If their walk home from 7-Eleven was a movie, Alex only caught the trailer. It was like one for an action flick where short scenes are broken up with blackout pauses, everything slowed down, transformers crashing buildings and junk. As far as she can remember, there were no car-turned-robots, just a lady asking Jesse if Alex was alright in front of a bar with a dark wooden sign that looked kind of Irish-y, and a dog may have shoved it's nose in the crook of her knee, and there was definitely a huge group of people on a street corner singing I'm on a Boat. There's a vague dark area of whispering and stair climbing, and she opens her eyes on top of her comforter as Jesse's fumbling with the ankle strap of her flats, kneeling at the foot of her bed.
Her right hand feels scary empty for some reason. It's a bizarre thought until she realizes there should totally be a black clutch inside it. "Why is my purse gone?"
Jesse's deeply and adorably focused on taking her shoes off, acting way too cautious considering she got them for like fifteen bucks at Target. She scoots closer to him to set her heel on his knee, and she wedges them off that way.
He tilts his head back. "I put your bag on the dresser."
"Did any of my stuff fall out like when we were walking?"
"Uh, you weren't walking. I dragged you." He smiles. "And, I had to take your purse away 'cause you kept smacking me in the ass, sayin' 'giddy up, Jesse,' like you were a cowgirl or some shit."
She laughs because even though she has zero memory of that, it sounds like something she'd do. Her now bare foot is still resting against his knee, and she slides it further up his thigh. "Cowgirl sounds so fun right now."
He scoffs. "You can like barely sit up."
"Yeah, yeah," she says, dismissively. He does make a pretty good point. The idea of lifting her head more than an inch sounds terrible and super unnecessary.
Alex shuts her eyes, her leg plopping back down on the bed. She just lays there for a while, listening to him move around the room: soft footsteps on carpet, plastic bags crunching, the metal clink of Jesse's belt. Her arm is kind of sore, so she tries to rub it, but she touches something that's not her body. It's the back of his hand.
"I was just checking if you crashed. You cool sleeping in that?"
Her brain's fading so low, it's running on about one battery bar. But, there are two things on her pay attention list: her nightstand lamp is on (the only light in her bedroom), and his shirt is off. There's also this whole thing about him leaning over her, shirtless, which she's appreciating the shit out of. She grabs his wrist with the scorpion and flattens his palm against the front button of her denim skirt. "Want to undress me?"
"Yeah," he says. He's wearing this devious, filthy little smile on his face that glimmers in the lamplight, like he's a sexy Peter Pan. "But, not when you're like half-dead."
"You sure?" Her hand slips from his arm, eyes staying closed a little longer, and he's probably right again. Shifting to her side, she clears her throat. "Lame-o."
The mattress sinks in next to her as she hears the lamp switch click. She can feel him pull the blanket over her, the underside chilled from the A/C, and she tugs it up to her shoulder.
She dreams about Jesse. He's naked. Well, they both are. She's taking a random mid-afternoon shower when he steps from a thick, fog-like steam like he's in one of those ridiculous, soft-core porn cologne commercials. Except he's all lanky muscles and black tattoos and smiling like him. So, she lunges at Jesse, kissing him. She wraps her legs around his ribs for some reason, but he's ramming into her even if they're not lined up the right way. It's like her subconscious is too lazy for the nitty-gritty, just focused on mashing their slick bodies together like when Alex was a kid and made her Ken and Barbie kiss.
The sex is overdramatically rough, tiles splintering under their weight, and her back's rhythmically smacking against the wall with enough force to shatter her spine. And, it legit sounds like a jack hammer.
After a while, she's not kissing him anymore, getting off on hearing his husky plea of "Alex, Alex, Alex," until it horrifyingly morphs into something a little whinier and a ton more incestuous.
Sunshine is basically balls deep in her bedroom, and someone is trying to murder her door. She has to blink a few times to register that Jesse is lumbering over to the sound and undoes the lock. The door swings open, and Justin flies in just as Jesse rolls back in bed.
