. (spacecowboys) wrote in doorslogs, @ 2013-11-06 18:38:00 |
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Entry tags: | batman, catwoman |
Who: Wren and Luke
What: Discussing the party (1/3)
Where: Home
When: Recently
Warnings/Rating: T for tears
The first thing Luke did, as soon as he stepped through the front door, was phone up work to call in sick.
Aside from Gotham-related issues he’d never actually taken a sick day, but he needed one. He needed a week, really, or a lifetime, but this was a starting point. He didn’t think he could put on the uniform and do his job feeling like he did, like he could barely stand to be himself and he’d like nothing more than to claw himself out of his own skin. See, he’d always known he was messed up. That was just part of who he was; no one could do the things he’d done and be perfectly whole, entirely sane, squeaky clean without a spot of blood to be seen. He’d accepted that, or at least he tried to. And yeah, sure, he’d killed that girl at the party before and that had torn him up inside, but this was different, somehow. That woman or whatever she was had begged him, pleaded, and he’d acquiesced. She’d wanted him to hurt her and he had. The last thing he remembered was squeezing her throat, feeling cartilage snap under his fingers, and he couldn’t forget. He hadn’t desired her in a physical way, so that part didn’t bother him. Touching her, it hadn’t been about pleasure. He hadn’t even wanted her; she was just a substitute because everything was all tangled up and he’d gone around telling everybody that he was Death.
No, what bothered him was that he’d choked her when she asked. He’d always prided himself on never hurting women, never hurting the innocent, and he’d gone and played into some fucked-up game and strangled somebody because he was sick. He was too much like the guys he’d killed, maybe. Some of their darkness had gotten into him. Thoughts like that made him want to run, to put as much distance between himself and Wren because he wasn’t safe, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He couldn’t leave her. Even knowing that she’d been with someone at the party, he couldn’t do it.
Thinking about that, about her having sex with some guy (which was what he assumed she’d meant), made his blood boil, made him want to strangle something for real, so he tried not to think about it. Tried, and failed. So he called in sick and he called the babysitter to take Gus early, out for breakfast or something before school, because his smiles felt fake and he hugged him a little too hard, a little too long, and he didn’t want Gus knowing anything was wrong. Once he was gone Luke wandered the house like he was lost, and when he tried to get some water his hands shook so badly that he dropped the glass and cursed loudly enough to spook the dogs. It was so, so tempting to take one of the shards and stick it somewhere to punish himself, but he resisted. He cleaned up the mess, tossed the remnants in the garbage, and ended up pacing while he waited. Around the counter, into the living room and sidestepping the furniture, then back again; a frenzied pattern.
Wren took hours to get home.
There hadn't been any real need for it, not beyond her own guilt and the fact that her mind wouldn't stop replaying the previous evening like one of those crime reenactment videos. She felt filthy, and she didn't want to go home. No- She couldn't go home. She couldn't look at Luke, and she couldn't let Luke look at her, and so she stalled. She stalled for hours and hours. She found a pay-by-the-hour motel and she stripped the color from her hair and dyed it the natural cinnamon of her youth, because maybe that would make it better somehow. But it didn't. The girl that looked back at her from the mirror was more her, but that didn't actually help at all, and the only thing that kept her from going out and finding a fresh bottle of dye was the fact that she was starting to have a very, very hard time finding the energy to maintain the blonde.
She was about to enter her eighth month of pregnancy, and the gestational diabetes was making her tired as it became harder to keep under control. She shouldn't be having a child, she knew, not after what had happened the night before. But it was too late to do anything at all about it, and she wasn't going to run away while she was so very pregnant. She'd run away once, and it had all turned out bad, and Gus had been the one to suffer for it. No, she would stay in Las Vegas until the baby was born. She could do that. She would do that.
Luke would understand, she thought. Luke had to understand, and she brushed the tears away from her eyes as she sat on the edge of the motel bed and willed herself numb. She'd been so good at numbness when she was young. She'd been able to wrap it around herself like a blanket, but it didn't work anymore. Sitting there, she remembered every little thing she'd done the night before, and she remembered all the things she'd wanted, and her stomach lurched. She made it to the bathroom just in time, and she spent the remainder of her paid time kneeling there, hugging the toilet and trying to cry herself dry.
