Nothing Hurts Like Your Mouth (Cursed, Bo/Jimmy)
Title: Nothing Hurts Like Your Mouth
Fandom: Cursed
Characters: Bo/Jimmy
Word Count: 2145
Rating/Warnings: PG-13
Notes: Written for yuletide (originally archived here.) Title stolen from a Bush song. Concrit makes me happy.
Jimmy takes the rest of the week off school, Ellie be damned. She might be able to repress and deny the whole fucking thing, but he's still having nightmares and every time he looks at Zipper, his stomach knots in remembered fear.
Bo calls seven times between Thursday and Sunday, leaving messages like nothing happened and they've been best friends since kindergarten. Jimmy ignores them all and deletes the ones from Brooke without even listening to them.
The night he walked her home, they kissed again at her doorstep and she made him promise to call, which he did in the same dazed, surreal state he'd been in since the accident. He'd seen a girl literally torn in half. He'd been infected by a werewolf. His sister had suffered the same fate. Her boyfriend's ex-fling had tried to kill them all. Her boyfriend had jumped on the homicidal bandwagon. His body had disintegrated on their kitchen floor.
He was not ready for goodnight kisses at the front door and innocent high school romance. Not without some serious therapy.
But he'd wanted Brooke for so long that telling her no sounded crazier than telling her about the whole werewolf incident. So he just avoids her, because that way he doesn't have to tell her anything.
But she shows up on his doorstep on Sunday, worry lines creasing her forehead and her hands shoved deep in her pockets. Ellie makes him invite her in, and they sit around with coffee and biscotti for half an hour before Jimmy finally gets Ellie to take the hint and leave. She gives him an encouraging look before she goes, and he hates to dash her dreams of a normal life from now on, but he's not going to be asking Brooke to the prom.
Brooke takes it better than he thought she would, but then, Bo dumped her by telling her he was gay, so he supposes his, “I'm just in a really weird place right now,” comes as no surprise.
He also supposes he should have worded it better to the aforementioned dumpee, because when he goes back to school on Monday, people already assume he and Bo are 'together.'
Brooke didn't do it maliciously, and he knows that, but he can't help the spark of anger in her direction. He had just gotten over being the class geek; here he thought he might actually make it through his last year of high school on the greener side of the fence by milking the werewolf mojo he'd mooched.
Bo takes it in stride, but he's probably just glad he's not the only one in the spotlight. Jimmy hears from a few people (because they're the few that are still talking to him like he's a normal person, not because they're the few who know) that Bo came back to school wearing his gay on his sleeve, opening up to anyone who asked and a few who didn't, approaching the whole thing with the same level of intensity and confidence that he did wrestling, or bullying. He didn't do anything halfway.
He catches Jimmy in the hall after lunch and slings an arm across his shoulders, that twisted lip smile of his looking even more terrifying now that it's supposed to be friendly. Jimmy shakes him off and looks around to see if anyone noticed. He's got nothing against gays, see, but he doesn't especially want to be confused with one, and he'll spend hours later thinking that logic through until the inevitable bitter end.
Bo doesn't seem to mind, just walks with Jimmy to his next class, and Jimmy can see that the gossip mongers are going to have their work cut down for them.
“Look, Bo, you were kicking my ass last week, it's a little weird that you're trying to get a piece of it now,” Jimmy says, and he realizes it's the most boneheaded and insensitive thing he could possibly say, ever, in the history of dumb things he's said, but he doesn't take it back because he's stressed and angry and traumatized, and Bo of all people should know that.
Bo looks genuinely hurt, but only for a second, and then he's falling right back into old patterns. “I'd be worried about repressed faggotry if I thought every guy that touched me was hitting on me, Myers. Fuck you.” He starts backing down the hallway, somehow still managing to swagger. “Fuck me, too, I guess, for thinking you might be an ok guy beneath all that 'pity me' emo bullshit.”
Jimmy kicks his locker and slides to the floor clutching his foot when he discovers that super strength was not one of the leftovers of werewolvery.
