Author's note: How do I see Melanie? Not a dumb blonde, or a sex kitten, or a cold evil witch, or a little emo baby…but sort of all of them, to some extent. She's gullible and naïve, yes; but playful. She hides herself behind a calm, cool exterior, but she's really, really lonely, and hence? She just can't get a break. She never attracts men who want areal, stable relationship, just men who like to hang around the streets at night and talk about their problems (cough Terry, cough Ghoul too), which is all great, except she jumps in, and she puts out a little too quickly because she's desperate to be loved and belong as soon as possible, falls hard and fast, and gets hurt. Awwww. Ghoul, on the other hand, is bored, but looking for stimulation…such as a pretty girl with some mental issues. I love this pairing. Why aren't there any other Batman Beyond fics with Ghoul in them? I mean, you'd think he had hoards of fangirls, what with his gothic good looks and such.
And by the way, I have not seen King's Ransom, so screw it.
"So how come I never see you around any of the dance clubs?"
Melanie shot him a glance, one of partial interest half concealed by her heavy eyelids and obscured by her thick eyelashes. Melanie had always been lovely. It was the breeding. Sometimes she wondered whether or not her parents had ever actually loved eachother, and hadn't married one another for the looks—so that when the pair of them married and had children, the resulting offspring would be good-looking. It was undoubtable that her older brother Jack had always been handsome, when he wasn't basking arrogantly in the light of their father's praise, or sulking with greed…but she shook her head once, thick hair, the colour of a platinum blonde's without the peroxide, bouncing back over her shoulders. There was something about how he talked, this 'Ghoul' character, that interested her—false accent, casual and airy, almost mock demanding, though it would appear he really didn't care what her response was, or as though it didn't occur to him that he should care. From that quick glance, she glimpsed his hair, slightly longer than hers, falling over his face, but the front pieces were too long to smudge his heavy makeup. Her parents wouldn't have approved. Probably poor, living on the streets, mostly; parents not around much, or gone. He looked as though he were on his own. She averted her eyes in one sharp swivel of her eyeballs, blue irises focusing on the wet sidewalk in front of her. She was alone, too.
"Don't know anyone," was her sighlike response. She wasn't sure where she'd gotten a soft voice from. It wasn't as though she were quiet, though she tended to be at times. Her voice was just soft. A coo, a sigh, usually fairly low.
"You new?" She felt his eyes flicker over her face, but she didn't meet his with her own. She liked that he only spoke in short sentences—leaving out the verb when it wasn't necessary, but not speaking brusquely. It was informal and almost intimate—like he wanted to include her immediately. She got a cozy feeling of déja-vu from their conversation—as though she'd had it before with someone, though certainly not him. He seemed new, fresh, and altogether exotic.
"I keep to myself," she replied after moment, trying to come up with a reason. Why didn't she know anyone? She couldn't actually think of a reason for it, and she was somewhat startled to discover that she had never thought about it before.
"You didn't tonight," he remarked, and this time the eyes on her face didn't let up. She could tell from the corner of her eye that he was watching and turned her face in the opposite direction, as though she were looking off to the side.
"No. But then, don't you keep to yourself?" It was a fairly bold statement, which Melanie had no qualms whatsoever about making. She turned to look at him, thick curls wet against her soft skin. Their eyes met, and his thin lips slowly spread into a wide grin.
"Not tonight," he said, and then, slowly, reached his hand out, and smoothed the wet strands of her hair back behind her ear. His fingers touched her skin only briefly, never lingering a moment longer than was necessary to secure her hair behind her ear, and then his hand dropped. It seemed very natural, very un-sleazy, and it seemed so different from the usual attitudes of the young men like him she'd met in the past that she smiled back at him, then dropped her gaze to the puddles in front of him. They continued to walk like that for a little while, and then she said, "We're close to my apartment."
"It's up here?"
