Niles Takes a Trip... and Then a Tumble
Part 6 : An Epiphany for Niles
The early afternoon sun etched its way through the slits in the blinds.
Niles felt complete contentment for the first time in his entire life. He finally felt like a man, not a bumbling boy, full of frustrated passion and awkward gestures. A man - someone who was desired and fulfilled another's desires. He turned and glanced over at Grace, who lay beside him, hidden by the blanket, except for her face.
She looked like a vision to him. He reached out and touched her hair, just
to reassure himself that she wasn't an apparition. Her dark reddish brown strands felt like silk as they slipped between his fingers. She stirred and opened her hazel eyes.
"Good afternoon," he said quietly.
Grace smiled back at him.
"Mmmm....It certainly is," she lazily intoned.
Her hands extended out to hold his face. She rolled gently forward until
their bodies softly collided, wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed both his cheeks.
"You are the most wonderful, sweet lover I have ever had," she murmured.
She hooked her smooth leg over his thigh and drew him up close. Niles' lips parted slightly in anticipation and surprise. She traced his lips with her tongue and kissed him deeply. When their mouths parted, he leaned back and looked into her eyes.
"You... are my first, " he confessed in a breathless, husky sounding voice.
Grace's lambent eyes sparkled.
"I never would have known," she said simply and kissed him again.
Niles felt like he was tumbling towards ecstasy. He sensed a rapture invade his whole body and take over his very soul. He had a sensation of feeling confident and humble at the same time. He rolled lightly on top of her.
Their nude bodies began to move with a gentle yet persistent rhythm. With each stroke he perceived a mounting tidal wave of emotion that threatened to overtake them.
Grace arched her back and gripped his arms. Her mouth opened with a gasp of delight. There was a lacing of limbs and flesh and yearning and joy. Niles shuddered a release and fell towards the oblivion of her lips. Nothing else mattered for the moment. Not Vegas, not Seattle, not school, not even his own insecurities or fears. Nothing mattered to him, except Grace. That was everything he needed for right now. Grace... amazing Grace was his salvation. Niles cradled her softly, their spent bodies lying in tandem. She petted the hair on his sinewy arms.
"I take it you are fully recovered," she teased.
"Yes, thanks to you," he replied, kissing the back of her head. "I could
stay this way for ever."
"But you know we can't," Grace's said with a touch of regret.
Niles suddenly felt his heart begin to thump wildly. His breathing became more quickly paced.
"I know, I know," he said in a rush, trying desperately to suppress his
rising panic. " You have to get washed and dressed in your costume to get yourself ready for Brisbane's afternoon show. It will be a couple of hours and then you might be hungry. I... I could make you something, something to eat. I'm really quite good at cooking, even out of the simplest ingredients. I won a ribbon for it in high school one time, you know -"
"Niles," she said compassionately. "Niles, stop."
"No!" he sobbed. "No, Grace! I can't let you go! Say I can stay with you!
P...p...please!"
He sat up and folded his legs up to meet his chest. His head sagged into
his arms as he hid his face from her. Grace sat up beside him and put her arm across his back and rubbed it soothingly.
"Niles, there are no performances this afternoon. Today the show moves on to Los Angeles. I'm going with it. You - you are going back to Seattle to school."
Her calm, rational manner sliced through him like a surgeon's scalpel.
"That's it then," Niles said bitterly. "So cut and dried for you. Was it
fun having a "virgin" like me for your amusement? You never really felt anything for me, then? I was just a couple of day entertainment while you stopped over in Vegas. You just used me, didn't you?"
He despised himself for sounding so cruel, but his pain was driving him
blindly forward to the brink. If they argued and he left, he could always tell himself later it was for the best, that way.
Grace shook her head.
"You don't mean that. I know you don't. Please
don't make this any harder than it is... on both of us."
Tears welled up in her eyes. Niles hated the fact that his words had made her cry.
"I love you Grace!" he blurted out. "I need you!"
"Oh Niles, I love you too," she cried. "But we both know that this is
something for the now, not for the forever. When I first found you lying on that cold, hard ground, I just intuitively sensed that there was a connection between us. That's why I brought you back here and not to a hospital. I had to get to know you better. It was like an unstoppable force."
