Prelude [Grey]

[Grey (DELETED 5068)]

Her eyes held Jesse’s bright gaze. Her attention was solely upon the man whose lap she sat on. Part of her barely registered their surroundings. How unprofessional it was to sit on the tattoo artist’s lap in this open shop where anyone could just walk in? Grey barely even thought about anyone else. Their conversation was so deep that she tried to understand where Jesse’s relief was coming from. She tried to imagine not being able to speak for years. And to finally accomplish that task? To finally be able to open one’s mouth and sound comes out? Their voice. It was almost unfathomable not to speak. For Grey, she would get beaten. To speak and not be asked a question. To voice her needs over her wants and instead get a slap in the mouth or a kick in the *** to go back to her room or to shut up… Grey just couldn’t imagine the fact that Jesse couldn’t physically utter a word until his uncle had been murdered.

She looked at the man in front of her with no difference. She looked at him with perhaps a bit of confusion and a bit of frustration upon his part. That he had to carry that burden that he spoke of unstrapping finally. Relief. Yes, she could understand that it would be such a relief to be free from the pain that one caused you years ago. In that moment that he looks back to her, she lifts her hands and cradles his face. There was sympathy and a splash of understanding. There was never any pity with Jesse. She accepted his kiss, returning the light touch of his mouth. “I’m glad you can speak. I’m glad you can talk with me.”

She said it in such away as he pulled back that she certainly felt almost bereft. That if she hadn’t had bumped into him that night, she still would be a traveling vagrant. She’d still be stealing, living on the streets, and determined to hide a squatter’s rights. “You are enough for me. More than enough. So much more than I deserve.” She whispered to Jesse. Where her hands fell away from his face, they now would rest open and spread across his chest. She believed that. Deep down, she believed that she wasn’t good enough. She hid it well, with bright smiles or jealous scowls. She was possessive, but to a point. She never really had anything to be possessive over before except food. She’d stab someone just to get it. Just to have someone else’s leftovers.

“Money.” Grey says to Jesse’s question. There was money involved. To feel Jesse’s thumb brushing against her lips, the tingle of nerves were excited. The look on Grey’s face seemed to fall. Where before she was sad and a little lost, now… There was just darkness that swirled within her eyes. Her shoulders fell, and the typical shrug came to settle upon the right one. Soon, Grey looked down at her hands on her lover’s chest. Her voice got quiet. “My father set up a trust fund. He was a kid from the right side of the tracks, I guess you could call it. His parents were rich. Well, his mother. She died in a car accident a few years after I was born. All the money my father were to inherit had been put into a trust fund for me. Couldn’t touch it until I was twenty-one, I guess.”

Grey, honestly, really didn’t care.

“She kept me because of the money.”

[Jesse Fforde]

So much more than I deserve, she says, as if everyone’s got a price. As if everyone’s got a set value in the eyes of the public, as if she believes her value is far less than his. As if they all adhered to some archaic class structure, and he was in the upper echelon while she drudged down with the help. of course he doesn’t believe it. The frown creases his brow as the immediate frustration broils within him, wanting to lash out across his tongue, to slap her across the face to bring her to her senses.

Deserve?! Jesse’s no golden boy. He’s no knight in shining armour. He’s pissed a lot of people off for no good reason. He’ll probably piss a whole lot more people off, before his time is through. There are so many things that he disregards, that he does not respect. Not because he thinks he’s better than everyone else, not really. But because, up until Grey - up until Tytonidae and Andras, really - he’d lived only for himself. He had been selfish, and still was in so many ways. He wouldn’t go so far as to say that Grey didn’t deserve him, because he doesn’t think that way. He doesn’t think in structures of good enough or not good enough. They’re all equals, with equal footing, and in love - well, he’s starting to think that it’s unfair to ever say that one person ever loves more than the other. When it’s true, anyway. When it’s all-consuming.

It rattles him, sometimes, to think about how much he does love Grey. It’s a never-ending fire, one that cannot be put out. It’s why it rankles him when she says she doesn’t think she’s good enough. Who is she, really, to say that? It’s not up to her, is it?

