Taking Flight -- Part 1

Huzzah! I've done it! It's taken me a few months, but damn, TAKING FLIGHT is here. First and foremost, I'd like to thank the Academy for their nomination and -- wait. Sorry, wrong speech. Got a little ahead of myself here...
I digress.
TAKING FLIGHT, like CAGED BIRD, was intended to be written as one story, but to save y'alls poor eyeballs, I've broken it up into parts. (At the moment, there are three.) TAKING FLIGHT is not nearly as long as its predecessor, but it packs a more emotional punch. TF flips back and forth between Abram and Cayde, as you will find out shortly, and has plenty of flashbacks, which you guys will need when you see what's coming!
Well, without further ado, here's part one of the sequel to CAGED BIRD:

Taking Flight

With her, something in him broke free; something wild and reckless. Yet, she kept him from self-destruction. It was Cayde who made him feel so free and bold and as proud as any man could be. Their love was powerful, potent, and furious – nights were filled with such physical, exhausting, sensual displays of it, days were spent learning, loving, and fighting the impulse to crush the skulls of anyone who dared give her a second contemplative glance. Cayde Pruett became his everything rather suddenly, but Abram wouldn’t change that for the world.

~*~*~*~

Wild.

Animal.

Beautiful.

She twisted beneath him, small muscles trembling and quivering beneath sweat-slicked skin, her swollen lips parting suddenly as a cry, choked and harsh, escaped her lungs. When she shattered wetly around him, Abram Wescott knew that no deity could promise an afterlife, heaven, or nirvana better than the one he was experiencing in that very moment.

Cayde’s nails found his biceps but the pain only spurred him on. One thrust, two, and on the third he surged hard upwards again, cutting off the air in her throat as he gave in to his release, emptying out deep inside her where he belonged.

On shaking arms he slowly lowered himself down, his muscles burning as they fought against turning boneless and relaxing against the soft, narrow body beneath him.

“I’m going to miss you,” she whispered softly against the shell of his ear, her hot breath shuddering against his damp temples.

Abram lifted his chin and regarded her pale, freckled face, full of angles and flush, and the smoky, hazel orbs staring up at him under heavy lids. He felt something spark to life deep in his belly, something that made them both shift with less-than-subtle groans.

“I’m definitely going to miss you,” Abram told her, laughing a little at how much he meant that.

Cayde smirked as one of her talented hands tucked back a few dreads that had fallen over his shoulder and onto her flushed chest, revealing a pert pink nipple and the curve of her pale breast.

The spark became a low burn as Abram cupped that very breast, the nipple poking out between his forefinger and middle. Cayde gave a little surprised “Oh!” when he gave the nipple a soft scrape of his teeth, but she didn’t push him away.

He smiled as her hands played over his shoulders, her fingertips gently tracing the lines and shapes of his tattoos as he paid homage to the body that come tomorrow he would be leaving for his band’s global tour.

“Stop thinking about it.”

Abram lifted his lips from the left side of her ribcage to look up at her. It was on the tip of his tongue to play dumb, but Cayde lifted her eyebrows expectantly. He gave in.

“I’m trying,” he said honestly, the burn almost snuffing out now. Something in him rebelled at the idea of leaving this bed – and this woman in it – but at the same time, that something frightened him.

Shaking his head to clear those thoughts, Abram returned to kissing the sweat from her skin. When he got to her mound, Abram spread her trembling thighs, the basest part of his humanity thoroughly pleased at how well he had marked her as his.

“Stop perving, Abram, it’s freaking me out," Cayde teased.

Abram smirked and rose above her, the evidence of his so-called “perversion” on his fingertips.

“What are you—?” Cayde cut off when the tip of his finger pressed against the heated skin of her abdomen.

M-I-N-E.

Cayde gave him a dry look. “Was that really necessary?”

“Fuck yes,” Abram murmured, the burn suddenly turned to all-high centigrade.

The first thrust inside her made her knees buckle and snap close, but the next few hundred had her hips snapping up to meet his, their symphony orchestrating itself all over again until they reached their peak, their crescendo, and the alarm for him to wake up to head to the DFW airport.

Abram came with her name on his lips, but the time for boneless limbs and small comforts had passed.

“Happy Birthday,” she told him later, after they had showered and he was packed.

Abram turned and pulled her into his arms, breathing her scent of apricot conditioner in deeply, ignoring the part of him that rioted at the idea of leaving Cayde behind.

