Status: Complete
Save Yourself, I'll Hold Them Back
The House
“Fuck, this burns,” Bob hisses, allowing Anette to support him while they hobble towards an abandoned house. His hand is pressed over the burning wound. It’s spread to just larger than the palm of his hand and is a sickly charred black and red. Gerard had almost passed out at the sight of it and is now having his elbow held by Mikey because he’s stumbling from queasiness and exhaustion.
“We’ll ice it, that should stop the burning,” Anette assures him, even though she has no idea if it will work or not. “Come on, in you get.”
They stagger into the house and the kitchen. Everything is coated in a thick layer of dust. Anette sets Bob down in a creaky chair and looks about the kitchen. The one window is letting in a considerable amount of moonlight. Along that wall is a counter with a sink that, upon inspection, doesn’t give water. In the corner is a fridge that isn’t plugged in and is empty. Anette sighs. Where the hell is she going to get some ice from?
She hears Frank, Mikey and Gerard all stumble into the house and go to explore it. A few moments later, Ray walks in the door from parking the van.
“Anette, I think there’s an ice box out by where I parked. I’ll take care of Bob if you want to check it out,” he says. Anette nods and goes back outside.
There’s a slight breeze, but it feels good after the day of heat. The moon is bathing everything in a light that would have been beautiful any other night. But Anette can’t see that beauty tonight. She’s too full of worry and exhaustion to care.
She follows the tire tracks around the house to where the van has been skillfully hidden from the road. With luck, they can hide out here for a few hours without being discovered by Korse or the Draculoids. Anette starts poking around, looking for the ice box. She hopes Ray is right.
And he is. The ice box is against part of the house, just in front of the van. She opens it with a grunt and is pleased to see that it’s the one thing running off of a battery and is therefore cold. After she balances the lid against the house, she digs in to the ice and gets several good-sized chunks. Nothing is uniform, but at this point it doesn’t matter. As long as it helps Bob get better, Anette doesn’t care how cold her hands are or how awkward looking the ice is.
When she gets back, Ray has found an old shirt somewhere and has ripped it up to make bandages. Anette warps the ice in one of these and goes to press it on Bob’s skin. The burn is even bigger.
“This’ll hurt, but it should help,” she tells him. He just nods and grits his teeth, and when she presses the make-shift cold pack to the burned flesh, he takes a deep and sharp breath.
“It’s working,” Ray comments, gently pressing his fingers around the wound. “It’s stopped expanding, anyways. I’ve never seen a burn work like this before.”
It takes probably an hour of icing before the wound is completely extinguished, and it leaves them with a puddle of water. Then Ray goes and digs a First Aid kit out of the van. It’s out of gauze, but he grabs the tweezers and says, “This is going to fucking hurt.”
“Just do whatever so it heals faster,” Bob pants. Ray nods, and he starts peeling blackened flesh off of Bob’s arm.
Anette leaves the room almost immediately. She can’t stand to hear Bob trying to hold back screams. And anyways, she thought she had seen an aloe plant outside. She’d get some for the burns before they wrapped him up. As she walks, she wonders if Mikey, Frank, or Gerard is asleep. She hopes they are, but she doubts it. Personally, Anette feels too scared and hyped up to sleep, even though she knows she’s exhausted. She wishes they could just stop running, just give up, but from what Bob had told her a few years ago, she knew that death was better than being at the mercy of a SCARECROW or Better Living. He wouldn’t tell her exactly what they did, but the look in his eye had meant that it wasn’t worth trying to survive.
She finds the plant and tears off enough to cover Bob’s wound, then walks back inside. Ray’s almost done there, and in the cloth that held the ice is bits of dead skin. “Last piece,” Ray promises before peeling Bob’s arm clean and revealing the raw flesh beneath it. Bob grips the arm of the chair with his free hand and pants.
“Fuck that hurt,” he mutters. “Am I good now?”
“Almost,” Anette says, peeling the plant apart to get at the ointment inside. She daubs it on the wound, then binds it with the cleanest strip of cloth she can find. “There.”
“I’ll take him from here,” Ray says, and he helps Bob up and walks him out of the kitchen to find a spare room where he can sleep.
-
Anette is sitting at the table, exhausted. She’s finished cleaning up the kitchen and is slumped in the chair, fighting sleep. Ray comes back into the room, running his hands through his curly hair.
“Bob’s asleep. So are Frank and Mikey.”
“And Gee?” Anette asks, looking up at him. She can see the dark circles under his eyes, and she guesses she doesn’t look much better, possibly worse because she has lighter skin.
