-------------------------------------------------------------------------

  This story is part of a series that I've entitled 'Seasons'.  The
series as it stands so far:

 1. Hazy Shade of Winter
 2. Summertime Blues
 3. Season of the Witch
 4. April Showers
 5. The Cruelest Month
 6. The Real World
 7. A Time to Cast Away Stones <still in the works>

Email is always appreciated.  In fact, it provides a large part of
my incentive to write.  :-)

Hawkeye
_______________________________________________________________________

  Do me a favor, and only redistribute this with the following notices
attached.

  Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction.  Any resemblance between the
characters herein, and any real people living or dead, is purely
because I draw from many sources, real and imaginary.  Chew on that.

(c) 1993 Pure Blue Enterprises.  All rights reserved.  Explicit
permission
granted for electronic re-distribution, without changes.


[v1.2]
                      Hazy Shade of Winter
                      (Part 1 of 'Seasons')
                           by Hawkeye

  It's been 18 months since I've seen her now.  I may very well never
see her again, so I feel it's appropriate that I get my thoughts and
memories of her in order.  Who knows, maybe it will help...

  She first flipped her way into my life 6 years ago.  Yes, flipped.
I spotted her in the meal line at Hudson, about 10 feet in front of
me.
She was just a little thing, maybe 5' 1" or 2", with platinum colored
hair, cropped at the shoulders.  God, she was cute.  Anyway, her hair
had this way of falling across her face whenever she leaned forward
to put something on her tray.  She kept flipping it out of her way,
with a little toss of her head.  Unreal.

  So there I was, staring at her, dizzily thrilled at watching her
hair
swing, and I smashed my tray into the woman in front of me.  It was
spectacular.  I sent a cascade of porcelain and glass onto the tiled
floor.  I was lucky--only about half the lunchroom looked up at me, to
see what idiot was responsible.  I put on my best sheepish grin, and
tried to get my ears to stop glowing red.  I didn't see whether she
looked at me or not.

  So, that was the first time I saw her.

+++

  Almost a month after that, I signed up for the "movie crew", a sort
of entertainment committee for the dorms.  It wasn't just movies, in
fact it was mostly parties and bands and all kinds of ("socially
stimulating", read the charter) activities, which we had a sizable
budget for.

  So, as if you couldn't guess--the new guy gets the shit jobs.  I
ended up cleaning up after a loud, riotous party that shook the
building's foundations until 2 am.  I really had all day Sunday to do
it, but I was still wide awake and nursing a ringing in my ears that
would keep me up for hours, so I figured I'd get a head start on it.

  Anyway, I was picking up the "No Underaged Drinking" notices that
had been torn down and stamped into the beery mud on the floor, when I
heard the front door slam.

  Nobody was supposed to be let into "Ground Zero" after the party.
Except me, Joe Cleanup, because I had the keys.  But since this was
my first mission, I'd made a rookie error, and left the front door
unlocked.  I just prayed it wasn't drunken partiers, come to scrounge
the last beer.  I'd be here all night.  As it got closer, I could tell
it was just one set of footsteps.  Good.  I could deal with that.
Hopefully.

  As my midnight prowler rounded the corner, I shouted, "Hey,
you're--".  It was a pretty good start, I thought.  But I came up
short on the rest of it.  Choke.  I'd never be the big game player.
It was -her-, and I couldn't finish my sentence, because her hair was
doing that bounce thing again.  Oh, god.

  "Hey, you're--", she mimicked cheerfully.  And gave me an elfin
grin.  So, I knew this was the time for me to get a hold of myself,
say something engaging, and show her how fascinating, mature, and
confident I was.  Yeah.

  "Well... you're not supposed to be in here.  It's after hours."  Oh,
that was good.  Throw her out quick, before she clues in that she's
alone in a half-dark room with a moron.

  "Oh.  Do you want me to leave?" She stuck out her lower lip, in a
cute spoof of a little girl pout.  Did I say that I choked before?  I
didn't know the meaning of the word.  I almost swallowed my own tongue
this time.

  "No!" I got that part out, well enough.  Maybe I was improving.
"No--I just... uh.  Hmm.  Why are you here?" No, I obviously wasn't
improving.

