Title: She Bets On Long Shots (She Wants What They've Got)

Pairing: Maureen/Benny
Rating: M – mostly for sexual situations, but illegal drug use, too.

Author: Narcissmy

Disclaimer: R.I.P Mr Larson – you'll never be forgotten so long as I have grandbabies. Title lyrics to Mr. Matt Nathanson

A/N: This isn't m quite yet, but it gets there =] There's also gonna be a bit of Maureen/Alison at a later date, so...stay tuned?

The apartment was filled with random strangers, closest friends and very few family members. The music was loud and creeping from an ancient looking set of speakers balanced precariously on the table. The singing was louder, kindly provided by Collins, who seemed to know the words to every single song ever made. Ever.

But the loudest thing of all for Maureen Johnson was the feeling of loneliness beating in her ears with every sluggish heartbeat.

Mark was sleeping.

It was a minute to New Year, and Mark was sleeping.

Roger and April were curled around each other in a position which suggested that they didn't really want to be with other people. His hand was smoothing the skin at the base of her back, and they were kissing each other frantically. Sucking the high from each other's pores as his mouth travelled a little lower down her jaw. Their heartbeats were accelerated, skipping over each other and the heroin like lovers in the sheets.

Collins couldn't give a shit that he didn't have a significant other. He'd drowned the knowledge of Aids in copious amounts of vodka and was entertaining his crowd of adoring fans with his soulful voice and the pull of his personality. His heartbeat was content and full, racing through his veins and arteries with the euphoria of blow. Maureen couldn't look at him for too long because it made her chest ache and hollow, as if she was yearning for hope to bury beneath her ribcage. She was losing hope lately. Maybe if she stuffed it behind her sternum it would stop everyone bursting her bubble.

She was a flirt, Mark said. She was too friendly, Mark said. She got too drunk, Mark said.

Maureen was tired. She used to look at him and see a face full of intelligence, of dreams that weren't misplaced. Of an ambition that told her he'd get out of this place – out of Alphabet city – and make something out of what he had; which was raw talent. They were fizzling out. Or Mark was clinging on hopefully, and Maureen was growing bored. Gone were the days of the honeymoon period, where he had been so interested in filming her. Gone were the stolen moments of affection, heated affairs in public. The excitement had died. He was living for the future, forgetting the past, and bypassing the present in the process. And that wasn't Maureen.

In the beginning, when he had filmed her everyday as she made her journey from the brief job she had held as a waitress at the Life café to her home, he had been witty. He had stared at her pouty lips a little too long. Been so fascinated by the sway of her hips and her sassy rejection of him, even as she smiled that toothy smile of hers and winked. Maybe next time, Mark. He had called her Lolita for the first week of knowing her, because she had refused to give him her name. She had eventually spelled it out in the condensation of the Life Café windows, as he stood outside on the snow covered sidewalk in his stupid scarf, because he couldn't afford to come in and buy anything.

Now, she wasn't even sure he remembered she was here, half the time, let alone what her name was. How much he had wanted her in the beginning. And maybe that was the problem, for Maureen. She played a good game of cat and mouse. She was always the one calling the shots. And then when she gave herself to the person who had pursued her for so long, they became bored. She gave too much of herself.

Even now, when she could hear him snoring as she neared the bedroom door. Even when he had deserted her on a night that was meant to be celebrated with your nearest and dearest, she scooted closer to the bed to press a kiss to his sleep slackened mouth. She made it into the living room for the final countdown, and when they'd all sang Auld Lang Syne and given the required kisses, she retired to the stoop. Collins looked so happy, raising his glass and leading the chorus. But he wore his blood cells on his sleeve, and she saw the fear. She could smell it. So she left before she started sobbing like she did when she initially got the news. The biting cold of the stoop was a harsh slap in the face, shocking the excess moisture pooling in her eyes back into her tear ducts. Skin-tight leather made her ass look great, but she was fucking freezing.

She liked it. It was a good kind of cold, and though her fingers were numb and her breath made just as much impression on the air as her cigarette smoke, she couldn't go back inside. She felt isolated in her abandonment, and her whole body ached with the facade of her relationship. Every muscle was sore with falsities.

The stoop shifted slightly, and she thought for a moment that she had finally reached the stage of inebriation where she was hallucinating. She couldn't remember if she had participated in ingesting any of the various substances being passed around, so she didn't pay much attention. Her memory was hopeless at the best of times.

It was Benny. He took one of her cigarettes from the packet without being offered. He leant against the wall of the building to smoke it, the smoke curling up around his perfectly arrogant lips.

She began to reapply her lipstick.

"I guess you finally lost Shirley Temple."

"Alison is inside." He answered, but she didn't miss the way his eyes skirted to her mouth. She widened her eyes and popped her lips for effect.

"Alison is passed out behind the sofa. I'm surprised her darling daddy dearest hasn't called her to tell her curfew was at half past seven."

Maureen snorted a little at her own humour. She was coarse, but she was attractive in the sense she didn't try to hide it. Growing up with male relatives had taught her that elegance was a pretence. Benny was always horrible to her, but she thought that somewhere in that fat, pompous skull of his there was a flicker of respect for her.

"Oh yeah, and where's your other half Mo? At least mine passed out instead of willingly crashing." He rolled his eyes. Benny and Mark were on tense terms at the moment. Roger was acting as peace maker, but Maureen was counting down the days until Benny married his perfect little princess Muffy and fucked off to Richland where everybody drove a Land Rover and gave their kids cruel names.

"He's there for me when I need him. When your dad died and you got wasted, I was wiping your snot off your face whilst Ali-no-fun-son was getting her nails done."

"Well she's doing something better than you. I'm awake, and Mark is sleeping. He's that bored. Maybe he'll lose interest and fuck Roger, if he's not doing that already."

Benny threw the cigarette at her feet. They always did this. Banter always became nasty. Maureen had never been able to pinpoint why they got on so infamously, but it was the first time her pulse had raised all evening. Her heartbeat skipped up against her ribcage. She wanted to slap him.

So she did. And she could bet it hurt. If his face was as painfully cold as her fingers then it would smart. One minute she was in front of him, and the next his hands were holding her face as he held her against the brick wall, and suddenly her breath was caught in his throat.

His lips were warm and his tongue was ruthless. She felt like her whole mouth was on fire with the force of him, and he was too close and too passionate. Too inconsiderate for a lover used to Mark. Pliant Mark, who tried to be adventurous but never quite got there. His hands were on her ass without invitation, and even though every synapse in her brain fired to tell her that this was so wrong when she could still taste Mark on her lips, her body keened towards him and her tongue pushed furiously back. He was warm and solid, and she was damned if she'd come up for air first. She'd kiss till she was unconscious rather than admit defeat. When he was done, he rubbed his calloused thumb across her lips, the harsh quality to his work-hardened skin a stark reminder of why he didn't fit in with Alison's world. The remainder of her lipstick smeared across her pale skin and he drew his tongue against the surface of her mouth, horizontally, as if sealing himself inside her mouth.

Her eyes burned, a multitude of question marks framing her irises. He shrugged and laughed, and then he was gone.

And it was just Maureen and the vapour of her breath once more. Loneliness.

This time, of course, her heart thudded with a keen enthusiasm.