Adult-FanFiction.org : Television / Streaming

Crash Dummy	By : BehrBeMine Category: G through L > Gilmore Girls Views: 4968 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own The Gilmore Girls, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Crash Dummy
- 1
Title: Crash Dummy
Author: BehrBeMine (behrbemine@gmail.com)
Website:

http://www.behrbemine.com/solemn/
Word Count: 12, 436
Disclaimer: I don't own these
things. Sad. I feel poor.
Feedback: Well I'm not going
to beg because, let's face it, that's unattractive, and I already have lipstick
on my teeth. But I'll throw a little party in my head if I'm given incentive.
Pairing: Chris/Lorelai
Rating: R
Summary: "The wedding was too
perfect. Something had to marr it. Luckily for Lane, 'something' was me."
Beta: Nicole - - thanks ever
so.
Distribution: I'm sure you
can tickle it out of me. And it's at my sites every night by curfew.
[Build-A-Fic Guidelines --
Time Period: end of season
six / 1982-'83 flashbacks
Ickle Word: Schmoopy � (adj)
� To be sweet and adorable and cute to the point where it creates an entirely
new word to describe it.
Random Object: a remote
control
Quotation: "If love is blind,
why is lingerie so popular?" -- Author Unknown]
Note: I put so much sweat and
blood into this. So much '82-'83 research and time. I hope so much that it was
worth it.
Note: A few lyrics scattered
from U2's album, 'October': 'I Threw a Brick Through a Window'. This is not a
songfic. There is just one portion of the story where a few lyrics enhanced the
emotion I was trying to evoke.
Dedication: For my muse, who
finally behaved. This time, anyway.

- -
I.

She's pushing 40, though she
doesn't look it. In fact, at times, she doesn't look a day over 25. But
there's something in her eyes on this night as she enters Christopher's place,
crossing her arms protectively over her breasts. There is age beneath her
eyelids; pain, wisdom, and the evidence of a scarred soul. There are no bruises
on the outside, but somehow he knows that figurative blood has been spilled.

She needs to not be alone
right now. She needs someone to witness her breakdown. He obliges as he lets
her step inside the doorway. And he is lost to her then, a part of her again.
After all this time, he sees that look in her eyes, and he is willing, he is
eager, he is ready to be hers again, for however long she'll have him. Sherry
is gone, and a large pile of money can only give so much comfort when loneliness
creeps up again. It's a woman's touch that is needed in these times. And what
better woman to touch than this one?

He begins by reaching out for
her elbow, innocently enough. It is not his intent to seduce her, but he'll
have her if she's willing.

"Lor?" he prods gently.

Her head is shaking from side
to side. "I-don't-want-to-talk-about-anything."

Something has reached in and
grabbed a hold of her heart; that something is now squeezing the ever-beating
life out of it, extinguishing it from existence. He can see it in the way her
eyes are sinking into her skull, becoming larger as the rims become blackened,
the color of bruises. Maybe it's not that she doesn't want to talk; maybe it's
that she can't.

Silence is so deafening when
you're standing next to a Gilmore girl. He thinks this to himself, and not for
the first time. He can recall a time roughly 20 years ago when a sixteen
year-old Lorelai stood before him with a pregnancy strip in her hand. Read
it, was all she would say, and then she was quiet for so long while things
sunk into his brain, making his skull much like hers was this day.

"Christopher..." she squeaks
out just now. She's calling him by his full name. Something's definitely up.

He perks up from his reverie.
"I'll sleep on the couch tonight. It's pretty comfy, once you get past the
needing to be comfortable phase. You can take the bed."

She purses her lips and nods
strangely, her eyes on the ground. He wants to see Lorelai's eyes, wants to
look into them the way he hasn't been able to for the longest time.

"Lor?" he prompts again when
it seems she won't be speaking anytime soon.

"The couch. You. Right."
Monosyllabic Lorelai is a sight to behold. You'd think they'd show it at
carnivals and charge money for the phenomenon. Lord knows Taylor would.

It's as if Chris can actually
see a knife coming between them to cut the tension like a block of cheese. He
looks at her as she looks at the ground, at her shoes, at the scuff marks on the
ground from her shoes. The knife's blade cuts further until the tension
separates and falls like sheets amidst them.

"Screw it," Lorelai finally
mumbles before launching herself at Chris, wrapping her arms around his body and
crushing it tightly to hers. She looks at his face in a scrutinizing way, close
enough to examine every wrinkle that isn't there. Even when they are there,
they'll look distinguished on him. After all, he is Christopher. She knows
this, as she stares, seeming to contemplate her next move.

"I think," Chris whispers, as
if by talking too loudly he could scare her away, "that you're too afraid to
make the next move."

Challenged and already
defeated enough, Lorelai feels a lone tear escape from her left eye. She can
literally feel the mascara smear as she leans in to capture Chris' bottom lip
between her own. Her lips tremble against his as she continues the kiss,
pulling at his lips with the gentle ease of one who has been a lover of him many
a time. She knows him. She knows how he likes to be kissed. She knows how to
read the way he kisses her back.

II.

If she had known that the year
1982 would bring her last summer free of the tummy and the baby that would morph
into a new life, she may have searched harder for the answers that still linger
two centuries since. Lorelai's priorities went from "Is it fabulous?" to "Is it
necessary?", then were downgraded further to "Can I live without it?" Survival,
rather than enjoyment, became the key when her body was transformed into a
locket which would open to reveal another human being.

Lorelai picked at the food on
her plate with its expensive new design. She tried not to absolutely zero in on
the perks of being a part of a family whose only time spent together just had to
be for dinner, even on Friday nights. Drag. She sighed, and purposefully
slouched in her chair, contemplating doing the "Wow, I'm stifled -- I mean,
stuffed" excuse thing again and running out before purchasing guard dogs became
a topic of interest again. Dogs that would keep nothing out, but would rather
only serve to keep Lorelai in at all times.

She wasn't so much nervous as
annoyed at the thought of how many Scooby Snacks it would take to buy the
guards' cooperation.

"Sit up straight, Lorelai."
Hence Emily was given the patented stare that she had received from her daughter
since the very first time she placed her in one of those dresses that are meant
to be seen but not touched; worn but not worn out. Their skirts were the best
ones for spinning, and yet they were to belong only to a mannequin version of a
child behind glass.

Tiny carrots lined up for a
parade around Lorelai's plate as her father brought up a new topic. Something
about his new co-worker's business travels taking him on travels where he was
able to learn in a more first-hand way about the depths of the holocaust.

Emily perked up at this. "Ah,
I remember when Melissa Loman's father used to recall his time spent in Germany
during Hitler's reign. After being near so many blasts, it's no wonder the
man's hearing was never the same."

"God, you're old."

"What was that you muttered
under your breath?" Emily snapped.

"You're old enough to remember
people remembering things like that!"

"Your room. Now." Emily even
pointed in case Lorelai had sudden amnesia and needed directions.

"Old!" Lorelai spat out.

"Straight upstairs, young
lady. There will be no dinner for you."

"But then there will be no
urge to regurgitate."

"What are you saying? Are you
bulimic? You do look thin."

"No, Mom. I just hate the
'food' we eat here."

"Perhaps some time without it
will make you a little more grateful," Richard put in gruffly.

"Don't call me ungrateful."
Lorelai stabbed an accusatory finger at the air. "I'm leaving the room, aren't
I? There's something we can all be grateful for! ...Enjoy your Cornish hen's
barf."

"I heard that," Emily said
dryly, beyond irritated with these teenage antics.

Voiced Lorelai, while walking
away: "That's because I said it out loud."

III.

