A/N: So I've had extreme writer's block for a long time now and I'm sure it's completely do to my personal problems in real life. I am now a recovering addict, however, ever since I quit drugs I've had more than a hard time getting back into writing.
So sorry if this really sucks.
I decide to step outside for a cigarette while Rachel prepares dinner. After she had bent over for the twelfth time and I began to drool, I realized I was wound too tightly to keep my hormones in check. Her backyard is just as nice as the inside of the house with perfectly trimmed hedges, a modestly sized pool (if there is such a thing), and a matching patio set that only ever looks that good in home decor magazines. It definitely isn't a stretch to envision two gay men living here. I take a seat in a patio chair by the pool, throwing one leg over the arm rest and sinking down in to it. The wind had vanished, along with any other sound that would normally go along with the night, and even the water in the pool is absolutely still.
As I inhale the toxins from my cigarette, I lift my chin high and watch the smoke swirl around the dancing stars above me. It hits me that this is the most calm I have been since... since, I can't even remember. I know that my body isn't built for this tranquility and would never be able to survive it for long periods of time, but it still makes me long for that ability. I wish I could forever be content to sit beside a pool, in peace, with no where to be or go, and no prophecies to fulfill or apocalypses to stop. To just be.
Of course thirty-seconds into that fantasy and I'm itching to rip the head off of a Carnage Demon and streak my face with its blood warrior style. Slayers just weren't made to settle down and raise rugrats. We've got so much fire inside that if we pause for even just a moment, we start to get burnt.
"Nice out, isn't it."
I'm definitely starting to get burnt.
"I guess," I shrug, keeping my eyes fixed on the wide sky above while blowing out a series of smoke rings, "Liked the warmth better on the West coast, but the quiet is nice."
She sits back in the seat beside me and I can feel her eyes studying me for a long while before they finally follow my gaze upwards, "You're coming from the West coast?"
She's trying to get me to talk without looking like she's trying to get me to talk. She sucks at it. Still, answering her question probably won't kill me and I really don't have anything better to do.
"California," I offer with indifference, taking a long drag of my smoke and casting my eyes to her. The way she's sitting in her seat is reminding me of why I came out here. It's too cute, too innocent, and too not, all at the same time. One of her big toes is barely pressing to the concrete pool deck while she is swinging her knee from side to side. Her other foot is resting on the seat of the chair, knee hugged tightly to her chest with an arm hanging loosely around it. She's resting her chin on top of her knee while her other hand fidgets with her toes hanging off the seat and the ponytail her hair had been tied back in is gone, leaving her long dark hair to fall all around her bare shoulders and against her knee.
I turn away. Back to the shining stars that I can never get arrested for enjoying too much.
"California," she hums back and I already forgot that I had said it, "Must be so beautiful."
I remember the grey walls, the oversized women with mullets and facial tattoos. I remember the stench, the screaming, and the food that I will always believe was cat puke. I remember the demons, the pain, the death, the loss, and then I remember her. The girl I'm running from.
"Has its moments," I sigh, tossing the butt of my smoke into the pool, realizing after that it probably wasn't the right thing to do as a guest. She wrinkles her nose in disgust as her eyes follow the floating butt, and the look is enough for me to push up off my comfy chair and go after it.
"Oh, it's alright," she says, quickly when I'm already kneeling down at the edge of the pool. It's not a hard matter to pluck the garbage out of the water, but the tone in her voice makes it sound like it's a big deal. Strange.
"Got it," I say, holding it up with another shrug and searching the area for a trash bin. I spot one near the house and by the time I've thrown it in and turned back to face her, she's wearing this look of surprise, shock and joy, as if I've asked her on a European vacation or something.
"You alright," I ask with a half chuckle as I fall back down into my chair.
Her eyes snap back to me from the trash can and lose some of their awe before she nods firmly, "Yes, of course. I just didn't expect you to actually-"
"Clean up after myself," I finish for her. It's a pretty fair assumption. I'm not usually one to clean, or even throw away my bawled up Kleenexes when I miss those five pointers, but there's something about this girl.
Yeah, I don't even know how to explain it.
"Dinner should be ready in about five minutes," she says softly, her fingers gently tapping on her knee as her eyes glimmer from the light reflecting off the pool, "I hope you like eggplant casserole."
Sounds disgusting.
"Never know until you try," I say instead, "Besides, I'm starved. I could eat a whole farm."
She throws me a look, that I'm sure is purely impulsive towards her feelings about animals so I quickly add, "Organic vegetable farm."
Her stare holds for a few seconds longer before she bursts into intoxicating giggles, even making me let a couple soft chuckles slip as I close my eyes and turn away from her. I've always felt the need to hide my smiles or laughs from other people. Sure, a big part of it was trying to uphold my kick-ass take-no-shit, bad girl image, but I also had this fear always lurking in the back of my mind, that if I let anyone else see it, that if they could see my smile, they would take it away from me. So if I felt the urge, I would bite my tongue, choke it down, close my eyes and turn away. I would think of any thought that could bring my anger back.
Probably has something to do with my mom never loving me and all that psychological bullshit. Whatever.
