LIKE A MILLION LIGHTS. /david

[DAVID ANTHONY HARLEM]

<sub>"Good. He fucking deserves it." He riffled through their cramped cupboards.

To her question about tattoos, he nodded, putting one a tea-kettle on the mini-stove, full of water. "I've got more than I actually remember having done." He came to sit beside her on the couch, the structure giving a small creak under his weight. He presented the other arm to her, where the zombie scene resided. There was a stained-glass type display that started above his elbow and traveled up under his shirt-sleeve. They were typical of anything you'd see in a church; Christ, Mary, angels. The scene continued beneath his shirt. "I've got 'em all over my shoulders and chest and stuff, too... You know... If you wanna see them."

He wasn't sure what actions might send her back into oblivion. Given that some man had just tried to do Odin-knew what to her, he wasn't sure taking his shirt off was the correct action.</sub>

[AMANDA JANE STEVENS]

A small smile spread over her lips, a real one. It warmed her heart ever so slightly to know that he didn't accept what Mason did to woman and girls in general. God himself only knew how many others just like her there were, it made her feel ill inside. How many other girls hadn't been as lucky as she was? How many girls had actually had their innocence taken by him? She only dared to think about it. It was safe to say that she was starting to cheer up, if only for a moment.

Amanda took his arm in her cold tiny hands once again. She ran her finger up his arm gingerly. There was something amazing about the way the ink looked embedded in his skin that seemed just incredible. Her index finger stopped on top of his zombie scene. Zombie movies were the only horror film that she could ever really sit through. They still scared the living hell out of her like all the other horror films, but she still insisted on watching the particular brand of horror. Her smile grew wider as she moved her finger up his exposed flesh. She liked his arms, they felt strong and they were covered in ink, it was a bonus. Amanda moved her body closer to his, her knee against his leg. Her eyes move up his arm to his face and she blinked for a second. She bit her lip again, making another decision right then and there. It was one that she really wasn't even sure about, but it'd have to do. "Do you mind?" she asked cocking her head to the side a little. When it came down to it, she mainly wanted something to keep her mind off of her trauma. However, she couldn't help but feel like she also wanted another peak at him below his clothes, the very thought mortified her.

[DAVID ANTHONY HARLEM]

Her finger-tips on his skin gave rise to a sea of goosebumps. His lips gave way to a tiny smirk, that same wolfish quality. He shifted, subtly, the hair that had troubled him before falling into his eyes again. He left it. "Yeah... I mean, if you don't mind." He pinched the hem of his shirt, stretching and pealing it up and over his head.His frame was thin, wrapped in hard, lean muscle. The tattoo that started on his arm continued up onto his shoulder, giving way to a school of gold-fish.

There were two more fish on his ribs, one chasing the other towards his right hip. A tree was tattooed growing above his right-hip, the branches reaching up over the ribs on his left side. The branches were naked on one side of leaves, but heavy with red, round apples. The roots of the tree descended down beneath the waist-band of his jeans. A banner wrapped around the trunk of the tree, reading either 'Salt of the Earth' or 'Scum of the Earth'. The ink was too blurred to be certain.

There were more words, lyrics and dates. 12/04 was one. 02/21 was another, both. There were aces that had blurred over time. Old vows. His shoulders were scarred on the right side, along with his ribs. The scars were soft and thin. He'd earned them learning the hard-way about crowd-surfing while on acid. The images went on.

"I wish I could see back there, better. My ass-hole friends, they got me kind of wasted before they got me to the tat-parlor. Couple regrets back there."

[AMANDA JANE STEVENS]

Amanda smiled and watched him take off his shirt, a small thrill went through her body looking at all of his exposed skin. Her hands reached out and touched there she'd left off. It didn't occur to her that he might not even want her to touch him in any way, shape, or form. She wasn't even thinking as herer fingers touched his shoulder gently. It felt very intimate indeed, she had no idea where this was coming from. She traced the outline of the images in his skin, examining every inch of the new tattoos. Just like the ones from the other day, these were just as amazing and breathtaking. Amanda moved her fingers south, her eyes locked onto his scars. She ran her finger over them gently, but did not ask. It was his business and she would have wanted someone to do the same for hers. She looked up to his face again, "They're amazing." She said softly, her smile met her eyes for the first time in a while and she looked happy. She bit her lip gently, pretty much the last of her wall was slowly crumbling down for this man that she seemed to have just met.

