And still I have the pain I have to carry
A past so deep that even you could not bury if you tried...
I would fall asleep
Only in hopes of dreaming
That everything would be like it was before
But nights like this it seems are slowly fleeting
They disappear as reality is crashing to the floor
After all this time
I never thought we'd be here
Never thought we'd be here
When my love for you was blind
But I couldn't make you see it
Couldn't make you see it
That I loved you more than you'll ever know
A part of me died when I let you go*The fingers sliding lazily through his hair are familiar, even after all this time. Part of him knows that even this casual intimacy could become problematic, but in a world rapidly shifting around him--even if he caused the most drastic--some semblance of sameness seems necessary. He sleeps better when she forces him to it, and curled up here tonight, the fire the only light in the room, and the taste of whiskey on his tongue mingling with the well-remembered scent of her, he feels content. He is known, no mask necessary, no show of strength, no spinning of tales, no need to play their personal Jesus. He is safe, and safety is a thing he had forgotten. So he allows her touch, and the conversation carries between them in soft, intimate murmurs of the day and the problems to solve. Her insight is sharp and biting sometimes, cutting through the shadowed webs he dances around, but she, too, seems softer by the fire's glow, tempered by life and loss as much as he.
But there are gaps, gouges, craters and canyons that they balance on the precipice of. Thirty years is a long time to be each locked in a private hell the other can never fully understand. She is no longer the girl she was, thinking him nearly a god, and he has a new layer of bitterness pressed to his skin, a new coldness settled around him like a mantle, pulling him even further away from simple humanity than he had been just decades before. Standing apart was always his curse, but this distance is sharper, more engulfing, and he feels it with each breath, even as her fingers soothe him into a pretense of connection.
His need for the boy, her boy, separates them as well. They do not speak of it openly, but she finds him brooding in his office, sees the flash of loss, of pain in his eyes, and she knows him well enough to know. The tone that dances in his voice when he says his name is one she recognizes, and the sadness that slides through her gaze does not go unnoticed, but he does not know what to say to ease it. They are a culmination of decades of betrayal, pulled apart by their own choices, their own paths, and coming together now, pretending little has changed, when, really, the world they both knew is gone, and the people they were died long ago in cold, sterile hallways with the last gasp of a frantic dream.
These moments, then, are those out of time. They played in the snow with the boys, laughing, and there was hot chocolate for the children, and hot toddies for them when they came in. But his new consort's eyes burned, resentful and frightened of a closeness she neither understands nor shares, and the shadow of the children's father hangs over them, waiting to swoop in and break up the idyllic semblance of what could have been. Too many forces tug, pulling them back from the past to the present and an unknown future with each breath they take. He knows this. He knows she knows, too.
But, tonight, they do not speak of that. Instead they laugh softly, push the world outside the study door away, and pretend.
[ooc: Angela is ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mapetrelli and used with permission. Lyrics are from "Blind" by Lifehouse] ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
