cross-posted fic
Apr. 2nd, 2006 11:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chanter1944Not a challenge response, but written for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
erfanfiction all the same. It's dark, it's a side of Romano that's rarely seen, and it's been rattling around in my head since the trip to Wausau pretty much so I sat down and scribbled it. Tell me whatcha think? Did I do justice to the jerk and make him less... jerkish?
Title: Twenty Years
Author: chanter
Series: ER
Rating: R, for language and darkstuff
Characters/pairings: one-sided Romano/Corday, implied Corday/Greene and one-sided Romano/Lucy
Summary: Post Valentine’s Day. If there is a heaven. Romano reacts to the events of the day the only way he can.
Spoilers for Valentine’s Day, the Knight Who Saved Christmas and several incidents in previous story arcs.
752 words
He swears he hasn’t cried in twenty years.
Really. Twenty years.
He’s cultivated an exterior that somebody could’ve chiseled out the side of a local cliff it’s so hard and maybe it’s ice, maybe it’s stone, maybe it’s some chemically engineered combination of the two but whatever it is, it’s damn solid and repellent to anything emotional that trickles out the eyes. Steel and salt have never mixed, never will, and he’s willing to swear it’s been that long or longer since he’s dared. Or bothered. Or had a reason.
Whichever.
That exterior can handle anything; dirt, puke, blood--all par for the course in his profession. He lives for those primal sensations, realizes the fact when he stops to think about it and why the hell else did he become a surgeon but to feel things, control them, knit living tissue back together with hands a fraction of a protective inch short of bare, and somewhere between the euphoria and the paperwork and keeping himself in excellent skill and keeping that granite mask on his enjoyment of it all he just… hasn’t been bothered. And hasn’t bothered to cry.
For twenty years.
And then some.
For real. He’s been living on top of the world, living a kind of life that’s lifted him higher than a house in the suburbs, higher than most mortals ever dream of getting, two steps short of a miracle worker and maybe closer than that. And it’s just gotten better with time, going from a botched introduction to a drunken operation and flirtation gone horribly wrong and rising: rooftop. Family connections. Fiery foreigners that surprise him with their ability to light up a room and test his restraint. And call him by his first name, and mean it. Students that try his patience and wake him up on Christmas Eve. And make enthusiasm tangible, breatheable. And beyond. Maybe he can look down to see heaven.
If there is a heaven.
If there is a god.
And somehow now it’s all gotten mixed up, jumbled together, wherever white meets red and elegant English goddesses are blonde and delicate women barely out of high school speak with accents, where everything is going from green to red, somewhere in his head where one is whispering because the other doesn’t have a choice, and he’s the one screaming and the air is full of malevolent sounds and his overconfidence is the last thing one of them hears.
And the other one is so much better than him.
Because what’s left of her can cry.
It’s all gotten mixed up, jumbled together somewhere in his head where he’s wailing, and in the end the only thing he remembers how to scream is her name.
And that’s what wakes him up, silent screams that send him hurtling out of tangled sheets and leave him shaking in a cold sweat, staring into the snow two stories down, leaning a bare arm against frozen window glass and whispering a single-word prayer as that weatherproof mask erodes enough to let his eyes well. It’s a one-word prayer, over and over and as sickeningly, sickly unfamiliar as the tears tracing abstract patterns down his cheeks in the darkness of a bedroom that he suddenly knows was built for two people.
And one of those people is dead, and the other half of that one is probably clinging to the man she’s chosen somewhere in the city tonight. It’s a one-word prayer. It’s the perfect litany. Over and over, just like it was then. He hasn’t cried for twenty years.
She only had twenty years.
And when he realizes that he hasn’t bothered to hold back and that his eyes are silently streaming, he knows she’s won. And won him. And that she’s had him since Christmas on his doorstep and after that little home truth comes out he’s too shattered to care if any maliciously laughing god hears his sobs.
His is a single-worded prayer, over and over, whimpered and then mumbled and then when pretense is abandoned sobbed into the approaching dawn that’s still hours away but what does he care? It’s a one-word prayer, scarily insistent, and truthful and plain and in the scattered seconds when he can think in the time between after midnight and weak winter red sunlight he wonders if that laughing god is listening.
Maybe.
It’s a one-word prayer, over and over. And he means it every time.