Fuck Bo, he thinks. He's not emo. He never asked anyone to pity him. His fucking parents died, and he got stuck with a tightass, repressed sister in charge of his life, but he never asked anyone to feel sorry for him. He never asked for any special treatment.
He stays on the floor until the final bell rings, and even then, going home doesn't exactly sound like seeking refuge.
--
Ellie doesn't talk about any of it, except to ask Jimmy if he wants her to make an appointment with the psychologist they saw after their parents died. Because he did them so much good, as evidenced by Ellie's healthy relationship choices and avoidance of any painful issue. Jimmy declines.
He tries to bring it up once. Once. She walks out of the room as soon as he mentions Jake's name and doesn't come back. Jimmy takes hints pretty well.
He wants to bring it up again a week later, when he wakes up in the backyard again, craving raw meat and covered in scratches that he hopes are just from the bushes. But Ellie works more overtime than she used to, and he didn't think that was possible. She may have set up a cot in Kilborn's office for as often as he sees her.
He sees Brooke about as often as he sees his sister. She moved on fast, hooking up with the next in line on the wrestling team. He hears that Bo quit, not because of the constant teasing, but because he can't stand the sport. Never could. Now he's writing for the school paper. The modicum of success he's enjoying as an intrepid journalist doesn't make up for the fact that basically everyone he ever considered a friend has ditched him. Jimmy can't say he's surprised. Not much surprises him anymore, but he could have predicted that one even before the werewolf stuff. Bo was the darling of the wrestling team, the apple of his coach's eye, the idol of his peers, and all it took was Jimmy tossing him around on the mat for a few minutes for their loyalties to shift. He hadn't expected decency out of them when Bo came out, let alone loyalty. Then again, he hadn't expected himself to go apeshit on Bo, so he obviously wasn't the most accurate judge of character.
Jimmy starts wishing he hadn't been such a dick, and wishing Bo hadn't been such a dick, and wishing they both weren't so fucking stubborn.
--
It's almost two weeks later and Jimmy still hasn't figured out how to fix the scratches in the walls or on the ceiling, or the scorch marks on the kitchen floor, and Ellie's refusing to call an expert because she doesn't have a plausible explanation for their existence.
He thinks he should be doing something with plaster, or caulk, or paint, but he can't figure out what, and he's starting to avoid the kitchen because every time he walks past that big burn mark on the floor, he sees Jake trying to kill his sister and it's not making it any easier to sleep at night.
He'd call the wall-fixer or whatever they're called himself, but seeing as he's seventeen, with no credit card or form of employment, he's not sure how well it would go over. So he just starts spending a lot of time not at home.
Problem is, he has no friends, and he has no job, and he has no family besides Ellie.
And eventually, it's that sad fact that leads him to Bo's front door, hesitantly apologetic.
Bo stares at him, face unreadable, and Jimmy doesn't know this kid well enough yet to know if he's going to get hit or hit on.
It ends up being neither. Bo invites him in, and it turns out he has three older sisters who are remarkably like Ellie when it comes to wanting their little brother to hook up. They usher the boys into the dining room and throw each other knowing glances as they offer sodas and cookies in a tone that makes it seem like they're offering up Bo's body on a silver serving platter. Jimmy declines.
“So...” Bo starts, looking just as comfortable on the antique chaise lounge as he ever did on a wrestling mat.
“Yeah, so...” Jimmy offers in return, wiping his hands on his pants. Every once in a while he catches sight of his nails out of the corner of his eye and thinks they're long and brown and deadly looking. He just did it again and it throws him off, makes him lose track of everything he had planned on saying. So he just starts talking.
“Look, Bo, I screwed up and I know you weren't hitting on me and I shouldn't've assumed you were because that was a really dickhead thing to do not to mention homophobic and I realize now that I have some real issues with gayness that I need to deal with but I don't have an issue with you being gay and I probably said what I did because of my own issues and because you've been a jerk to me for so long that I maybe felt like I had a chance to get back at you and I took it-”
He cuts himself off with a deep breath, staring at the carpet. He thinks he stopped at a point that indicated more was coming, but he can't for the life of him remember where exactly he left off, and he feels like he couldn't draw a breath for more talking even if his life depended on it. Luckily, Bo answers instead of just waiting through an awkward silence.