Summer midnights were the
best. Tasteless dress discarded, Lorelai would climb down the drain pipe in
jeans that hugged her hips deliciously, the big bangs hair sprayed on so that
not even a windshield wiper could disturb their shape. She made jabs at '80's
fashion while being a part of it, tying the left side of her pink polka-dotted
shirt into a knot to off-set any sense of centering in her outfit. She loved
that she looked atrocious. She took pictures, especially when wearing that
"confused unicorn" ponytail on the side of her head.

Upon reaching the ground, off
she'd sprint to Chris' awaiting vehicle, and away they'd venture to cause some
sort of damage to somebody's brain. Most likely each other's.

She stopped before him this
day, hands on her hips, except for the left hand, which grasped the knot that
hid her hip underneath it. "Uh, Chris? I think your car went through some sort
of identity crisis."

Christopher beamed at her,
revving the engine of his new motorcycle. "You like it? I'm gonna call her
Moneybags."

"Hmm. Well, I think Moneybags
is going to ruin my hair wherever we go."

"Please. A hurricane couldn't
bring damage to your hair. I've tried smashing those bangs, Lor, and they just
pop back relentlessly, like a slinky."

"First of all, major cool
points for comparing my hair to the God of all toys without batteries.
Secondly, if we crash and burn -- "

"We won't -- "

" -- and skid along the road
until only one side of my face is recognizable anymore, you must make my skinned
off side look presentable again using Moneybags' shiny parts before anyone in
society can see me again."

"Cool, my own robochick,"
Chris said thoughtfully. "But you'll have to pay me back for the parts you
stole, once you're blinking and eating solid foods again."

Lorelai's throat made a
disgusted sound that was something close to a forced cough. "I make no
promises. And even when I do, I cross my fingers behind my back."

"You're such a child. And, by
the way, you haven't even bothered to ask exactly what she is."

"A safety hazard record in the
making?"

Chris ignored her comment and
ran his fingers along its smooth handlebars. "It's a Honda Shadow 750, babe.
Wait till you hear her purr."

"She'd better not take my
place there. My cat impersonations are uncanny, even to cats."

Chris patted the limited space
on the seat behind him. "So you coming for a ride or not? Time's a-ticking.
You know how your mother starts randomly popping in to your bedroom to make sure
you're there around three. All your jabbering's made it half past twelve."

Lorelai approached the
vehicle, a kind that she had never ridden before, and placed a leg over it so
that she was straddling it completely. "Christopher, you're the child. If I
didn't 'jabber', we'd have no conversation at all. All that would come out of
your mouth would be, 'Hey. What's happening? Oh. I don't do the conversation
thing.'" She began adjusting herself on the seat. "Okay, have to say, before
take-off -- this? Is the most uncomfortable seat I've ever sat in."

"You're such a child," Chris
teased again. "Wrap your arms around my waist. But don't get frisky, I need to
concentrate."

Sighing, Lorelai did as she
was told. "You really take the fun out of everything." Barely had she clasped
her hands together, hooking her arms securely, than Chris stepped on the gas,
and they were off.

Lorelai screamed, wordlessly,
and then she screamed his name. She couldn't decide if it was out of fright or
outrage or because of the thrill that chased the warmth from her veins and left
adrenaline in its wake. So much speed was gathered so quickly, and it was
nothing like being in a car, or on a bike. A motorcycle was death and danger,
like a noose with her name on it at dawn. It was speed that pulled the skin on
her face taut, and brought tears to her eyes that escaped from the outer corners
of her lids to be whisked away into the air they so briefly encountered and then
left behind.

It was the kind of thrill that
was slamming doors in her parents' faces, tearing itchy party dresses to
smithereens, escaping down the drain pipe every midnight that summer without
fail. To vocalize the word motorcycle was to give desired rebellion a
name. She knew that now. Clasping her fingers more intricately around Chris'
waist, she held on tighter.

IV.

It doesn't take long to find
Christopher's bed. History shows that it never did take them long to find a
suitable place to copulate: cramped cars, school bathrooms, the janitor's
closet, her parents' balcony. Whether they were putting on a show for people
across the street with buckets of popcorn between their knees was no concern.
Always the concerns of life were tossed away with his tie and her bra. They
became so lost in one another, having known each other a lifetime. Having
watched the candle's flame grow and flicker.

It was a trick candle, Lorelai
now realizes. One that could be blown out, lingering only in tendrils of
smoke. And yet once her back was turned, the flame could reignite. It did
reignite. Time after endless time. Maybe that was why she was here of all
places, throwing things away along with her clothes and those nonchalant
concerns. Throwing away what she and Luke had, an engagement that was stuck in
time, as if held by static cling wrap, never moving anywhere. She was too
afraid to watch it move backward, and so she had to leave before that could
happen, knowing that the forward steps would never come.

They'd never come.

Lorelai stands, naked,
watching Chris remove his boxers and socks. She flexes and unflexes her hands
at her sides, straining to recall a time before when she has been this
uncomfortable. She purses her lips, knowing that never before has she known an
action was so blatantly wrong, and gone through with it, anyway. She releases
the suction of her lips on each other, and feels for her hair as if it is a
foreign thing. She realizes that she is standing on train tracks. She isn't
moving away; she isn't trying to budge. She is begging that train to crash into
her and smash her to pieces.

Pieces that would litter the
carpet of Christopher's elegant bedroom, scattering as they decayed with time.
Maybe if she was only pieces, she wouldn't be the hollow shell standing here
right now, missing unfashionable baseball caps and the soreness of rubbing
delicate skin against eternal stubble. Maybe the sting of the ultimatum would
disappear as if it weren't this gigantic thing, like a black hole set against
all four walls of every room, pulling, wanting to suck her into being less than
Luke's main priority. So far less that the place she holds with him is worth
nothing. Nothing, if she can't have it all.

He wants more time; now he can
have all the time in the world.

"Lor?" Chris' voice comes to
her as if from far away. She realizes that she's touching her hair again,
looping strands of it around her fingers absent-mindedly as though she's
developing a habit of it, like people who chew their nails. She drops her hand
immediately, picturing the stubby fingers of those kinds of people, and the way
they can't even scratch; she doesn't want to go bald. She clears her throat and
meets Chris' eyes from where he stands across the room, giving him her
attention.

He takes timid steps toward
her, insecurities alive in his eyes, his mouth set in no shape in particular.
It's as if he can't choose what kind of expression his face is supposed to be
wearing.

She wonders when he became so
afraid of displeasing her. When he reaches the halfway point between them,
something within her snaps and she rushes forward, wrapping her arms around his
neck and capturing his lips, kissing him hungrily. As he kisses her back, his
arms encircling her, she searches within his mouth for the answers she's seeking
to questions she hasn't vocalized. She stabs her tongue in through his teeth,
digging deeper, an archaeologist with the desperation of a deadline.

Chris does nothing to tame her
intensity, his fire ablaze, so hot that it's turning from orange to blue.
Awkwardly as they kiss, he steers them to the bed, and he trips over the side of
the bed frame, sending them both flying down to the mattress. When Lorelai
lands on top of him with a thud, her lips are torn away, and her eyes pop open.

He groans at the way the
spell's broken when an object digs into his back. He reaches behind his body to
reveal the stereo remote from the living room. Gigi loves to hide the things,
loves to make Daddy "mad".

As he tosses it aside, Lorelai
stares at him, wide-eyed. After a beat, she crawls over him to take her place
in the bed. She usually sleeps on the right side of the bed, but tonight, she
chooses the left side on purpose. Getting situated, she cups Chris' chin in her
hand and draws it towards her, as his body follows suit. Ending up in a push-up
position above her, he is very aware of the way that her eyes have not left the
depths of his since opening. Each time he blinks, he expects to see her gaze
shift, but it's riveted, and now she is swallowing something that he hopes is
not her pride.

