Title: Fog Cutter
Author:
sidhefaerOriginal Fiction: The Matt & Aleister verse
Pairing: One-sided Malei (totally just came up with that)
Rating: R
Length: 1581 words.
Summary: At the end of the day, Aleister can still pretend.
Notes: Rewrite of a little one-shot I did ages and ages ago. I really liked it and wanted to clean it up a little bit, since it explains a lot of Matt and Aleister's relationship.
The crowd was thick, a cage hips and legs and arms and torsos pushing in. A disgusting sea of sweat and neon and damp black, dark places, where hands wandered, minds fogged, thoughts cluttered with alcohol, where slick fingers inched along bare tracks of skin -- summer at night, a collective conscious that moved and undulated like a snake in its death throes.
Somebody's hands found his shoulder-blades, and he wondered why he was even here. He wondered as he let them splay against his back. He let them come around and grip his sides and he let them move against him. The breath in his ear smelled of tonic and gin and old tobacco as it crawled into his nostrils and grimacing for a moment, Aleister turned around. The man who held him was a handsome forty, with unshaved stubble and graying hair, hopeful, maybe desperate.
"Do you want -- would you -- my place?" There was a bit of a grin under the bristles, old enough to be his father, God, how fucking wrong.
Sneering, Aleister removed himself from the man's grasp. "Don't touch me."
A pause, cajoling expression. "Don't be like that -- "
"Fuck off," said Aleister, and he meant it.
As he moved roughly away, he almost could smile about it, like it was a really brilliant joke -- fuck, wasn't it all? Like not the last dream of company he'd destroy this night, and he was looking for it. The man's face. How sad.
Boo-hoo.
He went to the bar next.
"And what what you like to drink?" She asked, a petite blonde thing, with the fashion sense of a complete troll and the haircut to make it work.
Christ.
Aleister stared, a little, and then ordered his drink. He had to ask. And he did, after he'd taken a sip and let it trickle, burning, down his throat.
She pointed to her nametag, which Aleister would have noticed if he hadn't spent all of his well-worn and quickly fuzzing attention on her plain face and short hair and dimpled smile -- he'd not known a girl with parentheses for dimples, but they curved into the corners of her nostrils when she sent him an amused smile and straightened the collar of her shirt. God, it was a simple gesture, but it held all sort of memories that made Aleister want to -- drink more, pretend she wasn't affecting him, or leave and try to forget about it. Eventually he'd do one or the other.
He needed to drink more. Or maybe drink less. Or get his priorities straight.
Periodically his glass was refilled, but Aleister kept his eyes down on the black marble turned green, pink, purple with the lights. Customers came and went, songs changed, but still he stayed there and drank his drink until his limbs felt heavy and awkward and he felt less like himself and more like somebody who wouldn't look back and like it that way.
A rather long series of fingernails entered his line of vision, tapping away in the glow of radioactive pink. He looked up and was met with that gorgeous (not gorgeous, he corrected himself, familiar) smile again, this time less amused and more lively, framed with messy strands of blonde-sand-whiskey that changed to blue in less that a second.
"You've been here all night," she said.
Aleister shrugged. "Have I?"
She paused. "Listen, I get off of work now."
"Ah," he managed, then raised his glass and looked at it despondently, darkly. "I should leave."
"Guess so," she answered.
He set the glass down again, rather harder than he should have all things considered, and removed himself from the stool. "Here's your money. Thanks for the drinks."
"No, I mean," She started, grabbing Aleister's forearm from the behind the counter, "I get off of work now."
He stopped and stared at her again, and he could almost see her blush, or maybe he was imagining it. "Ah," he said again, a little less eloquently than before.
It took her five minutes to grab her coat and switch shifts with the next bartender, a pretty young man with short dark hair, but Aleister couldn't bring himself to care about that, somehow. The girl's haloed head floated in his mind like a hazy illusion, like the aftertaste of the alcohol. Simple. Plain. Right. The only thing missing were the stupid sunglasses, all different colors -- no, nothing was missing, what was he thinking?
