Adult-FanFiction.org : Celebrity

As the Seasons Grey	By : christinecornell Category: Celebrities - Misc > AU - Alternate Universe Views: 46 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: Started life as kinky Christmas-related short stories in 2022 and took on a life of its own shortly thereafter. 100 fiction, none of this is real, and I own nothing except for the character of Christine.

Chapter List
- 30
- 31
- 32
Candles surrounded me and Christine as we took our seats at the table next to Wendy and her grandparents. Things were so cold in that house that they let the bags of groceries rest on the kitchen floor behind them, including the bag with the frozen food. I had a hunch that things were going to be rather awkward, given the fact that I was still wearing my leather pants and the fact that Christine had just touched me and kissed me as if it was all going out of style. My face was still warm from her kisses, and because we had eaten at a restaurant before then, there was no way I could eat even more. But we hung out there at the kitchen table as her grandparents ate their dinner so they wouldn't be alone in the dark with all this warm food. They had some pie as well as a whole roasted chicken that stayed fresh and warm despite the cold; they did in fact have a hot plate that worked on batteries, and thus, they were able to have mashed potatoes as well. I was eager to have some for the next day, given I remembered that this blizzard was going to be with us for a while.
I knew it wasn't latkes, but I wasn't going to turn down warmed mashed potatoes and chicken for nothing, however. They also offered me and Wendy some freshly pressed cider, and Christine some sparkling cider given she wasn't old enough to drink yet.
Every so often, through the cold candlelight, she flashed a glimpse over at me as she took a sip from her glass. Even in the darkness, I could see the look in her eyes. She wanted another taste of me.
“He's too old for you, honey,” her grandmother said with a straight face.
“That's what I told her!” Wendy declared. “Teenagers, Mom. You know how we were back then.”
“Oh, of course! We had our feelings then, and some things just never change.”
I took a sip of the fresh cider, which they had also bought from down in Carson City: apparently, it had been freshly squeezed in the grocery store, so it still had some small pieces of apple skin and some pulp inside. I liked a little pulp, but the flavor knocked me right between the eyes once I took a sip; it was the kind of cider that came straight out from an orchard, too, so I had that rich flavor of the apples as well as a little hint of alcohol in there as well. In fact, it came to me so strongly that I nearly choked on it once I swallowed it down.
“Are you alright, son?” her grandfather asked me. “Is that cider too strong for you?”
“Oh, no, not at all,” I assured him with a quick shake of my head. “In fact, I would say that this cider is just right, actually.”
“How's the chicken, Grandpa?” Christine quickly changed the subject.
“Oh, it's delicious. I promise it'll be even better come the morning.”
“This kind of reminds me of all of the warm, humble food we eat at Hanukkah,” I noted. “I reckon the mashed potatoes are perfect, too.”
“We're sorry it's not latkes,” her grandmother lamented with a slight shake of her head.
“Oh, no, it's okay! My family's not traditional with our Jewishness so... there are a lot of things that we don't do. We're a lot more easygoing with it all, but we still are who we are, though. We could make latkes tomorrow, though. It’d be a nice little taste of the diaspora once daybreak comes about.” I took another sip of cider, and I could feel my belly starting to swell up from all the decadent food I had eaten. It was after Thanksgiving and nearly Hanukkah: I deserved an indulgence every now and again, even without my parents there with me.
“How do you make latkes?” Christine asked me.
“It's not hard at all,” I promised her. “Have you ever had potato pancakes?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“They're a lot like that, except they also have some onion, an egg, and matzo meal in them. Or—” I turned my attention to her grandmother. “—some baking powder if Bubbie doesn't have matzo meal in the house.” And she smiled as she took another bite of potatoes. “They don't sound like much but a couple of them fill me right up without even a second thought. We usually eat 'em with sour cream and applesauce, which always puts me to sleep after the fact.”
“When is Hanukkah, by the way?” her grandfather then interjected.
“First night is on Monday when the sun goes down,” I replied. “I was hoping to get home to be with my parents because I missed Thanksgiving and all. I also don't have a lot of money, either. It was either get something to eat and be left out in the cold or have a hotel room with nothing to eat.”
“So, it's a good thing that my daughter and granddaughter scooped you up out of the cold, eh?” He showed me a smile.
