Listen To The Rain On The Roof

[Madeleine Baudelaire&Russ Ford]

A wise man once said that the best part of a good thing was the anticipation of it.
Ha, the fúck!
He knew, as he drew her closer, that this was something that had been anticipated, something that had been waited for. After all, he’d known that he’d been attracted to her pretty much from sight, and that had grown to a point that he’d never actually reached before. So this was something new – it was something that had been built up to, and Russ liked that.
And something told him that maybe it hadn’t only been him that had been thinking about this. Maybe that was a wrong assumption on his part, but the way she pulled him closer, held tight to his shoulder… maybe Lynn had been thinking about this, for a while, too.
He never thought he’d be so dámn relieved in his life. Or so thrilled… it shot through his veins in that same cobalt current, along with that static mixture of something-else that he couldn’t put a name to, but it was worth the wait.
So worth the wait.
So he brought her even closer (was there even such a thing as too close?), the current making his fingers weave themselves into her hair as her lips continued to move against his.
They were eventually going to have to break apart, at some stage. But, well… Russ didn’t really want to.
Lynn was the one who pulled away, in the end. Probably a good thing, seeing as Russ wasn’t sure if his self-control would run to that any time soon.
She moved back, but she didn’t move away. Her hands still gripped him tightly, and he didn’t let go his hold on her either. They both just stayed there for a second, trying to make sense of the others eyes, breathing each other in.
Then, she smiled.
It was that smile again. He’d only seen it for the first time tonight, and already he knew that that smile was going to make a complete sucker out of him every time she smiled it. In all the months since they’d met, she’d never used it to him once… Cocky to think it, but he kind of hoped that she hadn’t used it for anyone else, either.
The smile twitched, as thought she was going to laugh and Russ found himself smiling back at her, wondering why the smile was getting bigger…
“Russ,” she said, cheerfully. “You taste like an ashtray.”
…okay, no, he hadn’t been expecting that.
Russ started to laugh – he couldn’t help it. After all that had just happened, and she was making a joke – and he was glad she had. Glad that he’d been able to… to make her happier.
Aw, God, he was screwed. But the best bit was… yeah, he didn’t care.
“Occupational hazard,” he smirked, letting one hand fall from her hair to stroke along her smooth jawline. “I’ve just come inside from a cigarette.”
A second’s pause, but he couldn’t resist it.
“But I think I’m going to be cocky and assume that you don’t mind," Russ grinned, before kissing her again.
This time he knew that he had to stop it, though. There might have been something she wanted to say to him, something... It wasn't fair to interrupt her.
But... just a bit longer.
He did break it off though, eventually, reluctantly, before grinning at her. "Well, am I right?"

[The Delaney Twins]

Lynn became dimly aware of an acute feeling that her spine was melting, but she didn’t have too much time to worry about it before his lips met hers and her brain promptly switched off.
When consciousness came zipping back, it came back with a revelation: it may have been better to give than to receive, but, Jesus Christ, was it better to be kissed than to kiss. And this was a strange revelation for Lynn to have, because the last time that she had been kissed as opposed to kissing, it had been – well. Not unpleasant. But… not as good as this.
Then again, there probably wasn’t much that was.
And then his lips moved slowly back from hers, and he looked down at her again, and he grinned.
At that moment, she realised just how many people would have been offended by what she had just said, and would have had the exact opposite reaction. And she realised that… really, she was sort of lucky that, instead of being the kind of person to get (probably justifiably) pissed at the inappropriate comments that Lynn habitually made, Russ was the kind of person who grinned back.
“Well, am I right, then?”
Again, she had to resist the urge to laugh. Cocky git.
“On account of my not being here to stroke your ego,” she said, grinning, “I think I’m going to reserve comment on that one. But… well.” She lifted her hand and grazed her hand along his jaw, mirroring his action from seconds ago, but instead of dropping it afterwards raised it so that her hand rested on his cheek. “I think I could live with it if we did that – this – from now on. Y’know, every now and again.”
And then her eyes dropped down, but she couldn’t look at the ground; they were too close together. Instead she saw his chest, saw it rise and fall with his breathing, and kept her eyes fixed on the motion as she said, “I mean, that is, if you could see your way to, um… well, letting me take back what I said before. On Hallowe’en. I think that that might have been a, um – an error, on my part.”
She raised her eyes to meet his again, smiled – ignoring the goddàmn heat that rose to her cheeks – and said hopefully, “D’you think that’d be alright?”

