Say something I'm giving up on you

Entry tags:

Say something I'm giving up on you

Skype for

movingthechains

Gracie was as nervous to skype with Peter as she had been the first time she'd talked to him, but this time she didn't have time to fret about it. In fact, she was running late. She'd texted Peter on her way from the store that she was running about ten minutes late. They had a new girl and a return to work out before she could leave. At 8:08, she was running into the house, tossing her bags at the couch and firing up her computer. She answered the skype ping while still running around.

"I'm here!" she yelled at the laptop. "Getting tea and changing!"

A few moments later, she plunks a tea pot down on the coffee table, sloshing tepid tea out onto the table then a cup. She finally collapses on the couch in front of the laptop in a pile. She's got a pair of fleece lined tights on, an overly large sweater, and a pair of house shoes. Her hair is pulled up in a mess, a pencil skewered through it.

"Today was crazy. I played hookey from as many things as I could yesterday so I spent all day making up for it." She waggles her fingertips at him. "Hi."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Peter didn't mind ten minutes late. He sat waiting with the laptop in his lap and idly gnawing on twizzlers while he waited. He was reclining on the couch and on his chest he kept corralling a kitten from going too far this way or that. The animal was tiny compared to the broad expanse of his chest.

He was nervous too. But he also wanted to try to get back on track and not fuck things up again. At least try not to. He did tend to self sabotage things when they got too serious. But he was going to try to talk to Gracie about that one of these days, maybe now or maybe when things were more stable.

He waits abnormally patient even when her skype comes on and she still has things to do. Then finally she's there and he grins. "Hi. Sounds like you've had a busy day."

"I don't think I get to have any other kind this semester," Gracie answers. When she catches sight of the little kitten using Peter's chest as a playground she can't help but squeal and laugh a little. She covers her mouth with both hands. "Oh my god, you picked her up. She's so cute. Do you love her? Has she been good?"

Peter's tendency to self sabotage is something they need to talk about. Gracie suspects it's something he does, but it would help to have him talk about it and confirm it. She also knows that no relationship is easy and Peter hasn't had a real relationship in maybe ever. Gracie wants to know why that is too.

She leans forward, pouring tea in her cup, adding an obscene amount of sugar and some half and half to it before she sits back to listen to Peter.

That squeal makes his features twist a bit, nose wrinkling. Then he shakes his head. "Dunno what the fuck to think of her. She's no trouble yet except for keepin' up with her." Then he adds. "Pretty sure she's easily breakable, which isn't good."

Said cat proceeds to look directly at the camera and yawn.

"Both of those will get easier as she gets bigger. Also, as she learns the house and where everything is. Just look before you sit down to make sure she isn't curled up in the chair or on the bed."

The yawn makes Gracie laugh. "Obviously, she's not too worried about being broken."

"She don't know any better than to not be worried." He grumbled the words, because he's supposed to be big tough guy and little kitty is cramping his style. "You don't think she's too little? Tried to get her to eat and she wouldn't. Don't think she likes me. I'm kind of a douche bag in case you haven't heard."

"I keep hearing this," she smirks in response. "And no, she's not too little. She'll grow. She'll also eat when she's ready. Her stomach is like the size of the end of your thumb, so a couple of bites and she's good for a couple of hours."

She hesitates a moment. "Maybe, she's figured out that the douche bag part is mostly an act and she doesn't think she needs to worry."

The cat starts to nibble on his twizzler and his brow furrows. "Or maybe she has a sweet tooth." He offers in a subdued sort of way. He seems overly subdued as a matter of fact, somewhere in that in between place between his awesomeness and the depths of his emotions.

He shrugs, looking up at the computer screen. "Maybe it is an act. Fuck if I know. I just know I've been playing the part so long it's more comfortable than whatever this is... whatever I'm feeling about you."

The cat nibbling on the twizzler makes Gracie smile. She's noticing the subdued and she's not sure whether it's a good thing or a bad thing. Considering his next words, she's willing to go with it for a little while.