She got to her bus stop with tear stained cheeks and mint on her breath, and she was carrying a bag with the bare essentials that Luke would need to feed Gus and the dogs for the next few days. The bag was heavy, but she didn't call from the bus stop, and she didn't ask for help once she got close to the house. She carried the heavy bag for blocks, and she counted the steps, and she considered them part of her punishment.
She had a key in the pocket of the faded maternity dress she wore, but she didn't unlock the door. The dress was yellow, and it had been bright once, but now it was faded and worn thin at the belly, and the hem at her knee was a little ratty. She shifted the bag from one arm to the other, and she knocked. She wouldn't have been able to explain why knocking felt right, not even if she tried; it just did. She bit her lip as she waited, and her cinnamon hair dripped down along her shoulders. Her breath came rushed and shallow, and she kept her eyes focused on the cheerful mat outside the front door.
The hours preceding her return weren’t kind to him. After thirty minutes Luke had started to worry, but he didn’t trust himself enough to go out looking because, just then, he didn’t trust himself around other people. After an hour he’d decided she didn’t want to see him, and a thousand different reasons why raced through his mind; she was having doubts, she was ashamed, she wanted a break, she didn’t know how to tell him. Fear settled in to stay, and the real decline began when he grew tired of pacing.
He broke another glass, and this time he picked up the shards one by one with bare hands. He obliterated two mirrors, one in the bathroom and one in the bedroom, because he couldn’t stand the sight of himself. He screamed himself hoarse, into a pillow so the neighbors wouldn’t call the cops, and then came the silence, that eerie quiet which meant that there was nothing else to do but wait. The puppy had barked and growled but, eventually, taken refuge in Gus’s room, and even Finch eyed him warily like he didn’t know who he was anymore. Or maybe it was all in his head, because could dogs even look at people like that? He wondered if Wren was ever coming home. He wondered if it had meant nothing, whatever she’d done at the party. She’d said time and time again that there was no one else, that she never wanted other men, and unless those were lies (and he didn’t think they were, he couldn’t even entertain the possibility) then it was just the hotel messing with them again. Except that didn’t change what he’d done, and he rubbed his eyes raw trying to keep back tears.
When the knock at the door came, it surprised him. He wasn’t expecting her to knock so he stared, puzzled, wondering who it could be. Slowly he rose, padding across the floor, and then he unlocked the door and pulled it open as though in a daze. Relief coursed through him when he saw Wren there, and he stared, drinking her in, noting the different hair color and forgetting for a few seconds the night before. Then he started thinking, started imagining somebody’s hands on her and her hands on them, which made him think of his hands around the girl’s throat, and his stomach churned unhappily. The funny thing was, though, he wasn’t mad at her. Oh, it hurt like hell, but he didn’t blame her. He blamed the hotel. He blamed whoever she’d been with. He had, after all, always been so good at absolving her.
“Hi.” He spoke, finally. “You didn’t need to knock.” He stepped aside, hating that it felt like she was a guest and he was welcoming her inside. His knuckles were bruised and there were small cuts on his fingers, but maybe she’d just think it was the party. He was more concerned with what to say, and what she might say to him.
She stared too. She noticed the bruised knuckles and cut fingers. She noticed the rubbed-raw eyes and the strange silence in the house. She noticed, but she didn't think it had anything to do with how long it had taken her to get home. She blamed the night before. She blamed whatever he'd done. The last time he'd hurt someone, he hadn't been able to handle it, and she should have realized he would be just the same now. She'd been so caught up in her own wrongdoing that she hadn't thought, and the guilt consumed her as she stood there on the stoop. She swallowed back tears, and she shifted the heavy bag higher against her belly, and then she stepped inside when he moved aside.
The house looked just the same, and yet everything felt so very different. She didn't take more than a few steps in, and there she stood, her arms holding onto the bag of groceries like it was some kind of security blanket that she was too scared to let go of. She looked at him, her gray eyes wet and almost brimming over, and she didn't know what to say at first. She bit her lip, and she just looked at him. That's all, just for a few seconds. It would be okay if she looked for just a few seconds. She'd wanted so badly to see him the night before. Even with the confusion of the evening, she knew that. She understood what her mind had done, how it had twisted things. She understood, too, that what she'd always believe was true. He was too good for her; he always had been.
