A/N: This idea has been festering in my mind, and it's not allowing me to write anything else in a cohesive manner...So I'm posting it. :) Also, because I'm a song freak, I'll be posting a link to the playlist that goes along with this story in my profile. And it's gonna be totally awesome! (We've got to get back to Hogwarts...!) Praise you, dear soul, that got that reference.

Rating: M. Yes. Swearing, adult content, touchy-feely things, etc.

Disclaimer: I'm not gripping the world in a multi-market monopoly, but the characters happen to be mine.

Track: Franz Ferdinand – Do You Want To

Of STDs, Caution & Apprehension
:-:
CHAPTER 1: DO YOU WANT TO

"I don't really know about Brady tonight; he's been choking up the offense with his numerous turnovers, and he's been relying too heavily on his defense. What's your take on this, Bob?"

"Well, Joe, I'm sure it has nothing to do with his super-model wife having just given birth to a kid. Haha! In my opinion, that's more than enough of a distraction!"

"Oh, Brady," Karley moaned, "what in the hell's the matter with you?" For good measure, she chucked a stick of beef jerky at the television, but all it did was feebly bounce off and land on the carpet in a dejected manner. She crossed her arms and scowled. "Q," she asked, "would you say their chances are 40/60 or 30/70?"

Quentin Hamish Sovereignton glanced at her. "20/80," he said, deadpan.

Avid Patriots fans since the time of Bledsoe, the two sat on the poor excuse for a couch which had cigarette burns, beer stains and God-knows-what-other desecrations, and they watched their favorite team get their asses whooped. Since she was twelve and had moved in with him and her older brother, Karley had always called Quentin "Q." She claimed that it made him seem like he was out of Men in Black and could pass as somebody with formidable skill and talent, versus "Quentin" that made him seem like he was an Honor Roll student that went to bi-weekly Glee Club meetings before he had to leave for his chess tournament.

"You're full of optimism tonight."

"They're starting to suck."

Karley shrugged. "At least I won my bet with Tony."

"You bet with Tony? Again?"

"I've been winning lately," she said. "I'm on a streak."

"Karls, we need to pay rent," Quentin groaned.

"Rent my ass! Who pays for the food around here? I do because you two idiots always buy dumb things like Cheez-Its and Cocoa Puffs without any consideration for the fact that we'll all get cholera if we don't eat vegetables."

"But Tony," Quentin added, tapping the side of his can, "buys the beer."

"Fine, I'll give him his fifty cents back."

He blinked. "Fifty cents?"

"Yeah, we're not Rockefellers," she said. "It's more for bragging rights."

"You're ridiculous."

"Aww, thanks, Q."

Their playful banter ceased immediately when the game came back; the crowd was roaring and causing all sorts of fuss because Tom Brady wasn't paying his due. Quentin looked over at Karley and saw her left foot tucked under her opposite thigh, her hands wound around a Budweiser, and her mouth on the edge of the can in anxious anticipation. His brown eyes played around the edges of the bangs that swept across her forehead, the dark contrasting with the light. Her hair color was amazing, he felt. You could get away with calling it black, but when she stepped out into the sunlight, you could pick out streaks of auburn, the color, the life...He should probably tell her to stop drinking. Karley's brother, Tony, let her, though, so who was Quentin to say she couldn't? She was seventeen. She shouldn't be downing alcohol like it was water. As a matter of fact, she shouldn't be doing a lot of things, but she went and did them anyway.

Maroney tried to run it up the middle, but he got tooled by the Colts defense. Karley scoffed. "What a surprise."

"Is Dean coming over tonight?"

She looked at him. "Depends on long his soccer practice runs, but it's our anniversary, so he said he'd try his best to make it. Why, what's up?"

Quentin had a physical reaction to the word "soccer." He hated soccer. It was a pansy sport, and football would always trump it. "Tony's working late," he explained, "and I was going to go out, but – "

"No, I'm not keeping you in," she said. "Go out."

" – but Jamie called earlier and canceled."

"Oh, did she now?"

"Yup."

"Liar."

He grinned. "So it looks like I'm going to be staying here."

"How serious are you and Jamie?"

"Ehh." Quentin twisted his hand back and forth. "Sex but not spending the night."

"Classy," she laughed.

"She said that she forgot that it was 'girls' night out'."

