AUTHOR: Missy

EMAIL: lasfic@yahoo.com

PART: 1 of 1

RATING:  PG (Adult Thematic Material)

PAIRING(s): L/L

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CATEGORY: Drama, Romance

FEEDBACK: PLEASE?!

SETTING IN TIMELINE: post-show canon

SPOILLER/SUMMARY: "In Death, she was magical." (Lavenny Dreamscape)

NOTES: This is based on the Ted Hughes poem "The Offers."  Whenever I get ideas like this, I'm always glad to say stuff like "The X-Men Fandom Did Poetry-Tribute Fics First!" to make me feel like less of a dork...  Written for Solita's birthday.

***

The first time he saw her, they were on a bus hurtling through a street in the downtown night.  She had her hair clipped back with two bobby pins and it was long as it had been in high school, but she carried a blue-clad, weeping bundle under her arm and wore the grungy wardrobe of a haus frau.  He remembered that she did not see him, and wouldn't look back at him when he called her name.  When she got off he tried to trip her, but  his legs weren't long enough to reach into the aisle.

He wouldn't let the bus take everything he loved.  Not again.

In desperation, he'd chased her down the street but she'd disappeared into a building, and when he looked up at the street sign he read with great difficulty "Mulberry Street."

Just as he'd begun to wonder what she was doing in New York, he woke up.

***

The second time he had been playing Moon Shoot in the Pizza Bowl (and losing again) when she put her hand on his shoulder and turned him for a hug.

"La-verne, you made me tilt!" he complained, but that great big hug shut him up.  "But you look wonderful," he said.  She did - glowing eerily as she never had before, smiling hugely in a beautiful low-cut black dress with a little white L on the right breast. 

"Aww, thanks Len," she grinned, smiling shyly up at him.  "You're gonna be there Saturday?"

He wondered for what, but automatically he nodded his head.

"Laverne!" a strong, deep voice called from the alleys, one that had always made him stand up straight and true.  They both turned around as Randy Carpenter emerged from the darkness.  Laverne ran to him and wrapped her arms around his neck, her kiss given with such strong passion that he knew immediately that  what he had agreed to do was attend their wedding.

"But you're my wife," he had whined.  They didn't hear him.  Lenny walked across the floor and grabbed Randy by the shoulder, ready to tell him off even if he was his hero.

He awakened before the confrontation began.

***

The third time they were lying in bed in their old apartment in Studio City.  He knew he was naked, and from the stifling heat oppressing his skin he knew that it was summer.  He remembered this time - his favorite years of the marriage.  They had been incredibly poor and always hungry, their apartment one room and occasionally visited by mice, but he had experienced the best sex of his life then.  Anytime they wanted  it, anywhere they wanted it; as long as he had five cents left for a rubber they could shut the rest of the universe out for a half hour. 

She was curled up beside him in a ball, her hair long and fire-colored as it trailed over the pillow.  She wore a tie-dyed nightgown with an ugly green ruffle that she loved and he hated and often ended up at the foot of their bed.  She was there; he wrapped his arms around her, and he'd never let go.

"I'm scared," she said in a tiny voice.

"Why?"

"You're gonna leave me again."

His arms tightened around her.  "I'd never leave, Vernie."

She was instantly as happy as a little girl.  "Okay.  You don't mind staying up here?"

"Up here?"  The apartment stood up on the second floor - it was a short leap from the ground.

She laughed; her wonderful, nasal bark that was all Laverne.  "Look out the window, Len."

"Why?" He knew that the window had been bricked up; another reason why they were sweating to death.

"Lenny!"

The tone of warning he understood perfectly, and though Lenny  didn't want to get up and stop touching her,  he forced himself to roll over and roll up the shade.

Instead of a planx of bricks he saw nothing but blue sky.

He knew that it was paradise but he couldn't stay.

"Ain't it great?  Now we can be together forever..."

He pulled away from her grasping, red-tipped fingers.  The temptation was hellfire on his skin, but he knew his responsibilities.  "The girls.  I gotta stay with the girls..."

"You don't love me!  You're going to leave me!"  Now she spoke in his voice.

He woke up saying that he'd never stopped loving her.

***

The last time she came it was the anniversary of her final bus ride.  He was sitting on the rim of their tub, running a bath, wearing his ancient pink-and-red checkered robe, the one he'd been wearing when she gave him their first real kiss.

"Don't mess up this time, Len."

She was standing in the doorway, more beautiful than he'd ever seen her in that white slip of hers that never failed to make him drool. 

