Burns and Bruises

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

Warning! Mentions of abuse, profanity
and harassment read at your own risk!

Stanley Barber and Billie Wilson sat so far apart from each other after the unfortunate mishap that was Billie discovering Sydney's secret. It looked genuinely impossible for them to be having a conversation but somehow they were while also taking long pauses of silence. Neither knew what to say, how to go about saying it if they did or how the other would react. It was confusing so they mostly sat in contemplation.

After Stan had confirmed that the had seen everything, he hushed himself for a few minutes, trying to think of a reasonable approach to the situation. His conclusion;

weed.

Billie held the stick in between her fingers, staring at it but not taking any blows. She was too confused in that moment to make herself even more unsettled. She supposed that maybe it would help with her nerves but was unsure about anything. Was anything real? Was she real?

Stan sighed out a flurry of smoke. It blossomed out in big segregated puffs that danced mid-air and then vanished when he blew the next. He shook his head thinking the exact same thing as Billie;

How could any of this be real? How could any bit of this possibly make sense? It all happened so quickly. One minute he and Syd were having fun, the next he was saying mean things to her to make her mad which he definitely did and then Billie knew and was sitting across from him twiddling the weed between her fingers like a baton. When he wasn't looking she put it out by gently pushing the lit end onto her thighs. This didn't really work out properly however because it was hot and burned so she instead pushed it down onto the seat next to her.

Stan was still thinking up a way to make sense of it. He supposed that it was fate. If you had powers you were eventually going to have to display them to someone if not two people. In comics, Hero's companions often found out about the superpowers or secret identity by accident. So it only made sense that both he and Billie found out on accident.

But why had she been there in the first place?

Syd was going to kill him. Like, finish him off with the bowling balls, kill him. But all Stan could do was hope that Syd wouldn't and that Billie wouldn't tell anyone else. Just hope and hope.

Billies leg shook rapidly. She shivered without meaning to and shot a quick glance to the Stanley. She didn't like it. The silence. It was annoying. Silence gnawed at her insides. Silence hung in the air like the suspended moment before a falling glass shatters on the ground. The silence was like a gaping void, needing to be filled with sounds, words, anything. The silence was poisonous in its nothingness, cruelly underscoring how vapid their conversation had become. The silence was eerily unnatural, like dawn devoid of birdsong.

Billies leg bounced up and down in a repeated predictable manner. It swayed from left to right and never failed to hobble and make her forget that she was trying to focus on something. Her hand lay loosely on the limp as she attempted to stop it from aggressively shaking but her efforts prevailed uselessly. Stan heard the rapid tapping and took notice of Billie's distressed posture.

"You alright?" He sighed, finally facing her way after the long oppositely faced quiet.

Billie nodded her head and continued staring at the rolley. Her nose twitched as well and she kept doing it uncontrollably. It wasn't ticks or anything, well if it was it had never been diagnosed and wasn't severe. Every time her nose crinkled she looked more and more like a miniature pig something her mother liked to point out a lot. It happened mostly when she was nervous and she thought of it was a weird useless defence mechanism to her internal stress and problems.

Stans smiled, the reason unknown and eyed the candy stick hanging loosely between both of her fingers. "Smoke it. I swear It'll help." He advised. "I had a friend once, well not actually a friend he was my cousin, well not 'was' he still is, he's not dead or anything, you get what I mean a-and he had bad Tics so we used to smoke it together, you know? And basically, after a while he just stopped and they never returned, like poof, magic!" he stuttered, spitting out one word after the other.

Stand arms extended either side of him allowing for 'jazz hands' to finish his story. What a tale.

Billie looked to him and shook her head awkwardly. "I-uh I don't have tics," She said shortly. "I don't know what they are. I've had them since I was younger and they've never gone away. But they're not tics."

Stan chuckled inwardly. "Sounds like a Tic"

Billie flipped the hair in front of her eyes out of her face and smiled. "how would you know?"

"Just told you, my cousin had em" Stan replied.

"And your sure they weren't just the result of previous drugs?" She chuckled.

"What no?"

"Right then professor, what type of 'tic' do I have?" Billies questioned with an emphasized sarcasm on 'tic'.

Stan began to speak but then choked on his words, having no answer to Billie's question. "Caught me there, I guess" he paused, grabbing something small out of his shirt pocket. "Here, light it. Promise, I'll help".

He threw a lighter over to her. It was light but made of metal and not closed properly. So when Billie saw it flying at her, her reflexes sort of failed and she didn't react straight away. The little metal lighter hit her square on the cheek, sparking just as it made contact. Luckily it didn't light so nothing but the metal hurt her, although, she already had the fresh burn mark which made the contact excruciating.

She yelped and cupped her cheek in her hands. Stan hesitated at the noise, confused but then stood up abruptly and hurried forward. "I'm so sorry, shit, what happened!?"

He sat down beside her and slowly removed her hand from her face to reveal the awful purple mark which covered a majority of her left cheek. It seeped with different things that looked severe and he wondered how he never noticed it before that moment. He gained a ridged posture and swelled with a sudden empathy for the girl. Her cheek was in bits, swelled and sore all over.

