Pall Malls + Poetry // Judd Birch x OC/Reader

Ten Commandments

Emily felt the warm embrace of long, lanky arms wrapping around the front of her shoulders as she shut her locker between classes.

"Holy fuck, I missed you during Spanish." Judd said as he rested his chin on top of her head.

She'd never been one for PDA and these hallways were bursting at the seams with her peers, but she didn't know them. Not one other student had tried to befriend her in the month she'd been at Bridgeton, and why would they? Emily hadn't extended a friendly hand toward any of them either. October was bringing in crisp air and earlier sunsets and soon these lockers would only be a memory that haunted every one of them as they made their ways off to colleges and apprenticeships and prisons.

But Emily enjoyed Judd. She'd half expected him to avoid her like the plague after reading her file from Claymoore, instead it seemed that he was clinging onto her. That left three possibilities — He read the file and felt sorry for her, he read the file and was crazy enough to stick around, or he didn't read the file at all.

She hoped it was the second option. Though she didn't consider herself crazy, she'd gotten along with those that truly were fairly well during her stay at the nut house.

Emily turned in his grip, "Say something to me in Spanish." She said.

"Trade?" Judd asked, "Recite me a poem and I'll say fucking anything you want in Spanish."

She scourged her mind of the endless poems she had tucked away for a rainy day.

A rainy day.

Emily leaned back against her locker, textbooks and sketch pad tucked against her chest, "I feel closest to the angels when I'm in the middle of a thunderstorm, soaked to the skin, shook up with sound. Waiting for my bones to become branches of white light."

Judd had been enamored by the way she spoke since the moment they met — not a hitch in her voice, no roughness even when her throat was seared from piping hot smoke. So soft and sweet and silky smooth. He supposed that was part of being a reader, or an artist, or just a girl with a spell cast over him.

"Quiero comerte viva." He said, with no trace of an accent. Emily asked what that meant and he smiled, a devil's smile, then snaked his fingers through her belt loops and pulled her closer to him. "Skip third block with me and I'll show you."

Judd kissed her right there in front of everyone, she stood on her tippy-toes just to reach his lips. For a moment, no one else existed.

That was ruined when Judd's hand slapped the locker above her head to stop himself from falling into her. He'd been patted a little too hard on the back by a beast of a guy that Emily only recognized from passing in the halls.

"Sorry to interrupt the foreplay." The thinner guy beside him said, the smirk on his face and the casual cut of his eyes said that he wasn't really sorry. "Judd here has failed to introduce us. I'm Val, this is Kurt."

She smiled at the two as she tucked herself under Judd's protective arm. "Emily. You're in my next class, right?"

Val and Emily had British Literature together, though Val rarely showed up for it. The only classes that he bothered to show up for were Anatomy because he enjoyed playing with dead things, and Music Comp because he enjoyed playing with loud things.

He nodded and turned his attention back to Judd. "Fight Night at our place later. Dad's staying at the condo with his whore and Mom's gonna be fucking Coach Steve for awhile. You coming?"

Judd cut his eyes at the two, "It's not Friday, dingus"

"That's true." Val said. "But there's a party we have to grab a few tits at this Friday night, so we rescheduled."