Special Episode: Rainfall (Part I)
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here. The middle section of this episode contains mature content.
Calla spent the day in a cloud of brilliant happiness, shining out from her like a sunglow. All day, she’s been looking forward to seeing Ralph tonight.
All day, every time she’s caught a look at herself in the mirror, she’s looked half in a dream. Overflowing with passion, her entire body holding its breath. She could almost see the smoldering flames in her own eyes, waiting, waiting.
Ralph clearly isn’t feeling the same way.
He was in a good mood this afternoon. Calla got a bunch of bright texts from him. It turns out that Ripley is going to stay in Ketterbridge, and Ralph was happy about that. And apparently there’s a whole thing going on with a puppy that he wanted to tell her about when he saw her.
But by the time he came to meet Calla at the diner halfway between Port Sitka and Ketterbridge, Ralph’s mood had changed.
He’s sitting across the table from her, his teeth gritted, his jaw working. His shoulders are tense beneath the thin fabric of his shirt, his dusky green eyes blazing with anger.
And beneath that… Calla can just make it out. That raw, haunted, agonized expression in Ralph’s eyes. That visible ache he almost never lets show without a layer of anger to disguise it.
Calla hasn’t asked Ralph what happened to put him in this mood. Not because she doesn’t care, but because she suspects that nothing happened.
Calla has taken deep, serious wounds, just like Ralph has. She knows how sometimes they strike at you from within, completely unprompted, and sink you.
Ralph is struggling hard not to let anything show, and to not take it out on Calla. He won’t look at her, presumably because he doesn’t want her to see the look in his eyes. But he knows she’s seen it.
He’s making it about work, all the stuff he’s got to worry about. He took a shot on a risky investment, and he’s not sure if there’s going to be a windfall, things like that. He’s venting about it, and has been for a while.
Calla is watching him dreamily, not really listening.
“I just hate when work stuff is beyond my control,” he growls, viciously twisting his straw wrapper between his fingertips. “It’s better when I’m the one handling everything. Then at least if bad shit happens, I know that I deserve whatever I get.”
Calla doesn’t answer. Ralph steals a swift glance at her, apprehensively searching her eyes with his. There’s a sharp edge of anxiety that hangs over him whenever he gets in his dark moods around her. Like he desperately wishes that he could just stop, just pull himself out of it, be more easy-going and lighthearted for her. It’s a battle he never wins, but he tries his hardest every time.
Calla barely manages to suppress a smile, looking at him across the table. That worried knit between his brows is something she’s come to have a deep, fierce, almost painful fondness for, to the extent that she’s tempted to kiss it whenever it appears.
“It’s not a big deal.” Ralph’s eyes fill with sudden exhaustion, his shoulders sinking as if beneath a heavy weight. He sounds beyond irritated, ready to snap, every word punched out. “Nothing - it’s going to be fucking fine. I’m just stressed out, and real fuckin’ tired. I’m reordering my goddamn chain of command so that I don’t have to do everything, but until that’s all set in place, I’m even counting takes mys-”
“I like how your hair picks up the moonlight,” Calla interrupts, finally letting her smile escape across her lips. “It looks so soft.”
Ralph stops abruptly, taken aback. He pushes a startled hand through his blonde hair, then realizes what he’s doing and hastily drops his fingers back onto the table.
“Oh, yeah?” he asks, with a faint, shy smile warming his eyes.
“Mhm.” Calla stretches out her legs beneath the table, putting the toes of her boots to his. “Reminds me of the prince I always imagined coming to find me in my little secret spots in the forest. There to carry me off in the moonlight on his horse.”
Ralph lets out a startled little laugh, then winces at her, drops his gaze to his hands.
“Shit. Instead you got the guy all the palace guards would be chasing down.”
Calla lets out a happy sigh. “Even better.”
Ralph pauses, then looks up at her sharply. Gazing at her with a faint, appreciative smile, his grey-green eyes difficult to read.
“You’re a handful,” he laughs quietly. “Can’t believe it’s me who has to do all the handling.”
“I like how I’ve been handled so far,” Calla tells him, then giggles at the deep blush that instantly spikes in his cheeks.
There’s a warm smile flickering in Ralph’s eyes now, curving up his mouth. Calla can almost see him starting to forget everything, just a tiny bit.