“Dude, I was hitting on you.”
Jimmy's head snaps up and he mutters, “What?”
“I was hitting on you. I know you said it was the whole werewolf thing that gave you the...what'd you call it? Animal magnetism or something? But it's not, unless you've been a werewolf since I met you and you're still one right now.”
Jimmy scrunches up his forehead in confusion, shaking his head. “No, no, just for those couple of days, and I know there's some lingering effects, I still crave raw meat and I can feel the moon phase changing, but-”
Bo laughs, shaking his head and looking away. “Dude, you are thick. I've liked you for a lot longer than just a couple a' days. Why'd you think I picked on you so much?”
Jimmy flops back in his chair and throws his hands up, at the end of his rope with life in general. “I dunno, Bo, I guess I thought all the bruises and bloody noses and general bullying was because you didn't like me.” He pauses, eyebrows furrowing. "So you flipped out on me in the hallway that day because...?"
Bo's still chuckling, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands between them. “It's been a while since I got turned down. Not the best reaction, huh?”
Jimmy rubs a hands over his face and nods, smiling too even though he is so frustrated he feels like tearing into someone.
“Ok, ok. I get it. You like me. You've liked me. Doesn't matter to you that I'm not gay?”
Bo leans back again, throwing him a dismissive glance. “So you say.”
Jimmy stands up and hears Bo's sisters scurrying away from the door. “Look, I just wanted to apologize. Which I am doing. And also I need to know if you know anything about plaster and caulk.”
Bo's eyebrows jump up. “Taking up a new hobby, Jimbo?”
Jimmy frowns, just barely shaking his head in askance, and then he blushes furiously. “Caulk,” he says, stressing the nearly silent l. “Caulk.”
Bo can't stop laughing all the way to the hardware store, and he's still chuckling on the way back to Jimmy's, and even as they're patching up the kitchen door, he can't wipe the smile off his face.
Jimmy starts sleeping through the night after that.
Fandom: Cursed
Characters: Bo/Jimmy
Word Count: 2145
Rating/Warnings: PG-13
Notes: Written for yuletide (originally archived here.) Title stolen from a Bush song. Concrit makes me happy.
Jimmy takes the rest of the week off school, Ellie be damned. She might be able to repress and deny the whole fucking thing, but he's still having nightmares and every time he looks at Zipper, his stomach knots in remembered fear.
Bo calls seven times between Thursday and Sunday, leaving messages like nothing happened and they've been best friends since kindergarten. Jimmy ignores them all and deletes the ones from Brooke without even listening to them.
The night he walked her home, they kissed again at her doorstep and she made him promise to call, which he did in the same dazed, surreal state he'd been in since the accident. He'd seen a girl literally torn in half. He'd been infected by a werewolf. His sister had suffered the same fate. Her boyfriend's ex-fling had tried to kill them all. Her boyfriend had jumped on the homicidal bandwagon. His body had disintegrated on their kitchen floor.
He was not ready for goodnight kisses at the front door and innocent high school romance. Not without some serious therapy.
But he'd wanted Brooke for so long that telling her no sounded crazier than telling her about the whole werewolf incident. So he just avoids her, because that way he doesn't have to tell her anything.
But she shows up on his doorstep on Sunday, worry lines creasing her forehead and her hands shoved deep in her pockets. Ellie makes him invite her in, and they sit around with coffee and biscotti for half an hour before Jimmy finally gets Ellie to take the hint and leave. She gives him an encouraging look before she goes, and he hates to dash her dreams of a normal life from now on, but he's not going to be asking Brooke to the prom.
Brooke takes it better than he thought she would, but then, Bo dumped her by telling her he was gay, so he supposes his, “I'm just in a really weird place right now,” comes as no surprise.
He also supposes he should have worded it better to the aforementioned dumpee, because when he goes back to school on Monday, people already assume he and Bo are 'together.'
