Now Leaving Childhood

by BehrBeMine

It was to be the first step toward independence odd, then, that the act would require two of them. Chris and Lorelai, and their mutual loss of teenage virginity.

Title: Now Leaving Childhood
Author: BehrBeMine
Disclaimer: For goodness sakes, if I owned this franchise, you just know the poor characters would be put through angsty hell. I own not much more than bits of sanity scattered here and there.
Feedback: Critique, gushiness, or indifference, I will love you for it. Please send it my way.
Summary: It was to be the first step toward independence; odd, then, that the act would require two of them. Chris and Lorelai, and their mutual loss of teenage virginity.
Rating: R
Pairing: Chris/Lorelai (before series)
Warning: Please heed the rating and know that this story takes place when Christopher and Lorelai were sixteen years old. If that kind of thing squicks you, I'd suggest you go find something lighter to read. Going to quote the title of a new song I was just introduced to in order to defend writing this story, called 'Teen Horniness is Not a Crime'.
Author's Note: The term "dendrophiliac" means "one who is aroused by trees". ...What? It was in a Seth Green movie.
Required Notes: Written for amidalashari as per her fic prompt details given as part of the eliteggxchange fic ex. I tried to keep the angst out and the humor in. Didn't succeed at every point, but I did my best. :D

- -
September was upon them. In the wind, the leaves sighed before releasing themselves from the branches they had clung to their entire short lives. Lorelai admired their flight, and envied their freedom. She walked the sunlit streets with a small sway in her hips and thought of things unfathomed by those whose minds were less random than her own.

"Don't you wish you could change colors?" she asked, stooping down to pick up a leaf of bright red that blushed deepest in the center.

Chris barely glanced at the leaf she held captive before him. "What, like a chameleon? Maybe in my next life."

"I can make you change colors." She knew it, too. Just a trail of delicate fingers caressing his skin from the bottom of his neck to that ticklish spot right behind his earlobe, and her proof had begun. By the time she pulled back from whispering a naughty nothing or two in that ear, breath hot and words steamy, she had succeeded in her task. "See? Now you've gone from white man to red man. You've changed colors -- just like the leaf."

Chris worked quickly to recover. "You think you're so smart. Bet I could make your eyes change into any color you've ever seen." She blinked at him, waiting to be impressed. "Come a little closer. I'll show you."

"Ha -- I bet you will. But it's going to take more than that excuse for a line to get me where you want me to be."

He stepped forward and clutched her body around the waist. Pulled her flush against him, and nuzzled her jawbone. "I think I like having you right here."

"Right... here?" she asked, pressing her chest even closer to his. She watched him bite his lip and nearly groan before she giggled slightly and pulled away. "I don't think you can stay in this position for very long, let alone keep me here. I mean, you were the dirty-faced seven year-old who said you would marry me in the backyard and then when the vows came up, asked, 'Wait, what do I have to do?'"

"Now, now, Lorelai. Don't mock caution just because you have none."

"Please. Do I, or do I not, have a t-shirt that says, 'Caution: starts fires in dirty places'?"

"Of course I know that shirt. I want to burn it."

"How ironic. I wonder which of you would win the fight."

"I think I've got a bit of an advantage on the t-shirt."

"But what if I'm wearing it?"

"You can't override me that way."

"That's not what you said yesterday -- you said I could ride you any way that I want." She stopped to giggle at the premature exasperation on his face. "You know what, I think we should stop talking about sex and alluding to sex and gossiping other peoples' sex lives to death."

"Either this is leading to the ultimate pleasure or it's your way of telling me you're joining a convent."

"Chris." She turned to face him, letting the leaf colored like fire fall to the ground. "I'm saying we should do it. We should finally have sex."

"Where?" he asked her, his voice sounding cautiously optimistic.

"Anywhere." Chris started to point to the quiet front yard the two of them were just strolling past. "Not there," she told him abruptly, taking his hand to lead him away. "As long as it can be anywhere, we might as well make it as memorable as possible."

"Not to be a pig, but I very much think I'd remember slamming into you against that tree over there."

"Oh, Chris." She tsked, gave him "that was pathetic" eyes. "Now is not the time to announce your dendrophiliac urges."

