Adult-FanFiction.org : Celebrity

As the Seasons Grey	By : christinecornell Category: Celebrities - Misc > AU - Alternate Universe Views: 261 -:- 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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“So, let me get this straight,” Nelly began, “you had the time of your life with him, she barges in, he waffles, being all hot and sexy with you but trying to make it seem like he’s got her best intentions at heart, and then you basically give him the mother of all ultimatums.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I did,” Christine told her in a broken voice. “If I’m being honest, though, I don’t know what else I could’ve done.” Nelly shook her head.
They had gone next door to the bakery for ham and cheese croissants for breakfast, and while they waited for those sandwiches in question, Nelly led her over to the corner of the room so they could have some time alone. Christine had wiped down her face with a warm washcloth back at her apartment before they went out, but she knew that she would start crying again at any given moment. She kept the Sepultura shirt on all the while: they were in New York, and she knew that no one would pay attention to her lack of a bra under that green jacket.
“I think you made the right choice,” she assured her with a pat of her hand there on the table. “You are absolutely correct, I mean—I’m not going to lie. I would have done the exact same thing. Painful as it is, sometimes you have to realize what’s best for you. Sometimes you have to be your own best friend. I’m sure you’re aware of this.”
“Pfff, you got that right.”
“Really, I am impressed, Chris,” she confessed, and she raised her eyebrows in amazement. “I thought for sure you guys were going to be something. Just knowing how he’s always been toward you and everything.”
“Yeah, you’re telling me,” Christine said with a sigh. She gazed out the window, and she expected to see Alex out there on the street with a wedding band on his finger and a pair of shopping bags in hand. He had made up his mind in her eye. He would rather go and be with Captain Howdy for the rest of his life than be free. When she thought about it, that was what came to mind: she wanted him to be free from anything that hurt him and brought him more pain than pleasure. She wanted him to be content with everything, and not just one side of his life.
She wanted to help him and be close to him.
In fact, when she thought about it, she remembered how satisfying it felt to think that she had him all for herself.
She wanted him all for herself. She knew he wasn’t happy with Captain Howdy, but he was happy with her, with his Strawberry Girl. And there was something she couldn’t fully shake and that was his insistence that he was being sincere with her.
It could have been he was just a sincere guy, sincere in the sense that he lied to Captain Howdy for Christine, just to protect her from the wrath. He would probably steal for her as well.
“You know, right before I walked out, I gave him a little morning rendezvous,” she told Nelly, who raised her eyebrows at her.
“Really? Did he like it?”
“He sure did. A lot.” Christine sniffled, even though she knew she had no tears left at the moment. “I went real slow, too.”
“Ooh, slow’s nice,” Nelly remarked with a sly smile. “Underrated, too. Everyone wants to go fast all the time: slow is sensual and hot, and that tells me you connected with him.”
“He told me it felt like a hallucination,” Christine continued. “And he also called me a great kisser.” Her face fell. She knew that he was back at his apartment and crying. She wished that she could run back to him to soothe things over down there, but she had a croissant awaiting her, and she wondered how Nelly would react to that as well. “He was so vulnerable with me, too. In hindsight, it feels like I was seeing parts of him that he didn’t dare share with else, especially not with her.”
“Nelly?” The woman at the counter called out, and Nelly herself ambled over to fetch the croissants for them. Christine peered out the window again to the street. Once again, she expected to find him out there, wedding band on left finger and money well-spent on his new bride and everything.
She winced at the thought, and Nelly returned to her with the pair of ham and cheese croissants ready on little paper plates with napkins. The croissants themselves were golden and crispy, fresh out of the oven, and the cheese was bright yellow and melted to perfection. As she placed the plates down on the table between them, Christine couldn’t help but notice the pensive look on her face,
“Do you think you made the right choice?” Nelly herself asked with a slight cock to her head. Christine gazed on at her with her eyes wide and her lips pursed.
“Come on. Be honest with me.”
Silence fell over them, and silence that Christine could feel over them even in an otherwise busy little bakery on the street corner of the Upper West Side. She leaned over the table for Nelly to better hear her.
“I don’t really know if I did or not,” Christine confessed to her.
“Let me ask you a question,” Nelly began as she picked up her croissant. “Were you crying before you showed up at my place?”
“He was ready to cry at like any second,” she recalled. “You know, if I had stayed there another five seconds, he probably would’ve shed some tears right on the spot.”
“No, I don’t mean him,” Nelly clarified. “I mean you. Did you cry at all?”
“I was ready to,” Christine recalled. “I let go once I saw you.”
“Did you feel… I wanna say ‘off’ about it? Like something about it didn’t sit well with you?”
