#louie clemente x oc

[feverinfeveroutfic]

sunburn | ashes to ashes

THE RETURN OF FEVER! I have had these rolling around in the back of my mind ever since fever ended last summer. it was nine books, but there were a myriad of moments where i could have added a little more intimacy to it. mind, i’ve always considered myself more a storyteller than anything, but i was experiencing a lot of emotional distress then, questioning my sexuality and unpacking way too many bad feelings associated with it… i still struggle with it a lot but it’s not as awful as it used to be. (besides, whenever i write anything sexual, it’s meant to help me feel better about myself). i’m feeling 30 stories here and, though we have kinktober as well as kinkmas and fuckuary, i often wonder why we don’t have kink-related stuff for springtime, what with “spring fever” and everything.

“I’m home!”

She thought she would never hear those words again after Metallica had embarked on their tour. It was one of those fears that followed her wherever she went, especially whenever she left New York to visit her parents over there in Reno or even a little trip anywhere in New York City. Cliff had had a narrow escape already at a venue the night before, as someone had tried to nick him with a knife the size of a loaf of bread. He had called her and told her about it after it happened but she knew that it was enough to strike the fear of god into her.

She had hung up the phone and buried her face in her hands even though she was alone in her Bronx apartment. She thought of all the bad things that could have happened while he was out there on the road, and she didn’t want to think of those bad things, either. She slid her fingers down her face and peered out the window to the sunbathed street below. The people of the Bronx out there on the sidewalks, minds of their own, worlds of their own, families and stories of their own, private lives of their own…

Sam had never been one to be very sexual in the past: she had touched herself before, but there was so much that she had to overcome in the meantime. While Cliff had been away on the road with the boys, she had looked on at herself in the mirror in disbelief. She would take off her clothes to examine every inch of her body, and yet she wondered how in the world anyone would love this body, to feel it, to hold it, to love it, to make it feel welcome and like it has a place in this bizarre thing called life. She would listen to The Cherry Suicides’ album given their lyrics had that feeling to them but she still couldn’t feel it for herself. A feeling that oft eluded her no matter how much she wanted to feel it for herself.

Cliff was without question the first boy she had ever really had a crush on in her life, even at the ripe age of twenty-two. She always had the strangest looks whenever she would tell someone about her absence of a first kiss. How could someone that young be so beautiful and yet so undersexed, and she never could say as to why, either. At times, it felt as though there was a language that she had never learned before that very moment there in her apartment 

But since she had moved to New York the year before, and she had met Anthrax as well as Metallica and those neighboring bands out of the Bay Area, Exodus, Death Angel, and The Legacy, she knew that she would have to change things at some point.

Sam sauntered over to the windowsill for a glimpse out there to the street. She merely lived on the third floor but the people down on the sidewalks made her think of army ants. If only she could share her art with some of them somewhere along the line, and she could be the one to watch and desire herself, and she could be the miasma that was the “it” girl. 

Such was the life of the artist in uptown New York.

She spotted Zelda and Louie down on the sidewalk right across the street, and she smiled to herself at the sight of them. Something about Louie cheating on his girlfriend with such a hot babe like Zelda made so much sense that Sam almost didn’t have to think about it twice. That short black hair with that slender wiry body, slender from several years of pounding on drums to stay out of the streets of Narragansett and Providence, slender from living rather poor and isolated most of her life. Louie, meanwhile, had that long smooth hair down past his shoulders with that part that swept across the side of his forehead. 

Still very much a boy, and Zelda only made him appear that much younger by being next to him.

Sam saw Louie mouth the words “Hold my hand” to her. Zelda showed him a smile and said something to him. Sam was eager to hear Zelda’s Rhode Island accent again after a time. There was something so satisfying about it, especially with Sam having hailed from the West Coast where accents muddied out and sounded homogenous. She watched them cross the street together, and she wondered where they were headed. After the phone call with Cliff, there was no way that she could waste another moment up there in her apartment.

She swiped her keys from the stand and hastily locked the front door. She hoped to catch Zelda and Louie before they headed up the street as she nearly dropped the keys. Everything blurred around her as she sprinted down the stairs to the landing down below. She breezed past Emile’s apartment door, and she never bothered to take a peek inside to find out if Aurora was in there and she needn’t look, anyway.

The front door squeaked open as she emerged into the bright morning sunlight. The glare caused her to squint her eyes but she looked on at the street before her.

“Zelda!” she called out to her, and she and Louie turned their attention to her, and their faces lit up as a result.

“Hey, Sam I Am!” Zelda’s voice sailed through the noise of the street behind them like a high wave of the beaches of Narragansett. Sam padded down the steps to meet up with them with her arms wide open. Louie showed her a little smile as she embraced Zelda.

“Oh, man—it’s only been a few weeks since we saw each other!” Zelda declared.

“I can’t hug my best friends?” Sam asked her as she rested a hand on her shoulder for a moment.

“Of course you can—this was just sort of—”

“Unexpected like me?” Louie chimed in.

“Exactly, yeah!” Zelda laughed at that as Sam put her arms around him and he returned the favor.

“I actually wanted to give you guys a hug because Cliff called me last night to tell me that he got mugged right outside of the concert hall,” Sam explained.

“Holy shit!” Louie declared.

“Oh, my god, is he alright?” Zelda asked her, stunned.

“Yeah, he’s okay—” And Sam shuddered with the feeling of fear once again as she stroked her upper arm with her fingers. “—the guy threatened him with a huge knife, though. Had to give up his belt buckle because he didn’t have anything else on his person to give to him.” She then turned to Zelda, the working class girl from the smallest state in the country who had been intimate with herself from day one. “I also wanted to ask you, Zelda—about something… on the sexual side.”

She glanced over at Louie, who gave his hair a toss with a flick of his head as if he was about to pounce across the front of Playgirl magazine.

“Well, I’m a small town girl from New England,” Zelda told her in a low enough voice for her to hear for herself. “I know my way around that part’a town.”

“I want to do something hot—for Cliff,” Sam sputtered out. “Can we do that?”

“Yes, we can,” Zelda assured her with a twinkle in her eye, and she turned her attention to Louie. “And sweet little Luciano here is more than welcome.”

“Gladly,” Louie proclaimed.

It was a wind, flash, and a blur as Sam followed Zelda and Louie to the place where she had only ever dreamed of going to before as a young kid in California and Nevada, the one street that seemed so seedy and cast in shadow all the time, even at high noon when the sun hung high in the sky and cast everything in the brightest light possible. She was glad that she had locked the door prior to leaving because she knew that they would be in the red light district for a while. She was amazed that she lived so close to it, given it struck her as a mere regular street of New York whilst in passing.

“This is where Mo and Min used to come to when they were working on the weekends,” Zelda explained over the noise of the street. “They couldn’t last long because they missed Narragansett too much and decided to join me in making music instead. I’m glad they did ‘cause I dunno how long I could’ve lasted without my best friends at my side.”

“Music saves, you know,” Louie pointed out.

“It’s saved all of our lives,” Zelda assured him as they strode past a low building on the corner with blacked out windows and bright red buzzing neon on the outside. Sam brought her hand to her upper arm once again as if to protect her chest. They seemed to line the streets all around her as they strode along the sidewalk, all of them faceless, all of them with the presence that sent a chill up her spine as well as the pervading feeling of guilt.

They passed an erotic bakery before they reached the lingerie shop: the first thing that Sam spotted upon Louie holding the door for her and Zelda was a series of sex toys and blindfolds on display. The mere sight of them made her blush as well as breathe at a faster pace. The door closed behind her and the three of them were enshrouded in lush red light, as red as the feeling of the fever.

The toys came in small sets, complete with smoothly crafted special boxes as if someone could take them on a picnic at some point. Sam held a hand to her chest to feel the pounding of her heart from within. It was all happening so fast, and with such conviction that she had no idea as to where to begin with it all. She watched Zelda pick out a new camisole for herself.

Sam swallowed, and then, completely on impulse, she reached for the black tin lunchbox closest to her. She held her breath and took a glimpse inside to find a black satin blindfold, a bottle of lubricant, a silicone dildo, a pair of green metal balls the size of nickels, and what to looked to be a vibrator but about the size of a cork straight from a bottle of wine. She swallowed again, and she couldn’t recall a time where she never felt thirstier before. She skirted along the side of shelf to meet up with Louie, who was looking on at the leather teddies as well as the blow-up dolls hung up on the rack on the wall.

Sam closed the box and gasped for air. Though it wasn’t very warm in the shop, she swore that she was about to suffocate if she breathed a little too hard. She closed her eyes and fanned herself with the tips of her fingers. It was a real struggle to try and contain herself and the anxiety within her. If only she could just relax and feel the sexuality within her, like those metal boys and like the Cherry Suicides themselves—

“Sam, are you alright? You look like you’re about to pass out.” She opened her eyes to find Louie and the look of concern on his face.

“Yeah, I’m just—not really used to this sort of thing,” Sam confessed, and she let out a low whistle.

“Little bit of anxiety?”

She nodded her head.

“I know the feeling,” he said with a raise of his eyebrows at her. “And it sucks, too.”

She gasped and swallowed, as if she had been submerged in water and she struggled to find a single iota of air.

“Believe me when I say this,” he assured her. “The more you get exposed to it, the more you get used to it. The more you get used to it, the more you want to see it.” He flashed her a wink, and the smirk returned to him again. Right at that moment, Zelda stepped out of the dressing room donned in a white camisole that seemed a little extra small than she had warranted: she was so thin that the smallest size they had on hand was still a little too big. Sam glanced down at her own heavier body and wondered how Cliff could found a body like her own attractive.

Then again, Louie and Cliff were two completely different men. The feeling really did overcome her, and she hoped that this little black box could help bring her some peace of mind as well as comfort with Cliff.

And yet, the box sat on her shelf over the couch for a few days, this lingering demon that tempted her from clear across the room when she walked in for the morning. A big black spot against the soft eggshell white color of the walls, and thus, there was no way that she could miss it, even when she bowed her head away from it.

On the third evening, and she had curled up on the couch with a book on her lap, she peered up at the shelf and the end of the box closest to her. It wasn’t that high above her, but she knew that she had to reach up to take it off and open it up once again. She paid more attention to her book, however: only every so often, she glanced up there above her head for a look.

It was if it taunted her all the while, the little repressed girl who froze and flushed at the mere mention of having a first kiss. The mere thought of that spread into more thoughts, and then more and more until she reached the point that she could scarcely concentrate on the words on the page. She lay the book across her lap and looked up at the box. The apartment was silent save for the low hum of the refrigerator in the next room as well as the noise on the street and the neighbors down the hall.

No one was paying attention to her.

Sam tucked the bookmark into the book and set it on the coffee table next to her. Careful not to fall, she stood up on the couch cushion and picked the box off the shelf. She climbed off the couch and took her seat with it in her lap. With another swallow, she opened the lid.

The smooth faces of the Ben wa balls shone under the warm light of the lamp next to her. The satin on the blindfold shimmered with the feeling of being brand-new. She picked up the lubricant, and she knew right away that it was meant for her ass—

A knock on the door broke her concentration, and she hastily closed the lid and tucked it around the arm of the couch, out of sight lest anyone walk into the kitchen for something. She fanned herself once again and straightened out her hair with a swipe of her hand.

Sam fixed the bottom of her shirt as she padded on over to the front door. There he was, wrapped in light denim and with the cowboy hat upon his head to better accentuate the soft hair which spread over his slender shoulders. He towered over her but he showed her the bouquet of yellow tulips all for her and accompanied it with a smile.

“There he is!” she declared.

“Here I am!” He opened his arms for her, and she put her arms around him and rested her head on his chest. Cliff bowed his head as if he was about to blanket her with his hair.

Sam lifted her head and showed him a smile.

“God… I really missed you,” she confessed.

“I really missed you more, though,” he retorted with a kiss on her lips, a move which sent a chill down her spine. Her first kiss for real at that point.

“Is that a challenge?” she asked him.

“Only if you want it to be,” he retorted once more, and once more with another kiss on the lips. It happened all too quickly, and yet it was a pace that she could work with because the anxious feeling had moved along rather quickly as well. She moved back away from his face for a look into those luminous eyes.

“I have a little surprise for you,” she told him in a soft voice. Sam took him by the hand and guided him over to the couch. He kept the smile on his face as he gazed up at her: he reached up for the crown of his hat, but she wagged a finger at him.

“Hat stays on,” she told him: she spoke from the flesh. Sam then reached for the box behind the couch, and she placed it on the coffee table before him. She never thought twice about it as she unbuttoned her jeans and let them slide down her legs to her feet. Cliff leaned back and crossed his legs for her. Sam locked eyes with him as she reached for the Ben wa balls. He raised his eyebrows at them.

“What’re you doing with those, babe?” he asked her in a near whisper. She glanced down at those smooth little orbs, attached together by a narrow string and as smooth as glass. The woman in the shop said they should just slip into her little lips without a drop of lubricant.

She sighed through her nose and peeled off her underwear so she was exposed to him. His eyes widened at the sight.

The first one did in fact slip into her lips, and the second one stayed in place right behind her clit. The cold smooth feeling only made her straighten her spine and buck her hips a little bit in his direction.

“Holy shit,” Cliff breathed.

Sam then reached into the box again, that time for the blindfold. Her mouth was dry once again but she persisted. She slipped the blindfold over her head and eyes, and she was surrounded by complete blackness.

There was nothing behind her, and thus, she sank down to the floor: the balls kept her from closing her legs all the way, and she knew that she was wide open for him.

The rustling of denim caught her ear. Though everything was dark, she could feel his presence there before her. She had only just kissed him, but they had been a thing for months at that point. It was time, her time now.

“I want you to slip it out,” she told him in a low, husky voice. It felt rather odd for it to enunciate itself from her lips, but she still said it to him, and she said it with the utmost seriousness that she could provide for him. The feeling in between her legs was only coupled with a feeling of rising, a feeling of being on the come-up.

She never moved a muscle. She relaxed every inch of her legs, and then she could feel his fingers there. She wanted to close her legs but there was no way she could. Cliff slipped out the Ben wa balls and she treated him to a low, euphoric moan. The fact she couldn’t see it only added to the feeling.

“Shit, I wish I was having as much fun as you just now,” he said; she could feel his soft lips kiss the inside of her thigh. The little line of fuzz on his upper lip only made her rise again.

“I think there’s something in there for you,” she told him, out of breath. A brief pause.

“This little ring here?”

“That’s the one,” she sputtered out.

“This ain’t gonna fit on me, babe,” Cliff assured her. “I’m too big.”

Sam opened her lips to say something but she was cut off by the feeling of his lips on the inside of her thighs. The feeling of anxiety welled up within her once again, but at least she could only see the veil of blackness all around her, and the anxiety had risen in junction with the real feeling that she wanted, and that was his lips on her own for the second orgasm. Sam tilted her head back and let out another moan as he stuck his tongue inside first.

A third and biggest orgasm was coming as she could feel his tongue hit the head of her clit. She needn’t see it as she came twice more for him.

Her elbows shook from holding herself up for so long, and she lay down on the carpet, flat on her back. She could feel his body on top of her own, and it took her a second to realize that he had taken off his shirt at some point: his bare skin caressed over her own.

The darkness lifted away for her to gaze on into his handsome face.

“Stay with me forever,” she whispered to him, and he kissed her on the lips again.

“You know I will,” he vowed, also in a whisper.

[josiebelladonna]

iron & wine | part two

pairings: james hetfield x original female character | chuck billy x alex skolnick | eric peterson x louie clemente | chuck billy/alex skolnick/james hetfield | eric peterson x original female character | james hetfield x louie clemente

warnings: graphic depictions of violence, non-con

tags: au - royalty, modern royalty, weddings, las vegas , bets & wagers, femme fatale, blood and injury, leather, stripping, body paint, humiliation, revenge, size kink, threesome - m/m/f, power plays, bisexuality, polyamory, references to fear and loathing in las vegas, dead dove: do not eat, inspired by the scarlet letter - nathaniel hawthorne

summary: While at James’ wedding in Vegas, his fiancée shows her true colors to him as well as the royals. When a bet goes horribly wrong, a game ensues (set in the like blood from a stone universe)

word count: 6,546 (for a cumulative total of 11,546)

ao3 link

no idea why i didn’t post this on here yesterday, but hello! and yes, mind the tags, please. i don’t want to hear it.

I stood there in the hallway with the chocolate in hand and my other hand tucked into my trouser pocket, and I glanced about for Ashley and the look on her face. There were so many questions that flowed through my mind at the moment, and one of which consisted of what she had done to my prince back there in the reception hall. I popped the chocolate into my mouth and then I turned my head to the right.

No one was there. She couldn’t have gotten that far, as it wasn’t that big of a chapel, either, and the whole occasion took place within a block or so from the very heart of the Strip. I could see her from clear across the room as well.

I walked on down to the far end of the hallway there: another glimpse about and nothing came into fruition there before me.

I took another bite of chocolate and, as it graced my lips, a pair of hands crossed over my eyes. I held still with my mouth full of chocolate and I had no clue as to how to react right then. The fingers caressed over the bridge of my nose as well as my eyebrows.

I held my breath.

The body pressed up against my back and I could feel a pair of soft breasts against my shoulder blades.

The hands moved off my face and rested upon my shoulders. Ashley peeked around me with a devious smile on her face.

“Boo,” she caught me, and I swallowed down the chocolate and I looked at her with my eyebrows raised up a bit.

“May I ask what you’re doing back here?” I started with a clearing of my throat. She stepped around me all the way, so I had a full view of her body right there before me.

“Oh, just hanging out,” she replied in a singsong voice. “Hanging out like you and your ‘husband’—” She flexed her index and middle fingers at me.

“He really is my husband,” I insisted with a roll of my eyes.

“Oh, please,” she scoffed. “I saw you looking at my legs back there.”

“I was just looking at your shoes,” I cracked to her, complete with a sly little chuckle, but then again, I wondered as to what she was talking about. I only had eyes for Chuck as well as Chuck from Florida and Joey. Three guys. No coochies to be found anywhere. I swallowed at the sheer sight of her: she squinted her eyes at me as she rested her hands upon my shoulders, as if she was about to give me a massage. But then she leaned in closer to my face.

I turned away from her all to head on back to the reception hall and the safety and comfort of Chuck, and I had reached the bottom when she tackled me from behind. I fell face first onto the floor and the cup went flying out towards the door. She clasped her hands onto my shoulders: her perfume caressed over my nose, and she brought her lips close to the side of my face. I wanted to tell her that I was uncomfortable lying on my stomach with her squashed upon my back.

“Don’t make me fuck you,” she whispered into my ear.

“I do want you to fuck me,” I said with a straight face. “I’ve been a bad boy and I want to be fucked so silly.” As the words left my lips, I realized that she was taking my jokes without a pinch of salt to be found.

Ashley rolled me over onto my back and she stripped off her dress.

She loomed over me with her blonde hair streaked down towards my forehead and shoulders. Her lips parted and her tongue slithered out from the inside of her lips like the tongue of a king cobra. I had no idea as to how to speak to her: everything felt dry with me, but I could tell that she was moist as a lake.

“Dominate me...” she begged me. “Mmm, yeah—so good. So dominant and big and strong—”

I pinched my eyes shut as she ground down on me. I was flaccid but warm at the same time. Completely baffled and beside me.

When I opened my eyes, she was still there, complete with a big euphoric look on her face. Her lips parted to where they resembled the very lips in between her legs and her eyebrows raised up all to accentuate the softness of her face.

I could tell that I was getting her off.

In fact, she held onto my bare shaft, and she took a little condom out from in between her breasts, and she slipped it on for me. She tapped the latex-clad head of my dick up against her clit like the needle of a record player.

I slid right in like a big icicle. She ground down on me as if she was churning butter.

I was getting her off and I was doing the bare minimum of the work done.

But then again, there was nothing pleasurable about it for me.

She had got off on my body and yet I barely came for her. Even though Chuck and I had been arranged into a union despite our own soul bonds to other boys, I still came for him. I still gave him a little pearl of precum out of the end of my dick: but I barely shed any tears for her, however.

Ashley flashed me a big, wide grin in the vein of the cover of Duran Duran’s Rio and then she giggled at the sight of my dick right down beneath her. It was the first time I had had sex with protection on, and it was the first time I had had sex with a woman, too.

She then laughed at me.

“You little scoundrel,” she taunted me. “I barely came just now!”

“What?” I demanded.

“Yeah. Look at me—” She leaned back and showed me her pussy. Indeed, she was bright pink, but she had barely moistened up at the feel of me against her clit or even inside of those crinkled little lips. Barely aroused. She went down on me, and yet she faked her way through the whole thing.

I looked down at my body and I sighed through my nose. If I couldn’t get a girl off, what made me think that I could do that for another boy if I met him somewhere down the line.

“For a tough little boy, you sure aren’t that big enough for me,” she taunted me as she peeled the condom off my skin. “You have to be big to get me off.”

“I’m big!” I declared as I took a glance down at my own dick: flaccid and barely aroused as it was, I would say that I was of good size. Yeah, I didn’t have a big fat throbbing cucumber of a manhood, but I still had something there for myself. My skin was smooth and delicate there, and too often, I would wear snug jeans to make myself look bigger than in reality: it helped when I wore snug black jeans, too. They made me look bigger than I did, plus they accentuated my hips and my thighs to top it all off. I made the effort to look and feel good, even if I had never felt it either way before.

“You’re not that big,” she scoffed at me with a little wag of her finger into my face. “You’re too smooth, too, like one of those silicone dildos that come out of the clearance section of the sex store. I want some veins. I want realness.”

She climbed off me and laughed with utmost hysteria. I felt so ugly and so undesirable, but then again... was I in the right way to feel that way? She came onto me.

“Tiny little Jew boy,” she persisted with that sneer over her face. “I can’t believe you can’t let me have it...” She shook her head and backed away from me.

I laid my head back on the floor.

I could not even remember what she had done after that: my memory faded out from view, and I blacked out after the encounter. I couldn’t stop seeing her on the backs of my eyelids. That devilish look plastered across her face. The feel of her body against my own when I didn’t ask for it. The feeling of her body against my own when I never actually told her that I wanted it.

The fact that my jokes came back to bite me right in the ass... then again, was it really my fault? I was joking around with her, and she took them seriously.

“Alex?”

His voice echoed through my mind as if my mind had become a tunnel of sorts.

I rolled my head over the carpet as I struggled to gather myself within my confused body.

“Alex?”

I cracked my eyes open, and through my blurred vision, I recognized those streams of inky black hair as they sprawled down over my face. I could hardly breathe: my hips and my dick all ached from the feeling. I could hardly brush the memory of her flesh from my own.

I blinked a few times before Eric’s whole head and shoulders entered my view all the way.

“Alex? Are you okay? You don’t look so good.”

“I don’t feel good at all,” I confessed to him, and I cleared my throat. He rested his hands on my chest and I shuddered at the feeling.

“Here, let me help you—” He put his hands underneath my shoulders, and he raised me up off the floor. My head spun in circles, and my body ached from the feeling.

“What happened?” he asked me in a kind tone of voice. I looked at him right in the face as he asked me that. My bottom lip trembled. My body shook.

“Hold me,” I pleaded to him. Eric put his arms around me, and I leaned my head into his chest.

“What happened?” he asked me again, that time in a near whisper.

“She threw herself onto me,” I told him in a low voice.

“Who?” he asked me, and he peered straight into my face right then.

“Ashley,” I answered. “James’ bride.”

He gaped at me.

“You’re serious,” he muttered to her.

“Dead serious,” I said. “You know me, Eric—I wouldn’t lie to you.”

“What the fuck, James,” Eric grumbled.

“I don’t want to blame him, though,” I confessed. “It wasn’t his fault, but hers...” I shuddered from the awful feeling. I couldn’t stop thinking about her body against my own. I couldn’t stop the feeling of her skin against my own. Eric put his arms around me even tighter.

I didn’t want to think about it, and yet I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

“Come with me,” he gently coaxed me. He helped me up to my feet, and he never let me go for one second. He guided me back to the reception hall, where Chuck and Louie awaited us.

James and Ashley were nowhere to be found, and I had no desire to face them straight on right then, either. I looked down at my body, at how ugly it was and how it didn’t belong to me at all. It felt so weird to think about, all because it was her who came onto me.

When I took my seat at the table, Chuck rested a hand on my shoulder, and I shuddered at the feeling of his skin on me. The feeling of his skin on me.

There was a part of me that wanted to have revenge on Ashley for doing this to me, but I wanted nothing to do with her anymore after that. But nothing could stop the desire for revenge over her, to reclaim myself, to feel myself once again.

I leaned forward and I cupped my hands up to my face. I pinched my eyes shut.

It almost felt as though I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe at all.

This body was not mine. This body did not belong to me, and it was so ugly to boot. Completely unlovable and unsalvageable.

Chuck lingered right next to me: I could feel his arm around my upper back and his hand pressed onto my shoulder. I almost didn’t want to be touched, but at the same time I wanted nothing but touches. So confusing. So utterly baffling.

I couldn’t fight my body, though. The same was too much to bear that the last thing I could do was fight it any further than that.

I breathed harder as if I had just run a mile.

I lifted my head and I turned for a glimpse over at Chuck right there right next to me with his lips parted ever so slight at me. Those luminous eyes, that long mane of dark, espresso-colored waves down past his shoulders, that sun-kissed skin. Though we had been arranged into our union, I still had my feelings for him, nevertheless. This man was my prince, and I was going to take him to the end of the earth with me.

“Is there anything I can do for you, Alex?” he kindly offered me.

“Get me a new body?” I suggested to him, and he frowned at that.

“Something that can soothe you and keep you intact and at peace with yourself,” he clarified. “Want to take a walk? We are close to the Strip, after all.”

I sighed through my nose. “Yeah, sure, why not.”

I kept my arms folded across my chest as I stood to my feet; I followed Chuck out of the chapel and into the warm, brightly lit early evening. I glanced up at the buildings before us, at the crowns of the casinos and the hotels that resided at the very rim of the Las Vegas Strip itself. One thing that caught my eye was the bright light of the Luxor, bright despite the persistent light of the day around us.

I fixed my shirt collar, and I caressed the skin on my collar bones all the while.

