TITLE: Down With Love
CHAPTER NUMBER: Chapter 4
AUTHOR: theothercourse
WHICH TOM/CHARACTER: Actor Tom
GENRE: Romance/Drama
FIC SUMMARY: In the winter of 2011, Tom returns to New York City for the War Horse premiere and visit his Broadway singer ex-girlfriend, hoping to rekindle their flame. Deep in denial, she struggles with his reappearance in her life and his desire to overcome the obstacles that forced them apart more than once since they fell in love almost two years ago. These two ambitious and successful actors fight their families, careers and each other along the course of true love. And in the words of Shakespeare himself, the course of true love never did run smooth.
RATING: Mature (NSFW chapter - reunion sex and a ton of angst)
AUTHORS NOTES: Sequel to The Course of True Love Never Did Run Smooth
The Taylor Family Bakery stood in between Wexler’s Stationary Store and Samson’s Photography on Main Street in Cold Spring, New York the last time I laid eyes on the place. The only bakery within a twenty mile radius served a few small towns for residents and weekend visitors a little over an hour by train from New York City. The brick face structure had been built in the 1800s, and looked like it. All the businesses on the block had been retrofitted from something else and now served to fulfill the needs of a community of around 2000 souls, the quintessential everyone knew everybody else’s lives kind of town.
I attended school with the Wexler twins and the postmaster’s son and the grocery store manager’s daughter. My parents didn’t contribute much to the community or participate beyond the doors of the bakery, only if and when it served the good of the business. They were hands off people, and it translated to them as parents to me. All their efforts served the bottom line, and keeping the money in the black instead of the red. Those were constant phrases I heard as a child, red meant danger, black meant less stress and oppressive tension around the house.
Because my parents were absent from me as a child, I found people and places I fit in, even as a six year old until I found my voice, my love for the stage, and my desire for a round of applause. I didn’t wander far from the backroom of the bakery, where I was put with a coloring book or a toy, anything to entertain a small child without supervision. Instead I ventured out into the neighborhood, Main Street, and found myself in Cold Spring’s only pizzeria, owned and operated by an older Italian woman who traded her disco roller skating rink in New Jersey for tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese in the early ‘80s in Upstate New York.
Everyone called her ‘Mama Raina’ though the licenses for her restaurant had been issued to Julie Caruso. All her stories began with ‘When I cashed out in dirty Jerz…’ It was her catch phrase, and she’d been well settled in as the neighborhood hangout before the bold and bored six year old version of me found the place. I visited every day after school, attracted to the strange but colorful marriage of 70s disco glam and 80s electric pop music atmosphere that exuded from inside. Record album covers littered the walls, collages of top 10 singles decorated the cheap laminated tables, and music blared from a black boom box in the back corner. I learned early on not to touch the underside of the table, all sticky with abandoned pieces of pink and green chewing gum.
When the high school kids survived past the 3pm end of the day bell, the popular set all funneled in and crowded into Mama Raina’s for a slice and a soda, burning two or three hours before flitting off home to their white collar, working class parents for family dinner. Because it was such a small almost-tightknit community, at six years old, I became an honorary teenager, with Mama and the dozen or so teenagers watching after me. They all knew who I was and where I’d come from, and adopted me as little sister between the hours of 3pm to 6pm on weekday afternoons.
One particular afternoon remained burned into my memory. Seated in the back booth, I could still remember the smell of the garlic knots and the well-cooked tomato sauce and the Hawaiian punch from the teenagers’ snacks. As most afternoons went, everyone including Mama sang along with the boom box, cranked to 10, playing whichever popular song of the week. It was the regular activity to blow off steam and create a cohesive sound, singing along with the radio.
Whitney Houston’s Where Do Broken Hearts Go made the cut, and it was the first song that I remembered learning the lyrics to, after so many afternoons in Mama Raina’s sanctuary. The teenagers were so proud when I sang along, and they all shook my hand or ruffled my hair with affection. That was the day I felt included somewhere, with likeminded people, treated like an equal. I mattered.