  "Well, you *are* Sam, right?"  Without waiting for me to somehow
screw up saying "yes", she added "I'm Lisa Bradley.  I'm supposed to
help you clean up."

  Oh, no way.  Things like that just don't happen.  But they did that
time.  I found out, as I went about the most delightful evening of
mopping rancid beer that I ever hope to experience, that she had
joined the "movie crew" several months ago, but hadn't been active in
it because of "other" time commitments.  So, she was just now starting
out at the same newbie level as myself.

  We had a great time slopping around and making inane jokes.  She had
a pixie sense of humor, and an easy way about her that actually made
me feel comfortable, despite my ongoing awareness that she was very,
very attractive.  I watched her all night as we cleaned up... the way
her breasts moved under the cotton blouse she was wearing.  The way
her jeans stretched nicely around her bottom when she bent over to
pick something up.  The way her hair bounced as she walked.

  She was the cutest little package you could ever imagine.  She must

have weighed only 110 or 120 lb, and she came up to about my chin.
Her breasts would have seemed small, and her hips narrow if she had
been a tall woman--but on her frame, they made her look well-endowed.
I couldn't take my eyes off her; not to say that I really tried.

  I went to bed that night, dreaming about how her platinum hair
bounced around as she moved.  And how she had to keep shaking her head
to flip it out of her face.  I had that little flip memorized, and my
dreams were full of tossing hair.

  That was the second time I met her.

+++

  That semester, we got to know each other pretty well.  We used to go
out of our way to hang out together.  All her friends were guys, it
seemed.  She was friendly and attractive and fun to be around, and
guys got pulled in like moths to the flame.  The only thing that kept
them from hitting on her constantly was the fact that she already had
a steady boyfriend.

  Yup.  That was why she was late getting involved in the movie crew.
She had met this guy at the beginning of the semester (about the time
I had my lunchroom "scene"), and she had become very involved with
him,
to the extent of not doing much else besides seeing him.

  He was actually a pretty cool guy--the couple of times I met him, I
thought that if he wasn't dating Lisa I'd probably like to hang out
with him.  In fact, I probably wouldn't have minded anyway, despite my
sort of silly jealousy of him, but Lisa kept him apart from us.  She
never brought him along when she went out with her male cronies.  I
didn't ask why.

  So things rocked along pretty nicely like that for the rest of the
semester.  We were the "cleaners" for the movie crew, so we got to
spend time together every weekend.  And it was usually just the two
of us, since for some reason nobody else volunteered to work with us.
Go figure.

  Anyway, winter came down hard on us, and the end of the semester
came crawling through the snow, sneaking up until it caught us
completely unawares.  Before I knew it, she was gone for Christmas
break, and I hadn't even had a chance to really say goodbye.  Hell,
I didn't know if she was even coming back next semester.

  Christmas was the longest holiday I've ever experienced.

+++

  Needless to say, she did come back the next semester.  I shoved a
birthday card under her door, saying, "Welcome back.  I don't know
when your birthday is, so I thought now would be a good time to take a
wild shot at it."  She laughed when she called me on the phone, and
she told me I was weird.  "Only when I'm around you," I said.

  Within a couple of weeks, we were almost back to our old routine,
except that this semester, the movie crew had a couple other newbies
to do the cleaning up.  We found other reasons to spend time alone
together.

  It was the middle of February, and we couldn't escape the fact that
we were obviously spending far too much time together for it to be
just casual anymore.  She made references to her boyfriend
occasionally, when it seemed like the atmosphere between us had
gotten too thick to breathe.  That hurt, but I didn't say anything
about it.

  Despite the tension, we continued to see each other.  We went to
late night films, and stayed up all night in her room, listening to
her stereo.  Sometimes we would end up falling asleep leaning against
each other, or snuggling under a comforter as the February gales
roared against the window.  I tried tentatively to kiss her a couple
of times, but she turned her head away.  Her "boyfriend" was never
around anymore.

+++

  February gave way to the warmest March I've ever seen.  The weather
turned bright and cheerful overnight.  I had a snowball fight with
some friends of mine, and we almost hurt each other by packing the
wet, heavy snow so hard that it left bruises.

