Because I Want You
Chapter One
Gray meets Green
He caught sight of her in the crowded subway. Dressed all in black, with an emerald green sash tied round her waist, she was a goddess to behold. He adjusted the school tie, a striped concoction of green and silver and took a step towards the vision in black.
Her hair was a storm of curls, not uniform, and not at all sleek—wild. Her eyes were outlined, he saw, in a green so deep it could be mistaken for black. Her lips, unpainted and slightly bruised and red from the worried biting of pearl teeth, were clamped firmly together. Her face showed only slight annoyance as she was jostled, swinging with the motion of the fast moving train. Her hand, a long lithe thing as pale as parchment wrapped itself round the grime laden pole—unconcerned, it seemed, with the germs most likely infesting the smooth metal. A pencil was stuck behind her ear, a bag, heavy and full to bursting, beside her foot. Feet clad in sneakers a size too big, and most certainly not of a female preference.
A boyfriend?
Draco couldn't be bothered to care, or find out. He simply wanted to talk to the goddess, sure that his looks and charm could swipe clean any memory of another man—leaving the mind willing to accept new images. His images.
He took that step forward, mouth readying to spew a line he didn't mean. Another pretty face. Another pretty body. Another conquest.
A hand clasped his shoulder.
"Where do you think you're going?"
Draco rolled his eyes and turned to his friend. "Over there. Why?"
His friend's clasp tightened, pulling him closer. "We shouldn't be here." It was a hiss, as well as a truth.
They both knew they should have taken the car, the Porsche rather, but Draco had insisted Conroy to take it home, that he and Blaise had practice after school and would be taken home by Mrs. Parkinson.
If only Conroy had known that Draco was dragging Blaise through the subway, to the area known as nothing more than the slums. A place only mentioned when most necessary as the simple thought of it left a foul taste in one's mouth.
"If we get caught, I'm going to make you pay dearly."
Again, silver eyes rolled, uncaring and unaffected by the threats. He turned back round as the train jerked to a stop, a sea of black exiting the open doors.
"Shit Blaise."
"What, did you lose your pussy?" Blaise sneered as Draco shouldered his way through the black, the blond head easy to follow even in the growing darkness.
"There!" Draco pointed, long fingers gloved in fine leather, his breath twirled in lightweight crystals among the filth.
Blaise followed that gloved finger to its mark, eyes following the departing figure. "Do we have to?"
But it was a useless question, he knew, as Draco grabbed him by his hand tailored coat and drug him through the exhaust heavy alleyway.
"You can't seriously…"
"Oh yeah?"
"When you said you wanted to go slumming…"
"Be quiet would you." Draco hissed as they closed in the space, the girl didn't seem bothered by the streets lined with men and women alike, begging, trading. And they didn't bother her. She passed among them, a ghost, one of them. But the ghosts lining the alley leered at the two boys in their warm clothing and scuff-less shoes.
"Hey there pretty boy." Draco felt Blaise cringe as the gap-toothed man with a growth of salt and pepper stubble stumbled into their path—deliberately. "Mighty cold out, ain't it, petty boy."
"Don't they teach you to share?" Asked another, closer now. Draco and Blaise closed the gap between their warm, clothed bodies. But the ghosts didn't come any closer…not close enough to touch, simply circling.
"Draco." The whisper was a plea which Draco ignored. He cocked a sculpted brow at the man blocking his path and took a step forward, the man taking one backward. Draco smirked, his eyes glittering with cool understanding.
He was untouchable.
They'd avoided a crisis, Blaise couldn't see it as luck, and shivered as the blank eyes of those too far gone followed his every step. All of this, all of this pushing of luck, just to appease a friend's grotesque fascination with the slums? Why? When they had everything they could want—let alone it was clean. Blaise could feel the exhaust particles, wet and sticky and gray, as they stuck to his unprotected face. One needed a contamination suite to visit this place. The air was clogged, choked with the wretchedness of everything in which it embodied. Unwrapping the scarf from around his neck, he pushed the material to his lips, wanting to inhale fibers rather than this despair drenched air. But the stench got through, the taste permeating his mouth and he knew now why his parents and their bobbing borage of acquaintances kept from mentioning such a place as this.
He'd make Draco pay if he caught anything unpleasant.
"Where'd she go?"
Like he cared? Blaise held the scarf to his mouth, mute and uncooperative as his companion made his own frantic search for tonight's fun.
Draco's sight washed over the street, finally catching a glimpse of brown curls. "Come on."
She entered a building, he saw, a building without a light on inside, windows without panes, glass long gone and home to only the lowest forms of life.
