[ UGHghhHghhghh. For all that he fucking hates this trip down memory lane, Billy is positively flushed from the sun, a brighter gleam to his eye. He's ditched the leather pants, his layers, the thick warm sweater Oksana gave him weeks ago in favor of a linen shirt that's practically open.
Where half the town is still suffering from weather shock, Billy bounced back in hours. He relishes the sweat on his brow. ]
You know how to ride one of these? [ Tuzik is freshly borrowed from Orest, chestnut coat gleaming and the morning deliveries already in his past. The glassblowers are still hiding from the sun and their furnaces. ]
[She’s turned a shift into a sundress, sleeves ripped off, buttons undone as decently possible. Someone has graciously braided her hair away from her neck.
The horse, is, hm. Yes. She’s chewing her thumb, trying to hide a grin. ] No. But, for the record, I don’t think you’ve ever been hotter than you are right now.
[ He can't stop looking at her. The way her skin's flushed, the way the dress cuts off. The boarding house is right there, he could fuck her in his room, her room, in the woodshed, but— swimming.
And he grins. Preens a little. That's what makes Tuzik chewing on his shirt collars bearable. ]
Come on, babe, I'll help you up.
[ Big words from a city boy who learned to ride by necessity a month ago. Tuzik's velvety nose nudges toward Jem before Billy can help her up. When he noses at Billy's arm, teeth bumping against his skin for a nibble, he says, "Knock it the fuck off." Not something Tuzik wants to do, but, Billy slides on the saddle in front of Jem, hand finding one of hers and wrapping it around him. ] Hold on.
[ Horse riding is bumpy. Luckily, on horseback, it doesn't take long at all to get out toward the lake. ]
[She squeezes around his middle, pressing her cheek into his back while she grins like a giggling maiden. For the first time, somehow, she feels properly medieval. Feels like some girl she might have seen in a painting, galloping off with some scoundrel or stable boy, bumpy ride or not.
It may not be a long ride, but Jem makes the most of it. Enjoys the heat of Billy's back, the slightly damp sweat that clings to her cheek, soaked through his shirt. She thinks about kissing it when the shirt is gone, maybe in the cooler depths of the lake.
When Tuzik comes to a stop, she peels herself reluctantly from Billy's back. Isn't quite sure how to get down gracefully, really. ]
[ He slides down first, turns, smiling coyly up at her. She looks hot, he thinks, even though horses didn't really do anything for him back home. Maybe because he'd never really thought about them after he turned eight and stopped playing cowboys on the playground. She looks wild, like something unreal, her braid loose, her shift sticking to her skin shiny with sweat. ]
I'm not gonna start with the m'lady shit, [ he promises. ] You'd have to go to Munson for that.
[ Still a sore spot. But maybe not so sore. Uncertain. But the quip comes easy, maybe from the sun and the warmth and how fucking good he feels getting his hand in hers, the other on her hip as he helps her slide down. Then he's tugging her toward the water. Off goes his shirt, boots too, and he's undoing his buckle with a jangle when he leers at her. ] Race you.
[There's a delighted little flush to her cheeks when she's helped down, mouth split wide when he strips, shuffles out of his shoes - she stops to step out of her own, bare feet in the dirt.
There's a glint in her eye - devious, competitive, when she says: ] It'll hardly be a race, [and then tugs her arm back, side knocks him and bolts towards the water, cackling as she goes.]
[ Yelled, but gleeful as he charges after her, and she might meet the water first, her feet splashing in first, but Billy thunders in behind her, arms scooping around her middle, pulling her tight to his chest when he spins her around and then—
drops them both into the water down under their heads. It's so hot, but the water is a brisk shock when his head breaks the water laughing. There's probably still ice melting in it toward the middle, the heatwave still scorching through everything. ]
[She screeches with laughter when he grabs her and takes her down. It's so fucking cold, and when she comes back up for air she's chattering even as she laughs, reaching to grab his shoulders and push him back down.
