See You Smile

by Dawn Sister

  "Er, hi!" I say, then, because I don't want to meet his eye, and I can't actually see where his eyes are beneath his bushy eyebrows, I turn back to the bar to try to get the barman's attention.

  The Wizard/Wookie half breed squashes closer to me. What is this guy's story? I know moving will not work because I already did that and he followed.

  "You here for the party?" the guy asks in his gruff voice. There's so much hair I can't actually see his mouth,

  "Er, yeah I am." I answer, because it would be impolite not to, "I haven't been to this club for a long time."

  "Thought I hadn't seen you around before. It's usually full of kids these days!" He grunts and I just nod, giving a small, polite laugh.

  The barman takes my order and I wait with growing impatience for him to bring the drinks.

  "Did you come on your own?" bear guy asks me and I can feel the panic rising. Is he coming onto me? His knee just moved closer and pressed against mine. Eugh!

  I'm sure he's a nice enough guy, but he's just not my type. All that hair would give my entire body a beard rash, and how the hell would I even find his mouth to kiss him? I'd need a comb and a couple of barrettes; I'd need a degree in hair dressing just to find the guy's eyes.

  "No I didn't come on my own." I tell him, although I can't bring myself to tell him I came with someone specific because I don't know how Cal would react if I was giving everyone the wrong idea, "I'm here with friends." I point in the general direction of the group that includes Cal.

  Hairy guy huffs and shrugs,

  "You're here with a bunch of kids?" he asks disdainfully, then he leans towards me and licks his lips. So that's where his mouth is, eugh, gross, just gross. I can't contain a slight shudder, "How about you ditch the kids and we go somewhere more adult?" he suggests, flicking his eyebrows that are so thick they bounce independently of his face. His hand comes up to stroke my own beard and I try to move back but there is someone standing directly behind me now so I can't, "I like a guy who knows how to grow a beard." He says seductively.

  Oh my god, I've had enough of this,

  "Yeah?" I ask him, containing my disgust as I reach out and grab a handful of his ample facial construction and give it a firm tug, "I like a beard too, but some people just don't have a clue when to stop."

  I turn back to the bar and pay for my drinks, ignoring the flash of surprise at my brush off in Hairy Guy's eyes. His hand grabs my arm though and I look down at it, then up at his face, my eyebrows raised in irritation. I do not like being manhandled,

  "Hey, listen, I just thought…." He begins but doesn't finish as a sun-bleached blond whirlwind jumps between us,

  "Jake, what's taking you so long? Did you have to brew the damn beer?" Cal shouts at me excitedly. His blue eyes are wide and innocent but he flicks his eyebrows and his expression tells me he has jumped in on purpose. He turns to face Sasquatch and grins, "You don't mind if I steal him away do you?" he flutters his eye lashes and flashes Big Foot his widest grin then doesn't wait for a reply as he pulls me away leaving the guy spluttering with surprise.

  The entire incident is threatening to reduce me to fits of hysterical laughter. This is the second time tonight that Cal has jumped in and laid a claim on me. It's becoming a habit. Not that I'm complaining but I don't think he realises what it looks like to everyone else or what it looks like to me.

  I glance back at Hairy Biker and I think he looks angry that he was just cock blocked by one of "those kids", or at least his eyebrows seem to be trying to meet his moustache as he frowns, otherwise I wouldn't know.

  "And I thought I was the one that needed rescuing." Cal snorts, with an adorable roll of his eyes, glancing back at the bar and shuddering slightly, "Eugh, gross."

  I chuckle as he pulls me through the ever increasing crowd in the club. I realise he is pulling me away from his group of friends though. I resist. Has he lost his bearings or something?

  He stops with a gasp,

  "What's wrong?" he regards me with feigned innocence, "I didn't interrupt you in full swing did I?"

  I narrow my eyes and click my tongue,

  "No, cheeky brat." I snort, "Thanks for the well timed interruption though!" He shrugs,

  "No problem!" he grins and then resumes pulling me away from his friends,

  "Cal!" I get his attention again and he looks at me irritably, "Where are we going?"

  "I found Lou Anne and Lawrence." He says, "I thought we'd go sit with them."

  "What about your friends?" He shrugs,

  "They all went off to dance and I didn't really feel like it since it would have put me back in the evil clutches of Pete." I snort,

  "Not your type, huh?" I ask him and he shakes his head,

  "Just like Gandalf the Wookie wasn't yours." He points out. I give an involuntary shudder then we both burst out laughing, "Come on." Cal grabs my hand again and leads the way. I don't complain.