He wanted her that autumn, wanted her so badly he woke up with sheets tented over his crotch. He dreamed of touching her anywhere and everywhere, and woke up covered in his own sweat. And she did nothing to make his wait any easier...

She sashayed her hips and took her Chilton skirt up by half an inch; she sat on his desk while waiting for class to start, her body just a thin slat from his lap; she giggled toward him intimately in the hallway, loving to leave the feel of her hot breath on his neck. She got looked at but didn't look back, except at him. It excited him, and he longed to pull her body closer to his, knowing she was a babe and glad she was his babe.

He loved breathing in her scent, and he wanted her like crazy until the anticipation of it nearly drove him insane. Now she'd decided he could have her whole body to himself, and he waited impatiently to touch her and make her feel... whatever it was he was feeling himself.

--

They lay together, side by side on the floor of Natasha's sitting room, just outside her bedroom. The thought of having a similar layout attached to her own bedroom made Lorelai want to gag, as did the decor surrounding her whenever she slept in her home. Considering the limited amount of time she spent in her own bedroom, it wasn't surprising that she left the room just as her mother had designed it. It kept Emily happy and quieted one potential argument. When Lorelai found her own place one day, she'd make it her own.

Natasha, a casual friend of Lorelai's for the past year, giggled as she rose from the couch and took her boyfriend's hand. "We'll be back," she said to the floor huggers as she passed them on the way to her bedroom. "You two be good. Because we won't." As the bedroom door was closed behind them, Natasha's laughter could be heard through the thick oak.

Chris was staring at Lorelai when she turned her head on the carpet to look his way. She pressed her lips together and recognized the want in his eyes. The small boom box beside them blared the off-kilter rock of Megadeth. Lorelai laced her fingers through Chris' as he bobbed his head to the beat of the music. She turned it down just slightly and rolled on her side to face him.

There was a moment when their eyes met and held, steadying the tilt of the earth and bringing it to a halt. Instead of leaning in during this most excellent spell, she opened her mouth to speak, which was what so often made her Lorelai. "If you were gay, which of the guys in the band would you do?"

Christopher's face screwed up in distaste. "In this band? Don't make me answer that question."

"You know I make you answer all questions."

"I know you try to."

"And most times, I succeed."

He sighed, and a faint smile claimed his face. "Why would I want to think about some guy when I'm laying right next to you?"

She was quiet for a few seconds, her eyes clouded with thought. "What about David Bowie? Would you do him?"

"I really wish you'd drop that pitiful obsession over him."

"You say obsession, I say realization of the hotness. Hello? Like his lyrics weren't speaking specifically to me. 'Cause you can never really tell when somebody wants something or wants to stay... Maybe he was indirectly on purpose speaking to us now." She licked her lips because she liked to draw his attention to them.

"Now come on, Chris, what if you were gay? Just take your mind there for a minute. I know that's a slow process with you sometimes, but you'll get there."

Now his face held a full-on grin, his gaze sparkling at the way he loved when she teased. He reached out and caught her arm in his hand, pulling her toward him just roughly enough that she had to know what was in that head of his. "There are parts of my body with quicker responses," he told her. As if she didn't know. And to this, she laughed. Her laugh was like a melody he'd always known and heard before sleep each night. She gripped his own arm just as roughly and pulled herself into the hollows of his body, molding her shape to his.

"Now, about this Davie Bowie 'hotness' you speak of..." Chris trailed off, not understanding the attraction and not wanting to. "Is that your way of finally declaring your insanity?"

She mocked in her gasp. "I'm going to tell him you said that," she informed him brashly.

"You do that," Chris insisted, not intimidated in the least. Her saucy smile warmed his body in new places. "You're crazy."

"You're just jealous 'cause you're too sane."

"...Do you hear that?" he asked suddenly, cocking his head on the plush carpet and nodding toward the closed door not far from their conjoined limbs.

The mixed tape had moved on to Jimi Hendrix. "And the sea is straight ahead, straight up ahead," Lorelai sang softly. She rolled over to push stop on the boom box. "Hear what?"