Brooke didn't do it maliciously, and he knows that, but he can't help the spark of anger in her direction. He had just gotten over being the class geek; here he thought he might actually make it through his last year of high school on the greener side of the fence by milking the werewolf mojo he'd mooched.
Bo takes it in stride, but he's probably just glad he's not the only one in the spotlight. Jimmy hears from a few people (because they're the few that are still talking to him like he's a normal person, not because they're the few who know) that Bo came back to school wearing his gay on his sleeve, opening up to anyone who asked and a few who didn't, approaching the whole thing with the same level of intensity and confidence that he did wrestling, or bullying. He didn't do anything halfway.
He catches Jimmy in the hall after lunch and slings an arm across his shoulders, that twisted lip smile of his looking even more terrifying now that it's supposed to be friendly. Jimmy shakes him off and looks around to see if anyone noticed. He's got nothing against gays, see, but he doesn't especially want to be confused with one, and he'll spend hours later thinking that logic through until the inevitable bitter end.
Bo doesn't seem to mind, just walks with Jimmy to his next class, and Jimmy can see that the gossip mongers are going to have their work cut down for them.
“Look, Bo, you were kicking my ass last week, it's a little weird that you're trying to get a piece of it now,” Jimmy says, and he realizes it's the most boneheaded and insensitive thing he could possibly say, ever, in the history of dumb things he's said, but he doesn't take it back because he's stressed and angry and traumatized, and Bo of all people should know that.
Bo looks genuinely hurt, but only for a second, and then he's falling right back into old patterns. “I'd be worried about repressed faggotry if I thought every guy that touched me was hitting on me, Myers. Fuck you.” He starts backing down the hallway, somehow still managing to swagger. “Fuck me, too, I guess, for thinking you might be an ok guy beneath all that 'pity me' emo bullshit.”
Jimmy kicks his locker and slides to the floor clutching his foot when he discovers that super strength was not one of the leftovers of werewolvery.
Fuck Bo, he thinks. He's not emo. He never asked anyone to pity him. His fucking parents died, and he got stuck with a tightass, repressed sister in charge of his life, but he never asked anyone to feel sorry for him. He never asked for any special treatment.
He stays on the floor until the final bell rings, and even then, going home doesn't exactly sound like seeking refuge.
--
Ellie doesn't talk about any of it, except to ask Jimmy if he wants her to make an appointment with the psychologist they saw after their parents died. Because he did them so much good, as evidenced by Ellie's healthy relationship choices and avoidance of any painful issue. Jimmy declines.
He tries to bring it up once. Once. She walks out of the room as soon as he mentions Jake's name and doesn't come back. Jimmy takes hints pretty well.
He wants to bring it up again a week later, when he wakes up in the backyard again, craving raw meat and covered in scratches that he hopes are just from the bushes. But Ellie works more overtime than she used to, and he didn't think that was possible. She may have set up a cot in Kilborn's office for as often as he sees her.
He sees Brooke about as often as he sees his sister. She moved on fast, hooking up with the next in line on the wrestling team. He hears that Bo quit, not because of the constant teasing, but because he can't stand the sport. Never could. Now he's writing for the school paper. The modicum of success he's enjoying as an intrepid journalist doesn't make up for the fact that basically everyone he ever considered a friend has ditched him. Jimmy can't say he's surprised. Not much surprises him anymore, but he could have predicted that one even before the werewolf stuff. Bo was the darling of the wrestling team, the apple of his coach's eye, the idol of his peers, and all it took was Jimmy tossing him around on the mat for a few minutes for their loyalties to shift. He hadn't expected decency out of them when Bo came out, let alone loyalty. Then again, he hadn't expected himself to go apeshit on Bo, so he obviously wasn't the most accurate judge of character.
Jimmy starts wishing he hadn't been such a dick, and wishing Bo hadn't been such a dick, and wishing they both weren't so fucking stubborn.
--
It's almost two weeks later and Jimmy still hasn't figured out how to fix the scratches in the walls or on the ceiling, or the scorch marks on the kitchen floor, and Ellie's refusing to call an expert because she doesn't have a plausible explanation for their existence.