“Dunno. Go find him though. You need him.” Anette starts, but Ray smiles wearily. “Come on, Anette. We all know you two have a thing.”
“But—”
“Bob’s okay with it, you know. He thinks it’s good for both of you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, but if I were you, I would keep the, uh… public affection to a minimum, ‘kay?”
“Got it,” Anette replies, and after she yawns and stands, she walks down the hallway to try and find Gerard. The creaky, wooden floor is covered in dust with lots of scrape marks and footprints in it, and she follows one set all the way down the hall and into the last room on the right.
The room is pretty bare except for the old bed centered along the right wall and the lump of dusty quilts on it that apparently contains Gerard. Anette can hear his shallow breathing, breaking the dead quiet of the night. She walks as quietly as possible over to him and sits gingerly on the edge of the bed, wincing as the springs creak. She can just see the back of Gerard’s head, his black hair greasy and stringy and messy. Anette reaches out to run her fingers through it. She hopes it won’t wake him up.
The moment she touches his hair, he shoots up out of bed and grabs her shoulders, his fingers digging into her muscles. His eyes are crazy and alert, but have a strange amber tint to them. Maybe it’s the light. “What is it, what’s wrong?” he practically yells, trying to get out from under the quilts while keeping a hold of Anette.
It takes her a moment to recover her breath, lost from Gerard’s sudden… aggression. But she sets her own hands on his shoulders and starts to gently push him back into the bed. “It’s alright, Gerard. I promise.” Her voice sounds shaky, but she tries to keep it under control. He needs that from her right now.
When they lock eyes, Gerard’s jaw goes slack and he makes some sort of strangled noise like he can’t find his voice. His eyes are really starting to worry Anette. Do they change color when he’s sleep deprived? They’re still that amber instead of hazel. Finally, he gets some words out. “Was I… was I a-asleep?”
“Yes,” Anette says. Gerard’s grip is hurting her, and she can feel him shaking through it. Carefully, she sets her hands on his face and rubs her thumbs on his temples, small circles that make him close his eyes and shudder again. “Please go back to sleep. I’m sorry I woke you.”
His eyes open again, feebly. “Mikey? Where’s Mikey?”
Now he’s got that look like a small, scared animal, and Anette’s heart feels like it’s going to break. Lips trembling, she says, “M-Mikey is with Frank. They’re both okay, too. But we might have to leave s-soon, so you should try and sleep, alright?”
Gerard pulls her closer jerkily, and Anette has to steady herself against the mattress so she doesn’t head-butt him. Their noses are almost touching. “I just… when I close my eyes, I see… I see…”
Anette knows exactly what he means. “Me too. Every time,” she assures him. His eyes are still wild, but he looks more relaxed, possibly. So she decides to leave, to let him sleep in peace.
But when she moves, he grips her even tighter and she has to fight to hold back a wince. “No!” he yells, but it isn’t angry. It’s scared. “Please… don’t. I can’t… I can’t…”
“Can’t what?” Anette prompts.
“I don’t think I can sleep without you.”
“Alright... I’ll stay.” She leans down and kisses him, some blonde hair falling off her shoulder and tickling his face. Gerard lets go of her and she lies next to him, letting him practically crush her against himself and bury his nose in her hair. But Anette’s alright with whatever he wants to do, as long as he’ll just sleep.
-
Ray stays up all night this time. He doesn’t want to bother Anette and Gerard on the off-chance Gerard might be sleeping, but he does check up on Mikey and Frank in the other bedroom. They’re both asleep, but Mikey’s hand in just inches from the nightstand and his knife, open and ready to use. Frank isn’t frowning in his sleep, which is a good thing. So Ray leaves them to check on Bob.
Ray did the best he could with Bob, considering there were no more bedrooms. He found a stash of blankets in a cabinet that smelled like mold, but they would have to do. He made Bob a bed of them on the decrepit couch and the moment Bob had closed his eyes, he was out. Ray had stayed for a moment, running his fingers through Bob’s too-blonde hair, and then left. The image of Bob’s ravaged arm was stinging Ray’s heart.
But Ray can find neither sleep nor a place to sleep. Instead, he explores the house, turning up an old radio. After digging in the van for maybe half an hour, he returns triumphant with batteries and gets the radio working. He lingers on a news channel for a while, hoping not to hear anything. Sports, weather… news of the gas station exploding. But all of it is recorded, not live. And that’s fine, considering it’s three in the morning by this point. As a bonus, the station said that they had no idea what was going on or why the explosion occurred. Good. So BL didn’t want the public involved in the man-hunt just yet.
