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The first time it happens, he throws his sweater over her shoulders. His heart is pounding in his chest (and he haven't even been drinking coffee), and a sticky feeling of guilt is spreading through his body like threads mixing with the adrenaline.
Rowan looks just as nervous. She wraps herself in his sweater like in a blanket, sits on the floor, and looks lost and small like someone had suddenly sucked all courage out of her. Brandon understands this perfectly well; he knows this fear. Even brave girls like Fricks eventually break down as dolls with articulated arms.
He gives crappy speech, babbling incoherently. He's a hundred times better at trashing people than at comforting them, but at least he's trying. He probably should have read more, but fuck the eloquence. Rowan shrinks down, hugs her knees, and looks deep into his soul, searching for signs of deception. He wouldn't trust himself either, really. But she, it seems, is slowly opening up to him, trusting him. Naive.
She's wearing his sweater when they timidly kiss for the first time, and Brandon can't understand how everything could have turned so drastically wrong, and the freaking Fricks has taken up residence in his fucking lungs refusing to leave, no matter how many cigarettes and weed he smokes out of it.
***
Somewhere between December and April, after the real King Cobra is found and Brandon is released on false charges, they avoid each other. Rowan stubbornly stares at a book before every class they have together and flatly refuses to listen his offers to meet and talk. Brandon stops asking after the third attempt, ignoring her ruminations and her eternal avoidance tactics. She could go to hell. It was easier to back her into a corner and hit her with bulling remarks and taunts than to constantly fight the urge to shake her by the shoulders and kiss her hard enough to knock all the nonsense out of her head.
Someone awkwardly spills juice on her T-shirt (thankfully, all the paint jokes stayed in the past after the hell of the last six months), and Rowan sighs wearily, as usual, and looks apathetically at the growing stain. Brandon isn't a chivalrous knight but still he comes over and takes a spare shirt out of his backpack. It's a habit to carry a spare shirt — he never knows what mood his father will be in or which day he''ll have to spend the night at Sean's or Trevor's.
"Take it."
Rowan looks questioningly, almost fearfully, with a hint of guilt in her greenish eyes.
"It's just juice."
He shrugs, still holding his hand outstretched, and she finally takes the T-shirt.
"Thank you," she exhales with a wild desire to run away.
Brandon manages to ask one last time, making her freeze for a few extra seconds:
"Need to walk you home?"
"No, it's fine. I need to see the school counselor. My dad insisted."
He watches as she turns the school corner five minutes later, wearing his T-shirt tucked into her jeans. Life has a funny sense of humor.
***
Ms. What's-Her-Hame is organizing a two-day camping trip in early May, complete with real tents, whining teenages and all that "team spirit boosting." Everyone knows it's complete bullshit but they obediently pack their backpacks and head into the woods with pained expressions. Brandon even likes the change; he likes a lot of things but he keeps quiet so he doesn't look like freak. Trevor, nearby, complains about the lack of proper toilet, while the enthusiasts start a fire and pitch their tents. Brandon watches them from the shade of a tree, quickly lighting a cigarette.
"Dude, this is shit, I think I stepped in an anthill," Trevor mutters, dusting off his pants and cursing.
"Idiot."
Rowan's here too, of course. She methodically pretends to gather kindling, but in reality, she's stalling. Her hair is in a loose bun, but one strand keeps falling out, and Brandon gets stuck, continuing to blow smoke into the air.
It's getting cool by evening, and everyone finally settles down around the fire. Someone in the circle has brought a guitar, so the evening is going quite well. It's even camaraderie-like, Brandon supposes. Rowan, four people away, watches intently as someone else's fingers pluck the strings, and an inexplicable jealousy of the guy playing grows inside him. Brandon turns away, catching a laugh at someone's joke. He won't act like a pathetic idiot, drooling over a perfectly ordinary girl. There are plenty of others around, like Emma (or is it Liz?), who sends him photos of herself in her underwear almost every Saturday.
But it's not Emma or Liz he drapes his shirt over when Hayley leaves to sneak away to Hawk. It's not Liz or Emma he exchanges silent glances with. It's not Emma or Liz with whom he had rooftop conversations and almost painful understandings.
Brandon returns to his seat and looks away, ignoring Trevor's muffled "What the fuck just happened?".
***
He's not passing her house on purpose. He's simply wandering down the street, periodically licking the salty blood from his split lip, thinking that Sean's timely escape to LA is just too bad, and he doesn't want to go to Trevor. Of course, by the laws of the universe, Rowan sees him. She stops abruptly, stares piercingly, and asks (of course she does):
"Are you okay?"
