Author's Note: You guys...it is seriously ridiculous how long it's been since I've written anything. Like, anything ever period. For a while I'd taken a break from fan fiction to work on an original story that was quickly working itself into a "novel," but I'm not even working on that. And I miss writing! I'd like to update something, but I seriously don't have the energy to reevaluate anything and figure out the next step.
Instead I've had a tiny snippet of this in my brain, and while I couldn't really figure out how to expand it, I decided I'd just start writing and see what happens.
Disclaimer: The characters of The Mummy and The Mummy Returns are the property of Universal Studios. The quote at the beginning of the chapter is from the Robert Burns' poem, "Open the Door to Me," and yes, I do know that a wan moon is sort of the opposite of a full moon (I mean, a waxing moon would ACTUALLY be the opposite, but, you know...wan is thin, full is huge. I get this on a basic level.)
Cobalt
"The wan moon is setting ayont the white wave.
And time is setting with me. O!"
Robert Burns, "Open the Door to Me"
"I can tell that you like me."
The room would have been black as pitch in that willfully forgotten corner of the city, where bad things happened to bad people. It would have been too dark to see the sneer on his weaselly little face. She could have imagined herself close and alone in the blackness, in the darkness that never really relented. She could have imagined she was alone and that his steady puffing was a figment of fantasy; she could pretend she was imagining the warmth of his body too close to hers. It would have been too dark; but the moon hung full and low in the sky - close enough to touch and fit to burst above the horizon, destroying night and darkness in so many pallid, beaming chips.
The moon was low and her room was a strange blue-gray color, a cold, dead color that reminded her of his eyes. And she could see everything in the blue-gray - the wrinkles in her sheets and the molding on her mirror across the room, and him, there beside her. She could see him, stretched out and taking up over half the bed even though he was dismally thin. She could see him, fixing his cigarette between his teeth and pulling his cigarette from between his teeth - over and over again, trails of smoke losing themselves in the moon and the blue-gray light.
She could see him but she didn't particularly want to see him. She would have liked not to see him, actually; to do her work in the blackness as she usually did - to feel the dry, cracked skin on his hands but not to see them; to feel his lips on hers without having to look into his face. She would have liked not to see him. It was better that way.
She didn't look over at him in the moonlight. "I don't like you."
She didn't have to look at him to know how his sneer grew worse. "I know you like me. I can tell."
"How can you tell?" she snapped dryly. "Nobody's ever liked you before."
He turned on his side to look at her with wide, desperate eyes. And she didn't want to see him, but it wasn't black like it was supposed to be.
"People like me, Gretchen," he beseeched her in that terrible whine.
She snorted. "No, they don't."
"How would you know?"
"Because if anybody liked you, you wouldn't be coming to me."
And that was all of it. He huffed a little breath and rolled back over on his back, puffing on his cigarette more anxiously. She sighed and tried to keep her eyes closed. She tried, but she couldn't.
That was all of it. There wasn't a single person who liked him, and that's why he came to her. He came to her to feel liked, which she supposed she wasn't particularly good at. She didn't like him. She didn't like him at all, and she never hid it too well. She never hid it...But she could tolerate him and his hands and his lips if he paid her.
Maybe that's what he thought being liked felt like.
It had been so long since anyone had really liked Gretchen that she couldn't say she remembered.
"Well I like you," he threw back in a taunting kind of sing-song.
"I know," she sighed. "I can't get rid of you."
And there were his eyes again, too wide and too desperate. "Why would you try to get rid of me? I am a paying customer just like everybody else."
Gretchen clenched her teeth together, but she didn't say anything. She didn't know what to say. She let out another sigh and tried to keep her eyes closed again.
He was staring at her.
"You have no reason to get rid of me," he said. "I pay you."
"I know."
"Then why would you want to get rid of me?"
She took a deep breath...and let it out again into the cool blue-gray. If only it was dark...
"Why would you want to get rid of me?"