He lowers himself to her,
chest upon chest, his nipples hardening as one of them brushes directly against
one of hers. He sighs with happiness, thankful that Gigi has gone to bed on
time this evening, and then begins kissing Lorelai again.

Lorelai absorbs Chris' sigh,
and relaxes her body, her chest deflating towards the mattress. As their lips
meet, she closes her eyes and thinks of anything but what is worth thinking
about.

V.

"You never could stand still
when you were a child, I don't know what sort of amnesia overcame me to cause me
to think you'd be able to do so now," Emily whined, acting as if the seamstress
wasn't in the room. It never failed to be interesting how easily she labeled
certain people with insignificance.

"It's okay, Mom," said
Lorelai, moving on purpose this time. "You're probably just going senile."

Emily sighed with impatience.
"Lorelai, someday you're going to grow up to understand what things are
important, and you're going to have a child who turns out to be just like you."

"God, that would be cool." Lorelai stared dreamily at the ceiling, imagining
it. A mini version of her. "It would be like playing Barbies, only the Barbies
would be us."

"You might as well give up,"
Emily told the seamstress not five minutes later. "Your efforts were good ones,
but there is no hemming a skirt evenly if it is continually pulled up and down."

"Does that mean I can take
this thing off?" Lorelai asked, her voice pleading and hopeful.

"Yes, take it off. Walk all
over the skirt until you trip yourself at my dear friend Lacy's wedding this
weekend. Just don't be surprised if I turn away as if I don't know you."

"If only..." Lorelai had that
dreamy tone again. She yanked the dress off right in front of her mother, just
to embarrass the woman with the exposed skin of her belly between bra and
panties. "So I can go now?" She pulled on the sexiest top her mother would
allow. "We're done with the 'fitting' thing?"

"Go," Emily said, defeated,
with a flick of her wrist and a hand to her forehead. "Really," she remarked,
her voice given new strength as Lorelai bounded toward the large dressing room's
door, "I marvel at how you get in and out of jeans that tight. You'd think they
were painted on."

"Is that your way of saying
I'm allowed to decorate my jeans with paint?"

"Good lord. Go, Lorelai. Go
now."

Giddy, Lorelai showed little
manners as she raced through the formal dress shop, looking for the entrance.

"Did you find what you were
looking for, miss?" asked a salesman with a tasteful tie and a gentle voice.

"Not even, I found my mother," she said, and that was all
she explained before pushing her way through the main door and out into the
sunshine. She immediately headed toward the seediest bar in Hartford, which was
where she and Chris always went when one was looking for the other. It was a
great place to hang out, in front of the doors with the sleazy figures of nude
females painted onto the small pieces of glass that allowed one to see into the
bar just enough to realize they weren't seeing anything. She loved that it was
forbidden, so forbidden that even when she was of age, she'd probably never
enter it. Lorelai loved this place during the daytime, when it was closed due
to the appearance of the sun, for what it would do to her parents' reputation,
precious as it was, if she were to be seen there by anyone deemed important.

The way she scoffed at the
uptight restrictions of privileged society was no hidden thing.

Lorelai reached the bar,
expecting to find it lonely without a companion lounging by its doors. Instead,
she found Megan Reily sitting, knees pulled up to her chest. Lorelai narrowed
her eyes, for the girl's back was touching her territory. Making with the happy
voice as she approached, she said, "Megan."

The girl looked up. "Hey,
Lorelai."

Lorelai looked around a bit as
if someone were watching. "What are you doing here?"

"Getting baked by this sun."

"Yeah, it's scorching, all
right. Hey, you know, Megan..." Lorelai bent her knees and sat cautiously
beside Megan on the cement. "Not to be like a total bitch, but you are so
sitting on my part of the sidewalk."

"Ohhh." Megan blinked. "And
see, I just didn't know that because I didn't see your name where I placed my
butt."

"It's written in invisible
ink. Though it glows in the dark. It's sort of nocturnal that way."

Megan ran a hand over her
bangs that had a wispy quality that Lorelai had always envied and couldn't
achieve, seeming to contemplate those words. Megan fingered her long strands
which were so white Lorelai wondered often if she had milked a few albinos or
been scared shitless so many times that all of the color ran screaming out.

"I'm pretty comfortable here,"
Megan finally said. "And even if your name really is there, I don't mind
sitting on it."

Lorelai huffed and folded her
arms across her breasts. "Come on, Megan. Remember the time I paid the old
homeless guy to buy you cigarettes when you chain-smoked your weekly ration?
Tell me you didn't love me for that. You missed out on so many lecture type
words from the parental units."

Sincerity did not touch the
smile on Megan's face. "They found out."

"Ugh. Well. Megan."
Lorelai's voice was taking on a whining note. "This space is mine. I called it
like a year ago. Called it like claimed it and even called it Bon Jovi."

"You're telling me I'm sitting
on Bon Jovi as incentive for me to move?"

"Don't get attached. He likes
being sat on by my butt better than other butts."

"How do you know?" Megan shot.

"He told me," Lorelai
backfired.

"How could he tell you if you
were sitting on him?"

"I... gweh..."

Lorelai was about to call a
time out on an argument, perhaps for the first time in her whole life history,
when strong arms snaked around her waist from behind. "Hmm," she sighed
contentedly into the smell of Christopher as he nuzzled the back of her ear with
his nose. "You're good at that..."

"You looked like you needed a
little calming down," he soothed, rocking her upper body with his arms. He
glanced up. "Hey, Megan. How's it hanging?"

"We were talking about butts,"
she so delicately informed him.

Chris gave a manly chuckle,
inhaling the scent of Lorelai's shampoo in the stray tendrils that fell from her
ponytail to frame her face. "I hope you left mine out of it."

"You scared it couldn't
survive the scrutiny?" Lorelai prodded.

"When the scrutiny's coming
from you two? It's definitely good to be afraid."

Megan slowly stood from where
she was sitting on the invisible marked territory. "I think we were just about
to decide who has the better butt between Lorelai and me." She was so
informative, all of the time. She was someone who Lorelai didn't miss when they
failed to get together in the summertime.

Lorelai could feel something
growing in size from where Chris was pressed against her from behind.
Unconsciously, his grip on her waist tightened a little, squeezing to claim.
Lorelai's eyes went wild with excitement and bewilderment, her mouth forming an
ecstatic wow as Chris' reaction sunk in.

Chris was picturing the way
Lorelai's behind had looked in those favorite jeans of hers as he had walked up
to the two girls just moments before. He closed his eyes at the thought,
picturing its toned shape, and the way the fabric hugged her below the waist,
from hips to cheeks, making him want to touch her there, now. Always. A quiet
groan escaped him that he couldn't withhold as he pressed himself into that tiny
butt of hers.

Lorelai giggled self
consciously, and whirled around until she was facing her beau. Though she was
looking at him, her words were directed at Megan: "Let's not pull him into
this." The blush in her cheeks was deliciously pink as she took Chris' hand and
started leading him down the street.

Megan quickly followed. "So
now that I stopped suffocating your Bon Jovi, can we be friends again?"

"Mmm..." Lorelai tilted her
head this way and that as Chris put his arm around her shoulders. "What will I
get out of it?" she teased.

"You get to hang with the
coolest chick this side of town."

"Really? My clone's around?
Where?"

When Chris finished forcing
his laughter to subdue itself, he asked, "So how's it going with you and Mickey,
Megan? Lorelai here like so misses asking about M&M." He raised his voice to
an unnatural pitch to make extra fun.

"Mock me, will you. You'll
pay for that," Lorelai told him darkly, conjuring storms in her eyes.

"Actually, Mike and I are
giving it another shot," Megan said, the excitement in her voice hiding behind
caution.

