Franco and Elizabeth: Better
by Tessaray
The half-hour drive home from his studio is usually enough time for Franco to make the transition from artist to husband. Enough time for his frenetic energy to dissipate, for the shrieking Death Metal to fade from his ears, for the images in his mind to surrender to the banal reality of the tidy houses he's passing on tree-lined streets, and to remember to stop at the red lights even when no one's around.
Usually, after a quick clean up in the bathroom, he'll slip into bed, wrap around Elizabeth, smell her hair, bury his face in her neck. Sometimes he needs her, sometimes she needs him… and then they make love urgently, or languidly, or with so much emotion she'll cry… and he'll struggle not to. Sometimes she just wants to share her day, her thoughts, her concerns… and he loves listening to her voice spread through the night like honey.
Other times she's asleep, so warm and small, snoring lightly. And that's his undoing — the simple humanity of it, the profound fragility of her breath in sleep. And what rips him to shreds is the terrible knowledge that one day she'll stop. He prays then (though he believes in nothing) that he'll go first, so he'll never have to face this world without her.
These thoughts have plagued him today, deep and unshakable, since he got word that a former patient died of a drug overdose. He remembered her more clearly than most — she'd discovered a love of pastels in his art therapy room, worked rough and angry, tongue sticking out... but her incongruous peals of laughter would ring out like bells and make him smile...
Fourteen years old.
It's not the first loss of this kind, but it's the first since he became a husband, a step-father, and it hit him hard. He'd assumed he could retreat to his studio as usual, bury himself in color and noise, paint away the grief and savage vertigo, transform it all into something manageable… something that has nothing whatsoever to do with this new life with Elizabeth and her boys.
But he's standing in the living room now, staring into darkness, absently thumbing his wedding band. He doesn't remember parking the car, opening the front door or locking it behind him. His mind is laser focused on Elizabeth, upstairs, snug under the covers and he wants her, desperately. He imagines taking the stairs three at a time, bursting into the bedroom, seizing her… and she would recognize his need, open herself to him…
It would be a burial, of sorts… a definite transformation. But a selfish one, coming from a fucked-up place. He doesn't like touching her unless his head is on straight.
So he drops his bag, shrugs out of his coat, checks his watch… wonders what might be on TV at 3:16 in the morning… until a sudden stabbing pain in his shoulder reminds him how stiff and tight he is, how careless he can be with his body when he's standing at his easel hunting for release.
#
He leaves the upstairs bathroom light off, having grown accustomed to darkness, and the little nightlight over the sink is plenty to see by as he undresses and drops his clothes on the floor. The shower squeaks when he turns it on. He scowls, keeps meaning to fix it… a new washer, maybe… or an o-ring? He's clueless about this home repair stuff, but is determined to learn, to be that guy Elizabeth can call to on a lazy Sunday, "Hey honey, can you come fix this…?"
He slides the shower door closed, moves into the pelting stream and just stands there, groaning aloud. The hot water feels amazing on his skin and he turns in slow circles, lets it run over his body, ease his tension, loosen his muscles. He lifts his face into the spray, runs his hands over his hair, closes his eyes… notices a wave of cool air, hears the shower door sliding…
He's startled, dashes water from his eyes and turns to find Elizabeth beside him, smiling in the low light, hair pinned up, porcelain skin glowing like she's lit from within.
"Hey," she says and glides her hand up his chest, rests it over his heart… and something brittle and protected inside him dissolves, something he hadn't realized he'd been clinging to. But now that it's gone, he's left shaken, barely able to breathe.
"Hey," she says, concerned now, leaning up to look into his eyes. "You okay?"
He takes her face between his hands and kisses her, gently at first, then with a growing intensity he can barely control. He's willing her, with all his might, to stay strong and healthy, safe, happy and alive, vibrantly alive, forever…
He breaks the kiss with a breathless gasp, drops his brow to hers and squeezes his eyes shut.
"Babe, what's up?" she whispers, caressing his lips with her fingertips.
Grief and fear twist and rise unimpeded inside him and there's so much he wants to tell her — about hopelessness, about angry pastel marks and surprising laughter, about kids who never stood a chance — but all he can manage is a harsh, "I missed you."