Her shift is soaked; white gone entire transparent against her skin, hair clinging to her face and shoulders as she pushes back to the surface to take it off before she becomes too weighed down. ] You dick, this is so heavy - [and it is. But it's also clinging to her thighs, her hips, her tits, half-pink with the skin shining through. ]
you ever forget where a thread was going.... zooms forward...
Oops. My bad, baby. Whatever are you gonna dooo? [ Cooed, happy and pleased, bright and brilliant like nothing's gonna go wrong. He ducks to kiss her, to press his hands against her wet hips, the sticking fabric, drag his hand against her inner thigh. ] I'll help you get it off, don't worry.
[ Tuzik grazes, and Billy is light and airy even though his chest feels too full, too heavy. They swim, their hands wander, and later, when they're laying on the bank baking with the sun on their naked bodies, Billy turns and sees her expression, waiting, expectant.
He groans. ] You've got to be kidding me.
[ She won't drop it. He knows this. His head tips back up toward the sun, eyelids closed. He sees the warm glow of the back of his eyelids and pretends he's at the beach. Not Rubilykskoye. Not Hawkins. Him and Jem on a beach somewhere. ]
It wasn't like that. I don't even know if he leaned queer. He didn't look in the showers.
[ But there's no denying: ] He was pretty though. I thought about it. Then I beat his face until it looked ground, and we didn't talk after that. Then he hit me with a Cadillac. [ Steve's face, battered and red, set to turn blue is a stark memory. More quietly he says: ] I went too far.
We talked about him, right? In that closet. Like I knew he was - pretty, or whatever, without seeing him.
[She'd made Billy jealous, egged him on, used Steve Harrington's name without really knowing a thing about him. She leans over him, strokes the hair from his face, thumbs away the lingering water droplets on his cheeks and nose. ]
You wanna talk about it? Going too far?
stranger things lore dump..... damn... cw: refs to for assault, threatening behavior and drugging
[ She leans over him, blocks out the sun for a moment, and he squints up at her, eyes crinkling at the corner even though he hates talking about this shit. He looks at her ear, then past that at the blue, blue, so fucking blue sky. If she moves, he'll have the sun in his eyes, but he doesn't mind. ]
It's stupid. Now I know they were... I don't know. Monster hunting? Munson wasn't there so he doesn't know, but, I guess that's what the fucking deal was. We were still really new to town, and Max snuck out. My dad got after me about it, made it my fucking deal, so I had to go hunt her down.
[ That all comes out casual. Got after me about it masks a whole heap of bullshit. ] I found her at this shithole of a house, four boys from the middle school and Steve goddamn Harrington. Who didn't live there.
It was fucking weird okay? I get it, that I went too far, but he fucking lied about her being there. At the end of the day, she just didn't trust me to know about the bullshit— which fair, I wouldn't have trusted me either.
But I went after her little boyfriend, really got in his face, shoved him around, and tried to scare him off, and when Harrington threw himself into it, I just... lost it. He hit me, and it was the funniest thing in the fucking world, you know? Like I'd had a date. I wanted to be on a fucking date. Listening to music, probably getting pussy, and instead, I'm in some shitheap getting clocked by a prom king who's got my sister hostage.
It was so fucking funny I... cracked this plate on his head and wouldn't let up. My knuckles were bruised the next day, all of em purple. Hurt too. But his face was... it was really fucked up. I think I would've kept going too. When I get like that, it's like I can't fucking stop. Like I woulda pushed his nose into skull, really fucked him up or killed him if Max hadn't... stuck me with something. I don't know. I woke up hours later, worst drug come-up of my life.
[ He's not looking at the blue-blue sky anymore, he's looking at the tree line, eyes tilted back to look at the sparce pines and the empty skeletal deciduous trees. ]
[All she can do is listen. He paints a strange, horror-movie-like picture; enough detail for Jem to understand why someone might lash out, ask questions later. There's other details there, the vague brushing over of his father, then the candid honesty of how badly he hurt Steve Harrington, prom king.
She says: ] You found your kid sister in a stranger house with four boys and a kid your age. It sounds sketchy as fuck. It must have looked worse.