I wanted a shower. I wanted to clean myself off after all of that, especially since she had left me there on the floor and without anything to nourish my body. And yet, when I touched my skin, I could feel the softness inside of there. Maybe it was my body, after all.

“Come on, Alex—” Chuck goaded me across the street, particularly towards the sex shop. The last place I wanted to be was in a place filled with dildos, especially some that resembled to my dick in terms of size and texture, as well as things meant to get your freak on, but Chuck led me away from there instead.

I glanced up to the skyline before us: the point of the Luxor remained within our view every step of the way up the street to the corner.

“Frank Sinatra Drive, Alex,” he declared with a gesture up over our heads.

“This goes into Frank Sinatra Drive,” I told him with a point off to our right. “Right down this way, if I recall correctly.”

“That’s good,” he told me with another gentle pat of my shoulder. “That tells me your memory is doing alright.”

“It could be way better,” I said with a shrug.

The two of us hung that right and we made our way down the street there, towards the overpass and the golf courses there. It would be quite the walk, and it proved to be the noisy one to boot, too. I was happy that that ungodly heat remained off in the distance for all of us there in Las Vegas Valley: it would be another month or so before something as pleasant as this proved to be a chore of sorts. Another month or not, I was happy that we lived in a place like the Bay Area.

As Chuck and I walked along the sidewalk, I paid close attention to the sensations in my feet and my knees, and it moved me in ways that I had never felt before in my life. Never had I been so acutely aware of myself as I did something so innocuous like take a walk and I swear to all that’s holy, I started to see through time. I started to see through time, and I transcended my own body for a moment. But then I returned to earth once again, especially when I accidentally tripped on an upraised part of the sidewalk.

Slightly uprooted, but it was enough for me to catch myself before I completely lost my balance.

Chuck caught me by the arm before I went any further down the sidewalk, and he tugged me back into an upright position.

I ran my fingers through my hair and I gazed on at him.

“Care for a drink?” he offered me.

“After that? No, thanks. Besides, I’m still only eighteen, Chuck.”

“No, I mean, like a glass of root beer or something,” he clarified, and he gestured up the block. There was a little café beyond the overpass, rested there on the side of the street then known as Frank Sinatra Drive, and even from a distance, I made out the sight of the sign in the front window which read something about five-dollar root beer floats and milkshakes.

I did love me a good root beer float and also a milkshake.

A temporary fix to a harsh and immense pain within me, but I yearned for that something sweet, especially there so close to the extravagance that was the Las Vegas Strip.

I took my seat in the booth underneath the bay window on the far side of the room, the window with the view of that edge of the Strip: I spotted the luminous crown of the Luxor between the other few buildings there on the block behind us.

Chuck took his spot right there before me with a glass of water in hand and a smile on his face.

I leaned back a bit, all so I could put my arm up on the ledge behind me.

“Cannot believe she did that to you,” he confessed with a shake of his head. “What was she thinking?”

I shrugged.

“I wish I knew the answer to that,” I told him in a soft voice: I kept one hand extended out before me, complete with my fingers fanned out from my hand.

“How are you holding up?”

I shrugged again. “Slightly better, but that’s not really saying much, though.”

He frowned, and one that I wasn’t used to, either.

“What’s the matter?”

“Where’s your ring?”

I took a second glimpse down at my left ring finger: indeed, my wedding band had gone missing. I had no recollection of ever taking it off before, either.

“I—I don’t know,” I stammered out. I gaped at him, and his mouth dropped open.

“She didn’t,” he quipped.

“She couldn’t have!”

We both gaped at my hand.

“She did!” he said.

“She did! She did! That bitch!” I clenched my fist and the guy at the counter called out Chuck’s name. He ducked over to the counter for our floats: a part of me wished he had gotten us something to eat because there was no way I could stomach the food at the reception. The wave would have to rise again at some point, and I could feel the storm brewing within me at the mere thought of it.

I stirred the spoon inside of the glass: the ice cream was creamy, and the root beer tasted fresh and utterly delicious, and the froth on top had this almost caramel-like glaze to it. It was in fact so good that for a moment, I forgot what had happened prior to then. I gave it a little stir with my spoon, and I cracked a little smile: I glanced up at Chuck across the table from me, who showed me a smile as well.

“These are good,” he remarked.

“They really are,” I said, and I sipped on the straw once again. Chuck peered over the wall behind me all to behold the sight of something there. I glimpsed over the wall myself.

“Here they come,” he told me in a soft, soothing voice.

Indeed, Eric and Louie hurried their way back to us from up the street, as if they were looking for us and they passed the café: the two of them with their collars undone and their pants undone as if they had just returned from a party of some sort.

Chuck stood to his feet, complete with the glass inside of his hand. I turned all the way in the chair for a glance over the top of the wall. The two of them looked so flustered, as if they had been running for quite a while before then. Naturally, I had questions for them.

Once they were right across from the café, Eric glanced about the street first and then he led Louie all the way: it took me a moment to notice that they were holding hands with one another, and my mind immediately flashed on that remark Ashley threw at me about the union between me and Chuck. They reached the side of the café and then they rounded towards the front door.

Louie held a little white piece of paper in one hand, and he handed it over to Chuck in particular. Eric let out a low whistle as he ran his fingers through his smooth inky black hair. They had in fact been running for a long time, after all.

“She lost a bet,” Louie informed us, shocked and slightly mortified.

“What do you mean, she lost a bet?” Chuck demanded as he took the paper from him.

“Ashley lost a bet with her fiancé,” he repeated. “She lost a bet that she had made with him—apparently, they had made a bet to see if she could resist getting down with one of us.”

The two of them glanced over at me, horrified. I rested my hands on my knees and I parted my lips a bit for a bit of a sigh. Nothing could deny the feeling of revenge within me right then.

The desire to dominate her as well as James, all for doing this to me. The desire to reclaim myself, the desire for agency for myself. This body was mine and no girl and her fiancé were going to take it away from me.

“Let’s get him,” Chuck declared to us.

“Him?” Eric asked him. “Why him?”

Chuck glanced over at the counter on the other side of the room, and then he looked back over at me.

“I’ll explain it later,” he clarified. “In private.”

Once our bellies were loaded up with smooth ice cream and root beer, Chuck and I followed Eric and Louie over to the main artery that was Las Vegas Boulevard and that welcome sign right smack in the middle of it. At that point, the night had already begun to blanket itself over the Strip and the lights themselves shone bright, all manner of crown jewels and golden coins there for us, as proper royal crown princes.

“Is there a reason why we’re over here?” I asked Eric and Louie both.

“To give you a little absorption of sorts,” the former told me over the roar of the traffic before us. “Lou and I both think that everyone who turns eighteen must make a pilgrimage to the Las Vegas Strip. It's like a Quinceanera of sorts, but with all the glitz and glamour and freedom. To ride the highest wave known.”

The highest wave. His words rang throughout me as we made our way past the sign and towards the very heart and soul of the strip.

Though night had fallen over us, a part of me wanted to put on my sunglasses and fix my shirt. I was in Vegas, baby: I was the ultimate Vegas boy even if I had no money on my person to spend out on a roulette wheel. Then again, I had my own roulette wheel at the helm, and it came about in the form of Chuck and Eric’s plan.

If we liked to gamble and bring it all to life, then we would be willing to take the gamble, nevertheless.

A little sneak attack on the two of them on their precious day, and one that came in the form of the glittering lights and the pungency of the traffic off to the side. To hand in our poker chips and let the ball roll along the rim of the wheel. To stare at the dealer dead square in the face and beg to him, “hit me” while we have a trio of cards that add up to sixteen.

We walked along a fine line, a fine line that separated sin from impurity. The sight of an empty hell manifested before me, right before my very eyes, and yet I relished every part of it, with every step of the way.

A little game of blackjack as the four of us made our way along the boulevard, the four of us with our hair down around our shoulders and the upper part of our backs. All our bets had been set on black. Souls of black.

It was going to be absolutely worth the gamble the more that we walked, and we reached the rim of the Luxor. We made our way all the way down to the fountains outside of the Bellagio and we figured it would have been best to return to the chapel and ultimately, our hotel rooms.

The four of us had to look our best as we returned to the comfort of our rooms: the last thing I did prior to turning in for the night was take a shower just to remove that dirt from my skin. The dirt of the traffic on the street and the dirt of Ashley having gone down on me without my properly telling her.

This was how dirty boys got clean, and this was how those dirty boys avenged themselves against inane bets on roulette wheels left unspoken.

The morning of the wedding, I awoke to the bright sunlight as it filtered through the filmy curtains onto my bare skin.

I was amazed that I had slept all the way through the night, after what had happened to me. But I awoke that morning with the sunlight crossed over my bare chest and my stomach, and I knew that showtime was upon us following a round of continental breakfast downstairs.

A brush through my inky black hair, especially after the gray sliver at the crown of my head, as if it was my crown jewel. The crown prince, and the prince who dove head-first into the realm of sin. To seek revenge and play the game that had been laid out for me.

The black silk button-up shirt over my body: I had no idea if it was the combination of my own soup with the water there in Vegas, but my skin felt extra soft, especially when I ran my hand down my stomach and onto my waist. Extra soft, and I knew that it had to do with the incident in the hallway.   The black silk hugged the shape of my body as if I was comprised of decadence itself: the richness of red wine, the tempestuous flavor of sin. I had become the darkness out of the desert oasis myself, complete with a sashay of my hips and a sip of the proverbial dirty martini. A dirty dog and a filthy rat, and I was about to bite my way through the wire.

Chuck put on a little black jacket as well as big black leather cowboy boots, which brought a little snicker out of me.

“What?” he asked me as he brushed his hair.

“Nothing,” I said. “It’s just kinda funny how you’re wearing cowboy boots to this whole thing.”

“Why, ‘cause I’m half-Pomo Indian?” he teased me.

“No, no—to be honest, I completely missed that until you pointed that out to me. No, it just seems rather hilarious to me. Chuck is going to be cowboy for a day.”

“We dance at sundown, my prince,” he told me as he adjusted the lapels of his jacket. Without another word, we headed out of the room and made our way downstairs to fetch Eric and Louie.

To go with the cowboy boots, the former had put on a little black Stetson hat and the latter with his little black leather gloves. We not only were going to gamble our way through the whole thing, but we were apparently going to take it all as a stand-off of sorts.

As long as I had my helping of the delicious, sweetest pie known, then I was okay with the whole shtick.

The four of us made our way over to the chapel, where the occasion was already gathering before our very eyes. In fact, there were so many people there that Chuck had difficulty in finding a spot for us right away.

I had more attention focused on finding the back door to the chapel, which I knew would lead me to the hallway to Ashley’s dressing room, followed by James’ little hideaway.

The couple of traditional fucks they were, I knew that they prepared in separate rooms.

We found a spot for ourselves right outside of the parking lot of the chapel, and within range of the sex shop across the street no less. When I ran my fingers through my hair, I knew that I was about to embody everything that that little shop encapsulated, complete with a little drop of poisoned wine to boot.

The four of us strode along the street together, four bandits, four horsemen. I kept my sunglasses on all the way until we reached the front door and signed our names on the guest list. It would be about a couple of hours or so before the nuptials took place: all things were about to fall right into place for us. The four of us gathered at the far end of the front corridor, right outside of the reception room and, as far as I knew, out of earshot of the newlyweds to be, both of whom were nestled up in their dressing rooms.

“I’ll take care of Ashley,” Eric vowed to us in a low voice and with an adjustment of the cowboy hat upon his head. “As far as we know, she cannot resist any kind of temptation of any kind such as this.”

“Yeah, especially if she and her fiancé seem so keen on befouling my prince,” Chuck grumbled as he put his arm around me.

All the while, there was a part of me, deep inside of me, that begged us to show some mercy. Mercy in the form of the demand, “what the hell are we doing?”

But as far as I knew, no one else had seen it happen, and Eric and Lou had found out about the bet and wrote it down. It was the only thing that we had to do, too, or else James and Ashley would have gotten away with it all. Gotten away with going after me, and the reason remained well beyond my own comprehension.

Chuck and I exchanged hugs with Eric before he ducked back towards Ashley’s dressing room down the hall. Louie then turned to us with that stern, stoic expression plastered across his face.

“I’ve got him, don’t worry,” Louie promised to me: he extended a gloved hand to me, and I clasped onto him in return. The smoothest leather, and something that I knew that James wouldn’t be able to overcome for himself.

“I’ll give you the signal once things are ready,” he vowed to us with a wink and an adjustment of his gloves.

Once the two of them had ducked back into those rooms, I turned to Chuck, who adjusted the lapels of his jacket once again.

“Shall we?”

“We shall,” I replied as I lifted my right elbow to him as if to link arms with him.

Indeed, it was a lovely ceremony before the wedding, one filled with delicious, decadent food and a punch bowl: as far as Chuck and I both knew, there was no booze to be found. Strange to me, since Metallica seemed so keen on drinking all the time.

I had finished my first full plate of food when James came running out of the back hallway, complete with sweat beaded across his brow as if he had run a whole mile just then. His face twisted in utter rage, he pointed to me.

“YOU!” he shouted, which in turn made all hundred people in that room stop right in their tracks. “YOU!”

“Me?” I demanded, dumbfounded; and I wondered what had happened back there with Louie. I drank the rest of my root beer before I stood up on my feet. I raised my hands as if about to catch him in his tracks, but he lunged past me to Chuck instead. He sucker-punched him, hard, right between the eyes.

Chuck fell ass over teakettle onto the floor behind us: his legs nearly toppled the table over before me. I lunged for James, and I yanked him right off my prince. Arranged marriage or not, the man was still my prince, and he was my husband: I had to be the good husband and stand up for him.

Furious, James turned to me and grabbed me by the collar. He yanked me into the hallway, all so we were out of sight and out of collective mind.

He tried to throw me against the wall right outside the door, but I kneed him right in the crotch. He let out a wounded yelp but before I could run away, he yanked me back. I was barely shorter than him, but it felt as though he towered over me.

“I’m gonna fuck you so hard,” he growled at me.

“Yeah, sure you will—” I taunted him, and I opened the buttons on my shirt just so he would let go of me. But he never did, even with my shirt open: instead, since he stooped over and held onto his crotch with his other hand, I leapt on top of his back. It was right then I wished that I gained an extra thirty pounds to further subdue him, but I had to make do with what I had in my little body. I pushed him down to the floor.

He wanted to fuck me but now the tables were turned, and I was about to gain revenge.

No one was around and so I peeled off my pants and I slid his trousers down his hips. He rolled over underneath me. But I was on top.

I could look at him dead in the face, the man who had made a bet to see who could treat me like a piece of meat better than the other, as I got down on him from the top. But he laughed at me.

The bastard laughed at me, and I looked down to see my erection out before me.

“I’m huge compared to you,” he sneered at me: the snarl of a lion.

“You may be huge but at least I'll admit it, you bastard,” I retorted back to him.

“Oh, yeah, like you can get me off like Ash can,” he teased me. “Please. At least with her, I can put the cream on her cake the right way. With you, I'd have to put the icing on the cake sideways.” He laughed at that, but I wasn’t close to being done with him, however.

I couldn’t help it: I lunged for him, and I pushed him down onto the hard carpet. At least the carpet was clean.

“Here, Alex, let me help you—”

I glanced up and there was Chuck, with a bump on his forehead but as furious as me.

Both our dicks into James’ mouth. Mine in his mouth followed by Chuck’s hands around his to round out the threesome.

Apparently, Louie had returned to the other dressing room to help Eric with Ashley—apparently, she had this thing where, though he kept the cowboy hat on, it made sense to have a pair of leather gloves in there as well. From what I could recollect, it was Eric’s suggestion to have Lou in there with him, albeit right before she clambered after him from behind.

But it didn’t matter to me at that point, not with my reclaiming myself on the man who did this to me, even with the ache in my back and my knees as well. Chuck was the iron, and I was the wine.   We were gaining revenge, redemption, justice. A tit for tat in the most scrumptious way possible.

“Hey, Alex, you want to take a picture, so we remember this glorious occasion?” Chuck suggested to me as he flicked some of James’ cum off his fingers.

“Let’s,” I said with pride.

I had to scrounge around for a Polaroid camera there in the hallway, but I found it at the far end. I also found a little bottle of what appeared to be some of that washable fabric paint right behind it.

Perfection.

James, delirious and covered in our juices as a means of punishment, was about to have a little more than he had warranted before then with the completion of this paint.

I had thought about painting the demon skull from the cover of The Legacy, and the same skull of which all five of us had tattooed on our arms, but I went with a big letter “A” on his chest instead. That big letter painted in blood red paint, which in turn made me think of the most luscious red wine from the heart of Vegas.

“Hey, Alex, give us some of that,” Louie called out to me from behind. I handed the bottle over to Chuck and he tossed it underhand over to him.

I took two photographs with that camera, one of James and one of Ashley, all for a manner of humiliation. I hoped that they both got off on that because it would be there forever.

I guess, all I could say in response to the whole entire thing was what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. James could deny it all that he wanted, but if this entry is to prove something, it’s that he took a gamble with that woman and then with me, and he’ll have to pay the bank back at some point.

We all have to trade in our poker chips at some point or another, especially when someone like me is involved.

[feverinfeveroutfic]

sunburn | ghost notes

The boy from the shadows,

his hair long and smooth, a helmet of dust

from the heart of the Golden State on the mind.

Something in the way that I moved drew him,

in more ways that I can find.

The girl with the drumsticks and boots, he said,

I can’t stop thinking about her—she’s in my head!

I kissed him and paid his rent to live,

and I soon found myself more than I can give.

Oh, dearest Luciano, my first love,

I fit you perfectly like your black glove.

I knew that I would keep you forever,

even if your own nascent family

proved us for never.

That searing voice, the one that caught my ear!

The man with the cape and the one who had started it all.

I reeled him in like the quahogs in Narragansett,

and I held him to my breasts quick.

Oh, boy, the one who gave me his heart and mind,

we danced like the stardust he said

surrounded me.

The hottest flame burns the fastest,

though I yearned for more.

My pollen hit the floor,

and a swift marriage ended far and away.

I burn for Steven still,

even as his new life 

has made my heart so very ill.

The strange one, the pearl, the oyster,

the boy with the steely gaze.

A sweet little ghost with the wind at his back;

I barely recall when we had spent our days,

but his tender touches left their mark.

He took me by the hand and called me Shiksa,

and I told him I wanna get wit’ ya.

Like a lightning strike, he raged and burned,

and yet I still feel his desire and how he yearned

for me, the streets of Rhode Island,

how I had served as an island

for him, for myself.

Sweet Alexander,

the unconditional one,

and what dreams are made of,

the one who brought me the nectar of springtime.

[feverinfeveroutfic]

sunburn | crushcrushcrush

“Is there a reason why you brought me in here, Lou?”

”Yeah, but, uh—kinda—keep your voice down, though. God forbid we have someone walk in here and see us, especially since there are cameras everywhere in the building. Plus, you know, it’s bad enough I sorta committed the affair.”

”Right!”

”Let’s see, if I recall correctly, it’s in this stall here. I remember Eric pointing it out to me when he came in here the other day and he ran by me saying that Zelda would get a kick out of it.”

“Okay. Um. Where is it? I’m lookin’ here in this stall and I’m not—oh, there it is.”

”Yeah! Okay, I’ll go over here in the one next to you… and you just put your head close to the hole and when you see me, give it a nice little blow.”

”Okay. Um… god, I’m glad we’re doing this in a dressing room and not the men’s room.”

”I know, right? Okay, I’m undoing my pants. You see me?”

”Oh, yes, I see you, alright. Heh. Nice and juicy like a fat sausage.”

”Yowza! Okay, now, I’m going to put my hands behind my head and let you guide my way—”

”Oh, wow, Lou, you taste good. Nice and delicate.”

”Your tongue is like velvet! Woof!”

”Shhh!”

”Oh, right, right, right. Phew. That’s delicious right there.”

”You’re already kinda drippin’ a bit, babes.”

”Huhhhh, you’re telling me. I can feel it. I’m also hopin’ the metal doesn’t crush my dick.”

”It won’t. I’ll give you a hand job and a crush all on your own before that happens. Oops, got a little bit on my chest.”

”Keep going, keep going, keep going.”

”I wish you could see me, Lou—I just put my hand down my pants to get myself going. You taste a lot better because of it.”

”Oh, man. Oh, man!”

”Lou, hold still!”

”I’m trying, I’m trying, I’m trying…”

”Daaaaaaaamn, you’re hard as diamond!”

”I can feel it! Fucking hell!”

”Yeah, baby, gimme some more of those juices.”

”Huh—oh, man. Oh, man. Oh, man! I’m gonna cum! I’m gonna cum!”

”Not if I do it first, big boy!”

”Hooooo—” 

“Yeah. That’s how we do it in Rhode Island, baby.”

”California, too.”

”Would you like some more and I can orgasm for you a second time?”

”Maybe outside? I feel like the entire store just heard us, ha!”

”Man, and I thought I was brazen, heh. I need a napkin.”

”Yeah, I do, too. Man, I haven’t jizzed that much in a long time.”

”You came right in my mouth, too. Consider that a win as well.”

”Now, if only I can make you come in my mouth next.”

”Ha! Good luck with that, pony boy.”

[feverinfeveroutfic]

chapter twenty five: a good boy

“that’s not how you move a closet! that’s the worst closet moving i’ve ever seen!” -jim gaffigan

Aurora had begun frequenting the San Francisco Bay Area more and more often from that point onward; given Sam was often riding back down to Los Angeles and onto Catalina Island, she only got to see her old friend for half of a day before one of them had to leave. Every single time, however, she noticed her growing bigger and bigger. To think that she had shown Sam another side to her all the while, and yet all she could think about was her mother's words in how when children were involved, things became harder to deal with. And even though he wasn't a kid anymore, she wondered how Alex was handling the whole feud between her and Aurora.

It only made sense to acknowlede it with him: he participated in her and Emile's wedding after all.

And in the meantime, Testament had fulfilled their time there at that studio and Eric had the final say with it all to Ruben, who made the mad dash back to the label itself in order to submit the new album. A month's time and they would take their stride alongside Metallica and everyone else: this little quintet out of the Bay Area about to nip at their heels and let the world know that they were in fact a force to be reckoned with.

But at one point, within mere hours of Eric handing the final tape over to Ruben, Sam found herself in a strange spot.

All the traveling to and fro between the Bay Area and Catalina Island. All the unsettled feelings and being divided up between both of her parents. The new beds each and every week. Every single time, a little harder on her. Every single time, she just wanted to stop for a second, if only to observe the oleanders as they bloomed against the San Francisco fog and the persistent cold despite winter's transformation into springtime. Some of them wilted and withered from the cold, but many of them returned once the sun poked out from behind the clouds, those five petals big and strong and either a deep shade of pink or pure white.

With Cliff, it was tulips. With Joey, deadly nightshade. With Alex, oleanders.

The end of April brought on the realization that Greg's birthday was coming up, as was Eric's. As if she needed more things to do as she met up with Alex at the cafe across the street from Ruben's house. Chuck and Tiffany had gone off somewhere else from that point out, and thus the two of them were once again left alone together.

He sat across from her and his long jet black hair fell down around his shoulders like a thick lush mane: that singular plume of gray stood almost upright over the right side of his brow like a little radio antenna. She eyed the collar of his shirt: the same shirt he wore when they made out in the pool room, and once more, he had undone the top two buttons and showed off a bit of his chest and his collar bones.

The soft scent of his cologne filled her nose even from across the table. He leaned back in his chair and kept his right hand close to the base of the cup. Sam leaned forward a bit as if she was making up for him.

“I still have yet to see your old high school,” she told him.

“I know you do,” he said with a thoughtful look on his face. “There's a lot you've just got to see around here, Samantha.”

He lifted his cup and brought it up to those sensual little lips, and then he lifted his gaze to her again.

“You sure you don't want anything?” he asked her.

“My dad's got stuff across the street,” she replied, and she sighed. He knitted his eyebrows together.

“Is everything okay? You don't seem like yourself.”

She lowered her gaze to the glass cover on the table top. How she wanted to be back in New York with Joey and also Marla and Belinda: it also felt like a million years since she had heard a word from the Cherry Suicides as well, even as she put on that shirt for another day that day. The fatigue settled over her like a wave of sorts.

Ruben had promised her a cup of coffee at any point during the day if she so wished but even after a nice warm one earlier that morning, she still had a bit of trouble waking up all the way for Alex right across the table from her. She sighed through her nose again and she propped up the side of her head within the palm of her hand.

“I can't keep doing this,” Sam finally said to Alex. “This incessant going back and forth between my parents' houses and taking the stinkin' bus every time. It literally feels as though I haven't made any art in a million years even though it's only been a couple of months since I started doing this.”

“Why's that?”

“Traveling is hard on me,” she confessed. “And by hard I mean, it's not like touring. It's getting on the bus right as I get settled into my dad's house or my mom's house. It's having to see you guys for a week only to vanish again for another whole week. I can't keep doing this.”

She folded her hands upon the table's surface and she gazed down at the glass covering there before them. She looked on at her own reflection as it looked back up at her: her own dark eyes gazed back at her. Her skin was still tight and smooth with her teenage days: still young Samantha, little Sammie, but she had reached the age of twenty four by some black magic.

“Well—remember what Eric and I both told you,” he said, “do what ever feels right to you.”

She raised her gaze back up to Alex, still with a thoughtful expression plastered across his face.

The cafe was quiet, except for the grinding noise of the coffee maker on the other side of the counter.

“I should ask you,” she began.

“Go ahead,” he encouraged her as he flexed his fingers on his right hand a bit: he returned his hand to the top of the table afterwards.

“How're you handling the whole thing with me and Aurora?” she asked him, to which he hesitated for a moment.

“It—actually hasn't crossed my mind all too much,” he confessed. “I've actually forgotten why you ladies were fighting each other in the first place.”

“She made your nineteenth birthday all about her,” she recalled. “And then when I tried to address that with her, she was a complete ditz and made everything about herself again.”

“Oh, yeah, that's right! Again, it actually hasn't crossed my mind very often. I've just had my mind on other things.”

“Like making an album?” Sam showed him a smile.

“Like making an album, right! Two albums to be exact. The New Order and now Practice What You Preach.”

“Germany, too,” she added.