Twenty years later, as I rested against the Marriott Marquis Hotel’s down pillow, folded in the arms of the man I loved, I mattered. To him. Starring into Tom’s eyes, our bare legs threaded through each other’s, I counted for something. My hands were tucked up under my head as I faced him. The smile upon my face pushed through the hesitancy of spending time with him, and being intimate with him again.
Straight white teeth peeked out from behind the ginger goatee as a matching gleeful expression met mine. “Did I really put a smile on your face?” The raspy bedroom pillow talk continued to be Tom’s strong point.
“You did,” the giddy bubbling inside me made that smile grow, and a truthful confirmation for him.
The afterglow of our lovemaking found us snuggled beneath the sheets with the bedside lamps on, so we could see our reunion glow.
“Where did you go just now?” he asked mimicking my relaxed pose.
“Mama Raina’s. Whitney Houston singing in the background.” In our time together, I rarely talked about my childhood. Not from shame or embarrassment, but simply, for me, my life began when I found theatre and the acceptance that I found within that community.
Tom acknowledged it with a silent nod, sensing that it was ancient history and he didn’t want to tread there unless I led the way. Instead he brushed locks of my hair behind my ear and behind my shoulder, baring my neck. His fingers lingered at my naked shoulder, an internal debate playing behind his eyes: to ask or to listen.
“My composer—the one who wrote Bonnie and Clyde—Frank, he wrote one of her songs, one of her hits. Whitney Houston, I mean. It actually went to number one here. It—I used to sing it as a kid with a bunch of older teenagers that, well… babysat me.” I avoided the topic of family since that was a sensitive subject between Tom and me, something that came between us more than once. “Can you imagine it? I get to sing his score, and I listened to his songs on the radio. Me!” I said with incredulity.
“Why not you?” His British pronunciation ticked my inner ear. If it were possible to fall in love with the sound of one single word, it was Tom’s ‘not.’ The nasally resonance made my heart pitter patter a quickstep. “You’re extraordinarily gifted.”
I giggled airily at his compliment and his subtle approach, closing the shallow gap between us. “Tom, thank you… but what I meant to say—it blows my mind! A composer, that one on the radio back then, wrote a song. For me. I get to perform his songs every night. They pay me to do that. And a room full of people, almost 1000 people, listen to me sing his songs.”
I mattered then as I mattered in the arms of this man. He made me feel that.
“You’ve been with this show… since… April was it?” He flattened his hand to the small of my back, maintaining our positions but eliminating the gap between us. The king-size bed nearly swallowed us up and the bedclothes glued us together.
“I’ve been attached as Bonnie since then- when Daddy Long Legs closed-when I saw you—“
He interrupted me with a kiss on the lips before I could rehash that painful part of our history. When we were apart…
Changing the subject, I explained how the past year had gone though he’d been there for some of it. “1776 was a limited run, and playing Martha was fun, a different pace from Bonnie. Peppy and lively, Martha was, and Bonnie is spirited and loyal. Martha gave me a reprieve from the darkness in Bonnie and Clyde.” I reached out and touched the bristles of his goatee. I was used to scruff on him, the day or two old stubble, but not the full on facial hair that Tom sported.
“I liked you in that one too,” he complimented evenly rolling me over onto my back. The aroused man positioned himself between my legs and propped himself over me. “Are you enjoying that?”
My fingers played and softly yanked at the brush of hair on his face, enchanted by the coarse yet ticklish feel of it.
*
Smirking into another pass of Kristiane’s fingers over my whiskers, I told her plainly, “Henry.”
Her eyes lifted to mine almost in surprise. With a coquettish grin, she reminded, “No, I’m Kristie. Expecting someone else?” Her foot grazed up the back of my leg inching her way to hook around my waist, her body language asking for physical affection. She wanted me again.
The gesture went straight to my groin with a jolt, the knowledge that this woman wanted another go of it excited the masculine and primal part of my being. Blood drained from my brain to my cock fueling my lust for her, but the need to talk with her stayed strong. “Clever that, but I meant the facial hair, the moustache and beard, they’re for Henry.”
Playing coy, she grinned wider, “And I thought it was for me.” She brought my face down to hers and licked the shell of my ear. “I’ve been enjoying the burn.”
Fuuuccckkk.
