Every Hour • •

[willow-jae dakota holt]

Will had done her very best to walk away from any and all situations that set her blood boiling. She had seen exactly the kind of damage her volatile temper could do and where it could land her. Six months in juvenile detention had been gruelling, and Willow didn't want to experience the adult alternative. She had been a grieving kid, lost with no one to point her in the right direction. The only outlet she had was her rebellion. She was hardly a pillar of the community now, but she was a hell of a lot better than the girl she had left behind in the Mojave. Her frustrations were worked out on the engine of a car now. The only damage done to a living person was to herself when she was careless and caught her hand on something sharp. Scratches were nothing compared to the hurt she had inflicted on others in the years gone by. Besides, her own pain was resolved with some curses and spit speckled lips over the wound while she swore loudly and creatively. It was a lot better than a courtroom, a judge, and witnesses condemning her as some psychopathic criminal who would never be fit to walk the streets with the rest of society.

Tonight, was an interesting turn of events to say the very least. The guys she lived with were used to her being loud when she was drinking – hell, they were probably used to it when she was sober! Will could give as good as she got verbally, but she always knew when it was time to walk away. Or someone pulled her away before things could escalate beyond her control. She knew she was far from angelic, but she didn't consider herself to be one of the worst in New York City. She wasn't someone people ought to fear, not like it used to be. Her control was a lot more steadfast these days. Tonight, something inside her just snapped. It was like the lion she had caged those years ago broke free for just a short minute. That minute was all it needed to cause the irrevocable damage that could very well change her life for the worse. Everything she had worked so hard to achieve could come crashing down fasting than a wave in a storm.

She didn't quite know what had been so different about tonight. There had been nothing different about her behaviour in the beginning. It was normal to see Zander flirting with anything in a skirt, and it was her typical reaction to pass comment to try and throw him off his game or scare away the lady who had caught his eye. She did it to all of her housemates when it looked like they were about to be hit with cupid's arrow. It was a game she liked to play with them, and they knew to suspect as much. This particular blonde seemed hellbent on keeping Zander's attention though, which only encouraged Willow. When she moved in for a kiss, it was like watching a black hole sucking up everything around it. At first Will was torn between just watching this horror show or interfering and saying something, but interfering won out like it always did. She made a crude remark over the music, before slipping away again, but suddenly she was yanked back by her hair. It was a sharp, aggressive tug, and Will spilt her drink back over herself. It was in that second that the old rage that she had kept so well restrained reared up. It was like she was possessed. No one had touched her like that since she was confined to a unit and a cell. All kinds of memories flooded back and the drink was thrown from her hand. Reeling around her fist closed and met the girl's face with a crack that wasn't heard over the music. Then, before she could stop herself, Will sent the girl crashing to the floor with another punch. Only then, seeing her victim sprawled out and dazed did she snap back to her senses and instantly dash for the exit. What she had just done could ruin everything.

• • •

TAGGED! Zander Frederick Reich
WORDS! 703!
OUTFIT! Freaked out Felon?!
LYRICS! A Thousand Years - - - Christina Perri
NOTES!

[Zander Frederick Reich]

Something had seemed different about the night even before everything kicked off. Zander hadn't been able to place it and looking back at the night, he couldn't tell where it all really went wrong because it had all just seemed so off from the start. The roommates were all out as they usually were, together and enjoying a good night. It was a game for them to see how long they could actually get away with flirting with the randoms of the bar before Will started in with her jabs at them or the women. Zander liked getting her riled up because she was always quick with a comeback and they always made him laugh. He wasn't in it for a long time with these women. In fact, most of the time, he was scoping out the place to pick a woman that might just get under Will's skin.

The thin blonde he'd picked at random was all flash and no substance. Zander regretted it immediately because she was completely dull. But he'd initiated the conversation so he couldn't just say "nope" and walk away. So he stuck around and smiled and nodded at her ditzy chatter. He resister the urge to yarn or check his phone because it wasn't actually ringing. He could have faked an emergency but that, in his books, required a few more minutes. Normally, when Will started with her games, the women ran away anyway so he was really just biding his time until she ran away in tears or embarrassment. He sipped at his drink and rolled his eyes when Will started in but was secretly thankful that she'd not disappointed him. This one was a persistent bugger and he wanted a smooth escape.

