Title: "Dancing in the Dark" 2/?
Author: Mala
E-mail: malisita@yahoo.com
Fandom: "General Hospital"
Rating/Classification: 'R', AU, language, sexual situations, C/M, BJ/AJ,
Disclaimer: Oh, boy. I REALLY don't own them.
Summary: In a slightly alternate timeline, Max Jones hates where she's been and Coleman Radcliff hates where he is. Barbara Jean Jones hates where she is and AJ Quartermaine hates... everything. So, where can they go together besides straight to Hell?
"I'll shake this world off my shoulder." --Bruce Springsteen.
Somewhere between a plie and a pas de deux, she'd quit being BJ Jones. It didn't sound like a dancer's name. It didn't roll off the tongue. And by seventh grade, the whole "BJ" connotation had been too much to deal with. No, she didn't give blowjobs, thank you very much. And Barbie...? Well, that was a doll with big boobs and tiny feet. She had the latter...but not the former. She had a tight dancer's body, slender like a taut string...and she really hadn't been grieving when she never got past A in the cup department because there was less weight pulling her off balance when her partner lifted her above his head.
So, at eighteen, planning to audition for the American Ballet Company, she was the mouthful of "Barbara Jean." Only her family still called her "BJ" and only her Uncle Luke still got her and her mom confused.
She was Barbara Jean and she was going to get the Hell out of Port Charles and become the most famous ballerina in the Western Hemisphere.
No more "how's the Doc, BJ?" or "Have you learned how to make Ruby's chili yet, BJ?" No more eyes watching her every time she went out on a date. She still remembered her pesky brother and her cousin Lucky punching out Sly Eckert for kissing her outside Kelly's two years ago. Well, to be fair, Lucas had just held his arms...but she still hadn't spoken to him for three weeks after that.
No more "You're so sweet, BJ." "You're so good." "Your parents are lucky to have you." She was sick of being good and sweet and wanted. Half the time she wondered what it would be like to step off the street and get hit by a truck and end the flow of sugar that was lacking in her brother's life but seemed to be drowning hers.
She was the one, not Lucas, in danger of a diabetic coma.
Which was why she was walking into Jake's. A bar. On the "bad" side of Port Charles. Wearing one of Elizabeth Webber's stretchy little tops and a pair of Emily Quartermaine's low-slung blue jeans. And a pair of her mother's high heels. She was playing Bad Girl dress-up. She just wasn't sure it went any farther than the clothes.
So, Jake's.
Emily's boyfriend Zander lived in one of the rooms above the place and spent a lot of time downstairs playing pool, so it couldn't be all bad. And she was fairly certain there would be no one in the place who would ask her for Aunt Ruby's chili recipe or ask her how her father was holding out over at GH while the HMOs were moving in.
It was a fairly crowded night and when she walked in, she bumped right into a blond girl heading towards the back stairs, a messenger bag clutched to her side. Someone tougher would've snapped, "Hey, watch where you're going!"... but Barbara Jean was taking baby steps, so she let the tall girl in the tight jeans disappear without any displays of bitchdom.
And she inched through a couple of guys playing pool, ignoring them when they whistled. One cat-called to her back, "Hey, come back and rub some more, Sweetheart, I didn't get off."
Yeah, there was something Dr. Tony Jones's daughter heard every day.
She giggled even as she turned on one heel and flipped him the bird. "There you go. Suck on THAT."
And then she continued on her way up to the bar. That was one went if they wanted to give up sweetness for something harder, right? And she would've ended up there, ordering something beer-like, if, like something out of a bad teen movie, somebody hadn't called her name.
"BJ?!?"
And not even the *right* name. Her stupid baby non-ballerina name.
A man shouldered through the crush of would-be pool sharks and as he neared, his dark brown eyes narrowed. "Barbara Jean Jones...I *thought* that was you. What the Hell are you doing here?"
Expensive pants and sweater, dark brown hair, a slight slur, and a tumbler of something amber clutched in one fist. Yeah, it was definitely AJ Quartermaine.
