"We keep falling in and out of love,
The message is so clear,
But we still wonder what's above,
Just like the moonlight,
The sky and stars above,
We keep falling in and out of love."
Falling In and Out of Love - Femme Fatale
/
Billy reopened the gate and led Joss past the pool and into the guys changing room. It definitely smelled worse but Joss allowed him to tug her inside. She was telling him something simple and ordinary about school, small talk that wasn't going anywhere. Just filling up her courage meter, waiting for the perfect moment to lead in to what she really wanted to ask him about, what had happened with Trish a few days ago, but he never allowed her to get to the question. The instant the heavy metal door closed behind them his body was suddenly pressed hard to hers, forcing her breath out in a rush of surprise and spiking heart rate, pushing her up against a wall, lips demanding and consuming.
He grabbed hold of both of Joss' wrists, holding them forcefully above her head as his lips crashed into hers, his skilful tongue ruthlessly filling her, telling Joss, with a ferocious need, to release any remaining fight she still held in her body. She couldn't help but feel this was some kind of reprimand for her pushing back and questioning him outside, and she enjoyed the small thrill of getting to him, of making him want to silence her. When he'd deemed she had yielded enough, his mouth became gentle and soft, taking his time to coax her to kiss him back, tongue rolling in slow sensual waves against her own, until Joss felt like the very edges of her body were melting into his.
Leaving her dizzy, he pressed exploring kisses down her jawline and to her neck, where he lingered with the clear intention to rebel against the promise he had made her only a week ago. Joss felt a sudden rush of flushed warmth and excitement as her whole body hummed with the fast rushing of her pulse. When that familiar pressure came from his kiss turning to a bite, she fought against the primal surge of pleasure that made her not want to push back against him, wanting to be possessed by that deep craving and sated by his appetite for her. But, finally she regained enough of her senses and tried to move out of his grip, trying to save herself another embarrassing bruise to explain. Her resistance seemed to only make him more determined to show her she couldn't win this game, not now, not today, not ever if he got a say.
It was easy to give in and allow him his way because it felt so good, and she balled her hands into fists as they remained pinned above her head, wanting this and at the same time, hating how easily she surrendered under his touch. Even when she knew she'd pay for it later, even when she knew she was giving him free reign to stomp all over her requests and move the goal posts to wherever he wanted.
He quickly maneuvered his tactics to her body, hands skimming down arms and past curves, brushing sensitive places with a firmer touch, fingers working without tenderness, only insistent want, as if they were on a time limit and it was quickly running out. There was no gentleness or slow aching build up to the main event this time, but it didn't matter because Joss had wanted him from the moment that kiss had ended.
His fingers were at her skirt, easing it up past hips, and before Joss could let out more than a few breathless moans of eager anticipation he'd curled his hands about her thighs, pulling her up on to his waist. He fumbled a moment to loosen himself from his jeans and then with a casual pull he'd nudged her underwear to one side and slid in to her before she could fully understand what was happening. The sensation caused Joss to suddenly suck all the air back into her lungs, her whole body on pins and needles for a few seconds as she adjusted to the abrupt change, and he stilled, waiting and hungrily watchful, until her eyes connected with his, ready for more.
Joss had never had sex standing up before, in fact her mind had often wondered if it was even possible or just a fiction made up to look hot in movies, but Billy was here proving it was very possible. His thrusts were sloppy and careless, his sweat slick fingers slipping against his hold on her thighs as he let out low grunts of equal parts enjoyment and effort, trying to bring them both to the finish line before his grip failed. Joss could feel all the sharp edges of the tiles pressing into her back as she grasped onto his shoulders with strained determination that she wasn't going to be the one to stop this moment either.
