April Showers Response - Eventually...
Title: Tasting The Rain
Author: fc2001
Rating: FRT/FRM
Disclaimer: Without Prejudice. The names of all characters contained here in are the property of Michael Crichton, Amblin Entertainment, Constant C, Warner Brothers and anyone else involved in the making of ER. No Infringements of these copyrights are intended, and are used here without permission.
Spoilers: Brief vague mentions for “Here and There” and “Back In The World” but nothing too specific.
Content Warning: Neela, Ray, the 1st of April, and a storm…need I say any more? Contains mild sexual references and the occasional curse. My eventual response to the “April Showers” challenge - it is the product of my over active imagination, you have been warned….
The night air clung to her skin, tiny invisible droplets of heat, soaking through the bare skin on her arms and shoulders. The whole city was close around her, the heat thick in her nostrils and mouth as she took another deep breath in.
She allowed the air to escape slowly, heavily, back into the atmosphere. She looked up at the sky again, pressing down on the world, heavy with thousands of water droplets and just waiting to burst. It was grey, dark, burdened. She began to wish she’d brought a jacket, just in case.
One foot rubbed nervously behind the other, scuffing the buckle of her new shoes down her calf, as she scanned up and down the street again for any sign of another person.
The only light came from a dying streetlight, but even through the enveloping dark, she saw a lone figure approaching her. The shape was ambling confidently down the sidewalk in her direction. She squinted into the shadows, thinking the profile strangely familiar.
“You?”
She exclaimed, unable to contain the initial disappointment in her tone.
“Roomie?”
He returned, reflecting her sense of disappointment. Her weight shifted onto her left leg, and she returned the strap of her dress to her shoulder, filling the awkward silence with awkward movements.
“What are you doing here?”
She heard him ask eventually.
“I could ask you the same question,”
Her foolishness began to creep up on her, a sinking feeling that she’d been set up. She glanced up at him. He faltered a second before answering.
“I was meant to be meeting someone…”
“Someone? As in a date someone?”
“What? Does that bother you?”
Well, yes, kind of…no, Neela, no! She scolded internally. Don’t even give that a second thought. Confine that thought to history.
“No…it’s just…”
Enlightenment dawned through his expression.
“Did Jane tell you to be here?”
She nodded, watching the cogs turn in his mind, and feeling her own thought processes turn in the same direction.
“Morris…”
They said in unison, looking directly at one another, having what could only be described as a Eureka moment.
“That…that…”
Words failed her, and she found herself on repeat, struggling to express the exact depth of her loathing for Morris, and, in that moment, Jane as well.
“Chief Resident, my ass,”
She finished, not very eloquently.
“Well…”
He began, exhaling deliberately. She shuffled again nervously.
“…Looks like it’s about to rain. Home?”
He indicated the direction by angling his head. She nodded.
“Why not? I’m not really in the mood for staying out now,”
The offer of his arm was unexpected but not exactly unwelcome. Chivalry, she guessed, may not have been as dead and buried as she thought. She slipped her arm inside his, her body just touching his as they walked together. There were a couple of minutes of silence, both of their minds turning over recent events. She chose to focus on exactly how they’d both been duped.
“Why, I mean, how did they do this?”
She turned and looked up at him, his expression more than slightly confused.
“How did they outsmart us? - ”
She continued, flicking her gaze to the side momentarily for no other reason than to stop herself focussing on him.
“- We’re two smart, intelligent, professional - ”
“And clearly desperate,”
He said, just a hint of self-deprecation in his tone.
“People - ” She finished, processing his comment after a seconds delay. Her hand smacked his upper arm lightly. “Hey, speak for yourself…”
She finished; smiling wistfully at the complete inanity of the situation they found themselves in. He smiled back, his words forming slowly behind his expression.
“Oh…right. Cause you’ve seen so much action recently, Neela. You were letting Jane set you up? That reeks of desperation…”
He drawled the last sentence, and she felt it filter into her brain. Why was that awful arrogance of his so damned attractive?