"Dracoooo." Blaise wanted to gag as his friend touched the infested handle of the door. "Can't we just go home? Pansy would be more than happy to appease whatever sexual…thing…you want to try."
His friend just didn't get it, Draco smirked. This hadn't anything to do with sex. That only happened to be a benefit at times and a burden at others.
"Would you sleep with her?"
"Fine. Just get this over with. Mother will be upset with me if I'm not in by two."
Mischief floated into the silver ringed irises and Blaise felt he might have profited more by persisting that they leave. But the door was open, and his friend was disappearing into those depths, leaving him with no choice but to follow.
"Well this was a brilliant idea."
"Shut up."
"Oh come on."
"Get out your fucking lighter, Blaise."
Blaise did, the light flickering briefly before the flame slid into life.
"Do you hear that?"
Draco listened, "Yeah." He looked around. "This way, I think."
Not that there was any other way to go, Blaise thought as they passed the boarded doors laced with glow-in-the-dark graffiti, a lace of another world. The steps that met them were no better off than the street outside. Cans, litter, dead things he would not contemplate and discarded clothes were scattered as fallen leaves, an artists darkest portrait. Blaise shuddered but felt a pull, physical and mental, urging him down the warped slats of wood. There was music floating in the air. Not floating—killing, penetrating.
A door, large and not at all moveable, blocked their way. Painted green, a texture rough enough that a body pressed harshly against it would find skin removed layer by meticulous layer till nothing but blood laden flesh was left to coat the metal. And from the looks of it—that had happened, on occasion more common than either boy wanted to dwell upon.
"Are you sure?" Blaise pleaded. "We can still go back."
"You want to do this as much as me."
Blaise bowed his head. Admittedly it was he who first planted this seedling of thought into Draco's blond head—but he'd never dreamed they'd actually do it.
He should have known.
"How do we get in?"
"A handle?"
It was then the door opened, only a crack, and a girl younger than them by a multitude of years glared out.
"What the fuck you want?" Her voice was hoarse, a cigarette dangling precariously between two scabbed fingers.
The two boys stared. What did they want?
"Entrance is twenty n'up."
Her mascara encased eyes shifted to look them up and down—a display in a store, they'd be perfect. Here…her lips curved into a vicious smile and Draco caught a glimpse of metal as she spoke.
"Let 'em in Danny." The door opened, Draco half expecting it to creak, but it opened with silence into a room that was anything but.
"Sixty."
"What?" Draco asked, his voice raised as he couldn't hear a thing now.
The girl rubbed her scabbed fingers together, a motion well known by those in the room.
"Money!" Blaise whispered in a shout.
That was never a problem, Draco pulled a wallet from his pocket, fingers quickly shedding it of crisp bills he'd put in only this morning. Paying for himself, and the friend who was trying his best to appear uninterested in the room full of moving bodies, exchanging fluids, heated music, and passing drugs. Drinks of amber, swirling with added powder exchanged hands, money slipped between fingers…promises broken, deals made in the quick blinks between light and color.
They moved like blocks, not flowing like most of the patronage of this weird, underground world.
Draco's eyes roamed the bodies. Some he recognized, public school students, not worth his time. But his interest was still on the green-sash beauty from the train. Ands she was no where to be found.
The music was too loud, the room too hot, everything unclean. The outside air, clogged with exhaust fumes, had even managed to penetrate this dark cellar, but the air was being stomped into the floor, allowing only stench of bodies to rise to nose level.
Blaise clamped his fingers around Draco's arm, not ever thinking to let go. At least not until he got comfortable in this new environment.
"Ya wanna dance, cutie?"
Blaise turned. A girl who couldn't be a year older than him winked. Her chestnut brown hair was sleek and straight, her teeth white and pearly. She smiled easily with her blood-red lips. Her eyes shimmering in the disco light, the glitter letting off sparks every now and then.
She gripped his hand, pulling him away. He let go of Draco's arm easily enough. His friend laughing as he watched Blaise get drug to the gyrating body mass.
Then the music ground to a halt. Draco looked up from his search as a man came on the stage, shooing off dancers. He was followed by others, carrying instruments.
"How you guys doing tonight?" the man asked.
The crowd, which had seemed so rowdy only moments before, shouted their hellos to the man who smiled.
"Guess what I've got for you tonight?"
And the crowd answered.
"Correct. And believe me this wasn't any easy feat. You know those two, they aren't exactly the easiest to get to come out here on a school night."
The crowd laughed. Draco was just confused.
"Hey blondie."
