Disclaimer: Yep, don't own it.

Warning: This fic contains adult content. If you do not like, please do not read.

...

Bills...

Hydro (I preferred to read by candlelight, anyways)

Phone (local only)

Heating (how the hell did oil get that expensive?)

Visa (just for emergencies, and-

Jesus, how am I supposed to pay this? Twelve hundred dollars? There was no way I spent that much this month. What the hell did I buy?

Shoes? I glance down at my well-worn boots, grubby and frayed, a hole starting in the bottom so that every time it rained my sock got soaked, browned from the matted inside. At least four years old, bought when I still fed from my father's pocket. I definitely didn't buy any of those anytime recently.

Food? Had I splurged in some restaurant with Allison? But I only saw her once in the past few weeks, when she had frantically appeared on the doorstep, strangely wide-eyed, holding a home pregnancy stick, marked with a pink plus sign. We had spent the night staring at the test, not really speaking until she left in the morning, kissing me goodbye, kissing a bleary-eyed John goodbye as he grunted a noise of endearment, and walking back to the small house she shared with Andy. So no on the food, then.

Housewares? I roll my eyes, looking around the dingy studio apartment I've been sharing with John for the past four years while he works at a construction job and I take classes at Chicago State. Everything looks like it had been made pre-1950. All the furnishings that came with it (the couch, the table, the shelves) are crammed up in the tiny space so that you practically have to crawl across someone's lap to reach the table from the bed, and the doorway from the fridge. The appliances are yellowing, only one side of the toaster works, the linoleum stays slightly stained no matter how hard I scrub at it, and the floor beneath the bed squeaks every time the bed moves. Which is a lot when you share it with John Bender.

I unfold the visa bill, looking for the mistake the company had so surely made. Halfway down the page of small charges (groceries at the market, stamps at the post office, antibiotics at the pharmacy for John when he nearly chopped his finger off on a table saw) I see it.

$934.78. MP&C 29 East Madison.

Nine hundred and thirty four dollars at 'MP&C'? I hadn't bought anything on that side of town, much less for nine hundred dollars-

There are sudden familiar heavy footsteps in the hall outside the door, and I look up as I hear John muttering to himself as keys jingle in the lock. Like always, he gets the key halfway into the deadbolt before it jams and he starts swearing. I hear him slam his palm into the old door and groan. "Claiiiiiire, come open the door. It's fuckin stuck again."

"Just a second," I sigh, pushing back the chair and standing. I kick a discarded, empty bookshelf I've been meaning to throw out and squeeze past the table to the tiny alcove in front of the door. I put my hand on the deadbolt as I lean into the crack of the door. "What's the magic password?" I tease, and I can practically feel John's jaw tense.

"Blow me."

I roll my eyes, flipping the deadbolt over to let him inside. He stomps into the tiny apartment, smelling of wood chips, metal grease, and sweat, running his hands through his messy hair as he peers down his nose at me. "Hey," he says simply and I can smell the smoke off his breath, that sharp tang of tobacco against the flavour of a mint candy.

"Hey." I don't even think about it anymore, lifting myself up onto my tiptoes to try and equalize the difference in our heights, waiting for the sharp kiss that always comes. John's hands are landing on either side of my neck as he kisses me lightly, familiarly. But he hesitates briefly today, his rough lips pressing against mine with added pressure, coaxing my mouth open. I hear the shuffling and clunk as he drops his tool belt on the floor, on top of my last remaining half-decent pair of shoes, and shrugs out of his flannel jacket, letting it fall beside the discarded belt. The kiss grows soft again as I wrap my arms around his neck, digging my fingers into his wind-felt hair. I can feel the dried sweat and sawdust along the back of his neck and ridge of his shoulders, the muscle taut against my fingertips. I let my lips drop from his, licking the salt from them as I let my head fall into his chest, resting my forehead on his old thermalwear.

"You okay?" he asks gruffly, his hand reaching up to tug at my earlobe before cupping the back of my head, pulling my gaze up to look at him.

"Yeah."

"I bought coffee and milk like you wanted this morning." John points to a plastic bag he had dropped with his tool belt. He reaches into his trouser pocket then, pulling out his wallet. "I had to borrow your Visa to pay for it. I get paid tomorrow though and I've been working double overtime this-" He stops talking abruptly at the look on my face. "Claire?"

Visa.

John.

$934.78. MP&C 29 East Madison.

"Claire, here's your credit card-Christ, what are you looking so fuckin pissed off at?"