"Oh my God, yay!" piped in
Lorelai. "He's your boyfriend again. Your boyfriend for the second time. Your
boyfriend squared." She gave Chris a pointed look. "See? I can already apply
math to my everyday life. I think I've stuffed enough of that crap into my
brain."

"Hey, at least math always has
the same answer. You and your 'More English! More! There must be more words!'
kick is the ridiculous thing. I speak the language as fluently as I'll ever
care to, okay?"

"Wow," remarked Megan, "you
both actually do have one interest in our school. That's enough to blow all our
minds."

"Whose minds?" asked Chris.

"Everyone at Chilton, college
counselors, society..."

"It is so nice to know we're
on so many peoples' minds." Lorelai added a smile to her sarcasm and turned her
face in toward Chris' t-shirt covered chest, inhaling his new manly aftershave.

The three continued to walk
aimlessly for a few steps leaving the air unpolluted with the abuse of the
English language. Certainly, though, it couldn't last.

"So, how long have you two
been a couple?" Megan pried, having noticed the touching and the smelling. The
arms, hands, interlocking everywhere.

"We're a couple?" Lorelai
looked at Chris, feigning shock. "Honey, you really have to tell me these
things."

Chris shrugged. "I assumed
you knew."

"You also assumed Megadeth was
gonna kick Metallica's ass."

"Says the girl who wants to
stalk The Bangers."

Lorelai's eyes closed in mild
impatience. "The Bangles. As my apparent other half, I think you should
know me better."

"Looks like we're real bad at
this 'couple' thing," Chris "admitted", loving the games he played with Lorelai,
for she was the only person he knew above the age of seven who still would play
such games so unabashedly.

"I guess we'd better stop it,
then, before things get out of hand."

Megan looked on, perplexed.
She knew them, but nobody really knew Lorelai Gilmore until they got
close enough to see these types of insane intricacies.

"All right," Chris said.
"Megan, Lorelai and I are no longer a couple." He gave himself a visible tremor
as though a fat giant snake were moving down through his body. "Glad we got
that out in the open."

"Okay, so we're just friends,"
Lorelai "established", having let go of Chris' hand and setting it free.
Noticing the absence of the weight of his arm on her shoulders, she continued,
"But I still want the benefits: sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll."

Chris' schmoopy smile then was
the only genuine piece of conversation they'd shared all day. "You got it,
baby."

VI.

Chris' body is heavier over
hers than it used to be. She remembers these things. Has always remembered.
Where she is hollow, he is whole, his muscle pressing in to the vacant spots
left by the skin stretched taut over her bones. It's all she feels like in this
moment: a bag of bones, once so milky white, and now fading into the grey of
oblivion. The oblivion that claims lost souls and forgotten memories. Those
who are lost and never find the right path.

She can feel the bones in her
mouth, lined up together as her teeth. She clenches them as Chris massages the
knots in her body. He has an idea of how they got there; what he doesn't know
is that they're not going away.

VII.

Some nights when the clock
struck twelve, Chris would climb up the drain pipe, rather than call Lorelai
down. They'd lay side-by-side on her bed with its frilly unstained comforter
that had to be upgraded to a new one every time she did make a stain. She
didn't even pretend to care about choosing the new patterns anymore. The way
she saw it, a couple more grueling years of high school, and then she was home
free. She was just biding her time until she could leave. When she could
celebrate, Emily could celebrate, and Richard could remain as detached about the
entire thing as ever he seemed.

When debating which of Snow
White's elves had the most sex appeal weirded Chris out to the point of getting
on his nerves, he rolled onto his side, supporting his head with his bent arm.
"Please tell me there are other things you've thought of today."

Lorelai shrugged and then
duplicated his position, so that they could look one another in the eye as they
spoke of things that were oh-so-important. "I was walking by the electronics
store on 15th the other day and the TV in the window was playing an episode of
'Cheers'. I was thinking like... the values of shows like that are so lost on
people like us. People who find sitting down as a family and watching TV
together uncomfortable, and more like a waste of time."

Her eyes found other areas of
her room to explore as she formulated the rest of what she was going to say. "I
don't think I've ever watched anything other than the news with my parents.
That 'Cheers' song, Where everybody knows your name... It's true, you
know."

"Oh, very," Chris immediately
agreed. "People always know my name."

"As long as they've had enough
time to rehearse it before the obligatory birthday party."

Chris smiled. "'Let's see, I
give the envelope of money to the tall girl standing next to Jack's latest
divorcee...'"

"The system never fails," was
Lorelai's conclusion. "Except when it does."

What she loved about Chris was
that he nodded, and he understood. She made sense to him in ways that sometimes
she couldn't even make sense of.

"You ever actually watched an
episode of 'Cheers'?" Chris asked her.

"Ha. No. Way too boring for
me."

"That's right. I should have
known. You're more into the crap they'll be selling reruns of on videotapes for
$1.99 in six months flat. But you just have to watch it, because a title like
'That's Incredible!' just screams 'dear God watch me'. I think they must use a
title like that hoping for some kind of validation. Those poor suckers are
going to be waiting a long time."

Lorelai lunged at the chance
to defend her show. "People died to entertain, okay?"

"No, I think they died because
they were so stupid they decided to sit in a box for six hours with no air."

"You're just jealous that your
death won't be as fondly remembered."

"By the fifteen people who
watched the box thing?"

Lorelai furrowed her brows.
"...Yes."

"Well, I may need five
minutes, but I think I can come up with something just as 'memorable'."

"Like walking a tight-rope on
stilts?"

Chris paused. "How about you
walk a tight-rope in high heels, and then we'll talk?"

"Sorry, bucko. My
fantabulously glorious death is already in the scripting process. It's going to
blow your mind. And don't you dare try to take a peek."

Chris reached over in a flash
to grab a hold of Lorelai in her off-the-shoulders pink top, and pull her to
him. "Not even a little peek?" he pried, touching his lips to hers that eagerly
waited. He lost his focus for a moment in the kiss that served to drown him and
all of his senses, but upon rising for air, he remembered his mission. Project
Tickle began, as he found the spots on her body that she knowingly tried to keep
hidden from him. But there were only so many bases she could cover, and still
things were left vulnerable somewhere. His fingers tapped and hooked in a
frenzied way on the soles of her feet. Then he grabbed a hold of her side when
kicked away and his ticklish fingers wouldn't let go, not even when the giggles
and her cries of, "Stop it! Stop it!" rose from his ears to the ceiling. "Not
even a little wibble peek?" he pleaded.

"No! Stooooooop! My parents
are just downstaaaaaaaairs!"

With that final warning, his
fingers relaxed, wrapping around her side tenderly, and holding her body to
him. He buried his nose in her severely messed up hair, inhaling the scent of
her that always helped him to relax and keep going when life was too much.
Within seconds, he was calm, and her breathing had slowed down close to a normal
rate again.

"How about we stop talking
about you and death in the same sentence?" he whispered.

They unfolded from one another
at the reality of that, and took their original positions, on separate parts of
the mattress, hands near but not touching, eyes to the ceiling, contemplating
the sky that was somewhere above.

Lorelai, as usual, was the one
to break the silence when it had stretched itself thin. And always her ice
breakers were monumental, the very thing that those who failed to be scholars
must have pondered from time to time.

"What happens during the
second you lose in a sneeze?"

VIII.

Chris is ready for full-on
sexual contact now, covering her again, whispering things in her ear, like he
used to. Lorelai realizes, not for the first time, how many ways in which
despite all recent changes he's stayed the same. When it comes to her.

She doesn't hear what he
whispers; whether they're words or just vowels rounding out consonants. They've
have no meaning, as she is numb, and her senses are not working. She is not
feeling things like she should be, like she always has. He is touching her
breasts in the way he learned long ago she favors, and it's as if she has
floated out of her body, and is seeing this happening to someone else with her
face. Her face made of decaying stone.