She groaned. At least she knew her best friend's brother was the last person on earth who would ask about her dad. They hated each other's guts. But there went her quest for naughty anonymity. "Hi, AJ. I'm, uh, meeting Zander and Emily to shoot some pool," she lied, brightly, crossing her fingers behind her back.
"I hate that guy," AJ confided, in that way that only drunken people did. Like the time her father had leaned over during dinner and whispered, too loud, that he thought her stepsister Carly was a two-bit whore. That was the last time Mom had served wine with dinner. And Dad had moved out a week later. "Zander..." AJ continued, with, thankfully, no idea that she was thinking about the woman he and her father had once had in common, "He's a punk. He's a punk kid who's gonna mess up Em's life."
Em had breast cancer. There was really little chance her life could be any more messed up. "She and Zander love each other," Barbara Jean reminded, softly. "Shouldn't that be all that matters?"
"Love? Ha." AJ gestured with his glass emphatically. "Love is a bullshit story, Kiddo, that they tell you about so you can sleep in your cozy bed at night. I don't believe in it. Not anymore."
"Then what DO you believe in?" she couldn't help but ask.
He stared at the liquor like it was his reason for living. "This," he said, sardonically. "Drinking." And something cold dropped over his eyes. "Fucking." When he looked back at her, she wasn't even sure he could see her... or if he did...that he recognized her. "Fire." He smiled and it a beautiful smile, dimples and all, but it was terrifying, too. "I believe in fire."
He was talking about something hot, burning, but all of a sudden, she was cold. And she shivered. AJ was an alcoholic. It was rumored he'd set at least two major fires in the last three years. And it was common knowledge that he'd stalked his own wife.
If this was...if this was what being the complete opposite of herself was like...she...she wasn't entirely sure she liked it.
Within seconds, though, the strange look was gone. And she knew, in his eyes, she was at least little BJ again. If not, hopefully, grown up Barbara Jean. "Come on, let me find you a seat so you can wait..." His free hand closed around her upper arm and he gently steered her towards a table near the jukebox. "You don't wanna be in a place like this by yourself."
"So why are *you* here alone?" she countered, dropping into a chair with altogether too much grace. Grace was her only excess. And it didn't count for shit.
"Because I'm not innocent, Barbara Jean. I never was."
"Innocence is overrated," she snorted, tossing her head.
He reached across the table's scarred surface and took her hand. His grip was warm and dry and it swallowed her up. "No," he whispered, in a voice choked and husky with what sounded like regret. "No, it really isn't."
***
Somewhere in the last few years, his little sister's best friend had grown up. And he hadn't noticed. To be honest, he'd been a little busy...what with climbing out from under Jason's shadow...fighting Carly for custody of his son... and trying to keep Courtney...but now, here she was. Little Barbara Jean. Tall and slender, her brown hair swinging just above her shoulders. She was trying to look older, more mature, in the tight, slinky, black top and the ripped jeans that barely clung to the points of her hips. But she couldn't hide the shine in her dark blue eyes. The vulnerability. The youth.
No, innocence was not overrated. It was sitting right here in front of him.
He sighed and turned her hand over, staring at the myriad of lines bisecting her palm. He wondered if her lifeline was long, if her loveline was short. If she, like Emily, wanted to eat up as much of life as she could before it...before it...ended. "Don't try to grow up too fast...you'll miss childhood when you're my age," he warned, hating the catch in his voice.
Her fingers curled up to brush his. "Do you miss it?" She was full of questions. So curious. He wondered if she'd inherited that open, honest, optimism from Tony...if *that* was what had attracted Carly all those years ago.
He smiled, bitterly, shaking his head. "I never had it." He'd climbed inside a vodka bottle at fifteen and never crawled back out. "When you're a Quartermaine, being a kid isn't part of the deal. You're a thing. A possession ...and maybe Em...maybe she's lucky she..." He broke off, closing his eyes.
Innocence. Barbara Jean was alive, but his baby sister was dying. By her own choice. No chemo. No radiation. No mastectomy. Just a slow, eventual, death. Surrounded by the people she loved.