“Germany, too! And ginger snaps.” She leaned forward again, and once more had her hands folded over each other. The fire opal bracelet Chuck gave her clinked against the glass underneath her.

“I made out with you,” she said in a soft voice.

“You made out with me or did I make out with you?” he asked her.

“Both.”

Alex squinted his eyes at her. He shuffled his feet under the table, and he flexed his fingers again.

“You alright?” she asked him as she eyed his hand.

“I'm feeling it again,” he admitted to her.

“Feeling what?”

“It.”

Sam lowered her gaze to the cup of coffee before him and she nibbled on her bottom lip.

“French up that coffee and we'll talk,” she told him.

“French? You mean Irish.”

“Nah, I mean French.”

Alex held still with his hands on either side of the cup. He looked up at her with those deep eyes focused and steady upon her. For a split second, she swore that he lowered his gaze towards her chest. He flinched those long fingers a bit.

She thought about the things that Joey had told her over the phone that one time and she thought about doing them to Alex instead. Her lips around him. His fingers down below the equator and his tongue up inside of her.

He picked up the cup and took a sip, and not for a single second did he remove his gaze from her. He never seemed more hypnotic before: a little loose back there in the pool room and he suddenly became Mr. Seducer. She thought about Joey's venom, the way in which he seemed to slide and slither about like the deadly nightshade he so sprouted from: Alex came from somewhere else, as if from a fever dream. Where Joey resided within the earth, Alex seemed to burn into her with those deep eyes.

She sighed through her nose and bowed her head a bit to bring attention to her chest. Once more, for a split second, he dropped his gaze by a mere hair.

It was there between them. It was real, as real as the grays on his head. As real as those deep eyes that gazed back at her as if he lured her in, much like those oleander bushes in the south land.

He flexed his fingers again and all Sam could think about was the day before wherein they were about to add the final touches before submission. She sat there in between Alex and Louie as Chuck was talking about going on tour that summer, and wherever they went from that point onwards was anyone's guess. The vibe that surrounded them was so tense and yet she sat there so comfortably in between those two men.

Louie mentioned something else about the poison garden to her and Aurora just happened to be there right next to him, now six months along and her gaze fixated on the clipboard rested upon her lap.

“I'm really feeling it, Sam,” he told her with a smile on his face once Eric picked up the phone to call up Ruben. “Our producer told us this new record could really put us forth.”

“Will it have a gift shop?” Aurora absently asked.

“Yeah, wolfsbane keychains,” Alex muttered under his breath, which in turn brought a giggle out of Sam.

He said it again right there in the cafe, and that time with a smile on his face.

“Yeah, wolfsbane keychains!” he exclaimed. “You and Louie have 'poison garden'—we should have wolfsbane keychains.”

“Wolfsbane, and not desert roses?” she asked him.

“You guys can have desert roses, too,” he pointed out.

“I say desert rose because I'm based out of the desert you know.”

“Of course! Desert roses for the desert rose right across from me.”

The door behind them swung open and Ruben stepped into the cafe with a blue and white tin tucked underneath his arm.

“Hi, Daddy!” she greeted him and she stood up and threw her arms around him.

“Hello, sweetie!” he returned the favor for her with his free arm. He then turned to Alex, who straightened himself up so he wasn't sitting so down low in the chair; but he handed Alex the tin. “Hey, son. Seeing as—you're such a hard working kid, these are for you.”

“What's this?” he asked him.

“What is it?” Sam echoed him as he took off the lid.

“Ginger snaps, baby,” he declared as he took a bite of that first little cookie.

“Ginger snap me up side the head,” she joked.

“Anyways, I've got the next hour off,” Ruben told them, “I'm in need of help for the two of you. Eric and Chuck both told me to bring in a couple of blank video tapes tomorrow because apparently the label wants you guys to film a music video in promotion of the new album.”

“Do you even have one?” Sam asked him.

“Yeah, it's somewhere packed away in that house—hence why I'm asking. Can't do it by myself. You know. You know how much that house still needs unpacking.”

“Absolutely!”

He then raised a finger to the both of them. “I'll be right back.”

He ducked away from them and headed back to the other side of the cafe, and right behind the counter there. Alex took another bite of ginger snap: the cookies in that tin were small medallions about the size of silver dollars so he could pop one into his mouth. Even though she liked him when he had a little bit of liquor in him, the sight of him eating those cookies brought a wave of comfort to her: she'd rather watch him get heavy from eating too many cookies than have his body go south from drinking.

If only Joey could get hooked on those as well.

“How are they?” she asked him.

“Excellent. The perfect amount of ginger, too. Sometimes they can be too much with it.”

She took one herself and he took a third one, and popped it into his mouth as if it was a potato chip. Indeed, he was right: it felt like a little kiss of ginger coupled with butter and some nutmeg.

“Speaking of ginger snaps, I guess Guns N' Roses are gonna be in town,” he told her once he swallowed down that bite. “Tomorrow night, I think.”

“Ah, cool! I wonder if Zelda got to see them again. She introduced me to them after all.”

“She probably did see them! They were back East just a few days ago. Prince actually got to open for them, believe it or not.”

“Wow! I wonder if she got to see him, too.”

“If she did, I envy her,” he admitted. “Prince is one hell of a guitar player. Hard to believe that album Purple Rain's actually five years old now.”

“I think it's funny that there's actually a guitar player called Prince—and you sort of came into my life like a dark heavy metal prince.”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“I wouldn't say it's funny,” he said, “it's definitely interesting to think about, though.” “A coincidence, would you think?” she asked him.

“There are no coincidences, Samantha—but everything has a purpose, though.”

“I just think of Belinda's first impression of you,” she recalled with a shake of her head.

“What was that?” He took another bite of ginger snap.

“She called you precocious.”

“I'll admit it,” he said upon swallowing. “I'd rather be seen as precocious than full of myself, even though I can be.”

“I can be, too,” she told him.

“I think it's better to be full of yourself with just the right amount of doubt thrown in all the while than be doubtful of everything and wear a mask of arrogance.”

Sam hesitated with her mouth slightly agape.

“I like you,” she told him.

“I like you, too,” he replied back to her with a raise of his cookie. “And I like the fact that you and now your father wanna give me cookies.”

“'Cause cookies are love,” she said.

“It's all spent doing fuck all,” he said with a straight face.

“Doing fuck all to fill your belly with love,” she pointed out.

“And my ass with ginger,” he retorted. It made no sense but she laughed at that anyway. Ruben returned to them and he rubbed his hands together.

“Come on, kids,” he beckoned them.

Alex put the lid back onto the tin and then with his free hand, he took the knit yarmulke out from his back pocket.

“Wow, I haven't seen that in forever and a day it seems,” she remarked as he stood to his feet.

“I haven't worn it in forever and a day,” he said, “mainly because we're going with your dad back to his place and not elsewhere.”

“Oh, I see!”

He tucked the tin underneath his arm and once Ruben held the door for the both of them, they crossed the street and back to the house. Ruben himself took to the linen closet and he encouraged them to take to the kitchen.

Sam knelt down before the small wooden table on the side of the room closest to the hallway. Nothing underneath there, but she did flash a glimpse over at Alex on the couch in the living room with the yarmulke on the arm right next to him. She missed her couch still, still there in the apartment in Hell's Kitchen. She pictured Genie curled up at the top, all by herself all the while.

Cliff sat there and drank Mexican hot chocolate with her.

She also pictured herself and Joey sleeping together on that couch: as soon as she thought that, she pictured herself and Alex together on that couch.

He stood up and turned around and she caught a view of the seat of his pants. He hitched them up and she couldn't help but let her eyes wander.

All those ginger snaps and incessant touring and working allowed his body to develop a lovely toned shape: slim and lanky, even slight, and yet he was nice and round in the rear end.

She had drawn Joey. She had drawn Frank. She had drawn Cliff. She had drawn herself.

She still needed to draw Alex: if only she could convince him of such, especially since there was no alcohol anywhere in the house. Even if there was alcohol anywhere in that house, there was no way it would fly by Ruben as he strode back into the front of the house. But she had to loosen him up somewhat, and there was only so much a ginger snap the size of a silver dollar could do for her.

Sam hurried over to Alex right as he turned around and he raised his dark eyebrows at her.

“What happened?” he asked her in a hushed voice given Ruben was right there next to them, and he delved through a small box he had tucked under the coffee table.

“Something has—come over me,” she confessed to him in a low voice.

“How so?”

She gestured for him to follow her. They got about five steps in when Ruben stopped them both.

“Where do you kids think you're going?”

“We're—going to look in my closet,” Sam told him.

“Of course, yes!”

She led him back into her bedroom and he left the door ajar behind them. She slid the doors open and she ducked inside first and pressed her back to the dividing wall behind her. Alex joined her with his back against a protective covering on a piece of dry cleaning.

She put her arms around his waist and she lingered closer to his face.

“Oh, I see what you're doing,” he said to her in a low voice.

“I want you loose again,” she confessed in a near whisper. She eyed those lips, smooth as ripe cherries and ready for her taking.

“I'm gonna fuck ya silly and then it's gonna be every man for himself from there on out,” he joked.

“Not if I'm the one who fucks you silly first,” she chided, “and it'll be every man and woman for themselves from there on out.”

“What's going on in there?” Ruben called from the next room.

“Nothing!” Alex and Sam called out in unison; she returned to him.

“Kiss me,” she begged him in a near whisper.

“Kiss you? Your dad's literally right there in the next room, Samantha!”

“Kiss me—the fact he's there will only make it sexier.”

“We are in your closet after all,” he pointed out.

“Just touch me already!” she insisted.

“What?” Ruben called out.

“It's okay, Dad!” Sam called out the closet door and then she returned to him.

“Okay, we really gotta do something or he's going to find out about us,” he told her in a hushed voice.

“And what if he does, Alex?” she demanded as she raised her chest up to him.

“Samantha, have you seen how he looks at me?” He dropped his gaze to her chest and he nibbled on his bottom lip. “He wants to skin me alive!”

“I don't think he does,” she assured him with a shake of her head. “I mean, he gave you ginger snaps for crying out loud, Alex. Now, when he and my mom were together and I brought Joey home with me, he definitely wanted to do things to him.”

“Why is that?” He frowned at that.

“Joey,” she started; even though she promised her mother to keep it under wraps, the cat was already out of the bag. “—I'm guessing reminds him of some guy my mom knew once.”

Alex snickered at that, but Sam smacked him in the shoulder.

“Ow!” he hissed, and then he rubbed his shoulder.

“What do you mean, 'ow'? I barely hit you!”

“A slap is a slap, though,” he pointed out.

“A slap is a slap like on your ass?” she asked him.

“Shhh!”

“What's going on in here?” Ruben's voice floated into the room right then.

“Nothing,” they both said once more in unison. He stepped into her bedroom and they peeked out of the closet together.

“Nothing in here, Dad,” Sam told him. “Really, there's like nothing in here.”

“I really haven't found anything in here, either,” he confessed as he pressed his hands to his hips. “I'll have to break down and buy some new ones, I guess.”

“There's a shop not too far from here that sells all kinds of stuff like that,” Alex told him.

“Oh?”

“It's right up the street here, actually. You just ask the lady in there about it and she'll show you and it's real cheap-o, too. One time, when I was little, my dad needed to tape a lecture and all I remember is him talking about how it was like a treasure trove in there.”

“Well, thank you, son, I'll—I'll be right back.”

Ruben bowed out of there and Sam turned to Alex once again.

“You are such a good boy,” she declared.

“Just doing what I can,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders. The front door closed and Sam ran her tongue along her bottom lip.

“Why do you want me loose again, by the way?” he asked her as he pressed his hands to his hips.

“I want to draw you,” she told him.

“You wanna draw me?”

“Yes. I wanna draw you—the best way I can make love to you without getting you drunk. Or maybe I can if you so wish.”

“Nah, I get drunk, I wouldn't be able to stay in the seat.”

Sam turned to her courier bag there on the desk chair and she took out that brand new journal she had bought in Santa Monica for a brand new chapter in life.

“There's a stool in his room right down the hall,” she advised him. “Grab that and I'll turn the light on for you, Mr. Skolnick.”

He showed her a little smirk before he left the room. While he was in the next room, she peeled off her shirt and changed into one of those Death Angel shirts that she had brought along with her. She knew that if she ever had to eventually decide on a place to live, and she chose San Francisco, she would have to see them again, and that time in their home city no less. She moved the floor lamp in that room closer to the closet door, right in front of her.

Alex returned with the little black stool in question.

“Hey, cool shirt,” he remarked.

“One of many!” she declared and she gestured to the floor lamp right in front of her. “Have a seat.”

He closed the closet door and took a seat there on the stool.

“Tell you what—you draw me, you've gotta do it with Greg,” he said.

“Why?” she laughed at that.

“'Cause Greg could use it, that's why. You do it with Greg, I'll give you whatever the hell you so damn well please.” He hesitated for a second. “Gosh, that was a mouthful.”

She giggled at him.

“You're so sexy, Alex,” she said, “I should really draw you just for the fact you're so sexy—a bet or not.” He raised his eyebrows at that.

“You—wanna draw me? Should I strip naked or something like that?”

“Nah—you can leave your clothes on.” She stood up and walked on over to him. “Although—”

She reached forward to that third button and unfastened it for him with only two fingers. With her other hand, she did the same for the next one. Then the next one down. The next one down. Soon he stood there before her with his shirt open and a sliver of his bare body shown off to her.

“You only wanted to do that 'cause you wanted to undo my shirt for me,” he teased her, and he nudged his shirt back a little bit to show off a little more of his chest to her. She reached up and switched on the light for him.

“Oh, my,” she breathed out. “Oh, my, Mr. Skolnick.”

“Hey, now, Mr. Skolnick is my dad—I'm little Alex,” he insisted as he took his seat there on the stool. He leaned back a bit and showed off more of his body to her. The way the light shone down onto his pale smooth skin and onto the tops of his thighs.

“I thought you weren't little, though,” she recalled.

“To you, I'm not,” he teased her as he opened his legs a bit to get himself comfortable in front of her. He set his hands on either side of the stool's head and his eyes hooded a bit. His lips seemed extra plump and soft; his waist had slimmed down but also seemed a little bit thick at the same time.

Alex leaned back against the wall so more light cascaded over his body. The way the light bathed his body and made his already full face appear fuller, and his deep eyes even deeper. He tilted his head back and the light in turn made the skin on his neck, his chest, and his stomach appear so soft, smooth, and silken. Sam sat there across from him with her drawing pad rested upon her lap: every glimpse up to his body made her want to feel him some more. The scratch of the graphite made him seem much softer and sweeter.

To genuinely feel and touch him. Such a beautiful boy.

He cleared his throat.

“Remember on the road trip up to Carson and Tahoe we were talking about Georgia O'Keeffe?” he asked her.

“Of course,” she replied as she momentarily lifted her gaze back up to him.

“I think I spoke too soon.”

“Why is that?”

“You're absolutely filthy.”

“Filthy—ha! I don't think so.”

Alex raised his eyebrows at that.

“Seriously? You're absolutely loose. Loose like a loose—pussy.”

“Alex!” she said in a hushed voice.

“It's true, though. Although I will admit that that was rather tasteless.”

“Tasteless like my pussy?” she retorted back to him.

“Nah, I reckon your pussy's about as tasteful as that drawing you're making, hence the O'Keeffe reference.”

He clapped his hands together and stood to his feet with his arms in the air as if he had declared a victory. Sam leaned back in her chair and she eyed the slight curve on his waist. It was the most gentle curve she had ever seen, but the light on his skin made it appear right before her eyes.

“You might wanna take it easy on the ginger snaps, big boy,” she teased him. “You're getting kind of a tummy.”

He lowered his arms and looked down at his waist. He touched the skin there with the mere tips of his fingers.

“Not again,” he grumbled.

“Ever so slight, though,” she told him. “Like I can see it a tiny little bit around your belly button but you can't really see it with your shirt closed, though. It's gonna grow, though.”

He sat back down, and then he reached to his right for another ginger snap, which he shoved right into his mouth. She stopped drawing so she could watch him eat it up and then he reached for a second one and did the same.

“Could use some milk,” he said with his mouth full.

“Milk has fat in it, you know,” she pointed out, and he swallowed.

“Hence the point!” he proclaimed and he rubbed his belly with both hands.

“You are such a tease,” she scolded him, and he gave his black hair a little toss back with a flick of his head.

“Let me ask you something—what happened to you in that pool room?”

“I dunno. You kind of—woke me up, Alex.”

He showed her a smirk and straightened himself upright. She had a light soft sketch right there before her upon her lap but she figured it was something good to work from that point onward. A little extra dark shading with his hair except for the small gray tuft over his brow.

“Are you getting okay?” he asked her.

“Getting it good, my dear Alexander,” she said as she used the side of her pencil to shade in the side of his neck and the lapels of his shirt. “My dear Mr. Skolnick.”

She lifted up the drawing pad and showed it to him.

“Soft, silky, and utterly gorgeous,” she declared; he pressed a hand to his chest as if he had just seen the best thing ever.

“Think you can take it from here?” he asked her.

“Absolutely!”

The front door closed right then.

“That was fast,” she stated.

“I said it was literally right up the street,” he recalled as he closed his shirt; she kept that drawing on the seat of her chair and she hoped that Ruben wouldn't have to see it for himself as they headed back to the front of the house. He had gotten four fresh blank video tapes, much to Alex's surprise and slight disappointment.

“We're gonna need more than that, Mr. Shelley,” he said with a shrug. “When we did the video for 'Over the Wall', we used like six tapes. Well, and they were messing around with the effects of it, too.”

“Well, son, this is what I've got,” Ruben told him. “It's what they had, too.”

“So what do you think we're doing this for?” asked Alex as he fixed his shirt a bit more: Sam noticed the buttons were one off all the way up.

“Let's give it a try for 'The Ballad',” Ruben replied with a smirk on his face.

Sam and Alex glanced at one another, and all she could think about was when he picked her up from the side of the road, which she hadn't even told him about yet.

The whole thing with Aurora felt a little redundant at that point.

[feverinfeveroutfic]

chapter twenty seven: skin and valentines

“the flies come roaring out, and will surround the entire world, and blacken out the sky and every last one of you, like a plague of locusts, like an exit, like an end.” -”burning bright (a field on fire)”, nine inch nails

i can finally say this now: BIG OL’ SMUT WARNING!

Testament were about to head out on tour at the very end of the month when Sam had the idea to make a drawing for them as a good luck charm of sorts. She also finally decided to head out with them while on tour given she was already in the thick of it all with traveling back and forth between her parents' houses. The other alternative was staying back home there in California and doing nothing to save herself.

She had that business card of which Charlie had given her before and she knew the only way in which she could do something with it was if she went with them. They did have a few stops over in New York after all.

In the meantime it had been a couple of weeks since he had told her that Anthrax were headed into the studio and there was no word if Joey would join them as of yet. Even though she was well nestled within their circle, it almost felt as though she had been put at a distance. The West Coast stood out as a completely whole separate world from back East. If nothing else, she had to bring both worlds together in some way or fashion.

She worked on that drawing all month long until they left for upstate New York and she finally decided to join along with them. As far as everyone knew, she wasn't their groupie, but rather their resident artist. She came up with the story that she would follow them wherever they went and made art along the way for them.

But that drawing consisted of the finest pen work she had made since Cliff was alive.

The snakes on her head. The look on her face.

It was sort of a self portrait: she based the expression on her face off of the way in which she looked in the mirror's reflection in the mornings. The way her face was shaped. The way in which the serpents riddled and writhed around the crown of her head. She had to draw it and she had to draw it up not just for herself but for those five men as well.

It was also around this time she began to see the mysterious man in her dreams once again.

He often appeared to her in fragments those times around: rather than full fledged dreams, but she knew it was him. The way in which his hair waved about and the way he always gazed back at her from the void. The way he seemed to burn into her memory like the ripe bright cherry at the end of a cigarette.

And she still had no idea if he was supposed to represent Alex or someone else. All she knew was Marla was the only other person who saw him in her dreams when the going got rough.

She finished up the last of the serpents on Medusa's head the night before she flew out to upstate New York with Testament. The more she thought about it, the more appropriate it felt to her to have drawn up Medusa before she sat next to Alex again on the plane. Greg and Eric were on the other side of the aisle from them; meanwhile Chuck and Tiffany took to the seats right behind them, and Louie was right next to an old man on the other side. Sam and Alex were surrounded: no way they could act upon each other there on the flight, especially since he kept his nose in the book he was reading all the while.

“You brought some of your drawings with you, right?” he asked her at one point, to which he lowered his book from his line of sight. For a brief moment, she looked up at the little tuft of gray atop his head and she swore it grew within only a couple of weeks time, from a slight pearl to a full on tuft the size of a baby carrot.

“There was no way I wasn't going to bring them with me,” she told him in a low voice: Louie's soft snoring right behind them caught her attention. She peered across the aisle to find Greg had fallen asleep as well while Eric paid attention to a few letters he had received just prior to the tour's onset.

She opened her journal right there for Alex and showed him that drawing of Medusa, to which he gasped at the very sight of it. Those thin lines of black ink that made up the scales on the snakes. The richness of the green skin. The way in which her eyes glared at the both of them from the nothing.

“Wow,” he breathed.

“I'm extra proud of this one, yeah,” she confessed to him.

“As you should be—that's stunning.”

“You know what else I wanna do?” she asked him.

“What's that?”

“Well, seeing as we're on a plane and there really isn't anyone else paying much attention to us—”

He raised his eyebrows at that.

“You're not suggesting...” he muttered, and he hesitated right in his tracks.

Sam turned to a fresh page right at the middle of the journal and without sparing a scratch of graphite or a drop of ink, she drew up two bodies right there on the page before her. Alex tucked his bookmark in between the pages and set it down on the tray before him so he could watch her.

The smooth angles of a young man in his prime. The smooth gentle full curves of a young woman.

He raised his eyebrows when she added the black hair on his head and left a spot black for the tuft of gray over his brow. He showed her a smirk when she added her features on the woman.

“Oh my,” he whispered. “You really are Georgia O'Keeffe. Go sexy some more.”

She brought a finger to her lips even though it was obvious no one paid any attention right then.

He showed her a sweet, thoughtful smile when she signed her initials at the bottom of the page.

“Mmm, sexy erotic art,” he noted. “No one can ever know about it, though.”

She shook her head at that and she looked over to see Eric looking in their direction.

“What about me?” he said to them in a low voice, and Alex brought a hand to his mouth to keep his laughter from growing too loud.

Then Sam remembered that Eric had offered her a date. She had hope that he would do that for her at any given moment during that tour, but as long as they didn't do it there in upstate New York, she would be fine with it.

Within time, they landed there in Poughkeepsie and Sam recognized that shoulder length blonde hair under the lights of the airport.

“Bel!” she called her.

“Hey, Sam!” Belinda greeted her with a tight embrace: she had missed the way in which she smelled.

“Hey, Belinda!” Louie followed up from right behind them. Chuck rounded out the group hug from the left there.

“I've got to call my dad and tell him that we made over here in one piece,” Sam told them; and Belinda turned to Eric for a hug himself.

“Good plan, li'l Sammich,” Chuck said.

“Hey, when's Father's Day this year?” she asked him.

“Father's Day is the—eighteenth, I think? We're going down South then so we might not have a phone nearby.”

“I could just skip on it,” she suggested with a shrug of her shoulders.

“You forget and you become the girl who forgot Father's Day,” he told her. He lifted his gaze to right behind her and she turned around for a look back at him there. Those long black curls down around his shoulders and the little pile upon his head so it actually resembled to a crown of sorts.

“Joey!” Sam declared, and her heart hammered inside of her chest.

“Sam! I thought that was your caboose right there—” He extended his arms towards her; as she came closer to him, she noticed tears in his eyes. She held him so close and his lips grazed against the side of her neck, as soft as they had ever been before. The softest they had ever been before towards her.

It felt so long since she had touched him and felt his body pressed up against her own. He leaned into her face and pressed his lips to her own. His tongue slithered right into her mouth and she wondered where they were headed from that point onward.

She knew Alex stood there right behind them all the while but she didn't care. She had her arms around Joey's slender body and her lips locked onto his.

His brown eyes sparkled with life as he led her away from there.

“Where are they going?” she heard Belinda ask Alex right behind them. But she couldn't hear what he said to her given Joey led her all the way back to the little shops at the front of the airport.

“Joey, where are we going?” she asked him at one final point.

He led her into a gift shop which, had she not known any better, she swore was a lingerie shop. There was no one else in there with them: Joey guided her to the edge of the room, right behind a rack of snow globes. They were nestled back there on the freshly vacuumed carpet. No one else but them.

He put her lips to hers and he ducked down behind the snow globes. She followed suit to the floor with him.

“Fuck it,” he breathed into her ear. “Fuck it—just fuck me. Right here, right now. Right in front of everyone.”

She reached down and caressed the crotch of his jeans with three fingers. Joey whimpered right into her ear. She made out and had phony sex with two other men before then but she needed to do it for real right there with Joey himself. He fell to his knees before her and then he lay down on the soft clean carpet. His black curls sprawled out from underneath his head in those rich lush waves.

“Sit on me,” he begged her.

Two men who begged it from her and specifically from her of all people.

“Sit on my face,” he begged her, “sit on my face and let's get it on hot.”

She was about to lose her virginity with Joey. That rite of passage that everyone talked about and made such a huge deal about this whole entire time.

She set her courier bag down on the floor right there. She stripped off her jeans and took a seat right over the prominent tip of his nose.

The edge of his tongue slithered around on her lips as she spread her legs a bit for him. It was difficult given they were in the midst of a gift shop but they were tucked back in a small corner of it all. She could only hope that no one else would see or hear them as Joey licked harder for her.

She gasped as the feeling only persisted with him. She lifted up and took a seat on his hips. No one else around them, even there in broad daylight.

Joey gagged on something. He coughed a few times and covered his mouth with the full palm of his hand.

“Shhh,” she hissed to him, and with her finger up to her lips.

“Hello?” someone on the other side of the room called out.

“Damn it,” he groaned. “The next time we get a moment alone, I hope it's at the hockey rink.”

“Hello, hello?” the clerk called out again.

Sam lifted up and fixed her jeans with a bit of haste. Joey did the same before he sat up again right as she came back towards them.

