Title: Sensory Effect
Author: BehrBeMine
Word Count: 1, 826
Disclaimer: I own nothing, sometimes not even sanity. Mkay?
Summary: He wanted her, he wanted this; his happiness lived in her.
Distribution: At my site every night by curfew. Any other takers, just let me know.
Character/Pairing: Trory
Rating: R
Time Period: Days of Chilton -- 'Run Away, Little Boy' is where it begins.
Ickle Word: Schmoopy - (adj) - To be sweet and adorable and cute to the point where it creates an entirely new word to describe it.
Song: 'Thanks For the Memories' by Fall Out Boy. Very loosely based on actual lyrics; more based on the overall idea of the song.
Quotation: "A lot of parents pack up their troubles and send them off to summer camp." -- Raymond Duncan
Random Object: keys
Beta: Melissa -- thanks, darlin'.
Author's Note: I had somewhat of a more magnificent piece I worked hard to finish and polish in time. Things didn't work out that way. Here's the consolation entry. I hope it suffices.
Dedication: For Camilla, who requested a Trory from me eons ago.
- -
She tasted like strawberries, from the first moment her lips fell on his. Tristan could feel the fabric of her Juliet costume; could feel her boyfriend's eyes on both of them, slowly burning holes in their flesh.
"I might kiss you goodbye but, uh, your boyfriend's watching," he'd told her, limbs prepared to leave.
To this day, he doesn't know why she did it. Why she chose him and fell into that kiss. When she pulled away, he could see his own reflection in the blue of her eyes. He barely felt her boyfriend tear him away, and ignored the rough, "Get away from her! Get off!" He could see nothing but his happiness, and the goofiest grin came to his face. The boyfriend wanted to talk it out. Tristan had to go. She said she'd write him.
She did.
--
She smelled like summer -- Happy perfume on her neck and peach essence in her hair. He inhaled her sweetness as he cuddled her that July 4th. Hartford's largest park hosted the patriotic festivities, and Rory's breath hitched under that sycamore tree as he kissed his way along her neck, up to her earlobe. He sucked the lobe into his mouth, sucked hard, and beneath him her body shuddered.
The leaves sighed in the wind as she asked him questions about military school. She wanted to hear all of the things his letters didn't say. All he wanted to do was touch her and touch her some more, but instead he lie down beside her and spread his fingers along the freshly cut grass. And he told her of six a.m. drills, hours-long chores, "strength and discipline". He told her of perfect sheet corners on the beds, and learning to finish the gruel on your plate. He didn't tell her about Justin R.'s dirty magazines under mattresses.
His stories spread her expression into smiles that caressed her eyes. She laughed at his antics with the other "military men in training", quipping a mile a minute at every aspect of Tristan's life she'd been kept from. She liked listening about his friends like Tucker and Matt who desperately needed a smack on the head.
"And I'm guessing you don't deserve to go without a few punishments, too," Rory said with a giggle.
"I definitely racked up some smacks of my own." When he thought about it, when he remembered, the steady rules that never wavered did more to alter his sense of right and wrong than his father's rules which were carelessly thrown about and changed on a whim. They broke a known rule, they got caught -- Tristan, Tucker, and Matt, several times. They learned not to push the same buttons again.
Her eager questions to spur him on made him realize things he wouldn't have otherwise.
"A lot of parents pack up their troubles and send them off to summer camp," Tristan said with a dry chuckle that meant nothing good. "Summer's the only time mine let me be around."
--
She looked like a porcelain doll usually shut behind glass as she rushed into his arms the first day of their senior year. He was back at Chilton, and it was as though the king had never left the building. All old friends bent back into place, and she was his welcome new addition.
He'd kissed many girls in front of his Mary's locker; now it was her lips that sought his as he came into view, her arms that snaked around his neck and pulled him close enough for soft whispers. Her breath, hot in his ear, warmed the goosebumps into shivers. He wanted her, he wanted this; his happiness lived in her.
Rory's fingernails were sometimes purple; he looked at them and thought of bruises he'd keep from her. He thought of bruises from his father that still left some scars, and wished he could know for sure he wouldn't be the same way.
She'd thread their hands together on the way to their shared English and Chemistry classes, letting go only when it was time to find their separate seats.
--
Her voice sounded like a goddess' wail as she cried out his name for the first time. His fingers toyed inside the lace of her panties, where they'd teased her until she was dripping between the thighs she clamped around his hand. He hooked his two longest fingers once he'd driven them far up within her, and her moans excited him to the point where he could holler and wake the dead.
