Fic: In Your Arms, Chapter 23
Title: In Your Arms
Rating: This chapter, R for violence and implied rape.
Pairing: Vam!
Summary:High school AU. A repressed Ville has had a crush on Bam for years, but the skater has never noticed him. However, when he does, Ville begins to break out of his confines with the skater’s help and Bam finally finds some stability in his life. But everybody knows things do not always go well.
Previous Chapters~ Here
-23
“Look, Andrea, I’m totally over Bam,” Jenn rolled her eyes even if her friend couldn’t see her over the phone, blowing on her nails to make the light purple polish dry faster. “Just because he landed himself in hospital and everybody’s talking about how Shanks ‘shanked’ him doesn’t mean I’m suddenly all hot for him again,” she scoffed.
Some more chattering came over the phone and Jenn shifted position, lifting her feet up onto the bathroom counter to paint her toenails a matching colour. Wet strands of dirty blonde hair slipped down over her eyes from the bubble bath she had just took, and she pushed them back behind her ear absently, still able to keep the phone secured between her head and shoulder.
Her parents were out attending a business dinner so Jenn was left home alone. She probably would’ve been out partying if it weren’t for her being grounded until further notice from all the assaulting Bam business, but to be honest she wasn’t all that keen about going out to clubs anymore anyway. Darren was still at large and even though the police had promised to not leak that she was the one to tattle, Jenn was apprehensive about showing her face in public. Because even if Darren was a bully, he wasn’t a stupid one. He would know it was her. But now that she’d told it felt like a huge weight had been lifted off her shoulders, and even if her parents were disappointed in her Jenn now didn’t feel like the world was going to end every day. She didn’t spend every moment of her time worrying that the police would catch her and lock her up or something equally as terrible. There was of course going to be repercussions for her actions, but the law was going to give her leeway as she’d pleaded that Darren had forced and manipulated her into doing what she had done. It wasn’t a farfetched idea.
“Sure, I know he’s hot, I mean, his abs… And his eyes are just dreamy,” Jenn giggled a bit, willing to give Bam some leeway now that she’d had time to cool off after the break-up. She was feeling bad from playing a part in his attack also, after all, since he was still hospitalised. “But he was kind of full of himself, you know?” Andrea hummed over the phone in agreement, twittering in sympathy and about how her own boyfriend, Liam, could be such a total stick in the mud sometimes.
Done with her toes, Jenn wriggled them and smiled in satisfaction with the result. Hopping off the counter and still listening with half an ear to her friend nattering away, she looked in the mirror and then smiled at herself, admiring her own beauty. Bam didn’t know what he was missing out on.
Her stomach growled suddenly and she frowned, looking down and patting it. “Uh huh,” she said absentmindedly in response to Andrea, pretending that she was still paying attention, and decided that she could afford to grab some ice-cream after what she’d been through this month.
Switching the phone to her other ear, Jenn slipped on her fluffy white robe and opened the bathroom door, shivering as she left the hot moist air and ventured down the dark hallway, leaving light footprints of condensation on the waxed wood. “Mmm,” she kept on making vague noises at Andrea as she entered the kitchen, not bothering to turn the lights on as the glow from the street-light outside filtered through the blinds and made it bright enough to see.
She grabbed the chocolate ice cream out of the freezer and plonked it on the counter, going to open one of the drawers for a spoon before pausing and frowning for a moment. Leaning over as she was, she could look under the blinds covering the kitchen window and consequently could see that the lock didn’t look quite right. Strange, because she could remember checking it along with all the other windows in the house before she had disappeared into the bathroom.
“I’ll call you later, okay?” Jenn said into the phone before hanging up on Andrea’s surprised voice, putting the phone down on the counter and leaning forward to get a better look. Maybe it was just the shadows playing with her eyes but it looked like… The hairs on the back of her neck stood up in the dark silence of the kitchen.
The lock had been broken open.
A rush of adrenaline spiked in her veins as she heard a sound behind her. Jenn twirled around, opening her mouth to scream but it was too late, a large sweaty hand was slapped over her mouth and a heavy powerful body had pinned her to the counter.
Frozen, she stared with petrified eyes into Darren’s face. It was distorted by the weird lighting, lines of shadow breaking up his loathsome features. He looked like something out of a horror movie.
“Boo.” He bared his glinting teeth at her- a predator’s smile. She flinched and whimpered at the word and tried to pull away from him, but his grip was too tight on her.
“I’ve come to pay you a little visit, Jenn,” he hissed, pushing her harder into the ledge with his body, making the cold marble bruise into Jenn’s back and making her whimper in pain and terror. Her rapidly beating heartbeat speed up even more when she felt the press of a knife against her side, her knees weak and body frozen. “Because you’ve been telling some tales that you promised never to spill, and for that I think you need to be punished.”
Darren’s eyes were malicious as he watched tears build up in Jenn’s horrified ones. “One word, one tiny sound, and I’ll gut you like the cow you are,” he said lowly as he took his hand away from her mouth. Jenn sobbed silently, squeezing her eyes shut and quivering, feeling bile rise up as the large rough hand dropped down to her neck, squeezing for a moment before sliding down under the material of her robe and grabbing lewdly, dirtily at her breast.
“Oh, I’m going to have some fun before killing you,” Darren breathed, laughing quietly as Jenn’s breathing accelerated to almost hyperventilation at the words, tears now steadily streaming down her face, her entire body shaking in complete and utter terror as he squeezed and jabbed her pointedly with the knife when she begun to feebly struggle.
“After all, I’ve got to get something back from all the trouble you’ve fucking caused me,” he snarled and ripped the material from her body viciously, throwing her to the cold kitchen tiles and following her down. He felt the rush of perverse power and lust as she tried to scream anyway, scratching at him uselessly with her desperate fingers and kicking at him hysterically. He only smiled and knocked her head against the floor, disorientating her, and even if it was fun when they fought and squirmed Darren didn’t want anybody to hear her shouts and come see what was going on. This was only the appetiser anyway; the main feast would be when he got his hands on that elusive pretty little Finnish Valo.
“Oh, don’t cry, you had got to know that you’d have this coming as soon as you opened your big fucking mouth,” he hissed and unzipped his pants, tightening his hand on the wooden handle of the wickedly sharp knife in anticipation, pressing it against her perfectly tanned skin and shivering in pleasure at her weak whimpers.
Now this was more like it. Grinning, he got to work.
-
When Mr and Mrs Rivell arrived home hours later, they were greeted with an unlocked front door and bloodied boot prints down the hall. A crimson splattered kitchen, a melted tub of ice cream on the counter and a naked, mutilated body sprawled askew on the once pristine tiles. It was only recognisable as their daughter from her long blonde hair and wide, glassy grey eyes staring up at the ceiling, a silent frozen look of terrified agony on her bruised and bloodied face.
It was only minutes later when the neighbours heard the sirens.
-
“Ville! You’re here early,” Mige exclaimed as he turned the corner around the back of the school building and spotted his friend smoking, blowing grey, pungent wisps into the frigid morning air. “What’s the occasion?”
Green eyes outlined in smudged black eyeliner that only partially covered up deep bruised bags under them looked up at him stonily before looking back out across the school’s sport field, their owner flicking ash from his cigarette across the concrete steps of the back fire-exit. “Do I need an occasion to be early?” Ville’s voice was deep and scratchy, laced with a sting of poison that had Mige blinking as he plonked himself down next to the other Finn, lowering his case containing his base carefully to the ground.
“No. No, I guess not,” Mige said slowly, eyeing his friend worriedly. It was a typical freezing Helsinki morning, yet Ville was dressed only in a tight black Iron Maiden t-shirt, dark grey jeans and a black scarf. His skinny arms were so pale they looked almost translucent, his skin tinged blue and littered with goose bumps, the hand that was holding his cig quivering weakly and his entire body shaking with minute shivers, yet his flat expression gave away none of the discomfort he must be feeling. Mige himself was dressed in at least three layers, and he was used to the cold Finnish weather unlike Ville who had been living in a warmer state of America for the past three years.
