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
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The rain pattered against the windshield as Christine and Nelly made their way through the blackness that had shrouded the neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Queens. Though the lights from the city dotted the scape behind them, everything had grown cozy and dark with the resting of the sun for the night. Christine held the lilies closer to her face, and she took a whiff of the white flower closest to her. She knew that she would have to find a vase for them if not that night then the day after.
“Is there a florist nearby here?” Nelly asked her. “I can’t remember.”
“Yeah, there’s one the next block over,” Christine replied. “I don’t know if they’re open this late, though. If you’re thinking of getting a vase for these flowers, I think my mom has a couple at her place.”
They pulled up to the next corner and, after a momentary pause, Nelly hung a left. As they approached the florist, Christine could not stop thinking about the experience back there at Alex’s apartment. He had maintained this brave face the entire time that she had known him, and she knew that there was something that hung over him. She could see the pain in his eyes, even if he had a smile on his face. She had no clue if it came from the fact that he was an adjunct professor who kept on standing in on such short notice, or the fact that his relationship was the way that it was right in front of their own noses.
There had to be a way to find the spark inside of him again, and yet she couldn’t help but worry about losing herself in the process.
Nelly pulled up to the florist and the dark windows in the front, and then she kept on driving forth to the other corner up ahead: Christine clutched at the flowers as she imagined them reaching the corner right as Alex and Matt drove on by them.
“Captain Howdy,” Christine blurted out.
“Huh?” Nelly raised an eyebrow at her.
“I’m referring to his girlfriend. I’m referring to her as Captain Howdy from now on.”
Nelly was silent for a moment, and then she snorted.
“You like it?” Christine chuckled as she held the flowers away from her chest to fix her jacket.
“It makes me laugh,” Nelly replied. “What brought it on?” Christine shrugged.
“I don’t know, it just felt appropriate to me.”
They turned the corner and within a manner of seconds, they were back in Queens. Christine showed Nelly her building and, once they pulled up to the curb, they sat there in a brief bout of silence.
“I should probably give you my number,” Nelly told her, and she reached across Christine’s lap to open the glove box: inside was a handful of napkins as well as the pressure gauge for the tires, a plain white pen, and a small pad of paper. She took the paper and scribbled two phone numbers on the front.
“The first one is for me, the second one is for Jasper, my doorman,” she explained, and then carefully, she perforated the paper at the binding and handed it over to Christine.
“West 78th Street,” she muttered to herself. “You live all the way up on the Upper West Side?”
“Yup, next door to a bakery and across the street from the playground—two blocks up from the Beacon Theater, too.”
Christine raised her eyebrows at that.
“You live up the street from the Beacon?” she asked her.
“I’ve only ever heard of his trio playing there once before,” Nelly confessed.
“How long ago?”
“I dunno, about…” Nelly shrugged and shook her head. “…five, six years ago.”
“Oh, shit. I was just coming out of dire straits back then, too. No way I was going to pay any attention to that.”
“When you say ‘dire straits’, what exactly do you mean?” Nelly asked her with her eyebrows knitted.
“My anorexia had peaked when I was nineteen, and then I floundered about in my early twenties with depression and anxiety—I didn’t actually start getting better until I was around twenty-five.”
Nelly gaped at her, stunned.
“You’re thirty?”
“Going to be in April.” She glanced down at her body, and then at her own face in the rear-view mirror between their heads. “Not bad, huh?”
“I could’ve sworn you were twenty at least, you look amazing, girl! No wonder why he’s so drawn to you.”
Christine showed a little smile at that as she pocketed the numbers. “There are a lot of restaurants up that way, isn’t there?” she asked Nelly.
“Oh, yes. No shortage of good food and good times. Bring that man along with you if and when you get the chance, and we’ll grab some Mexican or authentic Japanese or Italian—your choice.” She flashed her a wink, and Christine opened the door, only to be met by the pouring rain and the low distant roll of thunder.
