I spent so long figuring out the ending to this chapter, it was crazy. Finally came to me when I was eating a chicken sandwich. Haha. Yeah. I guess chicken is inspirational these days.
So, against my better instincts, I gave this a slightly darker ending than it would have had with my original plan. I kind of like this chapter, actually. It's a little overwrought and whatever...but...Whatever. Chapter 3 is already formulated a bit in my head, so that's good!
Also, I'm not creative enough to give these chapter titles, so they'll just be numbers. Oh well. :)
Yeah. Okay. I'm dead now. No energy for a lovely author's note. So…enjoy! :)
--
When he burst into the apartment the next day, glowing and sweaty from the gym, Jinx immediately got that wrinkly, displeased crease above her nose. She put down her magazine and squirted him with a bottle of air freshener from the bag of groceries they never seemed to put away. "You reek," she said, disdain lacing her voice. "Go shower."
Kid Flash grinned and sat down next to her at the kitchen table. "Jeez, usually girls get turned on by a little sweat. What's up with you?" He nudged her playfully in the ribs.
Her eyes flashed dangerously. "I'm not your usual girl," she hissed. Unfortunately for her, Kid Flash was in too good of a mood to be brought down by her pessimism.
"Whatever you say, babe." He stood up, stretched—which made her get the wrinkly thing above her nose again—and sped into the bathroom. He slammed the door fast enough so that her shout of, "Don't call me your 'babe'!" was muffled, and grinned.
She was just so easy to provoke sometimes.
--
Jinx was still sitting at the kitchen table when he emerged from the bathroom, steam wafting out behind him. She idly flicked through a few pages and looked up, surprised, when he sat down next to her again. Her eyes widened a little before they narrowed, and her customary eye-roll was already in mid-spin. "Please tell me you're going to go put some clothes on."
Kid Flash adjusted the towel around his waist and smiled. "Nope. My apartment, my rules." He paused for a second. "Y'know, they say that if you roll your eyes a lot, they'll get stuck looking at the ceiling for the rest of your life."
"That's only when you cross your eyes, imbecile." Jinx started to roll her eyes again, but stopped halfway. She reddened a little and Kid Flash pretended not to notice. "Anyway, if it's your apartment, why do you let me stay in it?" she challenged, probably trying to hide her momentary slip-up.
He sighed a little and pushed a fork around the table absentmindedly. "Haven't we already been over this, Jinx? Several times?"
"You didn't answer the question."
Kid Flash felt his good mood waver a little, but smiled anyway and delicately changed the subject. "So, I've been thinking."
Jinx turned back to her magazine and flipped to a page showing 'The Hottest Hairstyles of 2008!'. "Didn't the shrink tell you to never do that again? On pain of behavioral meds and 200-dollars-a-session therapeutical bills?" Her eyes were mocking in the pale face; smile twisted into something far less sweet than the night before.
Kid Flash ignored her. "I'm tired of frozen food. And you never get out of the apartment anymore." He paused, for a dramatic flair. "We're going out for dinner."
Jinx snarled—yes, actually snarled—at him. "I don't think so, bozo. We agreed that I'd stay here with you so I wouldn't get into any trouble, but you can't make me do anything I don't want to do." Her eyes stared daggers into his. "And I don't want to go out for dinner."
He heard her stomach rumble a little with hunger as she said it, and saw the remorse in her eyes before it was quickly buried behind an angry façade. She is so freaking stubborn sometimes. Kid Flash gave her his best swoon-worthy, heart-thumping, melting-from-sheer-hotness-overload grin. "I already made reservations." He stood up and headed to his room, but paused and leaned on the doorframe. "Oh, and Jinx?"
She turned to look at him, and he could see she was secretly a little pleased, even as she tried to hide behind a scowl. "What?" she snapped.
"Wear something nice." He winked and headed into his bedroom, trying not to laugh as he imagined her hexing his balls off from fury.
--
Two hours later, Jinx still hadn't emerged from the bathroom. Kid Flash rapped on the peeling white door impatiently. "Jinx! We're going to be late to the restaurant!"
He heard her snorting from behind the door, and there was the distinct sound of hair being teased into submission through an overdose of hairspray. "When you're the fastest nineteen-year-old in the world? I highly doubt it." He heard her set the bottle of hair spray down.
