Fic: Ruby Tuesday, Tom/OFC, rated NC17

[peki]

“You’re early,” Katie greeted him when Tom arrived for their date the next day. She was sitting on the steps at the entrance to the shop, changing from a pair of electric blue sneakers to black, shiny rubber rainboots. Her coat rode up, momentarily allowing him more than just a glimpse at her thighs. She wore black tights with a lacy pattern that didn’t end within his sight. He couldn’t see a skirt to speak of.

Tom smirked. “Looks like I’m just in time.”

“Hmm.” She smoothed her coat down over her legs before getting up. “I think maybe I should’ve made you wait in the rain for a bit. Nice, cold shower?”

He pulled up his shoulders, chastised. This wasn’t the tone he’d wanted to set for their date, especially not after the battle he’d fought to be here now. “No, don’t,” he pleaded gruffly. “I don’t have a, um…” He didn’t remember the word, so he tried to convey his meaning by a series of gestures that made him feel more idiotic by the second.

Katie quizzically watched him unfold an imaginary implement. “An umbrella?”

“Oh - yeah. Like the Rihanna song. Right.”

She giggled quietly. “That’s okay, I have one.” She pulled it out of the large bag in which she’d stowed away her sneakers and handed it to him. “You can stand under my umbrella…,” she sang, slightly off-key. “If you’ll carry it, that is. I don’t think I can reach up high enough to cover you.” She grinned up at him, her irritation forgotten.

Relieved, Tom grinned back. He opened the umbrella to hold over her head as she stepped out into the street. The rain was hardly more than an annoying drizzle today, but it was enough to make being outside uncomfortable. “So where are we going?”

“I know a place. Come on.” They had to walk closely together for the small umbrella to cover them both. After a few steps, Katie slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow, pressing up against his side. She barely reached past his shoulder. Tom had to adjust his long strides so they could walk comfortably side by side.

“How’s your day been so far?” she asked as she led him around a corner and along an unfamiliar street.

Tom didn’t really want to dwell on that too much. “Okay,” he said neutrally. He smiled down at her. “Better now.”

She furrowed her brow. “Bad, uh, rehearsal?”

“No, rehearsal is tonight.” One would’ve thought rescheduling a band rehearsal wouldn’t be much of a problem if all members of said band agreed to have it in the evening instead of after breakfast, but one would’ve been wrong. “Our manager didn’t want me to leave.”

“What, you need his permission?”

“No, it’s just…” Tom sighed. “He’s with us for a long time now, since we were kids. He still thinks he’s the band mommy or something.”

‘Damn it, Tom, I just worry about you! At least take a bodyguard with you!’

Maybe David was right, and he was being 'reckless and irresponsible' for going off on his own. But Tom didn’t want to take a bodyguard with him to meet a nice, normal girl, not on the one day and in the one place he could pass as a normal guy. Was he betraying her by not revealing who he was, what it was to be with him? David had called him selfish, but Tom refused to see it that way. He only wanted what everyone did: to connect with someone, outside of the lies and pretenses of fame.

He released a long breath, putting all those thoughts aside for the moment. He was here now. He could worry later. “I work hard,” he smiled lopsidedly. “I need a break.”

She patted his arm. “We’ll have a nice break now.” They rounded another corner and came to stand in front of a bright pink door. “Here we are.”

The little bakery was as kitsch as could be, with walls painted in pastel colors and two shopgirls in pigtails and white, lacy aprons. A large display case held towers of cupcakes, one more scrumptious than the next. At the back of the shop, there was a small seating area with plush pink benches and ornate little tables. The color scheme was like something out of a little girl’s dream.

“Um,” Tom said. “It’s…” Pink, he thought. “It’s nice?”

Katie giggled. “Don’t mind the décor. The food is really good. And the shakes.” She stepped up to the counter to order a large cup of coffee and a chocolate cupcake.

“The shakes?” Tom tried to make sense of the menu board that hung on the wall, held by two gilded paper-maché angels. “Are you having one?”

“No, too much sugar makes me hyper,” she laughed. “I need something a little bitter to go with the sweet.”

Something caught his eye. “A Skittles shake,” he told the cashier. The other shopgirl scurried off to scoop candy into a huge cup of ice cream. “Please,” Tom tacked on when he saw Katie look at him expectantly.

“That’ll be eleven fifty, please,” the cashier said.

Katie began to rummage through her bag, but he caught her arm. “No, I pay. But you can handle the money.” He pulled a handful of unfamiliar bills and coins from his pocket and dumped it into her hands.

