Categories > Original > Fantasy > To Dance With the Devil
What is Truth?
0 reviewsCameron wakes up alone after a night of passion with Venkata. What happens now?
0Unrated
Title: To Dance With the Devil
Author: MakaiKitty
Rating: NC-17
Category: Original Fantasy, "Above and Below” series
Pairing: Venkata/Cameron
Warnings: Slash, M/M, Anal, Angel/Devil sex, Mention of past child abuse
Distribution: My website, My LJ and any LJs I choose to post at, AFF.net, and FicWad. All of my accounts are under the user name MakaiKitty. If you'd like to use it just let me know.
Disclaimer: The characters, daemon realms, and situations in this story are all original and belong solely to MakaiKitty. Please don't steal, borrow, take, or otherwise use anything from my fics.
Updates: Just join my Yahoo!Group to be informed of any updates to this or any of my other fics - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/makaikittyfics
Status: Complete/One-Shot
To Dance With the Devil
Chapter Two: What is Truth?
Dark hair falling about him in waves of silk… the delicious throb of his lips, swollen from harsh kisses that were painfully perfect… lips on his back… /“More beautiful than any angel could ever hope for.”/… bites to his flesh, more tender than he was used to, more reverent in their touch… a forehead that wasn’t quite right; sharp points like horns, but that was silly because it was a man in his bed, not a monster… warm brown skin a contrast to his own paleness as they melded together, moving with sweat-slicked ease… hands touching him, gently soothing while slowly igniting his passions… his mind dizzy from things other than drink… nails that were only slightly too sharp to be called nails… the slow burn of being filled, so right that it should have been wrong… wings rising up behind them to block out all of the light… a voice so possessive that it should have been frightening, but wasn’t… /“Mine!”/…
Cameron woke with a start.
“A dream,” he assured himself in a strained voice, rough from sleep and lack of use, “It was only a dream.”
Even as he scolded himself for thinking, during that instant between dream and wakefulness, that his dream might have been anything more than an illusion, Cameron’s hand went to his lips, still tingling with remembered kisses from an imaginary demon, his other hand going instinctively towards the other side of the bed. The empty side of the bed. But, if his dream had been just a dream, then there was no reason for the bed to be anything but empty. Although, in the back of his hazy mind, still reeling from one too many drinks the night before and angry at having been startled to wakefulness before noon, Cameron thought that he should be at least the tiniest bit surprised to find his bed empty, even if the reason escaped him. His head throbbed, a reminder that he had been a bit too desperate to forget when he had gone out the night before, and he plopped back down on the tangled mass of sheets with a sigh that was part pain and part longing. His head ached for sleep, for aspirin and a cool drink, while his heart begged for something else entirely. A healing remedy that Cameron knew all too well was denied him.
Then a name came to him out of the fog, “Venkata.”
So, it had not been a dream after all? At least, not all of it. The wings and the horns, the claws and the black fire that had filled his dream-lover’s inhumanly beautiful eyes, even the tenderness and sweet endearments that had seemed so sincere, those were surely only products of his imagination. The rest, however, slowly returned to Cameron as he lay sprawled across his bed, one leg hanging haphazardly off of the side, a small smile returning to his lips as he remembered the handsome stranger called Venkata Mekjian. If the pleasantly sated soreness of his body was any indication, then he had been right to take the risk of allowing the other man into his inner sanctuary. He was certain that he had enjoyed every moment of what had happened once they’d gotten through the door, even if he couldn’t remember all of the details.
The fact that Venkata was no longer at his side, even though the hour was early, came as no great surprise to Cameron. In fact, it was expected. What was not expected was the odd sense of loss that he felt as he looked across the bed and found it empty still. He didn’t like to let anyone get too close, especially when he was helpless in his sleep, but a part of him wondered what it would be like to hear the water turning of in the bathroom, to hear the door open and find the dark haired stranger standing before him in only a towel, chuckling at the disheveled sight that Cameron surely made. Would he think the tousled blonde locks and the blue eyes still cloudy with sleep and drink were cute? Or would he make excuses and avoid looking at Cameron while he tried to find his pants, promising to call when they both knew that he never would. Would he want one last kiss before he was out the door, or would he simply be in a hurry, smiling that awkward smile that meant he regretted not leaving before Cameron had awakened?
