Sleepless
by Gadget 151
URL: http://www.bluecatsgraphics.com/pean/fanfics/86/

Author’s note:
In this story Pendergast doesn’t go to Viola—he goes straight back to New York after he rescues Constance.



The inability to sleep is never for the lack of trying. Pendergast often wondered if his inability to love was for the lack of trying. Love had evaded him the same way that sleep had, even as he laid comfortably in Margo Green’s arms, he felt the ache of emotional emptiness. He’d come to a conclusion earlier that night that Margo wasn’t in love with him, oh she did love him but it was something closer to lust. She was in love with the idea of being in love and to Pendergast it wasn’t the same thing.

...But he had no high ground to throw any ‘moral stones’ from. He’d only felt love for one person in his life... He’d thought he’d loved Charles Duchamp and maybe at the time he had, but then after the shock of his parents deaths had worn off and he’d come back to himself, Charles had tried to use sex as comfort. That had been his first taste of lust and it had ended their sexual relationship.

Helen, his late wife, had been the only one he was sure he’d ever loved. And Helen, he knew, was the reason sleep had evaded him for so long. Every time he closed his eyes he saw her face, saw her smiling at him. Why he’d thought Margo was in love with him was now beyond his comprehension. He’d thought—he’d honestly thought!—Margo would be the one to erase Helen. That revelation chilled him to the core and caused him to increase the distance between himself and emotion even further.

Less than a month ago, however, that distance had not been in effect. Less than a month ago, when he’d finally found Constance...when Diogenes was finally dead. The distance he’d held so close to him had taken a seat in the back of his mind. And he’d allowed Constance to see the real him; when all this time, he’d thought she felt nothing. Pendergast had let her seen him mourn the brother that had hated him to the very last.

And while Constance had soothed him, stoking his hair and bare shoulders, he had felt her love and denied it. He would only admit to himself that he did indeed want Constance, especially when she’d whispered she’d loved him while she’d thought him asleep. But Diogenes had had her first and he’d come close to thinking of her as family. And he could never...but then he had. When Constance had told him she was pregnant, he’d prayed it wasn’t his. He knew he couldn’t handle that...that mistake. He’d hated that the first emotion he’d felt was relief when he’d discovered that Diogenes was the father.

Now Constance was the distant one, pretending they hadn’t take sexual comfort in each other; while Pendergast wished it had never happened in the first place. Wishing he hadn’t fallen hard for her, wishing he could love Margo or just anyone else. But he wouldn’t let himself love Constance, wouldn’t let himself act on what he felt for her. Instead, he made himself feel for Margo, being overly affectionate, subconsciously pushing her away. Margo awakened lust in him, something he’d thought long asleep.

Pendergast felt immensely conflicted, in love with one woman, and lusting persistently for the other. He wasn’t sure he wasn’t sure which was the lesser evil, greater good; whatever.

Margo shifted against him, her mouth now pressing into his shoulder and he kissed her hair. ...And wished that Constance was on his other side. After all, it’s human nature to never be satisfied.