Something told Mige however, that if he tried to give Ville his jacket the other boy would just rebuff him violently. Ville was obviously in a strangely bad mood, and Mige knew that nothing ticked you off more when you were pissed than a person trying to be helpful. But in the way Ville held himself, hunched over and small, and the pained look in his eyes- that was what made Mige ignore what his self-preservation instincts were telling him. Something was wrong with his friend and it was clearly taking a toll on him. Even Iisakki had said that Ville had been acting a bit strange the night before after he closed the shop, too quiet and pale with shadows in his eyes. He’d been slightly worried that Ville had come down with something, like the flu. Now though, Mige was sure Ville had an ailment not of the body, but of the mind.
“You feeling okay?” Mige asked after a moment of silence.
Ville just wrapped his tinged blue lips around his cigarette, took a big drag and blew the smoke out slowly. His tone was sharp when he replied.
“I’m fine.”
Hah, right. “Monkey’s balls, you’re not,” Mige said, raising an eyebrow. “I’ve hardly said hello and you’re already biting my poor, measly head off with your scary sharp wolf teeth. I thought only women got that time of the month.”
Ville pinned Mige with a look, and if looks could kill Mige would’ve been a smoking pile of disintegrated Finn right that second. “Fuck off, Mige.”
“Ow,” Mige said flatly. “That really hurt. Straight to the heart, right there. But really, Ville, something’s wrong. You’re my friend, and I hate to see you like this.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Ville exploded, throwing down his cigarette and lurching to his feet, making Mige flinch back at the sudden, violent movement. “Just leave me the fuck alone, okay? I don’t want your fucking help, or your fucking pity! Stop it! Stop acting like you care, because you fucking don’t! Nobody cares!” He yelled at a wide-eyed Mige, fists clenched at his side and face flushing in anger as tears welled up in his eyes. His entire body was quivering with pent-up emotions.
“This world is just one big fucked up unfair piece of shit that eats away at your soul and I fucking hate it. I hate everything and fuck, I just, I just…” Ville broke, voice cracking as tears broke over his eyelashes and dripped down his cheeks. A flock of birds rose from the cluster of trees at the back of the field, frightened from their perches, as Ville let out a furious scream before ripping at his hair and sobbing, his chest heaving and shoulders shaking as he panted out his despair. “I don’t know what to do,” he cried helplessly.
Mige threw himself up to his feet, feeling himself start to panic but forcing it back, knowing that if he did it would just make matters worse. “Woah, woah, okay, Ville, it’s okay, calm down,” he tried, grabbing at Ville’s bony wrists to stop him tearing clumps of brown curls out of his scalp. “Sweetheart, shh.”
“No,” Ville cried, eyeliner running down his pallid cheeks, his eyes grief-stricken and hurting as he looked beseechingly at Mige, “it’s not okay. It’s never going to be okay. I’ve been kidding myself, Mige, I’m never going to be able to get back to him. Never,” he hiccuped, sobbing, just letting Mige hold his wrists without fighting. God, he was so tired of fighting. “It’s fucking useless,” he spat, squeezing his eyes shut and hating himself, “useless.”
“Hey, hey,” Mige cooed, glad that it was so early in the school day that nobody was around yet. He had no idea what Ville was going on about, and he didn’t try to understand, all he wanted was for his friend to be all right. “Hey, I’m here,” he said and gently pulled the other boy to his body in a hug. Ville resisted at first, sniffing and pushing him away with shaking hands, before giving up and falling into the embrace, burying his wet face into Mige’s shoulder and letting his sobs come.
“God, sweetheart,” Mige murmured worriedly into Ville’s hair as he felt the thin body quiver violently in his arms, the cold from Ville’s skin seeping through his clothes and into him. He felt tears burn at his own eyes from the depth of pain he could hear in Ville’s weeping, knowing that for Ville to blow up like this, so suddenly and brutally, that the breakdown had to have been coming for a long time. Something, however, must’ve set it off.
After a few minutes Ville began to calm down, his sobs falling away into little sniffles as he clutched at Mige’s jacket like it was the only thing keeping him anchored in the world. “Damn it, sorry,” he whispered into Mige’s neck after a while, “I didn’t mean… to shout at you.”
Mige just smiled and patted Ville’s back soothingly, feeling the aftershocks still moving through his friend’s body. “Nah, it’s all good. What are friends for, after all, other than to shout and scream at?”
Ville attempted a smile, sniffing, and pulled away slightly, brushing away the wetness on his cheeks tinged black from his eyeliner. “I must’ve scared the shit out of you,” he whispered, putting his face in his hands in shame, his shoulders falling. God, he was just so tired. He wanted Bam so badly but April yelling at him like that… Well, there was only one way she could’ve possibly found out about them and that was from Bam. And if she was so steadfast in keeping him away, then what did that say about what Bam had told her? Ville didn’t know what to think, but he despaired. So much, in fact, that no sleep had come to him the night after the phone call as he’d spent the entire time stressing, and he had no urge to eat or keep warm. He’d been living only on the hope that one day he’d get back to Bam, but what if that hope wasn’t something worth holding on to anymore? So much pressure was on him, and he guessed he was slowly breaking. Even the past few weeks when he’d been feeling like something more human the little itch to rip at his wrists had been calling, but Ville’d promised Bam, and he would never break a promise if he could help it.
“You gotta do better than that, Ville, to force me to defecate in my pants,” Mige smiled a bit but still looked worriedly at Ville, so small and exhausted and cold with the darkest bags he’d ever seen under somebody’s eyes. He sighed, pulling Ville into a hug again. “Look, how about I take you home, yeah? School is definitely not going to be beneficial towards your state of mind at the moment, and I’m craving some hot chocolate anyway.”
That sounded nice to Ville, and he nodded slowly against Mige’s comforting shoulder, feeling the energy from his explosion leeching away and leaving him sagging into Mige’s support. A few more tears leaked out again, just because he was so run down and terrible and Mige was being so nice. His breath hitched and Mige patted his back again before letting go and draping his jacket over Ville’s shoulders. Ville clutched the warm material to himself, shivering, murmuring a thank you as Mige picked up his case in one hand and reached for Ville with the other.
“Come here,” he said and pulled the other boy under his arm, glaring at some random students who passed them and pointed, whispering. “Lets get outta this place before its overrun with twittering fuck-heads.”
-
“God,” April whispered as she put her cell phone down. “God.”
The police had just rung. Jenn Rivell had been found raped and murdered in her own home just last night and they had no doubt who had done it. They’d thought she’d want to know.
Biting her lip, she lifted her hand from her lap and placed it on Bam’s, ever still and pale on the hospital bed. She looked into his face, at the still healing burn wounds, and then at the calendar on the wall, the chart at the foot of his bed, at the door with the guard sitting there, then back at Bam. Her son, unconscious and defenceless, a sitting target.
April didn’t want what had happened to Jenn to happen to Bam.
Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath and asked herself if keeping Ville away from Bam was more important than keeping Bam safe from that Shanks monster while there was a chance that Ville could wake her son.
It was a no brainer. April was a mother first and foremost, and mothers loved their sons no matter who they were or what they did. She would get used to Bam liking boys as long as he just woke up and stayed alive.
Opening her eyes, April firmed her resolve and stood, quivering lightly from the outcome of her decision. It seemed so simple now. How could she have been so confused? Her son would always come first. She would learn to live with it, as long as Bam would just wake.
April kissed Bam on the head, brushing his curls back from his forehead tenderly. “Don’t worry, Bam, I’ll keep you safe,” she whispered and sighed.
Right. Now somehow, she had to get in touch with Ville.
-
The television was on when Anette got home from work, so she dropped her handbag and keys on the kitchen table and curiously made her way into the living room. Ville was still supposed to be at school at this time and Matti was on his shift, so the house should’ve been empty when she’d arrived.
