feel

12

SOMEHOW THEY found themselves sitting on the rooftop of Hawkins High in the dwindling light, sharing between them a beer and a cigarette.

"Wait. So tell me again how she found you?!" Billy choked out between laughs, beer clutched in a hand shaking in laughter.

"Wandering around, covered in mud, looking like this!" Carter jumped to her legs, crouching her knees and waving her arms around whilst doing her best impersonation of a sasquatch growl.

Billy's head threw back in laughter so hard he thought his lungs would burst. She responded the same way, throat aching and eyes tearing up.

Her hand came out to hold onto his as she laughed so hard she nearly lost her balance. He guided her back to where she had been sitting in front of him with their legs touching as their bodies gradually stopped shaking.

A soft hiccup came from her throat as their laughter died down, both of their fingers tangled around each other's.

The cigarette in Carter's hand was slowly put to her lips and breathed in as she shook her head in the quelling laughter and softening light. She took a final drag and flicked the cigarette farther down the roof, watching as the light began to die from smoking embers.

She took Billy's hand in both of hers and pulled it into her lap, paying with his fingers subconsiously.

Nothing had felt more intimidatingly intimate to either of them. But neither stopped her fingers as they worked against his.

A small smile still played on her lips as he watched her intently.

"What are your plans?" Carter softly asked, fingers now running circles on Billy's palm.

It tickled, but he couldn't bring himself to pull away.

"What do you mean?" He asked, softer.

Carter's eyes turned upwards to gaze into his.

"I'm willing to bet you hate this hellhole almost as much as I do. So after all this," she gestured to the building they sat on, "what are your plans?"

Niether aknowledged that her fingers had entertwined with his and the feeling sent shivers down his spine and fire burning up hers.

Billy shrugged lightly, his fingers pushing closer to hers as his eyes dropped to watch their hands.

"I'm moving back to Cali. No doubt about that. But I guess before then I've gotta save up some money," he hesitated, eyes drifting to watch her features as they softened in the dying light, "and maybe find someone to come with me."

There was a sort of hope playing in his voice and a sad smile forming on her lips.

"That plan sounds like heaven," she whispered, eyes still infatuated with the way their hands fit together.

"Not yet it's not." The whisper was too soft for her to hear it.

Their eyes met for a moment. For one, blissful moment where blue searched brown and souls searched souls.

And then the night came alive with blues and reds and sirens.

His eyes went wide as hers sparkled in an adventurous, dangerous twinkle.

"You work out, right Hargrove?"

Billy tiled his head in confusion. Normally he'd have made a joke about her fawning over his muscles - which, to Billy's chagrin, she had yet to do - but the impending threat of a police car rolling into the school's parking lot made him change his mind.

"Wha-"

"Cause you'd better be good at running!" And then she was pulling him up by their joined hands, laughing as she began to sprint across the flat, one-storrey roof.

A laugh which Billy couldn't quite definitively say was insane or beautful but surely landed between them both rung out into the cooling air. Her fingers were like ice in his grip but he welcomed the change, not having enough time to dwell on the fact he was now addicted to the cold.

And then her grip was torn from his as she jumped down onto a dumpster and sprinted for the woods surrounding the school.

"C'mon, hosehead!" He heard her laugh through the trees.

Billy mumbled something about how the woman sprinting away from him would end up killing him, but she only laughed in response.

*****

"You're insane. You're literally insane!" Billy whisper yelled once they had looped back around after the police had left.

Carter smiled that lopsided, goofy smile he was beginning to get used to as she opened the passenger side door to the Camaro - which she refused to call his car because damn if she wasn't going to steal it for a joyride one day - and shut the door in his face.

Billy rolled his eyes and walked to the drivers side, sitting down on the leather he loved.

She was running her hands across the panels by the dashboard when he started the car. AC/DC screamed across the radio instantly and just as quickly she began imitating the guitar line with noises out of the side of her mouth.

If not for the pressure of not knowing when they could possibly be arrested, Billy would have paused that moment forever. But he knew he needed to speed out of the parking lot, so he did, but not without a smile breaking across his face.

Carter rolled down the window as soon as she could, leaning her head out and laughing in the wind. Billy was amazed by how freeing she could make every moment for the both of them.

He turned his attention back to the road, fingers drumming against the steering wheel.

He was trying not to think about her. Nor about how the clothes he was wearing had begun to take on her smell. Nor about how the chills he got when she brushed against him twisted knots in his stomach.

Billy threaded a hand through his hair and let out a short sharp sigh. The woman in the passenger seat less than four feet away was doing something to him he wasn't ready to acknowledge.

It was only then that he realized she'd been deathly silent, and he turned his gaze in expectation of meeting hers.

Instead, it was met with nothing but her legs, the only thing not hanging out the open window as she sat on the side of the door.

"Jesus, duchess!" He yelled in surprise, hand instinctively reaching out to grab onto her calf to prevent her from entirely falling out of the Camaro.

"Carter! Get back in the car! You're gonna kill yourself!" He called, but was met with only a loud laugh caught in the air as it whipped about her face.

There was nothing that made Carter feel more alive than balancing out of a car window in the dead of night.

Her arms stretched up and outwards, fingers reaching towards the stars and head thrown back in laughter. Billy's hand seared warmth through her body.

Once Billy's heartrate quieted from the surprise of Carter nearly hurtling through the window his grip loosened but did not leave, and a smile became etched in his face.

He couldn't remember what smiling felt like before she came into his life.

He wasn't sure if he'd been able to smile before.

And now he couldn't stop laughing so hard his stomach hurt and smiling so wide his jaw ached. This girl - this mystery creature who leaked into his life only days ago - was making him smile from doing nothing other than spend time with him.

And she was insane. Or as close to insanity he figured anyone could get while still retaining a wise air of reality.

And if he wasn't driving he knew his eyes wouldn't be able to leave her.

"You're insane, Celeste Carter James!" He called, laughing in the chill of the wind.

"Drive faster, Billy Hargrove!"

And he did. Not because she asked him to, and not because he thought it was safe, but because he knew the sound of her laugh would accompany the chill wind as it flew by them.