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b&red
Good holidays, all?
Lacking other topics of conversation (I'm not terribly charismatic, am I?), this is the follow-up piece to last week's "b&red" story. I hadn't intended on writing it until I received feedback from my professor on the first piece that ultimately said this, though in much more eloquent terms:
RED IS INTERESTING.
And of course I took that completely the wrong way and revisited the story in my brain and decided to unearth the concept once more for my final writing assignment.
As always, there are bits that I look at and think Oh, how much more polished that could be, but on the whole I am pretty happy with the overall cut of the story's jib, even a year later. I hope you guys enjoy it too :)
title: saved as "b&red"
pairing: b. and red.
rating: pg-13
parts: a follow-up...
disclaimer: Unnecessary?
summary: No good or evil here. Just B & Red.
notes: I'll probably do a follow-up post for my own amusement. Feel free to hold it against me :B
Night’s about three hours shy of dawn and Red is watching B in her sleep, her solid, heavy sleep, unaware of his eyes tracing the line of her body over and over because he’s afraid he’ll forget. Forgetting might not be bad, he realizes, but he loved her, still loves her, and in one of the comic books he read when he was younger there was some not-entirely-relevant quote about how love belongs to desire and desire is always cruel, and it’s so, so true.
He’s been sitting next to her for hours. His stuff has long been packed, fitted and stashed into every possible corner of his car—funny how easily five years of your life can fit into a compact auto if you really stuff it well. In his hands he slowly rotates a thick, worn fold of paper, checked and rechecked and double-rechecked to make sure he got it all. He flicks it open absent-mindedly, eyes darting down for a perfunctory glance at The List.
B shifts, a simple movement of one leg against the other that doesn’t break her sleep, and he automatically folds it up again and hides it in his pocket, looking at her all the while. His gaze falls on an old scar that curves along her collarbone, a relic of an old battle with some long-dead supervillain from her childhood that he curls his tongue against and kisses during sex; it makes her shudder and squirm and gasp for breath and it’s agonizingly sexy when she moves like that. One of those things that up until a year ago he could’ve dispelled any argument with—a simple brush of his hand, a kiss at the edge of the white scar and she was a goner—but then it stopped being “cute” and started being “manipulative.” To Red’s credit, though, the ability to manipulate others is on his résumé. Less of a quirk than an applicable job skill.
Thanks to the memory his throat is now thick and he swallows, a useless act that doesn’t solve the problem. He has to go. Another five minutes and she’ll be falling out of the deepest part of her sleep cycle, yes, he’s been keeping count, and he wants to be able to kiss her before he goes without any repercussions.
Standing up he feels like an old man, the way his knees pop as he straightens up, the moonlight throwing his shadow against her like a blanket. Her breathing stays steady as he smoothes her hair away, he almost can’t kiss her but he does, a slight pressure of lips against lips, it’s too hard, he has to go, can’t kiss her or linger a moment longer or else she’ll wake up and he’ll fall back into bed with her and never leave and the slow, painful death of the relationship is already too much to bear, he doesn’t want to stay for that and watch it disintegrate before their eyes.
A million little needles in his chest all the sudden, and he doesn’t even have the energy to scribble a note as he heads for the bedroom door. If he were any average human being he might be hyperventilating or crying.
The house is only fifty percent empty and yet it feels dead a thousand times over; he ignores it, sidesteps piles of books she bought him and shoes she wore the last time they went out, the night air frosting over his skin just a hair behind the agonizing loneliness and the fainter freedom that bears upon him as he shuts the door.
***
“I’m sorry,” B croaks remorsefully as he walks in.
It’s too early to go to bed and yet she’s already in it, curled away towards the window to watch the sun set, orange bleeding into pink into purple, tear tracks drying on her cheeks. Red walks in as he is pocketing the list he’s done up of his belongings, feeling guilty as the paper crackles in his jeans and he looks at B.
He stands at the door for a minute, heavy-hearted and miserable with the act of leaving weighing upon him more than ever.