She smirked, retracting her hand from his body, "That's terrible." She said biting her lip again. In her mind someone who did that could hardly be considered one's friend. They'd have to be someone really, really special for her to not hate them with a passion after trying something cruel like that. "You forgave them?" she asked cocking her head to the side gently. He would have had some big ass heart do forgive someone for that joke. Tattoos were not something that were simply erased, they were there for life.

[DAVID ANTHONY HARLEM]

<sub>Her attention to his skin and the art involved was something David enjoyed. She was tender, and her hands were gentle. He kept his gaze evenly on her face at first, but before long had closed his eyes, letting his head fall forward and inch.

He'd been with many girls in his life, but rarely had they been the gentle sort. It was customary in most of his encounters to return the affection offered, but he wasn't certain it was something she would welcome. He wanted to touch her like his instincts said to do. She was beautiful. The fact someone had just hurt her made him sick to think of.

She asked if he'd forgiven his friends who had been responsible for the unwarranted tattoos. "Some of them," he said. He nodded down towards the end of the bus, where Jon was sleeping. "I forgave Jon. I'd done something pretty screwed up to get on his bad-side, and he's gotten me out of enough scrapes."

The kettle gave off a whistle, cutting into the room with them. He stood, leaving his shirt on the floor with no intention of climbing back into it. "What about you. You got anymore tattoos?" He took the kettle off the stove-top, reaching for one of the few mugs they kept on-board.</sub>

[AMANDA JANE STEVENS]

Amanda nodded, looking back to where he'd nodded to. That must have been one hell of a friendship to go through that and survive. Something permanent like that might make her break her disgust for violence, if only for a night. Someone forcing her to get something stupid and something she was unable to remove easily was just a cruel form of torture. It would have even been classified as barbaric, she'd never spring that form of punishment on anyone ever. She smiled, "That's very noble of you. I'd never be able to do that, ever. I'd hold a grudge until the day I died." She shrugged a little, as if she held grudges to the grave all the time. In reality the only person that she'd ever think of forgiving for such an outlandish choice of retaliation. She mentally pocketed the information that Jon was a very important person; she was sure his whole band was in some way. Why would someone form a band with someone they hated? She couldn't help but wonder what he'd done to deserve such ill-treatment, he hadn't seemed like a bad person to her.

She watched him wander off and pursed her lips a little. He was still shirtless. Her gaze shifted downwards away from his masculine body, she held such a strange desire to run her hands over every inch of him, but for whatever reason she held back. Call her crazy, but perhaps it was because she didn't really think he'd want her to touch him. They'd just met, and she was very inexperienced when it came to men. She really wanted to kiss him, whether it was because she wanted the left over residue of Mason's lips on hers to be gone, or if there was a deeper meaning she did not know. Amanda blushed a little and rubbed her eyes, "Yeah," she said happily, "Just a few. I uh... D-do you want to see them?"

[/b] She was still unsure if she was comfortable enough to show him any of them at all. It was weird, as much as she didn't want to, she really did. She bit her lip and looked at him, waiting for an answer.[/blockquote][/blockquote][/size][/justify]

[DAVID ANTHONY HARLEM]

<sub>David came back to the couch with the prepared mug in hand, sitting down alongside her. There was no denying that he thought she was beautiful, or that, under regular circumstances, he would have already found a way to turn her clothing into a lump of rumpled fabric on the flood. He would have already kissed her, held her, explored the details that made her different.

He rested the mug on his knee, his eyes appraising her in a way he couldn't control. He wanted to see her tattoos. David gave her a nod, his face dead-serious.

"If you want to. I'd really like a look at them." What he wanted was to help her out of her shirt. So what if Jon woke up or their actions or the other three members of the WW came in at the wrong moment. It wasn't like they knew him for anything else.</sub>

[AMANDA JANE STEVENS]

She nodded slowly, pausing only for a moment to really think about what she was about to do. Her fingers pushed the dark strands of her hair behind her ears and she bit her lip again. There wasn't really any turning back now. Amanda leaned back against the couch and put her legs out straight, her fingers pushed her shirt up just enough that the purple and yellow laser-gun was visible. Her tongue flicked out to lick her top lip gently. Her fingers went to work on moving the top of her jeans down ever so slightly to reveal her two doves. She ran her hand over the inked images as goosebumps appeared all over her skin. Before he could reach out and touch any of them, which would have been a bad idea, she readjusted her jeans and pulled her shirt back down.

