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in our bedroom after the war
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| the l word: beyond that bend (lara/alice) |
[Oct. 8th, 2006|08:29 pm] |
Title: beyond that bend
Fandom: the l word
Pairing: lara/alice
Prompt: 074.summer
Word Count: 2,855 words
Rating: PG-13.
Author's Notes: 10.02.06 / spoilers up to season 3. pretty girls are ilene chaiken’s, not mine. Will return. for 100women.
So, we’re back where we started – why don’t we just leave it at that? –tina dico, ‘back where we started’
It was summer when Alice ran into Lara again, months after Lara left town after Dana died. Well, actually, it was after the whole thing with Alice altogether, but Alice wished not to think about that anymore. More like a nightmare, or a really bad high school memory.
So when Alice bumped into Lara one fine summer morning, some random street, she’d just said, “Hi,” removing her sunglasses to look Lara in the eye, standing there, shifting from one leg to another.
And Lara just said, “Hey,” in return, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear. Familiar habits die hard. “How are you?”
Alice had lost count of the months that had peeled themselves slowly by, and Lara, unfortunately, posed a rather difficult question. “So, you want the short or long version of my answer to that complicated question?” she’d just found herself asking, to which Lara smiled as if to say she wasn’t sure about where this was going just yet.
*
Maybe it was just that summer’s heat does all kinds of things to the brain – Alice was willing to accept any sort of explanation for why she and Lara were sitting there for donuts and chai latte six months later.
“So,” she wasn’t Alice Pieszecki for nothing – Alice starts her own conversations. All the time. “Where have you been all this time?”
Lara blushed, but it could’ve been from the heat, so Alice paid no mind. “Asia, mostly,” she replied quietly. “Studying spicy food in Thailand, that sort.”
“Life goes on, huh,” Alice didn’t mean to be bitter or bitchy, but it came out anyway. Alice looked at Lara as if she had just thrown a careless punch. “I mean…”
“It’s okay, Al,” Lara dismissed. She leaned in to take a bite from her bavarian donut. This was Alice, she just thought, astonished at what little changed despite the passing of days. “Relax.”
It was a weird word at the moment, ‘Relax.’ Despite herself, Alice found herself absently fiddling into her jeans pockets, feeling for strands of yarn she might have left there. Don’t be silly, Al, she quietly mused to herself. There’s nothing there.
And it felt like a long time ago – when she and Lara had sat cross-legged, playing with thread, trying to escape what it all was.
*
Funny how someone of Alice Pieszecki’s nature – the Alice who started all her conversations – failed to initiate that one particular conversation, the one about Lara and her and the several attempts at piecing Dana’s memories together by putting places she’d touched at one time or another side by fucking side.
This hand to that breast this lip to that shoulder this knee between those legs – and all the while, two sets of eyes closed, in concentration, frustration or illusion, or maybe all of them all at once. All.
Alice had wanted to say it was working so well, if that was the only thing she could say to keep Lara from leaving town, but she knew that’d be a lie -- as naked as they had both been the night before, on the sofa in Alice’s apartment. Had Alice known it would have been the last, she would have been gentler.
That’s what I should have said, Alice just thought to herself, looking on as Lara boarded a cab across the road.
*
“So,” Alice cleared her throat, a long while after. “Thailand.”
Lara looked up from her latte. “Hmm?” she just hummed, raising a brow. Apparently, she was too distracted to hear what Alice had said. “I’m sorry, you said something?”
The look on Lara’s face made Alice laugh. “It was nothing really,” she just dismissed, suddenly embarrassed to have interrupted Lara’s thought process. “Just a comment about Thailand.”
Lara leaned in. “What about Thailand?” she asked, attentive now. Seeing Alice turn away prompted her to apologize. “I’m really sorry, I’m just… distracted, I guess.”
“I completely get it,” said Alice, a finger tapping irregularly on the tabletop. “You know, I somehow saw this coming, but I never really got around to thinking what I’d do if it did come.”