“Why is everyone obsessed with my sex life? I do not need to get laid, not that it’s any of your business. Life is not all about sex, you know,”
She shot back indignantly, thinking back over her recent sexual encounters. None of which had been a great success. Either she’d freaked out and told them they were what? A tiny Band Aid? A tiny fucking Band Aid, Neela, really! Or they’d taken what they wanted, which she’d given them, and then run off back to Iraq. Sex wasn’t something that was a key part of her life, simply because she’d been turned a little bitter by recent experience.
“No…but it’s fun right?”
This earned him a practically poisonous glare, which he couldn’t help but enjoy, simply because it made her tilt her head again and gave him an unadulterated view of her cleavage.
“Yeah - that would be your attitude, King of the One Night Stand…When are you getting that revolving door fitted by the way?”
The tone was glitteringly sarcastic, but still, she hoped, playful enough. Then she noticed he wasn’t really paying all that much attention. She cleared her throat.
“I’m up here, in case you hadn’t noticed,”
She said, trying to sound indignant, but biting the inside of her lip in what? Anticipation? His eyes took a long moment to move away from her chest and back towards her eyes.
“Ouch, Neela, that hurt,”
He played at being wounded, hoping the pout and the puppy dog eyes would get him somewhere with her.
“I’m deeply wounded that that’s how you think of me,”
The tone was mock offended, with an ever so slightly flirty edge. He couldn’t help himself.
“How many relationships have you had that lasted beyond coffee in the morning? In fact, how many relationships have you had that have made it to coffee in the morning?”
She knew exactly. She had been counting. The number of nights he didn’t come back from gigs alone. And she had also heard the number of them that had slipped out before she got up in the morning. It wasn’t like it was every night…but…God, Neela, is that jealousy? What is wrong with you? She looked up at him again, but looked away instantly when she realised he was staring at her.
“I resent that allegation…”
“I live with you, remember? I’m the one that has to have those awkward 3am conversations in the kitchen with them - sometimes wearing one of your t-shirts but more often than not wearing very little at all…I’m the one that has to pass them on the stairs on their way out, looking sheepish and ruffled…And by the way, when was the last time any of them were actually over the age of consent?”
She had wondered what these girls had that she didn’t. What they gave him that she couldn’t. She had wondered why she wasn’t good enough to come home to, why she couldn’t be the warm body he needed. Was she that repulsive?
“Hey. None of them have been under the age of 20. I’m not like that,”
“Could have fooled me,”
She spat sarcastically. This was just jealousy. Jealousy that these girls were still young and lithe and beautiful and had the whole of their twenties ahead of them, whereas she was nearly 30, jaded and feeling increasingly cynical about this whole love-sex-marriage thing everyone else seemed so good at. And clearly more desperate than she’d admit - she’d been set up by Jane for crying out loud. Her med student.
“Is that jealousy I hear?”
She shook her head vehemently, seeing his smirk in her minds eye. She felt the first raindrops strike her bare skin.
“Sure, Neela, very convincing,”
“Can we change the subject please?”
She said, suddenly uncomfortable with the way the conversation was going. If he was trying to get her to admit…to admit that she wanted him then he was going the right way about it. And she didn’t want to do that.
“Whatever,”
An expectant silence fell between them, as each tried to think of a suitably neutral topic of conversation with which to fill it. The rain became heavier, until it was at characteristic deluge levels, drenching them both. A sudden thought brightened her visage momentarily, a flash of inspiration at how to lighten the moment, how to break the tension.
She spun away from him, kicking at the rapidly forming puddles, a blur of light and shadow. Her head tipped back, so her hair fell as a black curtain, and exposed the fine, languid line of her throat. She was tasting the raindrops, he realised with a start, childlike, her actions innocent.
“Didn’t you ever do this as a kid?”
She said, stopping only briefly, and not waiting for his response. It was for the entire world like being five again. Except when you were five, there probably weren’t ulterior motives involved.
“Didn’t get a lot of rain where I come from,”
He answered, tone one of mild amusement. Where was this side of her in the every day? He’d never pictured her as the type to go dancing in the rain.
A smile played the corner of his lips, feeling the pseudo innocence of the scene strike an unbearably wicked chord in him. She was captivating. Head tilted, mouth slightly open, drops of water falling from her hair tiny beads of moonlight. The rain streamed across her skin in rivulets, running down across her throat, over the sharp arch of her collarbone, before disappearing into the cleft of her cleavage, unashamedly but accidentally pushed out.