From behind the door came sounds that, though muffled at first, were unmistakable. Natasha's giggles had escalated to moans. Upon closer eavesdropping, her boyfriend's show of pleasure could be heard, as well. Chris guffawed and buried his face in his hands as he and Lorelai listened together. The silence that settled between them now only highlighted the embarrassment of the situation and let the cries rise in volume by those two friends of theirs who had abandoned them for the love of passion. Lorelai's face resembled enough shock to make her a lady, and her eyes fled from Chris' as she retracted her arms and added a few reluctant laughs to the hopeless giggles that now shook his form.

The air between them became uncomfortable and the awkward silence settled just long enough to hit a nerve in both teenagers as each tried to find a way past the sounds that now invaded their universe.

The thought came to Chris that he should reach over Lorelai and turn the boom box back on, drown out the narrated humping. But somehow the noises began to be less awful to hear and more... sensual. What they were doing in there, he wanted to be doing. The sounds, the cries, the ecstasy they were heading towards, he wanted for himself. And, of course, for the girl not five inches from his wandering eyes. He could feel a tingle surge from the tips of his toes up his long legs till it settled in his groin and pulled his mind into cloudy territory.

Where moments before he wanted to flee, now he longed for more closeness than he'd ever done more than imagined, and he found a way to meet Lorelai's eyes again. Like they had before; like they would again after. Finally, he exhaled, and with a finely enunciated, "Screw it," he practically jumped on top of Lorelai, slamming his lips onto hers and grinding his every limb into her bones.

Lorelai widened her eyes as her lips were crushed to the point of a bruising, but when she felt the hardness of her boyfriend against her thigh, the world fell away along with all of its noise. She let her eyelids close on the walls that had started to spin and gave in to the warmth that had begun to form between her thighs. She forgot to wonder if this was the perfect time and place; she forgot many things as a small moan escaped from her mouth into his.

Their kisses were rough and full of want, telling of pent-up energy and daydreams. Every time their lips separated for those milliseconds before meeting in new kisses, small gasps escaped from their elated lungs. He wanted her, and as she thrust her chest up into his, she felt like she'd never wanted anything more than the satisfaction that was coming toward them more quickly than a shooting star. The lightheadedness of her mind thrilled her as much as his fingers that found small bits of space between their bodies and wandered up to cup her breasts through the fabric of her t-shirt.

As he rubbed his finger pads over those tantalizing mounds of flesh, Chris' body responded to her tiny gasps and moans. He felt as if he'd been trapped now all his life, and only by continuing at this frantic pace could he ever be freed and feel that he'd been let go of every restraint that wrestled him down. He wanted to be free with this girl, this one and no other. He wanted to show her the same freedom and pull her along in his flight. He circled his hips against her own and worked his fingers up beneath her shirt, seeking her bra clasp. When it refused to come undone easily, he ripped the fabric till it tore and gave way, never to be worn again. As his fingers touched her bare nipples for the first time and brought them to hardened peaks, he could taste freedom in the air and on her tongue.

Lorelai arched her back into his hands, the sensation on her breasts like little tickles pushing her closer to the edge of the cliff she'd always longed to spring off of. Everything was happening so fast, every sensation urging them to be quicker. Before she knew it, her shirt was pulled over her head and tossed aside to someplace that didn't matter. All that seemed to matter were Chris' hands on her body and the thought of having him inside of her, a part of her. She buried herself in his kisses, sloppy and rushed as they were, and pulled him ever closer. She longed for the ecstasy that was coming; she could feel a wave readying itself to crash over her and claim her, make her no longer a child.

When Chris bucked his erection in exactly the right place, Lorelai cried out, and suddenly the sounds coming from her were drowning out everything in the other room. In this impromptu contest of passion, she was louder, and they were winning. Her sweet spot was brushed by the boy in her arms, the boys whose arms she occupied, and she was becoming lost to all feelings but that one. He began to set a steady pace of riding back and forth on top of her hips, and she'd never felt something so deliciously bad, so unerringly rebellious. She felt that if they didn't reach the top of the mountain in the next second, she just might die of the anticipation. She swallowed back startled gasps and opened her eyes to find his face.

What she saw was beyond him; bare legs rushing past. Natasha was in the room, and not long after she brought her voice with her. The light guiding Lorelai and Christopher went out. Life fell from its rush and suddenly the mountainous world was flat again.

