(no subject)
Title: Four Times Josie Dumped Sock
Fandom: Reaper
Characters/Pairing: Sock/Josie
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,016
Summary: Just as the title says. Four times that Josie needed to break up with Sock.
Notes: I wrote this about a year ago and then lost it, hence the slight abrubtness. Oops.
I.
Even knowing that Sock would likely show up in some hideous powder blue tuxedo straight out of a bad seventies movie, Josie had squeezed herself into a perfect red dress. She'd spent the evening telling her mother to try and not looked horribly shocked when she opened up the door later and saw Sock standing there in, what would inevitably be, John Travolta's old threads, a crooked bowtie, and scuffed shoes with bits of his shirt untucked from his waistband, and a wilted corsage in a banged up and already open container.
There was a lint roller in the front hall, a bowtie in her mother's pocket, a hairbrush in her purse, and an extra corsage sitting in the Miller's freezer in the kitchen. Josie Miller was a pragmatic girl and she knew her boyfriend all too well. She expected just about everything to go wrong on her prom night, but she was okay with that. She'd resigned herself to the fact when Sock's check to the limo dealership had bounced three days before. She was expecting the worst.
Granted, amidst all her pessimism, Josie had still been expecting him to at least show up.
Instead of shock at his appearance, Mrs. Miller was simply shocked that the never doorbell rang. Josie held back tears and forced a smile onto her face to keep her father from really going for the shotgun until her mother took over and she was free to run upstairs to her room and rip off the red dress she'd practically fasted all day to get into that evening. She was in her rattiest pajamas and curled up in her bed before anyone could run up and remind her that girls went stag to their proms all the time. That was all well and good and Josie was the last person to spit on the whole strong black woman thing, but there was a problem with that plan: Sock had the tickets.
It was ten o'clock when the pebbles started beating at her window and even though the prom had started at six thirty, she knew exactly who it was. Josie went back downstairs before her father could cock that shotgun.
"Josie, baby, you ready to rock?"
He really did look like a reject from Saturday Night Fever. Where once she might have found that endearing, she now just wanted to punch him. She didn't even bother coming down off the porch. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"Uh, we're going to our senior prom, duh?" Sock waggled his eyebrows and ran his hand through his hair in what was obviously meant to be a debonair fashion. "Why aren't you dressed?"
"I was dressed four hours ago when you were supposed to pick me up, jackass." And given the full bag of chips she'd devoured while crying in her room, there was very little possibility of her getting back into it even if she'd wanted to.
Josie hurled one of her mother's begonia pots and it shattered on the driveway to his left. Her neck might have rolled a little. It wasn't something she was proud of. "Goodbye, Sock."
And when that was followed by the distinctive pull of the barrel in her father's hands, Bert Wysocki had the good sense to leave.
II.
"It's my job!"
"Then maybe you need to get yourself a new one, because I'm tired of this, Sock, and it is not Ted's ass you should be trying to get your lips all over."
Of all the things she could have said, Josie was almost angry to see that those words had more effect on her (soon to be ex) boyfriend. "Are you saying I kiss Ted's ass? Because I do not kiss Ted's ass. I have never kissed Ted's ass. Never."
"Not the fucking point, and you know that." Her finger pointed between his eyes, so close that she could see his eyes cross from staring. Knowing him, he was probably enjoying it. "This is the sixth night in a row that you've cancelled on our anniversary date, for an anniversary that was two weeks ago, and it's the sixth time you've done it because Ted's put you on night shifts. It's like you're doing it on purpose and Andi told me it wouldn't be happening if you'd just shut up and do your job. Kind of like all our problems."
"Some things are sacred, Josie," Sock answered solemnly. "The paint can rodeo is sacred and I was doing my duty by it."