Calla adores Ralph as he is naturally. Serious, quiet, guarded, older way beyond his actual age. But she does love to make him lose the armor and forget about everything. Now that she knows she can. Now that she knows he needs to, sometimes. It’s all pent up in him right now, and he looks ready to burst with how badly he needs to blow off some steam.
Calla folds her elbows on the table, leaning closer to Ralph. “Hey.”
He folds his elbows on the table too, leaning closer to her, his grey-green eyes glowing with affectionate warmth. “Hey.”
Calla glances at the rain pounding against the windows of the diner, then turns back to Ralph. “There’s something I want to do.”
“Funny coincidence. Whatever it was, I was about to suggest we go do that, anyways.”
“I doubt it,” Calla laughs affectionately, lacing her fingers through his. “I’ll bet you’re not up for this.”
Ralph finally breaks into a small, eager grin. “Try me.”
~~~~
Calla is starting to suspect that Ralph didn’t really think she was serious about doing this.
He’s keeping pace behind her right now - she can hear his racing footsteps in the rain - but she feels like he’s still half in disbelief.
“Calla!” he shouts, over the wild crash of the storm. “Are you fucking serious?”
She picks up speed, running faster over the dark, rainswept hill that slopes down towards the forest, where the Sitka spruces rise two hundred feet overhead, swaying green giants against the velvet night.
The sky is a vast stretch of darkness, but the heavy clouds are pierced through with shafts of moonlight. They illuminate the falling rain, as well as Ralph and Calla as they sprint towards the treeline.
They both stop before it in the downpour, panting and soaked through. Calla wipes the rain out of her eyes and peers at Ralph through the darkness.
“You really want to do this?” comes his incredulous voice, out of the shadows.
Calla is feeling light, and free, and not held back by anything. She sets off into the trees, and as she does, she turns to Ralph, laughing, her eyes filled with a challenge.
As always, Ralph accepts the challenge immediately. He flies after her, headfirst into the darkness.
Calla has told him about her hidden places in the forests of Port Sitka. She would slip off to them as a kid, to live out whatever she dreamed of that day. It’s a beautiful, old forest, and she’s always felt close to it. Her favorite places there were hers alone, precious gifts it made her.
Calla told Ralph that she never takes anyone to those places. She never trusts anyone with those places. So she can understand why he’s stunned that she suggested they go find one of them. Right now, in the middle of a midnight thunderstorm.
But why not? Why not? Calla wants to, so why not? Something in her wants to share things with Ralph, and to see what the secret places would make of him, too.
This one isn’t far. The little lagoon is one of her favorites, so she feverishly hopes that bringing someone else there won’t spoil it somehow. But she wants to try. Even her anxious, mistrustful heart wants to try, for Ralph.
She weaves through the patches of moonlight, the rain crashing down on her, her breath high up in her lungs, her cheeks blazing hot in the cold rain.
Ralph is at her side, a blur of movement, his swift footsteps and the sound of his breathing reaching her in the darkness even when she can’t see him. When the moonlight comes out, it flashes over his wet blonde hair, like a pale flame somehow burning strong in the middle of the thunderstorm.
Calla staggers to a stop, panting, and pulls her soaked shirt off over her head. Ralph stops beside her, his chest rising and falling fast with his panted breaths, and stares at her as she kicks off her boots.
His eyes widen as she strips out of the rest of her clothes, until she stands naked in the forest.
Calla reaches out and tugs on Ralph’s threadbare shirt. He blinks hard, drawing back anxiously, glancing in the direction of the road they left behind.
Then he seems to realize what he’s doing. Balking in the face of a dare. He bites down on his lip, fighting with himself.
He freezes when Calla slowly, gently lifts his shirt up in the pouring rain.
He’s still motionless when she gets it over his head and starts to pull it off down his arms. Staring at her as the rain slides down the curve of his neck, over his tattooed ribs, the slender muscle of his bare torso. His drenched blonde hair is spiky and messy, one strand sticking up straight over his temple.
There’s a dark flame in his eyes as he looks at her.
He bites his lip harder, then breaks into a laugh. He bends down and starts unlacing his boots, and Calla backs up to let him, smiling as the droplets spill down onto her.