"And then on my back is superwoman." she said softly, sitting up once again. Amanda turned away from him so that he had no chance of seeing the scars and scabs, old and new, on her pale flesh. Her fingers were shaking as she pulled up the soft gray material. She lifted the gray material all the way up, but not off. In the front it stayed underneath her breasts and in the back it was up near her shoulders. She revealed her superwoman, dressed in all her normal gear, pushing away a large green hand, on a banner that wrapped the tattooed woman's body read "unstoppable". Amanda's eyes stayed shut as she waited for him to respond, she wasn't quite sure what he was going to do. If he did something she didn't like did she have enough willpower to do the same thing she'd done with Mason? Doubtfully, she'd just let whatever happen to her.

superwoman,laser gun,overall,dagger,code of arms,back of arms,
((i could never be so original. x-x and for reference because it's late and i can't be descriptive.))

[DAVID ANTHONY HARLEM]

<sub>It took most of David's resolve and self control not to kiss her right on the lips as she exposed the laser-gun and doves. The pink of her tongue against the curve of her lip was unsettling and erotic. They looked too soft and too delicate to remain unattended to, or to be used for such vile purposes as they'd been not too long ago.

He kept one hand on his knee, though, and one on the searing-hot breast of the coffee-mug. He watched her adjust her positioning, her clothing move and shift on the ruts and valleys of her body. Everything about her was begging the attention of his finger-tips and his palms.

When she turned her back on him he put the mug down on the floor, away from their feet, and scraped his hair nervously from his eyes. She raised her shirt, exposing the lower portion of her back, where, in a parody of tonight's evens Superwoman fought off some unseen monster. David bit the inside of his lip, fighting the instincts of any man.

"That's f... " His hand moved without permission from his brain. "That's amazing." His thumb traced the outline of the tattoo before he knew what had occurred. His fingers pinched the fabric of her shirt, creasing it, and before anymore words could be exchanged, he moved. David's lips were on her skin, softly, quietly, brushing over the super-heroine's depiction. "What if I called you super-woman?"





This song with these lyrics reminds me of this moment. Mebbe one day David will awkwardly sing it to her. <3</sub>

[AMANDA JANE STEVENS]

Just as she wished he'd kept his hands to himself with the tattoos on her hips; however, she couldn't help but feel that he wasn't onlt examining her hips. It caused another slight blush to crawl up her neck and display itself on her body. Her back tensed under his touch but she made no effort to move away from it. She liked it, which was terrifying for her, the mere fact that she liked it was enough to make her want to get up and run for her very life. She didn't however, she sat there and let him do whatever he wanted. More goosebumps rose on her skin with the exposed flesh. Amanda hadn't felt this exposed in front of someone since she'd gotten her tattoo... or was it when she was small and took baths with Alex? Well she'd never actually felt exposed with Alex, she used to run around naked for God's sake. All babies did, it was usually considered normal for small children. Babies, that was a funny thought, a scary one at that. "Thank you." she managed to choke out quietly. God she loved tattoos.

If she'd been tense before his lips, she was completely rigid after. It felt amazing, she just hadn't expected it. Amanda let her muscles relax slightly. Her mind barely comprehended what he'd said, she struggled to respond to him. "I... don't know. It. I... I'm not super." she said, struggling to make even the simplest of word come out of her mouth to form a coherent sentence. Amanda sat up, letting her shirt fall back into place, another split-second choice that she'd never made before. She turned around and looked at him for a second before she touched his face gently with her tiny hands, moving it up more on her level. She bit her lip again softly and glanced at his lips. Her body moved as if of it's accord and pressed her lips against his gingerly. If her face had been slightly pink before, it was nearly flaming red right now. She'd never kissed anyone before, well Mason didn't count. She didn't even know if he wanted her to.

[DAVID ANTHONY HARLEM]

David responded before his brain to could him 'no', his arm snaking around her waist as the warmth from her kiss rushed through him. His hand rose, cupping her cheek. He pulled closer to the girl, getting a taste of her lips, finally. The boy could taste the sadness on her mouth, and her inexperience. He'd been with a girl once -- she was responsible for more than one of his tattoos -- and she'd been the one to teach him how to read the subtleties of a kiss.

"You taste like smoke and booze and shame," she'd told him once, not long before they'd parted ways. She'd been a sick bitch but she'd had a taste for dramatic flair.

His body moved on the couch, exhaling contentedly as he retreated an inch. His voice crept out of his chest, latent with the spell she'd just cast on him. "I dunno... I think you're pretty super."