Josie rolled her eyes. "See, and there we go. This-you…" She held up a hand towards him, closing her eyes and taking a breath before speaking again. "You, Bert Wysocki? Are a grown ass man. And grown ass men do not pull this sort of mess. You work at a ghetto ass version of the Home Depot in the suburbs of Seattle! Do you see a bull anywhere? Cowboy hats? Boots? No, what I see is a grown ass man covered in paint who's about to go outside and get hosed down by his equally dumbass friends, come back in here and count night inventory for his GED having boss until he's forty-five."
"So you want to reschedule dinner?"
"We're not going to dinner, Sock."
"Lunch?"
"You're not funny and you're dripping on my shoes." She scowled at him before bending over to grab her briefcase before the paint found the leather. "We're done. Okay? Can you understand that this time? We're done. I can't take this anymore and let's be honest, we’re probably about two months away from you doing something idiotic enough to get arrested and prosecuted by my boss. So let me walk away before you become a conflict of interest."
Two months later when Sock and his friends were arrested after assaulting a candidate for city counsel at his own fundraiser, Josie talked her boss out of pressing charges, telling him that prosecuting Sock as an adult was fundamentally unfair, as he obviously had the mind of an eight year old. She could call him a grown ass man all she wanted, but Sock was obviously determined to defy her expectations.
III.
The first time she'd noticed it, she'd ignored it, telling herself that she'd never once been disturbed by it in her younger brother's room, so why should it bother her here? Because you don't make out with your little brother? Right. There was that answer. As much as she didn't want to, Josie started pulling away.
"Mm, Sock?"
"Wha?"
"Stop. Just a second-wait."
"What's wrong?"
Josie planted one last kiss on Sock's lips before letting go and sitting up. "He's staring at me."
"Who's staring at you?"
"Batman."
There it was, the crux of the problem. At nineteen years old Josie felt that she was far too mature to have a man dressed up as a bat staring her down from sheets and pillowcases while she tired to do everything from get her bra off to begging Sock for more. She didn't care if it was Christian Bale. That only took it too a different level of weird and didn't do anything to explain why, at twenty, Sock still had new -and she knew they were new because the movie had only come out months before- Batman bed sheets on the twin bed in his mother's basement. She didn't even bother to think about the fact that they were having sex on a twin bed in his mother's basement.
"It's watching me," she said, making a face.
"Okay." Sock reached around her body and started yanking at the pillow that her elbow was resting on. She fell awkwardly, smacking herself with her own hand when he finally got ahold of the thing, but he didn't seem to notice. Instead he took the pillow and tossed it over the side of the bed where Josie could only assume it landed in the remnants Chinese food they'd had for dinner the night before. When she'd straightened herself out again, he was grinning at her. "There, he's gone. Sex now?"
"Sock, they're everywhere. It's creepy." And as she spoke she realised she couldn't even bring herself to wrap the sheet around to cover her body for fear of cradling the Dark Knight to her breasts. "…and there's an image I'm not going to be unseeing for a long time. Great."
"What?"
"Nothing. Do you have any other sheets?"
"You're college girl, what do you think?"
"I think it's either Batman, C-3PO, or your mother's bed and that was weird the first time," she groaned.
Sock grinned. "It's a waterbed. You loved it."
"It's a waterbed. I got motion sickness. And then I got wet."
"Damn right you did."
"No, pervert. We poked a hole in the thing, remember?"
"C'mon, Josie…" He kissed her, and for a moment she did forget about the bed sheets. She had to give him credit: it was a good way to keep her eyes closed. Who kissed with their eyes open?
She refused to be that easily sidetracked. "Now they're watching me-" her words were cut off by a squeal muffled by Sock's lips as he slipped two fingers inside of her. She was sure it was meant to distract, but all it did was reaffirm to her the fact that she was having sex on top of Batman bed sheets and that essentially equated to having sex in her little brother's bedroom, which was -yes-worse than having sex in Sock's mother's waterbed.
Not to mention that Batman was still watching her.
"It's too weird," she said. "I can't have sex with someone who sleeps on superheroes."
"You're kidding, right?"