"If anything's unbreakable,
it's this," Lorelai said, as she slid into the passenger seat of Chris' red hot
sports car. "God, I love this car," she admitted as he changed gears and they
started rolling away from her sleeping house. "And I love that I found the
exact color nail polish so that my fingers and toes can match the paint. Wicked
Red, oh yeah."

She liked the name of it
because she felt the night would be a wicked one to remember whenever she
looked at that bottle of red nail polish to match his car.

The wind blew through her long
strands, accentuating the curls as they swarmed about her face in a lovely way.
"So where are we going?" she asked.

She has no idea where she's
headed. With this escapade, with tomorrow, with the rest of her life. Chris'
kisses are full of that fire that burns and consumes her, and she feels wrapped
in its heat, unbearably so, as if the walls are closing in and she's suddenly
become claustrophobic. There is perspiration over her numbness now, and the bed
frame is creaking as Chris takes his mouth on a journey from her breasts down to
her core, where he lingers, smoothing the course hair with his tongue, making it
seem as though he's bathing a cat.

"Geeze, it got wet so fast,"
Chris complained, rolling up his window against the pounding rain. "This is the
greatest view outside of Lookout Point, I swear. If only you could see it past
the zillion drops..."

"Lookout Point is so clich�,
anyway. Who wants to be someplace where everyone's going to be rivaling for
who's got the best lungs?"

Chris smiled at her optimism,
and handed her the bottle of vodka. Swig, and swig, and swig. He took out his
flask, savoring every gulp with the sour lemon face, trying to fight it every
time. He laughed at Lorelai's coughs. They were acting as though they'd never
done this kind of thing before.

She's never experienced this
sort of numbness. Sex has always been about the intensity of feeling, the idea
of it almost being too much to feel all at once. The best times were the times
when she feared she might split right in half. She longs for that now, thinking
that if she could give half of herself to Luke, it would be equal to what he's
been giving her. And she could be happy because that would only be half of her
life. The other half could stay with Christopher, if she could ever find a way
out of this numbness. If the sensation of pins and needles ever returns to her
fingers and toes. She thinks about it. She thinks.

Chris had never seen such a
little woman put away so much vodka with no chaser. The whiskey in his throat
had become an eternal burn. He'd damn well coated himself in it. And now all
of the words he said and heard were slurred greatly. Lorelai was making
declarations, like she always did, especially when she had no idea what she was
talking about.

"Life... is a fantastic thing
when you're young. When you're really young." As if she knew anything
otherwise.

Someone is speaking and before
the sound is over, Chris realizes it is coming from him. "Yeah, before your
trust account goes bankrupt thanks to your drunken daddy and you're losing grey
hairs."

"They have pills for that, you
know." Lorelai swigged again from the enormous bottle in her hands. Chris
wondered if the delicate bones in her wrists might snap if she kept relying on
their strength that way. The pout of her lip looked so saddeningly sober. "And
it hurts that growing up... growing up means growing away from who you used to
be."

"Me?" asked Chris, confused.

"Who you used to be."
Lorelai stabbed his chest with her pointer finger, and then tapped that same
finger on her own forehead several times.

"Away from who we used to
be." Chris digested this as he swished some of Lorelai's vodka in his mouth.

"Away! There's no better
place to be than away. Awayawayaway." Lorelai looked around with a
frown, searching for what was giving her voice that echo effect. She saw
nothing but the inner confines of Chris' car.

Chris was staring at her when
she finally met his eyes again. "It scares me, you know. The way you can tell
me it's okay and then suddenly it is. You're amazing."

"God you're drunk," was her
diagnosis.

"Yes, that too."

Lorelai grabs a hold of Chris'
naked shoulders, her palms sliding around on the sweat already gathered there
from his intense petting of her. The petting in which she hardly gave a
response other than to stare at him, at the walls around them, at the ceiling,
at her bared breasts, confusion and nothing else conquering the features on her
face.

"I... can't feel you," she
says, her lips seeming chapped as she parts them, her mouth gone dry.

He moves up her body. "Just
use your hands," he whispers tenderly, kissing them one at a time, and placing
them near his buttocks. Her hands slide again with the sweat already there.

She gives up, gives her body
to him. Lets him do what he's there to do.

"Don't give up yet, don't you
dare," Chris insisted, feeling like a coach. "Come on, a few more heavy swigs,
and that baby's empty. You can do it, just chug."

Lorelai blocked her eyes with
one hand as if she were staring into direct sunlight. "I don't wan'u," she said
in a drunken whine. "It doesn't taste anymore."

"It could never taste, Lor.
It doesn't have a tongue."

"It doesn't taste good."

"All right. Gimme it." Chris
seized hold of the bottle, and snapped his head back so that it was parallel
with the floor and the ceiling. Bringing the bottle to his lips, he chugged.
Swig and swig and swig. And then it was done. The alcohol was gone. Absorbed
into two underage individuals who knew they should know better, but couldn't
possibly care less. Without the booze, they were left alone, just the two of
them, companionless but for each other.

He looked at her. She was
looking for something else.

"I forgot music," he admitted
sheepishly.

"That's because we decided
your music sucks," Lorelai explained bluntly, coming back up to a sitting
position with a tape in her hands. "Well, not so much we decided as I've told
you repeatedly. So, my music it is."

She inserted U2's 'October'
into the car's cassette player. "Should be all cued up," she explained. "If
it's not, then the hell with it, I don't know how to work those damn buttons
right now. Chris, I can't see straight. You're kind of like leaning right no
matter what you do."

"You say I'm leaning the right
way?" he asked, pushing play and maneuvering himself into the backseat.
"Sounds like I'm not as lost as I feel."

I was
talking, I was talking to myself, somebody else.

Lorelai
somehow managed to stumble her way into the backseat as well, grumbling about
how roomy it was not until she tripped trying to get her last foot through and
fell on top of Chris. Then she laughed. And it was the most beautiful sound.

At least
one of them is enjoying this. Lorelai knows this is so. She can tell by the
pitch of Chris' voice as he shouts out while he's in-and-out of her body. She
feels like a full service gas pump, being filled, emptied, and refilled without
payment or compensation of any kind. She feels nothing but the uselessness of
her presence being there at all.

His hands
over her body are like sprinkles of rain.

Rain pelted
the hood of the car as percussion to accompany the lyrics that soothed in their
beat, if not their language.

Talk,
talk, talking.

I couldn't hear a word,

A word you said.

The
farthest they'd gone is second base, and Chris was fully aware of this after her
top was pulled off, her bra unsnapped. This area he had conquered, and
conquered well. He hugged her warm breasts to his face, loving their female
quality, their perkiness, the softness of them against his cheek.

The alcohol
in her belly started to make a ruckus, like there was a food fight going on in
there. Lorelai giggled at the sound of it, and her laughter's volume was
luminous in Chris' ears that rested against her skin. He felt so close to her
then, as if he was knowing her even on the inside. All parts of her were open
for him to claim.

His tongue
and lips claim her as his own, wet, hot, and sticky. All she feels is the
sweat, and nothing more. Her mind is screaming so many things, obscenities,
Luke's final words, the build-up to the ultimatum, April, April, April.

I said
there was no other,

Way out of here.

I got to get out.

Her body
strains beneath the mental baggage that is weighing her down. As she arches,
Chris takes that as incentive to go harder and faster. She falls to the
mattress, heavy as a soaked blanket. And she wants, more than to feel, to
forget. To think of anything else. She bans all that plagues her from entering
her skull, expelling thoughts as if with a baseball bat made of steel. There is
no Luke. There is no ultimatum. There is no wedding that never was.

Instead,
there is Paul Anka. The expensive shoes that became his chew toys. His coat
and its many shades of grey, proving that nothing in the world can ever be
straight black and white when Paul Anka's coat says otherwise.