[She hasn't pulled away. When I get like that, it's like I can't fucking stop. She understands this most of all, she thinks. That visceral anger; that innate desire to hurt when you're hurting. ] D'you regret it?
I'm supposed to, right? [ The air is hot and humid, and he knows if he rolls over, drags his tongue over her hip it'll be salty with fresh sweat from the warm sun. ]
I think so. It would've been stupid right, killing some guy because I lost it, didn't ask the right questions? She wouldn't've told me though. [ She didn't trust him, and he didn't trust her. ] But yeah. We didn't really talk after that, at school or parties. But I'd just see him, and... feel it in my knuckles.
[ His head tilts up again. ] Just don't know if 'Steve Hargrove' is in the cards. [ You know, for a little blue-eyed baby. ]
Don't go that far. I'm still gunning for Kit-the-Not-Car Hargrove.
[ Then he's grinning at her, mirthful at angling to convince her to name a joke-child after a sentient car, hiding the way he thinks over... the multiverse. Steven and Sue. Who would have thought. Sometimes he and Jem feel too similar, too many shared moments. Maybe it means he can tell her... anything.
He doesn't tell her that his Sue was kind of a stupid bitch. At least, that's what he would've said back home. He hasn't thought about her much here, hasn't recategorized his image of her with what he might know now about people and hurting. ]
I dunno. [ He squints at the way the sun lights up her tresses, turns strips of brown to molten caramel, exposing a million other colors. ] Max never really got it. No clue why, maybe she was just stupid, figured my dad wouldn't hit a girl, figured they weren't related so he'd back off. [ He's frowning now. ] He wasn't going after her, but he would've if he saw her little boyfriend.
[ God, it'd pissed him off so bad. Her not getting it, that she was walking on a knife's edge, and in the meantime, he was the one letting blood. ]
[Airy, curious. She thinks Max Mayfield was probably just very young and very sheltered. She was a year younger than Jem, before Jem became a soldier. In her brief memories, she struggles to recall being that small and that innocent. That … Free. ]
She was a little kid. It's different for girls. He would've called her... you know. Loose. Assumed the worst.
[ Sort of like Billy did that night. The more he reflects on it, the more he hates thinking about it. The rest sits on his tongue like lead. Above them, birds trill, confused by the change in weather. He wonders where they migrate. He says it blandly. ] And he was black. The boyfriend. He would've had something to say about that. And I don't know. I don't think she believed it. That it'd be... bad.
[She thinks: god, what a cunt. She hopes Neil Hargove dies early, hopes it's a terrible death, fitting for a terrible man. She hopes it hurts him half as much as he's hurt Billy, or what he might have done to a little girl for simply committing the crime of talking to a black boy.
She kisses Billy's nose. ] She might have thought he wouldn't do anything, just to keep up appearances. But kids don't always know that there's more than one way to hurt a person.
[She kisses his cheek. His jaw. ] I don't think she knew how much you were shielding her from, did she? And you - you were hurting. For so long.
He wouldn't have done anything outside the house. For appearances. [ He can agree with Jem about that, but it hangs obviously in the air: he would have done or said plenty at home. Max just didn't think she'd get it too. Didn't know it just took one inciting incident for Neil to explode. For it to become the new normal.
Jem kisses him and he feels the warmth of her, more comforting than even the heavy beating of the sun. ]
You're giving me too much credit. I was a real asshole. [ He tilts his head up, kisses the corner of her mouth. Laughs a little, corrects: ] Am.
You’re a softie under all of that, though. You picked me up on a horse.
[This is true. Whatever flaws that came before them are for the past. This Billy, the one kissing her jaw, who strokes her hair, who holds her at night, is something newer. Something reshaped, sanded down a little. ]
Did you still want to kiss Steve Harrington, after all of that?
Hey— I'm dying for something with more than one horsepower.
[ Somewhere in the multiverse, the Z28 waits for him. He wonders if he'll ever get his hands on a ride like that again. Plus, he really misses the memory of fucking Jem in the back seat.
