The Butterfly Path
Marlene seems all right when Gideon finds her at his door, but he knows better than that.
She is perfectly self-possessed, the feline swing of her hips perhaps just a little exaggerated. Her words are slow, but carefully articulated and perfectly constructed. But it's in her eyes; beneath the smeared mascara and creased grey eye shadow and the fall of her hair in front of them, they're clouded and beautifully careless. And she's here. That alone, her mere presence, says more than enough.
She must be high.
She pushes her way in and her hand traces his jaw in a sad mockery of the last time they stood here and she smiles vaguely and he knows she remembers. And then her hand is tangled painfully in his hair and her mouth is hard on his. Her fingers are at the buttons on his shirt so quickly and he's the one having the clothes ripped off him in the entrance hall this time.
And he should stop her. He should. From the hazy cast to her eyes, she's going to regret this in the morning, just because it's him. She's going to regret…if she remembers at all. He should floo Sirius (he seizes up, choking at the thought), or just turn her away. It should be easy, because this woman, this Marlene in front of him is nothing of what he wants.
But he can't. This is all just a mocking, painful echo of the once-upon-a-time he had a chance at once, but he is just not strong enough to push her away. This is the last time he'll ever touch her, he knows, even if they both live three hundred years. The last, and that knowledge is enough to override his better senses.
And her lips are hard and slick-smooth with dark, wet lipstick that smears over his mouth like a bloodstain, the skin of her face and body ashy and dry; everything about her seems stone-hard and pointed-sharp, but he thinks (hopes) that somewhere under the ugly makeup and phoenix tattoo and the smell of cigarette smoke that saturates her hair and clothing, Martin's sweet little sister is there for him to find, if just for a moment, a flash of something in her eyes.
He doesn't sleep when she's finished, holding his breath in desperate, grasping hope that if he doesn't move, if she falls asleep where her head's pillowed on his chest, that she'll wake up tomorrow morning and it could be a starting point, maybe—not a good one, but something. But she doesn't lay there long. Marlene retrieves her clothing and dresses in the dark of after-midnight. She doesn't say anything as she goes.
She leaves him to mourn, silent in the dark.
He tries to make this second time gentle and sweet and everything the first time should have been, everything Marlene deserves and Gideon wants to give her.
But she's painfully desperate to please him, and her hands flutter nervously at his shoulders and she's not enjoying what he's doing to her, already itching to push up and return the favor. She thinks she needs to, needs to give him a reason to stick around this time.
She's still awkward and unpracticed and shy about things, underneath, but she veneers it over in falsified confidence and a brusque, firm way of moving her hands on his body.
Gideon hates it. He hates himself for what he's done to her, the awkward, uncertain light in her eyes and the way she moves like it's all scripted just for him. He's shattered her trust in a brutal, ugly way and all he wants is the chance he fucked up, with Marlene's innocence in fewer, smoother-edged pieces.
It all feels false and forced, like the lovely happiness he used to inspire in her has been replaced with hard edged determination to please, to seduce, to be everything she thinks he wants and nothing of what she really is, nothing of what he loves. He doesn't make her happy anymore; he makes her desperate and he wonders how long it'll take for her to realize that.
Marlene shows up at his door, her hair plastered down with rain and teeth chattering. And they both know why she's here.
It's the innocent touches they've been dwelling on, the way Marlene sneaks glances at him through the curtain of her hair, the way Gideon freezes when he thinks what her brother would say if he was alive to see (if Martin used words at all and didn't just settle for two effective hands around his supposed best friend's good-for-nothing neck).
But she's just there now, the rain still sheeting down over her, and she ducks around him when he doesn't move from the doorframe.
"You still can't do rain-repelling charms to save your life, can you?" he asks, his voice a little strained, and they both really know he's fishing for some kind of innocent conversation. He closes the door and takes a step away
Marlene forces a laugh. "I know good ones that might actually save my life, so I figure I can handle a little rain," Marlene replies, and they fall into an awkward silence and Gideon stares hard at the clock on the wall; the second hand turns on the downward sweep and the mood in the room descends with it.
Her damp, soft hands are whisper soft on his face and he jumps, the touch both unexpected and long anticipated. Her hands follow him, her fingers tracing patterns along his jaw, scraping against the auburn stubble. She might be drawing his face closer to her, or inching up herself; he can't even tell because her lips are peach-pink and perfect and he wants them, wants her.
"We shouldn't," he whispers, but it's already useless because, even though she freezes a breath away from his mouth, the motion of the words brush his lips against hers and it's all gone. What should be is tossed away for want; want want, shameful want reels in Gideon's head and he crushes her down, falling back against the door. His calluses catch on her hair as he rakes his hands through it.
Gideon's never quite lost control like this, but Marlene falls too easily into his arms, melting against his chest and angling her white throat in some perfect, subconsciously seductive way. The way her breath catches, the way she whines breathlessly in the back of her throat (and then stiffens, embarrassed, when she hears herself) when he shoves a hand under the hem of her shirt is the end, and he doesn't even bother to think anymore.
Her clothes stick to her skin, pasted down with rainwater, and he nearly rips them from her, throwing all his rage and grief and pain and guilt into kissing her, hands rough and bruising against her rain-damp skin. She draws back for a minute, looking a little unsure, and he remembers for that minute, remembers words like nineteen and innocent and Martin's little sister. And then her arms are tossed back around his neck, her skin warming under his hands and she's trying to keep up with him, but he's too scared and desperate for her to even come close to keeping pace. He's trying to convince himself that it's just sex, to forget the way he burns inside when she smiles at him, freezes when she cries, because that's easier. (But this wouldn't be so damn important if it was…and even he knows he's too ridiculously chivalrous to abuse the hopeful loving light in Marlene's eyes like that. It never would have come to this, if that was all he wanted from her.)
She offers this gift solemnly, yielding up to his selfish taking with hitched breathing and encouraging noises and the uncertain, unpracticed butterfly path of her fingertips.
He takes, and right then it feels so much better than what he should be doing. He should be taking her home, keeping his hands to himself. He should be acting like a gentleman, treating her like a lady, treating her as gallantly as he expects Arthur to treat Molly. He should, at least, be going slow; she hesitates and flushes like the virgin he knows she is. There should be pretty words and gentle hands and roses and poetry and all the cliché, hopelessly saccharine things they laud in Molly's WitchWeekly. She deserves all that.
Instead, he only just manages not to turn, push her up against the door he's half-collapsed against, wrap her legs around his waist and have her right there in the entrance hall.
He makes it to his bedroom, at least, stumbling blindly, Marlene's backwards footsteps unsure as he propels her along until her calves meet his mattress and she collapses back on it. Most of her clothes scatter the floor by the doorway, but he disposes of what's left quickly enough.
Mine mine mine he wants to write on her soft freckled skin, he wants to write it deep enough that no one can ever take her away, but there's no tool in the world (especially this breaking one they're fighting through) to write something so indelible as that. In the dim twilight, the bruises rising purple on her fair skin look beautiful; he presses his mouth to the corner of her jaw, trailing down just beneath it and sucking hard. It'll leave another bruise, he half-thinks with some strange, possessive pride. She gasps underneath him, curling her spine up off the unmade linens on his bed, butterfly hands gripping down a little harder, nails biting lightly into his shoulders through the thin, ragged t-shirt he'd answered the door in; approval, encouragement.
She is beautiful, bruised and loose-limbed there on his bed, when he draws away to pull off his own clothing. Her hands flutter above her head, palms up on the already-rumpled sheets, and she cracks her knuckles, her nervous habit, and the succession of quick, quiet snaps break into their slowing breath.
The quiet is too much; the world starts to creep in through the gap under the door. He has a decent idea now, though, on what he can do to kill the silence, and he finds that place on Marlene's neck and smooths a hand underneath her as she arches her back again.
She doesn't disappoint, and her throat vibrates under his mouth with her whimper, and the sound, the feel and scent of her, chases away the ugly shadows creeping outside the flat. It chases away what little control he'd regained as he looked into her big doe eyes and floundered momentarily in how frighteningly, hopelessly in love with her he is.
There's just a splash of sunrise in the sky when he pulls back the curtains later, trembling and guilty and damp from his shower. She's a fucking mess, bruised and tangle-haired in the soiled sheets, her hand splayed palm down in the cooling spot he'd stealthily slid out of, and he's a fucking monster with long threads of her hair still twined in and out of his fingers.
He goes out; he thinks to bring her breakfast, some sweet and gentle gesture of affection, if more than a little belated. He can't bring himself to go back, though, and ends up at Dorcas and Fabian's at seven in the morning. Dorie answers the door, dressed in her Juriswitch pinstripes, a foaming toothbrush in her mouth, and a cautious wand in her hand.
She makes him some tea after rinsing her mouth in the kitchen sink, flitting out the door to work, with Fabian emerging from their cramped bathroom in a cloud of steam just in time to catch her as she passed and kiss her playfully on the mouth and pinch her pinstripe-trousered bum appreciatively. She complained about his damp hands on her work robes, but she glowed happily as she waved to Gideon as she passed the tiny kitchen.
Fabian sits with him over their tea and the Daily Prophet, knowing perfectly well something is wrong but not saying a word about it. Gideon doesn't need to talk; he just processes thought better in Fabian's calming, genial presence. Fabian leaves for his own job three quarters of an hour later, leaves Gideon in the flat.
And, sitting in Dorcas and Fabian's woefully tiny flat, it suddenly seems so simple. Dorie's legal books line bookshelves along the wall and Fabian's clean laundry is in an unruly pile on one of the kitchen chairs and the tiny bathroom is cluttered with Dorcas' carefully arranged cosmetics and Fabian's sole possessions in the room, a razor and shampoo bottle, somehow managing to look disordered in the ocean of Dorie's neatness.
There's no reason why he can't do this! No reason why he and Marlene can't be like Dorcas and Fabian. He can make it back before she wakes, and he can love her and…
She's gone when he goes back, flowers from the corner florist in hand. And, somehow, in the window of half an hour or so between when she left and he came back, he's run it all into the ground. And it is beyond repair.
She is gone and the pillow only barely smells of her. He wonders, sick to his stomach, if she cried.
Her face burns with shame and humiliation at the Order meeting, and she can't look him in the eye, shoulders curled in and neatly combed hair a protective curtain around her face.
And he vows to try again, begins to build up what courage he will need to toss himself down on her mercy.
(The way her face lights when she takes him back is the saddest moment of Gideon's life because it's then, underneath the dimmed, broken glow of her compromised happiness, he knows what they had is already dead and gone.)