five. times. kissed.
meme; five times kissed for a drabble about five times our muses kissed
I.
They run in similar circles, are always at the same parties; she’s heard his name plenty of times and has seen him around almost as much. Knows he parties just as hard as she does, knows he has a habit of taking girls to bed and not looking at them twice afterwards.
It’s weird, she thinks, that this is the first time we’ve interacted. It’s one of many thoughts swirling in her alcohol drowned mind.
It happens like this;
She’s sixteen and he’s freshly seventeen and they’re both trashed ( y’know the typical american love story ). It starts with a simple question ‘ can you hand me another beer ’ and ends up in a locked bedroom; her straddling his lap with his lips attached to her neck and his hands seem to impossibly be EVERYWHERE, hers are holding his shirt so tightly her knuckles are white. And through drunken urges her mind can’t hold off she’s cradling his head in both hands,
“ You’re going to care. ”
She doesn’t know what she’s talking about, what she’s referring to, it’s just drunken nonsense. She doesn’t think he knows either, doesn’t think either of them care. And then he’s surging forward, his lips meeting hers and she doesn’t even attempt to think the rest of the night.
II.
Their little fling had been a popular topic of discussion among their peers for awhile. The King and Queen of the party scene had finally collided - interesting enough for gossip hungry teenagers, but the real shocker was the fact he looked twice; that he didn’t pull his vanishing act with her. Disappoint spread throughout the kingdom when it became apparent what they had wasn’t a relationship, that their night together didn’t produce an official power-couple, but instead an epic friendship.
A few months later and the curtain opens on the familiar setting of a party, a house packed with teenagers and booze and unnecessarily loud and shitty music. Their friendship had come so naturally she almost thought it’d always be easy around him. She decides to trash that train of thought as she stands with the crowd forming around Aaron and some other boy she didn’t know.
His fist connects with bloodied flesh again and again and she’s screaming. Pleading for him to stop. One of her shouts seems to snap the rage right out of him. She doesn’t say anything when she ushers him into the bathroom to wipe the blood off of him.
He doesn’t answer her when she asks what the boy did to deserve that.
She kisses his knuckles when all the blood is gone. She wonders how many more times she’ll see them used to bring pain to someone else. She tries to stop her gaze from landing on her own knuckles; she wonders the same thing.
III.
His mom dies, hers had been gone for years.
It’s three thirty AM on a school night and she’s on his bed, holding him as he lays in her lap. His body shakes and all she can do is kiss the top of his head and repeat over and over that she’s here, that she’s not going anywhere.
She never wants to feel that useless again.
IV.
They’re older now. She’s eighteen and he’s a few days shy of nineteen. And they are currently such a cliché it’d be laugh worthy, that is if that weren’t too drunk to realize what a fucking cliché they were.
Laying next to each other in the grass, eyes fixed on the sky full of stars. The wind blows, the grass sways and leaves ride along on the breeze. Suddenly she’s feeling the weight of her insignificance all at once and she’s reaching out for his hand.
Everything is spinning and she’s not sure if it’s the alcohol or her thoughts causing it. She asks him, pleading and desperate and vulnerable in a way she only is with him, to tell her that he loves her ( you don’t have to mean it. i just want to hear it, just wanna pretend for a minute ). She never takes her eyes off the sky.
He says it. More convincingly than she would have expected; or maybe the booze is making him seem like a better liar.
But he says it. Maybe repeatedly, maybe she’s just hearing an echo in her head. She squeezes his hand. His brings both to his mouth and kisses the back of her hand ( she swears she feels his lips moving, thinks he’s mumbling something against her skin, she can’t make it out ).
She lets a few tears roll down the sides of her face. She closes her eyes, gets control of herself once more and turns her head towards him, a smile on her face that’s only practically forced.
She thanks him. Tells him he’s a good friend. The word tastes bitter in the back of her throat. She spends the next half hour throwing up behind her shed with one of his hands holding her hair and the other rubbing circles into her back.
V.
Everything happens in such a short period of time it makes her head hurt. Actually, it makes every goddamn inch of her body hurt. She starts staying home. The only time she leaves is to go to school, it’s her senior year after all. She won’t let herself fail now.
Then she fucks up her new routine only a few weeks later. To go and see him. It’s emotionally draining but at least now she knows where she stands.
A few days later is when the cat first shows up. It takes her another three before she decides it’s not going to kill her even if it is basically stalking her. A week and a half into this new and beautiful friendship, the cat lays in her lap with his eyes on her like he’s actually paying attention while she rants on and on about a stupid boy who turned her entire world upside down.
She’s so caught up in the venting process she doesn’t notice that in her ramble she’d gone and told the cat she loves the boy. She told the cat before him, even before she’d been able to admit it aloud to herself.
She laughs about it. Laughs about all of the ridiculous shit that was her life now. She laughs for the first time since Aaron had told her everything.
Marcella thanks the cat for freaking existing, kisses the top of his head and puts him on the floor gently.
( she punches aaron in the face when he explains all of his abilities to her months later )
