Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life

Pairing: Blaise Zabini x Parvati Patil

Universe: post-war, EWE

Rating: M for themes, sex

Summary: Olivie Advent cont'd.

Prompts: Blaise x Parvati pairing request based on their dynamic in How to Win Friends and Influence People.

He's riding the bottom of some uppers when he sees her.

"Hey," he realizes, falling blearily to a halt. "I know you."

"Please. You hardly know yourself," she says, and doesn't stop.

"We fight like my parents," she whispers, and he's made her cry again, and there is nothing lower than knowing that's on him. There is nothing like this guilt, sickening. Nothing like his skin crawling with contrition and longing and fear.

He pours the wine from the bottle, letting it drip onto the contours of her stomach. "Thought you didn't want to see me again."

"I didn't."

He trails the tip of his finger from the base of her ribs to her navel, leaving a glaze of malbec behind. "What changed?"

Her eyes are closed when she says, "Saw it in my tea leaves."

For once, he hopes she's right.

"No, really, I know you," he says, catching her arm, and she gives him a slant-eyed look of distaste, or possibly loathing.

"You're dying," she says.

"God, I hope so," he tells her. "See it in your tea leaves or something?"

"I can see it on your face," she says.

Their first kiss is behind a locked door. He has kissed her many times before this in his head, and he suspects the evidence of that is clear. This kiss, though, is spontaneous, unplanned, and it's difficult to tell which of them is more surprised. He kisses her like a sob, and she kisses him back like a scream. Ultimately it was probably an accident.

It gets heated quickly, probably because of the anguish and rage which has nothing and everything to do with both of them, and soon he has a handful of her hair and she's shoving his hand under her skirt and it's pretty clear where this is going, and the only thought going through his mind is how much he wants to see her naked. That won't happen here, not now, but someday he plans to look at her long and hard and carefully, conscientiously, committing her to memory. He'll dip his fingertips in watercolor to paint the sharp bones of her hips.

She seems to know he's a mistake. "You're going to break my heart," she says prophetically.

"No," he says. No, not yours.

She sighs when he fills her, or he does.

"I think I'm going to let you do it," she mumbles into his neck.

They fight about his drinking. They fight about her tarot cards. They fight about where to eat dinner. They fight about whether she should get a cat. They fight about her sister. They fight about his mother. They fight about the situation in the Middle East. They fight about his socks. They fight about his friends. They fight about him. They fight about him. They fight about him.

"You're not even trying," she says. "You're not even trying to be alive."

He can't figure out what the fuck that even means.

She snatches the bottle from his hand and brings it to her lips.

"Someday you won't have me anymore," she says. "Bet you won't even see it coming."

Then she throws the bottle at the wall, letting it shatter, and vanishes the glass.

After the first night he sees her he becomes mildly obsessed, which is not something he typically becomes when it comes to women (or men). For the record, there are an endless amount of ways their first meeting goes differently, and almost none of them end like this. "Hey, I know you." "Yeah, we went to Hogwarts together." "Hey, I know you." "I know you, too. Bye." "Hey, I know you." Silence. "Hey, I know you." "Who the fuck are you?" "Hey, I know you." "Fuck off."

"Hey, I know you." "Please. You don't even know yourself." This is the only outcome that has him scrambling for an explanation, thirsting for one. He learns her best marks were in divination and her best friend died during the war and now she works for some sort of wizarding art collective. She's not an artist herself but she manages their accounts, showcases their work. She has chosen to surround herself with beautiful things.

It's easy, then, to show up at her gallery opening in his most expensive tailored robes, buying a piece off the wall within five minutes of entering. He looks for her and doesn't see her.

"Why that one?" she says from behind him, and he jumps.

"Fucking hell," he says, spilling his martini on the floor. She vanishes it before it lands, the motion so quick he glares at her.

"Why?" she says again.

"Why what?"

"Why that painting?"

"Because I like it."

"No, you don't."

"Fine, because I like you."

"You definitely don't."

"What?"

"You don't know me. And you don't like that painting."

"What makes you so sure?"

"Because if you like that painting," she says, "there's something seriously fucking wrong with you."

He stares at her.

"It reminds me of my mother," he confesses eventually, feeling stripped down to his bones.

"Yeah," she says. "That makes sense."

Then she turns and walks away.

Inevitably he resorts to begging.

"Where is she?"

Her twin has different eyes, a different mouth. He is exceedingly aware that he has never kissed this mouth, and he hates it. It feels mocking and cruel.

"If she wanted you to know, Zabini, you'd know."