She would have stayed there, without saying anything at all, but the bag was so heavy. It was easier to hold it when she was moving, but it was a losing battle when she was standing still. The baby kicked, and she gave him an apologetic look as she moved past him to put the bag on the kitchen counter. And okay, that was okay. It gave her something to do. Something that wasn't standing there and staring at him and wanting to touch him so badly that it made her want to cry. She would have given nearly anything to hug him just then, but she just slid the bag onto the counter and rucked the fabric of her skirt up at the hip.
"Hi," she finally managed, very, very belatedly. "I didn't think I deserved to use the key," she admitted, catching a glimpse of the open bathroom over his shoulder. Her expression immediately turned perplexed, and she looked past him, and then back at his face. "Is Gus here? What happened to the mirror?" Her gaze dropped to his hands, and she took a step forward. If there was anything that could tear her from her ocean of self-loathing for a moment, it was him being hurt. She reached for one of his hands, but she stopped herself midway. "Can I?" she asked. She shouldn't touch him. She knew she shouldn't. She knew it.
It hurt to look at her but he didn’t take his eyes off her once, like her gaze held a magnetic pull and he was helpless to resist being pulled in. He closed the door, and he turned towards her, and he stared some more. No amount of pain changed the fact that he wanted to look, that he wanted to touch her even though he didn’t deserve to, just like whatever she’d done the night before hadn’t changed how he felt about her. Nothing ever could. There were so many things he wanted to say and yet he couldn’t verbalize any of them, too afraid of how she might react or what her responses might be. Somewhere in the back of his mind the logical part of himself told him that she wasn’t going to leave him, not for some mystery person she’d met at the party, but his fear was born of his own doubts and self-loathing and the more he tried to quell it, the worse it became. All he wanted to do was hold her, to find a way to erase the party and the night entirely, but he didn’t know how.
Her apologetic look confused him, but he didn’t question it, and when she moved to put the bag on the counter he followed, a few steps forward before he stopped, wanting closeness so badly it ached but hesitant to take it. His expression became something pained when she said she hadn’t thought she deserved to use the key and he almost reached for her, then, catching himself just in time and shaking his head instead. “It’s our house,” he said quietly, voice gone hoarse. “You deserve to use the key as much as I do.” He shook his head again when he asked about Gus. “No. He-- I thought he should get out of the house. I can’t-- I’m not--” But he couldn’t explain how he didn’t feel like he deserved to be around his son, so he left it at that and focused on her next question instead. “I broke it,” he said, matter-of-factly. “The one in the bedroom, too. I’ll replace them.” His gaze dropped when she reached for him, and he had to bite back a whimper when she stopped herself. He didn’t want her to stop. He wanted to know that she still wanted him, even if he didn’t deserve as much. “You don’t have to ask,” he whispered, and then he nodded for clarification. “You were gone so long, and I thought-- I thought you didn’t want to see me because things-- because you changed your mind.” He sucked in a deep, shuddery breath and moved a step closer.
Any hope she harbored within herself died when he stopped himself from coming closer. She tried to read into it, and she read a thousand things in the stilling of his feet. In the end, she decided that he just couldn't forgive her for what she'd done, and that made the despair well up like tides in her chest. He didn't even know all of it. He didn't know the things she'd wanted, and he didn't know the things she'd done, and he still didn't want to come close to her. And none of it was new, and that made it even worse. All of the things from the night before, they'd all been shadows of memories of who she'd been. She'd been silly to believe she could change. She'd been silly to think she could ever, ever be good enough for someone like him. It's our house, he said, but it didn't feel like it just then. It felt like some wonderful version of Heaven than she didn't deserve to be standing in. It felt still and quiet and like it was holding its breath and waiting for her to go. She just looked down, a tiny shake of her head. Our house, and she wondered how she'd let herself get to the point where she'd dragged him down so very, very far.
