(no subject)

[dedra.livejournal.com]

Title: Chance
Fandom: None--OFC/thinly veiled RP
Rating: M or NC-17
Summary: Sometimes inertia prompts us to do things that are out of character and take chances that we normally would pass up.

A/N: This is from a very vivid dream that I had about a year and a half ago...I wrote it, posted it, deleted it--then when this prompt came up, I went back and found it, polished it, spitshined it, and present it here for your (dis)approval... :D



He woke up and saw another in the thousands of lines spiderwebbing his aging eyes and wondered if his career was over. Lighting a cigarette that he swore he would quit, he sat on the edge of the bed in the luxury suite and looked in the mirrors that ringed the room to stroke Hollywood vanity. They saw musician, actor, star; he saw one-shot, failure, has been. He pimped himself and sold the crowd night after night, never letting anything of himself show, only that monster he’d created over years of practice and it made him sick to his stomach. He felt cheap, whored, used, but it’s what sells that counts and he knows that. It’s also what his manager keeps telling him on his too-expensive cell phone from the house on the beach that his bloodsweattears has bought. Blood money. Sweat off his balls. Tears bled from his soul. He throws a Baccarat crystal glass at a mirror that shows a whore for the crowd and it shatters into a million pieces, dripping with the vodka tonic. It’ll be on Ebay tonight—one piece in a tiny plasticine baggie with a certificate of authenticity from a greedy yet intelligent hotel worker who comes in to clean it up.

Defiantly, he rakes his hand through bleach blond curls that defy even the most simple of styles and decides to give the man just a little more. Whipping out his cock, he pisses on the shards of glass, each one holding a piece of his soul within and wonders how much it will bring his nameless, faceless entrepreneur now.

Grabbing his smokes and his shades, he gets into the expensive piece of shit the valet brings to the front door, tells the hotel manager to send all of his things to his California address and drives away from his life. Destination unknown, but he wants to find himself again, somewhere.

His last gesture of defiance is to throw the cell phone out of the window and into the river as he glides over a bridge at 100 miles an hour. In his heart, he hopes that he dies; somehow, he knows that God isn’t that kind.


She’s working in a convenience store on the edge of a no-name town where she has never been loved and never wanted to stay, but there’s no way out for a woman of her age with no experience and no ambition. She lights a cigarette that she swears she’ll give up and draws deep the calming smoke, feeling it filling her lungs with heat and warming her inside where it counts, where there’s been no warmth for years. Her life centers on the show, the one that was cancelled for years before she found it and the stories that her imagination breeds from it. There is nothing else that makes her feel, no other that makes her yearn. It makes her body sing along in the middle of the chill nights, her fingers strumming over taut nerves in sagging flesh and drawing forth gasps and moans when she least expects it. She sees him on the screen, larger than life, his smile, eyes, tongue, and she comes violently but never feels fulfilled, never complete.

She notices a car on the edge of the lighted tarmac. It had crippled in about a half hour ago, looking like it was out of gas the way that it rolled onto the pavement and she waited for the occupant of the fancy ass auto to come in and harass her like the rich do, but nobody did; it just sat there, lights still on, the windows up, and she wondered what the tinted windows hid behind them. Well. It was part of her job to keep things under control, so she locked the register and pocketed the key, then grabbed a wrench out of the toolbox underneath the counter. Her heart in her throat, she headed outside and over to the car of her dreams, or were they nightmares, and tapped her fingers on the window.

“Hey…are you okay? Do you need help?”

The only beauty she had left was her voice and it was showing signs of wear as well. It used to be high and girlish and she could sing better than some of those idiotic girls on MTV ever could, hitting notes so far out of their range it would make them cry. It had gone by the wayside with her dreams and now it was deeper, but no less sultry and soothing on the nerves. It rolled out of her mouth in a delicate whisper that spoke of dreams that had died and possibilities missed, and instead of the window opening like she expected, the door opened.

