Adult-FanFiction.org : Celebrity

As the Seasons Grey	By : christinecornell Category: Celebrities - Misc > AU - Alternate Universe Views: 150 -:- 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
- 45
- 46
- 47
His face emerged to her through the darkness, and she was certain that he had found his way closer to her. He had asked around to find out where the lost souls had resided, and he found her there on the side of the room. She had no idea as to when or how they had wound up on the road together, but she knew that she had her hands on the rim of the steering wheel and her gaze fixed out on the windshield before them. He had brushed his black hair back behind his head until it was nice and smooth, albeit with a slight frizz at the ends, and his streak of gray at the crown of his head seemed to swish back from his forehead like a plume of smoke.
She flashed a glance over at him there in the passenger seat and those long, spindly fingers that snaked up into the overhead handle by the door’s frame. His deep eyes obscured by his sunglasses, and his prominent nose poked out, as if he was about to lead her on to a kiss there. Christine puckered her lips at him and then she returned her attention to the road. The sun remained behind a veil of hazy gray that covered the entire sky, and she drove them along that little backcountry road in a car of robin’s egg blue.
The two of them, like Bonnie and Clyde, ready to escape their old lives and head out west for the Pacific Ocean together,
It was like that split second moment during the thick of a car accident where time slowed down to a crawling pace, and she was left feeling infinitesimal at the thought of being there next to him.
The next thing she knew, shards of glass spread across her face, albeit in utter silence. She turned her head for a look over at him and the look of sheer terror on his face. Confused, she returned to the wheel once again, that time to find that the front hood of the car was engulfed in flames. That beautiful rich blue, so classic and perfect for their getaway, now enshrined in hot flames.
Things became loud right then, and the next thing she knew, they were spinning in circles on the road until they finally reached a ditch on the side, and they rolled over into the cold earth. The flames were hot as they surrounded them both in a vortex all the way down to the bottom. No way out. No chance of escape.
He coughed and gagged. She tried to say his name but no sound came out. They both instead screamed at the top of their lungs.
Christine opened her eyes to find herself back in her bedroom in her apartment. She spread her hands down her chest and her stomach to find that her body was still very much intact. Her skin was as smooth and soft as ever, and her body was warm from the blankets. She closed her eyes and sighed.
It had been some time since she had had a horrifying nightmare like that, and every time she closed her eyes, she envisioned the flames once again. She opened her eyes, and she knew that she had to get up regardless of what she did. Aside from the ghastly nature of the dream, something about it shook her to her core.
She had to do something before it was too late.
Without further hesitation, Christine climbed out of bed and stretched her arms over her head as she gazed out the window to the street, followed by the view of the New York skyline outside against the soft gray sky. Another rainy day in the Big Apple, and one that she knew she would have to undertake for that day when she rolled into school.
At least it was Friday again.
She took the bus to school, and with the hood of her green coat pulled up over her head and her coat over her book bag to protect the outside from the incessant rain, and all the while, she wondered if she could hitch a ride with Greg and Eric at some point over the course of the next week. A little change would do her good.
But she arrived at school with several minutes to spare, which thus gave her the chance to speak to Nelly before she headed off to class and before the kitchen staff had to start on breakfast for the day. She tugged her hood over her head as she made her way up to the door of the cafeteria, and she spotted Nelly right by the counter with a pair of water bottles in either hand and her feathery blonde hair merely tied back in a ponytail.
“You literally just missed him,” she told Christine as she came within earshot.
“Just missed him?”
“Yeah, he was in here not even a minute ago. He looked—frazzled, like he had just ran a couple of blocks.” Nelly set the bottles on the counter next to her, and then she turned to Christine right as she took the hood off her head.
“I have to tell Alex about you,” she said. Nelly gaped at her.
“What! Why?” She held onto Christine’s shoulders and tugged her back away from the counter so they would maintain their privacy while out there in the open.
“I just have this feeling that he’s curious,” she explained in a lower voice. “He has this look on his face like he wants to know why and how I’m coming up to these conclusions about him.”
“But he shouldn’t, though,” Nelly insisted. “That’s how rumors get started, and then it manifests into gossip.”
Christine fluttered her eyelids at that. “What are you saying? You can’t keep a secret?”
“No, I’ll take secrets to the grave with me if I have to,” Nelly vowed. “I’m more worried about him leaking the secret.”
“If he’s spent this much time keeping his relationship a secret from the rest of the world, then I’m sure he can keep a secret about you and me.”
“Besides, did you even ask him? Does he even know that we’re talking about him?”