The screen was showing Sponge-Bob subtitled in Finnish with the mute turned on in the darkened room, the curtains drawn to block the sunlight, as Anette walked in a smiled at the sight on the couch. Ville was curled up in a fluffy deep green blanket, fast asleep with his head resting gently on his friend Mige’s shoulder, who blinked out of his absent stare at the television to look at her, tightening his hold around Ville’s thin shoulders protectively.
“Oh, um, hey Ms. Olzon,” Mige whispered, wincing when Ville muttered softly into his neck at the noise and then settled down again, tucking his knees more into his body on the cushion and curling his fingers in the soft blanket.
“It’s Anette, Mige,” Anette smiled, walking forward to pick up two empty mugs on the floor that looked like they’d once contained hot chocolate. “And what are you two doing out of school so early?” She said softly without much bite, glancing at Ville, happy to see him looking more relaxed and actually resting. Anette knew Ville had trouble sleeping and that last night had been a particularly bad one from the deepness of the painful bruises under his eyes, so she didn’t really mind that the boys had skipped school so Ville could catch some shut-eye.
“Ville wasn’t… feeling that well, so I took him home and stayed to keep him company. To make sure he was feeling better and all that,” Mige said, doing well in hiding that he was keeping something back, but Anette was sharp and she picked up on the slight hesitation, the unwillingness in his eyes to give something away to protect his friend.
Anette smiled. “You’re a good friend, Mige,” she said, moving the mugs to one hand so she could pat him reassuringly on his knee. “I’ll leave you two in peace, yeah? Unless you want something?” She asked Mige, raising her eyebrow. The poor thing must be bored stiff.
The scruffy boy shook his head. “Nah, I’m fine Ms- uh, Anette. Thanks anyway,” he smiled and hugged Ville a bit closer to him when he muttered again, making a quiet distressed whimper as his brows drew inwards in a frown. Anette ached to comfort him, but Mige looked like he had it all under control, stroking Ville’s slender back and side soothingly and murmuring soft words of nonsense into his ear. Anette looked at them for a few seconds, feeling her heart warm.
“Okay. Call if you need anything though, I mean it,” she reinforced and then left the dim, quiet room when Mige nodded at her, putting the mugs in the sink in the kitchen and sighing as she realised she needed to change out of her work clothes and have a shower. Looking back at the door to the lounge she felt a tinge of sadness and a bit of uselessness nip at her chest. Even if she had tried her hardest when she spoke to Ville, showed him kindness and compassion, he sometimes looked at her with such confusion and almost a kind of helplessness in his eyes, as if he had never known such things from an adult and had no idea how to react to it. They got along quite well, but that simple inability to accept empathy from an adult that Ville had kept them from connecting completely in the way she wanted to. It also kept her from being able to give Ville full emotional support, but Anette did her best with what he was willing to give her. Clearly, Anita had robbed him of his ability to trust in adults, but Anette had a sneaking suspicion that other grown-ups had to have also had a hand, as one bad egg couldn’t possibly make Ville so cautious around all adults.
The bird on the coo-coo clock bounced out, chirping and announcing that it was two o’clock. Anette jumped at the sudden noise and shook herself out of her inner thoughts, running a hand through her grubby hair. Damn, she needed a shower. She smelt like a fast-food joint.
When she emerged an hour later, freshened up and smelling faintly of lavender, she checked on the boys once again and found Mige also nodding off on the couch, his eyes drooping tiredly. It looked like Ville wasn’t the only one needing some sleep.
They look so cute together, Anette thought quietly to herself as she picked up another blanket off the other couch, shaking it out before tucking it around Mige. It was starting to get rather cold in the room and Anette couldn’t afford to put the heating on.
Mige blinked when he felt her covering him with a blanket and mumbled a quiet thank you, lifting his head a bit from where it was resting on top of Ville’s. Anette smiled at him. “Does your uncle know you’re here?” She asked quietly.
He nodded, “yeah.”
“You’re welcome to stay the night then,” she invited, “you look exhausted and I’m sure Ville wouldn’t mind.”
“That’ll be awesome, thanks Anette…” Mige accepted, trailing off as he yawned, his eyes slowly slipping closed. Anette laughed softly to herself and straightened, switching the television off with the remote and plunging the room into darkness.
-
The sun started to set and Matti was due home anytime, so Anette begun to prepare dinner, tying her hair up in a bun and chopping up vegetables, boiling some rice also. The potatoes were almost done when she heard the front door slam. Matti appeared a few seconds after, dumping his bag and keys on the kitchen table and collapsing in a chair, pulling a hand down his face.
“Bad day?” Anette asked, not facing her boyfriend as she finished draining the boiled potatoes at the sink, the hot steam curling up around her face.
Matti sighed angrily. “You have no fucking idea. Get me a beer or something, will you? My fucking boss is being a prick and refusing to…” Slamming a can of beer from the fridge in front of Matti, Anette tuned the rest of his rant out, knowing that it would just be the same complaints as the night before, and the night before that. He didn’t greet her with a kiss anymore, never even asked how her day went. Sometimes Anette didn’t even know why she stayed with him when he showed no consideration for her feelings. But maybe she was asking for a bit much, since the bills and the added stress of having a teenage boy in the house was probably getting to him.
Biting her lip, she hummed in all the right places and dished out some food on a plate, dumping it with more beer in front of him to hopefully shut him up for a little while. Annoyingly enough, he just kept on ranting through his mouthfuls of food, and Anette knew well enough not to wait around for thanks.
“Hey, where’re you going with that?” Matti finally paid some attention to her, but it wasn’t at the time that she wanted. Anette winced and stopped at the doorway, turning around to smile at him sweetly, her words dripping with sugary mocking as she balanced two plates in her hands. “Well, dear, I’m taking some food to Ville and his friend. Can’t have them starving, now can we?”
It might’ve been her tone that set him off, and later Anette may regret it just a little bit, but Matti’s expression went such a furious dark that the smile melted slowly right off her face.
“That boy can move his own lazy American arse and get his own damn food. And who the hell said he could have a friend over? This is my house, damn it, and I say who the hell comes and goes, so get back here woman and never use that tone with me!” He smacked is fist down on the table, and Anette was ashamed to find that she actually flinched back before her own expression twisted furiously.
“First of all, I said Mige could stay, as this is my house too because I pay half the fucking bills,” she spat. “Secondly, Ville isn’t American, he was born here. You would know if you paid the slightest bit attention to him. And I can use whatever tone I feel like thank you very much!” And then she spun on her heel and stomped down the hallway, fighting back angry tears as she heard Matti roar at her to come back, swear and then give up, something smashing against the kitchen tiles.
Anette took a second to lean against the wall, fighting back frustrated tears in an effort to compose herself before entering the lounge where the boys were. Her smile was wobbly when she entered, but it become stronger when two sets of alert eyes peered up at her from the couch worriedly. Looked like the boys were awake. From the hours they’d been sleeping, Anette was sure they’d probably be up all night fiddling with their guitars and doing things teenage boys do.
Pushing the fight with Matti she’d just had to the back of her mind, she gave the boys their food and ignored their sympathetic looks. She made Mige promise to make Ville eat at least half his plate and said that if they wanted, later (namely when Matti was out of the kitchen) they could raid the fridge for some pudding. Ville was still slightly subdued, but at least he looked better than he did than this morning.
“I’m going to bed now, so I’ll see you boys in the morning,” she said goodnight, feeling run down from Matti and from work earlier in the day. “Try not to make too much noise, yeah?”
They both nodded, already tucking into dinner, and Anette smiled at the sight of Ville eating before heading off to bed.
-
Ville, it turned out, was notoriously difficult to find. April didn’t know his last name, so it was impossible to look him up in the phone book. Bam’s phone had been destroyed completely in the fire at the park, so she couldn’t get Ville’s information off the device. She’d even rung Bam’s school, hoping the get some information from them as her son had said they’d met there, but the receptionist had said that there was no Ville enrolled currently.