Then his grin turns into a pained wince. ]
God. No. It's not like— listen, you were in a weird gay heaven with sugar mommies, free drugs, and collars for cannibals. Back home... [ It wasn't up to Billy. ] That town would've eaten me alive. He would've, if he knew.
[ At least, that's what he thinks. Hell, it's what he would've done given the reverse, if Harrington was a queer and Billy needed dirt... But, he wasn't. And home wasn't kind to people like him and Jem. ]
I mean, it sounds like he wouldn't have been much of a fight.
[Sorry, Steve. ] Y'know, I - where I grew up wasn't really a great a representation of the future. But it was legal, y'now. Gay marriage. Most people stopped giving a shit. Eudio was - exceptional. Paradise. But home, it wasn't always easy. So I get it.
[She noses in against him, pecks his mouth. ] My first kiss was my best friend, Lisa, before she went on holiday with her parents. I spent a week shitting myself that she'd never talk to me again when she got back.
[ See? This is why he loves her. She hasn't even met Steve Harrington, and she already knows he ain't shit.
But— no one's actually told him it's legal later on. He heard it gets 'better,' or whatever, but— he mulls that over. Doesn't act on it. Doesn't push her for answers or more information, just screws up his brow and thinks about it. He can't picture it, or— maybe he can, after living here. But not with men like his father in power.
Luckily, she makes it easy for him to grin up at her instead of staying dour: ] Yeah?
Did she talk to you again? Did she come back and want to practice kissing some more?
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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You can have the details. They're not exciting.
You ready?
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Wait outside.
[ UGHghhHghhghh. For all that he fucking hates this trip down memory lane, Billy is positively flushed from the sun, a brighter gleam to his eye. He's ditched the leather pants, his layers, the thick warm sweater Oksana gave him weeks ago in favor of a linen shirt that's practically open.
Where half the town is still suffering from weather shock, Billy bounced back in hours. He relishes the sweat on his brow. ]
You know how to ride one of these? [ Tuzik is freshly borrowed from Orest, chestnut coat gleaming and the morning deliveries already in his past. The glassblowers are still hiding from the sun and their furnaces. ]
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The horse, is, hm. Yes. She’s chewing her thumb, trying to hide a grin. ] No. But, for the record, I don’t think you’ve ever been hotter than you are right now.
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And he grins. Preens a little. That's what makes Tuzik chewing on his shirt collars bearable. ]
Come on, babe, I'll help you up.
[ Big words from a city boy who learned to ride by necessity a month ago. Tuzik's velvety nose nudges toward Jem before Billy can help her up. When he noses at Billy's arm, teeth bumping against his skin for a nibble, he says, "Knock it the fuck off." Not something Tuzik wants to do, but, Billy slides on the saddle in front of Jem, hand finding one of hers and wrapping it around him. ] Hold on.
[ Horse riding is bumpy. Luckily, on horseback, it doesn't take long at all to get out toward the lake. ]
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It may not be a long ride, but Jem makes the most of it. Enjoys the heat of Billy's back, the slightly damp sweat that clings to her cheek, soaked through his shirt. She thinks about kissing it when the shirt is gone, maybe in the cooler depths of the lake.
When Tuzik comes to a stop, she peels herself reluctantly from Billy's back. Isn't quite sure how to get down gracefully, really. ]
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I'm not gonna start with the m'lady shit, [ he promises. ] You'd have to go to Munson for that.
[ Still a sore spot. But maybe not so sore. Uncertain. But the quip comes easy, maybe from the sun and the warmth and how fucking good he feels getting his hand in hers, the other on her hip as he helps her slide down. Then he's tugging her toward the water. Off goes his shirt, boots too, and he's undoing his buckle with a jangle when he leers at her. ] Race you.
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There's a glint in her eye - devious, competitive, when she says: ] It'll hardly be a race, [and then tugs her arm back, side knocks him and bolts towards the water, cackling as she goes.]