Niles looked up; his tear-stained face turned in her direction.
"I made you feel that way? Really? Me?" he asked incredulously.
"Yes, *you*!" said Grace. "You with your sensitive, kind manner and gentle
nature. You with your raw feelings and needs. You, with your ardent
affections. You made me feel so helpless in the face of all that!"
"Grace, I never imagined that I could do that to anyone."
"You don't know the power of your own passions, my darling Niles. I'm just
glad I could help you unlock them. Just remember to use that potent force in you for good," she jested. "And not evil!! You could break a lot of hearts
if you don't mind yourself!"
"Oh, yes," Niles giggled nervously. "That's me, `Don Juan Crane'!"
"Well, it is the quiet ones that our mothers always warned us about!" she
chided. "Niles, let's go for a walk and get something to eat, if you are
feeling up to it. The fresh air will do you some good and we have at least four hours before I have to pack to leave, so there's plenty of time really."
"All right, Grace!" he said bravely, finally realizing that to dwell on the sad aspect of their situation would only spoil the time they had left. "Do you think I should take a chance and shave this craggy countenance?"
"I tell you what," challenged Grace. "If you let me, I'll shave your
whiskers for you! My treat!"
"You've done this before?" he asked with a little less bravado.
"No, but you will just have to trust me," she answered, as she brazenly
climbed out of the bed and donned her robe. "I'll be careful."
Niles felt the image of her voluptuous body burn in his mind. He wanted
everything to be just as clear when he thought back to this moment in the
future.
He watched as Grace trotted down the hallway to get a glass of water from the kitchen.
Niles dressed in his trousers and went to the bathroom and lathered up.
Grace appeared behind him, like a specter reflected in the bathroom mirror.
"Are you ready? Sit here on the edge of the tub."
She gently directed him down.
She carefully scraped the razor over his tender areas. The bruises were now more of a yellow-green pallor. Niles closed his eyes, soaking in the luxuriant attention that she lavished on him. Her cheerful conversation combined with her sensual touch made him forget that their time together was ticking away. Grace finally wiped his face with a rough towel and kissed him on the tip of his nose.
"You're all done!" she said proudly. "How does that feel?"
"Like I died and went to a barber shop in heaven."
Niles stood up and viewed himself in the mirror. The discoloration around
his eye was still highly visible. The rest of his wounds had healed remarkably well and were not really that noticeable. Grace quickly surmised the problem.
"You know, Niles, I could just put a little something on that and it
wouldn't show at all," she offered.
"Really? You mean something like... makeup?" he said with doubtful
disdain.
"Yeah, let me show you."
She skillfully applied a dab on her finger and covered the offending bruises.
"There, is that better?"
"Yes, yes I suppose it is," he said with surprise. "Thank you Grace."
"Come on, let's go out and get something to eat."
With that she skipped to the bedroom and quickly pulled on a pair of faded jeans and a tee shirt. A feeling washed over Niles as he surveyed her from the hallway. It was almost surreal how her actions were both cheeky
and naive at the same time.
"Who could have known that when I started out on my journey to
Las Vegas I would have ended up here, doing what I am at this moment," he thought.
He shook his head in wonderment and buttoned his shirt.
"Frasier will never believe this. What am I talking about... no one
will ever believe it! I don't even believe it!"
"Ready to go?" Grace inquired.
"Yes, all ready," he said as he grabbed his suit coat jacket and snapped his
suspenders onto his shoulders.
******************************************************************
They walked to a nearby restaurant. Niles had an eerie feeling that it was
the one he had been heading to the night of the attack, but both he and Grace avoided talking about that.
Niles insisted that they would visit his hotel room after they were done, so he could repay Grace for the cost of the meal. He pleaded, "I have money, you know. You shouldn't always be the one to pay. Let me treat you for once!"
And he did.
It wasn't far to his hotel. He knew Grace was faintly curious as to what it would look like. His place was much smaller than hers was but it was easy to see the imprint of his neat organization in the room, even though he hadn't been there all that long.
Niles flitted about her like a bird on a feeder. He fussed about where
she would sit. He dusted off the chair carefully before he finally allowed
her to perch on it. He disappeared into the bathroom to tidy up, coming
back a few minutes later muttering something about how "if he had had more time it would have been more presentable."