Lara was taken aback by the comment, but she took a moment to take a small sip of her latte. “You’d been thinking about me?” she asked incredulously after swallowing.
“Of course,” Alice just said, matter-of-factly, as if thinking about the love of your life’s other love in her life had been the perfectly normal thing to do. But then, catching herself, “I mean…” A pause.
“Mean… what?” the other woman prodded, obviously trying to rein in a smile. Lara had always found it strangely endearing, how at times Alice thought she knew exactly what to say, only to have the words flee from her head at the most crucial moment.
Who would’ve thought in their brief time together as friends, or lovers, or partners-in-grief, whatever – who would’ve thought Lara would notice such small things? For one, Alice wouldn’t have.
“I mean…” Alice scratched lightly behind her ear. But then, with her voice dropping a couple of decibels, she says, “Of course, I do.”
Lara let go of the smile, as if right on cue. “You know something?” she began, “I missed you.”
*
Alice looked at her watch and gave out a small gasp. “It’s almost seven,” she just muttered, unable to restrain the look of disbelief from surfacing. Had they just spent the last few hours talking about food and Thailand and donuts?
“Oh,” was what Lara said in response, apparently unable to take in just yet the speed with which time breezed through them both. Why hadn’t it been more forgiving before? “Do you need to be some place? I’m really sorry, I didn’t…”
“It’s all right, Lara,” Alice smiled. Because it really was. She put a hand lightly over hers, tentatively. “Do you need to be some place?” she asked back. “I mean… I could drive you. Old times’ sake, you know?”
God bless whoever coined that phrase, ‘for old times’ sake’, Lara just thought. Must have helped bring to life a lot of once-dead things. “Actually…” she began, or at least, she tried to. Funny how she didn’t really have any qualms when she kissed Alice out of grief, that night she flew in a day too late, but now all it took was a hand resting lightly on hers to confuse her.
“Look, you don’t have to take my offer—”
“No, that’s not it,” Lara countered, head shaking slightly. “I was just thinking… What about dinner?” she finished at last, with an offer.
On the table, Lara turned her hand around, palms up, her fingers meeting Alice’s in a warm, familiar tangle. The offer was slowly turning into one Alice could not refuse.
*
They couldn’t decide which restaurant to enter. Lara had no particular preference – she wasn’t in her best sous chef disposition these days. And Alice was not in the mood to be in the midst of so many people, either.
“Say,” Lara braved, “How about we just order some take out? Have it somewhere… quiet?”
Alice couldn’t half-believe her ear, really – was Lara suggesting they have dinner in private? Not that it was entirely objectionable, but… “We can call this really good Chinese restaurant and have it delivered… somewhere,” she suggested in return.
“Alice,” Lara sighed, tilting her head slightly to the right. “I haven’t forgotten where you live.”
“Then you probably remember it’s just beyond that bend,” Alice continued.
“Which was precisely why I suggested take out in the first place.”
Alice laughed. “Keep that up Ms. Perkins, I just might start reading the signals wrong,” she just said, walking on ahead.
Walking after her, Lara kept a smile to herself, stuffing her pockets with her hands.
*
“Yes, that would be two orders of yang chow rice, a bowl of sweet and sour pork and beef with asparagus,” Alice said, her voice booming across the room as she walked around with the cordless stuck between ear and shoulder. “Anything else?” she mouthed silently at Lara, who was settled rather comfortably on the sofa. Lara shook her head to signify that her order had been properly taken care of.
Putting down the phone, Alice just said, “This must be some sort of diet.”
“What is?”
“This is,” she just shrugged. “I mean, did you hear what we just ordered?”
Lara sat up. “In my opinion, it sounded like a pretty good meal for take out,” she just said.
“It did?” Alice asked back. “I mean, I could call again, if you wanted to add anything.”
“Alice…”
“Yeah, I know, I know,” Alice cut in before she could say anything else. “It’s not like it’s a date or anything, right?”
Lara laughed as Alice paced in front of her, cordless phone in one hand. “Alice, are you all right?”