“Oh, absolutely! I'm happy as a clam right now. I had a nice big sandwich with some French fries and a cup of coffee.” I turned my attention over to Christine, who, for a moment, licked her lips at the sight of me. If only I could see the inside of that mind of hers.
“We only have two guest rooms,” her grandmother joined in. “I just wonder where you're going to sleep.”
“I'll take the couch,” I offered her.
“Oh, no, Alex, I'll take the couch,” Wendy interjected right then.
“No, no, no, Wendy, this is your parents' house, you should take a nice comfy bed. Besides, I've slept on plenty of couches before in my twenty-six years, so I promise you that it's not that bad.”
“It's not really all that comfortable, though,” she pointed out. “It's one of those sofa beds.”
“I've slept on a few of those before,” I insisted. “As long as there's no bar right on the inside of my back, I'll do it.”
“Alex, you're our guest,” Wendy was adamant. “I'll take the sofa bed; you take the guest room. I mean, it's only fair.”
I sighed through my nose and lowered my gaze to the glass of cider down on my lap.
“Okay, I'll take it,” I conceded in a low voice, to which Christine giggled at me.
“He's a good boy,” I heard her grandmother say to Wendy right then.
“Hey, it honestly wouldn't be Hanukkah without a little bit of witty banter,” I promised her as I downed another swig of cider, a much heartier drink that time around and to the point that it nearly made me cough. But I got it down, and I ran my fingers through my hair, and I stood to my feet, and I offered to take their empty plates over to the sink. Wendy was right: I was a guest in the house, and thus, I should act like one.
“What exactly do you do, son?” he asked me in a low voice as he stood up before me.
“I'm a musician,” I replied as I held his plate in one hand. “I brought my guitar with me and everything. Starting from when I was about eleven years old to about three years ago, I played strictly rock n' roll and heavy metal. But now I've branched out into the jazz world.”
“You sound like a very diligent fellow,” he remarked, and I shrugged my shoulders at that.
“It's just... what I do,” I promised him. “My parents raised me to be focused on what I do. They were sort... begrudging, I'd say, about it. About towards my path to music, but they've actually been very supportive of me nonetheless, and especially the case when I moved over into jazz territory.” He set a hand on my shoulder out of comfort.
“Good job, young man,” he told me, and the amber candlelight danced over the lines in his face, especially the ones that lined his smile. I then took Christine's grandmother's plate to the sink, and I doubled back to Christine herself with the bottle of sparkling cider to find out if she wanted some more in her little glass cup.
“Unless you want a little burp-off in the next room,” she joked to me.
“And it wouldn't be Hanukkah without some tomfoolery, either,” I added as I jammed the cork back into the mouth of the bottle.
“Tomfoolery, is that what you said?” her grandmother chuckled.
“Oh, yeah. My brother and I would always play and joke around right before dinner time or before we got the Hanukkah gelt on each night. We'd joke about each other's feet and whatnot. You know, typical brother stuff. Speaking of which, mind me intruding, but did you happen to get some chocolate while you were down in Carson City?”
“As a matter of fact, we did!” her grandfather proclaimed, and his face lit up at the sound of that. “And son, I promise you are not intruding. If you want something to eat, go ahead and get something to eat. You're a guest, but you're good company, though.”
I then offered to put away their groceries for them, especially the stuff that needed to go in the fridge and the freezer. While I was putting away a gallon of milk and some cream cheese, I caught a whiff of something at the corner of the bag, something pungent and sharp, and I had a hunch as to what it was as well.
“Phew, something in here stinks,” I griped with a wrinkle to my nose.
“It's probably the cheese,” her grandmother replied, nonplussed. “It's a wedge of blue cheese—once the power returns, I'll make us some cheese and bacon rolls. I will admit that it does in fact stink, but it's not—it's not that bad, though.”
“Bet it's not as bad as Alex's stinky feet, though, Grandma,” Christine cracked.
“Hey, my feet don't stink that bad!” I jabbed back, and I couldn't help but chuckle at that. It reminded me so much of my brother and me that I cursed myself for not calling him when I called my mom back at the airport. Once I had put everything cold away, the bunch of us sat down at the table for a card game and a round of Monopoly before bed. It wasn't a gathering on the first night of Hanukkah where we were thankful to not have our throats slit over the course of the last year, but at least I took it all to heart and I stayed snuggled down between Christine and her grandparents; her grandmother offered to give me a blanket given it was that cold in the kitchen, but I promised her I was feeling alright.