“I’m sorry,” she says again. “I meant it when I said I didn’t want to fight. I just… I wish you could understand.”
Familiar anger sputters into life, but he drowns it in his guilt, instead moving away from the door towards her. The bedsprings protest weakly as he sits down and runs his hand through her hair, trying to come up with something appropriate to say.
She rolls onto her back to face him, taking his hand in hers and bringing it to her lips to kiss it, further apologies already burning in her eyes again. The guilt is stifling; he can’t breathe.
“I love you,” she whispers urgently against his wrist, and he’s choking to death and he wishes what she just said was enough.
He pulls her up into his arms and she instinctively wraps around him, head fitting into the curve of his neck as he squeezes her close and silently despairs about how he’s going to fit all that crap into his car. It flies out of his mind at the scent of her hair, the sobs that suddenly wrack her body, and he wishes, wishes it could make him stay.
“I love you, too,” he says desperately, because it’s the truth and he needs her to believe it or else, or else.
She nods into his chest, then gives a short burst of laughter and mutters something about feeling ridiculously pathetic and sorry, his shirt is getting wet, and for lack of anything better to do he manages a laugh back and asks if they have enough groceries in the fridge.
***
“I don’t want to fight with you,” B is suddenly apologetic, bringing her hand to her temples to quell the makings of a migraine.
“Then maybe you ought to quit bringing it up,” Red snaps back in an ugly voice, unable to suppress the surge of hate that jettisons in her direction, only it misfires and suddenly he hates everything, hates her, hates the world, hates himself for yelling at her when he’s supposed to love her but still, if that’s the way it works then isn’t she supposed to love him, too?
“If you loved me half as much as you said you did you’d quit giving a fuck about what I should be doing for other people and just focus on what I do for you,” he says viciously, unable to keep the poison inside, and when he sees the angry tears that mist her vision there is a brief moment of triumph, and he doesn’t feel the least bit sorry as he watches those tears carve their way down her face.
***
B is a marvel to watch in action. Red’s taken up the hobby of watching her when the signal goes up, especially if he’s had a hand in the trouble. Today it’s some lackey of a former client he had, wielding a weapon based on design plans he sold in exchange for the location of a jewel that supposedly has latent world-conquering powers. The jewel was tinier than he expected; he might have it set in an engagement ring for B, but knowing B she’d get overly suspicious and start digging up information about its powers and he really doesn’t need that on his plate yet.
She’s playing dodgeball with the beams from this gun that dwarfs the man brandishing it, flipping and twirling like it’s a dance, and Red wants to applaud her because damn, she sure moves pretty. She hasn’t noticed him yet, but he can see her eyes determined and set, scanning the area rabidly for his face—she’s not going to be happy when she finds him and will probably give him that favorite little lecture of hers about “special powers” and “obligations to the people” and yeah, he’s sick of it, but God, he loves to watch her dance like she’s dancing now.
The gopher his old client has recruited is too nervous; Red makes a Tsk sound at his sloppy firing. Far from a match for his girl B. A well-executed slide, a kick, and boom, the guy’s out cold on the ground. B shrewdly examines the gun, now quiet on the ground.
A thought suddenly occurs to Red, and he steps out from the shadows. “I wouldn’t crush it underfoot; you’d probably cause more damage than if you fired it point blank at someone’s face.”
She doesn’t turn to look at him, but he can feel the heat of her glare fine from where he’s standing. “I knew you had your hand in this.”
He smirks. “Am I getting that predictable?”
“Don’t even—this isn’t funny,” she snaps, and he can see her shoulders shaking with the effort of containing the explosion.
He drops the playful act and says, in all due seriousness, “Hey, I’m not—”
“If I look at you right now I’m afraid I’m going to hurt you,” she interrupts sternly.
He can’t help but sneer, “So hurt me.”
“I SAID THIS WASN’T FUNNY.”
She stamps her foot on the ground, once, and cracks in the asphalt issue from the impact, spidering out in all directions. Red observes it with a detached look on his face, the playfulness sucked out of him. She always takes this shit too seriously.