“Yes,” Christine replied.
“Do you wish you could talk to him right now?”
“To a degree.”
“It also helps that when you came to my place, you blatantly told me that you fucked up,” Nelly recalled with a thoughtful look on her face. Christine sighed through her nose, and then she picked up the croissant. She wasn’t completely in the mood to eat but Nelly had promised her a good time with those croissants, and she picked hers up for the first bite. The ham was warm and the cheese was smooth: a combination which reminded her of Alex’s skin.
She didn’t want to think about it as she dug into that lush croissant.
She would have to wait until the time came for her to get together with him to at the very least make sure he was okay. She took her time to eat the croissant to relish the flavors as well as merely enjoy her time there with Nelly. The entire was warm and welcoming for the two of them, complete with the soft smells of cakes and cookies and all manner of pastries from the heart of the early morning.
All so soft and so sweet.
The two of them fell into silence as they indulged in the croissants: Nelly offered to buy her a donut or a cookie for the ride home.
“I don’t know, you’ve already spent some money on me,” Christine confessed with a shake of her head, and she thought about the day when Alex had spent all that money on her, money he didn’t have no less.
“Come on, live a little! Here—I’ll get you a Boston cream donut.”
She stood there by the table and watched Nelly make her way over to the counter for one of those big chocolate-coated donuts with that lush cream inside of there. She sighed through her nose again and peered out the window a third time to the street. He was out there somewhere.
Nelly thanked the girls at the counter, and she handed Christine the donut. She showed her a smile as a result, and the two of them stepped outside to the street once more. A cool autumnal chill settled in the air around them, and Christine knew that the first real snow of the season was upon them soon enough.
“I don’t want to lose him,” she confessed to Nelly without a second thought.
“You won’t,” she promised her as they gazed up to the overcast sky in unison. The feeling of rain hung in there as well, but neither of them has any idea as to when it was about to come for them.
“It’s funny, he said that exact same thing to me,” Christine recalled in a thoughtful tone. Nelly flashed her a wink and they walked back to her apartment. The doorman held the door for Nelly but looked on at Christine with a stern expression on his face.
“It’s okay, Jasper, she’s just not in the best mood right now,” Nelly told him.
“Sometimes a nice big donut helps,” he assured Christine, and she showed him an unsure smile. It may have been the grave look on his face, but something about Jasper made her feel as though she was headed down to the principal’s office.
Nelly led her back up to her apartment for her things as well as some time there before she took the next subway followed by the next bus back down to Queens.
“No way I’m taking one of those feeder buses again,” Christine vowed to her with a shake of her head.
“Don’t blame you,” Nelly agreed with a shrug of her shoulders. “Too many people and they take way too long just to get down to the fruit stand on 71st Street, too.” She sat down next to Christine on the lumpy couch. “You can stay the night here if you’d like. This couch folds out into a bed, and I’ve slept on it a number of times—it’s really comfy for a sofa bed. You’ll also wake up to the smell of bread from next door.”
“I kind of want to sleep in my own bed tonight,” Christine said. “I also want to have dinner with my mom, too. I always have dinner with her on Sundays. Even with as much as I love the smell of freshly baked bread.”
“Good plan. Go be with family and get some sleep. Always take care and be kind to yourself in the face of heartbreak.”
Nelly helped her bring her things together, as well as a spare napkin for the donut, and then she put her arms around her one last time.
“I’ll see you tomorrow at school,” Nelly promised her.
“Wait, what if I see Alex?” Christine asked.
“Wait until you’re at school. Enjoy today while it’s here.” With one last embrace, Christine headed on down to the subway station on the next block. She held her donut close as she descended those slick tile steps to the platform below the streets. Something about the terminal made her feel a lot warmer than usual as well, and she figured it was the realization that she was going back home. Her ride awaited her in that shiny silver bullet, and she boarded with the wind at her back.
The next bus awaited her as well for that final stretch over the Brooklyn Bridge and into those familiar neighborhoods. She climbed off right as the sun hung over the apartment buildings on her block: she spotted Eric’s car parked up the street and she knew she was home.
All the while, she kept her donut safe under the spare napkin. It would have to wait some more as she walked along that second hallway to her place, and she was welcomed by the music of Jackson Browne at the apartment across the hall.
Christine awoke the next morning to the feeling of that teddy bear Alex had gotten her as well as gray skies but no snow on the ground. She didn’t mind as long as she was able to take the next bus to school in some peace and quiet. Once she was dressed, she realized that she still hadn’t eaten that Boston cream donut, and she knew that that would tithe her over until she had some lunch courtesy of that feather-haired lunch lady in the cafeteria.
