Title: Kiss That Girl
Author: Alexandra Bruderlin
Notes: See? I'm trying valiantly to get more updates going. And for all of you who have been hanging on for The Kiss, I promise you it happens in this chapter. Thank you to everyone who reviewed, and keep reviewing so I know which fics to update faster! Now, I must run away and hopefully finish my PissOff2 update!
Once again, flames based upon ship preferences are mocked at. Constructive criticism is accepted gracefully. Gushing reviews are beloved.
The car trip was long. I know that. Tawny was in the back seat with me, and ended up falling asleep before we left Boston – he needed sleep for his shoulder to heal. I stayed awake for awhile, just staring out the window. Zack didn't talk to me, and I didn't talk to him, as we left the city limits behind.
I did fall asleep, slumped against Tawny. I didn't know it until Zack stopped for petrol, and even then I fell right back asleep.
It was hours later when I woke up, but it still only felt like minutes. I felt a cooler breeze hit my face, and the sun hitting my face. I blinked, sitting up, to see Zack leaning against my open door, frowning at me.
"Tawny's already inside. We're stopping for a meal," Zack said simply. "Come on."
I unbuckled my belt and followed Zack into the diner. Tawny was already sitting in a booth, sipping at a chipped white mug. I smiled and slid in next to him. "Morning."
"Morning," Tawny grinned at me. "Sleep well?"
"Okay, I guess," I shrugged. "You?"
"Like a log," Tawny looked up at Zack. "Hey bro thanks for bailing us out."
Zack grunted a response and sat opposite us, watching us carefully. Tawny nudged his mug towards me. I picked it up, taking a large sip. And I winced. Strong, black coffee – very bitter. I couldn't cope with coffee, it was too strong for me; especially the way Tawny took it. I swallowed sharply, and pushed the cup back towards Tawny.
"Gross," I said, shaking my head to get rid of the taste. "Warn me next time." I elbowed him gently in the ribs. Zack cleared his throat and stood up.
"Not coffee, Lexy?"
"No," I said, looking up. "Anything but coffee. I'm going to the bathroom." I slid out of the booth and out the back to the toilets. And I stood in front of the mirrors there. My hair was tangled around my face, grimy smears around my entire face. Dark circles under my eyes and no colour in my cheeks. The signs of a seizure coming on. I wiped my hands dry on my jeans which felt damp and sticky from continuous wear.
I finger combed my hair so it sat flat, and tried my hardest to clean my face before I went back out to the diner. It wasn't anything special; a kind of worn place with vinyl booths and women on the wrong side of fifty wearing white uniforms, pouring the coffee.
Zack and Tawny were already wolfing down plates of food when I sat down. I barely acknowledged what I was eating I was so hungry. I think there were pancakes and eggs, and maybe some bacon. It was hot and reasonably fresh, so I wasn't complaining.
I was slurping up the last of my milkshake as Zack got up to pay. Tawny casually slung his arm around my shoulder. It felt good not to be in that stuffy Chinese restaurant, playing maid to May and the twins.
I pushed my milkshake container away from me - the milk had made me feel a little better and I could only pray that it would hold my seizures off - and turned to look at Tawny.
"So, where are we going?" I asked, smiling up at him.
"Zack's going out of his way to take us to New York," Tawny said cheerfully. "And then, we're off to Chicago."
"Come on," Zack interrupted us. "We've got to get going."
The trip to New York City was a long one. I think Zack double backed a few times to make sure we didn't have any Manticore operatives on our tail. We stopped at a few more road side diners for hot and greasy food, and I found myself wishing for a comfortable bed and home cooked food. Even though the most complicated 'home cooked' meal I had ever made was cold chicken salad.
The last night was the longest. Tawny and I were in the backseat, sharing pizza out of a box and keeping quiet so we didn't bother Zack. I had found an old paper back book at one of the service stations we had stopped at, and I read that, taking absolutely no interest in the plotline. It helped pass the time.
Then Zack's cell phone went off. It lit up and hummed a generic little tune. But something about that tune affected Zack. He pulled the car over to the side of the road and snatched the phone up.
