IMPORTANT IMPORTANT IMPORTANT: There's a question in the AN for you regarding content of future chapters. Please read all the way through. Thanks.

Patricia

I slammed my locker shut and leaned against it with a sigh of frustration. The hallways were filled with clomping footsteps and high-pitched chatter, the combined effect grating against my already frayed nerves. I edged my glance upwards in annoyance as a group of younger students shrieked excitedly, their voices stimulating what I imagined nails being driven into my skull might feel like. I didn't try to fight the scowl that settled onto my face as I saw Fabian over with Nina by her locker, the two of them curving into each other the way couples sometimes did. Ugh. Why did they have to be so happy? Fabian leaned in to give Nina a kiss and I turned away in disgust to see a flustered-looking Joy hurrying towards me, smoothing down her jacket. I turned towards her, grateful for the distraction. "What's up?"

Her eyes flitted back and forth before fixing on me, giving her a shifty appearance. "What? Nothing. Hey do you think you could get Eddie to do us a favor?"

My mouth twitched and I tightened my grip on my backpack. "Maybe. Depends on the favor. What'd you have in mind?"

Joy haphazardly raked her fingers through her hair, opening and closing her mouth before clearing her throat. "You know it's a really… small favor. Probably." I raised my eyebrows, waiting. She rubbed her arm and bit her cheek, and then the words poured out in a rush. "Iwanimtohelebrakinotheadmastsoffs."

I cocked my head and blinked. "Try again."

Joy blew out a quick breath through her mouth. "I want him to help me break into the headmaster's office."

I folded my arms. "Why do you need Eddie's help for that? We can do it."

"Well yeah but it'll be easier for him to get the key, which I need, because I asked and Sweetie never leaves the door unlocked. And not like once in a blue moon never, like, the school's computers coming alive and killing us all have a better chance of happening than him leaving the door unlocked never," she explained. I shifted my weight onto my other foot. I really wasn't in the mood to ask for help from Eddie at the moment. Or possibly ever again. My reluctance must have shown on my face because Joy made a helpless noise and clasped her hands together. "Come on, please Patricia? Pleeeeeeeeease? I'll never ask for anything ever again I promise."

I laughed. "Yes you will, and I'll… think about it." Lie.

She scowled. "Fine. I'll ask him." I raised my hands in surrender as she turned to stomp off, and then realized I'd never even found out why she wanted to get in the office to begin with.

"What do you need to get in there for anyway?"

Joy halted mid-step, shifted her weight back and forth a few times, and turned around to face me. "Look it's nothing important OK? I showed up late to a couple too many classes and I need to adjust my attendance record is all."

I tilted my head and bit my lip, contemplating. "Why don't we just get Nina to pick the lock?"

Joy stared at me like I'd suggested she swallow acid. "Well my lack of masochistic tendencies would be a good place to start."

I rolled my eyes. "Joy come on, it'll be simple. We wait until he goes out, Nina picks the lock, you two go in, and I run interference in the hallway while you find what you need."

"No," Joy insisted, and I forced out an exhale.

"Joy, come on. Please don't bring Eddie into this."

Her eyebrows drew together and her arms unfolded, one hand grabbing the strap of her bag and the other hovering at her waist. "Why, what happened? You two have a fight or something?"

"We'll call it or something and leave it at that." I rubbed my neck uncertainly. "Look, if you ask him for help then he's going to wonder why I didn't ask him, then he'll ask me why I didn't ask him and then we'll have to talk about it and I'm really not so good with the talking thing, OK? Can we please just use Nina?"

Joy's mouth began to open in the beginnings of a protest, and she swung her head to look around the hall, her eyes landing on Nina and Fabian, who were currently pressed so close together you couldn't fit a magazine between them, their hands linked as Fabian whispered something into Nina's ear that sent her into peals of laughter.

I nervously trained my eyes on Joy, waiting to see what her reaction would be. She stayed fixated on the couple and I sighed internally as her hands clenched into fists. "You can't keep doing this to yourself Joy," I said quietly. For all the reaction I got I might've thought she didn't even hear me, but I kept going. "It'll destroy you if you let it. I don't care how you do it but you need to figure out a way to move on."

