Who: Jesse Page and Claire MacCullen What: Making plans for Sunday Where: Outside of Claire's church, and then... When: Sunday Afternoon Rating: PG Status: Complete
Perched on the trunk of the black car that had recently pulled up to the curb across from the church was the car’s driver, a young bartender whose face wasn’t so easily recognizable in that part of town. Pinched between two of his fingers was a cigarette, the heels of his boots resting against the car’s back bumper as he hunched forward. Amber eyes with flecks of emerald were focused on the building on the other side of the road – a building he had not been inside of since he moved to town, and had no plan of entering any time soon.
The whole problem with this plan was that a certain someone spent every Sunday morning inside the church, and that certain someone was who he had agreed to pick up after her service was over – his girlfriend, Claire, who just so happened to be the Minister’s daughter.
Flicking ashes off to the side, Jesse let out a sigh as he pushed overgrown raven strands from his eyes, allowing him to sit and get lost in thought as he waited for the doors to open.
The timing was never exact. Ten-thirty was the usual target, but sometimes sermons ran long, or there were more announcements than usual. Occasionally there was a christening, or communion every other week. Sometimes those doors would open right around ten-thirty, but just as many times, it would be later. They never seemed to open early.
Even when they did open and parishioners started filing out into the cold, Claire was always at the back, having some thing or another needing her attention - commonly social. Family friends coming into town needed entertaining, cousins needed help with connections at the hospital, whatever. It just was the way it was, far back as she could remember.
Behind the milling crowd huddling against the morning wind, Claire pushed her hands in the pockets of her coat and instantly regretted wearing a dress. She squinted, shaking wind-swept red hair out of her eyes to see the familiar car half a block down the street, in the other direction of the parking lot. She gave the backs of the congregation a last look, then one over her shoulder back into the church. Daddy was in his office, and would be for another hour.
She trotted on sensible lilac heels down the stone steps and headed straight for the car, and the figure resting on its hood.
Boredom quickly took its hold over the young man that was waiting outside the church, and it wasn’t long before he started singing along under his breath to the Motley Crue song that was playing through the speakers of his car. He had also changed his position on the car, pushing himself back so that he could push his back against the rear windshield of the car, one of his arms folded beneath his head as the other kept itself occupied holding onto his phone, checking it every now and again to make sure he hadn’t missed a text from Claire, and when he wasn’t doing that he was cursing at the phone for being a piece of shit. He needed to make a mental note to get a new one, next time the opportunity presented itself.
His attention was back on the church when he saw people beginning to filter out onto the front lawn, families all holding hands on the way to their cars. He wasn’t sure if he’d ever stop feeling bitter towards those who were able to use their church as a sanctuary, seeing how that rite seemed to have been stripped away from him almost 12 years ago. He hadn’t ever stepped foot over the threshold of a holy building since the day his priest had called him an abomination.
That wasn’t something you got over easily, especially when he had placed so much faith in his relationship with Father Peter. He trusted him. He told him when he did bad things, and Father Peter told him how to rectify his mistakes, and told him words that made him reconsider doing bad things again. After those ties were severed, others tried to send him on the right path, but he never trusted anyone the same way.
Claire still had faith – she still had a strong connection to God, and the extended family of the church. He always envied her for that, but he also resented her for it, too. He was jealous of how everyone accepted her, loved her, and respected her. But who could blame them? Even he was guilty of it.
The sound of approaching footsteps made him turn his face away from the screen of his phone. The device was closed, and he scooted himself forward so that he was sitting on the ledge of the trunk again.
“So, how’d it go? Are you enlightened now?”
She gave him a look - something in the middle of frustration and dry sarcasm - but it was shallow and short lived. They’d had the occasional conversation (i.e., one time) about Jesse joining her at church, but Claire had learned her lesson after nearly getting her head bitten off. She held her religion close, but she wasn’t the type to push it on others. God knew that was Dad’s job; she’d had enough growing up.
“You askin’ because you wanna know or cause you haven’t been enough of a smartass today?” she asked in good humor, clearly teasing. The minister’s daughter set her purse on the trunk next to Jesse’s hip, put her gloved hands on his knees and stood on her toes for a kiss hello.
That face – the one that proved that she wasn’t happy with something he had just said – was one he was all too familiar with. It wasn’t any big surprise that Jesse and Claire didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of things, seeing how they were such polar opposites, but he tried to make the effort to watch himself around her when it came to saying what he was thinking. Not very many people got that courtesy, though it was their own fault for asking what was on his mind, or what opinion he had on certain subjects.
“I got a quota to fill.” He gave her a lopsided smirk, leaning down to accept and reciprocate the greeting, his hands finding their way to her waist. Pulling back, he rolled his lips under, able to taste the faint hints of whatever chapstick she had transferred through the kiss. She always tasted sweet, even when she wasn’t wearing any flavored balm.
“Got anything left to do here, or do I get you to myself for a while?”
Claire’s eyes automatically flicked to Jesse’s lips when they moved. She mimicked him, also without thought. It was an impulse she was driven to without explanation, besides that it just felt good. After she tasted her own ‘peach champagne’ chapstick, Claire forgot all about the little annoyance from a minute earlier, and there was a smile on her face.