"Zack… Syl… Look, my orders were clear… he is? Shit, Syl…"
He was getting angrier by the second. I tensed, exchanging a look with Tawny. I could hear the phone cracking as Zack gripped the phone tighter. With a grim look on his face, Zack unsnapped his seatbelt and climbed out of the car. I leant across Tawny, trying to listen to what was being said. Tawny shoved me right back into my seat and rolled his eyes.
'You'll just piss him off more,' Tawny signed. I made a face and picked up my book again, once again refocusing on the boring plot. We could both hear Zack yelling from outside the car, and I tried to listen to whatever Zack was saying to the person on the other end… Syl.
"No Syl. I gave you an order and you directly disobeyed… you want me to stop yelling? You tell him to pack up his things and move on to Ohio… no, Syl. Fuck, just do IT!"
I winced, and wondered what Syl had done to deserve such a loud ticking off from Zack. I blinked and realised I hadn't turned a page in a long time. I hastily did, tearing the edge of the page. And promptly realised I hadn't read a word of the previous page.
"Eavesdropper," Tawny tugged a lock of my hair. "Good book?"
"Shitty," I shrugged, closing it. "What do you think Syl did?"
Tawny snorted. "No guesses there."
I gave him a strange look, but before I could question Tawny's totally random comment, Zack got back into the car, throwing his cell phone onto the passenger seat with surprising force. I tossed my book onto the floor of the car and looked at Zack via the rear view mirror.
"Everything is okay with Syl, right?" I asked directly, one hand reaching up to knot my hair off my face with a cracked hair clip I'd found amongst my things. Probably something I'd taken from the twins' at some stage and forgotten about. It was cream coloured plastic with little red diamantes all over it. But I must have stepped in it – it had a large crack right down the middle and had long scratches across the surface.
Tawny caught my fingers and began smoothing my hair back and refastening the clasp of the clip. I smiled thanks to Tawny and looked back at Zack through the rear-view mirror. His gaze was focused unhappily on mine.
"She disobeyed an order," he replied shortly, starting the car again.
"E.T.A?" Tawny asked calmly as he sat back in his seat.
"An hour and twenty, I'd say," Zack said, pulling back into the traffic.
He was almost dead set right – an hour and twenty three, according to my watch. By the time we pulled up outside the apartment building – a nondescript brick block – I was antsy and would've happily gone for a twenty block run by the time we pulled up. I practically leapt out of the car before Zack had stopped.
We didn't exchange words as we grabbed out things and walked into the building. It was pretty nice for a Post-Pulse apartment block. Two lifts at the end of a long hallway, after a row of rusted mail boxes, with the apartment numbers painted on in yellow paint.
The apartment itself was 14B, and was absolutely huge compared to most of my homes over the years. I was amazed at the sheer size of the place. I dropped my bag in the doorway and walked in, ignoring whatever Zack was saying to me.
The carpet was cat piss yellow-brown and mostly frayed, with nails sticking up from it at the edges. There was one old, brown couch that looks like it had seen its fair share of parties and one night stands. There were two bedrooms, utterly identical – white-grey walls, a double bed and a dresser held together with masking tape. It was one of the nicest places I'd ever lived. I looked out the window, onto the street corner, where there were some shops and a dumpster.
"Lex." Tawny walked into the bedroom. "Zack wants to talk to you."
He's in the kitchen, checking the messages on the phone. I slip into the kitchen and take a seat on the stool on the other side of the counter, pushing my hair out of my eyes.
"You were ignoring me." His voice is flat and he doesn't look up from his phone but I don't dare roll my eyes when my happiness is so precarious; one snarky move and he can physically drag me away from my first proper home and away from Tawny. I give a small smile and resist the urge to tell him that he is the only one who takes himself quite this seriously.
"Sorry. What's up?" I lean forward and catch his eyes, and Zack pockets his phone and looks at me with the slightly annoyed gaze we all knew so well.
"You and Tawny can stay in New York for awhile – together," Zack says, turning his face away from me as if the happiness written so raw across my face offends him. "But don't do anything stupid, Lexy. No fuck-ups." His gaze meets mine and I frown, wondering if he's making me promise something I don't understand. I shrug.
"I wasn't trained to be an idiot, Zack," I reply evenly, with the Manticore arrogance he expects in lieu of respect.