Putting the phone down on the table between them, Alice just asked back, “Seriously, Lara – is this all right?”
Lara just bit her lip, in a way that told Alice she knew what to say but just didn’t have the right words for it – as has been the case between the two of them, all this while.
When the doorbell rang, Alice let go of the breath she wasn’t quite aware she had been holding all along. “Christ,” she cursed, jumping a little. “Thank God the food’s here.” Lara just flashed a silent smile in response. “Excuse me,” Alice just says before approaching the door. “Sometimes I feel like I’m in this made-for-TV drama of sorts.”
Lara laughed. “Yeah,” she just says, voicing her agreement. “It does seem a lot like that sometimes.”
*
Chinese came and went – Alice and Lara sat across each other on the dining table, eating in silence mostly, the general quiet interrupted every now and then by random stories about Thailand and about Helena, of all people.
“Helena’s back on her feet?” Lara repeated in awe. “Wow.”
“I know,” Alice nodded. “Nobody thought she would, you know? I mean, Helena’s… Helena.”
“Old rich, huh.”
Looking up from her drink, “Uh-huh, not really the type who’d agree to employment, you know? So sophisticated and refined,” Alice just said after swallowing. “I mean, if she weren’t a very good friend, I’d definitely date her.”
Lara grinned. “Like that has stopped you before?” she just asked, wriggling her brows suggestively.
The comment elicited a laugh. “Staying out of that cycle now,” Alice held her palms up, as if in surrender.
“Seriously?” Lara asked, growing serious herself.
Alice paused for a couple of seconds. Why there was need to gather her thoughts and not go with the automatic response, she didn’t understand at the time. “Really. Seriously.”
Lara just nodded in response and said nothing until the end of the meal.
*
“So,” Alice cleared her throat. Lara looked up from the floor, where she had sat with her back against the far end of the sofa. It was a little over 9 p.m., and Alice was lying on the sofa’s other end, hand behind her head. “That was nice, wasn’t it?” The triteness made Lara laugh. “What? You think it wasn’t?”
“Of course, it was,” Lara just said, nodding and not really looking Alice’s way, just staring at the general direction of her toes, a pale flush on her cheeks. “I mean, it was wonderful, just seeing you again, Al.”
Alice moved to sit up. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh come on, you can’t even say it while looking at me.”
“Thanks for the wonderful dinner, Ms Pieszecki,” Lara turned her head finally, that trademark playful smile on her lips, a slightly raised brow. “Seriously. I had fun.”
Curiouser and curiouser, Alice just thought. There must be some decent explanation as to why she was sitting here in her apartment with her former partner’s ex-girlfriend altogether, after all these months, after everything that had passed them by – their erroneous ways of coping, their use of sex as medication, Dana, Dana, Dana… Dana. There must be a Grander Design, she just thought. Something bigger than the two of them, that Alice didn’t just quite grasp right now.
“Me too,” was all she could say in reply.
After much staring and silence, Lara got up from the floor and dusted her jeans. “It’s getting late,” she just says. “I should go.”
Alice led her to the door, although something inside told her this night wasn’t over just yet. Alice, Jesus, she mentally kicked herself. You are so not.
“So,” she held the door open, let Lara cross to the other side. “Thanks, I had a wonderful evening.”
Lara shoved both hands into her pockets, shifted from one leg to the other. “Yeah, such coincidence huh? Bumping into each other after all this time.”
“Yeah.” Pause. “Wow, we really spent an entire day together without inappropriate touching,” and with that, Alice finally managed to say, with a nervous laugh to boot, what she had been keeping in for long. “Fuck, did I just say that?”
Lara leaned against the doorframe. “Unbelievable, isn’t it?”
“Not really…” Alice replied, leaning on the opposite side. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like that.”
“What’s wrong with the way I’m looking at you, Al?”
“Jesus, Lara,” Alice exhaled, tapping the doorframe with the back of her head lightly, repeatedly. “I’m not sleeping with you.”
