A Rebound Without The Bounce [Onyx]

[/font]

Sometimes, Moses wished Ariel didn’t try so hard to be like everyone else. The combination of god-given beauty, figure and the ability to talk confidently with other people completely eliminated anything taken away by her lack of brainpower. Fionna often complained that it wasn’t that the girl couldn’t do, it’s that she wouldn’t try. However, Mo could see that it wasn’t Ariel not trying that was the problem; indeed, dim-wittedness and radiance were her ways of trying for something completely different – just to not be completely different. And yet, Moses could see that, for her, that would be impossible. Like him, condemned to a life without proper speech and voluntarily accepting this to mean he would never be burdened with unwanted company again, she was so very extraordinary, just like all of Fionna’s acquaintances. Ariel LeBlanc treated her body like a temple; in worship of life’s privileges and desires. She exercised every benefit that she was able to, from letting go of the real world for a surreal fog of hallucinogens and pain-relievers on one side of this spectrum to coming straight back down to earth, with all physical feelings clashing through her incoherently, in the pleasures of sexual relationships. It seemed Moses envied her for being so colourful. Moses Tieford was totally the opposite of the girl sitting across the small wooden table from him, in the front room of his living room that he had given up to their study session out of sheer selflessness and the yearning for difference. Fionna’s company was not uncomfortable, in fact Moses spent the majority of the happiest moments of her life in her unjudgemental presence, but it became tiresome at times. What the intelligent, awkward boy with the physical inability to make normal conversation really needed was someone who didn’t ask for it: someone like Ariel, who was content with thinking – or the lack thereof – and making small talk. But who knows what she really desired.

The silence in the naturally lit room, with yellow light spilling through the obscenely large arched windows like slightly rippling honey, was ripped suddenly apart by the shuffle and crackle of the page Moses was turning deliberately and lovingly. Every word of the beautiful fantasy epic resting between his elbows in its leather cocoon was absorbed in his vision, appreciated, considered and then stored in his immense memory. However, as the sound rung out, Moses became acutely aware that Ariel was not engrossed in her reading the way he was in his. She sat, head cocked dreamily, twirling her glossy hair aimlessly around one perfectly smoothed out, and yet hideously talon-like, fingernail. And she was staring at him. Mo, completely lost in the irrationality of the moment, attempted a nonchalant but wobbly smile. Yet the dazzling specimen still slouched jadedly with the unopened book pushed away from her body the way sense had been pushed away from her companion. The sixteen year old cleared his gravelly throat, almost useless tongue twitching in his mouth like the catch of the day on a pier of gum and tooth, and his eyes hastily recovered their original routine of scanning the curling letters intensely. And yet, just for a second, he had been lost.

Before the hypnosis of stunning language and vivid images could seize him, the shaking BANG of Ariel’s book momentarily leaving the surface and then come crashing back down set Moses on edge. Watch it, stupid bitch! he wished he could cry out to her, but knew his thread and insult would only emerge as a garbled tangle of slurred syllables, making him sound more foolish than he could afford to. The legs of the quivered and groaned under the surprising force that Ariel exerted onto it, but before Mo could even glower in her direction, all muscles tense and ears throbbing from the sudden assault of sound, she had burst into speech. “You know when you get a thought in your head?”

[/b] she asked sharply, making a sickened noise halfway between frustration and something more subtle that made the hairs on the back of Moses’ neck stand on end, “and you can’t get it out? Sucks, don’t it?” Doesn’t it, he corrected, before he could help himself, but then he actually took in what she had said. Yes, he constantly felt like that; possibly more than any other teenager in the District. He had no way of getting rid of these thoughts, no speech with which to be rid of the notions relentlessly bursting into existence in his mind. It was one reason he resented so many other people, and had so few friends. And yes Ariel was treating him as a normal equal. Or did she just want to talk about herself, in the least obvious way she could?

