Christy paused briefly at the door to run her hands through her hair, making sure it was vaguely tidy. For all his snide talk about redheads, she knew Shelley loved her hair. Once she was satisfied that she was presentable, she rang the bell.
"Hey," she said brightly as Shelley opened the door, and she was a little surprised to see him wearing a black dress shirt, the top few buttons left undone. "You're looking very smart. I was expecting to find you with your ratty old Who T-shirt practically rotting off your back."
Shelley smiled. "Well, I have a girl coming over, I'm kinda hoping she'll think I look sexy."
Christy grinned impishly. "Oh. Should I go?"
"Get in here," Shelley said with a chuckle, taking Christy's hand and gently tugging her through the doorway. He closed the door with his other hand, and only released her fingers in order to wrap his arms around her waist while he backed her against the wall and kissed her.
"You do look pretty sexy," Christy said when he let her go. Shelley smiled at her again as he led her into his living room, but he lacked his usual animation, and he seemed distracted. If Christy hadn't known better, she could have sworn he was nervous about something.
"I'm not the only one. Take a seat, I'll go fetch you a drink."
Christy complied with the suggestion, sitting on the couch and shrugging out of her jacket. She loved visiting Shelley at home. He was a thoughtful and attentive host, waiting on her hand, foot and finger, and anticipating her every need. He never bothered taking care of his other friends that way, but he treated her like a queen. It was a huge contrast from when she used to visit Sabin at home, although she'd loved that too; staying with Sabin, she'd felt almost as if she lived there. Of course, that was all in the past now. Feeling a familiar melancholy seeping into her chest, she hurriedly pushed her thoughts of Sabin aside.
"If I never see another airplane in my life, it'll still be too soon," she said conversationally as she laid her jacket over the arm of the couch.
"Well, hopefully I can make your journey worth it," Shelley called through from the kitchen.
"It's already worth it," she said affectionately, but she said it quietly enough that Shelley couldn't hear it. Being around him always made her feel relaxed and secure, and she could feel the stress of the past few weeks already beginning to melt away. She was thoroughly looking forward to spending a lazy weekend just chilling out and letting him pamper her.
"Here we go," Shelley said as he strode back into the room with a glass of orange juice, but his body language didn't match his jovial tone. He was tense and uneasy, and he didn't look at her as he placed the glass before her on the coffee table. It was wildly incongruous because in general he was very sure of himself and - with Christy, at least - smooth and suave. As Christy tried to figure out how to ask him what was wrong, he dug into the pocket of his black jeans and retrieved an empty blister pack from a box of pills, which he set down next to her drink. He was so awkward it was almost laughable, attempting to act nonchalant and pretend it wasn't a big deal, while simultaneously trying to make sure she understood the gravity of the situation.
Christy looked between the blister pack, her drink and her lover, not sure she'd correctly grasped what he was saying, despite the fact that no other explanation presented itself. It was unlikely, she thought, that whatever he'd put in her drink had actually come from the blister pack, but she didn't want to think too hard about where he'd really got it from.
She knew Shelley had his eccentricities, although she didn't know much about them. She'd woken to find him videotaping her on several occasions, and sometimes when he wasn't around she felt like he was watching her. She didn't know whether there was a real reason for that or whether she was imagining things, but although she felt it ought to bother her, it really didn't. She knew Shelley did things that Sabin was uncomfortable with, but there was no reason for her to enquire about them, other than idle curiosity. To her, there was no question about what kind of man Shelley was.
Thinking of Sabin again made her frown. She'd already lost one of her boys, she had no desire to lose the other as well. She shook the thought away, annoyed with herself. Shelley wouldn't walk away from her just because she'd refused to do something - especially something of this magnitude - and in any case, he wasn't hers to lose. He was asking a lot, but it was obvious that he knew that, and Christy knew he would have considered every eventuality and planned for every contingency before even contemplating doing this. He wouldn't take risks with her.
