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feverinfeveroutfic · 17 days

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the skeleton key | chapter seven: a caress of silver

”men wish to feel desired, women wish to feel in control”

-something i read learning about sexual needs (because i’m clueless otherwise) and something i wish this new generation of fic writers would understand already

It was one of those mornings in L.A. where the fog had rolled in and I was more than eager to head on out to the airport. I had to figure a way to go and meet the other guys again like what Marcy had told me, but for the time being, I was on my way to the Pacific Northwest. It had been quite some time since I had been up there, only ten years before.

Ten years. Ten years since I was last in Seattle.

It proved to be a homecoming for me the more I thought about it, and more so when I reached the airport and checked myself in for the first flight up the spine of the West Coast. I was going up there alone, and at some point, I was going to have to find my way back down to Sacramento to meet up with Marcy and Eric. And I was going to have to go back to work as well.

But for the time being, I was on my way up to the Emerald City, and I had my eye out for Alex once I touched down: apparently, his flight from Burbank came in at about an hour before me, which meant it was going to be me and him for a good chunk of the day. I chuckled to myself when I thought about seeing him from the plane window, that little plume of gray from the view into the airport. But I never did, until I reached the inside of the airport instead. He greeted me with those little buck teeth and his arms wide open for me.

“Hey, stranger!” I declared, and I held him close to me for a good long minute. It felt so wrong, but it felt so right at the same time. I then held back and gazed into his face, and I thought about giving him a kiss on those cherry lips. But then he beat me to the punchline and gave me a kiss, and he held me close again.

“Warm just like a bakery,” he remarked.

“I try my best,” I assured him with a smile.

“Come on... let's go check in and I'll take you to meet the guys,” he told me, and he offered to help me with my things out to the rental car that awaited us. I had my phone with me so I could take plenty of pictures for Marcy, but I was drawn to the big silvery camera dangled against Alex's hip, and more so when we prepared to go through baggage claim.

“Where'd you get that?” I asked him as we waited before the big conveyor belt.

“What, this?” He showed me the camera. “Oh, I've been into photography for a few years now. Randy—you may have seen him at the Metal Allegiance show, Randy Blythe, tall guy with the dreadlocks, the horned glasses, and the tattoos all over his arms, he's one of my best friends in the whole world—saw a picture I took and recommended I do more of that but with a proper photographer's camera. He lent me his and was thoroughly impressed by it, and then I had to give it back to him. It was an expensive camera.” And I chuckled at that.

“So you went ahead and got your own,” I followed along.

“Exactly!” he declared with a little twinkle to his eye. “And it seems to have done me justice, even as just a simple hobby on the side.”

My big blue overnight bag emerged on the conveyor belt, and he scooped it up for me and slung it over his shoulder.

“That's not too heavy?” I asked him as I remembered that I had packed a bunch of baking supplies in there.

“Not at all!” he assured me as we walked side by side. “Guitar cases and accompanying amps can get pretty heavy, but simple luggage is nothing for me.”

“You and your big, strong, lanky arms,” I noted with a glance at his biceps enshrouded under his peacoat, and I couldn't help myself. I reached up and gave him a squeeze on his upper arm.

“Yeah, you gotta be pretty strong to tour with a bunch of stuff like that,” he told me, and we stepped outside of the airport to the graying sky and the incoming rain. It was this gentle mist that fell in sheets, almost like the rain at the beach, and it was chilly enough for us to huddle together there at the walkway for a moment before we caught a break in the cars.

He led me to his rental, a small black hatchback with a rack on the roof even though we were nowhere near a place for skiing. He unlocked it for me and, once he tucked my bag next to his things, he turned to me with a deep, firm kiss on my lips.

“Make love to me,” he begged to me. “Give me what she can't give me.”

“You know I will,” I vowed to him.

“We're in Seattle, my dear,” he told me. “We should have some fun here.”

“Fun in Seattle even while it's pouring rain and drenching us down to our clothes.”

“Fun in Seattle with a cup of coffee and some scones,” he followed up.

“You want some scones?” I couldn't help the smile across my face.

“Yeah! You got any in your bag?” He chuckled at that.

“You wish,” I teased him. “I mean, I wanna make you some scones. Some chocolate ones, or chocolate and cherry like a play on the Black Forest cake.”

“Sounds devilish,” he replied with a slight squint to his eyes. “I like it. I think there is an oven in the room, too.”

“So, I could make some all for you,” I quipped, and I couldn't resist caressing his arms once again. “I brought my flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, vanilla extract, eggs, handheld mixer, measuring spoons and cups, pastry cutter, a couple of spatulas, and a sheet pan with me—I never go too far without them. I never know when I'm going to need them, so... I can definitely do that for you.”

“Oh, would you!” He cocked his head to the side a bit at the sound of that.

“You know it! Just let me get some other things first, like the chocolate and cherries and butter. I'll make sure they're kosher, too.”

He kissed my forehead right as the mist formed into straight rain, which then showered down in sheets over our heads. He then gazed up to the darkening sky, those blue eyes as bright as ever, and to the point I could not stop looking at them. In junction with the rain, they reminded me of the sky afterwards.