  We spend another couple of hours and another couple of beers in the pleasant company of Lawrence and Lou Anne. Cal is far more relaxed here, despite him seeming relaxed in our previous company. I realise why though when his head begins to lean heavily on my shoulder. I nudge him and he lifts his head and looks a little bleary eyed. He stifles a yawn and looks sufficiently embarrassed,

  "Am I keeping you up past your bed time?" I ask him with a smirk. He purses his lips,

  "Asshole!" he hisses, but his eyes are twinkling,

  "Seriously though, are you about ready to go?" He smiles and nods,

  "Only if you are." He tells me. I nod,

  "I was just waiting for you." I turn to the rest of the crowd sitting in the booth, "Guys, we're heading off now." I tell them.

  There are some groans and complaints that we are ducking out far too early. I think we're leaving at the right time though because Cal looks tired and I am kind of wrecked. I have spent the better part of the last three weeks in bed with flu.

  We catch a cab and it drops us off at the end of our shared drive. We stand for a moment between both our houses in slightly awkward silence. It isn't painfully awkward, but awkward in the way that neither of us wants to end a really great night. If this was a date I would ask him for coffee but it isn't so I hesitate. I'm sure he wouldn't see me asking him for coffee as any different from any other time he's spent at my house but to me it feels different and I'm not sure why,

  "So did you have fun after all?" I ask him and Cal smiles, chuckles and nods, "You're not sorry I manipulated you into going?"

  His response to this is to blush furiously and look away, and well he might, the manipulative little menace,

  "I'm sorry about that," he apologises, "I really, genuinely didn't want to go until you mentioned going yourself, although I know it looked like I was trying to manipulate you into asking me." He smiles, "I saw your expression change when you first had the idea of going and I saw the opportunity to get you out of the house instead of moping around feeling sorry for yourself." He tells me and I gasp,

  "I was not moping around." I protest incredulously. He just shrugs as if to say he doesn't believe me and that somehow we are quits because we both thought we were manipulating the other.

  Cal looks down at his feet and suddenly he snorts, giggling out loud in that sweet, unrestrained way he has when the laughter is really truly genuine. I don't care what he's laughing at, it's infectious so I join him,

  "What?" I ask between giggles. Cal regards me with sparkling eyes,

  "That guy with the Gandalf beard." He says. I roll my eyes and laugh harder, "Did you see how long it was?"

  "Not only that, Cal, I pulled it so I felt how long it was, eugh!" I make a face at the memory and he snorts again,

  "Oh my god I would never have dared do that." He says with awed respect for my brashness. "But it covered his mouth, you couldn't even see it. It's a good job he made a pass at you, I wouldn't have had a clue what he was saying if he'd spoken to me."

  "Thanks, I think." I say, still chuckling,

  "An
d kissing him would have been like kissing a door mat. I bet it would scratch like hell." Cal observes, still unable to contain his laughter.

  I stroke my own, neatly trimmed beard,

  "Speak for yourself." I say, "I'm sure it would feel awesome." Cal eyes me curiously, still grinning,

  "I never kissed a guy with a beard before." He tells me,

  "Come to think of it, neither have I." I snort. He pushes at my shoulder playfully and I stumble back a step,

  "Hey!" I make a face at him, still rubbing my beard thoughtfully. I should really say goodnight now, since it's late and I have a lot of things to do tomorrow. I have some emails to catch up on and I'm sure my first set of edits will be due soon,

  "I'd like to." Cal is saying, looking suddenly very serious, and I frown in confusion, thinking I've probably missed the beginning of that sentence while I was mulling over my to do list,

  "I'm sorry, what would you like to do?" I ask him. He's taken a step closer and alarm bells should be ringing right now, but they're not, because it's Cal stepping closer to me, not some random guy at the bar that looked like a walking carpet. Cal smiles,

  "I said: I'd like to kiss a guy with a beard." He seems slightly nervous,

  "Oh!" I have no idea why he's nervous but I realise what he meant, "Why didn't you say so at the bar, I could've introduced you to The Wookie." He snorts,

  "Not him, bozo, you." He pokes his finger at my chest, which is suddenly not large enough to contain my wild and erratically beating heart. His gaze is intense,

  "Me?" I frown, feeling a little dumbfounded. What's he talking abou….?

  "Ugh!" he growls in frustration, grabs the front of my shirt and pulls me forward.

  His lips are on mine before I can take another breath. My eyes are wide and my body is frozen in place. For a moment we are both motionless: his lips pressing against mine but neither of us are moving. He feels soft and warm and amazing but tense and unsure and then his tongue runs tentatively along my top lip as his eyes close and my entire body explodes with sensation.

