#and i always got them great bc of course i would its FOUR CHORDS AND BASIC STRUMMING

[horrorwebs]

i hate that its taking me so mich effort to learn how to play this fingerstyle song bc for someone whos been playing for like 6 years it should uhm. you know. it shouldnt be this hard

[athenawroughtarchive]

drabble for @mcallisterclan bc megan always writes prtty things for me. 2k wrds.

Everything is always so cold. Winter seeps through marble encasing and faux wood floors like tar pervading a lung - which is warm, a constant beat to it. The sheets are cold when she wakes up, and the thermostat is set to seventy three. She’s from Massachusetts, and though D.C. is significantly warmer, she finds herself having to adapt to the new environment.

The floor is cold when as her soles press against it; legs thrown over the bed, blindly seeking out her shoes strewn somewhere near the foot of the fourposter. It’s Phillip’s old bed, and like everything about him, it’s modern and stiff and unfriendly. She’s decided she hates it, and she’s put pink pillows everywhere, and yellow throw blankets and throw pillows are tossed all around the house, and they’re never folded. She wants him to get angry about it. She waits for it, watches him press his lips together in the same way someone would repress a laugh – except he would never laugh – before dissapearing into his office after work.

Dejection is cold. But he is colder.

There is something in the way the house sits that she knows he’s left on another business trip, the way the unwalked floor creaks when she pads into the kitchen.

A part of her wishes his ‘business trips’ were pleasure trips, and an even larger part of her wishes he was cheating on her. A sick, twisted part of her wishes she’d find a lipstick stain on his collar so they’d have something to ruin and something to rebuild. But there’s nothing there. And like a house that sits on a hill, their home is empty, and nothing stirs within it except for her spoon in a coffee mug. Fingers play chords against the granite countertop, and dressed scantily in one of her husband’s button downs he’d left in his old room, she pulls her knees up to her chest and sighs.

She watches with a ghost of a smile and the Boston globe in her hand as Machiavelli scampers into the living room, as though he’s been spooked. He runs on his chubby legs like there’s a broom waiting to sweep him into a corner, and she can’t help but laugh, eyes creasing and the newpaper crinkling.

Laying the paper flat against the island counter, she turns in her stool and nearly doubes over when her eyes land on Phillip’s figure in the doorway. He’s unmistakable - lofty, dressed in black slacks and a dark button down. She presses a hand against her chest and for a moment she thinks those rumours, those blind colleagues of his that seem to fear him, could be on to something. “Sacre bleu,” she sighs, catching her breath on the tilt of her throat.

She knows she looks a mess. Her hair sticks in every direction, despite being tamed in a low chignon, and mascara seeps from her waterline. But somehow whatever reflection plays in his exquisite eyes is livable. And then she remembers she’s barely dressed, her legs jutting from a shirt that isn’t even her own - one that hardly leaves her bodice to the imagination. Blushing fiercely, she waits for him to clear the air.

“Run out of clothes?”

“What?” Her voice is breathless and rushed.

His brows raise, and he gestures to the button down hung limply from her shoulders.

“Oh, no. Sorry.” A feverish scarlet runs up her neck. “You left it and – I’m sorry. I thought you were gone–– going?”

He pockets his keys. “No.”

“Where were you?”

“I wasn’t aware I was under interrogation. I had a meeting at the courthouse.” She looks up at him with her doe-eyed gaze and wonders, briefly, if there’s anything he lies to her about. “Is there a problem, Ambrosia?”

“No, no problem. Just curious.” She takes her coffee cup, the swift movement nearly allowing the hot brown liquid to lunge over the rim of the mug, and bids him aidue. “I’ll leave you to it.” She doesn’t check to see if he’s agknowledged her before making for the hallway.

“Ambrosia?”

Pulling the shirt over her ass, she turns back to Phillip, “yes?”

“I never liked the shirt anyway,” he said after a moment. “Keep it.”

January rolls around. A newscaster says the temperature would drop to the thirties by midnight.

The holidays came and went and the McAllisters churned in the New Year with a bottle of champagne. They toasted to health, just the two of them – which was so like him, really, because it was so traditional, so tasteless, that it almost pained her to lift her glass to something as insipid as health.

She’s unreasonably angry and for many, many reasons.

One - he never kissed her on New Year’s. It was the perfect setting: his mother’s house, the clock struck twelve, and as luck would have it she was pretty sure John kept mistletoes up yearlong and they happened to be standing under one. She stared up at him, their hips brushed, and she bit her lip. Her heart capsized in on itself when he smiled down at her and kissed her forehead. Rosie gave a half-hearted cheer, and blew into one of the kid’s harmonicas.

She was humiliated.

She cried in the bathroom as Mariah Carey caused the walls to tremble over the speakers - why were they still fucking listening to Christmas music? - and Barbara put on another classic holiday movie she says the boys used to love to watch when they all got along. So she kisses someone else, and finds out that guilt tastes a lot like copper.

And she decides that his colleagues were right. Phillip was terrifying when he was angered.