Once it's shut, Justin's clutching his forehead like he's the one with the headache.
"Alright, I'm too busy to care about any of this." He makes a frenzied, swooping gesture to the two of them: rumbled hair, under the same blanket, probably looking hung-over as hell. "I just need you to tell me where you hid my teal, test-tube necktie, the red one with periodic table, and my navy bowtie with green LED Frankenstein bolts."
His voice is doing painful things to her brain. So, she grabs an extra pillow and smashes her head. "Go away."
Her sound and sunbeam barrier is snatched away way too soon. Justin's a total jerk face and actually uses it to pop her on the arm. But, it's so worth it once Jesse shoves Justin back.
"Hey, this does not concern you," Justin says. Though he's standing like three feet away now. He frustratingly shakes his head. "Alex, please tell me where they are. Zeke's mom is picking me up any minute to take us to the airport."
"Where are you going?"
Justin is appalled or whatever. And she knows before he has to say anything it's because he's told her something, most likely more than once, that she paid no attention to. "Zeke and I have been planning on competing in this nationwide robot competition for months. It's being held in Vermont. It is extremely important and professional. So, I need my best clothes."
Alex yawns. "I hid your stuff in a secret black hole."
"Of course you did," Justin says. He hands over her wand. "Now, can I have them?"
"No." She nods to Jesse who is on his back with his eyes closed. "Don't really feel like summoning a bunch of old wizards to kill Jesse."
"Then get up and go somewhere else to do it."
"I feel like total crap. I'm not moving. Just go to your robot party with normal-people clothes." She drapes her arm over her face, really wanting to fall back asleep.
"Alex, please. Joanna, this gorgeous, genius senior from Portland is supposed to be there, and she loves nerdy puns and accessories. She said so on her Tumblr. Please, I'll do anything." He pauses. "I'll tell you a way that you and Jesse can leave the apartment whenever you want."
"Um, we snuck out last night, you idiot."
Justin sighs. "Yeah, but that was when everyone was asleep. You'd still have trouble during the day."
Jesse drags his hand across her arm. "Please, shut him up."
"Fine." She sits up, and the world does a Picasso-rearrangement. "You first."
"Alright. So, you can use a transport spell that doesn't require a wand. All you have to say is 'We're not permanently together, forever, got things to do, I know you have too, now let's go here, in spirit you'll be there, depechkiss modus.'" He grabs her discarded math notebook, and appears to write it down. "Now, come on. I don't want to keep Mrs. Beakerman waiting."
Alex groans and pulls herself to her feet. She pads across her room and slides on her pair of red wayfarers before staggering down the hall all the way to the stairs. With a flick of her wrist, a swirling, gaping, mass appears above her and spits out Justin's dorky neckwear.
He scoops them up from the carpet. "Perfect. Now, I'm not sure when I'll be back, because it will depend on how far our project…."
She holds her hand out, recites the tried and true hangover spell, and aimlessly waves her arm over her shoulder as she shuffles away. By the time she gets the lock jammed back in place, curtains closed, and sunglasses aren't on her face anymore, she realizes that in spite of magic, she's still totally drained.
Alex slips under the covers, already feeling snuggly with the heat she can feel from Jesse's side.
"Is he gone?"
"Yep," she says.
She can't make out what he mumbles, but then he pulls her towards him with his eyes still shut. He doesn't stop until she's basically on top of his chest with his arm hooked around her waist. His hand moves sluggishly up and down her side. She's almost positive he mutters "warm."
The next time she's awake, it's thundering. Her room is a navy shade as lighting flares behind the curtains like backlit bones on an x-ray. Something else is flickering inside, and it takes her a panicked minute or so to understand it's her T.V. and not storming from her ceiling, because it's happened before. Being a wizard and having tsunami nightmares go together about as well as tequila and 99 proof banana schnapps. And while the queasiness is gone, her entire throat still feels charred and earthy, like if she coughed too hard, she'd spit out dry lawn clippings.
