So Maybe I Love Him

What love really is, is a matter of trying not to lose your mind when you fall in love with that punk you thought you hated.

A/N: It occurs to me that I never told you the name of the girl. Anyways, this is a nice long one, the bulk of which was written on a school night in the wee small hours of the morning. I was on a ROLL, baby! Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go lie down.

2

Knocking On Heaven's Door

I was still fuming as I made my way across the Lexington Bridge. Damn that idiot! How dare he talk to me like that! Of course, I couldn't really blame him. Looking back on my life, I don't have any regrets about the person I'd become. That's the thing a lot of people don't get. Everyone's different. Just because being a punk was right for some girls didn't mean it was right for me. I mean, I like wearing pretty clothes, keeping up with the latest trends and going on shopping sprees. That's who I am.

And I was never a very nice person to begin with, so if you think that the attitude is one of those preppy rich girl things, you can kindly screw off.

I shoved my hands deeper into the pockets of the long blue jacket I had bought at a thrift store. It was actually really cute and I was lucky to find something like it so fast. On the Lexington, there's a beautiful view of the sky, so I paused to stargaze. When I looked back down the bridge, I saw someone standing on the guardrail.

On the Lexington, there's also a very popular suicide spot. My jaw hit the ground. Oh. FUCK! I've never run so fast in my life, but right then, I hauled ass. He was walking off the edge just as I got to him. Wrapping my arms around his waist, I threw my entire weight back. We fell, him on top of me, to the cold pavement. I was shooting my mouth off even before I sat up.

"ARE YOU FUCKING NUTS?!" I snarled, hanging on to him as he struggled in my grip.

"Fuck you!" he snarled, "Let me the fuck go!"

"No way! The hells wrong with your life that you wanna die like..." I was cut off when his elbow hit me in the side of the head. My grip loosened and he tore away. He made for the rail again, but I grabbed the hood of his sweater and slammed him back down, "Hey! I'm talking to you, dumb ass!"

Dark green eyes, rimmed thickly with black eyeliner, glared up at me.

My eyes bugged out of my head and my jaw was, once again, dangling somewhere at my knees. My voice froze in my throat. His, however, worked just fine. "What the fuck are you doing?"

You know, I wasn't entirely sure.

I fell over on top of him. Too much shock in too short a time span. So, I lay there with my head on his chest, listening to his heart beat. "God, you're an idiot," I managed finally, "The hell were you thinking?"

"About dying," he said, dryly. No shit, Sherlock.

"You don't wanna go like that."

"How would you know?"

"That's how my mother killed herself." I could feel him tense up under me. He lifted his head to look at me.

"You're lying," he said, in a soft voice.

"I wish," I snorted, hiding my face against his chest, "I watched her die, so I know damn well that it's not a picnic." His sweater caught my tears. I sat back on my heels, looking down at him. "So...Wanna tell me about it?"

He looked confused. "I don't get you. You treat me like shit one minute and the next you're saving my life."

"I'm covering for Batgirl," I said with a shrug. The corners of his mouth twitched up. "Hey! Was that a smile?!"

"No."

"Liar!" I said with a grin, "I SO made you smile." Should it bother me that I'm so ecstatic about making the guy I hate smile? The frown had returned. He reached up and touched my face. Just a soft brush against the side of my cheek. My breath caught in my throat. I mean, Benji was pretty damn hot in a punk rock kind of way. And he did look good with eyeliner. And he smelled really, REALLY good.

"Why are you being so nice to me all of a sudden?" he asked, the frown deepening, "Weren't you the one who said you never wanted to see me again?"

"If that's the reason you were going to kill yourself, I'm gonna ......" Okay, I didn't know what I was going to do. Maybe kick his teeth in. Or kiss him.

WHOA! NO! Bad girl! No! We are NOT going down that road! I like it just fine here in Denial Land.

I sighed, running a hand through my hair. This whole affair was giving me a headache, "Okay, look. I don't hate you.... Well, maybe I kinda did, but that was only because you kept giving me and my friends crap."