It made her sad that Gus wasn't there, but maybe it was for the best. He would have babbled and regaled her with baby names he'd thought of, all of which were predictably French or animal based. She wasn't sure she would be able to have the conversation she needed to have if she knew Gus was in the next room, so close and so very easy to take into her arms and hug, looking so very much like his père. She nodded her acknowledgement, but it was his stammering that made her tilt her head to the side curiously. She took a very long look over his shoulder when he explained about the mirror, as if she could see clear to the bedroom from there if she tried hard enough. "You don't need to replace them," she said without thinking. "Why did you break them?" she asked, her gaze sliding to his stomach as a memory filled her mind. She looked quickly at his hands again, trying to see if there was blood beneath his fingernails, and she wasn't thinking clearly by the time he took a step forward. It wasn't even his words that filtered through her panic, not right away; it was that shuddery breath, and the broken glass. She reached for him, and she pushed his shirt up with her hands, looking for fresh injuries, fresh wounds, anything that looked worrisome at all. Her fingers slid along skin, not trusting that he hadn't hurt himself somehow, and she shoved harder at his shirt. She cleared her throat, the ache there a lingering thing from the previous evening, and she knew she needed to just tell him. But it was so hard, and she didn't want to, and she concentrated on his hands for a moment longer. Just a moment. She could say things in just a moment. It was okay to touch him this once, just this once. She used his shirt to tug him forward, toward the sink, and then she ran the water to get his hands cleaned up.
He realized, in a distant sort of way, that she’d probably come to the wrong conclusion about why he held himself back. She always did, and he didn’t expect now to be any different. But there was no panic, no desperate scramble to make her see the truth; he was afraid of what would happen when he did. He’d have to tell her, have to explain, but god, how he didn’t want to. The woman asking to be punished didn’t make what he’d done okay, didn’t give him the right to crush her throat beneath his fingers. How could she defend him this time? There would be nothing for her to say, he was sure of it, and coupled with what she’d done, well, he worried that it would be enough to drive her away for good. So no, he wasn’t in any more of a hurry to confess than she was.
“I didn’t want to look at myself,” he admitted, a shameful whisper. It took him a few seconds to realize what she was doing when she pushed up his shirt, what she was looking for, and he began shaking his head as her fingers slid along his skin. He knew he shouldn’t touch her but he couldn’t help it, couldn’t help closing his fingers around her wrists as she searched for wounds that weren’t there. “I didn’t,” he told her. “I didn’t do anything. I didn’t hurt myself.” He’d wanted to, but he hadn’t. He didn’t try to push her away or force her hands back; the touch was just that, touch, and he let go once she tugged him towards the sink and turned on the tap. Obligingly, he held out his hands, and tried not to read too much into the fact that she hadn’t told him that she didn’t change her mind, or that she had wanted to see him.
His fingers felt like brands on her wrists, despite the fact that he'd branded her years and years ago without even noticing. She couldn't help but look down, still and quiet, not even a hint of breath lifting her chest for the span of that second. She looked down at that simple touch, at his capable fingers around the narrow insignificance of her wrists. She understood that he was reassuring her that he hadn't done anything to himself, that she didn't need to worry, but the only thing that registered was relief and the way his hands felt. The evening before, she'd had the most overwhelming desire to feel that touch, but she'd known she couldn't. Now, here, it was so hard not to just let herself have what she'd wanted so very much then. But she couldn't. She couldn't let herself, and so she just tugged him to the sink and set to work on his hands.
She took too much time, and she let herself touch his hands for far longer than was necessary. She lathered his fingers and palms with soap, the touch whispersoft, and then she looked for slivers of glass with slow thoroughness, after having dried his fingers off with the sort of lingering caress that was all intimacy. It was easier to let herself go this way, to let herself touch him when she was doing something to help. She would need to stop in a second, she knew. It would be over, and she didn't want it to be. But, finally, she had to let go of his fingers and look up at his face. Her expression softened with adoration, and she wanted to remind him of how beautiful he was, but she couldn't find words; she just looked. The baby kicked, and she rubbed her fingers over her belly without thinking, still not looking away from him. The words took longer, and they were soft and a little raspy from the lingering sting in her throat. "You should never not want to look at yourself. No matter what you did at the hotel, it doesn't matter. It isn't who you are," she said, because she knew that about him. Just like she knew that she was precisely what she'd become the night before. It was all of her terrible wants, and all of her terrible past, and all of the things she tried to hide for his benefit. She lived her life pretending; she refused to accept that he did the same. She knew him. "I know you better than anyone ever. I know who you are, and you aren't bad."
