Ella Claire Gainsborough {Beauty} (bookshelved) wrote in bellumlogs, @ 2010-05-24 12:50:00 |
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Entry tags: | beast, beauty |
Who: Daniel and Ella
What: There’s something about Jane; Roommates
Where: R1
When: Immediately after this.
Warnings: Sadness?
Ella was quiet the entire way to R1. She didn’t turn to look at Daniel, and she stayed just ahead of him, just out of reach. She wasn’t going to break down in the hallway; she refused. The tilt of her chin was stubborn, and her lip trembled slightly as she pushed open the door to Daniel’s refuge. Kat was lying behind the door, and she scooped her up and rubbed her cheek against the kitten’s fur in an obvious attempt at soothing her nerves.
She turned to look at him as he closed the door. “She’s lovely,” she said quietly, eyes almost-cry damp.
Daniel didn’t attempt to touch her, and it wasn’t because he was caught up in Ain’s hotel room or Jane’s confessional. That numbness was coming back, the cool misty stuff that seemed to separate everyone from him, but never far enough that he thought he could hide what kind of person he was from them. Ain was always asking him why, and Ella was always reaching, and now Jane was here, asking for something--but Daniel didn’t know why, and even though he cared for Ella enough to give her anything she asked for, he couldn’t reach back for her, and Jane... Daniel couldn’t do anything for Jane. He had known when she left it was better for her to stay away from him, and nothing had changed his mind on that count. Everything hurt so much that he imagined he just stopped feeling it.
After he turned the bolt and let the knots uncoil from his shoulders, Daniel stood at the end of the hallway to gaze into Ella’s face. “Yes,” he said, as if confused by the observation. “What happened to you?” It was a sympathetic question, not a harsh one.
Ella put Kat down, and she motioned to the balcony. She liked being outside of R1 much more than she liked being inside of it, and even Daniel seemed more alive out there - alive was a word Ella generally did not equate with Daniel. She stepped out into the cool air, the sweatshirt she was wearing keeping her warm enough, and she leaned her arms against the railing, mainly so she didn’t have to look at his face when she spoke. “Nothing terrible,” she said, because then he’d just worry about her being in the space as Lotte’s Phantom, and she didn’t want that, didn’t want him sliding into the protective mode that seemed to come so easily for him, while allowing him to keep his own feelings at a distance.
“There are things I know, Daniel,” she said softly. “You care about me, and you feel like it’s your job to take care of me, but you don’t love me. You love that woman, and she loves you. I would give anything for you to feel something like that for me, but I can’t wish that into being or grow it like a rose.” She made a helpless movement with her fingers. “No matter how I want to. And I want you to be alive again, more than anything, which is idiotically unselfish and utterly worthy of an Austen heroine, even if I can’t think of which one right now,” she said, almost-smiling through the tears that were brimming in her eyes.
He followed her where she led. In this life, Daniel was a peculiarly passive person despite his inherently stubborn nature. Sometimes he would argue, but most of the time he did what other people said--Ella, Vlad, Ain, even Vaughn--and every time he followed along with that distracted look on his face it was devastatingly obvious that was not the way it was supposed to be.
She was right; he liked the garden. He liked the smell of it, particularly the roses, and he didn’t tell her that he’d always liked roses, written about them and thought about them like long-dead friends he’d never been able to nurture the way she did. Coming close but not touching, leaning over the railing to watch the traffic far below, Daniel listened.
“It’s not a job.” He disliked the way she put that, because it wasn’t true. “You’re not a job. I care about you.” He turned his head to look at her. It was true.
“I know,” she said, looking over and touching his shoulder gently. “But that isn’t love Daniel. Love is... burning for someone. It’s not being able to wait for them to come through the door. It’s Darcy and Elizabeth; Jane and Rochester; Heathcliff and Catherine. Life isn’t a novel, but the feelings are the same as they are on the page,” she said with complete conviction, turning a little to look at him as she spoke. “When I first saw you, I could barely breathe for the butterflies in my stomach, and before I met you there wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t imagine what it would be like; all that from written words on a forum and in letters. You’ve never felt that for me,” she said sadly, touching his cheek.
