Fragile Wings: Part Two

by Timesprite and kaleko

She walks right past me, gun slung over her shoulder, casually sipping a coffee. I watch her, trying to look as displeased as possible as she passes the couch and goes into the kitchen. She comes back out with the bottle of rum and gun-less and sits onto the couch.

"Lemonade, in case you hadn't noticed, walking around town with a huge fucking gun on your back is not being inconspicuous."

She blinks, turning to look at me. "What?"

"The neighbors might see you," I add.

"Oh, Which neighbors, Dom? The crackheads or the pimp? You think they give a fuck what we do?"

"They watch us. They watch us and they know and if you keep being so fucking sloppy, they're going to notice something."

She sighs, pouring some of the rum into her coffee and stirring it with her straw. "Mmmm. Alcohol. Coffee. Mmmm."

I don't know what's been with her lately. She's been walking around the place nude since... hell, about a month after we moved in. She has no problem with jumping into bed with me. She showers with the curtain open, which I guess could just be an odd quirk, but...

I look over at her, randomly pouring rum into her coffee and sipping it. If I didn't know any better I'd say she was doing jobs on the side without me and trying to get drunk to be rid of the guilt, but of course that would just be me being paranoid. Maybe because I'm out of practise.

We haven't done much in the past few weeks, and I just sit around this place doing nothing. The TV amuses me once in a while but there's shit-all to do besides that. I'd think about buying a computer but I have a feeling I'd either shoot the damn thing or track down tech support and shoot them.

"I'm tired of watching TV," she says suddenly, grabbing the remote from me and flicking the TV off. "I'm tired." She flicks the cd player on, some new alternative band whose cd she picked up the other day coming on. I'm fine with it, curling up against the side arm of the couch and closing my eyes. Yeah, destressing is a good idea, although, thinking about it, shooting some expensive equipment would be cool. Lord knows I don't get to shoot enough stuff as it is.

Things are going smoothly, Lemonade bopping about in place to the music, singing along, sipping her coffee and rum. Then she stops bopping and just sings. Then she stops singing, and suddenly she's curled up on the couch leaning against me with her head in my lap. She offers me the coffee and I take it, taking a few sips. Eugh. It's that nasty, crappy flavor she gets from Starbucks all the time. Wench. She would hand that crap to me.

"You know, from this angle, you look really... unreal."

I snort, shoving her away from me. "What is this shit, Lemon?"

"What's what?"

"This!" I shout. "What do you think I am, some sort of fucking teddybear? Laying all over me and being all... kissy-kissy and shit. You drunk already?"

She looks offended, backing away. "Sorry. Didn't mean to upset you."

I feel bad now, but I casually brush off my jeans. "Well... yeah! Just... y'know... don't..."

She sighs, going to the other end of the couch and curling up, slowly drinking her beverage. "You know, you're the reason," she says suddenly, eyeing her coffee. "You're the reason I'm not dead, the whole reason I don't want to die. You've kept me going, and I think I--"

"Don't," I hiss. "Don't even say it. Don't even *think* it. You have no idea what the fuck you're going on about, so shut up."

"The hell I don't!" She hops up from her place on the couch, slamming her mug down on the coffee table, contents sloshing from the cup. "I know. You just don't want to fucking hear it."

"I'm not a replacement, Lemonade. What, you just going to go on fucking one team mate after another? Is that what this is? It doesn't fucking work!"

"How the hell would you know!" She snaps up her coat. "You probably never gave a shit for anyone in your whole damned life!" She shouts back, and slams the apartment door behind her.

I fall back on the couch, blowing hair out of my face in frustration. Not what I'd intended to happen. And the fact that her parting shot hit me like a ton of bricks in the stomach isn't even her fault--fuck. I'm too damned tired to be dealing with this shit, and too sober to deal with the memories. I grab up the half-full mug from the coffee table and down the contents, ignoring the taste, then head into the kitchen for a refill and something to clean up the mess.