[Madeleine Baudelaire&Russ Ford]

“D’you think that’d be alright?”
God, the blush on her cheeks… he didn’t think that Lynn could ever blush – especially after the day they first met, with the machine and all of that – he’d assumed she was pretty much blush-proof, but if you asked him, he’d have to admit that he was kind of enjoying it.
She’d said no, at Hallowe’en when he’d asked her out, and looking back on it now… to think he’d ever freaked so badly about asking her out. He didn’t really know why he’d panicked so much… probably because it was the first time his mouth had led him into that situation.
He still shouldn’t have panicked, godssake, but he had then.
Oh Christ, was that embarrassing…
Russ felt like blushing now.
So, thinking back on it, this was kind of surprising. He’d never have thought then that he'd be sitting here, after this conversation...
It was funny what just a thunderstorm could do.
Just.
Maybe it was a right-place-right-time moment, but… he really did think that it ran deeper than just tonight. Maybe that was just him, or maybe it was just him being cocky. But Russ really didn’t think. The mere fact that she’d just brought up Hallowe’en should be some indication of that, right? And she wouldn’t have kissed him in the first place, right? No, she wouldn't have. Right. He knew that at the time. It had all felt as though there had been a build up to it.
So now she'd said that...
“Yeah, I think that’d be alright,” he said lightly, with a smile. “Can I ask, though – how come you made the ... eh, error, then?”

[The Delaney Twins]

And finally, the laugh which she had stifled a couple of minutes ago rose to her lips. This time, she let it out. She shook her head. “I don’t know. Because I’m an idiot?” she joked.
And she didn’t feel bad about it this time. She wasn’t trying to avoid anything. She wasn’t going to avoid anything. She wanted to explain this to him, and he’d gone and given her the perfect opportunity, so she was hardly going to screw it up now.
Her face grew more serious – well, a bit more serious. She wasn’t really capable of wiping the smile from her face right now, she didn’t think. “No – it was… Well. OK. I have been thinking about this for months. Since you asked me, anyway. And thing is, when you did ask me – at that point, I hadn’t really been thinking about… y’know, us, like this, because I didn’t really think that we were like that. So you caught me by surprise, which is why I freaked out a little bit, and why I made the... “error” at the time. But then after, I was thinking about it, and I realised that, well, there’s really no reason why we couldn’t be like that. Then I started thinking about it properly, and I realised that - this should come as such a shock to you now - I really wanted to, y’know, give it a shot.
“So this realisation came about November 2nd,” she said. “And I sort of thought about saying something straight away , but something kept stopping me, ‘cause I wasn’t sure. And I don’t like doing things if I’m not completely sure about them. Thing is… I mean, Russ, you know I really like you and everything” – God, it felt weird saying this out loud – “but people talk. And here they tend to talk about you quite a lot, if you haven’t noticed. Particularly among… girls in our year. And usually I couldn’t care less about other people think, but this time I didn’t really feel like I could ignore it. So I didn’t really know if it would be – if it would be really… sensible”
Tact. Never Lynn’s strong point. But at least he didn’t look offended.
She’d finish quickly. It got better at the end, anyway.
“So I’ve spent the last two months driving my friends insane trying to figure out whether I could” – just say it, for Chrissake – “trust you or not, and I was getting absolutely nowhere. But now… Well. That thing a couple of minutes ago – I meant it, Russ, it really means a lot to me. It’s not like that stuff is the sort of thing I want to shout from the rooftops, so your reaction… Well, anyway, the long and short of it is that it looks like you made my decision for me.”
She smiled, and darted forward to kiss him on the cheek. Then as she drew back she said, “Hence the smiling and the kissing and the general happiness.”