“Thank you,” he whispered, his birthday the last thing currently on his mind.

He was bound to leave her sometime, either to head back to Pennsylvania where his house and broken family lived or back on the road where his fans and their money procured him a life of relative ease. Before, though, leaving hadn’t been this damned hard.

Before, there hadn’t been a Cayde Pruett.

“Come on,” she told him, pulling away. “You don’t want to miss your flight.”

He did, but he didn’t.

Never had a car ride been more depressing.

“I’ll call,” he promised her, as they grabbed his luggage out of the trunk of her Ford Mustang. Cayde had been suspiciously happy the entire time to the airport, whistling to the tunes on the radio that had almost made his eardrums bleed listening to. It was rather marvelous to him at how different their ways with coping with goodbyes were.

Cayde took out a small duffle bag and shut the trunk. She turned to him and smiled, her hazel eyes wide open and sparkling, just a trace amount of fatigue around the edges. “Skype is cheaper. No overseas charges and all that.”

“Right,” was all he could say.

Cayde tilted her head, looking over his face. “Hey. Cheer up, Abraham. A few months touring the world being bombarded by people who would give you their firstborn will go by faster than you think,” she teased.

Abram laughed. “I’m holding you to that, you know,” he laughed, his arms encircling her. “Firstborn included.”

Cayde held him back, her smile wider. “It will, you’ll see.”

He kissed her softly at first, but then it started to hit him that this was it. This was the last time he would physically hold this woman, taste these lips, or feel her heart drum out a rapid cadence until sometime in late fall, way too many weeks from now.

Hungry for something he couldn’t name, he felt his fingers intertwine in the heavy strands of her hair, making her prisoner against his chest and under his lips until some asshole honked and another let out a wolf howl some short seconds later.

Cayde dropped her head and stepped back, but not before Abram caught the sight of her hot pink flush on the tops of her cheeks.

Beautiful, he thought as she reached down to pick up his bags. So fucking beautiful.

“You better get going,” she was saying when he finally managed to get his mind back on planet earth. “See you soon.”

On impulse, Abram ran the backs of his fingers over the sharp curve of one cheek. “Soon,” he promised, taking the bags from her.

After one last goodbye kiss, he walked away.

If he had only known that it would be for good.

~*~*~*~

Abram jogged down the stairs to the wings of the stage. Sweat dripped down his face and neck before falling in beads to the concrete beneath his Chucks. Streaks marred the otherwise porcelain mask that his face had once been, revealing hollow cheeks flushed not with heat but with sickness.

Abram caught the towel that was tossed to him by one of the roadies and wiped at his face until it felt raw and clean. Or as clean as a sweaty, caked-on makeup face could get anyway.

As he passed the touring crew and venue security, eyes widened before looking anywhere else but the living skeleton that was walking past.

“Great show, guys!” called out Randy, the We the Shepherds band manager. A small Italian with a nervous eye tic, he was always irritatingly positive – but he also had a knack for getting shit done, which was why after Jace’s referral, the band decided to hire him on. He also had an irritating habit of ending his sentence with exclamation points! And did Abram mention positivity?(!)

“Thanks, Randy,” Orion grunted, somewhere close to Abram’s right shoulder.

Abram darted out into the hall leading to the venue exit before Orion could sink his teeth in.

Orion’s irritated “Fuckin’ A!” told Abram that the Andre Roussimoff-like bass player felt the same way about his quick escapes.

Shame crept up Abram’s neck, but he didn’t slow down until he was safely outside in the teeth-cringing cold of a Russian winter.

We the Shepherds were in Moscow, their last show of their Set the World on Fire tour. The turn-out of the whole thing had been great, though some of the locations had almost convinced him he would get shot or stabbed or gang-raped by a bunch of European Goths. Other than a few Japanese guys trying to raid their touring van, the whole tour had been pretty uneventful and honestly? Abram was glad it was over.

Moscow was beautiful, but he didn’t have the soul to enjoy it.

He didn’t enjoy much anymore, not since—

Abram stopped where he was, dead center in the middle of the abandoned snow-covered sidewalk.

Christmas lights from the shop window next to him cast brightly colored flashes of light against his face, first green, then blue, then red before starting over again. Abram focused on the pattern, on the silent music, until his heart calmed and his stomach stopped trying to give him a serious bowel movement. After he felt like it was safe to move again, he opened his eyes and kept walking, his eyes unseeing of everything around him.