“I don’t think he does,” Christine told her. “He’s never mentioned anything.”
“Then, why do that? Why make a mountain out of a molehill and betray his trust like that, and most of all, pull me into the crosshairs?”
“He has to know, Nelly,” Christine insisted, to which Nelly let out an exasperated sigh. “It’s also for my own good, too. You know. I’m pretty much doing this solo: those four girls behind me don’t know that I’m talking to him, no one knows. I worry about something happening to me and him and no one would know about it.”
Nelly pressed one hand to her hip and knitted her eyebrows together.
“As long as it’s merely the three of us, I’m okay with it,” she concluded. “But no one else knows about it, though. Not those four girls, not Eric and those two boys, and definitely not your parents.”
“It’ll be easy, Nelly, I promise,” she said. “Today’s Friday, so I’m going to ask him if I can spend the night at his place again tonight. Hope that he doesn’t have a date with her.”
“I hope so, too,” Nelly vowed with a wink, and then she patted her on the shoulder. “Anyway, I gotta get moving. Be careful with things tonight, okay?”
“Of course.”
Christine made her way to Mr. Hansen’s class, where Alex had gone, and thus, she wondered as to where he was substituting for the day. Among other things that she worried about with him was the fact that he still hadn’t landed anything permanent at the school: he was an adjunct as well as a substitute teacher. She looked to her left and saw the vacant desk next to her.
So unlike Eric to miss a day, especially since he had been present there since school started.
But there was something relieving about it, however: she could scout down Alex and ask him for another night at his apartment, especially since she knew where he lived now. She could take the bus back home, and then she could walk back into Brooklyn, to the street with all the trees and find him there.
It was easier said than done, given she had to walk through sheets of drizzle once she had been dropped off in front of her building: once she reached that line of trees, the outside of her green coat was drenched, but at least her bag was dry. She padded up his front steps and knocked on the door panel three times.
Silence.
Christine leaned over the railing for a look into the front window, but came out fruitless given thick ivory white curtains obscured her view.
“Can I help you?” His voice caught her ear right behind her, and she turned for a look back at him on the sidewalk. His face lit up when he recognized her,
“Oh, hi,” he greeted her.
“Is this a bad time?” she asked him as he made his way up the steps towards her. A car whizzed past them and sent a wall of spray up from the wheels: Alex bowed his head even though the spray came nowhere near him or his front step.
“No, no, I just… wasn’t expecting to find you here.” He showed her a smile as he skirted past her for the front door. He reached into his coat pocket for his keys, and Christine could see the droplets of rainwater on the outer rim of his glasses, as if it was barely raining at all. “Is there something you want?”
“I was just wondering if I could stay the night again,” she suggested with a shiver.
“Ooh, I don’t know about that,” he told her. “I have a gig with my trio tonight over in the East Village. We could do dinner, though, if you’d like.”
“I’d love some dinner!” He unlocked the door and held it open for her, and she ducked into his warm, dry apartment. Alex closed the door behind her and hung up his jacket on the hook next to the door: Christine did the same, and then she set her book bag down on the floor next to the couch.
“Smart of you to do that,” he told her.
“What, put my bag under my jacket?”
“Yeah.”
“A little trick I learned from when I was in middle school and I traded a backpack for an over-the-shoulder courier bag like this. I didn’t like how I would walk to school or the bus stop while it was raining or snowing, and the outside of my bag would get all wet, because then my stuff would get wet. I do it with my purse, too, especially when I’m walking around uptown.”
“Would you like me to make you something?” he suggested as he wiped off his glasses with the bottom of his shirt. “I just think how we had takeout last time, and I kind of want to mix it up a little.”
“I’d love to have something homemade,” she told him. “One of these days, you should come on over to my mom’s place, right across the hall from me. She’ll make us something delicious.” She ran her fingers through her hair. “What’d you have in mind?”
“Well, Rosh Hashanah has come and gone—and it takes a while to make matzo balls, too, and I don’t have any schmalz, either—and Hanukkah isn’t for a couple of months. I do have pasta and veggies and mozzarella cheese and a bottle of wine, though.”
“Sounds classy.” Christine then took her seat on his couch with her legs crossed and her right arm up on the top of the couch. She watched him move around the kitchen through that little doorway as if he was preparing something in a cozy restaurant somewhere there on Long Island rather than something personal for the two of them.
“I’ve been meaning to tell you this, Alex,” she began as he filled a pot of water from the sink.
“Go ahead,” he called out once he switched off the water.