Karley snickered to herself and went back to her beer and the game. Quentin did have to hand it to her; she could definitely drink her fill. She might weigh a hair under 110 lbs., but she was no light-weight. As he watched another turnover take place, he steadily grew more apprehensive about Dean coming over. He wasn't a bad guy, per-se, for he was on the soccer, basketball and baseball teams, he had good grades and wanted to go to college to major in business and mass communications (he had charisma up the ass), he came to the door for his dates with Karley, they've been going out forever, but there was something in the kid that Quentin didn't like. Dean seemed almost too perfect, like a little piece was off in his relationship with Karley. She deserved nothing worse than a good guy, and that's exactly what she got.

Quentin took the bag of beef jerky when she handed it to him. "You guys are doing well?"

"Dean and I? Very."

"Good."

"Yeah. Good."

Their mother was a complete fruitloop, and she had left Tony and Karley at young ages (to pursue a stage career in Las Vegas – plum on the other side of the country) in the care of their father. Jimmy Claremont wasn't a bad man at all. He simply had these big, entrepreneur dreams that never followed through in the economic sense. He was a bit of a failure. Quentin had met in once when he and Tony became friends in junior high, and his father had a friendly face and a big smile, but he went and shot himself in the head when Tony was eighteen. Not quite knowing what to do, Tony had rented a dilapidated, small house at the edge of Boston with his twelve year-old sister, Karley. He couldn't afford the rent, so Quentin had crashed with the Claremont siblings and paid his half of the bills.

It was a very symbiotic existence. Quentin worked part-time job, went to technical school so he could get his auto-mechanic license and played football on the side in a pickup league. Tony was an actual, full-time student at Salem State, played in the same league as Quentin but was barely ever home. Karley went to school, was normally home less often than Tony, and she was a killer student. She got ridiculous grades and was in all these fancy classes and clubs and societies. Her brains scared the shit out of Quentin.

He heard the shower squeak and the water shut off.

Yes, finally. Karley always took twenty years showering, and Quentin had some business to take care of. He laid a Jeep manual on the rumpled covers of his unmade bed and padded across his room in socked feet. Steam was pouring out from the crack between the wall and the bathroom door because Karley was anal and refused to shut any door completely. She burst out of the bathroom, her hair wound out in a towel as she threaded a belt through the loops in her jeans. The girl tugged the buckle into the proper place and shoved past Quentin, the scent of apple conditioner following her in perfumed cloud. "Dean's going to be here in twenty minutes!" she wailed, throwing open her sock drawer. Bras, panties and stockings were tossed carelessly onto the floor. With wild eyes, she held up two identical pairs of striped socks. "Which ones will he like better?" she asked, addressing Quentin.

Leaning against the hallway wall whose paint was chipping off with his arms crossed, he grinned, extremely amused. "The ones that come off faster."

She smacked him on the chest on her way back to the bathroom. "Jackass."

"Look, Karls, what are you so wound up about? I gotta get in there, too, hurry the hell up."

"It's our one year anniversary!"

"So?"

Her dark hair tumbled out of the towel, and she leaned forward, attacking her mane with a handful of some sort of product, a hair brush and a blow dryer. The dryer roared and blasted hot air, and he couldn't hear a word she was saying. His eyes were drawn to the mess she had just made all over her floor. Her drawer was just chock-full of shit. Reese's wrappers, spare tampons and condom packages were spilling over the top –

Whoa, whoa.

A condom box.

Curiosity peaked, Quentin stalked into her room and plucked the box of Trojans out of the drawer. Hallelujah, it was unopened, but...Gah, they were his! That little sneak! He'd bought them about a week ago, and he knew they were his because he'd been buying a certain brand and a certain type for years. They couldn't have been Tony's, for he only used Durex because he got an infection or some other gross shit from Trojans. When he wrenched open his nightstand drawer, Quentin did indeed see that his box was gone.

He'd have to have a little talk with Karley.

The blow dryer was still going strong, but he hair must've been to her liking because she yanked the power cord out of the wall. She straightened up, riffled her hands through her dark waves, and Quentin got this sudden feeling of somebody poking his stomach with something hot. He took in a deep breath. His best friend's kid sister looked pretty fucking good.

Noticing Quentin standing in the hall with his hands behind his back, hiding the condoms, Karley glanced at him while she was digging through her make-up bag. "I'll be out in a sec, Q."

He sidled into his room. "Take your time, no rush."

"Yes, rush," she said, curling her eyelashes. "I can't believe I sat there and watched them lose another damn game like that. I could've been getting ready for Dean. Did I mention it's our anniversary?" She was babbling.