[Madeleine Baudelaire&Russ Ford]

Jesus Christ.
He’d never, ever admit it to her, but… Madeleine had been right.
Eugh.
She’d told him, hadn’t she, that trust would be an issue because Russ didn’t have the cleanest of slates, and everybody knew it. There were the women, there was the name-issue, and then there was the gossip. And while Russ acknowledged that she may have had a point and so had listened to her advice, he hadn’t believed her. People didn’t talk that much, not about him. That would be Jack Trove, but not Russ Ford, right?
Well, apparently not. If it was enough to make Lynn think twice about this, then that was pretty bad. No, it was worrying.
And if it had taken two months to the conclusion with the help of her friends, God knew what her friends thoughts on the matter. Russ had to suppress a grin there.
Hell hath no fury like a woman's friends...
But he had to laugh as she kissed his cheek. “Hence the smiling, kissing and general happiness,” he repeated, with a grin. “Believe it or not, that was the first time I’ve ever actually asked a girl out... and it was mortifying. So feel good about that,” he added, with a chuckle.
But that wasn’t the issue that Russ should be addressing here, wasn’t it? The whole problem was trust. He’d usually thought that he was a fairly trustworthy person – he didn’t lie, and he didn’t tell secrets, and when he cared about a person he didn’t break their trust. But that was the point, he guessed. He hadn’t exactly shown that because of the way he was with other girls… no, Madeleine was right, dammit, and it was his own fault.
Russ pulled back from her slightly, to watch her face. “I actually spoke to Madeleine about it, and she thought that trust might be an issue, as well. To be honest, I didn’t get that until… well, now,” he added, with a laugh. “I also thought she was lying when she talked about gossip, but apparently I’m very unobservant. Still." Russ paused for a second, his fingers playing with her copper-tinged hair. "I'm glad that that's made your mind up for you, but if it's not enough... I don't really know how to convince you that you can trust me, but can you give me the chance to prove it?"

[The Delaney Twins]

Oh, thank God. If he’d spoken to Madeleine about it – she didn’t really know quite how to react to that particular piece of news: it could only be a good sign, really, but it was still a bit… weird, if her Head had been consulted about her romantic life. But, the point was, if Madeleine had said that trust would be an issue too, then at least Lynn didn’t look like a paranoid mental, which was always a plus, in her book.
And then he finished, “I don't really know how to convince you that you can trust me, but can you give me the chance to prove it?”
Lynn looked at him for a moment. He was being very careful, wasn’t he? Pulling back from her and watching her like that, saying things like that…
Lynn couldn’t really say that she didn’t like hearing them, but he didn’t need to say them. She trusted him. End of. Heaven knew she wasn’t going back to the indecisive mess she’d been a few weeks ago – this was it. Decision made. Done. Russ was her boyfriend, whom she trusted.
Hmm, that was sort of nice, actually, thinking that. Russ, my boyfriend. My boyfriend Russ. Strange, but nice. She’d have to get used to it, and she wasn’t really one-hundred-percent sure that the word ‘boyfriend’ suited him, but she still liked it.
She let a quiet laugh escape her lips, but that new smile was still playing around them. She couldn’t get rid of it. Especially just after he’d said something like that, which officially booted all the problems that Jamie and Kennedy had raised out of her head. “Um, hell yes.”
Short and sweet, then. She’d probably need to say a bit more than that. “But Russ, you do know that that’s hypothetical, right? I’m hardly going to tell you that I trust you one second and then take it back the next. I’m not that bad. And neither are you, either. It really shouldn’t have taken me this long to figure it out, y’know. But… well, I’m glad I did, too.”
And she leant forward and kissed him again, but this time it wasn’t like the other ones. They had been wonderful, strong and vibrant and sudden, but this one was different. Smaller. Just a little kiss. A little You-are-now-my-boyfriend kiss.
She pulled back after a few moments, and smiled again. “And don’t worry, it wasn’t that obvious that it was your first time asking someone out. Maybe just a little bit. And I was the one who was mortified, didn’t you see how weird I was acting? Clearly I don’t deal with that sort of thing very well either. We’re better off like this.”
And she reached out to take the hand that had been playing with her hair, and held it in hers instead.