“I've just got a hair on my tongue,” he explained to the woman, and Sam shook her head at that as she picked up her courier bag from the carpet. She paid no attention to what he was doing right then.

“We're alright, I promise,” Sam assured her as she held onto Joey's arm and led him back out of there, right as they met up with Belinda and Testament once again.

“What the hell was going on in there?” Eric demanded, and Chuck burst laughing when he saw Joey.

Sam finally turned around for a better look at him and the blush over his face and his tongue hanging out from his mouth like a dog.

“We're a thirsty boy,” she joked to them in a low voice, and Greg yelped out at that. Joey shook his head and blushed.

The seven of them made their way over to the hotel about a block from the theater, and all the while, he put his hand on her knee and even inside of her thigh. Testament's van remained right before them the whole way there and yet she wished to be in there with them, not because she wanted to get away from Joey but because she wanted to hang out with them some more.

They pulled up to a stoplight and he leaned in closer to her for a kiss on her neck. She returned the favor with a kiss on his lips and her hands on either side of his face.

He blinked several times once he pulled back from her and lunged ahead on the vast main road.

They climbed out of the car together—how Sam missed the humid lush feeling of upstate! But no sooner had she rounded the back end of the car when she felt his hand fondle up the seat of her pants.

“God, you're horny right now,” she groaned.

“I haven't seen my girl in so long,” he begged to her as he handed her her courier bag, her purse, as well as her travel bag. “I can't touch my girl? Like she has to cock block me?”

“Not in front of the boys,” she insisted; indeed, Testament had gotten out of their van; Belinda joined in from the car behind them as well.

“Besides,” he told her in a low voice, “I've gotta slip into sump'n a li'l more... dare I say, comfortable.” He flashed her a wink when he said that. “Also, Charlie should be up here like any time this evening. He wants you to meet someone.”

Sam raised her eyebrows at that. Now she knew the meaning behind the card Charlie had given her in the rehearsal space that previous time. Joey then leaned back into her face for a hearty kiss on the lips before he climbed back into his car again. Her heart swelled inside of her chest as he gave her a glimpse back and showed her a wink.

Given it was the middle of the last day before the brand new tour, she knew that Joey would be back for the show that following night, and perhaps her as well. She watched him go off when she felt a tap on her shoulder. She turned to find Greg right behind her with a little smirk on his face.

She turned around for a better look at the five of them plus Belinda.

“I think this hotel here has some billiards, Eric,” she said aloud as she hoisted her purse over her shoulder. The sound of billiards made Alex raise his eyebrows at Sam. She shook her head at that and he snickered.

Since it was the beginning of June there in upstate New York, it wasn't until seven o'clock when the sun began to hang low over the horizon, and when Sam finally called up Ruben to tell him that they had made it there to the East Coast.

“You kids have fun this summer,” he told her.

“Oh, we will,” she vowed as she lifted up her shirt and proceeded to change into something more comfortable herself.

Greg and Alex sat on either side of her at dinner time there in the wide open front lobby: every so often a gust of cool wind blew her black hair back and the bottom of her little low cut black blouse up so both of them could have a view of her belly. It also didn't help matters that she wore little black denim shorts all the while.

Eric and Belinda were still billiards while Louie had gone out there in town and Chuck and Tiffany sat on the far side of the open floor together, right underneath a television suspended on the wall.

Every so often, Greg gave his long dark hair a little toss back with a flick of his head so Sam could see the side of his neck. She never noticed the bit of five o'clock shadow there on his chin and all around his jaw line before. On the other hand, the thought of Joey with a bit of fuzz on his face tickled her a bit.

“Greg, you oughta put your hair up,” Alex suggested.

“Yeah, you'll look all stylish like a model,” Sam joked, which in turn made the both of them laugh out loud.

“I'm getting kinda hot, anyways,” Greg confessed.

“Hot as in thermally?” she asked him as he stood to his feet.

“Hot as in thermally, yeah,” he replied with a straight face, but it only made Alex chuckle. Greg flashed her a wink as he stepped away from their table and headed back inside of the hotel. Alex took one more bite of his chicken alfredo, and then he leaned back in his chair and ran his fingers through his dark hair followed by the tuft of gray.

“Stick a fork in me, I'm done,” he said, to which Sam picked up her fork and gently poked his belly with the tines. He flinched back which only made her giggle at him. She tried to gently poke him again and he flinched back to the edge of the chair some more. She pictured him being so cute with a bit of weight on his body: he was already on his way with the round shape of his face and those apple shaped cheekbones.

He then stopped. His eyes widened like a deer in the headlights. The warm soft color in his face drained away to that of old drywall. He looked as though he was about to vomit up his dinner right there.

“What?” she asked him, and he pointed across the floor. She turned her head and she looked on at the television screen.

“Tiananmen Square in Beijing,” he said, “a bunch of protests over there from people who want democracy. It's been going on for more than a full month now. They actually declared martial law over there just a couple weeks ago. Look at that guy!”

Her mouth stood agape as they watched a sole man stand in the middle of the street there in Beijing, right before a tank. When the tank moved out of the way of him, he moved to the side. They then both watched him climb up the side of the tank to the top hatch, and they gaped at each other. Alex returned to it and then he brought his hands to his mouth once more.

“Holy shit,” he blurted out; one of the few times Sam had ever heard Alex swear before her.

Thousands of Chinese took to the streets right there before their eyes against a backdrop of smoke and bullets. The crawlers on the top and bottom of the screen all read in Mandarin and given they were across the room, they couldn't hear it, but the horrified look on Alex's face told her everything she needed to know about it.

He shook his head and stood to his feet.

“What's the matter?” she asked him as she followed him outside to the impending darkness. “Alex?”

He bowed his head and hurried away from there: Sam followed right behind him, and then he finally stopped and turned towards her with a look of absolute pain on his face.

“I can't—I can't—that's just—no.”

Even in the darkness, she could see the tears in his eyes. She put her arms around him and held him so close to her.

“I want to help those poor people,” he wept. “They don't need that horse shit! They need to be free!”

“It's okay, Alex,” she told him in a hushed voice. “You do what you can. You do good, too. If it's any comfort at all, that worries me, too.”

He lifted his gaze to her and looked on at her like a lost puppy.

“That is a comfort to me,” he promised her. She pressed her hands to either side of his face and she put her lips to his. “As is that,” he added.

“Hey, guess what?”

“What?”

“We're alone again,” she said, and he glanced about the sidewalk.

“Yeah, we are. How appropriate.”

“You wanna hang out?” she offered him.

“Let's,” he replied with a little flutter of his eyelashes.

“You're knockin' me out with those lashes, boy,” she teased him.

“I should knock your ass out right now just for that,” he retorted to her.

“Knock my ass out right now with fuck all below the belt?”

He laughed at that, that big hearty laugh right from deep within his body. He lingered closer to her again.

“You really do what you can, Alex,” she repeated. “I can see you being such a force to be reckoned with in the music world with your voice.”

He showed her a sweet little smile and he lowered his eyelids a little bit. He showed her his tongue as well, as he ran the tip over those soft lips.

He then turned his head and he gestured to the other side of the lot, there of which stood a short alleyway.

“There's a spot right over there,” he told her in a low voice, and they ran across the parking lot, past Testament's van and past Anthrax's bus, both of which had been posted up at the curb. He rounded the corner first; once she joined him there he opened the buttons on his shirt a bit more so as to show off more of his chest to her. She thought back to when they took her to the field they scattered Cliff's ashes, except this time they were about to do it for real. The sole light came from a floodlight at the rim of the parking lot, but the distant glow from it was enough to soften his skin and make him appear fuller and rounder than before; full and round like the moon.

He grimaced at something.

“What's wrong?” she asked him.

“I've got an itch,” he complained.

“Huh?”

“I've got an itch!” A soft rustling sound emerged from the darkness between them.

“Where? I'll scratch it for you.”

“It's—It's—It's?” He chuckled at that. “It's—on my—I dunno if you know about any of this because you're a woman and whatnot—there's like this little tent that forms over the crotch of a guy's jeans when he sits for too long. The itch is literally right on my crotch.”

“Again, I'll scratch it for you,” she said.

“You just wanna touch my crotch,” he chided.

“Of course I wanna touch your crotch because it's nice and warm and very soft.”

“Not as soft as my ass, I would assume,” he teased her.

“Your ass is like a little pillow, Alex,” she retorted. “You know what else is like a little pillow is your tummy.”

“Eating so many ginger snaps,” he teased her as he patted his stomach. “Too many in fact.”

“How's that little vampire bite I gave you holding up, by the way?”

He lifted up his shirt and showed her that red mark the size of a dime right next to his belly button. His milky skin seemed to glow under the soft light behind him, and it glowed bright enough for her to see the mark for herself.

“Like a little branding of sorts,” he joked, and she giggled at that. To think it wasn't that long ago she and him didn't like each other that much. She put her arms up on his shoulders and he leaned back against the wall. She moved her face up to his and he parted his lips for her. The dim light softened his face, and those deep eyes, and that plume of gray over the right side of his brow: she still owed an encounter with Greg at some point during that tour, but for the time being she needed to be with Alex. She ran her fingers through his inky black hair and he tilted his head back a bit to show her his neck.

“C'mere, baby,” she whispered to him. “Come to mama, baby.”

“I'll come right here and right now,” he whispered back to her. “Just undo my pants for me 'cause they're a bit tight.”

She undid the button with both hands and then she reached down the front there. He was firming up but he needed a little bit of help.

Joey was actually down on the floor for her.

Alex meanwhile had his back to the wall for her.

“Yeah, just like that,” he breathed as her fingers caressed over his skin. “Yeah—Yeah—it's like squeezing a tube.” He gasped when she touched him a little bit too hard, but it brought a devilish smirk to her face.

“Harder?” she teased him.

“Harder—come on, you can do better than that. I know you can.”

“I want you on your back,” she commanded him; at the same time that was all she could think of with him. Something about his round face and those deep eyes whereby she wanted to see him down on the ground, splayed wide open all for her. “I want you on your back and I want you to beg for mercy.”

“Can't really lie down, though,” he whimpered as she touched him with a bit more pressure.

“I want to give it to you, though,” she said.

“Give it good and hard?”

“Extra hard. I know you like a little pain, baby.”

“I'm a bad boy and I need a good bit of punishing.”

“I'll punish you, alright,” she retorted back to him. It was as if they were ricocheting off of each other.

Alex's lanky fingers slithered down to the waist of her shorts and he yanked them off a bit. She undid the button on her shorts and she let them slide down her legs. Even in the darkness she could feel him right there right before her.

“I wanna know how you taste,” he whispered.

“Where?”

“You know. The place where the sugar bleeds out.”

“Oh, there. It might be hard to do that standing up, though.”

“I don't think so,” he whispered, and he dropped down from her face and down to her waist. She never went this far with Cliff before and thus to feel this right before her was almost alien to her. She could feel him taking off her underwear. She spread her legs a bit to help him out with it.

The feel of his tongue there sent a shiver up her spine.

“I think it's—it's—” he breathed. “This is like ten ginger snaps.”

He tickled her with his tongue. She could feel him going up inside of her with nothing more than that tongue. He slithered about like a hearty snake.

He then gasped for air and she shuddered from the feeling at the base of her spine.

“Whoa,” he groaned out.

“Yeah, you were digging deep there,” she sputtered: she was warm as a smoldering fire below the belt. Her nipples hardened on the inside of her bra.

“I want you to make me a mess,” he begged her. “I want you to do it, Samantha!”

He opened the rest of the buttons on his shirt for her and she put her arms around him. She thought back to when he was a sixteen year old boy and she had that fleeting thought about kissing him. She could do it for real at that point.

“Yeah, you like that, don't ya, big boy?” she breathed into his lips. She held back into an upright position and she gazed straight into those deep eyes right before her face.

It was like shedding skin with him. Even though she never saw anyone like that before, she did feel it within her with Alex right underneath her. She kept her knees on either side of his hips. It was just like Chuck, except she was really there for real that time around.

His back to the wall and her hands on his shoulders.

They stared right into each other's eyes as she ground down on him.

“You can go faster, you know,” he said without batting a lash.

So she did. He pressed his hands down on the wall behind him.

She held onto his shoulders a bit harder so she could go faster and harder on him.

A long time coming.

“Mmm—yeah, that's it right there,” Alex stammered. “Right there!” He closed his eyes and relished in the feeling between his thighs.

“Like that?” She thrust a little extra hard on him and he gasped again.

“Yes!”

“Like that!”

“Yes!”

“Like that!”

“YES!”

“LIKE THAT!”

“YES! EVERYTHING WITH A BITTA HUTZPAH RIGHT ON MY FAT ASS YES!”

She lifted off of him right as he came for her: as if she knew he was about to come right there. Out of breath, Alex's knees buckled and he slid down the wall a bit. Sam could feel something trickling down the inside of her legs.

“You're bleeding, my mistress,” he said in a broken voice. His bare chest heaved and he flashed her a shaky thumbs up. “I—I—that was everything I could've asked for...” He let out a whistle while she pulled up her panties and her shorts. She had a couple of pads in her purse back in the room, which meant she had to run back there with her legs together.

“Fuck me,” he breathed out.

“Okay!” Sam declared, and he burst out laughing at that, and then he followed it up with a soft moan from his throat. She stooped down for a better look into his face.

“D'you like that, baby?” she whispered. His knees quivered a bit as he stood back up to his feet; she caught him before he lost his balance.

“That was everything I ever imagined,” he said, still out of breath.

“Mmm—baby.” She put her arms around his waist.

“No one can ever know about us,” he said in a low voice, and she looked right into his round face and those eyes. He had never been so soft before. She had him right in the palm of her hand like a handful of jelly. She gave him another kiss right on the lips, albeit one that was quite a bit longer that time around. She slid her hand down his stomach, still very soft despite having slimmed down with time. Silky soft and very sweet, just how she liked him.

“Not a single soul, baby,” she breathed into his parted lips.

She bowed her a bit which in turn accentuated the sharpness of her brow to him, and through the dim light he showed her an exhausted little smile. And yet his eyes burned into her like the cherries on the ends of cigarettes.

She kept her legs pressed together as she headed back to her room for a shower and a fresh change into her clothes. Even though it was still early, she was ready for bed by the time Belinda returned to the room a bit tipsy; she dared not explain to her the blood on her underwear or why there was a few little specks on the bathtub there, and she could only say that it was nothing more than paint.

She went to bed early that night and woke up early the next morning, mainly from the sore feeling between her legs but also from the fact that she had gone to bed early that evening. She padded into the bathroom, and as she ran her hair brush through her dark hair, she looked on at the full figured woman in the mirror in front of her.

“Those two men are just something else,” she muttered as she shook her head. Even after she vowed to Alex that she would keep the whole thing a secret betweent the two of them, she knew that her clothes still smelled like both him and Joey. She picked up that low cut black blouse she wore on that first day there in upstate New York

“Bastards—both of them,” she said as she shook her head.

The spot between her legs was going to be sore from where she and Joey did it together, which in turn felt even more sore courtesy of Alex. But she dared not tell anyone about either encounter as she headed downstairs to fetch two cups of coffee and two plates of breakfast for both her and Belinda.

Alex was already up himself: he stood there before the buffet table with an empty plate in hand. When no one was looking, she reached down and slapped him right on the seat of his pants, to which he lurched forward. He turned around with a bewildered look on his face and then he flashed her a little grin.

“Yeah, you better take it easy on them ginger snaps, Alejandro,” she teased him, “if not a belly, you're starting to get a bit of junk in the trunk.”

“I've got junk in my trunk? What about junk on my junk?”

“Shhhh!”

She peered over her shoulder to ensure no one wasn't eavesdropping on them.

“I'll put a bit of junk on your junk soon enough,” she vowed to him in a husky voice, and he giggled at that.

“Sam!” Charlie's voice sailed from across the room.

“More on that later, baby,” she promised Alex in a soft whisper right into his ear. She bowed over to the other side of the room where Charlie sat across from a strange woman.

“Sam, this is Scarlett Valentine,” he introduced her, “—the artsy woman I was telling you about whom I introduced Marla to and almost singlehandedly got her foot in the door in the art scene.”

“Not quite,” Scarlett assured him in a big Queens accent much like Scott, “Marla still has to find a place to set up her works first. I also wouldn't say singlehandedly, either, as I had a bit of help, too.”

“Oh, so you're Scarlett!” Sam declared.

“That I am.” She showed her a friendly warm smile and a little glimmer in her eyes. She had a short straight bob of platinum blonde hair which fit her heart shaped face so she resembled to a queen of hearts, and she wore a smart dark red bathrobe over her pajamas.

“I'd have to go back up to my room to fetch you my journal, though,” Sam told her with a shrug.

“That's okay,” Scarlett assured her. “Charlie was just about to get the both of us a cup of coffee each.” Charlie himself shrugged and blushed from the attention on him.

Even with her legs sore, Sam still bowed back up to her room for her journal. Each step made her heart pound faster and faster in her chest. It was really happening: someone who had a lead in the New York art scene could perhaps help her out.

Soon, she returned to the lobby.

It almost felt as though she was about to display herself naked in front of an audience as she opened the journal to that drawing of Medusa. Charlie gaped at the sight of it where Scarlett examined those fine lines and those bright colors as if she inspected buried treasure.

“What do you think?” Sam asked her.

“This is brilliant,” she breathed, “utterly beautiful—just takes my breath away.” She sat upright so she had a bit of distance between herself and the page. “Very unique style, too, like it stands out from a mile away.”

She turned to Sam with a twinkle in her eye.

“You are going to be the next big thing in the art scene, Miss Shelley,” she said, and the excited smile crossed her face all the while. “In New York and maybe elsewhere as well.

“You sure about that?” Sam asked her, to which Scarlett nodded; she never imagined anyone using those words on her before, let alone someone whom she had just met through Charlie.

“What did Frankie and I tell you when we first met?” he recalled as he took a sip of coffee.

[feverinfeveroutfic]

chapter twenty four: sextape

Ruben's new house overlooked the Bay waters, about a block away from the harbor and within range of Alex's parents' neighborhood. If nothing, Sam could walk in between both of their houses. Her father kept his promise and made up a bed for her in that spare room; the dream catcher was back at her mother's house but she knew that she could sleep well knowing that Alex and his parents weren't too far from there. She lay down on the bed that first time around with her feet up against the wall opposite her and she envisioned Alex right next to her.

It felt so strange given she had reached the middle of her twenties and yet she found herself back home with her parents once more. New York felt like a whole other strange world once again, even with her couch still back there.

“I want my couch,” she muttered under her breath at one point. “I miss my couch.”

Then again, she felt like a teenager again, as if she was given another chance at it. There was a boy who lived down the street from her whom she had traded saliva with before and she was trading in between living with her mother and her father, and yet she still had a place to go with her old friends back home in New York. The sole difference was she had reached twenty four rather than fourteen.

She stayed with Ruben for about a week and then she made the trip down to Catalina on the bus and stayed with Esmé for about another few days before she made yet another trip up to the Bay Area. She knew that she would have to settle on some place at some point given the sheer extent of traveling and her feeling as though that things could be better once again: the bus rides through the Central Valley were rather tedious as well and she wondered how in the world Alex made that seven hour car ride so entertaining for himself the day he picked her up from the side of the road.

At some point, right before her next stay on Catalina and there was a longer stop than usual before the end of the line in San Pedro, she spotted a little art shop near the Santa Monica pier and she stepped off of there before the usual one. She knew she would miss the ride back and thus she ran along the sidewalk to that shop up the block. She held onto the top of that fedora Alex had given her with one hand and the courier bag he and his parents had made for her with the other hand. She was about to walk right into an art shop with the Skolnick name right at her back.

Her old journal had been falling apart at the seams for a time at that point, more so than when she and Alex were up at Glenbrook together. She only had one sheet of paper left anyway: she also took his advice and broke down on some page protectors.

A brand new journal, a new set of pencils, and a new chapter of life all for a small price.

She had to run back to the bus stop but she missed it regardless of anything, however. She knew in her heart that her leaving the bus was more than worth it. She stood there under the protective awning with her new tools tucked away in her courier bag and the fedora high upon the crown of her head, and her sunglasses rested upon the bridge of her nose.

Within time, the next bus came and she finished the trip down to San Pedro and she caught the next boat over to Catalina Island.

She had reached there about half an hour later than she had intended with her mother, but she explained it with a mere showing of her courier bag to Esmé.

Sam stayed there at the house for a full night and then the next day, for most of the morning, she had the house to herself. There was only thing she could do, since Alex hadn't given her his number. She dialed that old familiar number once more and she brought the cordless up to her ear.

“Hello?”

That familiar upstate accent.

“Joey?”

“Oh, hi,” he greeted her with a crackling on his end. “I was just thinking about you.”

“Were you now?”

“I was thinking about—how beautiful you are.”

“You're funny, Joey,” she told him as she twirled a lock of hair around her finger.

“But it's true, though,” he said with a clearing of his throat. “I was thinking about how beautiful you really are. Where are you right now?”

“Catalina. My mom's over in Avalon right now, so I have the whole house to myself at the moment.”

“God, I miss that island. It was so cool there.”

“It really is! I love it here. But you know—I love New York, too.”

“I wish you were here, too...” His voice trailed off.

“Are you drunk?” she asked him.

“No? Why would I be?”

“Because you were that one night when Chuck, Alex, Marla, and I were at your place.”

“I wasn't, though,” he pointed out. “I was more starving than I was drunk off my ass.”

“You smelled like booze, too.”

“Sure, I may have had a drink or two over the course of that day. But I wasn't drunk, though. I was lucid—I'm sure you remember me.”

“Yes, I do. How could I forget, really.”

“Sam, I wasn't drunk. I promise you that I was not drunk.”

“What was in that needle, by the way?”

“The needle I used to inject myself with?”

“Yeah, what was in there?”

There was a prolonged pause, such that Sam moved her head forward and her eyes darted about the floor in front of her.

“Joey? Are you there?”

“Yeah.”

“What was in the syringe, Joey?”

“Black—tar—heroin.”

She raised her eyebrows at that.

“Heroin,” she echoed in a soft voice.

“Black tar. It's extra raw so you get a heftier high from it—I guess it makes you sick, too. I didn't tell you—when we were in Europe—you know, when you, Marla, Belinda, and Aurora were with us—Frankie and I did a little bump of cocaine. I gave it up because it made my nose itch like crazy—he might still be doing it as far as I know, but I did it because it was there. But I tried out black tar because it's hefty in its numbing abilities.”

“Why would you want to numb yourself, though?” she asked him, concerned.

“Because I was in a lot of pain then, Sam. You weren't around to comfort me. I had to comfort myself somehow.”

“Charlie told me that they just wanted you to have a break, though, Joey,” she pointed out. “They just wanted a break, too.”

“Is that all?”

“Yeah. Which means—someone's not telling me the whole truth. I don't know if there was a lack of communication or you had something in mind.”

“I guess I just misheard him,” Joey confessed with a sigh.

“I think you did. That's—why I asked you if you were drunk.”

“I think I was just—in the moment then when he called me at the time.”

“In the moment of what?”

Another pause, albeit one that was even longer as a result of that.

“Joey?” she called out to him. “Joey, are you there?”

He cleared his throat, but he didn't say anything further. Just a soft buzzing noise on his end.

“Joey?”

“Picture me there next to you,” he started in a husky voice, “I've got my pants unbuttoned. I'm coaxing you to come on closer to me.”

She froze right in place. “I'm picturing,” she told him in a low voice.

“Come on closer to me,” he begged her, “come on closer and put your hands down the front of my jeans and touch me there. Touch me there, and I'll return the favor to you.”

“Where?” she asked him.

“Keep your voice down.”

“Where?” she asked him again, that time in a near whisper; Esmé was still out of the house and she was in her room, but she had to do it for him.

“Right below the equator. Right inside that lovely bit of sugar you got there. Just give ya a li'l fingerin'.”

“And what if I don't touch you?”

“You use your mouth on me. Use your mouth and then get on top of me.”

“I ride on top?”

“Yes. Right—on top.”

She thought about the tape that she and Chuck had recorded to send out to Bill. She wondered if he had it with him at that point and the whole entire thought of it made her heart hammer inside of her chest from that point onward.

“Should I top it off with a kiss to you after that?” she asked him as she ran her tongue along her top row of teeth.

“Please,” he insisted, still in a low husky voice. “And then I want you to climb the other way around with me.”

“So you can—”

“Put my tongue inside of you, yeah.”

“Oh, my, Joey—what if I wanted to squeeze your ass, like a couple of ripe oranges?”

“What if you wanted to squeeze my ass?”

“How would you like that?”

“I'd like that very much. I'd probably squeeze yours, too—”

There was a click on his end; she also heard the front door close right behind her.

“Hang on, I'm getting another call,” he told her.

“My mom's home, too.”

“Oh, shit! Yeah, you don't wanna get caught talking like this in front of her. I'll talk to you later, though.”

“Joey?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you, too. I'm glad my own sour stomach was weak enough to keep me from injecting that horrible, horrible shit, otherwise I never would've heard your voice again.”

She smiled at that, and then the two of them hung up at the same time.

His words stayed with her the whole week she was on Catalina, and even more so when she took the bus ride back up the Valley to the Bay Area. The first thing she did was visit the studio to see how Testament was doing, especially with her father being a part of their team now.

Sam pushed open the front door, which hung slightly ajar, so she could hear Alex plucking his guitar and Chuck laughing at something. Even from outside, she was growing familiar with his guitar tone and the elaborate, melodic way in which he played. She rounded the corner to find him there at the sound board, with that red guitar rested upon his lap and with his hair brushed to where it was rather frizzy and fuzzy and stood every which way.

“Hey, you,” she greeted him.

“Hey!” he greeted back to her, complete with a lopsided little smile. Her gaze wandered over to the sound board, where she spotted a series of tapes there, all which had the words “signed and sealed” inscribed on one side.

“Are you guys done?” she asked him, stunned.

“Yeah, it's all been recorded,” he told her, “well, Greg and Louie's parts are, anyway. Eric and I have to put down the guitar work, and then Chuck has to lay down vocals and then it all goes into mixing and mastering.”

“Don't you guys also have to play the songs together, too?” she asked him.

“Yeah, we do! We do that—in about a month or so, or whenever our residency is up anyways. It's like the last thing we do is perform the songs live in studio.”