Again, Ariel moved hastily, without giving him time to do so much as mutter an mmm of distant agreement. She scraped the rickety chair she was resting on so casually, clearly more comfortable in her surroundings than he, ironically, and leaned towards him. She smelt of peppermint and a dirty, husky scent that reminded Moses of secret, passionate meetings in dusty libraries. He inhaled deeply, revelling in how close she was to him, when before, in Fionna’s presence, they had both been so distant. “Can I see? Pleeeeaase?” she pouted, feigning interest in the thick volume of fiction that Mo was unconsciously brushing with the tips of his long fingers. While he was amused, and new that what she really wanted was some release from boredom, Moses couldn’t help thinking, somewhere in the back of his bursting mind, that maybe she was interested – that some part of her was just like him.

And then, just as quickly as the feeling had come, it evaporated like spirits as Ariel raised her legs smoothly onto the plane of the table, revealing more than a little flesh and reminding Moses that this girl was unclaimable, both as a mutual friend of Fionna’s and in the sense that she was, as he told himself firmly, way out if his league. With a firm, unshaking hand, Mo gripped her smooth, soft and lightly toned calf and eased her leg back off his dining table. It couldn’t be denied that even if he didn’t want to meet enough people to prove it, Moses certainly knew how to act around girls. This light flirtatious way of achieving his aims was routine, something he did in the company of Fi and the other triplets to avoid the stereotype of the gay best friend he knew would be so quickly thrust upon him. Even if he was never going to advance sexually or romantically with girls, he still had his dignity to uphold. And, it seemed, this was the point that Ariel picked up on next.

“What’s the deal with you and Fionna? I mean, you’ve been friends, like, forever, right?” It’s incredible how much Ariel noticed, for someone who seemed to be so thick. She was making Moses see his situation from another perspective he rarely ever got, not being able to verbally express his desire to hear them. But he and Fi were just friends, that’s all it had ever been. While, occasionally, it had almost seemed like Fionna felt the way Moses was often convinced he felt, nothing had actually happened. Was that so bad? Now that Ariel was throwing light on the facts, it seemed it was. And Mo was beginning to feel uncomfortable about it, too. Maybe it was time that Moses grew up. “But, seriously, you have known each other for yonks,” again, Moses thought that the way she spoke was ridiculous, “and you’re just friends?”

Yeah, so maybe it was weird. Thank you, Ariel, he thought, slightly surprised by how easily she addressed this issue, while he made a nondescript mmm noise. However, backtracking and thinking this may not be enough to show how much he had learnt already, he made direct eye contact. And how easy it was to do, her eyes certainly seemed brighter than her words. Moses was finding it easier to be in her contact by the second. Finally breaking the eye contact while he searched for some paper and a pen, straining to stop any need for speech, he was very aware of her presence directly next to him.[/size][/justify][/blockquote][/blockquote]

 

[/font]

 

For the first time in his entire life, Moses found himself wishing a new experience would keep on escalating, rather than disperse into the already crammed atmosphere of his regrets. Even in such a short space of several minutes of conversation, if it could be called that with Ariel babbling and Moses occasionally interjecting with a mumbled hum of detached interest, where he would usually find Ariel's presence excruciating, things were changing. Around him, the air saturated with her scent and her words, Mo suddenly felt like he fitted, like he wasn't just an awkward stain on the perfect bed sheet of his family history, and achievements. Inside, he was shocked at himself to be actually wishing it was so simple for him to talk, so he could use the Tiefords' silver tongue genes to respond to what this girl was saying. She was making things plain to him that he had only suppressed  before. A boy too afraid to face himself, it could only gradually get worse, but now Ariel was the float he needed to understand his problems. And Fionna was, admittedly, a problem. The girl who now leant so close to him that her shuddery, morphling laced breath caressed the tender patch of pale skin on his neck. The vein directly below this breeze throbbed with his quickly increasing heartbeat, and he could barely hear his own thought over the roaring of his blood in his suddenly heavy head. But that wasn't the only physical reaction Moses was having to this bizarre scene.

 

Nobody could say that Ariel LeBlanc wasn't incredible. Boys often mused that she was impossible to keep hold of, although once you'd experienced her… charms there was rarely a way to not want more. Moses had heard all these things many times, and the reputation that followed her just as doggedly as the hoarde of boys, and girls, who wanted her was one of the contributing factors for why Moses felt that this moment was one he would rather savour than refuse. And while she was acting like this, it would be hard for even the most chaste of people to refuse. When Mo glanced back to her in his seated search for something to scribble on, he caught her clouded eyes staring straight at him. Shining brown orbs, trapped under perfectly shaped angular brows, which made Moses flush even more than he already was. His quest for communication seemed all but forgotten as he himself became lost in the tension between them. He wanted to reach out and fulfil his want for her right now, as they sat there together. Though he couldn't tell her this, or do anything about it – he may have been having thoughts which made him uncomfortable all over again, but he was still cautious and sensible enough not to act on them – he attempted a quirky half-smirk to show that, hey, if she wanted something to happen, it could. Please.

