Wherefore Art Thou, Chase?

Disclaimer: I do not own the quotes in italics. They belong to ol\' BillyBob Shakespeare. That is all. ^_~ Enjoy!
~~~~~~~~~~


Chapter 5: “Any Man of Mine”


Chase studied the board of buzzers, inspecting each label placed next to the separate buzzers that named the residents’ last names and their apartment number.

…Hoffstetter, 3-B…Singh, 3-C…Smith, 3-D…MacPherson/Scott, 3-E! He pressed the buzzer next to “MacPherson/Scott 3-E” and waited patiently for an answer.

The speaker box crackled for a moment, then, “Who is it?”

He leaned closer to the speaker and said his name. It crackled again, then the metallic voice emanating from the speaker cooed and said, “Come on up!” before a loud buzzing sound, something akin to the kind of buzzer at basketball games, echoed around the small room.

The sound must have unlocked the door, because Chase found it remarkably easy to twist the doorknob, which hadn’t budged before. He walked down a corridor, looking at the numbers and letters of the apartments on either side of him. It seemed that the numbers signified what floor you were on and the letters were the individual apartments. Which meant Janelle and Erin lived on the third floor.

Chase groaned inwardly, beginning to climb the spiraling staircase. When he reached the third floor, he noticed that the staircase went up for a few more floors. For a brief moment, he wondered how far up they went, and who lived up there?

Instead of investigating, he walked down the hall. 3-E happened to be on his right and he had hardly knocked when the door swung open, revealing Erin on the other side. She ushered him into the apartment, which was larger than he’d expected it to be.

“Janelle’s in her room upstairs,” Erin informed him, as she dropped onto the couch and continued to watch the movie she’d been watching instead of doing homework.

“Upstairs?” he questioned, noticing the staircase for the first time.

“Yep. Apartments on this side of the building take up two floors. The places on the left were too small for all three of us, so we decided to look at the right-side ones,” Erin informed him cheerily.

“Three of you?” Chase asked, drawing certain similarities between his own situation and Janelle’s.

“Uh-huh. Janelle, Lily, and myself. Lily and I grew up down the street from one another.”

“How does Janelle know Lily?”

“They’re cousins.” That would explain why there had been only two names on the label, instead of three. Chase nodded, then eyed the apartment’s first floor awkwardly.

“So…Do I just go on up, or…?” he asked, trailing off as Erin fixed him with an amused look.

“Go down the hall and it is the first one on your right,” she said, looking like she was trying not to laugh. Ignoring the look she was giving him, Chase murmured a “see ya later” and climbed what he hoped were the final set of stairs.

As he strode down the hallway, Chase could hear twang-y, soft music lilting down the corridor to his ears from the first door on his right. The door was open only a crack, allowing him to push it open just a bit without the person inside noticing.

Janelle was leaning against the baby-blue wall behind her bed, which consisted of simply a full-sized mattress on a box spring on the floor. It seemed to be the only comfortable seating in the room, besides the plush white carpeting. And the window seat on the side of the room opposite to Chase. There was a small window above Janelle’s head, allowing the noon sunlight to stream in and cast a beam over her. She looked to be reading a book, but the front and back covers were concealed from his view because they rested against her scrunched up knees. Her position did allow her cotton shorts to gape open, though, and gave him an excellent view of her panties. They were white cotton; something Chase thought completely appropriate for the type of person Janelle struck him as.

What threw Chase off were the glasses perched on the bridge of her nose and the way her hair was piled into a messy bun-thing on the top of her head, with wisps framing her face. Not to mention the country music filling the room. Chase couldn’t find where it was coming from, but it amused him just the same to see Janelle tapping her foot along to Shania Twain’s “Any Man of Mine.”

“I’d never have pegged you for a country music fan.”

Janelle’s head whipped up so quickly, Chase was sure she’d gotten whiplash from it. Her cheeks heated, but she shrugged, appearing nonchalant.

“I like most every type of music. It comes from being influenced by many different people and generations,” she admitted. “I’ll just turn it off,” she added, stretching out her legs and depriving Chase of the excellent view of her panties before leaning over, reaching for something on the floor next to her bed.