“Doesn’t matter one way or the other,” Cameron reminded himself, pulling the blankets back around his body, thinking that it might be a good idea to just go back to sleep. Maybe when he woke up his headache would be gone, and with it his unusually sentimental longings.
***
The phone rang for what felt like the hundredth time, and Cameron was forced to admit that he could ignore it no longer. He heaved a great sigh, pushed his glasses from the bridge of his nose to rest on his forehead, and picked up the receiver. He couldn’t, for the life of him, figure out why he hadn’t just turned the ringer off to begin with.
“This had better be good,” he warned. “I’ve got a deadline and I don’t need any more interruptions.”
“And hello to you too,” a familiar voice chuckled on the other line, used to Cameron’s snap of impatience, finding it more amusing than offensive, “I see that someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed, eh?”
“Tommy,” the warm, familiar tone that suddenly colored Cameron’s voice was the closest thing to an apology that Thomas Smithe was ever going to get. In fact, had Cameron actually said that he was sorry, Tommy might have worried, and he didn’t have the time to go half way across town just to take Cameron’s temperature before dragging him to the nearest hospital. “Is something wrong?”
“Why does something always have to be wrong for me to call you?” They both knew the answer to that question. Tommy was only twenty-six, yet he was raising his three younger siblings, all under the age of twelve, by himself after their parent’s untimely deaths. He was also trying to keep the family business alive, managing Club Forever by night and taking business classes at the community college by day, all while suffering from a life-long illness that the doctors had been thus far unable to either diagnose or cure. It left him too weak to get out of bed some days, which was usually when he called Cameron to look after the kids. Not that Cameron ever minded. The four of them were the only family that he really had. Or, more precisely, the only family that he cared to have.
“Are the kids all right?” A noise of affirmation from the other end of the line eased something that had been winding itself tightly around Cameron’s chest. But it would not ease completely until the received another answer. “How are you feeling today?”
“I’m fine,” since he wasn’t coughing or wheezing Cameron chose to believe him. “I just thought that I’d call and see if you were doing okay. James called and said that he saw you leaving with a guy last night. Said that you told Johnny that you were taking him back to your place. They both thought that you seemed pretty out of it, and since you usually don’t let them talk you into going home with you I’ll have to assume that they were right, so I thought I should probably check up on you.”
Cameron shook his head and laughed. There were two sides to being the best friend of the owner of your favorite club. On the up side you could get in for free no matter how busy they were, and no one ever made you pay for your drinks or tossed you out the back door if you got too carried away. But, on the down side, everybody in the place became your babysitter. And, if you didn’t behave, they’d tell big brother on you.
“Aside from the fact that I have to finish this website by tonight or the client’s going to throw a hissy-fit, I’m right as rain,” and it was true. Aside from the nagging feeling of wanting to look across the room and find a certain dark-haired man sitting there, Cameron had been able to lose himself in his work for an entire afternoon.
“He must have been something if you agreed to take him home.” Tommy didn’t share his tastes in lovers, his eye always going to something a little curvier and a whole lot less male, but he never seemed uncomfortable about dishing with Cameron over his latest conquests. That was, when he wasn’t fretting over the endless stream of one night stands and badgering him to settle down with someone nice. “Tommy said that he didn’t recognize the guy and that he didn’t stay too long.”
“That’s because he came looking for me,” Cameron couldn’t help but sound pleased. In the light of day, away from the beat of the music and the strobe of the lights, Venkata’s pick-up line sounded cheesy. And that was being generous. But, even knowing that, Cameron still liked the idea that the handsome man had come to the club just for him. Why else would he have left right after finding him?
“You sound like you’re smiling,” so did Tommy. “Was he that good?”
“Better,” at least what he could remember. Although Tommy didn’t need to know that. He’d only worry that Cameron had been that drunk and had still left the club with a stranger. Cameron knew that he would never hear the end of it.
Tommy sounded impressed, “You gonna see him again?”
“Can’t,” the same thoughts had occupied most his morning at he had fought to get back to sleep. He hadn’t liked the answers any more then than he did currently. “Don’t know where to find him.”
