#when I literally moved here because when I called before applying they said reptiles were fine

[starfirebird]

the package tracking: Package Delivered 3:40 PM Thursday

the apartment office: We don't have it, but maybe they'll do another round of deliveries this afternoon?

the post office, in person: the other post office is the only one that does deliveries now, and they're already closed for the weekend

the apartment office, 2 hours later: we don't have it

me: are you sure?

me: are you really sure?

me: are you really sure that the box of PERISHABLE EGGS is not in this office somewhere?

the apartment office: oh, actually we got it yesterday and it's in the return to sender pile

me: and why would it be there?

the apartment office: no idea. aren't you happy you have your package now?

me: do you not see why your behavior is a problem?

[likexporcelain]

A Crack in Everything (Chapter 4/8) - Jonerys

Summary: Six years after their high school romance ended in emotional ruin, Daenerys Targaryen runs into Jon Snow by chance on Valentine's Day, forcing old memories to the resurface. This sudden reunion could be cathartic, but it could also deepen the cracks already in their hearts. The question Daenerys grapples with is, will this all be worth it in the end?

Rating: Explicit

First 4 chapters up on Ao3 -- more tags/warnings/notes there

The first time Jon and I kissed, we didn't stop for thirty minutes, and when the bell rang, we walked to Chemistry together with silly smiles on our faces. We had made a nonverbal agreement not to kiss in front of our classmates, though. Our relationship wasn't for public scrutiny. It was for us.

We were calling each other boyfriend and girlfriend by the end of the week.

I fell in love with Jon almost immediately after that, or maybe I had already been in love with him and just hadn't realized it. I had always thought falling in love was supposed to happen over a long period of time and that loving someone so passionately so quickly meant that the relationship was doomed. Maybe I had been right, but when I was with Jon, kissing him, touching him, laughing with him, I thought that we would last forever. I would never have another boyfriend. I would go to school and he would follow me, we would get an apartment together and watch each other grow as people, we would get married after my graduation, buy a small house on a large piece of land and have two kids by the time I turned thirty. I would be a wildlife biologist and he would teach modern literature. I planned it all out in my head during our first couple of months as a couple, and sometimes, I would interrupt our lunch time make-out sessions to add a new detail to our fifteen year plan.

“Goats,” I said once against his mouth, to which he made such a profoundly confused face and I couldn't help but laugh at. I had been sitting across his lap and I could feel his hard on against my leg, so I figured it was time to get his mind on something other than what making out could sometimes lead to. “What do you think of goats? I've always wanted them.”

“Well. . .” Jon began, scrunching his eyebrows, mulling the question over. “I can honestly say I've never met a goat I didn't like.”

“I want goats. At least two, so they aren't lonely.”

“That makes sense,” Jon replied with a nod. “What about a dog? I've always wanted a dog. A big dog.”

“I like dogs. Can we also get an iguana? I kind of have a thing for reptiles.”

Another nod while he twisted a lock of my hair around his finger. “I'm glad you told me. It's good that we get our fetishes out in the open now before we get too deep into this relationship.”

I laughed so abruptly that I snorted and buried my face into the curve of Jon's neck.

“I'm not really a lizard man myself,” he continued in an analytical sort of voice. “However, I did used to have a thing for Nala from the Lion King.”

“Please, stop,” I choked out through my fit of laughter. I leaned away from him, flopping onto my back on the pavement and splaying my hands over my chest. “I'm going to have a heart attack.”

Turning onto his knees, Jon leaned over me and kissed the backs of my hands. My giggles subsiding, I moved one hand to his cheek and brought his mouth to mine. When the bell rang and our lips parted, I realized what a compromising position we had been in, with me on my back and Jon above me, his tongue in my mouth and his knee on the concrete between my parted legs. We hadn't yet done anything more than make out and feel each other over our clothes, but in that moment I wished we were in a bed somewhere rather than behind the basketball gym at school.

While we walked to Chemistry, Jon bumped my shoulder with his arm and asked “Do you think we could teach the iguana to ride on the dog's back? Because that would be worth it right there.”

Tapping a finger against my chin, I replied “I think we could figure it out.”

Just a week later, university acceptance letters began to filter into the mailboxes of every student at Westeros Prep. All except one. It had made sense to me that Jon would go to college because I knew how intelligent he was. I could see him hanging out on a state school campus, lounging against a thick tree trunk, reading Of Mice and Men between classes, but Jon hadn't applied anywhere, and had made no indication that he was planning on applying in the future.

The only time he ever mentioned college was in reference to my own pursuits. When he saw a college fair had popped up in the quad one day, Jon made us go during our lunch period and as we fluttered from booth to booth, from Georgetown to Duke, from Columbia to USC, from Brown to Stanford, and so on and so on, he had made a passing comment I should have paid more attention to:

“The only booth that was ever set up at my old school was for the military, and it was there everyday. Actually, the Army recruitment office was just across the street from campus, between a Pizza Hut and the Metro PCS store.”

I recall those words often, wondering how long Jon had been considering joining the Army without telling me. For a long time after finding out Jon had decided to enlist, I was sick to my stomach with worry and guilt, so it made me feel better to think that it was always something he was interested in, that maybe being in the military would give him something I couldn't, that somehow, ironically, it would bring him peace.

* * * * *

While Jon drove me home from the pier that Saturday, I watched his fingers dance absentmindedly across the back of my hand over the center console. When he pulled up in front of my building, I hesitated, wanting to invite him inside, but after a few moments silence, I unbuckled and climbed out of the car. Before I shut the car door, Jon leaned over he console and asked “Can I come see you again soon?”

I told him he could, then went inside, noticing through the glass front doors of the complex that Jon's Jeep remained parked out front until I was inside my apartment.

The next day, I had assumed optimistically that Jon would be waiting for me again when I got off my shift, but that wasn't the case. I worried that he'd changed his mind, that, after fully processing what all I confessed to him on the pier, he decided I was too damaged now.