Grace laughed gently and just pulled him down on the bed.
They made love one more time that afternoon. There was a certain urgent
desperation that accompanied it. As if they were all too well aware of the countdown to their impending departure.
The late afternoon sun streamed through the crack in the drapes
and cut across their languid forms, after they lay exhausted under the pale,
stiff sheets. As Grace snuggled in the curve of his arm, her eyes closed, a
smile turned the corners of her mouth up slightly. Niles looked up at the
stained ceiling tiles and sighed. The reality of their destiny hit him like
an electric shock. His body convulsed for a brief second and a tear rolled
down his cheek. Grace tilted her head up, kissed it away and hugged him.
"Just remember me like this," she simply said.
He decided then and there to keep this just to himself. It was perfect the
way it was. He didn't have to hold it up to the scrutiny of others. It would somehow sully it if the judgmental opinions of his classmates intruded into the memory of Grace and what the two of them had experienced over the past few days. It was too precious to him. It was good enough that he knew.
Niles suddenly felt very grown up.
Grace was adamant that he not accompany her back to the Desert Inn.
She said that she wanted to remember him the way he was at this very moment - so handsome and masculine, yet also so delicate and fragile. His lean, bare chest was slightly damp with a glistening of sweat. His sandy blond hair was still a bit tousled from their earlier activities. As he sat upright in his trousers, his legs dangled almost casually over the side of the bed. His cheeks had taken on a ruddy complexion, while his large, dark blue eyes telegraphed his affections directly to her heart.
"Perfect," she whispered. "Don't move."
She kissed him one last time, pressed her cheek against his and left.
Niles disobediently ran to the window and watched her walk down the street. When he couldn't see her any further, he dashed outside to the balcony and strained desperately until she was a smudge in the distance.
He wanted to run after her, but he knew he couldn't. This was the way it was supposed to be. He didn't even realize he was crying until a passerby looked up in disgust and made some comment about too many bad drugs floating around Vegas nowadays.
It was Thursday. This was supposed to be his last full day in Vegas. In
his neatly organized diary he was scheduled to leave tomorrow morning.
But Niles knew he couldn't stay another minute. He threw on a shirt, paid his bill and tossed his luggage in the trunk of the Chevy. He knew it would be early Friday morning when he got into Salt Lake City but none of that mattered. To stay one more moment in Vegas would crush his spirit
completely.
He drove with a decided determination on the return trip. If he couldn't have Grace, he needed the familiar surroundings of Seattle to ground him. He didn't even stop overnight in Boise. It was after midnight Saturday when he finally got home to Seattle.
He had covered the three-day journey in about two. Exhausted but relieved, he opened the front door of his parent's house. It was completely still.
He knew their habits. They would have gone to bed after the 10 o'clock news, even on a Saturday night.
He crept silently up the stairs and lay down on his bed.
He stayed there for what seemed like forever, motionless in his darkened bedroom, thinking about all that had happened to him over the past week.
"Niles?"
A familiar voice broke through the inky void.
"How did everything go?"
"Fine, mom."
"You sound stressed son. Are you all right?"
"Mom...." his voice had a slight quiver to it. "Mom, I ... I met a girl."
His mother entered the shadowy room and sat on the edge of his bed.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"Mom, I ... we .... I love her, mom."
"I see... are you going to see her again?"
"No, no I am never going to see her again, mom," his voice cracked in the
gloom. "...Mom, it hurts so m...m...much!!"
His mother reached out and patted his hand.
"That is what life is about Niles. Sometimes to recognize the utter joy of love, you have to feel the pain of it too."
Her words slowly seeped into his aching heart.
"Some other things happened too. I'll talk to you about it
tomorrow...all right?"
"Of course son."
His mother rose off the bed and headed towards the door.
As Hester opened the door she turned slowly to see the outline of her youngest child on his narrow bed. She could barely make out Niles' arm straddled across his forehead. His eyes were shut tightly. His mouth was drawn taut while his teeth bit deeply into his lower lip. His body shook in little fits and starts.
When he was ready he would share with her what he could. Or not. It didn't really matter.
"Niles, we love you very much, dear. See you in the morning."
"Thanks mom," was all he said.