She blinked twice as he got out of the car. His face was ravaged by lack of sleep, too much nicotine and time, but she recognized it right off as the man from the show she loved and wrote about. Him. The one that she fantasized was touching her every night, the one that she had imaginary conversations with during the day in her trailer as she went around the place, scouring and cleaning the desert dirt off the flat surfaces before coming finally to rest on her computer to write more fantasies.

She said nothing though, as he stretched and looked at her sheepishly. “Sorry. I’m okay, don’t need help.” He reached into his pockets and turned them out, showing her their emptiness. “Don’t have any money, though. Forgot to grab it before I left.”

She heard an unspoken need in him, in his voice, and she respected that need. “I have some cash in my purse if you need to move on. Or I have a bed you can crash in. You look like you need it. You’re welcome to it.”

Surprised filled him up like a balloon, and he thought that he had been surprised enough in this lifetime. “I do. I could fall over right here where I stand, I’m so tired.”

“I get off work in an hour. Closing up now, that’s why I checked on you. Go on, get your stuff. We can take my car.” She jerked her chin at the old Nova sitting on the edge of the light, and said, “It isn’t locked. Just climb in, I’ll wake you up when I get you to my house.”

“Don’t have anything. Just me.” He looked at her with faded blue eyes, and she wondered what he was trying to escape. “Still offering that bed?”

“Go get in the car. I can cut the close down to a half-hour, if I work fast. I’ll book.”

He reached in his car and grabbed the keys, then locked it up as she walked back inside the store. She did the minimum to close down for the night, eschewing the stocking she should do and the sweeping and mopping that were mandatory. Wouldn’t be the first time those things got missed, she thought.

She paused long enough to pick up the phone and dial a number that she’d memorized and never used. It was late and she knew it, but Gina never slept before three—it was just her habit. “Gina, he’s here. Peter. He showed up almost an hour and a half ago and he looks bad, Gina. No, no money, no phone. Just the car. I’m taking him home. I think that he’s running. Don’t know. Don’t care. Gotta go. Email me later.”

Turned off the lights, closed the door and went out to the broken down car on the edge of the lot. He was asleep already, his head leaning against the window and tipped back. A small string of drool trailed from his mouth, and she wiped it gently with a balled-up Kleenex, then dropped it out the open window on her side as she headed out to the end of the mile, the last stop before the T-intersection where her trailer sat on the only thing that she could call her own.

She touched him when they got there, and he startled and flung out his arm defensively, catching her on the point of her chin. Immediate tears sprung unbidden to her eyes and his look of consternation and shame caught her eye. “Sorry. Usually when people touch me, they want something,” he explained and she nodded her head. She knew that feeling.

He followed her in to the darkened trailer on the edge of nowhere and felt right at home. It was surprisingly clean and tidy, although small, and the solitude called to him, pulling something from inside him, and he started to open his mouth and tell her who he was. She turned to him, suddenly shy, and stopped his confession right from the start, before it began.

“It’s okay, Peter. Be at home here. Stay as long as you need to. Regenerate.” She led him down a narrow hall to the spare room, then changed her mind and led him in to her own bed. “Sleep and things will look better in the morning. Good night.” She gave him a gentle shove and pushed him inside before he could open his mouth, closing the door firmly behind him.

He looked around, trying to get a bead on the woman he’d met up with, not knowing where to start. There was a bulletin board of pieces of paper and he stared at it for a long time, trying to decipher the meaning behind the pictures and awards tacked up there. Pictures of the woman whose name he didn’t know who already knew him and wondered where he had fallen, what rabbit hole had brought him to this dead-end town where he’d met the only person who knew his face.

He looked at the mirror over the small built-in vanity and saw another wrinkle, along with the toll that lack of sleep and too much of everything had taken and turned away broken and brokenhearted. Sleep. He needed sleep more than anything.

A tap on the door declined him even that. She came in at his call and sat a foam plate with a grilled cheese and a mug of tomato soup on the dresser at the foot of the bed. “You look like you haven’t eaten and you need to. Eat, and go to bed.”

He started to thank her, but she was already gone, the door closed behind her. He ate and drank the soup and stripped to his skin before climbing into cotton sheets that smelled like woman and musk. He was asleep when his head hit the pillow.

