He leans forward, his hands tangling in her hair, and presses his chapped lips softly against her forehead. She can feel the dry pain radiating off him, scorching her with its intensity, but there are no tears this time.

“I’m really sorry” he whispers, his voice rough with pain and longing and exhaustion, and she’s sorry too but she can’t find the words to tell him that. She knows that if she tries to speak around the lump in her throat then her cool mask will shatter and she’ll break down in front of him. Part of her wants him to pull away from her, to rip the metaphorical plaster off this gaping wound just to get it over and done with, but she doesn’t really mind when he stays where his is, savouring every millimetre of his skin against hers.

Although his hair tickles her cheek, she wouldn’t move for the world. If the building caught fire, if the world itself caved in, she couldn’t move while he was this close to her, murmuring apologies in her ears, his breath ghosting over her and trying to stitch her together with words as weak as they were difficult.

The inevitable happens and with a sigh that ruffles her hair he breaks contact and it hurts for a sudden moment, cold and deep, so that she can’t meet his eyes. One of his fingers trails down her chin and he tilts her head up to kiss her, his warm mouth pressing against hers and she melts in his arms for a fraction of a second. His hand’s still there, she realises, and she’s holding on to his shoulder as though she’s drowning and he can save her.

But he can’t, not this time, and he doesn’t need to tell her that nothing’s changed as he pulls away. Still, she doesn’t meet his eyes; she knows what she’ll see there and has no wish to. Regret, lust, shame, pity, all of them burning him up. Someday, she thinks, he’ll be a great husband. Someday he’ll make some woman happy, and settle down with the love of his life and a swarm of kids. Someday.

Just not today.

oh oh oh i am intrigued!!!
lovely writing as always

and yaay for new fic :D

oooh i am intrigued also!
brilliant writing :)

AHH whats it about? i want it to be caromac cos i luve caromac and its super sweet and nice but i also DONT cos its sad!

more please!!!

Ohhh my, the first bit had be stucked in straight away, its so beautiful, and heart breaking.!!

OK

1. Yipee 1m248 has started a new fic :notworthy

2. Hang on, is this a Caroline and Mac not getting together fic or is it.....

3. Horror of horrors a Caroline gets together with Guy fic

4. tells herself the first bit is Caroline and Guy parting company and feels much better

Ooh, I'm fascinated already. I can't wait to see where this is going.

Yeah I am too! Who is it? Who is it?

A mysterious start.I am most probably completely wrong here but for some reason i thought the couple were Mac and Holly.I am so looking forward to more from such a talented author whoever the couple may be. :)

The sun, Caroline reflected, was obnoxiously bright this morning. While some people might have called it a beautiful day, it was plain to her that some sick-minded God was mocking her misery with the glorious weather. The sunshine and blue skies had lasted for a week now – a week since she’d gone for a meal with her fiancé and found that he’d ‘met someone else’ and ‘wasn’t ready for that much commitment’. A week since she’d been to work, hiding in bed and ignoring all of her calls, ignoring her responsibilities in favour of sobbing into her pillow, wondering what was so terrible about her.

Now the light was glaring through her thin curtains to the extent that she had to avert her eyes and she rolled over with a grunt, burying her face in the pillow whilst simultaneously groping for the packet of cigarettes she knew would be sitting on her bedside table. Her fingers closed greedily around the cardboard, fumbling, and with a yowl she sat bolt upright as she realised there were no more cigarettes therein.

“Nooo” she whimpered, shaking the box in vain and looking around the room. “Buggering hell.”
On cue, her phone began vibrating on the table and she threw it angrily to the floor, feeling tears of desperation welling up again in her eyes. Mocking her, the phone vibrated again on the floor and she picked it up, squinting through the tears.

“Everything ok? Haven’t seen u for a while. Heard you were ill, hope u feel better soon x Mac.”

She swallowed hard and lay back again, giving up on caring, tired beyond belief. So Guy hadn’t told everyone then. Either that, or Mac just hadn’t wanted to tell her that he knew, and was going along with her lame excuse of being ill. She wasn’t sure how to react, or even how she was supposed to react. What was expected of her? Calm acceptance or wild hysterics? At the moment, anything she could show outwardly was coated in a thick dust of apathy, but the message from Mac was forcing her to react.