“Okay.” Laughing, she sorted through the cash, handed some to the cashier, then gathered the rest of it and put it into Tom’s pocket. “Thanks for the treat. Come on, let’s sit down.”

She led him to a table in the farthest corner of the shop. One of the girls served them their drinks and Katie’s cupcake, then left them alone to go chat with her coworker up front.

Tom folded his long body up to sit on the narrow little bench by the wall. Clumsily, he began to peel off his down jacket, trying not to sweep the cups off the table or make the whole thing topple over. He didn’t often feel graceless, but in this doll’s house of a café, he felt like a giant.

“There!” Katie said, and pulled the jacket off his shoulders unceremoniously.

“Thanks.” Tom sprawled, stretching out his long legs under the table, and watched her unbutton her coat, too. To his delight, he discovered that they matched: the blue sweater dress she wore was the exact same color as the main squares in his plaid shirt. The dress wasn’t as indecently short as he’d thought before, but it did show off quite a bit of leg. Tom wished that it had clung more, but he couldn’t very well fault someone else for preferring comfortably oversized apparel.

“I like your clotheses,” he told her.

Katie looked up, puzzled. “My…what?”

“Your clotheses?” he tried, stumbling over the many hissing sounds again.

“My clothes?” She bit back a laugh. Her teeth dug deeply into her lower lip, but she couldn’t stifle her smile.

Tom felt himself blush, which was ridiculous. He was pretty sure he hadn’t blushed since he’d accidentally given his first kissing partner a bloody lip at eleven, which was why she’d moved on to Bill the next day. Now though, with the lovely lady of his fantasies sitting within arm’s reach, he desperately wanted to get everything right; otherwise she might leave, or dissolve into thin air like a figment of his imagination.

“I’m German,” he said defensively, as if he needed to point out to her that there was a language he could actually speak well.

“I thought so. My German teacher had an accent like yours.” She smiled encouragingly. “Try again?”

Tom would’ve flat-out refused, but her smile was all kindness. He didn’t think she was trying to make fun of him, even though she could. “Clothes?” he said, trying very hard to imitate her pronunciation.

“Yes!” She patted his knee. “That’s it - you don’t need the extra ‘s’. It’s already in the plural. Clothes.”

Tom didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. His perception narrowed down to the hand gently stroking his thigh through the coarse fabric of his jeans. He swallowed hard. “Okay. I like your clothes.” He pointed at his flannel shirt. “We match.”

“Oh - we do! That’s neat.”

“But you look better in this blue,” Tom smiled, which earned him a playful slap.

“Flatterer,” she laughed, even as she blushed happily with the compliment. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

They smiled at each other across the table.

“Try your shake,” she said softly. “I’ve never had the Skittles flavor.”

Tom sampled it curiously; it was very sweet, but somehow it went well with the mood of the day. Cooped up in here, the grey upon grey of the February afternoon seemed far away. He looked around, taking in the paintings of questionable taste in their gilded frames, the fairy lights that were strung across the ceiling, the shelves on the walls that were filled from top to bottom with big jars of candy in every color of the rainbow. He smiled; he knew a special someone who’d been whining about ice cream for ages, and who was overdue some quality time with Tom anyway.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked.

“Huh? Oh, nothing, really.”

She shrugged. Her sweater slipped off her shoulder, exposing freckled skin and a bright pink bra strap. “You were sort of smiling to yourself.”

“I was just thinking. My brother would really like all the candy.”

“Your brother,” she said, amused. “You’re close? You seem very different.”

“We’re close. We’re always together.” Tom wanted to explain how they complemented each other, he with his neurotic perfectionism and Bill with his carefree enthusiasm, how they were as two sides of the same coin, but he lacked the words. The script he usually stuck to was no good when talking to someone who didn’t already know how he and Bill worked, what they did, together. What they had accomplished. “We’re… We look different, but we belong together. Like…like…” On impulse, he reached out and pushed her cup and plate closer together. “Bitter and sweet.”

Katie looked down at her cupcake, which seemed to be sneaking off to the rim of the plate for a clandestine meeting with her coffee cup. She smiled. “So. In this metaphor, you’re the cupcake, right?”

Tom’s face must’ve shown his indignation, because she burst out laughing. He huffed. In his opinion, Bill made a much better cupcake; hadn’t she seen his hair? “No.”

“Yes,” she gasped out between peals of laughter. “You’re sweet. And colorful.” She pointed at his bright blue beanie, which matched his shirt, which matched his scarf, which matched his shoelaces.

“No,” he insisted. His cheeks burned. He shifted uncomfortably on the pink bench, suddenly acutely aware how silly he must look in this place that was all frills and pastels. Maybe all this had been a bad idea. He wasn’t a cupcake sort of person.