Some nights he holds her like he's going to lose her. "You'd tell me if you were leaving me, wouldn't you?"

"No, probably not," she says, but her legs are woven with his and her arms are tangled around his neck and she is pressed against him, every inch, and so he thinks fears are mostly impossibilities, irrationalities. She wouldn't go, not her, because she's not actually very good, and certainly not very healthy. A good person or a healthy one would leave and find something better, but she's a little fucked up, like him. Little things. When he puts on his shoes she always looks like she's going to cry. She trembles sometimes in her sleep. She flinches when he speaks too loudly. Little things.

He's never actually considered anything precious before. Money does that to a person, so he doesn't know how to take care of her. How to keep her without hoarding her. He only knows how to waste things, misuse them.

He buys her gifts she doesn't use, and it infuriates him. "I don't want this," she says, tossing the necklaces back to him, the lingerie, the bottles of expensive wine, the candied chestnuts and truffles. "Stop."

Her rejection of him stings. He's giving himself to her and she says no you're not.

"The money is all I am," he snarls.

The look she gives him is 99% pity, 1% rage.

"I told you," she says. "You're not even trying."

For a person with hard edges, she cries easily. Sad tears. Happy tears. Tears of frustration. Tears when he leaves. Tears when he comes back. Tears when he says I love you. Tears when he says you love me, admit it, just say it, just tell me you love me and come home. Tears when he paints her toenails for her. Tears during sappy romantic movies. Tears when she draws the five of swords. She has brown eyes, liquid ones. At first she looks like the sort of girl who'd be pretty if she smiled more but eventually he realizes that when she smiles, she becomes this terrifying thing full of lethality and violence, practically cavernous with her joy.

Her beauty is the enormity of her heart.

It makes him furious when people don't see her. It makes him less angry when they do, but still angry. It's some intrinsic ownership reflex, provider bullshit, possessive-jealous fuckery that embarrasses him and makes him sweat. He wants people to understand that a single glance at her is not enough. He wants to understand how other people look away. The way he feels about her is a mix of resentment and poison. She reminds him of black coffee stirred with lavender sprigs. He thinks: I have to fuck her. Then he thinks: I can never fuck her, I don't want to get burnt.

In the end he does fuck her, only he doesn't, because even with his cock inside her this isn't fucking, it's something cliched and full of rose petals and bubble baths. He feels Byronic about her, Shelley-esque. She does some twisted shit to his brain that makes him want to rhyme. Why her? Because shut the fuck up, it's obvious, he has no goddamn idea. Maybe because she's been mourning him from the start.

"You're dying slowly," she says. "I know I'll miss you someday."

Then, because she's a little bit cruel, she adds, "Or maybe I won't."

Imagine some fucking oracle says you're dying. What do you do, heal? He doesn't.

He writes her eighteen letters over the course of eight days and then drinks for three weeks and then cries over the letters he wrote her. He throws a knife into the painting he bought, the one that reminds him of his mother. Underneath the painting is another painting, just kidding it's another dimension, just kidding he's on drugs. He's high for another two days and thinks about jumping off his roof until he realizes oh, duh, that's what she meant. He's been dying slowly since the moment he was born.

But then he comes down from the high and takes a four hour shower and thinks oh shit, I wasn't even on the roof. What the fuck?

But she's still gone.

Their third kiss is memorable because he's holding her hand and he comments out loud how cinematic this all is. The wind in her hair and the flower he's just tucked behind her ear and all that; it's highly literary.

He says, "How did I get you?"

"Animal magnetism," she replies.

The truth is she's funny and scary and her heart is bigger than his and her mind has all these nooks and crannies, twists and turns, and she sees right through him and he likes it. She says, "You're such a fucking fraud," and he says oh shit I am and kisses her gratefully, hungrily. He kisses her like he's eating himself alive, putting his whole psyche in her hands.

"Want the truth?" she says.

"Never," he tells her.

"I like how fragile you are." She laughs. "You're so delicate you make me look strong."

He's insulted and in awe. He adores her, slavishly.

"What do you want? Anything," he says. "Say anything and it's yours."

"Me," she says.

Then she kisses him until his lips burn.

She gives him the third best blow job of his life on his birthday and afterwards, she says, "God, I debase myself a thousand different ways for you."

"How does it feel?" he asks her.

"What, debasing myself?"

"Yeah."

"Really good." She smiles at him and he thinks she'll probably cry later. The cake is really beautiful. She might cry about that. Or maybe he'll get too drunk and she'll cry. He is hit with a mix of intense, insurmountable shame and glittering, opulent affection. "Makes me feel absolutely filthy," she says. "Terrifically gone to shit."