She was going to have to go back to the hospital soon, and thanks to her no-good bastard of an ex-fiancé, she was going to have to tell everyone that she’d been ditched for a younger model. She was going to have to face Mac, and Guy, and Boyce, and everyone who’d had their noses stuck in her sordid affairs, and cope with the gossip and the looks and the whispers, and worst of all the pity. The inevitable questions; are you okay? How do you feel? Weak excuses about how she hadn’t deserved it, and there are plenty more fish in the sea.

The problem was, she didn’t want any other fish. He was her fish – her donkey faced curly haired fish – and there wasn’t another one like him in the ocean.

**********************

Aw poor Caroline. However, there is a beautiful ginger-haired fish in the sea, maybe she should try and catch that one.

I'm loving this fic already. You always seem to get me hooked within the first couple of bits!

Never have i been happier to be completely wrong.I just love stories like this. :D

Donkey faced curly haired fish .... Awwww. Love this.

She's in love with Guy :knockout Awww what she needs is a friend called Mac :wub:

Hehe...well I thought I should do something Guy-centric for a change...though I'm sure I won't be able to carry on for long ;)

hehehe "ginger haired fish in the sea" thats got to be a T-Shirt slogan if i have ever heard one!!!

this is a lovely fic!!... please make is CAROMAC! we seem to have had a lack of those lately... some keeps going roung killing Mac OR in one particular case kills guy and yet STILL doesnt make it Caromac
*shoots evil glance towards madelinenancy*

Yes, please make it caromac!!
more soon please!! :)

I made myself do some 'Caroline/Guy in love screen captions' once. It hurt, it hurt a lot :(

*shudder* Ugh, that's just wrong :(

i can do it!
guy maybe with caroline in my fic, but she SHOULD be with mac.
but hes with me!
its all good!
:P

Diary
It’s been seven days and twelve hours exactly (well, almost exactly) since It happened. You – I mean I – know what It is so I suppose there’s not really any need to spell it out. Not that that helps.
I’m not really sure what the point of this diary is. It just makes me babble even more, and goodness knows that’s not a good thing. I could babble for England – no wonder men get sick of me within weeks.
You know what would help right now?
Yep – you got it in one. Well done Caroline. Vodka!

Sighing, she threw the diary to the floor and chewed absently on her pen. She didn’t really want to get drunk – it wouldn’t help anything in the long term and probably not even in the short term. But what else was she going to do? What was left for her now?

A bitter taste flooded her mouth and she spat ink, realising that the pen had cracked between her teeth.

Vodka it was then.

***************************

Guy watched with a writhing feeling in his stomach as Mac picked up his phone again, sighed, and threw it down.

“Guy, she hasn’t replied. Are you sure she’s okay?”

“Yeah. Um…yeah. She’s fine.”

Mac turned on the bench, folding one long leg underneath him, and frowned. Guy hated it when Mac frowned – it was like the other man could see straight through him, and he knew that this would not be easy news to break.

But his skin was saved when his pager beeped, and he leapt up as though it was his mother in the operating theatre, scattering files behind him.

“Gotta go – operation” he yelped, and dashed out of the door before Mac could catch him.

Mac massaged his temples and picked up his phone again. The screen remained blank with no reply, and it occurred to him that it wasn’t his place to be texting her. He’d given that up the day he didn’t go to the station, the day that he let Guy win; and yet something inside him still twinged when he saw the ring on Guy’s finger, and he was too honest with himself to pretend that his short temper and snappishness wasn’t to do with the couple’s engagement.

His phone was still blank.

No new messages.

He let his breath hiss out angrily, and threw his phone back into his bag. She probably just didn’t want to talk to him; that would be totally understandable after how he’d treated her. She was probably having a nice relaxing week with her family, celebrating, that was it, and she would have been irritated by his text.

Unable to help himself, he picked up his phone again.

No new messages.

*********************

Caroline set down the bottle of vodka with shaky hands, realising sadly that she didn’t even have the energy to get hammered. The sunlight burnt her eyes as she looked at the window, scorning her, and she pulled her knees up to her chest and whimpered quietly to herself.

Looking down, her eyes flicked onto her phone and she rolled over to pick it up, reading over the message again, not knowing how to begin replying to it and not liking to ignore it. Tiredness pulled at her eyelids, begging her to ignore the fraise-blond dilemma that called itself Mac, and she succumbed easily, burying her face in the pillow, too exhausted for tears this time. As her breathing eased, her mind wandered the short distance between doctors and she turned restlessly as another face planted itself firmly in her mind.