But the lashings don’t come. Not yet. Later, maybe, when he can allow those flames to lick her skin, to penetrate to her core. Right now, she’s answering his question. He’s still frowning. Money, yes. Money seems to bring the worst out in people. Those who have it are greedy consumers. Those who want it will do whatever they can to get it. And those who don’t have it are considered the scum of humanity. But he doesn’t understand.

“Money?” he asks. “But surely… you are old enough now, aren’t you? To have inherited already? Does she think that by controlling you, she can control the money? It’s yours. Why would she still be looking for you?” he asks. That germ of a plan, perhaps, to find Grey’s mother before she can get close. To kill her, before she can poison Grey’s life any more than she has. Grey never has to know. He stays still, arms wrapped neatly around her; possessive of her, even when there’s no one else around.

[Grey (DELETED 5068)]

She doesn’t expect him to understand. She can see his frustration with her. She knows that tension boils inside of him. Grey is perceptive. She knows just when to strike. She knows just when to back away from something that will become more harmful to her than good. She has fled many Ancient Zombies this way; ripped flesh and broken bones a clue that she doesn’t have as much strength as she would have liked to in order to slay the mindless entities. Bruises on her flesh had healed and the bones had regrown, setting in hours instead of days like that most recent stray bullet.

He doesn’t see it. He doesn’t see what her mother saw in her. He doesn’t see the worthlessness that she had been told for years. He doesn’t see the pain and the anger, the open wounds of her mind. He doesn’t see the hours she spent gazing into a mirror and wondering just why she was so very ugly in her mother’s eyes. Her mother’s view is the only view she knew for years. Her mother’s words still echoed in her head.

She was older now. She was wiser. She no longer flinched when someone was trying to touch her. She no longer held her breath when she felt the weight of a hand on her back or someone’s arms around her in a hug. She would stare at Jesse as if she were trying to get him to understand that he made her worth something. Without him, she felt like the nothing that her mother had beaten into her on a mostly daily basis.

If the bottle was only half empty, then it wasn’t going to be a good night. It meant her homework would take hours and the dinner would get ignored. She’d eat the toothpaste she went to bed with and pray she could steal something from the school cafeteria.

“I left. I ran away sometime in my Sophomore year of high school. I don’t think she knows where I am. Or if I am even alive. It takes a long time for someone to be declared dead without a body when a trust fund is involved.” She had seen the documents. It wasn’t a huge amount of money. It wasn’t even near a million dollars, Grey knew then. Though, there was interest on the account. By now, who knew? But when she was getting beaten, her mother used to grind it into her that it would make it all worth while. To have a nice house and a nice driveway. To have a lot of nice new things to have the neighbors over to show off. When Grey would be bent over the table with that belt over her skin, she had started to hate nice new things.

Her eyes glazed over a little bit while she remembered. She was staring at Jesse still, but she wasn’t really quite looking at him. She had been abused. She had been a tiny little thing, easily held down by the bigger woman in the house. She had learned early on that fighting only made it worse. Grey’s voice seemed so far away. So quiet, that it was almost a whisper. “I don’t want the money.”

She hated the money. She hated everything. She hated her mother, her mother’s men, that old tiny house in a neighborhood where the drugs had taken over in her younger years. The emotion that surrounded them seemed to be a void. It was a soul-sucking pit of darkness that almost seemed to chill the very air around them. Grey’s lips fell, the frown not even a frown really. It was just a fall of her mouth. As she remembered the darkness, she just seemed to zone out on him a little bit.

[Jesse Fforde]

He feels her slip. Not her body, but her mind; her focus. One second she’s there, mentally, and the next she’s drifting away. Almost as if the storm cloud of her past has gathered around her and threatens to wash her away in a deluge of unwelcome memories, the thunder and the lightning forcing her to hide under a table or seek out a safe corner. Jesse can’t see those memories. He wants to, so that he might be able to find some way to banish them. To replace them, somehow, with better memories.

