[Kenna] OVERDRESSED & UNDERAGED

Joshua had built up quite a reputation over the years. It wasn't his fault that some girls got jealous and spread rumours and lies, but a few innocent flings were blown up in the Academy to look like straight out whore-fests. Let's make one thing clear: slutty girls were not his type, had never been his type, and the only time he'd ever slept with one of the less dignified girls was at a party when he was completely wasted and couldn't see straight enough to pass judgement on the chick. However, he was completely sober at the moment and so when a girl in tight shorts and massive amounts of eye makeup walked into the room, he barely spared her a second glance. Wasn't his type. He'd slept with Cynthia because they'd been friends and had both understood that nothing would come of it in the end. Plus he'd known that she was old enough to make choices and that there had only been a year of age difference between them at the time.

Given his ignorance, he was marginally surprised when the girl flopped down next to him on the couch. "Do you mind?" Colourless eyes glanced over to her in irritation before he turned them back to the fire. It didn't seem to deter the high school student, however. He figured that she'd be deterred by his clearly sour demeanour and leave. That was how it usually worked with him--besides, his relationship with the Fire elementals had been strained as of late. His betrayal of them in the war had made things pretty awkward. He had been invited back and they were forced to 'accept' him, but the word accept was used very lightly. Their tolerance of his presence was much less substantial than usual.

If he had thought she was going to leave, he was proven terribly wrong when Kenna slung her legs over his own. He tensed up immediately, muscles stiffening in anger as he glared over at her. As if this wasn't enough, she increased his ire by... was she hitting on him? Disgust assumed his features. How long have I been on fire? What kind of a lame pick-up line is that? Besides, wasn't it supposed to be the guys that said stupid things like that? Not that Joshua was a fanatic of such things. He usually just hit on a girl if he was in the mood to hit on them rather than trying to pick them up with retarded sayings. All the same, if Kenna thought he'd be attracted to her she was terribly wrong.

Wait a second--how old was this girl, anyway? She looked younger up close than she had from a distance, probably enhanced in false maturity with her caked on make-up. "Six years," he replied smoothly, "I'm a sophomore. And if you don't get off me in about five seconds I'll show you exactly what that fire can do." He flicked his left hand and a burst of flame flared above it for a moment before vanishing, a clear threat that he was definitely willing to carry out if she kept this up. Sure, Joshua was a male, and there was a general assumption that all guys were shallow. But he was not this shallow. "What are you, twelve? I'm nineteen, and I'm certainly not some pedophile."

The girl did not reply to his angry request to move her legs away from his. Joshua may have been your typical male in the sense that certain things about girls did and would always attract him, but he was not some shallow guy who'd just allow any girl to whore herself out to him. He had standards, limitations, restrictions, whatever you wanted to call them. The man got a bad reputation for sleeping with just about anyone who asked, and that was rather inaccurate. He got drunk sometimes and did things he regretted, but most of his flings and one-night-stands had been with people he knew and who had a mutual understanding that nothing would come of it. This girl was some slut that he'd just met less than a minute ago that was trying to get him to spend the night with her. Really?

The mystery girl leaned in close and spoke into his ear. She was probably trying to be seductive judging by her tone, but it just made Joshua recoil with a disgusted expression, leaning away from her and casting a gray glare over at her. "Are you deaf?" he hissed. "I told you to get off me, not get closer." He was seriously fixing up to burn this girl to a crisp, and judging by Joshua Dale's infamous temper it wouldn't be long yet before he acted on this impulse. Then again, had he ever seen this girl around before? Since the dormitories were so intimidate, it wasn't uncommon for all of the Fire students to know one another by name, even if they'd never spoken before in person. Oh well. It wasn't like Joshua talked much to his fellow Fire elementals anyway. It was completely possible that he'd just overlooked this chick before--and thank god for that. He would have been completely happy if they'd never been acquainted.

Big and scary? Indeed he was quite intimidating, but he wasn't going to allow this slut to steer him around and enslave him with sexual favours. Even the thought was disgusting. Joshua shoved the girl away from him with his elbow, not wanting her to even be touching him when she had such impure intentions. He wasn't going to sleep with a girl that was several years younger than him, especially when she was clearly a whore. "It's me you'll need protecting from if you don't shove off." He wasn't even trying to disguise his threats by this point, and a heat was spreading through the room. It had nothing to do with being turned on or attracted to her--no, it was rage that fuelled Joshua's unintentional show of power. The Fire dormitories were already sweltering hot, however, so there wasn't as much of a difference in the air as there usually would have been.