She looked about the room around them: no one else in there with them, even with the door to the pool room wide open.

“I keep thinking about our encounter in the pool room,” she said to him in a low voice.

“You know, I don't really have a memory of it,” he confessed. “I mean, I sorta do? But it's rather vague, though. All I remember is feeling you up against my body and the next thing I knew, I woke up and I had that strange hickey on my neck. I never had one of those before, but when I took a better look at it, I thought 'is that what I think it is?' Sure enough it was. Again, my memory is real hazy but I do have somewhat of it, though.”

“And we made a pinky promise to one another that we wouldn't speak about it to anyone, either,” she added.

“I do remember that,” he told her with a raise of his eyebrows. “I remember that pretty clearly.”

“Because you puked it all up.”

“I puked it all up but I was still kind of fuzzy in the head, though. But I do remember that part, though. I remember feeling your finger on me, too.”

“I should tell you that you are quite the kisser,” she told him.

“I think you are, too,” he said with a little squint to his eyes. “I can still taste you. Even after all the water I drank up after the fact, I can still taste you on my tongue.”

“Do you remember what else I told you?” she asked him in a soft voice.

“Something about—me being perfect or something along those line?”

“How I want to protect you from things, especially other women.”

“Women are not things, though, Samantha,” he said in a singsong voice and with a wag of his finger. “You ought to know that. You're a woman yourself.”

“Of course,” she retoreted as she rolled her eyes. “But what I mean is I want to protect you, Alex. I think it might be from you being younger than me.”

“Could be. Or it could be the fact that you're out here in California again and your boyfriend is back in New York still.”

“You were a bit drunk, though,” she pointed out.

“I was drunk and feeling every inch of you all over me, like it's some kinda hallucinogen.”

“I kind of wanna tape your mouth shut now,” she admitted.

“Why?” he chuckled at that.

“Tape over your mouth and give you what for below the equator.”

He raised his eyebrows at that, but she realized that he was looking past her. Sam turned around and there was no one behind her.

“I thought I saw Eric back there,” he said as she turned back around and faced him straight on. “Anyways, you wanna tape me up and give me a little something down south?”

“Yes!”

“Lemme ask you this, Samantha—where did all this come from?”

“Hanging out with you and Chuck and Eric and Greg and Louie. That's what.”

“Nah, I'm sure you were feeling like this with Joey and all those guys back East.”

She eyed the veins in his lanky arms: they seemed much more slender, sinewy, and toned than before, as if he had worked out this whole entire time. She brought her gaze up to his face and those deep eyes that she had seen from a whole mile away from the coast line.

“I'll tell you this, though, Alex,” she told him, “—you are nice and soft. For a strong little guy, you sure have the softest body. Like cuddling with a little teddy bear. Or a little pillow.”

“Hey, I ain't little,” he scoffed with a toss of his black hair and a wag of his finger. “If you and I ever get together at some point again in the future—and things get extra passionate between us—I'll show you what I mean.”

She froze for a second, and then she realized what he was talking about. And then she showed him her tongue.

“You are a dirty little boy, aren't you,” she teased him.

“Again—I ain't little. And I might have to wash anyways—I'll be right back.”

He stood up and slung his guitar off of his shoulder, and then he walked on out of there, and into the next room. Given he said that within junction of itself, she wondered if he was actually going to do just that. She turned to the tapes on the sound board, those completed tapes, already recorded and ready to be pieced together for the new album.

A familiar woman's voice caught her ear right then, and she turned for a look to the door of the pool room. She recognized that jet black hair, which had been cut extra short and flipped about at the back of her head. She had put on a bit of weight from carrying two babies, but her protruding belly told Sam that there was something else now.

“Hey! Aurora!” She was stern.

“Sam!” Aurora's face lit up but Sam's arms folded across her chest took that look of joy away as quickly as it came. Eric and Alex stopped right in their tracks in the doorways right there on either side of them: the room fell silent as a result.

They hadn't spoken since that fateful New Year's Eve, but the wounds were still raw with Sam. Aurora glanced back at Eric, who stood there in the doorway of the pool room; he looked as though he was about to head back in there but he never did. She returned to Sam with a serious look on her face.

“Listen—I feel terrible,” she confessed. “I feel so terrible for what I did, for leaving you and the girls behind. But—I have a family now. It's hard for me to focus sometimes—and it was especially then, too. My brain just—wasn't firing on all cylinders. Really, I feel terrible, Sam. I can't believe I did that to you.”

“I see you already have another bun in the oven,” Sam grumbled; she swore that Aurora just had twins that past summer.

“I do, yes. I'm sure you know—I love my daughters. I love Emile. But I also love you, though. I love you and I miss you. And like I said, I feel terrible.” She paused for a moment. “If you're going to blame anyone, blame me.”

Sam parted her lips to say something but no sound came out. Instead, Aurora lowered her gaze and she turned away. Sam's mind went blank and then she turned to Eric and Alex there in the doorways, and the both of them looked so small at the sight before them. Eric then stepped out of the way to let Marla through: her hair still in that neon green, but she carried a small bundle in her arms.

“Our daughters,” Aurora explained, “Phoebe and Elizabeth—I just brought Phoebe with me. Emile's caring for Elizabeth back home right now. I don't know what this baby'll be next but I'm eager to meet him or her.”

She turned to Marla.

“What were you gonna do?”

“I was just take her outside to the porch,” Marla replied as she nodded to the doorway around Alex. “It's kind of stuffy in here and smells like beer.” Alex himself grimaced at that; he stepped out of her way and Aurora followed suit.

Sam, Alex, and Eric congregated there in the middle of the floor; she then turned to Eric.

“I feel like I haven't seen you in a million years,” she told him. “How are you?”

“I'm good, thank you!”

“We're on a roll lately,” Alex said with a glimmer in his eye.

“Hell yeah, we are, my brother.” Eric bumped his fist, and then Alex returned to the sound board for his guitar; Sam peered out the doorway at the sight of Marla and Aurora taking their seats on the porch. There was a small shrub right there at the rim, one decorated with big hot pink flowers. Sam had seen those flowers all over California, especially all over the southern region of the state.

“I don't like those flowers,” she told Eric in a low voice.

“What, those pink ones?”

“Yeah.”

“Why's that?”

“Those are oleanders. They're poison, Eric.”

“Oh, shit.”

“Yeah, look how close they are to them, too.”

Eric cleared his throat.

“Marla,” he called out. “Marla—”

“Just a second,” she told him off, and she adjusted the bundle in her arms, and then she returned to Aurora. “Anyways—”

“Marla!” Eric insisted.

“Just a second, Eric!” she insisted, and she turned back to Aurora. “What was I saying?”

“MARLA!”

She rotated in the chair and fully faced him with Aurora's daughter cradled in her arms.

“What do you want, Eric?” she demanded.

“Get away from that bush!” Sam declared.

“What, this bush right here?” Marla gestured to the hot pink flowers right behind her.

“Yes, those are oleanders—they're poison,” she advised her.

“Oh, shit—” Marla yanked Phoebe away from there.

“Yeah, go wash—” Sam proclaimed, and she and Eric looked at one another, horrified. Marla hurried off of the porch and headed back inside of the short corridor before them and into the bathroom. Aurora lifted up her chair and inched away from there.

“That was close,” Eric said as he headed back to the pool room.

“For real!” Sam returned to Alex, who had taken his seat there once again and played around with the volume on his guitar. He raised his head and showed her a soft expression.

“I feel like if you go back to New York now,” Alex told her in a low voice, “you'll be seen as a hick.”

“Why's that?”

“Because you're in touch with nature,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders, “I dunno, just something about being in a place like New York and knowing about things like oleanders.”

“That's probably why I loved upstate so much,” she recalled in a soft tone.

“There's also—this is just from what I've seen traveling through there and from touring—like a bluntness with New York, too. You like things that are nice and soft. It's okay, though—my dad tells me that time makes you stronger as it passes along.”

“I'll buy that,” she said, “I definitely feel stronger now than I was five years ago, before I moved to New York in the first place.”

“Don't blame ya,” he told her with a shake of his head and the little gray tuft over his head waved about like a little flag. “Five years—you've been through a lot, Samantha.”

“I really have,” she said in a low voice. “I really genuinely have, Alex.”

Louie strode past them right then with little black gloves on his hands. He gave his hair a slight toss back and showed her a grin.

“Poison garden,” she declared.

“Poison mother fuckin' garden,” he echoed her as part of his greeting and he gave her a bump of the fist.

“I don't know what that means,” Alex confessed, “but poison garden!”

Sam and Louie burst out laughing at that.

“When we were on a road trip together,” she explained to him, “we talked about starting a garden that's consisted of nothing but poison plants.”

Alex froze for a second, and then he burst out laughing, and then he looked on at her with a mortified look on his face.

“Poison plants? Like—deadly nightshade and—”

“Oleanders, too,” Louie added.

“Yeah, we discussed oleanders,” Sam continued, “mainly because they grow like weeds in the south land in particular. But yeah, deadly nightshade, oleanders, strychnine, among others. You can join us if you so wish, Alex.”

“I'd rather have a stake in it, thank you,” he said with a nervous chuckle.

“A stake in poison!” Louie declared. “Right on.”

“A stake in poison and sex tape,” Sam blurted out, to which Alex shushed her, but Louie had already walked away at that point. Marla returned out of the bathroom, still with the bundle in her arms.

"Marla!" Sam called out to her, and she padded closer to the doorway.

"Did Bill ever get the thing?" Marla hesitated for a second and then her face lit up.

"He did, as a matter of fact! Dave called me right before I flew out here and he said 'the eagle has landed.'"

"Hell yeah," Alex declared with a mischievous grin on his face.

"By the way," Sam added, "you look like a mom holding that baby in your arms." She turned to Alex. "Wouldn't you agree, Alex? She looks like a mom."

"Yeah, even with the green hair," he said.

Marla shrugged her shoulders.

"I dunno 'bout that," she confessed. "I've never felt like mommy type like with Aurora back here. But, I'll take that as a compliment, though. Thanks, guys." She showed them a smile before she ducked back onto the porch.

"Speaking of mommies," Alex said under his breath, and Sam took a glimpse over at him.

"What'd you say?" she asked him.

"Nothing." And he continued plucking and messing with the dials.

[feverinfeveroutfic]

chapter twenty: practice what you preach

Sam awoke to the feeling of Alex's little body nestled up right next to her. At some point, over the course of the night, she inched closer to him and he had put his arm around her once again. She slid her foot back towards that edge of the bed only feel to it was icy cold from the nightfall. Indeed, the entire house was cold from the night and the induction of the Bay Area fog outside.

Even with the daybreak, the Bay Area was still dark and cold from the dead of winter. She cuddled closer to him like they did in the back seat of the car: the sole difference was that a full inch of rain had fallen all over San Francisco overnight rather than something over a foot of snow. But she shivered regardless of the covers over her body.

There was a loud clank at the front of the house, followed by a pair of soft voices.

Alex groaned in his throat at the sound and Sam opened her eyes. His face remained right before her own: the tip of that aquiline nose about an inch from her cheekbone. Those sharp eyebrows as smooth as stone, and that skin as pale and smooth as the very snows that chased them away from Lake Tahoe. Even though he lay flat on his back, he had rolled his head over the top of the pillow and thus that little tuft of gray hung right above her eyes. For a moment there, upon her opening her eyes, she swore that he was a small boy once again, especially given they were in his old bedroom and they lay underneath all of those old posters from when he was a kid and in high school.

A part of her wanted to stroke his face, just to feel that smooth delicate skin and really find out if it was that smooth and soft as it looked. But she decided not to as he stirred a bit and rolled his head back a bit so she could only see the side of his face. She kept her eye on his chin and the delicate tight skin underneath; followed by the curvature of his lips, and then she fixated on his prominent nose and his high features, as stark and aged as stone in spite of his youth.

Young and old at the same time.

She nibbled on her bottom lip as he fetched up a sigh and held still right there next to her. She had kept her hand on something soft. It wasn't his hipbone.

“Alex!” Arlene called from the front of the house. “Alex! Samantha!”

Sam dared not move her hand lest he wake up to it instead of his mother's voice.

“Hey, kids!” Jerry followed up. Alex stirred again but he never awoke. Sam kept her lips pursed together, and she wondered if a certain small movement of her hand would do anything more for him.

“Breakfast is ready!” Arlene called out once again.

Once she had said that, Sam could feel the hunger within her as it gnawed away at the inside of her stomach. She wanted to move her hand but then again Alex still hadn't moved a single muscle. She held onto something soft and warm and she had no clue if it was actually his body or something else.

“Alexander Nathan Skolnick!” Arlene spat.

And he popped his eyes open at that, and he stared straight up above to the ceiling. Sam never moved a muscle.

“Is that your hand,” he asked her in a flat tone of voice.

“I don't even know where my hand is,” she confessed.

“Are you guys awake?” Arlene followed up.

“Yes, Ma!” Alex shouted which in turn made Sam grimace a bit. “Sorry,” he told her in a low voice. “Anyways, that better be your hand.”

“It's on your body, I know that much.”

He rolled his head over the top of the pillow again, that time with squinted eyes.

“Ma?” Arlene laughed.

“Ma and Pa,” Jerry called out, which in turn made Alex roll his eyes, but Sam giggled at them. She moved her hand and she realized that she had grabbed a handful of blanket, much to their confusion.

“What the hell was on me, then?” Alex asked her as she rolled out of bed.

“My arm, maybe?”

“Could be. But I could've sworn that it was your hand, though.” He followed her out of bed and, even though she put her jeans back on, he kept his shirt off as he walked with her into the front of the house, much to Arlene's shock as she brought over the plates of fresh matzo and sausage patties.

“Alex! What're ya doin'? Put your shirt on!”

“He feels better without a shirt, Mrs. Skolnick,” Sam told her as she took her seat next to Jerry at the kitchen table.

“I'm getting cold just looking at him, though,” Arlene insisted as she handed Sam a cup of coffee. “How do you like your coffee, by the way?”

“A little bit of cream,” she replied.

“Always start out with cream.” She shook her head with a smile but then she looked on at Alex with a slight sneer on her face.

“It's fine, Mom, I promise,” Alex pointed out as he ran his hands down his forearms. His pale skin seemed to glow under the kitchen lights as if made entirely of snow; once she took her spot across from him, he hunched his shoulders a bit. Indeed, it was rather cold in the house and the heater seemed to have a bit of trouble in picking up from underneath the metallic vent on the floor next to Jerry. His jet black hair flowed over his shoulders like little tentacles; his nipples tightened and goose pimples crossed over the skin on his waist. He was cold but Sam was sure that he wanted to be without a shirt, much like she wanted to be without a bra until they went out again.

“Alex—baby—go put a shirt on,” Arlene encouraged him.

“Go brush your hair, too, son,” Jerry told him, and Alex let out a sigh and then he stood up and ducked out of the kitchen.

“I also promised my mom I'd call her when I got here,” Sam said once he left.

“Oh, yes, definitely do that!” Arlene told her. “Phone's right over there over the stove, bubbeleh.”

Sam rounded the table and she stepped over to the little black telephone there on the wall next to the stove. She dialed her mother's number and she held the receiver to her ear. One ring, two rings—

“Hello, hello?” Esmé answered in a broken voice.

“Hi, Mom.”

“Oh! Sam! Thank heaven! I was just starting to get worried about you and Alex because you hadn't called me.”

“We got snowed in up at Tahoe the night before last,” she explained, “like we got to Carson City and then I took him up to the southern edge of the lake and it started snowing. It was nighttime by then, too, so we just buttoned up for the night and waited for the snow to stop. When it did, we went up to Incline Village for breakfast and now we're at his parents' house in Berkeley. Spent the night here last night.”

“Oh, good! Thank heaven. What matters is you kids are safe and both are in one piece. Also, I got a letter from Joey believe it or not. Just last night.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, he brought it over to me, like he must've seen me from across the room—we were in the grocery store in Long Beach.”

“Greg brought it to you,” she said aloud.

“Yeah—and Joey said he's going to meet you down at the harbor when you get down here again, whenever that may be.”

“I dunno, to be honest with you, Mom, because I have no idea what Alex and his parents are going to do.”

“Oh, no, wait, it says he's going to meet you there later today.”

“Today?”

“Yeah. No idea what time exactly, but he did say the day after New Year's, though.”

Sam fetched up a sigh. On one hand, she wanted Joey to have at least called her about it. But then again, he didn't know where she had gone off to and he didn't know where Alex and his parents lived there in Berkeley, either.

She bode her mother farewell for the time being, and she returned to Jerry and Arlene there at the table.

“My mom told me that I have a little something waiting for me down in Long Beach,” she told them, “which means I have to be down there today.”

“Aw, you're leaving us, bubbeleh?” Arlene looked hurt by that.

“I'm afraid so. And what does that mean, too?”

“What, 'bubbeleh'?”

“'Little doll', right?” Alex joined in from behind them; Sam thought about Belinda and if she and Marla had gone back home at that moment.

“Yeah! I used to call him that when he was little, because he was just this little doll of a little boy.”

Alex took his seat right next to Sam, now wrapped up in a long black shirt with a white square on his chest: it looked as though he had attempted to brush his hair but he never went further than his bangs, which started to grow out rather long: the bottoms brushed upon that sharp brow to where the longest tips began to obscure his eyes and make them appear even deeper than before.

“Have you heard of Run DMC?” he asked her as he gestured to his chest.

“I have now,” she told him.

“Oh, man! You've got so much to learn, Samantha.”

“So much to learn and so much to give, too,” Jerry followed up to that.

“Give it all to our boy over here,” Arlene chimed in with a hearty little chuckle.

“Oy vey,” Alex muttered as he took another bite of fresh matzo ball.

Sam stayed there and relished her cup of coffee and her spot at the table between Jerry and Alex. But she knew that she would have to pick up her things again and head on over to the airport, and by Alex's direction no less.

By around ten o'clock in the morning, and a few holes had broken through on the fog bank over the Bay Area, Alex changed back into a fresh pair of jeans and Sam had put her bra back on, albeit in the bathroom. Even from the other side of the house, she caught the sound of Alex's voice in the kitchen. Even with his parents, he still stood out like a sore thumb and he had the big booming voice to boot on top of it. Indeed, even when he stood next to his band mates, he seemed to dwarf them, especially Chuck who loomed up close to his height.

But then she thought about Joey and the fact that he had confessed to her even through a drunken stupor.

She wondered what he had in store for her as she headed out of the bathroom and made her way back to Alex's room for her purse, and then she walked back up the hall, towards the front foyer for her shoes and her jacket. Alex glanced over at her.

“Oh, there she is,” he said in a low voice, and he turned to front door for the same things as well. He took his seat next to her there on that little velvet bench and they laced up together. He put on his jacket and he reached into his pocket for the car keys.

“Come back any time, bubbeleh,” Arlene told her, and she put her arms around her.

“I'm sure I will!” Sam declared with a big bold laugh.

“Be safe and give your mother a hug for us,” Jerry added as he embraced her as well.

“I shall, Mr. Skolnick,” she promised; he put his arm around Alex at the same time.

“Li'l group hug!” he chuckled. “I'll be back.”

“You behave,” Arlene advised him in a low voice, and he made a soft little whimper at that.

Alex led Sam back outside to the car and that time, he climbed in behind the wheel.

“I really do like your parents, Alex,” she told him once they got rolling.

“I just—I feel like they were putting me on the spot the whole time,” he confessed.

“In your defense, they kinda were,” she said, “like especially when we were in the back room and you were showing me that riff, and you couldn't finish it.”

“Yeah, and I don't like being interrupted, either,” he added.

“I still like them, though. I like your dad, especially. I mean, he told me to come to him for anything school related. I like that.”

“Thank you for that,” he told her. “When I was growing up, a lot of people didn't, because they're New Yorkers and they're scary smart collegiate professors and everybody thought their raising my brother and me like that screwed us up.”

“Hey, at least they aren't from a strict religion,” she pointed out, which in turn made him chuckle.

“No, they aren't! I'd rather they be fully educated anyways.” He paused for a moment as they pulled up to a stoplight.

“By the way, are you thinking of continuing on with school? 'Cause—it looks like you didn't finish.”

“I didn't, no.” She shrugged her shoulders. “I don't really know, if I'm honest with you, Alex.”

The light turned green and they fell back into silence all the way over to the airport, all for the next flight out to Los Angeles. A quick one way ticket and the two of them walked together to the gate, both of them as silent as ever. It would be another minute before the gate opened and thus Sam turned to him and the gentle look on his face, the most gentle she had seen him.

He put his arms around her and held her close to his slender body. Still very soft from the two nights together.

“Give your mom a hug for me,” he told her in a hushed voice.

“Gladly,” she vowed to him. More people congregated behind them in anticipation of the flight.

“Also,” he added, “um—look for our last name in your mom's mailbox around the—middle of the month, give or take.”

“Oh?”

He showed her a shy, small smile in response to that. Sam stood still before him, slightly befuddled, but then she realized what he was telling her.

“I'll be on the lookout,” she promised him, and she wondered what it was exactly that Joey had in store for her.

“You better get going,” he encouraged her in a low voice, and she turned her attention to the gate behind her. Everyone behind them proceeded to board the plane.

“February, you said?” she asked him.

“Right on the first! Please join us.”

“I'll see you soon,” she told him.

“You, too,” he said. “Safe travels.” For a second, she swore that he winked at her. But then she picked up her things and headed over to the gate, and she boarded the plane with everyone else. She peered over her shoulder at the sight of him there with his hands tucked in his jeans pockets and the somber look on his face. The tuft of gray hair stood high over the right side of his brow like a little icicle. Those eyes locked onto her one last time before she turned away and headed down the terminal corridor; she then boarded onto the plane in silence.

And that whole entire time she never came across her father anywhere in the Bay Area: yet another thing she had to address to her mother once she was back down south.

She took that flight headed for Los Angeles once more, and soon thereafter she would board the boat down to Santa Catalina Island. She was bound to return to New York at one point regardless of anything else simply to visit Joey in upstate and to lay on her couch once again.

Over the course of that ninety minute flight, she thought about Alex's behavior over the course of their entire trip. It all worked out so perfectly with them even when she intended on nothing more than to improvise on it all. That was it right there: her first window into Alex and her confirmation on what Louie had said to her on the ride down the California coast. He had shown a new side to him, but she swore that she had a long way to go with him.

Add to this, she had a long way to go with Joey as well. She gazed out the window to the snow covered mountain tops down below: on the other side was the vast stretch of desert that seemed to go on out East for eternity. She and Alex had rode up that desert together all alone: on the other side of the plane, even though she couldn't see it from her seat, the Coastal Range and the coastline itself loomed down below the plane.

An hour later, and she landed just outside of Long Beach, where Joey himself awaited her there outside of the gate. His brown eyes appeared a bit lazier than usual but he showed her that familiar lopsided grin once she rounded the corner.

She hurried up to him with her arms wide open.

They embraced each other and he planted his lips onto hers.

“God, I missed you,” he confessed to her.

“Where's Krista?” she asked him in a near whisper.

“She went back home to Kansas City. I think she got the message.” He flashed her a wink at that.

And with nothing more to add, he led her out of the airport and back over to the docks for the next large boat over to Catalina. It was a cold, blustery day there in Long Beach, such that he lingered closer to her as they awaited their ride: the gray waters out before them chopped and shortened up with the cold winter winds around them.

She could feel his fingers right on the seat of her pants, and she showed him a mischievous smile as a result.

Indeed, once they boarded the boat, he kept one hand on her knee the whole twenty two miles. At one point, he slid his hand up the inside of her thigh, and she playfully slapped the back of his hand at the feeling. He showed her another lopsided grin at that.

Within time, the harbor outside of Avalon emerged in their view: all the usual little boats and yachts around the place had docked up for the New Year and also for the storm that had passed through. Esmé awaited them at the far end of the dock, wrapped up in a little sweater and with her cat eye glasses perched upon the bridge of her nose all the while.

“There are my babies,” she declared once they came within earshot; she embraced Sam so tight that she swore that she would cut off her circulation. Joey let Sam take the front seat and they drove back to the house.

Once they had made their way inside, Esmé continued on back to her bedroom for something, but that left Sam and Joey some time alone together.

“Alone at last,” he said as she guided him into her bedroom. She nudged the door shut, but she left it ajar a bit by a sliver the width of her pink nail.

“So how was your road trip?” he asked her once he peeled off his jacket, followed by his shirt. He tossed both on the chair in the corner of the room, and then he lunged for the bed.

“Exciting and quite the adventure,” she told him as she took off her jacket and her shirt. She unhooked her bra and left it on the floor next to her feet.

“An adventure like what we're about to have?” he asked her in a husky voice; she climbed up next to him but she never moved any closer to him. There had to be something here, something more just to get her going.

“Joey, we're in my bed,” she whispered to him.

“So? Let's get it on, Sam I am. I should tell you—State of Euphoria went gold.”

“Oh—Oh, Joey. Mister Lead Singer.”

She set one hand on the side of her and then she lowered herself down on top of him, and she placed her lips onto his dark ones. As smooth and silken as molten chocolate still: he tasted like peppermint and she knew that he had brushed his teeth just prior to her landing. A little tip of his tongue onto her own and she wondered where they would go from there. She had already put her lips onto his length when in England, but there was something more here. Something a little more homely.

“Sam?” Esmé called from the front of the house, which in turn brought the two of them to a complete standstill.

“Yes?” Sam replied back to her.

“Could you come in here for a second?”

She fetched up a sigh and she climbed off of Joey. With a bit of haste, she put her bra and her shirt back on over her body, and she headed into the kitchen to see what was the matter. Esmé struggled to remove the cork from a brand new bottle of sparkling cider, and thus Sam decided to help her. Though it was dry, she hoped that Joey wouldn't smell it from the next room, but at that point, her mother had poured her a glass of that cider and offered her a slice of pie with her lunch.

She thought of Alex all the while and since she knew that she hadn't eaten since that morning, she took the glass and the pie and took her seat there at the bar. Soon, Joey joined them and he, too, received a plate of pie and some cider himself.

“My little girl's actually going to be twenty four in a few days time,” Esmé remarked with a wistful tone to her voice.

The same age as Cliff, and just like with Cliff, she, too, hadn't been touched between the legs herself either. All the little glances and glimpses from Joey made her wonder if they would go any further than that over the course of the next few weeks.