That’s not how life works, however. That’s not how people grow and change and develop. They can’t banish every problem that they have ever had. They cannot make their lives all sunshine and roses, and there should not be an easy way out, either. The roads that they take, rocky or smooth or filled with so many hurdles and pitholes that they can hardly be navigated safely, those roads are what make them who they are. Jesse doesn’t like this, the way Grey seems to mentally retreat. This is a con of such a past, the way it can linger and clobber when least expected. But he can’t change it. And he can’t be angry at her for it. All he can do is remain solid, an anchor; he can be the safe corner that she can flee to, should she need to.

In order to reassure her that he is a safe haven, he drags a finger along the edge of her face; he tucks the luscious hair behind her ear, and brings his finger down over the line of her jaw, down underneath her chin. He turns that frown of hers toward him, and presses a kiss to her pouting lips. She’s not pouting like a petulant child, but instead like a grown woman who cannot escape the wounds of her childhood. He doesn’t close his eyes as he presses his lips to hers; his tongue does not part her lips. It is a kiss only to regain her attention, her focus. When he speaks, the breath hushes against her lips; his bright, ice-blue eyes latched on to the deeper shade of blue that exists within Grey’s gaze.

“Then forget about the money,” he says.

“Forget about her. **** her. She can’t get you here. She won’t. I won’t let her. And if she does find you? Grey, think about what you are, what you could do to her. She can’t hurt you anymore…” he says.

He knows it’s not much of a consolation. It can’t cure the past. It can’t take away the hurt or the anguish of a child bereft of love.

“I love you,” he repeats. Because she isn’t bereft of love, now. And he wants to remind her, over and over again, until it becomes a fact for her. Until she can’t ever doubt or deny it.

[Grey (DELETED 5068)]

It hurts. It physically hurts her body when her memories are all bunched up, strewn to the forefront of her eyes. It as if she can see herself both being tortured and reliving it at the same time. There are some memories that are more potent than others. Right now, though, she is remembering the place she grew up. She is remembering The Room and the closet that she got to call her bed. She didn’t even take anything with her, but what could fit in a backpack.

She didn’t even try for most sentimental items, like the beloved quilt her grandmother made her or the tools from the dilapidated garage. No, instead she had a few photographs, a plethora of fake IDs and credit cards that probably no longer worked, and two birth certificates and two social security cards. How could someone forget their own name? How could someone forget their own birthday? She didn’t remember. ‘Girlie’ was what was used to register her into school. None of the birth certificates had that name on them, after all.

Her mother had been so many different levels of cruel.

She felt the touch against her face. She had been so deep in her memories that she really didn’t even surface until his lips were pressed so very gently against hers. With each blink, the silent tears seemed to travel down her cheeks. There had been so much pain that Grey never really even seemed to grieve over the loss of her childhood. She had been filled with hate over the death of her father.

She didn’t even know why in that very moment she had tears sliding down her cheeks with the blinking of her eyes. Her chin tilted, brushing against his mouth ever so lightly before he pulled away. His scent filtered in. His face refocused. His voice sounded and he anchored her once more to him with the squeeze of his arms around her. She lifted her hands, brushing her fingers over the scruff of his five o’clock shadow and she holds him this way.

“I’m trying. It isn’t easy. Sometimes… Sometimes her words come to me. Things that she’d say over and over again to me. That’s the worst. Those moments when I feel like she is still with me. But,” She stopped, taking a deep breath. Her lips hover against his and she turned her head to kiss his cheek. To kiss his temple. To brush a kiss against his forehead. “But she doesn’t have me anymore. You do. You have me, Jesse.”

“I love you, too.” She whispered to him, meaning every single word.