I stiffly grab the plastic card from him, placing it in my pocket and catching his discarded clothes on the floor. "John, can't you pick up your shit?" I complain in frustration, stooping to pick up his jacket as he crosses the small kitchen to remove a beer from the fridge. He cracks it open as I bend over again to grab the grocery bag.

"And miss the view?" he replies smugly. I glance over my shoulder to see him looking at me, his eyes lidded, and a smug smirk playing on his lips. I narrow my eyes as he crosses his boots one over the other to take a more appreciative stance.

"Jesus, John, how many times do I tell you - take your boots off when you come in-this isn't a hotel and I'm not your fucking maid!"

"Aw, c'mon, Babe." He kicks his boots off, holding out his hands in surrender. "See? Not such a big deal."

"I'm always cleaning up after you - in this god damn apartment the size of my parent's bathroom..." My voice fades off into silence, and I can feel John's sudden glare on me, the air in the room tense.

"Yeah? Fuck you, Claire. Go runnin back to your Daddy if you hate it here so much," he sneers, raising the beer bottle to his lips and downing it in a few swallows. It is a familiar fight, one we have in some form or other each week. I can feel the anger bubbling up in the back of my throat, where I can still taste the smoke from John's tongue. He has that defiant look in his gaze, that glare that both burns behind my eyes and in the pit of my stomach, making my legs feel weak.

"Well at least my father didn't use my credit card to pay for..." I faulter. What the hell had he bought? I come to a conclusion by default, "...drugs!"

John looks flabbergasted, his mouth dropping open. "What the hell are you talking about? You think I'd buy with a fuckin Visa card? This may be news to a fuckin Queenie like you, but you don't just walk into the corner pharmacy and pay for a dimebag with some plastic shit." He stares down at me, challenging, waiting for an insult in return.

I curl my upper lip at him in distaste, stomping over to his position by the fridge and grabbing him by the front of his dark grey pants. His stance immediately changes, his hips stilling and his arms lean back against the counter, pushing his crotch towards me. I ignore his heavy stare and grab at his pockets, looking for something, anything to show what he had spent the money on. "Where is it, John?"

"Where is what?" he growls in annoyance, once realizing he's not getting anything except for my hands digging sharply around in his pockets.

"Whatever the hell you spent that nine hundred dollars on!" I yell, feeling my eyes fill with tears of frustration. I see recognition flicker on his face, then guilt. He gets that look... his jaw tensing, eyes wide and dark. Anger. I ignore it, my hands still in his empty pockets. "Just because you're the one with a job doesn't mean you can go and blow it on weed or beer or-or girls..." I slam the edge of my hand into John's stomach, but he doesn't move an inch.

I expect him to start yelling back at me, even shove me off him and storm out the door. Instead he straightens up, towering over me, and I am aware of how much larger he is than me. Not only taller, but wider. Thicker. Like it would take a gale to deter him instead of the breeze that so easily ruffled my carefully styled hair. I can see the muscles in his neck and chest tighten and flex as he takes a step closer to me. His dark eyes are locked on mine, and I can't quite look away. He takes a step to the right, pinning me directly between the wall and the counter, backed into a corner.

"You. Think. I went out and blew almost a thousand bucks on some chick other than you?" He presses himself into me, his face directly over my head, my neck still craning painfully back to keep eye-contact. "I'm not here cause I'm some sadomasochist or some shit. If I wanna leave, I'm gonna god damn leave."

"O-oh." My voice comes out as a squeak, but I can hardly hear it my heart is pounding so loudly in my ears. His gaze finally breaks mine as he looks down at my lips.

"You think I'm out fucking other girls," John says quietly, his voice not really a question, but laced with some sort of wonderment. I open my mouth to protest his opinion, but his lips are already on mine, his hands dropping to my hips. John kisses me like he kissed me back in highschool, where the only place we had the time or comfort to make-out in was somebody's car, the back hall adjacent to the gymnasium, or whenever my mother was drunk enough not to notice when my bedroom light stayed on until 3 a.m.

His lips are impatient, annoyed. As if this is a race and I am losing. And so I cheat, my hand dropping to the crotch of his dirty work pants, my fingertips lightly ghosting over the zipper before I cup his bulge into my palm, feeling him harden against my hand. John tears his mouth from mine, swearing as he grabs my wrist. He brings my hand back up and slams my entire arm against the wall above my head, pinning it there. With his free hand and the help of his knee, he pushes me up the wall, my feet lifting from the ground and a sharp squeal leaving my lips.

