Devin and Marissa: Rooftop Rendezvous II

[Marissa Jauntsen]

Rooftop Rendezvous II

“Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy solitude. It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them.”
― My Sister's Keeper
 

Late Thursday, 5^th September...

September nights in Montana, even on surprisingly warm, summer-like days were chilly and nothing like the warm temperatures of Malibu where the twins were raised.  Neither had adapted to the cold particularly well and their complaints in the cold winter were almost endless.  This evening, where it was sixty degrees in Malibu it was a brisk forty-five outside on the other side of the sheer white curtains billowing softly in the open window of Marissa’s bedroom.

She sat in her usual spot on the roof outside her room on a small blanket.  She didn’t want to sleep tonight so in a hoodie and sweats that were neither flattering nor fashionable, she braved the chill of the Montana night in her ritual of getting her nicotine fix.  She didn’t smoke in front of others, she found the scent it left detracted from her appearance, getting in her hair and on her clothes.  She used it generally as a means of relaxation, having a cigarette or a joint a couple nights a week as a means of de stressing before bed.

Nicotine wasn’t in play tonight as the polished metal tube vacuumed up the crushed white powder of the several XR tablets.  She snorted, shaking her head and groaning as the powder coated her nasal cavity to be absorbed by the blood vessels there where the drugs would be absorbed into her bloodstream and go straight to her brain faster and more potently than if she had ingested them and waited.  Her metabolism processed food, drugs and alcohol at a phenomenal speed since her strange new abilities awakened and this, she found, helped her not only get high faster, but prolonged the experience by delivering it directly to her bloodstream.

She shuttered, craning her head to one side and shaking reflexively from discomfort as the powder hit her senses.  She cursed silently as she rubbed her nose, trying to scratch the phantom itch that irritated her sinuses.  The means and the method of deliver may not have been the most glamourous for Shelly’s hottest fashionista, but the effects were exactly what she needed to escape the perceived misery and stress of a life she hated.

An hour later she was still there on the roof, gazing off into the sky and wondering all manner of random things as her brain was lightning focused and alert.  It wasn’t ideal, but this would keep her awake and if she was awake, she couldn’t dream.  Ever since the Not-Cody battle, like her brother after he was taken by the dark, she’s not had a night of decent sleep.  Eventually she’d see him; Cody, or what he’d become rather, and he would be battling her and the Fellowship all over again.  During the course of the battle the monster’s flesh would bubble and sear, melt and drip until his face would fall away and Marissa’s was in its place.  She’d rip and tear, shred and mutilate the Fellowship down to the last and it was always when her claws tore into her brother that she’d wake up in a cold sweat, her heart racing, and tears in her eyes.

The flint scrapped against the steel and the lighter sparked to life.  She took a drag and the cherry swelled to life as she inhaled and tried to relax while casting the thoughts of her dreams aside.  She exhaled and tried to relax as the freshly lit ultra slim one hundred filled the air with that first few moments of its unique scent before the full burn began.

“So,” her brother faded into view slowly in a violent shimmer before he solidified completely at his selected location: right next to his sister.  Marissa jumped slightly, thankful she’d exhaled, or she’d have been choking.

“Asshole!” she fumed, backhanding his arm, hard once he was fully present.  “I told you to quit doing the shit, what the fuck?”

He tried to lean away, but her hand was faster and surprisingly powerful for her size.  Her rubbed his arm, grumbling an ‘ow’ before feeling brave enough to speak again.  “So,” he picked up where he left off.  I went ahead and Windex’d your nipple and ass crack prints off the dining room table before mom and dad saw them.  Cade, I’m assuming?  And at mom’s setting too… nice touch.”

She tried not to grin like an adolescent boy who’d just heard someone fart, but she couldn’t help it.  Not even taking another drag from her cigarette helped mask the childish smirk on her face.  “Yeah,” she answered.  “He stopped by after the reception, and now, every time mom lowers her head to take a bite off her plate it’s going to be right where Cade’s face was between my thighs.”

He looked at his sister, one brow raised up in appraisal that was a, knowing Devin, both judgement and appreciation for deviance.  “That’s… that’s pretty fucked up.  Even for you EmJay.  Also, too much info, I don’t need to hear where Cade’s face has been planted.”

Marissa just shrugged.  “Fuck her and dad.  They’ve spent their life ruining ours, I may as well have some fun now that we’re probably going to be shipped off to a boarding school.  If I had more time, I would have fucked him on their bed.”

“And how, exactly, does that hurt mom and dad?”  He shivered and zipped up his hoodie.  “Christ it’s cold out here.”

“It’s therapeutic, Devin.” She craned her head to look in his direction.  “I don’t expect you to understand.” She flicked her thumb on the butt, letting ash fallaway onto the shingles that the rain and snow would wash away as it always did.

“So, does he know you’re just using him to get back at mom and dad by lashing out sexually?”  He shoved his hands in his pockets to stave off the cold.  “What’s your endgame?  Get pregnant and laugh in mom’s face as you watch her break down into tears as you throw away all of the opportunities you have in life to raise Cade’s kid?”

“Nope,” It was about as uncaring of a tone as she was capable of.  “I’m getting Nexplanon Monday, and we’re using protection, but thanks for being all in my business.  Besides, what makes you think Cade even gives a shit?  He’s in love with me, the idiot.  Come on, Devin!  We’re the bad kids!  We’re the liars, the bullies, the villains!  Might as well add sexual deviants to it too, right?  At least that’s one fucking thing we can enjoy in this steaming shit pile we call a life!”  She tried to calm down a bit by inhaling her cigarette once more, but her fingers were shaking as she rose it to her lips, an overdose side effect of the drugs she’d taken earlier, and her bodies hyper metabolism was doing all it could to keep her functioning.