“No,” he argued, still smiling. “Its your room; play whatever you’d like,” he told her, looking around like he hadn’t just seen the room because he’d been spying on her. In the corner, there was a standing lamp with many different-colored lights, each directed in a different direction. Chase was standing next to a medium-sized dresser, and beyond that there was a small closet. On the wall behind the door stood two, good-sized bookcases, each stuffed with books.

“You read a lot?” Chase asked, grinning widely and showing off those world-class dimples he owned. Janelle smiled and stood, nodding and coming over to shepherd him into her room. She partially closed the door behind him, earning her an odd look.

“Neither Erin nor our other room mate, Lily, likes country music very much, so they ask me to shut the door when I listen to it,” she explained, embarrassedly. She didn’t like shutting the door with Chase in her room. It wasn’t very large, and his broad shoulders seemed to fill the room in its entirety, unnerving her.

Chase took a seat on the edge of the bed, balancing the binder he’d been carrying on his knees. He looked so awkward, it was comical. Janelle had to stifle a giggle when he looked up at her.

“So…What’d I miss?” he asked, opening the binder and pulling a pen out from between its rings. Janelle glanced around the room, then she spotted her backpack beside her bed. She grabbed it and sat down on the other end of her bed, trying not to think about how close he was as she rummaged through her bag. Finally, she pulled out her Shakespeare binder and opened it. Each assignment was written down on a separate sheet of paper, usually followed by a sheaf of papers that were stapled together and had Janelle’s name at the top and a grade. There were five total, three of which abided by that pattern.

“You’re very organized, aren’t you?” he asked as he copied down each assignment with a certain type of dread. All of this had to be completed by Wednesday? Damn. Janelle laughed softly, the sound making him pause for a moment to appreciate it.

“Believe me, I’m not like that naturally. It took me a very long time to learn how to do this, and now I really only do it for things I love doing,” she told him, flipping the page to the next assignment when he did.

**********

After he’d finished copying each assignment, Chase suggested that they run some lines. He’d noticed that Janelle had a whole shelf on one of her bookcases dedicated to Shakespeare and he plucked Romeo and Juliet from there, once she’d agreed to his idea. He picked it up as a precaution, just in case he missed a line. It was unlikely, but it paid to be prepared.

“Where do you wanna start?” Janelle asked quietly, opening her script to a random page.

“How about the beginning?” Chase suggested teasingly, drawing out a smile from her. He much preferred this Janelle to the cold and isolated one he normally knew. “The first scene that Romeo and Juliet are in together?” he put forward, conjuring all sorts of memories from their audition.

Janelle hesitated for a long while, unsure if she wanted to chance going into that kind of uncharted territory when she could still remember the feel of his lips and hands on her. Chase held his breath, waiting for Janelle’s answer. He knew he’d taken a risk, but he didn’t really care. All Chase knew was that he wanted to kiss her. Now.

Janelle nodded slowly, pretending not to remember their kisses on stage. “Sounds good. That’s Act One, Scene Five, right?” she agreed, already turning to the scene in her script.

As he started his line, Chase kept getting flashbacks to their audition, wishing he could repeat the performance instead of just sitting on the end of her bed like they were. But, when they reached the kissing part, Chase was glad that they were sitting on the bed. It had ceaseless possibilities, now.

“Then move not while my prayer’s effect I take,” he said, before leaning in and pressing his lips firmly against Janelle’s. She gave a squeak of surprise, not expecting him to be so forceful, and opening her lips in the process. Chase swept his tongue into her mouth, tasting and teasing her. She made a small sound of pleasure in the back of her throat, already having lost track of reality, as her eyes fluttered shut.

He moved closer, setting the book and Janelle’s script aside without breaking the contact between their bodies. Changing the angle of his head, he stroked his tongue along hers. Janelle lifted her hands to his cheeks and moaned softly, leaning back. Chase followed her down onto the bed, bracing himself with one hand by her hip. Their lips moved restlessly and his body half-covered hers, allowing him to brace himself on his forearm and freeing up his other hand.

That hand rested on the hip it had been placed next to before. Then, it began to slowly slide up underneath the hem of Janelle’s shirt. She eagerly anticipated the feel of his calloused fingertips against her skin, and Janelle squirmed impatiently beneath him. Her breath caught when he continued to slide his hand northwards.