But they never did: given the extent of Anthrax's tour, Joey returned back home to New York the next morning after he had spent the night with them. Much like Alex, he took to the comfy couch overnight, and Sam and Esmé saw him off on the next flight out to Anthrax's next stop in Houston.

Sam's twenty fourth birthday in the middle of the month came with the next round of winter's rain as it lasted the full week, from Martin Luther King, Jr. Day all the way to that weekend when the country watched the inauguration of Bush. The whole entire time she watched it on the little television in the guest room, she thought of Alex and the package that he and his parents had sent her: a black fedora with a white ribbon around the base of the crown and a little black and red feather on one side. Alongside it was a handmade card from them, pieced together with colorful cardstock and some ribbon. On the inside, in neat penmanship and bright red sparkling ink, it read:

“Happy birthday, Samantha! Love, Jerry, Arlene, and Alex.”

She smiled at their names as she placed the hat upon her head, and she wondered if Joey was willing to give her something for her day as well, especially if Alex's words about gifts were anything to go by.

Indeed, she wore that hat on the flight back up to San Francisco on the first, much to the pleasure of the flight agents all around the airport and even a couple of the stewardesses on the plane. Alex awaited her at the gate, albeit with a grin on his face.

“Had a feeling that hat'd be a good fit for you,” he told her once she gave him a hello hug.

“You picked this out?” she asked him.

“Nah, my mom did. She was like, 'I haven't even met her yet and yet I feel this hat would fit her wonderfully!' and then you met her and after you left, she was like 'yes, definitely send that hat to her, baby.'” She chuckled at that. “Anyways, come with me.”

Alex led her out of the airport into the cold San Francisco Bay fog outside, and ultimately to his car. They drove over to that studio that he had shown her on New Year's Day, and they were greeted by an excited Louie wrapped up in a leather jacket right there on the front doorstep.

“Also, I should tell you that I finally figured it out!” Alex proclaimed with a twinkle in his eye.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah!” He unbuckled his seat belt, but he didn't climb out as of yet. “Literally right after you left, my dad was playing a record from a man named Al Di Meola and I heard it from my room, and it was like a lightning bolt. I ran across the hall and I started playing it on this guitar and then I was like 'yes!' So I called up Eric and showed it to him and he was like 'right on! Let's go with that!'”

They climbed out together and Louie hurried over to her with his arms wide open.

“I feel like I haven't seen you in a million years,” he declared right into her ear.

“It's only been a few weeks, Lou,” she told him.

But then he led the two of them into the studio, with that lush shag carpet on the floor and the bright high ceiling overhead. To the right stood the actual sound room itself, where Greg and Eric had already walked into with their guitars in hand. They rounded the corner only to find Chuck speaking with a familiar bob of black hair in the desk chair before him.

“Hey, Zelda!” Sam greeted her.

“Hey, hey! I was wonderin' when you'd get here!” Zelda clambered to her feet and threw her arms around Sam. “Happy belated birthday, by the way. Eric reminded me.”

“Thank you so much! And happy belated to Louie Louie over here, too.”

“Ha!” Louie belted out as he took off his jacket and hung it on the hook next to them; right underneath his jacket was a miniature fridge.

“The girls and I have a gift for ya, too,” Zelda continued, “but it's not like this hat or anything these boys have given you. We're making another album and I already have the perfect name for it, too.”

“What's that?”

“Captain Shelley's Gallery. After you and your artistry.”

“Oh, Zelda!” Sam threw her arms around her once more.

“And we got a gift for you, too,” Chuck joined in, “I'm sure Alex gave you a hint to it on the way over, too.”

“He did!” Sam declared.

“You girls are standing in for Mr. Producer right now,” Alex himself said as he raised a finger. He took off his jacket and he strode into the sound room as if he owned it himself. Sam and Zelda watched him walk over to his guitar, propped up on a metallic stand; he picked it up and slung it over his shoulder, and waved his black hair about a bit. That tuft of gray was obvious at that point.

Louie took his seat behind the drum kit and Chuck lingered over to the side.

“Alright, gentlemen,” Zelda announced through the microphone, “unleash hell.”

Eric and Alex both started it out with a big grinding introduction.

Louie's kick drum pounded through the wall right before her. Sam looked over at Zelda, who in turn flashed her a grin and nodded at her.

That riff, that groovy riff; it coaxed a shake from her hips a bit. In junction with Louie's drum beats, which felt akin to the hammer of a black smith, and it only added to the feeling. Zelda nodded her head along with it.

Sam thought about the night on Anthrax's tour wherein Alex had covered that Soundgarden song. His leads here wandered around and spiraled tightly into coils like that song straight out of Seattle.

Eric and Greg twinned one another: the latter of which played his bass such that it resembled to thunder. And then Chuck's vocals seared through that microphone's head.

Almost four years of straight touring and making music had made these boys tight and on point each and every time the next time over.

It had that hooky chorus, “so practice what you preach!” a phrase which Sam knew she would cling to for a thousand years.

He repeated it and Alex, Eric, and Greg both joined in on back up.

“Groovy, hard, and fast, and it gets stuck in your head, too!” Zelda exclaimed.

“Yeah, it does,” Sam said, “and I almost wanna like dance to it, too.”

At one point, Alex took a step forward with his little red guitar pressed to his body and he proceeded on his solo. Sam and Zelda watched him in complete awe as it felt as though he painted his first real masterpiece upon the proverbial canvas. Even through the sound proof door, he was able to make the floor shake with his bending of those strings.

This was not the hole in the wall and this was not the first time Sam watched Anthrax.

This was beyond that.

Eric gave his inky black hair a toss back as he joined in with Alex again for a few more seconds. Louie tapped on the kick drum a bit and Alex improvised along with him.

“He's—He's unreal,” Sam said to Zelda.

“Who, Alex?”

“Yeah. Well, Louie is, too, but Alex is from somewhere else.”

“He's a true artist,” Zelda said, “kind of like how you are.”

Sam stayed silent at that. She didn't really believe that was on the level of true artistry as of yet, but she knew it still resided within her. She knew that her own masterpiece, her own “Practice What You Preach”, stayed within her for the time being.

They jammed out some more songs, all the way to the end of the afternoon, to which Chuck sang himself hoarse and Louie had finally broken out a sweat. Chuck himself walked over to the door and unlocked it for them, and Sam and Zelda met up with him there.

“Oh my god!” he yelped in a broken voice.

“Dude, that first song is going to be huge,” Sam told him.

“Dude! Don't call me 'dude'. Anyways, I think you're gonna be right, li'l Sammich.” He turned to Zelda. “Care for a drink?”

“Please!” Zelda doubled back to the hooks on the wall and the miniature fridge on the floor there. She took out a pair of beer bottles, one for herself and one for Chuck; once she handed the one to him, she turned to Sam.

“Care for one?”

“Let's share one,” Sam told her, which made the boys laugh out loud. Chuck doubled back into the room and opened the bottle.

“Drink up, Alejandro,” he commanded.

“Chuck—Chuck, no.”

“C'mon, a little sip of beer won't kill ya,” he coaxed him. Sam bowed into the doorway there and she watched Alex take a whiff from the bottle's mouth first before he took a sip. He shrugged his shoulders and handed it back to Chuck himself.

“Not bad,” he confessed, “rather have a glass.” The phone on the control panel rang right then and Zelda bowed away to answer it.

“You guys really are like Metallica's honor student kid brothers,” Sam told them with a little laugh, which in turn brought a laugh out of Chuck.

“Metallica's honor student kid brothers,” Louie echoed that, and he laughed himself.

“And I guess Anthrax showed up right behind us to put the 'kick me' sign on our backs,” Alex cracked with a gesture to his own back.

“Then Megadeth came to talk us into the ground during debate class,” Greg added.

“And Slayer showed up, just to give the five of us all a swift kick in the ass!” Chuck rounded out and the six of them laughed out loud at that.

Zelda cleared her throat right behind her.

“Hey—Hey, Miss Frankenstein!” she said right into Sam's ear, which in turn brought more laughter. “Your little monster is on the other end.”

Even though she had nothing to drink right then, she was already feeling giddy. Zelda handed her the phone, the receiver of which she brought over from the body itself. Sam lingered there in the doorway with it up to her ear.

“Hello?”

“Sam?” She recognized that upstate accent.

“Oh, hi, Joey!” She smiled at the sound of his voice.

“Sam—Sam—you're—you're not gonna believe this,” he could hardly speak. The tremble in his voice made her stop right in her tracks. Indeed, he almost sounded sick.

“What happened?” she asked him, slightly concerned.

He fetched up a sigh, albeit one that shuddered a bit. He gasped and whimpered the lightest of whimpers and she wondered what was going on with him. Louie said something and Greg burst out laughing right then; thus, she cupped a hand over her ear so she could hear him.

“Joey,” she started in a low voice, “—what happened?”

He sighed again.

“I got fired,” he said in a small voice.

“What,” she stammered, “what! What the—fuck, what do you mean you got fired?”

Someone shushed the people in the rest of the room, and the room fell silent behind her.

“I got fired,” he repeated, and he brought his voice to a near whisper. “I just got off the phone with Charlie. He said—they all got into a meeting together and just decided to rid of me. If it's any fairness to him, though, I—I could tell he had a hard time doing it.”

She brought a hand to her mouth to keep herself from crying herself or from vomiting. He gasped again and she could tell that he was crying.

“Oh,” she breathed into the mouthpiece, “oh my god, Joey, I'm so sorry.”

“I'm just,” he stammered, “—I'm just—gonna—go to sleep now.”

“Oh my god, Joey. Sit tight, I'll be right there.” She hurried back to the sound board to the phone's body.

“Sam?” he stopped her in a broken voice.

“Yes?”

“I love you,” he declared.

“I love you, too.” She hung up right there, and she closed her eyes and let out a low whistle, and then she returned to the room, and Zelda and Testament, all of whom looked on at her, stunned.

“What happened?” Chuck asked her, concerned.

“Joey got fired,” she told him in a soft voice, and Alex gaped at her. Chuck raised his eyebrows at that, flabbergasted.

“What,” Louie flatly said.

“When did this happen?” Eric asked her.

“I guess just now? He said he just got off the phone with Charlie—which tells me he's home now—and they all had a meeting without him, and they decided to get rid of him.” Sam paused for a moment. “He also said that Charlie had a hard time telling him about it, too.”

Alex and Chuck looked on at one another with stunned looks on their faces.

“What the fuck,” was all Zelda could say.

“They were doing good, too!” Eric declared.

“They were doing excellent,” Sam continued. “Last month, he told me State of Euphoria went gold.”

“Already?” Alex raised his eyebrows at that.

“Yeah. So it just—that doesn't make any sense. And I promised him I'd be right there with him, which means I have to—I have to fly home to New York.”

“Well, it's five o'clock—we're done for the day,” Greg told her as he clutched his bass by the neck, “we'll take you to the airport.”

“I'll come with you,” Alex told her.

“Yeah, me, too,” Chuck added.

“No, guys, that's not necessary,” Sam told them off.

“Samantha, your boyfriend just got fired,” Alex pointed out, “he's going to need all the support he can get.”

“What he said,” Chuck added.

“I'll come, too,” Zelda joined in, “I'm going back home after this, anyways.”

Sam nodded her head and, once they had closed up shop for the day, Eric and Greg drove them all back to the airport. She had no idea as to what to say to Joey once they were back in upstate. But she knew that she would have a little talk with Scott and Charlie at some point.

Eric and Greg walked them throughout the airport and all the way to where the next red eye would take her, Chuck, Alex, and Zelda over to Syracuse.

“Are you guys going to be alright?” she asked them.

“Oh, yeah,” Eric assured her as he put his arms around her.

“I'll call you when we get there,” she promised him.

“Aw, thank you so much for that.” And he gave her another hug for that.

She would have to give all the hugs in the world from that point onward for Joey.

[feverinfeveroutfic]

chapter thirty four: the new order of things

Sam's twenty third birthday came about in a quick flash and a draw in the middle of January, but given the look on Joey's face for most of the day, she knew that she would have to enjoy every second of it all. Anthrax themselves hardly had any time to enjoy the Christmas break or the New Year given they had a pair of shows to play at L'Amour the week before.

“Consider it our birthday gift to you, though,” he told her in the two days before then; even though they had been scheduled to play for two dates, she could only attend the show on Saturday given the new workload for the winter term.

In the springtime, they were to be out on the West Coast for several dates and a small taste of it all before she did.

On that afternoon before the second show, she had done her black hair up nice and dressed in the nice black and red knit sweater that her mother had sent her for Christmas. As she ran a hair brush through her hair, she gazed on at her reflection in the mirror before her. Her hair as black as Joey's crown of ringlets, but it seemed to sit far more flat upon her head than she had realized before.

A week from twenty three and she looked as though she had aged about ten years: her eyes lacked that spark from when she first started school and her skin had not that smoothness to it like when she first moved to New York. Or maybe she put too much thought into it, but she lacked that same luster as before when she bode farewell to her teenage years.

In that brief pocket of time before the accident, Cliff had seen her as beautiful, even when she got heavier over Christmas. And it was looking on at her own reflection when she realized what he meant by that. Into her own dark eyes. At her own crown of flat black hair upon her head. She couldn't see it herself, and yet he could.

Or maybe she needed something more to rejuvenate herself.

Six more months like the taste of a pomegranate seed on her tongue.

She put the brush down on the counter next to her and switched on the faucet. She then splashed some cold water onto her face. The cold feeling itself woke her up even more than the power of a warm cup of coffee. A cannon ball right to the face and an electric shock down her spine.

Using the hand towel next to her, she patted her face dry and then she gazed on at her reflection once more. It did something, though: her skin looked even tighter than before. Her dark eyes seemed far deeper and her black hair appeared blacker. Thick strands of hair lay upon the crown of her head: the one closest to her brow lay upon her head in a thick swirl. She had had a cowlick upon her head, but she had no idea when she had it the first time around, and she had no idea where it came from, either. But it lay there upon her head with the curvature of a serpent.

She patted the towel onto her head and dried off the front of her neck before she left the bathroom and put on her jacket.

It was cold afternoon there in New York City: the snows kept on coming one right after the other in the past three weeks alone. When she reached the front seat of his car, Frank told her that a Nor'easter was headed their way soon enough; he had insisted on driving her there rather than have to rely on the buses, even with all the stage hands and new help they had on hand from that point onward.

“Yeah, it's gonna be your first one, ain't it?” he teased her.

“Oh, yes, I feel like it's gonna be appropriate for the show tonight, too. Thank you for this, by the way.”

“Oh my pleasure! I mean, you are a friend of us, after all. But even with it, we still have to do some convincing about the place because the thing is they see you as a civilian still.”

“Which is amazing because you guys are civilians yourselves.”

“Well, to you we are,” he explained as they reached the first stoplight up the block. “You'll see what Joey and I were talking about when we got home with the big rowdy crowds. I should also tell you that we're not gonna be playing in New York City again until the middle of August.”

“The middle of August?” she gaped at him, to which Frank nodded at her with a look of concern on his face.

“Yeah, at the Ritz. But—yeah, for real. The middle of August. The tenth, I think? Literally right after you leave.”

She thought about what Joey had told her when they got home from Europe, and it was right there she relished every moment of that drive down to Manhattan from Hell's Kitchen. Indeed, by the time they had reached L'Amour and that familiar neighborhood, Sam gazeed on in awe at what became of it all. Two years since she had been there and the whole place looked as though it had come from a whole other city. Cars loaded up on either side of the street outside there and all around the storm drains. Even as Frank pulled into that familiar parking lot, the whole place was filled to the brim.

“I'm with the band!” Frank declared as he turned a corner.

“We're at home, too,” Sam pointed out.

“Right! I'm with the band and yet here we are playing at home. Oh, wait—there's Billy!”

“Mr. Milano?”

“Yup, right there—” Frank rolled up to the spot before the side door of the club, and where Billy stood in the middle of, as if he was saving the spot just for them; and he backed out of there so they could park. Sam and Frank were met with a blast of icy cold air all around them; she huddled down in her coat and kept her hands tucked into her pockets.

“Haven't seen you in forever and a day,” Billy told her and he showed her a smile.

“You, either!” She put her arms around him and then he led them into that warm front room of the club. The place was already filled to the brim with people despite it being three in the afternoon.

“We're making every moment together count, Bill,” Frank told him over the noise of the crowd.

“You ought to anyways,” Billy pointed out as he led them to the backstage area.

“Well, Sam I am here is going out to California for a thing for school this summer, though.”

“Oh, yeah?” Billy gaped at her in surprise.

“Yeah, it's for my senior year,” she explained to him; he held the curtain for her. “No idea how long it's going to be for, though. It could be a few months, it could be the whole school year, I have no idea.”

“Oh, fuck! Yeah, let's hang out together here. Show doesn't start until—seven, you said, Frankie?”

“Yeah. The doors were supposed to open at six but I guess everyone got impatient.”

While they walked across those wooden floor boards, all those Stormtroopers of Death memories came back to Sam. It was even that long ago and yet it felt like a whole lifetime altogether.

“Yeah, they consider it to be the easiest job in the world, but you can see it, though,” Frank pointed out, and he glanced back at her. “Wouldn't you agree? It's not easy as it looks.”

“Oh, yeah, we're having to miss you boys for weeks on end,” she remarked.

“Watch your step,” he warned her as he held onto her hand. Indeed, she took a glimpse down and there on the floor lay a pile of thick black cables like a bunch of big noodles. The last thing she needed was to trip on that again, even if it could be far worse than that.

With his free hand, Frank pushed the door open and Charlie, Joey, and Dan congregated in that little room in anticipation of them.

“Hey, there she is!” Joey proclaimed, and he stood up and opened his arms for her. His dark lips grazed the side of her neck, much to the beating of her heart and her toes curling inside of her shoes.

“We'll get you in with no problem,” Charlie vowed to her; a clink on the floor caught their attention; she then peered past Joey and watched Charlie toss his drum sticks in the air, one after the other, and he caught them both in one hand.

“Looks like someone's been hangin' out with Zelda,” Sam remarked.

“We toured with those badass chicks for weeks after all,” Dan pointed out.

“Are they here?”

“They should be,” Frank told her.

“They were here last night, though,” said Joey.

“Oh, yeah, they were here last night,” Charlie added as he tossed one drum stick again.

“When they're here, though, we're gonna load up the whole place,” Billy told her. “They just draw in the crowds, more so than these fellas here.”

Joey then turned his head and peered out the door behind him.

“We spoke too soon,” he declared.

“Are they here?” Charlie asked him.

“Hey, what's goin' on?” Zelda's voice floated in from down the hall.

“Let's load up the place,” Dan said in a bold tone of voice, and he ducked towards the door.

“Load it up!” Charlie added as he clutched both drum sticks.

“Alright, we're gonna get loaded!” Joey cracked, and Frank, Sam, and Billy all burst out laughing at that. They bowed out of the room only to be greeted by Zelda and that bob of black hair slicked back from her face by a handful of gel and her arms and legs even more sinewy and strong than ever. She threw her arms around Sam, whose spine cracked at the feeling of Zelda's new found strength.

“Whoa, jeez—”

“Well, don't kill 'er, Zelda,” Dan advised her from behind her.

“I haven't seen her in so long it seems, though,” Zelda told him as she held back to let Sam breathe. She peered down at her legs, now toned and strong from those duct taped boots on her feet this whole entire time.

“My goodness,” Sam remarked.

“I feel like an Olympian with these things on now,” Zelda told her as she adjusted her black Guns N' Roses shirt, “it's like I run a marathon every night and my legs just get stronger.”

“Soon you'll be like Wonder Woman,” Frank declared.

“She already kinda is!” Morgan said with a laugh. “I mean, you guys saw her all this time, she's nuts now!”

With the arrival of the Cherry Suicides came an even larger crowd for themselves to behold before them. Sam lingered off to the side by herself, and away from the crowd, a spot that she had been in before but not at L'Amour, as she watched those four women take to the stage. Morgan's voice had grown stronger and more gravelly from the European tour, and indeed, Zelda's drumming had tightened and quickened. They really were transforming into a thrash band in their own rite.

That song, “Dead Witches”, had become a crowd favorite given it always turned into a ten minute long jam between Minerva and Zelda. The former always put one foot up on the speaker closest to her and bled out a solo to make Alex himself fall to his knees, while the latter never broke out a sweat whenever she hammered away at the drums.

Their signature song alongside “Day of the Dead” and Sam thought about the evening they debuted that at L'Amour. She had come full circle with them all.

Soon Anthrax took to the stage and Joey had removed his shirt and put on that little ball cap with the word “INJUN” inscribed inside with big bold lettering. Before they performed anything, Sam felt someone tap on her shoulder. She turned her head and there stood Chuck and Eric, both wrapped in heavy winter jackets.

“Hey, you guys!” she declared over the roar of the crowd.

“Hey, you—thought that was you standin' over here,” Eric said right into her ear.

“Got a little time off from recording today so we decided why not?” Chuck added. He then put his arm around her and held her close to him even though she knew that Tiffany was nearby herself. She knew it would be one of many hugs from Chuck more often from that point onward.

“Alright!” Joey bellowed into the microphone. “It's good to be back home, New York. We're Anthrax and we take no bullshit whatsoever.” He slung that white flying V guitar over his bare shoulder and it nearly knocked his hat off.

“Joey's got the right idea,” Chuck pointed out and he opened his jacket for something, and he set a black ball cap upon his head. On the inside of the bill, in spiked lettering, it read “Suicidal.”

“Where'd you get that?” Sam asked him.

“Some friends of ours called Suicidal Tendencies. We oughtta introduce you to them when you come out west.”

“This first song, the four of us had been throwing around while on tour in Europe,” Joey began again, that time with his hands clutched to the microphone head. “It's a cover—it's not ours, but I foresee it going on something new from us in the future. By a little French band called Trust—you guys'll like it. It's called 'Antisocial'.”

He played that first riff, and Sam turned her head and peered out the window near to them right as the snow was falling outside. Something about the way in which he played that riff accentuated the soft white out there. She could pick up some snow and toss it in the air as if it were confetti or glitter to that riff.

Charlie's kick drum beckoned a uniform clap from everyone in the audience. Frank joined in with them all for what felt like a full minute, and then Dan stopped them all with a grinding thrashy riff.

Joey played along and belted it out, the best he had ever sounded before.

Then there was that singsong catchy chorus: by the song's end, everyone in the room knew it.

“That's a hit,” Eric declared to her and Chuck.

“It totally is,” Chuck said as the room erupted in cheers.

The sound of a cover made Sam recall that one evening she and Joey lay side by side with each other.

“Hey, what was that song that Alex played?” she asked right into his ear.

“What song? There's a bunch of them.” Eric chuckled at that.

“No, I think we were in Providence together—yeah, we were! It was after the wedding, and you guys were out in the hallway and he played some riff from some band in Seattle.”

Eric hesitated for a second, and then he gasped at that.

“Oh! Oh, yeah, that was—that was—” He snapped his fingers as he struggled to recall it. “—damn it. I'll have to ask him about that because I know what you're talking about now. I remember it, it was cool! Kinda psychedelic and wandering.”

“Yeah, it was.” She thought of what Alex had said about the Wandering Jew at the sound of that last word. And even though Joey wasn't too keen on it, the very memory of laying there with him made her recall that song.

Anthrax played for a full hour that evening, to which they ended the show with “A Skeleton in the Closet”, which made Sam remember everything her mother had said to her. All the secrets left out in the open and she would have to sift through them all the while she balanced out her school work and going to hang with Testament more up in the Bay Area. As long as they were within range of the Bay Area, she could find a way over to visit them. If not, there had to be a way to them. There had to be a way over to see them.

All the secrets she had figured out with Joey, and yet there was still so much she hadn't figured out yet.

All the secrets she had figured out with Cliff, and yet there was still so much she never had the chance to figure out.

By the time Joey hit those high notes of “Gung Ho!” and Dan stood at the edge of the stage with his guitar pressed against his little body, Chuck tugged back on Sam and he and Eric took her to the backstage area.

“Whoa, what's going on?” she asked, taken aback.

“It was getting kinda rowdy there near us,” Chuck replied. “They're pretty much done, too.”

“Yeah, and here they come,” Eric pointed to the curtain right as Charlie and Frank bowed in there, drenched in sweat.

“Wow,” Sam told them.

“Phew!” Frank declared in a loud voice and pressed his hands to his hips; he then laughed at the euphoric feeling around them. Charlie followed it up with a loud whistle. Rosita hurried up to him and he put his arm around her and stuck his tongue down her throat.

Anthrax were going to be huge after that night. Sam was sure of it. It was just obvious to her that they were bound to become rock stars after that second night at L'Amour, even as Joey treated her to a little birthday gift that next Thursday on her day off.

“Not gonna make the same mistake Aurora did,” he vowed to her as he drove her up towards Syracuse. “Today's all about you, Sam I am.”

He had bought her a cupcake and a cup of latte from the bakery in North Syracuse and then spent a little bit of the afternoon with her down by the lake, even with the waters as black as the very night that awaited them later on. Joey huddled next to her with his head bowed and his hands tucked in his jacket pockets. His black curls fluttered about atop his head as if they were ribbons.

“How'd things go with Aurora, by the way?” he asked her at one point as she sipped on her coffee. “Because I tried callin' her the other night and she was just impossible to speak to.”

“She and I got into an argument,” Sam explained. “Well, I did most of the arguing. She just kind of stood there with the phone to her ear like a dumb idiot and I got really heated with her.”

He shook his head at that and then he looked out to the cold inky black waters beyond the railing. Silence fell over them. Silence except for the soft cold breeze through the pine trees off to the side and the gentle lapping of the lake down below. Sam took another sip of her coffee and relished in the warmth of it. She sighed through her nose and lingered closer to Joey. Times like that she knew she could stand in comfortable silence with him.

“Remember when we first met?” he began again with a clearing of his throat.

“Yeah, it was the first day I was here,” she recalled. “You and Frankie in the furniture store.”

“Mmhmm. I always thought of you as like the one who mirrored me when it came to moving. Except you've got more of a grasp on it than I do.”

“I don't think so,” she confessed. “You've moved several times before I did. It's just hard is all.”

“Hard work and hard going, too.”