She stood outside the door, listening to the soft snoring that rumbled through the wall and wondered what she was going to do.


Morning dawned as she tossed and turned on the lumpy cot and she was glad that she put him in her bed instead of in here. She opened the door and the sharp, bitter smell of coffee and cigarettes hit her in the gut and brought tears to her eyes and she wrapped her arms around her belly to hold her robe closed as she went into the small kitchen to find him waiting there for her.

“Hope you don’t mind. I had to look for the stuff, but I made coffee.”

She smiled weakly and grabbed a mug, loading it generously with cream and sugar before adding the bitter brew. She carried it to the square table by the window and sat across from him, lighting her own cigarette before opening the window a crack for the smoke to drift to.

His voice was flattened by shattered hope when he spoke. “So you know me.”

She looked at him, guilt all over her and nodded, drawing deep on the cigarette instead of speaking out loud. “How?” he asked and wordlessly she went to a cabinet by the television and opened the door to let him see the contents.

Inside, seven boxed sets of one series, five of another and his heart sank in his chest. He turned back to her and found her studying her hands in the washed light of the kitchen instead of looking at him.

He sat back down across from her and she shrugged. “Have to do something with my time, you know. No cable out here.”

He looked pointedly at the phone on the wall and she laughed, tinkling in the morning light. “Go ahead. Won’t do any good. It’s disconnected. Never got used anyway, so I figured I don’t need it.”

“Then why….” he started, then stopped himself mid-sentence, though it burned his tongue to ask. Why help me? Why not make yourself a hero to your friends? Why are you bothering, if not for what you can get?

“Nobody comes here without a reason. You looked like you needed to get away. Here’s as good as any.” She stood and wrapped the robe a little tighter around her full figure. “Take time. You seem to need it. Nobody leaves your life without needing it and it’ll be there when you’re ready for it.”

She headed down the hall, but her voice drifted back to him. “Don’t use the water, I’m taking a shower.”

He sat there in her kitchen drinking borrowed coffee and smoking bummed cigarettes down to the filter as he listened to her morning routine.

She came back, dressed in blue jeans that had seen better days and a tee shirt with a rock band, not his, on the front. She didn’t ignore him, but worked around him, cleaning the dust from the day before off of the counters and table, then moving to the front room with it’s loveseat and single chair, tables and desk with a computer prominently displayed. He watched her hands trail lovingly over the keyboard, then she sat down for a moment and brought up her email. She read a few, answered one and shut it down, coming back to the kitchen to sit across from him and sipped on her cold coffee.

“So, what is your name?”

She looked up at him, startled, like she just remembered he was there when he spoke. “Robin. Like the bird.”

“Robin. Do you have a last name, or do you just go by Robin?”

“Stone. Robin Stone. Nice meeting you.” She started to extend her hand, then pulled it back, realizing how grimy it was. She stood and crossed to the sink, washing her hands with dish soap then dried them on a paper towel before sticking it out in front of her again. “Robin Stone, at your service.”

He started to ask what service when a knock on the front door interrupted him. He saw her frown, then cross quickly to the door to open it and there was a dozen women outside, craning their necks and looking over and around her to find their dream-guy. They all started speaking at once and he heard his name, her name and what must have been a nickname, although why anyone would be called bleeding heart he would never understand.

They crowded into the kitchen, pushing past her like she was non-existent and it brought him close to anger, their uncaring attitudes. Chattering like magpies, they plied him with questions without waiting for replies, until the one question they dared ask finally blurted out of someone’s mouth and it stopped them all cold.

“Where’s Patricia?”

He cadged another of Robin’s cigarettes, giving her an apologetic smile, and she smiled back, softening her features. “She’s back in LA. She’s probably crazy with worry. I’ll call her later.”

He knew they wanted the myth, not the man, so that’s what he gave them. Charm and stories of the show, his ideas on where the character’s path should have gone, the disastrous sixth season and they sat mesmerized, eating it up. All but her. Robin. She busied herself with other things, laundry, making beds, fixing snacks for the vultures to fall upon hungrily and watching out of the corner of her eye.