Satisfied, Ray changes the channel, and keeps channel surfing for almost an hour. He goes from Mexican soaps (he stays here for almost half an hour because he can kind of figure out what they’re saying and it’s such a sweet escape) to a channel dedicated to advertising BL products (like they need it) to something in… Russian, maybe? It sounded strange.
Until finally, Ray comes upon a music channel, the only one he’s been able to get since they really left the city. “This is 109 coming to you live for the early birds. Doctor Death-Defying is back, rock stars, and we are bringing you this song straight from the desert.”
Ray is intrigued, and stays on the channel until sunrise. He sits there and watches the sky outside, letting the music flow gently through the kitchen, music he had never heard before and believed had been outlawed on public radio. It tells stories of life, love, suffering, death, and hope. Hope was what they really needed now.
-
Mikey is the first one up, and he and Ray start making a sort of breakfast at around six-thirty. Soon Frank stumbles in, and then Bob, who looks like hell. He’s pale and shaky and needs more rest, but food first.
Ray waits until seven to go get Anette and Gerard. He pushes their door open, cringing when it creaks loudly. He sticks his head in to find them on the bed together. Gerard is face-down next to Anette, an arm wrapped around her waist, whereas Anette is on her back, staring at the ceiling. She turns her head to look at Ray and give him a soft smile. “Time to go?” she asks.
Ray has to unstick his throat to form a reply, but it comes even later when he sees that on Anette’s pale shoulders are purple bruises shaped like fingers. What the fuck did Gerard do to her? “Yes. We’ve got breakfast and then we’ve got to run.”
“Be there in a few,” Anette says, and Ray closes the door, frowning.
-
“Gerard? Gee, time to get up.”
Anette reaches over and runs her free fingers through his hair. Her other hand is currently trapped under his body, on the verge of overheating or losing circulation.
“Mmm?” Gerard grunts, rolling slightly and opening his eyes. They’re back to their normal, darker hazel. Anette sighs at this. She wouldn’t have known what to do if they were still that odd amber color.
“Ray says food’s ready and then we have to get going,” Anette says gently, trying to wriggle out from under him.
“Oka—”
Gerard stops and is gazing at her intensely, shocked. “What?” she asks, confused.
“When… when did you get those?” he asks quietly, but she can tell he is furious.
She has no idea whether to answer truthfully or not. “Last night.”
“When last night?”
“When you… when you woke up.”
Now it’s Gerard’s turn to be confused. “I woke up?”
“You don’t remember it?”
“No. Did I do that to you?” He’s panicking now.
“It’s fine, Gee, it doesn’t hurt.”
“What the fuck, Anette, what did I do?”
“I mean, I accidently woke you and you freaked out and grabbed me—”
“Shit—”
“—but it was just because you were scared.”
“That’s no fucking excuse. God, Anette, I could have really hurt you—”
“You weren’t yourself,” she says firmly. She hopes he won’t keep arguing – she isn’t sure how he would react to his eyes changing color. And if he didn’t remember waking up even…
That electric feeling of Gerard’s lips on her shoulder interrupts her thoughts. He kisses her bruises like each one could make it better, make them a little lighter. “Anette, I… you don’t hate me?”
“Of course not.” This is silly to her, absolutely preposterous. “Gerard, I could never hate you.”
“Are you—”
Anette cuts him off with a kiss, one that catches him off guard, steals his breath away, makes him moan. One of her hands softly rubs against his jaw and he tangles his fingers in her hair, not caring that it hasn’t been washed because it still smells like her. Gerard is kissing her hungrily, wanting more and more, pressing their bodies together and trying to hide her away from the world. His tongue slides into her mouth and she just tastes warm and comforting, if those have tastes.
“Mm… mm, Gee,” Anette says, her lips brushing against his as she tries to open her eyes.
“Shh,” he mumbles before going back for more, never wanting to stop. One of his hands leaves her hair and goes to her waist, tracing along the fabric of her tank top and sliding underneath, fingertips ghosting along her skin. She shivers in the kiss and gasps as Gerard starts to gently suck on her neck just below her jawbone.
“Gee, n-not here,” she manages to gasp out, pushing on him.
“Why not?” he asks, trying to kiss her neck again.
“We have to go,” Anette insists, and she rolls away from him and out of the bed. “Come on. Let’s drive.”