Yeah, he hated Zander. A lot.
"AJ..."
"They're not coming, are they?" he asked, softly, when he could speak again. When he could look at her and see *her* eyes, *her* smile. "You lied to me. You came here on your own. Why?"
She didn't even try to deny it. She pulled her hand back, cradling it against her chest, and her eyes turned the color of clouds right before a storm. "For all your lectures about childhood and innocence, AJ...you have no idea what it's like to be me. To be perfect all the time. To never do anything wrong. To be the person holding your family together even when your parents are divorced, your brother's a diabetic idiot, and your sister is married to the local mob boss." Her lips tightened. "I'm sick of being everyone's little BJ."
Oh, yes. He had no idea about the burdens of perfection. No, sirree. Not him, the perpetual Black Sheep. "Then don't be her." He shrugged, saluting her with his nearly-empty glass. "By all means, be whoever you want. Do whatever you want. *Whoever*."
Barbara Jean laughed. And even that sound was light and young and full of life. But her words...her words were something altogether different. She leaned forward, arching a dark, silken, brow, and repeated, huskily, "'Whoever'? Do you mean that, AJ?"
Did he?
He drained his glass, swallowed his tongue, and felt his body jumping to the life for the first time in months. Like a lit match. Ready to burn.
Well, Hell.
Apparently, he did.
***
She had dated Sly steadily all throughout high school. He'd taken her to her senior prom just a few months back. Sly was wicked and sweet and blond... he hadn't fallen particularly far from the Spencer-Eckert tree. They had been named Cutest Couple in the Senior Superlatives...which had been riotously funny to them both since a)Sly had graduated from PC High three years before and b)they hadn't really been *together* together since her sophomore year. The punching incident.
When she got it in her mind to pray, she thanked God that her cousin and her brother hadn't stumbled upon them the first time they had sex. Sly probably wouldn't be alive and joining the Merchant Marines now. She still had vague nightmares of paraplegia and food tubes.
But, yes, there was her secret rebellion. She had slept with her high school sweetheart. Ooh. Everybody did *that*. No big deal. It was one of those things where your family was honor-bound to protest but if the guy was still around during college, you had their blessing to get married. Having danced for almost her entire life, there had been nothing to tear and very little pain and what Sly lacked in experience, he made up for in "Penthouse" letters and enthusiasm.
But AJ...? She had a feeling that all AJ *had* was experience. A lifetime of it. And not all of it good. He was, by no means, the "hottie" in the Quartermaine family. All counts, in that respect, lay on the brooding shoulders of Jason, the leather-wearing mob hitman. But AJ was handsome, almost boyishly so...except for the ruthless glint in his eyes, the self-loathing, and the simple fact that he already knew what it was like to fall from grace.
And that...that was what she'd come to Jake's looking for.
"Well?" She leaned out of the hard wooden chair, staring at him with more than just Bad Girl dress-up working in her favor. "What do you think?"
"A-about what?" Shady character or not, AJ had been raised right and he blushed faintly, dark eyes contracting, as he batted his empty tumbler between his palms.
"Getting out of here. Going some place a little more private." Stripping her naked and banging BJ into oblivion. "I'll let you drink all you want."
"Aww, you're so sweet." He laughed. A short, sharp, bark of a laugh. "You're also *eighteen*. You've had sleepovers with my sister. Don't you think it's a little weird to be wanting one with me?"
"You're, what, thirty? So?" She matched the laugh like an expert mimic, stretching across the table. "And I wasn't planning to sleep. Were you?"
"Do your parents know you talk this way?" And before she could even dignify that with a response, he answered himself, shaking his head. "No, of course they don't. Where do they think you are tonight...hanging out with Em? With Elizabeth?" He sighed, dragging a hand through his hair. "Gotta tell you...there isn't enough booze in the world to make me do something this stupid."
Her agility came in handy as she effortlessly vaulted across the table's surface like it was a an exercise mat and wound up in his lap. "Then do it sober," she suggested, simply.