He almost felt sorrier for her than he did for himself.

She disappeared and he asked where she went. They ignored the question, someone handed him a guitar and he sang a couple of simple songs for them, just to please. Always to please the crowd. For some reason, he felt even dirtier than he had the day he’d escaped.

One of them, he couldn’t remember her name, finally reported that Robin was in her room, cleaning out the closet and he closed his eyes. Wished with all his heart that they were alone, instead of surrounded by hangers-on.

He talked until he was hoarse and sang until he croaked, and still they wanted more. They wanted their fantasy and he refused to give it to them, withheld it, hoping against hope that they would leave. They stubbornly stayed, occasionally peeling off one by one to check on their absent hostess but returning quickly to bask in the fantasy that was him.

He finally ran them out long after sunset with a stretch and a yawn. He deftly deflected their inquiries about tomorrows that would never be and said that he was heading back to LA early the next morning, praying for their belief and trust so easily given and getting it returned to him in spades. They touched him and kissed him and made him feel dirtier than before, then left with smiles on their faces as he promised to see them again, the someday unspoken but assumed and watched their taillights blinking red in the dark as they finally deserted him and left him alone.

Not alone. He remembered where he was and with who and went searching for her.

She was in the master bedroom, sorting through papers pulled from a drawer, her discards piled higher than her keepers were. “So, you done playing the star?” she asked, bitterness tingeing her voice though she tried to keep it light.

He sat on the bed and handed her a lit cigarette, then lit one for himself. He put the ashtray between them as she leaned against the wall, her eyes closed and wished he had thrown them out earlier. “I didn’t plan that,” he finally said, his apology coloring the tone of his voice. She sighed, and tapped the spent ash off her cigarette before she answered.

“I know. It’s my fault.” He looked down at her, waiting and she felt his question rather than heard it. “I called my friend Gina before I left the store. I didn’t know how to handle this. You. I asked her advice. I never expected her to hunt me down like that.”

He shrugged. “I know. She told me. One person turned into a dozen and they all decided to come up here together. Not your fault. They wanted the myth; they got the myth, not the man. You have the man, now what are you going to do with him?”

She opened her eyes and he hovered over her from his place on the bed. “There’s some jeans that should fit you in the drawer over there. That’s what I was looking for when I started this project. Go take a shower. Relax. You don’t have to put on the persona for me, just….” She stopped, self-consciously realizing what she was saying and started to pick up the piles of papers, her hands shaking ever so slightly. He noticed, but refrained from speaking it and for that she was grateful.

He pulled the drawer open and found a man’s clothes--jeans, tees, underwear. He pulled out a pair of worn blue jeans and a tee shirt and went to the tiny bathroom to clean up.

She leaned her head against the wall and let her silent tears trickle down her face. The rumblings of broken trust and betrayal made her sick at her stomach; she never expected the day to turn into a sideshow like it had. Good thing that she didn’t have to work today or tomorrow either. She would get him back on the road in the morning, not eager to see his back but for his own protection. They would never leave him alone, would they?

She tossed papers into the trash bag at her feet and headed to the kitchen to clean up the disaster of the day. Overflowing ashtrays, half-full glasses of soda and the remains of the snacks she’d provided—she tidied, remembering at the last minute not to run dishwater until she heard the shower stop.

She was washing dishes when he entered the kitchen, hair still wet and curling as it air-dried. He carefully folded his towel and held it up to her and she glanced at the small washer/dryer combo and watched as he placed the threadbare towel carefully on top of it. He joined her at the sink and started rinsing glasses wordlessly, their movements as seamless as if they’d been doing this simple act together for years.

“I hate this, you know. I really do. I wish I could go back and be a nobody again, take small parts, just so they wouldn’t see me as…what they see me.”

His voice startled her, so close to her ear and she dropped the glass she was washing, only to have him catch it before it hit the stainless steel sink and shatter. He set the glass on the sink with deliberation in his movements and cupped her face in his hands. “They treat me like the monster. You treat me like a man, and you’ll never know what that means to me.”