The dress was soaked through, absolutely ruined. The silk was heavy, pressed against her skin; it clung to every inch of her. She twirled there, caught up in a moment all of her own. The material clung tight to her, drawing his eye down her body. He found his eyes lingering just below the neckline, and then both his gaze and his breath caught on where the dress dipped between her thighs.
It was then he looked up. She had stopped twirling, and she was looking straight at him. He expected her to be disgusted or at the very least affronted, but she wasn’t. Her gaze was softer, inviting. She couldn’t…she didn’t…well, it seemed she could and she did…his thoughts were no longer in complete sentences, overtaken by something entirely more base.
He took small steps towards her at first; still exercising what little self-control he still had, expecting her to back away at any moment. But she stood there, petite, drenched, wanton, and she waited.
The sky thundered overhead, brooding, petulant, wreaking revenge, drowning out his own thumping heart. Somewhere in the distance, lightening flashed, a jagged tear across the black sky. All around them, rain lashed into the ground, each drop another bullet.
His eyes on her were as black as the sky above, dark with…desire. Was it the storm or her uncontrollably beating heart that was creating the tension? The electricity she felt pass from her body to his and back, bouncing backwards and forwards.
She didn’t fight it when he took her face between his hands and bent to kiss her, she didn’t resist. Her eyes closed, her lips parted, and she lost herself in the moment. And every time he pushed for more, she played along.
“Home?”
She whispered forcefully eventually, his attention on her neck making her melt where she stood. It was now or never. It was more a demand than a question, and he willingly obeyed.
They fell through their front door, caught up in a tumble of laughing and kissing, in between which they proceeded to peel off each others soaking clothes. It was only in the briefest moment of clear thought that he managed to kick the door shut behind them.
“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do this…”
The words were breathless, snatched in between the kisses he was now lavishing on her very nearly naked body. She caught a moan in her throat.
She knew, she knew in the power and the passion, the feeling in the kiss, the very slight tremble in his hand. And she knew what wanting someone that badly was like. But now, she had him. Right where she wanted him, between her thighs.
The perfect end to an imperfect night, she thought with more than a glimmer of satisfaction.
Author: fc2001
Rating: FRT/FRM
Disclaimer: Without Prejudice. The names of all characters contained here in are the property of Michael Crichton, Amblin Entertainment, Constant C, Warner Brothers and anyone else involved in the making of ER. No Infringements of these copyrights are intended, and are used here without permission.
Spoilers: Brief vague mentions for “Here and There” and “Back In The World” but nothing too specific.
Content Warning: Neela, Ray, the 1st of April, and a storm…need I say any more? Contains mild sexual references and the occasional curse. My eventual response to the “April Showers” challenge - it is the product of my over active imagination, you have been warned….
The night air clung to her skin, tiny invisible droplets of heat, soaking through the bare skin on her arms and shoulders. The whole city was close around her, the heat thick in her nostrils and mouth as she took another deep breath in.
She allowed the air to escape slowly, heavily, back into the atmosphere. She looked up at the sky again, pressing down on the world, heavy with thousands of water droplets and just waiting to burst. It was grey, dark, burdened. She began to wish she’d brought a jacket, just in case.
One foot rubbed nervously behind the other, scuffing the buckle of her new shoes down her calf, as she scanned up and down the street again for any sign of another person.
The only light came from a dying streetlight, but even through the enveloping dark, she saw a lone figure approaching her. The shape was ambling confidently down the sidewalk in her direction. She squinted into the shadows, thinking the profile strangely familiar.
“You?”
She exclaimed, unable to contain the initial disappointment in her tone.
“Roomie?”
He returned, reflecting her sense of disappointment. Her weight shifted onto her left leg, and she returned the strap of her dress to her shoulder, filling the awkward silence with awkward movements.
“What are you doing here?”
She heard him ask eventually.
“I could ask you the same question,”
Her foolishness began to creep up on her, a sinking feeling that she’d been set up. She glanced up at him. He faltered a second before answering.
“I was meant to be meeting someone…”
“Someone? As in a date someone?”
“What? Does that bother you?”
Well, yes, kind of…no, Neela, no! She scolded internally. Don’t even give that a second thought. Confine that thought to history.