"Nope." Which should have been plenty apparent by the way she'd already reached for her shirt. "Besides, do you really want me thinking I'm Christian Bale while I'm sleeping with you?"
"I could take him," he answered without hesitation.
"I'll be back when you buy new sheets, Sock." And get a real apartment. But she didn't add that. Josie only wanted the basics from Sock, not outright miracles.
IV.
Josie was almost positive she'd set her alarm for eight am the night before. "I'm late. Fuck, I'm so late. I have a negligence torts test this morning. Fuck!"
"What're negligence torts?" Sock asked from his unmoving position on her bed.
"Breach of duty of care cases. Donoghue versus Stevenson in Scotland in 1932 is the best known example. The case was defined by- shoes!"
"It was a fight over shoe duty?"
"No, I found my shoes." She collapsed into her desk chair and started shoving her feet into sneakers. "Hair tie?"
"Catch." A black piece of rubber arched across the room for her to catch.
"Thanks."
"What would you do without me?"
"Have permanent bed head. Like you."
"I thought you liked my bed head."
"I do." Josie smiled and gave him a quick kiss. "I really do, but I've got work after this test and they don't like my bed head."
"They're stupid." He squeezed her ass. "You coming to the Work Bench before dinner?"
"Don't I always? You know, I could've sworn I set this last night?"
"Set what?"
"My alarm clock."
"You did. I turned it off."
For a moment it felt as if time slowed down, but Josie knew better. Josie knew this feeling, knew it all too well. Time wasn't slowing as she turned around to face her boyfriend, time was only her anger making her see red. "You want to repeat that?"
It didn't much look like he did. "I turned it off." There was a pause before he said, "You were dead last night, Josie."
"Which is how it works in the real world. You work hard, you come home tired, and you wake up tired the next day," she snapped. "And now I'm late."
"I was trying to give you a break."
"You made me late."
"Josie--"
"I don't have time for this argument." Josie grabbed her bag from her desk chair. "Don't be here when I get back."
Fandom: Reaper
Characters/Pairing: Sock/Josie
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 2,016
Summary: Just as the title says. Four times that Josie needed to break up with Sock.
Notes: I wrote this about a year ago and then lost it, hence the slight abrubtness. Oops.
I.
Even knowing that Sock would likely show up in some hideous powder blue tuxedo straight out of a bad seventies movie, Josie had squeezed herself into a perfect red dress. She'd spent the evening telling her mother to try and not looked horribly shocked when she opened up the door later and saw Sock standing there in, what would inevitably be, John Travolta's old threads, a crooked bowtie, and scuffed shoes with bits of his shirt untucked from his waistband, and a wilted corsage in a banged up and already open container.
There was a lint roller in the front hall, a bowtie in her mother's pocket, a hairbrush in her purse, and an extra corsage sitting in the Miller's freezer in the kitchen. Josie Miller was a pragmatic girl and she knew her boyfriend all too well. She expected just about everything to go wrong on her prom night, but she was okay with that. She'd resigned herself to the fact when Sock's check to the limo dealership had bounced three days before. She was expecting the worst.
Granted, amidst all her pessimism, Josie had still been expecting him to at least show up.
Instead of shock at his appearance, Mrs. Miller was simply shocked that the never doorbell rang. Josie held back tears and forced a smile onto her face to keep her father from really going for the shotgun until her mother took over and she was free to run upstairs to her room and rip off the red dress she'd practically fasted all day to get into that evening. She was in her rattiest pajamas and curled up in her bed before anyone could run up and remind her that girls went stag to their proms all the time. That was all well and good and Josie was the last person to spit on the whole strong black woman thing, but there was a problem with that plan: Sock had the tickets.
It was ten o'clock when the pebbles started beating at her window and even though the prom had started at six thirty, she knew exactly who it was. Josie went back downstairs before her father could cock that shotgun.
"Josie, baby, you ready to rock?"