She could see him trying to watch her without looking at her directly as she struggled to wrap her head around what was happening, and she realised suddenly that he was putting almost as much faith in her as he was asking her to place in him; if she called the police right now, he'd be in one hell of a lot of hot water. And if calling the police was what she decided to do, he wouldn't try to stop her.
She still hadn't moved a muscle when Shelley reached out and swept the blister pack onto the floor, kicking it discreetly under the couch. "Never mind," he said, and when he finally met her gaze, she could read the apology in his eyes. "I can get you something else. There's lemonade, Coke, grapefruit juice... I'll go double check exactly what I have." He picked her glass up and went back into the kitchen.
Christy sat and stared at the empty space where her drink had been, trying to figure out what was going through Shelley's head. She knew he touched her while she slept; Sabin used to do it too, although he'd specifically checked with her that it was okay, whereas Shelley had relied on his own reading of her, and with Sabin it had always been because he'd woken up feeling horny and decided he was going to take her, waking her up in the process. Occasionally Shelley did the same thing, but usually he just caressed her, gently and delicately, his fingers and lips skimming over her skin too lightly to rouse her, sometimes for hours. If she hadn't seen some of the videos, she wouldn't have had any idea he did it so much.
The only real difference between that and this, she reasoned with herself, was that she wouldn't wake up if he hurt her. And no matter how sleazy Shelley might be or how questionable his ethics, she knew in her gut, had always known, that he would never hurt her; not with violence, nor with disrespect. When it got right down to it, she didn't need to know exactly what he was thinking - there was nothing with which she wouldn't trust him.
She got up and made her way to the kitchen. Shelley stood looking into his open fridge and he didn't move when she entered the room, too lost in thought to hear her approach. The glass of orange juice sat discarded on the countertop.
Christy ran her hand around his waist from behind and let it settle on his stomach, and when his fingers closed over hers and squeezed gently, she didn't have to see his face to know that he was smiling in appreciation of the gesture.
"I'll understand if you want to leave," he said softly, but Christy dismissed the suggestion with a playful shove.
"This'll do just fine," she said, and she reached past him to retrieve her glass.
Shelley exhaled slowly, watching the smoke curl into the air in the dim lamplight. He hadn't smoked anything that didn't have weed in it in years, but somehow the occasion seemed to call for it. He flicked the ash into the ashtray balanced precariously on the arm of his bedroom chair, and then his eyes were drawn inexorably back to his bed.
Christy lay in the centre of it, where he'd placed her. The covers were pulled up to just above her breasts, the lace shoulders of the negligee he'd bought her enough to keep away what little chill remained in his well heated apartment. It was a beautiful negligee, white with a lace bodice and long silk skirt; he hoped she liked it when she saw it. He'd put a lot of effort into its selection, just as he'd gone to a lot of trouble over all the other details of the evening. The hardest part had been wrangling a copy of her medical records so he could minimise the chances of giving her anything to which she would react poorly, but years of getting to know women from a distance had left him with the kind of skill set that meant it had been far from an impossible task.
Briefly closing his eyes, Shelley mentally replayed the process of undressing her and putting the negligee on her. He'd seen her naked so many times, and yet revealing her inch by inch tonight had practically made his hands shake as they trailed along her skin, peeling her clothes away. For once, it had been hard to dismiss his lust, but what Christy was doing for him tonight was special, and he wasn't about to sully it with sex. Maybe another time, if she ever agreed to do this for him again, because the thought of Christy laying limp and pliable beneath him, defenceless and unequivocally his while he drove into her was almost more than he could stand. If he was honest with himself, the way he'd felt when he'd put her to bed had scared him, and he'd been deliberately delaying getting close to her again - he wasn't used to dealing with that much emotion.
She hadn't asked him what he planned to do to her; she hadn't asked him anything at all. He knew she wouldn't ask him what he'd done when she regained consciousness either, and the fact that the details of this night would remain his alone was the finishing touch that made the whole thing flawless. He found her faith in him both touching and humbling; he certainly didn't feel he deserved it.
