Cassie is staring out the window, taking deep breaths and trying not to panic, when her mother takes a hand off the wheel to squeeze her shoulder. Helena is going seventy miles an hour down a busy highway, and Cassie briefly entertains the thought that dying would take away the anxiety.

"Now, remember, I don't mind you having sex now that you're moving in with your boyfriend, but use protection."

Oh God. Cassie had been so busy worrying about the move that she'd forgotten the talk she'd been dreading since first telling her mother about the decision.

"I don't want to be one of those young grandmothers, mind you."

Cassie laughed a little. "No, you want to be the ancient type. We've gone over this."

And they had. At length. Since she got her first period. Just because she's starting college and moving in with her boyfriend doesn't mean she wants to strip naked and have sex on the kitchen counter. It doesn't mean she wants to have sex, period.

Of course, try telling that to the fifty-four year old woman who all but shoved a birth control pill down her daughter's throat – shortly before not-so-discretely stuffing a package of condoms into a box of her favorite books, along with the little tinfoil package of pills.

Cassie is convinced her mom needs to get a grip. Sex is probably the last thing on her mind (well, the first, but mostly on how not to have it). It scares her a little, honestly. Whenever he and Jaime get super close (like, past the hickeys and into serious groping) she freaked out. Because, like, what if it hurt or she hated it or it was awkward and afterwards they couldn't even look at each other? Maybe she'd be so horrible at it that Jaime would hate her afterwards.

But she can't tell her mom any of that, because for one it's almost too fucking embarassing to think about – for two, there is absolutely no reason to move in with a significant other than to make having sex more convenient.

So Cassie just sinks a little lower in her seat, scowl slipping onto her face while her mother repeats the safe sex talk for the seventh time in the past two hours. She can only hope that Jaime is cool with waiting till she's read – or at the least be as freaking jumpy as she is about it.

After her mom finishes explaining the condom rule for like the umpteenth time- "it's not your fault if it breaks, but always use one"- they finally arrive at the apartment division. Her skin is crawling and her whole body is twitching with nervous tension. She wants to go back home all the sudden, fall into her bed and curl up in front of her laptop and forget everything but reading funny webcomics.

Then they're somehow parked and she's struggling to breathe, trying to calm the little tremors shaking her skeleton apart.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Cassie's out of the car and surrounded by boxes and bags of her belongings, unable to figure out how that happened, because she wasn't ready. She throws her arms around her mom and gives her a kiss on the cheek, praying that her mother will take a stand, tell her that no she's too young to do this, she simply isn't allowed. But then her mom is in the car and waving goodbye as she backs out of the lot and how did this happen so fast.

Cassie was left standing there, the sidewalk around her covered with her things, and she couldn't remember any time she'd felt more alone.

Even though she'd already known this, it suddenly clicks in her head that the only people who are dating and move in with her are... having sex. Are moving in to have sex. Objectively she was aware of the fact, but it was a distant and cloudy worry. She's wishing that she'd stayed with her mom, refused to leave the car, demanded to go back home -

But she can't. Not now.

So she starts picking up boxes and slinging bags over her shoulder, heading for Jaime's door and knowing he left it open because he's working until six. There was only twenty minutes until he came back home but it was hardly a choice to snuggle into the warm comfort of her favorite blankets instead of sitting on the doorstep in the crisp air of mid-November.

His apartment – their apartment, she corrected herself – was fairly clean. He had a tendency to leave his books, papers, notebooks and empty coffee cups around, but that was easily straightened. The carpet was just vacuumed, there wasn't a speck of dust, and no stains – it was cleaner than her room, that was for sure.

Cassie dumped her stuff on the floor of the bedroom before collapsing under the covers and into the mattress. She debated sleep, which was hardly a debate since her eyes were already drifting closed and the world going soft and fuzzy.

When she opens her eyes, the alarm clock reads eight and she's rolling over to wipe drool from her mouth with the back of her hand.

"Hey, you're awake."

Cassie swings her head so quickly she cracks her neck, blushing because her boyfriend just watched her wipe spit off her face. He's propped up against the wall, long and lean and looking scruffy in the hottest way possible. There's a book in his hands, but she can't make out the title and finds she doesn't really care to.

"You could've woken me up." she grumbles half-heartedly.

"I prefer living, thanks. Remember when I tried last year, and you almost stabbed me with that knife you keep under your pillow?"

Yawning, she mumbled something almost incoherent but that sounded vaguely like 'you deserved it'.

"How do you like officially living together?" he asked, and the tone and question was light but she could see the thread of anxiety that made a little furrow between his eyebrows. Jaime took her hand – the one she'd wiped the drool off on, oh my God – and squeezed gently as he threaded their fingers together.

"Totally awesome," Cassie informed him, even though the two hours she's been living there was spent sleeping. But she'd say just about anything to get that little bit of worry out of his face and it must work because the lines in his face smooth out almost immediately.

"You hungry?" He asks, putting the book on the bedside table. She catches a glimpse of the cover as he does so - The Catcher and The Rye.

"Yeah," Cassie responds with a yawn. Now that she's (sort of) fully awake she can feel hunger clawing at the inside of her stomach. When was the last time she ate, anyways? "You wanna go get something and I'll unpack my stuff?"

"Sure." He kisses her forehead before exiting the room, and a moment later she hears the slam of the front door.