It was cruel to use Will like that but he also knew she would have played the games anyway so it was a fairly easy out if he wasn't interested. It was like an out-of-body experience when the blonde, whose name Zander had never even learned, leaned in for a kiss. He could be a bit of a cad. Not completely a bastard but occasionally damn well close enough. She leaned forward, he instinctively leaned back. Not enough to noticeable to the woman but enough that he felt it and people probably saw it. His eyes widening could have been from that fear that she was pushing the boundaries of a flirty conversation or from Will's snarky comment. Either way, they were wide and then everything moved so fast. Will was already walking away because she didn't think the blonde was worth it, and she was right, she wasn't. But the blonde's eyes narrowed and her face turned bright red. He had a millisecond to think "oh, no" before she was reaching out and tugging his roommate back towards them. If this girl thought for even a second that he would pick her over Will, she had another thing coming to her. Before he could do anything to stop it, Will had spun and nailed her in the face. He'd never seen that look in her eyes before and it worried him a little bit. She was usually pretty laidback. It took another punch to really put her down but then Will seemed to wake up out of a daze and realise what had happened. She fled and he chased after her. "What the hell was that?!" He asked once they were outside and more than a few feet away from the bar. If anyone wanted to say anything, he was a witness to the whole thing and there was no way Will was going to get in trouble for something she didn't start. She just finished it.

♦ ♦ ♦

TAG; willow-jae dakota holt
WORDS; 618
LYRICS; Smokin' and Drinkin' --Miranda Lambert
NOTES; <3

[willow-jae dakota holt]

Will knew she still toed that line between trouble and a peaceful life. Most of the time she couldn’t help herself. She knew that her roommates had probably saved her from some situations that could threaten her hopes of a happy life, and that they had done so without even realising it. Will had never spoken about her past. She would mention that she came from small town California, lived out in the desert and that her family was gone, but that was about it; that was usually more than enough for someone to start looking at her with those pitiful eyes she wanted to avoid. People didn’t need to hear the rest and decide to make her into some project of theirs. It was either going to be that or they’d run away and Will wasn’t sure she wanted that as an alternative – at least not from the people she actually grew to care about.

Her heart was pounding in her chest and she felt like she was going to be sick. The cold night air wrapped around her, but did little to comfort her the way it usually did when they left the club. Normally, Will loved the sensation of the cool air on her slick skin after a night of dancing and annoying her roommates, but now it just left her feeling empty inside. What if she had just made the biggest mistake of her life in New York City? Her record hadn’t been like a lot of juvenile records. It wasn’t expunged or sealed up when she finished her probation because she had been nineteen when her probation had come to an end. Legally an adult then, she was caught up in some strange grey area that meant it would flag the second her name was processed through any law enforcement database. Yes, she was protected in civilian searches and background checks, but no police search needed to get an extra warrant to open an old file from California. No police was going to look at it and see the grieving kid and the pile of psych reports that accompanied that record; they’d just see the anger issues, the violent assault and realise that here was a twenty-one year old who was on the opposite coast who hadn’t changed her tune.

Brushing her hair back from her face, Will knew Zander was behind her before he even spoke. She didn’t know how, but she knew. Her hand throbbed, knuckles hot and burning like they hadn’t done in a long, long time. Turning around, eyes stinging with the threat of tears she shook her head at him. “You don’t know me, okay?!” She looked back at the club, shaking her head again. “I fucked up. I’ve just ruined everything. Shit!” She lashed out again, this time at herself, bringing her fists down against her thighs once and then again. Her legs burnt, but she had to keep moving. She needed to get away from the club before the cops arrived or the bouncers came to grab her. Turning, she took off, thankful that she never wore heels.

• • •

TAGGED! Zander Frederick Reich
WORDS! 524!
LYRICS! A Thousand Years - - - Christina Perri
NOTES!

[Zander Frederick Reich]

The young model was only looking for a fun night out with his roommates and friends. He did actively go searching for women to bring home or even flirt with. He was looking solely for a good time with his buddies. People, in general, had a habit of ruining plans even without realising they're doing it. And especially, Zander had noticed that when people recognised you or thought they did, it was a hard time trying to convince them otherwise. His face was on a couple of billboards throughout the city, in circulation in Times Square but Zander didn't really notice those things anymore. He didn't think he was already jaded to the "Fame" but there were far more impressive things in the world than his face in Times Square. Of course, the first time it happened and he saw it, he was beyond pleased with himself and oh, so proud. He'd told everyone about it and had someone take his picture of him standing with his billboard behind him. He couldn't even remember who had taken that picture, only that he'd been so unbelievably proud of himself and that after a few of them, the excitement slowly waned. He still took the silly pictures whenever one was up there for his adoptive mother because she got a kick out of them but otherwise, he left them alone.