"I can't believe you!" Natasha was yelling, her voice shrill as she stalked angrily across the room in nothing but a large t-shirt, hardly noticing the two delinquents splayed on the floor.

"I'm sorry!" her boyfriend Ryan yelled back at her. "I'm sorry, okay? It was nothing."

Lorelai groaned and reluctantly pushed Chris away. She reached for her discarded shirt and pulled it quickly over her head. As she pushed her arms through the sleeves, she turned her full attention to her upset friend and let her heartbeat slow its pace back to normality again.

"What happened?" Lorelai asked, her voice deadened of its previous joy.

"I knew you liked Katie! I knew you liked her!" Natasha screamed at Ryan, completely ignoring the other two in the room. Chris crossed his arms over his chest and slumped, disappointment in his posture and on his face. "But to yell her name out, then? I hate you!"

"Yeah, I know the feeling," Chris mumbled to no one but himself, rolling his eyes at the drama. He took Lorelai's hand and stood up, pulling her along with him. "Looks like you guys need some time... we're gonna go."

Lorelai walked quickly behind him with her hand clasped in his, feeling as though she'd lost something that she never had in the first place.

--

"Skip fifth period with me," Christopher whispered in her ear. Lorelai closed her locker, saying goodbye to the David Bowie photo framed in there merely to drive Chris crazy. She was determined to meld his remaining sanity to the level she considered her own. And, to think, Emily insisted her daughter had no goals.

Though the sun was shining, the air was cool, every new breeze beckoning winter to come closer, faster. Christopher's motorcycle vibrated beneath them as they raced along the highway. The rushing air past Chris' ears covered the volume of most other things, but somehow he kept picking up Lorelai's incessant demands of "Are we there yet?" and "Why not?" He ignored them until she was shouting while pumping her arms tighter and tighter around his middle. "Where are we going? When are we going to stop? If you take me across the state border, I'm going to have to change my name to better fit New York's standards. Chris?... I thought you liked my name!"

He let the wind dull out her demands, and despite her growing aggravation, a grin kept gracing his face. When he flicked his signal on and departed to a quieter road, he gave her an answer as the wheels slowed their pace. "You act as though I've never taken you here before."

Lorelai drew her carefully plucked eyebrows together. "What do you mean 'here'? We haven't stopped yet."

Chris chuckled to himself. "What?" he teased. "I can't hear you!"

"You should know that I'm getting bored! More bored than I would be in sixth period geography. I may start practicing fire engine sounds out loud again!"

"What? I can't hear you!"

"You're evil!"

"And, we're here." Chris brought the vehicle to an expert stop, dropping his heels to swarm among the dust coughed up by the tires. Both of his ears were ringing a bit as the engine was killed, taking slow seconds to acclimate to the quiet after so much rushing air, and so much Lorelai. In a constant battle to say the most words said in the time God given, Lorelai was speaking again.

"I'm blaming this helmet hair on you," she said, standing and sliding off the back of the seat. "What are we doing in the middle of the forest, Smokey the Bear?"

"I like your helmet hair." Chris took off his leather gloves and set them on the handlebars, then took his girlfriend's hand which was much silkier than any leather he'd ever worn. "And we're not in the middle of anything. I can't believe you don't remember this place."

"I can be very unobservant when I desire," Lorelai told him, as if he didn't know. She followed where he led, placing her small feet in his larger footsteps in the dirt and batting away stray tree branches with her free hand. "Are you sure we can just leave your precious bike behind? It might get eaten by a..." She looked around the small clump of forest they were inside. "Squirrel."

"Well, they've got to eat what they can. People are only out here throwing nuts at them once or twice an hour. We're barely outside of town, Lorelai. Just keep following me. We're almost there."

Lorelai sighed and continued on behind him. She tilted her head and smiled naughtily to herself. "I love the way your butt looks when you walk... Kind of gives the term 'hindsight' a more interesting meaning. You should always walk ahead of me. No, wait. I didn't mean that. Other way around, so you can compliment me and I can be seen first and foremost. Did you know nature and I hate each other or were you born yesterday and I forgot?"