His eyes span, looking from her burned cheek to the slowly escaping tear. "Fuck, what happened?! Did I do that? I'm so sorry, god"

He looked to her and Billie took in a deep breath trying to ignore the sudden and forceful stinging. "Ai-Uh no, it wasn't you Stan." She confirmed moving away from the boy's gentle touch. Her stomach fluttered quickly and a lump formed in her throat.

"What happened?" He re-enforced, eying Billie.

Billie paused and then spoke. "I burned myself with a curling iron." She lied, while half-assed telling the truth. "-w-while I was curling my hair, obviously". It was always better to mix in a bit of the truth with the lie to make it seem more believable. That way, if you got busted you didn't completely make up everything. You could just possibly say you messed up on words. That was Billie's take on it anyway.

She looked to him and into his pretty hazel eyes. A large blackness encased his left eye and was swollen to an extent. "what happened to your eye?" she posed back at him, averting the subject from her own mishap.

Stan coughed, his hand brushing the area. He winced. "this old thing, uh, fell flat on my face while I was mowing the lawn. Hit a rock"

The two went silent, both fully understanding that the other was lying. How could they not lie, if all telling the truth would do was result in an extremely really weird and awkward conversation? And besides, they'd had way too many of those for one day.

"Do you want me to get you some ice for that?" Stan questioned, pointing to the burn. Billie shook her head politely and the boy sighed.

She looked to the wall and back down to her consistently shaking leg. "Uh, I think I better get going now," Bil said although she had no real idea where she was supposed to go. Maybe back home truly was the best option for her. At least her brother would be there.

Hopefully.

Stan was sort of let down by her words but hid it. Could he keep anyone around for more than ten minutes? Probably not anymore.

"Yeah, yeah-whatever- no problem." He exhaled.

Billie slowly lay the weed on the bowling alley chair, where Stan later picked it up and pushed herself up. Stan did the same and followed her to the door where he casually leaned on the entranceway. Billie stepped outside and turned around. "Well, um-Bye I guess". She waved bubbly and turned her back on the boy. He returned the gesture although her eyes did not spot him doing so.

Her ears, however, heard the cheerful farewell. "Bye, See you in school tomorrow" He yelled rather softly before adding; "I guess" to the end, just like Billie had. Billie smiled and walked down the footpath as Stan closed over the door.

She skipped lightly down the uneven sidewalk and under the bridge, her hands gently brushing off bushes, trees, brick and fence as she trodded down the street she'd first come hours earlier. Billie couldn't help but feel a sense of joy.

Even though her situation was a fraught, butterflies swam merrily around her stomach and her head flurried with different conspiracies and ideas.

What if everyone had powers and Syd was the first human to discover it? What if Syd was like a street superhero that saved people like Peter Parker or Gwen Stacy. It would have been so cool. What was Stan up to now that she had left?-No, that's weird? He's probably doing the exact same thing as when she was inside. Smoking weed.

Nothing special.

But her happy, semi-questionable banter was quickly cut short when a red convertible neatly sped up the road. It stopped a bit further up past Billie before reversing and parking itself beside the girl. The window awkwardly rolled down and inside was her brother, cigarette in mouth and toothy grin at bay. His hands were positioned on the wheel and his head turned to Billie. He had mousy brown hair, pale hazel eyes, just like Billie's and wore a bright red football T-shirt. He pushed the cigarette onto the car door and then discarded it by tossing it to one side. Although his face displayed no anger, for Timothy was not capable of keeping a grudge, she could see some semblance of parental angst bubbling under his skin and behind his ever so slightly twitching eye.

Without him saying anything, she walked around one side of the car and sat in the passenger's seat where he then confronted her.  Not about running away or their shitty situation but like a good brother should always, her then-current health predicament. "What happened there?" Timothy asked smoothly as he reached forward and turned his sisters head so he could examine the burn. "Looks like you need medical attention." he pointed out, though anyone with a GPA over 0.5 could have guessed it.

Billie snapped her head away from his hand and turned to face the window. "It's fine" She spat trying to switch the topic.

Timmy never really knew why she was so bitter to him. He was only trying to do his best for her but then again he probably would have taken it for granted if he had gotten any semblance of attention when he was younger. He started up the engine and began the drive. Billie watched as different scenes unfolded and then disappeared just to be replaced with beautiful new ones and placed her arm on the side of the car door to support her chin. It was going to be a short ride home. And then what?

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: AUTHORS NOTE

Hey everyone! Sorry for such the long wait. Life's been really busy lately and I just can't seem to be okay like ever. But I'm grand at the moment I guess.

Also on a side note; thank you so much for 700 nearly 800 reads! I appreciate you all so much and thank you for all the love and supportive comments that ya'll be throwing at me.

Also, what do ya'll think of the new cover? I'm so Indecisive and I keep changing it like every second day but I'm happy with this one.

See ya'll next chapter, byeee!