Her slow, lingering perusal of his hands was like a soothing balm on his agony, and he would have purposely dug shards of glass into his palms if it would make her touch last longer. Stupid, he knew, but he didn’t want her to stop. Somehow it was easier to breathe, and for a few seconds he had a semblance of calm before the water stopped running and she let go of his fingers. He’d watched her all the while and he watched her now, and the expression on her face caused his throat to tighten painfully and his eyes stung, even though he was sure he’d rubbed away any tears that might have threatened to form. No one had ever looked at him the way she did, and no one ever would. She loved him as no one else had, and as much as he felt like he didn’t deserve it, he was terrified of losing it. Terrified of ending up as he’d been the night before, an empty shell who’d forgotten what it was like to feel, and couldn’t even remember the one it sought so desperately to find. He didn’t trust himself to speak, and his struggle to regain control, to at least cling to the facade of calm, was painfully evident. His gaze dropped briefly when she rubbed her fingers over her belly, the ghost of a shaky smile appearing before it was gone and he was back to biting down on the inside of his lip to keep from sobbing aloud.
Somehow, he managed to breathe. Somehow, he managed to speak without falling apart. “You wouldn’t say that if you knew,” he whispered. He was so afraid of telling her the truth that he considered just not doing it; what did it matter now? He couldn’t leave, couldn’t stay away. Even if it was better for her, he couldn’t. What the hotel did to them had almost destroyed them in the past, and he wasn’t going to let it happen again. He looked at her for a long, long moment, panic rising in his chest, before he gave in to what he wanted and found her fingers with his, entwining their hands tightly. That touch was safe, wasn’t anywhere near her throat. “Just tell me it didn’t matter,” he said, the words coming out in a breathless, uneven rush. “Whatever happened, whatever you did, tell me it didn’t mean anything. Tell me it doesn’t mean you don’t love me, and it doesn’t mean you don’t want me. I’ll believe you,” he added, pleading. “I know you wouldn’t lie to me, I just-- I just need to hear you say it.” Maybe having been in her position before, to a degree, helped, because he knew it hadn’t meant anything then even though she hadn’t believed him. He’d known his feelings hadn’t changed, and maybe the same was true for her too. But he needed to know all the same.
That shaky smile of his hurt. Everything about being with him hurt. Because she knew she shouldn't be with him at all, and yet there she was, and she'd been in this very position so many times. It hurt more than it had before, though, because she couldn't lie to herself this time. No matter what she wanted, no matter how much she couldn't live without him, she couldn't lie to herself. The night before had brought everything back, all those old feelings of corrupting him, of being too dirty to even touch him. His voice chased the thoughts away for the briefest of moments, and she watched his lips as he whispered those self-deprecating words. "No," she said forcefully. She had no strength for herself, but she would never, ever let him talk about himself like that. "It doesn't matter. I don't care what the hotel made you do. You're good," she insisted, the words making her throat going ache-hoarse. She coughed, the residual pain like a sliver she couldn't get out of her throat, and she she didn't stop coughing until red dotted her upper lip. He was asking her to tell him something didn't matter then, and she couldn't understand what he was talking about at first. She looked down at his fingers in hers, belatedly realizing she hadn't tugged them away when he reached for them, and she pulled those fingers free of his reluctantly, her eyes immediately brimming with tears when she lost the contact.
She swallowed down that scratch-blood, and she shook her head sadly. "Nothing I did mattered. I love you. I don't want anyone but you. I've never wanted anyone but you," she insisted, her voice going thick with tears. "I'm not lying. I don't ever have to lie about that, not ever. You're all I ever wanted, even last night." She stopped herself then, because that wasn't the right wording, and her sigh was shaky. "I've never wanted anyone but you," she corrected, "even last night." She might have associated him with an untouchable God, but it was still him, and it was still the truth. Her intake of breath became sharper and shallower, and she took a guilty step back. "But I'm not- Luke, I'm not like you. I'm not good. I want- I want terrible things, and I'm dirty and filthy and tainted, and last night- last night proves it." Her voice cracked, and the words became impossibly hard to understand. She couldn't see him through her tears anymore, and maybe that was better. Maybe that would make it easier. "I shouldn't be around Gus. I shouldn't be around the new ba- baby." Her voice went ragged and broken. "I shouldn't be around you." She dragged the back of her hands against her eyes, but she couldn't stop the sobbing. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
He managed a smile, somehow, watery and fond in the face of her insistence. She could never believe him when he said the same about her, yet she was always so quick to defend him, unwavering in her belief that he was good even if it was blind faith. “I’ll never understand,” he said sadly, “how you can look at me and see good no matter what I do, but you can’t ever see the same in yourself.” She was absolving him and condemning herself, and it wasn’t fair. Two sides of the same coin but she always saw tarnish and grime when it came to her. Maybe he did the same, but at least he tried to believe her. It didn’t always work, but for her sake he tried. Concern sparked in his gaze when she began coughing, but then she tugged her fingers free and he swore he could actually feel his heart breaking as the contact was lost. It hurt, that simple gesture, and for one horrible moment he couldn’t breathe, throat tight and eyes burning something fierce. In that instant he thought he had his answer, and his world began to crumble around him.