"Good. I've got some things to do, but I want you and Tawny to stay down," Zack shrugs his leather jacket on and looks at me. "You know the number."
And before I can ask him what exactly Syl did to have Zack dump me and Tawn in New York when we were meant to go to Chicago, he was gone.
"Lexy?" Tawny reappears, tugging a shirt over his head, letting me catch a glimpse of his perfectly defined chest, and I felt my cheeks flush. "Zack gone already?"
"Yeah, he just left. Any hot water left?"
"Yeah," Tawny tugged his t shirt down. "I'm going to go and get some Chinese takeout – you want anything?"
"Can you get me a Chow Mien and a Coke?" I asked, unbuttoning my shirt. "I'm going to use the rest of the hot water."
The water pressure in the shower was non existent but I scrubbed my hair with the cake of soap left in there, feeling like half a ton of dirt and sweat was washing down the drain. The oversized t shirt and clean underwear I wore had never felt so soft and clean. I pulled a pair of socks right up to my knees and dumped my laundry on the floor of my bedroom, so I could do the washing the next day.
There was a crappy black and white television in the lounge room that played three stations – one in English, one in Spanish and one in Mandarin. I settled on a show in English, closing my eyes as the dialogue from the soap opera washed over me.
I woke up to someone stroking my hair and I wriggled away to find Tawny standing over me, with a smirk on his face.
"Got the food, unless you want to keep dreaming, Sleeping Beauty."
I roll off the couch and land on my feet, scraping my hair back into a ponytail. "I'm starving," I yawn and press my hand to my mouth to cover it up.
We sit on the kitchen bench, legs swinging and ate out of the plastic containers. We drank coke from the bottle, the silence companionable. He laughs and pulls my hair and his proximity makes my head spin in a good way. If I leaned up a little or if he just leant down a little, we could… I jerk backwards and almost fall in the sink before Tawny hurls me forward by my forearms, me slumping against him. I look up at him, rolling my eyes.
"For an X5, you're as clumsy as hell," Tawny smooths my hair back and pulls me off the counter with him. "We need to get some sleep – you need to get some sleep; last thing I need is you falling down in a seizure because you didn't get enough… sleep, I mean."
He swings me into his arms and walks me down the hall, my arms laced around his neck and he places me on my bed, kissing me quickly half on the cheek and half on the lips. I tighten my arms around his neck for a second and time sort of slows down as we pull apart; I lie back against the pillows, smiling slightly, and he pulls up, hovering above me.
"I thought he was going to split us up," Tawny roles in beside me, his fingers lacing with mine, his breath hot against my cheek. I roll onto my side and look at him carefully. He's lying on his back and his eyes are closed.
"I thought I was going to have to watch him walk away with you again," he murmurs. "I couldn't lose you again, Lex."
I lie flat again, wanting to slap myself for not leaning down and kissing him hard. I've never felt like this towards any other boy before, yet I want to kiss my brother like it's something I'd do every other day.
"Zack left me in Boston on purpose," I replied, untangling my hand from his, stretching my arms out.
"You were almost beaten and raped by that asshole Sanchez." I can see Tawny's eyes in the light; they're almost glowing gold.
I smile at him. "But you saved me. My hero." The words feel foreign on my tongue, but they sound right in the room. Tawny kisses my cheek again, a softer, longer kiss on the cheek and slides from my bed. I close my eyes and listen to him switch off the kitchen light and move back towards his room.
I curl up into a ball. I bite my lip and wonder what Tawny's lips would feel like if I kissed him properly. If he'd push me away and tell me in a quiet voice that he loved me like a sister. I lay awake, looking at the stars before sitting up. I pushed the sleeves of my shirt up and pulled the socks off my feet, tossing them onto my bed before slipping down the hall.
Tawny slept shirtless, in his boxers. He lay on the left side of the bed, the streetlights outside reflecting light and shadows across his face, so I couldn't read his expression.
"Tawn?" my voice came out softly but strongly. He faced me and I knew he hadn't been asleep either.
I crawled across the bed and lay against his side. I knew he was giving me a quizzical look. I looked up at him and we both leant forward at the same moment. His hand came to rest on my hip, my hand cupped his cheek. And he kissed me.