Zander could see she was scared but he had no idea why. Will always kept so much of herself hidden away from them that none of them really knew her but she knew all about them. Zander, at least, was quite the open book about most things in his life because he didn't see a point in hiding things that didn't matter in the grand scheme of things. He was one person in a world full of billions of them and he was not so significant that he thought what he said and did would matter to the masses at the end of the day. In fact, he knew it didn't. He was not one of the great minds of their generation. He was barely scraping by and was, even now, getting through life on his looks and what photographers and editors have called smouldering blue eyes. That wouldn't last forever and when the jobs did finally stop coming in, he would have something else to fall back on, though by then, he would probably need to return to school for an upgrade on all that he'd learned.

He didn't think she'd actually run away from him, he thought they'd be fine. No one was going to call for Will and if they did, he would make damn certain they did not take her anywhere. He chased after her, catching up to her quickly enough but even he could see she wanted to be as far away from the bar as possible. When they were more than a block, he finally felt like they could walk again. "Oh, whoa, no, not any further. Stop, Willow." He said, reaching out to stop her himself though he knew the use of her full name- or most of it anyway- would be enough to have her whipping around on him. "You did nothing wrong. She started that and there are a half dozen witnesses to say so." He would not have her thinking she'd done something wrong. "I'm not going to say you didn't go a wee bit overboard, one punch probably would have been enough since she was drunker than New York is old but she did start it."

♦ ♦ ♦

TAG; willow-jae dakota holt
WORDS; 595
LYRICS; Smokin' and Drinkin' --Miranda Lambert
NOTES; <3

[willow-jae dakota holt]

Will had worked harder than she made out to turn her life around. She didn’t spend evenings buried in the gut of a truck just because she loved engines. She did, but there was more to it than she let on to her roommates. Will worked her ass off to prove that she was more than her past and the record she hoped to leave there. Her temper still flared, but most of the time it was throwing a pair of balled up socks at Zander over the dirty dishes, or yelling at someone for waking her up too early. She didn’t lost control of herself like she used to, and she didn’t turn violent like she couldn’t stop herself from hurting those around her. Yet she could feeling it happening now. Her body was shaking as she tried to flee, and her mind was racing faster than her burning legs. She was angry at herself, pissed that she let some stranger push her over the edge like that with the tiniest thing; she had snagged her hair harder with her own hair brush.

She didn’t know where she was trying to go right now. All Will knew was that she needed to get away from the club. She didn’t care if Zander followed her, or that she had left the others inside. She didn’t even know if they had seen what had happened. Her mind was swirling with thoughts of what could happen, of the sirens in the distance that you could always hear in a city like New York. Zander using her full name brought her feet to a halt, breath escaping in short, fast gulps as she turned to face him. Her green eyes were as wild as her permanently messy hair – made even more messy by the fist that had yanked through it just moments before and the wind that that pulled at it as she took off down the street. “Don’t fucking try to tell me this is okay. It’s not.” None of them knew what she had been through. Even the people back home in Mojave hadn’t known the full extent of what Will had been through. She never talked about it – not really.

“One punch was too many! One punch is enough to ruin everything for me!” She screamed at him, wishing she didn’t have to explain herself. All she had wanted was to live her life without having to tell anyone about the pain she had been through back in California. She didn’t want to see her housemates look at her with pitying looks, to have them treat her any differently because of the life she had tried to leave behind. She kicked an empty trashcan, spinning around on her heel and wishing there was something else she could let her frustrations out on. She was so mad at herself right now for screwing up everything. “They never care who starts it. Only who did the most damage.” She hadn’t started it the night she beat Ashley Simmons black and blue, but that was the night that had sent her to juvie for six months.

• • •

TAGGED! Zander Frederick Reich
WORDS! 529!
LYRICS! A Thousand Years - - - Christina Perri
NOTES!