The unexpectedness of this encounter and the swell of excited heat only made it seem all the more heady, and although his thrusts were not as controlled as their first few times, they were intense and fierce and almost vicious in his intent. Her own hips met his in a frantic chaotic rhythm that drove him deeper, the sensation hitting somewhere that Joss found almost painful, but exquisite in its own brutal way. The feeling brought her so easily to the edge and she heard herself urgently begging him to not stop. With one merciless last thrust he nudged her over and she let out a series of sharp desperate cries as the waves washed through her in an unbearable mixture of muscle contracting pleasure and pressure. She clutched onto his broad shoulders, nails digging into flesh, gasping for air and salvation from the onslaught of relentless sensations that felt like they would never stop, and yet Joss knew it would be fleeting, mourning the absence before it had fully ebbed away. She felt her own release bring his to a quick and violent end and he let out a low cry, his teeth at her neck as he bit down hard enough to hurt, stifling the sounds of his own climax into her throat.
As they stilled, a prickling of sweat across both their skins, Joss felt herself sag against him in sudden exhaustion, her muscles vibrating in an uncontrollable tremor. She felt unable to keep up the pretence that she was fine after that bombardment on all her senses, like the link between her brain and body was short circuiting.
"You okay?" Billy suddenly gasped, obviously noticing how limp her form had become within his grip, catching her, hands cradling her backside to keep her upright.
"I just... I need to sit a minute," Joss said, feeling a blush rise in her already hot feeling cheeks.
Billy pulled back, slowly moving her off his hips, his touch certain but careful as he helped her sit upon the tiled floor and he came to sit beside her, his back pressed against the cool wall. They both took a moment to catch their breaths.
"Was it too rough?" Billy asked, after several beats of silence had gone on unbroken for some time.
Joss shook her head, not really understanding what had happened. "No, just unexpected, I guess," she said.
"Told you I'd find new ways to surprise you." He grinned and Joss batted him away, before finally finding the will to pull her underwear back into a comfortable position and shift her skirt back down. "Guess that isn't something you did with your older guy?" he asked with a mischievous quirk of his eyebrow as he zipped up his jeans.
"No," Joss conceded. "It was pretty basic bed stuff with him."
"Huh, sounds like a total loser."
Joss reached out, her knuckles grazing his bare arm in a silent thanks for an attempted verbal attack on someone who had hurt her.
"What happened between you and him, in the end?"
Joss sighed, exhausted and unwilling to fight back against his questioning. "He started fooling around with someone else. Or lots of someone elses, and instead of just being straight, he lied to my face." Joss hesitated, hating going back to that memory. Remembering that earnest face that held nothing but deceit, those cool grey eyes that were aware of all her wounds and knew just how to pretend to bandage them, while only opening them wider. "He told me he loved me, to stop me leaving him."
"You left anyway?" Billy said with a knowing look in his eyes.
"I told him I would, so I did."
"Did you regret it?"
Joss shrugged. "He was the only person to give me the time of day so, yeah, until I saw him with his tongue down some other girl's throat the next night."
"See, total loser," Billy said with a sniff.
"I wasn't mad about that." She saw him give her a look that didn't really believe her words. "I'm not saying it was fun to see it, but I didn't feel jealous, just used, and that felt kinda worse." She wiped the remaining sweat off her face with the back of her hand. "To know I really meant nothing after all those months. He'd said 'I love you' so easily, just to get what he wanted, to make me stay, to control me. It gave me the creeps." Joss brushed her hands against her arms, trying to stave off the real chill she did feel in the aftermath of all that pumping blood and warm bodies. "That anyone could say that word, love, but only really want to have power over you." Joss didn't want to say more, to acknowledge that her ex boyfriend had used affection as a weapon against her. It felt stupid to even admit it in her own head, like she was some simpering loser.
Billy gave a slow nod. "Yeah," he said, but for a few seconds offered no further comment until she caught his gaze with hers. Joss wasn't sure what he saw in her eyes, but whatever it was, it made him say more. "That word is a knife."
Joss tried to push back the surprise that wanted to show on her face and instead held him to her gaze as an unspoken promise was exchanged between them, a promise that word would never pass either of their lips while in each others company.
"The guy I got the tapes from back in Cali," Billy continued, dispelling the tense uncomfortable atmosphere, "his girlfriend was cool. She'd been in some hippy cult when she was a teenager and she said they used this technique called love bombing. You know, overwhelm you with sweet shit until you feel safe and cared for?"
Joss gave a distracted nod, her gaze still tethered to his.