Maybe this wasn’t the time for talking. In our history, I had to break down her defenses and grant her patience to get her to honestly open up to me. I did want to revel in her, every bit of her, in the physical and philosophical sense. Her feminine and sexual side were a temptation, a best kept secret that she only shared with me, and I was blessed for it.
Brokenly, while laying claim to her neck, working my way down, I breathed, “The BBC—the… Hollow Crown—Henry the fifth…”
Her breath hitched and caught when my lips made contact with her breast, kisses and scrapes left along the path from her cheek southbound. “…Shakespeare,” she moaned, identifying and making the connection to our conversation. Another moan, and her meaning changed, “My Shakspeare.”
I was hers, from that first note I heard her sing at a friend’s birthday party before careers and family and friendships got in the way. The woman brazenly took to the stage with a karaoke microphone in hand and sung a song written for a man and made it her own. As confident as she was performing in front of a room full of people, she’d shown me her inquisitive and sensitive self, her vulnerability and her intelligence. She captured my heart and my imagination within a few short days and enriched my life.
Where I was confident in wanting her for the rest of my life, she needed convincing. I didn’t understand her aversion to marriage, but I was determined to bring her around. We were too good together, and we understood each other’s lives outside us as a couple. I rose above her, assuming a bruising kiss, anxious to change her mind about our future. It wouldn’t become just another night of sex, amazing mind-blowing, life-altering sex. I could get her to see beyond her fears and know that I’d be there to support her if she fell.
I kissed her until we were both out of breath and she smiled again for me. “I shouldn’t like this,” she touched my chin, tugging at the facial hair there, “as much as I do, but it’s sexy. You’re sexy and it’s rough and scratchy, but I want to feel it everywhere.” Kristiane had never been shy or ashamed of her sexual appetite, once we’d been together. Cautious with new positions or locations or experiences, she followed my lead, knowing she could trust me and I’d never abuse that trust. I’d been the first man to go down on her.
Hearing her desire to be devoured in sensation, the grounding and real pleasure-pain of tender worshiping kisses and the chaffing burn of prickly beard, spurned me into action like a race car when the flag drops. Kristiane applied pressure to the gas pedal and I took off with 900 horsepower behind me. Groaning at the strain in my cock, I gruffed, “Details, woman and I’ll do it. Every explicit detail.”
A flame of acceptance lit behind her eyes, a fierce loyalty and willingness to show me her choice. Her arms circled above her head into the folds of the pillows, her right hand holding her left wrist in a tight grip. “Pin me to this bed and make me squirm, make me feel it. Your tongue, your teeth, your lips, your skin, your hair, your scruff, your fingers, your hands, your cock—all of you on me.” Without shame and hesitation, she possessed all the beauty in the world, especially when she asked for sexual gratification.
My knuckles grazed along the inside of her thigh towards her sex and then teased away from her cleft. Like a siren, her heat called to me. “The first solo you sang tonight, what was it?”
The blush of arousal rose from her chest up her neck into her cheeks, her skin luminous with the color of a rose. Her hands splayed over my chest as if to push me away but it turned into a caress, her thumbs playing along the patch of hair in the middle, and her fingertips stroking my nipples. Her mouth opened slightly in invitation, the expression of heightened want. “Touch me.” An urgent plea. A pressing beg.
I licked her lower lip before dipping my tongue within her mouth swiftly, only a brief taste. “Sing for me and I’ll do everything you crave.” My hand slid back up her thigh and swiped a light caress over her center.
“How ‘Bout a Dance?” her tone light, following my question about her song… just barely. The provocative touch stealing her train of thought, focusing on my hand instead of the song she knew in her blood.
“Yes,” I encouraged, ghosting my facial hair across her cheek. “You sang it beautifully.” If the woman wasn’t naked beneath me, I might’ve been a bit more articulate but it took more than enough effort to say that. “Us—” I sunk my teeth into her shoulder, marking her as I had earlier. “I heard us in that song.”
The lyrics spoke to me while I watched her portray Bonnie Parker in Bonnie and Clyde, and her voice had been silvery and sweet, crisp and clean.