Chase broke their kiss to place more kisses all along Janelle’s jaw and the long column of her neck. Her fingers slide into his hair as she moaned and writhed passionately. She had never experienced anything as powerful as what she was going through now. Caution be damned, she never wanted him to stop!

Chase groaned and suckled on her leaping pulse just as he reached the gentle swell of the underside of Janelle’s breast. He was about to cup her breast through her bra, when the door suddenly swung open and a loud voice said, “Hey, ‘Nelle, we’re ordering pizza; whadda you wa…” The voice trailed off as the owner of it seemed to realize that she probably should have knocked first.

Janelle snapped back into reality harshly, pushing at Chase’s shoulders with all of her strength, when a feather could have knocked him away. Chase went tumbling off the bed unceremoniously, falling to the floor in much the same manner. He stared at the blonde woman in the doorway. It was that same woman from the party on last Wednesday that he’d seen talking to Erin and Janelle. This must be Lily, he though ruefully.

Janelle took a deep breath as she stared at Lily, trying to recollect herself into some semblance of order. The blonde merely gaped at the both of them, blinked once, twice, then backed up and closed the door. Janelle wondered what she was doing for a moment, before she heard a knock and Lily’s muffled, “Janelle, can I come in?”

Chase burst out laughing, his shoulders shaking with mirth. The whole situation was just funny to him. It was embarrassing, certainly, and frustrating as hell because now he had a hard-on the size of Texas that he wouldn’t be getting rid of anytime soon. But, the shocked looks on both Janelle’s and Lily’s faces were priceless. Not to mention that Janelle’s glasses were askew and fogged up in the most adorable way. And Chase would wager that his hair was sticking up in all sorts of directions.

It all combined to make a very comical situation. Chase’s laughter was infectious and Janelle soon found herself laughing along with him.

“C’mon in, Lily!” she called out, still laughing hard.

The door swung open once more, revealing a shocked-but-amused-looking Lily.

“We’re ordering pizza, Janelle. What would you and your guest like?” the blonde asked politely, pausing to take in Chase’s appearance when she said “guest.”

“I…I ought to get going,” he said, before anyone got too attached to the idea of him staying for dinner. As he said it, Chase stood and pretended to dust himself off from his tumble. Grabbing his binder and pen, he headed for the door. Lily stepped out of the way for him, giving him a small smile. He paused and turned to look back at Janelle, memorizing the exact way she looked at that moment: in complete disarray, with burning cheeks. “Thanks,” he told her, and Janelle shivered with the heat in his smoldering chocolate eyes. As he walked down the corridor, he heard Lily giggle and say something to Janelle that he couldn’t quite catch.

Chase climbed down the stairs and smiled confidently at Erin, who took one look at him, her eyes widening a little at the hard-on she hadn’t been expecting him to have, and laughed quietly.

“Got a little exciting in there, did it?” she teased, waggling her eyebrows.

“Hot and heavy…Just the way I like it,” he retorted as he headed for the door. It was easy to tease her–even easier than it was to tease everyone else. They’d probably be very good friends, but Chase knew that was all they’d ever be. Janelle was just too…something more, he decided. “I’ll see ya later, Erin,” he told her, twisting the knob on the door.

“Yep. So long, Woody!” she called behind him, making Chase chuckle. Time to go home and take a VERY cold shower, he determined, shifting uncomfortably under the gaze of an old woman who was coming up the stairs while he was going down them.

**********

“Did you see the size of him?!” Lily asked excitedly as she chewed on her pizza. Her blue eyes were wide and animated. Her comment, though, made Janelle choke on her Hawaiian pizza. She coughed and sputtered, hearing Erin laughing as the redhead slapped her back firmly. Janelle swallowed tightly and took a deep breath of air before fixing Lily with a glare.

“I don’t see how his size is any of your business, or Erin’s business, or even my business,” she rebuked the blonde frostily.

Lily just rolled her eyes and sighed.

“You’re impossible, ‘Nelle,” she muttered, scowling and taking another bite of her slice of pizza.