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[ Yelled, but gleeful as he charges after her, and she might meet the water first, her feet splashing in first, but Billy thunders in behind her, arms scooping around her middle, pulling her tight to his chest when he spins her around and then—
drops them both into the water down under their heads. It's so hot, but the water is a brisk shock when his head breaks the water laughing. There's probably still ice melting in it toward the middle, the heatwave still scorching through everything. ]
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Her shift is soaked; white gone entire transparent against her skin, hair clinging to her face and shoulders as she pushes back to the surface to take it off before she becomes too weighed down. ] You dick, this is so heavy - [and it is. But it's also clinging to her thighs, her hips, her tits, half-pink with the skin shining through. ]
you ever forget where a thread was going.... zooms forward...
[ Tuzik grazes, and Billy is light and airy even though his chest feels too full, too heavy. They swim, their hands wander, and later, when they're laying on the bank baking with the sun on their naked bodies, Billy turns and sees her expression, waiting, expectant.
He groans. ] You've got to be kidding me.
[ She won't drop it. He knows this. His head tips back up toward the sun, eyelids closed. He sees the warm glow of the back of his eyelids and pretends he's at the beach. Not Rubilykskoye. Not Hawkins. Him and Jem on a beach somewhere. ]
It wasn't like that. I don't even know if he leaned queer. He didn't look in the showers.
[ But there's no denying: ] He was pretty though. I thought about it. Then I beat his face until it looked ground, and we didn't talk after that. Then he hit me with a Cadillac. [ Steve's face, battered and red, set to turn blue is a stark memory. More quietly he says: ] I went too far.
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[She'd made Billy jealous, egged him on, used Steve Harrington's name without really knowing a thing about him. She leans over him, strokes the hair from his face, thumbs away the lingering water droplets on his cheeks and nose. ]
You wanna talk about it? Going too far?
stranger things lore dump..... damn... cw: refs to for assault, threatening behavior and drugging
It's stupid. Now I know they were... I don't know. Monster hunting? Munson wasn't there so he doesn't know, but, I guess that's what the fucking deal was. We were still really new to town, and Max snuck out. My dad got after me about it, made it my fucking deal, so I had to go hunt her down.
[ That all comes out casual. Got after me about it masks a whole heap of bullshit. ] I found her at this shithole of a house, four boys from the middle school and Steve goddamn Harrington. Who didn't live there.
It was fucking weird okay? I get it, that I went too far, but he fucking lied about her being there. At the end of the day, she just didn't trust me to know about the bullshit— which fair, I wouldn't have trusted me either.
But I went after her little boyfriend, really got in his face, shoved him around, and tried to scare him off, and when Harrington threw himself into it, I just... lost it. He hit me, and it was the funniest thing in the fucking world, you know? Like I'd had a date. I wanted to be on a fucking date. Listening to music, probably getting pussy, and instead, I'm in some shitheap getting clocked by a prom king who's got my sister hostage.
It was so fucking funny I... cracked this plate on his head and wouldn't let up. My knuckles were bruised the next day, all of em purple. Hurt too. But his face was... it was really fucked up. I think I would've kept going too. When I get like that, it's like I can't fucking stop. Like I woulda pushed his nose into skull, really fucked him up or killed him if Max hadn't... stuck me with something. I don't know. I woke up hours later, worst drug come-up of my life.
[ He's not looking at the blue-blue sky anymore, he's looking at the tree line, eyes tilted back to look at the sparce pines and the empty skeletal deciduous trees. ]
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She says: ] You found your kid sister in a stranger house with four boys and a kid your age. It sounds sketchy as fuck. It must have looked worse.
[She hasn't pulled away. When I get like that, it's like I can't fucking stop. She understands this most of all, she thinks. That visceral anger; that innate desire to hurt when you're hurting. ] D'you regret it?
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I think so. It would've been stupid right, killing some guy because I lost it, didn't ask the right questions? She wouldn't've told me though. [ She didn't trust him, and he didn't trust her. ] But yeah. We didn't really talk after that, at school or parties. But I'd just see him, and... feel it in my knuckles.
[ His head tilts up again. ] Just don't know if 'Steve Hargrove' is in the cards. [ You know, for a little blue-eyed baby. ]
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[She pauses. Snorts. ] Your step mum - she was a Sue too, right? Like my mum. That’s so weird. Coincidences.