She stretches out as far as she can, trying to find all the cooled areas between the sheets. Her left foot nudges something solid.
"Yo," Jesse says. He grips her toes through the comforter. "You like play soccer or some shit? 'Cause you fucking kicked me in the ribs earlier. Not to sound like a pussy or anything but that shit stung."
Alex sits up, blinking against the glare of a super bright dog food commercial. "Never really been into sports. But, yeah, I can get pretty aggressive when I'm sleep. My bad."
Jesse leans back on his hands, still half-naked, and smirks. "Just when you're asleep?"
This feels like an invite to jump him already. Last night seemed to be going in the banging direction, though she isn't completely sure. And like honestly, she feels like if she throws herself at him any harder, she might literally turn into a Frisbee.
She shrugs as his show comes back on. It's a Discovery Chanel segment about different kinds of bugs. They're doing a wide-shot of a wriggling mass of beetles knotted together over a dirt hill like woven licorice when she hears a crunching sound.
Alex whips her head around to see Jesse with a bag of BBQ potato chips, chewing slowly, eyebrows raised like he's already waiting for her to ask him something. She reaches over and pinches out a couple.
Some guy with a funny accent describes how bees pollinate flowers and junk, and they eat in silence, Jesse tipping the bag over to her every once and a while. The camera closes in on a ton of tiny little eyes.
"Yo, you keep bringing up like flies in the lab, and whatever swatter thing Mr. White makes. Like what the hell is that all about?"
"This one time, not sure when exactly, but I think it's gotta be pretty soon after you get out of the hospital. Anyway, Walt is like obsessed with killing this fly so it doesn't contaminate the product. He gets so worked up that you have to slip sleeping pills in his coffee. And, the whole thing's got like a different tone, like slower paced. I don't know. Justin called it a bottle episode or something because you guys are in the lab almost the whole time. It's like supposed to represent how stressed out Walt is, and him dealing with stuff and the business. Well, I think so."
Jesse picks something out of his teeth with his pinky nail. "You were kidding about him hitting me though, right?"
"No," she says. Grabbing another handful, she notices his eyes are about as round as the chip she pops in her mouth.
"You mean like, like in the way you said?" He swallows, seeming bizarrely uncomfortable, and he lowers his voice like someone else is in the room. "He for real ties me up…and spanks me…and I like it?"
"Oh my gosh, no! I was just drunk and messing with you. Jeez." She laughs. "Walt's just being cranky and uptight and himself. Hits you pretty hard, but it's just a typical fight."
He seems to relax. "Anything else I should know about? Since you know my future and shit."
"Yeah, there is. I actually have this kind of a perfect, foolproof strategy-thingy that will make the rest of your life so much better." She sits up on her knees though it's not very comfortable in a jean mini-skirt, and sets a hand on his shoulder. "You listening?"
He nods, serious and anticipating.
"Do…not…go home…with Andrea."
"Remind me who that is."
"Well," she says. She thinks this might be back-pedaling into kind of prodding Jesse into liking her, but she actually has real, non-selfish reasoning. If he never met Andrea, he wouldn't find out about Toma̕s, and then things would never like escalate to the point where he'd need to kill Gale. It makes complete sense, but he doesn't need to be bogged down with too much information.
Alex reassuringly rubs his arm. "All you need to know is she's not someone you want to sell to…or talk with…or look at. Just avoid her…like Ebola. Trust me, I…you know, I care about you…a lot."
"Yeah." He's looking past her, and stands as he drops the remote on the blanket. "You can watch something else if you want."
Alex viciously crushes the channel button under her thumb, because congratulations, she just spooked Jesse out of her bed. She feels sickeningly sensitive and offended, and she should probably just start slinging teenths of her pulverized confidence from shady street corners. It doesn't help that nothing good is on. Or there isn't until she passes by Jaws, and flips back. It's just started, right as that naked girl gets pulled under, and Alex smiles. Something about the mix of beach, dumb people, and floating pools of blood always puts her in a better mood.
