A/N: Unbetaed. Yeah, I just really felt like writing more IceAnybodys fic. Backstory and all.
Summer in the city is at odds with itself – sharp jutting angles of skyscrapers hitting fluffed, rounded bubbles of hot air. It all sinks in on itself like an unsuccessful soufflé. He sits on the stoop of his apartment as the midday sun bears down overhead. The ice cream trucks make several rounds around the block, playing their songs on tinkling bells that sound like drops of rain collapsing against the dirty street. He smacks his lips, feeling the dryness. Some kids in Harlem have sprung a hydrant and are dancing in the water. He sits on his stoop.
She's sitting across the street. She is like the buildings, the city. He is, too (he doesn't like to think of it). It runs in their blood the moment they're born. The rush of the city gives their heart a normal arrhythmia, the sounds of the city thicker tympanic membranes, and at the end of it all, a complete lack of caring. She is all hard angles, jutting bones, loud voice, and soft lips. She sits on her stoop and he sits on his, like Spain and Portugal after the Line of Demarcation was drawn, and they watch the Good Humor trucks track paths around their block.
Her mother slips her a dime with a soft smile, thin lips pressed together in a show of solidarity. She buys an ice cream cone and walks back to the stoop. He watches her eat it, a gesture with consequences neither of them understands; the vanilla ice cream trickles down her chin and her pink tongue darts out to lick at it here, there. He feels a little uncomfortable. She feels a little exhibitionist.
"Give me some."
"Get your own!"
He growls and darts across the street, limber long legs granting him leopard-like grace and agility; he grabs the cone from her and takes a big, satisfying bite. She slaps him. He just smiles at her, his mouth still full of the quickly melting ice cream, lips curling around the act of her anger. "You got a problem?" He arches an eyebrow, draws himself up to full height in an attempt to be intimidating. She doesn't flinch. "You ain't anybody, kid."
"Don't call me kid." She nibbles at the edge of the cone and he takes to watching her again. When she sits, he takes the seat next to her. "No one said you could sit here."
"It's the street."
"It's the stoop."
"You ain't the only one to live in this building." He huffs out a laugh. She finishes the cone, licks the ice cream off the tips of her fingers, watches with unsatisfied curiosity at the way he's looking at her. "You playin' with fire?" He's older than she is and she knows that – she still doesn't quite understand what's going on here. Her older sister has tried to tell her about men; Honey who stepped out of the apartment one day and never came back, but she sees her now and again, marked with strange paths on her arms and sunken-in eyes and a smile that says more of the world than her face does. (Men take what they want. You better be careful. If they want anything, you just look 'em in the eye, sis, and you say, how much?) But he doesn't seem like one of those guys that her sister told her about.
"Sure," she drawls, her accent heavy. "What kind o' fire we talkin' about?"
He leans in closer, watches the way she licks her lips when she's challenged. "You don't know, maybe you better not play."
"I can take care of myself."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
"And how are you going to do that?"
She eyes him. "I can take you."
He says something soft and murmured, tries for something close to the lines they say in the movies, but what he says doesn't sound anything like that. Nothing sounds right in his head so he just leans down and kisses her. She's not the first girl he's kissed, but her lips are soft and she can guess what he wants to do, moves with him, not against him, and her red hair is dusky and lies short, but just long enough for his fingertips to graze. When he pulls away, she releases a soft sigh and he smirks.
She was not his first kiss, but he was her first.
She looks up at him with bright eyes and he smiles. "That's playin' with fire." She smiles back at him, punches him in the jaw for the hell of it. He crosses the street and the asphalt Rio Grande that seemed so navigable before rises with the flood rains and she is lost again (Honey walks through the door one more time with high-heeled boots and advice, walks out with a tiny rosary pressed so hard into her palm from their mother and please, Honey, please, you can live with us, but they never took direction well, any of them).
He meets a boy named Tony at church that Sunday – their mothers congregate and chat about the goings-on in the neighborhood and what dishes work best on low budgets and god, aren't the gangs just getting out of hand? Tony is two years older than him, sneaks him out the back where they meet his friend Riff and smoke cigarettes. He takes two deep drags that make his throat itch and his lungs burn. He coughs and they laugh. Riff throws a punch and he reacts violently, instantaneously. His shoulder cocks and his fist flies before he's even really aware of his actions. Riff catches his fist and laughs. "You're quick. We could use a guy like you."
