A/N
"Look, look in the candlelight,
See in the flame of life,
And my spell is so alive"
Sleeping (In the Fire)- Wasp
/
They pulled up on the quiet street where Joss' small two storey, two bedroom home stood in complete silence and darkness. Billy put the handbrake on and sighed deeply, the slightly uncomfortable atmosphere almost as palpable as the stagnant summer air.
"Your mom not home yet?" he finally asked with a blasé tone.
Joss glanced at him before being drawn back to the bitter loneliness of that empty house. "She never is."
"Wait, you live here alone?" She could hear his surprise.
"Not exactly," Joss said, reaching for the door handle, but then she decided against it and relaxed back into her seat. "She comes by once a month or so, stays a few days and then takes off again. Her job means she has to go to other states and stay there while she teaches classes or does TV stuff."
"Huh, so, that's why you work at the arcade, for food money and-"
"No," Joss interrupted rather bluntly, not wanting him to misunderstand and think she was in a worse position than he was at home. "She sends all the money I need, I just..." She ran out of steam and looked away, fingers fidgeting, thumbnail scraping at a rough cuticle. She set her gaze out of the window and remained silent, knowing she'd already made herself incredibly vulnerable to him tonight, to chance more felt like offering her throat out to a predator's sharp teeth.
Her gaze drifted back to him, her heart tugging slightly as he accidentally touched his injured lip while lighting another cigarette, wincing at the renewed pain, and she felt like she was being far too judgmental and unkind. Hadn't he also bared a little part of himself in return?
"How much trouble are you in, for today, I mean?" she asked, her voice was just above a whisper.
He laughed that wolfish laugh. "Shit, I have no idea. My old man will have got the call hours ago, probably sat fuming in a pile of beer bottles."
It all made sense now to Joss.; Billy seeking her out after detention and being intent on them going somewhere, anywhere. He was avoiding that last long walk before his carefree freedom was taken away, replaced by the fear of violence. He was trying so hard to hide his true feelings behind a mask of uncaring swagger, but she could see the tension in his every muscle, straining at his jawline. She felt helpless.
"Hey," Joss ventured, not really knowing if she was going to regret this later, "you want to come in? You can hide out here tonight, if you want?"
He gave her a look that she couldn't read, but not hearing a 'no' she continued. "You can pull up on the driveway." She casually pointed in the direction she meant, trying her hardest not to make this all sound like a big deal.
Slowly he rolled the car to where she indicated and cut the engine. They sat in silence for a few minutes, neither really knowing what to say, given the situation.
"Just so we're clear, this isn't an invite for us to jump into bed together." Joss broke the uncomfortable tension with her usual tactical use of a sudden brusque outburst.
He chuckled. "Hey, anywhere you want is fine by me, sofa, counter tops, I'm up for it all!" He stretched languidly.
"Stop fooling around." She began to grab up her broken bag out of the footwell.
"I wasn't the one who brought fooling around into the conversation." He gave her a lascivious smug smile.
Joss rolled her eyes, knowing he was taunting her. She got out of the car and heard him follow. She dug into her jacket pocket and pulled out her keys, opening the door to the stifling hot air within the house. "I'll open some windows, we don't have any fans."
She walked in, leaving him to close and latch the door behind him. She switched on a nearby small lamp in the hall, bringing a dim glow to their surroundings, before she set about cracking open as many windows as she could. When she returned to the hallway, he was studying the many old dusty family photos studding the walls; long ago happy people that no longer existed.
"Come on," she said, indicating with a nod to the stairs. "I have to be at school early tomorrow, I promised Lori I'd share my math notes with her."
He followed her up the stairs and Joss couldn't help the small swell of fluttering panic that flowed into her stomach, like she was being stalked. For a second she felt like taking the rest of the stairs two at a time, but she quelled the flighty instinct back, telling herself this was the first friend, never mind the first guy, she'd ever brought back to her home, it was normal to feel nervous.
She pushed the door with a heavier hand than it really needed, knowing it often stuck at its hinges.
"Well, welcome to my castle, I guess." She turned on a lamp by her bed and quickly picked up the dirty clothes strewn across her carpet and hid them in her closet before he had much chance to see her lazy attitude to laundry.
Billy stood, studying all the band posters on her wall, seeming far too big a presence in her tiny bedroom.
"I get most of them when I visit my dad," she said, straightening out her bedding. "There's a really cool music store that always has all the latest stuff."
"Cool," Billy said, looking around the room, "it's not what I expected."
Joss laughed, throwing a spare pillow into his arms. "So, you thought about what my bedroom looked like?"
"No," he said, with a confidently dismissive grin, "I mean it's just not got much of a girly feel. Not what I'm used to." He placed the pillow down on the bed.
"Again, from the tiny amount of types of bedrooms you've scaled up to," she said, indicating with her thumb and forefinger just how small she meant.
"Whatever," he dismissed, going back to studying all around him.
She turned to her stereo and pressed play on the tape deck, bringing a low volume of sound to their surroundings as the music began to play softly, WASP's seductive 'Sleeping In The Fire'.