"Then once they got you all docile, that's when they strike." He smacked a fist into his open palm in demonstration of that strike. "I don't think it's just a cult thing though, I think a lot of people use something like that to make others do what they want, get you to let down your guard. It's fucked up, what people do to each other."
She nodded again, trying to see through those words into his memories, but knew it was a pointless task.
"So," Joss said, finally breaking eye contact. "I tell you something, you tell me something, right? That's the deal?"
"That wasn't even a real question," Billy said with a laugh.
"A deal is a deal," Joss pushed.
"Okay, Tanner, what does your filthy mind want to know about my love life?"
Joss knew she had a choice to make as to what information she now wanted to gain for her arsenal, and despite all her needy longings to understand what had happened at school with Trish, she decided to stay with the bigger picture of trying to uncover just what made him really tick. "Not about your love life. I saw you and Max fighting again the other day and it got me curious."
"Curiosity killed the cat," he warned with a grin of teeth, but he already knew Joss wouldn't back down.
"I want you to tell me what happened between you and her, back in Cali?"
Billy gave her a look that rested somewhere uneasily between anxiety and anger, and then he glanced up at the ceiling and let out a bitter huff of laughter as if he knew she'd caught him. "Here comes the mind bullshit," he said letting out another laugh, this one full of disdain.
"You said no childhood stuff, this is last year stuff. If you can ask about my ex then-"
"Yeah, yeah," Billy dismissed, knowing she was right.
"You said it was Max's fault you had to move here, right?" Joss urged.
"It was her fault," Billy said, his hand lightly balling into a loose fist, in what could have been nervous energy or restrained anger.
"What did she do?"
"Pissed off my old man," Billy snapped a little too quickly, as if he was ready to attack any words she wanted to place in his way.
Joss brushed her cool arms again with her hands. "And?"
"I told you her dad was sniffing around?"
Joss nodded.
"It made my dad pissed. He'd make Susan not take the calls, tell Max he hadn't called, until I guess he did just stop calling, for a while anyway."
Joss remained silent, knowing now she'd got him talking she just had to listen, but her mind made a small note that this sounded a little too similar for comfort to those petering out phone calls from his own mother.
"Max knew she wasn't meant to see him, it wasn't in the court order, because he was a loser that never stood up to bat." Billy looked down at his hands a moment. "Then she started sneaking off. We all thought she was skating with her friends, hanging out with older kids, going places she shouldn't go, that sorta thing. She'd come home late sometimes and it'd cause drama." He took in a deep breath. "I was told to keep an eye on her, make sure she didn't come home late, babysit, but she would have this nasty little habit of slipping out the back window and just vanishing for a few hours. So, I got shit for it, I was the fuck up, I was her 'brother', I should be there all the damn time and be responsible for her. If I messed up, my dad got mad, and, one night he lost it-" He let out a breath of snide laughter, obviously remembering this was about as fun for him as Joss remembering her ex.
Joss' mind went back to their conversation outside the bar on Monday, when Billy had told her how he'd gotten the car. Was this event the catalyst to Billy's nearly broken arm? To him appearing shortly after as the new owner of a shiny blue Camaro?
"Did they know, Susan and Max, that your dad-" Joss found she was now the one that couldn't finish the sentence.
"Susan did. She'd flinch and shit when she saw him do it, say 'stop Neil', in this thin little voice, like she actually cared, but it was just pearl clutching, just shit she didn't want to see. She didn't care, she would've been happy if I just moved out anyway. She told my dad I had 'too much attitude', whatever the fuck that means. I guess she thought I deserved it, because a lot of the time, maybe I did. I talked back, I got angry, I got in fights. I was disrespectful. To her I was just trouble from the start, so why care if that's how my dad deals with me acting out?"
Joss felt all her muscles tense and she drew her legs closer to her chest as if instinctively trying to protect herself from harm, maybe protect him too. She wanted to tell him something comforting, to let him know that he never deserved his father's rage, but she remembered the last time she'd confronted him about his dad's behaviour and he'd pushed back, almost defending the actions as justifiable, his own fault. She could only suppose, knowing him as she now did, that perhaps being punished for what he deemed 'bad behaviour' was easier to stomach than the possibility that he was a victim to something he couldn't control.