She slapped his hands away from her face and tore herself away from him, regretting her move as soon as she did but unable to take it back. “Don’t use lines from the show—it’s demeaning. To me and to you. I’m going to bed. I’ll finish these in the morning.” She left him standing there by the sink, confusion written all over his face and went into the spare room, not even bothering with her clothes as she sunk into the lumpy mattress and dozed off, mentally and emotionally exhausted.

She woke hours later with a body next to her, curled around her back like a dream that stayed. He must have sensed she returned to the world because he kissed the back of her neck in apology for his thoughtless use of lines already spoken and overused. She turned onto her back and stared at the ceiling, the lights from passing cars making patterns from the blinds, concentrating on the sounds of the country and the pattern of the lights to keep from noticing the warmth of him, the feel of him, his scent lingering on her skin. He traced patterns on her folded hands, trying to catch her attention and she studiously avoided it, watching the lights, always the lights.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean….”

“Why are you here? What are you doing? What do you think you need from me?” Her questions fell flat and monotonous from her lips and he sighed beside her.

“I…don’t know. I guess I’m looking for someone who can see inside.”

She turned her head finally to look at him in the dark. “Don’t you know that they don’t see inside? They only see what you want them to instead of giving them what they expect. They don’t want to see the man that helps with the dishes and smokes too much and drinks himself into oblivion to stop the feeling of being typecast. They expect the monster and you give it to them freely, without questioning their needs or your wants, because you’re a pleaser. You want to make them happy, you want more of a career than the vampire and that’s noble, but if you constantly give them what they want, it will never happen.”

He was amazed at her insight, but even more than the next words out of her mouth. “I don’t know what you think I can give you. I have nothing. I have my job at the convenience store that keeps me in hearth and home and smokes, pays for my Internet, and gives me enough to get by. I don’t have connections, I don’t have friends and I don’t have any desire to be another notch. I’ve done enough of that, I don’t need it any more.”

He opened his mouth to refute her and she hurried on to keep him from saying what he thought she wanted to hear. “I don’t need someone to come in and turn me inside out, then leave. I’ve had that before too and it didn’t change anything. I’m still here and they left and that’s all. I can’t give you back your youth and I can’t restore your faith in yourself, because I don’t even have that myself. When I first started writing fanfic it bothered me, because I thought it was too much fantasy, but I found out I’m good at it and people like it, so I keep writing. The other stuff I write, I don’t even bother posting, because nobody wants to read the original stuff, they want Asher, so I give them Asher.” She turned away from him and he saw the tears trickling down her face to dampen the hair by her ears and she stared at the ceiling and passing light patterns again as she spoke not to him, but to herself. “I don’t have anything to give, so there’s nothing to take. Nothing but myself and I’m not willing to give that so easily anymore. Today was the proof that I needed and so I’m done.”

She sat up and climbed over him. He caught her hand, trying to keep her with him and she turned to him, her lips curled back. “Do you want me to piss my pants, or can I go to the bathroom?”

He released her, and she left the small room, closing the door behind her. He waited for her to come back, then climbed off the tiny bed to go and find her.

She was sitting on the steps out the back door, smoking in the dark. He sat next to her and his voice was quiet, but audible. “I don’t want anything from you, really. I just needed some time to myself, to reload and find me again. I’m sorry about today. They’re vulgar, this worship, and I hate it, but Bernie says to play up to it, so I do. I’m sorry for turning your home into a circus.”

“It won’t stop. It will never stop until you make it stop, you know this, right?”

He held out his hand and she put the cigarettes and lighter in it. Shaking, he took one and lit it, their cherries the only light in the dark. “I know.”

“Then make it stop. Retire. You could, you know. The movie deal, the spin-off—they are a dream at this point, a promise that the producer types make to keep the public happy. Asher will never age, but you have and nothing short of blurring the lens and severe makeup will change that. Unless you want to go Hollywood and have the facelifts and botox injections like they want you to.”