“If he knew to come looking for you at the club then he must know where to find you.”
“He’s already gotten everything that I have to give,” there wasn’t a smile in his voice any longer. But he didn’t sound angry or bitter either. It was just the truth. A truth that Cameron had long ago accepted. “I don’t think that he’ll come for me again.”
“Another bastard, huh?”
Cameron was oddly offended by that comment. He wasn’t sure why, he knew almost as much about the man as Tommy did, even if he had let him take him at least three times that he could remember, but Cameron didn’t like Tommy calling Venkata a bastard. It was true that most of his lovers were just that, and the ones that he did allow into his life and/or his home only to have them skip out on him after a night or two were doubly so, but something told him that he hadn’t completely misread Venkata. Some of the kindness in his eyes, the tenderness behind his touch, had to have been real.
“Just the opposite, actually.”
“Then why-“
“I’m sure it was just a mistake that he came looking for me,” there was a reason that no one ever did, except, perhaps, for a few exes who had waited until he’d been drunk enough that they’d known that he wouldn’t say no. “He won’t be back.”
“I really wish that you’d stop thinking like that.”
“Me too, Tommy,” he’d stopped insulting himself around Tommy, for the most part, but only because he knew that it would usually earn him a lecture from the older man. But sometimes he just couldn’t help himself. It was damn hard to believe in yourself all of the time when hardly anyone else did. When you’d grown up being told that your whole family would be better off if you were dead, when your own mother brought you to her priest because she thought that you were a demon, when every lover that you’d ever had didn’t even remember your name after they’d had your body, and even your so-called friends had a habit of losing your number when they got to know you too well. One good meaning best friend wasn’t quite enough to change twenty-two years worth of hard proof. And the fact that Venkata had left without a word only proved that Tommy was the one who was wrong. “But I think that dear old Mum might have been right about me. I really am worthless.”
“Cam!”
There was a knock at the door, and Cameron had never been more grateful to have a phone conversation interrupted before in his life. He’d been foolish to antagonize Tommy. The other man never let him get away with his pity-trips, as he called them. Cameron could only blame his odd behavior on the strange dream that he’d had, the dream that he couldn’t get out of his mind, and on his traitorous heart that continued to tell him that if he only went back to the club tonight he might find Venkata waiting for him.
“Wait a sec, would ya Tommy? There’s someone at the door.” He didn’t wait for an answer, instead grabbing his cordless phone and heading for the door, Tommy along for the ride.
“Cameron Parish?” The delivery woman asked, big green eyes raking over Cameron’s body, taking in the cut-off shorts that rode dangerously high on his legs and the beat-up tank that rode even higher. Cameron preened at the attention, even if he wasn’t interested, and he winked at the young woman as he flashed her his most winning smile.
“At your service,” he glanced down at her name tag, masking it with an appraising look of his own, although his didn’t have the heat behind it that hers had, “Maria.”
“Um…” He tried not to laugh. It always felt nice to know that his charms were appreciated. And, if Tommy was left scolding him on the other end of the line, telling him to behave even though he couldn’t possibly see what was going on, then so be it. “I…”
“Have a delivery for me?” he provided helpfully. He was enjoying the way that the woman was reacting to him, but his curiosity was fast taking over, and he wanted to know who had sent him what. There weren’t many people who were likely to be sending him presents, and he hadn’t ordered anything online for a while, so he honestly didn’t know why the pretty green-eyed woman was standing at his door blushing like a virgin on prom night.
“Yes,” she came to her senses suddenly, covering her embarrassment with procedure. She’d seen people, men and women both, come to the door in far less without it phasing her. Admittedly, most of them didn’t look half as good, but still… “If you could just sign here please, Mr. Parish?”
“Sure.” Cameron took the clipboard that he was offered, listening to the delivery woman prattle on to cover her chagrin over her earlier behavior. Cameron thought that it was cute. He had a feeling that she turned her fair share of heads, although not for the same reasons that he did, or the same type of heads. He had an odd urge to actually pat her on the head and tell her that she was adorable. He suspected that would end in a broken nose though, so he did nothing, signing his name and handing it back to her like a good boy should.