That was enough.
The End.
Part 6 : An Epiphany for Niles
The early afternoon sun etched its way through the slits in the blinds.
Niles felt complete contentment for the first time in his entire life. He finally felt like a man, not a bumbling boy, full of frustrated passion and awkward gestures. A man - someone who was desired and fulfilled another's desires. He turned and glanced over at Grace, who lay beside him, hidden by the blanket, except for her face.
She looked like a vision to him. He reached out and touched her hair, just
to reassure himself that she wasn't an apparition. Her dark reddish brown strands felt like silk as they slipped between his fingers. She stirred and opened her hazel eyes.
"Good afternoon," he said quietly.
Grace smiled back at him.
"Mmmm....It certainly is," she lazily intoned.
Her hands extended out to hold his face. She rolled gently forward until
their bodies softly collided, wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed both his cheeks.
"You are the most wonderful, sweet lover I have ever had," she murmured.
She hooked her smooth leg over his thigh and drew him up close. Niles' lips parted slightly in anticipation and surprise. She traced his lips with her tongue and kissed him deeply. When their mouths parted, he leaned back and looked into her eyes.
"You... are my first, " he confessed in a breathless, husky sounding voice.
Grace's lambent eyes sparkled.
"I never would have known," she said simply and kissed him again.
Niles felt like he was tumbling towards ecstasy. He sensed a rapture invade his whole body and take over his very soul. He had a sensation of feeling confident and humble at the same time. He rolled lightly on top of her.
Their nude bodies began to move with a gentle yet persistent rhythm. With each stroke he perceived a mounting tidal wave of emotion that threatened to overtake them.
Grace arched her back and gripped his arms. Her mouth opened with a gasp of delight. There was a lacing of limbs and flesh and yearning and joy. Niles shuddered a release and fell towards the oblivion of her lips. Nothing else mattered for the moment. Not Vegas, not Seattle, not school, not even his own insecurities or fears. Nothing mattered to him, except Grace. That was everything he needed for right now. Grace... amazing Grace was his salvation. Niles cradled her softly, their spent bodies lying in tandem. She petted the hair on his sinewy arms.
"I take it you are fully recovered," she teased.
"Yes, thanks to you," he replied, kissing the back of her head. "I could
stay this way for ever."
"But you know we can't," Grace's said with a touch of regret.
Niles suddenly felt his heart begin to thump wildly. His breathing became more quickly paced.
"I know, I know," he said in a rush, trying desperately to suppress his
rising panic. " You have to get washed and dressed in your costume to get yourself ready for Brisbane's afternoon show. It will be a couple of hours and then you might be hungry. I... I could make you something, something to eat. I'm really quite good at cooking, even out of the simplest ingredients. I won a ribbon for it in high school one time, you know -"
"Niles," she said compassionately. "Niles, stop."
"No!" he sobbed. "No, Grace! I can't let you go! Say I can stay with you!
P...p...please!"
He sat up and folded his legs up to meet his chest. His head sagged into
his arms as he hid his face from her. Grace sat up beside him and put her arm across his back and rubbed it soothingly.
"Niles, there are no performances this afternoon. Today the show moves on to Los Angeles. I'm going with it. You - you are going back to Seattle to school."
Her calm, rational manner sliced through him like a surgeon's scalpel.
"That's it then," Niles said bitterly. "So cut and dried for you. Was it
fun having a "virgin" like me for your amusement? You never really felt anything for me, then? I was just a couple of day entertainment while you stopped over in Vegas. You just used me, didn't you?"
He despised himself for sounding so cruel, but his pain was driving him
blindly forward to the brink. If they argued and he left, he could always tell himself later it was for the best, that way.
Grace shook her head.
"You don't mean that. I know you don't. Please
don't make this any harder than it is... on both of us."
Tears welled up in her eyes. Niles hated the fact that his words had made her cry.
"I love you Grace!" he blurted out. "I need you!"
"Oh Niles, I love you too," she cried. "But we both know that this is
something for the now, not for the forever. When I first found you lying on that cold, hard ground, I just intuitively sensed that there was a connection between us. That's why I brought you back here and not to a hospital. I had to get to know you better. It was like an unstoppable force."
Niles looked up; his tear-stained face turned in her direction.