Her smile softens and she pulls the laptop into her lap so that she's closer to the screen then wraps her hands around her cup of tea. "That's the point of masks, isn't it? To make us comfortable when we're dealing with something difficult. Eventually it has to come off though. You have to deal with what's underneath."

"I dunno, I like to say fuck difficult and go on to the next thing." Because pretending it isn't there is working so well for you, Peter. He rolls his eyes and looks at the screen.

A corner of his lips lilts upward. "You look good, Gracie girl."

Gracie hesitates a moment before she responds. "Except that sometimes the difficult things are the best things and moving on would mean leaving them behind."

Yeah, she's kind of talking about them and their relationship.

She blushes slightly. "Thank you." She looks up to him. "You too."

He laughs at that, a good, hearty laugh that rouses Lucy just a bit from where she's curled up on his chest near his neck. "Maybe the opposite of the best things."

He pauses, taking a deep breath. "The truth is that I lied."

"In that case, we are definitely not talking about the same thing."

It's good to hear him laugh though. However, the smile that brings to her face comes to a halt when he makes his confession.

"I--okay. About what?"

"About fairytales not happening in real life." Surprise, Gracie! Not what you were expecting, he's sure. "They do."

Gracie arches one eyebrow up and a smile spreads over her lips. "Sometimes, they do. "

She bites her bottom lip. "You know the thing about fairytales. they always end happily ever after. That's what makes it a fairytale."

Except the Russian fairytales, which are horrible and sad and never end with happily ever after, but she's not going to share those with him just yet.

"I dunno. Sometimes they just get sad." He answers, as if he knows. And honestly, he thinks he does. His experiences says he does.

He grabs another twizzler and lightly holds it between his teeth even as he speaks. "My parents were a fairytale. Pretty damn happy. In love. Made for each other." And that's how he knows they're real. He's seen them.

"Maybe they weren't ever fairytales to begin with then," Gracie starts then stops, deciding to qualify her statement with the little experience she's got. "The guy that broke my heart, Eli...I thought he was the one, you know? I thought this was going to be my fairytale, but when things got difficult or that first rush of giddyness faded, he didn't want to stick around. He wasn't my fairytale. He was just a part of the scenery." She fiddles with a loose strand of hair, flicking the end of it at Aslan when he comes over to investigate, walking across the back of the couch. "Or my parents. They were okay and maybe even happy until Ethan's death and then...they couldn't work through it. I think it's the difficult things that really tell whether it's a fairytale or not. It's like the backbone of the fairytale."

"I think we've all got scenery on the way to the fairytale, and it seems so real in the moment. It's only looking back at it that you realize it for what it was." She presses her lips together. She's about to take a chance and she doesn't honestly know if it'll pay off. "Tell me, Peter. Who's your scenery? Who broke your heart?"

"My parents were a fuckin' fairytale." He says defensively. Because that's how he took her comment after he'd spoken about his parents. His mom couldn't help having a heart attack and dying on the floor in the kitchen. And his dad couldn't help that he couldn't fully move on from her death. Nothing had gone south. Ever. And they had never and would never be scenery to each other.

He would move on, but he just needed to clarify the truth of the fairytales he's seen, especially that one. "I get that scenery happens. And I know you've seen your share of it, which sucks. But my parents weren't scenery to each other. She died. He's broken over it. Nothin' went south. That kind of love? It's fuckin' real and deserves more than o be seen as anything other than what it was." Peter can seem very passionate and larger than life about things. But this is a different kind of passion from him. It isn't false, it isn't bravado, it isn't an armor. It's genuine and heartfelt. "May not happen very often, but it happens. And it's real. And sometimes it just gets sad."

"Oh. No," I didn't mean it like that, Peter." Gracie is quick to clarify. "Fairy tales don't end because someone dies. I'm sorry. I should have--" She hadn't really connected the sad part to the part about his parents being a fairytale and she probably should have. "I didn't realize that was the kind of sad you were talking about. I guess I was just thinking about the part where he loved her. I wasn't thinking about the part where it's sad because she's gone."