Her words, what she said next, temporarily halted the destruction. She said exactly what he’d hoped she would, and then he didn’t understand; if she still loved him, still wanted him, why did she pull away? Her wanting him, even last night, didn’t take away the sting of her being with someone else, but it didn’t matter. He had to make himself believe that it didn’t matter. The night would fade with time, and they’d move on. He couldn’t dwell, couldn’t let jealousy consume him; and, admittedly, it helped that he believed her. She would never lie to him, not about this, and he knew without a shadow of a doubt that her tears were genuine. “I believe you,” he managed, half-sobbed, and he almost reached for her when she stepped back. His heart shattered just a little more, and he was already shaking his head before she’d finished talking. “No.” The word came out hoarse, too quiet, so he cleared his throat and tried again. “No, baby. Don’t say that. Don’t,” he pleaded, and to hell with the hotel and what it had tried to tell him about himself. He moved forward, closing the distance between them, fingers finding her jaw of their own accord. “You’re not dirty, or filthy, or tainted,” he whispered fiercely, the words wrapped around tears he hadn’t yet shed. “Last night didn’t prove anything. I know you. The hotel doesn’t. You are good. It doesn’t matter, okay? It doesn’t matter, and I don’t care. I don’t care what happened.” He closed his eyes, briefly, forehead pressed to hers like he couldn’t possibly get close enough. “I love you,” he said, the words choked and wet. “I love you so much, and Gus loves you, and this baby, it’ll love you too. We need you. We want you.” A deep, deep inhale. “Don’t apologize. Please, baby, don’t. You said it didn’t matter, right? What I did, it didn’t matter, because you knew it wasn’t me. The same goes for you too. Don’t absolve me and condemn yourself. I won’t let you,” he insisted. “I won’t.”
His smile almost shattered her, and the sadness in his words made her heart ache. Unlike the night before, she most certainly had a heart in her chest now; she was sure she could feel it breaking. "Because it's true," she replied with conviction. It was easy to see the good in him, because he didn't actually long for anything bad. He'd hurt bad men once, but he'd been pushed too far. He'd been too kind and too sweet, and he hadn't been able to handle what she and Thomas had done to him. That didn't make him bad, not to her. It meant he was sensitive, and there was nothing wrong with that. It was so very different from her own twistedness. "Because you never wanted anything bad. You never wanted to do anything bad. You're a good man, and you've always been a good man. You're special, Luke. You always have been," she said adoringly, and was it any surprise she equated him with God? She'd been raised on New Orleans voodoo, though she'd given it up years earlier. Now, she lit candles in church late at night, when no one was there, and that was as far as her belief extended. But she believed in something good, and she believed he was the best person she'd ever met, so it wasn't any surprise that the two things had become tangled the night before.
She shook her head when he started nearly sobbing. She didn't want this. She didn't want to make him hurt. She thought of the mirrors, of the cuts on his hands, of the ones she was so sure she was going to find on his stomach. She didn't want to hurt him, and she just kept doing it. Over, over, over, and it was just like New York. He moved forward before she even noticed any hint of impending movement, and she knew she should step back. She knew she shouldn't let him touch her, because it would be so very hard to make him understand if he was there, so close, so near that she could just lean into him. She tried to tug away from his fingers on her jaw, but it was a feeble attempt. The movement made the ache in her throat rage, and she was silenced by the fierce tone of his voice. She gasped when he pressed his forehead to hers, and her breath hitched for a second that felt like eternity. She wanted to echo his declaration of love. She wanted to tangle her fingers in his hair, and she wanted to press her lips to his and feel his breath in her mouth. She wanted those things, but she forced herself to stay still, fingernails digging crescents beneath the hitched fabric at her hips. "It's not the same. It was me. It was me, Luke. I want things, and I push you, and I've been doing it so long that you think it's okay now," she said, her voice breaking with so much guilt. "There was a woman, and there was a man," she said, because confessing, confessing would make him understand. "She kicked me away halfway, and he just touched me and hurt me, but I wanted it. I like it when you bruise me. Do you understand? I'm not normal." Her voice was climbing and shattering, and it all came back to this, and tears streamed down her cheeks and splattered on the shoulders of the faded dress she wore.
