The Notorious R(uth) B(arakat) G(rimaldi)

Chapter 49: Curtain Up

AN: There may or may not be an epilogue, which may or may not contain some sex 😉

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"Ruthie! Wait! Wait wait waitwaitwait!" Elliott's voice was urgent.

"What?" Ruthie's voice was knowing and amused. She leaned back across the seat and kissed him again, mouth open, exhaling audibly through her nose, leaning into him hard, nearly slamming him into the driver's side door.

His hands went to her waist of their own accord, creeping under her shirt, finding the soft flesh of her breasts over her flimsy lace bra nearly immediately. They filled his palms, the hard nipples in the centers, making him crazy to see them.

Ruthie moaned, straddling his thigh, grinding against him, thrusting her knee into his crotch to create the most unbearably wonderful friction. Elliott bit her lip in response, pulling a hand out to grasp her hair and yank it back.

"Oh god, Elliott, you picked a hell of a time to develop a case of 'I've got the hornies'," Ruthie gasped into his mouth.

"Look, I was on another continent for nearly a week, apart from my girlfriend, who's the hottest thing on the planet, with the most incredible body and mouth known to man, it's not my fault," Elliott murmured. Ruthie could hear the smile in his words. "I'm randy as fuck, okay?"

"Fine with me, sir, you want to pull off a quickie, right here in the car?" Ruthie asked, reaching for the zip of his jeans. "Or you want a blowie? Some mouth love?" She laughed as she leaned back to look at his face to see the effect of her words. "Or you want to 'have a wank,' as you like to say, while I take my top off, or what?"

Elliott looked at her speculatively for a moment, eyeing her up and down. Then, regretfully, he shook his head. "As lovely as all those options sound, jellybean, Ms. Piper sent us to your house to grab some roses for the stage forty-five minutes ago, and her head's going to explode if we don't get inside with them soon, so I think I'm going to have to put my baser nature aside for the moment."

"Whatever you say, I'm yours to command," Ruthie said agreeably. "Let's get these flowers in the vases and up on the stage right away, then."

Someone had forgotten to put the flowers they'd bought the day before in water, and all of them had wilted over night, making the stage look pretty terrible. Ruthie had offered up her father's garden when they'd seen the mess after school, and Ms. Piper had given her and Elliott the job of cutting enough roses to fill the vases at the sides of the stage. Luckily the house didn't open until six-thirty, and the show was well in hand.

Ruthie and Elliott made quick work of the flowers, using stem strippers in the utility room to peel off the leaves and thorns, plunging them in cold water. The colors were mixed, not like the red and white ones they'd bought, but they still looked nice, everyone agreed.

Considering the scale of a production the size of Les Miserables, they were amazingly well prepared, Ruthie thought as they took their places. As with all productions, everyone did double duty, and even though Ruthie was Eponine, she was also in the ensemble to help fill out the crowd scenes, so she was dressed as a poor prisoner/villager for the opening scenes. Elliott was next to her, dressed similarly.

"Ready?" he whispered to her.

She nodded quickly, giving him a smile. The tension, the electricity was palpable.

Ruthie would never tire of this, never.

"Break a leg, jellybean." Elliott leaned in and gave her a fast kiss.

"Break a leg, Elliott."

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It almost went off without a hitch. As with all high school productions, some forgot their lines, some missed their cues, some were inadvertently funny, the microphones cut out for no discernible reason, but it was all part of the magic of high school theatre, and everyone stumbled through.