Chris
crawled up Lorelai's body, mouthing Lor, Lor, Lor, all the
way to her mouth. He captured it with his lips that were already pleading, his
skin humming for a connection. He could taste the alcohol on her breath, and
could also taste beyond it, to the flavor that was Lorelai, which he hoped would
never change.

It was as
though the world around them slept as rain pounded and Lorelai slid out of her
clothes, Chris doing the same on his side of the backseat. Lorelai could feel
no other presence as she tossed her skirt at the window and watched it slide
down the glass before dropping to the floor. She picked the purple fuzz out
from in between her toes after removing her Care Bear socks. She was a girl who
would always cling to sock designs made for six year-olds.

She laid
back then, getting as comfortable as she could in the less than spacious
interior of Chris' fabulous car. "Chris?" she beckoned, her voice a slushy
slur, outstretched finger curling in continuously.

"Oh yeah."
His voice was husky and low, rich with lust as he lowered Lorelai until she was
spread across the seats, and straddled her body from on top. As soon as he
dipped down to take her lips, the world around them was lost, far away, and
gone.

I was
walking, I was walking into walls.

I'm back again, just keep walking.

Instead,
there is grass. A green richer than limes in a cocktail, the scent of it
dizzying, signifying when summer has come. There is snow, millions of unique
snowflakes, falling to be fused together once hitting ground. Snow, in its
slick form, creating ugly slush in which winter boots play slip 'n slide. And
in its compact form, crunchy beneath your feet when you walk, elevated from the
ground by the layers of whiteness that beg for snowmen and angels carved into
the mass. There is magic in the snow, magic that now seems so far away.

Chris'
touch continues to sear flesh, and yet behind her closed eyes there is nothing
but green grass and white snow.

Lorelai
widened her legs until she swallowed his between them. She steadied herself,
gripping his shoulders, her arms snaking up behind his back. She tasted his
nipple for the first time, warm and salty like a hot pretzel. "Tastes gooooood,"
she mumbled, as he rained kisses down her jaw and neck.

When first
he inserted a finger into her wetness, she realized just how wet she could be.
As she suspected, Chris was as very much a virgin as she. It could be found in
the awe of his face as he teased her folds, and searched for the special nub
from sex ed. That tiny g-spot that would make Lorelai buck into his groin until
he had to have her, had to be inside of her.

As he
searched and she drowned in the sensations of his fingers touching her there
and oh, there, Lorelai marveled at the way his organ felt against her
upper thighs as it unintentionally poked or slapped her skin gently with his
movements. Curiosity at its highest, she lowered a sneaky hand down between
their bodies, preparing to grasp his fullness and feel its dimensions, curious
about the quality of the skin.

Just as her
fingers barely brushed the tip of something male on him, Chris found that nub
and pinched it just so. "Oh!" Lorelai cried out, her hand immediately drawn
back to join her other one in tangling into her hair. "Oh, oh!"

There is
mac and cheese; Kraft Dinner from a box or Sookie's macaroni made from scratch.
The eternal mystery of how real cheese could be melted on a stove and then
poured onto noodles that are then baked to perfection and yet can taste no
better or worse than the macaroni with the powdered cheese from the box.

I walk
into a window to see myself, and my reflection.

When I thought about it,

My direction,

Going nowhere, going nowhere.

Dirty
locker room talk was now to be his knowledge put to the test as Chris removed
his fingers that were rubbing the swollen nub, and replaced them with his
tongue. Lorelai cooed and began touching herself to compensate for feeling so
much at one time but not knowing what to do with it. She caressed her breasts
as if they hadn't been a part of her for years now, until Chris closed his lips
around the nub and began to suck. Then she lost all control, and gave a lungful
scream to penetrate the raindrops that just kept falling. The drops were
falling and she was falling, along with everything around her, like in an
elevator. Those ticklesome butterflies even found their way to her tummy to
flutter about as she bucked up her hips, begging for more.

That was
the signal Chris was waiting for, and at that, he could wait no longer. He rose
to devour her mouth once again, his inexperienced hands working quite sloppily,
trying to shove his enlarged member into the right hole to give them both the
release that all this building tension called for. It was time to come together
and explode.

I was
talking, I was talking in my sleep.

I can stop talking.

I'm talking to you.

She was
even more wet than before, her juices making the entrance to her core a slippery
thing. And his cock wasn't helping in the least, going wild and frenzied
without his optimal supervision.

Finally, he
tore his lips and attention away from Lorelai's face to focus on putting the
puzzle pieces together. Using both hands, he shoved his cock in deep, and
Lorelai gave a shocked gurgle at the invasion of her body. As her face went
white with pain, he crumbled into her arms.

"Lor? Are
you okay? Lorelai, I'm sorry..."

"You
can't..." She had no breath; he had taken it all away. "...stop there."

"It's okay
if I keep going?"

"Please..."
she said faintly.

There are
labels, she is aware of right now, that we go by as if they were our name. But
they're nothing like our name, most of the time hardly complimentary. They
describe one aspect of our entire selves, as if all our other attributes don't
make sense enough to matter.

Jocks...
losers...

Goths...
skaters...

Chris
pushed on, pumping Lorelai as if for loving information. He could suddenly
sense just how muscular her thighs were as she clenched them around his waist,
crossing her ankles behind his back because she said she saw it in a movie
once. His ear remained warm from the hot breath she expelled into it with
her whispered words, and he cocked his head, hoping for more action near the
lobe.

Lorelai
sighed loudly as a method of getting more air pumped back into her brain. She
figured that at least if the experiment failed, she got to be loud. Always she
was waiting for her next opportunity to make a ruckus that could embarrass her
mother the way being a part of the sickeningly scripted Gilmore family
embarrassed her.

No one,
no one is blinder.

Who will, who will not see?

No one, no one is blinder than me.

"Think of
how everything is here, right now!" she exclaimed in an explosion of air,
clenching her inner muscles around the slick moving cock. "Anything could be
ours, Chris. Anything..."

She doesn't want to think about anything. Not the green
grass or the white snow, Paul Anka's premature grey hair, or the way Rory's
bangs are an attribute she sometimes expects to not be there. Society eats at
her insides.

Nerds...
stoners...

Sluts...

Chris
couldn't believe that he was inside of her, and that he was about to leave a
part of himself within her body as he made his exit. Her face was a lusty pale,
a few fat hair sprayed curls and a cigarette away from resembling a '60's
actress' sex pout. He ground his hips into hers, bringing forth her moan and
her hands, which slapped his skin accidentally when they sought to grab hold of
something that was part of him.

Slamming
into her, he relished the fact that the car's hinges were groaning and
complaining. Maybe they were breaking. It was a thought that at any other time
would send him into a wild panic, but he was inside of her, and she was so wet
and she tasted like the ocean. She was the vast oblivion of looking out at the
ocean, and a future so far away it was blocked off by fog in the distance that
didn't matter. Only moments mattered, like this one, when Lorelai's voice was
proving that the hinges weren't the only things coming apart.

There is
another way out of here.

Chris is
above her numb body, and she thinks she is going colorblind. She doesn't see
blue �

- in
Lorelai's eyes as he groaned, "Open them, baby. Look at me watching you. It'll
turn you on like shirtless body builders."

She strains
to see any shades of brown �

- that
light up his eyebrows and that mat of hair beyond the litter of his hair gel.
Lorelai would stab him with another of her "only John Travolta clones slosh on
so much hair product when they own a penis", but her quips are so lost, gone to
some recessed part of her brain that must sleep sometime when she eventually
stops dreaming.

She is lost
�

- "Have I
found it?" he asked, pumping two more times before she squeezed so tightly that
he exploded in body and sound, loving her mouth in which he helped drown her
moans as she squirmed beneath him in pleasure and dizziness.