“Ooh, better get inside!” Nelly declared as Christine held her purse in one hand and the bouquet in the other. “Do you need any help?”
“To unlock the door,” Christine said, and she rummaged through her purse for the key to the front door of the building.
“Here, I’ll hold your flowers—” Nelly climbed out first, and she held onto the bouquet for her; Christine tugged the hood over her head and climbed out to the deluge. Using the light from the overhead in the car, she unlocked the front door and held it open with her hip. Nelly then handed her the bouquet.
“I’ll see you on Monday,” she told her over the roar of the rain around them. “Stay warm and dry!”
“Thank you, Nelly—you too—” Christine backed into the front part of her building, into the warm dry safe dim light there before her. When the door was closed, she turned to find Nelly back in her car. She had nothing more to do other than to head on upstairs to her place for the rest of the weekend. She had homework to tend to come the morning, anyway.
* * * * * * * *
It had been over two weeks since that evening at his apartment, and the days only grew shorter with each passing one. Christine glanced up at the calendar one day only to find that it was nearly Halloween at that point, and she hadn’t had a proper costume since high school. There had to be something for her battered body, especially after she had licked her wounds and gained the healthy weight that she needed in the wake of anorexia.
Those old memories of the time prior to her overly fretting over her body and her weight felt so far away and so quaint that she wondered if they had even happened at all. But she could feel them, each time she wore snug jeans and a shirt that would never stop riding up her body. The young girl inside of her wanted to show off her body without restraint and without feeling as though she needed to cover up, especially as she had filled out as part of the healing process.
There was something so subversive about shopping around for a costume, and posing with the little white blouse right in front of her own. She knew that her belly would show itself, as well as a great deal of her chest, and that wondered just how much the school would allow for it, but the skirt was long enough and she had tights to go with the entire ensemble as well, and the fake blood that she was to spatter on the front made it all the more satisfying.
She had often wondered about dressing like this for Halloween as early as her junior year of high school, when she believed her eating disorder had waned away to where she could begin thinking of dressing like that, and now the time came for her.
Christine tried it on in the dressing room and, once she put the little white cap on her head, she felt a chill up her spine, the same chill she felt back in Alex’s apartment. The bottom hem of the blouse remained over her belly button, and the button at her breasts accentuated their full shape. It was a fleeting thought but she pictured herself surprising Alex with it the next time they saw each other at the school, especially when she eyed the pack of fake blood and the fake knife as well.
She knew it would be inappropriate for school, especially come Halloween at the end of the week, but she couldn’t care less about the rules, however. During lunchtime would be a costume contest, plus, she was older at that point as well: she could leave for school without one of her parents noticing that she wore a Halloween costume that showed off a great deal of skin despite the cool autumnal weather outside.
She took the costume home with a skip in her step. Though it was raining yet again, she walked along the sidewalk as if it was a warm spring day in New York City.
When she returned to her apartment, and she heard the sound of her mother singing along to Paul Simon across the hall, her heart skipped several beats. The thought of wearing something sexy and spooky had never crossed her mind before but there she was with it strewn across her tiny kitchen table for the better part of the week, all the way to Thursday, the day before Halloween. She flicked the blood across the front of the blouse as well as the skirt, including a large blotch right on the seam to make it look as though she had been stabbed in the thigh.
She smiled to herself but as she stood there with her hands pressed her hips, she wondered if he would appreciate it at all.
Christine glanced over to her right, to the bouquet of white lilies on the counter nestled in a dark blue glass vase next to the kitchen sink. She had kept them alive since that night at Alex’s apartment, even in the face of October and the incoming snows and cold winds over the next couple of weeks: the white petals seemed to have an extra sheen to them under the soft daylight that filtered in through the kitchen window. Those flowers were meant for Captain Howdy, and yet she had rejected them as hard as anything, but there was something in the back of Christine’s mind that her there was something more to it.