He snapped his head to look at her profile and she shrugged. “I’m not…I’m not as innocent as I look. Been to Hollywood before. Actually, Studio City. Recorded an album, right out of high school. Never released. They told me that if I wanted to be a star then I needed to lose weight or they wouldn’t sign me. I told them to fuck off, my voice is what mattered, not how I looked. So I know how it works and who pulls the strings. It isn’t you, it’s the managers, the producers, the money behind the scenes.”

He shook his head. “You’re just full of surprises, aren’t you?”

“More than you know.” She stood and dusted off her pants, waiting for him before she opened the door. She walked wordlessly into her room, slipped out of her clothes, and slid between cool sheets before he got to the door. He waited at the foot of the bed, for what he wasn’t sure, but her unspoken invitation hummed on the air. She folded the other side of the bed back and waited, and he slipped out of the borrowed jeans and tee shirt and slid in beside her.

She gave him her back, and he curled around her again, sighing contentedly. He slipped a hand around her waist and she covered it with her own, snugging it under full breasts that sagged with time and who knew what other reasons, and he was asleep and at peace for the first time in a long time that he could remember.


He woke alone, the sun streaming in the window into his face and heard voices in the other room. He felt like an intruder, and didn’t go to see whom she spoke with, but listened with his ear to the door like a thief.

“I don’t know where he went. He called someone on his cell phone and a limo came and got him last night around midnight. Sorry girls, he’s gone.”

Another voice. “Did he leave anything?”

He heard her laugh. “Considering that he didn’t have a thing with him besides the clothes on his back and his phone, no.”

“What about the clothes that….”

“They were his. Now, can you go on back home? I have a lot to do before I go to work. Laundry and errands and the like.”

“Yeah, sorry, Robin. We didn’t mean to bother you. We just wanted….”

“Yeah, I know. Goodbye.” He heard the front door close and cars starting up, and she walked to the bedroom door and almost knocked him over when she opened it. “They’re gone.”

“How did you know?”

“What, that they would be back? Not too hard to figure out. Following a dream, that’s what they all do. They don’t realize that dreams fade in the daylight.”

He realized the truth in her words. Dreams did fade in daylight as one awoke to the real world around them.

He padded into the kitchen on bare feet, not bothering with the tee shirt, grabbed a glass and got some water. He drank until he felt full and drunk on it then promptly ran to the bathroom to throw up. Her hands were cool, as was the washcloth she handed him and he wiped his mouth gratefully. “Thank you,” he mumbled, and she blushed.

“It’s nothing.” She left the bathroom, and he had to go searching for her again. She was back in bed, the blankets pulled up over her head, her body shaking beneath them, and he lay down next to her again, cradling her in his arms.

When her tears were spent, she looked up at him defiantly, daring him to mention her weakness and instead he kissed her.

Her hands slid off his sweat-slicked skin as she tried to push him away, but he stubbornly held on, burying his face in her hair and smelling the scents of home and love that he missed. Woman, musk, salt, life. All the things that were lacking for him, and he needed more than the lights and music and adoration he did have. Patricia didn’t smell like this; she smelled sterile and perfumed with scents that screamed money, not home.

His hands smoothed her clothes over her fullness, her womanly body and she made a noise of protest. “Don’t.”

“Please. I need…I need this. I need you.”

Her eyes pleaded with him and he ignored it, instead concentrating on the messages that her body sent. Nipples hard under the fabric of her clothes. Hips arching against his hipbone. He felt his excitement growing and pressed the evidence against her softness.

“I’m not…I don’t do this…please….”

“Please what? Stop? If you really want me to, I will.”

She felt the throb begin between her legs, the need deep in her gut and she trembled at her body’s betrayal. “I….”

“See, you don’t really want me to, do you pet. You want this as badly as I do. You like it just as much as I do. I want to sleep with a woman, not a stick, and you want a man, not a monster. Let me make you happy, make us happy, even if it’s just for a minute. Please.”