Kid Flash checked the clock on the microwave again. "Yeah, but the reservation is for six thirty. It's, like, six twenty-nine." His eyes flickered over to the clock again. "Six twenty-nine and fourteen seconds." He tapped his fingers impatiently against the dark pant legs and straightened the tie on his neck again, bouncing a little on the soles of his feet.
There was a muffled sigh.
The door opened.
And Kid Flash forgot everything he was about to say and do because…well, because Jinx was gorgeous.
She stood there in the doorway to the bathroom, looking just a little snippy, but the corner of her mouth was curling upwards and he knew she was trying not to laugh. Her face alone looked really pretty—her eyes were big and dark, like a fawn's, and there was something really shiny on her lips. It smelled amazing. Fruity. Like raspberries.
Then his eyes drifted downwards from her face, and all thoughts screeched to a stop.
She was wearing a floor-skimming black dress with geometric patterns cut out of it, and the flashes of white skin against silky black fabric made his hormonal teenage mind reel. It hugged her curves as if she had been born wearing it and was possibly the most spectacular dress he had ever seen. It was incredible. It was gorgeous. And it would probably break a lot of men's hearts when they went out together.
Kid Flash struggled to re-boot his brain. "You look…fantastic."
Jinx gave him that crooked smile he liked so much. "And you don't look completely repulsive," she shot back, with just a trace of smugness in her voice. He had to laugh. He was wearing his father's old tuxedo and a deep blue tie.
"I'm wearing a thirty-year-old tux. Your dress looks like it just flew off the runway, babe."
Jinx somehow ignored the 'babe' comment and stepped forward to fix his tie. Her face was barely a few inches away from his as she fussed with the silky material. "Vintage. Even better." They stood there for a couple seconds, and Kid Flash vaguely noticed his heart beating a little faster than normal.
"Um…Flash?"
"Yeah?" Wally, he thought silently to himself. She's supposed to call me Wally.
"It's six thirty-one."
He looked at the clock on the microwave again. Crap. Late. "Your chariot awaits, my lady," he said grandly, and scooped her up in his arms. Jinx barely had time to protest before they were rocketing through Jump City, completely avoiding rush hour. Kid Flash dug in his heels when they reached the restaurant and let a—very shaky—Jinx out of his embrace. She wobbled a little in her stiletto heels (heels? How had he not noticed her wearing heels?) and he caught her elbow.
"Nine and a half seconds. I think I have a new personal record." Jinx felt her (completely intact) hair, an annoyed gleam in her eyes.
"You absolutely ruined my hair," she huffed, but there was no venom in her voice. She was almost smiling.
Kid Flash smiled and brushed a lock of hair out of place. "I like it when it's a little messy. It's very…chic."
Jinx's eyebrow arched in suspicion, but she let him lead her into the restaurant without comment.
For almost an hour, dinner was…amazing. It wasn't disgustingly fancy, but it was nice. Really nice. Kid Flash stuffed himself with pasta and oysters and Jinx nibbled on some kind of really classy fish. The (admittedly, very pretty) waitress tried to flirt with him the entire meal; he earned himself several impressed glances from Jinx when he completely ignored the girl's overly warm smiles and massive amount of hair-tosses.
They talked easily, words flowing like water. Kid Flash felt smiles on his face at the most random moments, feeling ridiculously happy that she was just…talking. Talking without inhibitions. He felt the walls crumbling, one by one.
So, yeah. It was nice. Really nice.
But it was when they got to dessert that it all kind of fell apart.
They were both seeing how much sorbet they could eat before getting a cold headache. Jinx was winning—even though she was laughing hysterically and getting more ice cream on the table than into her mouth—when Kid Flash noticed her looking at her watch. Repeatedly.
"What's the matter, babe? Got a date?" He leaned forward and checked her watch. Eight forty-seven.
She put her spoon down and glared at him, all traces of laughter suddenly gone. "I'm already on one," she spat. "With you."
Kid Flash ignored the rapid mood swing, as usual. "Then why are you checking your watch so much?" He wouldn't have been curious, except for the fact that she was avoiding his eyes and had turned a little pale. What is she trying to hide? "Jinx?"
She pushed her bowl of blueberry sorbet away. "I'm done. Can we just go?"