She's fixated, that's all. That's got to be it-- after all, I saved her ass, she said so herself. And God knows she didn't take Marc's death well. It'd figure she'd look to me to fill that void. Not as if we've had much contact with anyone else these last two months. Shit. I should have seen this coming. She's just lonely, and stressed... and I've been treating her like shit for it. I shouldn't have let it get this far, I think, swirling the contents of my mug a bit-- there's not much coffee in it by this point at all-- but I did, because it didn't really bother me as long as I could pretend... what, exactly?

I scowl and slosh the last of the liquor into the cup. As long as it didn't offend my perceptions of what was okay, as long as it didn't cross the arbitrary line in the sand that let me take advantage of what I wanted and throw the rest of it... I stretch out on the couch, deciding I really don't like the way the damned cactus Lemon bought a few weeks back is looking at me. Stupid phallic looking plant...

----

"Dom? Are you conscious?"

"Hunh?"

"Dom? You don't look well."

"Well, fuck. Isn't that a coincidence, I don't feel well, either..."

"Let's get you into bed, girlie. You're drunk."

"I... is the room supposed to... move..."

"ACK! Hey, hey! Stand!"

"I can't feel my leeeeeeegs..."

"Fuck. Okay. Um. Sit. You can just sleep out here for the night. Let's get you out of--"

"Hey, are you watching me undress? Perverted dead cactus... I bet you are."

"Hey. Gimme the bottle."

"Noooooo. It's telling me to have another beer. Mmmm. Cheap American beer. Fucking... lovely."

"Dom, that's a PLANT you're talking to. Give me the goddamned liquor now."

"It's whispering. Can't you hear it?"

"The cactus is not whispering to you. It has no interest in your chest, I promise. It's dead."

"Stop staring at me. You don't get another beer, they're miiiiiine. And don't you dare try to take them. You've had enough to drink, buddy... buddy-o."

"Did you just say 'buddy-o'? Really, give me the bottle now. We're going to go to bed, and I'll put a bag over Javier so he can't watch you while you sleep."

"But... but..."

"Yes, I know he's a pervert. It's okay. Nasty cactus."

----

"Oh... God..." I stumble towards the bathroom, suddenly completely forgetting where it is. I go into every room along the way until I reach the right one.
      My wretching and sobbing causes Lemonade to come running in behind me, kneeling on the floor behind me. She wraps my long black hair around her hand, combing it out of my face and patting me soothingly on the back as I lean over the toilet.

She's making little "shh"ing noises at me, massaging my midback in a circular motion. The calming vibes I start to feel don't make my stomach any better, and her voice is being drowned out slowly by the pounding in my head.

Just when I think I'm going to pass out she grabs me from under the shoulders, throwing me over the side of the tub and turning the cold water on. She splashes it into my face, still patting me on the back. "You're turning blue, girl. Breath for me... don't do this..."

We spend over an hour in the bathroom like that, her bent over me in concern, splashing water onto my face. I finally slump over the side, onto the floor. She pulls me against her, cradling my head in the crook of her arm. "You okay?" I can't do much more than moan, the bubbling in my stomach less severe now but still violent. She runs her hands through my hair, watching me with concern. "I stayed up all night watching you," she says softly, patting my forehead. "You look like shit."

"Henh.."

"Yeah, I know. You drank window cleaner."

I blink a little, looking up at her a little bewildered.

"I... well, I kinda melted the plastic spray bottle trying to use the stove, so I put what was left in the glass flask thing. It was the only thing I could find." She looks guilty, but there's a small smile on her face. "You must've mistaken it for alcohol and drank it, because it was empty on the floor. You're lucky you aren't dead, but there was barely half a cup left in the flask, so I guess it wasn't so bad."

"Says you," I mutter, trying to sit up. I learn that's an accident waiting to happen as my legs decide they don't want to get up just yet. I crumble back down to the floor, Lemonade leaning over to grab my arm and hold me upright.