The rain really isn’t so bad, she thinks to herself. Once you decide not to fight it, to just let it have you.
Ralph straightens up, bare of his clothes, a shy blush in his cheeks. Calla looks at him with admiring eyes, then catches his hand and sets off through the trees again, this time keeping his slippery wet fingers locked in hers.
Ralph shivers a little. Calla doesn’t know if it’s because of the cold, or something else. She feels his blazing green eyes on her, roving all over her body as the rain beats down on it.
She senses Ralph’s free hand reaching for her, and dances gracefully out of the way just in time to evade it.
Calla smiles radiantly as she hears the burst of low, indignant laughter behind her through the rain. She lets go of his hand and picks up speed, her heart pounding at the thrill of a chase - then gasps when Ralph flings an arm around her waist, catching her instantly, drawing her back up against him.
The cold shock of his rain-chilled skin is instantly followed by a deep, burning heat from within him as he presses her wet body back into his. Like she breathed oxygen into the fire in him.
She takes in a sharp breath when she feels how badly he wants her. Right here, in a thunderstorm, in the forest. His thumb strokes her soft, naked abdomen, then glides higher, his panted breaths breaking right in her ear.
Calla lets him feel her for a breathless moment, then slips out of his hands.
Ralph watches her as she weaves further away, her bare feet on the pine-needle blanket. He comes after her, panting with his whole body, his cheeks on fire. His grey-green eyes are practically smoking as she stops, turning to face him.
“Come on!” she calls through the downpour.
Ralph stares at her in confusion, then gasps when she turns and springs into the air, right off of the little cliff edge she was standing on.
“Calla!” he shouts, and leaps after her.
For a few breathless seconds, they both fall. Calla always loves this moment, the free fall. But it’s different this time. Special. Because in midair, Ralph’s hand somehow catches hers, and holds on tight.
Then Calla sinks deep into the cool spring water of the lagoon, and hears the muffled explosion of Ralph landing beside her.
She stays completely submerged for a peaceful moment, then pushes herself up through the water. Rising towards the softened, thumping beat of the rain pounding against its surface, sending little shocks of bubbles down.
Calla bursts back into the night air, smiling happily, and slicks some water out of her buzzed hair. She squeezes Ralph’s hand reassuringly, then lets him go.
Ralph comes up beside her and tosses his hair out of his face, gasping for breath. He stares around with wide sage eyes. Taking in the clear, gentle waters of the lagoon they landed in, shaded by the vivid green branches of the trees, the banks heavy with soft moss and crowds of wildflowers.
Calla hasn’t been back here in so long. She forgot how beautiful it is. She kicks herself towards the shallows and stands up, so that the water just barely kisses her glistening wet hips. She tips her head back and lets the moonlight spill down her body, captured in raindrops, like pearls. Trailing her fingertips over the crystal surface of the water.
Ralph catches sight of her, and his roaming eyes come to a sudden stop. Calla gives him a reckless, devious little smile, arching an eyebrow.
She expected him to laughingly tell her off. But he only stares at her, just stares and stares.
His eyes are swimming with lakes of dark fire, of pure, undiluted passion, burning so fiercely hot that Calla can feel the flaming touch of it from where she’s standing. He’s looking at her like he’s drinking in the sight, and slowly growing intoxicated by it.
She didn’t expect this reaction. She goes very still, looking back at him, holding her breath.
Ralph starts moving like he’s being drawn towards Calla by something beyond his power. He gets his feet down on the pebbles of the shallows and slowly comes to stand before Calla in the water, his pupils enormous in the moonlight.
The rain pours down and the thunder growls as Ralph bends down to Calla, puts his nose against hers, and slowly, caressingly runs his hands up the sides of her body.
He trembles as he touches her, and she trembles, too.
The water lapping at her, the rain running all over her skin, the droplets falling from Ralph’s hair - it all feels like extensions of him, of his touch that sets off the melting heat and turns her body soft and pliant as warm candle wax.
She comes up against his body, melts into his embrace. He wraps his arms around her middle, breathing hard, pressing her to him. She can feel his pounding heartbeat this way - she can feel everything.