"Uh, yeah," he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, "You and your so called friends and their little boy toys do that all the time. What, do we not have the right to defend ourselves? Or is it some kind of crime to be different?"

Wow. Nice to see I have such a marvelous reputation. I shrug, "I'm not a nice person."

"And that's a good excuse?" he said with a snort.

"No, but it's the truth. I don't give a rat's ass about other people, because they don't give a shit about me," I said, coldly, "No one's going to stop and help you when you're at the bottom of the barrel, and you can't depend on anyone but yourself. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something."

"Then why help me?"

That was actually a very good question.

Benji sat up, "You know, I'm surprised you haven't killed yourself yet. With a philosophy like, it sounds like you don't think life's worth living."

"I don't feel like dying," I said, "I only do what I want to do. That's the point."

"Well, I want to die," he said, coldly, "Why won't you let me do that?"

I kissed him.

Nothing big, just a soft brush against his lips. The kind of quick, spontaneous thing that first kisses are sometimes. Benji's eyes looked like they were about to pop out of his head. I couldn't help giggling. "The fuck did you do that for?!" he sputtered, finding his voice.

Because I wanted to. Because I was trying to prove a point. Because he was the only thing I could depend on. Because the thought of losing him hurt so bad that I was sure I would die if he ever left me like that. Because I'm a total idiot. Take your pick, I got more.

I rocked back on my heels, letting the motion carry me to a standing position. "I dunno," I said, with a shrug, "Felt right, I guess."

He eyed me cautiously, "Weren't you the one who told me that you never wanted to see my face again?"

Crap, did I actually SAY that?!

"Yeah well," I grumbled, offering my hand, "Maybe I lied." He took my hand. I leaned back, using my weight to balance out his as I pulled him up. With the momentum he gained from that, Benji had me pushed up against the guardrail, his long arms around me.

"Thanks," he murmured, kissing the soft curve of my neck. Now, I'm not exactly experienced in the saving lives career, but I was pretty sure that this was not standard procedure. I liked it, though, and as I said before, the boy smelled REALLY freaking awesome. I slid my arms around him and leaned into him. His body was slim and hard.

I sighed, "So, what know?"

"Well," he said, slowly, "We could go to one of the late moves and fool around in the dark."

Ooh, I liked that idea.

NO!screamed my conscience and common sense in chorus.

"Try again," I said.

"What, you don't like that idea?" Benji asked, and there was a teasing note in his voice.

Quite the contrary, actually. "It's just that I've recently stopped thinking that I hate you," I said, with a sigh, "We should probably take this one step at a time."

"So what do you have in mind?"

Dunno, go to the grocery store and make out in frozen foods aisle?

NOOO!shrieked my conscience and common sense, again, this time joined by my aching legs. After all, the nearest grocery store was a good four mile distance from the Lexington. We would have to settle for a convenience store.

"How about I take you home and you spend the night?"

He brightened, "That works."

"Don't look too chipper, buddy. My brother's gonna be there." With the rest of my so called family. Still, he didn't seem to bummed about it. What was with this guy?

------

"You live HERE?!"

I raised an eyebrow at Benji's bulging eyes. I glanced up at the building in front of us. We lived in a church my brother had found abandoned and had renovated several years back with the help of his band and a slew of people who showed up to help and never really went away. Of course, it was a lot bigger now and we were in the middle of adding another room on for ANOTHER one of our more or less permanent house guests. It was often crowded and noisy, filled to the brim with various odd people and reeking weirdly of flowers and homemade booze, but it was still my home.

I had never brought anyone from school here before.

"Well, it's not the Ritz, but it's not some windy alley either," I said, a little defensively. I still wasn't quite comfortable with the idea that Benji and I were on maybe more than friendly terms and like I said before, I'm not much of a model citizen anyway.

Benji wraps his arms around my waist, pulling me close. "I'm sorry, babe," he murmured in my ear, "I didn't mean to offend you. It's great."