"Once or twice. Why aren't you guys going out?"

"Uh, well, he said it'd be more romantic here."

With a frown, Quentin shoved the box of condoms in his pocket and made a show out of peeling back a strip of wallpaper. "This place is a dump."

"A romantic dump," she swooned, twirling out of the bathroom. Her hair was light and wavy, bouncing jauntily with her movements. He could see the lavender straps of her bra showing from beneath her white tank top, and he prayed that she was at least putting on some semblance of a shirt.

Karley wrestled a thick, bulky Boston University sweatshirt over her head. Well, that certainly did the trick, he thought to himself. She sprayed some perfume on her wrists, rubbed them together, and touched behind her ears. Quentin had always told her that her perfume smelled like laundry detergent, and had simply told him that he had no idea what he was talking about. In his roundabout way, it was his method of telling her that she didn't smell like a slut. Which, y'know, was good.

She looked clean, homey and put together, and when she grinned at him, he blurted: "We need to talk."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Look, I was just – "

RapRapRap!

"Later, Q?" she asked over her shoulder, flying down the stairs to answer the door.

"Sure. Later," he mumbled to nobody, tugging out the Trojans. He flicked the corner of the box and tossed them dejectedly into his room.

Quentin had his feet propped up on the coffee table, a box of pizza on his lap. The only light on was a low-watt bulb above the kitchen sink, and what he was eating was only illuminated by the flashing colors coming from the television. He shoved some more pizza in his mouth, washed it down with a gulp of beer, and he suddenly heard a door slam upstairs. He stopped chewing and listened.

"For only $9.99, you get two sticks of Mighty Putty for the price of one! Now ladies and gentlemen, this is a deal you can only get – "

"Dean, c'mon, just leave the door open!"

"What's your problem, hon," he replied, "it's just a door."

He heard another slam and thought it was perhaps a drawer. "Oh my God, I can't find them."

"Find what?"

"Hold on..."

Quentin turned down Billy Mays just a tad, heard more doors opening and closing and then Karley's voice: "Never mind, I have one."

"Look, can we at least shut the door?"

"Doors, doors, doors, Dean. Do I get pissy about you washing your soccer socks once a season?"

"No, but you're fucking crazy about leaving these things open! "

He could practically hear the smile in her voice. "Door or sex. Pick one."

"Sex – "

"Then the door stays open."

There was a growl of frustration. "Babe, but that makes no sense!"

"Tough shit."

There was some more bickering, and Quentin quickly cranked up the volume of the advertisement so it wouldn't seem like he was being a creeper and eavesdropping on their argument. Dean came stampeding down the stairs, jamming his arms into the sleeves of his jacket. "Bye, Dean," Quentin said, his mouth full of pizza.

"Bye," he gruffed, shouldering past Tony who'd just came in the front door.

Tony mouthed something along the lines of, "What the fuck's his problem?" and shoved a case of beer into their small refrigerator.

Quentin shrugged. He wasn't complaining. Tony sat down the couch, put his feet up on the table and reached into the pizza box. "Practice tomorrow night, man," he said.

"Yeah, almost forgot about that one."

"We're going to tool at Friday's game."

They pounded fists. "Damn straight."

"Weren't you supposed to see Jamie tonight?"

He grumbled a swear. "Yeah."

Tony dropped the subject. "So where's Karley at?"

"Upstairs. Dunno how she is, though, she just had a fight with Dean."

Tony's mental, orange flag went up. "She never fights with Pretty Boy."

"Tell me about it."

"You know what's up?"

"I just hope I'm wrong."

Just then, Karley in all of her Trojan-stealing glory bounded down the stairs and settled herself between Tony and Quentin. Both men were silent as they waited for the teenager to fill them in. Quentin handed her a slice of pizza, which she cheerily accepted. She cracked open a beer, and Tony didn't even blink. All Quentin could smell was pepperoni and apple conditioner.

Her knee was pressed against his thigh.

"What was Dean so tied up about?" Tony finally asked.

"Apparently, he doesn't like how I don't close doors all the way."

Laughing, her older brother shook his head. "I knew that'd come back to bite you in the ass one day."

Violently, Quentin cleared his throat and announced that he was going up to bed. It was only eleven, but his head was pounding and his leg was on fire.

He changed into boxer pants, brushed his teeth and sat on top of his covers. Quentin Sovereignton wrestled his way out of t-shirt and twisted around to turn off the lamp. For a good five minutes, he sat in the dark, not even trying to go to sleep before he snapped the light back on. The Jeep manual that he'd been looking at lay on the small table next to his bed. He picked it up and started thumbing through it, seeing diagrams of engines and fuel lines and pumps, but he wasn't registering any of it.