“Uh-huh.” Katie’s eyes twinkled. She picked up her cupcake and began to lick at the frosting.

Whatever aversion he’d had to unflatteringly cutesy metaphors melted away like buttercream under the strokes of her tongue. Tom stared, barely able to keep himself from leaning across the table and kissing the frosting right off her lips. He’d be a cupcake if she’d do that to him with her mouth. He’d be anything, whatever she wanted, if she’d touch him with her lips like…like…

“Do you want a taste?” Her wry voice pulled him rudely from his naughty fantasies. She held out the cupcake. “It’s good.”

Tom looked into her wide, all-too-innocent eyes and knew without the shadow of a doubt that she knew what she was doing to him. Slowly, he began to smirk. This was a game he knew how to play. “Actually,” he said, “I do,” and leaned in to kiss her hungrily. He licked at her lower lip that was sticky and sweet, begging to be kissed. He’d been aching for another taste of her, addicted from the first, fleeting moment, desperate like every kiss they shared could be the last. And it might be; who knew what tomorrow would bring? When he let her go, it could be over, just like that, before it had ever begun.

Tom didn’t want to let her go.

Her cupcake hit the plate with a soft squish, forgotten. Her hands fisted in his shirt, unsure whether to pull him in or push him away, and Tom seized the moment of uncertainty to gather her against his chest, one hand cupping her cheek, the other angling her body towards him with a firm grip on her hip. She gasped, startled, but then his tongue was tangling with hers, drawing her out teasingly, and suddenly she was kissing him back, as if the wall between them had crumbled and fallen.

She broke away, breathing hard. “Oh boy.”

Tom didn’t know if the phrase was complimentary or not, so he just kissed her again. She tasted like coffee and frosting, bittersweet and wonderful.

Close to them, someone cleared his throat. “Excuse me,” a man with two squawking children said peevishly, “This is a family establishment.”

Tom turned around, ready to tell the guy to shove off, but a kick to his shin turned the insult into a loud, “Ow!”

“We’re very sorry.” Katie pulled back a little, smiling apologetically at the man, who settled down at the table next to theirs and began to scold his children for making a mess of their obscenely large shakes.

She took a few quick sips of her coffee, her cheeks very red. The cup rattled as she set it back into the saucer. Through the curtain of her hair, Tom could see that she looked flustered, but she kept a hand on his arm, stroking gently back and forth even as she ignored him for a couple of minutes.

Tom slurped his shake loudly for maximum annoyance of the man at the other table. From the corner of his eye, he saw Katie watching him with amusement, and blew up his cheeks comically until he heard her giggle behind her hand.

“Stop.”

“Why? He interrupted us.” If he thought about it, Tom was actually quite mad.

“We’ll go somewhere else,” she murmured. Her fingers crept into his sleeve and tickled the inside of his wrist.

He shivered, ridiculously turned on by so small a touch. But then, he’d been hard since the moment he’d traced the lacy pattern of her tights up under her skirt with his eyes, out in the street, in the cold. Every moment he was not touching her was torture.

“Where?” he asked, his voice little more than a strangled whisper.

She hummed thoughtfully. Her hand had disappeared into his sleeve and was exploring the taut muscle of his arm. “We could take a walk in the park.” Short nails scratched lightly at his skin. “Or find ourselves a nice dark corner in some museum. Behind some ornamental tapestry.” Her fingers skimmed his arm, then suddenly pressed down on the spot above his wrist where he was sore from too much guitar practice.

Tom hissed. Immediately, she snatched her hand back, startled.

“Sorry! What did I do?”

“It’s just my bad arm,” he winced. “I played guitar too long.”

“You play until you’re hurting?” She shook her head. “That’s crazy.”

“It’s my job,” he shrugged.

Her eyebrows rose with surprise. “Wait, the band is your job? I thought you were…I don’t know, touring for fun.”

Tom snorted. Touring could be fun, but most of the time, it was hard work. “Let’s not… You said you want to go to a museum. We can do that.” He leered playfully, trying to dispel the worried frown on her face. “I love museums,” he claimed, outrageously. If his brother was here, he’d have a gigglefit. “Let’s go. Right now.”

She chuckled. “Easy. Is your arm okay?”

“Yeah.” He rotated his wrist gingerly, testing the strained muscles and tendons. He might need some athletic tape tomorrow, but he didn’t want to think about that now. “I’m fine.”

“Still,” she smiled. “Let’s take things slowly, okay? Right now, we can just have coffee. Or a shake.”

She didn’t touch him after that, and after a few foiled attempts to touch her, Tom resigned himself to a quiet afternoon.