**********

“Hey, Superboy,” Janelle greeted Huey on Friday afternoon with a kiss on the cheek. The girls had all taken to calling him by the pet name for a number of reasons. Partially because his last name was the same as Superman’s alter ego’s; partially because he could solve impossible math problems “faster than a speeding bullet”; but mostly because he seemed impervious to Erin’s kryptonite–something not even the true Superman could ever do. They’d be going on their third date tomorrow evening. The second date had gone much like the first one, except there was ice cream involved the second time. There were still no kisses, though, which was pissing Erin off. No man had ever been able to resist her, and it frustrated her that she seemed to be the only one who wanted more than “just talking” in the “relationship.”

“Nice to see you remembered again, Janelle,” he retorted, taking her things and placing them on the kitchen table before going to get them each a soda.

Janelle grinned and sat down at the table. “You know, Erin’s pretty upset,” she remarked. It was the king of all understatements. The redhead was practically ripping her hair out of her head in frustration with Huey. She’d practically begged Janelle to bring her up and mention that she was going crazy.

“About what?” Huey asked, frowning as he brought over the sodas and set them down on the table, one by himself and one by Janelle’s stuff.

“I think you know,” she said pointedly, with a meaningful look.

Huey merely grinned at her enigmatically. “I don’t think that’s any of your business,” he told her succinctly. She sighed and shook her head.

“Neither do I, but Erin insisted that I say something to you,” she confessed.

“Hey, Huey, do you know when Seamus is getting home?” asked a voice, which Janelle instantly recognized. She hadn’t talked to Chase, outside of rehearsals, since that day Lily had caught them making out in her bedroom almost two weeks ago. It was too awkward for her and just looking at him made her heart clench and heat gather at the juncture of her thighs. It was better to just avoid him altogether.

Chase was more reasonably dressed this time than he was the last time she’d been in his kitchen. He was wearing a suit jacket, tie, button-down dress shirt, and nice jeans. When he noticed Janelle, he smiled fondly. “What, no glasses today?” he asked her teasingly, noticing the article was absent, as usual.

“You wear glasses?” Huey asked curiously, frowning. He was no doubt trying to picture her with glasses and the scrutiny made Janelle uncomfortable.

“Only on days when I’m not going anywhere. Otherwise, I wear contacts,” she clarified, a light blush touching her cheeks.

“I thought they were cute,” Chase mentioned nonchalantly, causing her blush to deepen. They seemed like they belonged there…The feeling of familiarity had been at its most potent when he’d seen her wearing the glasses, but he still couldn’t place where he knew Janelle from.

I guess there’s still more to Mystery Girl that I need to solve, he reasoned as he stepped out the door distractedly.

“He left before I could answer his question,” Huey observed, sounding confused.

**********

Chase gripped the steering wheel of his car tightly, gritting his teeth and trying not to think of Janelle. He was going to a job interview and the last thing he needed was a hard-on tenting the front of his pants because he was thinking of Janelle. And the way her silken skin felt against his hands. Or the way she looked utterly delectable with her lips swollen from his kisses. Or…or…damn…

He shook his head hard, reaching for the radio dial and blasting the song. He didn’t care what it was, just as long as it distracted him from thinking about Janelle. She seemed to haunt his thoughts every waking moment and his dreams when he was sleeping. That morning, he’d awoken from a particularly erotic dream about “his Juliet,” hard as a rock.

The way he was acting, Chase was sure he was bordering on obsession. But, he couldn’t help himself. He’d just be sitting somewhere and all of a sudden, BANG! She’d show up in his thoughts and he was powerless to stop her. His situation nagged at something in the far reaches of his memory, and that was the worst part. The scene seemed so familiar, yet Chase had no recollection of ever feeling this way about anyone.

He was so consumed with his thoughts, that Chase almost missed his turn.

“Shit,” he swore as he jerked the car to the left sharply, earning many shouts and honks from the cars around him. Driving down the road, Chase paid careful attention to where he was going. Finally, he reached his destination, sliding into the parking lot. Getting out of the car, he heard the excited shouts of children of all ages.

Taking a deep breath, he strode towards the door, locking the car behind him. Just focus, the way you did with the auditions, he told himself as he stepped through the front door.