[Jesse Fforde]

Jesse doesn’t quite know what to do. The crying doesn’t make him ashamed of Grey, but more ashamed of himself. The last time he’d seen a woman cry he had walked away. In the past, when women have cried around him, it’s because he has made them cry. Because they’ve realised he’s not staying; that he isn’t boyfriend material, and that he’s moved on. That he never thought it was anything special, and he’d have just delivered the fatal blow - the one line of communication written on a piece of paper to tell them it’s over, to stop calling. Because as much as he’d tried to avoid it, sometimes he found a clingy one. One that came back to his place rather than the other way around. Ones that knew where he lived and knew his number to text. Sometimes he brought it on himself because they were such a ride in the sack that he’d gone back for more. Booty calls, set up all over the city.

Sex, back then, had been fun. It had been a game, a hobby. It never meant anything to him. No bonds were forged and he was able to walk away unscathed, his heart still solidly in place, even if a little cold and like stone. He assumed that they started to cry as a ploy. A lure, a trick developed over time to help the female species to keep the male species by their side. And yet Jesse had always thought himself above the muck. Immune.

He’d never been in love, however.

With Grey, sex does mean something. With Grey, an unbreakable bond appears to have been forged. And so with Grey, as those hot tears slide down her cold cheeks, although Jesse feels the habitual urge to walk away, he knows that he can’t, and he knows that he doesn’t want to. He still has no idea what to do, however; having never had to comfort a crying woman before, he’s not sure how to make it stop, or whether he should. To try to make it stop seems insensitive, but nor does there appear to be anything he can do to help. He cannot make the memories go away, and he cannot make her past hurt her any less.

Except, maybe, he could say some things, over and over. Things that Grey will remember. Things that might soon replace the barbs that her mother had stuck so deep beneath her skin.

“You are a goddess,” he starts, rubbing his cheek against Grey’s.

“You are the missing part of my soul,” he adds, tongue then teasing the love of Grey’s ear.

“You bring my peace, my love,” he whispers, voice a mere husk before pressing a kiss to the curve of Grey’s neck.

“You are my dove, little dove, and I will always love you,” he says, and he knows that he means it. Never before has he uttered those words, but he believes them, now. Otherwise he would not have said them. He lifts his hands so that his fingers cradle Grey’s head, thumbs caressing the top of her cheekbones.

“Always,” he says, holding her gaze with his bright blues, before kissing away the salty tears.

[Grey (DELETED 5068)]

Her face was damp from the soundless tears. As her eyes began to clear, she could see the worry upon her lover’s face. She could see the different mixture of emotion cross through his eyes as if she could distinguish irritation from worry and concern from anxiety. Grey had tried not to cry in front of Jesse. Grey had tried not to drop her worries or concerns at his feet for any length of time. In truth, it was not because she felt he couldn’t handle any burden she already had; it was because they were her problems. They were her responsibilities and demands for a solution in the short haul or long run.

In fact, she would have lifted her hands up to wipe away the messy wetness upon her face if Jesse hadn’t already clasped her cheeks. Her arms had pulled back between their bodies and her hands were spread out against his chest. He made her feel loved. He made her feel safe. From that first time she wandered into his company, to sleeping under his roof, to becoming his - Grey breathed out a sigh of guarded belonging.

If she had still been under her mother’s thumb and entwined in a forbidden relationship with this man before her, she would have felt shame. She would have felt guilt for letting Jesse fall in love with her. She would have felt fear for the possibilities that one day she would not be allowed to see him any longer. So, while those emotions fueled the wetness to return, there was a hiccup of relief that pressed against his cheek as he leaned into her and called her his goddess.

She took every touch Jesse was willing to give her. She took every ounce of affection and treasured it as that heavy moment continued to pass through them. It isn’t long before there is a place, somewhere deep inside of her, that seems to gain a sense of peace in his arms. It is almost as if his reassurance born her an ability to accept his loving words.

“You are the missing piece to my soul, too. You are my lover. You are my future.” She whispered to him, her cheek brushing against his as her fingertips had to rest upon the flesh of his neck. She had to touch him. Him and not the cotton he was wearing. She opened those clear eyes, settling her gaze upon Jesse’s icy blue eyes. Her vision was clear and she seemed to be smiling now as he cradled her head. “Mine, Jesse. You are my dream.”