She thought about the first relationship that she had watched in her life, the one between her parents, and she wondered if there was anything to work with there as she looked on at the stamens inside of those flowers.
She had to let the fake blood dry all the way, anyway.
Christine made her way across the hall and knocked on the door once the music faded out.
“It’s open!” Wendy called out. Christine nudged open the door to find that her mother had rearranged the entire front living room to where the couch was right under the bar before her, the love seat was under the window on the far side of the room, and the television rested on a brand new big wooden stand with bookshelves on either side. She glanced over at the bar and the kitchen, where Wendy was scrubbing something on the counter.
She then raised her head as “You Can Call Me Al” came onto the little disc player tucked against the backsplash off to her left, and her face lit up at the sight of Christine.
“There’s my girl! Would you like something to drink?”
“Uh, yeah, sure,” Christine replied with a smile on her face. “Can I ask you a question, Mom?”
Wendy reached over and pressed the pause button on her disc player.
“Ask me a question? I’m your mom, you can ask me anything.” She kept the gloves on as she opened the fridge door behind her and handed a can of cream soda over to Christine.
“Go ahead,” she encouraged her, and Christine swallowed, as if to swallow down the nervous feeling within her. It had been so long since she and her mother had a conversation like this that the feelings almost felt alien to her.
“I… like this guy,” she began gingerly, “he’s a little older but—I really do like him, though.”
Wendy showed her a smile. “I just think of the couple of cute crushes you had in high school,” she remarked. “What’d you want to ask me, though?”
“He’s currently in a relationship at the moment. But I really don’t think he’s happy, though.”
Wendy raised her eyebrows at that.
“Have you met her?”
She shook her head.
“What makes you think he isn’t happy?” Wendy asked her.
“He never talks about her, and when he does, I can see it on his face,” Christine explained, and all the while, she was careful with her words, “like the love has long gone away from there. And I think what I’m trying to ask is… how did you and Dad fare close to the end there? Because I want to really be sure of his unhappiness before I think of keeping my eye on him any further.”
“Well… basically, your father and I hadn’t been happy with each other in quite some time before then. You remember us fighting a lot.”
“Oh, yeah,” Christine recalled, and she shook her head as she thought back to all their quarrels when she was in high school.
“We knew it was done when he would accuse me of being vindictive about things when I really just wanted him to help me,” Wendy continued. “I remember thinking he had a mistress on the side, just from how he acted some days… being all sketchy and obsessed with his own privacy. As it turned out, he and I both have a drinking problem, and I never got on well with his family, either.”
“I don’t think this guy has a drinking problem,” Christine assured her. “I also kind of don’t feel comfortable with my feelings about any of it, either, because this is a guy with a relationship. I want to give him time should he get out of it, too. But I can’t help how I feel about him, though.”
Wendy rested a hand on her shoulder and then took off her glasses to better look into her face.
“Well, sweetie, if it’s how you feel about him, you have every right to feel that way,” she told her. “I remember you talking about feeling guilty for liking boys and girls in school, and I always assured you that it was okay for you to feel that way.”
“I think it’s so inappropriate, too,” she confessed. “You know, because he’s older.”
“Chris, when I divorced your father, I knew that I was making the right decision for the both of us. It might seem painful and strange, and you might feel a bit sour about it at first. But it’ll be worth it in the end.”
“And how’d you do that?”
“For starters, I got sober. Part of sobriety is showing yourself self-love, doing things that you know will make you happy and keep you away from anything harmful. If his current lady is giving you stress, and you want him away from her because you think he’s unhappy, he’s probably not right for you, painful as that sounds.”
“He does like me back, though,” Christine insisted. “Probably more than he likes her—I had dinner with him twice, and even stayed the night at his place. I just fell asleep on his couch, we didn’t do anything risqué. You should see him, Mom, he always smiles at me, like he’s genuinely happy to see me. I feel it every time I see him: he’s crazy about me. God, I wish I could help him.”