"We're just about there," she said by way of answering, and they continued on. Melanie focused on the steady pounding of raindrops, falling on her face, making her blink more quickly than usual, keeping her head down. She glanced over at him, shaking her head to free it of excess water. He wasn't looking at her, but he wasn't looking at the ground, either—he was looking straight ahead. His eyes seemed to be impervious to water, though his hair certainly wasn't. It looked even longer and darker, a goldenrod colour, water dripping from the ends of the strands, making them look spiked. His hair stuck to his high cheekbones and to the black lapel of his jacket.
"So you like the Screaming Crows?"
Her voice was soft, light with interest, but low and husky in its own way, as always.
"Yeah." Melanie liked that he didn't look back at her immediately—that would have seemed desperate. And she liked the way he said the word—it didn't sound like "yeah", the way anyone else would have said it. After a few steps, he spoke again, just as Melanie thought he would: "Do you?"
"Yeah." It sounded different when she said it—different from him. It was interesting, that they were both the same word. You'd have to speak English fluently to tell, listening to their conversation. "What's your favourite song?"
She wasn't hiding her interest. She never did, never felt she should conceal it. She didn't want men to chase her—she might turn them away.
Still watching him, Melanie saw Ghoul's lips turn up into a smile, though he didn't glance back at her before answering. "The Scarecrow. Yours?"
He looked back at her, and their eyes met a second time—she realized he was wearing white contact lenses, disguising the true colour of his irises, leaving only his black pupils. It looked eerie. It looked schway. She smiled and looked down at the ground.
"'The Porcelain Doll,'" Melanie said, in her low, soft tone of voice.
"You look like one."
His accent made it sound unprofessional and un-chivalrous and, again, un-sleazy. It was as though nothing got through to him, like nothing was important or even unimportant. Without thinking first or blushing afterwards, Melanie took a step closer to him, her shoulder up against his arm, for she was fairly petite and he was at least 5'9''.
She felt his muscles tense slightly beneath the thick, drenched fabric of his trench coat, then relax, not to a relaxed position, but to the same casual position she assumed he'd had before. She allowed her head to tilt slightly to the side, some wet strands of hair slipping onto his jacket, though of course he couldn't feel it through the heavy material.
"Thanks." She considered shutting her eyes and taking his arm, letting him lead her; just before she did it she realized that she couldn't. She was having him walk her home; she had to have her eyes open. There wasn't anything else she could think of saying, although it had suddenly occurred to her that he, too, looked like a Scarecrow. Not the one in the song, of course, who wore elbow gloves and Victorian-aged clothes. But there was an indefinable Scarecrow something about him that caught Melanie's eye, brought her attention to him. Did he manage to scare the crows? Who were the crows? Not Melanie, that was sure. She was intrigued. Far from scared.
Then, though, there was the matter of the porcelain doll. He'd said she looked like one, not that she suited the song or something. It was a relief, for while he was not like the Scarecrow, Melanie didn't want to think she could be like the Porcelain Doll—cracked head, glass eye rolling on the floor, the result of someone loving one far too much. Obsessive love kills girls like you, Melanie, she thought to herself silently. She shivered impulsively, a spasmodic little shake she couldn't control, accompanied by a chill running right down her spine and the feeling that her heart was hollow in her chest.
A hand touched her face.
"You all right?"
Melanie turned her face up. Her eyes met his. Yes, she could definitely see the contact lenses. He didn't seem too terribly concerned or worried, not in a frantic way, but with a frown. She hadn't seen him frown before then. It worked for him. "Is your apartment coming up soon? You shouldn't stay out in the rain."
Melanie stared back at him. "The contacts work for you," she said, looking at his eyes, then dropping her head down. It leaned very slightly on his shoulder. She was audacious.
She didn't care. "It's sort of schway," she said, low voice.
"Thanks." He seemed to sound as though that statement of hers pleased him, but not too much. He just took it favourably. Melanie moved her head slightly, and sighed. Her eyelids fluttered, but she kept them open. The rain was still falling as heavily as ever and they walked just as steadily through it, which was to say, rather languidly. Even though walking through the rain was unpleasant, it seemed to make one's movements sluggish rather than brisk. The rhythm of walking was soothing. Melanie didn't want to do any thinking, but her mind couldn't help but disobey her wishes.
On the outside, she was passive, compliant. Inside she was in turmoil. Melanie's first impulse with anyone she felt an automatic interest in was to start a relationship, that moment, that minute. If it was a true connection, everything would make sense. It had with Terry…everything with Terry had made sense. And then her parents had pushed her and she'd lost him. But now her parents weren't around.
Still…Melanie liked to argue to herself that most men she met she never even gave a chance. But what about the men she did give a chance to? That was something else entirely…even Melanie knew how quickly she gave in, how much she wanted people to like her from the moment she met them. She'd learned a little, but it was still hard.
She turned her eyes up, looking at Ghoul's face. She could not fathom what she wanted out of this…aquaintance. Did it count as a relationship? She doubted it. Her eyes slid across his face, quietly, imagining the feel of his skin against her fingers, trying to figure out what she wanted. What did she want?
Her apartment was coming up, she saw out of the corner of her eye. Did she want him to call the next day? Did she want to kiss him on the doorstep? No, she decided; she didn't want that. The thought pushed itself into her mind: would he call the next day if she didn't kiss him?
There it was, wasn't it? The reason why Melanie Walker wants to kiss everybody, she thought bitterly. She just wants to be loved. It was ridiculous. She felt annoyed with herself, and stopped before her door.
"This is it. Thank you," she said, in the same soft, low tone. He wouldn't know the turmoil she'd just been in, not at all.
Melanie's hand slid into her pocket, searching for her keys. Cold metal hit her wet fingertips and she pulled them out. She fumbled, fingers slightly numb, to find the right key on the bunch before placing it into the slot, then realized he hadn't responded. Melanie raked her fingers through her thick blonde hair, then turned her forget-me-not eyes back at him.
He stood there, seemingly nonchalant, as he'd been in the diner. For a moment, struggling with her own sense of ridiculousless, she had forgotten exactly who the man was and what he looked like; all she'd remembered was that he was a man who was walking her home. Seeing him again she remembered what was attractive about him. A strange hypnotic quality, a sense that he was a steady foundation, someone who knew himself, his place in the world.
What that place might be, it never occurred to her. The hand holding the keys went slightly limp.
"See you later, I hope, Melanie?" he asked, shrugging his shoulders back slightly, probably with the cold. This was absurd, she realized. It was pouring outside and she had no idea how far away he lived.
She sighed and glanced down, pushing wet hair out of her eyes. "Do you…?" She sighed again as he frowned slightly, not hearing her through the rain and taking a step or two forward. "Do I what?"
Informal, unchivalrous, unsleazy. Melanie took a few steps down the stairs and her eyelashes flickered upwards so that she looked at him. Her face was a little wet; the mascara barely ran. It looked like smudged eyeshadow, though Ghoul saw that, not she.
"Do you want to come in for a while? It's still raining pretty bad."
Ghoul's pale lips curved up crookedly. "Sure."
A shot of something, warm like alcohol sometimes was, went through her like a flash. His voice, the faked accent—the way he said 'sure'.
"All right. Can I get you something to drink? Tea, maybe?" She turned away and dashed up to the door, quickly choosing the key—the others went to different rooms in her house, to diaries, to the cash register at the diner—and placing it into the slot. The door opened automatically, as most doors did these days, except for the ones with manual keys.
She heard Ghoul walk up the steps behind her, so lightly that it was difficult to believe he'd walked all this time through the rain with her. And then, he spoke—accent and all.
"Hot. It's cold out here."
Melanie smiled and stepped into her apartment. "Sure."