A/N: Sorry it has taken so dang long to update, but this is one of my longest chapters, so that's something to be happy about, yeah?

DISCLAIMER: I wish.

Chapter 13

Tommy walked into the studio that Saturday a bit different than usual. Both he and Jude were glad for the weekend. It meant more time together. They would have to be at the studio – or at least claim to be – but still, they had more time together.

Tommy didn't walk into the studio with that pleasant thought in mind, however. Just the night before, Tommy had finished writing lyrics. Lyrics to a song that he had been working on for many, many months. It was much different than most of his previous work. It was just him and the piano he played at his apartment. It was a song Tommy had started writing before he had even left all that time ago. The idea first came to him in the car – his Hummer – after he dropped Jude off at her house at the end of her seventeenth birthday. They had been locked up for quite some time earlier in the evening. They fell asleep in each other's arms. They almost kissed. Their lips were gravitating towards each other – magnet's north finding it's south – when Jamie and Spied entered the room. Vin Spiederman. Jude's boyfriend of the time.

Tommy was not a naturally jealous person – he rarely cared enough about someone of the opposite sex to feel such an emotion. But Tommy had been jealous of Spiederman. He was a threat, as much as Tommy hated to admit it. Tommy had seen the punk as a threat. He'd never truly seen Andrews that way – Jamie loved Jude in a very conditional way, but god forbid she do anything to fall off his pedestal. Jamie loved her as long as she didn't change. Didn't grow. Didn't mature. Tommy had known from the start that the best friends turned lovers wouldn't last. But Spiederman? He was an actual threat. Jude and Spied seemed to have very genuine feelings for one another. And while Spiederman acted like a total kid half the time, Tommy knew he was mature. When he wanted to be, at least. Jude and Spied had a genuine connection. That was still proven by their solid friendship. To be honest, Tommy had always suspected that Jude's feelings for Spied were not as strong as her feelings for her producer. But no matter how close Jude and Tommy got, no matter how much time they spent together and looks they shared, Jude left with Spiederman at the end of the day. Not Tommy.

And he hated it.

So the night of Jude's seventeenth, Tommy wrote. But he didn't finish. The song he had begun meant too much to him, and he had to take his time. He had to get it right.

Now he was done.

Tommy greeted Jude that morning in the studio with a cup of coffee. She smiled warmly in thanks and took a long gulp.

"I wrote a song," Tommy began, speaking into the silence.

Jude questioned, "What's it about?"

Tommy replied a bit too heavily, "You."

Jude wanted to smile, but she did not. His expression was puzzling. It held very little joy.

"Okay," she said slowly, "What about me?"

A sigh slipped from Tommy's lips. "I've been working on it for months. I started writing it when you were dating Spiederman."

"Oh," the careful surprise was evident in Jude's voice.

Tommy almost smirked and said seriously, "It will battle Corner of Your Heart."

Jude clenched her hands into fists and nodded her head. "You should play it then." Her voice was barely above a whisper.

Tommy headed to the sound booth and sat behind the keyboard. He took a long, deep breath and placed his hands on the keys. He pressed down and played the first slow, haunting notes of the song. He licked his cracked, chapped lips, opened his mouth, and began to sing.

"I held you like a lover

Happy hands

Your elbow in the appropriate place

And we ignored our others

Happy plans

For that delicate look upon your face…"

Tommy kissed her on her sixteenth birthday, and he still remembered his first true feel of his lips on hers, tingling and demanding. Her hair was red back then, and it was sticking to her face, wet with rain.

He pressed his lips to hers with almost violent urgency, he recalled. It was like an electric shock, and he hadn't seen it coming. How could a girl – a girl of sixteen years of age – make him feel such things? Make him lose such control? They pulled away from each other upon interruption. The vulnerable, wide-eyed expression on Jude's face was still ingrained in Tommy's memory.

And then he told her to forget it. It never happened.

They didn't talk about it. It never happened. But they didn't forget.