Lost �

- found.

Numb �

- tingling
in the aftershocks, Lorelai held Chris to her, and they laid together, on that
memorable sports car backseat.

It's so
quiet, the bedroom so large, as Chris is spent, and Lorelai is without a sense
of self. He kisses her on the forehead, and she squints her eyes, scrunching up
her nose distastefully. She waits for him to crawl off of her, and then she
rolls away, choosing to face the wall, rather than what she's just done.

There is
another way out of here

Gonna get out, gonna get out of here.

Chris
savored Lorelai's breasts afterward as she twirled a few strands of hair around
her finger. "If love is blind, why is lingerie so popular?" she wondered aloud.

The rain
had become much softer, merely drizzling over the top of the car, showering the
windows like a wet gentle breeze.

Alcohol
swarmed in his stomach as he nuzzled a soft pink nipple. "I love you, baby."

Lorelai
laughed uproariously, upsetting the quiet calm, like a toddler at a piano
concert. "I love you, too."

"Yeah?"
Chris was hopeful.

"Always,
when you're drunk."

"No... Lor."
He was concerned, though she smiled. He cupped her face in his hands, loving
its youth and its unrivaled beauty that would not be tamed at 40, nor 80, nor
the day of her death. "Love me anyway. Love me all the time."

She
continued to giggle softly, as if sharing a secret with the alcohol within her.
He wished she would share more of her secrets with him.

No one,
no one is blinder than me.

VIIII.

September
brought Chilton architecture back into focus, along with teachers whose strive
was to snap brains out of their perma-baked state. "Tenth grade this year,"
Lorelai said to Chris over the phone, crossing her ankles together as she lay
flat on her stomach with the support of the mattress and the new pink comforter
beneath her. "They're lucky I can count that high, or the confusion would start
even earlier than usual."

She hemmed
her own skirts, their sex appeal causing Richard's eyelids to clamp shut, and
Emily's eyes to bulge out of her head. "You are not going to school looking
like that, young lady."

"Not going
to school? Ptuh, sounds fine to me!"

Lorelai sat
down on the living room couch, spreading her legs seductively out on the length
of the cushions, running slim fingers over the smoothness of her shaved legs
that reached perfection. She watched Emily's face, the rage that turned her
temples purple, as she contemplated whether she would ever win when it came to
controlling a daughter who would not be controlled. It made Lorelai
laugh, picturing her mother as a stick of dynamite, the fuse long enough to be
lit this entire time, and yet destined to explode.

"Come on,
Mom," she said, lowering her legs, and doing her part to try. "I don't live
just to torture you. I just want to look good."

"Fully
buttoned collars and skirts that sweep past the knees encapsulate academia,
Lorelai. High school isn't a fashion show."

"Wow, we
are so totally from different generations." She pulled on a Cheshire cat grin.
"Come on, Mom. Love me for meee. I can just picture you doing it.
Smiling past that miniscule tug of your lips."

Emily
wandered off, then, muttering something about how she'll "never understand".
Whether the "she" was herself or Lorelai would be unclear for a lifetime.

Even
treating the school hallways like fashion runways got old after a day or so.
Lorelai began passing Chris notes between classes. He opened one during a
particularly inane lecture in English class. Feeling grumpy? Read this.
Not feeling grumpy? Okay, read this. Heard you got a B on your freestyle poem
last week. This I must see. Meet me at your car after school. Stand me up,
and I might decide to learn how to hotwire it on a whim. -- Lorelai the
Luscious

His smiles
were goofy ones when he read her loopy handwriting that couldn't ever stay
within the lines. The girl wouldn't write straight to save her life. This
particular note started as a curve in the center and branched out into circles
that circled one another, forming a story like the inside of a tree trunk.
Making it as close to impossible as she could for him to inconspicuously read
"junk mail" while in an English class. He loved the way she made things
difficult and complicated, with no apologies. He loved that she knew of her
abilities, and was nothing if not blatantly, sometimes annoyingly proud.

She was the
opposite of sane.

She was
playing with the short fabric of her Tuesday skirt, the one which gave her the
most flirtatious confidence, as he approached his car after the final
school bell that afternoon. Her tiny butt was planted against the driver's side
window as she smoothed out the pleats in the skirt, the specially curled
tendrils of her hair fighting for dibs to brush against her cheeks as she looked
down. Even parts of her own body itched to touch her. Maybe they even tingled
for it as they got closer, like Chris' hands were doing now as he unclenched
them from fists and left them open and ready to pull her to him. He longed, as
always, to covet her softness that would contrast his solidity.

She was
humming one of those girl band songs that gave him the disgust face, and
thus he was able to approach her without her realizing by the sound of his
footsteps on the asphalt. He felt like an agent, like a part of 'Magnum, P.I.':
sneaky, with obvious intent as he reached out to touch a delicate bouncy curl.

Lorelai
looked up, the song in her head forgotten, and he could tell by the way her
mouth muscles were fighting against a smile that she was attempting to play a
role. "Christopher," she acknowledged coolly.

She'd
gained an inch over the summer, as well as half a cup size. These were things
he knew she was very proud of, for she told them to random strangers, sometimes
even when sober. Her presence was a bit more commanding, but still he saw
through her; she could hide behind no facade. "Lor," he voiced like always,
pulling her to him and breathing in the scent of her hair. "Haven't seen you
since lunch."

"Missed
me?"

He pulled
back. "You know it," he kidded.

"Yeah. I'd
miss me, too." She looked at the folded piece of paper he held in his hands.
"So, you brought the poem?"

"I did.
Though I'm not reading it."

"Uh! You
tease! I can make you read it."

"Only if
you read yours, too."

"I can
quote mine from memory. It's been formulating in my head for like years, dude."

He liked
the way she played games with language, with props, with his heart. Suddenly,
Lorelai stole the paper from his hands, unfolded it, and ruthlessly read it to
herself. She burst out laughing before she could have possibly made it halfway
through.

"Chris, I
didn't know you were so..."

"Yeah,
yeah. Give it back."

"'I am the
clay,' she mocked. 'I mold it, as I mold myself. Clay.' You know what comes
next? 'I think I've gone gay.'"

Chris
couldn't help but to chuckle. "I think it's too deep for your scope, babe.
Metaphorical and whatnot."

"Don't tell
me I don't go deep. My poem was so deep, it redefined the word." She thought a
moment, her eyes rolling up into her head as she searched for the memory of the
better words. "'I dug the deepest grave, in which to bury my slave. He
was brave, but still it couldn't save... him. My grave was so deep, I jumped in
it and fell asleep. It's a grave you'd like to keep, if only the price wasn't
so steep. And you weren't so damn cheap.'" She nodded. "Yeah. I can do the
depth thing."

"Morbid
much?" Chris hooked an arm around her shoulders. He loved to claim her that
way, using that action to profess to the world that she was with him. To remind
himself in a macho way that she was his.

"Do not
critique me without being ready for my critiques back. Your poem's earned you
new author names all over the place. All right, now... PukeBrain, is it? Or
was it NiftyNausea? Care to hear more of peoples' inevitable reactions?"

Chris
laughed and kissed her forehead. "Retard," he said affectionately.

"Don't talk
to yourself."

"You're
retarded," he maintained.

"At least I
have voices to talk to other than the ones in my head."

"So you
say."

"Over and
over again." It was both a statement and a promise.

"You're
like an answering machine," Chris told her. "One that you can't always
understand."

"Oh,
please. All interesting women are that way. If you could understand us, what
would you do with all your free time?"

"I'd find
something to do."

"Or
someone."

Chris
coughed as something in the air got caught in his throat. "Excuse me?"

Lorelai
snickered. "...Retard."