Then, there was a knock on the door. Quentin sat up, flattening down his unruly dirty-blond hair with his hand.

"Hey," Karley said, "you wanted to talk?"

"Uh, yeah," he said, leaning over the bed and fumbling for his t-shirt. He wrenched it over his head, and he distinctly noted how she had taken of her BU sweatshirt and closed the door behind her with a soft click. She never closed doors. That's what made Karley...Karley.

"I kinda wanted to talk to you, too."

"Oh?"

She climbed onto his bed, crossed her legs facing him, and settled her hands in her lap. "You first," she said, blue eyes smiling.

He was kind of dreading that she'd say that. On his nightstand lay the box of condoms. They've since been opened. He tossed them onto her lap. "What the fuck is this, Karley?"

Without hesitating, she leaned forward, slid something out of her back pocket of her jeans and shoved it back into the box. The foil package was still in one piece. "That's what I wanted to talk to you about."

"Wonderful. You're seventeen."

"So what?" she snapped.

"So – "

"I didn't do it with Dean."

He stared at her. "Then who'd you do it with?"

"Nobody!"

"What?"

"You're not even listening to me."

"You had a box of condoms in you drawer."

Her eyes went wide. "Do you want Tony to hear?"

"Tony should hear! This is ridiculous!"

"Q, chill out, please"

"Me? I'm chill."

"You know what, I hate it," she spat. "Not having had sex before sucks. Dean hangs it over my head, you give me shit about 'doing it right' and with the 'right person,' when I hear you going at it with Jamie like every other day. I've heard it hurts, and it's messy, miserable and awkward – "

"And sweaty."

"Thank you! Yes, and sweaty. I just want it gone."

"You still have it?" he asked, incredulous.

She narrowed her eyes at him. "As a matter of fact, I do."

"I thought you tossed it away. A while ago."

"I tried," she said. "Today, as a matter of fact. Dean wasn't having any of it because I didn't want the door closed, guys at parties get all bunched up because – "

"You throw yourself at guys at parties?"

"God, I don't 'throw myself' anywhere."

"I digress."

The bad lighting in his room was bringing out the auburn in her hair. "I want it to go away," she said.

"What are you getting at?"

"You."

"Me?"

"Do you want it?" she asked.

He couldn't have heard her right. "Want what?"

"My virginity."

Holy Christ.

Quentin groaned and rubbed his face with both of his hands. "Take that back," he mumbled into his palms. They way that she'd said it sounded so casual and relaxed, as if she were asking him if she wanted the other half of her fudge pop.

"No, I mean it. I want you to teach me how to have sex," she said quietly.

When he looked at her, her cheeks were slightly flushed, and she still held the box of Trojans.

"You're not serious."

"I am."

"In that case, I can't. No way. You go get Dean, and you close your door. Tony and I will go out for the night, and you'll do it with somebody you love, who you'll marry and – "

"Somebody I love," she shot back, "or somebody I trust?"

"Do you not trust Dean?"

"Frankly, I trust him about as far as I can throw him."

He quirked a brow. "But you love him, don't you?" It made him all itchy to talk about sex and love with a seventeen year-old girl. She was a kid, for fuck's sake. Well, he still thought of her as a kid.

"I never said that, and what in the hell does marrying have to do with anything?" she said, suddenly remembering what he'd previously mentioned. "My god, you and Jamie are ridiculous in bed, and I remember you and Tony going on and on about this Marissa girl when I was like eight."

"What's good for you and what's good for me are two entirely different things, Karley."

She handed him back the box. "Will you at least think about it?"

"I can't. I just can't do that to you," he said. The whole house was eerily quite, and Quentin got a feeling that Tony was long in bed. He laid a hand on her knee. "I'm sorry."

For a moment, something in her face and in her eyes told him that she had understood. "Sleep on it, Q."

With that, she took his heavy hand off her knee and got off his bed, closing the door behind her. Swearing, Quentin punched his pillow into shape, snapped his light off and forced himself to go to sleep.

He needed sex with Karley like he needed a bad habit.

A/N: Whoo! First chapter up. This isn't going to be that long, by the way. Ten-ish chapters maybe. Of course, that also depends on how well this is received. So yea or nay? Lemme know, I'd love to hear what you guys think. :D