Ficlets, April 11, 2005

[mandarinjazz]

"Not Yet A Little Girl" by Miro



Britney finds vulnerability distasteful.

She watches him out of the corner of her eye. He's waving for the cameras, he's got his public smile on, the million dollar glitter and the gossip rag twinkle. Sometimes she thinks he sparkles a little too much. She smiles and nods and follows suit. She puts her hand in his because she can, but his press back is a little distracted. She can tell he is sweating down his sides; she can feel the heat from his shirt.

Behind them, Chris watches her back. He's worried again, she knows. (She hopes.) She holds her head up high and matches her prince's toothpaste smile. Everyone will see that she is happy, everyone will know that this is perfect. Everyone except him. She feels his eyes on her spine, tracing the smooth lines of her back, her hips. He's alone tonight. She wondered when that started.

*

"I can't fucking believe you," he yells, his voice magnified a thousand times as if he wants the neighbors to hear. "You're going to come here like this? Now?"

"It's my right!" she screams back, her hands tight in fists. "I deserve something better than what you've offered in the past!"

"You know very well I can't give you that," he says, his voice steadier, calmer, his hands behind his head. His torso is bare, not even the sheets covering his skin. Her breath catches. He looks like a Greek god, Dionysus perhaps. She wants to touch his chest, even though she knows it won't do any good. She wants to follow the line of his neck with her fingers.

Instead she stalks out, slams the door after her. She stands by the vending machines, staring at the coca cola bottles and struggling to get her breathing under control. She wants to punch something. She raises her fist as if to smash the vending glass but a hard grip closes over her wrist. She shakes, then steadies herself with some degree of difficulty. She refuses to look at Chris's face. When his fingers leave her wrist there are red imprints on her white skin. He hasn't shaved in three days. Maybe their arguments keep him up. She raises her chin. She can be strong for the crowds, for the public; why can't she ever be strong in front of him?

"I won't apologize," she says. She must sound like a very little girl. He's experienced; he knows the ways of the world. She doesn't know what he's doing here.

"Please don't," he says. His eyes are hooded. She can't tell what emotion's in them.

*

He's been with all of them except him. And she knows he was the one who started it. "Chris this," he'd say when they were younger. "Chris that." Sometimes, in the dark, he'd sit in the dark with his palm splayed across her belly, them on the bed together with the sheets tangled between them. (Well, correction. They'd be together but not exactly together; she'd be with him, always with him, inches from his skin, and he'd be somewhere else entirely, a distant wonder in his eyes that she wanted for her very own.) He'd say, lashes low, a hot fire in his cheeks: "Don't you ever wonder. . . what it would be like, you know. To sleep with- to touch-" he makes a dark sound in his throat, turns over. He licks her between her legs until she wants to come but he doesn't let her at all. He makes her swallow his until her throat is bitter and sore from it.

In the morning she cleans her face with cool water, she takes a bath, she scrubs hard, but she can't get that taste out of her mouth. Her face burns when she sees Chris and she knows he knows but he doesn't say anything, just looks away. Maybe he's embarrassed. Maybe he's ashamed, wonders why she still puts up with it, why she's still around. She laughs with Joey and hooks their fingers together, though. She'll try not to notice.

*

She knows about the other guys because they take her out to breakfast the morning after, faces all apologetic. She was expecting to hear banging and moaning but they managed to keep pretty quiet at night. They bought her waffles or egg mcmuffins, whichever was their own special method of soothing ruffled feathers, and they’d smile weakly and their eyes would get all cross. "I'm sorry," most of them said first. "It's just that he's so – so- so."

"I know," she says, smiling, eyes not a bit sad.

Lance was the first. Lance always had a crush on Justin, so she kind of expected that. JC was easy to figure out; he dripped sex, he wouldn't mind melting into Justin for one night or two or seven. She was surprised about Joey; she'd always thought he was straight, he had so many girls at his side all the time. It was only a matter of time before Chris took her to breakfast. The best for last, she says to herself with this unaccustomed cynicism that was all Justin's fault. But then she finds out- from Lance, no less- that Chris made them all do it. "She's just a little girl underneath all the makeup," he'd say to them, and they'd feel guilty and cave.

*Just a little girl*. She's disintegrating, bit by bit limb by limb, and that's the best he can come up with? She's losing her soul and if she looks back she won't ever recover it, the task of a little girl? She used to be innocent a long time ago; she can't quite remember when.

*

"You deserve to be happy too," he says, turning over, his hands crossed behind his neck. He isn't looking at her. Like usual, he is somewhere else entirely. She wants to steal that from him. The self righteous son of a bitch is giving her permission. She wants to punch him. Instead she settles for departure, for slamming the door, for looking after Chris concerned in the hallway and allowing herself to cry. He doesn't even blink. But still - *Little girl.*

*

She tries coke one time with Aaron Carter in a dirty bathroom during an afterparty of some awards show. He leaves, like everyone else, when she is alone and shaking with her arms around her knees. The world turns into a fog as her head thumps the counter.