Calla lets out a heavy rush of breath against Ralph’s chest. The sound is lost in the rain, but he felt it. A tremor goes through him, like that one little breath blew burning sparks into life. His body is suffused with heat, and so is Calla’s, her very blood on fire. The rain is almost smoking on his skin, and hers.
Ralph opens his green eyes and looks down at her with them. They look so staggeringly beautiful to Calla in the rain and the moonlight that her heart comes to a complete standstill.
Time fades away as she stands there, submerged in the invisible smoke of heat and passion, her heart running wild, her eyes gazing up into his.
Then he’s kissing her, hard and hungry, and she’s shivering with pleasure as his grasping hands feel her body with increasingly frenzied, rough touches that make her gasp. His fingers are like the brush of flames, melting, melting.
She’s already panting, unable to finish even one clear thought. Her face is so flushed that each cold droplet of rain to spill down on it is a tiny shock, setting her nerves alight. She closes her arms around Ralph’s neck, lost in him, kissing him back with the full force of everything she’s feeling, rubbing herself up against him.
Ralph suddenly breaks off the kiss, panting. He goes motionless, then starts pressing Calla backwards through the water, towards the edge of the lagoon.
“Lay down!” he gasps, in a husky, urgent, rushed voice. “Lay down!”
Calla staggers out of the water and drops flat onto her back on the soaked moss. There’s a split-second where the rain is beating down mercilessly onto her exposed body, and then Ralph is over her, shielding her from it. His mouth is burning hot when it finds hers, despite the cold raindrops scattering from his hair, which is darkened to honey-blonde from the rain.
His body is a rush of pure, sublime heat, in striking contrast to the cold everywhere else.
Calla clings to him as he works his teeth into her neck, then lets out a whimpering, wild little cry of ecstasy as he lowers himself between her thighs.
Ralph shudders, a choked gasp escaping from his mouth. He holds very still for a second, his jaw working, his muscles all tensed up. Then he suddenly and roughly starts to move like he can’t help it, letting out a deep, fractured groan as he does.
Calla is moaning, too, her head thrown back, her back arching, pressing her shoulder blades deep into the soft moss. Piercing, unspeakable pleasure surges through her in mounting molten waves, forcing all kinds of breathless cries from her lips, all lost in the rain.
Ralph’s jagged, trembling breaths reach her through the roar of the storm, roughened up with hoarse bursts of his moaning voice.
No one hears any of it. It’s all for him and her, another secret of the forest.
~~~~
Afterwards, silence falls for a time.
Calla is still lost, swimming in perfect oblivion. Her body feels enriched, heavy, glowing. She’s deep in that boundless, all-consuming serenity that used to be so hard for her to reach. At the very root of everything, at her very foundations, she feels total, infinite, cosmic bliss.
She tightens her arms around Ralph’s warm body, filled completely with the sense of having her every deepest need met, and then some.
Ralph finally lifts his head from Calla’s chest, looking down at her with dazed eyes. She opens hers at the same time, and realizes that the rain has slowed down to a feather-soft drizzle.
There’s a hushed stillness to the forest, the wet spring air perfumed with forest green. The lagoon that Calla and Ralph’s legs are still half-submerged in is glowing beautifully in the naked moonlight. The clear waters are lapping softly, the towering Sitka spruces overhead glistening with droplets.
Ralph isn’t looking at any of it. He’s staring at her, speechless, his eyes filled up with sheer… Calla doesn’t know what. But whatever it is, it’s powerful. It blazes out from the depths, dancing like flames.
Calla stares up at Ralph, stricken. What he’s silently telling her is registered by her heart and soul, even if she can’t come up with the word for it.
Maybe afraid of what she might be seeing in his eyes, Ralph blinks, then starts to draw back. Calla tightens her arms and legs around him without thinking, burrowing her face into his neck.
“No!” she whispers, clinging to him with fierceness that startles even her. “Don’t leave me! Don’t let me go!”
Ralph stops still.
Calla can’t see his expression, but she winces at herself in horror, her cheeks searing with humiliation.