"Fine," I grumbled, leaning into his touch. This was something I had grown very comfortable with very quickly. I was a physical person, who liked to touch and be touched by the people I liked (not in that way, you freaking sickos). True, we hadn't REALLY kissed since that first shy little peck on the Lexington, but we held hands, fingers laced, and Benji kept pulling me into his arms every chance he got, which I enjoyed immensely. Neither of us had talked about school or our friends on the walk over.

It was going to be hard to explain how two people, who had supposedly hated each other since meeting, suddenly couldn't keep their hands off each other. I knew some of my friends would probably ditch me, especially when Carol Bernheart found out. She was what you might call the Queen Bee of our school..... Except I had quite unwittingly stole the role of alpha female. Let's just say the two of us weren't on good terms. We often had trouble functioning civiliy when in the same room together. The reasons were simple and no secret to either of us. I was a threat to Carol because I wouldn't blindly bow down to her ultimate will.

I had never really considered her a threat to myself so much as a minor annoyance, but know there was Alex and Benji to consider. I talked the talk and walked the walk, but I didn't have control over the male half of the student body the way Carol did. Especially the male half that were twice Alex's and Benji's size and tended to resort to bullying.

"Something wrong?" asked Benji, resting his head on my shoulder.

"Just thinking about you and Alex."

"Natalie!" Speak of the devil. The door of the church was thrown open, as a hurricane of fishnets and spikes barreled into me, his weight knocking me on my ass. It didn't faze me when he planted a big wet kiss on my lips. That was the way Alex said hello to the people he liked. Remember how I said I was a physical person? Well, Alex takes that to a whole other level.

"Alex?" came Benji's surprised voice, when I finally pushed the little psycho off of me. Alex blinked up at Benji, his eyes surreally blue against an intricate design of eyeshadow and makeup. He had dark red lipstick that was smudged all over his mouth from kissing me.

"Benji?" Alex echoed, in the same surprised tone. Then with a delighted yell, he threw himself on Benji. I ignored the two digging through my purse to retrieve my compact. I noticed that my lipstick was missing. Damn, I thought that pink on the inside of the swirls looked familiar.

"Alex!" I snarled, grabbing him by the back of the shirt and hauling him off Benji, "Where the hell is my lipstick?!"

Alex pouted, his dark red lipstick more smeared then ever, "God, you just NOW noticed that I took it?!"

I made to hit him, but he wriggled out of my grasp and ran, laughing loudly, back to the house. Muttering dark threats involving as many sharp pointy things as I could think of, I turned back to Benji. He was still lying on the ground, fairly stunned. Big surprise. Alex had been so excited to see him that he had had Benji's shirt off and his zipper half way down when I pulled him off. I looked down at him for a moment, lying there looking stunned and incredibly sexy, before I felt a blush tinge my cheeks and I turned away.

"You better get up before he decides to come back and ravage you on our porch." I was feeling in a ravaging mood myself. An odd feeling for a girl to have, I'll admit. Proof I'd probably been around Alex too long. Or maybe it was just Benji.

I mean, a guy should NOT look that hot when he has red lipstick smears all over his mouth.

Benji had his shirt back on and his pants zipped by the time my brother came out. "Hey you two!" Zack snarled, "Either get in here or start fucking 'cuase ya got half the neighborhood jacking off with your little show!"

There are times that I love my brother dearly and would give up my very life for him. Then there are times I realize I could kill him and no jury in the world would convict me for it.

"Who's he?" asked Benji, still a little breathless.

"My brother," I said, dryly.

"Thought so," he said, with a soft laugh, taking my hand and leading me into my own house.

I was beginning to find that there were two primary urges when it came to Benji. The urge to kick his ass and the urge to kiss him silly. I was also finding that these urges came together in the same moment, so that I was trapped in a vortex of anger and affection that was completely driving me nuts. And like seeing him with red lipstick smudges, I was finding that I couldn't get enough of it.

In retrospect, it might have been easier to become an LSD addict, but I don't think it would have been nearly as satisfying.

TBC