“You must be really special,” the words caught Cameron off guard. Had she been talking to Tommy? It was almost laughable. Everyone was out to get him, to convince him that he was worthy, or so it seemed. “This was a custom order that was really hard to fill. Almost all of them were out of season, but the guy who sent them said that it was very important that he send only the very best, and the color had to be just right too. He said that the normal roses simply weren’t good enough.”
Cameron was speechless as he was handed the largest bouquet that he had ever seen in his life, the heavy crystal vase barely enough to contain all of the stems. He could believe what the woman said about the flowers being special. He couldn’t even identify half of them, and the ones that he could he had never actually held in his hands, but the thing that shocked him the most was that the main bulk of the massive arrangement was made up of a flower that matched the pale blue of his eyes perfectly.
When Cameron at last looked up from his flowers, wanting to ask where they had come from and if the woman was sure that they were for him, he found that she was already half way down the hall. Luckily for him, however, there was a small note card stuck in the center of the flowers. Ignoring Tommy’s questions coming from the phone, Cameron took his flowers inside, kicking the door shut behind him. He took them to the kitchen table, breath tight in his chest, mind reeling as he waited to find out who they were from. He knew who he wanted them to be from, but he wasn’t about to get his hopes up.
With trembling hands Cameron pulled out a small white card from the little plastic stick-holder and read it to himself. Then he reread it. Twice. The card contained only two simple letters in sprawling script: V.M.
“Tommy?”
“Yes?” Tommy sounded annoyed from being ignored, but at the shaky, elated sound of Cameron’s voice he couldn’t hold on to his anger. Instead it was replaced with curiosity.
“I take it back.”
“Take what back?”
“Maybe she was right.”
“Your mother wasn’t-“
He didn’t know why, but the sight of the flowers, and the initials on the card, made his heart skip a beat. He tried to tell himself that they didn’t mean anything, tried to chalk it up to guilt on the other man’s part at having left without saying anything that morning, but he could not seem to make his heart listen to his head. Even without a message to go with them, without an explanation or a promise, the flowers seemed to mean something. Something important.
“Not my mother,” Cameron said, a wide smile spreading across his face, the urge to scream like an excited school girl so strong that he had to put a hand to his mouth for a moment, lest he deafen his friend, “Maria. She might just have been right.”
TBC ...
Author: MakaiKitty
Rating: NC-17
Category: Original Fantasy, "Above and Below” series
Pairing: Venkata/Cameron
Warnings: Slash, M/M, Anal, Angel/Devil sex, Mention of past child abuse
Distribution: My website, My LJ and any LJs I choose to post at, AFF.net, and FicWad. All of my accounts are under the user name MakaiKitty. If you'd like to use it just let me know.
Disclaimer: The characters, daemon realms, and situations in this story are all original and belong solely to MakaiKitty. Please don't steal, borrow, take, or otherwise use anything from my fics.
Updates: Just join my Yahoo!Group to be informed of any updates to this or any of my other fics - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/makaikittyfics
Status: Complete/One-Shot
To Dance With the Devil
Chapter Two: What is Truth?
Dark hair falling about him in waves of silk… the delicious throb of his lips, swollen from harsh kisses that were painfully perfect… lips on his back… /“More beautiful than any angel could ever hope for.”/… bites to his flesh, more tender than he was used to, more reverent in their touch… a forehead that wasn’t quite right; sharp points like horns, but that was silly because it was a man in his bed, not a monster… warm brown skin a contrast to his own paleness as they melded together, moving with sweat-slicked ease… hands touching him, gently soothing while slowly igniting his passions… his mind dizzy from things other than drink… nails that were only slightly too sharp to be called nails… the slow burn of being filled, so right that it should have been wrong… wings rising up behind them to block out all of the light… a voice so possessive that it should have been frightening, but wasn’t… /“Mine!”/…
Cameron woke with a start.
“A dream,” he assured himself in a strained voice, rough from sleep and lack of use, “It was only a dream.”