April had seriously hit a dead end. She’d even asked Ryan, but even he and Novak had no idea, didn’t even know who Ville was. Finding that out had soothed the sting from Bam not telling her about Ville; he hadn’t even told his friends yet. But even if that made her feel better, it did no favours in trying to find Bam’s boyfriend.
April groaned and banged her head against the computer screen when even a Facebook search turned up blank. Weren’t all teenagers on that stupid site these days?
“Any luck?” Phil said as he popped into the room, taking in the sight of his wife whacking her head against the monitor. He raised an eyebrow. “I guess not.”
April sighed and sat back, throwing her hands up in the air in frustration. “I give up. God damn it, no, I can’t, I have to find him, but hell, you would think this boy lives in a hole in the ground the way there’s no record on him! I can’t even find his last name. There’s no way I’m going to be able to find his address or phone number.”
Phil sat down in the desk next to her and thought for a moment, searching through the papers to grab a packet of chips to help stimulate his brain. For once, April didn’t snatch them out of his hands and berate him for eating junk food all the time, just put her chin in her hands and watched him eat with despondent eyes.
“Well,” Phil said after chewing and swallowing. “He rang you, right? So there’s got to be some record of the number he rang from somewhere. You could ring the phone company and ask them to pull our records.”
April’s eyes widened and she leapt out of her chair, bombarding her husband’s face with ecstatic kisses. She didn’t even care that he tasted of greasy chicken flavoured chips.
“Phil, this is why I married you,” she grinned, picking up the phone on the desk beside him and dialling their company’s number.
Phil munched smugly as he wrapped an arm around his wife’s waist, listening as she asked them for the records of the numbers that rang them a few days ago.
“Yeah, around 5,” April confirmed, and scribbled down the number they gave her on a pad with a pen, frowning a bit when she saw what she’d written. “Are you sure this is the right number?”
“Oh okay, thanks,” she said and hung up, looking at her messy handwriting.
“What wrong?” Phil asked, stretching up to look over the pad to see.
“Huh? Oh, the numbers are strange. The area code isn’t one I’ve seen before. Here, take a look.” She passed the paper to him.
Phil’s eyebrow rose and he put the packet of finished chips down. “It’s the area code for Finland, I’m pretty sure.”
“Finland?” April exclaimed, incredulous. What the hell was Ville doing all the way over in Scandinavia when his boyfriend was lying in hospital, unconscious, still healing from burn wounds and refusing to wake while his assaulter was running around free? Things were just getting stranger and stranger. Did they have a fight and Ville leave or something? Finland seemed a bit of a way to go for a break up though. “Well, okay, he’s just going to have to come back then for Bam then anyway,” she frowned and picked up the phone again, dialling the number.
A man picked up, speaking only what April could guess at was Finnish. “Um, hello,” she ploughed on, hoping that he would understand her in English, “I’m looking for Ville?” God, please be able to speak English, or she wouldn’t know what to do.
“Ville? He is not on shift right now. He will be tomorrow, if you could call then?” The man said, thankfully in English, but with such a heavy accent that April had a hard time understanding him.
On shift? Ville had rung from work? What the hell? April thought. “Uh, tomorrow won’t do. It’s urgent,” well, the faster she got in touch with Ville the quicker he could get here and the bigger the chance that Bam would finally wake up. “Could you possibly give me his home number or something so I can get in touch with him?”
The man paused for a moment. “It depends. Who’s calling?” He asked suspiciously.
Damn, April thought. “It’s Ville’s family from America. I lost his number and his work was all we had. There’s been a… situation and we need to get in touch with him to let him know,” she crossed her fingers behind her back, praying that it would work. Phil watched on with hopeful eyes.
He still sounded a bit apprehensive, but the man gave her Ville’s number anyway and said that he hoped the situation wasn’t too bad. April thanked him, said that it would be getting better soon, and hung up.
“Well, this is it,” she said and Phil smiled at her. “Let’s just hope he’s home,” he said as she dialled.
“Yeah,” April replied and listened to the phone ring.
-
Warmth, a strong arm around his waist, soft breath against his cheek. Ville smiled sleepily, moving closer to the body next to him and curling his fingers more securely around the hand in his, sighing quietly in the serene silence.
“Bam…” He murmured happily.
The body shifted. “What?”
Ville froze for a second before his heart sunk in his chest, fighting back disappointed tears at the voice that wasn’t Bam’s. Eyelashes fluttering, he opened his eyes to look the other boy sharing his bed in the face, staring at him with confused green eyes.
Mige grinned at him. “Look who’s finally decided to wake up. It’s almost noon, sleepy head. Not to mention I was about to die from boredom. No offence or anything, even if your face is pretty, it does get rather boring after staring at it for a couple of hours.”
Blinking, Ville ignored what his friend just said and glanced down at their joined hands before looking back up. “Mige. What are you doing in my bed?”
“Sadly enough, not anything particularly interesting, if you catch my drift,” Mige wriggled his eyebrows suggestively and Ville rolled his eyes, whacking his friend in the arm.
“Ouch,” Mige pouted. “Don’t you remember?”
Ville blinked and sat up, the covers falling down to his waist. Thank god he was still wearing his clothes. He looked around the room, feeling the memories come back- he must’ve been pretty tired still after that nap to sleep for quite a while when he had Mige had finally gone to bed in the small hours of the morning. Mige’s guitar and the one Ville had loaned from school, along with sheets of music and some magazines along with a large amount of CDs were scattered around on his floor. They’d had quite a lot of fun fucking around with music last night. It had been a welcome distraction from that phone call and Ville’s subsequent break down at school yesterday morning.
“Yeah, I remember, sadly enough,” Ville muttered, rolling his eyes when Mige’s pout became even more atrocious.
“I’m hurt that you don’t find my company pleasant,” Mige joked and Ville laughed.
“Your company is anything but when you smell like you do,” the green-eyed Finn grinned as Mige whined that he’d had a shower… a couple of days ago.
“So, you feeling better now?” Mige asked as they tumbled out of bed. Ville stretched lazily, reaching his arms over his head and cracking his back, revealing the simple silver barbell piercing his navel when his shift rode up.
Ville smiled a bit weakly. He did feel better, but his heart was still a stone in his chest. He felt helpless; what was he going to do if Bam didn’t want him anymore? No, he thought to himself, pushing the painful thought into the back of his mind, don’t think like that. You won’t know until you see him.
“Yeah. Thanks for staying with me, Mige. I seriously don’t know what I’d have done without you,” he said sincerely as Mige flapped a hand at him.
“Nah, it was no biggy, you would’ve done the same with me.” The other boy grinned, running a hand through his hair and clapping Ville on the shoulder with the other. “Now come on, I’m fucking starving.”
Ville chuckled and lead Mige out of his cluttered room and down to the kitchen. “You’re always fucking hungry.”
“Well, I gotta eat twice the amount to make up for what you don’t eat, you little skeleton,” Mige teased and poked Ville in the stomach as the other boy scavenged through the fridge. “There’s left over pudding, if you want it?” Ville asked, beating away Mige’s hands.
“Hell yeah, dessert for breakfast, there’s nothing better,” Mige grinned.
Ville was just getting the spoons out when the phone rang. “Here,” he said, handing Mige a spoon. “Knock yourself out, just don’t whine when you make yourself sick,” he grinned.
“Sick from chocolate pudding? Blasphemy,” Mige said and dug in. Ville rolled his eyes and picked up the phone, smiling.
“Hello- Ville speaking.”
-Chapter 24
A/N: *smiles sheepishly* Long time no see. :/ I cannot tell you how sorry I am about making you guys wait for so long for an update. I suck. I’m really, really sorry. Forgive me?
Sadly enough though, writer’s block and end of year exams are ailments that cannot be cured by pills, but I’ve recovered now thank god! \o/ Hopefully some people are still reading! :O I still want to get this finished. :)
Comments are <3! And also let me know if people are still interested! :)
Rating: This chapter, R for violence and implied rape.