But, Monday evening, there was a knock on my apartment door.

I was watching a Shark Tank marathon and eating Ben & Jerry's out of the pint tub – that and the two-liter of Diet Coke on the floor beside the sofa was my dinner. I really should have spent the day searching for another part-time job so that I could start making enough money to achieve my new life dream of being able to afford my own apartment, one with a dishwasher, but the overwhelming feeling of utter hopelessness kept me watching reality TV since waking up.

“Missi! Your B.F. is here!” I called out, knowing she and her boyfriend had a date that night, because she had been in the bathroom for almost two hours getting ready.

She rushed through the living room with only one shoe on, muttering something about how she thought they were meeting at the restaurant. I kept my eyes on the TV, but when Missandei opened our front door, it wasn't her boyfriend's voice I heard, it was Jon's.

“Hi, is Daenerys here?”

My eyebrows shot up in surprise and I looked to the door, but all I could see was Missandei's slender back and part of the mostly-opened front door. Then she twisted around and shot me a suspicious look.

“Daenerys,” she said with an inflection, because she'd never heard anyone use my full name before, “the door's for you.”

Moving quicker than I had all day, I stood and ran into the kitchen, throwing my ice cream back into the freezer and splashing water from the sink on my face. It occurred to me that I was in my pajamas, but thankfully they also happened to double as normal, though very casual day clothes – yoga pants and a somewhat over-sized Los Angeles Rams t-shirt. Missandei side eyed me as she sauntered back to the bathroom and I shuffled to the door while tying my hair back as neatly as I could.

“Hey,” Jon said.

With nervous surprise, I told him to come in and he did. As I moved around him to close the door I noticed he smelled more like deodorant than cigarettes. He was also holding a plastic bag.

“I'm sorry for just stopping by. We never exchanged numbers.”

“That's okay. It's the same number I had in high school, though. But, I guess you probably don't still have it in your phone.”

He shook his head. “Is this a bad time?”

“Not unless you count me sitting on my ass in my pajamas watching Shark Tank as a bad time.”

With a small smile, Jon said “You didn't used to like football.”

I glanced down at my shirt, then shrugged “I watch a few games here and there. Do you want to sit?” I crossed the room and picked up the remote where I had dropped it and flicked off the television. Missandei and I didn't have much in the way of furniture. Just a deep green sofa, IKEA coffee table and our 34 inch TV that rested on a solid wood bookshelf turned on it's side. Missandei stored her vinyls between the vertical slats. Most of our things sat in piles on the floor. Stacks of books, stacks of blankets, stacks of towels. Our living room almost always looked like we were preparing for a yard sale.

Sitting together on the couch, Jon set his plastic bag in the space left between us.

“Don't you have work tonight?” I asked.

“I actually got off earlier today. Switched shifts with someone. I wanted to give this to you. I know it's lame, but I thought I should see if you wanted it back.”

With a hesitant smile, I put my hand in the bag and removed from it something soft and familiar. Though somewhat faded from lots of wearing and washing, it looked as good as I remembered and smelled even better, because it smelled like Jon. A crimson sweatshirt with HARVARD printed across the chest. I smiled down at it as wide as I did the first time Jon gave it to me.

“You kept it?” I asked.

“Ever since the day you threw it at my head and told me to eat shit and die.”

As he smiled, I frowned. “Did I really say that?”

“It was the last thing you ever said to me actually.”

I hadn't forgotten, but I had hoped Jon had. Looking down at the big white letters, I said “I wore this thing everyday when I wasn't at school or work, you know.”

“I know.”

“I kept wearing it even after Harvard rejected me. I had this idea that I would wear it on my first day at Caltech. It was going to be hilarious and I would have made absolutely no friends.”

“I know.”

Scooting to the edge of the sofa, I straightened my back and pulled the sweatshirt on over my head and down my body. The end of my t-shirt stuck out the bottom awkwardly, but it fit.

When Missandei came out again, all dolled up and ready for her date, she eyed the word across my chest and said “I thought you went to Caltech.”

“Harvard looks better on her,” Jon answered for me and the peculiar complement made me blush nonetheless.

“Alright,” said Missandei, giving me another one of those suspicious looks that meant have fun but be careful. I had never told my roommate about Jon, even though she was the closest thing to a best friend I've had since Jon. It was sad to think of how little she really knew about me, and that it was completely my fault. Once, while we were both tipsy off cheap gin, I told her about my pregnancy as a test, seeing how far I could open up to another human being before I'd start to panic, but that was as far as it went. She asked if I'd had an abortion and I answered by pouring myself another drink and changing the subject to workplace gossip. Once again, Jon knew more about me than anyone else in my life.

I gave awkward introductions – “Missi, this is Jon. Jon, this is Missi.” –  and she was out the door a minute later, saying she may not be home until morning.

Alone with Jon now, my apartment never seemed so quiet. To quickly break the tension, I asked him once more about his face.

“Your scars. What happened?” I asked.

“It's kind of a long story.”

“Well, Missi did say she may not be back til tomorrow.”

That got him to smile a bit before going into it. “I guess it really isn't that long of a story. I served for four years, came back and didn't know what the hell to do with myself, so I reenlisted. Eight months into my tour there was an ambush and --” He finished the story by holding up his fist and popping out his fingers as he made a dull explosion sound with his mouth. “A month in a hospital later and I was discharged.”

I could tell there was a lot more to the story by the way Jon's soft eyes squinted and his body relax in a defeated sort of way against the back of the couch. I could feel him shutting down, just enough to keep the memories from taking over his mind. This look wasn't unfamiliar to me. He had the same sort of look whenever he spoke about his mother. It was the same look he had the day he brought me to the neighborhood he grew up in.

