oh PLEASE for the writing prompts Carcy + "I do blame you." 👀
Tick. Tick. Tick. Fuck.
If the clock on the wall just above the entrance to this room wasn’t safe behind a cage, Lucy would have smashed it by now. With what exactly, she wasn’t sure, but she would have tried. Why put a clock behind a barrage of metal, anyway? What kind of clock in a county hospital is that invaluable? And what does it need protection from?
Well, Lucy supposes she is a threat to said clock’s life at the moment, but that’s only because she’s stuck in some sort of deranged couple’s therapy with Carter– who she isn’t even dating– and that ticking is driving her almost twice as mad as he is.
“How long do we have to wait for him?” Carter mumbles, eyeing the infuriatingly-stationary door anxiously. Lucy huffs.
“I don’t know,” she says impatiently. “Do you have to ask that every two minutes?”
Carter’s head whips around to face her. “I haven’t asked that at all! Not until now.”
“No, but I can hear the question every time you look at the door. Which is a lot.”
Carter rolls his eyes. Despite his annoyance being perfectly justified (she doesn’t have to snap at him), a bubble of anger simmers in Lucy’s chest. Being around him has gotten more and more difficult lately, in part because it seems the moment she found her voice again, she’s used it to argue with him. When they’re not arguing, she clams up completely. She either can’t figure out what to say to him or just says everything on her mind– a horrible all-or-nothing cycle. The bickering isn’t what it used to be, either. Carter doesn’t rise to the challenge. He just looks tired.
“Whatever, Luce.”
Tick.
Her fists ball at her sides, if not to punch the clock then to ground herself. The crescent shape of her short nails becomes embedded in her palms. He still hasn’t dropped that nickname. Absolutely nobody calls her that but him– a fact she can’t decide on loathing or loving. He’s called her that more in these past few months of recovery than he ever did before… well, before. In a way, they’re closer than ever. In another, she’s fighting a torrent of tears every time she looks at him, anger and guilt and sadness all at once. Maybe that’s why she argues with him so much; if she isn’t mad at him, she might be something else, and anger is so much easier to feel than whatever else he’s planted inside of her chest. Besides the knife.
That wasn’t him, she reminds herself just like her therapist would want her to. Of course she knows that logically. It’s the by proxy part she’s invented in her head that forces her thoughts to stutter.
Lucy’s face twists like she might cry. She looks down at her lap and picks at her cuticles to distract herself.
“Stop calling me that.”
“What, your name?”
“That’s not my name!” She bursts. Baby blues bore into wide, cavernous browns, wounded in a way that Carter doesn’t expect. His face softens. It saddens, really.
Lucy’s hands are shaking despite how tightly she clenches them together. Carter feels an urge to reach forward and uncurl them, to smooth out the painful way she’s clasped her fingers. He’s leaning forward before he even realizes.
She flinches, another thing Carter doesn’t expect. He knows he shouldn’t take that to heart, but he does. The sense of rejection that swells inside of him lights his fuse the way only she can. They always burn hot and bright around each other, but never for long. Just enough to light up the room for a moment.
“I didn’t do anything,” he says defensively, voice cracking. Lucy scoffs.
“Of course! Of course you didn’t, John.”
His name is barbed on the tip of her tongue, said like a warning shot. Instead of ducking for cover, he stiffens in his place.
“No, I didn’t! I’m sorry you’re aggravated that we have to wait for the therapist that you caused us to require-“
“Oh, like you had nothing to do with any of it?”
“I didn’t scream at you in the middle of the cafeteria for offering you an apple, did I?”
It’s just a fact; she doesn’t know why it stings so badly. That’s how it happened. They ate together, Carter fussing with his IV and Lucy picking at a bowl of lukewarm oatmeal, and he held out an apple he wasn’t going to eat to her. Red. Shiny. Like a puddle of blood.
Lucy had flipped her shit, batting it out of his hand and asking him who he thought he was. She felt terrible about it– she’d never seen Carter so defeated and almost… scared? Not the kind where it seemed like he believed she would hurt him, but something else. Maybe unsure was a better word.