[Steve. Susan. A shared birthday. Maybe Jem was Billy, in another life. Maybe she is him, now. ] Do - d’you wanna talk about why you were so angry?
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[ Then he's grinning at her, mirthful at angling to convince her to name a joke-child after a sentient car, hiding the way he thinks over... the multiverse. Steven and Sue. Who would have thought. Sometimes he and Jem feel too similar, too many shared moments. Maybe it means he can tell her... anything.
He doesn't tell her that his Sue was kind of a stupid bitch. At least, that's what he would've said back home. He hasn't thought about her much here, hasn't recategorized his image of her with what he might know now about people and hurting. ]
I dunno. [ He squints at the way the sun lights up her tresses, turns strips of brown to molten caramel, exposing a million other colors. ] Max never really got it. No clue why, maybe she was just stupid, figured my dad wouldn't hit a girl, figured they weren't related so he'd back off. [ He's frowning now. ] He wasn't going after her, but he would've if he saw her little boyfriend.
[ God, it'd pissed him off so bad. Her not getting it, that she was walking on a knife's edge, and in the meantime, he was the one letting blood. ]
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[Airy, curious. She thinks Max Mayfield was probably just very young and very sheltered. She was a year younger than Jem, before Jem became a soldier. In her brief memories, she struggles to recall being that small and that innocent. That … Free. ]
ref to life with an abusive parent, and racism
[ Sort of like Billy did that night. The more he reflects on it, the more he hates thinking about it. The rest sits on his tongue like lead. Above them, birds trill, confused by the change in weather. He wonders where they migrate. He says it blandly. ] And he was black. The boyfriend. He would've had something to say about that. And I don't know. I don't think she believed it. That it'd be... bad.
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She kisses Billy's nose. ] She might have thought he wouldn't do anything, just to keep up appearances. But kids don't always know that there's more than one way to hurt a person.
[She kisses his cheek. His jaw. ] I don't think she knew how much you were shielding her from, did she? And you - you were hurting. For so long.
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Jem kisses him and he feels the warmth of her, more comforting than even the heavy beating of the sun. ]
You're giving me too much credit. I was a real asshole. [ He tilts his head up, kisses the corner of her mouth. Laughs a little, corrects: ] Am.
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[This is true. Whatever flaws that came before them are for the past. This Billy, the one kissing her jaw, who strokes her hair, who holds her at night, is something newer. Something reshaped, sanded down a little. ]
Did you still want to kiss Steve Harrington, after all of that?
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[ Somewhere in the multiverse, the Z28 waits for him. He wonders if he'll ever get his hands on a ride like that again. Plus, he really misses the memory of fucking Jem in the back seat.
Then his grin turns into a pained wince. ]
God. No. It's not like— listen, you were in a weird gay heaven with sugar mommies, free drugs, and collars for cannibals. Back home... [ It wasn't up to Billy. ] That town would've eaten me alive. He would've, if he knew.
[ At least, that's what he thinks. Hell, it's what he would've done given the reverse, if Harrington was a queer and Billy needed dirt... But, he wasn't. And home wasn't kind to people like him and Jem. ]
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[Sorry, Steve. ] Y'know, I - where I grew up wasn't really a great a representation of the future. But it was legal, y'now. Gay marriage. Most people stopped giving a shit. Eudio was - exceptional. Paradise. But home, it wasn't always easy. So I get it.
[She noses in against him, pecks his mouth. ] My first kiss was my best friend, Lisa, before she went on holiday with her parents. I spent a week shitting myself that she'd never talk to me again when she got back.
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But— no one's actually told him it's legal later on. He heard it gets 'better,' or whatever, but— he mulls that over. Doesn't act on it. Doesn't push her for answers or more information, just screws up his brow and thinks about it. He can't picture it, or— maybe he can, after living here. But not with men like his father in power.
Luckily, she makes it easy for him to grin up at her instead of staying dour: ] Yeah?
Did she talk to you again? Did she come back and want to practice kissing some more?
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