Starstruck
Chapter One: If I Had To Choose A Way To Die It'd Be With You
By: Jondy Macmillan
A/N: I'm a bad, bad person. This brings the count of my SP fics up to what, eight? Gaaaaah. None of which are complete. Well, YCNGB will be complete soon, and I think NBtR is going to be pretty short at that. Which will bring me back down to…six? Shit. Gah. But I HAD to! The writing gods called, and I answered. Oh, and uh…I do not speak French. The only accents I'm used to interpreting are Asian/Indian/Hispanic…and my knowledge of British slang is limited to Harry Potter, Doctor Who, and Skins. So…uh…yeah. Don't expect much on that front. I shall try valiantly, and probably fall flat on my face. I figure at about twenty something their accents would have lessened anyway. At least that's what I'm telling myself to feel better.
The things they say about love; they're wrong. I've never understood why things like obsession and passion are thought to be amoral. Why does love have to be gentle, kind, and that's all? How can you say that the bad aspects of human emotion aren't a part of love? It's supposed to be all consuming, right? How can it be any one thing, and how can you say there aren't evil bits, like falling in love is ever cut and dry?
I'll tell you the truth. Love is horrifying. Falling for someone is a sloppy, messy affair. Its pain, and it's the worst kind of pain, because it can be wonderful. Love makes everyone a masochist. Love makes everyone a sadist. It's intoxicating to know that somebody is under your complete control, and terrifying to know that you're in their thrall too.
If people were of one sort, perhaps love would be solely gentle, and solely kind. But people aren't. People are slobs. They're vindictive. They're hateful. They're full of shit. They'll always abandon you. Love is just another name for letting someone destroy you. And you'll submit to it, willingly, all in the name of…well, you know.
My head's underwater. His fingers on my neck are like iron. My face is numb. I can't breathe. I wonder if I ever will again. He must sense my thought, because I feel his bruising grip on my neck pull me up. He lets me take a few gasping, panting breaths before pushing me back down into the icy rush. And I let him. I don't struggle, denying even my instinct to survive. Of course I can only deny it for so long before I feel my lungs ready to burst. I open my mouth, welcoming the stream into my esophagus, my stomach. I squint my eyes closed, silently screaming bubbles, and I hope the water steals my life from me before he can. I would really hate to think that I died for love.
He pulls me back out of the water as my vision begins to go black. So much for wishes. I can feel him pumping hard on my chest. He's going to crack one of my ribs. He's not even being careful.
"Sheet," he curses, his voice harsh and grating. I always told him that he smoked too much. He used to have this amazing voice. He used to be able to sing. He ruined it. He ruins everything.
I feel my stomach heaving. The water gushes from my mouth like a gurgling brook, a waterfall. It's still cold, freezing my innards on the way out. His fingers are like wintry steel, and I can feel them pressing into my abdomen. He's chanting, "Breaze, breaze, breaze. You bastard, breaze."
At first I don't even understand what the chant means. Breeze? What breeze? There's practically gale force winds out, but I'd hardly call them a…oh. Breathe. He wants me to breathe.
It makes me want to hold my breath until I'm blue in the face. I want to keep the water in my stomach like some kind of poison, chilling me from the inside out. Against my will, my eyes flicker open. I see him staring at me, his golden-brown lion's eyes glaring down at me, fiercely protective. Even if he's the one who was hurting me in the first place. Fine. I exhale.
Now I'm panting to catch my breath, to keep my stomach from churning a second time. It would serve him right if I heaved all over his camo pants. I imagine a big fat pile of vomit staining the front of his black wife beater. It gives me twisted satisfaction.
"You are mad," he observes. See, and people say the French have tiny brains.
"No," I correct, my voice strangled, despite the sarcasm dripping from it, "I'm tickled pink you decided today was the day to drown me. Really, I am."
"Tickled pink," he wraps his tongue around the unfamiliar phrase; I doubt he's ever used the word 'pink' in his life, "Zis sarcasm means you are mad, non? So I am right."
Satisfied, he sits back on his heels, still supporting my head with one arm. His bicep feels like it's made from stone.
