Work Text:
The house lay silent for now. The first fallen leaves where accumulating on the bottom of the pool. It had been emptied only two weeks ago, when the gardner had pensively sniffed the air, feeling that summer was finally over. For now the sun still valiantly shone over the houses that stood along the shore. Sometimes at noon someone especially brave would even try to still sunbathe outside on their respective jetties.
Daisy had turned 50 that year. Tom was away with his current mistress, not even bothering to keep up appearances these days. Their son, didn't visit either, on holiday with his friends in Italy this time of the year. Nick and him had just come back from there themselves, after having first spent two weeks in Rome and then an extended stay at the Riviera to enjoy some actual time at the beach, because God knew the coast around Rome didn't actually invite to swim.
The house had been emtpy for two months. The white sheets still covered everything as they returned, as they hadn't given the servants a heads up and they were still at their respective homes. Nick remarked how it reminded him of the time when they'd first gotten together. So Gatsby had decided to not call the servants in quite yet.
Gatsby spared a peripheral glance at the staple of newspapers the servants had left. The most recent on top. Stock prices and the rise and fall of the newest star of economy interested him only anylonger, if at all, on a level of mere curiousity. He threw another perfunctory look at the assortment of mail that was piling on the table beside the papers. That he would actually have to spend some time on, later. Much later. He proceeded to carry his own luggage up to their bedroom where Nick had already went.
Outside a woman was making her way up the driveway, stopping here and there frozen, staring at the overgrown garden, the unkempt paths that were barely distinguishable from the lawn, recalling in her mind the way things had looked the last time she'd set foot onto these grounds.
They hadn't really upacked, only tossed the luggage off for now, both exhausted and glad to be sleeping in their own bed again tonight. They sat with wine and cheese, which was about the only thing the house had still to offer as it concerned culinary matters, on a chaiselongue still covered in a white sheet like everything else in the room. The high-windowed patio doors had all been thrown open wide by Nick as soon as they'd come inside. Through them a cool drift came in, ruffling the cream-colored, translucent curtains like skirts during a dance, the draught pulling them inside the room, blowing them up almost in their faces, at an especially strong gust.
Gatsby's hair was more platin blond these days, with the grey that was mixed in prominently these days. He watched as the wind ruffled Nick's hair that still steadfastly refused to lose any of it's original brown color. Only sometimes when he hadn't shaved for a while you could see grey in his beard, but on his head time stood still.
There was a ringing on the door. They both groaned in annoyance. While they had certainly made new friends over the years, none of the people who would have been in the position to witness their arrival belonged to them. They contemplated not answering the door. But Nick, always concerned about other peoples' feelings worried that it might be something important. Before he had the chance to get up though, Gatsby had already gotten to his feet, making for the door, with fond expasperation for his lover.
It was Daisy standing in front of their door. She looked at him through long and probably fake lashes, her mouth forming a slight '0', as if she hadn't expected him to answer the door but was glad anyway. She looked at him much how she'd always looked at him, back in the days, when there still had been something other than contempt for him in her heart. The years had been kind to her, well as kind as the years could be on any woman in her fifties.
"I saw that you are back," she started, taking a step forward as if wanting to enter the house. Gatsby moved out of her way.
"We've just returned."
She stood in the hall, her gaze moving around, as if assessing what had changed. She hadn't passed that doorstep for over twenty years.
"How are you?" Gatsby asked, for lack of anything else to say. He still had no clue what she could possibly want from him now.
A rehearsed and by now second-nature smile came onto her face. "Oh, I'm fine, I'm fine. Did you know that Tommy Junior is going to Oxford?"
He had as a matter of fact. It wasn't exactly news either. He had been there for a few years now. But then the last time they had actually exchanged words had been longer than that. "That is great. I'm sure he'll enjoy it there."
"Yes. Yes." She seemed so awkward, so out of her depth, when all she'd shown him the past years, if they had met at all, had been aloofness and disregard, like the mere association with him embarrassed her.
"Would you like something to drink?" he asked, trying to recall the polite basics of interaction. When politeness and social ettiquette had been nothing they had been bothering with at anytime in the years that had gone by. They had become unseen and unimportant and with it unbelievably free. The last time the police had bothered knocking on their door had been ten years ago. The time they'd actually gone to a tea party even longer than that. No one invited them to any events. Few people even knew who they were anylonger. And those who had actually been at his parties, they certainly refused to admit to any recollection. Gatsby had stopped being a notorious name so long ago that he actual went by it again these days.
"Yes. Yes. If it's no trouble."
"None at all. I'm afraid I can only offer you wine, though, that Nick and I salvage from the cellar. You see the house is in quite a state right now." He turned to go back to the living room, where he'd left Nick, as Daisy grabbed his arm.
"No! It's not so important. Actually I don't really want a drink. I drink too much anyway these days." A nervous chuckle. Her hand on his arm still didn't release her grip, if at all she had edged closer to him now. She was again looking him in the eyes. And what was it he saw there? Longing? It was sad anyway, whatever it was. By the way the lines on her face seemed to deepen at that expression, she had been sad a lot in the last years. "Have you..." she smiled a little, shy, self-deprecating. "Have you sometimes thought about those weeks we spent here... after Nick had brought us back together?"
"Sometimes." he said, mostly because it seemed to him cruel to admit that he hadn't.
"Me too." Then softer she repeated, "Me too." Her gaze wavered outside to the bathing jetty where they'd lain in the sun together in those days when she'd been everything in his life. "I find myself thinking about it a lot lately. Jordan– my friend, the golfer, you remember her? She married her third husband last week. Did you know that?" She trailed off again. "Sometimes I wonder what my life could have been like if only I'd been braver." She looked at him, searchingly, a slight, hopeful smile on her face. "If only we could go back." Daisy's smile broke, as her gloved hand brushed over Gatsby's arm in a fragile, hesitant gesture.
"You can't repeat the past." Gatsby replied, kissing her on the forehead gently.
Nick came walking out of the living room then.
"Oh," he exclaimed surprised, but not necessarily put off by the presence of his cousin. "Daisy! How are you?"
Gatsby turned around and smiled at him. Finally Daisy's grip slipped off his arm, silent and unnoticed, as if it had never been there.
"Hello, Nick." she greeted with a smiling mouth and pained eyes. Regretful. Like, while she envied his place there would have still been many things she would have liked to say to her cousin. "It is good to see you. We need to take tea together some time." Knowing that they never would. "I have to go now. Tom and I are expected for lunch. I need to get ready." She turned around and headed for the door in quick strides, not looking at either of them just one more time.
Nick looked after her a while longer, frozen in an aborted half-wave, looking non-plussed. "Well, that was quick."
Gatsby wrapped his arms around Nick's waist from behind, resting his chin on his shoulder, as he regarded the path the woman had just went. "We should close the patio doors. It's getting chilly."
Outside Daisy watched as the two men moved from door to door, shutting the house off from the outside world once again. Both were clear to see, illuminated by the lights of the house, while outside the sun was slowly setting. Daisy couldn't make out what they were saying, but she heard them laughing, kissing once as they were both engulfed by a curtain that was thrashing especially wild in the evening wind. Soon the last door was shut. And the world displayed to her in the house had become a silent one if no less happy for it.
It was a long time till Daisy walked back the gravelly driveway she'd come up. As she made her way down the path, she watched the green light on the other side of the shore.