He thinks he should be doing something with plaster, or caulk, or paint, but he can't figure out what, and he's starting to avoid the kitchen because every time he walks past that big burn mark on the floor, he sees Jake trying to kill his sister and it's not making it any easier to sleep at night.
He'd call the wall-fixer or whatever they're called himself, but seeing as he's seventeen, with no credit card or form of employment, he's not sure how well it would go over. So he just starts spending a lot of time not at home.
Problem is, he has no friends, and he has no job, and he has no family besides Ellie.
And eventually, it's that sad fact that leads him to Bo's front door, hesitantly apologetic.
Bo stares at him, face unreadable, and Jimmy doesn't know this kid well enough yet to know if he's going to get hit or hit on.
It ends up being neither. Bo invites him in, and it turns out he has three older sisters who are remarkably like Ellie when it comes to wanting their little brother to hook up. They usher the boys into the dining room and throw each other knowing glances as they offer sodas and cookies in a tone that makes it seem like they're offering up Bo's body on a silver serving platter. Jimmy declines.
“So...” Bo starts, looking just as comfortable on the antique chaise lounge as he ever did on a wrestling mat.
“Yeah, so...” Jimmy offers in return, wiping his hands on his pants. Every once in a while he catches sight of his nails out of the corner of his eye and thinks they're long and brown and deadly looking. He just did it again and it throws him off, makes him lose track of everything he had planned on saying. So he just starts talking.
“Look, Bo, I screwed up and I know you weren't hitting on me and I shouldn't've assumed you were because that was a really dickhead thing to do not to mention homophobic and I realize now that I have some real issues with gayness that I need to deal with but I don't have an issue with you being gay and I probably said what I did because of my own issues and because you've been a jerk to me for so long that I maybe felt like I had a chance to get back at you and I took it-”
He cuts himself off with a deep breath, staring at the carpet. He thinks he stopped at a point that indicated more was coming, but he can't for the life of him remember where exactly he left off, and he feels like he couldn't draw a breath for more talking even if his life depended on it. Luckily, Bo answers instead of just waiting through an awkward silence.
“Dude, I was hitting on you.”
Jimmy's head snaps up and he mutters, “What?”
“I was hitting on you. I know you said it was the whole werewolf thing that gave you the...what'd you call it? Animal magnetism or something? But it's not, unless you've been a werewolf since I met you and you're still one right now.”
Jimmy scrunches up his forehead in confusion, shaking his head. “No, no, just for those couple of days, and I know there's some lingering effects, I still crave raw meat and I can feel the moon phase changing, but-”
Bo laughs, shaking his head and looking away. “Dude, you are thick. I've liked you for a lot longer than just a couple a' days. Why'd you think I picked on you so much?”
Jimmy flops back in his chair and throws his hands up, at the end of his rope with life in general. “I dunno, Bo, I guess I thought all the bruises and bloody noses and general bullying was because you didn't like me.” He pauses, eyebrows furrowing. "So you flipped out on me in the hallway that day because...?"
Bo's still chuckling, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees and his hands between them. “It's been a while since I got turned down. Not the best reaction, huh?”
Jimmy rubs a hands over his face and nods, smiling too even though he is so frustrated he feels like tearing into someone.
“Ok, ok. I get it. You like me. You've liked me. Doesn't matter to you that I'm not gay?”
Bo leans back again, throwing him a dismissive glance. “So you say.”
Jimmy stands up and hears Bo's sisters scurrying away from the door. “Look, I just wanted to apologize. Which I am doing. And also I need to know if you know anything about plaster and caulk.”
Bo's eyebrows jump up. “Taking up a new hobby, Jimbo?”
Jimmy frowns, just barely shaking his head in askance, and then he blushes furiously. “Caulk,” he says, stressing the nearly silent l. “Caulk.”
Bo can't stop laughing all the way to the hardware store, and he's still chuckling on the way back to Jimmy's, and even as they're patching up the kitchen door, he can't wipe the smile off his face.
Jimmy starts sleeping through the night after that.