This really isn't fair. He's not supposed to understand it when I use sarcasm. It's the one thing he doesn't understand; and from him I don't understand anything at all. How am I supposed to get the upper hand?
It's not like I have a nifty foreign language I can suddenly launch into. My French sucks ass.
I cough; long, wracking, dry coughs that make my throat hurt. You would think all the water I just swallowed would help assuage the pain, but no. That would require fate to like me, which I think I can safely say; it does not. If fate felt any pity for me at all, it never would have allowed me to meet Christophe DeLorne. On the other hand, as Christophe likes to say, 'fate iz a capricious beetch', so I don't take it too personally.
"'ave you decided to tell me what I need to know?"
"Fuck you," I spit. He doesn't even bother dodging. I watch my saliva hit his skin with a sort of fascinated horror. I expect him to retaliate. To hold my head back under the water of the brook. Instead hurt passes over his face, a lightning flash. If I didn't have a trained eye, I would never have caught it.
Great. I feel guilt for spitting on the man who has been trying to kill me for the last hour. Or at least torture information out of me. I don't doubt Christophe will kill me if he needs to, oh no, I've gotten over that delusion. However, I think that he might regret having to do so.
That's enough, in my mind. That's love.
Ain't it grand?
"You are mad," he sighs, not bothering to wipe his cheek, "You spit like a wildcat."
He's the wildcat, the lion. Those fierce eyes are trained on my face, and even now, his gaze heats me from within. My shivering lessens.
"Look. I'm not going to tell you anything. You know it. I know it. Can you just kill me and get it over with?"
"Kill you? Why would I kill you?" he looks puzzled, and I can't fathom why.
"Because that's what you do. You're 'Ze Mole'," I say, imitating his once thick accent.
"But you," he pauses, blinks, "You are Gregory."
"That is my name," I reply, not really getting it.
He shakes his head at my supposed idiocy. I hate him for it. He's always been the only one who can ever make me feel like a complete ignoramus, which is ridiculous if you consider my IQ is considerably higher than his. Possibly double it.
"'ow about we start at ze beginning, oui? Where deed you get ze guns?"
"I already told you. I'm not at liberty to say."
"It pains me to 'ave to 'urt you more."
"I'm sure."
He rolls his eyes, "You always must be stubborn. It's not an attractive trait, you do know zis?"
"Yes, because your attempts to introduce me to the silt formations of streams is very attractive."
"What iz zis silt?" he asks, confused. I watch him roll his tongue over the word. I sigh. My lover. My enemy. He's a moron.
"Don't worry about it," I groan, "I'm not telling you where I got the guns."
He stares at me for a long time. Then he says, "We 'ave reached an impasse, zen."
"What impasse?"
"I won't kill you, and you won't tell me what I need to know."
I still don't believe he won't kill me. Love's sadism is true and absolute.
He traces a finger along my jaw line. I know these fingers better than I know my own. I lean into the touch. He pulls away, only to smack me, hard. I feel my teeth grind together, the delicate bones in my cheek caving inward. He has the strength of a gorilla. I don't think he knows how to pull his punches, not even for me.
I find myself half submerged in snow. My body's so cold that I can barely feel it anymore. The moon is bright overhead, a face formed in the nooks and crannies of its craters. The face looks like its laughing at me.
"Gregory," he intones, warning me that another assault will come.
I ply myself up out of the snow, my clothes sticking to me like a second skin.
"Why would you want to be involved in something like zis anyway?" he demands with a quizzical expression, "You don't like war."
"That's the point, man," I choke out, "I'm going to stop it."
"Ze war?" he scoffs, raking a rough hand through his thick, spiky brown hair, "Impossible."
His dog tags dangle in front of me, the moonlight glinting off them like the hard edge of knife. I reach out, entangling my fingers in them. He glances down surprised as I pull his face close.
"Not the war. I don't care about stopping the war," I say, listening to his breath hitch in his throat, "I care about stopping you."
"Zis is…not realistic," he mutters, looking away, "Why would you need to stop me?"
"Realistic? Fuck that. They're going to murder you, Christophe."
He frowns at me, his lips pulling away from his gums to reveal nicotine stained teeth.