“I’m making you something in ceramics class.”
“Aw, that’s so sweet of you,” he told her. “You don’t have to do that.”
“But I want to, though,” she said.
“Well, you know—don’t tell me what it is. I want to be surprised, after all.” Her eyes directed to the rack of guitars next to the couch, specifically to the singular bass guitar at the very front.
“I think it’s so cool that you play bass, too,” she called out as she watched him walk to the fridge.
“You can thank my brother for that,” he told her as he took the cheese and some raw spinach out of the drawer and closed the door with his hip.
“By the way, I just realized you’re making something with veggies and cheese,” she remarked. “I don’t think I’ve ever had baked pasta with veggies, because my mom always makes it with sausage or chicken.”
“Welcome to the fun world of ‘kosher’, dear Christine. I actually do have some sausage in the freezer, but—meat and cheese shouldn’t touch each other.”
“It’s one or the other.”
“It’s one of the other, exactly.”
A knock on the door caught their attention, to which Christine’s heart skipped a few beats. Alex padded out of the kitchen with a dish towel over his shoulder and his plume of gray pushed back over the crown of his head.
“Who’s that, I wonder?” she asked him in a low voice, and he shook his head. He peeked through the peephole and then gasped.
“What is it?” she asked him in a near whisper, and he glanced back at her wet coat on the hook.
“Um—shit. Take your coat and hang it up in the bathroom so it’s not dripping everywhere.” She hastily took the coat and ran for the cozy little bathroom, and she slung the coat over the top of the curtain rung around the shower. She skidded back into the front room where he handed her the book bag.
“Go in my bedroom and hide in the closet,” he advised her in a low voice. “Do not make a sound.” She doubled back to his cozy bedroom, where she spotted the wicker door to her right. She tucked her book bag against the wall and stepped over the pile of clothes on the floor. She was about to close the door when the knock on the door became pounding.
“Alex!” a woman’s shrill voice caught her ear. “Let me in! I’m getting wet!”
“Just a second! I’m cooking!”
Christine slid the door shut and nestled down on the floor next to the pile of clothes, all of which smelled of him. She kept her feet by the door so she wouldn’t dampen his clothes. She closed her eyes and thought about Nelly, and it was right then she realized she forgot to tell him about her.
She could hear their voices right outside of the bedroom door, and she started to wonder if she had made a huge mistake by even coming there in the first place.
“Here, you want me to take you to my room and show it to you?” Alex was asking as he led her to the bedroom. Christine held still.
“I do,” the woman commanded. “Besides, I saw that you are using half a box of linguine. Why are you eating all that pasta?”
“Because I want to,” Alex replied, stern. “I’m starving—I’ve barely eaten anything all day.”
“All of that?” she demanded. “You’re going to eat all of that baked pasta? Aren’t you worried about your weight or your health?”
“Relax, it’s kosher,” he scoffed. “Like I said, I’m really hungry right now…” He rummaged through something that Christine couldn’t see for herself: she could only see the sliver of their bodies through the grated panel before her. She couldn’t even see her face.
“Why do you lie?” she demanded.
“Why on earth would I lie to you?” he asked her.
“I don’t know, maybe because you forgot about me and everything I have done for you.”
“How could I forget what you’ve done for me? You’ve done plenty for me. I gave you everything but you just wanted more. And you still want more from me, too.”
“And this is a bad thing?”
“If you keep getting on my case about it, it is—”
He was cut off by a loud slap. Christine gaped at that, but she put a hand over her mouth to ensure no sound came out. Alex brought a hand to his face to ease the pain, and her face softened at the sight of him.
“Don’t—you—dare,” the woman snarled at him: Christine could see her long finger pointed right into his face, right at the full tip of his nose.
“Don’t hit me,” he retorted, but she opened her hand again for another slap across his face. Christine held still: she didn’t move, she didn’t breathe. She could only see Alex’s stunned face through the gap in the wood.
“Give me the bracelet,” the woman ordered. There was a pause, and then he took something out of what sounded like his nightstand drawer and handed to her.
“I will see you tonight,” she commanded, and she jerked his head closer to her for an open-lipped kiss, to which Christine closed her eyes so she wouldn’t have to witness it. The woman stormed out of the bedroom and back out to the living room. “By the way, tell Matt and Nate they can’t be ushers,” she called out.
“Why not?” Alex demanded, but she had already left the apartment, complete with a hard slamming of the door. “Don’t slam the door!” He let out a low whistle and knocked on the closet door panel. “Christine, you alright in there?”
