Disclaimer: Yet again...I don't own anything :(
"Hey, you." Brit grinned at her and put his bag down behind the counter she was wiping down. Meat smiled, but didn't look at him.
"Hi." She muttered under her breath.
"Everything okay?" Meat looked up at him, and he gasped involuntarily. Her left cheekbone was covered in a huge purple bruise, bordered with green and yellow swellings that extended up to the edge of her eye.
"Fuck." He murmured. "Who did it?" She shook her head and shrugged off his touch on her shoulder. "I said who did it?"
"Ma mum." The blonde girl muttered, going back to her counter-wiping.
"What!"
"Shh!" She snapped. Brit clenched his teeth and blew the air out through his teeth to calm himself. Meat ignored him and moved onto the next table.
"Your mum...hit you?" She nodded silently. "Why?"
"She jus' does sometimes. She's decided that ah'm not good enough to be part of her family anymore. Ah don't know..."
He stood and watched her without speaking, wondering how long she had had to deal with this sort of thing, with the dread of returning home.
"Are you okay?" He asked softly, a new sort of affection towards her in his voice. She noticed it, although she wouldn't admit it.
"Yes, ah'm fine. Ye should be getting back. Ye'll be missed." He shook his head, unable to tear himself away from her.
"I'll take you back with me." She shook her head uncomfortably.
"No, ah shouldn't." Exasperation hit. Why was she staying in a place where she obviously wasn't happy, where she was getting hurt? God knows what else she'd had done to her.
In a moment of daring he held out his arms for her, never for a moment expecting her to let him put them around her. But she did.
"I don't want to leave you." She nodded, but didn't do anything about it.
"Will ah see ye tomorrow?"
"Of course."
Meat let him go and smiled sadly.
"Hit?" Madonna repeated incredulously. "What do you mean 'hit'?"
"Just what I said, hit. Her mother hit her across the face. All down here." He gestured to the side where the bruise had been on Meat's face earlier. A tarnish on her perfect skin.
"So she's being abused?" He nodded, still thinking about her. Madonna handed him a drink. "Get her out of there."
"Y'think?"
"Yeah." The woman put her hands flat on the table and looked seriously at him. "Honestly, even if she doesn't want to come, which I guess she will, make her get out. Or who knows what might happen." She finished as Paul McCartney wandered into the room.
"Hey, Brit, my main man, what did you find today?" Brit shrugged and gestured to his bag.
"Not much." He took a swig of beer. "Meat's being hit by her mum."
"What? By her mum?" The other man leant on the table, a look of disbelief shadowing his face. "Bring her here." Brit nodded and offered Paul some beer, which was gratefully accepted. "Don't let her stay there any longer."
Brit thought about how it would be if Meat came to live at the Heartbreak with them all. Seeing her all day, returning to find her waiting for him, waking up with her by his side in the morning, sleeping with...
"I'll bring her back tomorrow." He said decisively.
Brit couldn't sleep that night. How could she stay there? Did she not want to go back with him? He shivered at the thought of what could be happening to her right now. How was he meant to go to sleep when all he was thinking about was her?
Unable to stand it any longer, he got up and brushed aside the curtain the split his bedroom from the main room. He daren't leave the Heartbreak at this time of night, there would be Secret Police everywhere.
Halfway through his second beer, the logistics of how he was going to get her to come back with him struck. She would have to get some things from her house, where ever she lived. Then they'd just have to run for it. He doubted her parents would miss her, the disgusting way they treated her.
Tomorrow, he decided. Tomorrow he would bring her back to the Heartbreak, away from her old life.
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