  I came back to the dorm with my hair dripping half melted snow.  I
stopped by Lisa's door, and kicked it with my sneaker.  As she opened
the door, I smacked her with a handful of loose slush that I had

idden in my pocket.  She burst into tears.

  I stood there completely dumbfounded.  I hadn't hit her hard, and
the snow was just soft and slushy.  The script read that she was
supposed to wrestle me for control of the other handful that I had at
the ready, and we were supposed to shriek dire threats at each other
until one of us got it rubbed in our face.

  "Lisa...?" I stepped into the room, jamming the other handful of
snow back into my coat pocket.  She had seated herself on her bed,
her face buried in her hands.  I pushed the door closed behind me.
"Hey--what's wrong?"  I felt like 180 lbs of stupid asshole.

  She didn't answer me, she just shook her head a little.  I dumped my
wet coat on the floor, and sat down beside her.  Tentatively, careful
of a violently negative reaction, I slipped my arm around her.  I
smoothed her hair back (had I ever seen it rumpled before?), and
squeezed her shoulder in what I sincerely hoped was a reassuring
manner.

  "What is it?  Do you want to talk about it?" I paused.  "Or should I
shut up?" She stopped crying then, and just sort of trembled, dryly
gasping.  She lifted her face from her hands and tried to say
something, but she couldn't get it out.  It sounded like "He..."

  I wasn't so sure I wanted to hear this.  I've heard women cry before
over guys, and I'm pretty good at the awkward business of "just being
there" for them.  But with Lisa, it wasn't like I had no personal
interest in this.  I didn't want to listen to a tale of how she just
couldn't live without X, and her life was meaningless now that he's
gone, but she's so glad she has a friend like me that she can talk
to... My head would probably just explode into a million tiny glowing
fragments if she said anything like that.

  I waited while she got her breathing under control.  She managed to
gasp out between fits of shaking:

  "He..." she started.  I winced.  "He tried to... tried to..."

  I suddenly felt as cold as the arctic sea.  "Oh, my god... are you
ok?" I demanded.  A second later, I grabbed her by both shoulders,
"ARE..YOU..OH..KAY?" I was maybe a little harsh with her, but I felt
a rising tide of panic that was going to make me burst at the seams in
a minute.

  She nodded, and brushed at her eyes.

  I stayed with her all night.  It turned out that her "boyfriend"
hadn't
taken so kindly to being slowly excluded from her life, and had showed
up with a heavy load of alcohol weighing on his brain.  She had argued
with him, then told him to leave.  He decided not to.  She shouted at
him.  He attacked her.

  She was tougher than she looked.  At 5'2" and maybe 120 lbs, you
don't get the feeling that she's a world class fighter or anything.
But she's not weak, and she's not timid.  She grabbed the ceramic
pencil-cup from her desk, and smashed him in the face with it.  He's
lucky it didn't break and cut his eye open.  As it is, it sounded like
he was going to be sporting a shiner and a major headache the next
day.  He had stumbled out the door, presumably because she had knocked
some sense into him.

  We didn't talk that much about it.  Mostly, I just stayed with her,
and respected her silence.  We ordered out for food, and skipped all
our classes.  I held her a couple of times when she started bawling
again.

  I stayed with her for two days.  I slept on the floor, because even
though she wanted me in the room with her, she didn't really want to
be touched.  I felt horrible, partly for what had happened to her, and
partly, selfishly, because I felt like extra baggage in something that
obviously didn't include me.

  When she felt ready to cope on her own again (and also the need
for her to keep up with her classes started to become pressing),
she went back to her normal routine.  I went home, still a little
dazed from the events of the past couple of days.  More dazed than
her, I think.  She bounced back--I was still gushing anger and
disbelief.

  Like I said, she was tougher than she looked.

+++

  Two weeks went by, and I scarcely heard form her.  I saw her light
on at all hours of the night, because I went for lots of walks in the
damp March air.  Walks that took me through the courtyard - under her
window, coincidentally.  Yeah.

  The third week after, I got a phone call from her.

  "Hi," she said.

  "Hi...  What's up?"  I paused.  "How are you?"

  "I'm ok."  She actually sounded like she meant it.  She wasn't good
at faking moods.  If she was depressed or cranky, she always sounded
depressed or cranky.