"Take it easy, would you? You're going to hurt yourself." She pulls my arm across her shoulders, wrapping her other arm across my back and under my other arm. It takes her a moment to pull me to my feet, and we walk clumsily back to the bedroom.

She sits me down on the bed, propping me up against a few pillows and flicking on the TV. "You need to lay down. Whatever possessed you to get that drunk in the first place?"

I look at her and she knows the answer. She looks away as the phone rings.

It's like a million bells going off in my head, still echoing between my ears after she picks it up on the third ring. I'm still too hungover to hear what she's saying, but it seems like a simple convo. I really had no idea she knew anyone or that anyone besides who we intended had this number. Maybe it's a telemarketer, I tell myself as I fight to stay awake.

...Where--?

Right. The apartment.

It's dark out. The shades are still open, letting a bit of moonlight in. The TV's still on on the table at the end of the bed. Everything in the apartment is dark.

"Lemonade?" I call out, sitting up. The room spins a little, but it's not half as bad as it was this morning. I must've slept all day. I look at the clock... 4:35 A.M. Heh. Must've slept all night, too.

I get up-- because I can actually walk now-- and wander about the apartment. It's empty, and the car keys are gone, but her gun of choice still sits on the floor beside the couch. Where could she have gone at 4 in the morning that doesn't require her taking her favorite weapon?

I sigh and sit down onto the couch. I'll wait for her. That's what I'll do. And the minute she walks in the door, she's going to catch hell.

----

The sun is fully up by the time I hear the door unlock and I push myself into a sitting position from where I've been dozing on the couch. Head still hurts like a bitch, and I doubt there's a thing in the world that could force me to eat anything for the next week or so, but it's better than dead, I guess. Maybe. I lean over the back of the couch. "Where the fuck were you?"

"Out," she replies, dropping her coat on the floor and the keys on the table.

"Oh, out... right," I snap back. "Out where?"

"Just around, okay?" She walks over, leaning against the couch. "How you feeling? You should really take it easy, y'know. You were half dead last night."

"And who's fault is that?"

"You wanna start this shit again?" she shouts at me, looking like a little kid about to throw something out of anger. I wait for it, wait for her to take off her shoe and throw it at something, or take her keys and leave. But she doesn't, she just stares at me. "Why are you doing this to me?"

"I'm doing this? Last I knew you--"

"No! You are not turning this back on me! I... I gave you something the other night, a part of me I didn't think I could give after Marc. And you just... you laughed at it!"

"Lemon, I'm not..." I flop back on the couch. "I'm the wrong person to get attached to. It'll only bring you grief. Do yourself a favor and forget about it."

She laughs wryly, looking down at me. "What do I have to lose Dom?" She brushes her hair out of her eyes. "Look around for a sec. My team is dead, what the hell else do I have? Besides, I don't want to forget about it, and I think--" Her hand drops down to touch my shoulder. "I think that this isn't about me, it's about you. You don't really give a fuck about me at all. You just don't want to deal with the fact that someone might actually care about you."

"Oh, fuck you," I mutter, turning away from her speculative gaze.

"You really want me to reply to that?"

"No!"

"Aww, I'm hurt." I can practically hear the impish grin in her voice. She moves around to sit next to me on the couch, deliberately leaning her head against my shoulder. "I think you're just playing hard to get," she purrs, toying with the ends of my hair. If she got any closer, she'd be sitting in my lap. She shifts so she can look at me, face only inches from mine, and something in the back of my head keeps me from pulling away. "You've got really... gorgeous eyes, y'know that? Like the sky right before the sun totally vanishes." I can feel her breath, light on my skin. "Very..." Her lips brush mine, lightly at first, then harder as I don't pull away.

I jerk away suddenly, sweeping up the gun from the floor and holding it point-blank to her face before she can even react. "What the *hell* do you think you're doing?" I shout at her, ignoring the sudden frightened look on her face. "Goddamnit! Where the hell do you get off using your powers on me like that?"