“I can’t—I can’t even talk, I’m going home,” she whispers.
Red watches her shoulders as they rise with the effort of breathing, and he says quietly, “Nobody’s stopping you.”
He knows it hurts when he says it, and he means for it to hurt. She doesn’t look back at him, just stiffens her shoulders and speeds away, leaving him to deal with the aftermath.
***
“Say, sweetheart?”
Red looks up from his book, smiles at her. “That’s a disgusting nickname.”
“Yeah, well, you’re kind of stuck.” She plops down next to him on the couch and flips up the book to read the cover. “Ah, Neruda.”
“Me gustas cuando callas,” he responds blithely.
“Porque estás como ausente,” she picks up, not missing a beat, and his heart twinges a little.
“My pretty, well-read superheroine,” he coos, planting a firm kiss on her neck.
She squirms out of his grip and laughs. “Hey, I’m trying to be serious with you.”
Red adopts a solemn expression and says in a monotone, “Serious face on.”
B gives his knee a hard smack, and when he’s done bitching about the pain she makes him look at her.
She holds his gaze for a few seconds before he blinks and says, “So…?”
“So… I was thinking you should come fight with me sometime.”
An awkward moment passes, and he breaks eye contact, laughing and shaking his head. “B, come on.”
“No, really! The next time I get called out to duty, you should come with. I think if you just tried this out—”
“Trust me, I don’t need to ‘try this out—’”
“How would you know?” B demands, a wry look on her face. “You never tried it before, have you? How would you know?”
“I haven’t tried slitting my wrists either, and I don’t need to do that to know it isn’t good for me,” Red drawls, and she screws up her face in that adorable way he likes so much. He grins at her.
“Far from the same thing,” she says in a stern voice.
“To you, maybe.”
She sighs, then pleads, “You couldn’t do this for me? This little thing?”
“Sweetheart,” he says, then catches himself. “I mean, darling. Pumpkin. Honey. Baby. Dollface. Um, baby dollface?” He issues a pointed look at her. “Any of those work for you?”
The look on her face is a resolute NO. “Stick with B.”
“Thank God, I hated all of those. B. I love you. Isn’t that enough?”
She groans. “Why’d you have to go and play that card on me?”
“Hey, you played the ‘do this for me, please?’ card on me. I deserve a little retribution.”
“Red,” she says firmly, and meets his eyes. “You and me, we’re special.”
“I know.”
“There are things we can do for this world that other people can’t.”
He sighs. “I know.”
“Well then, don’t you think we should do what we can to help it, then? That we have an obligation to those who need help?”
“We’re people, too,” he says flatly. “What about our obligations to ourselves?”
“Are you telling me you feel you owe it to yourself to be a villain?” B presses, and Red sighs again.
“You understand that no matter how many times we have this conversation I am not going to ‘come to the side of light,’” he says, waving his hands in mock awe for the latter half of his statement.
She curls her knees up onto the couch and rests her head on his shoulder. “You’ll come around,” she says confidently.
He gives her an exasperated look. “And you say that because…?”
Her gaze is steady, unwavering. “Because I know you’re a good person.”
“Good. Because your opinion is the only one I’m interested in.”
She groans and looks away, and he goes back to his book. Tension hangs like some acrid, dead thing in the room, and he can’t focus on the words.
“Red. Please. Couldn’t you—”
“Me gustas cuando callas,” he interrupts, and he can feel her draw her lips into a thin line.
***
B’s hair, her practical, sensible hair, flutters into a mess of tangles underneath his hands, swims against her skin. Oh, her skin. That skin of hers that he can’t get enough of and yet there’s so much of it and not enough ways to impress it against his.
He kisses her and in response she parts his lips open with hers, sweeping her arms around his neck and breathing his name in a voice, no, a VOICE, one that deserves its own language, its own history.
There’s that little scar on her collarbone, there, that one, and he bends his head, brushes his lips along it, and she immediately arches into him and sighs this little sigh that he wants to hear again, doesn’t want her to stop, can’t stop touching her, kissing her.