"Zat is not true."
"Oh, so I'm lying now?" I release my hold on his dog tags, falling back into the snow. I'm half blinded by the brightness of the moon, the stars.
He doesn't say anything, so I groan, "I took the bloody guns because they were going to use them to kill you on your next mission. It was stupid; I know they can get more at any time. It's the fucking government, after all."
He just watches me.
"You know what? Don't believe me. Do what you have to do."
He frowns at me. One finger traces my lips, and all I can smell is stale cigarettes. I can see the dirt so deeply ingrained in his nail bed than even an entire team of manicurists couldn't extract it. Lord, I'm such a pansy. Father always warned me that moving to America would make a queer out of me, and damned if he wasn't right. That's why I'm lying, bloodied in the snow, thinking about a French assassin's nail beds. My lips feel wet, and I dart my tongue out over them. Bastard. He smeared blood across them. Probably my own. I don't even want to think about how many cuts he's made on my body. How many scars I'll have to map every place he's touched.
I lick my lips again. The salty, metallic taste burns on my tongue.
Christophe notices. He puts a finger to his lips, and in the barely-there illumination of the moon I can make out the hint of red on his knuckle before he sucks the whole thing into his mouth like some sort of lollipop. The flavor of blood does more for him than it ever can for me. His eyes flicker shut for a moment, in something sickly akin to ecstasy.
"I really hate you," I murmur, even though I know it's a lie, and he knows it's one too.
"Self-deceit iz not good for you," he observes, withdrawing his finger from his mouth and pretending he hadn't looked absolutely sinful doing so.
"How do you know its self-deceit? What if I'm finally telling the truth for the first time in ages?"
He leans down, peering closely at my face, "Because, if zat were true, you would not be trying to save me from zis imaginary 'azard."
"It's not imaginary," I stress the last word, but I've given up on arguing. I'm sore and cold, and all I want is to be free. Free from him, free from loving him, and free from this terrible idealism that makes it so that even if I ran as far as I could, I'd never really be free in the first place. He chuckles, maybe because he knows. Maybe he can read my thoughts. Maybe that's why he likes to play this game of cat and mouse, 'round and 'round forever and again. Because he knows he'll always win. He must. It's the only way to explain his fetish for causing me so much heartache without ever worrying that I'll walk away.
"What do you want, zen? Do you want me to quit my job? Run away wiz you? Iz that 'ow you want to spend ze rest of your life? Fleeing, wiz a mercenary?"
"I was a mercenary too," I inform him, like he doesn't know. Like that isn't how we got into that situation in the first place.
"You?" he scoffs, "You were soft. You were too 'onest, too naïve."
"I was the only person who could ever beat you," I say, even though it comes out as a whisper.
He nods, "Oui. Zis iz true. But only because I let you."
I stare at him, "Why would you do that?"
I know the answer. So he could play with me. So he could train me to be his. He likes nothing more than breaking his toys. It's the only way he knows how to show his affection for them. He twists them and bends them and disfigures them until the day they look exactly like him.
"I adore you," he frowns, "I always 'ave. You know zis."
Of course. And it all goes back to what I said. Being loved by this man, by this creature, by Christophe DeLorne…it's not gentle. It's not kind. It's being cherished by something as fierce and primal as a lion. It's being caught up in a whirlwind so high that your feet never touchdown again. And maybe he loving him does a little too tame the beast within, but really it's more like being caged myself, so why bother?
Because I'm a masochist. Because I'm a sadist. Because I'm in love.
"So the question arises," I mutter softly, "What do we do?"
He grins at that, the feral grin I'm used to seeing him wear before he sticks a bullet in someone's head, "We beat ze odds."
"You're going to evade death?"
I watch him shrug, casual, "I always do."
Not this time.
A/N: Confused yet? This is more like a prologue than an actual chapter. A very long prologue. I wasn't going to post it, but then I posted the first chapter of another fic, which made my fic count thirty four, and I'm not a big fan of even numbers. I'm strange, I know. Please review and tell me how much my characterizations suck! Or not! I hope not, but I'm counting on the former.