Her gaze snapped back to me, anger and hurt plain on her face. "What you think it's that simple?" She hissed. "That I can just flip a switch and my feelings for him will just dissolve? Because I can't, OK? I can't just turn it off, I loved him and that doesn't go away overnight."

"Do you even want it to go away?" I demanded. "I am sorry that all this has happened the way that it did Joy, but right now you are in the exact same position you were last year, and when he breaks your heart again, because he will, I'm going to be the one who has to put the pieces back together."

Joy glared at me, her entire short stature seeming to grow rigid. "And what, pray tell, does Patricia Williamson know about dealing with a broken heart?" She steppe closer. "We both know you're too scared to let anyone get close enough to have even half a chance of cracking yours. Is that what happened with Eddie? Huh? He get too close for comfort?"

The floor seemed to shift underneath me. No. Joy wouldn't use that against me. Not that. She wouldn't. But as I looked at Joy her face remained set in defiance and I knew that she had meant it exactly as it sounded.

My face was stone as I glared back at her. "You know what Joy? Ask him. Do whatever you want, I don't care. Just don't come to me for help." I shoved away from the locker with a good deal more force than was strictly necessary and my feet wobbled in my combat boots a little as I marched away, tuning out the sounds of hallway noise. There was a prickling feeling rising up in my throat and a burning in the back of my eyes. I nearly threw myself against the doors at the end of the hallway, doing my best to block out Joy's question and not let the tears start. Don't think about it. Breathe through your nose. Don't blink. Focus on your footsteps. Inhale. Exhale. Don't think about it. I concentrated on the sounds of my feet against the street as the bell rang, signaling we had five minutes to get to class. I ignored it, willing myself to keep it together.

I managed to keep the tears from falling all the way back to Anubis, but by the time I made it I felt like someone was pulling a wire tight around my lungs. My breaths would only come in short spasms and my vision was blurred. I slid inside the house and through the coatroom, trusting muscle memory to lead me up the stairs since I couldn't see where I was going. My hand was shaking as I opened the door to the girls' hallway. I was almost there. My legs were trembling slightly as they carried me the last few steps to my door. I sagged against it, my hand twisted the knob and I tripped inside.

My bag fell from my fingers as I finally, finally collapsed on to my bed and buried my face in my pillow. Now that I'd made it though, the tears didn't come and I wondered if I'd held them in for so long that I didn't know how to cry anymore. Really this was an unfortunate time for it to be happening given that my eyes were burning so badly it felt like Joy had rammed matches in to them to go with the verbal knife she'd shoved in my gut.

I'm not sure how long I lay there, feeling my eyelashes brush against the pillow every time I blinked before my eyes started to calm down. When they'd finally stopped feeling like the inside of a curling iron, I squeezed them shut and buried my head even farther into my pillow, trying to will the world out of existence.

Someone knocked on my door. "Yacker?"

Damn it.

Eddie knocked again. "Hey you decent?" Pause. "Well I'm coming in so if you're not decent now is probably a good time to say something." I didn't react as the door swung open, hoping he'd think I was asleep and go away. "What, I'm supposed to think you're sleeping, is that it?" I didn't move. "Well maybe that would work, but see I know you're not sleeping. How do I know? Because I remember when my dad took us to see that opera right before finals last year; you fell asleep on my shoulder and you drooled. And you're not drooling now so therefore you're not asleep.

"I don't drool." My voice was a bit muffled by the pillow but I'm pretty sure he got the gist of it.

"You do so," he insisted. "And you're clearly not asleep so case closed."

"Yes I am."

"Are not."

"Are so."

"That's an awful lot of talking you're doing for a sleeping person."

"I know right? The doctors say I might have a disease. Joy's thinking of getting me studied." I could feel my lips pulling into a smile and dug my nails into my wrists to try and fight it.

"Well seeing as you're already talking, what are the odds you sit up so I can have a conversation with my girlfriend instead of the back of her head?" My smile instantly died and I didn't answer. "Really? This is how we're going to play this?" There was a sigh when I again said nothing. "Alright. Well, don't say I didn't warn you."

I frowned as the mattress shifted from the addition of his weight onto the bed. What was he doing? I was considering peeking out from behind my pillow when I felt his fingers ghost over my neck and stiffened. The skin where his fingers had just been suddenly became hypersensitive, as though my entire nervous system had centered to that one area.