* * * * *

When Jon turned eighteen, it was a Saturday. I would have taken the day off to be with him, but he told me his family had planned a whole day of “fun” for him and that I should take Sunday off instead. I thought that I should have planned something for him as well, but it seemed like he already had something in mind. He picked me up Sunday morning in front of the Seven-Eleven and drove about ten miles South until we were in a neighborhood that made mine look like Pleasantville.  

“This is where you wanted to go for your birthday?” I asked as he parallel parked next to a boarded up, dilapidated apartment building.

“I don't really care about my birthday. I just wanted to take you here, and since you took the day off. . .”

“You wanted to take me here?”

After he got out of the car, he went around and opened the passenger door for me, like it was a real date. It was an unusually chilly morning for April and I kept my hands inside the front pouch of my Harvard sweatshirt. Jon put his arm around my shoulders and pointed up to the third floor of the crusty brick building.

“You see that window, the one on the far left side, third floor?”

“Yeah.”

“That's where my mom died. Inside that room.”

Moving my eyes from the boarded window to Jon's profile, I tried to read his expression, but it was one I couldn't dissect. He didn't look especially sad, though he certainly didn't look happy. His features were soft and unaffected, but his lips were pursed like he was contemplating something, a message written on the wall that only he could see.

We hadn't discussed Jon's mother much. All I knew about her was the probably-false rumors our classmates would mumble to each other when I was within earshot. I never pressed Jon for the truth because it would have been hypocritical of me, since I never wanted to talk about my family either.

“How did she die?” I asked gently, trying to make the question come off in a way that Jon would know he didn't have to answer.

Jon took a few easy breaths and rubbed my arm where his hand rested. It gave Jon comfort to give me comfort. “Drugs. But, I'm sure you already knew about that.”

“I didn't know if it was true or not.”

“Unfortunately, a lot of what people say at school is true. The rest, well, I don't even know enough about my life to dispute the rest. She wasn't always a junkie, though. She was actually a really great mom for a long time, but she always had this very intense, penetrative sadness that seemed to consume her little by little each day. Living where we lived didn't help. Everyone was on something and by the time I reached middle school, she was as good as gone. The rest was just watching and waiting until one day she never came home. She'd gone missing before, but only for a few days at a time. After two weeks, I just assumed she died. When the cops showed up at the front door and told me what they'd found when they raided this building, I couldn't even cry, because I'd already accepted it.”

“I'm sorry, Jon.”

He shook his head and looked at me. “I just wanted you to know the truth. I wanted you to see who I am.”

“That's not who you are, though. That's who your mom was. You're not her.”

“Sometimes I feel like a traitor. I'm basically being taken care of by Ned Stark, but when my mom needed help, he wasn't there. But, I actually like Ned. He's almost always working, but when he's not, he's a really nice person – annoyingly nice sometimes. I don't understand what sort of dispute he could have had with my mom before I was born to make them hate each other so much. I tried asking a little while ago, but he's even less comfortable talking about my mom than I am.”

I took my hands out of my sweatshirt and hugged Jon against me. “You're not a traitor. Some families are just too fucked up to ever understand.”

Hugging me back, he laid his cheek against the side of my head and said “One day, I want to have a totally un-fucked up family.”

“Me too,” I replied.

That was when Jon told me he loved me for the first time, but he told me as a question. “Do you already know that I love you?”

I lifted my head and answered “I had a feeling. You already know that I love you, right?”

“Oh, yeah. You're not very subtle.”

I smiled, but it was hard to be happy in a place like that. A car alarm went off in the near distance and a cat fight had broken out in front of a rotting cottage across the street. The sound of rickety shopping cart wheels grew ever louder as a homeless man limped down the street in our direction.

“Where did you live?” I asked. It couldn't possibly have been here.

Thankfully, we got back into the Mazda, but we didn't travel far. Jon turned onto the highway, drove North a couple blocks, then pulled into the parking lot of a laundromat. I followed suit when Jon exited the car once again, and I followed him across the parking lot until we stood on the sidewalk facing the highway. Sunday traffic was light, but still noisy, so when Jon spoke I had to stand almost against him to hear.

“Across the street,” He pointed in front of us, to a huge building, right up against the highway, tall and beige and rowed with small plaster balconies, clothes and towels draped over the edge of half of them. On the bottom floor, graffiti decorated the chipped paint and the windows were all barred. While it was certainly a step up from the abandoned drug-den Jon had just shown me, the building was depressing at best.

“We lived someplace nicer when I was young,” Jon continued. “I mean, it still wasn't a great area, but it was a little house with a front yard and there were kids my age who I could play with. We moved here when I was nine, after my mom lost her secretary job.”

I took his hand in mine and squeezed. “A few foster families I stayed with lived in buildings a lot like this one, but I never stayed long.”

“It's weird that we met where we did. In some fancy douche-bag school. I guess I'm just lucky you're freaky smart and my uncle is freaky rich.” His eyes were still on the building, his palm damp against mine. “I'm not going to say I'm lucky my mom died when she did, but at least something good came out of it.”

“Hey.” I gave his arm a gentle tug to get him to look at me. I had no idea how to respond to that, so instead, I said “Let's go someplace happy, alright? For your birthday.”

“Yeah.” Finally, the corners of his mouth lifted. “Can we go to your apartment?”

I sucked my bottom lip between my teeth and nodded. That was exactly what I had in mind.

* * * * *

Slowly, I raised a finger to where the longest scar started on his forehead and felt the slight crease of skin. Incredulously, I asked “You spent a month in the hospital for these?”

Heaving a drawn out sigh, Jon began unbuttoning his shirt. My pulse raced, but any excitement I felt for getting to see Jon's body again was quickly replaced by anxious fear. I couldn't prevent my gasp, and I felt tears prickle at my eyelids as soon as my eyes beheld the long, jagged scars that covered Jon's torso, one of which being right where I had placed my hand in the middle of his chest on the pier, right over his heart.