“I wasn’t looking to meet anyone. I didn’t want to meet anyone,” she told him conversationally as they strolled along the darkening streets half an hour later, her hand in his. “But you just kept coming back.”

No one was more surprised about that than he, but Tom wisely chose not to say that. “I like sneakers.”

“I noticed.” The rain had stopped; they didn’t need the umbrella, but she still kept close to him. “What else do you like?”

“Making music. Hanging out with my band mates. You,” he enumerated, grinning down at her.

She chortled. “So you and your brother work together. What’s that like?”

“It’s good,” he shrugged. “Sometimes it’s annoying too. But we’re together all the time anyway. Doesn’t feel like work, really.”

“Really?” she smiled. “I have a sister, and I love her to bits, but we drive each other batty if we spend too much time together.”

Tom knew it was like that for a lot of people, but it still seemed sad to him. “We’re twins,” he offered consolingly. “It’s different. It’s a, a special connection.” He noticed her smiling at him like one would at a cute, fluffy baby animal and quickly changed direction. “Besides, he needs me. I have the bigger brain.”

Katie laughed. “So modest and charming.”

“That’s me,” Tom grinned cockily, and she laughed harder.

“Uh huh. Come on, the museum’s this way.” She laid a hand on his arm, steering him the right direction. Suddenly, she was very close again.

Tom drew her carefully against his side and laid his arm around her shoulders, almost expecting resistance. But she didn’t shake him off; her arm came around his back, and together, they walked on, not missing a step.

It turned out to be a beautiful day, bad weather notwithstanding.

~*~

“So, the band,” she began when Tom walked her from the shop to the station the next evening, “that’s what you do for a living? Make music?”

“Yeah.” Tom debated how much he should tell her about it.

This wasn’t exactly a date - ‘too soon’, she’d said the day before, when he’d asked to see her again today. He had showed up at the store after rehearsal anyway, and she had graciously allowed him to accompany her for a bit of the way home. But he could already see the bright red, white and blue sign of the London Underground in the distance as they strolled along busy Kingsway, and he didn’t want to waste time on polite chitchat when they could be doing other things.

Tom was quite partial to kissing Katie, after they’d spent the better part of yesterday afternoon making out behind the ceremonial burial robe of some Egyptian mummy.

“What sort of music?”

“Rock. Pop. Whatever we feel like, really.” He grinned. “My brother is really creative. He has the ideas.” The rest of them just went along on the crazy rollercoaster ride.

“He seemed interesting.” Katie glanced up at him, all curious blue eyes. “But so are you.” The cold had colored her cheeks pink. She wore a white knit hat today that looked like a dollop of cream atop her cherry hair. He smoothed his palm down the back of her head, where wool met the softness of her hair. He did like touching her; everything about her was warm and alive.

“Yeah?” he smiled, and she smacked him playfully, chortling.

“Do you enjoy it?” she asked. “Making music as a job?”

“Huh? Oh.” He actually had to give the question some thought. He released a long breath into the winter air, where it puffed up, a little cloud that hung over his head for a moment before it dissipated. “Most of the time, it’s good.”

“And when it’s not?”

“Then I get stressed.” He couldn’t often speak openly about the hardships of the rockstar life - it would’ve sounded ungrateful - but with her, who didn’t know the scope of his job, he could voice the thoughts that weighed heavy on his soul. “Right now, I’m worried we won’t fill the venues we booked.”

“Will you play a show in London?” She smiled. “I’ll buy a ticket.”

After the quiet time they’d spent together here, he wasn’t sure he would even want to expose her to the reality of his life. It would come as a shock. “I’d give you a free ticket, but we’re not playing in London.”

“Where’s your tour taking you then?”

“Luxembourg. Rotterdam. Brussels. Then back to Germany, up to Denmark and Sweden…” He saw her surprised look and quickly changed the subject. “What about you? You said you studied…business something?”

“Business management,” she nodded. “I’m not really sure where to go with that, but it’s good for a lot of things. I kinda want to open a shop. If working at a shoe store is fun, imagine what it would be like to own one.”

Tom smiled at her enthusiasm. “Sounds nice.”

There was a busy intersection ahead, but before the high street crowd could swallow them up, Katie led them around a corner onto a quieter side street that was lined, left and right, with quaint little shops. She pointed at the display window of a small boutique that sold custom footwear. There seemed to be a lot of shoe stores in London. Tom wasn’t complaining.

“See, I think that’s really cool - their shoes are one-of-a-kind. If I had a shop, I’d commission only the really cool shoes, the limited editions and the rare colors. Make it a really exclusive selection. But affordable.” She smiled brightly. “So the poor students and musicians could afford them, too.”

