Unfamiliar Ceilings

It was half an hour later, after Dean and I had gotten back from our little...escapade. I was annoyed, to put it very lightly. He held my hand during the entirety of the short walk back to the enclosure, which now smelled less of weed and a little bit like vomit. He practically threw my hand back into my side as soon as he set foot in there. I don’t know why it annoyed me, it just did.

To put the cherry on top of a perfect event, it seemed that Jay had turned up during our absence, and she jumped up out of her seat beside one of her clone friends to come and greet Dean. Quickly, I guessed that she was the reason he dropped my hand, as soon as he walked over to her and hugged her tight, spinning her in a little circle while she cackled. He planted himself back in his seat beside Jake while she sat on the floor between his legs, his arms slung over her shoulders.

I just rolled my eyes and walked away. Right past them and over to the opposite side of the enclosure so I could sit with Anna and Johnny, both of whom were trying to coax Jenna into letting go of Johnny’s arm and let her friend take her home because she was too drunk. That explained the vomit smell.

So, there I am, just sitting between Anna and Johnny while they talked to all their closest friends. I spent the last half hour looking like somebody had tried force feeding me Cod Liver Oil. Why did I feel so bad because he fucked me off for Jay? I mean, why would I care? I don’t like him, I hardly even knew him. It was weird.

“What’s up with you?” Johnny asked, now sharply shaking his arm in an attempt to get rid of Jenna.

“Am I really that transparent?”

“Indeedy.” Johnny laughed at me and gave his arm another sharp tug, freeing himself from her grasp and sending her tumbling backwards onto the floor. He didn’t need to tell her to fuck off, because before he knew it she was up and flouncing away with her friend in tow.

“I think I want to go home,” I mumbled, pushing my hand through my hair and glancing over at Dean. “I feel sick.”

Johnny nodded slowly and smiled at me. “Come on then, I’m bored anyway. You can stay the night at ours if you want, and then tell me what’s really wrong.”

I laughed and narrowed my eyes at him. “Deal, so long as your lovely brother stays put.”

Johnny nodded solemnly and stood up, said goodbye to his friends and held his hand out for me to follow him. People said bye to me, most of which hadn’t even set eyes on me before. I glanced very, very discreetly over my shoulder as we walked away and saw them sitting together, Dean’s arm loosely around her shoulder and their mouths currently eating each others faces off.

*****

“Is this really, honestly that confusing for you to understand, Johnny?” I asked, raising my eyebrows incredulously at him. I’d called at home to let Mark know I was staying there.

“Yeah!” he said, throwing his hands up in frustration. We’d gotten back there a little while after six in the evening, and decided we should just watch films until we thought of something better to do. I was thankful, because it prolonged the interrogation I was bound to get off him. We were currently situated in the middle of Johnny’s double bed, him in a pair of bright, quirky Hawaiian shorts that should never, ever be allowed to see the light of day and a white vest. I was in an old pair of plaid boxer shorts that were too long on me and the blue vest top I’d worn that day. We were watching The Butterfly Effect and I had to pause it several times to explain things to him.

“Why do you have it if you don’t understand it?” I laughed, flicking the side of his head. “It’s so easy to get.”

“It’s Dean’s and I’ve never seen it before, so shut up!” he said, rolling his eyes and shaking his head. “Anyway, we’ve got bigger things to talk about.”

Oh, no.

“So, what was wrong before?”

I glared at him playfully and sighed, pushing my hair away from my face again. “Nothing, really.”

“I know there was something, tell me.” Does persistence run in this family or something? I just rolled over and put my face into Johnny’s pillow. He hit me on the back of the head with the other one and I looked up at his impatient face.

“I don’t want to,” my voice was still all muffled by the pillow. He crossed his arms over his chest and gave me this really stern look. The kind of look my mother would give me when I forgot to bring a glass down from my bedroom or something.

“Okay, I’ll guess. Dean did something? Said something?” he asked. “You were perfectly fine before you walked off with him.”

I lifted my head briefly to nod a little bit, before dropping my head back into the pillow and mumbling, “Yup.”