“Oh my God,” I breathed, unable to look away. I had to cover my eyes with the palm of my hand when I felt about ready to throw up. “I shouldn't have let you go,” I whimpered. “I knew something bad was going to happen. I knew you were going to get hurt.”

“You knew you couldn't stop me. And I'm fine now.”

After a hard swallow, I let my hand drop, taking in the sight again with a bit more composure. “Does it hurt?” I asked, reaching out tentatively and touching the discolored scar running down the center of his chest with my fingertips.

“Not anymore.”

“You almost died, didn't you?”

His hand raised to my face and I felt his thumb stroking the water that had spilled from my eyes. “Don't cry,” he whispered, leaning toward me. “I'm not dead.”

Slowly, but without caution, I leaned forward to rest my cheek against his. His arms went around my waist and mine draped around his shoulders. We remained like that for a short time and when I leaned back ever so slightly, I turned my head, my nose grazing against his cheekbone. I took his face in my hands and tilted his head down so that I could press my lips to the top of his most prominent facial scar, kissing my way down the permanent blemish until it stopped at the hollow of his cheek. All it took was a shift of my head a couple inches and my mouth was over his, and when I puckered my lips, they just barely touched his. Each kiss was just a little bit firmer, a little bit longer, and soon Jon was kissing me back, letting me taste his tobacco and winterfresh breath, and his warm tongue.

* * * * *

I had made Jon wait in the hallway outside my apartment door for a couple minutes while I straightened up. It was a tiny place and I wasn't exactly a tidy person. Once all the dishes were in the sink, garbage in the garbage can, dirty clothes in the hamper, and clean clothes tossed in the closet, I gave Jon the green light to come in.

It wasn't the first time Jon had been over, but it was nerve wracking all the same to watch his eyes scan my single room apartment like he was trying to spot something that wasn't there before. There was never really much to see, though, besides clutter. Just a kitchenette, a Salvation Army desk and my bed, which was just a mattress and box spring sitting on the floor under the only window in the whole apartment. There was a door next to the refrigerator that led to a small bathroom and a sliding door by my bed that was a long, narrow closet stuffed with old school stuff and cheap clothes. I never liked buying furniture because I never liked moving it, so when I did buy things for the apartment it was usually funky blankets and pillows and water cups with TV characters on them. I hung Christmas lights across two adjacent walls but rarely plugged them in, worrying it might be a fire hazard. There was no television, but I did have a laptop that I kept locked in my desk in case of a break in.

Jon took his fake-leather jacket off and draped it over my desk chair. “I like the dinosaur pillows.”

I turned to my bed, cheeks going pink as I realized I had made my bed the other day with cartoon dinosaur sheets I'd bought on sale in the children's section at Target. It probably looked even stranger that along with them, I was using a thick Christmas themed throw blanket as a comforter.

“So, I have a question,” he continued. “You're still seventeen, right? So how come you're living on your own and not in some shitty foster home?”

“It's a long story,” I said, sitting down on the edge of my bed. Because there wasn't a frame, the height was about the same as a regular couch. “The short version is that my brother adopted me when he turned twenty-one, but that turned out to be a complete nightmare, so I got emancipated when I was fifteen, around the time I started at Westeros Prep. I had been working since I was fourteen so I could already support myself enough to afford this lavish life of luxury you see here.”

With some hesitancy, Jon replied “I thought your brother died.”

“My oldest brother killed himself less than a year before I was born. I have another brother, though, who is about seven years older than me. I haven't seen him in a couple years. He must have gotten all of my father's genes, because he's not a very good person. I still love him, though, but if I never have to see him again, I think I'd be okay with that.”

Jon nodded slowly, crossing the few feet between my desk and my bed to sit beside me. “Fucked up families,” he said.

“Exactly.”

For a bit, we sat in silence, save for the soft hum of the traffic outside, until Jon broke it.

“What do you want to do?”

Nervously, I shrugged, a lie because I knew exactly what I wanted to do. It was the same thing we'd almost done the last time Jon was over, and the same thing I fantasized about most nights as I tried to fall asleep.

“Are you too warm in that?” he asked.

I glanced down at my sweatshirt and nodded, then pulled the thing off. The tank top I wore underneath rode up to just under my bra as I did so, so I tugged it back down over my hips quickly. Jon raised a hand to the back of my head and I felt his fingers rake through where my loose hair had become tangled. When I toed off my shoes, Jon followed suit and removed his Converse. While his eyes were on his feet, I took a chance and pulled off my tank top, and before Jon's eyes found me again, I was already shedding my bra.

“We don't have to,” he said, because that was the sort of thing nice guys said, and while I was glad for that, what I really wanted was to feel his hands on my naked tits and his mouth kissing me all over.

It sounds silly, but the fact that Jon had turned eighteen and I was still seventeen made me even more excited. I always enjoyed those sorts of benign rebellions because it was all I could ever afford myself. I felt this way behind the basketball gym sometimes when Jon and I would spend the entire period making out. As soon as the bell would ring, I would pull back just slightly and say “We need to get to class” and Jon would reply “Fuck class. Kiss me,” and I would kiss him for another two minutes before we'd run to Chemistry and get there just as the bell was ringing again. Little things like that made me feel dangerous and like my life was more interesting than it really was.

Jon had a condom in his wallet “just in case” and when we were both naked I watched him slide it onto himself, chewing on my fingernails until he was finished. I was a virgin and he wasn't, but I liked that it wouldn't be his first time. I needed him to be less nervous than I was.

Lying back on one of my dinosaur print pillows, I parted my legs enough for Jon to situate himself between them. When he leaned over me, I flinched a bit, thinking he was going to put his penis in me right then, but he didn't. He pushed some strands of hair from my face and asked “Are you okay?”

“Yes,” I whispered and pushed some of his curls behind his ear.

“Just kiss me, alright? And don't stop.”