[Madeleine Baudelaire&Russ Ford]

He couldn’t help but laugh at her “Um, hell yes.”
Russ laughed, squeezing the hand that held his. “Oh, well, as long as it wasn’t that obvious. Thanks for that, and I’m glad I wasn’t the only mortified one. You just did a better job of hiding it, apparently. So, yeah, we’re much better off like this.”
Far better off. This way didn’t involve embarrassment or either of them feeling worried about it.
But she trusted him, now. That was always going to be pretty essential : his girlfriend would have to trust him. And admittedly, he’d had trouble coming round to the idea that he wasn’t trustworthy, but he got it now, and admittedly, he felt pretty ashamed of himself now. But even if her friends thought he would, even if his thought he would, Russ knew that, especially after tonight, there was no possibility of his treating her the way he’d treated people before. It just didn’t come into the equation.
Luckily, though, whatever he’d done that had helped Lynn so much tonight had also managed to make her trust him. He didn’t really know how to sum up that relief.
“It really shouldn’t have taken me this long to figure it out, y’know. But… well, I’m glad I did, too.”
He couldn’t really argue with that.
Somwhere in the pause after he spoke, he noticed something. The thunder that had punctuated the conversation had gone unnoticed by them for a while, but every so often he’d caught a clap or two. Now, the peals had faded away into nothing, and the only sound in the room was the soft pounding of the winter rain on the thick leaded glass windows. There were no flashes of lightning to rent the sky anymore, the black night had survived it in one piece.
The storm was over.
The night had survived the storm, and so had Lynn. And in the space of that one storm, look at the difference that had just been made. Look at her. When he’d come into the room, during the storm, the peals of thunder had echoed around the room, with her sitting, a shaking wreck in the middle of the floor. But now, she was calm, happy, with a bright beautiful smile on her face, and Russ suddenly felt another rush of affection for her that he couldn’t really explain.
But there she was, peaceful, happy.
Storm’s over.
Happy Christmas, Sally.
“Hey,” he said, smiling softly at her. “D’you hear that?”

[The Delaney Twins]

“Hey,” he said to her, smiling in a way that she’d never seen before and which made her want to hug him. She restrained herself, though, because he was obviously going to say something.
“D’you hear that?”
She listened.
And she expected to hear it again, hear that horrible crashing cacophony again, and suddenly she expected to see the bright flash of silver light flood the room; and briefly, she wondered why under God Russ was bringing it to her attention now, of all times.
But she didn’t hear what she expected to hear.
She didn’t hear anything except the flute-like whistle of the far-off wind, and the tinkling of the leaves of the trees as the wind raced through them, and the staccato tapping of the rain on the windows. Just rain, nothing else. It was only rain. It was safe.
And she understood what Russ was really saying to her – the storm was over. The storm had passed over, and Lynn hadn’t even noticed.
“It’s over,” she said, and she couldn’t stop the surprise from leaking into her voice. “Oh, wow. Wow, I – I didn’t even notice it ending. ”
And that had never happened before. Before, when Kennedy had sat through the storms with her, he had made it easier, but it had never gone away. Lynn had always been waiting, tense, for the storm to pass, and she’d always been very, very aware of when that did happen. But now, with Russ…
She hadn’t been thinking about the storm at all, had she?
She laughed softly, slightly in awe. “God... That’s… That’s never happened before. Me not knowing it was over, I mean. You’re more distracting than I gave you credit for."
And she smiled, gently, like he had, and she squeezed his hand more tightly.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. And it didn’t really feel like just saying that was enough, considering everything that had happened tonight, but she didn’t know how to say what she wanted to say. It didn’t really… She didn’t know the words to express what this had all meant to her, so Thank you would have to do for now.