B looks at Red from under heavy-lidded eyes and hisses, “I love you,” against his throat.
No good or evil here, just B and Red, no sense of duty or obligation or getting into these senseless little fights about things that in the long run don’t matter, but Red is too drunk on her voice and her skin to explain see, this, this is what’s important, us is important.
His mind reels desperately as he kisses her, fails utterly at forming an argument, and all he can do is whisper her name and tell her he loves her and never, ever wants to leave her.
***
“I can’t be involved with you,” B explains, stumbling on the words and running them all together and blushing to the dust. Definitely not the reaction he’d been hoping for when he’d asked, but he can work around it.
“You are involved with me,” Red clarifies. “Past two years, in fact. I’m keeping count and everything.”
“I mean ANYMORE.” She has this distressed look on her face, this look that resembles a child presented with a room full of bubbles who has just been told not to pop a single one. “I can’t be involved with you, much less LIVE with you. Not with someone who isn’t… you know…”
“… A virgin?” he ventures.
“No, you smartass!” she shrieks. “Someone who isn’t good!”
He curves an arm around her waist and she yelps in protest, but doesn’t do much else to discourage him. “Good at what?”
She laughs feebly and shakes her head. “Stop. Just… stop. You have to.”
He catches her gaze, holds it, and her words fall and fade as they make their way to the open air.
“I have to… what?” he whispers playfully, eyes glittering.
Her hands slide along those arms of his, wrapped around her hips. “Um.”
***
Red’s standing in the middle of it, carrying information on him worth billions of dollars, and B has this look on her face, this LOOK that screams hurt and betrayal, and Red’s still standing in the middle of it.
She barely sees the crumbling ceiling, the stunned guards lying dormant on the floor, nor the glut of information that drips from his body. Her eyes are locked on his, and he doesn’t blink because he doesn’t know what she’s going to do.
Because all she CAN do is stare at him and whisper his name, again and again, her own personal litany.
***
“You know, I didn’t catch your name,” B suddenly remembers, looking up from the bookshelf.
“Red,” he replies, tugging out a book by its spine and handing it to her. “Here. This is a good one.”
B adds it to her stack without looking at it. “I’m B.”
He grants her a smirk before returning his attention to the scores of library books. “Everybody knows who you are.” You’re number one on The List of People Us Villains Should Avoid Running Into, he thinks, but hey, he was always a rebel.
“Yeah, I—I know. Sorry, I just—argh!” She presses a hand to her face as she blushes, and Red allows himself a small grin. Shyness suits her terribly well. Makes her cheeks glow and her eyes glitter. She gets all pretty and the like.
“I’m so bad at getting to know people, is all,” she mutters, shaking her head with a smile.
“Well, I’m good at getting to know people,” he offers helpfully, and it isn’t a lie. He makes it his business to get to know people—that’s the only way you can get anything out of them.
The remnants of her blush are fading, but her face is still a healthy pink. Pink is such a good color on her! “Maybe you could help me with my horrific social problem, then.”
Red turns his attention from the shelf completely to her—looks her dead in the eye and catches her off guard, so she blushes something fierce again but can’t rip her eyes away.
There’s the faintest glimmer of something in him, something he won’t recognize until much later, after the courtship stage is over and done with and his bigger problem is whether or not he’ll come clean (though when it happens it won’t have been by choice), something that will keep him with her despite the conventions of Good and Evil and her own standards of morality, something that in the end still won’t be enough to make him stay, as much as he’ll wish it could.
He looks her dead in the eye and catches her off guard and she blushes something fierce.
“I’d love to.”
-fin-
I'm a sucker for your comments, you know. Just saying. ♥
Lacking other topics of conversation (I'm not terribly charismatic, am I?), this is the follow-up piece to last week's "b&red" story. I hadn't intended on writing it until I received feedback from my professor on the first piece that ultimately said this, though in much more eloquent terms:
RED IS INTERESTING.