"Our bodies moved and hardened

Hurting parts of your garden

With no room for a pardon

In a place where no one knows what we have done…"

Tommy flashed back to the night he wrote those lyrics. He had kissed Jude in Darius' office. Their second kiss. Their first, in that rainy alleyway, had been initiated by Tommy. But their second? It was mutual. Lips coming together at the same time, searching. Desperate. It was wrong, both of them knew, but neither of them seemed to care. As they say, forbidden fruit tasted sweeter than any other kind.

Jude walked away from him that day, leaving him alone in Darius' office. It gave him a lot of time to contemplate. A lot of time to write.

"Do you come together ever with him?

Is he dark enough, enough to see your light?"

Tommy thought about when he first got the chorus down on paper. Jude was dating Spiederman, and Tommy was notably jealous. While Spied undoubtedly had real feelings for Jude, Tommy doubted he held the true appreciation for her – and true love – that he himself felt.

"Do you brush your teeth before you kiss?

Do you miss my smell?"

Tommy's moment with Jude were unplanned, uncontained passion. But with Vin? It was all expected. Tamed.

"Is he bold enough to take you on?

Do you feel like you belong?

Does he drive you wild

Or just mildly free?"

Tommy nearly whispered the next line, his eyes closing as he sang: "What about me?"

Tommy challenged Jude when others didn't and vise-versa. Only they would take each other on and speak the words that had to be spoken. Tommy thought back to just a few days previous, the pair of them locked in an embrace in the dark corners of the studio. They certainly drove each other wild. She made him come apart in ways no other woman had ever done, and he wasn't even sleeping with her.

"Well, you held me like a lover

Sweaty hands

My foot in the appropriate place

And we use cushions to cover

Happy glands

In the mild issue of our disgrace…"

He was thrown into thoughts of the future. What would happen if – when – people found? He sighed internally. It would be a disgrace in some people's eyes. He could see the headlines flashing before his eyes – the public may not react well. Jude's father certainly thought not.

"Our minds pressed and guarded

While our flesh disregarded

The lack of space

For the light hearted

In the boom that beats our drum…"

Flashes of times passed and times that could be streamed through Tommy's consciousness. Skin on skin. Fingertips grazing. Lips meeting lips, curves, and sensitive flesh.

Tommy sang the chorus again, questioning echoes of his previous words. He never chanced a glace at Jude, knowing it would be easier to get through the song without looking in her eyes. He found himself knowing exactly how she had felt as she recorded Corner of Your Heart in his same position. The words meant so much to him. His emotions were in over-drive. He was hyper-sensitive as words slipped from his loose lips.

"And I know I make you cry

And I know sometimes you wanna die

But do you really feel life without me?

So be free

If not, leave him for me

Before one of us has

Accidental babies

For we are in love…"

Tommy had written these lyrics last night. They were fresh on his mind. In his heart. But, really, the words were another flashback to times past. Times before he had finally made things work with Jude. Tommy took a deep breath and finished the song, delving into the chorus.

"Do you come together ever with him?

Is he dark enough, enough to see your light?

And do you brush your teeth before you kiss?

Do you miss my smell?

Is he bold enough to take you on?

Do you feel like you belong?

Does he drive you wild

Or just mildly free?

What about me?"

The last words were repeated a final time, raw with emotion.

"What about me?"

He played the final notes and let them fade. Tommy took a moment of silence for himself to regain his composure. He turned to face Jude expectantly, just as she had done before him with her song so many weeks – months­, he realized – prior.

Jude smiled a half-smile at him silently and beckoned him to her, outside the sound booth, with the crook of her finger. Tommy met her there in the quiet, and she brushed her thumb across his cheek, guitar calluses rough against the smooth skin of his face. She brought her lips to his in a soft, simple, and meaningful kiss.

"I love you," she whispered, moving her head to place it on his shoulder with a deep, relaxing breath.

Tommy let out a contented sigh and simply held Jude close. He threaded his fingers through her blonde locks and stroked her hair. He enjoyed the closeness.

"I wish we got more time alone together," said Tommy.

"You and me both," Jude replied. "Its times like this I really wish I had a good girlfriend. If Kat was still around, I could have claimed I was spending the night at her house."

"I suppose Patsy wouldn't work," Tommy presumed.