Pairing: Vam!
Summary:High school AU. A repressed Ville has had a crush on Bam for years, but the skater has never noticed him. However, when he does, Ville begins to break out of his confines with the skater’s help and Bam finally finds some stability in his life. But everybody knows things do not always go well.
Previous Chapters~ Here
-23
“Look, Andrea, I’m totally over Bam,” Jenn rolled her eyes even if her friend couldn’t see her over the phone, blowing on her nails to make the light purple polish dry faster. “Just because he landed himself in hospital and everybody’s talking about how Shanks ‘shanked’ him doesn’t mean I’m suddenly all hot for him again,” she scoffed.
Some more chattering came over the phone and Jenn shifted position, lifting her feet up onto the bathroom counter to paint her toenails a matching colour. Wet strands of dirty blonde hair slipped down over her eyes from the bubble bath she had just took, and she pushed them back behind her ear absently, still able to keep the phone secured between her head and shoulder.
Her parents were out attending a business dinner so Jenn was left home alone. She probably would’ve been out partying if it weren’t for her being grounded until further notice from all the assaulting Bam business, but to be honest she wasn’t all that keen about going out to clubs anymore anyway. Darren was still at large and even though the police had promised to not leak that she was the one to tattle, Jenn was apprehensive about showing her face in public. Because even if Darren was a bully, he wasn’t a stupid one. He would know it was her. But now that she’d told it felt like a huge weight had been lifted off her shoulders, and even if her parents were disappointed in her Jenn now didn’t feel like the world was going to end every day. She didn’t spend every moment of her time worrying that the police would catch her and lock her up or something equally as terrible. There was of course going to be repercussions for her actions, but the law was going to give her leeway as she’d pleaded that Darren had forced and manipulated her into doing what she had done. It wasn’t a farfetched idea.
“Sure, I know he’s hot, I mean, his abs… And his eyes are just dreamy,” Jenn giggled a bit, willing to give Bam some leeway now that she’d had time to cool off after the break-up. She was feeling bad from playing a part in his attack also, after all, since he was still hospitalised. “But he was kind of full of himself, you know?” Andrea hummed over the phone in agreement, twittering in sympathy and about how her own boyfriend, Liam, could be such a total stick in the mud sometimes.
Done with her toes, Jenn wriggled them and smiled in satisfaction with the result. Hopping off the counter and still listening with half an ear to her friend nattering away, she looked in the mirror and then smiled at herself, admiring her own beauty. Bam didn’t know what he was missing out on.
Her stomach growled suddenly and she frowned, looking down and patting it. “Uh huh,” she said absentmindedly in response to Andrea, pretending that she was still paying attention, and decided that she could afford to grab some ice-cream after what she’d been through this month.
Switching the phone to her other ear, Jenn slipped on her fluffy white robe and opened the bathroom door, shivering as she left the hot moist air and ventured down the dark hallway, leaving light footprints of condensation on the waxed wood. “Mmm,” she kept on making vague noises at Andrea as she entered the kitchen, not bothering to turn the lights on as the glow from the street-light outside filtered through the blinds and made it bright enough to see.
She grabbed the chocolate ice cream out of the freezer and plonked it on the counter, going to open one of the drawers for a spoon before pausing and frowning for a moment. Leaning over as she was, she could look under the blinds covering the kitchen window and consequently could see that the lock didn’t look quite right. Strange, because she could remember checking it along with all the other windows in the house before she had disappeared into the bathroom.
“I’ll call you later, okay?” Jenn said into the phone before hanging up on Andrea’s surprised voice, putting the phone down on the counter and leaning forward to get a better look. Maybe it was just the shadows playing with her eyes but it looked like… The hairs on the back of her neck stood up in the dark silence of the kitchen.
The lock had been broken open.
A rush of adrenaline spiked in her veins as she heard a sound behind her. Jenn twirled around, opening her mouth to scream but it was too late, a large sweaty hand was slapped over her mouth and a heavy powerful body had pinned her to the counter.
Frozen, she stared with petrified eyes into Darren’s face. It was distorted by the weird lighting, lines of shadow breaking up his loathsome features. He looked like something out of a horror movie.
“Boo.” He bared his glinting teeth at her- a predator’s smile. She flinched and whimpered at the word and tried to pull away from him, but his grip was too tight on her.
“I’ve come to pay you a little visit, Jenn,” he hissed, pushing her harder into the ledge with his body, making the cold marble bruise into Jenn’s back and making her whimper in pain and terror. Her rapidly beating heartbeat speed up even more when she felt the press of a knife against her side, her knees weak and body frozen. “Because you’ve been telling some tales that you promised never to spill, and for that I think you need to be punished.”
Darren’s eyes were malicious as he watched tears build up in Jenn’s horrified ones. “One word, one tiny sound, and I’ll gut you like the cow you are,” he said lowly as he took his hand away from her mouth. Jenn sobbed silently, squeezing her eyes shut and quivering, feeling bile rise up as the large rough hand dropped down to her neck, squeezing for a moment before sliding down under the material of her robe and grabbing lewdly, dirtily at her breast.
“Oh, I’m going to have some fun before killing you,” Darren breathed, laughing quietly as Jenn’s breathing accelerated to almost hyperventilation at the words, tears now steadily streaming down her face, her entire body shaking in complete and utter terror as he squeezed and jabbed her pointedly with the knife when she begun to feebly struggle.
“After all, I’ve got to get something back from all the trouble you’ve fucking caused me,” he snarled and ripped the material from her body viciously, throwing her to the cold kitchen tiles and following her down. He felt the rush of perverse power and lust as she tried to scream anyway, scratching at him uselessly with her desperate fingers and kicking at him hysterically. He only smiled and knocked her head against the floor, disorientating her, and even if it was fun when they fought and squirmed Darren didn’t want anybody to hear her shouts and come see what was going on. This was only the appetiser anyway; the main feast would be when he got his hands on that elusive pretty little Finnish Valo.
“Oh, don’t cry, you had got to know that you’d have this coming as soon as you opened your big fucking mouth,” he hissed and unzipped his pants, tightening his hand on the wooden handle of the wickedly sharp knife in anticipation, pressing it against her perfectly tanned skin and shivering in pleasure at her weak whimpers.
Now this was more like it. Grinning, he got to work.
-
When Mr and Mrs Rivell arrived home hours later, they were greeted with an unlocked front door and bloodied boot prints down the hall. A crimson splattered kitchen, a melted tub of ice cream on the counter and a naked, mutilated body sprawled askew on the once pristine tiles. It was only recognisable as their daughter from her long blonde hair and wide, glassy grey eyes staring up at the ceiling, a silent frozen look of terrified agony on her bruised and bloodied face.
It was only minutes later when the neighbours heard the sirens.
-
“Ville! You’re here early,” Mige exclaimed as he turned the corner around the back of the school building and spotted his friend smoking, blowing grey, pungent wisps into the frigid morning air. “What’s the occasion?”
Green eyes outlined in smudged black eyeliner that only partially covered up deep bruised bags under them looked up at him stonily before looking back out across the school’s sport field, their owner flicking ash from his cigarette across the concrete steps of the back fire-exit. “Do I need an occasion to be early?” Ville’s voice was deep and scratchy, laced with a sting of poison that had Mige blinking as he plonked himself down next to the other Finn, lowering his case containing his base carefully to the ground.
“No. No, I guess not,” Mige said slowly, eyeing his friend worriedly. It was a typical freezing Helsinki morning, yet Ville was dressed only in a tight black Iron Maiden t-shirt, dark grey jeans and a black scarf. His skinny arms were so pale they looked almost translucent, his skin tinged blue and littered with goose bumps, the hand that was holding his cig quivering weakly and his entire body shaking with minute shivers, yet his flat expression gave away none of the discomfort he must be feeling. Mige himself was dressed in at least three layers, and he was used to the cold Finnish weather unlike Ville who had been living in a warmer state of America for the past three years.