He scrambles out of the bed and catches her just before she’s about to leave. It’s gentle, though, and he pulls her in close. “Only if I get to have you. One night. Before it’s too late.”
Instead of just shaking her head, she kisses him again, then leads the way out the door.
“We’ll ice it, that should stop the burning,” Anette assures him, even though she has no idea if it will work or not. “Come on, in you get.”
They stagger into the house and the kitchen. Everything is coated in a thick layer of dust. Anette sets Bob down in a creaky chair and looks about the kitchen. The one window is letting in a considerable amount of moonlight. Along that wall is a counter with a sink that, upon inspection, doesn’t give water. In the corner is a fridge that isn’t plugged in and is empty. Anette sighs. Where the hell is she going to get some ice from?
She hears Frank, Mikey and Gerard all stumble into the house and go to explore it. A few moments later, Ray walks in the door from parking the van.
“Anette, I think there’s an ice box out by where I parked. I’ll take care of Bob if you want to check it out,” he says. Anette nods and goes back outside.
There’s a slight breeze, but it feels good after the day of heat. The moon is bathing everything in a light that would have been beautiful any other night. But Anette can’t see that beauty tonight. She’s too full of worry and exhaustion to care.
She follows the tire tracks around the house to where the van has been skillfully hidden from the road. With luck, they can hide out here for a few hours without being discovered by Korse or the Draculoids. Anette starts poking around, looking for the ice box. She hopes Ray is right.
And he is. The ice box is against part of the house, just in front of the van. She opens it with a grunt and is pleased to see that it’s the one thing running off of a battery and is therefore cold. After she balances the lid against the house, she digs in to the ice and gets several good-sized chunks. Nothing is uniform, but at this point it doesn’t matter. As long as it helps Bob get better, Anette doesn’t care how cold her hands are or how awkward looking the ice is.
When she gets back, Ray has found an old shirt somewhere and has ripped it up to make bandages. Anette warps the ice in one of these and goes to press it on Bob’s skin. The burn is even bigger.
“This’ll hurt, but it should help,” she tells him. He just nods and grits his teeth, and when she presses the make-shift cold pack to the burned flesh, he takes a deep and sharp breath.
“It’s working,” Ray comments, gently pressing his fingers around the wound. “It’s stopped expanding, anyways. I’ve never seen a burn work like this before.”
It takes probably an hour of icing before the wound is completely extinguished, and it leaves them with a puddle of water. Then Ray goes and digs a First Aid kit out of the van. It’s out of gauze, but he grabs the tweezers and says, “This is going to fucking hurt.”
“Just do whatever so it heals faster,” Bob pants. Ray nods, and he starts peeling blackened flesh off of Bob’s arm.
Anette leaves the room almost immediately. She can’t stand to hear Bob trying to hold back screams. And anyways, she thought she had seen an aloe plant outside. She’d get some for the burns before they wrapped him up. As she walks, she wonders if Mikey, Frank, or Gerard is asleep. She hopes they are, but she doubts it. Personally, Anette feels too scared and hyped up to sleep, even though she knows she’s exhausted. She wishes they could just stop running, just give up, but from what Bob had told her a few years ago, she knew that death was better than being at the mercy of a SCARECROW or Better Living. He wouldn’t tell her exactly what they did, but the look in his eye had meant that it wasn’t worth trying to survive.
She finds the plant and tears off enough to cover Bob’s wound, then walks back inside. Ray’s almost done there, and in the cloth that held the ice is bits of dead skin. “Last piece,” Ray promises before peeling Bob’s arm clean and revealing the raw flesh beneath it. Bob grips the arm of the chair with his free hand and pants.
“Fuck that hurt,” he mutters. “Am I good now?”
“Almost,” Anette says, peeling the plant apart to get at the ointment inside. She daubs it on the wound, then binds it with the cleanest strip of cloth she can find. “There.”
“I’ll take him from here,” Ray says, and he helps Bob up and walks him out of the kitchen to find a spare room where he can sleep.
-
Anette is sitting at the table, exhausted. She’s finished cleaning up the kitchen and is slumped in the chair, fighting sleep. Ray comes back into the room, running his hands through his curly hair.
“Bob’s asleep. So are Frank and Mikey.”
“And Gee?” Anette asks, looking up at him. She can see the dark circles under his eyes, and she guesses she doesn’t look much better, possibly worse because she has lighter skin.
“Dunno. Go find him though. You need him.” Anette starts, but Ray smiles wearily. “Come on, Anette. We all know you two have a thing.”
