Power, Control, Respect
In which Courtney falls asleep, wakes up, smacks Duncan right in the kisser, and hears voices. Deals are made, tempers flare!
Duncan pulled the car up in front of an abandoned one-story shopping block, exhaled, and looked at Courtney. "Here we are."
"Where's here?" she grumbled. It took her a few blinks to remember she'd fallen asleep somewhere other than home.
"You mean you don't know your own city?"
She stepped out of the car and stretched, yawning. "Not really my city. Besides, I don't go to the places they're going to tear down…"
"And here I thought you'd be useful." Duncan walked around to the trunk and pulled out two bags; he tossed one to Courtney. She pouted, but took the bag anyway.
She leaned forward a little to accommodate the heavier load in a way that felt more like blandly responding to stimuli than attempting to ease the stress on her body. "Not without some coffee or sleep," she muttered.
Both Greg and Violet left the car through the same door. The streetlights let her see what the dark car couldn't—their faces. Greg had hair most girls would kill for—long, perfectly straight, dirty blonde. His square-ish face and baby blues matched Duncan's, though his features were a little more serpentine. He wore dark camo pants tucked into a huge pair of steel-toed boots, a seriously old t-shirt with a logo on it that looked like shredded splatter paint, and fingerless gloves. His ears were pierced so that they had holes in the center, which Duncan later explained was called "gauging." He had all kinds of tattoos, but she wasn't awake enough to decipher them. Violet, appropriately, had purple streaks in her hair and a little lavender headband. Her latex halter-top-and-capris combination blinded Courtney, but as she turned away, she noticed Violet also had spiked bracelets on both wrists.
"Tim Hortons around the corner? I could get you some coffee," Greg offered, thumbing at the main road behind him. Courtney nodded and muttered something which Greg interpreted as 'large double double.' "You got any money, bro?"
"Nope."
"Cool. I'll see if I can pick up some Timbits too." He linked arms with Violet, Wizard of Oz-style, and motioned her forwards. "Alright, V, we've got work to do!" Courtney could only shake her head and yawn.
"Still weird," she said.
"You get used to it." Duncan motioned towards the abandoned building before them. "After you, princess."
In exchange for his kindness, Courtney gave him a look reminiscent of an English-speaker trying to learn physics with a Chinese textbook. "Are you… serious?" she groaned. "The windows are broken and it's scheduled for demolition."
"And?"
"Even your car is safer than this. Someone will—"
"Nobody will, worry wart," Duncan interrupted, stopping her mouth with his index finger. "Like you said, it's scheduled for demolition. Nothing's safer than a ghost town."
The building hung low to the ground, with low doorways not a far cry from the ceiling. Most of the windows used to be storefronts, and some had colorful word splashes painted on them advertising their final sales. Most windows were missing or smashed, making the block look like a mouth missing teeth. She had brief visions of being swallowed alive by a geriatric strip mall and getting digested into merchandise, so she shook her head to get the image out. Duncan figured she was trying to stay awake.
"Alright, sleepyhead, let's explore this dump…"
Broken glass was everywhere. The place used to be a toy store, judging by all the toy cars and dolls strewn about. A stairwell went upwards, most likely to the roof. The walls were free of graffiti, but empty beer cans dotted the floor. Duncan went to check the register, and was surprised to see a few dollars and coins left over. He looked at half-dead Courtney appraisingly; he'd have to trick her awake. He palmed the money and put on a fake look of crushed hopes. "Damn, someone's been here already. Guess we better watch out, princess, maybe you are in danger," he whispered, moving toward her. "Calgary's bad side can smell a goody two shoes from a mile away."
The glossed-over sleepiness in Courtney's eyes slid away instantly. "I'm not a goody two shoes!" she shouted.
"Prove it."
She stood there, amidst the glass and beer cans and doll heads, staring at him, arms crossed. The angered smile she wore could have killed her lawyer at twenty paces.
Duncan laughed. "What, are you trying to stare me down? Or is that you puckering up? I dig that, come give bad boy a ki—"
WHUMP! In one wild swing, Courtney hammered Duncan's face with the full force of his own duffel bag, making him swing sideways like a whip. The blow caused the bag to pull open; a couple aerosol cans flew out and rattled across the floor. "Bad enough for you, hon?" she shouted, throwing the bag at the wall.
