Grey Skies and Light Fading
Grey skies and light fading, headlamps making patterns on the wall. Uptown, it’s dead now, but out here no one seems to care at all... Come closer, you’ll see me... - “Take Me to the Riot” by Stars
a fluffsmut love one shot for Mal and Leo
All rights and respects to Stephenie Meyer.
Also to Stars, Rod Stewart, The Who, Bad Company, Carole King,
Al Green, Aerosmith, Bob Marley, John Lennon
Rated M
September 6th, 1976
...
I look toward love in the light as I reach for the handle and slide the patio door open.
She doesn’t see me when I step outside, but I see her.
Next to her mom, in a small group of men and women, she’s laughing at something and when the clouds drift open and let the yellow-white sunset through, her dress looks translucent.
She lifts her right hand and takes a drink. I make the effort to focus on the bend of her elbow instead of her lips on the Coke bottle, but even the curve of her bare arm tempts my thoughts.
“Cullen, how’s it going?”
Mr. Weber claps his hand against my back with a grin and love looks up with her tawny-dark eyes. Same burnished sincerity I first laid my own eyes on eight months ago. Same warm sepia-auburn that made me think of walking home. In the fall. When I was a kid...
She looks over and up at me, just as innocent and open-hearted as the first day we looked at each other.
“Very well,” I answer Mr. Weber, shaking his hand. I still don’t want to stay. I still want to clasp Bella-baby’s hand and blow this popsicle stand, but I take the Coke he offers so as not to be rude. “How are things at the shop?”
Weber kind of laughs. I pop the bottle cap and take a drink, giving him half of half, of half of my attention.
The other half of it is on my girl, and the other half of half of it is on the little shapes her mouth makes when I pit-pat my fingers between her legs.
So, I sort of listen as Weber tells me about the new kid they just hired at his and his wife’s record store, and how he keeps wanting to reorganize things. I laugh with him, and drink my Coke, but my eyes keep drifting back to vanilla-blonde curls, naked collarbones and barely covered shoulders.
Six days have never taken so long in my whole, entire life.
Isabella and I met last fall.
She’d just moved to Hanover from Phoenix. Little wooden flower barrettes in her hair and her knees just barely peeking out from under her light pink dress, she was sitting in the back of Paul’s advanced world history classroom at the local high school, making up a test she’d missed the day before.
Paul, my best friend since little league, had just received his teaching degree a few months before. I still had one more year of graduate school to go and no idea what to do after.
I’d come to pick him up for The Who show we were road tripping to that weekend.
I’d left tripping over my own ridiculously smitten heartbeats.
About a week later, I unpacked my bags for upcoming semester, in the house I shared with him and Alec. Three nights later, I was walking instead of driving because it was such a nice evening, to Emily’s to pick up a bag. Isabella was just leaving open mic night at Clearwater’s, the coffeehouse on Cold Brook lane.
I didn’t make it to Emily’s. I walked love home instead and she invited me to come to the next open mic night with her.
A week later, I did just that. On the little stage, she rhymed Bad Company lyrics with Al Green and Carole King, and breathed her own sweet emotion in-between the lines. When she curtseyed at the end and smiled all shy, held her two fingers up and said This will be an everlasting love. No woman. No cry - I felt the hair on the back of my neck get up, stand up.
She mingled with her friends, but she waved to me. She gave me her sunset-dark eyes and let me walk her home again.
She wore my jacket, charcoal grey hood up over her soft blonde, low-pulled pigtails and smiled at me like a #9 Dream...
“And I think I’m going to put a smoke detector in the back office, because, well, I can’t be positive of course, but I’m pretty sure...”
Mr. Weber keeps going on about the Newton kid and I laugh under my breath with him, but in truth I’m thinking about how much I want to kiss love’s kneecaps.
She and I have taken our time, and fastened ourselves together over countless night walks, dinners with her mom and secret afternoons on my bedroom floor. Listening to Lou Reed and drinking cream soda floats. Too curious not to steal timid glances.
It took me almost six of the eight months to finally kiss her. She was my best friend by then and finally our ages, the fact that I was in college and she still had a whole year of high school to go, didn’t matter anymore.
She’d never kissed anyone and she wanted so much to be sure in her heart, and by her birthday, just a few months ago, she finally was.