 

However, Ariel sighed softly, sending even more excited impulses bouncing chaotically through Moses' body, and bent towards him unintentionally to retrieve a pad and some expensive-looking pens from her bag. The proximity of her body made Moses want to groan, and shift away all the same, but even in his maddened state he knew that would have been indecent. And indecent even for Ariel. "Got you covered, babe," the endearing term in her husky voice making Mo's breath catch in his throat – though she was only teasing, right? She practiced writing her name, like a child deep in concentration while carrying out a seemingly vital task, her brow almost invisibly creased and her pale pink tongue poking out from between two full, arched lips. Her handwriting, and the way her movements flowed together almost as elegantly as they did when she glided into his house at the start of this encounter, were the only things that stopped this task from being completely endearing. Ariel, Ariel, Ariel, read the page, reflecting the words that Moses wished he could whisper to her himself. Did his impediment put her off? Is that why she hasn't acted yet? Moses was getting frantic, and even he couldn't understand why.

 

He needn't have worried, for no sooner was the innocent boy engaged in these thoughts than he caught Ariel's dazzling gaze on him again, expelling heat like two enveloping lasers from the front of her head. A smile played at her lips and cheeks, her chin rested delicately on the cleft her fingers made as they twined together. Moses would have happily stared at her forever – or done something more mature, but she motioned for him to read what she had just written. More than just absent lines of her name? The silence was excruciating and backbreaking as Mo took in what she had conjured elegantly on the paper: maybe, if you wanted to be more than friends with Fionna, you should look at her the same way you were looking at me. Ah, crap, had it been that obvious? But Ariel couldn't have expected him not to look at her with desire, a hunger for her flesh on his as well as her looks, because she was, well, Ariel LeBlanc. And he didn't feel that way about Fionna. Sure, maybe he loved her, a little at least, but he didn't want her how he wanted Ariel, right that moment. Moses didn't want Fionna. He needed her, her company, her brains, her smiles and considerate words, how she accepted him even though he might as well be a mute. But did he need her? With this girl woman here in front of him, it was hard to think of anyone else. It was hard –

 

But there was more written that Moses had not yet acknowledged: How much do you like her then Moses. Be honest now, I'll know if you're lying. I may be thick, but I know people. And I know guys even better. And you definitely can't tell me I don't know that. Moses wasn't focused enough to lie to Ariel. Besides, what was the point? He was finally beginning to understand how he felt for Fi, and for girls like Ariel, and he wasn't going to lose all that by telling falsehoods that could get him nowhere. So he would be honest, and tell Ariel that he honestly wasn't sure how he felt for Fionna anymore. Moses swallowed and exhaled hard, which lucky for him meant he had no breath left to moan with when Ariel came close once more and whispered, "Thought you might want to do this with both of us writing, and not just you."

 

He took the pen in his quivering hand, and began to scribble in his blocky, ugly writing, I'm not sure anymore. I used to like her a lot, he winced at his own candour and naivety, but kept writing hesitantly, I don't look at her the way I look at you because, because? Was it really not too stupid to write "because I want you and I don't want her"? He couldn't afford to show Ariel what a silly child he really was. Hastily he scribbled out his because and wrote instead: you're not thick. Seriously. You just don't see things the way that the rest of the world does. The air was still thick with the echo of the pen scraping the crinkled notepad, and the heaviness of Moses' nervous breathing, as he curled Ariel's fingers tenderly back round the pen. Keeping eye contact with her the whole time, he carefully set her hand back to the pad and waited for a reply. If he was lucky, she didn't notice the trembling of his fingers. If he was lucky, she also felt the electricity in that innocent touch that he felt. Moses Tieford was way out of his depth.

[/justify][/blockquote][/blockquote]