Draco's eyes landed on the redhead now leaning on the back wall beside him.
"You're new here."
Draco rolled his eyes.
The girl shrugged, pulling out a cigarette from god knows where. Draco couldn't figure out where you could put anything in an outfit that had hardly enough material to make a pair of decent underwear. She held the pack out to him.
"No thanks."
She shrugged, lighting her own. She closed her eyes as she inhaled deeply.
"So, without further ado, I give you two very talented singers who have yet to come up with a band name as they refuse to become a band."
The crowd cheered, as the lights dimmed to nothing but a cloud of gray.
"You're gonna love this blondie."
Draco doubted that.
Then came the green.
The music started low, the stage encased in that gray-green cloud. The green sparkled, swirling, wrapping around the gray possessively.
"Shine the headlight straight into my eyes…like the road kill, I'm paralyzed. You see through my disguise."
Draco's eyes caught sight of a green sash through the cloud. The girl he'd followed was on the stage, her head bent, swaying, like the body of people below her, to the man's voice.
She was alone on stage, her mike held away from her.
She wasn't the one singing.
The cloud cleared, green spotlights covered the stage.
"Cause I'm looking at you through the glass...how much is real? Just listen to the noises. Since I was born, I started to decay."
The girl, her brown curls shielding her face, slowly lowered herself until she was crouched on the stage floor, almost a bow.
The crowd did the same, even Blaise was pulled into a crouch by the girl he was with. Only Draco and the red-head remained standing—leaning against the back wall.
Then the guitars started, loud and angry, the drums beating them into submission, and a male form walked on to the stage.
He didn't saunter,
Or run,
Or jump.
No, he simply walked.
"It's just a different scene…I was staring at this yellow-haired girl. Strike up a conversation with this black-haired flamenco dancer. We all want something beautiful."
It wasn't a man, but a boy, no older than seventeen. He walked to the girl, pulling her to her feet, as he sang his lines. His voice bold and sad, ringing truth.
The crowd had risen…sometime, and was swaying now, their eyes focused on the stage, not one of them looking away.
The girl kissed him as he finished, their bodies pressed close. "I wish I was beautiful. Pass me a bottle, fill me with life..."
And then they pulled apart, facing the audience. The boy kept his tousled head down, his face nothing but a pale shadow beneath and together they sang. "Stare at the beautiful women. Smiling in the bright lights. Help me believe in anything. I want to be someone who believes…"
Draco felt his heart shudder, his heartbeat overtaken by the drum—no longer his to command. The boy was dressed much like the girl. Black, and green. The clothes hung loose, making it all the more obvious the lithe body beneath. His fingers curled round the mike which he held almost delicately, his black hair as wild as the girl's brown curls…non-conforming.
As they turned back to each other the girl shook her head, smiling. "Believe in me.
Change your style again. Come back to me awhile. Change your taste in men. I will paint my picture…"
His hand trailed down her cheek. "Paint myself in blue and red and black and gray. Gray is my favorite color. If I knew Picasso…I would buy myself a gray guitar and play…" He turned away from his partner then, his head thrown back. He swung as the drummer took his time in the spotlight.
Then his face came down,
And green met gray.
"It's been this way since Christmas Day. Dazzled, doused in gin. I'm killing time on Valentine's…waiting for the day to end. When everybody loves me, I will never be lonely."
Draco didn't dare to blink. He didn't dare to breath—not that it was even an option. With the guitar plucking his heart, the drums keeping it beating and the eyes of that…what did one call the most gorgeous guy?
And then he was released, as the Adonis turned back to the girl—who now was nothing more than a bystander in Draco's mind. She didn't exist. Couldn't.
And they sang, with eyes only for one another.
"Standing in the spotlight. I bought myself a gray guitar." His hand was trailing her face again, moving along the elegant jaw line. Draco swallowed thickly. "Airs and social graces, elocution so divine. I'll stick to my needle, and my favorite waste of time, both spineless and sublime. Believe in me because I don't believe in anything…"
If only that…that…Draco took in a shaky breath as the man turned to the audience once more, his eyes piercing. He was sure that this god was looking at him. Only him.
"I'm looking at you through the glass...you can't expect a bit of hope. And while you're outside looking in. Remember what you're staring at is me."
Before the last note had died, before the voice had trailed off, the lights were dimming.
Then there was only black.
Thanks for reading! If you liked, please review. If you like it, then there will be further chapters!
jd.
Song sang was a mixture of lyrics from Counting Crows Mr. Jones, Stone Sour's Through Glass, and Placebo's Teenage Angst and Change Your Taste in Men