He became the living skeleton. A shade.

The thought spurred a memory, and not a good one.

“You’re a shitty excuse for a man,” she hissed at him, the tears in her eyes finally seeping freely down her cheeks.

That’s all he was now, but that’s all he had ever been. And it just hadn’t mattered as much, not until now.

Not until Cayde had needed him.

But he had never been needed before. Wanted, sure, he had a string of girls in his past that could attest to that. Being needed was a new concept to him. It was as frightening as it was exhilarating, but his fear had won out.

And he had lost everything…

…but he couldn’t make himself get it all back.

Which was why he was here, running from his boys, dreading the return home but dreading the idea of getting back in that fucking tour bus or on another plane. He wanted, truly wanted, but as to what he wanted, he couldn’t figure that part out.

It hadn’t always been this complicated, he reminded himself. Sonya, the ex before Cayde, had been simple in her demands: fuck her hard and buy her pretty things. He had done that, the first part especially, but in the end he was left with a bruised ego and a hardened heart that wanted nothing to do with pretty, perfumed brunettes.

Then he met Cayde, a white-haired pixie with a mouth like a sailor, who had willingly left his bed the moment he had passed out like a baby with her in his arms.

And he had wanted to kill her for it.

That’s when things got complicated. All that emotional shit that had come within hours. After, he had fucked her in her own bed, imprinting the smell of them on her sheets, then her couch, and then her dining room table after – though he was sure by now she had set those things on fire to purge the memory of him from her life.

For those four weeks after the Dallas show, they had been always touching, kissing – God they had kissed – and somewhere between her learning to deepthroat him and him making chocolate chip pancakes for a midnight breakfast, he had done the incredibly romantic and stupid thing: he made them official.

“You’re thinking very hard about something.”

Abram’s lips gently skimmed over her neck before he placed a soft chaste kiss behind her ear. Cayde stirred against him, her narrow throat swallowing nervously.

“I was trying to convince myself that European girls are all hairy and gross and won’t be in any way appealing to you,” she murmured in a voice husky from fatigue.

Abram chuckled. “How’s that working out for you?”

She gave his upper bicep a soft pinch out of irritation. “Not very well, actually. I keep picturing you tonsil-hockeying it with a Maria Sharapova look-alike.”

Abram’s brow furrowed. “She is hot…” he agreed, cutting off with a laugh after she punched him in the gut. “But I think my girlfriend might take issue with me making out with other girls.”

Abram grinned at her astonished silence. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you speechless before,” he joked.

Cayde shut her gaping mouth before he could get another jab in, her face turning pinker by the second.

“So, while I’m in Europe,” Abram began as his fingers walked up her prominent ribcage, “that means you can’t tonsil-hockey it with anyone not as attractive as me – which is no one, for clarification purposes.”

Cayde laughed at that and squirmed under his tickling fingers. “I don’t think—” she squealed, turning over onto her belly to make it stop. “I-I AIIIIEE, Abram! ABRAM. Oh my God, stop it right now or else I’m going to p–”

Abram blew a loud raspberry against her shoulder and held her tighter in his arms when she tried to wriggle free.

“Truce! Abram, mercy, truce, you win, Uncle…whatthefuck stop that!”

He laughed and his fingers went from tickling to stroking. “You don’t think what?” he asked huskily against the shell of her ear.

Cayde let out a final giggle and turned her cheek so she could breathe. “As cheesy as it sounds,” she said a bit breathlessly, “I don’t want anyone else.”

Abram stopped drawing spirals.

“You don’t know me well enough to say that,” he said quietly against her shoulder.

Cayde’s body tensed beside him, but her face admitted defeat. “It’s not without lack of trying,” she replied, turning it back on him.

Now it was Abram’s turn to tense. “You’re…right,” he said finally. Cayde looked at his face then, surprise written all over it.

“Are we having a serious conversation for once?” she asked in shock.

Abram cracked a smile and nodded, looking over at her. “Yea, I think so.”

Cayde propped up her head on her palm, her tousled hair spilling down off her shoulders and covering her bare breasts. “This is like…groundbreaking, you do realize that, right?”

Abram rolled his eyes with a laugh. “It’s not without lack of trying,” he told her, wiggling his eyebrows.

Cayde swatted his chest gently. “Stop stealing my lines.”