He followed her to her car, something broken down and rusty and perfect. Her car -- of course, he was buzzed so high, he wouldn't be able to drive, even if the cool air woke him up, crisp and clean and everything the club had lacked, especially when they rolled down the windows and spoke nothing into the rush of night wind. What, he kept repeating in his head, What am I doing what am I doing what what what
"Your place," she smiled at him from the driver's seat. He told her where.
If it seemed odd to him, Aleister preferred to say nothing. He didn't mind. Oh no, he didn't mind at all. In fact, he didn't know what he minded at all now, did he have one, a mind? Sobriety was the only thing he knew he didn't want back, if getting drunk would bring him this. Whatever this was.
They barely made it through the door of his apartment before she was on top of him.
"You don't know who you look like," she whispered against his lips, nibbling on the ring of metal, bringing a quiet groan from Aleister's throat into the too-still air. He raised his hips to hers, surprised at himself. She sucked in a breath near his ear. "Oh."
He wanted. "Who do I look like?" He breathed roughly against her neck, pressing himself into the warm body above like it was something he could sink into and hold forever. She took a minute to answer, kissed him chastely, then swiped a soft tongue across his bottom lip and chuckled at his response.
When she got to it, "Her," was the simple answer, and a lot of things suddenly clicked into place. Aleister suddenly hated her and loved her intensely at the same time. He flipped her over, her back hitting the carpeted floor with a few cracks and small burst of laughter. Her legs lifted up and hooked behind his waist, which cradled and rocked against her hips. She arched daintily into him, mewling, reminding Aleister that he knew nothing about women.
He raised his torso from hers for a breather. She lay arms-out beneath him, ankles still crossed behind his back, small chest heaving. Oh, God, it was like he was right there...
It was so easy to pretend.
"Listen, I--"
"I know," she said, "me neither."
It was awkward, but it felt a lot like fitting two puzzle pieces together. Aleister clutched her flexing shoulder blades with chipped fingernails and panted into her mouth. Her breasts were small and rosy and she gasped when he touched them, experimentally at first, then with intent. She moaned and smiled and her eyelashes fluttered and it was all a little much for him, but it felt good, it felt like it was working, at least for a little while.
He whispered the name in his head when he couldn't hold on any longer.
They slept in his bed together, though it was mostly for convenience rather than comfort. The afterglow was best when her hair tickled his chin in the moment when he was between sleep and waking, and he could still almost fake it. When he really woke, she was sitting up on the bed, pulling on her jeans. Exposing a browned expanse of back that curved faintly in at her ribs.
"Thanks," she said, like he did her a favor. She smiled at him again, though still gorgeous, was that much more different in the stark daylight. He nodded curtly, and after she left his bedroom, he dressed himself in a pair of holed pajama bottoms and went to the kitchen to cure his growling stomach.
Had that been a mistake? Had it been something he couldn't have prevented? Stupid, stupid.
"Yo, Alei! Hey -- oh. Hello."
Aleister almost dropped the frying pan.
Matt was standing in the doorway, in front of the girl. She was staring at him in the same way that he couldn't look away from her, shocked and perceptive and it was obvious, even to Aleister. They looked too similar. It was too obvious, and there was no way Matt wouldn't notice that she looked a hell of a lot like him, was him --
Oh, no. No no no no no.
"Hi," Matt began awkwardly, with that lopsided smile and wide mouth that hers could never ever measure up to. Aleister wanted to die.
"Hey, man, sorry I interrupted something." Suddenly, Matt's expression lifted higher, into one of crinkled eye-corners and hands shoved deep down into roomy pockets. He snuck a sly grin at the girl. "So Alei finally scored, right? He's such a girl, y' know, really picky. You're lucky. He's a really loyal guy, when you get past all the thorns."
"I'm sure," the girl said, uncomfortably. Aleister wanted to hit her.
Matt's smile dropped a little bit, then returned-full force. "Well, I'm gonna go make like a tree, save some awkward pie for the rest of you. See you later Aleister, I can wait. Good catch." He winked at the petite blonde, then strode off down the apartment complex's hall.
Aleister and the girl stood there for a moment.
She looked at him. "I see," she said, and left, leaving the door wide open.