“Yeah. I think so.” She opened her eyes to find his silhouette on the other side: she reached up and nudged open the door. He had taken off his glasses and bowed his head. She glanced down to find a bouquet of lilies laying on the floor, and she could only make assumptions right then. She picked herself off the floor of his closet and stood before him.
“I don’t know…” His voice trailed off.
“Alex. Listen. If you’re unhappy with her, then why keep doing this to yourself? Why keep it going when it’s obvious that the feelings are gone now?” Christine stooped down and picked up the bouquet: a few of the flowers had lost their petals, but she didn’t too much damage to them.
“I had those in the kitchen,” he explained in a low voice. “She walked in and I gave them to her. She started getting really combative with me, and… she followed me in here and threw them on the floor. It’s weird because it wasn’t that long ago, she’d take them and then kiss me.”
“Well, start from the top,” Christine coaxed him.
“We met through mutual friends. I still remember us walking and talking and going to get Chinese takeout together. I had struck out for years on women, and she just never found the right person. Things were actually pretty great when it first started, like the first few years were genuinely wonderful. I really don’t know what happened along the way there.”
“The honeymoon ended,” she said.
“The honeymoon ended, right. Over time, I started noticing little things. An offhand comment here, a bad morning there. Next thing I knew, I found myself being pushed to the edge some days, like I couldn’t keep up with her and her desires anymore.” He glanced down at the bouquet in Christine’s arms and showed her a small smile. “She pointed out how I never cook for her, and that’s how she got heated.”
She glanced past him to his nightstand, where he only had a lamp, a pad of paper, and a framed photograph of a couple that looked to be his parents.
“I also notice you have no pictures of her anywhere around here,” Christine remarked.
“Pictures of me and her are virtually nonexistent. She tells me she doesn’t like having her picture taken.”
Christine frowned. “What? I don’t like having my picture taken, either, but if someone wants to do that for me, I’ll oblige—especially if it’s with someone whom I’m interested in. Does she not want it taken with you specifically?”
“Pretty much, yeah,” he replied with a shrug. “I’ve photographed her alone before on a few occasions no problem.”
Christine shifted her weight there in her spot. Something about that gave her an odd, inexplicable feeling, as if there was something to that that never sat with her. The sound of the rain outside caught her ear, and it was right then she realized he had left the window open.
“Here—” He took off his glasses and held them before his face. He coaxed her to move in closer to him, and Christine lingered right before his face.
“I want you to kiss me,” she whispered to him.
“Kiss you?”
“Yeah. After what just happened? Yeah, you deserve a kiss.” He shifted his weight and bowed his head.
“Has anyone ever told you that you have the sexiest voice?” she asked him, and he raised those big deep eyes to her, big like marbles, as blue as the ocean.
“If I have the sexiest voice, then why did my girlfriend just hit me?” he asked her, and his voice returned to that husky silky tone that she had only heard once before.
“Because she doesn’t know how to kiss you—” Christine leaned in for his lips, but he moved away.
“You must! You must.” He closed his eyes. She could make out the pain in his face, the pain in his heart.
“You’re a man of lust and leisure, Alex,” she told him. “You deserve it.”
“Leisure, yes—I dunno about lust, though.” She tilted her head to the side as if to coax him. He ran his tongue along his bottom lip to make it redder in appearance. He then leaned in closer to her but pulled back yet again.
“I can’t,” he insisted.
“But… I need you, though. You need me, too.”
“I know, I just…” He closed his eyes again and pursed his lips.
“What?” she asked him in a near whisper.
“I don’t feel right about this.”
“Well, if… anyone asks, tell them we just got together for an evening,” she suggested.
“Men in relationships don’t get together with single women, they have affairs. Especially when there’s booze involved.”
“Then explain the bottle of wine in your kitchen,” she pointed out. “And explain why I’m here, too.”
He furrowed his brow with his free hand. “An affair… so taboo. So beyond me. So unlike me, too.”
“Could you at least kiss me, though? Just to—you know—get it out of your system.”
She reached forward and nudged his hair back from his shoulder. He tilted his head back and showed her his shapely neck for a second, and then he returned his gaze to her. Those eyes, so deep and haunting. She leaned in, and then he did as well.
Their lips met: his reminded her of little cherries at the fruit stand not too far from there, especially the Rainier ones all the way from the Pacific Northwest. She could feel a spark in there as well, a rush of blood to the head as she realized what she was doing. She rested her free hand on his chest to feel his hammering heartbeat inside there, and then she moved it down onto the full, round shape of his belly. She moved back for a glimpse into his face as well as the look of euphoria in his eyes.