He smiled to himself as he recognized the song and began to casually look through the papers on her small desk, and she allowed him that small trespass into her private things.
"These are pretty good," he said, picking up a few sheets that had come loose from the well worn sketch book she kept them in.
Joss resisted the urge to go and snatch them away in embarrassment. "Thanks." She opened her own window as far as it would go, placing various books on her lace curtains to serve as a makeshift bug net.
"These are sketches of the design on your jacket, right?" He turned the paper in his hands and fluttered it at her, showing the pencil drawing of two old school style tarot cards, one with 'Death' and one with 'The Lovers,' and above and below the stylized wording of 'Know Your Fate'. "Did you paint your own jacket?" He raised an eyebrow in surprise, and Joss could see he was impressed, which gave her a small thrill in the pit of her stomach.
"Yeah."
"Cool. It's a cool jacket. Is that what you want to do after school? Something with art?"
"I really don't know," Joss said honestly. "It makes me happy though, so maybe," she shrugged.
"You should," he said, with an alluring smile and a casual shrug. "It'd be a shame to waste your talent."
She took off her jacket and laid it over the chair near the desk, her hands brushing the design with a pride she didn't think she'd really felt before. "Thanks, it's good to hear someone thinks I have any talent."
"Well, you do. You'd make some great album covers."
She grinned, feeling the warmth of his praise. "When I draw it makes me feel like I really exist."
He quirked an eyebrow at her and she continued, trying to make him understand.
"If I can put what's in my head on paper, it proves I matter... I don't know, it's stupid, I guess."
"No, I get it." He continued to look through the pages. "You like religious stuff? You draw a lot of saints and stuff."
"I like it, like the art style," she replied, "but I'm not religious. My parents took me to Italy when I was, like, eight, and we saw a lot of churches and great art works, that cool ceiling. It sparked a love in me for it."
He nodded, a small smile on his face as if he was truly enjoying her work, and her cheeks heated with a continued boost to her self-esteem.
"What about you?" Joss took a few steps forward, her hand indicating to the necklace he wore. "Do you believe?"
He let the papers go, his fingers clutching the pendant as if to hide it from her prying eyes, but he quickly relaxed and acted as if he had just been playing with it for a moment.
"I stopped believing a long time ago."
"Then why..."
"It was my mom's," he cut in, not letting her fully voice her question, "it's pretty much all she left me with."
Joss felt the bubble of apology trying to escape her throat and pushed it back down, knowing he wouldn't want to hear it.
"You ever try and find her?" Joss pushed, knowing this was thin ground between them.
He studied her face a moment, a hint of frown furrowing the place between his brows as if he were trying to solve a particularly hard math problem, then he seemed to find the answer and his body and expression relaxed. He shrugged as if shrugging off any hint of emotional heaviness. "I tried a few times before, when I was young and stupid, to make her come back." Joss could hear just how stupid he'd thought he had been as that kid. "But she'd always move place to place, it was hard to find her because she didn't want to be found. But then my old man made his perfect new family and I was told to get in line or get out." He shook his head.
Joss felt the strong urge to reach out and touch his shoulder, but didn't, knowing this would not be wanted either.
"Did she just disappear?"
He shook his head again. "She's still in California, somewhere. She never bothered to leave me a forwarding address. Once I got my car I thought..." He stopped his line of thought abruptly and glanced at her, that frown faintly showing again. He sighed, "But, Max's dad started sniffing around again and Max started causing drama, trouble, and my old man moved us. He didn't want me finding my mom again either, so it was a win-win for him to move. So, any chance I had..." He pursed his lips and let out a sardonic laugh as if remembering a very unfunny memory. "I had to leave everything behind, everyone I knew, my whole damn life. I had something there, you know?" His expression twisted, as if this was all starting to grate on him.
"You blame Max for that? For the move here?" Joss asked, hearing the way he gritted his teeth every time he mentioned his step sister.
He looked at her, anger rippling through his eyes. "You're damn right! Her fault any of this happened. She's a piece of shit. All she does is cause trouble and drags me into her bullshit!"
Joss felt a shudder of surprise at the hatred he had about this subject. She knew she was beginning to poke too deeply, he was losing patience, but she didn't interrupt him or break the moment, allowing the words to come when he wanted.
"She and Susan, they don't have to deal with that side of my dad," he said, half pretending to be distracted by her art again.
Joss gathered Susan was Billy's dad's wife, and Max's mother.
"Never have," he shrugged, not delving any further into just exactly what Max had done to cause all this animosity. "They see it sometimes, his anger, and they just look the other way. And Max causes it, sneaking out, being late, telling lies, it all comes back on me, I'm the one that gets it in the damn neck! I'm expected to babysit everything she does."
Joss could feel the waves of temper building in him, and decided now was the time to try and defuse it.
"That's shitty," Joss said softly. "It's unfair too, but Max is just a kid. Just like you were, she can't control what your dad does."
"Just a kid?" he shook his head with a cynical laugh and curl of lip. "You really don't know her." He gave her a look full of a warning to step cautiously. "Look, fuck it right? Can we talk about something else." It was a demand not a request.