"So in other words, nothing ventured, nothing changed?" Chris jiggled her hand clasped firmly in his. At last, they reached their destination. Lorelai was about to say something new, but he pulled her up in front of him and wrapped an arm around her waist from behind. "Look."

She peered into the clearing before them, noticed the way the ground ahead of her sloped steeply down to another bank of land far below, and then eventually... to the city they'd just left behind. She widened her eyes in appreciation, letting Chris pull her back snugly to his chest. Surrounded on either side by tall evergreen trees, they stood in the place where nature gave way to the most incredible view. Far below them and right before her eyes was Hartford, the city she'd been born in, the city she'd shunned in many ways. Always she'd been looking at it as the bigger force surrounding her. Seeing it now, it was as if this oppressive birthplace of hers had shrunk, and now she was larger than life, looking down upon it as if seated in the sky. Its size didn't seem so impressive now, and yet as she looked down upon it, she saw something like beauty in it that she'd always chosen to ignore.

Chris was breathing in the scent of her hair, aware of the view but looking at nothing but her.

"Wow," Lorelai finally breathed. "Are you sure I've been here before? I think I'd remember..."

"Yeah, once. We came on a picnic in these woods when we were like ten or eleven. I nearly chased you off the edge right there in tag and almost got skinned alive by my dad and yours."

Lorelai laughed. Stranger than seeing the city in its seeming shrunken glory was imagining her father so vehemently defending her. It made for an odd picture in her head. "I wonder why I don't remember."

"Well you hit your head pretty hard when I got to chasing you again. I'm betting a few memories fell right out as you raced into that tree."

"Did the bark have bite that day? What a shame."

"Your tenaciousness always wins in the end," Chris assured her. He paused. "Though I don't know why I just told you that, as if you need more ammunition."

"I know why you said it," she told him, merciless in her certainty. "Because I wanted you to. See my power? Fear my power."

"You definitely warrant fear of some kind." Christopher cocked his head and smiled bravely. He nuzzled her ear with his nose and felt her go lax. As his breath ghosted along her cartilage, and then his tongue snaked out to lick her lobe, Lorelai sighed into the trees and conjured pretty images in her head. Though she chose not to communicate her thoughts, she was pretty sure Chris knew she was thinking this would be when they would lose their virginities in one another.

She was wrong. They wouldn't copulate just then... not for another five miles.

Voices could be heard approaching from somewhere in the near vicinity. "Damnit," Chris mumbled, jarred from pretty thoughts of his own. "Looks like we're not as secluded as I thought. Come on. We'll go find another view."

"Another view, huh?" Lorelai turned around in his arms. "Like you need anything more to look at than this?" She pouted her glossy pink lips and pointed to her perfectly put together face.

From somewhere deep in his throat, Chris growled, using all of his energy to keep himself from pouncing on her right then and there, and showing her something worth looking at. She knew his predicament, could feel the brunt of it poking against her hip, and the amused growl from within her sounded pleased as a purr.

--

There was a side road, a dirt road, on which the motorcycle kicked up dust that Lorelai sputtered from her mouth as if it were the worst kind of eggplant appetizer served at the Gilmore mansion every third Sunday before dinner. This time, when she screamed for mercy, for a pit stop, Chris was more easily convinced, and slowed to a halt. Smack-dab in the middle of nowhere.

Lorelai removed the protective helmet she so despised and looked around to appraise the land with a nose wrinkled in distaste. "No one around for miles. Do you think it's the decadence of the dairy cow scent or the dry grass rustling and hissing like snakes looking for leftover bodies, forgotten and left to decay?"

"Such a ray of sunshine you are," Christopher teased, his smile lighting up more than his eyes. As he removed his own helmet, his curved lips infected her and she was soon smiling just as goonishly. "My lady..." he began, every cinder of his voice full of mock, "would you care to lie with me and start those fires in these dirty places before us? There won't be another motorist along for at least twenty minutes, give or take, and we'll have the cows as our audience."

Lorelai sighed openly. "You know that I've never minded the exhibitionist style of life. The more witnesses to this, the better."

"I love that about you," he let out without thinking. But then he didn't take it back.

"What about me?"