She finished the rest of her coffee and then he cleared his throat once more, and rubbed his hands together.

“Wanna take a walk?” he suggested.

“Yes, please.”

Sam held the cup to her chest as they walked on to the pathway close to the water. Snow blanketed bushes lined the right side while a slope dropped down from the walkway on the left. Given Anthrax were going to be away during her spring break, she knew that this would be the last time she would see upstate New York in this snowy state. She glanced out past the snowy slope to the black waters. Nothing like it. Absolutely nothing like it, not even her memory of Lake Tahoe or Yosemite fulfilled the same feelings as that lake north of Syracuse and the forests all around the state.

“There's something so romantic about walking about upstate New York after a snowfall,” she noted.

“It's all the trees and the remoteness,” he said. “And just the way the sky is dark and the fog comes in from the lake up the road—Lake Ontario, I mean. At least the roads are clear, too. We can do whatever we want from here on out.”

Her last birthday there upstate with Joey and she had to make every second count with him. The last of her own skeletons in the closet for him as he did for her.

“You know,” she began again, “we're not too far from that old studio Stormtroopers recorded their album at, either.”

“No, we're not. Wanna go there?”

“Yeah, I want to show you something there.”

Within time, they reached the top of the pathway and within the line of sight of Joey's car. Given it had been some time since they had been there, Sam had to rack her brain for the way over to that little notch in the woods. It was also a bit of a drive but Joey himself didn't seem to mind however.

That familiar treeline emerged within view, as did that old ramshackle building before the partially collapsed sidewalk. A large snow drift piled up before the storm drain which meant Joey had to park a bit out in the street. Sam climbed out of her seat first and she led him past the drifts and towards that notch in the trees. Given a fresh blanket of snow had fallen upon them, she knew there was no way she could walk in through those trees, even with her boots on.

Joey peered in through the gap as well, and up to the canopy: all the branches collected together under the snow so it resembled to a lacy veil.

“The quiet place,” she remarked.

“The what?”

“Charlie and I found this little spot when Stormtroopers of Death were making their album a couple of summers ago. We hung out here when the sun was going down, too. We called it the quiet place because we went inside here to a clearing and it was dead silent.”

“Wow,” Joey breathed. He looked over his shoulder to the trees across the way. No one else around.

It had in fact become the quiet place.

“When you come back here, we should hang out here again,” he told her. “Hang out here and you can draw me while I'm in the trees.”

She giggled at that and they returned to his car once again. Once she buckled herself into the passenger seat, she caught a glimpse of Joey looking on at her with a thoughtful expression on his face.

“You know that song we do on Spreading the Disease?” he began. “Medusa?”

She hesitated. “Yes? Yes.”

“I don't remember the full mythos behind Medusa, but according to Scott, there's a star in the sky referred to as 'Medusa's head.' I don't remember the name of it, but we get the word 'alcohol' from it. Medusa was left hung out to dry after Athena turned her into the snake headed monster that we all know and love. And you know how booze makes you feel afterwards.”

“Oh, yeah, how it dries out your mouth and the back of your throat big time. Especially if it's a lot of booze, too.”

“Consider yourself Medusa after this,” he told her in a soft voice. “The way the snow outside here just tightened up your skin, but there's something else, though. Something I can't really put into words, like there's something to it. Kinda like Medusa herself.”

Her own reflection in the mirror before the first Anthrax show at L'Amour. Her own eyes as they stared back at her and the way her hair seemed far blacker than before. For a few seconds, she did in fact turn into Medusa there: she missed the snakes upon the head however. She brought her attention back to Joey and the stoic look upon his face. His brown eyes as they gazed back at her, like the cold stony stare of Medusa.

“Shall we head on back to the city?” he suggested.

“Yes please,” she declared, and he fired up the car and they began on back down the road to New York City and ultimately Hell's Kitchen once more. By that time, the cold gray sky overhead succumbed to even colder blackness. She knew Marla and Genie awaited her with her birthday dinner.

“You wanna spend the night at our place?” she offered him. “You did an awful lot of driving today.”

“I don't see why not,” he confessed with a shrug of his slender shoulders. “It might be the last time I do.” He unbuckled his seat belt and then he stopped right in his tracks. “By the way, d'you ever get into stained glass this term?”

Sam shook her head.

“Belinda's powers of convincing fell flat over the Christmas break,” she replied, “and so I missed the cut with there. I don't know if I can do it spring term, to be honest. If I do, then I might be ahead of the curve a bit because she's willing to teach me some tips and tricks on it all.”

“Excellent!” he said with that lopsided smile on his face.

He guided her back into the building and up to that apartment on the third floor. She opened the door where she was greeted by the look of joy on Marla's face and her open arms.

“Our birthday sister!” she declared as she held Sam close to her. Belinda stood up from the couch and joined in on the group hug.

“Our last little party together,” she said, and she brushed away a tear from her eye.

“What a lumpy number this is, though,” Sam told her with a straight face. “Twenty three.”

“Could be worse,” a man's voice near the door to the porch caught her attention. “Could be twenty four like me and Chuck this spring.”

“Or me in a couple of days for that matter,” said the other guy.

“Hey!” she declared as she looked on at the two of them. “Louie and Eric!”

Joey, who stood right behind them, shifted his weight at the sight of them there. Eric flashed her a wink and Louie leaned back in his chair and crossed his legs right then.

“They have something they want to tell you,” Marla announced to her. “Something pertaining to their new album.”

Eric nodded his head.

“We're calling it The New Order,” he told her.

“The New Order—” Sam started and then she nodded her head. “I like it, it's kinda mysterious. Like those old science fiction novels you'd read in school.”

“Exactly!”

“He and Chuck ran it by Zelda at the show the other day and she was like, 'that just sounds badass,' you know?” Louie said in a single breath; he had this look of disappointment on his face when the words left his lips at that.

“Hell yeah.”

“So we have a cake ready for you as well as some spaghetti Bolognese,” Marla told her right then. “Belinda just took it off of the heat right as you and Joey walked in.”

“Oh, boy!”

Joey rubbed his hands together and he ducked into the kitchen without a second thought. Belinda and Marla joined him, as did Eric. Sam turned to Louie with a serious look on her face.

“How are you feeling, by the way?” she asked him, to which he frowned and shook his head at that.

“What do you mean?”

“Like you were mentioned Zelda just a little bit ago. Is everything alright?”

And he pursed his lips together and lowered his gaze to the floor. It dawned on her right then.

“Don't tell me you told her,” she stated in a low voice.

“I kind of—had to,” he confessed with a shrug of his shoulders, and her heart sank at the sound of that.

“How'd she react to it?”

“Well, she slapped me across the face and then she kissed me right on the lips, and then she slapped me again.”

“Slapped you twice and then kissed you?”

“No, slapped, kissed, and slapped again. And when I say 'slapped again', I don't mean across the face.”

She gaped at him. They were still in love. So much here that was left wide open.

“Louie, sit tight,” she began with a raise of her finger. “I have an idea.”

“No, Sam—no. Besides, dinner's ready.”

“Well, seeing as I'm going to be back in California soon, I want to make myself at home ahead of time.”

She made her way into her room and she fetched her journal and one of her pencils. She was leaving for California come the end of July and even as she picked up her journal and that pencil, she wasn't ready to leave as of yet. Even when she first moved there, she had to begin on packing her things early on so things would run more smoothly once the time came. She wanted her room to remain as is right there; she returned to the living room with a bit of haste and Louie burst out laughing at the sight of it.

“Would you like me to pose for you?” he joked as he leaned back with his arms atop of the chair.

“Nah. Although, I do like that position you're in right now. With your hair sprawled over your shoulders like that. Very Greek godlike.”

“Who's a Greek god?” Belinda asked her as she returned to the room with a plate of food in one hand.

“Louie is. Wouldn't you agree, Bel? By the look of his hair over his shoulders like that.”

“Oh, yeah.” She beamed at her by the sound of that. “Anyways, there's a plate of spag bol waiting for you both in there.”

Louie almost jumped out of his chair at that, but Sam kept her mind on her bedroom behind her as she beat him to the kitchen. Marla served Joey up a plate of food and Sam lingered right next to him.

“I guess I'm gonna have to start packing it in soon,” she confessed to him in a low voice, and his face fell at that.

“I don't want you to go,” Joey begged her. “You gotta stay and hang with us.”

“I wish I could, Joey,” Sam told him as Marla handed both her and him plates of Bolognese with a solemn look on her face; neither of them were ready for the new order of things coming soon. “I genuinely wish I could.”

[feverinfeveroutfic]

chapter thirty three: glass caskets

On Christmas morning, Sam received a phone call from both of her parents as well as a couple of gifts from them, sent from different addresses no less. Even if her senior project would only carry on for a short time, she knew that the whole thing between them would drag on for so long. Joey also called her right after to invite her to a New Year's party with just the two of them plus Marla and Belinda if they so wished. Not only was it to be her last Christmas with Joey nearby, but her final New Year's Eve with him. Sam thought about the time that Belinda had given him too much to drink, but she had faith that he had long passed that point. He would have to serve something more at the party, something more musical than something such as that.

Another thing that she received in the mail was a Christmas card from Testament as well as Anthrax, Metallica, and the Cherry Suicides; and Dan Lilker and Scott both sent her and Marla, as well as Belinda card on top of that. Dan's was a straight postcard with a photograph of him seated cross legged next to a fiery red Christmas tree and with his head propped up in one hand.

“Mr. Blue Eyes,” Marla remarked as she perched his card on the shelf on the side of the room, right in the midst of the silver and pink garlands they had hung up in the mere two days before then. Scott and his bride to be sat at a small black table with glasses of egg nog in either hand; right behind them stood a small Christmas tree with white twinkling lights. Next to it on the shelf, strong and high like one of the skyscrapers in the heart of New York City, was a lit menorah. The golden flames from the candles shone over the room; even with a Polaroid camera at their helm, the room around them still managed to have a dark feeling all around.

“So moody and morose,” Belinda remarked. “I love it, though. I can see them doing that without the flash of the camera, too.”

“Yeah, I can, too,” Sam added as she picked up the next Christmas card. Meanwhile, the Cherry Suicides had a photograph of the four of them in cherry red bikinis and with Santa hats, each of which had the Star of David embroidered on the fronts, atop their heads; Zelda and Rosita both had knives holstered to their hips while Morgan and Minerva had knives holstered to their ankles and fake blood splattered across their legs and their stomachs. Zelda also held a black and red sugar skull in one hand with a snowflake imprinted at the crown.

Metallica on the other hand dressed in Santa outfits: James and Kirk both had put on pairs of black sunglasses while Lars stuck out his tongue to the camera and Jason stood there with his arms folded across his chest.

“Hey, you know, at least the girls have the Star of David on their hats,” Sam pointed out to Marla and Belinda.

“I know, right?” said the former. “And Scott and his girl have the menorah behind them. How 'bout Anthrax and Testament?”

Belinda picked up Anthrax's Christmas card, which had nothing more than the four of them bunched underneath a Christmas tree on the ceiling. Charlie and Frank had their backs to the wall while Dan hunkered down in front of them: it took Sam a few seconds to realize that they were imitating a family of three carrying in a tree. She turned it over and burst out laughing at Joey's black and white picture, of him standing there with his arms folded across his chest and with a nonchalant expression on his face. She laughed even harder at the “Merry Christmas from Anthrax” printed on the side of the card as well.

“I actually like that one,” Marla chuckled.

“I do, too!” Belinda laughed with them. “Now how 'bout our five boys from California?”

Sam picked up the final Christmas card, the one that looked as though there had been more effort put into it and not a mere Polaroid photograph plastered on a piece of cardstock of the same size. Chuck sat in a big comfy looking chair at the center of it all with his bare brown legs out for them to see, and a pair of feathers which dangled from either side of his head. Next to him was Greg and Eric, the former with no shirt on and a gift wrapped present nestled right in between his cross legs, while the latter adjusted his dark red velvet Santa hat, which appeared to be too small for his head. Louie posed at the back with a big golden star held up above his head as if he had just found buried treasure. Alex meanwhile sat off to the side with his black hair tousled over his shoulder and a wreath of holly upon the crown of his head.

Sam took a second look to find that right in the midst of that holly was his yarmulke.

She turned it over to find, written in slender scarlet red ink, the words “Seasons Greetings from Testament. Love, Chuck, Eric, Alex, Greg, and Louie.”

“That's actually a really cute picture of them,” Belinda remarked as Sam turned it back over.

“Wait, what was that other thing back there?” Marla stopped them right in their tracks. Sam turned it back over and indeed, there was a little note at the bottom of the cardstock, one written in graphite.

“What's it say?” Marla asked her.

“'Meet us up in Ithaca New Year's Eve for dinner. Eric.'”

“Again?” Belinda was stunned.

“Apparently so?” Sam shrugged her shoulders at that. “I haven't heard anything from the fan club about anything, though.”

“Which means we're probably gonna have to leave here like early in the morning,” Marla pointed out. “Four hour drive to Ithaca from here.”

“Not necessarily, Mar,” Belinda pointed out. “We can leave here like the middle of the afternoon, meet up with them for dinner and then bounce on down to Joey's place for the party.”

“Does it at least say what time?” Marla asked Sam.

“No, it just says meet them for dinner. Yeah, I'm thinking we should leave at like two o'clock here.”

Sam kept this on her mind over the final week of quite the hectic and intense year before the time finally came for them to leave for upstate New York once again, the second year in a row they did. She wondered what Testament had in store for them as she and Belinda climbed in Marla's car, wrapped in heavy winter coats and their big boots. Joey called that morning and told them that the lake effect snow had already begun to fall.

Before she started up the car, Marla set a black velvet beret atop her head, much to Sam's surprise.

“Whoa, where'd you get that?” she asked her.

“Rosita sent me this,” Marla replied, “it came in the mail the day after Christmas. I forgot to tell you.”

“Oh, it's alright. I dig it.”

“I do, too!” Belinda chimed in.

They reached the highway in no time and before they left Hell's Kitchen, the first snowflakes began to fall over them. Within no time, the sides of the road would be utterly blanketed with pure fresh white snow. Another thing that Sam was going to miss while out in California: the New York snows, even with how seemingly unforgiving they were; their memory and the feeling of it all etched its way into the very fabric of her mind. She thought back to when she first met Charlie and she told him and the barista about the snow in Carson City. She thought for sure that the snow in Carson City was unique, and yet New York had shown her another ballpark for it. Something haunting and beautiful about the skyline against the incoming blizzards, and then there stood the forests in the upstate area, especially as they were when at night.

Four hours, and by the time they reached the turn off for Ithaca, the lake effect took hold all around them. The sky overhead had been gray up to that point, but the white glare of the snows had brightened everything above them. Sam peered out the windshield to the pure white sky as flakes the size of silver dollars pelted the rooftop and the road before them.

“I hope we can actually get there,” Marla confessed at one point: it didn't help matters that it was getting late and the pure white soon gave way to dark gray again as well as cavernous royal blue. But lucky for them, Sam soon recognized the outskirts of the whole Finger Lakes area, even against the snow and the incoming darkness. The outside of Ithaca soon followed, as did that familiar narrow piece of road that led back to the hole in the wall. Right there across the street, at that restaurant, she spotted Eric and Chuck congregated outside the front door, underneath the awning away from the snow and under the golden lights as well: Sam recognized them even in the darkness.

“The men of the hour, I see,” Belinda remarked, and Marla took the parking spot right in front of them. Eric nodded at Sam and she gave him a pretty little wave. She climbed out first and Chuck turned around and greeted her with a big sweet smile.

“Hey! There are our girls!”

Belinda climbed out from behind her and, careful not to slip on the fresh layer of snow on the blacktop, the two of them hurried up to Chuck, who held both of them close to him at the same time. Sam then embraced Eric, who seemed warmer and softer than she initially remembered, and Belinda followed suit.

“Thank you for that Christmas card, by the way,” Sam told them.

“Nothin' to it, Sammich,” Chuck said as he put his arm around Marla.

“And you should've seen Exodus' Christmas card, though,” Eric assured her. “We got nothin' on them.”

“So what'd you guys want while we're here?” Belinda asked him.

“Oh, nothing,” Eric said with a shake of his head. “We just wanted to have dinner with you girls.”

“I also wanted you girls to meet someone, too,” Chuck added with a little smile on his face. Eric held the door for them: no one else in there except for Alex, Greg, Louie, and a blonde woman at the booth on the far side of the room. The three of them stood before the table and Chuck beheld the woman as if she was a bit of unearthed treasure, with her golden blonde hair, her bright eyes, and smooth skin.

“Sam, Belinda, Marla—this is my girlfriend Tiffany,” he introduced.

“The infamous girls,” she declared as she took each of their hands. “Or am I confusing you ladies with the punk band?”

“The Cherry Suicides? Maybe,” Sam replied, and that coaxed a laugh out of Louie.

“Alright, kids, let's eat,” Eric coaxed them; Sam and Belinda took their spots next to Alex, while Marla sat down next to Chuck and Tiffany.

The sun had gone down which gave the otherwise vacant restaurant a much more homey feeling to it. Their waitress showed up with cups of coffee, and a cup of hot chocolate for Alex.

“I just want you guys to know that the heater's been acting up lately,” she told them at one point.

“Huddle in like a bunch of penguins,” Greg joked, and they did just that right as a grating sound overhead caught their attention. A gust of warm air billowed out of the vent before it dissipated, and their corner of the room fell cool again. The fact the place was empty only added to the feeling.

“Man, remember how crowded it was in here last year?” Belinda asked her in a low voice. “When you and I were here with Joey?”

“Oh, yeah, I know, right?” Sam agreed with her; they had to shout across the table to each other. This time around, a whisper could carry over to the other side.

“I like you with black hair, by the way, Marla,” Greg spoke at one point.

“I like the little streak at the front, too,” Alex remarked with a gesture to his brow.

“It was Sam's idea, actually,” she explained to them. “She had been wanting me to dye my hair a whole bunch of colors but I told her that would've been too much work. I like the single stripe myself.”

“Imagine if Alex dyed those grays bright blue himself,” Chuck joked.

“Or if they changed colors, babe,” Tiffany chimed in.

“Ooh, yeah! They changed colors like during one of his solos.”

“Song changes tempo,” Eric cracked before he took a sip of his coffee.

“Or when Louie pulls a Zelda,” Chuck added. Sam and Louie himself both burst out laughing at that, while Alex paid more attention to his cup of cocoa, which was piping hot even when their food came to their table.

“I kinda like doing this,” Marla confessed at one point as she held a French fry close to her mouth. “Spending New Year's together.”

“Sam's ahead of the curb, though,” Louie told her with a nod of his head, “she and Belinda spent the last one with us, too.”

“It was mainly her, though,” Belinda pointed out.

Just the bunch of them there in that little corner of the restaurant where no one could bother them, except for the waitress who brought them refills and even offered them dessert of key lime pie or a hot fudge sundae.

“Wanna split a piece of pie with me and Bel, Alex?” Sam offered him.

“I dunno—I've barely touched my cocoa,” he confessed.

“Trying to watch his girlish figure,” Chuck laughed and at that point Alex bowed his head and laughed himself.

At one point, Chuck, Tiffany, and Marla all stood out of the way for Eric, who bowed out of there and into the darkness.

“Where's he going?” Marla asked them, even though Chuck and Tiffany didn't sit back down.

“Something important across the way,” he answered with a twinkle in his eye.

“I'll help pitch in,” Sam told them.

“Oh, no, we got it, Sam sweetie,” Tiffany promised her. The front door opened again and Eric poked his head into the restaurant.

“Hey, Chuck!”

“That's my name, don't wear it out.”

Belinda giggled at that.

“Louie, too—you two fellers in particular—better get your asses across the street quick. It's hella important.”

“Oh, shit—” Louie drank down the rest of his water and then he slid out from the hard booth seats.

“Want me to warm up the van?” Greg called out to him.

“Yes!”

Eric bowed back out to the darkness while Tiffany to the register at the front of the restaurant. Louie slipped on his jacket as he ducked out of there after him. Greg soon followed suit with the keys to the van jingling in his jeans pocket.

“I'll warm up the car, too,” Marla told Chuck.

“Oh, yeah, definitely—go get warm.” Belinda then stood to her feet and followed Marla to the front door. That left Sam and Alex there in the corner.

“We'll leave you kids here alone so you can finish your cocoa,” Chuck told them with a wink and a nod, and then he followed Marla and Belinda to the front door. The rest of the cafe had fallen quiet in their wake; and Sam turned her attention to Alex, who had taken off his coat and showed off a little bit of his chest from under those little pearl buttons. The thin black fabric hugged his lanky little body: nineteen years old, and he still had that stubborn little tummy on him, but she could tell he had slimmed down a bit over the last few months. He gave his black hair a toss back and he showed her a quaint little smile.

“Hey you,” she greeted him.

“Gonna be you and me for a little bit,” he remarked as he set his left hand down by the cup of hot chocolate.

“Just like last year,” she recalled; she glanced down at his mug. “That's got to have cooled down by this point. It's been over thirty minutes.”

“Kinda. It's one of those real heavy mugs where the heat gets trapped in it. That, and it was scalding hot when the waitress brought it. Glad I didn't take a drink yet.” He set his hand on the side and then shrugged his shoulders.

“So I hear you're heading out to California soon?” he said with those sharp eyebrows raised a bit, to which she nodded her head.

“Yeah. It's for school, but yeah—I'm going out there with my counselor the last day of July.”

“Wow.” He knitted his eyebrows together at that. “Well—and you heard this from me, too—and I think Eric and Chuck'll both agree with me on this, come to think of it—but Testament will be making our new album at the crack of New Year's Day, exactly the same as this past year with our debut. No exaggeration, we looked at our contract just two days ago and went 'shit, we gotta make another one?' I guess we're going to be at the same place as before.”

“The hole in the wall?” Sam recalled, stunned.

“Yeah. That's according to the text. I don't know if we'll be there by the time you leave—July, you said?”

“Yeah.”

Alex pursed his lips. “Yeah, I have no clue if we'll still be there by the time you go out there. I hope not because we know what we've got ourselves into at this point after the first time. We record, release it into the world, and then we go out on tour to promote it.”

“Like no time to rest,” Sam remarked.

“Not really, no. I will say this, though, it does get me out of my parents' house.”

“I hope you guys don't have to go all the way to New York just to start putting together an album, though,” she confessed.

“Yeah, that's probably the one drag with that,” he said as he rubbed the tip of his nose, “is we have to go far just to lay down tracks and whatnot. I do like New York, though—you know, my parents hail from here so I feel weirdly at peace whenever we go down to the main city. I hope we can do more back home in California to be honest. I can hope all I want to, but I haven't heard anything from Aurora, though.”

He leaned back in his seat and rested his hand back upon the surface of the table, right next to his cup of hot chocolate. Sam gazed on at the side of his face and the stoic expression there. He then cleared his throat and turned his attention to her.

“Have you—spoken to Aurora at all?” he asked her in a low voice. “Because I know the two of you are friends and all.” Sam shook her head.

“I haven't spoken to her since your birthday,” she told him.

“Oh, wow.” He was taken aback by that. “Oh, man, that sucks.”

“Yeah.” She nodded and rolled her eyes a bit. “But Belinda saw her recently, though, and she and Emile were shopping for baby clothes. That was a couple of months ago, like October. You know what I can't believe is how she made your day all about herself. I didn't think she could be so selfish.”

“Were you able to do anything about that?” he asked her, and she shook her head. It was there she hoped that Osegueda had been the one to do the trick on Aurora; maybe, just maybe, she wouldn't have been so egotistical on the day that was supposed to be about Alex. At least she had a laugh about that.

Alex himself meanwhile tilted his head to the side a bit; Sam followed his gaze to the other side of the room, but she had no clue as to what he looked at over there.

“What's up?” she inquired right into his ear, and he turned his attention back to her. He flicked his head a bit so his fine black bangs covered part of his eyes.

“You got any spare change on you?” he asked her.

“Yeah.” She opened her purse and took out her wallet from the bottom there. Then she paused. “Why? Do you need any change?”

“There's a payphone right over there,” he stated and he pointed to across the room; indeed, there stood a white and silver payphone on the wall right next to the front door. “Go call her.”

“Right now?” she asked him, stunned.

“Yeah. Samantha, it may be the last time you ever get to talk to her. She's gonna be a mom soon and you're gonna go out in the wilderness for who knows how long.”

She frowned at that.

“Besides, it's Christmas and she's—she's—fucking growing a baby.” He almost grimaced when he said those last few words. “She's probably not doing anything right now.”

“Except growing a baby,” Sam joked.

“Except growing a baby, right!” That brought a laugh out of him. She let out a long low whistle and then she took out a pair of quarters from her wallet, and she climbed to her feet. Alex took a sip from his hot chocolate as she made her way over to the other side of the room to the phone. She picked the receiver off of the wall and she slipped in both quarters into the slot. She dialed their number and waited a few seconds. She expected Aurora to answer it given she was always so assertive herself—she helped organize full on tours for three bands after all.

“Hello?” She was greeted by a man's voice instead.

“Hi, Emile—it's Sam.”

“Oh, Miss Shelley!” he proclaimed. “I was just thinkin' about you and Aurora and I were gonna send you a Christmas card.”

“Aw—oh my god, that's so kind of you,” Sam sputtered out at that, and then she caught herself. “Um—is Aurora around at all?”

“Yeah, she's right here. Only three months along and she's already showing!”

Sam sighed as Emile handed the phone over to Aurora.

“Sam I am! I haven't heard from you in so long! How's it going?”

It was right then, by the mere sound of her voice, that the Aurora Young who answered the phone there was not the Aurora Young whom Sam met the first week in New York City. This Aurora Young had a high grating whine to her voice and, by the sound it, no sense of logistics at all. Her sense of culture gone and the soft gentle tone to her voice now given away to a loud rattling shriek of sorts. Locked away in her new home, her new nest, for a great length of time and Sam could tell that she had lost her mind.

“Um—things are going,” Sam sputtered out. “How about all of you? I mean, the two of you?”

“Oh, my god, things are just wonderful, Sam! Emile and I have the room set up for the baby and we're making everything for kids now. You know, I didn't think I would have kids some day, but I just love it, though! He and I are planning on having at least two more after this first one. I love it. I love every minute of it.”