“Well… you must remember to keep yourself in mind,” Wendy advised her. “Someone like that will do everything they can to get inside of you as well as him. Treat yourself to your own little mug from ceramics class. If he breaks up with her, do what I’m doing here with you and put your arm around him. Make him comfortable with being alone because he’ll have so much on his mind then. Give him time and your company in the meantime. He’ll need all the love he can get until he’s ready for romance again, that is if he ever does come to that point.”
Christine sighed through her nose, and then Wendy put both arms around her and held her close. Christine closed her eyes even though she had no tears to shed.
“We all work at our own pace,” Wendy said in a soft voice. “And we’re all just walking each other home.”
Christine relaxed for a few seconds, and then she stood upright for a look into her mother’s face and the warm little smile she had always known. Wendy then put her glasses back on and adjusted her rubber gloves to get back to cleaning.
“What’re you doing for dinner tonight, by the way?” she asked her.
“Probably just going to make myself some chili,” Christine said with a shrug. “I have some beans and ground meat back in my kitchen, and it’s one of those days to have something warm like that.”
“Mind if your mother has some, too?” Wendy suggested with a smile and a hasty scrub of the casserole dish before her.
“Not at all! I kinda want to use that big pot that’s in my kitchen right now, anyway.” Christine cracked open the can of cream soda and took a sip. The soda seemed to taste a lot sweeter to her than usual, and she knew that it had to do with the fact that she had told someone else about her feelings for Alex, and that person wasn’t Nelly or Eric.
She was eager to make a pot of chili for her and her mother that evening, and by the morning, the morning of Halloween, she was ready to wear her costume, complete with some extra fake blood smeared on her face and her lips, as well as the fake knife in her pocket.
She kept her long green coat closed over her body, not merely out of modesty, but to keep herself warm: the rain had stopped but the feeling lingered in the air as she stood at the bus stop in anticipation.
She wondered what everyone in Mr. Hansen’s class would be wearing once she spotted the school grounds on the side of the street; she was eager to see Nelly at lunchtime as she recognized her face under the brim of a witch’s pointed hat. Christine thought of running up to her to surprise her but she had turned away into the alley behind the kitchen.
She was about to head on over to Mr. Hansen’s class when she heard his voice across that narrow side street. She recognized his black hair and that big gray streak at the crown, but his hair was rather disheveled in comparison to the usual smoothness, as if he had just climbed out of bed, and he had on a white silk shirt under a crushed black velvet vest and pinstriped trousers held up with a slender black leather belt: he had left his collar popped open even with the little velvet kerchief around his neck. It looked as though he had a holster on the left side of his belt as well.
“Hey!” Alex called out to her, complete with a jovial smile on his face.
“Hey! You’re looking quite chipper this morning, how goes it?”
“I have great news, Christine—my strawberry girl.” He gestured his hands forth, and she noticed the black fingerless gloves on his hands.
“Go on, go on,” she coaxed him.
“I made the short list for a full-time position here. They’re actually considering me!”
“Oh, that’s wonderful, Alex!” She threw her arms around his stout waist and lay her head against his chest. His body was warm, and the only thing that separated her breasts from his body was her own green coat. But she had to bear in mind what her mother had told her the night before in that she had to give him time.
“I want to apologize to you, too,” he said as he held back for a view into her face.
“What for?”
“For making you hide in the closet.”
She shook her head. “Neither of us knew she was coming, Alex. Trust me. We were having a nice evening together and it just happened to go sideways when she showed up swinging her scorpion tail at us.”
He burst out laughing at that, complete with a couple of claps. Christine couldn’t help but laugh herself.
“You like that?” she asked him.
“A scorpion tail, oh god! That’s—” He nudged his glasses up his nose and looked on at her for a second, and then he laughed out loud once again, this big hearty laugh that emanated from somewhere deep inside of him. He rested a hand on his chest and stood back with the other hand on his hip.