She took a deep breath and released it and he knew that he had her within his grasp. He pressed his advantage, and kissed her again, his tongue finding the inside of her mouth as warm and inviting as her body. He drowned in her, letting himself go and she touched his body with birdlike hands as he undressed her slowly. She covered herself with her hands when he exposed her skin bit by bit, and he moved them to kiss and touch her reverently, worshipping her with his tongue and mouth, each inch revealed another secret. Stretchmarks along her sides, and he wondered where the child she had borne laid, in whose arms it gathered safety. Full, ample breasts that sagged with time and he palmed them, caressing them and nuzzling them like he was home for the first in a long time.

He found himself ready too quickly, almost too quickly as his fingers traced the outlines of her core through her jeans. “Love, I need to slow down or I’ll blow this.”

Instead of her acquiescence, he was shocked when she pushed him onto his back, pulling his turgid cock out of his fly and taking it down her throat. She sucked once, then twice, and he came in her mouth, her throat moving against him as she swallowed. She sat up and turned her back on him, starting to dress and he pulled her back down to lay in his arms. “Is that all you think I wanted? A receptacle? What kind of man do you think I am?”

She gave him a weak smile. “I guess I thought that you were like all the other men…get in, get on, get down, get off, get up, get dressed, get out. You aren’t, are you?”

“Not even close.” Bright blue eyes that looked more alive and vibrant since his arrival pierced her to her soul. “Not even.” She felt him nudging her hip again, and he kissed a drop of his own jism off her full lower lip. “Missed a spot.”

She blushed. “Sorry.” He shrugged and his fingers stroked her again through her jeans.

“Can I…?” he asked and she nodded, biting her lower lip. He unzipped her and slid them down over her womanly hips and belly, pulling them off her feet and flinging them to the floor. She looked away, waiting for his disgust at her weight, then looked back at him to see him looking at her openly, his gaze admiring and not disgusted in the least and hope sprang to life within her breast.

He moved to cover her with his body, and she sighed. The feeling of a man again. It was almost alien to her, it had been so long. His cock poked her thigh and she spread her legs open for him to settle between them. He did, with his own sigh and she opened her eyes to look at him above her.

She started to speak when he slid into her buttery folds, settling himself deep inside her. Her mouth O’ed in surprise at the fullness of him, then she realized she must be tighter from the lack of activity. He was the first since…no, she wouldn’t bring that here. Now was not the time.

Their bodies moved together, slick with sweat as the heat built inside the trailer and inside their bodies. She gasped as he hit a spot deep inside her and he noticed and hit it again. Her eyes closed, her hair sticking to her forehead and her neck as he nuzzled her neck and kissed her ear, whispering encouragement into the delicate shell. He asked and she raked her fingernails down his back to his ass before gripping each cheek in a strong hand, pulling him deeper inside her.

She felt herself building and knew that she was close and he drove into her harder as she pulled at him, scratched him, bit his nipples. She felt herself spasm deep inside and so did he when she clamped down on his cock, locking them together as she milked him with her body, drawing his own orgasm to the fore and he started thrusting against her as he jettisoned deep inside her, watching her slack face with it’s rictus of passion as she came again.

He pressed their foreheads together, looking deep into green eyes that held her secrets safe within even now and wished that he could know them, know her as she trembled against him. There was time for all of that now, he realized, his decision made for him by this moment, this minute. He could be a man, he decided suddenly and his decision galvanized him to action as he started to laugh full and deep, kissing her mouth and neck and hands as she fluttered them to push him off of her.

“Robin, you’re a treasure. A gift from God.” She stared at him, suddenly frightened of this person she didn’t know and she started pushing in earnest, finally throwing him off to the side as she gathered her clothes and ran to the bathroom.

He stared at the back of her as she slammed the door behind her, then deliberately followed her into the bathroom and the shower, startling her. She jumped, then turned her head and tried to hide the tears that were determined to fall anyway and he held her close under the pounding spray until she was once again spent. She washed herself quickly, without tarrying over any one part and stepped out, leaving him alone, and he did the same.

He found her again in the kitchen, smoking and drinking coffee from the day before. She spoke without turning around. “I think that we need to get you back to where you belong.”