“But—”
“Bob’s okay with it, you know. He thinks it’s good for both of you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, but if I were you, I would keep the, uh… public affection to a minimum, ‘kay?”
“Got it,” Anette replies, and after she yawns and stands, she walks down the hallway to try and find Gerard. The creaky, wooden floor is covered in dust with lots of scrape marks and footprints in it, and she follows one set all the way down the hall and into the last room on the right.
The room is pretty bare except for the old bed centered along the right wall and the lump of dusty quilts on it that apparently contains Gerard. Anette can hear his shallow breathing, breaking the dead quiet of the night. She walks as quietly as possible over to him and sits gingerly on the edge of the bed, wincing as the springs creak. She can just see the back of Gerard’s head, his black hair greasy and stringy and messy. Anette reaches out to run her fingers through it. She hopes it won’t wake him up.
The moment she touches his hair, he shoots up out of bed and grabs her shoulders, his fingers digging into her muscles. His eyes are crazy and alert, but have a strange amber tint to them. Maybe it’s the light. “What is it, what’s wrong?” he practically yells, trying to get out from under the quilts while keeping a hold of Anette.
It takes her a moment to recover her breath, lost from Gerard’s sudden… aggression. But she sets her own hands on his shoulders and starts to gently push him back into the bed. “It’s alright, Gerard. I promise.” Her voice sounds shaky, but she tries to keep it under control. He needs that from her right now.
When they lock eyes, Gerard’s jaw goes slack and he makes some sort of strangled noise like he can’t find his voice. His eyes are really starting to worry Anette. Do they change color when he’s sleep deprived? They’re still that amber instead of hazel. Finally, he gets some words out. “Was I… was I a-asleep?”
“Yes,” Anette says. Gerard’s grip is hurting her, and she can feel him shaking through it. Carefully, she sets her hands on his face and rubs her thumbs on his temples, small circles that make him close his eyes and shudder again. “Please go back to sleep. I’m sorry I woke you.”
His eyes open again, feebly. “Mikey? Where’s Mikey?”
Now he’s got that look like a small, scared animal, and Anette’s heart feels like it’s going to break. Lips trembling, she says, “M-Mikey is with Frank. They’re both okay, too. But we might have to leave s-soon, so you should try and sleep, alright?”
Gerard pulls her closer jerkily, and Anette has to steady herself against the mattress so she doesn’t head-butt him. Their noses are almost touching. “I just… when I close my eyes, I see… I see…”
Anette knows exactly what he means. “Me too. Every time,” she assures him. His eyes are still wild, but he looks more relaxed, possibly. So she decides to leave, to let him sleep in peace.
But when she moves, he grips her even tighter and she has to fight to hold back a wince. “No!” he yells, but it isn’t angry. It’s scared. “Please… don’t. I can’t… I can’t…”
“Can’t what?” Anette prompts.
“I don’t think I can sleep without you.”
“Alright... I’ll stay.” She leans down and kisses him, some blonde hair falling off her shoulder and tickling his face. Gerard lets go of her and she lies next to him, letting him practically crush her against himself and bury his nose in her hair. But Anette’s alright with whatever he wants to do, as long as he’ll just sleep.
-
Ray stays up all night this time. He doesn’t want to bother Anette and Gerard on the off-chance Gerard might be sleeping, but he does check up on Mikey and Frank in the other bedroom. They’re both asleep, but Mikey’s hand in just inches from the nightstand and his knife, open and ready to use. Frank isn’t frowning in his sleep, which is a good thing. So Ray leaves them to check on Bob.
Ray did the best he could with Bob, considering there were no more bedrooms. He found a stash of blankets in a cabinet that smelled like mold, but they would have to do. He made Bob a bed of them on the decrepit couch and the moment Bob had closed his eyes, he was out. Ray had stayed for a moment, running his fingers through Bob’s too-blonde hair, and then left. The image of Bob’s ravaged arm was stinging Ray’s heart.
But Ray can find neither sleep nor a place to sleep. Instead, he explores the house, turning up an old radio. After digging in the van for maybe half an hour, he returns triumphant with batteries and gets the radio working. He lingers on a news channel for a while, hoping not to hear anything. Sports, weather… news of the gas station exploding. But all of it is recorded, not live. And that’s fine, considering it’s three in the morning by this point. As a bonus, the station said that they had no idea what was going on or why the explosion occurred. Good. So BL didn’t want the public involved in the man-hunt just yet.