Kid Flash felt the vibrations of her tapping her foot against the floor, a nervous tick she'd always been embarrassed about. He caught her hand and pressed it between his. "Jinx, what's wrong?" A trickle of worry twisted in his stomach, icy-cold and foreboding. "Is everything okay?"
She scooted her chair back abruptly. "I have to go," she snapped, and darted out of the restaurant.
"Jinx!" Kid Flash felt his heart speed up a little. He slapped a few twenties down on the table and sprinted out of the building, completely ignoring the flirtatious waitress winking at him as he passed her.
Outside, the cool night air slapped him in the face, heavy with salt. Kid Flash whirled around, trying to find Jinx's black dress in the darkness.
She was leaning up against a wall about a hundred meters away from him. And even though he was the fastest teenager in the entire world, he walked towards her slowly, almost afraid of what he would see.
Afraid of what? his brain taunted him.
Shut up, his heart screamed.
When he was close enough to see her cat-like pupils, he stopped and waited for her to speak. They stood there, frozen into stillness, hearts beating wildly for no reason at all. Kid Flash felt the seconds ticking away in his inner alarm system, felt time blurring into endless, silent minutes.
Eventually Jinx stirred, her voice no more than a whisper. "Every night at eight forty-five, we'd always go out. The Hive Five. And me." She closed her eyes and crossed her arms, protecting herself from whatever memories were invading her mind. "Sometimes it would be a jewelry store. Or maybe a museum, or maybe just a really nice restaurant somewhere. We'd plan…and we'd go…and we'd steal. Anything. Everything. And I'd always be the one who stole the most."
Kid Flash felt the blood rushing through his ears, shockingly loud in the silence. But Jinx kept talking, talking with all the barriers down and no reservations…and he was entranced.
"We could never go out in public, because of course the Teen Titans—" her voice held only a small trace of disdain "—would come and fling us in jail. Not like we didn't end up there a lot anyway, but still. We could never go out to eat pizza like they do. Or just…walk. The only time we were free was at night. When we were stealing."
Jinx took a deep, shuddering breath. "But you and I...we were sitting in that restaurant. Just…sitting. Eating and talking and laughing, like we belonged there. And no one was giving us weird looks or calling the cops or screaming at us or anything. People were nice." He noticed her fingers digging into her arm, black nail polish still smeared from last night.
Kid Flash waited for her, but she didn't say anything else. Finally he cleared his throat, trying to be gentle. "Jinx…That's what it's like. To be a hero. People are nice, because you help them."
Her eyes flew open, and they were sparking with anger and confusion. "It didn't feel right," she hissed. "People were nice, and all I kept expecting was for them to start screaming at me again." The anger faded and she slumped against the wall, looking very fragile. "I don't fit in here, Wally. I just…don't."
Kid Flash looked at her broken, defiant stance: feet splayed, ready to bolt at a moment's notice; slumped against a wall but muscles still tense; eyes huge and wary in the pale face. Always ready to lash out. Always ready to run.
His heart was breaking. He longed to reach out and comfort her, stroke her arm or hug her or anything. But then he remembered the Flash's words: That sometimes there were some wild things you're never supposed to touch.
A question burned his tongue, and he stepped back a little, trying not to accidentally brush her arm with his. "Do you want to go back?" he asked, voice husky to his own ears. "Back to the Hive Five?"
Jinx closed her eyes again and slid down the wall until she was sitting with her forehead pressed against her knees. "I don't know. I just don't know."
He sat down next to her. And when the tears started sliding down her face, he held her wordlessly, feeling her tears soaking through the suit jacket. After an eternity of whispering soothing, meaningless words to her, she regained her pride and slid farther away from him, eyes staring blankly into the darkness.
Finally she spoke again. "You don't really understand, do you. What if feels like. To be a criminal." They weren't questions.
Kid Flash wanted to hold her again, even if she was crying, but he wrapped his arms around his knees instead. "No," he said simply. "I don't."
There was silence for a few seconds. "Do you want me to show you?"
More silence. And then, going against every ounce of sense he had and every lesson he'd been taught and every vow he'd sworn and every life he'd saved…
"Yes."
--
Ooh, drama!
I'll probably post the answer to the "Guess How Old Seraephina Is!" poll at the end of this story. Which will be...um...
I have no idea. xD
So if you haven't voted, then...VOTE.
Buahah. :D