And of course I took that completely the wrong way and revisited the story in my brain and decided to unearth the concept once more for my final writing assignment.
As always, there are bits that I look at and think Oh, how much more polished that could be, but on the whole I am pretty happy with the overall cut of the story's jib, even a year later. I hope you guys enjoy it too :)
title: saved as "b&red"
pairing: b. and red.
rating: pg-13
parts: a follow-up...
disclaimer: Unnecessary?
summary: No good or evil here. Just B & Red.
notes: I'll probably do a follow-up post for my own amusement. Feel free to hold it against me :B
Night’s about three hours shy of dawn and Red is watching B in her sleep, her solid, heavy sleep, unaware of his eyes tracing the line of her body over and over because he’s afraid he’ll forget. Forgetting might not be bad, he realizes, but he loved her, still loves her, and in one of the comic books he read when he was younger there was some not-entirely-relevant quote about how love belongs to desire and desire is always cruel, and it’s so, so true.
He’s been sitting next to her for hours. His stuff has long been packed, fitted and stashed into every possible corner of his car—funny how easily five years of your life can fit into a compact auto if you really stuff it well. In his hands he slowly rotates a thick, worn fold of paper, checked and rechecked and double-rechecked to make sure he got it all. He flicks it open absent-mindedly, eyes darting down for a perfunctory glance at The List.
B shifts, a simple movement of one leg against the other that doesn’t break her sleep, and he automatically folds it up again and hides it in his pocket, looking at her all the while. His gaze falls on an old scar that curves along her collarbone, a relic of an old battle with some long-dead supervillain from her childhood that he curls his tongue against and kisses during sex; it makes her shudder and squirm and gasp for breath and it’s agonizingly sexy when she moves like that. One of those things that up until a year ago he could’ve dispelled any argument with—a simple brush of his hand, a kiss at the edge of the white scar and she was a goner—but then it stopped being “cute” and started being “manipulative.” To Red’s credit, though, the ability to manipulate others is on his résumé. Less of a quirk than an applicable job skill.
Thanks to the memory his throat is now thick and he swallows, a useless act that doesn’t solve the problem. He has to go. Another five minutes and she’ll be falling out of the deepest part of her sleep cycle, yes, he’s been keeping count, and he wants to be able to kiss her before he goes without any repercussions.
Standing up he feels like an old man, the way his knees pop as he straightens up, the moonlight throwing his shadow against her like a blanket. Her breathing stays steady as he smoothes her hair away, he almost can’t kiss her but he does, a slight pressure of lips against lips, it’s too hard, he has to go, can’t kiss her or linger a moment longer or else she’ll wake up and he’ll fall back into bed with her and never leave and the slow, painful death of the relationship is already too much to bear, he doesn’t want to stay for that and watch it disintegrate before their eyes.
A million little needles in his chest all the sudden, and he doesn’t even have the energy to scribble a note as he heads for the bedroom door. If he were any average human being he might be hyperventilating or crying.
The house is only fifty percent empty and yet it feels dead a thousand times over; he ignores it, sidesteps piles of books she bought him and shoes she wore the last time they went out, the night air frosting over his skin just a hair behind the agonizing loneliness and the fainter freedom that bears upon him as he shuts the door.
***
“I’m sorry,” B croaks remorsefully as he walks in.
It’s too early to go to bed and yet she’s already in it, curled away towards the window to watch the sun set, orange bleeding into pink into purple, tear tracks drying on her cheeks. Red walks in as he is pocketing the list he’s done up of his belongings, feeling guilty as the paper crackles in his jeans and he looks at B.
He stands at the door for a minute, heavy-hearted and miserable with the act of leaving weighing upon him more than ever.
“I’m sorry,” she says again. “I meant it when I said I didn’t want to fight. I just… I wish you could understand.”
Familiar anger sputters into life, but he drowns it in his guilt, instead moving away from the door towards her. The bedsprings protest weakly as he sits down and runs his hand through her hair, trying to come up with something appropriate to say.
