Author's Note: Next chapter for "Put The Heat On" coming in July-thought I'd drop you guys a little short something during Shortaki Week, doing #Creator's Choice (not using all the prompts this time, unlike "Truth Cast In The Fresnel Lens" where I used ALL of them, RIP) that I already had half-baked until then! May/June has been crushingly busy, sorry to make you guys wait!
… … …
She trudged wordlessly to her bed and sank into the mattress, gaze downcast, before he'd even crossed the threshold into her darkened room. He fell back against the door, slamming it shut unintentionally. He didn't even care.
Arnold tossed his head back against the whitewashed wood grain, attempting to summon calm, self-control. His brows clenched in disgust.
The thunder of Mr. Pataki's words still rumbled in his ears, echoing tremors of outrage through him. Almost worse was the ringing silencefrom her mother and sister. The sheer distance of their negligent, detestable nothing for her.
Indignation was no stranger to Arnold, and this was far from the first injustice he'd witnessed towards her. And Helga wasn't easily disappointed by family at this point, as she rarely held them to expectation in the first place.
But when she did; when their fickle attentions lingered on her just long enough to dare her to extend her hopes, and risk…
He felt a rarer feeling roil dark and deep in his chest, leeching its way down into his fists. One he worked to keep on a leash, and to his disquiet:
Malevolence.
Helga pulled the chain on her bedside lamp.
She grabbed a nearby issue of this month's Wrestlemania special edition and pretended to read it with practiced indifference, elbows pinned to her waist as she held the issue high enough to mask her face from the nose down. It wasn't long before she flipped the pages without even feigning to scan them in pretense.
It both drained and somehow inflamed him further, seeing her like that.
The fact that he was in her room—and that the last time he was, they'd fought, didn't seem to matter.
In a rushing moment he couldn't stand to be away from her, but stalled, not wanting to bring this feeling of…hostility, with him.
Aside from marching back downstairs to give Mr. Pataki a run for his money, he couldn't think of any other outlet than kick out some of that pent up energy, striking the air above the floorboards as he stood in place.
He took a few long, steadying breaths afterwards, and moved to join her on the bed, jeans hiding the way his legs protested his languid movements in spasmed jolts.
He willed his legs to relax as they hung over the side with hers, their weight shifting as the mattress sank and pushed them together, thigh to thigh. The contact wasn't lost on Arnold; and figured, from her stiffness, that it wasn't lost on Helga, either.
He'd be lying if he said he didn't feel that familiar, entrancing heat where their bodies touched. But, at that moment, he couldn't even find himself caring for anything below the belt.
His voice croaked when he spoke at last.
"Helga…I'm—"
"So, whaddya think of the Jack arc in Devil's Dice?"
Helga had interrupted him with her usual, casual curtness, still not looking up from her magazine; her gaze and shoulders tight as it clearly went unread.
"Really dangling us on that last season's cliffhanger, huh?"
She turned another page, but her stare remained fixed.
Arnold sighed.
"...I—"
"Of course, there's only a few ways they can backtrack from that disaster. If things were really gonna shake out on the next season's premiere, they'd have to cut curtains on the whole show."
His chest ached in the tense pause that followed, before she continued.
"Kinda lazy, right? Tossing out a bunch of cheap drama to bait their audience like we're a bunch of mindless clods. Criminy, don't they know their cash cow of a show only got so popular because of its history of halfway decent writing, and not taking the easyway out?"
"Helga—"
"I mean, it is kinda stupid, right? Shooting themselves in the foot like that, thinking that just because the series's gotten so big that they can get away with being sloppy, like it's any other kinda lamebrain show for saps, and—"
Arnold clasped her wrist, cutting her off.
Helga swallowed, eyes darkening as she adjusted her grip on her magazine.
Permitting him.
Arnold hesitated. Then drew her hand to his knee, and placed his own over it; rooting her to him.
And waited.
Helga's eyes shut under the shadow of her furrowed brow. Bitten between hidden teeth, her lips pursed hard and inward, puckering the skin of her lowered chin. A rare display, but her walls stayed up—it was the only way, he knew, that she could bear his closeness right now.
That expression deepened as Arnold squeezed her hand in the stretching silence.
His words croaked out again, quieter this time.
"Helga…I mean, that was—"
"Don't say anything, Arnold."
"How can't I? That was just…"
"Don't…"
"Helga, I'm so sorry you're—"
"This is why I don't like having you here."
However soft her voice, no more than an airy rush between her teeth, his abdomen clenched like he'd just taken a punch to the gut. He was sure she didn't mean it, but it still struck as hard as some bitter, unloving truth.
He was beginning to realize lately that sometimes it didn't matter that he knew what her true feelings were.
When they came quietly, her words had power.
Arnold swallowed thickly, closing his eyes. Shutting that hurt out, he turned his torso towards her and pressed his forehead to her temple, firmly. Helga flinched; he squeezed her hand again, in a plea to stay with him, and exhaled shakily.
Maybe he shouldn't have said he was sorry, that of course she'd mistake it for pity—and he knew she could shove him away any moment, like she had, at times.
But she didn't.
"Well—I am here," he countered. "And, I can't imagine how they—anyone, could just…overlook you, Helga."
Helga paused, and scoffed.
