Love is Madness

15: Here's to Losing your M i ñ d

Lissa's lips tightened. She leant back on her hands and sighed up at the sky. "I done something this time," she said with a sidelong glance. "I kissed him."

"Yeah, so? We always do dat t'ing, plenty times,"

True, very true, high out of their heads, anybody within reach.

Lissa huffed in reluctant amusement. "Não," she corrected. "I kissed him. Hard. I kissed him, on his mouth, h a r d ."

And it felt like, like I was burning up, like we were molten gold.

"Oh?" Cat said carefully. "Itsa bout bloody time, y'know."

"He kissed me back, and then he ran away," Lissa murmured, almost to herself. "And I don't know, I don't understand, anymore."

"Didch'ya like it, it was good?"

Lissa laughed shortly.

"Like I had popping candy, in my blood,"

Then she stopped.

"I think he forgot, I think he was high." she whispered.

Cat pinched her ribs, suddenly and viciously, her high spirits unable to stay down for long. She pushed Lissa off the truck's roof as she wriggled away from Cat's pointy fingers, and called boisterously down to her breathless face.

"Well go and get him and talk, chica, or go an' beat him again, or let's jus' get us drunk, sì?"

"Puta-!" Lissa yelled back without preamble. "Escurinha puta-!"

Cat folded her arms haughtily. "We all here know, thisa gurl is a lovely shade of roast hazelnut and caramel. Charcoaled bitch, y'self,"

And Lissa laughed, jolted out of her dazed-fog-and-heartache, and shook her head, blew Cat a kiss, what else could she do but love her?

***

"Obrigado, querido," she said to Cass as he passed her the box of fixing up Mikhael supplies he'd run out and brought. "Thank you."

"He'll be ok," he said kindly, and she hoped hoped hoped it was true.

"Or someone'll get done over for GBH, innih?"

She laughed despite herself, and Cassiel nodded at her, that boyish nod that said everything was cool, and left her to open the door to the beach shack alone.

Mikhael's chest rose softly and fell inbetween pauses under his t-shirt, like it hurt him to breathe. The blackness of his clothes made his colouring gleam white-gold. His eyelashes cast gentle shadows on his cheekbones, faint smudges of darkness in the dim and smoky air of the beach shack. He was sprawled out on the floor, half propped up on a surfboard and a jacket. His awkward position pushed up his t-shirt and revealed the skin of his back and waist, the bruises there already purple.

Maybe it was just the lighting, Lissa decided, pushing the door closed and settling down next to him. That's why he looks so bad. She trailed her fingers over his collarbone. Now she saw his split lip, the glorious black marks on his temple and jawbone and across his nose. Maybe it was better that the light was dim. Maybe he'd look worse in the outside light.

Lissa picked up his hand. She ran her finger over the joining between his wrist and thumb, and shivered. His knuckles were battered raw. In the quietness of being alone, except for a softly breathing boy, her ribs felt tight, her throat sore. She wiped the back of her hand vigorously against her eyes and set finishing her fixing, to wrapping up Mikhael's sprained wrist and bleeding knuckles.

He sighed inaudibly. Made to touch his jaw, brushed against her, eyes still closed. Then they snapped open, gleaming feral gold, and he was scrambling away.