Her excitement was contagious. Tom stopped on the curb, and snuck his other arm around her to pull her close, bunching their bulky winter coats between them. “Keep talking about sneakers,” he murmured, breathing in the scent of her hair.

“Well.” Her eyes sparkled mischievously. “I’d rent a lot of sales space and put all the shoe boxes out on the floor so people could open them up and smell that new shoe smell, you know, the leather and rubber…”

He might have moaned quietly, but he couldn’t be sure. He was too wrapped up in her: the red shine of her hair under the lights of a theater marquee, her fruity scent, the soft-rough-soft feel as his hands skimmed down her sides, touching silky hair and coarse wool and finally skin as her hand caught his at her hip.

“I’d have color sections,” she continued, her voice low now and rich, only for him. “And there’d be a counter just for accessories. Shoe care products, clips, laces--”

Tom had to kiss her; he couldn’t have helped himself if he’d wanted to. She giggled quietly as his lower lip nudged hers teasingly, and he sealed the small sound between them with his mouth, her amusement humming through him.

“You have a shoe fetish,” she teased.

“Nah,” Tom whispered, close to her ear. “It’s just the way you talk.” There was a small mole under her left earlobe; he kissed it softly, rubbing his nose into her hairline, making her shiver. He could feel her pulse throb quickly, excitedly, under his lips. He traced it down her neck with his tongue, sucking the thin skin there between his teeth playfully.

“Hey!” Katie’s voice came as if from far away. Her arms wound around his neck, drawing him up so she could kiss him again. They stood on the sidewalk, people brushing past and traffic flowing all around them, wrapped up in their own little bubble.

Tom had forgotten where he was. He might even have forgotten who he was, and all that came with it: the fear of stalkers, the annoyances of paparazzi and nosy reporters, their demanding manager. All he knew in this moment was that this, here, was exactly where he needed to be - with her, kissing, kissing.

Someone shoved past them, whistling. Katie broke away, breathless. “Oh.” She licked at her swollen lips. “We should stop.”

She might have a point; chances were low, but someone might recognize him, and Tom didn’t want pictures of them together all over the internet tomorrow. His first impulse was to take her back to the hotel, but she wasn’t a groupie and he didn’t want to treat her like one. There was something terribly impersonal about the easy-clean carpets and generic furniture, no matter how luxurious the place was. Usually, he was all too glad to leave all memory of his encounters behind in the mussed sheets of a hotel bed, but this, with her, he wanted to remember.

He glanced around, spotting a dark passageway between two houses nearby, out of the way of passers-by and bright street lamps. He caught her hands as she made to push him away, tugging her towards the secluded little corner. Under cover of darkness, his arms came around her again, sneaking under her coat to hold her close. “Better?”

“Lots.” She arched her back stiffly when Tom crowded her against a damp, mossy brick wall, trying to touch it as little as possible. Happily, this pressed her closer to him. She wrinkled her nose. “It’s smelly here. Very romantic.”

“I’ll distract you,” he smirked, lips ghosting over her jaw again before they found hers. There was no room in his mind for anything else; his senses were filled with her and her alone. She wore a flannel dress under her coat today, much like the shirt he’d worn the day before; Tom fancied that she’d put it on because of him. He slid his hands up her sides, trying to feel the shape of her body through her clothes. Pressed up against him as she was, he could feel that she was hiding some nice parts under her oversized shirt.

His fingers fisted in the soft flannel fabric at her waist, bunching it up to reveal the curve of her hips. He couldn’t resist moving his hands further down, palming her ass through the thick cotton of her leggings, shuddering when he felt the uneven outline of a lace trim on her panties.

“Stop!” she breathed, breaking their kiss with a firm hand at the back of his neck. “Tom, stop!”

Reluctantly, he drew back.

“I asked you once, yesterday,” she said sternly, “Will you be good?”

“I am good,” he smirked, just like he’d done the day before. She’d laughed at him then and let him kiss her some more; the precedent made him bold. He hauled her up against him and kissed her deeply, his tongue tracing patterns over her neck. He sucked on the sensitive spot behind her ear again, taking ridiculous delight in the mark he had left there before.

She moaned quietly, her hands coming up to cup his head. “You’re…”

“Really, really good,” he breathed, smug. “I promise…” And with that, he popped the top button on her shirt, fingertips sliding over a slippery silk cami that draped the swell of a round breast.

“Tom, Tom--”

He groaned, low in his throat, but before he could get any further, she pushed his hands away and drew back, clutching the collar of her shirt.