Gently, so, so gently, he urged the collar of my shirt away from my neck, and then his fingers were replaced with his lips. I pressed the pillow even farther into my face, fighting back a moan as he pressed soft, quick kisses along the back of my neck, turning me to fire everywhere he touched. While his mouth was busy on my neck his hand trailed down my back to where shirt met skin and suddenly I couldn't breathe.

I could feel his fingers skating lightly over my waistband as his mouth danced over to the hollow of my neck not covered by pillow and my hands contracted into fists. Part of my brain started yelling at me to make him stop, to not let him do these things, get this close, but I ignored it. A bigger part of me, a part that didn't seem to be coming from my brain at all but some place entirely different, wanted to see where this would go.

The pads of his fingers dipped beneath my shirt, tracing a pattern on my back and I shifted underneath him, I couldn't help it, my entire body felt hot like I'd never felt hot before. It wasn't a 'too much sun and now I'm burned and suffering hot', or an 'I've been sitting in front of the radiator for ages' hot, or an 'I accidentally touched Trudy's iron while it was hot' hot. As his fingers shifted from my back to the curve of my hip I thought deliriously that this hot, this hot was a fiery heat that sizzled everywhere he touched, a heat that seemed to have hijacked my brain and was making me think deliciously dirty thoughts, like how his mouth would feel not just on my neck, but my breasts, or how his fingers would feel if they moved lower and more center. "Eddie," I gasped into my pillow, struggling to form a coherent train of thought.

He withdrew his hand from underneath my shirt and I bit back a sound of protest at the sudden cold that replaced him. His fingers now drifted down my leg and I waited impatiently to see what he would do next, wondering why his fingers halted as he reached the underside of my knee and his mouth left my neck, leaving me aching for more. Then his fingers started moving again and my eyes shot open and my leg kicked out. I yelped, unable to help it and jerked my leg away as I sat up and turned to glare at him, finding him smirking at me with raised eyebrows. He could not possibly look smugger, I thought savagely. "Problem Yacker?"

I scowled, fighting to calm my racing heart. "Did you just tickle me?" I demanded, cursing my inability to catch my breath.

He shrugged, his face shifting into an expression of innocent bewilderment, save for the grin tugging at his mouth. "Who, me?" I narrowed my eyes and he laughed. "I did warn you." I crossed my arms, which only seemed to further amuse him. "What? Were you maybe expecting me to do something else?" I simply continued to glare at him as he pushed himself over on the bed so that he was sitting dangerously close. He leaned forward so that his breath tickled my ear. "Like maybe, finish what I started?"

My toes involuntarily curled and I focused on my breathing. "Because I could finish it if you want me to." My mouth fell open a little and I struggled to inhale as his right hand moved to my waist again and I was suddenly very glad he couldn't see my face. "All you have to do is ask nicely."

Oh, no, no way. Not happening. "As if," I snapped, unfolding my arms and ignoring the tingling in my fingers to shove him away.

He bounced back, laughing again, and we settled into our own bubbles of personal space as he raised his hands in surrender. "Fine then. Have it your way. Let's discuss why you skipped the last two periods."

"Let's not," I deadpanned.

He tilted his head, squinting at me. "Hmm. Closed off. Irritated and not with me. Nina's the one who told me she saw you leaving when I asked, so it's not her. Amber and Alfie you'd just let it go. Fabian, bless his soul, is about as irritating as a dust bunny in the desert and I know for a fact that Mara and Jerome were making out in the janitor's closet when it happened, which leaves Joy." I raised an eyebrow and he shrugged. "Joy's the one you had a fight with."

My jaw dropped and my eyes narrowed as I snapped it shut. "How could you possibly know that?"

Eddie frowned in mock confusion. "Umm, deductive reasoning? Did I not just talk you through my thought process? Because we can do it again if I went too fast for you. My train of thought does tend to travel a good deal quicker than–"

"Yes," I interrupted, mostly to shut him up. "I had a fight with Joy. So what?"

"So, it was a big enough deal that it sent you storming out of the school faster than Alfie goes running when he hears Victor say 'Lewis!'."

A small laugh burst out of me before I could stop it and I sighed, refolding my arms. "It's nothing."