She rolls onto her back to face him, taking his hand in hers and bringing it to her lips to kiss it, further apologies already burning in her eyes again. The guilt is stifling; he can’t breathe.
“I love you,” she whispers urgently against his wrist, and he’s choking to death and he wishes what she just said was enough.
He pulls her up into his arms and she instinctively wraps around him, head fitting into the curve of his neck as he squeezes her close and silently despairs about how he’s going to fit all that crap into his car. It flies out of his mind at the scent of her hair, the sobs that suddenly wrack her body, and he wishes, wishes it could make him stay.
“I love you, too,” he says desperately, because it’s the truth and he needs her to believe it or else, or else.
She nods into his chest, then gives a short burst of laughter and mutters something about feeling ridiculously pathetic and sorry, his shirt is getting wet, and for lack of anything better to do he manages a laugh back and asks if they have enough groceries in the fridge.
***
“I don’t want to fight with you,” B is suddenly apologetic, bringing her hand to her temples to quell the makings of a migraine.
“Then maybe you ought to quit bringing it up,” Red snaps back in an ugly voice, unable to suppress the surge of hate that jettisons in her direction, only it misfires and suddenly he hates everything, hates her, hates the world, hates himself for yelling at her when he’s supposed to love her but still, if that’s the way it works then isn’t she supposed to love him, too?
“If you loved me half as much as you said you did you’d quit giving a fuck about what I should be doing for other people and just focus on what I do for you,” he says viciously, unable to keep the poison inside, and when he sees the angry tears that mist her vision there is a brief moment of triumph, and he doesn’t feel the least bit sorry as he watches those tears carve their way down her face.
***
B is a marvel to watch in action. Red’s taken up the hobby of watching her when the signal goes up, especially if he’s had a hand in the trouble. Today it’s some lackey of a former client he had, wielding a weapon based on design plans he sold in exchange for the location of a jewel that supposedly has latent world-conquering powers. The jewel was tinier than he expected; he might have it set in an engagement ring for B, but knowing B she’d get overly suspicious and start digging up information about its powers and he really doesn’t need that on his plate yet.
She’s playing dodgeball with the beams from this gun that dwarfs the man brandishing it, flipping and twirling like it’s a dance, and Red wants to applaud her because damn, she sure moves pretty. She hasn’t noticed him yet, but he can see her eyes determined and set, scanning the area rabidly for his face—she’s not going to be happy when she finds him and will probably give him that favorite little lecture of hers about “special powers” and “obligations to the people” and yeah, he’s sick of it, but God, he loves to watch her dance like she’s dancing now.
The gopher his old client has recruited is too nervous; Red makes a Tsk sound at his sloppy firing. Far from a match for his girl B. A well-executed slide, a kick, and boom, the guy’s out cold on the ground. B shrewdly examines the gun, now quiet on the ground.
A thought suddenly occurs to Red, and he steps out from the shadows. “I wouldn’t crush it underfoot; you’d probably cause more damage than if you fired it point blank at someone’s face.”
She doesn’t turn to look at him, but he can feel the heat of her glare fine from where he’s standing. “I knew you had your hand in this.”
He smirks. “Am I getting that predictable?”
“Don’t even—this isn’t funny,” she snaps, and he can see her shoulders shaking with the effort of containing the explosion.
He drops the playful act and says, in all due seriousness, “Hey, I’m not—”
“If I look at you right now I’m afraid I’m going to hurt you,” she interrupts sternly.
He can’t help but sneer, “So hurt me.”
“I SAID THIS WASN’T FUNNY.”
She stamps her foot on the ground, once, and cracks in the asphalt issue from the impact, spidering out in all directions. Red observes it with a detached look on his face, the playfulness sucked out of him. She always takes this shit too seriously.
“I can’t—I can’t even talk, I’m going home,” she whispers.
Red watches her shoulders as they rise with the effort of breathing, and he says quietly, “Nobody’s stopping you.”