"I missed you, too," she says, but from her tone, she must know there's more. "I heard you come in, but—," she breaks off, jerks her head back and comically screws up her face. "Eww, you smell like turpentine!"
He's caught off guard and gives her a soft chuckle. "Yeah…yeah, I got some on my hands."
"And of course you mindlessly played with your hair, like you always do," she mock-scolds with an open smile and pushes his sodden hair back from his face. Her presence is playful now, lifting him above the pain, steadying him. As always, she makes it all better with the lightest of touches…
"Did not," he pouts, adoring her, stroking a fingertip over the tender pulse at the base of her throat.
She grabs a bottle from the shower rack, pours shampoo into her cupped palm, reaches up and rubs it into his scalp. "Nobody uses turps anymore, Franco. It's so nasty. I wish you'd use that walnut oil I gave you."
"Whatever you say," he purrs, angling his head into her massaging fingers like a cat. Her arms are fully extended and he gently cups her swaying breasts, feels her nipples harden in his palms... and he decides to make her job easier. He sinks to his knees and looks up at her, sees her lips part, breath quicken. Wordlessly, he slides his hands from her breasts to the backs of her thighs and lifts one leg over his shoulder. As his fingers open her, she convulses with a small whimper, hands tightening in his hair.
She's like satin against his mouth and as steam rises around them, he feels himself slipping into a dream where nothing can harm her — not age, not sickness, not despair. He usually likes to take his time, tease her, make her chase him, but he doesn't want games now. He needs to feel her life-force, to be the source of her pleasure… and he finds tonight's most sensitive spots, strokes her, flutters his tongue, growing hotter and harder as her taste and scent and whispers fill his senses. The water is pelting his back and she's washing his hair with increasingly erratic movements… until finally she grips his head and bears down on his mouth with a long, sweet cry, thighs quivering in his hands…
"Rinse," she gasps, laughs, and drops away from him. He's smoldering inside, half-crazed, but he does as she says and stands, closes his eyes, arches back under the stream, rakes his fingers through his shampoo-slick hair... and shivers at the sudden touch of her hands. He doesn't move, just enjoys her palms sensuously gliding over his biceps, his underarms... then lower, making slow, delicate circles over his chest and stomach as though exploring him for the first time.
Stepping closer, she wraps her wet, silken body around him in an emotional embrace which he returns. He dips his mouth into her hair, breathes deeply as she rests in his arms, steam dancing around them in the dim light. Her fingertips trace patterns in the watery shampoo flowing down his spine, and lower, playing along the cleft of his ass, making him shiver. He holds her tightly and splays his fingers over her flawless back, marveling once again at how frail she is, yet how incredibly powerful.
One small, sudsy hand slips between his legs and cradles his testicles as she wraps the other around his erection. They both watch her stroke him with aching slowness and a loving focus that sears him to the core. The energy is building to a fever pitch between them, and when she raises her eyes to his, when he sees that her pupils are blown black and wide, her cheeks flushed, tendrils of hair damp and wild around her face, he groans, thrusts into her grip even as he pulls away from her to turn and rinse the soap off in the spray.
When he turns back, she half leaps into his arms. He grabs her thighs, lifts her, tips her back against the shower wall as she wraps her legs around his waist and plunges a hand down between them, guiding him... and though he's nearly frantic with need, he very slowly pushes inside and lets her adjust, convulse around him, pull him deeper.
He has to stop for a moment, as he always does, so overwhelmed by pleasure and relief and fierce passion for her — and by things he hasn't even learned to name yet — that he's afraid he'll collapse under the weight of it all.
And she waits, clinging to him, surrounding him with her body, her understanding, with everything she is... and more love than he could hope to earn in twenty lifetimes. He begins to move then, to gently rock, and watch her face as she feels him inside her...
He suddenly reaches up and frees her hair from the clip, watches it cascade over her shoulders and as she shakes it out, she smiles, laughs and kisses him — vividly happy, vibrantly alive… here and now.
And with the lightest of touches, she's made it all better.
- end -