And just like she expected, the momentum of her body slamming into his was like flint and steel. The pyromaniac couldn't help but let the spark turn into a fire. "Barbara Jean..." he groaned, softly...before he wrapped one firm hand in her hair, lowered her head to his, and kissed her.
***
Somewhere in the back of his head was the thought that the girls he wound up kissing were getting, progressively, younger and younger. But the thought in the front of his head was much more profound: kissing Barbara Jean was incendiary.
And he was going up in smoke.
In the middle of Jake's.
They were plastered together, chest to chest, her trapped in his lap, back arching against the edge of the table. And all he wanted to do was spread her down on it and burn inside her. And the last time he'd gotten this worked up at Jake's, he'd wound up fathering a child with a manipulative slut.
So, the smart thing to do...besides pushing her away and drinking a *lot* of coffee while taking a cold shower...would be to change location. He picked her up, amidst cheers and jeers and wolf whistles, and walked her right out the door. Without even coming up for air.
Her arms linked around his neck and her long, slender legs, closed around his hips and when he slammed her against the wall of the narrow alley out back, the only sound she made was the most gorgeous little moan.
It was that moan that snapped him into some, *some* semblance of rationality. "We can't...we can't do this here," he pointed out, even though it was carefully dark and off the main road.
"I live with my parents," she reminded, chuckling, mouth swollen and begging for more kisses.
"Well fuck." He laughed, breathlessly, leaning his forehead against hers. "So do I."
All right, they *were* going to do this here. But she had come to that conclusion before him and he was gasping when her nimble fingers slipped between them and began to work the fastenings of his pants. Two could play at that game..and he slid one hand down the front of her low- riding jeans.
Her lips trailed along his jaw, tongue rubbing rough against his stubble and she whispered approval in his ear as he stoked her banked fire and burned his fingertips..."Now you're catching on, AJ."
He was in her hot little hands, crackling. "Barbara Jean, you are *so* not who I thought you were," he murmured.
"You're *exactly* who I thought you were," she countered, with something like...like gratitude in her voice.
She led him into the inferno...where he charred, splintered, and burst into ash.
**
TBC.
Author: Mala
E-mail: malisita@yahoo.com
Fandom: "General Hospital"
Rating/Classification: 'R', AU, language, sexual situations, C/M, BJ/AJ,
Disclaimer: Oh, boy. I REALLY don't own them.
Summary: In a slightly alternate timeline, Max Jones hates where she's been and Coleman Radcliff hates where he is. Barbara Jean Jones hates where she is and AJ Quartermaine hates... everything. So, where can they go together besides straight to Hell?
"I'll shake this world off my shoulder." --Bruce Springsteen.
Somewhere between a plie and a pas de deux, she'd quit being BJ Jones. It didn't sound like a dancer's name. It didn't roll off the tongue. And by seventh grade, the whole "BJ" connotation had been too much to deal with. No, she didn't give blowjobs, thank you very much. And Barbie...? Well, that was a doll with big boobs and tiny feet. She had the latter...but not the former. She had a tight dancer's body, slender like a taut string...and she really hadn't been grieving when she never got past A in the cup department because there was less weight pulling her off balance when her partner lifted her above his head.
So, at eighteen, planning to audition for the American Ballet Company, she was the mouthful of "Barbara Jean." Only her family still called her "BJ" and only her Uncle Luke still got her and her mom confused.
She was Barbara Jean and she was going to get the Hell out of Port Charles and become the most famous ballerina in the Western Hemisphere.
No more "how's the Doc, BJ?" or "Have you learned how to make Ruby's chili yet, BJ?" No more eyes watching her every time she went out on a date. She still remembered her pesky brother and her cousin Lucky punching out Sly Eckert for kissing her outside Kelly's two years ago. Well, to be fair, Lucas had just held his arms...but she still hadn't spoken to him for three weeks after that.
No more "You're so sweet, BJ." "You're so good." "Your parents are lucky to have you." She was sick of being good and sweet and wanted. Half the time she wondered what it would be like to step off the street and get hit by a truck and end the flow of sugar that was lacking in her brother's life but seemed to be drowning hers.