Chris
sighed, hating the next words that had to come out of his mouth. "I've got to
go now. Parental obligations and whatnot." He put two fingers beneath
Lorelai's chin and tilted it upwards. "You going to be able to let me go?"

"What, you
think that I'll just miss you and miss you forever and ever until you come back
again?" Lorelai asked, her voice accusing as her finger stabbed him in the
chest.

"Yes."

"You know
me well."

X.

Her inner
monologue invades, and she tries to keep the shouting in her head from
penetrating into the world around her. The wedding was too perfect.
Something had to marr it. Luckily for Lane, "something" was me.

She
remembers her drunken night of false glory, when she made the night be about the
fact that she wouldn't be a bride, rather than the fact that Lane was. "June
thiiird, June thiiird; Red Bull gives you wiiings! Okay, moving on."
Caught in Sookie's arms, she failed to realize that everyone was confused and
far from entertained. She didn't see their frowns, or at least she couldn't
define them due to everything spinning the way it was.

She is
alone with a man beside her in the same bed. Her eyes are dry; there are no
tears. There is nothing, because everything tangible is gone.

XI.

Her voice
had a husky quality to it, deeper than her vocal chords had ever dug before.
Like that grave she wrote about in September. "Remember what it was like...
before we knew?"

He
swallowed over lumps that kept reforming, never allowing his throat to be clear
enough to speak audibly. Struggling to be heard, he spoke louder than usual.
"You mean yesterday?"

"Yeah."

"I don't
remember what that was like."

She shakes
her head, eyelashes fluttering down to touch her cheeks. "I don't, either."

"Don't get
too excited," he'd said the night before any of this came to light. Before.
"That's a boa constrictor in my pants."

"Heh.
Chris," said Lorelai. "That's what I was excited about. I need a practice
specimen before dissection starts in science class next month."

He clasped
her hand and pulled her behind the building, pinning her against the brick wall,
holding her wrists hostage above her head with one of his strong hands. She
didn't fight it, merely fixed him with an intense gaze in the silence as their
breath made lines of condensation in the cold February air. Most of the
students were long gone, and only a few of the teachers' cars remained.

"Happy
Valentine's Day," Chris whispered right into her pink ear, warming it for brief
seconds. And then they kissed like lovers do, having been together since the
summer and beyond. The crisp air froze their noses that they rubbed together,
and Lorelai giggled at kissing like the Eskimos do. Lorelai wanted to
leave an imprint of their bodies on the brick wall, a signature, a promise that
they had been there together, once, and maybe would be again.

They sat
together, their backs against that wall, their bottoms frozen against the
ground, looking at the thin layer of snow covering Chilton's grass. They talked
for hours into the evening, bragging to one another about how many times they'd
"done it", how many positions they'd attained. How high they'd place in the Sex
Olympics that Lorelai would one day make a reality. And Chris almost believed
her then. He did that sometimes. Became convinced because she was just so
convincing.

They talked
about Metallica and Megadeth, made comparisons, and invisible lists of pros and
cons. Lorelai so graciously "thanked" Chris for dragging her to the premiere of
'Return of the Jedi', where Yoda's diapers were the fashion statement to avoid
of the year. Where she learned "speak correctly how to". They made snow angels
that were lame, due to not enough snow on the ground. Still, Lorelai's was
declared the better one, which only made sense, considering she had more
experience than anyone in her part of the universe.

They played
rock, paper, scissors, and tic-tac-toe in the snow. Then Chris proved his
manliness in the thumb wrestling portion of the night as the sun set behind his
silhouette as any sun that remained was aimed directly into Lorelai's eyes. She
blamed this factor on her losing streak with the thumb wars and any possible
losses in the future. Her reasoning made sense to her, and that was more than
enough to tide her over.

Bonding in
the cold, neither one considered bailing for the day until the moon brought on
new chills that tore into their expensive winter jackets. Wrapping her sparkly
lilac scarf around her neck with a sexy swoop, Lorelai stood and walked with
Chris to his car. Snow crunched like potato chips beneath their boots, and the
silence of the night closed in on them, making them feel insignificant and
small, except when it came to each other.

Chris was
slow in unlocking his car door on purpose as he waited for Lorelai to speak.

"So there
are those pesky benefits that you still owe me before the night's over," she
reminded him with a poke in the back.

"Yeah..."
he said, hiding the relief that she wasn't ready to be rid of his presence for
the evening. "I'm kinda tired, though."

"Well I
don't need the drugs."

"God knows
you're naturally over-stimulated."

"And I
don't need the rock 'n roll. I get that every morning in my shower."

Chris
quirked a brow.

"But, that
leaves the sex thing," Lorelai pointed out.

"That I can
do."

Lorelai was
grinning. "Thought you were tired."

"Never too
tired for that. Not when you're wearing that skirt."

"Hmm. Why
do you think I wore it?" The innocence in her voice was no longer a disarming
thing.

"You've
always got a plan."

"I am the
master of inventing and plans, and when I decided to put the two concepts
together, whew, did they ever worship me that day."

Chris
leaned forward to whisper in her ear once more. "Let's find somewhere quiet so
I can worship you right now."

They sat
now, uncomfortable, a day later. Buried by the news splattered on a test stick
that came back blue. Lorelai didn't voice the fact that suspicions had been in
her mind for the last couple of weeks. Chris knew not to ask her about it.
They were so silent, sitting as children on a swing set at the one empty park in
Hartford.

The
glorious sun was setting before their eyes as they sagged in their swinging
seats, lifeless dolls, contemplating bringing another doll to life to live in
their not quite real world with the toy kitchen with the easy bake oven and the
food made of plastic.

Christopher
shuffled his feet along the dirt on the ground, afraid of the father he would
be. Knowing his tendencies to bail even before things got really hard.

Lorelai kicked her feet forward, swaying slightly in the
swing, gentle strokes back and forth, letting her hair fan behind her, her brown
locks wild past her vision, as everything in the past seemed to be. Wild,
uncontrolled. Locked with a key thrown away. So many keys lost to the back of
fate's junk closet. She didn't say anything, even to herself, but there was
something in her gut telling her that she just knew, she was meant to be a
mother someday. The reason for no words, however, was because anyone could
gather that the day was not meant to be anywhere close to today.

Christopher
finally broke the silence, when only the shuffle of feet and the tangle of metal
linked bars invaded the absence of sound. He was afraid to say this, as he felt
like a coward in many ways. His feet already twitched every other minute,
begging to start running to a place far away from here and all that he had
caused to happen.

"I was
looking at you last night..." he said, voice barely audible. But he couldn't
bear to speak louder while he said these words. "After we were finished, in the
backseat of my car. Your hair was a mess, and you were laughing about it. Then
you laughed because you said someday you were going to get bed head as
bad as me." She had stopped swinging and her attention was focused on him so
completely, he became self conscious like the time he was forced to be in the
spelling bee in the auditorium in front of his entire elementary school. "And I
thought to myself, I'm going to marry that girl."

Lorelai
became instantly uncomfortable, and looked down at her shoes, concentrating
especially on the shoelace that was untied. She zeroed in on it, not hearing
those words echo in her brain like they were being tossed back-and-forth by
tennis rackets. She desired to be so Zen as she squeezed her eyes shut like a
five year-old hiding in a corner, and all that she maintained was the urge to
scream and then bawl as she beat her fists at the world, because it was not
supposed to be this way. She didn't know what the right way was, but it
was not this.

Christopher
swallowed a bitter lump of sour rejection. He blinked back tears of pain. He'd
always strived to be a man, and now it was time for him to become that man,
ready or not. "You okay? You freaking out, Lor?"

"No, no
it's fine," she said, and it amazed her how well she could lie. It amazed her,
too, that he could believe her.

- -

end
- 1
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Crash Dummy