Her fingers combed idly through his dark curls as he pressed tired, sated kisses to her collarbone. She cast a lazy glance around the room, seeing clothes scattered, bedsheets twisted. But it was only him who could keep her attention. His brown eyes met hers then and he smiled softly, catching her hand and bringing it up to his lips. His other hand was busy tracing patterns on her bare skin, brushing over the little hairs on the nape of her neck.

“Je t’adore,” he whispered and kissed her lingeringly, his lips soft against hers, not giving her the chance to reply. Me too, she thought fervently, me too.

She jerked awake, heart hammering, and scrubbed furiously at her eyes as though she could erase the memories. Like hell could she, when she could almost feel his sweat-slick torso pressed against hers, every muscle taut, holding onto her like she was the last woman on earth. She lay there for a moment, holding her breath, preserving the moment until her lungs burned and dark spots danced in front of her eyes, and then the air fell out of her lungs in a gasp and she doubled over, choking and spluttering and trying to oxygenate herself again.

And when she opened her eyes again, the bed was cold and empty.

***********************

Aww :( poor Mac & Caro
Agh Caroline don't think of bloody Guy :angry:
Go to Mac, go to Mac, go to MAC! :D

more soon please!!

Aww! Darn Guy stealing her off Mac then throwing her aside :(...please add more soon!!

COME ON MAC with yer long legs!!! GO AND GET HER AND WIPE AWAY THE BAD GUY!SMUT MEMORIES

:lol:
Caroline! Go to Mac NOW!

I still can't get over the fact that she's so upset at loosing Guy. I mean, come on girl send a friendly text to Mac - he needs you :)

oh oh this is aceeee
but caro has to be happy!!!
love it

look at the length of this chapter! It's huge!

***********************
Mac could barely hear the beep of Guy’s machines over the sound of his breathing as he focussed all his energies on the delicate operation he was carrying out. There was no room for distraction, no room to be thinking, wondering, worrying where Caroline was. She always did this operation with him – in silence, admittedly – but not having her there unnerved him. Purely on a professional basis of course, absolutely nothing to do with the way he could feel the warmth of her body radiating onto his as she waited at his shoulder for the next command.

See, he was doing it again. Thinking about Caroline and not about the operation at hand, and he had to drag himself back to the theatre, shaking his head to lose the vestiges of her face shimmering in front of him.

“Water in your ears?” asked Guy in a low voice, raising an eyebrow, and Mac forced a smile before bending back over the patient.

*******************

The next day, her sleep was shattered by the shrill ringing of her alarm clock and the prospect of going to work made her groan for the two-hundred-million-and-forty-sixth time that week. It had been a week, both too long and not long enough. It still hurt, as though someone had carved a hole in her lower chest cavity, slightly left of centre, and sprinkled salt in it.

Groaning melodramatically, she swung her legs out of bed, running them over the carpet in search of her slippers and hitting the alarm clock as hard as she physically could. Then she levered herself up, catching onto the bookcase as her vision swam, and stumbled into the bathroom. The hot water of the shower made her feel slightly better and she remembered for once to have her coffee before cleaning her teeth rather than after.

Spitting into the sink, she scrubbed at her eyes with her hands and looked despairingly into the mirror. She looked a state, and she knew it; dark rings under her eyes, pinched cheeks, cracked lips. But it was too late to do anything about that now; she was going to be late, and there wasn’t enough make-up in the world to make her look human.

Rinsing out her mouth one more time, she flung a towel over the mirror and allowed herself a tight smile as she picked up her car keys and steeled herself to face the world.

*********

The first thing she saw when she pulled into her parking space at the hospital was Guy’s car, and it took all of her self-control not to start the ignition again and go straight home, curl up in bed and cry until it stopped hurting. But instead she locked the car behind her and took a deep breath before she walked in through the doors, refusing to look back.

She’d timed it well – she wasn’t late, but she wasn’t early enough to have to linger in the staff room. As soon as she’d put her bag in her locker, she was paged to deal with an angry patient in ward 5, and then when she’d stuck a needle in him to shut up his whining another nurse needed her to fill out some release forms, and then she was stitching up a football fan who’d been crushed in a crowd in A&E, and immediately afterwards her pager went again informing her that she was needed in surgery in ten minutes, giving her approximately ten minutes to get washed and gowned.

She was feeling fine. She didn’t have time to feel anything but fine; this was one of the times where the stress of working in a large hospital paid off.

*************

Mac hummed to himself, kicking the patient’s bed in time with his tune, until Guy snapped at him to stop it. The Swiss man was in a foul mood, shouting at everyone who got in his way. Of course, Guy’s mood never made a damn bit of difference to Mac – he lived to annoy the anaesthetist.