She was the one, not Lucas, in danger of a diabetic coma.
Which was why she was walking into Jake's. A bar. On the "bad" side of Port Charles. Wearing one of Elizabeth Webber's stretchy little tops and a pair of Emily Quartermaine's low-slung blue jeans. And a pair of her mother's high heels. She was playing Bad Girl dress-up. She just wasn't sure it went any farther than the clothes.
So, Jake's.
Emily's boyfriend Zander lived in one of the rooms above the place and spent a lot of time downstairs playing pool, so it couldn't be all bad. And she was fairly certain there would be no one in the place who would ask her for Aunt Ruby's chili recipe or ask her how her father was holding out over at GH while the HMOs were moving in.
It was a fairly crowded night and when she walked in, she bumped right into a blond girl heading towards the back stairs, a messenger bag clutched to her side. Someone tougher would've snapped, "Hey, watch where you're going!"... but Barbara Jean was taking baby steps, so she let the tall girl in the tight jeans disappear without any displays of bitchdom.
And she inched through a couple of guys playing pool, ignoring them when they whistled. One cat-called to her back, "Hey, come back and rub some more, Sweetheart, I didn't get off."
Yeah, there was something Dr. Tony Jones's daughter heard every day.
She giggled even as she turned on one heel and flipped him the bird. "There you go. Suck on THAT."
And then she continued on her way up to the bar. That was one went if they wanted to give up sweetness for something harder, right? And she would've ended up there, ordering something beer-like, if, like something out of a bad teen movie, somebody hadn't called her name.
"BJ?!?"
And not even the *right* name. Her stupid baby non-ballerina name.
A man shouldered through the crush of would-be pool sharks and as he neared, his dark brown eyes narrowed. "Barbara Jean Jones...I *thought* that was you. What the Hell are you doing here?"
Expensive pants and sweater, dark brown hair, a slight slur, and a tumbler of something amber clutched in one fist. Yeah, it was definitely AJ Quartermaine.
She groaned. At least she knew her best friend's brother was the last person on earth who would ask about her dad. They hated each other's guts. But there went her quest for naughty anonymity. "Hi, AJ. I'm, uh, meeting Zander and Emily to shoot some pool," she lied, brightly, crossing her fingers behind her back.
"I hate that guy," AJ confided, in that way that only drunken people did. Like the time her father had leaned over during dinner and whispered, too loud, that he thought her stepsister Carly was a two-bit whore. That was the last time Mom had served wine with dinner. And Dad had moved out a week later. "Zander..." AJ continued, with, thankfully, no idea that she was thinking about the woman he and her father had once had in common, "He's a punk. He's a punk kid who's gonna mess up Em's life."
Em had breast cancer. There was really little chance her life could be any more messed up. "She and Zander love each other," Barbara Jean reminded, softly. "Shouldn't that be all that matters?"
"Love? Ha." AJ gestured with his glass emphatically. "Love is a bullshit story, Kiddo, that they tell you about so you can sleep in your cozy bed at night. I don't believe in it. Not anymore."
"Then what DO you believe in?" she couldn't help but ask.
He stared at the liquor like it was his reason for living. "This," he said, sardonically. "Drinking." And something cold dropped over his eyes. "Fucking." When he looked back at her, she wasn't even sure he could see her... or if he did...that he recognized her. "Fire." He smiled and it a beautiful smile, dimples and all, but it was terrifying, too. "I believe in fire."
He was talking about something hot, burning, but all of a sudden, she was cold. And she shivered. AJ was an alcoholic. It was rumored he'd set at least two major fires in the last three years. And it was common knowledge that he'd stalked his own wife.
If this was...if this was what being the complete opposite of herself was like...she...she wasn't entirely sure she liked it.
Within seconds, though, the strange look was gone. And she knew, in his eyes, she was at least little BJ again. If not, hopefully, grown up Barbara Jean. "Come on, let me find you a seat so you can wait..." His free hand closed around her upper arm and he gently steered her towards a table near the jukebox. "You don't wanna be in a place like this by yourself."