"I made you feel that way? Really? Me?" he asked incredulously.
"Yes, *you*!" said Grace. "You with your sensitive, kind manner and gentle
nature. You with your raw feelings and needs. You, with your ardent
affections. You made me feel so helpless in the face of all that!"
"Grace, I never imagined that I could do that to anyone."
"You don't know the power of your own passions, my darling Niles. I'm just
glad I could help you unlock them. Just remember to use that potent force in you for good," she jested. "And not evil!! You could break a lot of hearts
if you don't mind yourself!"
"Oh, yes," Niles giggled nervously. "That's me, `Don Juan Crane'!"
"Well, it is the quiet ones that our mothers always warned us about!" she
chided. "Niles, let's go for a walk and get something to eat, if you are
feeling up to it. The fresh air will do you some good and we have at least four hours before I have to pack to leave, so there's plenty of time really."
"All right, Grace!" he said bravely, finally realizing that to dwell on the sad aspect of their situation would only spoil the time they had left. "Do you think I should take a chance and shave this craggy countenance?"
"I tell you what," challenged Grace. "If you let me, I'll shave your
whiskers for you! My treat!"
"You've done this before?" he asked with a little less bravado.
"No, but you will just have to trust me," she answered, as she brazenly
climbed out of the bed and donned her robe. "I'll be careful."
Niles felt the image of her voluptuous body burn in his mind. He wanted
everything to be just as clear when he thought back to this moment in the
future.
He watched as Grace trotted down the hallway to get a glass of water from the kitchen.
Niles dressed in his trousers and went to the bathroom and lathered up.
Grace appeared behind him, like a specter reflected in the bathroom mirror.
"Are you ready? Sit here on the edge of the tub."
She gently directed him down.
She carefully scraped the razor over his tender areas. The bruises were now more of a yellow-green pallor. Niles closed his eyes, soaking in the luxuriant attention that she lavished on him. Her cheerful conversation combined with her sensual touch made him forget that their time together was ticking away. Grace finally wiped his face with a rough towel and kissed him on the tip of his nose.
"You're all done!" she said proudly. "How does that feel?"
"Like I died and went to a barber shop in heaven."
Niles stood up and viewed himself in the mirror. The discoloration around
his eye was still highly visible. The rest of his wounds had healed remarkably well and were not really that noticeable. Grace quickly surmised the problem.
"You know, Niles, I could just put a little something on that and it
wouldn't show at all," she offered.
"Really? You mean something like... makeup?" he said with doubtful
disdain.
"Yeah, let me show you."
She skillfully applied a dab on her finger and covered the offending bruises.
"There, is that better?"
"Yes, yes I suppose it is," he said with surprise. "Thank you Grace."
"Come on, let's go out and get something to eat."
With that she skipped to the bedroom and quickly pulled on a pair of faded jeans and a tee shirt. A feeling washed over Niles as he surveyed her from the hallway. It was almost surreal how her actions were both cheeky
and naive at the same time.
"Who could have known that when I started out on my journey to
Las Vegas I would have ended up here, doing what I am at this moment," he thought.
He shook his head in wonderment and buttoned his shirt.
"Frasier will never believe this. What am I talking about... no one
will ever believe it! I don't even believe it!"
"Ready to go?" Grace inquired.
"Yes, all ready," he said as he grabbed his suit coat jacket and snapped his
suspenders onto his shoulders.
******************************************************************
They walked to a nearby restaurant. Niles had an eerie feeling that it was
the one he had been heading to the night of the attack, but both he and Grace avoided talking about that.
Niles insisted that they would visit his hotel room after they were done, so he could repay Grace for the cost of the meal. He pleaded, "I have money, you know. You shouldn't always be the one to pay. Let me treat you for once!"
And he did.
It wasn't far to his hotel. He knew Grace was faintly curious as to what it would look like. His place was much smaller than hers was but it was easy to see the imprint of his neat organization in the room, even though he hadn't been there all that long.
Niles flitted about her like a bird on a feeder. He fussed about where
she would sit. He dusted off the chair carefully before he finally allowed
her to perch on it. He disappeared into the bathroom to tidy up, coming
back a few minutes later muttering something about how "if he had had more time it would have been more presentable."