“I said, stop it” snarled Guy, and Mac smiled up at him angelically.

“Can’t help the fact I’m musically inclined, Guy.”

“Yeah, well actually you’re not. You’re out of time. And out of tune.”

“No, you’re tone deaf.”

Guy squared his shoulders.

“I am not tone deaf. I was a great singer when I was at school.”

Mac smirked, knowing he had him now.

“Oh, I bet you were. I bet you sang beautifully.”

“I was the finest soprano Whiteleaf ever…oh f*ck. Stop laughing, I was only a kid…I mean, obviously my voice is lower now…but still in perfect tune. Unlike you, Mr…tuneless.”

“Mr Tuneless, yeah. Good comeback.”

“It stopped you from humming for a bit” said Guy, and Mac was forced to admit that he might have a point there. His equally witty comeback was cut short by the interruption of his second in command arriving.

“Are you two boys going to bicker all day, or shall we cut this poor…thing up?”

Guy froze with the air of the condemned on his face, a fact which Mac was too busy hugging Caroline to notice. He noticed how she tensed at his touch though, and let go of her hastily. Of course – Guy always was the jealous type.

“Did you enjoy your break?”

Caroline had never been more glad of the surgical masks that covered most of their faces as she smiled and made up some bullshit about decorating the house. It would be just her luck that the operation that was a pair of hands short would be the one that Mac and Guy were doing, but to her credit she hadn’t flinched as she walked in through the door.

On the other hand, she couldn’t even pretend to deny that butterflies hadn’t erupted in her stomach when she saw Guy’s thick head of hair, and she’d mentally cheered as he bested Mac in their verbal sparring for once.

The tension in the theatre was thick enough to cut with a knife, and by the end of it even Mac was squirming. It wasn’t that there was any hostility or coldness – in fact, Caroline and Guy were the perfect couple, civil and polite to one another and to Mac.

“Dr Todd, would you pass me the scalpel?”

“Of course, Dr Macartney. Dr Secretan, how long will she be out for?”

“Another twenty minutes, maybe fifteen, Dr Todd.”

“Thank you, Dr Secretan”

And so on. It was lovely. There was no sniping, no childish humour, no insults, and it felt totally and utterly wrong. Mac botched the stitches in his haste to finish, and neither Guy nor Caroline said anything, just worked silently until he pronounced the operation finished, and then left silently as well. The last thing he saw as they ungowned was Caroline taking Guy’s arm, and then they rounded a corner and disappeared.

An odd sense of hurt blossomed in Mac’s chest. It must be that he’d upset them somehow, maybe with his texts and concerns for Caroline, but despite that he didn’t think that they would have cut him out that much.
Sighing, he decided it was time for a long cup of coffee.

****************

yay for long chapters!!
loving the banter :)

aww mac.... :(
and aww caro... they need to be together :D please. hehe

eee long chapter! :D

haha Mac and Guy's banter :P

but Caroline get over Guy already pft! Go and be happy with Mac!!

more soon pleaseee!

:o I want to hear Caroline and Guys conversation, go away Mac!
Banters good though

Poor Mac feeling left out of their relationship when they're not even together anymore!! The writing is fantastic but I can't believe that Caroline is still so hung up with Guy - she should be with Mac!!

DONT LEAVE OUT MAC!! she shud go round the corner and beat guy up!

Oooo nice long chapter - me likes :)

Why doesn't Mac know they've split up yet :unsure:

please post more soon!!

It hurt to be next to him.
It hurt to feel the warmth radiating off his arms.
It hurt to smell his aftershave, and to remember how she’d fallen asleep and woken up to that smell.

But despite the pain, she kept walking, Guy’s arm in a death-grip, until they reached the staff room and she threw him down into a seat. He didn’t meet her eyes, but he did turn so that both of them were facing into the corner, giving the conversation a little privacy.

“Did you want something?” he asked coolly, and her heart clenched painfully as she projected hatred through love.

“Well, I was wondering how you neglected to tell anybody we’d broken up” she said, imagining every word was a shard of glass slicing at his face. He squirmed.

“Well, come on, Mac wouldn’t exactly have taken it well. He’d have got all stroppy and things would have been awkward.”

