Prompt from blackqueenphoenix: AU Caryl. At a mutual friend and/or co-workers beach party, Caryl meet. Everyone is swimming but them because of their scars. They escape the party together. Ending with sexy times????

This has literally been in my WIP folder for more than 3 years. An adorably fluffy prompt, right? Except you know I don’t do straightforward interpretation (see “Shades of Scarlett Conquering” for what I did with the prompt “crushed velvet”), and besides, these characters aren’t going to end up in bed together right off the bat, even in an AU setting. I just can’t do it. Sorry, BQP, if you’re out there somewhere.

Instead there’s angst and drama and a smattering of fluff. And ice cream.

Title is from Dan Fogelberg’s “Loose Ends.” (The working title was “Frankie and Annette Do Georgia.” Honk if you’re old or retro enough not to have to Google who Frankie and Annette were.) I was listening to Nether Lands (1977), and this lyric just shouted to me about these characters’ families of origin and their similar histories, and how our origins help to create the patterns we fall into w/r/t the people we allow into our lives. (My headcanon, and that of many others, has always been that Carol came from a family with a domineering if not physically abusive parent, probably her father.)

The chords struck at birth grow more distant
Yet we strike them again and again
And we plead, and we pray 
for a glimmer of day
As the night folds its wings and descends…
Exposing the loose ends.

And now to our story.