He knew she'd never done this before, but she was reckless where there used to be hesitation, and she spurred him on, reaching out her small hand to finger the bulge in his jeans that grew in magnitude till it filled in her palm. "Oh, Rory..." he kept saying, over and over. He put on the condom with the "ribs, for her pleasure". But she wasn't the only one who careened over the edge. "God, God, God," Tristan gasped into her hair, her neck, her mouth. "Oh fuck..."
Tantalizing as she was with her pouted lips, her tight heat, and her squeezing thighs, it was when she bucked her hips up into his deliciously that she seized his control and he came with another cry of her name.
--
She felt like satin as he hugged her closer than could be, and told her to be good. He touched a finger playfully to her nose, and she took off her tasseled hat to bat him with it gently. She wasn't the one who needed to behave, was what she told him, and that much was true. Yale was calling her, and she insisted they not waste a minute before he was off to Princeton and everything would be shared in far-away letters again, punctuated by the occasional weekend rendezvous they'd struggle to make last like slow melting candy.
The summer was their time. It was what they had to hold onto. He'd always loved the summer. The world had grown from catching frogs and splashing in rain puddles to ignoring all frogs and the rain while he kissed Rory senseless and left her dizzy afterward. He gave her silly smiles and kissed her closed eyelids on the lash line. He'd found his paradise partner.
"'Together forever' is a cliché," she said to him as mid-August climbed onto the calendar. "Let's call it more... 'hell or high water'."
"Whatever you want to call it," he told her, "I'm yours." She said she'd miss him.
She did.
--
Freshman year at college was so different from the high school experience. Popularity shrank in importance, except at the keggers, but then there was enough beer to make all things obsolete, anyway. Tristan gulped the beer on Saturdays and called Rory late in the night, just to hear her voice. She always said she couldn't imagine being any farther apart than she felt at every moment without him. He told her that he felt the same; he didn't tell her that sometimes he felt he needed to be more deserving of her. He didn't tell her he'd been thinking of ways to improve his pastimes from playboy digs and smirks.
Summer came again, and as she writhed beneath him that first night home in his king-sized bed, he slammed into her hard, wanting to jolt both their bodies, make this feeling sustain for however long it could. Her voice rose in pitch, the sound of her pleasure making him groan in ecstasy. He lay beside her afterwards, as she pulled the cold sheets to her damp skin.
She fished his car keys from the pocket of discarded jeans on the floor, fingering them as they clinked together. She set them on the nightstand and asked to stay the night. His nod came so eagerly they nearly bumped noses.
"I miss your long hair," was what he told her before sleep, touching the softness of it and wanting to be wrapped in its coils.
She said she was thinking about growing it out again. "Especially if you want me to."
He smiled and didn't know what else to say.
--
It was warm the next morning when they stepped into his shower together. His parents hadn't been home for a month already, and the maid knew not to bother him when he was "busy".
The hot water scalded them, fusing their bodies together wherever skin touched skin. He teased with his fingers, the way she liked best, and her voice raised his bravado with its every heightened cry. He cupped her sex and dug his teeth just slightly into her shoulder. She shivered despite the heat.
He chose then, when her chest was heaving and she was recovering from their against-the-wall activities, to tell her that he was leaving. That right now, college wasn't enough. Her smile faded from its schmoopy giddiness until it was altogether gone.
"I need to prove that I can be more than I am. Whatever military school did for me, it changed me for the better. Look what it did, I mean... it gave me you."
He watched droplets form at the ends of her hair; saw them fall and crash out of shape once hitting the tub floor.
"The army?" she asked, her voice choked with disbelief. "You could be killed. Just like that, you could die. And, what? You're willing to risk never seeing me again so you can feel like you deserve me?"
"I've been thinking a lot. It's what I have to do."
She shut the water off and he heard the drain gulp it all down. He watched her towel dry her hair and tried to deny the way she was avoiding his eyes.
--
"Do you hate me?" he asked her, the queen on his Chilton King arm.
"I hate what you're doing. That's all. And also the purple tie you wear all over the place." He could sense that she was gritting her teeth.
He tugged the strap of his heavy bag further up his shoulder. "I'm strong. Don't worry, Ror. I'll be back, and I'll be everything you need me to be."
"I never asked you to change."
"I know..." He touched a finger to her cheek and followed her tear's trail down it. "That's something I love about you."
She smiled gently, and her breath was full of strawberries as she leaned in. "I love you, too." His porcelain doll waved him off, hair releasing peach scent into the wind that carried him away in his dark blue Lexus. He'd always had so much to doubt when it came to trusting that anyone meant what they said. He could see her windswept figure caught up in the rearview mirror, behind the dust that trailed his tires and gave her a dreamlike quality.
She said she'd wait for him.
Come hell or high water, she will.
- -
end