Abram bit his lip for a second. “I’m sorry,” he murmured, meaning it.

Cayde rolled her eyes. “Dude, you can steal my lines. Just give credit where’s it due,” she teased.

Abram shook his head slowly. “I meant that I’m sorry I’m not…” He laughed softly and looked at the ceiling for a second, shame shooting through him.

Cayde decided to help. “Open? Forthcoming? Willing to share your innermost secrets? Christian? American? Vegan? Republ–”

Abram clamped a hand over her mouth, a laugh shaking his entire body. “All of the above.”

Cayde gasped against his palm. “Youhardemican?”

Abram pulled his hand away with a smile. “Yes, I’m American.”

Cayde narrowed her eyes. “Prove it.”

Abram rolled his eyes and reached across the bed, grabbing at his jeans. She barely caught his wallet before it hit her full on in the face. Cayde flipped it open and tugged out his driver’s license, her hazel eyes darting quickly over its contents.

“Hmm,” she hummed.

“Abraham Lee Wescott is a resident of exotic Scranton, Pennsylvania standing at six feet six inches of pure masculinity goodness. This gift to the world of metal was born on…” She glanced up at Abram. “Fucker, you’re old,” she teased, jerking the license away before he could grab it from her. “Well, we’ll just have to look over that, grandpa,” she joked, clearing her throat afterwards. “This gift to the world was born on Independence Day – ooh, so American! – and drives with corrective lenses like a majority of most people and look! You’re an organ donor. So thoughtful.”

Abram snatched the license away, shaking his head. “And you are so full of shit,” he told her, tossing it and the wallet off to the side. He then made a face. “If it says all that on there, it’s a wonder I still get speeding tickets,” he mused.

“The Man hates rock music. It’s thought provoking and oh so rebellious,” Cayde told him in mock-seriousness, a smile tugging at her lips.

Abram tugged her down to him and pressed his forehead to hers, inhaling sweat, her sex, and the fading traces of her perfume. Heaven be damned if he didn’t get hard again. “So much for having a serious conversation.”

Cayde frowned into a pout that was, if Abram could put in one word, adorable. “My argument is that you distracted me.”

Abram smirked and kissed her mouth until the pout softened her lips and the fight left her body. “In that case, I can’t fault you for it,” he murmured against her lips after they broke away.

Cayde shrugged. “It’s called the ‘honeymoon stage’, where I am ridiculously head over heels crazy about everything you do and can’t fault you for shit.”

“I like the sound of that,” he laughed, his knee gently pushing aside her own so he could slip between her legs.

Cayde’s face reddened as she rolled onto her back, her teeth catching her full bottom lip briefly. Even after all they had done, she still blushed.

Abram leaned down and kissed each flaming cheek. He pressed his hips against hers, sliding into the tight, wet heat that was the key to the only sort of heaven he knew. 

Within minutes she was a wildcat beneath him, never still with her hips, her hands, or her mouth. Words spilled from her kiss-swollen lips, dirty taunts and pleads that she knew would get to him.

Far too soon, he was cumming deep inside her, his entire body shaking from the intensity of it.

That’s what his life had been missing – this intensity, this pleasure that went more than skin deep.

But just like everything, it all came crashing down.

Abram had never asked about protection.

He should’ve.

Abram found out that he was a father after the Reading Festival, via a 3 A.M. Skype call. Cayde was a mess, trying her hardest not to cry as she told him exactly how many pregnancy tests she had taken to make sure (and she had taken six).

He had all but had a fucking panic attack.

With black around the edges of his vision and a cold sweat streaking down his back that had nothing to do with his ninety minute set, he had told her as bluntly as he could that he wasn’t ready to be a father – he couldn’t be a father.

She had asked why, which was only fair considering, but how could he even begin to explain his upbringing? His father, incapable of keeping his pants on, had fathered five other children out of wedlock. One of the women had actually been a nineteen year old sophomore in his father’s American Lit class. She had had twins, two girls named Prynne and Pearl. That’s irony for you.

His mother had been driven to drink long before the affairs came to light. As long as Abram could remember, his mother had greeted him in the morning for school with a drink in her hand. He’d come home to find her passed out on the divan, a wine stain spreading across the floor rug. Come morning, the rug would be gone, but his mother would be still as drunk as ever.