He knows it hurts when he says it, and he means for it to hurt. She doesn’t look back at him, just stiffens her shoulders and speeds away, leaving him to deal with the aftermath.
***
“Say, sweetheart?”
Red looks up from his book, smiles at her. “That’s a disgusting nickname.”
“Yeah, well, you’re kind of stuck.” She plops down next to him on the couch and flips up the book to read the cover. “Ah, Neruda.”
“Me gustas cuando callas,” he responds blithely.
“Porque estás como ausente,” she picks up, not missing a beat, and his heart twinges a little.
“My pretty, well-read superheroine,” he coos, planting a firm kiss on her neck.
She squirms out of his grip and laughs. “Hey, I’m trying to be serious with you.”
Red adopts a solemn expression and says in a monotone, “Serious face on.”
B gives his knee a hard smack, and when he’s done bitching about the pain she makes him look at her.
She holds his gaze for a few seconds before he blinks and says, “So…?”
“So… I was thinking you should come fight with me sometime.”
An awkward moment passes, and he breaks eye contact, laughing and shaking his head. “B, come on.”
“No, really! The next time I get called out to duty, you should come with. I think if you just tried this out—”
“Trust me, I don’t need to ‘try this out—’”
“How would you know?” B demands, a wry look on her face. “You never tried it before, have you? How would you know?”
“I haven’t tried slitting my wrists either, and I don’t need to do that to know it isn’t good for me,” Red drawls, and she screws up her face in that adorable way he likes so much. He grins at her.
“Far from the same thing,” she says in a stern voice.
“To you, maybe.”
She sighs, then pleads, “You couldn’t do this for me? This little thing?”
“Sweetheart,” he says, then catches himself. “I mean, darling. Pumpkin. Honey. Baby. Dollface. Um, baby dollface?” He issues a pointed look at her. “Any of those work for you?”
The look on her face is a resolute NO. “Stick with B.”
“Thank God, I hated all of those. B. I love you. Isn’t that enough?”
She groans. “Why’d you have to go and play that card on me?”
“Hey, you played the ‘do this for me, please?’ card on me. I deserve a little retribution.”
“Red,” she says firmly, and meets his eyes. “You and me, we’re special.”
“I know.”
“There are things we can do for this world that other people can’t.”
He sighs. “I know.”
“Well then, don’t you think we should do what we can to help it, then? That we have an obligation to those who need help?”
“We’re people, too,” he says flatly. “What about our obligations to ourselves?”
“Are you telling me you feel you owe it to yourself to be a villain?” B presses, and Red sighs again.
“You understand that no matter how many times we have this conversation I am not going to ‘come to the side of light,’” he says, waving his hands in mock awe for the latter half of his statement.
She curls her knees up onto the couch and rests her head on his shoulder. “You’ll come around,” she says confidently.
He gives her an exasperated look. “And you say that because…?”
Her gaze is steady, unwavering. “Because I know you’re a good person.”
“Good. Because your opinion is the only one I’m interested in.”
She groans and looks away, and he goes back to his book. Tension hangs like some acrid, dead thing in the room, and he can’t focus on the words.
“Red. Please. Couldn’t you—”
“Me gustas cuando callas,” he interrupts, and he can feel her draw her lips into a thin line.
***
B’s hair, her practical, sensible hair, flutters into a mess of tangles underneath his hands, swims against her skin. Oh, her skin. That skin of hers that he can’t get enough of and yet there’s so much of it and not enough ways to impress it against his.
He kisses her and in response she parts his lips open with hers, sweeping her arms around his neck and breathing his name in a voice, no, a VOICE, one that deserves its own language, its own history.
There’s that little scar on her collarbone, there, that one, and he bends his head, brushes his lips along it, and she immediately arches into him and sighs this little sigh that he wants to hear again, doesn’t want her to stop, can’t stop touching her, kissing her.
B looks at Red from under heavy-lidded eyes and hisses, “I love you,” against his throat.