  I don't hesitate, I don't think, I simply react. As his lips begin to move so do mine, and with them the rest of my body is jolted into action. My eyes close as I part my lips and allow his tongue inside my mouth. His arms move up to wrap around my neck and his fingers bury themselves in my hair. There's a moan I think comes from me, but I'm not entirely sure, nor do I even care. My hands move to clasp around his face, tipping my head slightly to get a better angle from which to really feel his tongue inside my mouth.

  My tongue joins in and he definitely moaned that time. His hold around my neck tightens as I taste the inside of his mouth, feel his lips on mine, soft and pliable, feel his body pressed against mine, firm in all the right places as heat pools around my groin.

  He's hard, I can feel the firm heat pushing against my thigh as he presses his leg between mine, and oh my god, so am I but I don't care, because this is Cal. I am kissing Cal, the beautiful, gorgeous, incredibly sexy Cal and there is no way he doesn't want this because he initiated it.

  God, this is amazing. The feel of him, the smell of him, the taste of him just overloads my senses and is everything I dared to imagine it would be. Where the hell did he learn to kiss like this? You know what though? I don't even care. It's like we're surrounded by a bubble of air and every objection my brain might have come up with to not do this has been extracted and is stuck outside with no way of getting in.

  My arms wrap around him now, pulling him if possible, harder against me as our lips remain locked together, our tongues dancing, tasting and searching. We fit. That's what is making this so amazing, we just fit. I never want it to end but I guess even something this good has to end sometime.

  It doesn't end suddenly, in a fit of panic because one of us has realised we shouldn't be doing this. The bubble is still somehow keeping those objections at bay. It doesn't end abruptly, it simply ends naturally with our lips finally parting, our breaths, held as we kissed, released in a soft susurrus of air across our cheeks and our eyes slowly opening at the same moment to regard each other with shy smiles and flushed cheeks.

  Cal has got to be the most gorgeous creature on the face of the earth as he smiles into my eyes and I lose myself in his.

  Then the bubble bursts,

  "Oh my god!" Cal gasps, suddenly pulling away from me, his hand up over his mouth and his blue eyes wide with unreadable emotions, "I…we….I should probably go."

  And then he's gone, off up his steps, into his front door and out of sight before I can even register the change in mood.

  What the hell just happened? Did we just kiss? Can I even bring myself to believe that actually happened?

  My lips are still tingling and I can still taste him there. My body is shocked through with electricity and I'm practically sizzling so I have to believe something happened.

  And then he scarpered. Well of course he did because why the hell would he even want to kiss me? He wanted to know what it was like to kiss a guy with a beard, not me in particular. I wanted to kiss him though and he must have realised that. He must have felt my reaction, my total surrender.

  I pull at my hair in angst as I wonder what to do next. Should I follow him, try to do some damage control? He caught me off guard and now the flood gates have opened. Oh god, there's no way he's ever going to want to be friends with me now. One moment of madness has the potential to ruin everything.

  What the hell am I going to do?

  "Jake?"

  I spin around and stare into his wide, frightened eyes. Oh god he's back but he looks like a scared rabbit. What the hell have you done Jake, you monster?

  Suddenly his knees give way and I instinctively catch him,

  "Cal!" I gasp, "What's wrong?" This is not just because we kissed, something else is terribly wrong.

  He is pale and shaking as he points a trembling finger towards his house,

  "My house!" he gasps and I realise with horror he is crying, "Someone trashed my house."

  Chapter 13: A Night to Forget

  Tonight has turned into a night to remember for all the wrong reasons.

  One in the morning and Sheriff Jefferson finally left us alone after about a million questions and getting Cal to sort through the mess in his house to see what was missing. It was difficult with troches, because whoever did this decided it would be fun to cut all the cables to the junction box as well as everything else.

  Strangely enough it doesn't look like anything has actually been stolen. Well I say that, what I mean is nothing physical was taken. What has been stolen is Cal's self confidence; his privacy and his belief that home is the safest place to be.

  The entire house has been wrecked. Someone broke in and simply smashed, ripped and mangled everything they possibly could. They took a spray can to everything else. I don't think there is a window or piece of furniture left intact or a wall or floor left unmarked. I'm surprised we didn't notice when we first got out of the cab because the spray paint adorns the outside walls as well but I guess we were thinking about other things: things that will have to take a back burner right now because Cal just doesn't need the complication.

  It's far too late and both of us are far too tired to think straight, let alone talk about that kiss. Cal is exhausted and it's all he can do to generate enough energy to lift his feet as I guide him up my front steps and through into my living room.