Hornet's Nest Ch. 09

There was a drainpipe up a wall in front of me, and I took it, right past a CCTV camera. Fuck it. I was up the first ledge, onto another. Ran to scale the second roof.

Once up there, there was no hesitation and no thinking. Just running, jumping. Scraping my palms on rough bricks, dropping and feeling the slam in my ankles with a bad landing. Keeping balance across slanted tiles, up to flat roof.

He was right behind me. Fuck. Higher.

I had to commend his perseverance, but I knew how to lose him. And yet when I came to it, I hesitated. I could make the jump, I knew I could. But David couldn't. He'd fuck it up. He'd follow anyways. He'd try the jump even if it could kill him.

The simple knowledge that he'd hurt himself if he kept chasing me, made me stop. I lost my momentum at the edge, staring at the escape that became impossible.

I heard him thud down behind me, and turned to face him. He'd caught me. Of course he had. I'd taught him how. He stopped where he was, gasping for breath, watching me across the distance, waiting to see what I'd do. I didn't do anything.

He stepped forward and I moved away from the edge. Cortisol hadn't worked, so now it was adrenaline's turn.

My fist smacked across his face. A tooth cut his lip and sliced into my knuckles. He staggered in shock. I was shocked. And then in the timeframe of a split second, he swung back.

I didn't have time to dodge. I moved with it. There was an impact across my cheek and I stumbled a few steps to the side. The pain came moments later. I couldn't stand. I doubt he hit me with all his strength, something harder could have knocked me out. I tumbled to my butt in an ungainly fashion.

I needed a few seconds to recover, clasping at the smarting side of my face, and looked at the stinging cut across my knuckles of the opposite hand.

"Shit," he breathed.

I looked up to his eyes, wide and as startling green as always.

"I'm so sorry..."

"I deserved that," I croaked.

"No..." He crouched down in front of me. "I'm sorry, I'm so fucking sorry." He gingerly reached out to touch me, but stopped, as if he thought he'd make it worse.

"It's okay."

"No, it's not. Vi, I'm so sorry."

"Stop fucking apologising."

His worried eyes moved off me as he touched at his lip and looked at the blood on his fingers. I turned my knuckles in the light.

"You still got all your teeth?" I asked.

"Yeah." He placed his hand over my own on my face. I moved it and he took over cupping my cheek, gently rubbing it with his thumb.

The tears started. It was pain, inside and out. I loved him so much. Why did I keep hurting him?

He sat beside me and I buried my face into his chest, sobbing my heart out, crying like I hadn't done in years. There were so many things pent up. So many stupid things. Things that were my fault, things that weren't. Things I should've done better, things I couldn't change.

I racked with sobs, and he held me while I squeezed my arms around his middle. If he was still feeling any pain from that graze wound, he didn't let me know.

Rooves aren't always pleasant. There can be dirt and moss, plastic bags that've blown in the wind, and plenty of bird shit. Yet it also feels hidden and removed from the world. I wouldn't have chosen somewhere else to have that moment. I cried until my eyes stung and my throat hurt. My breathing was a hyperventilating mess, but I gradually calmed it, and sniffed until my sinuses begged me to stop.

I felt... released. Like I'd just let something bad out and gotten rid of it.

David's hand stroked my hair. "I love you, Vi."

"I love you too." I sat a little straighter and looked at his face, touching at his lip. My fingers came away bloody. "I'm really sorry, for doing that."

"It's fine."

"No it's not."

"At least you fought back for once."

I frowned, he smirked, then clasped at his lip in some attempt to stop the bleeding.

"You gotta stop running from everything, Vi."

"I stopped, because I was gonna jump," I swallowed and gestured in the general direction, "over there, and you were gonna follow, because you're stupid, and you'd fuck it up, and you'd hurt yourself."

"Cheers for saving me a broken leg."

"Or worse. I... I really love you."

"So why are you trying to leave me?"

"I'm bad for you. I'm bad for your family. I'm just bad."

"No, for fuck sake. You think worse of yourself than anyone else thinks of you."