He really did look like a reject from Saturday Night Fever. Where once she might have found that endearing, she now just wanted to punch him. She didn't even bother coming down off the porch. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"Uh, we're going to our senior prom, duh?" Sock waggled his eyebrows and ran his hand through his hair in what was obviously meant to be a debonair fashion. "Why aren't you dressed?"
"I was dressed four hours ago when you were supposed to pick me up, jackass." And given the full bag of chips she'd devoured while crying in her room, there was very little possibility of her getting back into it even if she'd wanted to.
Josie hurled one of her mother's begonia pots and it shattered on the driveway to his left. Her neck might have rolled a little. It wasn't something she was proud of. "Goodbye, Sock."
And when that was followed by the distinctive pull of the barrel in her father's hands, Bert Wysocki had the good sense to leave.
II.
"It's my job!"
"Then maybe you need to get yourself a new one, because I'm tired of this, Sock, and it is not Ted's ass you should be trying to get your lips all over."
Of all the things she could have said, Josie was almost angry to see that those words had more effect on her (soon to be ex) boyfriend. "Are you saying I kiss Ted's ass? Because I do not kiss Ted's ass. I have never kissed Ted's ass. Never."
"Not the fucking point, and you know that." Her finger pointed between his eyes, so close that she could see his eyes cross from staring. Knowing him, he was probably enjoying it. "This is the sixth night in a row that you've cancelled on our anniversary date, for an anniversary that was two weeks ago, and it's the sixth time you've done it because Ted's put you on night shifts. It's like you're doing it on purpose and Andi told me it wouldn't be happening if you'd just shut up and do your job. Kind of like all our problems."
"Some things are sacred, Josie," Sock answered solemnly. "The paint can rodeo is sacred and I was doing my duty by it."
Josie rolled her eyes. "See, and there we go. This-you…" She held up a hand towards him, closing her eyes and taking a breath before speaking again. "You, Bert Wysocki? Are a grown ass man. And grown ass men do not pull this sort of mess. You work at a ghetto ass version of the Home Depot in the suburbs of Seattle! Do you see a bull anywhere? Cowboy hats? Boots? No, what I see is a grown ass man covered in paint who's about to go outside and get hosed down by his equally dumbass friends, come back in here and count night inventory for his GED having boss until he's forty-five."
"So you want to reschedule dinner?"
"We're not going to dinner, Sock."
"Lunch?"
"You're not funny and you're dripping on my shoes." She scowled at him before bending over to grab her briefcase before the paint found the leather. "We're done. Okay? Can you understand that this time? We're done. I can't take this anymore and let's be honest, we’re probably about two months away from you doing something idiotic enough to get arrested and prosecuted by my boss. So let me walk away before you become a conflict of interest."
Two months later when Sock and his friends were arrested after assaulting a candidate for city counsel at his own fundraiser, Josie talked her boss out of pressing charges, telling him that prosecuting Sock as an adult was fundamentally unfair, as he obviously had the mind of an eight year old. She could call him a grown ass man all she wanted, but Sock was obviously determined to defy her expectations.
III.
The first time she'd noticed it, she'd ignored it, telling herself that she'd never once been disturbed by it in her younger brother's room, so why should it bother her here? Because you don't make out with your little brother? Right. There was that answer. As much as she didn't want to, Josie started pulling away.
"Mm, Sock?"
"Wha?"
"Stop. Just a second-wait."
"What's wrong?"
Josie planted one last kiss on Sock's lips before letting go and sitting up. "He's staring at me."
"Who's staring at you?"
"Batman."
There it was, the crux of the problem. At nineteen years old Josie felt that she was far too mature to have a man dressed up as a bat staring her down from sheets and pillowcases while she tired to do everything from get her bra off to begging Sock for more. She didn't care if it was Christian Bale. That only took it too a different level of weird and didn't do anything to explain why, at twenty, Sock still had new -and she knew they were new because the movie had only come out months before- Batman bed sheets on the twin bed in his mother's basement. She didn't even bother to think about the fact that they were having sex on a twin bed in his mother's basement.