The vague expression on his face, always-present made her trail her fingers down his jaw sadly. “You don’t feel that for anything, sweetheart,” she said even more softly. “You’re depressed, and I don’t know when it started, but it’s been getting worse since I’ve known you. When we first met, you cared enough to fight about things with me; now you don’t even fight.” She took a shaky breath. “Down there, with that woman, you looked alive - even if it was because of the thought of losing her.”
Daniel didn’t know what to say. “I lost her before you came,” he said. “A long time ago. I’m sorry that... that what I have isn’t enough for you.” He didn’t sound angry, didn’t look angry. There was something in him that stirred with resentment, though, and he didn’t know why. Why should he resent her feelings? If she’d known about Ain it would be worse, and he would see the look on her face that he saw on Jane’s the last time he’d seen her. He felt something when he thought of that, at least, though it was not a lot. He just didn’t want Ella to hurt, but he couldn’t seem to protect her from that.
She almost cut him off halfway through his sentence. “No,” she said stubbornly, with a tilt of her chin. “This isn’t about you not having enough, because you do.” If there was one thing Ella was certain of, it was Daniel’s potential. You didn’t write what he used to write without feeling. “I knew your writing before I ever knew you, and someone who writes like that feels. They’re the type of person who feels too much,” she said knowingly. “The type of person that sleeps with everyone’s wives and who everyone looks at when they walk into a room. And that’s still there, Daniel, it’s just buried under a blanket of things my sister did to you. It isn’t that what you have isn’t enough; it’s that you don’t feel that sort of passion for me.” She knew what that felt like too; she’d been there before with William.
That got him. He stood upright and he turned to face her and it wasn’t argument in his eyes, it was something harder that actually burned. If she was looking for life, for reaction, she’d got it. “I don’t write anymore.” He said it like a blow. “Stop waiting for it to happen again. It won’t.”
“There are things in life you don’t stop being, Daniel. A writer is one; an alcoholic is another. I know plenty about both,” she said with a stubborn tilt of her chin. She might not be a good writer, but the need was still there, just like it always had been. And she could still taste the burn of whiskey against the back of her mouth, even without having had a sip in years. Her eyes blazed with challenge. Let him try to contradict that if he wanted to.
He did. “No you don’t,” he returned, angrily. “You just think you do. You always think you know everything there is to know about me.”
“I know things about me,” she said. “I know what it’s like to want a drink so badly you can smell the whiskey with the bottle closed across the room. I know all the deals you make with yourself the day after. I know what it feels like to write something down and get it out,” she insisted. “And I know, Daniel Webster, what it feels like to shove it all down where no one can touch it, because it hurts too damn much to let anyone get there. That’s what I know.”
“I’m not you.” Frustrated beyond words, a rarity, Daniel took his palms back and shoved at the railing in an absolutely pointless gesture, and the blow left the metal and his bones vibrating from wrist to elbow. He turned around without another word, storming back into the apartment.
She counted to ten, wiped at her eyes with shaky fingers she’d managed to keep steady while he was beside her, and she followed him.
“If you aren’t me, then who are you?” she demanded, challenging.
“I don’t know!” he snapped at her. He was looking for something in the kitchen, letting cupboards bang shut because the sound made him feel better. “No one you should want, and it’s not my fucking fault you don’t realize it. Go talk to Jane about who I am.” Bang.
It had been a carefully crafted question, and she’d expected the answer. She followed him into the kitchen, and she forced herself not to wince at the banging of the cupboards. “I don’t want to talk to her about who you are. I want you to tell me. Who are you? What are you so sure she’s going to enlighten me about? Why she left? I can guess, if you want.”
“Why not?” he was shouting now. He couldn’t find what he was looking for, evidently.
“You cheated on her,” she said, and it was a simple conclusion based on the piles of books he’d left behind in the locked room when he’d tried to kill himself. Piper or Ain: It could be either (or both), but it didn’t really matter, not for this conversation. “Were you trying to sabotage it? Because it’s obvious you love her, Daniel,” she said, the last sentence softer than the rest.
Daniel wanted to break something. “I don’t have to try.” If she was trying to calm him with the volume of her voice, it definitely didn’t work.