As she stood at the bus stop, she nibbled on the donut, still fresh even after a ride down the spine of New York and over the East River and then her leaving it out on the kitchen counter overnight. The chocolate was nice and thick, the dough stayed soft, and the cream was extra lush. She smiled as she took a bigger bite and glanced down the street.
Alex wasn’t too far from there, but she needn’t think about him right then, not when she was eating such a delicious donut. She topped off the last bite right as the bus lumbered up to the curb for her.
Another ride to campus.
Once she stepped off, and the sky darkened some more, a feeling of dread overcame her. She knew that she was going to have to face him there at Mr. Hansen’s class.
It was like one of those mornings where she was faced with a big test and she had forgotten to study: every step to the classroom felt like a step closer to hearing if she was about to be sentenced to death or at the very least life in prison. But this death sentence had a stern look within those bespectacled blue eyes and lanky creeping fingers that looked ready to take her down several pegs.
Christine reached the door of Mr. Hansen’s class, which remained ajar right before her. She closed her eyes and sighed through her nose.
She stepped inside.
A woman with her hair tied up in a bun sat at the desk with a book on her lap and a notebook on the desk before her. Alex was nowhere to be seen.
Christine turned her head to her corner of the classroom, where Eric, Sabrina, Valentina, and Colette had all already taken their seats. Puzzled, Christine padded over to the group, who looked over at her as if they were waiting for her to say something.
“Have any of you seen Alex at all?” Christine asked them as she sat down.
“We were just going to ask you that,” Eric replied. “I haven’t seen him since last week and he promised to be home when I called him.”
“What’d you call him for?” she asked him, and she wondered if Alex even got a phone call from Eric at all during that weekend,
“I wanted to ask him some questions about music,” he duly replied with a shrug. “I kinda wonder how he’s doing right now, because I called him twice yesterday and I got the voicemail. He told me he’d pick up, too. I guess Mr. Hansen’s planning on retiring after this year’s up and they’re trying to find another sub now.”
“We haven’t seen him, either,” Sabrina chimed in from behind he, and Marlene took her seat right then. “At least, not the three of us.”
“You guys talking about Alex?” Marlene asked them.
“Yeah,” Christine replied.
“I just saw him,” Marlene told her.
“You did?” Valentina joined in,
“You did!” Christine’s heart skipped a beat.
“Yeah, I saw him in the teacher’s lounge just now sitting at the table by himself,” Marlene explained. “He looked like something was bothering him, though. I didn’t dare go over to him.” Christine swallowed at that, and she knew that she had to talk to him when she had the opportunity.
“But you still saw him, though,” Eric said with a nudge of his hair from the side of his face.
“Oh, yeah.”
More students filtered into the room, and Christine knew it was going to be a long hour.
“He looked like something was bothering him?” she asked Marlene.
“Yeah, he had that faraway look on his face,” she explained in a lower voice, “like he was wondering about something huge. He’s got those big sullen eyes, too—you know, they feel like they’re staring right through you. I just had this feeling that all was not well on his end.”
“Maybe all is not well on his end,” Colette suggested. “He did say he was an adjunct professor after all.”
“Adjunct and a sub, too,” Eric added. But while they talked about it, Christine turned her attention away from them.
In fact, she scarcely paid attention to the class that day: the sub made them watch a movie and she knew that she was going to have to catch up with him after school. It was going to be a long day, even with classes that she loved.
When the hour was dismissed, she tapped on Eric’s shoulder.
“You want to help me?” she asked him.
“With what?”
“Catching up with Alex,” she answered.
“Yeah, sure. I still have those questions I want to ask him. Meet up after school?”
“Always.”
Indeed, it was rather interesting at lunchtime as she ate at her usual spot on the side of the room but by herself, and Nelly even looked around for Alex for her as well.
At the end of the day, she hurried out of the building to the sidewalk. Eric stood at the corner with his long black hair streaked behind him like a long black cape.
“Let’s run, Chris-Chris,” he declared, and the two of them ran back towards the registrar’s office to at the very least get the scoop on his whereabouts. The cold damp air filled Christine’s lungs with every step along the blacktop. It felt as though everything moved in slow motion, even as they broke into a sprint about halfway down that street to those double doors. Eric held the door for her, and she bolted inside first.
They both out of breath, but they managed to gather themselves just to focus on the matter at the helm.
“Is Alex in?” she asked the young woman behind the reception desk.
“Who?”
“Skolnick,” Eric added.
“I think he went home about twenty minutes ago,” she told them. “He said he’s apparently doing an interview at NYU later this afternoon because he doesn’t know if he has a future here.”
