Darker London

A number of blocks away from Cherry Orchard Lane Stephie heard a vehicle pull in beside her, and spun around to face it, ready to fight it. Fists raised like she could take on a van and everyone inside it. “Just me!” said Lucas, leaning across the passenger seat, the window rolled down.

Stephie rolled her eyes hard. “Fuck OFF, Lucas!”

“Hey,” he said, putting the Melon in park and jumping out to follow her on foot. “Not gonna say anything, don’t have to talk, just want to make sure you don’t get plucked off the street by some punk in a van.”

“I don’t need your help.”

( ... )

There were better places she could have gone for New Years, wiser places. Which would have been good if Stephie wanted better, if she wanted wise. She didn’t, she yearned for that full body rush of adrenaline, wanted defiance and alcohol, sex and power. She kept thinking you wouldn’t survive it, you wouldn’t survive it and how, well… how he wouldn’t survive what she’d been through, how he’d crumble and break apart even if he said he wasn’t the type to lay down and die. But she’d survived. She’d survived and her back and hands were strong, and her heart was strong.

It was. It was. Her heart was strong (she told herself.)

( ... )

Leon threw a good party, a sprawling party, a motley mix of rooms each dancing to a different beat. Daria had brought her daughters and they played with Oscar as Leon tried to turn all the tiny people into a tiny xylophone-bongo-triangle band, Neil was drinking wine and telling Nova jokes, there were more people than could reasonably fit in the Blasphemy Font and most of them were naked. Merry felt a bit lost. Ellie and Geordie weren’t here. Her family was, but she still felt like everyone was way too cool. Everyone else was having a better time – everyone else knew how to have a better time. How did people just take off their clothes in front of people they’d never met before and sit in a Blasphemy Font, hot water bubbling around them? How did people walk into a room and strike up a conversation with other people?

Merry had a few bottles of berry cider in an attempt to be festive, in an attempt to loosen up, but all it did was make her belly feel fizzy and her arms felt heavy. Her head stayed exactly as problematic as it had been an hour ago.

( ... )

Wait here Miles had said, but like hell Stephie was going to wait. Not after he'd left, not when she didn't know when he was coming back or what he was going to say to her. She couldn't wait, because she was waiting on his terms and everything they'd been doing together this past month had been about making sure that his terms never overrode her own.

So she shoved open the windows and climbed out, banging them shut behind her. The midwinter drizzle cooled her down, but she was drunk enough, and on fire enough that she wasn't cold, not yet anyway.

She wasn't cold, but, she realised, as she stood in the back yard, she didn't have anywhere to go.

( ... )

The sunlight had woken Stephie, as it had woken Miles and Astrid. This meant when Stephie was fighting to keep her burgers down as they rattled out of Cambridge in the Melon, Josie was fighting to pull tranquiliser darts out of herself. Stephie had thought that no one could feel worse than she did this morning, but she was quite frankly wrong.

Wearing a pair of sunglasses she’d found in the glove box, she talked with Lucas on the drive back, both of them sharing stories about fuckups of the past, of juvie in particular, remembering why Misha had called them the male and female versions of each other, way back when they first met in 2008. They talked about how various members of their social group, themselves included, had relied too often on arson as a solution to their problems, and Lucas even told her that fire kind of freaked him out, now.

Stephie said maybe she was going to chuck out her lighters when she got home in case the need to burn shit arose again. Lucas applauded her mental health decisions.

( ... )

A proper medical crew met them at the hospital, and Stephie sat in the van near his head, trying to keep out of the way as they moved him. Lucas was waiting when she finally emerged, and gave her his hand to help her jump down. She looked pale – not Miles pale, but pale.

“Ruined your hoodie,” she said, wiping a bloody hand on the bloody hoodie. One sticky clot fell to the ground from where it was clinging to the centre pocket. Stephie made a face.

“Gross,” said Lucas.

( ... )

Josie lay under a blanket in the back seat of a car, eyes open, listening, feeling, trying not to get car sick. That’d just top everything off like a big fucking cherry, wouldn’t it?

She was also trying very hard to stay still. There was Miles in her veins, making her twitchy. It had been a long time since she’d last slept with him, last drained him even a little. They were too familiar to sleep together, now that they lived together - any thrill was gone. Familiar and too easily irritated by each other... their living situation only worked because the rest of the world irritated each of them more than the other did.

( ... )