"I--" she backs away from me, curling up at the other end of the couch, staring at me wide eyed. "I didn't..."

"Bullshit, Lemon! Don't act like you don't know what the hell it is you just tried there!"

"I didn't!"

"Bullshit," I drop the gun and stare at her for a long moment. "Fuck." I take a deep breath, put the gun down, and leave the room.

----

I'm lying in the bedroom, flipping through channels on the TV mindlessly. I can hear Lemon crying in the living room. Part of me thinks she deserves it, for trying to pull what she did. I don't take kindly to people fucking around with my emotions like that. Another part of me, however, is calmly pointing out that perhaps I'm simply taking the easy way out of a situation I'd rather not deal with.

I turn off the TV, kick the bedding around a bit, punching the pillows and trying to ignore the sounds on the other side of the door. Getting comfortable isn't really an option, and Lemonade's sobbing isn't helping things. She's been sitting against the wall all night, sobbing. I didn't know it was possible for anyone to cry that much. She'll stop, and then start up again, worse than before. Or maybe I'm just getting more and more tired of it.

I toss and turn in bed. She's quiet now. The TV is off, the apartment is silent. The floor boards creak outside the door. The knob turns. Light from the nightlight in the bathroom shines into the room. It silhouettes me against the wall.

The floor boards creak. The door closes. She's standing there, staring at me in the darkness. I didn't sign up for this, I think, as I sit up. There's a part of me-- that same part of me that screamed for me to leave, to click "send" on that email and put my foot on the pedal-- screaming for me to send her away.

I move over.

She sits down. In the darkness I can see her eyes are wide, teary, black from mascara and eyeliner running, red from rubbing them. Her hair is disshevled, her shoulders hunched down. She watches me with pink eyes, and I know. I know she didn't do that, back there in the living room. Then I wonder all over again if she's making me forgive her.

"I'd never--" she starts, and I cut her off by taking her hand.

I pull the blanket around her, pulling it up around her neck, and lay back down. She does, too, and watches me. Her eyes close slowly until she's finally asleep. I watch her until the sun comes up, when I goto get coffee, donuts, and learn the deeper meanings of the universe through the FM rock station's morning show DJ.

----

"So you gonna tell me where you've been after all, or not?" I ask, sipping my coffee as she scarfs down another donut. She shrugs, playing with a strand of hair.

"It's really not important. I just had to get out."

I don't believe her. I looked over the phone records I'd managed to acquire, and most of the calls are to various pay phones in Florida. Why would she be calling pay phones in Florida, unless she was talking to an informant? ...No, why would she...?

I sigh, feeling the folded up paper of records in my pocket. I want to pull it out and show it to her, show her I'm onto her and she might as well tell me, but I'll wait. What really baffles me are the calls to the Venice Hill Division of Child Adoption and Foster Services near Garrisonville, Florida.

I plan to look into these. Something about Florida, many somethings about Florida that she isn't telling me. I have a feeling what it is, and if it is that... well, that would be a good reason to be so broken up about Marc.

People have secrets in this business. It's not safe to let people know too much about you. I respect that. She's never asked about my life, nor I hers. But it seems like I'm slowly being sucked into a past, her past, and I'm not sure that I don't want to get involved.

It's not a good thing.

---

Three AM and I jolt awake, my nightmares skittering back to the darker places of my mind. I gasp in a lungful of air and try to slow my heart. Lemon stirs beside me, her permanent position in this uneasy truce we've called. The dreams linger, but her hand touches my shoulder lightly, voice soft in my ear. I let myself be guided, let her hold me and calm me until my pulse slows and I can sleep again.

She never asks about the dreams.

Mornings are always hardest for us. We don't look at each other, refuse to face what we fear the most in each of our eyes. Some nights the nightmares come for both of us and we just cling to each other, like two children lost in a sea of blackness, with no hope of ever seeing anyone but each other ever again.