"If it's important to you it's important to me. And it's honestly not even worth your breath to try and convince me it's not important to you so how about you just save us both a few lines of banter and tell me what happened."

I looked away, scoffing weakly, before turning back to him. "It's honestly not that big a deal."

A Cheshire Cat grin stretched across his face. "If you intend to keep running with this line of argument I could always," he leaned forward, "Persuade you, again."

I narrowed my eyes and made to kick him but he caught my foot and began taking my shoe off. "Hey!" I protested, and he looked up to me from my shoe with completely serious eyes.

"The story or the shoe Yacker. I mean it."

I shook my head in disbelief. "I'm dating a four year old, I swear."

He wrinkled his nose. "Fancy that, I've got an older woman. Who's also British. Very classy. Like dating Mary Poppins. If Mary Poppins drooled in her sleep."

"I don't drool."

"Liar," came his easy reply.

I made a show of sighing dramatically before he gently, but firmly, grabbed me by the wrist. "You know Patricia, one of the things that helps a relationship work is this handy little thing called 'good communication'. I would know, seeing as how all of my failed relationships had none of it."

My eyebrows rose. "Really? Because you have so many failed relationships to look at." He shrugged and my mouth went a little dry. "How many others?"

He scratched his head. "Well actually I don't know if you could really call them 'relationships', per say, more like female acquaintances with benefits."

I blinked a couple times, trying not to show how thrown I'd suddenly become. "How many?" I tried to sound curious.

He puffed up his cheeks and blew out a long stream of air, twisting his hand back and forth. "Two or three. Or six. But, definitely no more than fourteen. I think."

I felt like someone had kicked me in the chest. "Fourteen." I echoed. My voice sounded funny.

Eddie shrugged, nonchalantly. "Give or take. Am I the only one who realizes we're getting off topic?"

"You said they had benefits." I ignored his attempt to get the conversation back on track. "What kinds of benefits?"

He shrugged again, and this time it looked more than a little uncomfortable. "Does it really matter?"

"Yes," I insisted. He scowled at my blankets. "What? Don't want to tell me?"

"I don't want you to get upset," he shot back.

"You don't know I'll get upset," I retorted. "What kinds of benefits?"

He brought his eyes up to mine and I almost took the question back. I almost didn't want to know. "The kind that involved getting naked together."

My brain seemed to stop working. "You mean like sex." My voice sounded wrong. Off. He nodded, holding my gaze. "So you've, you know, you've…" my voice trailed off and I wanted to scream.

"Yeah I have." He kept looking at me, gauging my reaction.

"Oh. OK then." The back of my throat felt uncomfortably dry. "With all fourteen of them?"

He waved away my question. "It doesn't matter. It never meant anything."

It matters, I wanted to say, but I didn't. "How would you feel if I'd slept with fourteen other guys?"

Eddie shrugged. "Stunned frankly, you don't seem like the type."

"That's not the point," I snapped, feeling nettled. "Why are you just now telling me this?"

"Well when should I have said something then? I mean it's not exactly the sort of thing that just comes up in an every day conversation," demanded Eddie. He plastered on an overly bright smile. "'Hey Patricia, so I was thinking we could both make a list of our past sexual partners and give them to each other, just for the hell of it, what do you think? Come on, it'll totes be funsies.' Is that what I should've done?"

"Maybe." I could feel my anger rising in my chest, hot and volatile and poisonous. "How would I know how you're supposed to bring it up? I'm not the one with fourteen failed relationships. Sorry, 'female acquaintances with benefits'," I mimicked his earlier saying, my voice bitter.

Eddie scowled. "You see? This is exactly why I didn't want to tell you, I knew you'd overreact."

I fought an urge to smack him. "Right of course, because I'm just overreacting. Not at all like my anger could possibly be justified, not when us girls are constantly falling prey to the weakness that is our feminine emotions, right? You're so stupid."

"Fine," said Eddie, tightly. "Fine since I'm obviously too stupid to figure out why I should've told you about this, even though it never meant anything, tell me how to make you not hate my guts for this. Tell me what I have to do."

"Well how about you build a time machine and travel back a few months, and then you can tell me about the fourteen other girls at some point before this one. That would be a good start. But for now you can just go away."

"Don't." He set his hand on top of mine and I tried to pull away but he grabbed on and didn't let go. "Don't do that, don't shove me away. You can't keep closing yourself off."