“Robin, I belong here.”

Her eyes blazed when she turned to face him. “No, you don’t,” she said deliberately. “You’ve had your time, your minute and now you need to get back to your life so I can get back to mine. Get dressed and I’ll take you back to your car.”

“I don’t want to.”

She threw her coffee mug at him, missing him, and screamed, “Do you think I care what you want? You got what you want. I want you to go now.”

He bravely stood in front of her and smoothed his hands down her arms. “No, you don’t. You don’t want me to leave any more than I want to. Do you?”

She didn’t speak; she just let the tears fall again. “I’m not your normal man, Robs. I don’t fuck and leave, it isn’t a part of my method.” He took a chance and drove the arrow into her heart. “What happened to your baby?”

She stopped dead, her mouth gaping and she touched her stomach. “My husband…my daughter…killed in the front yard. How did you know?”

“Well, could be because the bed in the spare room is a child’s bed, or because you have the body of a woman who’s given birth, or that you have men’s clothes in your house, or maybe just because you expect to be alone and have everything you love or care about disappear in a flash.” He watched her face and saw the damage there in her eyes, and enfolded her into his arms again. “I don’t disappear like that, Robin. I’m not going to leave and never come back.”

She turned from him and laughed bitterly. “Don’t make promises that you can’t hope to keep.”

“I don’t.” He rested his chin on her shoulder and she unconsciously leaned against him. “I have to go and fire my agent and my manager and announce my retirement, but I’ll be back. I promise.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I know. You won’t, until I’m back. But when I’m back, I’m back to stay. Would you go with me? Can you do that?”

“I don’t think so. I’m not the Hollywood type.”

“We wouldn’t be staying there. How does Oregon sound? Green grass and fresh air and a new start all the way around? Does that sound good for you?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know why I never left. Must have thought this was my hair shirt for surviving.”

“Were you home? When it happened?”

“I was fixing dinner. They were working on the car out front. A drunk missed the corner and thought that they could turn in our front yard instead and hit them both. They were pinned….”

Her voice trailed away and he knew that she was reliving the horror in her mind and he gave her a little shake. “Oregon then. Somewhere else, where neither one of us have memories. I have a son, do you know?”

Again, the bitter laugh. “Do you think there’s anything that I don’t know about you? I can go on any website in the world and find out all about you. This’ll be really good for the old career, Peter.”

“Say it again.”

“What?”

“My name. You’ve only said it twice. I like the way you say it.”

“All right. Peter.”

“Do you think that we could love each other?”

She looked down at her hands and he spun her around in his arms. “Answer me, please.”

“I don’t know. It…might take a while.”

“We have time. We have all the time in the world.” He cupped her face in his hands and tilted her chin with his thumbs. “All the time we need. All we have to do is take it.”

He saw her doubt and felt his own, but there was something to her quiet acceptance of his proposal that soothed his soul and calmed his nerves. “That’s all it is, taking the time to know one another.”

“You know nothing about me.”

“Well, then we’re even. You only know what Bernie puts out there for the public to read, not the man behind the mask. I’m not an angel, Robin.”

“I never did like Angel,” she said, turning it into a pun. “I’ve always liked the big bad boys.”

“Then I can be your big bad. But I want to at least try. Once. For myself and for you.”

She looked at him, really looked and saw the sincerity and the hope burning like a flame inside him and she decided to take the leap. “I guess we can try. Doesn’t hurt to try.”

“No, it never hurts to try. Not for something you really want.”

She saw him differently now; not the actor or the character, but the man and she kind of liked what she saw. “Let’s go get your car, and we’ll talk about this, but if you change your mind….”

He left the sentence hang, and kissed her instead. “I won’t. I want a life, not a career of pimping myself nightly. Let’s go get my car, and we’ll talk on our way to LA.”

Talk. They would talk. Get to know each other. Start over fresh. Hope hung in the air as she got her purse and keys and joined him by the front door. Hope was all they had and right now, it was all they needed. It was a beginning.


ETA: Edited to take out completely unnecessary commas. I am such a comma whore.