I'm becoming painfully aware of how loudly I'm panting, my skin burning under John's touch as his hand lazily runs over the column of my throat, the line of my jaw, down the v-neck of my blouse, pressing heavily against the skin of my chest. His mouth is on my neck, finding that spot near my pulse that he knows I can't resist, that turns my entire body into a complete and utter mess, helpless against John Bender. When he finds it, I feel some sort of burn erupt down my throat and my captured hand tenses in his grip.

"John..."

I can feel him smirking into my skin, finally freeing my arm as my hands wrap themselves in his shaggy hair, pulling his mouth back to mine. His lips only stay there long enough for his tongue to slide in and out of my mouth, leaving with it the taste of his recently downed beer and the cigarette of his walk from the parking lot to the complex entrance. He pushes me further up the wall so my hips are resting over his, my back arched to bring my breasts closer to his mouth.

The position leaves me completely open and as his hand strays to my ass I feel my pulse move with it, down between my legs. I squirm against him and he changes his weight in response, pressing up into me and his name shamelessly escapes my lips again. "John."

He drops me, abruptly and unceremoniously on the floor. My weight is a shock to my system and I look around in confusion at the sudden cold on my skin, the warmth no longer between my legs. I look up at John, that sneer back on his face as he regards me with his hands shoved deep in his pockets.

"What the hell was that?" I shout, crossing my arms over my chest as John gives me that once-over that makes me feel dirty, that long stare from my red hair to my legs. He's goading me, his dark eyes defiant.

"I've worked all day, Princess. Maybe I don't want to do all the work for a change." He smirks at me, challenging, and all I want to do now is go over and smack the smug look off his face. We've played this game of power before, the-who-can-succumb-first-battle-of-wills, but today it only angers me.

"You are such a piece of work," I mutter, smoothing back my hair and stomping past the couch to the dresser. I throw my macroeconomics textbook on the floor, looking for a noise to annoy him, and start pulling off my blouse. It crackles with static as it goes over my head, my hair standing up. I smooth it back down, avoiding John's stare as he watches my reflection in the dresser mirror.

"Is this a show?" John asks, not sarcastically, but not seriously either, his voice light.

"Fuck you." I unbutton my jeans and shove them down my legs, kicking them off and leaving them in a pile on the floor in an uncharacteristic mess. "Since you won't tell me what you spent that on, I'm going over to the dorms to see Brian. Maybe he has some insight on $934.78. MP&C 29 East Madison," I mutter, wrinkling my nose at the reminder.

"The dork's in class," John says, his face once again angry, his stance stiff. "Some fucked up shit where they get off on dissecting dead animals."

I roll my eyes, digging around the top drawer for a t-shirt. All I can find are John's old boxers and a bunch of unmatched socks. Of course I haven't done laundry in a week, down to the bottom of my last roll of quarters. I slam it shut in frustration, feeling hot tears at my eyes. John examines me carefully in the mirror, his face tilted to one side, his eyes staring, his mouth slightly open as if wondering whether to challenge me, whether to press his luck.

"What are you staring at?" I snap, opening and closing my jewelry box, taking out a pair of expensive earrings.

John ignores the question, his stance once again insolent, weight put on one side, looking at me heavily through his long bangs. "You dressin up to go see Johnson?" And he's suddenly behind me, his hands landing on my bare shoulders: rough fingers and wind-chapped palms. The contrast against my smooth skin feels like sandpaper, filing away the stiffness of my shoulders, the goosebumps raised on my spine. I watch the mirror's reflection as he drops his mouth to the back of my ear. I try to ignore it, opening the second drawer to find a change of pants.

John watches as I lift my hands to my ears, removing the tiny studs in the second holes, and the sapphire from my right lobe. He watches carefully as I move to the other lobe to remove the other earring. His gaze is just daring me to do it, to remove the diamond that matches the one I gave him, that still sits below his conch piercing. I pluck the diamond stud apart, my hands shaking slightly as John pushes me forward into the dresser, the sharp wooden edge digging into my stomach. His hands slide down my back, his breath hot against my ear as he unclasps my bra, white satin loose now over my chest.

"Figured I'd help you out," he says harshly in my ear, his hands reaching to slide the straps down my arms, letting the clothing fall off my body and onto the floor.

"I thought you didn't want to do all the work." I try and throw his nasty tone back at him, but I don't quite achieve the same affect, my voice too soft and cracking. It came too easy to him. I had to work at it.

"Yeah? I changed my mind." John runs his long fingers along my ribs and to my breasts, filling his palms with them. That familiar burn is back, heavy in my lower stomach, accusing between my thighs. As if drawn to it, as if he could see the trails of veins like a map, his hands dropping, thumbs hooking in the elastic band to drag my panties down.

Trusting John always comes easy.