Christine and Eric glanced at one another.
“Twenty minutes ago,” the latter muttered.
“Yeah…” Christine nibbled on her bottom lip. She was fueled by nothing more than a donut and a grilled cheese sandwich, but she felt she could do anything if she had the initiative for it.
“Thank you,” she told the receptionist. “Come on, Eric.”
“Where are we going?”
“You drove, didn’t you?” she asked him.
“Yeah.” His face then lit up. “Oh, I see.”
The two of them then sprinted out of there. Before they reached Eric’s car, he took out the keys from his jeans pocket and nearly dropped them onto the blacktop. They piled inside, and then they sped out of the campus onto the side street to avoid the traffic.
“She said he went home and he’s going to do an interview later,” she rambled. “What exactly does ‘later’ signify?”
“I have no clue, but—” Eric pursed his lips. Christine turned her attention to him.
“What?”
“I got a bad feeling about this,” he confessed. Right as the words left his lips, Christine glanced at the dashboard clock which read four-thirty. Twenty minutes to get home, and then another thirty to NYU. It seemed rather strange that he was going to have an interview with a university that late in the day.
They made their way along the boulevard down towards the Brooklyn Bridge, and right before the rush hour traffic as well. They sped over the bridge, over those black waters of the East River which seemed to burn even under the veil of a gray sky before the first snowfall.
“He’s going to see that fucking woman he’s with,” Christine proclaimed, to which Eric raised his eyebrows.
“Do you know where she lives?” he asked her.
“No, and I really don’t have any desire to, either,” Christine replied as they reached the other side of the bridge and the outskirts of Brooklyn itself.
“I ask because we could go to her place and do a little spying of sorts,” he said. “You know. Catch up with them and listen in on them in her place or some shit.”
“We could probably do that when the snow goes away,” she suggested. “I feel like it’s supposed to snow some time today, so it’s not really the best time for that.”
“True. Also, we don’t know if she even lives on the ground floor, either.”
“Yeah, that would totally throw a monkey wrench into the whole shebang—” Christine gestured for him to make a left, down that street lined with all of the trees. Christine spotted that gray streak on the sidewalk, shoulders hunched up to his ears and overall disposition one of moroseness. She pointed out the windshield.
“There he is!”
Eric pulled over to the car right behind Alex, and Christine spared no time in climbing right out.
“Thank you so much, Eric—I’ll meet you back at my place,” she told him.
“I’ll be waiting for you,” he promised her, and she closed the door. Christine skirted past the car next to her, and she ran so fast onto the sidewalk. Alex peered over his shoulder for a look back at her, and he walked at a faster pace to get away from her.
“Alex!”
They were going up the street, away from the bus stop, and his car was parked way down the block as well, thus, she knew that he wouldn’t go very far unless he was about to take a cab. Indeed, once Eric sped past them, a couple of big yellow taxi cabs hummed by as well. She walked at a brisket pace after him.
“Alex, wait!” she called after him. “Wait!” He raised his hand up to catch a cab.
“Alex!” Christine broke into a run and finally caught up with him. Fuming, he tore away from her and flounced up the sidewalk in hopes to catch another one of those cabs.
“Alex, please!” she beseeched. “Would you just talk to me?”
“After what you did the other day?” he finally declared without looking back at her. “No freaking way.”
He stormed away from her, but Christine chased after him.
“Alex, please—Alex!”
“Leave me alone,” he scoffed.
“Alex!”
“Leave me alone, goddammit!” he snapped at her.
“Alex, come on! You’re being juvenile!” He stopped right in his tracks and glared at her.
“You wanna talk about being juvenile?” he demanded, irate. “What the hell was that ‘it’s me or her’ choose-y bullshit you pulled on me?”
“You know exactly what I meant by it!” she declared.
“That had to have been the most petty, immature bullshit I had ever heard in decades, Christine,” he spat. “I don’t know why someone your age would say such a thing. I thought you were way more mature than that!”
“It’s because I WANT YOU!” she shouted right into his face: there was enough traffic on the street to bolster the sound of her voice. “I want and love you, Alex! I love you more than you can ever imagine! It kills me to think that you’re with her when I know she doesn’t love you: she just loves you if you have money. She thinks you’re weak! She fucking ruined architects for me. I almost can’t even bear to come into school anymore because I know you’re still with her! I just… I hate it. I HATE IT! I FUCKING CAN’T STAND HER! I WISH SHE WOULD JUST DROP DEAD!”