Something told Mige however, that if he tried to give Ville his jacket the other boy would just rebuff him violently. Ville was obviously in a strangely bad mood, and Mige knew that nothing ticked you off more when you were pissed than a person trying to be helpful. But in the way Ville held himself, hunched over and small, and the pained look in his eyes- that was what made Mige ignore what his self-preservation instincts were telling him. Something was wrong with his friend and it was clearly taking a toll on him. Even Iisakki had said that Ville had been acting a bit strange the night before after he closed the shop, too quiet and pale with shadows in his eyes. He’d been slightly worried that Ville had come down with something, like the flu. Now though, Mige was sure Ville had an ailment not of the body, but of the mind.
“You feeling okay?” Mige asked after a moment of silence.
Ville just wrapped his tinged blue lips around his cigarette, took a big drag and blew the smoke out slowly. His tone was sharp when he replied.
“I’m fine.”
Hah, right. “Monkey’s balls, you’re not,” Mige said, raising an eyebrow. “I’ve hardly said hello and you’re already biting my poor, measly head off with your scary sharp wolf teeth. I thought only women got that time of the month.”
Ville pinned Mige with a look, and if looks could kill Mige would’ve been a smoking pile of disintegrated Finn right that second. “Fuck off, Mige.”
“Ow,” Mige said flatly. “That really hurt. Straight to the heart, right there. But really, Ville, something’s wrong. You’re my friend, and I hate to see you like this.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Ville exploded, throwing down his cigarette and lurching to his feet, making Mige flinch back at the sudden, violent movement. “Just leave me the fuck alone, okay? I don’t want your fucking help, or your fucking pity! Stop it! Stop acting like you care, because you fucking don’t! Nobody cares!” He yelled at a wide-eyed Mige, fists clenched at his side and face flushing in anger as tears welled up in his eyes. His entire body was quivering with pent-up emotions.
“This world is just one big fucked up unfair piece of shit that eats away at your soul and I fucking hate it. I hate everything and fuck, I just, I just…” Ville broke, voice cracking as tears broke over his eyelashes and dripped down his cheeks. A flock of birds rose from the cluster of trees at the back of the field, frightened from their perches, as Ville let out a furious scream before ripping at his hair and sobbing, his chest heaving and shoulders shaking as he panted out his despair. “I don’t know what to do,” he cried helplessly.
Mige threw himself up to his feet, feeling himself start to panic but forcing it back, knowing that if he did it would just make matters worse. “Woah, woah, okay, Ville, it’s okay, calm down,” he tried, grabbing at Ville’s bony wrists to stop him tearing clumps of brown curls out of his scalp. “Sweetheart, shh.”
“No,” Ville cried, eyeliner running down his pallid cheeks, his eyes grief-stricken and hurting as he looked beseechingly at Mige, “it’s not okay. It’s never going to be okay. I’ve been kidding myself, Mige, I’m never going to be able to get back to him. Never,” he hiccuped, sobbing, just letting Mige hold his wrists without fighting. God, he was so tired of fighting. “It’s fucking useless,” he spat, squeezing his eyes shut and hating himself, “useless.”
“Hey, hey,” Mige cooed, glad that it was so early in the school day that nobody was around yet. He had no idea what Ville was going on about, and he didn’t try to understand, all he wanted was for his friend to be all right. “Hey, I’m here,” he said and gently pulled the other boy to his body in a hug. Ville resisted at first, sniffing and pushing him away with shaking hands, before giving up and falling into the embrace, burying his wet face into Mige’s shoulder and letting his sobs come.
“God, sweetheart,” Mige murmured worriedly into Ville’s hair as he felt the thin body quiver violently in his arms, the cold from Ville’s skin seeping through his clothes and into him. He felt tears burn at his own eyes from the depth of pain he could hear in Ville’s weeping, knowing that for Ville to blow up like this, so suddenly and brutally, that the breakdown had to have been coming for a long time. Something, however, must’ve set it off.
After a few minutes Ville began to calm down, his sobs falling away into little sniffles as he clutched at Mige’s jacket like it was the only thing keeping him anchored in the world. “Damn it, sorry,” he whispered into Mige’s neck after a while, “I didn’t mean… to shout at you.”
Mige just smiled and patted Ville’s back soothingly, feeling the aftershocks still moving through his friend’s body. “Nah, it’s all good. What are friends for, after all, other than to shout and scream at?”
Ville attempted a smile, sniffing, and pulled away slightly, brushing away the wetness on his cheeks tinged black from his eyeliner. “I must’ve scared the shit out of you,” he whispered, putting his face in his hands in shame, his shoulders falling. God, he was just so tired. He wanted Bam so badly but April yelling at him like that… Well, there was only one way she could’ve possibly found out about them and that was from Bam. And if she was so steadfast in keeping him away, then what did that say about what Bam had told her? Ville didn’t know what to think, but he despaired. So much, in fact, that no sleep had come to him the night after the phone call as he’d spent the entire time stressing, and he had no urge to eat or keep warm. He’d been living only on the hope that one day he’d get back to Bam, but what if that hope wasn’t something worth holding on to anymore? So much pressure was on him, and he guessed he was slowly breaking. Even the past few weeks when he’d been feeling like something more human the little itch to rip at his wrists had been calling, but Ville’d promised Bam, and he would never break a promise if he could help it.
“You gotta do better than that, Ville, to force me to defecate in my pants,” Mige smiled a bit but still looked worriedly at Ville, so small and exhausted and cold with the darkest bags he’d ever seen under somebody’s eyes. He sighed, pulling Ville into a hug again. “Look, how about I take you home, yeah? School is definitely not going to be beneficial towards your state of mind at the moment, and I’m craving some hot chocolate anyway.”
That sounded nice to Ville, and he nodded slowly against Mige’s comforting shoulder, feeling the energy from his explosion leeching away and leaving him sagging into Mige’s support. A few more tears leaked out again, just because he was so run down and terrible and Mige was being so nice. His breath hitched and Mige patted his back again before letting go and draping his jacket over Ville’s shoulders. Ville clutched the warm material to himself, shivering, murmuring a thank you as Mige picked up his case in one hand and reached for Ville with the other.
“Come here,” he said and pulled the other boy under his arm, glaring at some random students who passed them and pointed, whispering. “Lets get outta this place before its overrun with twittering fuck-heads.”
-
“God,” April whispered as she put her cell phone down. “God.”
The police had just rung. Jenn Rivell had been found raped and murdered in her own home just last night and they had no doubt who had done it. They’d thought she’d want to know.
Biting her lip, she lifted her hand from her lap and placed it on Bam’s, ever still and pale on the hospital bed. She looked into his face, at the still healing burn wounds, and then at the calendar on the wall, the chart at the foot of his bed, at the door with the guard sitting there, then back at Bam. Her son, unconscious and defenceless, a sitting target.
April didn’t want what had happened to Jenn to happen to Bam.
Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath and asked herself if keeping Ville away from Bam was more important than keeping Bam safe from that Shanks monster while there was a chance that Ville could wake her son.
It was a no brainer. April was a mother first and foremost, and mothers loved their sons no matter who they were or what they did. She would get used to Bam liking boys as long as he just woke up and stayed alive.
Opening her eyes, April firmed her resolve and stood, quivering lightly from the outcome of her decision. It seemed so simple now. How could she have been so confused? Her son would always come first. She would learn to live with it, as long as Bam would just wake.
April kissed Bam on the head, brushing his curls back from his forehead tenderly. “Don’t worry, Bam, I’ll keep you safe,” she whispered and sighed.
Right. Now somehow, she had to get in touch with Ville.
-
The television was on when Anette got home from work, so she dropped her handbag and keys on the kitchen table and curiously made her way into the living room. Ville was still supposed to be at school at this time and Matti was on his shift, so the house should’ve been empty when she’d arrived.