Control, it always fell back to that for him and maybe believing his father was just acting like any parent would, was Billy's own version of controlling the narrative of his own life. Fear and parents, in his mind that just went together like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Joss wasn't sure how to navigate this uneven terrain that wouldn't result in him only creating more distance from her, and she knew to interrupt Billy now with her own opinions would only serve to disrupt the whole conversation.
He rolled his head gently back against the wall. "Max disliked me as much as I disliked her, we were both attached to the the living, breathing reasons why my mom and her dad couldn't ever come back and fix things. Susan married my dad." He shrugged. "Even if I knew my mom wouldn't come back... Max still hoped her dad would. So, she was a real shit-bird. We tolerated each other. I had my own stuff going on, she had hers. We just kinda existed in the same space, trying not to cause waves, until my dad made me start taking responsibility for what she did."
Joss nodded but kept silent, once again allowing him to speak in his own time.
"To Max, it was just rebelling against a new life she didn't want, so I had to get real tough on her when warnings weren't doing anything. And my dad, he was just getting angrier at me, at her, because he didn't feel in control. He and Susan started arguing, and I knew... it was gonna go the same way it had when I was a kid."
Joss understood this was all leading somewhere bad, but held her emotions in, waiting for him to reveal the whole story.
"I started breaking Max's shit every time she disobeyed me, every time she lied to me about where she'd been. How many of her tapes and posters and magazines I destroyed, I lost count. She'd get all weepy and then look at me like I was this monster, so I became that monster she was afraid of. So she'd finally stop doing all that stupid shit. It worked for a while."
"I guess it didn't keep working?" Joss put in softly.
"No, it just made her more defiant and sneaky. She started to hide her stuff too, so I couldn't find it." He let out a laugh and it almost sounded like he admired his step sibling's tenacity. "So, one night after we'd argued and I'd broke some of her shit she hadn't managed to squirrel away, and she still snuck out, I followed her. She thought she was so fucking smart, that she'd given me the slip again. It turned out she'd been traveling all the way to down town, on her own, to see her dad at his shitty apartment."
"So, what happened? Did you confront her?"
Billy shook his head. "No, think she'd listen to what I said? Think her deadbeat dad would've just handed her over? I went right on back home and I told my dad where she was, I was sick of being responsible for her, let him deal with it, he married Susan."
Joss' eyes widened. "Why?"
"Joss," He said her name with impatient exasperation, like she should already understand how to untangle this twisted set of knots. "I just wanted her to stop, and I was angry at her causing constant shit, getting me into her bullshit. If she'd carried on, things would have got worse." His hands balled again, his jaw set in determination. "It had to stop."
"So, your dad-"
Billy didn't let her finish, like he couldn't stand hearing her say what came next, fingers raking through his hair. "He went down there, dragged Max back home, then he and Susan argued most of the night. After Max had slammed her door and Susan went to bed, I heard my old man go out, heard his car start. I know he went on back and beat the shit outta Max's dad. I saw his knuckles the next morning."
Joss held her breath a moment, trying to process what he'd said. "Jesus. What did Max's dad do?"
Billy shrugged. "Nothing. Guess he was too much of a chicken shit to do anything. But my dad thought he might call the cops or make a formal complaint, or try and force his way back into Susan's life again with that as his crowbar. My old man, he hated having that threat hang over him."
"And Max?"
"She never found out, she never got a chance to talk to her dad after that." He took a moment to let out an impatient sigh. "It was all decided in days, we were moving as far away from that deadbeat as we could. He didn't even see it coming." Joss thought a smug smile was pulling at his lips for a moment, but when she got a better look, it was more of a grimace. "None of us did."
"So, you moved out here?"
Billy nodded. "About the furthest we could get for that 'fresh start' my dad insisted was the real reason." He shook his head, smirking at the obscene absurdity of it all. "Max blames me for telling, and I blame her for causing trouble in the first place. There's no way to fix that, because I guess we're both right." Billy sniffed and glanced away, the silence heavy between them until he spoke again.