She closed her eyes and screamed up to the sky at the top of her lungs before she burst into tears, perhaps more than she had ever cried at the height of her anorexia. Christine buried her face in her hands and bawled over the noise on the street. She dared not move or even so much as open her eyes to see him. Her entire body shuddered and shook, until she felt a hand on her shoulder.
She moved her hands away from her face to look up at him and the tears in his eyes, real tears at that point. He opened his arms for her.
“Come here, come here…”
Christine sputtered and moved in closer to his chest. Alex put his arms around her and held her close to him. His body shuddered from tears as well, and more so as she bawled right into his shirt. His long spindly fingers snaked their way into her hair, and he lay his head down upon the crown of her own.
The city of New York seemed to be crying with them as the noise on the street only picked up the pace into a continuous wall of sound. At least it wasn’t raining again.
“I’m a jerk,” he said in a broken voice. “I’m a fucking jerk!” Christine glanced up at him and his puffy bloodshot eyes as well as the tear stains all over his face: she noticed the drops of tears on the insides of his glasses. Something inside of her told her that he hadn’t cried like that a very long time.
“No,” she told him. “No, you’re not a jerk. If you’re a jerk, then I am, too.”
She held his face with both hands.
“I love you more than you’ll ever know,” she told him as she looked right into eyes. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“You never will lose me,” he vowed to her in a broken voice, and more tears streamed down his face. He pressed his cherry lips to the side of her face, and he held her close to his chest once again. She sniffled and wiped away more tears.
“Come on, let’s go inside,” he suggested.
“Don’t you have to be somewhere, though?” she stammered.
“It can wait,” he assured her as he took off his glasses and wiped away more tears with the back of his hand. “This is way more important.”
He took his keys out of his jacket, and he opened the door for her. Once they were inside, Christine bawled into his chest once again. Alex held her face in his hands and kissed her right on the lips, the wettest most emotional kiss by far, more so than when they kissed in the rain.
It happened so fast as he peeled off her shirt and brought his lips to her breasts. The next thing she knew, she was on the couch, naked, flat on her back and he was on top of her, also naked except for his glasses.
Once he came for her, he lay down next to her and held her tight in his strong arms.
“Oh, man—” he breathed out.
“This is how we make up, baby.” She dared not mention Nelly to him.
“I’m gonna have to meet your parents now, I guess,” he confessed in a low voice.
“It would help,” she told him as she kissed the side of his face and then she put her arm around his full waist. His body was warm and tender to the touch.
“She ruined architects for you, really?” he asked her with a chuckle.
“Yeah. I used to actually have kind of soft spot for architecture and all that shit. I can’t even stand it now because of her. I’m more impressed by great music, great art, and marine biology than I am architecture now.”
“Wow.” He chuckled at that.
“What’s so funny?” she asked him, and she couldn’t resist laughing herself.
“Nothing, that’s just—wow. Man, that’s brutal.”
“Put some cold water on that burn!” she exclaimed, and he laughed some more, and then he stopped and massaged his temple with his fingertips.
“Ouch.” He grimaced from the pain.
“Headache?” she asked him.
“You would think that having a little hanky-panky would help with pain in the head, but I guess not.”
A low vibrating noise caught their attention: Christine glanced over his chest to behold his phone on the nightstand. Alex reached over for it to check the caller ID.
“I can’t,” he confessed as he put the phone down and let it go to voicemail. “It’s going to have to wait. I’m too tired.”
Christine tightened her hold on Alex’s body and lay her head on his bare chest.
“Too tired…” he sleepily muttered. Her hand slid down over his belly in all its soft smoothness.
“Your tummy really is just so soft and cute,” she told him. “It’s like the belly of a puppy or a teddy bear.”
“I want to lose weight, though,” he confessed as he inched his body closer to her. “Not a lot, just a few pounds. I want to be able to see my toes again.”
Her hand rested right over his belly button. She knew that his skin would only soften if he lost a couple, and she licked her lips at the thought of him being softer. She kissed him on the cheek again.
“I love your body no matter what,” she whispered to him. “I’m very in love with your body, actually, baby.”
“That’s so sweet,” he breathed out, and his eyes drooped closed. She ran her hand down the full rounded shape of his belly down to his hip. His soft smooth skin only brought a smile to her face. After all the tears, she still found her way back to the safety, the softness, and the beauty of his body.
She kissed him on the cheek again, followed by three whole times on the side of his neck. He kept his hand pressed onto her hip; he showed a small, contented smile at the feel of her hand and her lips on his skin.
“So sweet…” His voice trailed off as he drifted off to sleep, and Christine lay her head on his chest and closed her eyes. She knew they were going to wake up at dinner time, but she could care less at that point.
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As the Seasons Grey