She kisses him again, and she is happy-sad, or sad-happy.

"I'm going to miss you," she says.

"Are you going somewhere?"

"Someday, yeah," she says. "Don't rush me, though."

Stay, he wants to say, but he doesn't.

"Come on," she tells him, dragging him back to the party. "Your degenerate friends are waiting."

He loses track of how long she's been gone. He sends so many owls to her gallery they start sending them back unopened. Is she there? No, she's not here, please stop this Mr Zabini, it's becoming upsetting to the artists in residence. Miss Patil is on sabbatical, no we don't know when she'll be back. She didn't leave an address or a message. We don't know who to ask, try her sister. Try her friends.

The truth is she doesn't have friends. When he realizes it, he starts to understand: she doesn't have friends. Not really. He was her friend. He was her friend and he hurt her, he was mean to her, he was a bad friend to her, he let her down. He loved her badly, so she left.

She tells him his palm says he has a big heart, that he'll live a long life. He has "air palms," all anxiety and artistry, she's jealous. Three children or no children, unclear. One lover but also, many trysts. Sensuality abounds, she muses, either teasing him or lamenting it to herself.

She kisses the center of his palm and curls his fingers around it, which is the only part of that he actually believes.

"Thought you said I was dying," he says.

"You are," she says, "but you're going to live a long life while you do it."

"Do what?"

"Die slowly."

"Sounds painful," he says.

She gives him a fleeting look of sorrow and her eyes briefly water, red-rimmed.

"It will be," she says. "It is."

"I know you," he says.

She cut her hair and changed her perfume, but still, it's unquestionably her.

"Yeah?" she says.

"Yeah," he tells her, "but you don't know me."

"I don't?"

"Not anymore. Whoever that was before, he finally died," he says. "The handsome gentleman you see before you was just recently born. Possibly this morning."

She arches a brow, then beckons for his palm. "Show me."

He gives it to her, and she studies it for a long moment. Several long moments.

"I've seen this palm before," she says, delivering her verdict.

"I know," he tells her. "You have."

"But you're different?"

"Unrecognizable."

"Clean?"

"Virginal."

She pauses a moment, shading her eyes from the sun.

"Are you here to take me home?" she asks, after perhaps another minute of silence.

"I don't need to," he says. "I am home."

When the gallery aides drop off the painting, he's hungover and much more broke than he was yesterday. Still, he turns it over to inspect his new purchase, spotting the label on the back.

Some People are Made of Death.

Oil on canvas, Parvati Patil, 2 May 1999.

"I wouldn't have answered that owl for just anyone, you know. I have a lot of clients. I can't meet with every rich prick who spends too much money on bad art."

"It's not bad art."

She arches a brow, disagreeing, and he changes his tactics.

"So, how often do you sell your own work?"

She sips her gin quietly. "Never."

(He will kiss her in ten minutes.)

"So this was…?"

"An exception."

(Nine.)

"You made an exception for me?"

"I didn't know it was going to be you, but yes."

"Why this painting?"

(His life will change irreversibly in seven minutes.)

"It was ugly," she says.

"It's not ugly."

"It is," she corrects him, sparing him a glance that says don't argue, and he obeys. "It is, and I wanted it to be. I wanted to make something ugly. If I made something ugly then maybe I would get it out of my sight. And if I got it out of my sight, maybe I could get it out of my body. And if it was gone from my body, then maybe it would finally be gone from my soul."

(Six.)

"Did it work?"

"No." Pause. "Not really."

"So what are you going to do about the ugliness?"

"Carry it, I guess. I don't know. Wear it like a cloak. Or a scarf."

"Or a noose?"

"Yep. Probably."

(Five.)

"I like it," he said. "The painting. Well, no," he corrected himself. "I don't like it. It makes me feel sick to look at it, and honestly I was drunk when I bought it."

(Four.)

"But," he said, "I don't want to look away."

(Three.)

"That's brave of you," she says, expressionless. "Or fucked up, I don't know. Perverse, kind of. Definitely a little sexy."

"Thank you? I think."

(Two and a half.)

(Two and a quarter.)

She drains her glass, rising to her feet and glancing toward her office.

(Two.)

"Want to go somewhere?" she asks him.

(One.)

"Yeah," he says. "I thought you'd never ask."

a/n: The compliment I value most is people who will read whatever I offer them regardless of what pairing is listed at the top. I don't expect many to reach this point, but to those of you who are here: Thank you, you're my favorites. Title of the story from one of my favorite albums.