Dreams were supposed to be beautiful things. They were supposed to be wonderful settings and gorgeous belongings. She knew that he disliked being called a knight or a prince, but he was hers. He was her tattooed artist of a man who drove her to begin to accept not only who she was, but also what she could become. With a slow smile spread across those once sad lips, she only watched him as the husky words were music to her ears.

“Always.” She confirmed with him, sitting there with him as he made her feel so much better than what she had been when she walked in the doors of that tattoo parlor.

[Jesse Fforde]

Jesse laughs. A low, satiated crawl of blissful amusement. He doesn’t say it, out loud, but he could almost imagine some kind of minister standing nearby; Micah, or Velveteen or both. Micah, no doubt, the one person Jesse know who can bind, who can affect an eternal marriage between two souls. The words that have passed each of their lips sound so much like vows, and it should have scared the living **** out of Jesse. It does, in a way, but not enough to have him pulling back or shying away. No, instead, somewhere in the back of his mind he tells himself to remember. Remember every word that he has said because, one day, he might need them.

For several very long seconds he finds himself just staring at Grey; staring into her eyes as he imagines an eternal future with her. What would she do if he were to ask her, right then and there? He’s already made her immortal. The next step is small in comparison, right?

But then he remembers Blake and Zoey, and how quickly they fell apart. He remembers every other relationship that he has seen between everyone else that he knows; eternal bonds set where two people can’t actually survive eternity with each other. Irreversible. There’s no divorcing an eternal bond. There’s Micah and Velveteen, of course. They have been together for as long as Jesse has known them. They are bound. They will last forever - one can tell, just by looking at them, watching how they act around each other. Even when they are arguing. But it’s a romantic ideal. Something that Jesse doesn’t adhere to, not really. He is reasonable, and wants to make sure that everything is perfect, first. That Grey has no regrets. That she is happy. ALlow her to get properly settled, first, before drowning her in the deep end into which he had already thrown her.

He clears his throat, the smile still blooming upon his lips.

“Why don’t we go home?” he asks. He glances over his shoulder. No one has walked in while they’ve been talking, and it’s been a slow night. And, as the minutes continue to crawl, it’ll become less and less likely that anyone will wander in. Most people wouldn’t realise the tattoo parlour is a twenty-four hour establishment.

Before she even has a chance to answer, yes or no, Jesse is already reaching around her, shuffling pages into a neat pile, picking up his stray pencils and charcoal sticks and putting them back into their cases - cleaning, because he would never leave his work station in a state of disarray. When it comes to cleanliness at work, he is pedantic, and a little bit OCD.

[Grey (DELETED 5068)]

It is a beautiful sound that comes from his lips. She relishes the bliss it erupts within her when she hears it. Whether he is on the telephone, playing his games, or in bed - the sound of his jovial, husky voice clenches around her chest. There is a nod to her head. Her fly away pieces of hair tickle and tease, catching against her earlobe and bringing the hint of pink to her flesh of her face. It was obvious that she had fed lately, at some point.

With a deep breath, she nodded again. She wanted to go home. She needed to go home. It was a place that provided a further echelon of sanctuary. Grey would not argue with the man. She would not put off going home for them to sit there quietly waiting on a customer or two of his or the drunken human to traipse in off the street and get a tattoo to permanently mark their flesh.

“I’d love to.” She spoke to him, taking that moment as he leaned forward around her to lean into him. She sank her face into the crux of his shoulder and eased her hands around his ribs. Her arms encased him in that one-sided hug and she breathed him in. It was as if she were cementing him into her memory. That she were trying very much so to get the details down for her own sense of preserving herself. Yes, this evening had certainly turned out to be wonderful.

She enjoyed the hours she could spend with her lover. She enjoyed knowing that they could function so very well separately, but so much better together. Through thick and thin, she knew that she could trust herself upon Jesse’s words and cations. It wasn’t long before she had pulled herself to her feet and was walking out with the lithe, tattooed male into the night.