"Suffice?" His tone was laden with revulsion as he narrowed his colourless gaze. She was saying that he would be sufficient enough for her? Oh, hell no. That was not okay. "I'm the one with the standards here," he said, a bit of a sneer creeping into his tone. She was bothering him quite a lot at the moment, and not in the sort of way that she was hoping. "I have plenty of money--if I wanted a whore, I could just buy one. But I'm above such pathetic sexual satisfaction." Really, he didn't need a whore to make him feel good. Of that, at least, he was confident.

Kenna was the queen of mixed and confusing signals today. One moment the girl was draped all over him and whoring herself out without a care in the world, and the next she was sobbing and whining about how she'd thought she could fix everything with sex. What the hell? It wasn't that Joshua went around trying to be a complete and total jackass in his every day life, but he wasn't very good with girls and their emotions--or guys and emotions, really--so he felt more disgusted than anything else. Was she searching for some sort of pity from the man whom she'd just tried to manipulate with offers of sex? It didn't work that way with Josh. He couldn't just accept a change-on-a-dime personality. A lot of people thought he was bipolar with his 'sudden' bouts of rage, but at least there was a reason behind most of his spurts of anger. Was there even a reason for this? Josh didn't know, and as insensitive as it sounded, he really didn't care either. This girl was a slut and she couldn't take that back just by crying her crocodile tears and trying to win sympathy. He wasn't a compassionate person by nature. You had to earn his trust, and in earning that trust you would also earn his compassion. He had no compassion for this girl. He even had the grace to look disapproving as he leaned away from her slightly and made a face. Ugh. Why was she trying to dump all of her problems onto him? He was a stranger whom she'd met all of about five minutes ago when she had came onto him. He would have understood a little more if he had started to flirt back or put moves on her and she'd freaked out and backed down, but he hadn't. He'd shown no interest whatsoever.

Wait--was her upset over his rejection of her? Perhaps this potential realisation should have made him feel bad, but it didn't. Instead, Joshua just shook his head and frowned deeply. "You're right," he said tonelessly, "you probably are wrong. But you know what? I don't care." He wasn't going to go into the fact that he thought she was disgusting and pathetic if she had to find her affection in the form of college guys. What the hell would she have done if he'd agreed to sleep with her? He was several years older and she didn't know him; for all Kenna knew, Joshua could have taken her out and slipped something in her drink, and then there would be even further shame on her part when she woke up without her memories of what she'd done. But she was lucky tonight, because as much as his sex life wasn't the most modest or admirable thing, he wasn't like that. Joshua stood up from the couch, brushing off his arm as if to dispel the invisible discomfort. It was purely psychological, but he swore he could feel the ghost of where she'd leaned her head against his arm. Had she felt the right to hit on him just because he was alone and shirtless in the Fire dormitories? She hadn't answered his question about her age--it had been mostly rhetorical anyway, she was young and that was all that mattered--but he wasn't counting on her being much older than fourteen or fifteen. Saying that she looked twelve had been a metaphorical thing he'd spat out of his disgust, seeing as the youngest accepted students in the Academy were thirteen years of age.

She looked like she was about to have an emotional breakdown right there on the sofa, but it wasn't his problem to deal with. "If you sleep with random guys every time you get confused, I'd hate to see what you're going to turn out like." The words were sarcastic and every bit as cold as before. These weren't his issues, he didn't understand them. So he did the insensitive thing--he walked away. He didn't shoot the sobbing girl so much as a backward glance, not even as she balled her hands into fists and buried her hand in her arms. She could cry until her tear ducts dried up. Wasn't his fault that she had chosen the path of a slut. Of course, what Josh didn't know was the fact that she had a boyfriend she'd been all too willing to cheat on until his cold rejection of her. It was actually a good thing that the Fire graduate wasn't aware of this, else his reaction might have been a lot less impersonal. He didn't agree with cheating. He'd never truly loved anyone before and so was basing his opinions off of pure common sense, but he didn't think you really loved someone if you slept with another person at the drop of a hat. If you loved sex more than you loved a specific individual, that wasn't true love. It was also why he was pretty damned confident that his relationship prospects were bleak. He'd never met anyone whom he felt like spending his life with. But he handled it differently than Kenna. Rather than bawling his eyes out on the sofa of the common rooms--god forbid one of the gossips came in and seen, she'd be the talk of the school--he just shrugged and moved on with his life.