“Like it isn’t awkward for me now?” she exclaimed, horrified to find tears springing to her eyes. “You’re so insensitive, Guy”

“Not what that nurse from Radiology said earlier” he said under his breath, but it was loud enough for Caroline to hear and with a sob she sprang to her feet and walked out, scrubbing at her eyes with the sleeve of her white coat.

The voice at Guy’s shoulder almost made him jump out of his skin.

“So, you going to tell me what all that was about?”

Guy shrugged, rolling his eyes.

“Just Caroline getting a bit stroppy. You know.”

Boyce nodded and smiled widely, settling into the seat next to Guy.

“Excited about the wedding?”

“Err. The wedding. Well, there was a slight hitch in that plan.”

The smile fell off Boyce’s face.

“A hitch?”

“Well, you know, I wasn’t quite ready to settle down.”

If looks could kill, Boyce reckoned that after his stare Guy should be slumped on the floor. Sadly looks obviously didn’t kill, and Guy was wittering on about some gorgeous blonde nurse who’d taken his breath away so much that he’d forgotten about being engaged and just ended up in a closet with her.

“You cheated on your fiancée?”

Guy had the grace to squirm a little.

“Um…yeah. But it’s all okay now.”

“Is that why she’s been away for the whole week? Because you broke her heart? And then you didn’t even tell anyone, so she had to come in and pretend everything was fine?”

“It was for the best. She’s fine.”

Boyce paused to consider that for a moment, and then swung around and punched Guy in the face as hard as he could. The anaesthetist crumpled to the floor with all the elegance of a dying swan, swearing at the top of his voice as Boyce dived on top of him, trying to get another shot in despite the crowd of people who’d suddenly decided to get involved. Strong arms lifted him free and pulled him away from the melee even as he kicked and fought against them, seeing red.

“Boyce! Mate, calm down. He’s not worth it, you might damage your knuckles on his granite skull.”

Mac’s words didn’t do much to dull Boyce’s rage, but the surgeon had such a tight grip on him that he couldn’t breathe, let alone move, and slowly his blood pressure subsided and he relaxed. Mac let go of him tentatively – years of experience had taught him that relaxation didn’t necessarily mean the person had calmed down. But it looked like Guy had been shepherded out of the room, so he released the younger doctor and turned to face him, about to ask what the hell had happened, but Boyce beat him to it.

“Remember when you thought you were dying, and you sent Guy to the station?”

Mac winced inwardly, put a finger on his lip and gazed at the ceiling.

“Hmm…dying…sent Guy to the station…I’m sure it’ll come back to me. Carry on.”

“Remember how you did it because you trusted him not to hurt her? You thought that they could be happy together?”

A cold feeling started in Mac’s stomach and he swallowed.

“I told him that I’d kill him if he hurt her. Boyce, what are you trying to say?”

“I’m saying that Guy’s an absolute twat, Mac. But also that maybe you were wrong to try and play God.”

He knew it. The second he’d phoned Guy to ask him to go to the station, he’d known that it was a risky game to play; so many ways it could backfire and go wrong, and he’d thought the worst of it was getting a clean bill of health on the day that Guy and Caroline had announced their engagement.

“What did he do?”

“A young nurse in radiology” muttered Boyce with no humour in his tone, and Mac’s eyes froze over.

“I’m going to fucking kill him” he said in a totally flat voice, but he didn’t make any move to get up. “I’m going to rip the bastard limb from limb. I’m…”

Whatever he had been about to say was cut off by Caroline walking in, looking pale but dry eyed. She smiled and nodded at the two men, and walked over to her locker, throwing her bag back inside.

“Time to cut people up, Dr Macartney” she said lightly, and not knowing what to say he settled for nodding and following her. When they got there, he saw her see Guy’s swelling eye, and look at him but he didn’t look back. He still knew she was smiling under that mask, though.

Ahh facking Guy :swearing Bastard :angry: :angry:
Hurrah for Boycie telling Mac! And Hurrah for Boyce punching Guy!!
And yes Mac, go and kill Guy!! :angry:
Poor Caro :( :(

Ooh more soon please!!!

I love this fic SO much!! Boycie's always the hero! Hoorah for him telling Mac and poor Caroline - Guy is so evil...GRRR but I'm glad that Mac got a clean bill of health cos now it can be a Caromaccy one, yes? Please! Also please add more so soon...

YaY for evil Guy getting what he deserved hehe. And yay for boyce and Mac for just being so cool :wub:

Do swans die gracefully :unsure:

I love the way you've got Guy in this fic - if you keep going like this he'll have no redeeming features at all :lol: