Title: i heard the streets were paved with gold
Pairing: Lily/Teddy
Author: Aimy (lonely hands)
For: Kaye (what stars are)
i swore i'd chase until i was dead
i heard the streets were paved with gold
radio ; lana del rey
More than anything, she wants to be told that life is beautiful.
She'd be the girl with the cold eyes; that girl dancing all night and singing all day and all the fucking, all the fuck-ups, it'd all be worth it. She could kiss the boys in the dark and have them stay in the light of day.
But she's Lily and she burns and it hurts, it hurts.
She packs up and leaves at just seventeen and when he looks at her like that she thinks maybe he could ask her to stay.
It's easy enough being on your own, she realizes, but being alone isn't quite the same thing.
She meets a girl who calls herself Mags and then a boy comes along, a boy called Tom, and things get complicated but better. Mags takes her in and Tom tells her she's pretty and Lily sometimes forgets herself and smiles.
Smiles and laughs and still hurts but the good sort of hurt that warms her from the inside-out.
"S'not much," Mags breezes, leading Lily by the hand, "But it's all mine," and maybe Lily deflates, just a little. It's sort of a dump and Mags is sort of a nothing, but Tom smiles and winks and shrugs like it's not half-true.
And Lily holds Mags' hand and Tom waves and slinks off and Mags laughs and looks like she wants to follow.
Days trickle past without her notice and Lily passes the time curled in Mags' bed.
They play the same three CD's over and over, lisping the lyrics huskily into hairbrushes and tripping over each other as they bounce and dance about on the sheets. They shout and scream and holler at the walls and Lily feels perhaps invincible when there's no-one on the other side to tell her not to.
And when she gets hungry, Mags fixes her cereal and when she moves Lily can count every bone in her rib-cage.
"Tom'll come over today," Mags repeats on monotone and every day he doesn't she eats a little less. Lily slurps at her cereal and pours Mags a bowl and bites her lip when the blonde lines them up one-by-one on the headboard.
"Do you have any money?" Lily thinks to ask, just the once. Mags turns to her, wide eyes drooping. She shrugs, giggles and flicks a cheerio. "We could go out for a burger, or something?"
Mags shakes her head slowly, cropped curls bouncing gently. "I wouldn't want to miss Tom."
Lily doesn't thinks to ask again.
One morning, Lily wakes to find Mags picking at the keys of her battered mobile phone.
"Hey," Lily grumbles sleepily, "That's mine," she pushes herself into a sitting position to reach for the phone, "Don't go through my things, Mags," she adds as her fingers close over the screen.
"You have a load of missed calls," Mags says, smiling.
Lily shrugs slowly. "That's okay," she replies, slipping from the covers and stumbling to her bag, "I'm going to put this back here, okay? Don't look at it again. I'll find someplace else to stay."
Mags frowns. "You don't have to do that."
"Okay," says Lily quickly, "I won't. It's fine."
Smile firmly back in place, Mags bounds up from the bed and disappears out into the corridor. "Come on," she calls, "I'll make you breakfast! Hurry up, Tom'll come over today! We need to straighten this place up."
Lily sighs.
"Here you go," Mags announces, sliding a bowl towards her as Lily reaches the kitchen and grabs a chair, "This'll buck you right up," she says, grinning, before pouring vodka over Lily's cheerios.
Pursing her lips, Lily glances up at Mag's beaming face. "I guess," Lily mutters, reaching for a spoon and digging in, "It won't hurt."
"Exactly!" Mags agrees, sipping straight from the bottle. "You know, I think there's this gig in a few days. Tom's taking me, he promised. Wanna come? He won't mind, I'm sure. He thinks you're cool."
Lily nods and tries not to think too much into it.
"Hello, beautiful."
Lily hears Mags giggle as she leads Tom into the Living Room. "I knew you'd come see me," Mags slurs, "I said you'd come. Didn't I, Lily? I was right, wasn't I? I knew you wouldn't let me down."
Tom grins as he falls beside Lily on the couch, Mags following and landing with a soft thump on his lap.
"How are you girls, tonight?" Tom asks, completely focused on Lily. "Had a little pre-drink, have you? Been drinking all morning, I'll bet. Isn't that right, Maggie?" He laughs, throwing an arm around Lily.
"Mags," Mags informs him primly, "I don't like 'Maggie.'"
Lily shifts a little uncomfortably. "Maybe I should put Mags to bed," she suggests loudly, straightening up and attempting to pulls the girl from Tom's lap. Mags giggles madly, falling further back.
"Good idea," Tom agrees, pushing out from beneath her, "You sit down, Lily. I'll tuck Maggie up and then we can hang out, just the two of us."
Slumping, Lily nods. She steps aside as Tom helps Mags to her feet, leading the way to the bedroom with the two of them trailing behind in her wake. "Just through here," Lily instructs, flipping on lights along the way.