Even as he scolded himself for thinking, during that instant between dream and wakefulness, that his dream might have been anything more than an illusion, Cameron’s hand went to his lips, still tingling with remembered kisses from an imaginary demon, his other hand going instinctively towards the other side of the bed. The empty side of the bed. But, if his dream had been just a dream, then there was no reason for the bed to be anything but empty. Although, in the back of his hazy mind, still reeling from one too many drinks the night before and angry at having been startled to wakefulness before noon, Cameron thought that he should be at least the tiniest bit surprised to find his bed empty, even if the reason escaped him. His head throbbed, a reminder that he had been a bit too desperate to forget when he had gone out the night before, and he plopped back down on the tangled mass of sheets with a sigh that was part pain and part longing. His head ached for sleep, for aspirin and a cool drink, while his heart begged for something else entirely. A healing remedy that Cameron knew all too well was denied him.
Then a name came to him out of the fog, “Venkata.”
So, it had not been a dream after all? At least, not all of it. The wings and the horns, the claws and the black fire that had filled his dream-lover’s inhumanly beautiful eyes, even the tenderness and sweet endearments that had seemed so sincere, those were surely only products of his imagination. The rest, however, slowly returned to Cameron as he lay sprawled across his bed, one leg hanging haphazardly off of the side, a small smile returning to his lips as he remembered the handsome stranger called Venkata Mekjian. If the pleasantly sated soreness of his body was any indication, then he had been right to take the risk of allowing the other man into his inner sanctuary. He was certain that he had enjoyed every moment of what had happened once they’d gotten through the door, even if he couldn’t remember all of the details.
The fact that Venkata was no longer at his side, even though the hour was early, came as no great surprise to Cameron. In fact, it was expected. What was not expected was the odd sense of loss that he felt as he looked across the bed and found it empty still. He didn’t like to let anyone get too close, especially when he was helpless in his sleep, but a part of him wondered what it would be like to hear the water turning of in the bathroom, to hear the door open and find the dark haired stranger standing before him in only a towel, chuckling at the disheveled sight that Cameron surely made. Would he think the tousled blonde locks and the blue eyes still cloudy with sleep and drink were cute? Or would he make excuses and avoid looking at Cameron while he tried to find his pants, promising to call when they both knew that he never would. Would he want one last kiss before he was out the door, or would he simply be in a hurry, smiling that awkward smile that meant he regretted not leaving before Cameron had awakened?
“Doesn’t matter one way or the other,” Cameron reminded himself, pulling the blankets back around his body, thinking that it might be a good idea to just go back to sleep. Maybe when he woke up his headache would be gone, and with it his unusually sentimental longings.
***
The phone rang for what felt like the hundredth time, and Cameron was forced to admit that he could ignore it no longer. He heaved a great sigh, pushed his glasses from the bridge of his nose to rest on his forehead, and picked up the receiver. He couldn’t, for the life of him, figure out why he hadn’t just turned the ringer off to begin with.
“This had better be good,” he warned. “I’ve got a deadline and I don’t need any more interruptions.”
“And hello to you too,” a familiar voice chuckled on the other line, used to Cameron’s snap of impatience, finding it more amusing than offensive, “I see that someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed, eh?”
“Tommy,” the warm, familiar tone that suddenly colored Cameron’s voice was the closest thing to an apology that Thomas Smithe was ever going to get. In fact, had Cameron actually said that he was sorry, Tommy might have worried, and he didn’t have the time to go half way across town just to take Cameron’s temperature before dragging him to the nearest hospital. “Is something wrong?”
“Why does something always have to be wrong for me to call you?” They both knew the answer to that question. Tommy was only twenty-six, yet he was raising his three younger siblings, all under the age of twelve, by himself after their parent’s untimely deaths. He was also trying to keep the family business alive, managing Club Forever by night and taking business classes at the community college by day, all while suffering from a life-long illness that the doctors had been thus far unable to either diagnose or cure. It left him too weak to get out of bed some days, which was usually when he called Cameron to look after the kids. Not that Cameron ever minded. The four of them were the only family that he really had. Or, more precisely, the only family that he cared to have.
“Are the kids all right?” A noise of affirmation from the other end of the line eased something that had been winding itself tightly around Cameron’s chest. But it would not ease completely until the received another answer. “How are you feeling today?”
“I’m fine,” since he wasn’t coughing or wheezing Cameron chose to believe him. “I just thought that I’d call and see if you were doing okay. James called and said that he saw you leaving with a guy last night. Said that you told Johnny that you were taking him back to your place. They both thought that you seemed pretty out of it, and since you usually don’t let them talk you into going home with you I’ll have to assume that they were right, so I thought I should probably check up on you.”