He takes the cigarette, sticks the filtered end in his mouth. "Use a guy like me for what?" he mumbles around it.
"Tony and me are goin' to start up a gang. You know, we figure the West Side's our home just as long as it's been anyone else's. We got first dibs. And we're willing to fight for it. You in?"
"What, and get my stupid ass killed?"
Riff lights up, the soft flick of a lighter accompanying the swishing of his Sunday clothes (a size too small, but his parents ain't got nothin' left) and then a satisfying hiss of breath. "We ain't got shit on the West Side," he says. "Ain't our turf worth fighting for? Our home?"
He doesn't say anything.
"God," Tony cries with a laugh. "You're fuckin' cold. Look, Riff and I don't play games. You're either in or out." He extends his hand.
He muses for a second. "I'm in." They shake on it.
Riff laughs. "You're Ice."
"Fuckin' right," Tony adds.
Ice, he thinks. There's something oddly fitting about it. (He doesn't think about the girl on the stoop across the street. Not really.)
They fight skirmishes and wars over their tiny scrap of earth, and slowly, Riff and Tony begin to accumulate a steady number of members. Some of 'em were Emerald rejects, something they want to do to prove something. He never wanted to prove anything. He keeps a lighter in his pocket, lights up before they go into a rumble. He ain't got nothin' to prove. It's all a manner of duty, honor. He figures just 'cause they're in the States doesn't mean they have their little issues of pride – his mother deserves more than a tenement apartment in the Meatpacking District. And they deserve more than a skyful of dirt and a satchel of magic beans for all their troubles. He isn't Jack – the magic beans don't even bring a motherfuckin' beanstalk.
The girl on the stoop grows up, follows him to a Jets meeting one day. The guys make fun of her – she is too angular for their tastes, too rough and tumble, too dirty. They ask her for her name and she replies, "Anybodys." He doesn't think about the time when they shared an ice cream cone in the relative calm and oppressive heat of summer, doesn't think about what he said, what he did to bring them to this place. She glares at him, and he accepts the fault. It is his fault, he is to blame.
"Get out o' here," he says, accent lingering over his words like a plague. She spits on his shoe.
"I hear her sister's a real whore," Action rambles, excited. "You know, works right up in the—"
He clenches his jaw, looks from Riff to Tony. "Shut the fuck up, Action. How are we supposed to focus on the rumble if you keep runnin' your mouth off?"
Action leaps to his feet, but he's nothing compared to the colossus that Ice is, towering on two long legs with a lankiness that becomes strength and intimidation in a split second. Action hesitates for half a second, and there it is again, the aggression that sets his shoulder to cocking and his arm to raise. Riff sets a hand on his bicep. "All right, all right. Knock it off. Listen, Action. Me and Tony got Ice, a'right?" Action grumbles.
That night, he fights Seamus in the Emeralds for the rest of the turf extending out, and he thinks about that girl who isn't a girl anymore, the one with the fight in her eyes and muscle on her bones. He fights like his life depends on it. He wins (he always wins); when he goes home, his mother is sitting at the kitchen table, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand. ("I wish you'd stop fighting," she says, sadly. "A boy like you could do so much."
"Ma," he grumbles. "I can't do nothin'."
She cries, and somewhere inside him, he feels guilty.)
She meets him the day after he gets his gold Jets jacket (he's one of their first members, and they don't have that much money, but he and Riff and Tony – they're the damn triumvirate), watches him strut like a rooster preening his feathers. He moves almost silently on the sidewalk and she throws herself in front of him until he practically trips over himself stopping. "What the fuck you doin'?"
"Look at you," she says, shrilly. "Where'd you get that jacket? Steal it off some Park Avenue bitch?"
"Park Avenue bitches wear men's jackets?"