I realize we are not the only two in the world. We're two people in an expanse of people just like us. We lost, we gained, we lost again. Alone, sometimes: by ourselves in an empty world full of empty streets. A place where nothing has meaning and all we have to do is sit around, sip our coffee and wait for death to come. Times like this I wish I had a fucking computer. The internet is full of faceless names, codes, words, rooms and communities of people to lose one's self in. It's almost like an escape.

Julio was into that for a while. Just about every morning, religiously, he'd log on, check his email, say hello to the letters on the screen, the letters that formed nicknames like howdygal67 that he'd grown so close to. It's that false sense of security most are drawn to. It's easier to bitch at a name on a screen, to disassociate those names with human faces. It's easier to hate and love through a keyboard and monitor, easier to say things you'd never say in person.

I think it would be my ideal world.

I can't turn her away. I'd love to, because I know this is wrong, wrong in the same ways all the others were wrong. I don't know why I think this will be any different.

"I know what you're hiding from me
You know what I'm hiding from you
I know that you hurt me real bad
You know that I hurt you bad, too
Let's just get naked
Just for a laugh
Let's just get naked
It's a trip and a half..."

My cigarette is burning out in the ashtray on the table, and the TV is on mute, and there's some strange girl-music on the stereo. Lemonade is in the kitchen.

She makes banana nut pancakes for breakfast with honey-maple syrup, freshly squeezed orange juice and coffee. Two plates at the kitchen table, two forks, two knives, two napkins.

In the back of my mind I can see the scene in black and white, Lemonade in her little white and black dotted dress, tightly curled hair and apron. "Gee golly, Dom, I hope yuh're hungry! I fixed us a meal right quick but t'is shure a lot!"

I snort. What the hell does she think this is, the Guthrie family farm house? This doesn't mean I've given in. This doesn't mean we're a couple or something. This just means I've gone too fucking soft to turn her away, and she wants to make this one big happy or something.

Well, fuck that, I say. I'm not going in there.

So I sit down at the couch with my bottle of Jack Daniels and turn on the TV. And she's still in the kitchen, making eggs, cooking bacon, waltzing around the kitchen humming like a god-damned idiot. He used to do that. He used to make things in the kitchen, just to lure me out of bed, make me forgive him. I couldn't stay mad at him and he knew it. If I already knew that Lemon couldn't read me I'd say she's playing with me on purpose. It's got to be hard to mess with someone's emotions when you don't already know what they're feeling, though.

"Hey," she says, poking her head into the room. "I've got breakfast made in here."

"Not hungry."

"But I made pancakes!" she pouts, shaking her head. "See? I've got paste all in my hair. I went through all the hard work..."

"Okay, okay, if it'll shut you up...!" I have to admit she looks cute like that. Domesticated, eating her hacked-to-death-with-the-crooked-fork pancakes, with pancake mix in her hair and wiped on her jeans and bacon grease splattered on her shirt.

The bacon is either too crispy or too chewy, and the eggs are scrabbled, which I don't like. The orange juice has pulp and there's no blueberry jam for the toast, then I try the pancakes. They're perfect. Just about the most perfect pancakes I've ever had.

And I look up and Lemonade's watching me, smiling, with syrup on the edge of her mouth and pancake mix in her hair and on her jeans, and bacon grease splattered on her shirt, and I wonder where she comes up with the ability to smile at me no matter how much I scream at her or make her feel unwelcome.

She moves from the table and gets a yellow glass of liquid off the counter, and I see the Lipton container on the side of the microwave. "Lemonade drinking lemonade? That somehow seems very, very wrong," I say.

She takes a sip and sits down across from me with a smirk. "I wouldn't mind eating a domino, though."

The only thing that keeps me from choking on my egg is that I remember dominos are a cheap Oreo cookie. Something inside me is dearly hoping she meant the damned cookie and not me.

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