“Do I really have to tell you to stop?” She shook her head, glowering. “I can’t do this. We can’t.”

Tom could; he had no qualms about any of this. He’d wanted it ever since he’d first laid eyes on her standing under some blinking Christmas lights, surrounded by sneakers. “Sorry, I just…” He held out his hands in what was supposed to be a placating gesture, but only made her retreat further. “Why not? I don’t have much time left here.”

“So you’d rather not waste it on just going out with me?” Her eyes flashed. “What is this to you? A race? To get into my pants?”

“You’re not wearing pants,” he countered. He was all too aware of that fact.

That took a bit of the wind out of her sails. “No, I’m not wearing trousers. I am, however, wearing pants.”

Confused, he squinted at her. “Huh?”

“Or knickers, as it were.” She shook her head. “Never mind. My pants needn’t concern you. Just… Forget about it.” She turned sharply and walked off, leaving him standing in the alley like an idiot.

Tom blinked. A minute ago, everything had been great. He hadn’t known he could mess up so completely in such a short time. “Hey, wait! Katie!”

He hurried after her as fast as his pants would allow. She was surprisingly fast when she wanted to be. Breathless, Tom caught up to her, jogging along as she stomped down the rainy street, her rubber boots squeaking.

“It’s not a race,” he panted. “I just, I really like you. I think you’re really pretty.” That earned him a sidelong glare, which was better than nothing. “I wanted to touch you. So I did. I had no…plan to get into your, your pants, or…what do you call them?”

She huffed. “Knickers.”

“Right.” He reached out and caught her wrist, stopping her in her tracks. “I, I didn’t even really think--”

“That much is obvious,” she retorted coldly. “I don’t know what world you live in, but you can’t just have everything you want, when you want it.”

That one stung; was he really so spoiled? “I don’t--”

“I mean, what did you expect when you came to meet me today?” she challenged, working herself up to righteous anger now. “Did you think I’d just let you grope me in an alley, between some trash cans?” She spun around, livid. “In the rain?” She touched a shaky hand to her forehead, muttering to herself. “Dammit!”

“I, I…” The words wouldn’t come fast enough. Bits and pieces of what he wanted to say were whirling around in his head, but he couldn’t string together a halfway decent sentence. Tom got the sinking feeling that nothing he could say would fix this now. “I didn’t expect that,” he finally forced out past the lump in his throat. “But… Yeah, I want you. Should I lie and say I don’t?”

She flushed hotly. “I don’t want you to say anything.” She forcefully unwrapped his fingers from around her arm. “Go away, Tom!” And with that, she stormed off, not looking back. A moment later she was gone, swallowed up by the crowd.

Tom stared after her, a niggling unease creeping up on him. It felt a lot like guilt.

~*~

“So basically, you’re fucked,” Gustav summed up the story after Tom had related it to his band mates at rehearsal.

“No, Juschtel,” Bill said indulgently, “The point is that he didn’t get fucked.”

Ba-dum ching! came the cheerful rimshot from the drum platform above, giving Bill’s punch line that extra force it needed for Tom to feel even more shitty.

“Not funny!” he shouted across the stage. The headsets and in-ear monitoring meant they could talk normally to each other from anywhere within the venue, but he just felt like shouting. He let his guitar screech a loud, dissonant chord.

“Too soon?” Bill asked. “Well. I’m sorry, Tom, but she kind of had a point.”

“You were being a pig,” Gustav elaborated cheerfully.

“Cut him some slack, you guys,” came Georg’s calm voice from somewhere under the stage, where he and his guitar tech were restringing a bass. “He hasn’t gotten laid since we had that thing in that place, remember? We’re lucky he hasn’t exploded yet. We could be scraping Tom splatter off our custom-painted stage right now.”

Bill actually seemed chagrined. He skipped across the stage to where Tom was sullenly stomping on the buttons on his effects board, trying out settings. Bill bent down so he could catch a glimpse into the hood of Tom’s sweatshirt, into which Tom had retreated to sulk. “I’m sorry,” he stage-whispered. “I should’ve gotten you some exotic dancers while we were on vacation.”

“I don’t want exotic dancers!” Tom growled. “I want her.”

“You mustn’t be picky,” Gustav advised, “You’re lucky there’s still girls out there at all who want to sleep with you. I would’ve thought you would’ve run out by now.”

Maybe he was right and Tom’s luck had run out. Tom hung his head. “I didn’t mean to insult her!”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have implied she was just a ticky box on your check list.” Georg came out of the vaults, strumming his bass. “Girls don’t like that for some reason.”