"Sure," Joss said, trying to sound casual. She flicked the dial of her small portable TV and the black and white fuzzy picture flickered into being, as some old Hammer Horror movie played.
She flopped down onto the bed, tired from the long heat of the day, the cool breeze from the open window very welcome. Joss felt, rather than saw, Billy lower himself on to the bed as she did her best to seem nonchalant and interested in the movie. He positioned the pillow next to hers and somehow they both managed to find room on the single bed. They watched the movie in near silence for a while, laughing at the bad special effects until the credits rolled. She got up, pushing the off button, before returning to her place on the bed.
The tension in the room had intensified with the silencing of the TV, the soft strains of music still playing from her tape deck speakers just seemed to add to the heavy atmosphere, and Joss tried her best to defuse it by reaching up and turning off the light, encompassing them in full darkness in the optimistic idea that this would signal that it was time to sleep.
She returned to lying on her back, her hands resting on her stomach and felt the mood heighten into something even more potently charged. Any hope she'd had that extinguishing the light would somehow aid the situation felt like a sudden big misjudgement. Now, she was not only alone with a guy in her bedroom, but they were concealed within the folds of darkness, where hands could easily search and wander, unencumbered by the fear of open exposure.
She could hear her own heartbeat thrumming softly in her ears, her whole body feeling electrified by how near he was and how alone they were. He turned over onto his side so she could tell he was looking at her, and she could hear his low breathing.
"So, when you said no fooling around, did you mean completely, or, you know, just a little?" She could hear the smile in his voice.
Joss laughed. "Is that all you think about?"
"Hell yes," Billy said, laughing too, "don't you..." he paused, "think about it?" She felt his hand come to brush her stomach, his fingers entwining with hers. Before she could reply or try and neutralize the situation she felt him move, shifting his body to straddle hers, his hands skimming up her arms to her shoulders, holding her in place firmly, and she found once he'd caught her, she didn't want to stop him.
His head dipped and their lips met in a deep and soft kiss. His hands roamed her body, grazing across exposed skin and urging her response. Her hands came to his shoulders, feeling the smooth curves of muscle of his bare arms. The cool metal of his pendant glanced against the dip of her throat as they continued, becoming hotter and heavier in their intentions with every new press of lips, until he broke away and began to kiss and stroke his way down her body, paying extra attention to the hollow of her throat, her collar bones, and the tops of her breasts.
His hands were soon joining in, kneading and teasing, until she was breathing heavily, but before she could become too comfortable with this escalating situation he was moving again, his lips running kisses down her stomach and reaching the edge of her denim skirt. He lingered there a moment, leaving soft butterfly kisses across the exposed skin above her waistband; he glanced up, grinning like a Cheshire cat. Joss' hands reached out to his shoulders, her clutching fingers silently telling him that this was far enough. He stopped for a moment, holding up his palms to her, showing he wouldn't break their unspoken rule.
"Whatever Saint Joss wants," he said with a teasing smile.
She didn't have time to say anything in return to the slightly unkind nickname, as the next moment his mouth was at her thighs, sending ripples of warmth across her entire body, leaving her feeling dazed. Then his kisses and caressing strokes were at the back of her knees, the turn of her calf, the curve of her ankle, the whole experience making her want to squirm and giggle childishly under his intense inspection. She felt him run a fingertip gently over her inner thigh where she knew she had a large scar.
Billy slowly moved back up her body and finally reached her lips with his, the kiss more intense and insistent than before. She could feel him trying to beguile her, to push and entice her to give in to him, and the unnerving thing was, Joss wanted to. She'd gone from a determined stance to wavering uncertainty in the time it had taken for a song to finish and a new one to start. His body was hard and soft all within the same complex intimacy, his hands stroking so sweetly, trying to coax her into relaxing fully, as the solidness of his chest pushed against hers, the action telling her that he wasn't going to give in easily. He positioned his knee between her legs and nudged with a mellow demand in a subtle attempt to pry her last remaining resistance away, but he didn't push past a certain point, seemingly still allowing her the ultimate choice.
Joss didn't give in, twisting her body into a long line that denied him any more than a passionate fumble in the dark. To compensate for his perceived disappointment her hands came to the back of his neck, stroking, running gentle teasing fingers through hair, in an attempt to let him know she still wanted him, just not that completely, not yet. She urged him closer, her own mouth hungry, seeking a way to make him feel good too.
She felt a sudden unpleasant taste pass her lips, salt and the tang of iron. She pulled back from him and looked up into his face. She could clearly see, despite the dark room, that the cut on his lip had opened again, running a steady trail down his chin.
She touched his cheek gently and he flinched a little, as if the concerned intimate contact had burned him. "You're bleeding," she whispered.
"Do you care?" he asked, and pushed his lips forcefully back to hers.
/
A/N
Hello, welcome back to any reading this. I hope you enjoyed.
I had to take a break because of life stuff but I will always be back, as I've said this story is finished and just in need of some spellcheck TLC.
Any support, follows, likes, etc are all very, very welcome. It's been a rough week on my whole ego at work, unrelated to writing, but you know, we all need a boost, but if you can't, thanks for stopping by.
See you all next time.