Like you care, good girl Rowan Fricks. Brandon twists his broken lips into a smile, adjusting his grip on his backpack, projecting a false sense of invincibility.
"Can't you see it?"
She frowns, and through some internal debate unknown to him, she reaches a decision. She sighs long and loudly, as if to say, "What the hell have you gotten yourself into again, Darrow?"
"We need to treat that wound. Come on, Dad's not home."
He goes. Of course he goes, how could he not? He even patiently lets her run an alcohol swab over his lips, sniffing the air, tracking her every movement. He listens to the kitchen clock to avoid focusing on the silence. It's not oppressive, but it's not enjoyable either. They've been silent for too long these months, and now his tongue is frozen to the roof of his mouth.
"Do you have a place to sleep?" She asks straight out, to kil him on placel. Rowan knows too much about him and loves pretending to care to just let it go.
"I'll find a place."
He turns his head away as her hand reaches out to apply the cotton pad again.
"You can stay here. Dad won't be home from work until morning."
Like it's no a big deal. Like fucked-up classmates are always sleeping over. Who the hell knows?
Brandon knows nothing about her, except her strained relationship with her mother and her strange ability to become the target of bulling. With anyone else, he'd crack a few dirty jokes, but with her, he's sure nothing will happen between them tonight. They've thrown their chances out the window in three steps.
He stays.
He looks at her short gray pajama shorts and plain white tank top, thinking her mocking him is a way worse than a spray-painted locker at school. A couple of levels higher, straight from beginner to pro. Her bed is narrow, and Brandon realizes with each passing second that he should have insisted on the floor. They, of course, try not to touch. It's not going well.
"I hope you're not kicking in your sleep," Rowan grumbles, apparently trying to smooth over the awkwardness, and Brandon chuckles. He'd like to pin her down to the blanket right now, shut her up with a few kisses, bite somewhere on her collarbone, just to try and calm raging fantasies.
He counts slowly to ten, fifteen, twenty... She breaks the silence again with:
"I'm sorry. It's my fault you were behind bars. We thought you were a cobra."
Her hair tickles his shoulder, and the whole place smells of her. Torture. Or rather, retribution for years of abuse.
"Forget it. Consider us even. I screwed up there too," he swallows thick saliva. "And go to sleep already, girl."
Rowan rolls her eyes, then closes them, placing her hand under her cheek. Brandon follows suit.
In movies, waking up is depicted as something thrilling - boy wakes up before girl, looks at her sunlit face and always wakes her with a kiss. In reality, Brandon wakes to an insistent knock on the door. Rowan does too.
At first, her eyes widen and she sleepily looks at him, then suddenly jumps up and, almost falling in the process, picks up his sweatshirt from the floor and pulls it on. She's obviously half-asleep and in a rush, but Brandon puts his hands behind his head and watches as the sweatshirt completely covers her short shorts as she leans halfway out of the room. He almost giggles, imagining her father's reaction if he decided to come inside now—and maybe it wouldn't be so funny, but the situation is absurd. They had nothing (except for that one kiss, a long time ago).
With a little imagination, it's easy to imagine how this morning might have begun or how the entire night would have gone, but these thoughts lead to something far too dangerous now so Brandon try to force himself to think of something less... appealing.
What the hell have you gotten youself into again, Darrow?
***
On the last day of school, Sean throws a huge party. Without Nicki, the organization sucks, reminding of those who are no longer among them. Brandon takes a couple of sips of vodka for Nicks, strolls through the courtyard filled with drunken teenagers, and smokes a cigarette with an acquaintance. Summer is ahead, a schoolboy's dream, but the thrill is lost in this mess. The music suddenly becomes irritating, jarring, and infuriating with its dull lyrics.
Brandon goes to the roof to find it already occupied. Rowan sits with her legs tucked under her, smiling uncertainly as he climbs up to her.
"Aren't you supposed to be at Sean's party?"
"Are you?"
She snorts, looking back at the sky, looking relaxed, almost calm. She wears his shirt. It is loose in the shoulders, but casually attractive. Brandon tries to Imagine, if someone has told him a year ago that he'd be sitting on a rooftop like this with Rowan Fricks, he would have laughed in their face.
"My shirt suits you," he smiles a couple of minutes later, and Rowan turns her head, revealing a faint blush.
"I keep forgetting to give it back to you," she mumbles sheepishly, tugging the corners of her lips into a smile. "Can I ask you something?"
"Yeah."
Her lips are warm and sweet, like the coffee she always carries around in a termos. Brandon answers eagerly, a little dazed, having waited too long for this miracle to react normally. He places his hand on her neck, brushing against the thin chain (that very one), and moves a little closer.
He doesn't want his things back. He fucking loves the way they look on her.