In any case, two nurses had escorted (read: dragged) her out of the cafeteria and back to her room before he could try to share carrot sticks or something. She’d received a lot of visitors that day. First, Mark, who brought her some magazines and awkwardly channel surfed while she drank a lot of orange juice. Then Benton tried to jest with her about Carter getting on his nerves, too, which managed to make her smile. Carol was the last before she was alone for the night. Having been privy to various moments from her and Carter’s strenuous relationship since its birth, she’d seemed the most empathetic and the least awkward about what had happened. In the end, she held Lucy’s hand while she cried a little and then painted her nails a bright, shiny blue like they were having a sleepover and not a regulated visit in a hospital room.
Now Lucy sat in a very late therapist’s office and picked at the cerulean polish chipping off of her fingernail.
She grit her teeth and averted Carter’s gaze. He followed it, looking into her eyes even if she wouldn’t look into his.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said weakly. Carter’s turn to scoff. He pursed his lips hard, bouncing his fist on his knee.
“Okay, so help me understand,” he said slowly, trying to be patient.
“No.”
“Then I don’t know what to do, Lucy. You won’t talk to me like a normal person-“
“Like we’ve ever communicated normally?”
“-and I can’t even get you to look at me.” He tilted his head as he said this, still trying to catch her eye. It took most of her willpower not to shift her gaze from her hands.
“We’re not going to get anywhere if you don’t stop acting like you blame me for everything.”
“I do blame you.”
Tick.
It isn’t what she means to say– or, she thought it might remain in her head, tucked away where she didn’t have to address that sentiment. Carter is stunned into silence, perhaps addressing a fear that Lucy just confirmed. She doesn’t blame him for everything, of course, just the one event they’ve been dancing around.
Her cheeks are warm and wet, flushed with emotion and damp with tears.
“Fuck,” she whispers, wiping fiercely at her face. But it’s no use when her breathing is starting to stop and start abruptly like an unreliable car engine. She closes her eyes tightly and bounces her leg. The room fades. All she can hear is her own breathing and all she can see behind her eyelids is Carter’s face– first his expression at what she’s said just now, and then from Valentine’s day. They’d startled at each other for so long. She’d heard her own breathing then, too.
“I do blame you,” she repeats around a mouthful of grief. “Do you know how hard it’s been? Going to sleep in a hospital bed and waiting for you to come in and slump to the floor?”
He doesn’t answer. She doesn’t stop. God, where is that counselor?
“I-I can’t not see it. I can’t not feel it. All I keep thinking is that maybe if you’d fucking listened to me-m– or, or if I’d pushed harder, we wouldn’t be here. I don’t want to blame you because I do blame you and it really, really hurts.” Her voice beaks on the last word. “I blame myself, too. And it’s so much energy hating myself for what happened that I have to be mad at you too.”
It’s quiet, save for their shaky breathing. Their breathing, she realizes. Lucy opens her eyes and looks hesitantly over at Carter. He has his hand clasped over his mouth and aside from his staggered breaths, the tears that roll down his face are silent. He isn’t looking at her, but she looks at him. Not expecting anything, just looking. Waiting.
After a minute, he almost gasps the way he draws air into his lungs. “I’m sorry,” he chokes out. “You’re right. I should have listened to you.”
She worries her lip. “I don’t want to be right. I just want to explain. It’s hard to talk to you.”
For the first time all afternoon, they meet each other’s teary gazes. It should be embarrassing, but it’s not. It does hurt, though. The raw, real pain in their eyes hurts.
Carter swallows thickly. “Can I make it easier?”
Lucy blinks. Oh. She hadn’t anticipated that.
Tick. Tick. Tick. That noise seems to come in threes, now.
She touches her hair, brushing it back from her face. “I don’t know,” she admits, “but I am sorry.”
“For what?”
“I don’t know. I just feel sorry.”
Lucy thinks maybe her therapist would be proud of her for that, but maybe she wouldn’t be. After all, look at how she’s coped with twenty minutes of alone time. If you can call it that. Though, she supposes there are worse fates than being alone with Carter. In a twisted, horrible way, when she thinks of being alone with him, part of what she remembers is dying. She thinks that at least she wouldn’t have been the only one. She thinks of the valentine he dropped, they way their chests heaved as they looked at each other. It isn’t a pleasant memory, but there’s that silver lining– he didn’t leave her alone. He came searching
She searches now for his hand. It’s instinctual, really. He lets clasp their palms together and their arms hang in the space between their chairs.
The clock continues to tick. Lucy realized the ticks don’t come in threes: she’s grouping them that way.
She still kind of wants to smash the clock when the counselor finally shows up, but that’s okay. She doesn’t snap the next time Carter says her name and they both wonder if maybe that’s a start.