“No…it’s just…”
Enlightenment dawned through his expression.
“Did Jane tell you to be here?”
She nodded, watching the cogs turn in his mind, and feeling her own thought processes turn in the same direction.
“Morris…”
They said in unison, looking directly at one another, having what could only be described as a Eureka moment.
“That…that…”
Words failed her, and she found herself on repeat, struggling to express the exact depth of her loathing for Morris, and, in that moment, Jane as well.
“Chief Resident, my ass,”
She finished, not very eloquently.
“Well…”
He began, exhaling deliberately. She shuffled again nervously.
“…Looks like it’s about to rain. Home?”
He indicated the direction by angling his head. She nodded.
“Why not? I’m not really in the mood for staying out now,”
The offer of his arm was unexpected but not exactly unwelcome. Chivalry, she guessed, may not have been as dead and buried as she thought. She slipped her arm inside his, her body just touching his as they walked together. There were a couple of minutes of silence, both of their minds turning over recent events. She chose to focus on exactly how they’d both been duped.
“Why, I mean, how did they do this?”
She turned and looked up at him, his expression more than slightly confused.
“How did they outsmart us? - ”
She continued, flicking her gaze to the side momentarily for no other reason than to stop herself focussing on him.
“- We’re two smart, intelligent, professional - ”
“And clearly desperate,”
He said, just a hint of self-deprecation in his tone.
“People - ” She finished, processing his comment after a seconds delay. Her hand smacked his upper arm lightly. “Hey, speak for yourself…”
She finished; smiling wistfully at the complete inanity of the situation they found themselves in. He smiled back, his words forming slowly behind his expression.
“Oh…right. Cause you’ve seen so much action recently, Neela. You were letting Jane set you up? That reeks of desperation…”
He drawled the last sentence, and she felt it filter into her brain. Why was that awful arrogance of his so damned attractive?
“Why is everyone obsessed with my sex life? I do not need to get laid, not that it’s any of your business. Life is not all about sex, you know,”
She shot back indignantly, thinking back over her recent sexual encounters. None of which had been a great success. Either she’d freaked out and told them they were what? A tiny Band Aid? A tiny fucking Band Aid, Neela, really! Or they’d taken what they wanted, which she’d given them, and then run off back to Iraq. Sex wasn’t something that was a key part of her life, simply because she’d been turned a little bitter by recent experience.
“No…but it’s fun right?”
This earned him a practically poisonous glare, which he couldn’t help but enjoy, simply because it made her tilt her head again and gave him an unadulterated view of her cleavage.
“Yeah - that would be your attitude, King of the One Night Stand…When are you getting that revolving door fitted by the way?”
The tone was glitteringly sarcastic, but still, she hoped, playful enough. Then she noticed he wasn’t really paying all that much attention. She cleared her throat.
“I’m up here, in case you hadn’t noticed,”
She said, trying to sound indignant, but biting the inside of her lip in what? Anticipation? His eyes took a long moment to move away from her chest and back towards her eyes.
“Ouch, Neela, that hurt,”
He played at being wounded, hoping the pout and the puppy dog eyes would get him somewhere with her.
“I’m deeply wounded that that’s how you think of me,”
The tone was mock offended, with an ever so slightly flirty edge. He couldn’t help himself.
“How many relationships have you had that lasted beyond coffee in the morning? In fact, how many relationships have you had that have made it to coffee in the morning?”
She knew exactly. She had been counting. The number of nights he didn’t come back from gigs alone. And she had also heard the number of them that had slipped out before she got up in the morning. It wasn’t like it was every night…but…God, Neela, is that jealousy? What is wrong with you? She looked up at him again, but looked away instantly when she realised he was staring at her.
“I resent that allegation…”
“I live with you, remember? I’m the one that has to have those awkward 3am conversations in the kitchen with them - sometimes wearing one of your t-shirts but more often than not wearing very little at all…I’m the one that has to pass them on the stairs on their way out, looking sheepish and ruffled…And by the way, when was the last time any of them were actually over the age of consent?”
She had wondered what these girls had that she didn’t. What they gave him that she couldn’t. She had wondered why she wasn’t good enough to come home to, why she couldn’t be the warm body he needed. Was she that repulsive?