I’d never been more sure of anything, ever.
“But, that’s okay. Takes all kinds to make the world go ‘round, doesn’t it?”
Weber chuckles a little and I nod, taking another drink. Love smiles from across the lawn, peeking her eyes up to mine from under her shy little lashes.
If I didn’t know her better, if she was anyone else, I’d think she was doing it on purpose, that she was teasing me.
But that’s not even close to the truth.
I know that look and I know she’s not teasing at all.
She’s the very best kind of genuine. Everything she feels fills her autumn-dark eyes up; even if she tried, she couldn't hide. Her truths were easy for me to read from the start and if I went up to her right now, in front of her mother and all their friends, and touched her cheek, and told her I just wanted to feel her -
Right here.
Right now.
She’d let me.
She’d part her lips and make that half-gasp, half-giggle sound that she makes when she’s nervous, but she’d let me put my arm around her waist.
I don’t though.
I lead the way for us both and I know I’d want more than that, and so would she, and just because her mom likes me doesn’t mean she’d be okay with letting me get all handsy, all over Bella at their neighbor’s Labor Day picnic party.
I smile back at her from where I stand, listening to Mr. Weber and another man now, talking about the Carter and Ford, and all his ties to Nixon, and why he won’t win...
Love looks down and then back up to her own conversation. I laugh at the man next to me’s jokes, but I’m thinking about being in her bed, six nights ago.
I came over to help her study for her physics final. We were alone in her mom’s house; Renee was working an overnight shift at the hospital.
Talking lead to kissing.
Kissing lead to tummy-touches and slow rocking on her bed.
Which lead to working my fingers under her faded Fleetwood Mac tee-shirt, over her blue and white striped briefs.
Under them.
Inside her.
Holding her barely open, most honest eyes under my own, watching her yield and trust, and want, and follow, and love me.
Tugging her tee-shirt over her head, melting her hair like blonde ice-cream all over her light pink pillows.
Feeling her hands all urgent and warm moving up my back, pushing my tee-shirt off too, helping her unbutton my fly.
“Slow, Edward... Go slow...”
I did.
All night.
I moved slow and easy inside her.
I went so, so, so fucking slow.
Taking my time, I took her, all night long, until she was all pink lips and tender tips, all soft trembles when I grasped her hips and held her in place. When I finally locked her to me as gently as I could bring myself to and came.
And came.
And came more than I ever had, and she held onto me so tight, like she wasn’t ever going to let go.
Slow.
God, I had to move so slowly. She was so soft...
Mr. Weber and his friend are talking about something I’ve lost complete track of now, because all I can think about is touching her neck, her chest, feeling how her sweet little heart beats so fast for me.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” I nod to them both and lift my Coke politely before stepping away. “Thank you.”
Six days.
She had to leave the next morning to go away on a road trip she and Renee had planned months before.
It’s been six fucking days since I’ve seen her, let alone wrapped my arms around her, tickled her stomach, kissed the little dips of her hipbones.
Six days since I’ve held her up off her bed and kissed her between her warm legs until she was whimpering, pulling at my shoulders, begging me to make her come...
When love looks up again, I hold her eyes as I take each of my steps.
She’s all I see, all I can hear.
“Kiss me...? Kiss my mouth while you... Ooooh.... Oooooooh... Give me kisses while you do that, please? Please...”
I’ve survived on goodnight phone calls for six days. My body has missed her unrelentingly. No matter the temporary relief I’ve offered myself, it’s been only that: temporary.
I’ve been so hard for her for days. So hard it hurts.
The few people left between us in the crowd shift apart to let me pass and when they do, I see her legs.
She’s got on little just-off-white boots that match her dress and thin grey-black socks pulled all the way up, covering her knees.
The slips of her bare thighs between the edge of her dress and the tops of her socks look ridiculously warm. I dig my free hand into the front pocket of my jeans and grip my Coke tighter with my other. It’s all I can do in the world to keep from reaching both of my hands out to touch both of her legs.
Pick her up.
Slide my hands up the back of her dress...
“Hi,” she smiles, pressing her light pink lips together.
I want to part them with my thumbs. I want her open mouth, soft under mine.
“Hi,” I smile higher, leaning down to kiss the top of her head. Her hand seeks and finds three of my fingers, and she squeezes gently, just for a second...
XXO
