Yes… It does.”
Ned looked at her, mortified, and pressed his lips together, a painful and scared expression in his eyes that Chuck had never seem in him before. He looked away and his guilty sight was lost on the green tiles:
“..I’m sorry…I know that it probably doesn’t mean anything to you by now, but I… I want you to know that if I could… somehow…”
He didn’t know how to end his sentence, like all the words the Pie Maker knew weren’t enough anymore. Secretly she was thankful, because his voice sounded too broken and too sad for the tall and wonderful man, all grown up from the shy boy she’d waited for.
And suddenly, the most charming man she’d ever known, seemed sure that the abyss was the only thing that remain in front of them. It was like hope had slipped out of the door while they weren’t looking.
Chuck felt hot tears flooding her throat and her eyes, and very sad and small smile appeared on her lips as she spoke in a wrecked and defeated tone:
“I’ve already forgiven you. That was the easy part.”
“I’ve already forgiven you. That was the easy part.”
The pie maker looked at her with a mixture of confusion, guilt, and a hint of optimism in his eyes, and Chuck felt even worst when the only thing he said was a very gentle, very caring, and very Ned:
“…Don’t cry… please.”
“…Don’t cry… please.”
She wiped away the tears with a fast and nervous move and smiled sadly. It was unfair; she was the broken, resurrected and lonely one but still she couldn’t keep away from him, or hate for looking at her like he was doing now, or for speaking with a voice that was that full of love, fear, tenderness and guilt that silenced all the mean, terrified voices in her own mind.
If you’ve already forgiven him, why are you crying, and why is his heart breaking into a million pieces in front of you?
-“Chuck please… look at me.”
That pleading, hushed and broken tone made Charlotte Charles want to kiss him to death.
Literally.
She looked at him finally, and a warm rush of love poisoned her rage and hate when she saw Ned’s shy smile and grateful gaze, but specially, when she heard his unmistakably hopeful tone too close to her:
“Thank you.”
“Thank you.”
And then, the girl named Chuck smiled brightly for the first time in three days, even with the moisture of her tears burning her cheeks.
“How’s your hand?”
Ned had completely recovered his familiar warm and gentle tone, and was looking intensely at her with his back leaned up against the cabinet door.
He can’t touch me, but right now, he’s touching the same thing I’m touching.
Somehow, Chuck found that extraordinarily comforting and normal. Normal for them, anyway.
“Much better, I’m not bleeding anymore.
Thank you.”
Thank you.”
Ned looked at her as if he hadn’t seen her in years and smiled shyly:
“You’re welcome.”
“You’re welcome.”
Chuck`s gaze left the Pie Maker and his charming smile for a moment to fix it in her green ballet flats. She asked softly and a slightly small teasing tone:
“So… is this how is going to be every time? You just say the right words, that’ll be it?”
“So… is this how is going to be every time? You just say the right words, that’ll be it?”
Ned looked thankful and overwhelmed for a very few seconds, marveling at the discovery, that without knowing how and when, he had become Charlotte Charles’s anchor.
This is too good and too bright to be your life baker boy. You should be careful; maybe there is a surprise inside this pie…
And actually, there was.
But Ned didn’t know that yet, and brushed away that dark and premonitory voice of his mind, still under the spell of her words, and chuckled softly and delighted in that increasingly warm kitchen.
Chuck felt a familiar hot and wonderful vertigo in her stomach at his deadly combination of sexy, charming and shy tone when he said:
“Of course.
“Of course.
This is how it’s going to be.”
Ned smiled softly and looked at her in such an intense and powerful way that Chuck knew instantly and without a doubt, that he was kissing her.
But not the kind of friendly, respectful, in-front-of-parents kiss type.
No. In his mind Ned had pushed her up against the cabinet and had his big hands underneath her grey dress and his hot tongue into her mouth, kissing her thoroughly and consuming her.
Of course, it was only in his mind.
However, she knew it and it was enough, so Chuck smiled at him, hoping that somehow he could know that right now, she was digging her nails in his bare back and moaning his name.
Ned smiled a bit embarrassed when he spoke, as if his imagination had betrayed him with his teasing and anything but shy tone.
“I… I don’t have more secrets…”
And then, the girl named Chuck wasn’t smiling anymore.
She had one, and one of the big ones; the kind of secret that could make everything go the hell forever without second chance; or a third one in her case.
Charlotte Charles had run away from him and from his warm spell three days ago, and in that time she had almost betrayed their secret and everything else they were, as if all the love, faith and promises between them didn’t mean anything; and even now, there was still a part of her screaming her to do it, to hurt him and made him bleed in a way that no one else could.
You can admit it -- let him know how you almost told everything to a stranger, then sit back to watch his heart breaks in front of you -- or tell him that his worst fear was knocking at your door only a night ago—or that you are not as perfect as he thinks you are. Break the spell and tell the man that loves you more than anything how you were willing to run away to never go back.
Or you can lie to him again, and pray that truth and fate never knock at your door.
So the girl named Chuck smiled brightly and lied.
“Me neither.”
Of course, she couldn’t know that in actuality, fate was about to knock at their door.
To be continued…
Comments are always like sex and coffee combined.