"It's watching me," she said, making a face.
"Okay." Sock reached around her body and started yanking at the pillow that her elbow was resting on. She fell awkwardly, smacking herself with her own hand when he finally got ahold of the thing, but he didn't seem to notice. Instead he took the pillow and tossed it over the side of the bed where Josie could only assume it landed in the remnants Chinese food they'd had for dinner the night before. When she'd straightened herself out again, he was grinning at her. "There, he's gone. Sex now?"
"Sock, they're everywhere. It's creepy." And as she spoke she realised she couldn't even bring herself to wrap the sheet around to cover her body for fear of cradling the Dark Knight to her breasts. "…and there's an image I'm not going to be unseeing for a long time. Great."
"What?"
"Nothing. Do you have any other sheets?"
"You're college girl, what do you think?"
"I think it's either Batman, C-3PO, or your mother's bed and that was weird the first time," she groaned.
Sock grinned. "It's a waterbed. You loved it."
"It's a waterbed. I got motion sickness. And then I got wet."
"Damn right you did."
"No, pervert. We poked a hole in the thing, remember?"
"C'mon, Josie…" He kissed her, and for a moment she did forget about the bed sheets. She had to give him credit: it was a good way to keep her eyes closed. Who kissed with their eyes open?
She refused to be that easily sidetracked. "Now they're watching me-" her words were cut off by a squeal muffled by Sock's lips as he slipped two fingers inside of her. She was sure it was meant to distract, but all it did was reaffirm to her the fact that she was having sex on top of Batman bed sheets and that essentially equated to having sex in her little brother's bedroom, which was -yes-worse than having sex in Sock's mother's waterbed.
Not to mention that Batman was still watching her.
"It's too weird," she said. "I can't have sex with someone who sleeps on superheroes."
"You're kidding, right?"
"Nope." Which should have been plenty apparent by the way she'd already reached for her shirt. "Besides, do you really want me thinking I'm Christian Bale while I'm sleeping with you?"
"I could take him," he answered without hesitation.
"I'll be back when you buy new sheets, Sock." And get a real apartment. But she didn't add that. Josie only wanted the basics from Sock, not outright miracles.
IV.
Josie was almost positive she'd set her alarm for eight am the night before. "I'm late. Fuck, I'm so late. I have a negligence torts test this morning. Fuck!"
"What're negligence torts?" Sock asked from his unmoving position on her bed.
"Breach of duty of care cases. Donoghue versus Stevenson in Scotland in 1932 is the best known example. The case was defined by- shoes!"
"It was a fight over shoe duty?"
"No, I found my shoes." She collapsed into her desk chair and started shoving her feet into sneakers. "Hair tie?"
"Catch." A black piece of rubber arched across the room for her to catch.
"Thanks."
"What would you do without me?"
"Have permanent bed head. Like you."
"I thought you liked my bed head."
"I do." Josie smiled and gave him a quick kiss. "I really do, but I've got work after this test and they don't like my bed head."
"They're stupid." He squeezed her ass. "You coming to the Work Bench before dinner?"
"Don't I always? You know, I could've sworn I set this last night?"
"Set what?"
"My alarm clock."
"You did. I turned it off."
For a moment it felt as if time slowed down, but Josie knew better. Josie knew this feeling, knew it all too well. Time wasn't slowing as she turned around to face her boyfriend, time was only her anger making her see red. "You want to repeat that?"
It didn't much look like he did. "I turned it off." There was a pause before he said, "You were dead last night, Josie."
"Which is how it works in the real world. You work hard, you come home tired, and you wake up tired the next day," she snapped. "And now I'm late."
"I was trying to give you a break."
"You made me late."
"Josie--"
"I don't have time for this argument." Josie grabbed her bag from her desk chair. "Don't be here when I get back."