Cameron shook his head and laughed. There were two sides to being the best friend of the owner of your favorite club. On the up side you could get in for free no matter how busy they were, and no one ever made you pay for your drinks or tossed you out the back door if you got too carried away. But, on the down side, everybody in the place became your babysitter. And, if you didn’t behave, they’d tell big brother on you.
“Aside from the fact that I have to finish this website by tonight or the client’s going to throw a hissy-fit, I’m right as rain,” and it was true. Aside from the nagging feeling of wanting to look across the room and find a certain dark-haired man sitting there, Cameron had been able to lose himself in his work for an entire afternoon.
“He must have been something if you agreed to take him home.” Tommy didn’t share his tastes in lovers, his eye always going to something a little curvier and a whole lot less male, but he never seemed uncomfortable about dishing with Cameron over his latest conquests. That was, when he wasn’t fretting over the endless stream of one night stands and badgering him to settle down with someone nice. “Tommy said that he didn’t recognize the guy and that he didn’t stay too long.”
“That’s because he came looking for me,” Cameron couldn’t help but sound pleased. In the light of day, away from the beat of the music and the strobe of the lights, Venkata’s pick-up line sounded cheesy. And that was being generous. But, even knowing that, Cameron still liked the idea that the handsome man had come to the club just for him. Why else would he have left right after finding him?
“You sound like you’re smiling,” so did Tommy. “Was he that good?”
“Better,” at least what he could remember. Although Tommy didn’t need to know that. He’d only worry that Cameron had been that drunk and had still left the club with a stranger. Cameron knew that he would never hear the end of it.
Tommy sounded impressed, “You gonna see him again?”
“Can’t,” the same thoughts had occupied most his morning at he had fought to get back to sleep. He hadn’t liked the answers any more then than he did currently. “Don’t know where to find him.”
“If he knew to come looking for you at the club then he must know where to find you.”
“He’s already gotten everything that I have to give,” there wasn’t a smile in his voice any longer. But he didn’t sound angry or bitter either. It was just the truth. A truth that Cameron had long ago accepted. “I don’t think that he’ll come for me again.”
“Another bastard, huh?”
Cameron was oddly offended by that comment. He wasn’t sure why, he knew almost as much about the man as Tommy did, even if he had let him take him at least three times that he could remember, but Cameron didn’t like Tommy calling Venkata a bastard. It was true that most of his lovers were just that, and the ones that he did allow into his life and/or his home only to have them skip out on him after a night or two were doubly so, but something told him that he hadn’t completely misread Venkata. Some of the kindness in his eyes, the tenderness behind his touch, had to have been real.
“Just the opposite, actually.”
“Then why-“
“I’m sure it was just a mistake that he came looking for me,” there was a reason that no one ever did, except, perhaps, for a few exes who had waited until he’d been drunk enough that they’d known that he wouldn’t say no. “He won’t be back.”
“I really wish that you’d stop thinking like that.”
“Me too, Tommy,” he’d stopped insulting himself around Tommy, for the most part, but only because he knew that it would usually earn him a lecture from the older man. But sometimes he just couldn’t help himself. It was damn hard to believe in yourself all of the time when hardly anyone else did. When you’d grown up being told that your whole family would be better off if you were dead, when your own mother brought you to her priest because she thought that you were a demon, when every lover that you’d ever had didn’t even remember your name after they’d had your body, and even your so-called friends had a habit of losing your number when they got to know you too well. One good meaning best friend wasn’t quite enough to change twenty-two years worth of hard proof. And the fact that Venkata had left without a word only proved that Tommy was the one who was wrong. “But I think that dear old Mum might have been right about me. I really am worthless.”
“Cam!”
There was a knock at the door, and Cameron had never been more grateful to have a phone conversation interrupted before in his life. He’d been foolish to antagonize Tommy. The other man never let him get away with his pity-trips, as he called them. Cameron could only blame his odd behavior on the strange dream that he’d had, the dream that he couldn’t get out of his mind, and on his traitorous heart that continued to tell him that if he only went back to the club tonight he might find Venkata waiting for him.