“I didn’t…” Tom groaned. “Look, I would give it time! I would give her all the time she needs, but I don’t have it, it’s not mine to give, and I’ll never forgive myself if I let this one get away without doing something, so what was I supposed to do? Please, tell me!”

His tirade was met with stunned silence. Tom shook back his hood to find the other three staring at him, identical looks of surprise on their faces. He flushed. “What?”

“Did you just say you wanted more time with her? Do you mean to say that this is not just love for one night?” Bill threw up his hands. “Oh! Oh, Tom!” He launched himself at his twin like a very skinny, extra volatile missile, exploding in Tom’s face with a shower of affection. Tom found his cheeks being pinched and tried to shove the contrite singer off him, but Bill clung with surprising strength. “I’m sorry, I didn’t pay enough attention! But I’ll help you now!”

“Please don’t,” Tom grouched.

“We’ll get her to forgive you,” Bill cooed, ignoring the way Tom was squirming in his embrace. “Don’t worry, Tom! Once she sees what a softie you are inside--”

“I’m not soft!”

“Oh, please.” Gustav was leaning over the railing of his drum riser, watching the spectacle below with amusement. “You cried during Meet Joe Black.”

“I didn’t cry,” Tom snapped. Gustav was lucky that the egg still didn’t work right, so there was no way of getting at him until his platform was lowered again at the end of their rehearsal. “And it’s all Bill’s fault anyway! He’s soppy. It’s contagious.”

“It wouldn’t hurt you to be a little more soppy,” Georg suggested. “Girls like that sort of thing.”

Bill let his twin go at last to give Georg a withering look. “Treating someone well has nothing to do with soppy. I’d imagine she just wants him to be a little more sensitive about her needs.”

“I am sensitive to her needs.” Tom wiggled his eyebrows meaningfully. It wasn’t just that he’d wanted Katie so much it hurt; no, she’d wanted him too. He was pretty sure of that.

Bill smacked the back of his head. “Her emotional needs.”

Tom winced. His own emotions were running amok, and who was being sensitive to his needs, anyway? His band mates were teasing him, David remained unimpressed with the rehearsals in general and Tom in particular, Katie was mad and, to add insult to injury, that didn’t even make a difference for the perpetual state of arousal he was in at the mere thought of the girl. Tom’s nerves were frayed; he didn’t think he could handle much more.

“We’ll go see her today, when we’re done here,” Bill decided, blissfully oblivious to his twin’s impending nervous breakdown. “Tell her all the nice things you told us earlier. She’ll come around, you’ll see.”

But Katie didn’t.

“She doesn’t want to talk to him.” Rose was blocking the door to the shop, having intercepted the twins on the threshold.

Through the window, Tom had seen Katie disappear into the stockroom when they showed up at the door. He’d known she was angry, but he hadn’t thought she’d go out of her way to avoid him when he was trying so hard to make amends. The thought stung.

“He wants to apologize,” Bill told the shopgirl in the dulcet tones he reserved for the most obnoxiously dense reporters.

“He’s not welcome.” Rose cleared her throat. She smiled at Bill. “But you can come in if you’d like.”

Bill glanced at his twin. “I couldn’t,” he said politely. “Can you tell Katie that Tom is very sorry, at least?”

She scowled at Tom. “Can’t he speak for himself?”

He just couldn’t win today, not with any woman. “I can,” Tom said sullenly, “but you won’t let me talk to her anyway.” He ducked his head, feeling stupid and helpless against the force of the female hostility that was directed at him. “I wasn’t going to… I care about her, dammit.”

That gave Rose pause. “She likes you too. For whatever reason.”

“Yeah, well.” Tom shrugged jerkily.

There was an uncomfortable silence. “I don’t know what you did, but she’s quite upset,” Rose told him eventually, in more conciliatory tones. “I don’t like a workplace atmosphere like that.”

Tom glanced up, surprised that she’d address him directly. “Then let me talk to her and fix it!”

“I can’t.” She stepped closer, wrapping her long cardigan around herself against the cold, and lowered her voice. “She said she didn’t want to talk to you today, so I assume she won’t want to talk to you tomorrow, when she gets off work at half past seven, and her evening class is cancelled.”

He raised his eyebrows. “She…?”

“Go now.” Rose nodded at Bill. “Nice seeing you again.”

“You too.” Bill favored her with a smile that had made many a girl swoon. “Thank you.”

They retreated to the pub around the corner, where Gustav and Georg had set up camp and were already on their third pint.

“I like it here,” Gustav declared after Bill had given a brief recap of what had happened at the shop. “The beer is good, the city is really interesting, and the girls won’t give Tom the time of day. We should’ve come here much sooner.”

