Falling Skies Invasion Alone

Hair

A/N Sorry for a few things this week 1- it's taken so long to update, exams have been stressful as hell. 2- I think my last chapter didn't publish? It's called Time and it's about the draw to go up in the ship. Had some Internet issues lately and so it may have been unavailable to public view. 3- I repeated this chapter! In a previous draft I posted the chapter twice but I've hopefully fixed it now!
So sorry for all that- hope you enjoy- please leave any comments!

His hands clung to me. One hand nestled in the small of my back, pulling my body closer to him: the other hand knitted in my hair, brushing it away so he could continue kissing me. My legs were wrapped around his body having had jumped up to sit on the worktop. I pushed the collar of his tatty leather jacket off of his shoulders and the metal crap that filled his pockets made a clunk when the jacket hit the ground.

"Cassie." He muttered against my mouth in response to me bracing my arm at the back of his neck, keeping him near me. I could feel his hand leave my back and press against the top of my chest, just at my collarbone, and then his fingertips trailed down my body and rested at the waistband of my jeans. I ground against him but his fingers started to move to unbutton my jeans, so I couldn't help but laugh.

"What?" he pulled back a little, separating our lips. At that I let go of him and rested back on the heel of my hands.

"We're not having sex, Pope." I stared at him. My eyes took in his confused gaze, diluted partly by the glaze of lust in his eyes. His stubble had left a slight itch on my cheeks and chin so I rubbed at my face a little, still watching him as he pushed his long, straggly hair back a bit.

The events that had led to this coupling were...odd and slightly weird but it happened, so there I was, kissing the hell out of John Pope and denying him sex.

"Then what the hell are we doing?" He questioned, but placed his hands on either side of me, leaning forward a little.

"Personally? I'm pissed off and trying to get back at Ben." I shrugged and cupped his face in my hands.

"Is that what this is about?" Pope asked and reached up to tug on my hair.

I had cut it.

Ben hadn't come after me after I retreated, enraged, from the ship after seeing him with Maggie. Again. I raged in our bedroom, pacing back and forth like a caged animal, and I couldn't see past it, past the anger, this time.

And then, like the waves of feeling I had been experiencing, ne of clarity washed over me. It was like all the anger, pain at Ben lifted away from my body. It was like a whole other person walked out of my body, like some sort of spirit. And I was taken over by another being.

Before I really knew what I was doing, I headed out for the basement where we kept our medical supplies, where I had been when Maggie sought me out over her fears of having spikes. That is, before she hooked up with my boyfriend.

It was down there, in the dampened room, that my hands grabbed a pair of scissors and chopped at my hair. It had only simply been trimmed in the last few years, reaching past the middle of my back, down to my waist, or just past. But the scissors hacked at my hair, chopping off inches and inches unevenly. I didn't go so short that I would look like a mad woman, or a twelve year old boy. But the cut to my shoulders was just as drastic a difference that if I had shaved my head.

My hair fell to the grounds, covering it like the moult of a dog. I threw down the scissors to the table and ran my hands through my hair. My fingers almost kept going even though I had reached the ends, fresh and blunt.

It was then that Pope had walked in. His step slowed as he passed through the arch of where the non-existent door was to the room. "Whoah." He stared. "What'd you do? Massacre a herd of Highland Cows?"

I dragged my fingertips through my new cut again. "Needed some change." I shrugged and kicked my hair away, brushing my strands off my top.

"This got anything to do with the fact that you and spike boy aren't exactly joined at the hip right now?" Pope dragged his hand across one of the tables on his way towards me.

"We're never normally joined at the hip." I narrowed my eyes a little at him.

"But lately, it's been like you guys are staying away from each other. What happened? He spikes light up during sex?" he tilted his head up in question.

I swallowed and licked at my lips. "He made out with Maggie. Twice."

I don't know why I told him, but I did. He jutted his head back just a fraction in surprise. "Really." He dragged out the word like he had been expecting it all along. "And here I was, about to vote for you two for Homecoming King and Queen."

"See I was going to vote for you as 'Most Likely to Die Alone' but I don't know, there's some other people in the running." I shrugged and leant against the table.

We stared at each other for a moment. "What are you looking at?" He squinted. What was I looking at?

Then I thought back to Pope, to all the things we had said to each other in the past.

"You kissed me once. Before we left Charleston. Do you remember?"

He snorted a laugh a little. "Yeah. Then you said that you were too young for me and hit me."

It was like in the movies where the innocent, taken-advantage-of, timid girl has a turning point and makes herself over to a badass, free woman.

But I wasn't innocent to begin with. I wasn't timid. And I would not stand for being taken advantage of. So when I shed my persona, I was losing the care and compassion that I had that kept me human, and became too harsh, too hard, too much.

So I ignored the thoughts of Ben in my mind. The thought that to do anything with Pope would be worse than what Ben had done perhaps. Because I was becoming too hard.

And that's how Pope and I ended up where we had.

"So what- you're going back to the coat hanger?" He questioned.

"I'm doing nothing of the sort." I raised my eyebrows, daring him to cross me in my mood. "But I'm not sleeping with you because that's too much. And you would regret it. Not as much as I would. But you would regret it."

"You're insane." Pope dropped his head down, almost grazing my shoulder, but I pushed him away with my knee and jumped down from the table.

"Yeah. But it was fun. You're a good kisser." I scooped up his jacket from the floor and pressed it against him. "You know, for an old guy." I pecked his cheek and dashed out.

Exhilarated. That's how I felt. Just weightless. I had dropped all the baggage, all the fear and anger and practically every other feeling. I just felt...solitary.

That was, until I saw Ben again.