Once she's alone, she digs through her stuff in a desperate attempt to find the condoms before Jaime does. Birth control pills she can pass off as needing to regulate her period, but she needed to burn the latex- or something- to avoid a conversation with Jaime on how fucking pushy her mom is.

Once she finds them, she rips open the box and crushes it mercilessly before ripping it into pieces and hiding it in the pages of various books. She does the same thing with the condoms – without the crushing and ripping into pieces that is – and puts them in books she knows Jaime doesn't like. Apparently gay erotica isn't a popular seller among twenty something heterosexual males, who knew?

Calmed a little by the safety of her secret, Cassie began unpacking a black case filled with DVDs. It was a mixture of horror, Disney, sci-fi, comedy and every season of Doctor Who. She had the sudden and brilliant plan to watch a movie when Jaime got home. It would be their own personal theater- that they could eat Chinese in without sitting in uncomfortable and collapsing seats. She flipped through the DVDs, hoping to find something that was more mature than Finding Nemo, but less likely to make her geek out than Firefly and not as much of a cult hit as Pulp Fiction (which she had seen a billion times anyways).

Eventually she settled on an older Korean horror film because she could hear Jaime coming back in and mumbling about the cold. He really, really hated anything to do with the cold- which gave her an excuse to always cuddle up to him underneath layers of fleece blankets.

Dragging the blanket from the bed with her Cassie ventured back into the living room where Jaime was unpacking cartons of fried rice and sesame chicken. She set the blanket aside while trying to figure out the wiring system for his DVD player.

Once she figured put that you are only supposed to plug in the yellow and white wire and to attach the black one to the TV, she put in the movie and hopped a little with excitement as the screen loaded. Jaime tugged her towards the couch and they slipped under the blanket, shifting to find a comfortable position and making pseudo-angry remarks over cold feet.

About a quarter of the way through the movie and halfway through her sesame chicken, Cassie felt Jaime shift uncomfortably and lean further into her. At first she tried to ignore it and focus on the screen, but after a few minutes she noticed (with a surge of annoyance) that he wasn't even paying attention to the movie. He slid himself into her lap, blocking the screen just as someone was about to be killed in a wonderfully gory manner.

"What are you doing?" Cassie asked impatiently, craning her neck to watch the movie.

"You're beautiful." Jaime whispered, tucking a strand of blond hair behind Cassie's ear. All the blood in her body rushed to her head, so quickly that she got a little dizzy. She'd never get used to his stupid endearments and compliments, especially when she had bedhead and a zit by her hairline and rice stuck to her front tooth.

"Aren't you gonna watch the movie?" She asked, and entirely without her permission her hands slipped behind his neck so her fingers could play with his hair easily.

"Not a big horror fan," Jaime responded honestly, and Cassie straightened indignantly.

"You read Stephen King and Robert Bloch all the time!"

"Read," He mumbles. She groans, tugging at his hair so that he pulls his head farther than an inch from her's.

Instead of returning to his position he was previously in to watch the movie, Jaime only scooted closer to her until she couldn't lean any farther away and into the couch.

Jaime licked his lips, a quick dart of tongue, and suddenly there was no better idea in the world than to taste him. So Cassie did exactly that, leaning forward instead of back to trace the outline of his lips with a fingertip.

Jaime was so close that she could feel his heart rate accelerate, knew the exact instant that he dipped his head in to kiss her.

She opened her mouth eagerly, tongues curling around each other in a well practiced dance. It never got old, tracing right behind his front teeth with a barely there touch and ripping a helpless whimper from his throat. The kiss got harsher, more intense, less making out and more fucking each other's mouths with lips and tongue and teeth.

Jaime pulled away, and Cassie opened dazed and confused eyes with just enough time to see his pupils blown wide. He switched their positions so quickly that when Cassie was on his lap she couldn't exactly tell how she got there. Then it didn't matter because he was sucking a mark in the hollow between neck and shoulder and her hips rolled down instinctively.

She caught a harsh breath in her throat that ended in a moan when Jaime gripped her ass, hands firm and strong and oh so good. He shifted a bit under her, and then all she could do was hold onto his shoulders and gasp while he rocked up into her a firm pressure that dragged with an agonizing mix of too-much-not-enough.

Jaime pulled away from kissing her to throw his head back, mouth a silent oh when she pushed down hard enough that it almost hurt. Cassie took advantage of his weakness to scrape her teeth delicately under his ear and down his neck, feeling him shudder and bite back groans underneath her and it felt so good to hear him lose it and know she was the one doing it. Reaching the place between neck and shoulder, the same place that he had marked, she pulled away to give a postiively evil little grin before biting down.

Jaime's hands shoved her down harder onto him, a shout that could have been yes or fuck or God but Cassie didn't know because fingernails were digging into her back and she was gonna have bruises but-

The opening cords to White started on screen and she ripped herself away from Jaime, falling off the couch and scuttling away. She couldn't look at him, face red and her entire body throbbing – though mostly just one part – and screaming at her that it isn't too late and people have sex all the time and like it. She glanced down at her sweat pants, mortified to see that they'd been soaked through.

Cassie didn't say anything, knowing Jaime would understand, opting instead to watch the movie and slowly inch back towards the couch until she was curled against Jaime in what could have been an absolutely platonic manner if it wasn't for the hickies and soaked underwear and very obvious boner.

Jaime excused himself to take a shower after the movie was finished, and Cassie put her head between her knees, stared at the floor, and wondered what the fuck she was doing wrong.