Title: Running Home
Author: Tote
Genre: angst/romance
Rating: R! For some very, very mild language and adult situations.
A/N: well, here it is people. The anticipated R-rated Tote story…freaked? Not as much I am.
This story is inspired on some vague, strange events with my former boyfriend (nothing near as good as Adam and Joan, obviously) the ungodly temperature in Holland at the moment and my obsession with writing something NOT PG for once.
While writing this, I listened to Jem's 'Come on Closer', Maroon5's 'Secret', Damien Rice's lovely 'Delicate' and 'The Way You Want It' by Keane.
Please review! And thanks so much to all you good people who reviewed 'Worth Saving':
SEND THE WB AND UPN MAIL ABOUT PICKING UP JOAN OF ARCADIA,
CBS (cowardly bad slugs) are apparently not backing down.
p.s. not sure about my title: Teejay, Unchallenged, any thoughts?
There was a sudden hush in the house. Every movement was muffled and every voice lowered, till the very act of breathing was something to be tolerated. The windows fogged with tension and humidity. Summer had never been this hot.
Joan stretched her body, trying to get the kink out of her tired muscles. She was lying, panting slightly, on her bed after having just collapsed on it moments before. Normally a girl that considered the trip from her bedroom to the fridge exercise, she'd had a hard time adjusting to the long, grueling hour-long runs across town every morning before school. Well, there was nothing like a holy hint to get you off your lazy ass.
But she wasn't exactly sure why God wanted her to run. Confusion wasn't exactly unusual in her life, especially since He'd started talking to her, so she just did as she was told and let exhaustion take her mind off the pain of everyday life.
And it got her out of the house earlier than usual: definite plus.
She hated this house and everything in it. Things she'd loved all her life (the teddy bear she won at a carnival when she was eight, a funny lava lamp from the sixties, her thrift-store vintage clothes) made her cringe. Sometimes she wanted to burn everything in sight, sometimes she just wanted to leave and never come back: she was itching to leave home at last.
She'd always been close to her family no matter how much she bitched about her whacky parents and dork brothers and had always dreaded college a little. But things had changed. She'd outgrown this house; she'd outgrown these clothes, those books, that stupid teddy bear: she needed to escape, she needed a rescue. She needed Adam.
Yes, Adam she needed most of all.
She needed his quiet, vigilant attention on her that made her feel anchored and safe. Or the smooth touch of his hand in hers. To make him laugh and cheer him up when he felt tired from work or weary from his life. She wanted the love that had enveloped her life like a saving grace. It was the thing that had made up for all the bad things, all the tragedy and doubt and grayness.
Joan longed for the intensity they sometimes had, the way any random movement or word could make her want to break all her own rules and go to bed with him—the way sometimes the way they were, with their hungry, longing kisses, their quiet passion seemed so high and holy that she suspected sex could never live up to expectations.
That maybe she would never live up to his.
It occurred to her, lying on that bed and catching her breath, that she might be on the brink of doing something desperate.
Had Adam felt this way before he went to Bonnie?
The question had risen in her mind unbidden and she gasped aloud, hating that the subject hadn't stayed safely in its little box at the back of her mind. Hating that she was beginning to weaken, to sympathize: she didn't want to find reasons for what he did, she wanted to be angry. Despite her aching, tight muscles, Joan suddenly felt like running for another hour.
And keep running and never stop.
Joan covered her eyes with her hands and sighed deeply: the noise seemed very loud in the silent house. It seemed they were all just waiting for something to happen.
Maybe they were waiting for her to lose it again. Or screw up, or kill Adam, or more likely, sleep with him. These were the things that rolled around her brain like marbles, tempting her and hurting her and leaving her feeling dry and empty and unsatisfied: there needed to be an outlet for a rage this cold.
Suddenly she wasn't in her bedroom. She was in the shed, Adam's shed.
He was at the table, his head in his hands. Surrounding by his art, he looked smaller. There were sketches of her all over the desk, drawn with such intricate detail that she felt as if no one but Adam had ever really seen her.