“So,” he said, drawing out the “o”. “What happened?”

I sighed and pushed my head out of my pillow to sit cross legged in front of him. He copied my actions and we sat knee to knee as I told him exactly what had happened and how it happened before it turned back into the Spanish Inquisition. Johnny listened; a little bit too intently, and smiled like the Cheshire cat through the most part, up until I told him what pissed me off.

“I thought you’d be annoyed that he kissed you,” he chuckled.

I shrugged. “I am, now. He seemed to just, not like Jay at all, so it was really two-faced.”

“Oh,” he laughed harshly. “Dean hates Jay. Trust me.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Your brother has serious mental issues, and I believe you should have him incarcerated in the nearest psychiatric ward.”

“I’ve been saying that for years,” he smiled. “I don’t know how to explain it to you though. There are a few things that could be going on and most people never know what’s going through Dean’s head. I only do because he’s my brother.” He paused for a few moments and thought a bit more.

“I suppose there are three possible answers,” he said, stroking his chin slightly. “One could be that he actually does like you – and before you protest, he thinks you’re a babe so shut up. The second, maybe he just wants a shag, no strings attached, that’s why he dropped you and went for Jay. The third, he could just be being Dean, in which case, you need to be careful with him.”

“Why would I have to be careful? I’m not involved with him, I probably never will be and I don’t want to be.”

“Because he’s a prick when he’s being Dean,” Johnny said, raising his brow. “And don’t lie to me again, yeah? If you didn’t want to be involved, you wouldn’t have gotten so annoyed over it.”

Okay, that was true. I fell backwards onto the mattress and covered my face with my hands. He was right, plus if I really, truly didn’t want to get myself involved with somebody like him, I would never have let him into my life, never mind kiss him. My head was all over the place and I couldn’t think straight after a while.

I like him, but I dislike him. He’s gorgeous, but he’s got the personality of a porcupine crossed with a fox. He sent me running the other way, but I wanted to be closer. God, I really am going insane.

“Don’t think about it too much,” Johnny smiled. “You’ll just go mental.”

“It sounds like this happens a lot?”

He just shrugged and said, “Let’s just watch the rest of this stupid film.”

*****

I woke up with Johnny’s elbow poking into the side of my head uncomfortably. I shifted away slowly and almost fell off the side of the bed. Johnny was skinny, but bloody hell, did he hog a bed. He was sprawled out and completely and utterly dead to the world. My temple ached slightly from his pointy elbow and I grabbed the pillow I’d been sleeping on to fling it at his head.
Nothing.

I stood up off the floor and stretched my arms up over my head, my tongue poking out of my mouth a little bit as I yawned deeply. I crept out of the room, trying to find a way to some kind of bathroom. I could hear Johnny’s parents downstairs chatting monotonously and preparing for another day of work, I assumed. I crept along the empty landing, as quiet as I possibly could as I passed Dean’s room. I was just about to turn the handle to what was more than likely a bathroom when the door to my left opened.

“What’re you doing here?”

I inhaled – very deeply and very slowly- and turned around to face Dean properly. Obviously it was him, Johnny was more or less passed out in his own bedroom as the other end of the landing. Dean was standing before me in just a pair of boxer shorts. I’m starting to think he considers himself a nudist in his own home.

Yeah, like life wasn’t complicated enough.

“I stayed the night.”

Dean raised his eyebrows briefly and chuckled maliciously, then reducing that to his trademark smirk. “Shagging my little brother? Quite the cradle-snatcher, aren’t you?”

My jaw dropped and I felt my eyes go wide before they narrowed in a glare. “No!”

“It was just a joke, Leila, calm down,” he laughed, leaning against the doorframe of his bedroom door. “I know it’s me you want really.”

Okay, too early in the morning for him to be conceited. I rolled my eyes and turned my back on him, heading back on my mission for the bathroom. Big-headed, moronic arsehole. His door clicked shut and I realised I was free. It seemed I had picked the right door, so I sorted myself out and washed my hands and face before making my way back out onto the landing.