“What are you, by the way?” he asked her, to which she unbuttoned her jacket and showed off the costume underneath. He raised his eyebrows and parted his lips at her, completely taken aback by the sight of her. “Oh, my.”
“I’m a murderous nurse,” she declared, to which he laughed again. “And let me guess, you’re Sweeney Todd.”
He ran his fingers through his dark hair and, with a flash of his gray streak, he shook his head about and showed her a devilish smile. He then reached for the holster on his belt and showed her the fake straight razor.
“The demon barber of Fleet Street,” he sang in a low voice, much to Christine’s surprise.
“Whoa, you have a nice voice,” she remarked.
“You think so?”
“Yeah. You ought to sing more, Alex.”
“Sing for the lesson today,” he chuckled, and he put the razor back into the holster. “Keep an eye on your coat, too. Make sure no truant officers are giving you the button-eye at some point during the day.” He flashed her a wink, and she closed her coat but never buttoned it up as they walked to class together.
Eric had already taken his seat, donned in a black silk cape and with his long black hair styled back. When Christine took her spot next to him and opened her coat for him, he showed her a smile with fake fangs.
“The Count!” she decreed. He spat out the teeth and licked his lips.
“These things make you so thirsty, though,” he confessed with a shake of his head.
The three brunette girls behind them meanwhile had put on sombreros and matching ponchos over black mariachi suits.
“The Three Amigos,” Alex guessed.
“Correct-a-mundo!” Colette declared. “And you must be Sweeney Todd.” Alex picked out the razor from the holster again and pressed one hand to his hip.
“Pray that Christine doesn’t pull a Mrs. Lovett on us all,” he said in a low voice.
“I dunno, Alex—Val seems rather keen on you,” Marlene joked as she took her seat. Christine nibbled on her bottom lip: the thought of him being in the arms of someone who didn’t love him was already difficult enough for her to stomach, but the thought of Valentina having a crush on him made her heart skip several beats.
She glanced back at Valentina and the line of stars stuck onto her skin under her right eye: Marlene meanwhile had put on a velvet tie-dye headband around the crown of her head, a matching vest over a yellow tunic and a black crushed velvet trousers with tie-dye trimming at the bottom hems. Her red hair sprawled down from underneath the brim of the hat, albeit more disheveled than Alex’s hair: upon taking her seat, she took off her round glasses, the lenses of which had been tinged light purple. Christine noticed the little golden peace sign medallion around her neck, nestled inside of her open collar.
“I mean, hippies are all about peace and love, after all,” he remarked as he strode on over to them, still with the straight razor out in the open. He kept his attention fixed on Valentina and the sombrero on her head, all while looking as though he had nothing to say to her right then.
“Valentina… Bloody Mary,” he said, and Christine, Eric, and the other three girls all laughed out loud at that.
“Bloody Mary?” Valentina nudged a lock of hair behind her ear and treated him to a soft chuckle.
“Your name made me think of valentines, which can be rather bloody. It also just suits you.”
She giggled at that, and Christine raised an eyebrow. She thought back to the name that he had bestowed upon her the day before, “the strawberry girl”. Strawberries, as ripe as anything, even in the face of fall.
Without further hesitation, she peeled off her coat all the way, right as Eric glanced over at her with his eyebrows raised.
“Whoa,” he breathed out.
“Ooh, look at Christine!” Sabrina declared. “Sexy nurse!”
“Sexy, killer nurse,” Christine corrected her, and she let the coat drape over the back of her chair.
“Hence the Mrs. Lovett reference,” Alex declared.
“Hey, she can’t wear that,” a girl at the back of the class protested. The five of them frowned, and especially since she wasn’t even in costume, either.
“Who, me?” Christine asked with a point to herself.
“Yeah. You can’t wear that.”
“Why not?” Eric demanded. “She’s not doing anything wrong.”
“It’s against school rules.”