“I will take it to bed with me, though,” I assured her with a little smile. “I like cuddling down in bed, especially on a night like this.”
“And especially on a night when you're left up the creek without a paddle, either, I would assume,” she added.
“Oh, absolutely.”
I had completely lost track of time, but within time I was feeling ready for bed. I could hardly keep my eyes open once I had bought three houses and a hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue over to Christine for two thousand big ones.
“I can't hardly do math right now,” I confessed to her with a yawn.
“I can't, either,” she assured me. “But that's all you got, two thousand?”
“Yeah.”
“Ooh, yeah, it's almost midnight,” Wendy informed us. “Let's pick up again in the morning, and hopefully the snow will have stopped by then.”
But it didn't sound like it was going to slow up any time soon, however: if anything, by the sound of the howling winds outside as well as the pelting of the snow on the roof and the side of the house, it sounded as though it had just begun. Nevertheless, Christine showed me the second guest bedroom, a cozy little room with one of those beds that tucked up against a wall and the corner like that of a couch with a small desk and a spindly little chair, the back of which I draped my coat over.
“No idea why there's no closet in here,” she confessed to me. “But sometimes when it's just Mom and me, she likes to have this room so I can have the one with the closet.”
“Kind of makes you wonder why your grandfather won't put one in,” I wondered aloud as I rubbed my hands together and pried my shoes off without using my hands.
“I remember him talking about it once,” she recalled. “But that was one time, though, and it was quite a while ago. It was also said in passing, so I don't really remember if he really said it or if I was just dreaming it.”
“I've heard of things like that,” I told her. “Kind of makes you wonder why your brain won't latch onto the whole thing because you never know what might be important down the line.”
“I don't really know, to be honest,” she absently replied, complete with a shake of her head. “It's like... a feeling that I want to remember but I don't really know how to access it again.”
I cocked my head to the side at the sound of that. Strange that a teenage kid would say that, especially after I had been told I was precocious as a teenage boy not too long ago. But there was something else there, something that lingered over her, and it wasn't the shadow from the darkness of the room left behind from her upright flashlight: it wasn't a literal shadow that swept over the crown of her head, but something else. I gazed into her eyes, hidden away with darkness, and yet I could see something in there.
“What?” she asked me.
“Something still haunts you,” I observed, and I waved a hand before my chest. “I can feel it, plus it bothers you, too. There's something in your bones, and you seem to be afraid to say it aloud.”
“Alex, it's traumatic,” she explained. “I'm also afraid of fully talking about it right now when there's no electricity now. You know... Mom can overhear me. Sound travels in this house like you wouldn't believe. You think you have a moment of privacy, but the walls are paper thin regardless of what you do.”
I was taken aback by that. I wondered what exactly it was that she harbored away inside of herself such that Wendy couldn't even hear about it. There had to be a way: I glanced behind me to the side of the bed closest to the face of the wall. I lay down on the bed behind her with my back to the wall so we could be face to face with each other. She glanced back at me: through the dim light, I could see the bewildered look upon her face.
“What're you doing?” she demanded in a hushed voice.
“Come here,” I coaxed her in a soft whisper, softened even more by the pillow under my head and neck. She raised an eyebrow at me, much to my own confusion. “You kissed me, rubbed up against my leg, and practically gave me a hand job, I think you can lay down with me. Close the door, too.”
Christine then reached over and shut the door most of the way save for a small crack between it and the edge of the frame itself. She lay down next to me so I could see the shape of her body against the pale light of the halogen flashlight, but the back of her head faced me instead.
“Face me, though,” I insisted, and I couldn't help but chuckle at that. She rolled over onto her other side so her face was right up by mine. The sight of her there before me brought some butterflies to the stomach as a side dish. I licked my lips as she rested her hands right between us: I thought back to that one time where my ex and I had a moment alone together, and I had thought about asking her to bed because I could feel something in between the two of us. But we never did head off anywhere with that feeling, however.
She always left me unfulfilled, and I had no one to blame for it other than myself. But Christine came along like a little spider and injected her venom into me to uncover those hoary old feelings again, and there I was, face to face with her.