That sounded easy. I'd had a lot of practice kissing Jon over the last few of months. When he closed the gap between our mouths, I kissed him the way I thought lovers kissed and tried not to focus on Jon's hand as it trailed between our bodies and touched me where no one else had ever touched me before. My hips jerked slightly and I moaned into his mouth which just made him kiss me better.

A second after his hand left me, I felt something else replace it, but instead of freaking out, I just did what he said and kept on kissing him. I had my hand behind his head, keeping him with me just in case.

I knew that it would hurt. Everyone always says the first time hurts, but the pain went away a lot sooner than I thought it would. I wondered if having used tampons for years had helped, but quickly turned my mind onto something other than periods, like the fact that Jon Snow, my boyfriend, who I loved so deeply, was in my bed, having sex with me.

Afterward, we got Icee's and pizza from downstairs and watched Lost on my laptop, pausing it every few minutes to make out a little bit. “Best birthday ever,” Jon had murmured between kisses.

* * * * *

“Daenerys,” Jon breathed against my mouth and I wanted to roll myself up and live between his lips like one of his cigarettes. But then he said “Maybe I should leave.”

I leaned back a bit, understanding but also not understanding at all, because he had kissed me back, his hand had slid from my waist to my thigh and his dark eyes were full of hunger.

“Can't you just kiss me for a little?” I asked, running my hand across his cheek and feeling his short beard tickle my palm.

Leaning his forehead against mine, he purred. “I don't know if I can just kiss you.”

I recaptured his mouth, trapping his bottom lip between mine. The kisses intensified quickly. I didn't think I'd ever kissed Jon like this. These were needy, ravenous kisses. Live-in-the-moment kisses, because in the next moment, everything could be different. Forget-about-the-future kisses. There was only right now.

I swung a leg over his lap and his hands went to my ass before sliding up and under my shirt, uncomfortably stretching all the fabric that kept my body hidden. His fingers unhooked my bra so that his palms could caress the length of my back uninterrupted. Maybe that was as far as Jon wanted to go, but I took a chance away, leaned back on his lap and peeled off my shirt and sweatshirt, all in one, albeit awkward, motion. Then I took a breath, watching Jon's dark eyes watch my chest as I slowly slid my bra down my arms before dropping it onto the floor.

From my back, Jon's hands trailed around until they were feeling the curve of my tits, not much different, I hoped, from the last time he'd held them. His calloused fingers against my nipples made me bite my bottom lip and I was suddenly feeling breathless. When Jon leaned forward, I tilted my head up and then his mouth was on my neck, pressing wet kisses that made my toes curl. Arousal boiled between my legs and I began to move my hips just enough to feel how much he wanted me too. As soon as my crotch brushed his, he hummed against my neck and slid his hands back down to my ass, pulling me firmly against him.

“I need you,” I breathed, my eyes closed, focusing on his body against mine. “I need you inside me.”

But a moment later, he was leaning away from me, resting against the back of the couch and parting his hands from my yearning body to rub his eyes, as if he thought this was some kind of dream. I could see the wheels turning in his head and suddenly felt lost. If he was mulling this over, then I knew how it would end.

“This is why you were afraid to talk to me,” I said solemnly, fingers fiddling with the bottom hem of his flannel shirt. “You knew this would happen. You knew I still wanted you.”

His hands dropped to my thighs, rubbing them like he would do to my arm to comfort me, to comfort himself. I didn't feel comforted, though. I could tell he was trying to focus on my eyes and not the fact that I was half naked and on top of him, ready for the taking. “I knew that I still wanted you,” he whispered. “I just have to think first.”

“You've had all this time to think, Jon, and it lead you here. I didn't ask you to come over tonight. But you're here now, so stay.” I was pleading now and I hated it, but I was afraid that if he left I wouldn't ever see him again and I couldn't go through that twice.

Eyes trailing down my body, I could see them flicker as one part of him tried desperately to convince all the other parts to give up on me. His hands began to tremble as they slid up to my hips, and then he was moving me off of him. Standing, he kept his back to me while he adjusted the way his jeans pressed against his erection. I didn't try to speak. I had already said all I could think of.

“I just need to think,” he said again while pulling a pack of Marlboros from his pocket.

He didn't walk away, though. He remained standing in front of the couch, fingers sliding a cigarette into his mouth and I just watched him do it, content to let him smoke in my apartment if it meant he wouldn't leave. Jon would never do that, though. His hand never even reached for a lighter.

After a minute, I stood, cautious and quiet. I picked up my t-shirt and held it to my chest, covering myself without putting it on, then moved around to Jon's front. I didn't try to touch him, but I stood close. His eyes stared at the wall behind my head, still mulling.

And then something changed. His eyes squeezed shut and he pulled the cigarette from his mouth, tucking it behind his ear. A hand covered his eyes as he inhaled sharply through his nose. I wanted to hold him but still thought it best to give him space. The next time I saw his eyes, they were pink and his eyelids twitched like he was trying not to cry.

“Okay,” he said finally, then paused again to take a series of long breaths. “You were right. You were right all those years ago when you told me that it didn't matter and that it didn't change what we had, because I never got over you, I never stopped loving you and I never stopped wanting you. I guess that's obvious. Every day since you told me to eat shit and die, I have missed you. You're still the most beautiful person I've ever seen. I would give you every single piece of me if you wanted it.” I could hear his throat swallow hard. “But, I don't want anyone to ever look down on you, or us. . . Fuck. This is hard for me. I want this so bad, but it's hard for me to accept that there's this thing between us. I wanted us to be perfect. I thought that we were perfect.”

The t-shirt was growing damp where my hands clutched the fabric. I was sweating again. Jon was too. Small beads of moisture percolated at his hairline.

Shaking my head, I whispered “I don't need perfect. I never did.” I stared at his chest. With him standing, the scars looked almost like rips in his flesh, like something trying to cut it's way out of him. “I'm sorry I pushed you. I'm sorry I made you uncomfortable. Please don't leave, though. We could just hang out. Even after all these years, I still think of you as my best friend. More than anything else, you were my best friend.”

