Terms and Agreements (on hold indefinitely)

The Part Where a Bunch of Mushy Crap Happens in About Five Seconds

                                                                              7

"Ali?" My mother's muffled voice came from the hallway, "Honey?"

I hurried into my room, closing the bathroom door and flying to the bedroom door, opening it a second later, but only enough for my head to peer out.

Mom stood in the hallway, studying me with a curious expression. "Ali, where did you go? You left the house without telling anybody where you were going."

"I know. I'm sorry, Mom," I said, trying to come up with where I could've been. "I...uh...ran over to Jenna's house, she...wanted to show me her Halloween costume."

"Oh," Mom said, smiling then, "well, if everything's okay....?"

"Yeah, everything's just great," I said, venturing a glance back at the bathroom door.

"All right then," Mom said, "I'll be going. Just tell somebody next time you leave, okay sweetie?"

"Okay," I said, and I quickly retreated from the door, closing and locking it once more.

I quickly grabbed my phone and texted Jenna, telling her that she had to be my fake alibi. Of course, she wanted to know where I'd actually been, but I didn't tell her anything.

Flynn was still sitting on the toilet when I returned to the bathroom.

"Your mom?" He asked as I picked the rag up off the floor and rinsed it.

"Obviously," I said, wringing the rag out and resuming the strange task of cleaning a freaking stab wound. Though very small and shallow, it was still a freaking stab wound. I knelt down beside him, and as I gently cleaned it out as best I could, I said, "now, will you please tell me what happened to you?"

He winced as I pressed on the wound, but then he said, "Fine, nosy."

"I'm not nosy," I retorted, "I just want to know what to tell the police."

"The police?" He asked immediately, "you didn't call them, did you?"

"No..." I answered slowly, sitting back on my heels, looking up into his eyes, "why? You're not mixed up in some illegal mess, are you? Because if so, you're gonna have to-"

"I didn't do anything," he interrupted, then a small smile turned up a corner of his lips, "just in case it's against the damned Terms and Agreements."

"Well obviously," I replied, grinning, turning my attention back to his wound, which I was pretty much finished with by now.

"I figured as much - ow!"

He slapped my hand away as I gingerly poked at the injury in his side. "Are you finished yet?" He asked.

"Not quite, I haven't done your face yet," I told him, rising to my feet and proceeding to rinse the rag out again.

He groaned in annoyance, but remained seated and waited for me.

I finished rinsing the rag, and turned back to him, cupping his rough-with-stubble chin in my left hand before softly rubbing at the cut on his cheek with my right. He closed his eyes.

"So did you get any licks in?" I asked as my eyes left the cut and travelled over his thick, dark eyebrows, and his long, black lashes.

In reply, he held up a fist, showing the broken, bruised skin on his knuckles, his eyes still closed.

"Well good, because I'm sure whoever it was was an asshole," I said, and he nodded slightly.

"You have no idea."

I moved the rag down to his lips, a bit too roughly because I was, I'll admit it, a bit distracted with the perfection of their shape. They looked so soft.

I scrubbed over the busted part of his bottom lip quite hard, and his hand flew up to mine to stop me. 

And that's when we kind of froze. And his eyes flew open, and they locked on mine. I would enter a "blue on brown" or something here like people always do, but we both had dark brown eyes, though his were darker, more penetrating.

I don't know what came over me, so I'll just blame it on stupid weird teenage hormones, but when he just stared deep into my eyes like that, his tanned hand looking pale against mine as his slender fingers wrapped around mine, I just....I don't know.

A bunch of butterflies were released from their cocoons in my stomach, and I felt a blush creeping up my cheeks. Fortunately my dark complexion hid it pretty well. I hope.

All of this mushy crap happened in about 0.2 seconds, or hardly any time at all basically. I suddenly became very conscious of the fact that he was shirtless, something that hadn't bothered me just a few minutes ago.

After about five seconds - and I mean the 1-Mississippi seconds - of staring at each other, he was the one who broke eye contact first.

"Uhh...don't rub so hard," He mumbled, taking the rag from me and moving his head, breaking free from all physical contact.

"Er...sorry," I muttered, backing away and heading back to my room. I stood in the center, glancing around, a bit frantically, looking for something to do. At last I realized I could give him one of my giant shirts I sleep in sometimes, since his shirt was all bloodied and gross.

I dug around in my drawers until I found my boys' Star Wars t-shirt I'd bought two sizes too big. I took it back to him in the bathroom, where he had stood up and was bending over the sink, cleaning up his lip the rest of the way.

"Hey, I found you a shirt," I said, trying to sound casual as he turned around and I tossed the shirt to him.

He looked down at it, the Star Wars font facing upward at him. "Thanks."

I just kind of stood there awkwardly as he slipped it on over his head, his hair getting all messy and sticking up all over the place.

"Do you have any, like...bandages or anything? In case it starts bleeding again," he said, not looking at my face, but fixing his gaze on the floor.

"Oh yeah, of course I have bandages, because I'm always picking up random stabbed people from gas stations at night," I said with a smirk, the familiar sarcasm instantly making me feel more comfortable.

He looked up at me for a second with an amused expression before dropping his eyes back to the floor.

Then I became serious. "No, I don't, all we have are band aids. But we do have some bigger band aids, they're just in my parents' bathroom. I'll, uh...I'll go get one. And some ice for your nose."

"Okay," he said, and followed me into the bedroom where he locked the door behind me after I entered the hallway.