She's able to enjoy the movie for another three or four scenes before she's hit with warm air. Jesse's slouched in her purple circular lounge chair with the window open about a foot or so, letting in the smell of rain and the city's oils waft in as his smoke floats out the other way. His head's tipped back against the wall, Adam's apple raised. He takes a long drag from his cigarette, blowing it out of one corner of his mouth, lets the thing dangle there as he scratches his throat. She feels like she's watching like an anti-anti-tobacco ad or whatever, because this is deliciously captivating, and she might be drooling a little.
Alex tries to pay attention to Jaws, but even the mayor's tacky suits aren't distracting enough. She promises one more glance and that's it. But, it turns more into a lingering peek, and then full-on gazing.
His eyes are level with hers, and his expression is blank for a second. Then there's a faint smile as he picks something off his tongue. He laughs, rumbly and low. "Yo, you're fucking creepy."
"You're fucking confusing." She bites the inside of her cheek. "And, gorgeous."
Jesse taps ash just past the windowsill, eyelids narrowing as he sucks in another breath of smoke. His face is intense and grim like in the heavier scenes of the show. "I think I have like a theory. It's not hard facts or anything, but I think I'm aware of enough shit to say this now. You know those girls I was talking to the other day? Not last night, but like I think a day or two before that?"
He doesn't wait for her to say or do anything. "Well, I was thinking that I couldn't remember the last time a girl was into me or whatever and wasn't an addict. It's been since maybe early high school."
"I kept catching you looking at me, like you know, you wanted to fuck me." He rubs his chin with his palm. "And yeah, you party, but nothing serious. You're straight as hell compared to most of the girls I've been with."
Jesse flicks more ash off his cigarette with his eyes on the carpet. "It made me think, hey, maybe in this alternate dimension shit I could be like a magnet for hot, mostly stable bitches. I'm new and don't belong here, but in a good way. It's like if you took Clark Kent from Smallville and put him in Dawson's Creek. He gets chicks where he's from, but it's never that one girl he likes, and in the first few seasons, the ones who like him mostly have weird kryptonite shit going on. But, Clark in Dawson's Creek, where no one is half-alien and everyone is like horny all the time? He'd be like knee-deep in that shit. He's Superman. And, I thought maybe that's like me here. Getting any of this?"
She makes a kind of disgusted frown. "Do I get that you are very old? Who still makes Dawson's Creek references?"
"Whatever," he says. He clanks his lighter shut with a fresh Parliament between his fingers. "I wanted to test this out. So, I hit on those two girls. They looked clean and like put together and not hookers. I was on my A-game and everything. But, they treated me just like girls like that always treat me, just kind of snotty and annoyed. Then I thought you knowing all my shit was the missing link or whatever. That girl at the party last night blew that up. So, what I'm saying is I've decided you must be completely, fucking insane."
She shakes her head, squinting. "You have this totally upside down or something. There are plenty of girls in this 'world' who are huge Jesse fans. I would know because I've skimmed over like dozens of blogs that literally only talk about the color of your eyes. I guess we just haven't run into any of them. But, given the right crowd, you wouldn't be knee-deep. You'd be like hip-deep. It's just the chick with the wand you got stuck with."
He puts out his smoke even though it's only halfway done. "I don't feel stuck. I like being here with you. I still just don't like understand why you like me."
"I thought I covered that pretty well last night, you know, before you kissed me and you were like cool for five seconds."
"You say girls here like me, but it's like as a character, which is about one step-up from using me like a toy. With you, it's not like that. I thought it was at first, but nah." He pauses. "You like really, really like me. And, it's like mind-fucking the shit out of me."
She raises both arms, not positive what to say. It's also more than a little bizarre how everyone keeps telling her she likes Jesse as if it's some big news to her, which is stupid. She's never had to defend why she's into to someone this much in her entire life.