Her words, which had warmed him once, made him feel like he was actually worth something, only hurt now. They hurt because he didn’t feel like he deserved them, and the more he tried to believe her the worse the ache in his chest became. He wondered how he’d ever let her believe something that was so untrue, because he wasn’t good, and he wasn’t special. He never had been. But he’d let her think he was, he hadn’t objected as much as he should, because she was the only one in the world who’d ever thought so much of him and, selfishly, he hadn’t wanted to lose that. He brought his fingers to her lips like he could somehow silence her convictions, and it was so, so hard not to fall apart. “I don’t deserve that,” he said, a cracked whisper. “I’ve wanted to do a lot of bad things, Wren. I’ve done a lot of bad things. You think you don’t deserve me, but that’s not true. I’m the one who doesn’t deserve you.” She was blind to his faults, he knew, as he was to hers, but it would never be any other way. Not on his end, anyway; he always feared she’d realize the truth one day and push him away.
He wouldn’t have let her tug away even if she’d put real effort into it, desperation to make her understand overriding his own fears of what he was capable of. They were going to have a baby in a month or so. They had a home, and they had Gus, and he wasn’t going to let the hotel take away everything he’d ever wanted. “It wasn’t you,” he began, insistent, but he fell silent as she went on. He didn’t want to think about it but he did, he imagined her being with a woman and he imagined some man hurting her, like he’d hurt that woman, and he could have killed both of them if he’d known who they were. His anger was directed at them, those nameless people, even if that wasn’t fair, and at the hotel, and at himself. But not her, no, never her. “You’ve never pushed me,” he said, starting again, pulling back enough to look at her while his fingers kept up a frenzied rhythm of touch on her skin. “Everything we’ve done, everything we have, I wanted as much as you did. I don’t care what happened. I mean-- I care that someone hurt you, and I care that the hotel did this to you, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change how I feel about you,” he said, and his voice broke on those last words, but he kept going. “The hotel twists things, baby. It twists things and makes them wrong. I like it too,” he admitted. “I-- those bruises, leaving my mark on you, I like doing it too. I like it when you do it to me. Does that make me bad?” He shook his head. “It’s not wrong. Nothing we do could ever be wrong. The hotel twisted what you wanted, that’s all.” He brushed his thumbs over her cheeks, trying to wipe her tears away. He wasn’t strong enough to push her away, no matter how undeserving he felt of her, and he wasn’t strong enough to let her push him away either.
He couldn't silence her, and he couldn't change her mind, not with his fingers on her lips. He could have covered her mouth with both hands and she would have thought the same thing, would have felt the same thing, and she would have kept talking against the salt of his palm; there would be no changing her mind. It was an effort, though, not to kiss those fingers he pressed to her lips. It was even harder not to kiss him when his voice cracked. She shook her head as he spoke, countering each of his assertions with the movement. "You deserve everything," she insisted, and she shook her head again, negating the rest. No, he was wrong. "You haven't ever wanted to hurt someone for bad reasons. No, Luke," she insisted, her voice finally raising a little bit to match the certainty in her tone. "No. You want the best for everyone. You've always been like that. You've always been willing to risk every last little bit of yourself to help someone else. Always. I know you, Luke. I know you inside and out. You have to believe me," she insisted. She'd repeat it until she was blue, and she would repeat it until there wasn't even a hint of oxygen left in her lungs. Anything bad he'd done, he'd been pushed to it. Even without the hotel's reminders she knew that to be true. "Thomas pushed you too hard, and I left, and you broke. That doesn't make you bad. It makes us cruel," she said, and she believed that so very much. Her belief was peppered in the words, and she willed him to believe her. It was the most important thing in all the world, him believing her.