“Come in here one minute,” I heard Dean call from inside his room. I stopped walking and looked over my shoulder, considering whether I should or not. “Really, I have something you might want.”

I swear if he’s planning anything inappropriate, I may just have to kick him.

I braced myself and walked into his room. I laughed at the first sight of him, crawling around on the floor with his boxer-clad bum sticking up in the air while he searched under his bed for something. I saw him shake his head at me as he dragged his backpack out from under his bed and began to fish through the various pockets. With his back to me, he stood up slowly and then turned around the face me, keeping his hand behind his back.

“Guess what you forgot to collect?”

I thought for a while. I still had my money, my phone...fuck. Something on my face must’ve identified that I realise I left my iPod with him in the enclosure yesterday and forgot to pick it up when I left, because he smiled and brought it out and handed it over to me.

“I think I flattened the battery,” he laughed. “You’ve got more music than I expected you to know on that thing.”

I laughed. “Full of surprises. Thanks for getting it back to me; I’d be lost without it.”

“Do I get a reward?” he smiled and made this stupid little face. And it was almost cute. Almost.

“Depends.”

“On?”

“What you want?”

He waggled his eyebrows suggestively and smirked again, “Well-”

I held my hand up and cut him off, shaking my head. “Don’t even think about it.”

“Fine,” he laughed, pretending to look extremely heartbroken and disappointed. There was some really long, awkward silence thing going on after that. Well, I found it awkward, he seemed totally at ease, lounging around in his boxers and flaunting off his taut stomach and chest. I then remembered I was wearing his little brother’s old underwear.

Smooth, Leila, real smooth.

I started feeling a bit excited though. I suppose close proximity to Dean, half-naked with the power to do anything I wanted to, because I know he wouldn’t deny me it, caused that. As long as he kept his stupid mouth shut, everything would be okay. I started thinking about yesterday, and then the excitement was quickly extinguished and replaced with annoyance.

“What’s up with you?” Dean asked, bouncing over to his bed and lying down, letting the sun trail across his body from the open window.

“You’re infuriating, you know?” I said simply, planting myself onto his desk chair.

“What I do this time?”

“Yesterday,” I muttered, avoiding his eyes by looking out onto the street from the window. “You kiss me, and then act like I have rabies as soon as Jay shows up. Not that I care, but still.”

Lie. I knew he knew I cared that he did it, that it bothered me. I just wasn’t willing to freely admit it. I heard him chuckle lightly and mumbled something under his breath that I didn’t quite catch. It was probably something I didn’t want to hear anyway.

“Why’d you do it?” I asked, looking at him properly. He was staring up at his ceiling nonchalantly and I saw his shoulders shrug ever so slightly. His eyes flashed to mine and he smirked.

“Because I could.”

I glared at him angrily and got up out of the chair, my iPod clutched so tight in my fist that it might have broken. I was on my way back to the door leading onto the landing and he grabbed my wrist, just like in my first confrontation of him.

“You’re such a pig,” I growled. “You can’t just do things like that to people.”

“But I can,” he smirked. “Because I know you want it just as much as I do.”

I just stared. Okay, had he just completely called me out here? I think so.

I think I was doing that thing, where you have so many things you want to say, but you can’t bring yourself to say them and end up opening and closing your mouth like a fish. Eventually, my composure returned and I narrowed my eyes at him before saying, “No, I didn’t want it, I still don’t.”

He laughed harshly. “You’re such a bad liar, Leila. I could do it again, right now, and you wouldn’t even try to make yourself resist it. I can see it, in the way you look at me, how easily I get under your skin.”

He was bringing himself close again, muttering that last sentence like it was some secret between us. I felt his arm snake sneakily around my waist, and the heat radiating from his bare chest and arms, onto the exposed skin of my shoulders and neck. He was right, entirely right, but I’m not letting him have that satisfaction. His eyes were closing and I realised that then was my only time to act.

I shoved his chest sharply, pulling myself out of the embrace and freeing my wrist in the process. I glared darkly at him from the other side of his bedroom, while he just looked at me and smirked. I muttered a final petty insult and left him there.