She stepped into the kitchen, into his space, and she closed the cupboard door he had his hand on before he could slam it. “Of course you had to try,” she said, defying his certainty. She tugged on the front of his shirt with fisted fingers. “It wasn’t about the sex, Daniel. What was it about?” She wasn’t even intentionally pushing at this point, it was something she wanted to know. She believed he loved Jane, she truthfully did, and she didn’t understand why he would sabotage it - unless he was afraid.
Daniel brought his arm down between them against her arm, pushing her back, but not with as much force as he wanted to. “I don’t know,” he shot back, fiercely. “It just happens, just to forget. I don’t know.” He took her fist and tried to give it back to her and pull away from further contact.
She didn’t let him. “To forget what, Daniel?” she asked. She had her guesses - they were all about being vulnerable and scared, and she was just now starting to realize how much he and William had in common. There was a difference, however - her. She was a different person now than she was then.
She slid her hand up his neck and along his cheek, and she twined her fingers into dark curls that had started to get too long, and she tugged. It wasn’t gentle, and it wasn’t soft. It was as hard and sharp as the kiss she gave him, which was angry and hurt and possessive all in one. “To forget what?”
He tore away from the contact. It was not like it was with Ain--that was just sex, affection and sex, not this. This was supposed to mean something after the sweat dried, and Daniel didn’t want to give Ella the little he had, not when it was not enough. “I don’t know.” He turned away from her blindly.
She hesitated then, and then she stepped forward and slipped her arms around his waist tentatively, demeanor saying she would flee in an instant if he rejected her again. “It’s not your fault, Daniel, that you aren’t attracted to me,” she said, and it was a soft, confessional thing. “You never were,” she said even softer, more insecure. It was an old wound he’d just torn open by pulling away, and it was something she wasn’t very good at hiding when she wasn’t expecting it.
He looked down at her with surprise so sharp it interrupted his anger. He didn’t pull away, but he didn’t return the embrace. He looked puzzled for the first time, fleeting, and with all the adrenaline of anger but abruptly without the emotion, he said, “That’s not what it is. You think you are not beautiful? Attractive?” It was a serious question.
“Being attracted to someone doesn’t have anything to do with how beautiful they are or how attractive they are,” she said, slipping away when he didn’t return the embrace. “I thought you were gorgeous without ever setting eyes on you,” she admitted. She rubbed at one of her eyes. “My point, Daniel, is that being with you makes me unbelievably happy - in bed, out of bed. I don’t do that for you. What you give me, I want to give it back, but I can’t, because I’m not what you want.” She paused, her voice going sad. “She is.”
“She’s gone,” he repeated again, as if she had not heard him when he said it at the beginning of the conversation. “She’s back, but she’s already gone. I don’t know why she came back, but she’ll remember why she left, and she’ll go again.” The bitterness there was audible. “Let it go, Ella.”
“Do you love me?” she asked. It was quiet and resigned, and she already knew the answer.
“I thought I don’t feel that for anyone.” The anger wasn’t gone when he said it, real and red in the back of his eyes, and then he pressed his fingers into his eyelids, as if to snuff it. “Ella. I’m tired. We can argue about this in the morning.”
She shook her head sadly. “No, Daniel.” She reached out to touch him, the raw need and want and love in her eyes so obvious it as almost painful, but she dropped her fingers, sure he would just pull away from her. “I’m not going to turn into the nagging-” she stopped short, not knowing what to call herself anymore. “My apartment’s uninhabitable,” she said, trying to keep the tears from flowing down her cheeks and failing. Her strength was gone for the night, and she was crumbling with every word. “And I can’t afford it with the flower shop and the loan, which I refuse to not pay,” she clarified, trying to make the words clear through the tears. “I don’t know if Helena is planning on staying with Vlad permanently, but you aren’t required to take care of me. I’m not something you’re stuck with. I’ll figure something out, and until then, I’ll add it to the loan payment, the rent for the room,” she said, the words all blurring together with tears by the end.
Somewhere along the line, she’d fallen completely in love with him, and she didn’t know what to do now.
His hand dropped and a new, obvious panic took over. “You’re not leaving?”