She was nude in one, lying down with her eyes closed, her mouth half-open, as if gasping with pleasure. He'd left out the belly button ring. In the sketch, she was shining with beauty and ecstasy and pleasure. Joan sucked in her breath and looked at Adam, who was staring, not at the nude, but at another sketch:
She, Joan, holding the box of things he'd made for her and staring up with such pain written across her features so clearly, it made you ache. Adam's hands, gripping the edges of the paper, shook slightly. He looked as if he were very close to doing something…desperate. Something bad.
Coming up behind him, unseen, Joan touched his shoulders. Adam didn't look up, or around, but his body instantly relaxed into her touch. His shoulder muscles felt tense beneath her fingers: slowly, she let her right hand wander up and tangle into his thick, wavy hair. She sighed his name: "Adam…"
His soft, unbrushed hair, his smell of metal and smoke and something…it was like coming home again.
"Jane…" he whispered and his hands stopped gripping the paper quite so tightly. His voice sent a hot vibration up her arms and down her spine: take me, take me, take me.
Encouraged, she lowered her head down to his neck and kissed him there, just a kiss, beneath his ear where she'd never touched him before. He breathed in deeply, leaning into her touch and dropping the picture onto the table. "Adam, I don't care…" her whole self leaned into him and he leaned back into her, "if this is a dream or not," her hands went up under the front of his shirt and she felt his heart racing in his chest as he moaned involuntarily, as if in pain as well as pleasure, "I need you, I need you to…"
She couldn't finish the sentence.
Adam's body trembled as the kiss at his neck went lower and deepened: she let her tongue slip through and she licked along his veins and bit him lightly, till he moaned her name, till he whispered, in agony: "Jane, please don't stop."
"Joan?" said a voice from her doorway.
She uncovered her eyes and lifted herself up on her elbows. Luke was holding up the phone, a slightly quizzical look on his face. Usually he'd make some comment, but he, like her and everyone else in the house, seemed to be holding his breath in expectation of the Girardi's final killing blow. No one would rock the boat.
"Thanks," she replied softly and as she took the phone from him and shook off her dream, she felt like a stranger, even to herself. "Hello?" she said softly into the phone.
"Jane."
That voice! It sent a wave of pleasure through her that shot down to the place between her legs and then brought a stab of pain with sudden sickness to her stomach. She remembered where they were at these days. For a moment, she couldn't speak. Then she murmured, like a plea: "Adam…"
Please don't say anything too perfect, not now.
"I know, Jane, I know. It's just…" He sounded uneven, out of breath.
"Yes?" Despite herself, hope propelled her heart way up as she prayed, begged God, that he would have an explanation this time. She dug her fingernails into her mattress and ached for their cautious, awkward sort-of-almost friendship to stop now before they became complete strangers to each other.
Tell me something that make us, us again.
"You've been… inside me, all day long. You're in my head."
It was said with sorrow laced in his sweet, melodic voice but…it was sensual too, in some strange way. The odd combination made her head hurt and her body ache differently. "You can't say things like that," she whispered.
"I want to say them." His voice was strained with some emotion, some inexplicable yearning sadness and why did his sadness always seem so much deeper than other people's? Why did his heart seem to break when he spoke to her these days? It's not fair; it's not fair she raged inside: he did this to me!
"I don't care. You don't get say them," she hissed at him and felt her eyes go hot and her hands tremble from wanting him to say them anyway.
"I know," he told her so adamantly, so grimly, so filled with his own strange sadness, "but for a second, it was like I could feel you in the shed. I was thinking about you, and then—"
Joan swallowed.
"I know," she whispered.
"Jane…" he pled, "I can't just leave you alone. I can't make this go away."
"I know," she whispered again and her heart was breaking, "I know, just…not yet. Not yet. You can't—you can't be forgiven."
"Okay," his voice was hoarse. "Okay, Jane."
The line went dead.
Joan fell back against her bed, her entire body shaking and tingling and screaming to—she got up, jogged down the stairs and past her staring mother and father, back out the door:
She had to keep running.