"Night, lovely," Tom says, guiding Mags to the bed, "You get some rest now, okay?" He frowns shortly as she makes to argue. "No, babe. I'm taking you to that gig, remember? We can talk all you want there."
Lily hovers. "Do you need me to call a cab?"
Throwing the covers over Mags, Tom turns. "Why?" He asks, tone light and teasing. "Want to get rid of me? There was me, thinking we could hang out; get to know each other a little better."
He laughs softly, backing her out of the room.
"Of course not," she replies with a smile, "Stay, if you like. I didn't think you'd want to bother without Mags. She's pretty fucked, isn't she? I guess she's had more to drink that I'd thought."
Tom claps his hands together. "Great," he says, rubbing his hands together slowly, "I'll get us both a drink, shall I? You sit down. You look exhausted."
I am exhausted, Lily thinks. "Thanks," she voices aloud, "I'm just going to run and get my phone really quick, okay? Back in a sec," she motions back in the direction of the bedroom, before going to check on Mags.
The blonde is snoring softly as Lily rifles through her bag. Picking out the phone, she shoves it in her pocket.
"Here's that drink!" Tom calls through, popping his head around the door. "Everything all right? She's dead to the world, look! You're a good friend, Lily, putting her to bed like that."
Lily flushes. "I'm coming through right now," she says uneasily, taking the glass from his hand and smiling her thanks, "I shouldn't have too much, though. It won't be great if both me and Mags wake up with hangovers."
"Agreed," Tom laughs.
The next morning, Lily wakes with a throbbing headache and a very stiff neck.
"Your phone's vibrating against my leg," groans a male voice, "Can you answer it or switch the fucking thing off? There's a girl," he turns, pulling his leg from her thigh. Her very exposed-to-him thigh.
"Um," Lily replies, digging around to reach the back pocket of her skirt, "Right. Uh, hello?"
The roaring voice on the other end is undoubtedly Teddy's. "What the fuck, Lily? Where are you? Who are you with? You've had everyone worried sick. Just... what the fuck, Lily?"
Lily cringes. "Listen, Teddy. It's early. My head hurts. So, please. Go fuck yourself."
Something against her back shakes. Lily starts in alarm, before remembering the male voice from before. She turns slowly. "Hi," Tom chirps, laughing, whilst motioning at the phone, "Lemme have a talk with this guy."
Lily hands over the phone numbly. "What happened last night?"
Tapping a finger against his nose with one hand and juggling the phone with the other, Tom plants a noisy kiss on the corner of her mouth. "I'm sorry," Tom says into the phone, "But Lily is a little busy right now."
He hangs up to the buzz of Teddy's string of swear words.
"What did we do, Tom?"
Tom chuckles. "Oh, Lily," he replies, raising an eyebrow, "You slept in the shower. With me. And you seem to have misplaced your knickers. I don't think it'll take you too long to figure out."
Her mouth straightens into a thin line, eyes hard. "Fuck that."
"Let's not mention this to Mags, hey? Wouldn't want to break her heart."
They go to the gig, just like Mags said.
Only, Tom leaves a post-it on the bathroom mirror, asking Lily, and Mags doesn't eat at all for three days and tells Lily she loves her five times in an hour and presses sly kisses to her collarbone when she least expects it.
"Maybe this isn't such a great idea," Lily whispers furiously to Mags, wiping at the lipstick on Mags teeth with a wad of tissue, "I don't really think he's going to show, after all. Let's not go."
Mags smiles manically. "He'll show. He promised."
Lily is torn between putting Mag's head through the mirror and hugging her. "I'm not feeling well," she lies desperately, turning Mag's face gently to look at her, "I don't want to go."
"Then I'll go alone," Mags replies firmly, "Tom'll come over today."
Lily sighs. "Tom'll come over today," she mimics, sick to the stomach with the both of them.
"I told you," Mags hisses, griping Lily's arm hard, "He promised."
Tom turns to flash them a grin. "Maggie, you go in ahead, okay? I've got a special spot reserved, just for you. We'll catch up with you in just a sec alright, darling? That's it. Save me a dance!"
Grimacing, Lily reaches for Mags as Tom pushes her into the throng of people drifting into the club. "I'll go with Mags!"
He smiles. "Ah, but Lily! There's someone who wants to meet you, sweetie. I can make you a star! You can sing, right? This guy, he can help you make it big. Anything you want, babe."
Losing sight of Mags, Lily shakes her head. "I'm going back to Mags."
"Nah," Tom says, traipsing an arm around her shoulders and marching her round to the back entrance, "That's not what you want. We'll get you a drink, calm your nerves and then we'll get you up on that stage, yeah?"
Lily stops short, throwing him off. "Stop. Just stop. This is all going way too fast."