Grace laughed gently and just pulled him down on the bed.
They made love one more time that afternoon. There was a certain urgent
desperation that accompanied it. As if they were all too well aware of the countdown to their impending departure.
The late afternoon sun streamed through the crack in the drapes
and cut across their languid forms, after they lay exhausted under the pale,
stiff sheets. As Grace snuggled in the curve of his arm, her eyes closed, a
smile turned the corners of her mouth up slightly. Niles looked up at the
stained ceiling tiles and sighed. The reality of their destiny hit him like
an electric shock. His body convulsed for a brief second and a tear rolled
down his cheek. Grace tilted her head up, kissed it away and hugged him.
"Just remember me like this," she simply said.
He decided then and there to keep this just to himself. It was perfect the
way it was. He didn't have to hold it up to the scrutiny of others. It would somehow sully it if the judgmental opinions of his classmates intruded into the memory of Grace and what the two of them had experienced over the past few days. It was too precious to him. It was good enough that he knew.
Niles suddenly felt very grown up.
Grace was adamant that he not accompany her back to the Desert Inn.
She said that she wanted to remember him the way he was at this very moment - so handsome and masculine, yet also so delicate and fragile. His lean, bare chest was slightly damp with a glistening of sweat. His sandy blond hair was still a bit tousled from their earlier activities. As he sat upright in his trousers, his legs dangled almost casually over the side of the bed. His cheeks had taken on a ruddy complexion, while his large, dark blue eyes telegraphed his affections directly to her heart.
"Perfect," she whispered. "Don't move."
She kissed him one last time, pressed her cheek against his and left.
Niles disobediently ran to the window and watched her walk down the street. When he couldn't see her any further, he dashed outside to the balcony and strained desperately until she was a smudge in the distance.
He wanted to run after her, but he knew he couldn't. This was the way it was supposed to be. He didn't even realize he was crying until a passerby looked up in disgust and made some comment about too many bad drugs floating around Vegas nowadays.
It was Thursday. This was supposed to be his last full day in Vegas. In
his neatly organized diary he was scheduled to leave tomorrow morning.
But Niles knew he couldn't stay another minute. He threw on a shirt, paid his bill and tossed his luggage in the trunk of the Chevy. He knew it would be early Friday morning when he got into Salt Lake City but none of that mattered. To stay one more moment in Vegas would crush his spirit
completely.
He drove with a decided determination on the return trip. If he couldn't have Grace, he needed the familiar surroundings of Seattle to ground him. He didn't even stop overnight in Boise. It was after midnight Saturday when he finally got home to Seattle.
He had covered the three-day journey in about two. Exhausted but relieved, he opened the front door of his parent's house. It was completely still.
He knew their habits. They would have gone to bed after the 10 o'clock news, even on a Saturday night.
He crept silently up the stairs and lay down on his bed.
He stayed there for what seemed like forever, motionless in his darkened bedroom, thinking about all that had happened to him over the past week.
"Niles?"
A familiar voice broke through the inky void.
"How did everything go?"
"Fine, mom."
"You sound stressed son. Are you all right?"
"Mom...." his voice had a slight quiver to it. "Mom, I ... I met a girl."
His mother entered the shadowy room and sat on the edge of his bed.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
"Mom, I ... we .... I love her, mom."
"I see... are you going to see her again?"
"No, no I am never going to see her again, mom," his voice cracked in the
gloom. "...Mom, it hurts so m...m...much!!"
His mother reached out and patted his hand.
"That is what life is about Niles. Sometimes to recognize the utter joy of love, you have to feel the pain of it too."
Her words slowly seeped into his aching heart.
"Some other things happened too. I'll talk to you about it
tomorrow...all right?"
"Of course son."
His mother rose off the bed and headed towards the door.
As Hester opened the door she turned slowly to see the outline of her youngest child on his narrow bed. She could barely make out Niles' arm straddled across his forehead. His eyes were shut tightly. His mouth was drawn taut while his teeth bit deeply into his lower lip. His body shook in little fits and starts.
When he was ready he would share with her what he could. Or not. It didn't really matter.
"Niles, we love you very much, dear. See you in the morning."
"Thanks mom," was all he said.
That was enough.
The End.