“Mm... I’m on call startin’ at ten tonight, so I gotta get some sleep before that,” she said. “So you got me ‘til I pass out.”
Jesse’s nose scrunched a little to show that he wasn’t pleased with the fact that she was going to be working that night, since Sundays were his one day off from work, unless someone needed coverage. Most days he didn’t know how they managed to spend time together – he usually worked until the early hours of the morning, when she was just getting up for work, and even when their shifts coincided, there were days when both of them were too exhausted to do anything that required a lot of energy. Of course those days were few and far between, but Sundays were their day, unless she was on call.
“Than I better make the most of it.”
He leaned in for another kiss, though one turned into two, and two would have turned into three and so forth if he didn’t remember where they were, and who might have been watching. It wasn’t even about the fact that he cared whether or not people shot him dirty looks whenever he was in that part of town, looking at him like he was someone who was going to tarnish Claire’s image, but he didn’t need her dad popping his head out to see his daughter kissing the boy she had not yet introduced him to. A quiet noise that sounded like a mix between a whine and groan echoed in his throat, a way of showing that it was difficult to resist, his nose pressing against hers, keeping her close to him with the way his hands remained rested against the curve of her hips.
“You hungry?”
Any excuse to get the hell away from the church was good enough for him.
She knew what that meant - innuendos weren’t exactly lost on Claire, in fact she had a virtual library of them for every saying in her comprehensive memory. But ground-in inhibitions with names like Morality and Shame did hard, complicated things to her insides that always picked up her heartbeat and strengthened her pulse.
Without realizing it, Claire blushed and meant to say something, but he cut her off with his lips over hers. It came out once as a breathy noise, then melted away completely. Melted away. For the moment.
“I could eat,” she said, a warm chuckle on her voice. The car was warm, much warmer than the need for her coat, so as soon as they started moving, she shrugged it off and ran her hands through her hair.
The way her alabaster skin flushed as she thought about the possible meanings behind what he had said wasn’t lost on him, and he barely managed to suppress a devious smirk. When this whole thing between them started (this ‘thing’ being their relationship), the inhibitions that were causing her cheeks to redden were dulled by copious amounts of alcohol mixed with a rebellious streak. It took him a while to remember that she was a genuinely good girl, which was a rarity back in New York, where he had been born and raised. Maybe it had more to do with the types of people he usually associated himself with when he was a teenager. Either way, he had never met anyone like Claire until he moved to Babylon. He found the way she blushed like a schoolgirl amusing, especially since he knew she what she was capable of when it came to making the best of their time together.
Hopping down from the back of the car, he moved around to the driver’s seat, turning down the volume of the music that he had turned up in order to hear it from his spot on the trunk. His fingers fiddled with the radio, trying to tune into something worth listening to, trying not to get too distracted while he was driving. When the got to a red light, he looked over at her, one of his elbows resting against the door at the bottom of the window, chewing thoughtfully at the corner of his thumb nail as he observed her.
“Something on your mind?”
He knew what was on her mind – it was the same thing that had caused her to blush earlier, and he tried not to smirk again as his thumb idly brushed back and forth along the bottom of his lower lip. These little gestures spoke volumes about what was on his mind, but if they weren’t on the same page, he’d have to settle by actually getting something to eat.
Something was indeed on her mind, though the train of thought was momentarily distracted - though not diffused - when she caught sight of him in the corner of her eye. Her response was damned near Pavlovian; the flutter in her stomach and curling toes in her sensible heels. Claire’s grin, up to that point, had been fighting with itself. Now, it simply spread across her cheeks, the bottom lip scraped briefly by the top row of her teeth.
It was difficult to look him in the eye, or even the face - for too long. It only reinforced the things playing in her head to an acuteness that was almost uncomfortable. So she snuck quick glances his way once or twice, before her eyes found less potent things like the window or her ring.
“Maybe...” she started, her voice a bit lower. “Maybe I’m not really that hungry.”
He was so caught up in watching her smile that he didn’t even notice that the light was about to change. One of his brows lifted ever so slightly at the admittance that tumbled from those peach champagne lips of hers, noting the way that she could barely look at him – like he was sin incarnate. He, on the other hand, had no problem keeping his focus locked on her.
“Huh…”
She had to know by now that Jesse was not a man of many words – she didn’t know very much else about him, but that was one of those things that was kind of hard not to notice. What she had learned over time though was that he didn’t need very many words, or any at all, to let her know what he was thinking, or feeling.
Finally looking up at the traffic light, Jesse was forced to pay attention to something other than the girl in his passenger seat, and pulled forward, no true destination in mind. He shifted in his seat, able to sneak a few glances her way when he knew it wasn’t going to get them killed due to oncoming traffic. After a turn that he would have only taken to get back to the other side of town, where he lived, he finally reached out for her hand over the console, twisting their fingers together, needing contact – just enough to satisfy him without needing to pull into the next vacant lot he spotted.
They were both hungry, but it wasn’t food they were after. That much was clear.