  I waited again, feeling frustrated about not knowing what to say.

  "Look," she said.  "Why don't you come over tonight?  It's my
birthday,
did you know?"

  "No, I didn't know!  How old are you?"

  "I'm 20.  You don't have to get me a card, since you gave me one
back
in February." I could almost hear her grinning through the phone line.

  "Great.  What time?"

  "How about 7?"

  That couldn't have sounded any better to me.

+++

  I considered what to get her for a present.  She's one of those
people who's hard to buy for.  Not that she's unappreciative, though
she does tent to mock you in a friendly way for making "silly"
purchases.  And I never quite got a handle on what she considered
silly and not-silly.  She had such a curious and humorous attitude
toward everything that serious and silly got kind of mixed up.

  So, what did I do?  I bought her a squirt gun.  I knew it would get
used on me, probably at embarrassing moments like in lecture or
something, but I would live.  As requested, I didn't get her a card.

  I showed up at her door at 7.

  She opened it when I knocked.  She looked beyond beautiful.  She was
so radiant she was almost glowing white.  She had on a dress, which is
unusual in itself, her being a bluejeans kind of girl.  And she had
tied
up her hair, which is also out of character - she always lets it hang
loose.

  I kept my composure, though.  I said "Uhhh, wow.  Hi," just as
smooth
as ever, and didn't even trip stepping into the room.

  She took the package that I held out to her.  She made as if to
tear the wrapping open, then looked up and asked, "Should I?".  I
thought about it for a second, then said, "Better not."  I smiled.

  "Hmmm."  She looked at me out of the corner of her eye, as if trying
to catch me smirking, then put the package on her desk.

  In the meanwhile, I was beginning to experience a small discomfort.
Her white dress was form-hugging, and cut fairly low across her bosom.
I could see the cleft between her breasts, and it was distracting me,
badly.  The room began to seem too warm, and I was getting a lump in
my throat.

  "Sit down," she said, "you look like you haven't slept."  I sat on
the end of her bed.  I said, "Well, I've been kind of busy lately."  I
didn't tell her I'd been busy walking around campus all night thinking
about her.

  She sat down on a chair facing me, and said, "Well, what do you say
to Chinese food and ice cream?  I've got them warming in the kitchen
microwave." She added with a grin, "No--not the ice cream!  That's in
the freezer."

  Since that sounded good to me, we went to the kitchen (actually a
sort of "shared kitchenette"), and fetched the food and plates she had
left warming.  We ate in her room, balancing the plates on our knees,
and listening to the radio.

  Then we broke out the ice cream.  I mean that somewhat literally.
We didn't bother with cones, we just broke open the carton, put it in
a bowl on the chair, and ate it with spoons.  She sat on the bed next
to me.  I grinned at her between mouthfuls.  She grinned back.  I
dabbed a bit of ice cream onto her nose.  She wiped it off and ate it.
Then she spoon-flicked a piece of it, and hit me just above the eye.

  I wiped my forehead, and then came at her with a giant spoonful,
though I wasn't entirely certain what I was going to do with it when I
caught her.  She grabbed my arm and we wrestled backwards.  I trapped
one of her arms under me, and pinned the other with my free hand.
Then I dabbed her on the nose again.  Laughing and spluttering, she
tried to blow it up into my face.  Suddenly, I put my mouth over hers,
and kissed her ice-cream cold lips.  She went tense like a loaded
spring--so that I was about to let go of her, when her lips began to
move against mine.

  The tension drained out of her arms and body.  I let go of her
wrist, and shifted my weight off of her, as all thoughts of our
wrestling match dissolved in a haze of warmth.  "Put the spoon down,"
she whispered between kisses.  I turned and dropped it into the bowl,
then turned my attention back to her.  When I kissed her again, her
mouth opened, and she offered her tongue, which I sucked on with a
giddy tenderness.

  I kissed her eyes, her lips, her throat, the tip of her nose.  I
breathed hot into her ear, and then sucked on her tender earlobes.  I
tasted the faint perfume of her flesh, and the sweetness of her breath
against me.  We made out like giddy teenagers for probably half an
hour, softly kissing and caressing each other, until warmth began to
slowly give way to arousal.  I was still enthralled with the
tenderness of her mouth, but I was beginning to have a desire for the
rest of her as well.