"I could vomit back all the stuff I already said about you. How you're like a good guy. Or I could say even cheesier shit like how you make me laugh, and I feel like I'm connected to you way down like to a bottom of the ocean depth. Like I don't know anyone else who plays drums and sings in a band, and likes to destroy things when they're bored, and totally understands cereal-related jokes. We like the same junk, and we give like no shits about boring, normal-people crap, and blah, blah, blah. And, you're not a toy. If you're anything like that, you'd be more like…."
She rolls her eyes because she can't believe she's about to say this. "You're like the Pamela Anderson of my Baywatch, like you can't help but stare and you'd probably do anything to meet her. I…."
"Yo, did you just call me like a dude version of Pamela Anderson?" Jesse grins. She can feel it in her gut. "Because that's like the most dope compliment I've had ever."
"Well, more people should say things like that to you. Should say stuff like that all the time. You deserve it just by being Jesse." She runs a hand down her face, and stands up, heading for the door.
"What are you doing?" He sounds anxious.
"I can't be in here anymore," she says, scrunching her face up. "You're shirtless and like smoking and lounging. It's like I don't know if I want to eat you or screw you. I need to like stick my face in the freezer or chew through a textbook or like go somewhere to diddle myself a ton. Just do something other than like dry-hump you with my eyes."
Jesse cocks his head to the side, slowly licking his lower lip in a way that makes her want to watch it on a never-ending loop. "Get over here."
Her entire body feels jittery and flushed, feet retracing her steps until her shin softly thuds against his knee. It's the only contact she's going to make, because it's his turn to touch.
Also, maybe this is a little lazy. Like, how hard would it have been for him to march up to her and throw her on the bed? Why does she have to go to him?
His legs part just slightly, fingers trailing up her calf.
She takes back everything. "Hey, no more of this whiplash start-stop crap, alright?"
He nods, grasps the backs of her thighs, and pulls her down. She plops down on his lap pretty hard at an angle that makes her mouth drop open. And, it's almost embarrassing how excited she is this early on.
She leans in to kiss him. But, he cranes his head back with a smirk, hands feather-like down her sides before gripping the bottom of her tank top. She lifts her arms to let him take it off, not feeling even a little self-conscious because she's too busy gently rocking against his thigh. He presses right back into her as he strokes the constellation on her ribs, following the touch with his tongue as he traces each star with a yummy wet heat. She reaches back to unclasp her bra. Before it's even dangling from the side of the chair, he's cupping her with both hands, thumbs doing things that make her jerk forward.
When she does, his lips find the hollow of her throat, sucking at a tender place she didn't realize was even a part of her body.
She digs her fingers into his hair. "Jesse," she sighs.
He pulls back with an obscenely hot slippery noise to kiss her. But, it's not like the first time. It has an edgy, almost angry messiness that reminds her of the way he dresses himself.
Being in his narrow lap again feels all kinds of awesome, straddling him with his tongue in her mouth, and oh shit, his fingertips feel thick and heavy right where she wants them.
Alex spreads her thighs farther apart as he slips past elastic. Before she can really enjoy his skin against hers, he takes his hand out. It may have been devastating if his eyes weren't locked onto her face. Then his fingers curve in the fabric to slide her underwear down her legs so slowly her whole body convulses. And, she anxiously kicks them the rest of the way off.
His hand slips back down against her crotch and she grinds into the base of his palm. "Is this good?"
"Fan-fucking-tastic," she says.
He chuckles, somehow deep-toned and breathy at the same time. She wants to feel it against her mouth so she latches her lips to his neck. Her focus is hazy and wobbly, but after some frantic groping, she finds the lip of his sweatpants, and starts to tug them down.
Jesse's stubble awesomely grates against her cheek, and it's already familiar in the best way. "Yo, let's go to your bed."
She shakes her head because words are really hard with his fingers languidly stroking her back and forth. "Too far. Don't want you to change your mind."