He turned away, ashamed.  "I don't know how to do it.  I don't know how you DID it."

Her hand rested on his shoulder -  he felt the press of the teeny diamond he'd bought her fifteen years ago against his prominent bones.  "It's easy.  You do what you think is right.  You keep 'em happy and fed and spend time with 'em."

"They're girls, and they want you."

Her arm went around his neck.  "They always used to wait by the window 'til you'd come home off your shift.  Remember how they'd sit on the floor by your feet while we all watched 'Francis The Talking Mule'?"

He laughed - it felt good, so he did it again.  "Yeah, but most of the time I'd come home and they'd always be in the backyard with you throwing around a ball."

"I always wanted a team of pitchers," she grinned.  But then her face turned serious.  "You can throw a ball for them now."

"Not as good as you."  He turned around and grasped her hard, feeling every thin bone beneath his embrace.  "Come back.  I need you.  I don't wanna do this alone."

Firmly, she pushed him back a little.  "I can't."

Tears began to roll down his cheeks, and again he turned from her.  It was her lips on the back of his neck that made him stop.

"You big dope.  It's not your fault."

His self recrimination came pouring out.  "I should've been there.  I should have been on the bus with you."

"So the girls could be orphans?" she said, quite practically.

"Shirley and Carmine could've taken 'em; they would do a swell job bringing 'em up..."

"Lenny," she turned him around and made him face her, "they need their daddy.  No one loves them as much as you do."

"You died on a bus," he moaned.  "Why did it have to be there?"

She held him tight.  "It was a traffic accident; the driver had a heart attack."

"Why didn't you wait for me?  I was only five minutes late to the plant..."

"I had to get home.  It was Shirley's birthday, remember?  I needed to get candles for her cake."  His arms were a vice around her.  "I didn't mean to go, I swear.  It's not like what your mom did."

"I know..."

"Len!" she turned him around again, held him by the shoulders.  "I didn't wanna leave you.  In fact, I fought like hell to stay here with you guys, but if I'd won I woulda been a vegetable.  You know that.  The doctors told you."

"You wouldn't have wanted to be that way."

"No," she kissed his neck and inhaled.  "I forgot how good this feels.  I miss you, too."

"I miss you more than you know."

"I know how much you miss me, dope," she smiled.  She stood up.  "I gotta go.  I need to see the girls."

"Can't you stay a little longer?"

"Would it make me going easy?"

"No."

"C'mon, Len...'

He turned away - he felt that watching her leave would bring true closure to the picture, yet he felt a million times lighter without it.  "Will you wait for me?"

"I dunno," she said, a teasing quality to her voice, "there are a lot of real cuties up there..."

"You ain't seeing Randy, are you?"

"Would I do that to you?"

He turned around, saw her standing there waiting for his answer.  "Not the mother of my kids.  Vernie, do you really love me best?"

She grinned - that was the old game they'd played as kids.  "After all these years, you should know I do."

***

When he woke up this time, he was in bed with three girls; one of them had his nose and was curled up on her mother's pillow; the next had his lips and the curve of her mother's shape beginning to take hold and was clinging to his stomach; the youngest lay with her head on his chest, her mother's red curls trailing up his quilt-covered belly like a river of fire, and though her eyes were closed he knew they were the same shade as his. 

They all wore the pajamas their Aunt Shirley had made for them last Christmas, and they each had a hand on him, as if attending to his salvation.  He appreciated and reciprocated, his palm running over each head, urging them to stay asleep, as he had done when they were babies.  It's dad.  I'm still here.

He tossed a bleary glance toward the nightstand and his alarm clock, which told him it was way too early to be awake.  Invariably, his eyes bobbed down to the silver-framed picture of his wedding - he saw himself holding Laverne and grinning stupidly at the camera, his mouth ever presently open.  God, he hated to look at pictures of himself - he always looked like a huge idiot in them...

Lenny realized that he hadn't looked at Laverne's face in the photo for the first time in a century. 

He did so deliberately now, so that he would remember her unique face, the shape of her lips and the light of her eyes.  Okay, Vernie, he said to her - in his head, not out loud to avoid waking up the girls, I'll do it for you.  Just don't give up on me.

As he closed his eyes again, he felt the heaviness of the world around him, the mantle of what he must do and what he needed to do, lift a little.  It would be okay - he'd manage.  He had to. 

He tried to make himself okay with it all.  As afraid as he was, it was time to grow up.

As he drifted off to sleep, he could’ve sworn that he felt the brush of a hand against the top of his neck and the brush of warm lips on the nape of his neck.