“I frankly don’t care if it’s against school policy—she looks amazing,” Alex assured her.
“We’re all gonna kick ass at the costume contest today, too,” Marlene added as she adjusted her glasses.
“Hell yeah, sister.” Alex reached behind Eric and Valentina to give her a high-five, and then he flashed Christine a little wink and a sly smirk. She straightened her back so her breasts and her belly were on full display for the class to see for the duration of the entire hour.
She could hear a couple of people whispering behind her as Alex indulged in a spooky jam session with a couple of pedals on the floor before him. The sounds that emerged from that guitar reverberated around as if he was down inside of an abandoned tunnel under the streets of New York: at one point, he stepped on a pedal which added a rather metallic tone to the reverb.
“Sounds like a spaceship,” Eric noted.
“A spaceship or a robot, if I do say so myself, Sluggo,” Alex decreed. He held still with his fingers on the neck, and he very slowly strummed on the body. It sounded as though ghosts were haunting the room, such that it sent shivers up Christine’s spine. “Things you only briefly touch on in the second year of music theory.”
His eyes fell to her chest for a moment, but she shook her head at him, as if to point out that she was wearing a bra underneath that top.
His eyes still watched her as she put her coat back on and she headed for ceramics class. Unlike the previous class, no one seemed to object to Christine’s costume, especially when she held up the finished mug she had crafted all for him. She had already begun on a mug for herself in the meantime, going ahead of her mother’s advice, one to twin the first mug.
“Do you think this could last a long time?” she asked Miss Estes with a nod to the finished mug there on the table before her.
“Well, ceramic lasts forever,” she told her with her eye on the smooth outer rim of the mug as well as the handle. “Even if a handle breaks, you can glue it back on and it’ll be good as new. Have you considered going further with ceramics, Christine?”
“I have, yes!” she declared, and Miss Estes picked up the mug.
“This is beautiful,” she told her. “One of the better pieces I’ve seen in a while, too. Nice job, Miss Peck.”
“Thank you so much.” Christine smiled, and she knew that Alex would love it when she showed it to him that week. Without wasting another moment, she sauntered over to the jars of glaze on the shelf on the other side of the room for her own mug. She then peered back at his mug there on the table.
The color scheme of the glaze had fused together into a bright scarlet red circle on the side, a marking that made her think of the sun through a veil of clouds, especially since the rest of the color scheme was earthy on that side: rich dark brown that melded into pure white on the other side. She looked on at her own mug, ready to be glazed and fired in the kiln at the end of the week itself.
It was right then she knew what colors to glaze onto her own, sort of as a compliment to it.
“This is how I know you’ll always be with me, even if you move on away from me.” She stroked the side of the mug with her thumb. It was such a coincidence that she had no idea as to how it worked out so well with the glaze and the coloration in the wake of the kiln’s hot fire. The marking was to match one on the mug for herself, something in the vein of a friendship bracelet.
Light brown with dark umber, as well as a bit of light pink to give the browns some depth, and out came the big red spot on the side. His big and bold Jupiter to her bright vernal Sun, or her wandering Uranus to his autumnal Sun, as she considered using the same shades of brown but with a lush bright ochre and soft seafoam green.
She was eager to swipe the paintbrush across the one side of her own mug, whereby she would make the colors match almost to the same, but the perfect circle on hers would be a light fusion of the yellow and green. A dance of the marks, a meeting of perfect circles, connected together forever.
Christine packed up her things for the day and she headed to the cafeteria for the costume contest. It was right then she began to wonder if her costume was far too scandalous that she would be disqualified. She recognized Alex’s gray streak over by the cafeteria door as he let the four girls inside first.
After everything, she knew that she couldn’t resist it with him at some point, especially when she was dressed like that. She knew that she had to make her move at some point, especially before the next trio show, and especially before Captain Howdy showed up again at his doorstep with an axe to grind and soft white flowers to ruin.
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As the Seasons Grey