"Caught you," she snaps through her giggles, pointing an accusing finger at me.
I try to pull down at the corners of my mouth and will it to go away, but the smile fights against me, "What?"
"I knew you had a smile in there somewhere," she says softly, with a triumphant tone to her voice but without managing to sound arrogant or annoying. Still just cute.
"You should do that more often," she swallows, her eyes falling nervously to the fingers tapping at her knee as the rest of her flushes, "You have a nice smile."
I watch her out of the corners of my eyes for a few seconds as she swings her dangling leg a couple times before catching it with her toe against the concrete again, then stare back at the calm water.
"Thanks," I mumble, trying to decide whether to pull out another cigarette or wait until after dinner. I'm not good at these kinds of situations and I want to smoke to calm my nerves, or at least so I have something to do with my hands, but before I can make up my mind she's talking.
"So where are your parents," she asks, her voice sounding shy although I know it's not an emotion she usually deals with.
"Mom's dead," I answer curtly, parents are the last thing I want to talk about.
She nods and pushes further, "And your da-"
"You mind if we lay off the parental topics," I ask, trying my best to not sound like I'm personally attacking her. I do like listening to her talk. Her voice is sort of soothing in a weird way, but I don't rip open old wounds for strangers. Even if they are petite brunettes with killer legs.
"I apologize," she says and I can tell she really means it, "What about brothers or sisters?"
"Just me," I reply, deciding to go for that smoke and lighting it up. She makes a face and I make an effort to exhale the smoke in the opposite direction, "What about you?"
"Just me and my dads," she answers, but there's an unmistakable note of sorrow in her words.
It interests me.
"That's not enough for you," I ask, cigarette pursed between my lips as I swing my leg over the arm rest to join the one already there and face her.
"Oh it is," she answers quickly, as if she's afraid of being accused as ungrateful, "I am very lucky to have two parents who love me as much as they do. There are so many kids that grow up without even half of what I have."
I can't help thinking about myself and the jealousy I felt when I saw the picture of her with her dads, but I know she's just going on a spiel before she gets to the part that's missing in her life.
"Still," she says slowly, her eyes watching me closely to see if I'm judging her. I'm not. She continues, "Although my fathers were always good to me, I miss having a female role model in my life. Sure, I did find my birth mother, but it didn't turn out how I thought it would. And now she's raising the child of the girl who made it her life's mission to make my high school experience a nightmare and she had sex with Puck, which was just so wrong on so many-."
"Wait," I interrupted, completely confused, "Your mom had sex with a puck?"
"No," Rachel smiles softly, "Puck is a boy in my school. I guess we dated a bit before, but I was never... well I wasn't his type and vice versa."
"So he did the nasty with your mom instead," I smirk, again, I try not to, but I can't help it, "Who needs soap operas in Lima, Ohio."
Rachel chews on her lip, "I think I would've liked a sibling, at least I like the thought of having a sibling. Of course I would still want to be the favourite, but maybe an older brother who could've stood up for me at school."
"Kids bugging you," it's more of a comment then a question since she's basically already said it.
"Everyday," she mumbles and the pain in her voice even makes my insides throb. I'm not usually one to sympathize with others, but something about the way that she says it, as if she's been in prison everyday since her first day of school, it makes me understand somewhat. Either that or this fighting for the good side thing is really getting to me.
"I thought that things would change when I finally became a senior," she sighs, dropping her head back to look at the stars, "I thought being a senior meant that everyone looked up to you, like you were special. But everyday I still get a slushy thrown in my face, someone calls me a dwarf, shoves me against a locker, and writes things about me on the bathroom walls. I think if I had an older brother, he would've protected me and although I do not condone violence, it would've been nice to see them get thrown into a locker for once."
"Sounds like you got it pretty rough at school," I say, dragging on the end of my cigarette, milking it for all it's worth.
She blinks and the darkness in her eyes vanishes as she smiles again, "It's not all bad, I'm captain of the Glee club and-"
"Glee club," I interrupt again, raising an eyebrow, "What the hell is a Glee club? Sounds kinda cult-ish."
She giggles and I melt a little more.
"Don't be silly," she scoffs, "A school sanctioned cult?"
"Hey," I say, lifting my arms defensively, "I dunno what goes on in Lima. Whole town could be one big cult."
"It's a show choir," she explains with a huge grin and roll of her eyes.
I'm still confused, though. I know what a choir is, obviously, but adding the word 'show' in front of it, makes it sound like it's not the kind of choir I'm thinking of.
"Been awhile since I was in school," I shrug, "And been even longer since I knew what the hell was going on in school. You're gonna have to explain."
Just as her mouth opens to answer, a beeping sound comes from inside the house, and with a smile that promises the conversation will be continued later, she slides off the chair and says, "Dinner's ready."
Dinner was good. Like, really fucking good. I'm not ready to swear off Porky and worship zucchini, but to be honest, if she cooks like that all the time, I would certainly consider it. She hardly ate any of it herself and I wondered if she was too stunned by my display of shoving as much food as I could into my cheeks, or if she was too invested in what I thought of it. Her facial expression read both.