And doesn’t he damn well wish there was a god tonight.
“Lucy.”
erfanfiction all the same. It's dark, it's a side of Romano that's rarely seen, and it's been rattling around in my head since the trip to Wausau pretty much so I sat down and scribbled it. Tell me whatcha think? Did I do justice to the jerk and make him less... jerkish? Title: Twenty Years
Author: chanter
Series: ER
Rating: R, for language and darkstuff
Characters/pairings: one-sided Romano/Corday, implied Corday/Greene and one-sided Romano/Lucy
Summary: Post Valentine’s Day. If there is a heaven. Romano reacts to the events of the day the only way he can.
Spoilers for Valentine’s Day, the Knight Who Saved Christmas and several incidents in previous story arcs.
752 words
He swears he hasn’t cried in twenty years.
Really. Twenty years.
He’s cultivated an exterior that somebody could’ve chiseled out the side of a local cliff it’s so hard and maybe it’s ice, maybe it’s stone, maybe it’s some chemically engineered combination of the two but whatever it is, it’s damn solid and repellent to anything emotional that trickles out the eyes. Steel and salt have never mixed, never will, and he’s willing to swear it’s been that long or longer since he’s dared. Or bothered. Or had a reason.
Whichever.
That exterior can handle anything; dirt, puke, blood--all par for the course in his profession. He lives for those primal sensations, realizes the fact when he stops to think about it and why the hell else did he become a surgeon but to feel things, control them, knit living tissue back together with hands a fraction of a protective inch short of bare, and somewhere between the euphoria and the paperwork and keeping himself in excellent skill and keeping that granite mask on his enjoyment of it all he just… hasn’t been bothered. And hasn’t bothered to cry.
For twenty years.
And then some.
For real. He’s been living on top of the world, living a kind of life that’s lifted him higher than a house in the suburbs, higher than most mortals ever dream of getting, two steps short of a miracle worker and maybe closer than that. And it’s just gotten better with time, going from a botched introduction to a drunken operation and flirtation gone horribly wrong and rising: rooftop. Family connections. Fiery foreigners that surprise him with their ability to light up a room and test his restraint. And call him by his first name, and mean it. Students that try his patience and wake him up on Christmas Eve. And make enthusiasm tangible, breatheable. And beyond. Maybe he can look down to see heaven.
If there is a heaven.
If there is a god.
And somehow now it’s all gotten mixed up, jumbled together, wherever white meets red and elegant English goddesses are blonde and delicate women barely out of high school speak with accents, where everything is going from green to red, somewhere in his head where one is whispering because the other doesn’t have a choice, and he’s the one screaming and the air is full of malevolent sounds and his overconfidence is the last thing one of them hears.
And the other one is so much better than him.
Because what’s left of her can cry.
It’s all gotten mixed up, jumbled together somewhere in his head where he’s wailing, and in the end the only thing he remembers how to scream is her name.
And that’s what wakes him up, silent screams that send him hurtling out of tangled sheets and leave him shaking in a cold sweat, staring into the snow two stories down, leaning a bare arm against frozen window glass and whispering a single-word prayer as that weatherproof mask erodes enough to let his eyes well. It’s a one-word prayer, over and over and as sickeningly, sickly unfamiliar as the tears tracing abstract patterns down his cheeks in the darkness of a bedroom that he suddenly knows was built for two people.
And one of those people is dead, and the other half of that one is probably clinging to the man she’s chosen somewhere in the city tonight. It’s a one-word prayer. It’s the perfect litany. Over and over, just like it was then. He hasn’t cried for twenty years.
She only had twenty years.
And when he realizes that he hasn’t bothered to hold back and that his eyes are silently streaming, he knows she’s won. And won him. And that she’s had him since Christmas on his doorstep and after that little home truth comes out he’s too shattered to care if any maliciously laughing god hears his sobs.
His is a single-worded prayer, over and over, whimpered and then mumbled and then when pretense is abandoned sobbed into the approaching dawn that’s still hours away but what does he care? It’s a one-word prayer, scarily insistent, and truthful and plain and in the scattered seconds when he can think in the time between after midnight and weak winter red sunlight he wonders if that laughing god is listening.
Maybe.
It’s a one-word prayer, over and over. And he means it every time.
And doesn’t he damn well wish there was a god tonight.
“Lucy.”