"Why not? After all, as this lovely little conversation so wonderfully demonstrates, it's not like you haven't kept things from me." I felt like I was a little girl again, holding my mother while she cried. "Boys will break your heart," she whispered, clasping my face tightly in her hands, forcing me to stare into her eyes that were shining with tears. "Don't ever trust them."

"Not on purpose. Patricia, come on. Talk to me. You have to talk to me." His voice was still filled with frustration but now there was an undercurrent of urgency that hadn't been there before.

"I don't have to do anything," I glared at him, daring him to try and force me into it.

"You're right. You don't. But I'm asking you to talk to me anyway, because you're my girlfriend and that's what girlfriends do when they're mad at their boyfriends. They tell the boyfriend why they're mad so the boyfriend can grovel and try to fix it. Let me fix it."

I stared at him, my breathing shallow and realized that although he was still holding my hand, I was gripping his back just as tightly. The words were out of my mouth before I even had time to decide whether or not it was a good idea. "There wouldn't be a list." Eddie blinked and his face shifted from anger to mostly anger but part confusion, and I knew that he had no idea what I was talking about. "When you asked how you should've brought it up, if we should've just made lists of everyone we've ever slept with." I looked away from him, pulling my eyes to the left where I focused them on Mara's books. "Your list would be fourteen girls. I wouldn't have one. There wouldn't be any names to put on it."

I saw his eyes widen slightly in the corner of my vision. "Patricia–"

There was the sound of something crashing down the hall and I flinched instinctively, pulling my hand out of his before I could help it. I glanced at him, to confirm I wasn't going crazy. "You heard that right?"

He nodded and I slid off the bed and moved towards the door, hearing Eddie follow me. I eased the door open and looked both ways as we slipped into the hall. I knew that even if we didn't shut our doors before leaving for school each morning, Trudy closed them while she was cleaning and so the sight of Nina and Amber's bedroom door gaping wide immediately told me something was wrong. "Maybe Trudy accidentally knocked something over," Eddie whispered. "I'm sure it's nothing."

"If you're so sure it's nothing then why are you whispering," I asked back just as quietly. Eddie scowled and jerked his chin for me to continue down the hallway.

I couldn't help but hold my breath as we crept forward, grateful beyond words that the floorboards were choosing not to squeak today. We reached the door and I peered through it, trying to get a good angle. When I saw what was happening I had to bite my tongue to keep from gasping and snatched at Eddie's arm, turning to face him. 'What?' he mouthed. I fisted my hands in the shoulder of his jacket and gently tugged him towards me, bringing my mouth as close as possible to his ear. "Victor's searching the place," I breathed. I was so close to him that I could feel his breath hitch, feel the heat of his body in all the places it pressed against mine.

His head shifted and now his lips were pressed against my ear. "What do we do?"

My hand tightened once on his shoulder and I pulled back to grin at him, before raising my voice. "I'm telling you Eddie it's probably nothing." I made my voice loud and clear, reaching out as I spoke to shove the door open even wider and step inside, pulling my boyfriend with me. As we entered the room Victor gave a – very satisfying – jump of shock, turning towards the door, dropping the shoebox Nina kept hidden under her bed. I feigned surprise. "Victor! What are you doing here?" I blinked innocent eyes at him, doing my best to look puzzled and not indignant. A grown man had no right to be going through a teenage girl's belongings. Especially not one who should've died of old age decades ago.

"What am I doing here? What are you two doing here? You're supposed to be in class!" Victor drew himself up and scowled down his hooked nose at us and I gave him my best attempt at a charming, 'I really hate to be an inconvenience smile'.

"Don't be mad at Eddie, Victor, he was just helping me. It's that time of the month you see, and I got really bad cramps and just couldn't make it through class so Eddie volunteered to take me back to rest. When we heard the crash Eddie thought it might be robbers or something." I could feel Eddie staring at me, and did my best to subtly step on his foot, silently urging him to look as though this story was not new to him.

Victor, meanwhile, now looked extremely uncomfortable, as most men did when being confronted with the biological realities of a teenage girl. "Oh. Well then. You had to – I mean, you got – that is to say—"

"Yes, that's what we're doing here Victor. Now how about you tell us why you're going through Nina's things?" Eddie cut him off. I could tell he was doing his best to keep his tone light, but there was a hard edge to it. "Instituting a weekly contraband search are you? Checking for alcohol in the nightstand and heroin in our underwear drawers?"