Georg chortled. “I think you did the right thing,” he told Tom encouragingly. “Give her some space. She’s not going to forgive you if you’re annoying about it.”

“I don’t know that he can be not annoying,” Gustav said.

“Be nice.” Bill kicked their drummer’s bare shin under the table, causing Gustav to spill his beer and curse. “His ego is fragile, you know that.”

“I’m sitting right here!” Tom complained.

Bill patted his knee. “Don’t worry, Tom, we’ll go back tomorrow. Maybe bring some flowers. She can’t ignore you forever.”

But Katie could.

“I’m sorry.” The moment she stepped into the street, Tom was there. He hadn’t dared go inside, instead choosing to wait for her to finish tidying up. He’d observed from across the street while she puttered around in the shop, locked up the register, switched off all the lights. When she’d opened the door, he’d forced himself to go forward with his plan, alone this time. Bill was waiting this one out, having ducked into the vintage store across from her shop again.

“Please, listen,” he said, and it sounded a lot like begging. “Katie, I didn’t mean to--”

“Don’t,” she sighed. “Just… Leave it alone, Tom, okay?”

She was talking to him. That was all that registered with Tom’s mind. He couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face. Heartened, he thrust the flowers he’d bought at the corner shop at her. “Okay, but… I brought flowers?”

She looked at the bouquet, her eyebrows rising high on her forehead. “That’s…sweet,” she said in a flat voice. She didn’t take the bouquet.

Tom frowned. “What’s wrong?” The flowers were a little wilted, and the cellophane wrap was crinkled from Tom nervously crumpling it between his fingers, but he’d believed it was the thought that counted. His mom had always loved the bouquets from the gas station.

“What’s wrong?” she snapped. “You aren’t serious, right?”

“I know I… offended you,” he said, trying to get through the lines he’d rehearsed before she interrupted him again, “But I didn’t mean to. I thought it was okay to, to do that. Kiss you and, and stuff.” He took a deep breath, all too aware that she might bite his head off with the next remark. “I thought it was okay because you wanted it too.”

She nodded tightly. “You made assumptions. About me, about what was going to happen between us.”

That she could deny what had been between them was offensive to him. He huffed. “Don’t tell me you didn’t want it too.”

She blushed deeply, but held his eyes. “I did. I do. But that doesn’t mean it’s going to happen.”

“Why not?” he exclaimed, throwing out his arms and almost hitting her in the face with the bouquet.

“Be quiet,” she told him firmly. She rummaged around in her bag for her keys and began to lock the shop door. “I’ve been there, done that. I don’t need another guy who just wants to shag and then leave me,” she said under her breath.

“Shag…?” The word made him stumble, but he had a fair idea what she meant. “I’m not… I like you! I don’t want to go away! But I have to.”

“Why? To go on tour? Can’t you…postpone or something?” Her face fell. Suddenly, she didn’t look angry anymore, just sad.

Tom bit at his lip. “I can’t. It’s all booked, the stage is almost ready, we are finally ready.”

She folded her arms across her chest, drawing in on herself. “But I’m not ready. You can’t expect me to be just because you are.”

He didn’t know what to say to that. He couldn’t deny how much he wanted her, and he didn’t understand how she could admit that she wanted him, too, that she cared, just as much as he did, and still not give them a chance to work things out. But he’d have to respect it; there was nothing else he could do.

“Okay,” he murmured, “okay.”

She nodded tightly. “Good.”

Tom wondered if this was the end. His insides felt hollow. “Can I walk you home?”

“No, that’s okay.” She shrugged. “You should go. I’m sure you have things to do. Rehearsal, or whatever.”

“We’re almost done.” He didn’t want to make her mad again by expressing a sense of urgency, but time was running out; he had to let her know how he felt.

If only he knew what the fuck it was that he felt.

“Won’t be here much longer,” he said. His heart sank when she nodded.

“That’s great, isn’t it? Means things are looking good for your tour?”

“Yeah.” He looked into her sad, beautiful eyes, and was suddenly overcome with a longing to hold her again, just once. If this was the last time he saw her, he wanted it to be a pleasant memory. He took a deep breath. “Can I kiss you?”

“No! I still have the mark from last time.” She touched her neck briefly, feeling if her thick, knit scarf was still in place.

Tom felt a tired sense of satisfaction. At least he’d given her something to remind her of him. He held out the flowers again. “Take them? They were for you.”

But she shook her head. “Let’s just…not, all right? Bye, Tom.” She turned sharply on her heel and hurried off, leaving him standing on the curb, looking after her.

It had started to rain again.