Burning Thicket

"I love you, you know."

"I know, I know," I said.

He smiled and hummed happily and I used my hand to cradle the crown of his head. He tilted it back, pushed a gritty pill inside his mouth with his tongue, and I fed him water from a mistily stained glass. He swallowed and sighed heavily. His eyes were like a dead dove's.

"Is that enough?" I asked. He nodded.

"I'm sorry, Paula. M'head 'urts so much, an –"

"Ey, ey," I whispered, and brushed back his hair from his face a little too harshly. I hadn't meant it. "It's alright."

"It wasn't like I didn't want to."

"Of course it wasn't," I smiled at him. He looked all sleepy and strange. I thought of Martians, and baby's gums bleeding out their milk teeth, and apes with big hairy hands. I thought of how pretty he might have been had he looked fully grown and human in the face. I thought of Niccals.

His eyes closed, and drifted open, and closed again gently. Anytime soon he'd be flat and turned to his left on the pillow as it soaked up a puddle of his drool. His lips would be unpleasantly wet.

He looked flimsy when he slept. I watched him, cocking my knee up on the bed and resting my elbow on it, taking a drag of one of his cigarettes. They were hand rolled through his large, shivering fingers as he smiled at me through the grey cloud and orangey light of the lamp by his bed.

"You sleep, Stu," I said softly. "Make it up to me tomorrow."

"I promise ya," he mumbled.

I ran my knuckles carefully, lightly, over the curve of his jaw. He had a shaving rash. He was sore and rough and prickly to the touch and I thought of nettle leaves. My tits had an ache below the surface like a bee sting. I was straining. I wanted him. I needed something. I always did.

I sat there licking my lips, naked and sucking a cigarette, watching him fall to sleep with my chin pointed upwards. I was getting bored.

He never reacted. I pinched his wrist and he just twitched, and so I breathed an eerie mist of smoke over his face and watched him cough and snuffle through it, like a rabbit in a burning thicket.

Turning from him I yanked on my bra. It was the white lace one he liked. I took it off and found a different one, dark silky purple. I pulled on my knickers and looked in the mirror. My berry-coloured lipstick was smeared over my left cheek and on his neck. I'd been sucking on his ear lobe and licking the skin beneath it. Then he had a headache and I fed him his pills.

I put on my shoes and pulled his parka around me, mashed the cigarette in the ashtray. My linen dress wouldn't hold against the cold of the car park; my Mother told me that when I was younger in autumn. She bundled me in ugly knitted jumpers even when it wasn't cold. She taught me a lot. When there is a problem you find a resolution regardless of feelings or discrepancies, and that was exactly what I did. She was alone, and she found blackcurrant and rum, and that was that. She was angry, and she swatted my backside and face and arms, and that was that. I was alone, and I found Stuart, and that was that. Means to an end.

I felt a bit bad. I looked down on him and felt love inside, but know I wondered if perhaps I had mistaken the symptoms, and all along it had been pity. He was such a dumb, awkward, funny little thing. Poor thing. I wanted the pity to be love. If I looked at him in the right light, or closed my eyes, the frail little blossom of it could grow a little, open.

But I couldn't be bothered to look after him like a good person should, because no-one could look after me; even though I knew he did try. He bored me. When we had sex it was always slow and soft. He didn't react. I wanted more, something. I always did.

I opened the door and left him to sleep. I thought Murdoc's lips, soft and cool and shiny as snakeskin over mine.

I walked.

A/N: Fresh from my little holiday I started writing this, as a warm up, at about nine o'clock. My first ever first person fic, eek!

Still, there's not enough Paula-fic around here. And though I hate to say it, 2-D fangirls, I think she's a bloody fantastic character to write. :P I'm not sure she's very in-character here, but whatever. I haven't planned a word of this out, so... I'm not even sure what I was going for! :)

Lastly, if anyone has any suggestions about writing other stuff, please let me know, because I'm running low on inspiration. Thank you!

I hope you all liked this anyway, please let me know what you think! :D