Sam closed her eyes and bowed her head a bit. Her best friend had become someone else.

“Is everything okay?” Aurora asked out of the blue. “Are you there?”

“Yes,” said Sam as she raised her head. “I want—to talk to you—about something.” She cleared her throat.

“Go ahead, go ahead, go ahead—” In the background, Emile echoed that in song, much to Sam's grimacing.

“I wanted to tell you that—you know when you announced you were pregnant, it was during Alex's birthday party?”

“Yeah?” Aurora had a bit of reluctance to her voice.

“Well,” Sam tried to keep herself calm all the while, “—it was during Alex's birthday party.”

“And?”

“It was during Alex's birthday party,” Sam repeated. “Well, it was supposed to be about him.” She clenched her free fist down by her side and she let out a shuddered sigh. She could feel herself quivering and quaking at the very notion of Aurora being so dense right then. It was so unlike her, and she knew that Aurora was so much smarter than that, and yet it felt as though she had grown dumb within a matter of a quick flash and a whir. Her best friend, now a different person altogether. If only she could see what Sam saw through her eyes. If only she could understand what she was trying to tell her.

“Sam, what're you—”

“How could you have been so selfish, Aurora?” Sam interrupted her, furious. “That day was supposed to be about him!”

“Sam—I wanted to surprise everyone there.”

“Do you even understand what I'm trying to tell you?” Sam demanded, heated. “That day, the twenty ninth of September, was the day Alex Skolnick came forth on the earth's surface with a guitar in one hand. It was supposed to be about him and you made it all about yourself.” She trembled a bit from the feeling. “I can't believe you did that, Aurora. That was just—that—that—fucking—” She could hardly talk.

“Sam, be happy that I'm going to be a mommy soon,” Aurora scoffed. “We're supposed to be due—let's see, I'm three months along—what's it in six months?”

Something inside of Sam snapped right then. Her best friend, once open and diligent and humble and smart, had become a complete husk of herself. Add to this, she still made it about herself.

“No, stop!” she said in a loud voice, such that it shut Aurora up. Her hands shook and her heart pounded inside of her chest, but she persisted especially with the silence that surrounded her. “No, Aurora. I can't be ever happy for you and Emile when all you do is make every last little thing about yourself. You also didn't even thank me and Alex for being in your wedding, either, for god's sake! When you got knocked up, your brain did, too, apparently. Jesus, what the hell happened to you, Aurora? You are supposed to be my best friend, for crying out loud! You and I were inseparable even when I lived in the Bronx and you in Brooklyn. But no, instead you get married and you left your own best friend at the curb because apparently she's not as willing as you are to spread your legs to the next guy who smiles at you. Whatever. Have your baby. Have a million babies and let your uterus fall out, I don't care. When you bleed out of control, think of me. Merry fucking Christmas.” She slammed the phone down and turned away from the wall with a flushed feeling in her face. Her heart hammered in her chest all the while she strode on back to Alex.

He looked on at her with the cup of cocoa still right next to his hand.

“Congratulations, you're the thousandth person to say I was born with a guitar in one hand,” he said with a straight face once she came into earshot.

“Wait.” She hesitated right before the table. “You heard me?”

“Heard the whole thing,” he told her, and he giggled like a little boy. And then he straightened himself up. “But—damn. I can't believe she actually wasn't willing to listen to you and talk things out.”

Sam shook her head and she returned to her spot right next to him at the table. She wanted to cry but no tears came forth in her eyes. She also couldn't bear the thought of crying before a boy she didn't know too well, either. Instead, she just propped her chin up in the palm of her hand.

“I don't know what happened to her, Alex,” she confessed; she glanced over at him, and she brought her attention to his waist, still slightly full, and then the rest of his body. Even sitting there, he looked graceful. “She's—completely different person from when I first met her. I almost don't even recognize her anymore. I remember, it wasn't even that long ago, we were sitting in this Vietnamese restaurant eating pho together and she was telling me about her Korean heritage, all the little rituals they do and everything. Come to think of it, that was the last time she and I had a genuine intelligent conversation with each other.”

Alex shook his head at that. Sam sighed through her nose and she leaned back in the seat next to him. His long lanky fingers twitched a little bit on the surface of the table. A guitar player with too much energy.

Indeed, he brought his hand closer to his face and he pulsated his fingers a bit.

“You alright?” she asked him.

“I get cramps in my hand sometimes. 'No pain, no game' as it's often referred to as.”

He then picked up his hot cocoa and, after he blew on the surface a little bit, he took a sip of it. She glanced down at his body again.

“You look really good, by the way,” she complimented him.

“You think so?” he said as he set the cup down.

“Yeah. Your tummy's not poking out so much. Within time, you'll be all willowy and thin as a rail.”

“I've lost a little weight,” he said with a gentle little pat of his stomach, “not much—like, seven or eight pounds, but I do feel it. I remember it wasn't even like a year ago, I had this roll on my waist and it hung over my jeans. It's just that I like to eat, though.”

“Don't we all?” she laughed.

“I kinda want to be the type of musician who's real thin but there's something graceful about him, though. Like how Cliff was—he was like this classically educated musician and so thin and elegant. Or like David Bowie about ten years ago—minus the whole 'thin white duke' thing of course. Something radically different from your typical coke nosed rock star, you know?” He then cleared his throat. “You said you and Aurora had pho together. You know, I have lived in the San Francisco Bay Area my whole entire life and I've never eaten pho before. There's a whole Asian sector up there, too. Can you believe that?”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I always wanted to try it, though, just because it looks yummy. There's so much I wanna try out, too.”

“So much to eat and so much to do. All the world's a stage, after all.”

“Right?” He had a twinkle in his eye when she said that, the first time she had seen a twinkle in his eye.

“The only drawback is I imagine getting very fat because of all the tasty food you're eating.”

“Watch, I'll have this big round Buddha belly on me by the time I'm my dad's age—like around fifty.”

“You can rub it for good luck,” she joked, “seeing as you'll be like Buddha.”

“Yeah, I'll be like 'hey, want a bit of good luck? Come rub my belly'.” And she burst out laughing at that. Without another word, Alex downed the rest of his hot cocoa, which apparently had plenty cooled off enough at that point. Indeed, she pictured him a little bit on the round side, and his handsome face made even more lovely with some extra pounds. Joey had the round face himself, and there was something so precious about it as well, except Alex had that milky soft skin just like the full moon at night. Soft and round, just like the full moon.

Sam then climbed to her feet so she could let him stand up and put on his coat once more: tall and growing slim, made even slimmer and more graceful with that dark peacoat wrapped around his body. He lifted his hair out from underneath his coat collar so it all sprawled out over his shoulders.

She led him out of there and into the cold darkness that fell over Ithaca: the sole lights out there came from the tail lights on Testament's van that awaited him at the curb. Right up the block stood Marla's car, ready to take Sam to see Joey down in Camillus for the New Year. She turned to Alex as he rubbed his hands together to better keep in the warmth.

“I will say this,” he started again as he adjusted the lapels of his coat, “seeing as you'll be closer to us, if and when you come out to California, we should see each other more.”

“You wanna take me out on a date?” she teased him with a giddy little chuckle.

“No, no, no,” he said with a lopsided grin on his face. “I mean, when the dust eventually settles on our end, like when we can finally take a little bit of time off and get the chance to breathe, you and I should hang out together.” He glanced off to the side. “If I'm honest, Samantha, I kinda like hanging out with you.”

As soon as the words left his lips, the first flurries from the lake effect fell over their heads. He glanced up to the sky: the little tuft of gray over his brow resembled to one of those few little snowflakes around them. The darkness that enveloped around them meanwhile made him resemble to a ghost.

“You know what?” she stated as she tucked her hands into her coat pockets. “I like hanging out with you. You're easy to talk to.”

“Well, I dunno 'bout that,” he said with a shrug of his shoulders and a slight roll of his eyes, “I'm still trying to figure out as to how to interact with people on tour. I just come to you because you're familiar to me. I recognize you as Samantha Shelley, the girl whom Cliff dated for a bit before he was killed, and also the first member of our fan club. You're familiar so I can admit that I am at the very least, a little comfortable with you.”

“You're also aware of other people, too,” she added, “like—you don't make things about yourself. At least not in that way.”

“Growing up with parents who studied social science for literal decades will do that to a guy,” he said with another shrug of his shoulders. More flurries floated down from the pitch black sky and he gazed up once more: the shadows accentuated the depth of his eyes such that he in fact resembled to a creature from another world. Indeed, therein lay something ancient and shadowy about Alex, as if he was a time traveler from the distant future who had come to guide her, or a dark prince. The touch of gray upon his head only added to the feeling.

“Sam!” Belinda called out from the backseat of the car.

“I gotta go,” she told him.

“I do, too.”

“Um—will I see you soon?” she asked him.

“I hope we can see each other again soon,” he said with a thoughtful expression on his face, “in the mean time, you take care of yourself.”

“You, too—and Happy New Year, too.”

“And Happy New Year to you, too!”

They parted ways, and Sam bowed into the front seat next to Marla, who had switched on the heater full blast. More time with Alex and she could finally uncover yet another glimmer from beneath the cool demeanor. There was a young boy in there: she had to coax him out somehow.

The darkness had fallen over upstate New York, but Marla had hope that they would reach Camillus in no time. Granted, the snow forced her to slow down a great deal but the lights of the Syracuse skyline glowed through the low clouds all around them. Sam thought about that little encounter she had had with Alex back there, and she couldn't stop thinking about it.

“Not the first time I've had to do this,” she assured Sam and Belinda; the former thought back to when she, Frank, and Charlie had to rescue Joey from the side of the road. And now she was going to see him again, that time for the real stroke of midnight for the New Year.

Indeed, they finally reached Joey's place a block away from the art shop, closed up for the night; Sam thought about the stained glass window she wanted to make of Joey, and she wondered if Belinda had finally used her powers of recommendation and convincing to snag her a spot in the realm of art glass for the next quarter. At that point, however, it was almost nine o'clock at night, which meant the party would be starting late.

The warmth from the heater and sitting close to Alex that whole time had left Sam feeling all manner of cozy. By the time they made their way into Joey's apartment, she already could feel her eyelids sinking low. But she had to stay awake for him. She had to be next to him at the stroke of another brand new year there in upstate New York.

She opened her eyes at one point, and she found herself seated upright on his couch. Joey took his seat right next to her, while Marla and Belinda giggled about something in the next room.

“Joey,” she breathed out, and her voice broke. She cleared her throat. “What time is it?”

“About five minutes to midnight,” he told her with a glimpse down at his wristwatch. “I've just been waitin' for you to wake up for the past two hours.”

“I don't even remember falling asleep,” she admitted with a shake of her head.

“You just walked in through the front door and collapsed on the floor. Marla and I put you here because we knew you would wake up. Just when was the only question about it.”

He then cleared his throat, and his brown eyes wandered over to the kitchen doorway behind them.

“I like watching you,” he confessed in a low voice. “You look so soft. I wish you could see in you what I see in you.”

“You know, it's funny, I—feel the same about you. I wish you could see in you what I see in you.”

He ran his tongue along his dark lips. Their last New Year together. Not a shred of mistletoe for Christmas but the feeling of her leaving in a few months time served to be enough for them.

“Two minutes now, Bel!” Marla proclaimed from the kitchen.

Sam lifted her head from the top of the couch. If she was going to be closer to Testament from that point onward, she had to give Joey the one thing he so desired. She had to give to him what she couldn't give to Cliff when he was alive not even the year before.

“Shall we?” Joey offered her as he lingered closer to her.

“Sixty seconds now.”

Sam sighed through her nose and she brought her face closer to him. That soft soapy musk on the side of his neck. The even softer aroma embedded in the roots of his black curls. The softness and smoothness of his skin. She left it all for him, and now she was about to leave him come the summer time.

She lingered closer to his face.

“Thirty seconds.”

Joey ran his tongue along his dark lips again. He put his arm around her: and she realized that Chuck had put his arm about Marla but not her at the restaurant.

“Let's make this count,” Sam told him as she gazed into his brown eyes, as dark as the snowy night outside there.

“Every last part of it,” Joey added, and his soft expression hardened. She had been sitting next to Alex for the better part of an hour, but she needed him to be present.

“Fifteen.”

She closed her eyes. Like waiting for Christmas itself to come.

“Ten—nine—eight—”

She relaxed every inch of her body and the mysterious man in her dreams burst into mind, albeit for a fleeting few seconds.

“—four—” Marla joined in with Belinda. “—three—two—one!”

Joey pressed his lips onto hers almost immediately, and Marla and Belinda clapped in the brand new year. A brand new year of brand new adventures, especially for Sam as she drank down some more of Joey's venom. Something to take along with her out to California and put on display for all the world to see for itself.

[feverinfeveroutfic]

chapter twenty-one: the sun king

*as of writing this today (6/6/21), this is probably my favorite chapter (i say “as of because i’m positive there’ll be more 💜)

Halloween came along in the form of a blanket of rain and low orange lights from the street. Sam awoke early, before the sunrise, so when she looked out the bedroom window, the Bronx skyline glowed with that rich amber color at the east. She thought about Cliff's suggestion about Mexican hot chocolate and she let her eyes wander over to the other side of the street. Cinnamon and nutmeg with whipped cream.

The rain was coming and she wondered if there would be anything going on later that night given it was another full school day.

The sound of Cliff clearing his throat caught her ear, and she peered over her shoulder to the bedroom door. It was still quite early, just shortly after five in the morning, and yet she was willing to make him another cup of hot chocolate to go along with his breakfast.

She slipped on a sweater over her camisole and she headed on out to the front room, and Cliff himself lay out on the couch. She offered to let him sleep head to toe in her bed with her, but he insisted on the couch instead. He lay his head on a small pillow, on the side of the couch closest to the kitchen door: some of his smooth hair spread across his face so she could only see the tip of his nose.

Sam was careful to creep past him so she could check on the chocolate and what she had for breakfast. Not much. Not much as far as straight up coffee went for him and herself, either. Even though it was early in the morning, she figured she could make her way across the street for some cinnamon and nutmeg, and she had to hustle all the while as well. She peered around the corner at the crown of his head and she showed him a smile.

She doubled back to her bedroom to get dressed. Cliff was still asleep by the time she left and made her way outside. She caught a glimpse of Aurora's purple jacket when she reached the street, but she wasn't going to stop for any reason on the way there. Sam tugged her hood over her head but it kept on falling off with the gusts of cold wind.

She thought about asking either Cliff or her parents for a new hat: a matching cowgirl hat! She strode past a series of jack o'lanterns and witch cutouts on the sidewalk, and she thought about a pointed witch hat instead.

She rounded the corner, only to be met with a gust of cold wind and a handful of dried leaves. She adjusted her purse strap with one hand and the hood on her head with her free hand. The leaves cleared away and she spotted Zelda and Louie at the curb.

“Darling Samantha!” she called out to her over the wind.

“Zelda and the devil,” Sam retorted, which brought a big laugh out of him. “Where you guys going?”

“A little bit of breakfast and then some rent money,” Louie replied as the three of them clustered together on the sidewalk.

“You guys gonna do something for tonight?” she asked them.

“Yeah, as a matter of fact, the Cherry Suicides are gonna play a Halloween show at seven thirty down at L'Amour,” Zelda replied. “The four of us are gonna dress up like witches!”

“Sexy witches, I assume,” Louie cracked with a little nod of his head.

“Yeah, you wish,” she scoffed, and then she returned her attention to Sam. “What you doin'?”

“Cliff suggested Mexican hot chocolate yesterday so I had it on my mind when I got up a little bit ago. There are also some things I need to get anyway to boot, too.”

“Mmm, that sounds good. As a little appetizer to what awaits later on tonight.”

“Apparently so,” Sam agreed with her. “But anyways—I gotta move on. I go to class in a few hours—” Another gust of cold wind took them aback a little bit, and the three of them bowed their heads in unison.

“But yeah, I go to class in a few hours,” she continued in a loud enough voice.

“We gotta go in there, too, anyway,” Zelda assured her, and without another word, the three of them pressed on into the tiny market to get away from the winds. Zelda ran her hands over her short bob of black hair, and Louie shook his head about. Sam turned her attention to him.

“By the way, what brings you here to New York from California?” she asked him.

“The same reason why you're here,” he answered with a little toss of his inky black hair.

“It's for good reason anyway,” she retorted.

“I'm still kinda sheltered, though,” he confessed with a shrug of his shoulders. “I think we all are.”

“Just a bunch of boys still.”

“Kinda. It's why I'm living with Zelda.”

“Louie!” Zelda herself called to him from the other side of the room, and she showed them a bottle of Irish cream liqueur. “Remember the other day we were talking about Irish coffee?”

Louie then returned his attention to Sam.

“Just a bunch of boys still,” he couldn't resist the chuckle.

“Still!” she declared with a laugh herself. “Have fun with that.”

“Oh, we will,” he assured her with a wink.

Sam pressed on to the spice aisle and she was quick to pick out those two little glass bottles as well as some more chocolate. She also remembered those little marshmallows, all just for him. By the time she checked out, Zelda and Louie were still congregated on the other side of the market with the bottle of liqueur as well as a small box of banana nut muffins. They laughed about something once Sam made her way over to the front door.

She began to wonder if there was something more in between those two besides their status as roommates. He did joke about their Halloween costumes being sexy after all. Indeed, when she saw them on the curb, they were walking quite close to each other, and they seemed a bit more friendly towards each other compared to the first time she saw them together earlier that year. Maybe that was why Louie actually moved back east but he wasn't willing to talk about it as of yet given he was still new to Sam.

She kept her head bowed against the wind, even though she had her back to the gusts and the sunrise. By the time she got back to the apartment building, the golden light from the sunrise kissed the top level high over her head; she turned around in time to find Zelda and Louie having returned to the street. The sunrise shone on the crown of his head to where it actually looked as though he had had a crown.

She watched them walk towards the other side of the street and then she remembered Cliff upstairs. He was still sound asleep once she ducked back into her place and she set the small bag of groceries on the counter. She was quick to melt the chocolate first with some milk and then she added the cinnamon and the nutmeg once she poured it into the white mug. Hot chocolate for him, complete with whipped cream and a bit more nutmeg.

Meanwhile, she made herself a single little cup of coffee especially since it was a long school day.

She set the mug of Mexican hot chocolate on the coffee table right before his face and he opened his eyes in time.

“Is that what I think it is?” he asked in a broken voice.

“It is,” she answered, and she reached to his face and pushed the hair out from his eyes. Cliff lifted his head from the little pillow and gazed up at her with a dreamy look on his handsome face. He took one hand out from under the blanket; even though he was so big and tall compared to her, he resembled to a young boy.

Still just a bunch of boys after all.

“It was just something that was on my mind when I woke up this morning,” she confessed to him. “You mentioned it and—so I got up early and bounced up the street.”

“The cinnamon and the nutmeg even?” He pushed himself onto his side and he kept his eyes fixated on the white mug on the table before him.

“The cinnamon and the nutmeg even,” she echoed him. “And those little marshmallows. Besides, I have to get going to school in a little bit...” Her voice trailed off, and he reached forward for the mug. He took a whiff of the hot chocolate and the spices first and then he took a sip.

He let out a long low whistle.

“It's been a while,” he said.

“True.”

“So you have to get going soon?”

“Yeah. I'm just gonna change my clothes and grab my things, of course. I should also tell you that the Cherry Suicides are playing down at L'Amour tonight at seven. 'Cause it's Halloween and whatnot.”

“I'll be waiting for you,” he vowed to her, and he flashed her a wink before he took another sip from the mug. Without another word, Sam doubled back to her room and she put on her big long black winter coat, even though she had no idea if it would snow that day. Big long coat paired with those high heeled boots. Even though she hadn't planned anything for herself, she figured she would improvise.

Before she left the apartment, Cliff called her “the lady in black”.

“Yeah, well, you're the sun king,” she retorted as she stepped out to the hallway, and he laughed out loud at that. As she descended the stairs, she noticed Aurora in Emile's doorway, but she kept on walking to the front door. It was either ask her about it or miss the subway.

When she showed up at the school, she was greeted by Marla with a big black floppy witch hat upon her head.

“So many witches right now,” Sam remarked as they walked to the art history class together.

“I'm the real witch, though,” Marla assured her: Sam took a second look at her fingers and she spotted violet glitter painted on her nails.

“You've actually got the glitter and the goods.”

“The heritage, too.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I'm from a long line of actual genuine witches. With a ubiquitous last name like Taylor, you're gonna be part of some kind of lineage.”

“I wonder if I'm part of anything like that,” Sam said, absent.

“What's your last name, Shelley?”

“Yeah.”

“I'd think you are,” Marla assured her as they entered the classroom one right after the other. “That sounds like the kind of name that would indicate a heritage of sorts—” She stopped right in her tracks. Sam glimpsed at her expression and then she followed her gaze to Belinda, who wore what appeared to be nothing but white rags. A shirt with a piece of fabric across her chest and such that it showed off most of her breasts: it fit her to where it accentuated the curves of her body. But her skirt dropped down to her ankles, and it looked as though it was stitched togther with scrap fabric. Her blonde locks caressed over her broad shoulders.

She glanced up at the two girls in the doorway.

“What the hell, Bel?” Marla sputtered.

“I'm a mannequin,” Belinda replied and her eyes wandered over to Sam. “Blame her.”

Marla turned her head into Sam's direction. Neither of them said anything to each other for what felt like a long time, such that two people sidled behind them and almost pushed them out of the way.

Sam's mind fell blank even as Marla opened her mouth to say something about it. No sound came out.

“I'm a mannequin,” Belinda was saying to someone behind her. “A little mannequin short and stout.”

Marla laughed out loud at that but Sam had no idea as to what to do right then. It also didn't help matters that Belinda walked to their drawing class as she lifted up her skirt and she showed off the little pearly white flats on her feet.

“Bel, you should've put like cotton balls on the toes of your flats or something,” Marla joked as they rounded the corner before the stairwell.

“Nah, I would've looked ridiculous,” Belinda pointed out as she descended the stairs before them. “Believe me, I tried it out first and I thought it was just too much.”

Even despite the raggedy look of her outfit, she moved about the floor of their art class with a pair of scissors in either hand, one that was red, and the other blue. There were a couple of points wherein Sam wanted to ask her for one of the pairs of scissors so she could start over the shading on her current drawing, a tropical fish with shiny scales. She never did, but she did run the edge of the graphite with a light touch over the fish's tail fin, and she was able to give it a light film. Careful not to make the graphite too dark, she kept the pencil at an angle so the fin would be filmy and lacy.

She kept her head bowed towards the paper so she wouldn't see Belinda with the scissors. She did the exact same thing for the dorsal fins on the fish, and that was when Marla and Belinda began arguing about something.

“Here, let me show you—” Marla insisted.

“No, Marla—I've got it—I got it!”

Sam kept her attention fixated on the fish drawing in spite of it all. Darker at the scales' points and then she piled it on as she moved in closer to the middle of each scale. Each and every one. It was either that or pay attention to what her two friends were bickering about.

And lucky for her the class was long enough that she could make a few more finishing touches on the fins and the mouth of the fish. It was all still a bit too light. More graphite on the otherwise darkest parts of the fins and the scales. The sheen on the scales seemed fine but everything else was too light, far too light to submit to Miss Estes.

Those added layers of graphite almost looked out of place and disjointed. She angled the pencil again to make it look homogenous. She hoped it would look dark enough but also light enough; meanwhile, Belinda scoffed at something but Sam pressed on with the drawing before her. More graphite on those lacy fins and on those shiny scales. Even more, until they became rich and dark.

There was enough graphite on the fish's mouth given the sheer amount of darkness in contrast with the off white color of the paper, and she figured that was enough. If she played around with it more, she would darken it even more to the point it looked murky and nothing like a tropical fish.

She signed her initials at the bottom and she stood to her feet to hand it in.

Sam returned to her seat for her things, and, once she leaned to Marla and told her that she would await her upstairs, she made her way up the steps. As she made her way outside to get out of those stuffy school buildings, she recognized Cliff's hat and those dark bell bottoms up at the corner. She hurried onto the sidewalk and she ran up to him.

“Oh, whoa, you're out early,” he noted once she came within earshot. She threw her arms around him.

“Sometimes I get out early,” she told him; he kept his arm around her and he looked over at the stained glass windows in the front hallway. She followed his gaze and she thought back to that first day of school.

“I should tell you that we got close to the Iron Curtain and the Berlin Wall,” he told her in a low voice.

“When?” she asked, stunned.

“September. Like, right around the time you started school again. Just looking at that stained glass over there made me think of that.”

Sam gazed up at him and the brim of the hat as it cast a shadow over his face. He really was the sun king. And even in the shadow, she could make sight of pieces of cinnamon on the corner of his mouth. He nibbled on his bottom lip and she tilted her head to the side, and she gazed right into his eyes.

“I wanna tell you something,” Cliff began in a shaky voice, to which Sam raised her eyebrows at him.

“I wanna introduce you to my parents.”

“Well—Thanksgiving and Christmas are coming up,” she pointed out. “I think I might go visit my parents around then, unless they're willing to come out here to visit me. But we can go to the Bay Area and meet Mama and Daddy Burton.”

Cliff rubbed his hand on the Sam's shoulder.

“We've gotta do that—you and me. Just getting away together. Or—since I live out that way and we've actually got a couple of shows around New Year's, we can get you to fly on out. We can hang out with Legacy more, too, if you want! Alex gets Christmas off, too—maybe we can get to hang out together for real then.”

“I can ask Aurora to come along with me,” she followed along. “I mean, she is from California herself. She and I can fly on out when school lets out.”

“Well, what you got next?” he asked her.

“I have a writing class later this afternoon and then I go home. The Cherry Suicides have a Halloween show at seven tonight down at L'Amour.”

“Let me take you there,” he begged her.

“I'll let you,” she said, “I'll let you take me to the West Coast for Christmas if you wish.”

Cliff brought his head closer to her and she caught a whiff of cinnamon on his hair and his neck. The smell of Christmas.

“It's only the beginning, my love,” he said to her over the noise of the street, and without another word, he pressed his lips onto hers, and all she could taste was Christmas.

“Hey, love birds!” Marla called from the front door, and they turned in her direction. “It's lunch time and Belinda got tangled up in a pair of blue scissors.”