“Wait a sec, would ya Tommy? There’s someone at the door.” He didn’t wait for an answer, instead grabbing his cordless phone and heading for the door, Tommy along for the ride.
“Cameron Parish?” The delivery woman asked, big green eyes raking over Cameron’s body, taking in the cut-off shorts that rode dangerously high on his legs and the beat-up tank that rode even higher. Cameron preened at the attention, even if he wasn’t interested, and he winked at the young woman as he flashed her his most winning smile.
“At your service,” he glanced down at her name tag, masking it with an appraising look of his own, although his didn’t have the heat behind it that hers had, “Maria.”
“Um…” He tried not to laugh. It always felt nice to know that his charms were appreciated. And, if Tommy was left scolding him on the other end of the line, telling him to behave even though he couldn’t possibly see what was going on, then so be it. “I…”
“Have a delivery for me?” he provided helpfully. He was enjoying the way that the woman was reacting to him, but his curiosity was fast taking over, and he wanted to know who had sent him what. There weren’t many people who were likely to be sending him presents, and he hadn’t ordered anything online for a while, so he honestly didn’t know why the pretty green-eyed woman was standing at his door blushing like a virgin on prom night.
“Yes,” she came to her senses suddenly, covering her embarrassment with procedure. She’d seen people, men and women both, come to the door in far less without it phasing her. Admittedly, most of them didn’t look half as good, but still… “If you could just sign here please, Mr. Parish?”
“Sure.” Cameron took the clipboard that he was offered, listening to the delivery woman prattle on to cover her chagrin over her earlier behavior. Cameron thought that it was cute. He had a feeling that she turned her fair share of heads, although not for the same reasons that he did, or the same type of heads. He had an odd urge to actually pat her on the head and tell her that she was adorable. He suspected that would end in a broken nose though, so he did nothing, signing his name and handing it back to her like a good boy should.
“You must be really special,” the words caught Cameron off guard. Had she been talking to Tommy? It was almost laughable. Everyone was out to get him, to convince him that he was worthy, or so it seemed. “This was a custom order that was really hard to fill. Almost all of them were out of season, but the guy who sent them said that it was very important that he send only the very best, and the color had to be just right too. He said that the normal roses simply weren’t good enough.”
Cameron was speechless as he was handed the largest bouquet that he had ever seen in his life, the heavy crystal vase barely enough to contain all of the stems. He could believe what the woman said about the flowers being special. He couldn’t even identify half of them, and the ones that he could he had never actually held in his hands, but the thing that shocked him the most was that the main bulk of the massive arrangement was made up of a flower that matched the pale blue of his eyes perfectly.
When Cameron at last looked up from his flowers, wanting to ask where they had come from and if the woman was sure that they were for him, he found that she was already half way down the hall. Luckily for him, however, there was a small note card stuck in the center of the flowers. Ignoring Tommy’s questions coming from the phone, Cameron took his flowers inside, kicking the door shut behind him. He took them to the kitchen table, breath tight in his chest, mind reeling as he waited to find out who they were from. He knew who he wanted them to be from, but he wasn’t about to get his hopes up.
With trembling hands Cameron pulled out a small white card from the little plastic stick-holder and read it to himself. Then he reread it. Twice. The card contained only two simple letters in sprawling script: V.M.
“Tommy?”
“Yes?” Tommy sounded annoyed from being ignored, but at the shaky, elated sound of Cameron’s voice he couldn’t hold on to his anger. Instead it was replaced with curiosity.
“I take it back.”
“Take what back?”
“Maybe she was right.”
“Your mother wasn’t-“
He didn’t know why, but the sight of the flowers, and the initials on the card, made his heart skip a beat. He tried to tell himself that they didn’t mean anything, tried to chalk it up to guilt on the other man’s part at having left without saying anything that morning, but he could not seem to make his heart listen to his head. Even without a message to go with them, without an explanation or a promise, the flowers seemed to mean something. Something important.
“Not my mother,” Cameron said, a wide smile spreading across his face, the urge to scream like an excited school girl so strong that he had to put a hand to his mouth for a moment, lest he deafen his friend, “Maria. She might just have been right.”
TBC ...
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