No good or evil here, just B and Red, no sense of duty or obligation or getting into these senseless little fights about things that in the long run don’t matter, but Red is too drunk on her voice and her skin to explain see, this, this is what’s important, us is important.
His mind reels desperately as he kisses her, fails utterly at forming an argument, and all he can do is whisper her name and tell her he loves her and never, ever wants to leave her.
***
“I can’t be involved with you,” B explains, stumbling on the words and running them all together and blushing to the dust. Definitely not the reaction he’d been hoping for when he’d asked, but he can work around it.
“You are involved with me,” Red clarifies. “Past two years, in fact. I’m keeping count and everything.”
“I mean ANYMORE.” She has this distressed look on her face, this look that resembles a child presented with a room full of bubbles who has just been told not to pop a single one. “I can’t be involved with you, much less LIVE with you. Not with someone who isn’t… you know…”
“… A virgin?” he ventures.
“No, you smartass!” she shrieks. “Someone who isn’t good!”
He curves an arm around her waist and she yelps in protest, but doesn’t do much else to discourage him. “Good at what?”
She laughs feebly and shakes her head. “Stop. Just… stop. You have to.”
He catches her gaze, holds it, and her words fall and fade as they make their way to the open air.
“I have to… what?” he whispers playfully, eyes glittering.
Her hands slide along those arms of his, wrapped around her hips. “Um.”
***
Red’s standing in the middle of it, carrying information on him worth billions of dollars, and B has this look on her face, this LOOK that screams hurt and betrayal, and Red’s still standing in the middle of it.
She barely sees the crumbling ceiling, the stunned guards lying dormant on the floor, nor the glut of information that drips from his body. Her eyes are locked on his, and he doesn’t blink because he doesn’t know what she’s going to do.
Because all she CAN do is stare at him and whisper his name, again and again, her own personal litany.
***
“You know, I didn’t catch your name,” B suddenly remembers, looking up from the bookshelf.
“Red,” he replies, tugging out a book by its spine and handing it to her. “Here. This is a good one.”
B adds it to her stack without looking at it. “I’m B.”
He grants her a smirk before returning his attention to the scores of library books. “Everybody knows who you are.” You’re number one on The List of People Us Villains Should Avoid Running Into, he thinks, but hey, he was always a rebel.
“Yeah, I—I know. Sorry, I just—argh!” She presses a hand to her face as she blushes, and Red allows himself a small grin. Shyness suits her terribly well. Makes her cheeks glow and her eyes glitter. She gets all pretty and the like.
“I’m so bad at getting to know people, is all,” she mutters, shaking her head with a smile.
“Well, I’m good at getting to know people,” he offers helpfully, and it isn’t a lie. He makes it his business to get to know people—that’s the only way you can get anything out of them.
The remnants of her blush are fading, but her face is still a healthy pink. Pink is such a good color on her! “Maybe you could help me with my horrific social problem, then.”
Red turns his attention from the shelf completely to her—looks her dead in the eye and catches her off guard, so she blushes something fierce again but can’t rip her eyes away.
There’s the faintest glimmer of something in him, something he won’t recognize until much later, after the courtship stage is over and done with and his bigger problem is whether or not he’ll come clean (though when it happens it won’t have been by choice), something that will keep him with her despite the conventions of Good and Evil and her own standards of morality, something that in the end still won’t be enough to make him stay, as much as he’ll wish it could.
He looks her dead in the eye and catches her off guard and she blushes something fierce.
“I’d love to.”
-fin-
I'm a sucker for your comments, you know. Just saying. ♥
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“I love you, too,” he says desperately, because it’s the truth and he needs her to believe it or else, or else.
Because it just makes my heart do those paranormal leapy, twisty things. And that's just my favorite. :)
And, oh!, the sequencing. I love how this goes from the end to the beginning; totally backwards but possibly even more heartwrenching than if it were forwards.
You make me smile so big my face hurts. (And it has nothing to do with the cold weather and the fact that it's drying up my face and arms and everything.)
And I really do hope to see more of this because it just makes me a better person in general. :)
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