His mouth twitches. "Well, that's alright. We'll just have a dance. That's alright, isn't it? We'll go get Maggie and we'll have a good time. I promise you, Lily. You'll have a good time."
But no, she'd already said. If she could just slip free of his grip; reach her wand from her left boot and either hex him straight between the eyes, or at least Disapparate right under his nose.
"We'll go find Mags," and it's enough to make her think twice but Merlin only knows why, "Straight after."
He ends up ditching her as soon as someone starts up a conversation with him, but he doesn't let her get away unnoticed without stuffing something small and plastic into her hand.
Lily straightens her shoulders and narrows her eyes and thinks she'll just throw the pills in the nearest bin but they're small and prettily coloured and she wonders if he wants her to sell them.
She's no drug dealer and she's no smack-head but maybe, just this once, she could do something a little more reckless than booze and fags and boys and looking out for Mags is exhausting, okay.
And they're easy to swallow and she finds herself a pretty boy to buy her drinks and it all goes down so smoothly. The pills and the drink and the sweet nothings he whispers in her ears and she doesn't even mind when he tries to kiss her.
Because Tom is watching her like she's his and she's not or maybe she is but she shouldn't like to be.
At some point the pretty boy leaves her with not much more than his number in lipstick on her wrist and the taste of his whiskey kisses and she's dancing with Tom and he's got stars in his eyes. He shines and she shines and they shine and it doesn't hurt, not at all.
She thinks if she leaned in close enough she could pull the glitter from the sockets and breathe in the shimmer if she could just catch one of his eyelashes and he's very beautiful, she realizes, but beautiful boys hurt.
Beautiful boys hurt pretty girls and average girls and then girls like her. Girls who drink and fuck and have walking disaster stamped across their foreheads. Girls who have reality shows or girls in films or girls on the front page of the newspapers.
The kind of girl that gets into a lot of trouble.
He'd be her trouble if her trouble wasn't old and cowardly and Teddy. Teddy, who she sees in the girl with the bubblegum pink hair and the boy with the blonde girl on his arm and Tom, the beautiful one, because Teddy was beautiful, too. The Teddy, she remembers. He'd been beautiful.
The Teddy sitting across from Mags is not beautiful. That Teddy is tired and red and clutching a bottle of vodka. That Teddy is here and that Teddy will take away the stars and replace them with something normal and dull and Teddy like coffee.
She's lost Tom somewhere in the mist of stars and colours and Teddy and Mags and she thinks, wow, nothing hurts. It doesn't even hurt when his mouth does that frowny thing or when Mags trotts off after Tom like a puppy dog and what's really great is that it doesn't hurt one bit when he speaks.
"You need to come home, Lils," he's saying, but she's not really listening. She's listening to the thumping of her heart and the beat of the music and the giggling of the girl at the bar. Merlin, she wants to laugh, too.
Lily doesn't speak, because that was always's Teddy's forte. Instead she smiles and takes his hands and tells him they should dance and thinks how she'd like to kiss away the traces of his frown. He's so much prettier with a smile.
And Teddy almost kind of smiles all by his self and Lily can finally laugh and be like the girl at the bar who isn't a walking disaster and has stars that aren't Tom's. She thinks Teddy could have stars for eyes, if only he'd hold her and tell her he loved her and smiled a little more often.
"Everyone has been so worried about you, Lily," Teddy mutters and he doesn't let go of her hands, but looks like he wants to, "What am I supposed to tell your parents? They were so hoping you were doing something wonderful."
But this is wonderful, Lily thinks. Her and Teddy and the stars. What could possibly be more wonderful?
Lily looks up and Teddy isn't there and Tom's lost his stars.
His face is inches from hers and he's screaming and Mags is glaring and where is Teddy, where? Her head is pounding and she misses the stars and she misses Teddy almost half as much, only not, much more.
And Tom is kissing her and Mags is crying, she thinks, and Teddy isn't there but the stars are in her head and they hurt, they hurt, but it's an okay kind of hurt. The kind of hurt that makes kissing Tom seem okay.
But it's not, because Teddy was there but now he's gone and she has this nagging feeling like he's not coming back. It's alright, when Tom smooths her hair and shushes Mag with a wave of his hand and tells Lily she's special and they're gonna make it and she's gonna feel wonderful.
Wonderful. Just like they wanted. So Lily says yes, it will be wonderful. And smiles and laughs and cries and thinks Teddy, where did you go, Teddy, why did you bother, Teddy? Fucking hate you, Teddy.
A lot, but not and Daddy won't be proud and Mum has sad eyes but Teddy'll say he tried even though he was scared. She was scared too, she'd say, but she's not there, she's here.
And it's not okay, but it'll be wonderful.
a/n: please don't favourite without leaving a review, thanks.