"Your dad hates me."

"No, he doesn't. He gave me his car keys. He wanted me to come get you."

I rested my head against his shoulder, feeling a strange mix of exhausted and freshly energised.

"We have to talk, Vi."

"About what?"

"About everything."

"I don't know what to say."

"You'll figure it out." He shifted, pushing me away as he got to his feet. I watched him, but didn't immediately rise. "We should just go, get away from everything, just for a bit."

"Go where?"

"I know somewhere."

"... Okay."

I was surprisingly shaky, but got to my feet and found us a way down. After a brief moment of wondering where we'd ended up and figuring out what the street was, we tracked back to the car. We received a few looks from people around - perhaps they'd witnessed our whole little chase, or were wondering why David had a split lip and I was sucking my knuckles.

More luck, that he'd left the car pulled up on yellow lines and it hadn't been touched yet. We quickly got in, and he drove. I didn't know where to. I kept apologising about his lip, and he kept telling me it was fine. It just took so long to stop bleeding.

"You've got sharp teeth," I said.

He chuckled, and reached out his left hand to squeeze my thigh.

*

David had everything planned out. First, we stopped at a supermarket and picked up some food. Then, he drove out of town, into the countryside.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

"Some woods. Used to go there when I was a kid. You know, like, mountain biking, without any mountains."

"You got a mountain bike?"

"Yeah, in the shed. It's a bit small now."

I watched fields going past beyond the window. "Is it okay? To take your dad's car out like this."

"I'd text him, but I kinda lost my phone."

"I, err, I got Tyler's number?"

"He kinda lost his phone too."

"Oh. Duh. Oh, wait, I got your dad's number."

We pulled up to wherever the destination was. It was the kind of place full of nature trails, and had a small carpark. I handed my phone over to David, and he thumbed some brief message to Zack, then we picked up the bags and got out.

"So we're having, like, a picnic?" I asked.

"Pretty much."

The first few minutes of the walk were a comfortable silence. I didn't understand what I was supposed to do, or what David wanted. He eventually eased me up with a few well-placed questions. Before I knew it words were pouring out of my mouth. Verbal diarrhoea, that's what it was. It seemed to go in aimless circles, but it must have made some sort of sense to me at the time because I kept talking.

I talked about when I was a child, how I'd always wanted a BMX and never got one. How I once stole a skateboard and broke it after two days - one of the wheels came off then I snapped it in half. Harold scolded me about it... It was with a strange twinge that I realised I had memories of people like Harold from when I was 5 years old, or maybe younger. There'd been so many people who always seemed to be there, and then disappeared. It didn't always mean they were dead, I just had so many faint memories of the ways things kept changing and shifting. My childhood was divided in the chunks of different events. I remembered those events before I remembered what I'd been doing, how I'd felt, or how I'd coped.

I'd grown up having to exist in whatever situation I found myself in. I learnt to run because if I didn't, I'd have to fight. And I'd been taught that fighting was the last resort. If you weren't strong enough to win the fight, you were caught. So many people around me, they'd all known they weren't strong enough, but they kept going regardless, because they were determined to live.

I had some sort of shell, because I'd needed it. I'd spent too much time around certain people, who needed to see me a certain way. The problem is that when you live a lie long enough, you even start to believe it yourself.

The more we talked, the more we strayed from the marked paths, until we were picking our own way through undergrowth and plantlife. The environment was so calming, the singing birds, the dappled sunlight coming through the canopy of leaves. How did David know to take me somewhere like that?

It hit me like a brick in the middle of a mostly unrelated sentence. I didn't know who I was.

Wear a mask for too long, and you forget what's beneath.

I stopped walking, and David eventually realised my crunching footsteps had ended, looking over his shoulder and raising an eyebrow.

I tried to explain in another jumble of words.

It almost made me light-headed. How could I not know myself? How much of me was suppressed, how much was a fake bravado? What was conditioned, what was genuine?