"So why are *you* here alone?" she countered, dropping into a chair with altogether too much grace. Grace was her only excess. And it didn't count for shit.
"Because I'm not innocent, Barbara Jean. I never was."
"Innocence is overrated," she snorted, tossing her head.
He reached across the table's scarred surface and took her hand. His grip was warm and dry and it swallowed her up. "No," he whispered, in a voice choked and husky with what sounded like regret. "No, it really isn't."
***
Somewhere in the last few years, his little sister's best friend had grown up. And he hadn't noticed. To be honest, he'd been a little busy...what with climbing out from under Jason's shadow...fighting Carly for custody of his son... and trying to keep Courtney...but now, here she was. Little Barbara Jean. Tall and slender, her brown hair swinging just above her shoulders. She was trying to look older, more mature, in the tight, slinky, black top and the ripped jeans that barely clung to the points of her hips. But she couldn't hide the shine in her dark blue eyes. The vulnerability. The youth.
No, innocence was not overrated. It was sitting right here in front of him.
He sighed and turned her hand over, staring at the myriad of lines bisecting her palm. He wondered if her lifeline was long, if her loveline was short. If she, like Emily, wanted to eat up as much of life as she could before it...before it...ended. "Don't try to grow up too fast...you'll miss childhood when you're my age," he warned, hating the catch in his voice.
Her fingers curled up to brush his. "Do you miss it?" She was full of questions. So curious. He wondered if she'd inherited that open, honest, optimism from Tony...if *that* was what had attracted Carly all those years ago.
He smiled, bitterly, shaking his head. "I never had it." He'd climbed inside a vodka bottle at fifteen and never crawled back out. "When you're a Quartermaine, being a kid isn't part of the deal. You're a thing. A possession ...and maybe Em...maybe she's lucky she..." He broke off, closing his eyes.
Innocence. Barbara Jean was alive, but his baby sister was dying. By her own choice. No chemo. No radiation. No mastectomy. Just a slow, eventual, death. Surrounded by the people she loved.
Yeah, he hated Zander. A lot.
"AJ..."
"They're not coming, are they?" he asked, softly, when he could speak again. When he could look at her and see *her* eyes, *her* smile. "You lied to me. You came here on your own. Why?"
She didn't even try to deny it. She pulled her hand back, cradling it against her chest, and her eyes turned the color of clouds right before a storm. "For all your lectures about childhood and innocence, AJ...you have no idea what it's like to be me. To be perfect all the time. To never do anything wrong. To be the person holding your family together even when your parents are divorced, your brother's a diabetic idiot, and your sister is married to the local mob boss." Her lips tightened. "I'm sick of being everyone's little BJ."
Oh, yes. He had no idea about the burdens of perfection. No, sirree. Not him, the perpetual Black Sheep. "Then don't be her." He shrugged, saluting her with his nearly-empty glass. "By all means, be whoever you want. Do whatever you want. *Whoever*."
Barbara Jean laughed. And even that sound was light and young and full of life. But her words...her words were something altogether different. She leaned forward, arching a dark, silken, brow, and repeated, huskily, "'Whoever'? Do you mean that, AJ?"
Did he?
He drained his glass, swallowed his tongue, and felt his body jumping to the life for the first time in months. Like a lit match. Ready to burn.
Well, Hell.
Apparently, he did.
***
She had dated Sly steadily all throughout high school. He'd taken her to her senior prom just a few months back. Sly was wicked and sweet and blond... he hadn't fallen particularly far from the Spencer-Eckert tree. They had been named Cutest Couple in the Senior Superlatives...which had been riotously funny to them both since a)Sly had graduated from PC High three years before and b)they hadn't really been *together* together since her sophomore year. The punching incident.
When she got it in her mind to pray, she thanked God that her cousin and her brother hadn't stumbled upon them the first time they had sex. Sly probably wouldn't be alive and joining the Merchant Marines now. She still had vague nightmares of paraplegia and food tubes.