She counts the days. They don’t talk for nearly a week. His fists are still balled and there’s a vein which flickers in his neck when he sees her now. The silence is deafening, the distance between them earsplitting, as the first week of the new year rolls by. In like a lion, out with a lamb. They eat at different times, wake in lonely beds.

There’s an event that they have to attend, on the ninth. She’s accustomed to these sorts of things - being the daughter of Matthew Reynolds has conditioned her well – and by proxy Phillip has become something of a regular to them, too.

But she’s also used to living in an apartment with her closest girl friends. So when she reaches around to clasp her bra which had tangled itself with the back of her dress – one with a hefty price tag at that –  she finds herself at a loss, sighs, and realises there’s only one person that could possibly avail her.

“Phillip?” Her voice rings throughout the still house.

There’s a moment of shuffling, before his voice sounds back at her, “office.”

She follows his voice into his workroom and nudges him to gain his attention. “Please? It’s stuck.”

A moment passes in between her plea and his silent nod. His hands reach out, and momentarily his palm presses against the small of her back. Such is the berth in size that he can nearly still her with one hand. His skin is warm against her - hers is almost always cold.

He moves onward, and with deft fingertips draws the icy zipper across her freckled back and clasps her dress in place. She sighs in relief, pulling the sleeve up and over her shoulder.

“Thank you. Do I––”

“You look beautiful.”

A shy grin crosses her lips. “You, too.”

The house oddly smells like him. She thinks its funny, because he’s sly and deceptive and he’s good at his job (she knows because she rifles through his things) - he never leaves a trace, never any indication of his whereabouts.

She sometimes wonders if he really lives with her - she’s a hurricane and he’s neat and organized and never leaves the seat up or his shaving cream on the counter, while her hair clips and barettes and makeup are all over the place. She thinks its John’s doing, or his military upbringing. But the more she thinks about how utterly faultless he is, the more he serves to annoy her.

Though she’s washed it twice, the laundry smells like him. Minty, pervaded with cinnamon, spice, citrus. She brings the cottony shirt to her nose and holds the warm fabric to her chest. He’s been gone a week and everything still smells like him. She wonders if –––

His birthday is on the fourteenth. He’s thirty-four, and it’s the first time either of them have had a birthday since tying the knot. She wants it to be special. So she, perhaps blindly, consults with Matthew and even her own brother before settling on initialed cufflinks and a home brewing system - which supposedly revolutionized beer drinking, according to Matthew. She had considered a watch, of course, but that was somewhat cliche and she figured she’d try again on their anniversary.

Anniversaries were intended for the cliche.

She’s affluter with nerves, toying with her fingertips as she waits for him to get home. She wants him to like it. She desperately wants his approval.

He gets home at six - and like clockwork, her heartbeat rings in her ears when he breezes through the door, discards his glasses from the bridge of his nose, and pulls off the helmet from his head, his hair still looking impeccably suave.

“Phillip.” She greets, a twinge of expectation to her voice. She walks towards him and reaches for his hand, tugging him into the living room. “Come, come.”

Her poor husband is dubious. Did he think she had forgotten? “What’s this?”

She sits him down at the head of the table, and she, with her legs crossed and knees red, sits next to him. “This is your first birthday we’ve spent together. I wanted to do something for you. I wasn’t sure what you wanted, or what you needed, but I hope you’ll like it. It’s a last minute thing and I’m sorry but its not like you’re the easiest person to––”

“Ambrosia.” The pad of his thumb pressed against her bottom lip, he smiles gently towards her. “I’m sure it’s fantastic.”

“Open it,” she urges, a broad smile washing her face with unreserved joy. She fails to recall the last time she had been so raputous.

Like any well-trained, eldest brother, he is gracious and pretends to like the gifts she’s selected for him and thanks her profusely. She, through the largest smile she’s ever worn, tells him not to mention it. “So do you like it?”

“My wife has great taste,” he says.

She reaches for his hand again and squeezes it. “Happy birthday, Phillip.”

“Ambrosia?”

She leans her elbow against the table, nodding quickly. He tucks a stray lock of hair behind her ear, gently cupping her face with one hand.

“My birthday’s on the fifteenth, sweetheart.”

They go out one night - the sky is irritated with stars and it is no longer quite so cold, nor is the loneliness quite so unbearable. She supposes she has learned to adapt.

Phillip was scheduled to meet with an investor and his wife that same night, but his partner took a rain check last minute and the reservation still stood, so she tagged along instead, and wore a low cut, inky dress, so he could take her to a niche location on the Potomac river, which feeds into the mouth of the Chesapeake bay with the sound of a crooning guitar and encompassing atmosphere of over effusive Austrian cuisine.

He laughs for her. Something she said caused him to truly laugh, and though the noise is drained by a sip of wine, her eyes are glimmering with mirth. It is a blessed, blessed sound, honeyed and finely tuned.

She laughs when she tucks into bed, rolls over onto the cold, empty expanse of linen and mattress, lets her fingertips furl up the cool sheets. She’s so glad.

Whatever sophomoric feelings she had for Phillip last Christmas were gone.

She could move forward.