The screen was showing Sponge-Bob subtitled in Finnish with the mute turned on in the darkened room, the curtains drawn to block the sunlight, as Anette walked in a smiled at the sight on the couch. Ville was curled up in a fluffy deep green blanket, fast asleep with his head resting gently on his friend Mige’s shoulder, who blinked out of his absent stare at the television to look at her, tightening his hold around Ville’s thin shoulders protectively.
“Oh, um, hey Ms. Olzon,” Mige whispered, wincing when Ville muttered softly into his neck at the noise and then settled down again, tucking his knees more into his body on the cushion and curling his fingers in the soft blanket.
“It’s Anette, Mige,” Anette smiled, walking forward to pick up two empty mugs on the floor that looked like they’d once contained hot chocolate. “And what are you two doing out of school so early?” She said softly without much bite, glancing at Ville, happy to see him looking more relaxed and actually resting. Anette knew Ville had trouble sleeping and that last night had been a particularly bad one from the deepness of the painful bruises under his eyes, so she didn’t really mind that the boys had skipped school so Ville could catch some shut-eye.
“Ville wasn’t… feeling that well, so I took him home and stayed to keep him company. To make sure he was feeling better and all that,” Mige said, doing well in hiding that he was keeping something back, but Anette was sharp and she picked up on the slight hesitation, the unwillingness in his eyes to give something away to protect his friend.
Anette smiled. “You’re a good friend, Mige,” she said, moving the mugs to one hand so she could pat him reassuringly on his knee. “I’ll leave you two in peace, yeah? Unless you want something?” She asked Mige, raising her eyebrow. The poor thing must be bored stiff.
The scruffy boy shook his head. “Nah, I’m fine Ms- uh, Anette. Thanks anyway,” he smiled and hugged Ville a bit closer to him when he muttered again, making a quiet distressed whimper as his brows drew inwards in a frown. Anette ached to comfort him, but Mige looked like he had it all under control, stroking Ville’s slender back and side soothingly and murmuring soft words of nonsense into his ear. Anette looked at them for a few seconds, feeling her heart warm.
“Okay. Call if you need anything though, I mean it,” she reinforced and then left the dim, quiet room when Mige nodded at her, putting the mugs in the sink in the kitchen and sighing as she realised she needed to change out of her work clothes and have a shower. Looking back at the door to the lounge she felt a tinge of sadness and a bit of uselessness nip at her chest. Even if she had tried her hardest when she spoke to Ville, showed him kindness and compassion, he sometimes looked at her with such confusion and almost a kind of helplessness in his eyes, as if he had never known such things from an adult and had no idea how to react to it. They got along quite well, but that simple inability to accept empathy from an adult that Ville had kept them from connecting completely in the way she wanted to. It also kept her from being able to give Ville full emotional support, but Anette did her best with what he was willing to give her. Clearly, Anita had robbed him of his ability to trust in adults, but Anette had a sneaking suspicion that other grown-ups had to have also had a hand, as one bad egg couldn’t possibly make Ville so cautious around all adults.
The bird on the coo-coo clock bounced out, chirping and announcing that it was two o’clock. Anette jumped at the sudden noise and shook herself out of her inner thoughts, running a hand through her grubby hair. Damn, she needed a shower. She smelt like a fast-food joint.
When she emerged an hour later, freshened up and smelling faintly of lavender, she checked on the boys once again and found Mige also nodding off on the couch, his eyes drooping tiredly. It looked like Ville wasn’t the only one needing some sleep.
They look so cute together, Anette thought quietly to herself as she picked up another blanket off the other couch, shaking it out before tucking it around Mige. It was starting to get rather cold in the room and Anette couldn’t afford to put the heating on.
Mige blinked when he felt her covering him with a blanket and mumbled a quiet thank you, lifting his head a bit from where it was resting on top of Ville’s. Anette smiled at him. “Does your uncle know you’re here?” She asked quietly.
He nodded, “yeah.”
“You’re welcome to stay the night then,” she invited, “you look exhausted and I’m sure Ville wouldn’t mind.”
“That’ll be awesome, thanks Anette…” Mige accepted, trailing off as he yawned, his eyes slowly slipping closed. Anette laughed softly to herself and straightened, switching the television off with the remote and plunging the room into darkness.
-
The sun started to set and Matti was due home anytime, so Anette begun to prepare dinner, tying her hair up in a bun and chopping up vegetables, boiling some rice also. The potatoes were almost done when she heard the front door slam. Matti appeared a few seconds after, dumping his bag and keys on the kitchen table and collapsing in a chair, pulling a hand down his face.
“Bad day?” Anette asked, not facing her boyfriend as she finished draining the boiled potatoes at the sink, the hot steam curling up around her face.
Matti sighed angrily. “You have no fucking idea. Get me a beer or something, will you? My fucking boss is being a prick and refusing to…” Slamming a can of beer from the fridge in front of Matti, Anette tuned the rest of his rant out, knowing that it would just be the same complaints as the night before, and the night before that. He didn’t greet her with a kiss anymore, never even asked how her day went. Sometimes Anette didn’t even know why she stayed with him when he showed no consideration for her feelings. But maybe she was asking for a bit much, since the bills and the added stress of having a teenage boy in the house was probably getting to him.
Biting her lip, she hummed in all the right places and dished out some food on a plate, dumping it with more beer in front of him to hopefully shut him up for a little while. Annoyingly enough, he just kept on ranting through his mouthfuls of food, and Anette knew well enough not to wait around for thanks.
“Hey, where’re you going with that?” Matti finally paid some attention to her, but it wasn’t at the time that she wanted. Anette winced and stopped at the doorway, turning around to smile at him sweetly, her words dripping with sugary mocking as she balanced two plates in her hands. “Well, dear, I’m taking some food to Ville and his friend. Can’t have them starving, now can we?”
It might’ve been her tone that set him off, and later Anette may regret it just a little bit, but Matti’s expression went such a furious dark that the smile melted slowly right off her face.
“That boy can move his own lazy American arse and get his own damn food. And who the hell said he could have a friend over? This is my house, damn it, and I say who the hell comes and goes, so get back here woman and never use that tone with me!” He smacked is fist down on the table, and Anette was ashamed to find that she actually flinched back before her own expression twisted furiously.
“First of all, I said Mige could stay, as this is my house too because I pay half the fucking bills,” she spat. “Secondly, Ville isn’t American, he was born here. You would know if you paid the slightest bit attention to him. And I can use whatever tone I feel like thank you very much!” And then she spun on her heel and stomped down the hallway, fighting back angry tears as she heard Matti roar at her to come back, swear and then give up, something smashing against the kitchen tiles.
Anette took a second to lean against the wall, fighting back frustrated tears in an effort to compose herself before entering the lounge where the boys were. Her smile was wobbly when she entered, but it become stronger when two sets of alert eyes peered up at her from the couch worriedly. Looked like the boys were awake. From the hours they’d been sleeping, Anette was sure they’d probably be up all night fiddling with their guitars and doing things teenage boys do.
Pushing the fight with Matti she’d just had to the back of her mind, she gave the boys their food and ignored their sympathetic looks. She made Mige promise to make Ville eat at least half his plate and said that if they wanted, later (namely when Matti was out of the kitchen) they could raid the fridge for some pudding. Ville was still slightly subdued, but at least he looked better than he did than this morning.
“I’m going to bed now, so I’ll see you boys in the morning,” she said goodnight, feeling run down from Matti and from work earlier in the day. “Try not to make too much noise, yeah?”
They both nodded, already tucking into dinner, and Anette smiled at the sight of Ville eating before heading off to bed.
-
Ville, it turned out, was notoriously difficult to find. April didn’t know his last name, so it was impossible to look him up in the phone book. Bam’s phone had been destroyed completely in the fire at the park, so she couldn’t get Ville’s information off the device. She’d even rung Bam’s school, hoping the get some information from them as her son had said they’d met there, but the receptionist had said that there was no Ville enrolled currently.