"Pff. Yeah," she shrugged half-heartedly. "Cuz there I go, tromping down the halls," she gestured a march up and down with her shoulders. "Loudly announcing my presence to the masses as always…"
"No—"
Well, yes, he thought, but—
"Helga, come on, you…"
Arnold drew his arm across her back, his words bottling up. Then, pouring them into action instead, slid his hand under her undone hair, seized the tresses at the nape of her neck, and turned her head tenderly to face him. She acquiesced to the movement, eyes keeping shut under her creased brow…
Until she dropped the pretense at last, the magazine closing around her thumb as its pages splayed across her lap.
He pressed his forehead to hers in a firm, caring press. Wishing, like always, that he could will his thoughts into her with his own earnestness.
Their lips were inches apart when he continued, his voice deepening to a low whisper.
"You're incredible."
She hissed softly at his compliment.
"No. Really, you are. And I know, deep down, you know it."
"Heh," her breath came out in a shaky gust. "Yeah, you bet I do."
Arnold opened his eyes, and caught the sight of her own crumpled shut beneath her brow despite the blur from their closeness.
"I mean it, Helga," he replied, his voice hardening out its usual huskiness despite himself.
Forget them.
Believe me.
"You shine, even when you're not trying."
Her head shook against his, the humiliation she failed to hide twisting her features further.
He regathered his fist in her hair for a deeper hold, angling against her forehead with a resolute firmness, his nose brushing against hers.
The edge of his tone softened when he resumed, with no stubbornness lost.
"And more than that. And you're not just… 'loyal and brave…'"
He smirked ruefully, eyes closing at the memory of the lacking words he'd spoken to her at the Green Eyes temple in San Lorenzo, when all he could do was grasp feebly at her qualities as his heart took its fateful leap toward hers.
"If…my Grandparents, and the boarders, had been like that?"
He gave her hand another squeeze at the thought.
"Who—knows, who I'd be…"
He trailed off, wondering if he'd have recognized, or perhaps even liked himself at all, if that had been the case.
His knowledge of her traits and good deeds swirled in his mind—secrets she never told, but he'd discovered nonetheless.
The incongruity between her brusque carelessness, and her thoughtfulness.
The paradox of her overt self-centeredness, and sincere generosity.
Her twistedness, and her persevering, tender-heartedness.
And, still.
Would he have risked or sacrificed for others, if he'd grown up like that?
Like she had?
"Could I have been anything like you?"
His voice shook before swallowing, reining it back.
"So… strong, and… caring. Despite everything. Even when you're… hiding those things, behind your roughness..."
And more, Arnold's mind admittedly supplied, yet the edges around those harder feelings had softened, already forgiving the recent memories of her covertness and blunt nerve; which infuriated and impressed.
For a moment, his gaze drifted, then stopped; the leaflets bursting out from the edges of her poetry volumes, normally hidden away when he'd visit, catching his breath.
Arnold was, all at once, hyper aware and shivering from his proximity to her and the periphery of the total abandon scrawled in those purple inks.
While half of him still shrank in the singular focus of her wild, starving inner world, once he'd seen it—he'd finally dropped the other half of him like an anchor; humbled and utterly resolved, in the depths of those churning, zealous waters.
He brought their clasped hands up, to brush his knuckles against her trembling chin.
The pad of his thumb grazed over the soft line of her lips before tilting her jaw toward his, and no part of him was afraid.
If she were going to rip him apart in her starvation, she would have already.
"Would I have even been hiding?"
His lips dusted against hers.
"Would I have only been rough…?"
Helga was shuddering before he even kissed her.
Arnold could feel her holding back as he cradled her jaw, breath stopping—her stuffed feelings a current he could feel tracking through his fingers and into his own self regardless, growing his force.
He'd take control where his instincts told him she couldn't surrender to her own, even if for her own good.
If anything, he thought with impassion, she deserved to have some form of justice tonight, and the memory of its utter failure downstairs only made him slant his lips against hers harder, drawing her flush to him.
Helga sank at the first lingering swipe of his tongue, releasing the breath from her lungs at last.
She must have held it longer than he realized, rebounding in a fit of shallow panting. His own breath sped up, matching her quickened pace as she rushed her tongue over his, her moan muffled, and seized him by the plaid lapels of his shirt.
Arnold had no intention when he'd followed her to her bedroom that evening to make out. He even thought better of his current…intensity with her, despite the want in him.
That—what had just happened was hard for her, no matter how strong she was, and he should have been soft, he told himself. He should have been gentle, and not taken her dejection as submission to...this...
His fingers traced behind her ears softly, with guilt. He tapered off, kissing her chastely, going slower until he pulled away.
His lips stung when she yanked him back to hers, smothering his gasp.
Drawing to her knees on the mattress, she towered over him, fixed him to her with fistfuls of his shirt, and kissed him ferociously.
The room spun in a haze when she shoved him back on the mattress and climbed on top, pinned him down with her weight, and reclaimed him.
His breath broke out in hot, frantic pants, shuddering and hard under the steaming scrape of her wet, sucking bites at his throat; under the mercy of her bold, seizing hands.
Helga taking control back, he sensed, was her way of seizing that missing justice for herself. He didn't have to impart it when she could just take it.
But surrender it willingly, he did.