Satisfied, Ray changes the channel, and keeps channel surfing for almost an hour. He goes from Mexican soaps (he stays here for almost half an hour because he can kind of figure out what they’re saying and it’s such a sweet escape) to a channel dedicated to advertising BL products (like they need it) to something in… Russian, maybe? It sounded strange.
Until finally, Ray comes upon a music channel, the only one he’s been able to get since they really left the city. “This is 109 coming to you live for the early birds. Doctor Death-Defying is back, rock stars, and we are bringing you this song straight from the desert.”
Ray is intrigued, and stays on the channel until sunrise. He sits there and watches the sky outside, letting the music flow gently through the kitchen, music he had never heard before and believed had been outlawed on public radio. It tells stories of life, love, suffering, death, and hope. Hope was what they really needed now.
-
Mikey is the first one up, and he and Ray start making a sort of breakfast at around six-thirty. Soon Frank stumbles in, and then Bob, who looks like hell. He’s pale and shaky and needs more rest, but food first.
Ray waits until seven to go get Anette and Gerard. He pushes their door open, cringing when it creaks loudly. He sticks his head in to find them on the bed together. Gerard is face-down next to Anette, an arm wrapped around her waist, whereas Anette is on her back, staring at the ceiling. She turns her head to look at Ray and give him a soft smile. “Time to go?” she asks.
Ray has to unstick his throat to form a reply, but it comes even later when he sees that on Anette’s pale shoulders are purple bruises shaped like fingers. What the fuck did Gerard do to her? “Yes. We’ve got breakfast and then we’ve got to run.”
“Be there in a few,” Anette says, and Ray closes the door, frowning.
-
“Gerard? Gee, time to get up.”
Anette reaches over and runs her free fingers through his hair. Her other hand is currently trapped under his body, on the verge of overheating or losing circulation.
“Mmm?” Gerard grunts, rolling slightly and opening his eyes. They’re back to their normal, darker hazel. Anette sighs at this. She wouldn’t have known what to do if they were still that odd amber color.
“Ray says food’s ready and then we have to get going,” Anette says gently, trying to wriggle out from under him.
“Oka—”
Gerard stops and is gazing at her intensely, shocked. “What?” she asks, confused.
“When… when did you get those?” he asks quietly, but she can tell he is furious.
She has no idea whether to answer truthfully or not. “Last night.”
“When last night?”
“When you… when you woke up.”
Now it’s Gerard’s turn to be confused. “I woke up?”
“You don’t remember it?”
“No. Did I do that to you?” He’s panicking now.
“It’s fine, Gee, it doesn’t hurt.”
“What the fuck, Anette, what did I do?”
“I mean, I accidently woke you and you freaked out and grabbed me—”
“Shit—”
“—but it was just because you were scared.”
“That’s no fucking excuse. God, Anette, I could have really hurt you—”
“You weren’t yourself,” she says firmly. She hopes he won’t keep arguing – she isn’t sure how he would react to his eyes changing color. And if he didn’t remember waking up even…
That electric feeling of Gerard’s lips on her shoulder interrupts her thoughts. He kisses her bruises like each one could make it better, make them a little lighter. “Anette, I… you don’t hate me?”
“Of course not.” This is silly to her, absolutely preposterous. “Gerard, I could never hate you.”
“Are you—”
Anette cuts him off with a kiss, one that catches him off guard, steals his breath away, makes him moan. One of her hands softly rubs against his jaw and he tangles his fingers in her hair, not caring that it hasn’t been washed because it still smells like her. Gerard is kissing her hungrily, wanting more and more, pressing their bodies together and trying to hide her away from the world. His tongue slides into her mouth and she just tastes warm and comforting, if those have tastes.
“Mm… mm, Gee,” Anette says, her lips brushing against his as she tries to open her eyes.
“Shh,” he mumbles before going back for more, never wanting to stop. One of his hands leaves her hair and goes to her waist, tracing along the fabric of her tank top and sliding underneath, fingertips ghosting along her skin. She shivers in the kiss and gasps as Gerard starts to gently suck on her neck just below her jawbone.
“Gee, n-not here,” she manages to gasp out, pushing on him.
“Why not?” he asks, trying to kiss her neck again.
“We have to go,” Anette insists, and she rolls away from him and out of the bed. “Come on. Let’s drive.”
He scrambles out of the bed and catches her just before she’s about to leave. It’s gentle, though, and he pulls her in close. “Only if I get to have you. One night. Before it’s too late.”
Instead of just shaking her head, she kisses him again, then leads the way out the door.