Lara bit her lip. “Why not?”
The question threw Alice, who had expected her to come up with something akin to, ‘Who said I was going to,’ or something similarly cocky, but no – Lara Perkins was asking her why she would rather not sleep with her tonight.
Alice felt her reasons abandon her, as memories of teeth nipping shoulders, nails running down backs, strands of hair stroking stomachs, and all their corollary sensations inched slowly toward the first layer of her skin, where Alice’s memories reside. As if clawing their way out of a pile of other sensations, fighting for her attention.
She stood there opposite Lara by the doorway, a familiar burning sensation just below her stomach. “Because, Lara,” she managed to say, albeit weakly, “It’s not right.”
“I’m not really sure that’s what you really want to say,” Lara just said.
“We’re… we’re just mistaking it for something else entirely,” said Alice. “It’s not what we really want.”
“Really?” Lara asked. “If that were the case, then why are we still here by your doorway, discussing it?”
Alice knew Lara was right.
*
Who was to say it was wrong, touching Lara this way? Alice didn’t exactly have a “Top Ten Things Not to Do with Lara, or with any of Dana’s Exes” in her pile of lists.
In deference to Lara, she treated sex like she probably would her fine cookery – not that Alice had observed this much before, but Lara in fact had a certain method to the way she touched Alice, the way she kissed and stroked, bit and scratched. It wasn’t like anything taken out of a recipe book though, with their clearly identified ingredients, specific time-frames and measurements.
No, Alice really wasn’t of the opinion that the better cooks were the better followers of cookbooks – instead she had been sure, as she reveled in the feel of Lara weighing her breasts in her hands, that Lara improvised greatly as she went on along. Pretty much like Dana had. Pretty much like anybody in a new relationship would.
“Sometimes,” Alice had said after, lying in the sofa with a leg over Lara’s hip, head propped up on an elbow, “Sometimes, you touch me so well I forget they’re not Dana’s hands.”
Lara closed her eyes as she rested her head against Alice’s shoulder, chewing on her lip lightly. “Are you expecting me to say I feel the same?”
“Don’t you?”
A pause. “Do you think Dana had taught me how to touch you before she died?”
Alice laughed. “You know, sometimes,” she began, “I actually want to ask you if she had.”
“Al,” Lara sighed. “Are you trying to imply I haven’t been paying attention all this while?”
At first, Alice had eyed Lara curiously, trying to figure out what it meant – until the reality of what Lara had just said hit her, sank in, and then gnawed deep.
*
It wasn’t something Alice was ready for, nor was she at least ready to have heard it right out, and it seemed Lara had understood because she had dressed in silence and left before Alice woke at 6 the following morning.
There was no note, not even a number she could call, nor an address she could stealthily walk by several times a day because she wasn’t ready to admit she was interested in what Lara could offer.
Reaching over for her cell, as if on auto-pilot, she started dialing for Shane -- maybe her noncommittal club was open for membership. Alice sure could use some group therapy right now.#
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| Comments: |
aw, that's so muted and intimate and sad and lovely. little lines in your prose devastate. i particularly liked:
inched slowly toward the first layer of her skin, where Alice’s memories reside
and
that one particular conversation, the one about Lara and her and the several attempts at piecing Dana’s memories together by putting places she’d touched at one time or another side by fucking side.
*hugs 'little lines in your prose devastate'-comment close* -- this totally made my night.
thank you so much for the comment. *g* i was going for "muted and restrained" and i'm glad it kind of worked. :)
Oh, wow.
Alice felt her reasons abandon her, as memories of teeth nipping shoulders, nails running down backs, strands of hair stroking stomachs, and all their corollary sensations inched slowly toward the first layer of her skin, where Alice’s memories reside.
This sentence slayed me. And I don't know wtf it is, but I love the thought of Alice and Lara and you - you write them as though you were paying attention all that time.
Truly lovely work - thank you so much.
thank you for the comment :) i don't know what it is about lara/alice as well, but it absolutely draws me :) | |
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