Before he can say anything else, she yanks down his boxers and firmly wraps her hand around his cock. It's like they both shudder at the same time, and he's twitching and ready and big in her palm. She should really apologize for that cruel Mentos joke at some point. Now, she's more concerned with gliding her hand up and down. She drags her thumb across the head, putting enough pressure on the slit for him to groan and buck into her fist. She pumps him a few more time, before she moves back, pushing the stiff denim of her skirt to gather at her hips, lifting herself because she's very ready to make last night's mounting official.
His grip is tight on her outer thighs, so hard it kind of hurts, and she cries out.
He flicks his eyes to her face. "Condom."
That would probably be a good idea, or at least her version of one. She traces a nail down his shaft as a blue glimmer follows behind. It's like the one and only thing she knows how to do with hand magic, mostly because she taught herself to do it before she'd even heard the phrase "hand magic," and she's not quite sure how she feels about accidentally memorizing contraception magic at fourteen. But, oh, well.
She smiles. "We're good."
"It's not gonna like turn colors or fall off or some shit is it?"
"No. Now, hurry the hell up," she says. She's positive that sounded totally agitated, and she wiggles in his hands until he laughs a little.
"Shit," Jesse says. "That's hot."
He guides himself inside as she sinks down. She opens her mouth, shocked to hear a scream that isn't hers until she remembers Jaws is still playing. This is a flighty thought, because while the feel of him inside of her is great and everything, she starts to move and it's oh so better.
She rolls her hips, circles them in a kind of figure eight pattern that turns her body all mushy.
Jesse must like it too because he's spitting out a happy-sounding string of "shit, fuck, shit" around her name. She can even feel the blunt pressure of his nails in her back. "Oh shit, I can't even remember, like, shit, you're like just so…."
She laughs, still riding him. "I'm so what?"
He presses a kiss below her ear, shaking with a silent moan when she angles her herself at a sharp angle, pushing him in deeper. "I don't want to sound like a perv, but shit, you're fucking crazy tight."
"Mmm, maybe it's 'cause I'm still totally jailbait," she says, wiggling her eyebrows.
He winces. "Uh, don't remind me."
"My bad," she says. She really didn't mean to kill the mood or anything, so she reaches down to get a good, strong handful of his balls.
Jesse gasps out a chocking sound, giving back with a particularly forceful thrust. He grabs her ass and lifts, tilting her in a way that makes her whimper. Shit, she's never done this fast. She's not finished yet, but it's getting pretty freaking close. Maybe he can tell, because his thrusts are slower and deeper.
"Right there?" he says, heavy-lidded, grinning, more confident then she's ever seen.
She can barely nod. And, he hits that spot again, and again, and again.
It's not long before she's moaning his name, tightening around him, and she feels like an exploding great-white-shark-killing bomb.
Jesse's licking his way up her neck during the afterglow. She shifts, and feels he's still completely hard. It jolts her like a static shock because this is totally a first-time event in her life. Though, she's also never been with anyone over the age of seventeen.
She grins, pulling herself off before sinking all the way back down. He bites at her shoulder with enough enthusiasm to leave clear teeth marks. His fingers caress past her stomach and find her other spot. It's hurried now, everything feels slicker and warmer, and she comes for the second time less than a second before him.
He says her name, panting, and she ruffles his slightly sweaty hair. He looks like a satisfied puppy in a kind of weird, sexy way that only sort of makes her question the kinds of shit that gets her off.
Smiling, she amps up the sultriness of her voice when she says, "Good boy, Jesse. Good boy."
Alex is mostly kidding, but he groans. The sparkle of curiosity and want in his eyes is almost as exciting as the throbbing warmth she can feel stiffening between her thighs.
She stands, jimmies out of the rest of her clothes, and leans over with her ass in the air. She pats the foot of the comforter. "Come, Jesse. Be a good boy."
This time, he throws her on the bed.