[AMANDA JANE STEVENS]

Amanda's hands clutched the other boy's skin with her small pale hands. Even through the swirl of her hormones and inexperience, she remembered quite quickly that there was nothing to hold onto. Her hands moved to wrap around his back firmly. She'd completely forgotten about Mason and holding herself together, it seemed more of just a bad dream she'd had last night. Her body turned more in towards his, aiming to press herself against him more. She had no idea what she was doing. She was running purely on instinct, the scariest part for her was that she liked it.

He pulled away. She dropped her arms and looked down for a moment, she shifted her eyes back up as he spoke. A darker blush spread over her face, partially from the kiss and partially from what he said. "Thank you." she said softly, hesitantly moving her hand up to touch his hair experimentally. Honestly she didn't know what this meant, she didn't even know where it left them. Amanda bit her lip again softly, "I think you are too." She said quietly.

[DAVID ANTHONY HARLEM]

<sub>David turned his head as she touched him again, kissing the inside of her wrist. He should have known better. Everything was fleeting for David. Who knew what his brain would have to say in the morning? Instincts were overriding everything else at that moment, though.

He took her face in his hands, kissing her on her forehead, and then her perfect lips again. His fingers tangled themselves in her hair as he leaned into her. Like everything else about David, his actions were impulsive and passionate, short-lived and ever-roving. He wanted to kiss her from neck to navel, on her eye-lids, on her jaw, on each of her finger-tips. His body was mindless and romantic, and he was at its mercy.

In his mind, he knew he should be careful, should be cautious not to become another monster in her sky, but his body only knew what it wanted. Besides, his answers to pain or grief or frustration were drugs, booze and sex (usually in that order). She'd been hurt tonight, yes, but how better to treat the wounds than to retreat into something as hot and as frantic as a first kiss? He could bury almost any problem between the rise of a woman's hips.</sub>

[AMANDA JANE STEVENS]

Amanda could feel her skin heating up with every touch she felt from him. Every kiss he planted on her body down to the air he blew in her general direction. She could feel her face heating up to incredible degrees and she knew for a fact that her ears were tomato red. She kissed back against his lips. Her hormones were doing all of the talking now, and she honestly had no idea where this was going to go... Well she had an idea, she just didn't know if she wanted it to go in that direction. It was scary really, she wanted to do that with David, but she wasn't sure if it was her body, her heart, or her mind talking. Her hormones were certainly doing a whole lot of damage, although she wasn't sure if her body or mind were ready for all of this. Amanda really just wanted to crawl into a hole and think about it, but she didn't have time. This was moving so fast she could feel her head spinning, or was that something else? Oh god, she was losing herself quickly in a sea of seduction.

She pulled away from him gently and licked her lower lip quickly. Amanda moved her legs to straddle his lap to allow her easier access. It was unclear to her where she got the idea, perhaps it was her hormones commanding her actions once again. She pressed her chest flush against his before she kissed him once again. Her arms snaked around his shoulders so she could hold onto him tightly no matter what happened between them tonight. There was no guarantee that she was going to allow him the privilege of taking the rest of her innocence tonight, she'd already been through enough trauma from that department. Her fingers pressed into the skin on his shoulders trying to pull him closer to her, as if it were even possible. The only realistic way Amanda felt that they could get closer is if one of them was inside of the other. There was no doubt in her mind that David would comply if she wanted them to get closer, however, she was still having issues making up her mind. Still the fact remained she would likely not give up her innocence tonight, and yet she wasn't sure. Amanda felt like her mind might explode.

[DAVID ANTHONY HARLEM]

<sub>David's tongue was doing a different kind of talking now. His hand wandered under her shirt by inches, his fingertips impressing themselves upon her spine. He loved her curves -- could imagine creating her likeness in charcoal on his sketch-pad. He kissed her perfect jaw, giving a small, muffled moan into her skin as she pulled closer to him. There was no way she could understand what she was doing to him.

David had a strange relationship to sex. He drew immeasurable comfort from it. A woman's body, no matter its conventional beauty, was salvation for a man like him. David, unknowingly, was the polar opposite of the man who had taken advantage of Amanda. Certainly, he was a whore by anyone's standards, and he would share his bed with a new girl every night, if he was so blessed, but he couldn't and didn't see them as his objects, and he would never -- almost never -- strike one in anger. He'd known women from all walks of life.

His appetite egged him on. He set his brow into the nape of her neck, shifting to kiss her collar bone. "Come back to my bunk with me," he begged into her skin.</sub>