"It was my senior year, the school year had already started back in Cali, and I had to pack up, leave everything. Anyone I knew, the teachers who gave a shit about my grades and final exams..." His hands balled into loose fists again. "The ocean, anything that felt like it mattered, and move to the middle of cow shit nowhere. I had to start all over again. I hate Max for that, but I hate my old man more, because he knew what that'd mean for me, and he did it anyway. Because he didn't give a shit." He sniffed again loudly as if dismissing the words as too emotionally charged. "So, when we came here, all I had was anger, all I felt was anger. My whole life torn open because my dad chose himself and his new family, over me."
Joss stared down at her knees in the vast silence that came next. This felt way too heavy and complex for her to wade through and find her own thoughts. But she did feel she'd suddenly grown a whole load of understanding as to why the step siblings seemingly couldn't stand each other.
"Old habits die hard for Max," Billy continued, "guess she's too fucking dumb to learn. She caused trouble when we moved too, wouldn't listen when I warned her, and after last year... the last time things got heated, we agreed to just not have anything to do with each other. Live separate lives and stop trying to be any kind of family. That's fine by me."
Joss wanted to ask more about that last time, was that what Jonathan had told her about in the arcade, about the night Billy had beaten Steve Harrington to within an inch of his life? But she held herself back, feeling this was all more than enough to hear in one sitting.
"Sometimes my dad makes me pick her up, or take her to school, but other than that, we stay as far away as we can."
Joss let out a sigh.
She wanted to reach out and touch him, comfort him, to tell him a strange kind of thank you for telling her all this, while at the same time she couldn't help the instinct to recoil away from him for the way he'd treated his step sister throughout this situation. Max had only been a kid wanting her dad back in her life and he'd been callously mean, a bully... But Joss also didn't feel she had any right to judge him, she didn't know what she would have done in his position, in his life, in his shoes. She supposed he'd been juggling the situation as best he could, trying to manage his dad's anger, Max's rebellion and Susan's apathy. Joss wanted to believe that part of him had been trying to protect Max too, from having his father's anger directed at her, but she understood it was a wishful belief that wanted to cast him as the hero, when there weren't any in this story, only flawed, hurt people. Maybe this was the best for both Billy and Max, to come to a point of agreement of just not getting involved in each others lives?
"Do you... regret it?" Joss asked softly.
"Regret what?" Billy threw the words at her.
"Being so hard on her?"
"Sometimes," he admitted, but continued with his usual graceless snark, "better she learn sooner than later, that life is just one big shit show. You get hurt less if you know everyone can hurt you."
Joss didn't know if he really believed that or if it was just bravado to cover the hurt and guilt, but she somehow knew he did believe the 'sometimes' and that felt like it mattered.
"Your dad is the shit show," Joss breathed.
"Yeah, maybe." Billy glanced over at her, his eyes narrowing. "Is that enough juicy drama for you, Tanner?" he said, breaking the moment completely, his sudden look of annoyance making Joss back down from any attempts of empathic tenderness instantly.
"Yeah, enough drama," Joss said, and moved her gaze to her fidgeting hands, not wanting to look him in the eyes in that moment.
"Okay, well, I have to lock up and you have to get to work, so let's finish this up."
"Yeah," Joss said, following his lead as he got to his feet. He grabbed her forearm, pulling her up, and for a moment Joss thought he was holding on a little longer than was strictly necessary to make sure she was steady, but he pulled away before she could read any meaning on his face.
She began to follow him out of the door, still feeling stunned from their physical interaction, but somehow even more so by their conversation about his past.
"Oh, Tanner?" he said, suddenly blocking her way through the doorway with a lazy casual barrier of his arm.
"Hmm?" Joss said.
"I'll be by to pick you up after work."
"Okay," Joss shrugged, not seeing the harm.
"Then we'll go back to yours."
"Oh, we will?" Joss said, now grabbing onto her senses enough to question his thought process.
"Yeah." He grinned his most charming grin. "We have some 'basic bed stuff' to work out." He playfully pushed his tongue through slightly parted lips in what Joss took to be an attempt at defusing all the tension between them. It worked and she laughed, pushing past him.