April had seriously hit a dead end. She’d even asked Ryan, but even he and Novak had no idea, didn’t even know who Ville was. Finding that out had soothed the sting from Bam not telling her about Ville; he hadn’t even told his friends yet. But even if that made her feel better, it did no favours in trying to find Bam’s boyfriend.
April groaned and banged her head against the computer screen when even a Facebook search turned up blank. Weren’t all teenagers on that stupid site these days?
“Any luck?” Phil said as he popped into the room, taking in the sight of his wife whacking her head against the monitor. He raised an eyebrow. “I guess not.”
April sighed and sat back, throwing her hands up in the air in frustration. “I give up. God damn it, no, I can’t, I have to find him, but hell, you would think this boy lives in a hole in the ground the way there’s no record on him! I can’t even find his last name. There’s no way I’m going to be able to find his address or phone number.”
Phil sat down in the desk next to her and thought for a moment, searching through the papers to grab a packet of chips to help stimulate his brain. For once, April didn’t snatch them out of his hands and berate him for eating junk food all the time, just put her chin in her hands and watched him eat with despondent eyes.
“Well,” Phil said after chewing and swallowing. “He rang you, right? So there’s got to be some record of the number he rang from somewhere. You could ring the phone company and ask them to pull our records.”
April’s eyes widened and she leapt out of her chair, bombarding her husband’s face with ecstatic kisses. She didn’t even care that he tasted of greasy chicken flavoured chips.
“Phil, this is why I married you,” she grinned, picking up the phone on the desk beside him and dialling their company’s number.
Phil munched smugly as he wrapped an arm around his wife’s waist, listening as she asked them for the records of the numbers that rang them a few days ago.
“Yeah, around 5,” April confirmed, and scribbled down the number they gave her on a pad with a pen, frowning a bit when she saw what she’d written. “Are you sure this is the right number?”
“Oh okay, thanks,” she said and hung up, looking at her messy handwriting.
“What wrong?” Phil asked, stretching up to look over the pad to see.
“Huh? Oh, the numbers are strange. The area code isn’t one I’ve seen before. Here, take a look.” She passed the paper to him.
Phil’s eyebrow rose and he put the packet of finished chips down. “It’s the area code for Finland, I’m pretty sure.”
“Finland?” April exclaimed, incredulous. What the hell was Ville doing all the way over in Scandinavia when his boyfriend was lying in hospital, unconscious, still healing from burn wounds and refusing to wake while his assaulter was running around free? Things were just getting stranger and stranger. Did they have a fight and Ville leave or something? Finland seemed a bit of a way to go for a break up though. “Well, okay, he’s just going to have to come back then for Bam then anyway,” she frowned and picked up the phone again, dialling the number.
A man picked up, speaking only what April could guess at was Finnish. “Um, hello,” she ploughed on, hoping that he would understand her in English, “I’m looking for Ville?” God, please be able to speak English, or she wouldn’t know what to do.
“Ville? He is not on shift right now. He will be tomorrow, if you could call then?” The man said, thankfully in English, but with such a heavy accent that April had a hard time understanding him.
On shift? Ville had rung from work? What the hell? April thought. “Uh, tomorrow won’t do. It’s urgent,” well, the faster she got in touch with Ville the quicker he could get here and the bigger the chance that Bam would finally wake up. “Could you possibly give me his home number or something so I can get in touch with him?”
The man paused for a moment. “It depends. Who’s calling?” He asked suspiciously.
Damn, April thought. “It’s Ville’s family from America. I lost his number and his work was all we had. There’s been a… situation and we need to get in touch with him to let him know,” she crossed her fingers behind her back, praying that it would work. Phil watched on with hopeful eyes.
He still sounded a bit apprehensive, but the man gave her Ville’s number anyway and said that he hoped the situation wasn’t too bad. April thanked him, said that it would be getting better soon, and hung up.
“Well, this is it,” she said and Phil smiled at her. “Let’s just hope he’s home,” he said as she dialled.
“Yeah,” April replied and listened to the phone ring.
-
Warmth, a strong arm around his waist, soft breath against his cheek. Ville smiled sleepily, moving closer to the body next to him and curling his fingers more securely around the hand in his, sighing quietly in the serene silence.
“Bam…” He murmured happily.
The body shifted. “What?”
Ville froze for a second before his heart sunk in his chest, fighting back disappointed tears at the voice that wasn’t Bam’s. Eyelashes fluttering, he opened his eyes to look the other boy sharing his bed in the face, staring at him with confused green eyes.
Mige grinned at him. “Look who’s finally decided to wake up. It’s almost noon, sleepy head. Not to mention I was about to die from boredom. No offence or anything, even if your face is pretty, it does get rather boring after staring at it for a couple of hours.”
Blinking, Ville ignored what his friend just said and glanced down at their joined hands before looking back up. “Mige. What are you doing in my bed?”
“Sadly enough, not anything particularly interesting, if you catch my drift,” Mige wriggled his eyebrows suggestively and Ville rolled his eyes, whacking his friend in the arm.
“Ouch,” Mige pouted. “Don’t you remember?”
Ville blinked and sat up, the covers falling down to his waist. Thank god he was still wearing his clothes. He looked around the room, feeling the memories come back- he must’ve been pretty tired still after that nap to sleep for quite a while when he had Mige had finally gone to bed in the small hours of the morning. Mige’s guitar and the one Ville had loaned from school, along with sheets of music and some magazines along with a large amount of CDs were scattered around on his floor. They’d had quite a lot of fun fucking around with music last night. It had been a welcome distraction from that phone call and Ville’s subsequent break down at school yesterday morning.
“Yeah, I remember, sadly enough,” Ville muttered, rolling his eyes when Mige’s pout became even more atrocious.
“I’m hurt that you don’t find my company pleasant,” Mige joked and Ville laughed.
“Your company is anything but when you smell like you do,” the green-eyed Finn grinned as Mige whined that he’d had a shower… a couple of days ago.
“So, you feeling better now?” Mige asked as they tumbled out of bed. Ville stretched lazily, reaching his arms over his head and cracking his back, revealing the simple silver barbell piercing his navel when his shift rode up.
Ville smiled a bit weakly. He did feel better, but his heart was still a stone in his chest. He felt helpless; what was he going to do if Bam didn’t want him anymore? No, he thought to himself, pushing the painful thought into the back of his mind, don’t think like that. You won’t know until you see him.
“Yeah. Thanks for staying with me, Mige. I seriously don’t know what I’d have done without you,” he said sincerely as Mige flapped a hand at him.
“Nah, it was no biggy, you would’ve done the same with me.” The other boy grinned, running a hand through his hair and clapping Ville on the shoulder with the other. “Now come on, I’m fucking starving.”
Ville chuckled and lead Mige out of his cluttered room and down to the kitchen. “You’re always fucking hungry.”
“Well, I gotta eat twice the amount to make up for what you don’t eat, you little skeleton,” Mige teased and poked Ville in the stomach as the other boy scavenged through the fridge. “There’s left over pudding, if you want it?” Ville asked, beating away Mige’s hands.
“Hell yeah, dessert for breakfast, there’s nothing better,” Mige grinned.
Ville was just getting the spoons out when the phone rang. “Here,” he said, handing Mige a spoon. “Knock yourself out, just don’t whine when you make yourself sick,” he grinned.
“Sick from chocolate pudding? Blasphemy,” Mige said and dug in. Ville rolled his eyes and picked up the phone, smiling.
“Hello- Ville speaking.”
-Chapter 24
A/N: *smiles sheepishly* Long time no see. :/ I cannot tell you how sorry I am about making you guys wait for so long for an update. I suck. I’m really, really sorry. Forgive me?
Sadly enough though, writer’s block and end of year exams are ailments that cannot be cured by pills, but I’ve recovered now thank god! \o/ Hopefully some people are still reading! :O I still want to get this finished. :)
Comments are <3! And also let me know if people are still interested! :)