Not much talking could be done at the dinner table, not when my mouth was full the entire time, but when dinner finished, I made sure to show some manners that I had learned over the years and helped her clear the plates.
"Glee club," she says finally, after the long pause through dinner, "Is hard to explain exactly. You need to see it in order to fully understand and love it."
"So, what," I shrug, absently wiping a wet plate with a towel, "You're like this big group of kids in robes, singin' gospel tunes or somethin'? Praise Jesus and whatever."
"No," she laughs, handing me a new wet dish to dry, "I mean sometimes someone will come to the group with a gospel song they would like to sing, but it's not like what you're thinking. We sing a wide range of songs from Broadway hits to pop tunes, top 40 to rock, anything and everything you can think of-"
"Rob Zombie?"
"Okay, maybe not everything," Rachel chuckles, "Not yet, anyway. The best part is, we don't just stand there swaying as we sing. We dance, play instruments, act it out and have so much fun doing it."
"Huh," I say with a nod, it doesn't sound quite so bad. I do love rocking out to my death metal tunes, especially when pounding on vamps.
"If you're sticking around," she says, her voice softer and there's a slight tremor to indicate she's anxious in asking, "Tomorrow we have our Regionals competition. The other school is looking pretty fierce and we're competing against the other half of our Glee club at school."
"How does that work," I ask, not really that interested, but the question comes out anyway.
"Long story," she groans, "but if you would like to come watch me perform, I mean so that you can see what Glee is all about, I could save you a seat."
"Yeah, maybe," I shrug, keeping my eyes on the plate I'm drying so I don't get sucked into the cuteness that's radiating from her, "Don't think I'm gonna be sticking around that long, though."
"It's only one extra day," she reasons and I notice that she's chewing on that full bottom lip of hers again. I also notice that I'm staring and strangling the dish towel, "You said you had nowhere really to be anyway."
She's right, but I hate making plans and obligations that I have to stick around for. Most importantly, I can feel this girl already starting to attach to me and that's dangerous. My line of work gets cute little jailbait like her slaughtered into tiny pieces, and that's blood I don't want on my hands. This girl has never even seen a vampire before. She has no idea that all those things that go bump in the night are real. She's also not the type to handle it well if she did know. I can just tell.
"Look," I sigh heavily, putting the dry dish down on the counter and turning towards her, "This has been real rockin' and I actually enjoyed your meat free dinner, even though I'm a self proclaimed carnivore, but we gotta jus' treat this how it is, y'know?"
By the way she gently places the cup she was holding back into the sink, then slowly looks up at me with those huge innocent brown eyes, it's clear, she doesn't know. She has no idea what I'm talking about.
Her eyes are really fucking nice. So fucking nice that I can't remember what I was saying no to.
"Oh screw it," I whisper as all the good sense in my brain blows up and all I'm left with is the absolute need to know exactly what her lips taste like. All those warning alarms and that voice that was telling me to stay away from the jailbait, go 'poof' and my reflexes are back. Suddenly, my hands are on her hips, pushing her back against the sink and I'm pressing the length of my body to hers, rolling my hips just enough to make her squeak with surprise and arousal. My fingers curl against her soft flesh, hard enough for it to ache, but not enough to hurt, and I stare down at her as if I'm stalking my prey. I suppose I am.
It sounds sexy, like in one of those romance novels, closing in on the young harlot before I claim her heaving bosoms, or something like that. I've never actually read one of those books, and she doesn't really have much bosom to heave. Truth is, I'm moving slowly and with as much danger in my eyes as I can manage, without going all psycho killer crazy, hoping that she'll change her mind, because god knows I don't have the strength.
She's not backing down, though.
Maybe she's eighteen, she did say she was a senior in high school. Lots of seniors are eighteen.
I roll my hips against hers accidentally, or more on impulse just from our bodies touching in that way. It forces a mewling noise from her and her eyes to close and with my last bit of strength I manage to growl the words, "Please tell me you're eighteen."
Her eyes open quickly and they're filled with guilt and worry and I have my answer. She's not eighteen.
I feel her fingers brush against the bare part of my midriff, delicate and teasing. Her eyes downturn to watch her fingers as she whispers, "Sixteen," before her eyes shoot back up to mine to gauge my reaction.
"Fuck," I groan, the word rumbling low in my throat as I follow it with more of the same, "Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuckity-fuck fuck."
"It's not that bad," Rachel tries to reason, "I can assure you I am very mature for my age and you know sixteen is the legal age of consent. And you should know that my birthday is less than a month away, so I'm basically seventeen already."
She wraps her arms around my neck and begins to pull me down towards her and as much as I want to kiss her, I turn away instead and rest my forehead against her shoulder. I take a deep breath, just trying to calm down and that was a terrible idea, because now I've caught wind of her sweet smell.
"Once I start, I don't stop," I warn, afraid that I will unleash the monster inside me. I lift my head back to look her dead in the eyes and make sure she really understood.
Her fingers trailed softly down my cheek before she smiled and said, "I don't want you to stop."