  I turned my attention downwards, then, to the softness of her
breasts, which were pushing enticingly against my chest.  I undid one
button on the front of her dress, and kissed the notch of her
collarbone.  I undid another button, and kissed her bare sternum.  I
undid another, and kissed the swell of her breasts.  I undid the
buttons all the way to her waist then, and peeled the front of the
dress back from her bosom.

  I could see the dark pinkness of her nipples through the cotton bra
she was wearing.  More, I could see the hard tips of them poking up
the fabric.  I whispered to her, "Sit up?"  She sat up on the edge of
the bed, then stood, and peeled the dress completely off.  It dropped
at her feet.

  So there she was, standing there in her undergarments.  She reached
behind her back with her hand, but I stopped her.  "Turn around," I
said, "I'd like to do that." So she turned, and I unhooked her bra.
She turned back to me, and I pulled it slowly down, until I was
looking eye-to-nipple with her bare breasts.  I nuzzled between them
and kissed them, inhaling the scent of her skin.  I loved the way
they moved at my touch.

  We lay down together on the bed.  I worshipfully traced the curves
of her with my hands.  She trembled as I brushed my fingers over her
engorged nipples.  I laid her back flat on the bed, and took gentle
hold of one of her breasts.  It filled my hands to overflowing.  I
kissed the nipple, ran my tongue around it, and kissed it again.  Then
I began to nibble and suck on it in earnest.  When I paused, she
gasped and begged me, "Don't stop!  Do that more." I pinched and
rolled her other nipple, rather roughly, with my fingers.  She arched
her back and moaned.  I switched to give them each equal treatment.

  Finally, I lifted my mouth from her slicked nipples.  She gazed up
at me, now looking dazed with arousal.  That excited me more than I
would have believed possible.  Suddenly, I began to feel a hot aching
inside me, and I desperately wanted to kiss her again.  I slid up even
with her again, and laid my mouth over hers, while I continued to
pinch and caress her with my hands.

  After a long while of deeply and passionately exploring each other's
mouths, she broke our kiss, and breathed into my ear, "Touch me.  I
want your hands on me."  I moved one hand slowly down, across her taut
belly, and slipped it between her legs.  I said, "Is this what you
wanted?" as I stroked her through the fabric of her panties.  "This?"
She nodded vigorously, her breath sounding harsh in her throat.  She
whimpered as I rubbed harder, and I felt the heat of her soaking into
my fingers.  She sought my mouth again, and we began to devour each
other with a ferocious hunger.

  I rolled myself half on top of her then, mostly because I wanted to
feel her breasts against my chest again.  I felt their soft pressure
against me, shifting fluidly with every movement.  I slipped my hand
under her panties, and pressed my finger through the wet curls of
hair, into her body.  I slid it up and down the length of her slit,
exploring the heat and wetness of her arousal.  My cock was straining
frantically against my pants, now, to the point that it was starting
to be painful.  I pulled my hand from her, and reached down to
unfasten my belt.  I stopped.  "Is this ok with you?" I asked, my
voice thick in my throat.

  By way of answer, she reached down, and tugged at my belt.  I
swallowed hard as she fumbled with it, watching her breasts jiggle
with the play of her efforts.  I reached down to do it myself, but she
pushed my hand away.  "You wanted to do the bra, I want to do this".
She did get it on the third or fourth try, and my belt came loose.  I
undid the button before she could object, and then stood up and undid
my zipper.  She took hold of my pants and pulled them down.  Then she
took hold of the elastic band of my undershorts, and slipped it down
over my engorged cock.  She put her fingers around me, and stroked
them up and down the length of my cock.

  "Oh, yeaaaah... that's nice," I breathed softly, half fainting from
pleasure.  She took a better grip just under the head, and began to
move her hand firmly up and down.  I felt a slow heat rising through
my loins.  I wasn't in danger of coming quite yet, but if she kept
doing that...  I closed my eyes as she slowly worked me closer and
closer to orgasm.  When I knew I was approaching the point of no
return, I put my hand over hers, and stopped her.  I shook my head.
"I'll come if you keep that up."