“Chill,” her brother said sternly.  “I wasn’t judging, I’m just concerned, that’s all.  You tend to do stupid shit when you’re mad at the world.  I was worried, okay?”

“Oh, I do stupid shit?”  She turned her head to glare at him.  “You teleported Taggart’s car to Wisconsin because you’re pissed the Project didn’t protect Jason and I do stupid shit?”

“Wyoming, actually.”  He grinned while meeting his sister’s stare and after a moment she grinned too.  “He’s driving it back now.  Next time it’ll be Wisconsin, then Winnipeg.”  They both laughed at the thought of Taggart getting more and more pissed off every time Devin punished the Project for not following through on their promises.

Marissa’s expression finally went dead pan, and she lost all semblance of a being in a decent mood and cut right to the chase.  “So, what?  We’re talking now?”  She knew how her brother operated.  He’d slip in break the ice, engage in some casual conversation, and then escape any semblance of past responsibility by pretending nothing ever happened.

“In a manner of speaking, I guess,” he shrugged.

“Not funny,” she replied while fishing for another cigarette, considering it looked she was going to be here awhile.  “You know what I mean, stop being a prick.”

“Okay,” he conceded as he let himself slowly fall back onto the blanket and look up at the stars.  “I thought, perhaps, it’s been a day or so and we’ve had time to cool down.  Maybe could try hashing this out?”

She thought about it for a moment, casting away her crushed out cigarette and lighting another one.  It wasn’t often she smoked two in one evening, but situations being what they were… “Alright, how about we start with ‘you are supposed to be on my side’.”

“I’m always on your side, Em.  That doesn’t mean you’re automatically right in all things though.  So I agree with the Fellowship that you should have at least told us, that doesn’t mean I’m saying that you were wrong.  I get why you did what you did and how you handled it the way you did.  You got professionals involved and there is nothing wrong with that.  We’re just not supposed to have secrets, remember?”

“I know, I know,” Closing her eyes, she inhaled and then sighed heavily.  “When we made the promise though it didn’t really cover extradimensional spirits making threats against our family!  I didn’t know what to do!”

“But they don’t seem to understand that!” she cast out her arm towards the dark countryside, gesturing to the Fellowship, wherever they might be.

“Because they don’t care,” he shrugged.  “Who’re we to them?  Just the bullies, the mean, evil twins in their story.  The villains, like you said.  I don’t agree with how Jason handled it, but that doesn’t mean he, nor you are wrong.  I agree that in the future, if something like this happens again, we should tell each other about it, but I also agree that if the people we have to tell are incompetent to an extreme, that we should not be obligated to place people in danger just because Jason said so.  I get it, I do.  Remember, we’re talking about a guy who said that what he did Liam was a ‘mistake’.  Writing in blue ink instead of black is a mistake.  Ordering your burger with bacon when you didn’t want bacon is a mistake.  Putting a man in the hospital after you’ve tortured him to the brink of death is not a mistake.”

“At least he has Autumn to heal all of his victims now, so, there’s that.”  She tried to chuckle at her own sarcasm but just couldn’t.

“We’re all figuring shit out still, Marissa.” He went on, sighing with thought as he continued to seek answers in the stars above.  “The whole Fellowship is messed up, we’re lost, we haven’t a clue what’s going on or what’s going happen.  At the end of the day though, you’re always my sister, and I love you.  I may not always agree with you, but I love you.  But Cassie’s dad is running out of time, and he needs us.”

Marissa chuckled and raised her cigarette to her lips, the cherry blossomed crimson in the dark of the rooftop.  “I swear to god, you will literally do anything for a blowjob.  She’s going to get her dad back and forget all about you, you know.”

“I know.” He admitted with far more self-awareness than she expected.  “It’s not for Cassie.  It’s because that is what these powers are for.  They’re not for getting the girl or airplanes in the yard or arguing with Jason every other day or trying to find out if Autumn maintains a carrot patch or has completely tilled the field.”

“Wow.” Was all she could muster.

“They’re for taking down people like those hiding in Site B and bringing people like Cassie’s dad back to their families.  Tawny and Courtney don’t have the raw power to do it, the Fellowship is an implosion just waiting to happen and I don’t have the time nor the patience to keep putting up with the drama every other day.”

“We start a lot of that drama,” she laughed.

His reply was simple and to the point.  “Not anymore.  It’s a job.  They don’t like us, we don’t have to like them, but we still have lives to save, Dark to spank and a Homecoming dance to look fly as fuck for.”

Marissa groaned as she fell back like her brother did, now looking up at the stars as she finished the last of her cigarette.  “We are going to look so damn good this year.”

“So,” he turned his head to look at her.  “We cool?”

She exhaled the last bit of smoke out in a grey line that was quickly swept away by the evening breeze.  “Yeah,” she turned her head to look at him.  “We’re cool, and we’ll need to get in touch with Annette and Taggart about resources.  They need to either start helping or get the hell out of our town.”

“Couldn’t agree more.”  He said, grinning to himself and placing his hands behind his head.

They sat there for a few more minutes, plotting and scheming like they always did before finally agreeing that it was too damn cold to be talking outside.  Marissa prepped for a shower to wash the scent of smoke out of her hair and try to find something to keep her occupied, so she didn’t end up falling asleep.  Devin retired to his art for another hour or so.  For all his tough talk about Tawny the sketch of her and her smile he’d been working on since the night before was turning out to be a modern masterpiece.  For teenagers they were carrying an incredible weight and none of the Fellowship seemed to have proper mentors to help guide them through the trying times they’d found themselves in.  They would endure, like they always did, sticking by each other in a world that didn’t care and against monsters that were not always from other realms.