My eyes caught Jon's green Converse stepping closer to me. I could feel the heat coming off of his body and when he laid his palm on my jaw, I thought the skin might melt off my face.

“You're my best friend, too. And don't apologize. You didn't make me uncomfortable. I did. I've got Robb Stark's fucking voice in my head.”

He had said the last bit with a breathy chuckle and I finally picked my head up to face him.

“I'm not going to listen to it anymore,” he added. “He doesn't know what this is like.”

Hopefully, I suggested “We could just get dinner and watch TV. We never did finish Lost. Well, I finished it without you, but we could start over. Get some Chinese food and just. . . start over.”

“Okay.” He nodded. “Let's do that. But, let's do this first, alright?”

A second later, his mouth was over mine, kissing my upper lip and I was quick to capture his bottom lip, sucking gently. As soon as his arms were around my waist, I wrapped mine around his neck, dropping my t-shirt to the floor without a care. He held me close and lifted me to his height, my pointed toes leaving the carpet. My eyes were shut, focusing on kissing him, relishing in the tickle of his short beard against my nose and the smoking taste of his warm tongue. When his hand hooked under my butt, I wrapped my legs around him and moved my hips against his abdomen, longing for just an ounce of pressure between my thighs. My mind could hardly register that Jon had turned us around until I was suddenly horizontal, my back landing on my plush sofa cushions, and Jon was on top of me, having never broken our kiss.

I was being consumed by hot breath and salty skin, and flexing muscles, like the one pulsing against my desperate pussy. My hands were quick to slide between our bodies, connecting with Jon's belt. The buckle landed harshly against my pelvis once I had it unfastened. Jon sat up on my knees between my legs and pulled the leather strap from the loops around his jeans and dropped it to the floor.

“There are condoms under the sick in the bathroom,” I said through shallow gasps.

Meeting my eyes, Jon nodded, then leaped up and went to find my bathroom. After a deep breath, I lifted my knees to my chest and pulled off my yoga pants and underwear. Jon was back before they hit the floor and I immediately broke out in a fit of laughter because he had brought the entire Costco sized box with him. He started to chuckle as well, but was too mesmerized by the sight of me.

Moving slower now, Jon set the box down on the floor and started on his shoes, eyes never leaving me. I thought he would undress for me, but he didn't. Once his shoes were off, he climbed back between my legs and leaned down, kissing me firm on the mouth before moving down to my neck, nibbling the skin and licking my throat. My eyes closed and my fingers wove into his hair as I felt wet kisses trail from my collarbone to my chest to my nipple – I gasped, his teeth grazing the hard nub before sweeping it with his tongue. And then he went lower, to my navel, then even lower. His arm hooked under my knee and lifted it up higher, over his shoulder, and then his lips were on my pussy, kissing me, teasing me, tasting how aroused I had become. I tilted my head back against the sofa cushion and groaned, overtaken by the sensual sound of wetness meeting wetness as he licked me.

After Jon found my clit I knew it wouldn't take long for me to cum. My pussy had sucked his two fingers into it's depth like they belonged there and my muscles clenched them tight as he persistently sucked my clit between his lips and did something with his tongue that made me whimper curse words through clenched teeth, moving my hips against his mouth. My orgasm seemed to last forever though it was probably only about ten seconds. I begged him not to stop, and he didn't, but eventually it was too much and I had to push his head away.

I was left panting, chest heaving. Jon had sat up and I closed my legs, my thighs pressed tightly together. Slowly, he removed his fingers from inside me and rested his sticky hand on my knee, squeezing it gently. When I was calm, I looked at him and blushed, realizing it was the most relaxed I'd felt in a long time.

“Hi,” I breathed, like my mind had been wiped clean and I was meeting him for the first time, naked and trembling.

“Hi,” he replied, then gently pulled my legs straight, to rest across his own.

Jon rubbed my calves and feet and after a couple minutes, I thought I could fall asleep like that, but then I remembered the box of condoms and suddenly felt a pulse between my thighs. It had been so long since someone else had given me an orgasm that I'd forgotten just how much I loved it, but an orgasm wasn't all that I wanted.

Twisting on my side, I reached down to the floor and retrieved a condom from the box before sitting up. I moved to straddle Jon's lap, knees sinking into the sofa on either side of him. I could smell myself on his face when I leaned close. I kissed him, open-mouthed, connecting our tongues and I could taste myself too among his usual Jon taste. Even better.

While we made out like we used to, but better, I felt Jon's hands between us and his hips raising against me. He leaned forward to finish pushing his jeans and boxers off his legs, but I moved with him the whole time, never breaking our kiss. His erection was against me now, flesh on flesh. Jon leaned back against the couch and I lowered my pussy to let it rest atop the underside of his pulsing cock. He moaned into my mouth, his hands squeezing my ass while I moved my hips just enough to get him slick with my cum.

I'll admit, I wanted to let him slide into me right then, but I handed the condom to him and watched him put it on himself. Once ready, I gripped Jon's shoulders and lowered myself onto him, trying to keep my breathing even while he filled me.

“Oh my God,” I groaned once I had him all the way inside. His forehead was against mine, his hands back on my ass and I simply stayed there, sitting on his lap with him buried inside me, shifting ever so slightly here and there, getting reacquainted to the feel of him.

After half a minute, I lifted up a couple inches, then lowered back down. This simple move made Jon groan and squeeze my flesh.

“Just to warn you,” he sighed, “I'm not going to last very long.”

I dropped my forehead to his shoulder, and through a breathy laugh, I said “I'm good with that,” then rolled my hips to elicit some more of Jon's soft throaty sounds.