  She released me and lay back on the bed, then.  I dropped my shorts
on the floor, and climbed beside her.  I rolled her onto her side,
against my torso, and slipped my arm around her waist.  My hand went
under the fabric of her panties, and I began to squeeze her bottom.
We kissed, and I stroked and kneaded her buttocks with my hand.  She
breathed hotly into my mouth, and sucked on my ears.  I held her
shoulders with my other hand, stroking the curls of hair that escaped
down the back of her neck.

  Eventually, she said to me "Lay back.."  I lowered myself flat onto
my back, with just my calves dangling off the bed.  She threw one
shapely leg over me, and straddled me at the waist.  Then she lowered
herself onto me, so that her hips were resting directly on mine.  She
began to slide herself forward and backward, the damp silk of her
panties rubbing against my bare cock.  I arched my hips, and ground
myself into into the heat of her groin as she slid back and forth.
I reached up to grab her swinging breasts, as I kneaded them hard
with my fingers as we dry-fucked each other almost to the point of
physical pain.

  I was so hot by then that I could hardly breath.  I felt like I was
on fire--my cock was throbbing relentlessly and trickling a steady
stream of precum.  I gasped out "Now.  I've got to have you.  Now."
She looked me in the eyes and leaned forward on her hands and knees to
kiss me.  As she lifted her hips, I slid her panties down.  She lay
down beside me, and rolled onto her back, lifting her legs in the air
to take her panties off.

  We stared hard at each other, and I lay my torso partly across hers.
I leaned down to kiss her mouth, and as we did that, I put my weight
on my elbows, and shifted my body until I was laying on top of her.  I
reached a hand down between our bodies, and used my fingers to stroke
her.  Her lips were hot and slick in my hand.  I kneaded them, and
rubbed her clitoris with my fingers.  She moaned and writhed under me,
pressing herself into my hand.

  I masturbated her until she bit her lip to keep from crying out--all
the while whispering into her ear, "I want to see you come.  I want to
feel you around me, I want to feel the heat of you.  I want to fuck
you and fuck you and fuck you..."  I didn't have to urge the passion
in my voice, I was so stimulated by the heat of her under me that my
voice was shaking.  Her cheeks were flushed crimson, and her breath
was sobbing in her throat.

  Finally, I used my fingers to spread her sex, and guide my cock to
her.  I pushed gently.  There was resistance, but she was very wet,
and the head of my cock was already slick.  I pushed firmly, and
penetrated her.  In a few moments, her slowly yielding cunt took me
completely into her.  Then I began to move inside her.  She threw back
her head, and gave a groan from deep inside her chest.  The hot drag
and pull of our joining drove me to distraction, also, and my eyes
shifted in and out of focus as I slowly fucked her.  Her hips moved in
synch with mine, as I worked her with a steady rhythm.

  Then the mercury heat in my groin began to rise, and I began to lose
our steady rhythm.  I thrust harder, jabbing myself into her heat,
driven half frantic by the smell of her, and the wet animal sounds of
our coupling.  She bucked her hips under me, threatening to shake me
loose from her.

  Finally, our passion peaked in a white-hot burst of pleasure.  I
emptied my seed into her, in the four most powerful strokes of orgasm
I have ever experienced.  With a half-suppressed scream, she thrust
herself frantically against me, even as I was coming down from my
own peak.  I continued thrusting into her, in blind response to her
drawn-out orgasm, long after the shock of my ejaculation had ended.
Finally, we lay there together, gasping and exhausted beyond words.

+++

  After a while of laying there, I regained enough presence of mind to
realize that I was still laying on her, and making it hard for her to
breathe.  I rolled my weight off of her, and lay on my back, using my
little remaining strength to pull her against my side.  Her hair had
come unbound, and it was damp with sweat.  I ran my fingers tiredly
through it, and stroked her cheek.

  "Hey...," I said, softly. "How'd we do?"  She said, "Good."  She
swallowed.  "We did good." I saw a tear leaking out of the corner of
her eye.  I wiped it away with a finger.  "I love you, you know." She
answered, "I know."

  That was good enough for me.

====================================================