She can’t fucking believe what she just said to him, out loud - no no no, she only meant that she doesn’t want them to go their separate ways yet. That she’s wishing they’d made plans to spend the night together, not just meet up halfway between Ketterbridge and Port Sitka. That was all she meant, probably, but it came out sounding like a lot more than that…
Calla wants to draw back so she can scan Ralph’s face for any indication of what he’s thinking. But she already feels so vulnerable and exposed, she can’t make herself do it -
“God,” Ralph murmurs softly, propped on one elbow, slowly sliding his palm up the back of her thigh. “How is it that you fell right out of heaven, hellcat? And how the fuck did I get lucky enough to catch you? I don’t even know how to cope.”
Calla’s eyes fly open, wide and startled. She pauses, then eases back uncertainly, looks shyly up at Ralph.
She finds his eyes smiling down at her. He lets out a soft laugh, then takes her hand and presses it over his heart, so she can feel the pounding beats of it.
“Feel that? I’m fucking howling at the moon in there.”
Calla lets out a startled laugh, blushing even deeper than she was before.
Something flashes through Ralph’s dark green eyes at the sound of her laughter. He gazes down at her, his lip caught between his teeth.
Suddenly and impulsively, he draws back, dips his head down, and playfully snuggles his face into her stomach.
Calla lets out a burst of startled, ticklish laughter, seizing two handfuls of his hair. Ralph lifts his head, his cheeks pink, a tiny grin turning up his lips.
He moves to sit up again, and this time, he draws Calla up with him. He looks around at the lagoon like he’s really seeing it for the first time, winding an arm around Calla’s shoulders.
Stray bits of wildflowers are pressed against the skin of his naked arm, stuck there. He’s breathing movement into the wings tattooed on his ribs, slow and rhythmic and steady.
“Shit, look at this place.” He stares around at the massive Sitka spruces shedding their cold droplets of rain, the rich and luxuriant moss coating everything, the moonlight glimmering on the water. He turns to look at Calla, squeezing her shoulders a little. “Suits you. You - look right, here.”
Calla doesn’t answer. She’s working through a strange sensation. She feels inexplicably small in Ralph’s arms, and in some confusing way she can’t explain, that feels good. To be so completely held and enclosed, so warmly and intimately. She snuggles closer to him, leaning her head against his shoulder.
“Yeah, fuck the imaginary prince,” she murmurs, half to herself. “This is so much better. I’ll take the guy awaiting trial in the dungeons, please.”
Ralph exhales a laugh, stroking his thumb affectionately up and down her wet shoulder. “You know they’d never get me in the dungeons.”
“Maybe they would.”
“Yeah? Shit. What’s my punishment going to be?”
Calla considers for a second. “Execution by - something you hate. I don’t know. The feds.”
“The feds?” Ralph laughs, flexing his feet in the water. “This scenario involves both a royal prince and the feds?”
“Yep, and they’ve both got you, so.”
Ralph leans back on his palm, smiling faintly. “I’m shaking in my boots.”
“Really? You don’t look too worried.”
“Nah, why should I be?” He presses a kiss onto Calla’s temple. “My girl would spring me. Never been a fed or prince in history who could stop her.”
Calla bites back a wide smile, trying hard not to look up at Ralph. She takes a deep breath of him, cuddling up close.
She was going to ask him if he’s feeling better, after the terrible mood he was in earlier. But she’s definitely already got her answer. She actually thinks he might have forgotten completely about that, and she’d rather leave it that way.
But really, she’d rather not leave at all. She doesn’t want to go anywhere, because going somewhere inevitably means they’ll be parting ways. He’ll be driving back to Ketterbridge, and she’ll be going back to Port Sitka. They’re much closer to Port Sitka at the moment, but Calla can’t ask Ralph to stay at her place, because she lives with her family, and he hasn’t met them yet.
Still, there must be something, some way -
“Let’s get a hotel room, yeah?” Ralph suddenly blurts out. “Or - something? Just for tonight?”
Calla smiles to herself, then nods silently.
Ralph instantly looks relieved, his shoulders relaxing, his eyes brightening. Calla is relieved, too. The thought of driving off separately was cutting at her almost unbearably. She desperately didn’t want to go home without Ralph. It warms her through and through, to know he’s feeling the same way.
Although… it’s a strange thing. As soon as Calla looks into Ralph’s warm, smiling eyes, she feels like she already is at home. Right here, in the dark, in the forest. She feels at home.
Because she’s with him.
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