We did end up getting Chinese food, and we also watched Lost, but only the first episode before retreating into my bedroom. Into my bed, to be specific, but we wouldn't need the condoms. We just laid together underneath mismatched sheets and blankets, making each other warm in my drafty bedroom. Then we just slept. We slept for a long time. I couldn't remember the last time I'd slept so long, and not once had Jon gotten up to smoke.

In fact, he was still asleep on his back when I dragged myself out of bed to use the bathroom. It was the late morning and I heard Missandei come in the front door while I was brushing my teeth. I grabbed a brush from the counter and started working on the tangles in my hair while I walked out to greet my roommate.

She was sitting up on the kitchen counter, eating Greek yogurt with her finger, wearing the clothes she left in last night and looking as though she had hardly slept a wink.

“Fun date?” I asked, trying to keep my tone cool and casual.

With a tired smirk, Missandei nodded, then sucked some more yogurt off her index finger. “I should ask you the same thing. You finally get on Tinder or something?”

I shook my head, bringing my own finger to my mouth to nibble on a nail. “No, Jon and I have known each other since high school,” I replied. Maybe it was time for another test. “We actually dated in high school.”

Back straightening, Missandei gazed wild, intrigued eyes at me. “You had sex with an ex-boyfriend? That is some drama, Dany,” she said in an excited whisper. For a moment I felt flushed, wondering how she'd known we had sex, but then I realized we'd left the box of condoms sitting on the living room floor.  

“You have no idea. But. . . I'm choosing to be optimistic.” I smiled a true smile, something Missandei rarely saw from me.

With a sly grin, Missandei hopped off the counter, tossed her yogurt cup in the trash, then pulled me into a tight embrace. This was also a rare occurrence so my arms were more tentative as they wrapped around her.

When she let go, she swayed off in the direction of her bedroom, asking me to wake her up for work in four hours. That reminded me that Jon had work at two o'clock, so I slipped back into my room to lay with him some more before he would have to leave. And I would watch him leave, happily, finally knowing for sure that it wouldn't be for good.

[badbackgroundscience]

You know what happens to a cobra when it’s struck by lightning?

The same thing that happens to everything else.

Yes, I have just used that infamous line from the first X-Men movie. No, Thor does not actually electrocute his baddie of the week. But I was really wishing he would do something akin to wiping the proverbial floor with a man who was merely bitten by a radioactive cobra yet claims he’s more powerful than a Norse god.

You heard that right - The Cobra got his powers from getting bit by a radioactive cobra* (And like Spider-Man, he appears to only get wall-crawling and agility out of it; he has to make his own venom darts). His real name is Klaus - an ex-con who kills his employer because the scientist might one day get all the credit for the discovery of a universal snakebite antivenom. Klaus makes one of their captive snakes bite both of them, so it appears an accident, using all the available antitoxin on himself.

Thor, by pure coincidence, is in town and finds (his former mentor) Professor Shecktor before he dies, which allows the old man to exposit:

As I’ve said in many a post, all living things are radioactive. So if you’ve ever been bitten by any living thing - a snake, a spider, Mike Tyson - you were just bitten by something radioactive (Notice that you haven’t gained superpowers...yet...).  But I’m going to ignore this and simply move on to talk a little about cobras.

Cobras are a group of snakes belonging to the taxonomic genus Naja.** However, there are also false cobras, including the world’s longest venomous snake, the King Cobra (genus Ophiophagus). As of 2009, there are 28 species of ‘true’ cobra - we’ll assume it was one of those that was used to kill Shecktor. Each is capable of delivering a fatal dose of venom to a human, but not all venom works the same. Many cobra venoms are neurotoxic (which attack the nervous system, naturally, and cause paralysis) but some are also cytotoxic (which attacks cells, leading to swelling and necrosis), hemotoxic (blood), or cardiotoxic. Some venoms have crazy coagulant properties, turning your blood into what resembles a clump of jelly.*** In general, if you’re bitten by a cobra you die from being unable to breathe - your diaphragm can become paralyzed in as little as half an hour. (As for the Professor, he’s just lying in a bed - we’re not even told through narration that he actually dies after Thor leaves to confront the baddie.)

Proteins are responsible for all this damage; venoms can have hundreds if not thousands of different proteins in them, each having slightly different effects, but not all are toxic.**** That’s why research into snake venom is not simply to develop cures for snakebites, but for hunting among these proteins for ones that have other medicinal properties. For example, peptides (basically smaller versions of proteins) in black mamba***** venom have been shown to possess analgesic properties as strong as morphine - at least in mice - but has potentially fewer side effects.

Cobras don’t just bite you - some species have special holes in their fangs that allow them to squirt, or “spit”, their venom at a target.`* That’s a purely defensive move. The toxin can’t kill you from the outside, but if it gets in your eyes (That’s where they’re gonna aim) - it can cause chemical burns and, yes, blindness.

If I had to ID the species of our cobra culprit, Stan & Co. probably picked Naja naja - the Indian Cobra. It’s the classic “That’s a cobra!” species, though apparently, there’s only a ~25% mortality rate among untreated victims,`** as opposed to the most venomous cobra, Naja oxiana, the Caspian cobra (at 70-75%). We must also ignore the fact that the snake probably wouldn’t have attacked the professor, and instead merely slithered away, or only bitten Klaus for being the man actually bothering him. Indian cobras are one the “Big Four” species responsible for snakebites in India (presumably they aren’t all snake charming accidents) - but Naja isn’t a genus actively looking for a fight. Neither are most snakes, really...

Thor issues forth a “typhoon” to travel from Shecktor’s deathbed to Cobra’s reported location (which is, quite unhelpfully, simply “America”). Typhoons are tropical cyclones that form over the North Pacific (as opposed to hurricanes, which form in the Atlantic/NE Pacific). Thor merely looks to be making a windy cloud...