She looked, if possible, even more heartbroken. “If you want me to leave tonight, I can see if James or Iris-”
He stepped back into her, arms immediately possessive, chin over her head. “You can’t go,” he said, desperately, softer now. “Please don’t go.”
She hadn’t been expecting that, hadn’t thought that was what he’d meant. “I thought you meant I should leave now,” she said, sounding lost a moment. “Why, Daniel? Is it you or the Beast that wants that, because with Jane back, I... I’m probably not her anymore,” she said, sounding even more upset than she had a moment earlier, if possible. Beauty inside her was screaming, but Ella didn’t understand that; she just knew it hurt.
“Of course you are,” he said, with absolute certainty. “We’re not different, him and me,” he continued, with absolute disregard for grammar or consistency of what he may have said in the past. “Stay.”
“People have left, Daniel, and other people replace them,” she said mournfully. “I’m just a replacement,” she said with a sad shrug of her shoulders. She melted against his embrace, however, for just a minute longer. “I’ll stay for now, but on one condition,” she said finally.
“What?” He didn’t reply to the nonsense about her not being who she was.
“Agree first,” she said, and it was more Beauty than Ella in that moment, more Beauty’s certainty that she was wanted, that she had a right to demand things.
He hesitated, but Daniel (and the Beast, either and both) would give Ella (and Beauty, either and both) anything she wanted to stay with him. “Alright. What’s your condition?”
“Write down why,” she said simply, tipping her chin up when she looked at him. Again, more Beauty than Ella, because Ella would have feared refusal and rejection.
“I really don’t know why,” he said, disconcerted.
“I know that,” she said, her sad smile soft and knowing. She cupped his cheeks. “Just sit down for me tomorrow and write whatever comes to mind, even if it doesn’t make sense, even if it ends up being about the color of the flowers on the balcony. Just try for me, and I’ll stay. I’ll take the guest room, and I’ll pay rent, and you’ll be-” She had to stop before the last word, couldn’t help it; she was gasping, sobbing in that completely ungraceful way that was raw and honest and real. “-free.”
“No,” he said, and not about the writing, dropping his head to lean his forehead against hers. “You’ll stay with me, like always. And I’m not taking a dime.” As if he had dimes; Daniel didn’t have change. He just had a lot of un-cashed checks and envelopes of money he was supposed to be spending on groceries. “Come to bed. You’re tired and you won’t tell me what happened to you today, so it must be bad. Come on.” He pulled her toward the bedroom.
She dug in her heels. “You’ll write?”
Impatiently. “I’ll try. Come on.”
“I’m moving into the guest room tomorrow,” she insisted. “If you can write down why you want me to stay in your bedroom, we can talk about it,” she said, but she leaned against him warmly as they reached the bedroom. She wasn’t concerned about the rent; she’d just get cashier’s checks and put them in the drawer with all the others.
She stepped out of the lounge pants, his sweatshirt reaching well past mid-thigh on her, and she climbed onto the newly arrived bed, pulling Kat out from under the covers. She was exhausted, hurting and upset, and no matter how weak it was, she just wanted to curl against him this one night and sleep, just this once. She patted the bed beside her. “I was in a room with Lotte and her Phantom,” she admitted softly.
Daniel was fairly sure he could talk her out of this moving business, and she couldn’t give him money if he wouldn’t take it, so that would be alright. He was tired too, and he curled around her with his arms familiar around hers. “Don’t know what’s wrong with that girl lately,” he murmured, sighing.
“She thinks she’s Christine, and she thinks he’s misunderstood. She thinks they’re completely different people. She doesn’t realize yet that isn’t how it works,” she said, clinging a little more than normal, allowing herself that comfort. “I get to decorate my room,” she added softly, but determinedly. If he wanted her back, it was going to be because he wanted her back; not because a fairy tale made him do it.
She stretched up, and she kissed him once, tense at the possibility of him pushing her away, but determined to have that one last time. It was soft, a simple thing, uncomplicated, with a touch of sadness and finality. Being his roommate was going to be harder than being his lover, so much harder.
He made a small, contented sound, convinced it would be how it was in the morning.