“Okay,” I whispered.
“Okay? Okay what?”
“Tell me,” I begged to her. “Tell me everything.”
She swallowed. “I don't think I'm ready to talk about it with a complete stranger, though,” she confessed.
“Like I said, you've touched my body,” I assured her. “You've touched my body in this time period in which I feel so—so—ugly and undesirable. You came onto me and flirted with me. You expressed yourself towards me. You have shown me that I can be a safe place for you. Now... take your time. There's no rush to tell me. Whatever it is, I think I can face it as you have faced it yourself.”
She lowered her gaze to my body, and through the darkness and the shadows, I could make out the little smile on her face.
“Okay,” she finally whispered.
“Okay?” I raised my eyebrows at her. A part of me wanted to reach out and touch her, but I also had my worries. She had already touched me, but I wondered about the power of my own hand upon her. Silence fell over us like a blanket, as did a deep chill from the immense snow and frigid winds outside. Her smile disappeared as she closed her eyes. She resembled one of those little porcelain dolls that opened their eyes once they were perched into an upright position, even with the short little mop of red hair upon her head.
She then opened her eyes and locked them onto my own.
“I almost died,” she whispered back to me, to which I raised my eyebrows at her.
“You almost died?” I echoed her. The silence over us seemed to be heavier than it was a moment before. “How and also... may I ask when?”
“Two years ago, actually,” she replied, and it made a lot more sense as to why she insisted on not saying it aloud, and I was glad that I had suggested being face to face with one another. “It was right before I dyed my hair. I like to tell myself that I nearly died so I dyed my hair to remind myself of that. I was out here in Reno with my grandparents, and I was riding my bike up the street and a tree branch came down all of a sudden.” I gasped at that. “It landed on me, but luckily, I was wearing my helmet, otherwise I don't think I would be here right now. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in the hospital with a bandage on my head. Grandma told me she noticed I hadn't come home yet so she went out looking for me and she saw the neighbors helping me off the street. She got my grandpa and they drove to the hospital with them. I was out cold for two days. The nurse told me I was lucky to be alive because my heart actually stopped for a full five minutes. I was pronounced clinically dead for five minutes and then I came back.”
“Wow,” I breathed. “What was it like?”
“You know, it's funny, I remember seeing this big bright light,” she recalled. “A bright light plus my ex's voice. I remember him telling me to come back home. And that's what I did.”
“You came back home,” I followed along.
“I came back home. And I decided to rid of the old me and bring forth a bit of polish on my part.”
“Wow. That's… that's incredible.” I could scarcely speak at that. “That almost feels like a miracle of sorts.”
“It kind of was a miracle,” she followed along with a nod of her head. “Grandpa tells me that we're Vikings and being tough and tenacious is in our blood. It's even more interesting when I say that they took a scan of me and they found no brain injuries on my part. There was the worry that I could have a stroke at some point because of it, but... it hasn't happened to me. And moreover, they never told my parents, either. They didn't want them to worry about me because they have plenty to worry about as is.” She shrugged her shoulders. “A tree fell on me, and I survived.”
“I am... stunned,” I sputtered out with a shake of my head. “I am absolutely stunned, Christine. So, the tree just collapsed?”
“Pretty much. According to my grandpa, it was an old tree that had broken apart in a few windstorms that winter. I had seen the branch hanging pretty low over the sidewalk prior to then but I assured myself that it was still intact. I was riding past and the first part of it fell off, and the next thing I knew, the whole thing was coming down on me. I didn't have enough time to whip back, either. The whole thing pretty much just rained down on me.”
She sat up next to me, and she reached for the flashlight on the nightstand. She clicked it on as she shifted around on the edge of the bed; I sat up behind her to check it out for myself. She lifted the tail of her hair and shone the light down to show me a little scar about the size of a pea pod on the back of her neck.
“Oh, yeah, I see that,” I remarked; I ran my fingers over the surface of her skin to better feel the scar tissue there. “And this is what's left behind from it?” I asked her.
“Yes, and—” She gazed back at me with the flashlight pointed up to the ceiling. “—I had compressed two vertebrae in there, but the doctors were worried that I had broken my neck as well as my spinal cord from it because... you know. A two-thousand-pound tree fell on me. So, they did an emergency surgery to reattach the vertebrae. The cord was fine, hence why I was able to survive it, but... still. It just about broke my neck.”