It had taken a while for Abram to figure out the cause, but his father’s obsession with people dead a hundred years over hadn’t been the only reason. Apparently his parents had married straight out of college because his mother had been pregnant. They lost the baby, and ever baby since then. Abram had been a fluke that had survived.

Twenty-seven years later, he was still deciding if his parents’ were happy about that or not.

Twenty-seven years was a long time to second guess your every movement, every thought, every conversation. For his dad, his very existence wasn’t good enough. For his mother, she could care less, as long as her alcohol was kept in her hand, Abram could knock up a whole slew of girls with her award-winning smile of approval, as long as the tequila was good. Winning music awards, achieving the highest grades, or being the golden boy hadn’t meant shit to his parents. Nothing was ever good enough, not a single damn thing.

His first tattoo had been liberating. His first beer had almost been orgasmic. His first pussy had nearly sent him into a pleasure-induced coma. Moving out at eighteen had made him feel like the king of the world and not speaking to his parents had been as easy as breathing.

Abram’s life had not made him out to be father material. His parents had made sure of that, if anything else. Consoling a screaming kid, teaching one, cleaning it…the very thought of a fucked up genetic copy of himself demanding that of him was more than frightening. It was his own personal Hell.

But how could he say something like that to Cayde, a girl he wished he could stitch to his fucking hip? How could he look in those gorgeous eyes and demand in the politest way possible that she nip that zygote in the butt before it turned into a wrinkly, screaming pink human?

Somehow he had, and all she had done was stare at him, blink, and then say, “You’re a shitty excuse for a man.” His father’s son, after all.

Then she cut the Skype conversation off, and he hadn’t spoken to her since.

The Moscow streets this time of night were all but empty, if you looked in the right place at least. Where We the Shepherds had played had all but become a ghost town after the concert had ended in some hole-in-the-wall warehouse not all too unfamiliar from a particular venue in Dallas that had all but made Abram want to rip Randy from limb to limb.

Abram walked past these places now, unseeing of the way everyone gawked at him, but somehow able to notice how the security guards braced themselves in front of their doors, unwilling to let him past but willing to use muscle in case he decided to chance it. He didn’t.

Abram knew that he was not the usual Slavic fare. Tall, skeletal, with a dramatic flair for dreads and pale skin, Abram didn’t strike many as their fuck buddy. Not many called him beautiful, handsome, cute, or much in the way of positive feedback.

He was Father Azrael, the head ghoul, the lead singer/screamer/lyricist of an electronic/Goth metal band, and a pathetic excuse of a man.

And a father.

Abram’s eyes drifted unbidden to the flash of white coming from a towering Russian wearing clothes that definitely did not fit this kind of weather. She didn’t even glance at him, not that he had expected her to, as her gaze was fully fixated on the security guard, her mission written all over her face. The guard in question gave her mile long legs a long glance and didn’t even look away as he moved to allow her to pass into the club.

Her hair was Abram’s fixation, however, not those legs.

Gleaming white-blonde hair fell in thick layers almost to her ass. On this girl, it was a striking feature.

But it wasn’t mop-haired Cayde. Nothing about this woman was familiar to his fey-girl, as she was all feminine curves and an ass perky enough to bounce a quarter off. Cayde was petite, all points and straight lines, with skin as speckled as the starry night sky.

Cayde, who wore no makeup, who most days braided back her hair and by her own admission participated in No-Shave November, was not this woman by a long shot. But it didn’t matter, because the sight of that hair had done exactly what he had been dreading for weeks now.

It had made him miss her.

Want her.

Need her.

It reminded him of why he was running from his bandmates, of his nights spent staring at her number in his phone, but his shame too thick to make him press the call button. Bile choked his airway, but he refused to have a pity party in the middle of a crowded sidewalk.

Skirting past the lines, Abram ducked his head against the astonished eyes and the growing slap of icy snow to the hotel down the block.

After stomping the snow out of his boots on the ice-crusted hotel doormat, he tugged open one of the glass doors and rushed into the heated indoors.

As his fingers, toes, and the tip of his nose thawed, the rest of him remained chilled, fueled by the coldness inside of him now constantly present.

The cold remained even after a hot shower, a mug of hot tea, and an overpriced meal of grilled cheese with potato wedges.

For not the first time, Abram fell asleep to silence, the music in his head now nothing but circular thoughts and memories now turned to nightmares.

His last thought was if he would ever hear the music again.

~*~*~*~

Taking Flight part two coming soon!