"Jesus, ow!" he yelled, staggering backwards. She started power walking towards him, with vengeance in her eyes. "What the hell's gotten into—mm." She inhaled his words first, then reached her arms behind his head and gripped his back with one hand, his buzzed black hair with the other. He ran his hands around her waist and held the small of her back as though he were molding clay, his fingers making rhythmic circles around her spine. She felt his exhales brush coarsely against her cheeks, twitched at the cold stings of his nose piercing, pressed closer despite his spiked collar prodding her neck. She kissed him like she owned him, like she needed him, like he deserved punishment, like he satiated all thirsts. Every breath twisted them in some new shape; sometimes they curled like vines, her turning her head sideways to try and find a weak point. Sometimes they arced, one or the other losing feeling in the knees from so much blood rushing to the brain. Sometimes they sank in tandem, both sets of knees giving way and mirroring their bodies. She stayed on the offensive throughout, her tongue advancing on and assaulting his at every opportunity, while he shuffled through strategies and maneuvers, sometimes defensive, sometimes evasive, sometimes in ambush. No matter what he tried, he was undeniably her captive. She rationed his breaths and put up with his escape attempts.
Without warning, she slid her hands around to his chest and shoved him away, panting.
"Wooo!" belted a voice from outside the window. "Sweet dance moves, Courtney!"
Duncan's hands held on to a phantom Courtney, his face undergoing signs of shock. Real Courtney glared at Duncan for a few seconds, and then broke out laughing. Duncan adjusted to the world and straightened his back, his face slowly shifting to a grin and then laughing, too. "You might stand a chance, princess," he said appraisingly.
"I stand a chance? Did you see yourself just now? I had you!" she cried, still half-laughing, looking ready to have at him with the bag again.
Duncan put a finger under her chin and raised it up, mock-judging her face, making mental decisions about her now-piercing, slightly offended eyes. "Better than bad, worse than bad. Plenty of potential, but no experience, and no followers. Lacks perspective." It was the voice his parole officer used when he read off the monthly behavior report—disappointed, but not surprised.
"What are you talking about?"
He let go of her chin. "I'm saying you could be the baddest demon queen in Calgary if you tried, but as it stands you're just a princess, princess."
"Why would I want to be a demon queen?"
"It's not like you'd be a henchman or a worshipper; you'd give demons a run for their money. How about this: why would anyone want to be student council president?"
Venomously she listed the reasons on her fingers. "It's good experience, it looks great on transcripts, it's an opportunity to improve the school and get to know people better! How is running a gang good for transcripts?"
Duncan grinned. "Don't lie to me, babe. Power, control, and respect. That's what you're after. You want people to react when you walk in a room. Transcripts make a great excuse, but don't kid yourself. No matter where you go, you'll always want to be on top of the pile." He knelt down on both knees like a supplicant and took one of her hands in his. "You want this," he whispered, and gently kissed the knuckles of her fingers.
Courtney was moments away from shouting that she had no desire to become a godfather remake, but some corner of her mind, the part that liked to make excuses about things like transcripts, crawled out of its cage, looked at Duncan kneeling beneath her, and whispered to her—"yesss." She touched the corner of her mouth and discovered she was smiling. She wiped the smile off her face and ripped her hand away from Duncan's.
"You have to tell me why you're here first."
"And then?" he said, forcing his grin into something more manageable, hardly masking how his eyes thinned into slits to keep from crying victory.
"We'll see." She stood back to let him stand up, her arms crossed. He looked proud, or devious, or both. She hated him; she loved him.
"Dudes! That was better than porn! Coffee? Timbits?" Greg exclaimed, running up to them.
"She doesn't need the coffee anymore, bro. She's awake," Duncan said, heavily dropping a boatload of subtext. "Fork over the Timbits."
"More like 'awakened,'" said the voice in Courtney's head. It sounded terribly inviting.
AN: Woohoo! The fun begins. :D You have no idea how much I enjoyed writing this chapter.
For those of you that don't know, Tim Hortons is a Canadian fast food chain that mainly sells donuts and coffee. It has an iron grip on the Canadian coffee business, accounting for 62% of coffee sales. (Starbucks comes in at number two, with 7%. Geez!) Unlike America, where fast food is tolerated or enjoyed but never really welcome, Tim Hortons is a Canadian tradition—the coffee is good enough to be addictive. Timbits are mini donut holes. "Double double" means two cream, two sugar.