"Sometimes... everything." There was a moment that stilled the whining whistles of the wind between the two teenagers, as Chris gazed at her with want and she looked back with gorgeous teeth trapping her bottom lip in their grasp. But it was only a moment, and soon he was clearing his throat and settling down in the prickly half-brown grass spread on the side of the road. "We really going to do this?"

"Your engine's still running," Lorelai reminded him.

Chris looked down to his pants and the bulge they revealed. "Oh, is it ever." Then, in one quick movement, he tripped her with a foot hooked around her ankle, and caught her when she fell right on top of him. He grunted and she gasped, and then a tumble began when he rolled over on top of her, to which she continued the wrestling match by fighting him for dominance. Over and around they tumbled together atop that not-so-soft grass, to the melody of confused dairy cows. Next to a road where any passers-by could have seen them, they laughed and fought to pin one another to the ground.

Lorelai was breathing hard when, in a rare gesture of respect for the fragile male ego, she surrendered, and allowed Chris to pin her wrists to the ground. There was grass in her hair that, for a moment, he hesitated to pluck out. He reached down to capture a single dehydrated blade, but found that when his lips were lowered, they found their way to nothing but hers. She sighed into his open mouth, and from there he was lost to sudden passion. He pressed down on her rosy lips with such fervor, eliciting moans from her that were swallowed into him. She reached her hands up to clasp his back, and began scraping her nails down the fine fabric of his school shirt. She leaned up into his kiss so deeply that when finally he pulled back, he was nursing a bruising of both of his lips. Swollen and nearing the color purple, they pressed against one another and begged Lorelai to punish them some more.

"Holy David Bowie..." she whispered, waiting for jealousy to deepen the spirited orbs beneath his lashes. He was whispering something so quietly to himself that even when she leaned up slightly, she had no clue of his secret. And then he looked at her again, in a way he'd never shown his face before. Straddling her stomach with his legs as he was, he leaned down to bestow on her a kiss that resembled something so gentle. He was a lover in that moment, coaxing her into his own blissful state of mind.

She let him take her there. Gave in to this kiss which tasted sweeter than the wine they'd once stolen from her parents' fancier liquor cabinet. Sweeter than cinnamon-sprinkled apple tarts smuggled out of Christmas parties with mandatory attendance. As sweet as cherry blossoms caught in springtime dreams of flying somewhere better, somewhere new.

Itching to get up off of the grass that was tickling her to death, Lorelai raised her upper half. The result was a scraping of her hip bone against the erection encased in Chris' dark slacks. He exhaled quickly and sharply, and seized her, crushed her body closer to his, made her a part of him. The need to become infused together was nothing new to either of them, but a real opportunity to pursue the fantasy was before them now like it never before had been. His pants and her panties were shed. When his boxers were hastily kicked down past his ankles, he was given full access to his girl. He pummeled her softness underneath her bunched-up skirt, giving a grunt of satisfaction every time he brushed her sweet spot and she panted his name like a prayer.

He was finally allowed to touch anything, to kiss her anywhere; she was finally allowed to moan as loudly as she cared to, to be a rockstar as she sang out the praises of their lovemaking. At times they were hushed, pressed together and sticky with sweat; other times they created a chorus between them of moans and cries and all known sounds of pleasure. Their virgin status, once so taunted and discussed ad nauseum, were given death as their love was given new life. When he climaxed, she stopped breathing for a good five seconds, seeing nothing but light as the loss of their childhood was given to the sky right there, under the sun.

When his arms secured her to his chest and shielded her from the flying dirt that swarmed after a passing car, Lorelai thought of happy things. She felt a contentment then that she'd seldom felt before. She felt bad in every way that was good. She knew her mother would be horrified of the tale and was already enjoying regaling her with it shielded in sarcasm so it couldn't be pinpointed as the absolute truth.

Lying with Chris was nice, it was safe and comfortable. Their combined sweat helped fight off the coolness of the autumn breeze surrounding. But eventually, just lying there grew boring, and Lorelai disentangled herself and began to pull her panties back on. Chris took the cue and re-dressed his lower half. "Oh, shit," he said as he stood to zip up the fly of his pants.

"Uh, that can't be good."