"Fuck you," she spits. She grabs a cigarette from her pocket and lights it. She blows the smoke in his face. He wants to apologize for the past. (He doesn't.) She is taller, her hair shorter, but just as red. He walks down a back alley and she follows, unafraid. Jet or not, she's still of the opinion that she could lick him despite his record.
"Jets," he says.
"The Jets fuckin' replace your old neighborhood?" Maybe part of her is a little jealous, just like his goddamn mother. She doesn't say anything – he doesn't breathe. She punches him, her fist connecting with his jaw. It's premature. She knows how to fight logistically, but she's still unprepared. Her knuckles split and she shakes it out, her face set against the pain. He pushes her up against the brick wall.
"The Jets are family."
"You got family."
"Yeah? You family?"
"Wouldn't want to be your family."
"You want to be a Jet?"
"Riff's gotta let me in. I can fight, I can—"
"You can't do nothin'. Can barely punch me."
"Fuck you. I can slip in and out of the shadows. I'm so—I'm so small I can weave in and out and nobody notices nothin'. Stole some kinda statue from a broad on the L once." He's not stupid, unobservant – he catches the slight hesitation, hitch of breath when she lists her street cred. "I'm Anybodys." She is so hard, jagged-edges and fragments of glass outlining her silhouette (he almost forgets she has a family, a sister), but she shakes in his arms.
He leans down again (it feels so familiar, but he hasn't done it in years), his lips brushing against hers. It's vaguely romantic, he thinks, something that should be celebrated with orchestras and marching bands and torrents of rain. A city bus honks loudly, fire trucks zoom down Sixth Ave. She brings her hands up to his face, cup it with her hands as she kisses him back. They drink from each other – mutual prayer from two people too damned to do anything about it. He covers her with his body, presses her up against the wall. Her sister's words have sunk in a little more now, and she's older, certainly more wiser (that happens in New York City whether you want it to or not), and she pulls him against her, tugs him by his hips until they're up against the wall, bodies together, her back arched to keep their hips aligned. They may be poor, but they know how to do this – there's no money needed here.
His lips curve around hers, tongue sliding along her teeth and she groans. She's not supposed to do this, to give in so easily. If he breaks her heart on an apartment stoop, she's supposed to let it go and never think of him again. Her plan was to come here, punch him in the face, join the Jets, and live life as a rich son-of-a-bitch. She breaks from him to suck in a gasping breath; his lips spread fire along her neck. "God," she moans.
"This mean you forgive me?"
"You're a bastard," she laughs against his lips. It feels good to laugh, shaking off her fears into the encompassing smog of the skyline.
He kisses her again and she wraps her arms around his neck when they hear the soft sound of a throat clearing in the distance. Ice breaks away from her to turn at the noise. Riff. "Hang on," he whispers, wiping his hand across his lips. He shoves his hands in his pockets and heads over to him.
Riff lights a cigarette and eyes him warily. "Drop the broad."
"Riff, listen."
"No, buddy boy. It's the Jets. Or her." His eyes flash dangerously. "You want action, I can get it for you. Not her." He walks off as metal crunches in the background, salsa music blares from a nearby bodega. He saunters over to her. She reaches for him and he recoils.
She bites her lip and he can see her, dangling between who she was years ago and who she is now. "What?"
"Riff. I got to go."
"Yeah?" By the time she looks over, he's sprinting down the street. She wipes at her lips and cries in the alleyway. This is the way of New York – it tricks you before it chews you up and spits you out. She goes to 14th and 6th that night, buys a cheap bottle of vodka and spends the rest of the night drinking it on the stoop of her apartment building. She stumbles into her room drunk that night and her mother's prayers make her cry; her tears don't taste like alcohol (she wishes they would, it would make her stronger, somehow, somehow). Her sister doesn't come home that night.
Riff gets him Velma (or Graziella – he can't keep 'em apart).
She tries to bust in on their meetings sometimes. When she does, they all make fun of her, and he is no exception – as the third-in-command, he has a responsibility to show some kind of leadership. Especially since Tony flaked on them. She has something harder in her eyes now and he wonders how much longer he can hurt her before she'll finally walk away for good. When she punches him the fifth time around, it actually hurts – he cuts his lip on his teeth and it takes a couple days to heal. He feels strangely proud of her.