He has harsh words and an angry gaze, but his hands are always soft, slow, even as his tongue and teeth bite into me hard enough to bruise. To leave marks only on the intimate spots of body, where no one else looks.

And as I glance up in the mirror, I feel myself flushing further at my reflection. John's hands - one between my legs, the other tangled in my hair, drawing my head back to expose the pale column of my neck - contrasting not only with the difference in our skin tone, but the clothes still covering him. That grubby white thermalwear to cover the series of fading burns on his arms, and one long scar down the length of his shoulderblade, the grey pants with paint and sawdust practically woven into the threadbare fabric.

The hand in my hair lifts to the back of his own shirt, pulling it over his head and off as his other hand spins me around, so the edge of the dresser now digs into my tailbone. His mouth is insistent, his lips trailing down my chest as I hear him fumbling with his belt buckle, that telltale rustle of metal clicking together.

He has always been good at distracting me.

...

I run my fingers delicately over John's ribcage, his heart beating quietly over my palm. His chest is painfully smooth - so smooth if I didn't know him better I'd think he waxed it - his muscles long and cabled over sharp bones and veins. His skin is dark against the white sheets of the bed, and he has kicked them off to let the sweat dry, exposing himself completely in a way that is entirely nonchalant. I walk my fingertips down his stomach, smiling at the familiar feeling of the thick hair around his navel leading down towards his abdomen, dragging my fingernails through it.

John catches my hand before it can go much lower, bringing it back up to the safe zone of his chest. "Jesus, just gimme five minutes."

"Aren't you the one for making assumptions?" I laugh, teasing as I lean up and kiss his jawline.

"Fuck off." But his lips are curved up in a smirk, his eyes still closed. I turn onto my back, my side pressed up against John's. I hear him rustling and I glance over to see him digging around in the wallet from his discarded pants. He shifts, pulling himself up by his elbows as he places the joint in his mouth. I raise my eyebrows at him as he flicks open his lighter and tilts his head to light it. I hear him inhale heavily, his chest moving with his lungs, the skunk of weed filling the air over the bed. He exhales slowly, half through his mouth, the other half through his nose. His drops his head towards me, his mouth and eyes smug with the sex and the hit, his hair tousled across his head.

"Are you going to give me some of that or not, John Bender?" I ask sternly, reaching for the joint still between his lips. He lets me take it, watching me closely as I place it in my mouth, slowly, the way he taught me those years ago in detention, and then pursing my lips, the way he taught me when we started sharing a bed.

John surprisingly lets me smoke the last of the joint, despite it being part of his high-quality stash. I lean up against his chest, looking out the window as a warm haze settles over me, comfortably relaxing my shoulders. John takes my hand again, stroking the back of it, dragging his fingers up my own, and back down over my palm. I can feel his breath in my ear, hot, as his teeth nip my earlobe.

"I have something for you."

"Hm?" I glance over my shoulder at him, but his gaze is down in my lap as I feel something cool slip over the second-last finger on my left hand. It doesn't register at first, the cold feeling of precious metal against warm skin. I just smile at the feeling of the contrast as I glance down at my hand. I do a double-take. A small diamond sits in a white-gold setting. Clean. Elegant. Traditional.

Nononono. No.

It wasn't supposed to be like this. Where was the down on one knee? The flowers, the candy, the romantic candelight dinner? The elaborate gestures, the-

But it was so John. Everything. And suddenly, nothing else matters except the fact that John Bender - John Bender - had just given me a diamond ring. We had talked about marriage before, but never seriously, and I was under the impression that John would sooner wrestle Andy for bets than he would propose. And apparently propose to John Bender didn't involve actually asking the question.

I realize I haven't said anything when I feel John move behind me. "I know it's not much - it's all I could afford."

"What?" I ask breathlessly, still staring at the ring. It fit my hand, it fit my finger. It looked like it belonged there. Like it was the one thing my hand had been missing my entire life.

"The diamond - it's all I could afford."

$934.78. MP&C 29 East Madison

"I meant to pay it off the credit card right away, but when the car needed a new radiator, I had to pay that instead."

"You bought a ring with my Visa?" And suddenly it is the funniest thing in the world. I slap my hand to my mouth to keep from laughing, but the laughter escapes anyways. I let my head fall back into John's shoulder as I laugh. He's staring down at me in confusion, looking relatively nervous, a foreign expression to his face. I launch myself at him, wrapping my arms around his head, pressing my breasts up against his collar bone in a way he seems to appreciate as his hands come to rest on my waist.

"Is that a yes?" he asks dryly as I kiss his temple.

"Yes."

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