But, yes, there was her secret rebellion. She had slept with her high school sweetheart. Ooh. Everybody did *that*. No big deal. It was one of those things where your family was honor-bound to protest but if the guy was still around during college, you had their blessing to get married. Having danced for almost her entire life, there had been nothing to tear and very little pain and what Sly lacked in experience, he made up for in "Penthouse" letters and enthusiasm.
But AJ...? She had a feeling that all AJ *had* was experience. A lifetime of it. And not all of it good. He was, by no means, the "hottie" in the Quartermaine family. All counts, in that respect, lay on the brooding shoulders of Jason, the leather-wearing mob hitman. But AJ was handsome, almost boyishly so...except for the ruthless glint in his eyes, the self-loathing, and the simple fact that he already knew what it was like to fall from grace.
And that...that was what she'd come to Jake's looking for.
"Well?" She leaned out of the hard wooden chair, staring at him with more than just Bad Girl dress-up working in her favor. "What do you think?"
"A-about what?" Shady character or not, AJ had been raised right and he blushed faintly, dark eyes contracting, as he batted his empty tumbler between his palms.
"Getting out of here. Going some place a little more private." Stripping her naked and banging BJ into oblivion. "I'll let you drink all you want."
"Aww, you're so sweet." He laughed. A short, sharp, bark of a laugh. "You're also *eighteen*. You've had sleepovers with my sister. Don't you think it's a little weird to be wanting one with me?"
"You're, what, thirty? So?" She matched the laugh like an expert mimic, stretching across the table. "And I wasn't planning to sleep. Were you?"
"Do your parents know you talk this way?" And before she could even dignify that with a response, he answered himself, shaking his head. "No, of course they don't. Where do they think you are tonight...hanging out with Em? With Elizabeth?" He sighed, dragging a hand through his hair. "Gotta tell you...there isn't enough booze in the world to make me do something this stupid."
Her agility came in handy as she effortlessly vaulted across the table's surface like it was a an exercise mat and wound up in his lap. "Then do it sober," she suggested, simply.
And just like she expected, the momentum of her body slamming into his was like flint and steel. The pyromaniac couldn't help but let the spark turn into a fire. "Barbara Jean..." he groaned, softly...before he wrapped one firm hand in her hair, lowered her head to his, and kissed her.
***
Somewhere in the back of his head was the thought that the girls he wound up kissing were getting, progressively, younger and younger. But the thought in the front of his head was much more profound: kissing Barbara Jean was incendiary.
And he was going up in smoke.
In the middle of Jake's.
They were plastered together, chest to chest, her trapped in his lap, back arching against the edge of the table. And all he wanted to do was spread her down on it and burn inside her. And the last time he'd gotten this worked up at Jake's, he'd wound up fathering a child with a manipulative slut.
So, the smart thing to do...besides pushing her away and drinking a *lot* of coffee while taking a cold shower...would be to change location. He picked her up, amidst cheers and jeers and wolf whistles, and walked her right out the door. Without even coming up for air.
Her arms linked around his neck and her long, slender legs, closed around his hips and when he slammed her against the wall of the narrow alley out back, the only sound she made was the most gorgeous little moan.
It was that moan that snapped him into some, *some* semblance of rationality. "We can't...we can't do this here," he pointed out, even though it was carefully dark and off the main road.
"I live with my parents," she reminded, chuckling, mouth swollen and begging for more kisses.
"Well fuck." He laughed, breathlessly, leaning his forehead against hers. "So do I."
All right, they *were* going to do this here. But she had come to that conclusion before him and he was gasping when her nimble fingers slipped between them and began to work the fastenings of his pants. Two could play at that game..and he slid one hand down the front of her low- riding jeans.
Her lips trailed along his jaw, tongue rubbing rough against his stubble and she whispered approval in his ear as he stoked her banked fire and burned his fingertips..."Now you're catching on, AJ."
He was in her hot little hands, crackling. "Barbara Jean, you are *so* not who I thought you were," he murmured.
"You're *exactly* who I thought you were," she countered, with something like...like gratitude in her voice.
She led him into the inferno...where he charred, splintered, and burst into ash.
**
TBC.