“Phew…” He ran his fingers through the gray streak and bowed his head a bit, but she could see the blush in his face. But then she realized that it came from the slaps. She had slapped him in the same spot, and he was probably going to wake up with a bruise there in the morning. Her body wanted him, but she knew that he belonged to someone else, but that someone else was hurting him way too much to even bring love into consideration.
“I feel like such a whore,” Christine confessed, to which he raised an eyebrow.
“You?” he asked her, and he cracked her a crooked little smile in response. “I’m the one who committed the adultery, not you.”
“But I was the object of cheating, though,” she pointed out as she held the bouquet in her left arm.
He glanced down at her body with a sly smirk on his face, but then he shook his head again.
“I don’t know, Christine,” he confessed. “I really, really don’t know. There is some common ground here with you and me: neither of us know what we want really, truly out of life.”
“Except to kiss you?” she quipped.
“Except for a kiss, maybe.” He paused and then he peered past her. “I think the pasta’s ready.”
They headed back into the kitchen, and he whipped up the baked pasta for the two of them: all the while, he served her a glass of rich Bordeaux wine and a few pieces of bread to tithe her over. All the while, she could still taste him, and she could see in his eyes that he wanted another kiss from her somewhere down the line. She hoped that none of this would be seen at school come Monday.
The rain had cleared up once the sun had gone down, and as a result, she decided to walk on home.
“It’s only a few blocks,” she assured him as she slung her book bag over her shoulder, and then she put her coat on over it. “Besides, you’ve had a couple of glasses of wine, Alex. I don’t want you driving.”
“I really have,” he said with a slight hiccup. “I think—Matt’s going to be here like any second anyway.” He nudged his glasses up his nose again and showed her a sly little smile once more. “You should definitely come and see us sometime. Get you into the front row.”
“You know I would love to—”
The last thing she did before walking back out to the darkening street was put her arms around his full, stout waist. He was warm and relaxed, and she knew he would wake up feeling even warmer, especially since she made him forget about the slaps for a bit. She could feel her face growing warm as she picked up the lilies and then blew him a kiss before she headed out to the street.
Christine only just reached the tree right outside his door when she recognized feathery blonde hair over a black windbreaker.
“You’re not going to believe this,” she started.
“I do,” Nelly replied with a twinkle in her eye despite the incoming darkness. Christine stopped.
“What do you mean?”
“Heard the whole thing from next door.” She gestured back to the place right next door to his apartment.
“The whole thing!” Christine gaped at her.
“The whole entire damn thing,” Nelly said with a nod. “Heard every last part of it from the moment you walked in there last night to the moment she showed up to the apartment to the moment she came back to right now.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?” Christine demanded. “Why didn’t you come in and stop her because she quite literally slapped Alex, not once but twice?”
“Because I’m going to tell you this right now, Chris, especially since you just said that she hit him. He’s not just unhappy, he’s being abused. The first thing that gives it away is the fact you never see pictures of her around his apartment. Girls who love their man, genuinely love him, will want to be seen with him, and they will want to have that moment encased forever in a photograph. It’s all because they look good and they feel good. The fact there’s no pictures of them tells me that she refuses to be seen with him, which tells me she’s hiding something. I’m not saying he’s an angel at all because it’s obvious to me that he’s hiding something, too. It’s hard to say for sure who’s doing it to who, but the fact of the matter is, she refuses to be seen with him but claims to love him. That’s not love, Chris. That’s abuse.”
“And she hit him,” Christine added.
“And now, you caught her hitting him and playing foul, too.” Christine sighed and shuddered at the thought of Alex not only being with someone, but being with someone who hurt him. The warm, soft feeling that she had felt upon leaving had gone, and in its place was a feeling of nausea.
“You have to be strong, Chris,” Nelly advised her. “You must be strong. It’s for him.” Christine opened her eyes and gazed on at Nelly and the soft look on her face, soft despite the golden streetlights around them as well as the pair of headlights that rounded the corner up ahead. Something told her that was Matt from his trio.
“We should go,” Christine told her as she licked her lips. Even after the pasta, the wine, and the fresh bread, she could still taste him on her skin. She knew she would taste him for a while from thence forth.
“Come on, I’ll drive you,” Nelly offered, and she guided her up the street to her car parked right in front of Alex’s car. As far as Matt knew, they were two women just leaving for the evening, complete with that bouquet of lilies meant for that other woman.
- 45
- 46
- 47
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