[Madeleine Baudelaire&Russ Ford]

She seemed genuinely surprised that the storm was over, and it made Russ smile. She really hadn’t noticed that it was over, then. He was just glad that she had managed to forget about it, especially if that hadn’t happened before. It made her happier… it made her feel safer, he supposed. She definitely didn’t look as scared as she had earlier, when he’d arrived.
The opposite, actually. Neither of them had really even registered that the storm was still ongoing. Lynn was right, it was all very distracting.
And the smile that matched her sentence was as soft and sweet as candyfloss, and it made that rush of affection surge again, but it was nothing compared to how he’d feel when she spoke again.
“Thank you.”
Russ had no idea what it was about those two words or how she’d said them, but the way that she had said them started something in him that made him draw her closer and kiss her gently, as softly as her words had been spoken.
Pulling away moments later, he looked at her for a moment, but for some reason couldn’t smile, but repeated the words he had said earlier. “Sally… don’t thank me, alright? You really don’t need to thank me. It’s okay.”
It’s okay, it was all okay.
There was a silence for a moment, the only sound the light patter of the rain against the glass.
“I’m glad I distracted you though,” he said, with a sudden grin. “Call it a Christmas present, the distraction.”
… it was Christmas morning now, wasn’t it? There was timing, he guessed. It should have been snow, instead of this rain, but… to be honest, Russ preferred it this way. If there hadn’t been a storm, then what had just happened wouldn’t have happened, and… well, yeah. You got the picture.
Russ had always quite liked the rain, actually. If he was inside, that was. There was something smug about hearing the rain against a window, or the walls of a caravan – you were warm and happy inside, and outside it was píssing down from the heavens.
And now… well, this was even nicer.
“So, happy Christmas, then.”

[The Delaney Twins]

In the brief silence that followed his words, all Lynn could hear was the gentle patter of the rain and the steady thud of her heartbeat, which had been set racing by the kiss.
Part of her still couldn’t believe that this was happening. She had come down for a thunderstorm; she’d just come down to sit in the common room, that was all. She hadn’t even thought that anyone would come, let alone Russ. She hadn’t even thought that he would stay after he’d heard why she was freaking out, and yet…
And yet this had happened. Just happened, as if she hadn’t been agonising over it for months, as if she hadn’t had any doubts at all. It had just happened; the most natural thing in the world.
And about bloody time, too.
And as those words popped into her mind a grin cropped up on his face, and he began to speak. “I’m glad I distracted you, though. Call it a Christmas present, the distraction.”
Christmas. Of course, it was Christmas now, wasn’t it? It had been late when she’d woken up, if not past midnight already, and they were definitely into the small hours of the morning by now, considering how long it had taken her to get out her story. She’d not even thought about what day it was, what with everything that had been happening.
But now that she remembered… She kind of liked that it was Christmas. This was a nice way to start the holiday. And the holiday was a nice way to start this, her and Russ.
Whatever this was. Whatever this would be.
She felt excited to think of what would happen from here on in.
“So, happy Christmas, then.”
She looked at him for a moment, an answering smile springing to her lips. She couldn’t not smile. And then, she leant in to kiss him one more time. And she couldn’t not do that, either.
They’d kissed so many times already since the first one, so many times in the last few minutes. God only knew what they’d be like from now on. Still, though, she couldn’t exactly say that she saw that as a problem.
Then she drew back, the smoky taste of his lips still lingering on hers.
And she smiled that new smile again, and happily she said, “Happy Christmas yourself.”