“How ‘bout a dance? What do you say? I’ve got some moves… that I’d love… to show… you. Let’s find a spot… and dance the night away,” she sang quietly just for me.
The attempt to sing through my enticement on her skin was impressive at first but descended into heavy breathing as I trailed down her body with my tongue from her neck to the crease between her legs. I scraped my goatee along her flesh as she asked me to, behind the moist path.
Her fingers combed into my hair and held me fast against her damp slit. Her thighs clamped against my cheeks, my beard undoubtedly prickling the sensitive flesh pressed around my face. I pushed the flat of my tongue against her, savoring the tang of her wetness.
*
New York City/London, August 22, 2010
“Tom, we haven’t been the same since Paris,” Kristiane’s voice lost some of her pep that I longed to hear. The tension between us, the strain of the distance and the stress of our last two days together ate away at her confidence in our relationship, and it tore me up. The time difference and the difficulty finding a slot for us, just to talk around dying mobile batteries and overheating phones.
She didn’t understand – couldn’t understand what was happening, how could she when I barely understood it myself? I inhaled slowly, taking in the oxygen, letting the fresh evening air fill my lungs. I swirled the last of my drink around the bottom of the glass. This vivacious woman felt even further away than the 3000 plus miles between us, and I loathed each and every emotional mile that separated us.
Solemnly, I replied, “I know.” The truth was I knew it wasn’t entirely her fault, and it certainly wasn’t mine. Neither one of us could’ve anticipated this when we got involved. I think I heard her heart break at the admission when she hissed as if in pain. Because if allowed myself to admit it, she was in pain. This wasn’t what I wanted for her, especially not so close to her birthday. She deserved all the happiness and all the smiles, but I kept the frown on her face.
She was quiet for a long time, looking for something concrete to hold onto while she felt like she was suffocating or drowning. I heard every splinter of her shattered heart when she finally spoke again. “Are we breaking up? Is that what this is?”
Under all the hurt, the feisty girl was fighting for her place in all of this, but I knew that her pain could bury her and leave her as the girl I met a year ago, broken, afraid, searching for a friend. “Kristie, I don’t want that. You know how much you mean to me.” I stood up, unable to sit still any longer, doing nothing but nursing my drink.
“Tom, please… tell me what’s going on. I’m losing you.”
I couldn’t deny it. Part of me disconnected from her and I despised that. I was utterly in love with her, and I wanted her in my life, but a small part of me wondered if we could survive.
“I’m sorry… unreservedly sorry. But I question where—Kristie, us… where we’re going…”
“Tom, you’ve got me as long as you want me. We’re together.”
I didn’t say anything as the issues swirled around my head in a jumbled mess. My feet beat a worn tread in the hotel carpeting from my pace back and forth. The walls seemed to close in on me as my heart seized in my chest. No words came, no denial, no confirmation, no comfort.
Instinctive Kristie picked up on the silence immediately. “We’re together, right?”
Again, I let the question stay there, fester like it had since Paris, since London, since my mother laid into Kristiane. I couldn’t answer for sure. I adored this woman, but she confounded me. Yes, we were dating, as much as two people could, living in two different countries with an ocean between us. But together? I wasn’t so sure.
Panic rose in her voice, “Tom, we’re together, right?”
I paced another lap in my hotel room, seeking sanctuary from the chill air, knowing that the cold came from the inside, not the August evening. “Kristie, I’m not certain…”
“What is happening?” Her vulnerability and apparent agony seared through me. “Why is this happening?” Her tears soaked her voice, the melody broken and disjointed in her torment.
I hated my doubt and I hated myself for putting her through this. “Kristie, my love, I’m having a rough go of it. I- this- I want… that- we’re moving towards something.”
The vision and memory of her crying at the airport taunted me, knowing from the shaky labored breaths she took that I’d put those tears in her eyes again. This sensible, composed woman was a shadow of who she was because of me.
“What are you saying, Tom? We’re working to be together in the same country.”
“To what end?”
“I’m uh- mmm- I don’t understand, Tom. Don’t you want that? Please… what is happening with us?”
I sighed into the phone, her belief in us rocked, the fallout of something in her inhale. “Kristie, I… what you said… to my mum… I don’t think we are.”