"Christ, I don't know!" she snapped, meeting his irritatingly pathetic eyes at last. "It couldn't be because you're annoying or anything - "
He let out a long, whiny sigh and snuffed out his cigarette on the wall, letting it drop to the floor. She rolled her eyes, but she didn't have a chance to chide him before he was sitting up, leaning over her persistently. She glared up at him tersely and he stared back down at her, a strange look on his face like she'd never seen before. She might have thought he looked studious, but Beni Gabor wasn't really the sort. He was certainly looking for something in her eyes, in the corners of her face. He was certainly looking for something in the blue-gray light with his blue-gray eyes.
Then that old, nasty grin found its way into his mouth and glinted in his eyes.
"You do like me."
"I don't like you."
"You do," he said happily. "You don't want to get rid of me at all."
Gretchen raised her eyebrows. "Am I mistaken, or did you only pay me for an hour...?"
"I want to stay all night. I will give you the rest in the morning."
"Give it to me now or I'll have Ghazi haul you out."
"You will not."
"I will, too. I've done it before."
"Ghazi will not get out of bed at this hour just to throw me into the streets," he said, though his eyes shifted about nervously and betrayed his confident tone.
Gretchen scoffed. "Please. He lives for the chance to throw scummy little bastards like you out into the street."
Beni eyed her suspiciously. "I have the money."
"Then give it to me."
"I will give it to you."
"Okay. I'm waiting."
His eyes narrowed. "I will give it to you in the morning."
Her eyes narrowed back. And it was him and her in the blue-gray, too bright and too cold. It was him and her and she was wishing it was dark - wishing it was black like it always was - so that she could tell him to get the hell out of her room. That she was tired and she despised him and if he wasn't going to pay her, then he was going to have to leave. She wished it was black and that he wasn't him.
She wished he wasn't so thin and pathetic and desperate.
She wished she wasn't so thin and pathetic and desperate.
She wished she wasn't glaring into his blue-gray eyes in the blue-gray light, hating every line and curve and corner and wrinkle to utter distraction. She wished he'd stop fidgeting and just sit still. She wished he'd leave that weird pendant of fat man alone, and stop running it up and down its chain. She wished he'd just stop, and disappear into the blackness where he belonged. Into the blackness where she preferred him to be.
She didn't want to look into his face and see someone too much like herself. She didn't want to look into his face, so unkempt and untrustworthy and comically desperate. She didn't want to see somebody who needed something - who had the audacity to ask her to like him because he needed it. Everyone needed something in this goddamn neighborhood and he wasn't special.
And she didn't like him.
She didn't like him.
She really did not like that man.
...Wasn't it enough that he could have her body? What difference did it make if she liked him? Nobody else cared if she liked them. Nobody else cared, as long as they could have her, they could pretend to be liked. They indulged the fantasy of being wanted and liked even though surely they knew, somewhere in the backs of their minds, all the while, that everyone else found them repulsive.
That Gretchen found them repulsive - just not more repulsive than starving or begging.
What did he need her to like him for?
"I have it," he said again softly. "I have the money. I will give it to you in the morning."
He blinked and glanced away from her, and scratched his chin idly. And she knew he was lying. She knew he was.
But everything was too bright and too cold and she hated the thought of forcing him out to bring another man into the blue-gray. Even more, she hated the thought of laying there in the deathly light alone.
She stared at him the way she never stared at him. Normally she tried not to study his face or his features, so that she wouldn't have to remember him. He came all the time, but she didn't want to remember him in between. But she studied him then, in the light of the oppressive moon, and she heard him let out a wheezing sigh, and something inside her twisted in a way it hadn't in quite some time.
"Okay," she said quickly.
He looked up, surprised.
"Okay?"
"You can just pay me in the morning."
He grinned and settled himself back down into her bed, and she tried to stop looking at him. She tried to keep her eyes closed. She tried to tell herself to lay down and pretend she was alone in the blackness where she was sure she preferred to be.
But the night was blue-gray and he was beside her, and she was letting him stay even though he didn't have any money. It was blue-gray and she wasn't alone, because he wanted desperately to stay beside her and lie next to her.
She laid down next to him, her shoulder against his, and he moved his hand just close enough to hers - just close enough to touch, knuckles to knuckles, but not intertwine.
It was warm beside him, and he breathed and she breathed, and she imagined that perhaps they were both liked.
end.