I'm almost ashamed to admit that at that point in my life, David understood me better than I did. I guess it could make sense. It's not like I spent all day looking in the mirror. He'd spent enough time observing me to know what was real and what was a cover. He knew what it looked like when I really smiled. How my eyes danced when something got me excited. He saw how I closed up to the bad things.

I argued that I only closed up to protect myself, because that was how to get through things. He said that if something closed me up, it should be removed from my life.

David knew who he was. He'd been raised to know, by people who loved him. The way I saw it, his whole upbringing gave him the foundations he needed to go out into the world and be himself. Something everyone should have, and sadly too many didn't.

I couldn't even be jealous. His life was too different to mine, too alien to relate to. My parents loved me, I made sure he knew that. He didn't disagree. I was just the unfortunate by-product of their choices.

Well, yeah. I had been born an accident.

There was only so much they could do, and I always believed they'd done their best. They'd tried to raise me with good values. The bad things about me, I'd developed those by myself, by clashing with the outside world.

We came out to an area of the woods that was more open - more space between trunks, and less undergrowth. Another silence descended over us. It wasn't a bad thing. In fact it was annoying when my ringtone broke it. I wasn't aware that I'd ever taken my phone off silent.

I pulled it out of my pocket to check, and wasn't sure what to do.

"Who is it?" David asked.

"Harold." I stared at the screen as it vibrated in my hand.

"Don't answer it."

"It might be important."

"No, it's not. Not right now."

It rang out. "He'll call again. He'll keep ringing until I answer." Another call obediently came through.

David took the phone from my hands, turned it off, and slipped it into a back pocket of his jeans. "It can wait." He dropped the bags to the floor.

"Yeah, but-"

He put a hand on my stomach and shoved me against the trunk of a tree. And kissed me. I didn't return it with much fervour, still worried about his split lip and annoyed that my sentence had been cut short. He pulled back and I scowled at him, then finally twigged what he was doing with a sheepish grin.

"Fuck sake. How it started, huh?"

"Yeah, and the weather's better this time." He pulled his shirt up and over his head.

I blinked as his beautiful torso came into view. "Oh, wow. Okay." I stroked my hand up his stomach and raked my fingers through the hair on his chest. "For being a potato in hospital for a week, you still look pretty good."

He smirked. "A potato?"

"Yeah, well-"

He closed the slight distance, pinning me against the tree again. The kiss was patient, and gentle, gradually deepening while his hands squeezed my waist.

His tongue probed my lips and I let him in. I ran my hands up to his neck, down to his jeans, and hooked my fingers in the waistband to give him a tug against me. A very hard cock pressed against my hip.

His hands ventured higher, lifting my tank top and breaking the kiss. I raised my arms, but he left me to finish removing it while he attacked the clasp of my bra. He cupped my face and brought his mouth back to mine, then his hands stroked down my neck, over my breasts, giving an affectionate squeeze before continuing lower.

His lips followed, kissing and sucking down my throat, across my clavicle to a shoulder. He dragged his tongue over a nipple and I shuddered, but he kept moving down until he was kneeling, his face level with my stomach. His hot tongue quickly left cold patches against the fresh air. He poked it into my navel, I flinched and giggled. He grinned up at me.

"You're so beautiful."

"Yeah, you're pretty handsome yourself."

He hooked his fingers in the pockets of my jeans, giving a brash tug so I stumbled forward, landing on his chest with him flat on his back.

"So here, huh?" I asked, looking down at his face.

He pushed me off like it was no effort at all, reached for our discarded clothing, then laid the tops out like a makeshift blanket over the dirt. "There you are."

"So resourceful."

He hooked his hands under my arms and half lifted, half dragged me, dropping me down. Then he was between my legs, leaning over me, lowering his body against mine. He ground into me, and I pressed back. A flush of heat passed through my nerves, from the fork of my legs, all over.

We were making out in a tangle of limbs, mouths only parting for brief inhales. He tried to pull back and I bit his lip with a growl, followed by his little pained grunt. I quickly released him.

"Easy," he chuckled.

"Sorry, I just, I want you."

"Yeah." His hand slipped beneath my jeans and stroked through the slick mess in my knickers. My hips lifted, trying to press harder against his fingers.