"As if Patsy actually has a place!" Jude laughed. "She parks her car in my driveway and sleeps there sometimes."

Tommy quirked an eyebrow. "Ah."

Jude shrugged, "She's comfortable there."

"At least she has some place," Tommy remarked. "The girl could stand to cut back on the dumpster diving, though."

Mirth shone in Jude's eyes. "That's my Pats."

Tommy chuckled.

"I can't wait until I'm eighteen," Jude stated. "Maybe then I can finally have some freedom."

"Here's to hoping," he squeezed her hand.

Jude kissed his cheek. "Let's get back to work. We can try and lay down the track today."

"Maybe if we work fast, we can leave early and head to the Chrome Cat for a bit?"

Jude's demeanor instantly brightened. "That sounds great."


The pair arrived at the Chrome Cat at 4:30 PM. It didn't leave them a lot of time, but they had a good hour and a half. Tommy would then drive them back to G-Major where her father would pick her up, as though they had been hard at work the entire time.

It was nice to be finally alone. They didn't, however, lose themselves as they did the last time. Jude hardly regretted what happened in the studio days previously, but it wasn't something that they had done before. There was an unspoken rule, Jude had noted, that they wouldn't take things where they were headed that afternoon until her eighteenth birthday. Certainly it would ensure that things didn't go any farther than what she was ready for. But it was getting harder and harder to make themselves stop.

Settled into the couch, Jude sighed against Tommy's lips.

"Something wrong, girl?" Tommy asked and tried to read her eyes.

Jude shook her head. "I'm fine. Just thinking."

"About?" he inquired.

"You. Me. Us."

Tommy waited for her to elaborate.

"Well," Jude paused. "I was just thinking about what happened the other day. It's so hard to stop sometimes."

"Are you okay with what happened in the studio?" Tommy asked hesitantly.

"Yes!" Jude replied perhaps a bit too quickly. "Of course!"

Tommy laughed. "Please, Jude. Tell me how you really feel."

She rolled her eyes. "Shut up."

"Don't worry about it, girl," said Tommy. "I wouldn't pressure you into anything."

"I know that," Jude bit her lip.

"Then what's the drama?" he asked.

"I didn't want to stop, Tommy."

His mouth formed the shape of a surprised "o."

"And that kind of scares me," Jude continued. "Because I thought I wasn't ready for that, and I still think I'm not ready for that."

"Jude," Tommy grinned. "I know sometimes it's hard to resist my body, but…"

Jude smacked him with a roll of the eyes.

"But," he continued without pause, "we'll both make sure it doesn't happen before you are ready."

Jude smiled softly. "It probably seems stupid of me…to want to wait. You've had tons of girls, and I'm sure it won't mean much to you, but…"

Tommy interrupted her, nonplussed. "What makes you say that?"

Jude sighed. "You've been with plenty of girls – women – and I'm sure it won't be anything special…"

"Jude," Tommy was surprised. "Of course it will be special to me. I've waited for this for a long time. For you. It will be special because it will be with you." He pressed a kiss to her neck. "It's you that I've wanted all these years."

"Really?" she asked, allowing her insecurity to show.

"Really," Tommy confirmed. "I love you," he whispered. "And, well…I've never been with anyone I loved. Not like I love you." He pressed another kiss to her neck, this one lasting longer. "You're it for me, girl."

Jude sighed pleasantly and ran her hands up and down Tommy's back ass his supple lips attacked her neck.

"You're not making me want to stop, Tommy."

He chuckled lightly. "Sorry, I'll stop."

"Oh, that's not necessary," Jude protested.

They made the best of the hour and a half they had left, losing themselves in their favorite possible way.


end of chapter 13.

Hope you enjoyed. I certainly did. Chapter 14 will be up in a few weeks. Care for a few teasers to tide you over?

Chapter 14 Teasers:

"Is he so disgusted with me? So angry?"

"The song...the I've had stuck in my head...I'm ready to put lyrics to it."

"Well...did I ever tell you about that night I spent with Liam?"

"It's a duet, Harrison."

"I'm sorry."