Victor scowled and I met his gaze evenly. We hadn't been doing anything wrong. He, meanwhile, had been caught red-handed going through a student's belongings without probable cause. "If you must know," Victor began, putting on a much aggrieved tone. "One of you miscreants stole my… pin."

My eyebrows shot so high up my head I wondered if they'd disappeared into my hair completely. "Your pin?"

He gave a jerk of a nod. "Yes. I was taking it out to polish and realized it was missing. Since I never misplace anything, it seemed the only fitting confusion was that one of you miscreants had stolen it, doubtless as part of some practical tomfoolery. I was searching for it."

"Right, because just getting a new one would be such an inconvenience. Much easier to search four bedrooms from top to bottom for something roughly the size of a toothpick." I could almost feel the sarcasm dripping off Eddie's remark.

Victor scowled. "I don't have to explain my actions to children. Now both of you run along."

I pointed. "But you found your pin, so I'm guessing you'll be coming with us since you obviously don't need to search anymore."

He glanced down and realized his pin was indeed still stuck in his jacket and I fought the urge to roll my eyes. Victor was so far off his game it was almost disturbing. "Ah yes, of course. Of course! Very well then. Lead the way please."

I stepped back to clear the doorway, and brought Eddie with me. "Oh no, after you," I smiled, my voice packed with enough false sweetness to give me a cavity.

Victor confidently straightened his jacket and strode out of the room. I cast a half despairing, half outraged look at the absolute mess he'd left behind, and exited on Eddie's heels, shutting the door behind us. "Oh and Victor?" I called after him, for he was already halfway down the hall. How did someone so old move so fast? "I'm going to try and sleep the pains off, so please keep the volume down."

Victor raised his hand and gestured something that I could only assume was an annoyed confirmation. He turned the corner and I exhaled in relief, finding that I could suddenly breathe easier again. I turned to Eddie, about to ask what he thought Victor had been searching for, and found him staring at me. There wasn't really a word for his gaze; it was as though I'd suddenly transformed into his own personal miracle. "What?" I demanded. "Is there something on my face?"

Eddie broke into a grin. "You've got cramps because it's that time of the month?" He shook his head, shoulders shaking. "I think you've been spending a tad too much time with Amber, Yacker."

I rolled my eyes. "What like you've never lied through your teeth before?" I teased.

"Oh all the time, I just don't think I've ever managed to make it so entertaining for the bystanders."

I was about to reply but his hands suddenly cupped my face and he kissed me, quick and hard, pulling away before I had time to kiss him back. The grin stayed on his face as he gently brushed my cheekbones with his thumbs. "Only you," he said, but I got the feeling he didn't mean it as an insult. "Only you."

AN: *peeks nervously out from behind fortress* I know. I know! I'm a terrible person! I haven't updated this story in forever, and I feel awful, I do. I'd normally give an, "in my defense" spheel right about now, but I don't really have a defense, I just hadn't really been feeling inspired in a while. But I'm really sorry everyone, and I'd like to promise it'll never happen again, but as established by this lengthy little break I'm a horrible person, so I can't guarantee a lack of long waiting periods. But I can guarantee, that if you read and review it, it might make me want to write more. Yes this is blatant blackmail/begging. I'll update anyway, but reviews will help keep the story in my head.

About that IMPORTANT IMPORTANT IMPORTANT thing: so I know we all saw things get a little steamy in this chapter during Peddie's make out scene. I have plans for all the romance arcs, but I would like to get some readers opinions on how comfortable they would be reading sex scenes, and if so how graphic. I don't intend to change the story to an M-rating – I'm not giving you straight up erotica or anything for Christ's sake – but I do plan on having sex so I'd like to know if I'd need to make it very vague, or separate chapters or what. Send your response in review form please, thanks.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the chapter, thank you so much for not forgetting about my story and still being around to read this chapter, and please, please, pleeeeeease, answer the sex question because I was being entirely serious. Thanks.

Favorite, follow and review please. Let me know whose POV's you'd like to see. (I promise, I will get to them eventually.)