They're both there suddenly, louder than she'd expected. He's a lost little boy, shouting her name into her ear with his hand in her hair, not knowing what he did. Chris knows what to do; Chris has had experience with this sort of thing. He grabs her, pulls her to her feet. No ambulance, Justin yells. No publicity like this. She's almost grateful that he slams Justin into the wall and grabs his neck She's sorry he doesn't punch him.

When he's carrying her she brushes his dreadlocks from his eyes and he flinches from her touch. She tries to kiss him but he pulls back. "Why haven't you fucked him yet?" she says, her voice kindergarten harsh, followed by hard laughter that doesn't belong in her body.

"Because," he says softly, his eyes warm. "Some people are more important."

"Like who?" she manages as her laughter subsides. Her eyes fog and through the cloud she wishes he would just give up and kiss her- she's not the little girl she used to be any more. She'll prove it to him any way she can. But he never kisses her. She forgets what happens next.






*


"Hate But Not" by Miro


Both distaste and words have a kind of power Draco savors, and he chooses his words carefully in order to best express his distaste. He licks his lips and adjusts his hips; Potter's right, wonders never cease, he does practice his swagger in front of long mirrors when he thinks the common room's empty. (These days, it's usually empty anyway.) Potter's filthy little mudblood bedfellow looks like she wants to hit him, her upper lip jutted out and her thumb itching her palm. Let her, Draco hopes. Over the years he's developed something of a taste for masochism.

The halls are emptier now; there is less laughter. Less children to cause laughter. Weasley's finally dead, the little penniless bastard. If only the rest of the clan would be sad enough about the loss to desist breeding for a long long time. Draco smiles big enough to reveal straight white teeth and says with his tongue on the roof of his mouth, "Bet you and the little fireball went at it every night for hours, huh. Bet he's happy he doesn't have to endure it anymore, *Potter*." Draco takes especial pleasure in the pronunciation of Harry's name. His intonation contains all the enmity he once reserved for those who looked askance at the Dark Lord. The transfer had always been easy. Easy since he'd seen the knife through his father's neck. And the things that had followed. Those *things*; sometimes he doesn't like to remember. He smiles instead; he's just a little worthless masochist. He prefers other people's pain to his own.

"Why you little-" Hermione lunges forward. Harry's hand against her stomach stops her. Draco lets out a strangled cry and bunches his hands into fists. The little bastard should have let her. He doesn't have a Dark Mark to burn when he's called, reminding him of his faults, like Snape does. He wishes sometimes he was less of a chickenshit.

Harry surprises him by breaking into laughter. It's a strange sound in these halls, it makes everyone uncomfortable. He laughs until his glasses slide down his nose from the tears on his cheeks. Out of habit Draco looks for his bulwarks of support- but Vincent and Crabbe left him when he left the Dark Lord. He suspects they're dead now; they were never bright enough to learn how to survive pain, to develop a thirst for it.

Draco flings himself at Harry before Hermione can stop him, his hands around the little pulsing neck, fists pummeling into his face. Harry gets blood in his nose but he wipes it away with his sleeve. He lets Draco pummel him and even shrugs off Hermione when she reaches for his shoulder. Draco lets up and kicks Harry between the legs with one final deft stroke until Harry winces and squirms. Draco thrives on this petty hate. It's the only thing he's been feeling lately, ever since the departure of everyone he once knew stole every other feeling from him. Why can't Harry just make him feel better by getting a hurt look in his face, by fighting back, by crying out? Things would be so much easier if Harry knew how much of a bastard he was. He gives up and stalks off, tries to ignore the heat of Harry's skin, how nice his blood felt on his fist. He's still got a bit of Harry's blood on his palm. He touches it with his other finger in a displaced manner, not quite remembering how it got there.

He is satisfied when he hears Hermione's hard voice- "Why in Merlin's name didn't you stop the little bastard, Harry?" At least he’s a bastard to *her*. At least he knows where he stands there.

He imagines Harry pushes the glasses up his nose, wipes sweaty tangles of his unruly hair from his scar. He doesn't want to see that scar ever again; Harry's own Dark Mark that will blister for him whenever he doesn't wish. "Oh, he'll come around," Harry says softly, his voice solid and sure even though it is quiet. "He'll come around quite soon, I imagine."

Draco settles for punching the wall of the empty Slytherin common room until splinters get in his fingers and make blood on his skin. His own blood, mixed with that remnant of Harry's. All the former occupants of this room, of his life, are all gone, or dead, or owe allegiances to a greater power than petty hate can provide. Draco tries not to think of it, of what he gave up. But then his father's face comes back to haunt him, the knife in his neck, the things they did to him. He finds himself on his knees with his head in his hands.

There’s a hand on his shoulder, soft. He's never known softness. Did that little bastard follow him here, and how did he break the password? "I'm sorry," he says, as if he's always been used to sympathy. Draco's ashamed of his tears.

"Nothing to be sorry about, Potter," he manages, his head at a haughty angle as his eyes glisten- a mixture of anger and something- something else.

Harry puts his hand on Draco's face, slides his mouth across Draco's cheek. Draco almost takes perverse pleasure in the force of that tongue parting his lips. Maybe some things have a sort of power that words can't express, he begrudgingly admits later, when they're naked and sweating, alone together on Draco's bed, everyone else dead.