I needed this. I needed him. We both struggled out of our remaining clothes.

I had always been myself around David. It was something I'd realised early on, when he made me so relaxed in his company. Perhaps in our most raw, intimate moments, was when I'd been in my most honest state. I mean, I'd never faked an orgasm.

He was doing everything in his power to bring me to another one, burying his face into my pussy, assaulting me with lips and tongue. It was rough, and hungry, but I loved it. He sucked on my clit, and one look down the length of my body with his eyes gazing up at me did it. My hips bucked and I gripped his hair, trembling with each pulse, each wave of pleasure. The moans ripped out of my throat whether I wanted it or not, but I didn't care. We were in the middle of nowhere. I could be as loud as I wanted.

I laid with my eyes closed, panting, basking in the bliss. He shifted, touching his hairy thighs against mine, and stroked his shaft up and over my sensitive clit. I flinched, he smirked. We held eye contact as he pressed at the entrance, and slowly slid inside me.

I always loved that moment, how my body responded when he filled me. Every tingle and twitch, how it could take my breath away. I guess the look on his face mirrored my own. He moaned and gripped my hips.

It just felt how things were supposed to be. Everything was give and take. We both loved making each other come.

He fucked me with everything that had built up since our last time. His hands grasped at different places, pulling me against him, holding me down while he drove into me. He kissed my neck, traced my ear with his lips, and exhaled a growl. I shivered, arching my spine to press into him. He was claiming me, reminding me that I was his.

And he was mine. I rolled him over with some effort, wrapping my legs around his middle and pushing him aside. He turned onto his back with a smile. I straddled him, and rode him, alternating between fast and slow, gripping his chest, stroking my hands down his stomach.

His body tensed beneath me. I kept up a steady rhythm to push him over the edge. Maybe he didn't want to finish that fast, but I didn't care. I wanted to hear him, watch him. He held my thighs, holding my gaze.

"Oh God," he breathed. "Fuck..."

He came with a throaty groan, muscles taut and hips bucking to get deeper inside me. Then he released and relaxed, with a goofy grin on his face.

"Fuck sake, Vi."

I smirked. "What?"

He didn't reply, eyes watching his hands as they moved up my body from my thighs. He stroked and squeezed, feeling every inch of me, as though he hadn't taken the time to do so before. I laid myself down across him. His heart pounded through his ribs in a rhythm just a bit slower than my own. He traced my spine with gentle fingers while we stayed in a contented silence.

His arms wrapped around me and he nuzzled my cheek. "You hungry?"

"Yeah," I mumbled. "A bit." I lifted myself, peeling my sweaty skin away from his. It might've been cooler in the shade, but it was still warm weather. We were a bit of a mess.

He gave me his boxers to clean up, then we raided the bags. There we were, completely naked, sitting on our clothes in the middle of the woods somewhere, pigging out on an abundance of snack food for our dinner.

I was happy.

"So it had to be here, huh," I said as I picked a crumbly dead leaf out of my hair.

"Well, I thought it was hot," he replied through a mouthful.

I chuckled. "Yeah but I mean, your dad's car has a pretty spacious backseat."

"We're not fucking in Dad's car."

"No?"

"Just no. When I have my own car we'll fuck in it however much you want, okay?"

I leant against his shoulder with a grin. "I love you."

"I love you too." He caressed my cheek and his smile faded. "You've got a bit of a bruise showing up."

"And your bottom lip is sliced in half. Whatever."

"I don't know what to say when we get home."

"We got in a fight?"

"Yeah, literally. Mum's gonna be angry with me."

"Tell her I hit you first?"

"So she'll be angry at you too, won't stop her being angry with me."

I let out a sigh that sounded a bit like one of Wesley's exaggerated ones, then studied David's jeans on the ground, and the little shape of my phone in the back pocket. "Should I call Harold?"

"No, don't talk to any of those people until you've talked with my dad."

"Okay."

We stayed out there until the sunlight breaking the canopy faded, keeping away from everything like David wanted, just for a while.

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