Things go by in a flash – sometimes he acts more irrationally than he wants to. Snowboy talks about getting in her pants once or twice. He reacted so violently, they all fucking thought he was crazy and refused to deal with him for the next three days. Only Riff looked him in the eye and said volumes more in those warning glances than in anything else. Action brings it up two-and-a-half months later, the idea that she'd be a great fuck. He takes him outside, lifts him up by his shirt and tells him to shut the fuck up. Action shakes himself out of his grasp and lights up, says that he needs to lighten the fuck up and that it was a joke.
Sometimes, late at night, he dreams of that stoop, of the ice cream cone, and of a totally different scenario. He wakes up sweaty and hard, fisting the sheets. She is fucking driving him crazy.
She isn't faring much better. In her cheap bed in her dingy apartment, she lies and stares at the ceiling, at the sky outside streaked with flashes of bright light. Her hands travel over her own body sometimes, touch and rub and explore, and when her eyes are closed, she sees his face, his body. She always comes (it just makes her hate him more).
The Sharks are a much harder opponent than they'd ever expected. They've lasted longer than any of the other gangs that have dared intrude on Jets territory. The rumble is coming up soon and he can honestly say, as he shaves in his hole of a bathroom, he's not sure which side to bet on. For as much as they give, they still can only take so much. They're evenly matched. And fucking Tony's all messed up (he's seen love before, knows what it looks like, and the man is fucking gone, but Riff only sees what he wants to). When they head back to the dance, he squeezes in a quick dance with her though she stomps on his feet and squeezes his hands so hard they hurt (he deserves it).
After Riff gets killed, he lets her in. He's waited long enough for her, and she takes the small favor that he gives her. He calls her buddy boy and she calls him daddy-o and god, he just wants to take her and kiss her until their lips are so swollen, they hurt. He bites the instinct down and runs to find Tony. They have to save their own.
At the end of the night, Tony's dead, Riff's dead, and they're all trying to deal with the consequences. After Action and Snowboy and the others leave for their own homes, they sit together, him and Anybodys, on the stoop of his apartment. He kisses her, running his fingers through her choppy short locks, pulling her onto his lap. She whispers "daddy-o" to him in between kisses and he groans; he peppers her neck with kisses, slips his hands onto her bare skin, pushes her shirt up inch by inch.
"Come inside," he whispers.
She bites her lip, nips at his. "Okay." He tugs her by the hand towards his room. "Your ma…"
"Don't worry about it," he replies. "She's visiting my aunt in Poughkeepsie." Anybodys grins and pushes him down onto the bed, climbing onto his lap like a feral cat. He pushes her shirt up and over her head, presses kisses against her collarbone, laves her breasts with his tongue. She throws her head back and moans, soft gasps and mews of enjoyment. His eyes darken and they undress in the relative dark.
She pulls him on top of her with a short gasp; his cold blue eyes pierce her own and she suddenly feels a little unsure. She runs a hand along the smooth planes of his back. "Ice?"
He leans down and kisses her, softly. Tenderly. "I'm sorry," he whispers.
He sinks into her then, and she is hot and tight around him. He groans into her shoulder and she whimpers, rolling her hips, begging him to move.
His movements are fluid and he knows what he's doing. His hands find her hips as he sets a rhythm; she arches her back, he nips at her shoulder. And in the end, the subtext and the history dies between their lips.
In the morning, he stirs first, though his motions wake her. They've lived in this place for all their lives – caught in a glamorous city with none of the glamour and all of the grit and the notion that the damn cops could be up on them in a second. They're used to running. He turns to her, looks into her eyes. "You hungry?"
"What the fuck you think?"
He laughs then, a deep, low sound that rumbles his chest. She smiles, gives him a quick kiss. "C'mon then."
They sit in the morning hubbub of Manhattan waking up, eating pancakes; the maple syrup clings to their lips and fingertips, makes them sticky. In the end, he takes her hand and they walk around Chelsea, watching tourists and the elite go shopping. He kisses her – his life feels okay now. Good, even.
They buy bagels and smoke cigarettes and sit in the park. The midday sun parks above their heads, and everything's okay.