A Mutual Addiction
LadyNightSky
Rating: T, but a warning: this is not a light, fluffy fic. It deals with all sorts of sordid, unhealthy, usually forcibly ignored topics, so if you are easily offended, do not like violence, strong language, drugs, or bad, bad behavior, don't read on. The rating may have to go up to M, depending on how the reaction to this chapter goes.
See A/N at the end for more, if you like.
Disclaimer: Not mines.
"What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction."
—Chuck Palahniuk
Chapter One: Once Upon a Midnight Dreary ("The Raven," Poe)
Riven wasn't like all the others.
It manifested in a million different ways—his otherness, his difference.
It was there in the way Timmy, Sky, Brandon, even Helia, woke every morning and lazily dragged themselves off to class, chattering and joking, without a care in the world. Meanwhile, Riven would be seated and studying in an empty classroom, squinting in the dusty early morning sun, trying to make himself learn, trying to make it all stick together, grasping at the concepts as if he could bully them into behaving. While his brothers half the school away were sprinkling sugar on their oatmeal and burning their tongues on scrambled eggs, he crammed as much information as he could into his head, knowing that, unlike the others, failure was not an option for him. He had no other place to go. This was it, the last stop, the only chance left. The thought put a stone in his gut and a glare on his face, and later it would twist his words to the others with the kind of harshness only borne of envy, rearing its ugly head after being shoved down again and again.
It was there in the way the dark circles under his eyes never left, purplish, ugly reminders of a restless night, spent wandering the halls of Red Fountain while the others snored in their bunks. Prowling the halls like a giant cat, he could ignore his rapid heartbeat, his heightened senses, his body prepared for a fight that only existed in the nightmares from which he had woken.
Mostly, it was there in the way his hands gripped the handle of a saber like a lover, fingertips kissing the cool steel, slicing through his target with only a whisper of sound, the barest breath of a taunt—and nothing of an apology. It was in the way his wrestling grips lasted a moment longer than everyone else's in practice, his muscles relaxing only when he consciously commanded them to, his nature relishing the power, the domination—the forced submission of his opponent. There was a deep, dark satisfaction that rose in him, forcing him under like a tidal wave for the span of a second, until he remembered to push his way back to the surface, gasping for air.
It was this that brought him to her, at first. She was halfway broken already, and somewhere, in a part of him that he fought everyday to cage and contain, he felt a ping of pleasure at the thought of bending her to his will, knowing that, with the barest exertion on his part, he could break her completely.
The thought of that pleasure made him sick, and he purposefully avoided her, even when they were all gathered as a sprawling group. She never said anything—they rarely, if ever, spoke, anyways—but when he looked up, sometimes, he could see a flash of green, and he knew she had been looking at him. She had been watching.
It only made the pleasure stronger, because she would be that much easier to snap in half. It made it harder to tamp down.
It became more and more difficult, until, one day, he was the one that snapped.
Riven was drunk. He was so damn drunk he could barely focus on the two girls in front of him, their voices thick and slow like syrup dripping into his ears.
"No, I'm fine," he said loudly, hoping that they would go away. Please, let them go away. He had come here because it was small, unknown, tucked into a crevice between two hulking office buildings in downtown Magix.
One of the girls—it had to be Bloom, with that shade of red hair—said something loudly back, but he couldn't comprehend it.
"What?" he said, raising his voice again.
He saw the two girls put their heads together, their lips moving in and out of focus, until the redhead disappeared from his range of sight, and he was left with the other one.
Her hand landed on his bare forearm, warm and familiar, where he had rolled up the sleeves of his button down.
Suddenly, everything slid into focus again, bitingly, punishingly clear, so bright and clean that his head exploded like a geyser of pain. He gritted his teeth hard against it, squinting at the hand on his arm.
He was still drunk. He could feel how sluggish he was, how uncontrollable, in the small part of his brain that remained in control. But now he could see.
And what he saw made him lurch forwards.
"What are you doing here?" he blurted out, still too loud for the nearly-empty bar. "What did you do to me?"
Flora flinched slightly, the smell of alcohol and cigarettes rolling off Riven in waves, but she spoke in a measured voice, as gentle as always. "Bloom and I needed to stop and rest, so we ducked in here. We saw you in the corner, came over to say hello, but she had to meet Sky before we go back to school. I used a contact healing spell to clear up some of the alcohol, but nothing magic will get rid of it completely. Sorry for the shock."
He did not comprehend. "Why clear?" he slurred, trying to make his tongue behave to no avail.
There was the slightest tension in her lips—so plush and perfectly formed and weak and tempting, something inside of him spat out—as she said, "You should get back to Red Fountain. It's only Monday, and it's past curfew now. Come on, please, I'll help you back."
No. He didn't want to come back to reality.
He wrenched his arm out from under her palm, and the fog was back, not so bad as before, but worse than it had been under her contact healing spell, muddying his senses, dulling his sight so that he could barely make out her face.
She reached for him again, and he pushed back, the momentum making him stumble, his back hitting the dirty exposed brick wall.
Nowhere left to go.
Unbidden, reflexively, like they did during his nightly sojourns around Red Fountain, his instincts kicked into overdrive. His heartbeat sped up, his muscles tensed, but the fog still weighed heavily on him.