She takes a quick breath. "I'm sorry. For not understanding, for your father having to go through that and for you and Mark too."

He's quiet for several moments, idly chewing on the twizzler without actually biting into it and eating it. He's glad she understands. Because his parents' relationship is a big part of who he and Mark are, of what his ideal is, of why it feels unattainable to him. "Her name was Jennifer."

She lets out a sigh of relief when Peter finally comes clean. She tries not to let it be that big a deal, at least not on the surface though.

"I never liked Jennifers. They always seemed dodgy and peppy and is it okay to call them Jen or Jenny. You never really know." She takes a deep breath. "Whoever she was, whatever she did, she's the one that messed up, and at the same time, I'd like her address so I can send her a thank you card. Her loss was definitely my gain."

He almost grins at that, surprised by Gracie's reaction. He shrugs, trying to play it cool too, like what she said doesn't affect him anymore, like he's past it, above it all. "I called her Jen."

And he had adored her, completely and wholly. "She was my high school sweetheart. We dated for four year." He's just trying to get through it now, words coming out like he's reciting someone else's story. "I was more into it than she was. I get it. Hindsight's a bitch. But I brought up college our senior year. I brought up our future. And it came out that she didn't want a future with me. She said I was fun, dangerous, crazy, and never the long haul guy."

It's obvious by the way he's saying it that it's difficult for him and Gracie's heart is breaking for him. Unconsciously, she sets her tea cup down, both hands going to cover her heart. Sympathy for him wells up in her throat and she has to clear it to speak.

"Maybe you weren't her long haul guy, but you're mine."

Peter's gaze softens, a moment of vulnerability and hope that he pushes down beneath a layer of skepticism and years upon years of armor he wore to keep himself from that kind of hurt again. "I'd really like that but see how I already fucked us up?"

Gracie saw that moment though and she shakes her head. "You haven't messed anything up, Peter. You introduced an obstacle, one that we can get over. I will trust you again, as long as you're trustworthy."

She took a deep breath. "I'm still counting on you, Mis Text Boy."

He wanted to tell her that she shouldn't count on him. He wanted to tell her that yeah he had messed up and he didn't know what the hell she was still doing here with him. But he was selfish. And he selfishly wanted Gracie to keep wanting him. He wanted her to think he was the long haul guy so that maybe eventually he actually would be.

"I'll try not to let you down anymore."

He could keep being selfish as far as Gracie is concerned. She wants to give Peter the chance to realize that he can be whatever and whoever he wants to be. That includes the long haul guy.

"I know," she smiles softly at him. "So how is practice going?"

"It's more stayin' in shape right now than actual practice. Gotta bulk up for next season." Because it was a cycle, bulk up for the season, lose a lot of it during said season, rinse and repeat. "Just got meetings and events through the super bowl."

He smiled a bit. "Then I can come see you. There a gym in your neighborhood?"

"Is it good or bad that I thought you were already bulky? In a good way."

She couldn't help but smile at that. "Yup. A few blocks away. You could probably walk if you wanted."

"Nah, that's good. Long as it's in a good way." He grins, just a hint of the cockiness back in his eyes and in that grin. He needs her to like him, and he realizes that he needs it badly right now. He doesn't like being needy. So he tries to mentally shake it off.

"Where should cat sleep?" He asks.

As much as Gracie likes when Peter breaks down some of those walls and acts like the sweet man that she knows he can be, it's good that the cockiness is back. It means that he's settling into things.

She shrugs at his question. "I always put Aslan on the bed with me, but you can put a blanket in the bathroom and let her sleep there if you'd rather."

"Fuck I'll wake up to a damn kitten pancake!" He says with a grin even though he is a little bit scared of that actually happening. What would really happen would be that Peter would let the kitten in the bed and then stay awake all night for fear of rolling over on her.

"I'm pretty sure you won't roll over on top of her." Gracie knows exactly what would really happen. "Put her in the bathtub with a blanket. That way you know she won't wander off."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Say something I'm giving up on you

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

that was not win. sorry!

Re: that was not win. sorry!