Shelley didn't know why he was the way he was. He felt there ought to have been one catastrophic event that left him unable to relate to women normally, but there really wasn't. He supposed it was a build-up of smaller events, and there were a number of things in his teenage years that he could see contributing to it, but they all seemed trivial and commonplace enough to him that he resented the pane of glass they'd left between him and the women he cared for.
It annoyed him that his desires were so contradictory. It didn't make sense to him that he could thrive on the reactions he could coax from women, and yet still want them unaware of him. The human brain, Shelley had long since decided, was fucking stupid. But Christy catered to both of his cravings, without him ever having told her what they were. Right from the start of their entanglement, she'd seemed to understand him, which Shelley found all the more impressive given that he definitely didn't understand himself, and having her in his life had changed it a lot.
Christy had given him a more acceptable outlet for his compulsions, and although his outside interests hadn't dropped off completely, he was spending far less time on them. Along the way, she had seemingly effortlessly ascended onto a pedestal, and Shelley knew without question that if he'd been capable of falling in love with any woman, it would have been her. Even now, when he looked at her, he didn't see a woman passed out in his bed. He saw a redheaded Snow White in her crystal bower, beautiful, innocent and timeless in her poisoned sleep. Shelley knew he wasn't her prince though; if anything, he was the woodsman. Sabin, he thought wryly, might be Dopey.
He didn't want to dismiss Sabin's relationship with Velvet. He liked Velvet, and it was undeniable that she and Sabin had things in common, like a deep and enduring love of food - they were the two greediest bastards Shelley had ever met. No matter how much he liked her though, something about it just seemed off. There was something missing between them, something that was there with Christy. He'd seen it the first time the three of them had shared a bed, an instinctive connection between Sabin and Christy that he couldn't quite understand and would never experience. Sabin walking away from that was something he found completely incomprehensible.
He tried to ignore his misgivings about Sabin and Velvet, partly because he knew what he saw could well be coloured by his own concerns. The situation between he and Christy was perfect for him, but there were things he couldn't give her, no matter how much he wanted to; needs that Sabin had fulfilled for her, and that she wasn't going to be content to neglect forever. With Sabin gone, the clock was ticking. More importantly, although she'd never said a word about it, he knew Sabin extricating himself from their little trio had hurt her.
Shelley extinguished his cigarette and moved the ashtray to the windowsill. Since his time was limited, he reflected as he made his way across the room, he should spend it watching Christy, not thinking about how stupid his best friend was. And not hiding from the things Christy could stir in him.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, he reached out to run his finger reverently over her cheek and then bent to press a gentle kiss to her unresponsive lips. He closed his eyes instinctively, as though taking away the sight of her could stop the flood of feeling of which he was so afraid, but it roared through him anyway and he pulled back while he tried to get a grip. He wondered if this was what love was like, and how other people could stand it. As powerless as it made him though, and as much as it terrified him, he couldn't help craving it. He would be torn if Christy didn't want to do this again; on the one hand, he would always be grateful that she'd shown him how he was supposed to feel, but on the other, knowing he wouldn't feel it again would be torture.
Steeling himself for the onslaught of the unfamiliar, raw emotion, Shelley stripped down to his boxers and made himself get into bed with Christy. Her hair tickled his nose as he rearranged her, pulling her into his arms and settling her head against his chest, and his body reacted to being close to her again, but he steadfastly ignored the compelling desire to make love to her. She felt so fragile and helpless in his hands, and yet choosing to make herself vulnerable to him like this made her seem stronger than ever.
Shelley kissed the top of her head and closed his eyes again, revelling in the sensation of her body against his and the heat of her breath against his chest, and he gradually became more comfortable with the emotion that had completely overwhelmed him. He wouldn't sleep though; while she was in this condition, he had a responsibility to watch over and protect her. He might be just the woodsman, but she was still his princess.