Nowhere left to go, one part of his brain screamed, as the other growled, Weak. So easily broken. Lips…so pretty. Easy.
She grabbed for him, and the brightness was back, but this time he was moving, his head aching, his stomach roiling, she was moving him, dragging him through the door and into the tight alleyway between the bar and an office, moving, moving, moving…
He stopped, fighting the nausea, pulled out of her grasp, collapsed against one wall of the alley.
"No," he managed. "Not yet."
"Riven," she said softly, and even through the fog he could hear the fear laced in with concern and apology in her voice. Fear, the growly part of him said, relishing the word. "Riven, I'm sorry, but it's really late and there was a man in that bar, he was watching you, watching me too, like he knew you, and—"
He was watching her lips moving—easy, weak, broken—seeing her pupils dilate with apprehension and her heart start to race.
Fear, his nature repeated, pushing against the walls of its cage, rattling the bars and growing louder and louder, until it was screaming, a high pitched wail that went, fear and succulence and weakness…
She reached for him again, and finally, the deepest, darkest part of him broke through, spilling out of him uncontrollably, and the only thing the part of his mind that kept it contained could do was watch helplessly as his hands found Flora's wrists, and pushed her hard.
Flora's back hit the opposite wall of the alley, her head painfully snapping into the brick, and she inhaled sharply, shock making her momentarily immobile, and that moment was all Riven needed.
She could feel his lips on her neck, his teeth and tongue and breath, hot and warm, tracing a path to her lips. One hand was on her cheek now, holding her so that he had access to her skin, unnaturally pale in the moonlight. The calluses on his hands rubbed against her skin, turning it, all of it, into gooseflesh.
As soon as her head stopped ringing, she tensed against him, shoving as hard as she could, but he had her locked between himself and the wall, a solid mass of muscle and a lifetime of training. She called out, again and again, but her voice was high and thready. Her wriggling and pushing and struggling only made him stronger, resolve stiffening his defense. His lips were moving up her neck now, and they found her ear, and he breathed, "Flora."
She froze again, forgetting to shout, her eyes wide at the way he had twisted her name into something hot and forbidden and black and lustful, unlike the way anybody had ever said her name before.
She could feel his nose tracing a path towards her lips, inhaling her scent, fear and sweat and smoke from the bar, all undercut with the perfume of roses and sunshine, innocent and sexual and primal all in one.
Flora was breathing hard and fast, her eyes fixed on his face, which was set with a wild expression she had only seen a few times before, in battle. It was a complete loss of control, and gods help her, her heart raced ever faster as she observed the strange, terrible beauty of the lines of his face, the sharpness of his cheekbones and his haunted, hollow features, the unhealthy circles underneath his eyes even starker in the silvery light.
The pause in her struggle was all he needed to anchor his mouth to hers, and she squeaked, broken out of her reverie by the flash of teeth and tongue and the taste of him, sharp from the alcohol. She screamed into his mouth, but it had no effect. She caught his bottom lip in between her teeth, and bit down, and that only made him kiss her harder, until she felt like he was devouring her whole, until she could not help but open herself to him, because it felt like the only way to survive, the only way to surf on the tsunami of that deep-dark-wild-nameless-something that consumed him whole, spilling out onto her and threatening to drag her down too. The metallic taste of blood, his blood, from where she had bitten him, colored the kiss, made it more wild and uncontrollable and hot and heavy, fierce and strange, and she could feel his grip slackening on her face and on her wrist, preparing to move, preparing to—
She didn't know, she didn't want to know, and somehow, somehow, she managed to pull herself out of the current, away from the riptide, concentrating on the energy lying dormant in her body, ignoring the unsteady, erratic pulse of the blood in her veins, until she felt that indefinable glow of power.
Just a little shock, she thought, as his hands made their way onto her shoulders, exposed to the night air, and involuntarily, she flexed up into his touch. Just a little…
He stumbled back with a curse that almost made her falter, but her instinct for flight had taken over, and she was scrambling onto the street, almost deserted at this hour on a Monday, her heart in her throat almost choking her. She could feel the fading heat of his hands on her bare skin, burning their imprint onto her, and as fast as she could, she ran towards the transport station.
TBC.
A Please-Read-Before-You-Flame-But-Not-If-You've-Read-the-Note-On-My-Other-Fic A/N: In all probability, no one who's reading this right now will remember me, but I quit the Winx fandom in August 2007 (heh, I'm BAACCCKKK! *cackle*). At the time, I was into writing really fluffy fics from a very different point of view than presented here. Between 2007 and now, my writing style changed a lot (if you're interested in why/how/fics I wrote that show transition, see my profile for my other account), and with it, my outlook. In this fic, I'm trying to give the Winx characters a darker spin, exploring the sides of them—that I perceive—that the series doesn't show (I absolutely refuse to believe that the series shows all there is to a character). In my (admittedly twisted) head, Riven is a barely contained ball of fury and energy and pain, and his strength, physical and mental, is all but devoted to fighting for control. While the animalistic part of him perceives Flora as easy bait for now, which results in a very visceral, wild reaction, I think that underneath all that pink and glitter, she's got a backbone of steel that he'll discover soon. If it rubbed you the wrong way, if you thought something was definitely, definitely off, please feel free to flame, but I thought I would try to explain myself preemptively :) Sorry for the long A/N!
Drop me a review if you have any comments, please!