“And your mom hasn't even seen the scar?” And she shook her head.
“Like I said, she doesn't know anything about it, and if I'm being completely honest, I'm a little bit afraid to tell her as well,” she confessed to me in a low voice. I cocked my head to the side for a better look into her eyes, as dark as the earth underneath the snowpack out there.
“What?” she asked me. “What're you looking at?”
“What's your last name, by the way?” I knitted my eyebrows at her.
“Peck.” She paused. “Why?”
I directed my gaze over to the window on the other side of the room. Careful not to do anything to upset the bed and make the floorboards squeak underneath us, I climbed off the bed and ambled across the carpet for a look out through the curtains. Darkness stayed firmly ensconced over the neighborhood, but that didn't so much as damper my curiosity. I turned my attention back to her and the flashlight that shone up onto the ceiling overhead.
“So, tell me—where did the tree fall on you?” I followed along with her.
“Just right up the street here.” She gestured out the window, and I knew I was going to have to take a look once the weather lifted again. “We'll be able to see it once we have some light outside—it was this big, hundred-year-old cottonwood tree and they had to cut the rest of it down and burn it all because of me. It's just a little stump about the width of the chair over here.”
I returned my attention to the blackness out there, and I closed my eyes. I was not a man of prayer by any means at all but hearing her story and realizing what she had gone through then, and I could only wonder what else she had experienced in the last two years. I was a little afraid to find out, and as far as I knew, I had all night as well as the morning hours to crack the proverbial code that surrounded her.
“Nes gadol hayah sham,” I whispered out: it had been so long since I had spoken Hebrew, but the words came to me as naturally as breathing.
“Come again?” she asked me, and I turned to her, and I could hardly contain my excitement as well.
“A great miracle happened there,” I breathed out.
“A great miracle?”
“Yeah. Your last name does come out of Britain but it's also somewhat of a Jewish last name, like I've heard it in junction with the Jewish world every so often. During Hanukkah, you know, we have the dreidel. On each side, you have Hebrew letters, and they spell out an acronym for the phrase nes gadol hayah sham. Or rather: 'a great miracle happened there.' It refers to the Maccabees and their story of survival, but—” I clasped my hands onto her shoulders. “A great miracle happened up the street here. You survived something that would have killed you. You found the way out of the light and back down onto the earth where you should be right now.”
“That's beautiful,” she remarked. “Beautiful and... a little crazy, I might add?” I chuckled at that, but I was being serious. I ran my fingers through my hair, and I sauntered my way back to the bed to join her once again.
“So, that's all there is to it?” I asked her.
“Oh, no, there's plenty more to my story,” she assured me as she stood up before me. “But... I don't really know if you have the stomach for it, though.”
“I do, I do,” I assured her, and I fetched up a yawn right then. Or maybe it would have to wait until the morning. I had lay down on the bed next to her, and now I was ready to go to sleep.
“Go to bed, baby,” she encouraged me.
“Go to bed, baby, is that what you said?” I grinned at her, and she leaned into the side of my neck for a kiss. I curled my toes into the carpet at the feeling of her smooth skin against my own, and I knew the best way to deal with it all was to go to bed. She gently patted the side of my face.
“When you and I find another moment alone, we'll have another little chat,” she vowed to me. “In the meantime, I have to go to bed now.”
Before I could give her a little kiss good night, she gave me another one and ducked out of the guest room with nothing more than the flashlight at the helm. She left the door slightly ajar so I could feel the rush of the cold from the hallway. No way I was going to sleep like that, however; I closed it all the way, and then I took off my shirt, followed by my pants. I put on my pajama bottoms and climbed back into that bed: I kept the flashlight on the nightstand all the while. Silence blanketed the house, silence except for the winds.
I thought about the camera in the other guest bedroom, and I thought about all the jokes she had made towards me. All the little kisses. The way that she rubbed up against me while I wore leather pants.
She may have been seventeen, but she tapped something in me as if she had been so intimate with me all this time. I reached up and clicked off the flashlight, so the room fell completely dark.
I couldn't help myself. I couldn't resist the feeling.
And I wrapped my fingers around it and gave it a little tug.
- 30
- 31
- 32
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

As the Seasons Grey