...and by sheer coincidence lands in the exact same location the Cobra has. Our baddie’s trying to get some chemical plant employees to give him control of the facility, so that he can make a bunch of “cobra serum to create a vast army of others like [himself] - to do [his] bidding and serve [him] without question” so he can take over the world (I’m getting a feeling of deja vu...). He threatens them merely by sliding along the middle of the ceiling and boasting,

Another vocab lesson - “stings”, while capable of delivering venom, aren’t the same as “bites”. Or so you’d think, right? Arthropods sting; jellyfish sting; male platypuses sting. None of these involve mouths. But apparently, the Oxford English Dictionary does have an old definition that says, “Applied also to the fang or venom-tooth (and erroneously to the forked tongue) of a poisonous serpent.” I’m not comfortable calling a snakebite a “sting”; maybe you are. We’ll have to agree to disagree. Except on the part where the definition says “poisonous serpents” - that’s mistaking poison for venom and I won’t be having any of that.`***

This definition dilemma continues when the Cobra throws a bunch of capsules that vaporize his “cobra venom into a dense, fast-spreading vapor” - if you want to be accurate (And maybe you don’t, but why?) you can’t call it a venom if it’s not directly injected into a victim. It’s a poison.

During their battle, the Cobra ends up dumping the entire load of a random chemical vat onto our Norse god - however, I can’t make any sense of his technobabble (”This valve...activates the flow of a liquid chemical force-blast pipe”) - and Thor becomes doused in an “acid-base formula”.

As acids and bases neutralize each other when combined, I can only assume Thor was just hit with salty water.

The definition of ‘acid’ and ‘base’ has varied over time, but you generally walk away from a high school chemistry class learning maybe 3 that stick with you for some length of time:

Acids are proton donors, bases proton acceptors

Acids have an ‘H’ at the front, bases have an ‘OH’ at the end

Acids have a pH less than 7, bases have a pH greater than 7. Water is neutral, which is 7.

You probably forget these in the order I introduced them. (The second one isn’t entirely true, because bases don’t have to have a hydroxide on the end (see: ammonia, NH3).) Basically, when an acid/base is put into water, some fraction of its molecules break up - or, dissociate - into its constituent ions. For example, sulfuric acid - H2SO4 - first breaks up into an H+ and HSO4-, and then H+, H+, and SO42- ions. Because a large percentage of molecules do this, we call sulfuric acid a “strong acid”. Acetic acid (i.e. what they dilute to make vinegar) is a “weak acid” because far fewer of its CH3COOH molecules dissociate into H+ and CH3COO-.`**** The free-floating H+ ions, which are literally just protons, bond with nearby water molecules and make H3O+ (”hydronium”).

Water, which is equal parts H and OH, also dissociates, with some protons deciding to pop off and form a hydronium with a nearby undissociated water molecule. The “equal parts” bit is why water’s considered neutral. An acid has more hydronium than water - which we represent by giving it a pH lower than 7 - and a base has less hydronium than water, so the pH is higher than 7.

If you mix a strong acid and a strong base together, the protons from the acid will bond with the hydroxide from the base to make new water molecules. The remaining ions (e.g. the sulfate from the sulfuric acid) just hang around not doing anything. Since they’re ions that would bond with each other outside of the water (i.e. the one from the acid’s got a negative charge and the one from the base’s got a positive charge, but the water keeps them dissociated) we say that the other product of an acid-base reaction is a ‘salt’. Assuming the ratios were correct given the exact acid and base species, the solution is completely neutral in pH. If the ratios aren’t, it’s either still acidic or basic. It can’t be both.`*****

Unless, of course, they meant the compound was acid-based. 

Cobra evades Thor and shows up at Donald Blake’s rival’s practice, demanding this random doctor give him the “serums from [his] medicine cabinet”. The man quickly caves - much to the annoyance of Jane Foster (She left Blake to go work for Andrews. Long story...), who catches Thor’s attention as he flies by, by throwing a large volumetric flask through a closed window. Cobra’s not happy about that, and drops Jane out another window for Thor to catch while he makes his escape. Jane quits Andrew’s practice immediately after being rescued and goes to find Blake to beg for her old job back, and the Cobra goes Odin knows where.

And he leaves without making a single snake pun or slurring his “s”-words. (How dare he!)

* Okay, fine - it’s explained that it was the antivenom he took in response to the snake bite that gave him the powers...but what does a dying professor know?

**Cobras are in the taxonomic family elapidae, as opposed to the other main venomous family viperidae. Elapids venom is typically neurotoxic and Vipers hemotoxic, but there are exceptions.

*** Watch here (it’s Russell’s Viper venom - not cobra)

**** The first venomous reptile appears to have lived about 170 million years ago, and all extant venomous squamates (Hey - I talked about those last week!) descend from this creature.

***** Dendroaspis polylepis, an elapid (So, same family as Naja). The black mamba isn’t actually black - more of a grey to dark brown - except for the insides of their mouths.

`* Though given the definition of ‘venom’ it isn’t technically venom if it’s not injected into you. It’s just a toxin.

`** This is what Wikipedia tells me, citing a source behind a paywall, so believe at your own risk. But it’s definitely lower than 100%, which goes against Klaus’s claim in a later panel:

`*** The Japanese Grass Snake, for example, is poisonous. But, by far and away, most snakes are not.

`**** Note that acid/base strength is not the same as concentration. A single drop of sulfuric acid into a pool of water will not hurt you in the slightest, but it’s a “strong” acid. Meanwhile, the stuff used to dissolve a dead body in those first however many episodes of Breaking Bad was the “weak” Hydrofluoric acid.

`***** If you mix a weak acid and a weak base, you can’t neutralize the solution 100% because not all of the acid and base molecules dissociated. But the overall pH will still be a single value, again depending on the initial ratios of the specific acid and base. 

Journey Into Mystery #98 - Writer: Stan Lee, Art: Don Heck

Photo Credit:

Indian cobra By Saleem Hameed, CC BY 2.5