“You have the clearest eyes I have ever seen,” I told him, and he glanced down at me. The way his gray streak pointed up to the cold graying sky made me think it had descended from the clouds themselves. “You're like a ghost. The gray ghost.”

“I'm a dog,” he remarked with a straight face. “A wiry gray dog with floppy ears.”

“You mean the Weimareiner?” I asked him.

“Yeah, that's the one,” he replied with a snicker. He then peered up to the sky, such that the raindrops kissed his face and the crown of his head, and then he took a glimpse at his watch.

“It's after noon,” he declared, and he glanced down at me. “We don't check into the room until three, either. You wanna get a drink?”

“I'd love to have a drink,” I said. “A mimosa or something along the lines of brunch like that.”

“I think I spotted a place not too far from the hotel...” He gave me another kiss, and then we climbed into the car, and we drove to the western side of Seattle, complete with a view of the Puget Sound, and as far as I knew, it was ground zero for the grunge scene. When we climbed out, the rain waned back down to a fine mist.

Alex held his hand out for me, and I locked fingers with him. I huddled closer to him, away from the cold winds. I thought about asking him as to when the Metal Allegiance guys were going to meet up again, but I shelved it once we started walking onward to this little restaurant right down the block from our hotel.

He held the door for me, and I stepped inside first. We were greeted by the aroma of things cooking in the back part of that warmly lit place, such that he led me back there. There was a table under a single suspended lamp with a big stained glass shade covered in clusters of grapes and leaves; we huddled next to the window out to the street. Down the block stood the harbor itself.

He was going to be too tipsy to drive, but I let him have his fun with the big glass of beer and me with the mimosa in the champagne flute. I watched him drink that whole glass all the way to the bottom, and that point, his eyes drooped closed and he showed me more of a smile.

“Something tells me you haven't had a drink like this in a long time,” I remarked.

“Had a few too many,” he remarked with a little snicker.

“You certainly did, but I just had one too many,” I quipped; the mimosa was doing a number on me even without a second thought.

“Oh, c'mon, Alison, they always say that,” he hit back.

“'They'?”

“Yeah, you know. 'They.' 'Them.' The ones who always say that they—they—they—they—they—they had one too many.” He stifled a hiccup and showed me a sweet little smile complete with a peek of those little buck teeth. Sweet, but there was something tempting in there, however. He had had a few too many and now he had this look in his eyes as if he wanted to do something unthinkable in the back of that restaurant. It was just us there, after all. I leaned in closer to him with my arms folded over the top of the table before me so he would stay back a bit.

“There's something on your mind right now,” I said to him in a low enough voice for him to hear over the noise of the restaurant around us; he closed his lips so he showed me a little smirk instead. “There is something on your mind right now. We're in Seattle. We've had some drinks and now we're alone under a veil of immense passion courtesy of the sky overhead. You're feeling something.” His eyes hooded a bit, but it was enough to darken them. They went from that soft dream to the realm of a handsome devil at the drop of a hat.

I leaned in closer to the side of his head so my lips were right up next to the rim of his ear, obscured by his hair. He held still; out of the corner of my eye, I noticed him closing his, especially once I nudged the hair back away from his skin.

“Let me find the skeleton key into your heart,” I whispered into his ear, and I lightly kissed him on the side of the face. His shoulders jolted a bit, and I couldn't help but lick my lips and move on back to my spot. Alex opened his eyes again and gazed on at me, good, long, and hard right into my face as if he was trying to read my mind.

He then leaned in closer to me, to which stray tendrils of his frizzy dark hair drifted down over his shoulders: a piece spread over his brow and his eye as if to hide the two of us away from the world. Where I had breathed right into his ear, he brought his face up to mine so the full tip of his nose nearly brushed up against mine.

“I think you just found it,” he whispered back to me, and he locked lips with me. We were in public and yet he moved in slowly and deeply.

“I got my camera with me... and I just got the worst, stupidest idea, too,” he continued.

“I was thinking about that, too,” I said in a near whisper, as I helped him split the bill.

We were within range of Alki Beach, and we couldn't drive back to the hotel as of yet, at least not until the alcohol lightened up in our systems anyway. At that point, the rain had stopped enough to where the clouds broke a bit, and the sun shone down over us. I could stand by the fence that separated us from the rest of the gray waters of the Puget Sound as if I was posing for a glamour magazine. I leaned against the cables on the backs of my hands, right as the sun emerged from behind the clouds.

“Oh, that's stunning!” Alex declared as he held the camera to his face and pressed the shutter button. I opened my jacket to show off my shirt to him, including the low neckline.

One hand up on the cable closest to my head. My head tilted back all the while so I resembled Debbie Harry.

For a moment, I swore he was a young buck again, especially when showed me that crooked little smile from behind his camera. It was going to be something to meet the guys that evening, especially when I knew how things flowed between the two of us.

And I wondered as to how I was going to make those scones for him, too, especially since we were going to be tipsy for quite some time, possibly for the next few hours until we could check into the room.

But it made no difference to me as I posed for him and that camera. I was having too much fun, and I wanted to give him what he couldn't have back home. And all the while, I hadn’t thought about Jerry for one second.

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