"I, uh... left the motor running while we were..." Chris glanced at her sheepishly. "Guess I was a little too turned on to remember to turn it off. Anyway, the gas was almost kaput as it was, and now the engine's gone completely dead."

Lorelai rose to her feet and smoothed down her pleated skirt. "So what do you suggest? We flag down a passing blimp or two? I know you say that other people use this road, but Chris, we've only seen one car pass us the entire time we've been here. It could be a long wait till we find a new ride."

Chris patted the handlebars of his mechanical baby whose roars were now silent. "We could camp out here, I suppose. There's bound to be someone along this road sometime near morning."

Lorelai stumbled back a couple of steps, horrified. "Camp? Me? I didn't even let my Barbies go camping, and they had a Camper the size of Mom's 'old lady' handbags. Those are my true colors, and I'm not afraid to let them loose."

"Come on, why does everything have to be a rainbow?" he whined.

"Because it can," she deadpanned, and the strangest sensation hit Chris then, like he truly believed her, and believed that could be his life as long as he was with her.

He looked around at the scenery surrounding them and tried to keep his exasperation from surfacing. "What do you want me to do, walk this thing to the nearest town while you babble and complain of your lady legs needing rest?"

"Uh huh. Yep. The nearest town, Chris, is that Star studded one less than half a mile away. I say we take a chance and hike it there, get your gas tank filled up, and shut down the motor next time we want to get frisky when we're far away from those who can't converse back." She gave a glance to the nearby cows that were peacefully grazing. "No offense, guys."

--

Half a mile later, the motorcycle was wheeled into the town called Stars Hollow, and promptly its tank was filled with small-town-quality gas. Enough to get them back to what Chris called "civilized civilization" as he spoke to Lorelai behind the cover of his arm. She shrugged as the tank was filled and looked around her. From her vantage point, she could see more than they'd been privy to at the lookout point. When she had looked at Hartford from afar, she'd seen society and what it had built. As she looked around this tiny town that existed between two cities and was so often regarded as nowhere, she saw remnants of a different kind of life and what it had spawned. Real life, being celebrated rather than exacerbated. People passed her by, chatting about knitting contests and town meetings, a welcome change from hearing this or that being ridiculed and judged.

While the day was just setting into evening, and the sky was deepening its blue, Chris re-revved his engine, and together he and his girl drove through the sleepy town of Stars Hollow. Lorelai's Chilton skirt, the color of her eyes, waved fluidly at the townspeople as she tightened her arms around Chris' waist. As per the town speed limit, Chris had to drive at the speed of a snail, which gave Lorelai time to see the Fall for Autumn festival that was going on around them. She saw more joy in the people there (dancing in the grass to music from a weak local band) than she'd ever seen in those who surrounded her at the dozens of social events she'd been forced to witness and partake in.

She'd never been to that town before. But as they reached its outer limits and screamed past its "Come again; we're especially lovely in the spring time" goodbye sign, she knew somehow that she'd be back. That someday she'd be one of them, dancing barefoot in the grass and feeling the satisfaction of it crunching beneath the weight of her feet, making her feel mammoth as a jolly giant. The satisfaction could match that which she felt now, knowing that Chris had finally been inside of her, had made her body tense up in pain, had made her stain her panties in blood... had made her a woman. Back to the prison of Hartford they sped, waiting for the lectures of being late for dinner that surely were to come.

--

In all of the ways Chris and Lorelai were trapped that autumn, neither felt caged in any way as their public display of affection vaulted them into a fall from grace. Who would have thought so many students would be prowling the campus of Chilton on that unusually warm Saturday night in September when Chris held Lorelai pinned against the brick wall of the school, pounding his hard parts into her softness and making her cry out as a woman in intense heat?

The incident was brought to the attention of all four of their parents, and groundings and lectures ensued. "I have never been so mortified," Emily said to them both, a tired hand nursing her creased forehead and the headache that lay behind. When Chris' mother said much the same thing afterward, Chris and Lorelai shared a secret smile. Punished or not, they had seen the stars in one another and been filled where once they were hollow.

And never before, from this prison both had felt entrapped in all their lives, did either one feel so very free.

- -
end