“Hey. None of them have been under the age of 20. I’m not like that,”
“Could have fooled me,”
She spat sarcastically. This was just jealousy. Jealousy that these girls were still young and lithe and beautiful and had the whole of their twenties ahead of them, whereas she was nearly 30, jaded and feeling increasingly cynical about this whole love-sex-marriage thing everyone else seemed so good at. And clearly more desperate than she’d admit - she’d been set up by Jane for crying out loud. Her med student.
“Is that jealousy I hear?”
She shook her head vehemently, seeing his smirk in her minds eye. She felt the first raindrops strike her bare skin.
“Sure, Neela, very convincing,”
“Can we change the subject please?”
She said, suddenly uncomfortable with the way the conversation was going. If he was trying to get her to admit…to admit that she wanted him then he was going the right way about it. And she didn’t want to do that.
“Whatever,”
An expectant silence fell between them, as each tried to think of a suitably neutral topic of conversation with which to fill it. The rain became heavier, until it was at characteristic deluge levels, drenching them both. A sudden thought brightened her visage momentarily, a flash of inspiration at how to lighten the moment, how to break the tension.
She spun away from him, kicking at the rapidly forming puddles, a blur of light and shadow. Her head tipped back, so her hair fell as a black curtain, and exposed the fine, languid line of her throat. She was tasting the raindrops, he realised with a start, childlike, her actions innocent.
“Didn’t you ever do this as a kid?”
She said, stopping only briefly, and not waiting for his response. It was for the entire world like being five again. Except when you were five, there probably weren’t ulterior motives involved.
“Didn’t get a lot of rain where I come from,”
He answered, tone one of mild amusement. Where was this side of her in the every day? He’d never pictured her as the type to go dancing in the rain.
A smile played the corner of his lips, feeling the pseudo innocence of the scene strike an unbearably wicked chord in him. She was captivating. Head tilted, mouth slightly open, drops of water falling from her hair tiny beads of moonlight. The rain streamed across her skin in rivulets, running down across her throat, over the sharp arch of her collarbone, before disappearing into the cleft of her cleavage, unashamedly but accidentally pushed out.
The dress was soaked through, absolutely ruined. The silk was heavy, pressed against her skin; it clung to every inch of her. She twirled there, caught up in a moment all of her own. The material clung tight to her, drawing his eye down her body. He found his eyes lingering just below the neckline, and then both his gaze and his breath caught on where the dress dipped between her thighs.
It was then he looked up. She had stopped twirling, and she was looking straight at him. He expected her to be disgusted or at the very least affronted, but she wasn’t. Her gaze was softer, inviting. She couldn’t…she didn’t…well, it seemed she could and she did…his thoughts were no longer in complete sentences, overtaken by something entirely more base.
He took small steps towards her at first; still exercising what little self-control he still had, expecting her to back away at any moment. But she stood there, petite, drenched, wanton, and she waited.
The sky thundered overhead, brooding, petulant, wreaking revenge, drowning out his own thumping heart. Somewhere in the distance, lightening flashed, a jagged tear across the black sky. All around them, rain lashed into the ground, each drop another bullet.
His eyes on her were as black as the sky above, dark with…desire. Was it the storm or her uncontrollably beating heart that was creating the tension? The electricity she felt pass from her body to his and back, bouncing backwards and forwards.
She didn’t fight it when he took her face between his hands and bent to kiss her, she didn’t resist. Her eyes closed, her lips parted, and she lost herself in the moment. And every time he pushed for more, she played along.
“Home?”
She whispered forcefully eventually, his attention on her neck making her melt where she stood. It was now or never. It was more a demand than a question, and he willingly obeyed.
They fell through their front door, caught up in a tumble of laughing and kissing, in between which they proceeded to peel off each others soaking clothes. It was only in the briefest moment of clear thought that he managed to kick the door shut behind them.
“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do this…”
The words were breathless, snatched in between the kisses he was now lavishing on her very nearly naked body. She caught a moan in her throat.
She knew, she knew in the power and the passion, the feeling in the kiss, the very slight tremble in his hand. And she knew what wanting someone that badly was like. But now, she had him. Right where she wanted him, between her thighs.
The perfect end to an imperfect night, she thought with more than a glimmer of satisfaction.