[ fic ] i'm a slow dying flower ; mini, skins
Written for the prompt "don't take any kindness, it's a demand in disguise" by yon_lougawou at the Villainesses Ficathon. Originally posted here.
i'm a slow dying flower » skins. mini mcguinness (mini/nick, hinted franky/mini). pg-13. 1,099 words.
Mini's learned wariness well. warnings: uncertainty around sex, first time. I own nothing of these characters.
All boys want one thing from you. This Mini knows. (This her mother told her.)
Nick is nice off the bat, every bit the charming lad. He calls her gorgeous at a ramshackle party on a humid summer night, and when he tries to kiss her she lets him. His lips are dry, his mouth is wet, and he tastes so strongly of beer that she wrinkles her nose, but he’s a fit rugby player who wants to snog her, and Mini pretends it’s absolutely amazing, because she is sort of on top of the world.
When he becomes her boyfriend, like, officially, not much later, she gushes about it to Liv and Gracie, tries to hit the right note of excitement and keep the boasting out of her voice, no matter how fucking smug she feels. She’ll save that for all the other girls at school, she thinks, while she twines her fingers with her best friends like she can hold on to them forever.
It doesn’t take long for her to convince herself she loves Nick, with all the whirlwind passion of a young girl who wants to be in love before she even knows what it means. Mini’s never been the patient type.
And Nick must love her too, she thinks, because then it would be perfect, this thing, them. She decides it, so it is. This is how she functions: in control. Sets up the parameters, fits everyone else inside them, and sits back to watch her life replicate it all in perfect key.
Until it doesn’t.
Her fingers shake when she undresses herself, and it’s not like she didn’t know what was coming, but she still sucks in a breath, hates herself for the uncurling, terrible sense deep in her stomach that she is horrendously unprepared. She’s Mini McGuinness, she’s not supposed to be unprepared for anything.
She can see the exact moment Nick realizes her lie, and she tries to kiss the questions away, tries and tries and tries to keep this perfect (or at least to keep pretending).
It hurts more than expected, and simultaneously manages to feel like so much less. Mini’s not quite sure how that makes sense, even as she thinks over it afterwards, shivering on Nick’s mattress as he falls asleep beside her. She falls asleep much later, and she still hasn’t made heads or tails of it.
Her path intersects with her mother’s when the sun has only barely crawled up into the sky, and Mini pulls Nick’s sweater more tightly around her even as her mother’s arm wraps over her shoulder.
All boys want one thing, she remembers - her mother’s soft voice and the hand that stroked her hair as if it was sorry for the ways of the world, as if it saw this morning coming even ten years ago. Her childhood seems to hit her in face as they walk home in last night’s clothes, and it lingers with her when she pulls off the sweater inside, when she lies in her own bed and pinches the skin of her stomach and breathes deeply because that’s the technique she’s used to ward off sobs since she was seven years old.
She never (should have) thought Nick was different, because it’s not like she wasn’t warned, it’s not like he ever even gave her reason to. It’s comforting to think she saw it coming, though, to think that she had that much control - even if the knot that hasn’t disappeared in her stomach begs to disagree.
Franky fucking Fitzgerald tries to be so fucking nice, waxes poetic about what great mates they could all be, but Mini sees through it, sees just how bad things can get, how much potential Franky has to fuck everything up.
But suddenly there’s a new gang, and while she was freaking out she’s somehow ended up on the edge, which was never okay - is never okay. Mini’s pretty sure they all just think she’s a total bitch, but she shrugs that off, because it’s nothing new, because she kind of is, because even nice people want something from you if you do give them the chance, and she doesn’t exactly have an unlimited supply of herself to go around. There’s only so much to give, except she doesn’t get why no one else seems to have this problem, how Grace can smile so bright like she loves everyone, like there’s so much of her.
There’s less of Mini, but that’s what she’s always wanted, she thinks. She eats less, tries to physically exist less, and she pinches the skin of her stomach, doesn’t understand how there’s too much and not enough all at the same time. Somewhere along the way, she’s not exactly sure where, it became exhausting.
Franky does change things, and Mini would crow about how she saw it coming, except there isn’t much point. She stares at the other girl instead, like she can figure her out in stolen glimpses out of the corner of her eye, or pictures enlarged on her phone when no one else is around to see.
She doesn’t get it, doesn’t get Franky being nice to her after the shit she pulled, doesn’t get what Franky wants from her. She does wonder, when she kisses her for Grace’s play, when their eyes catch for maybe a second too long-but there’s Matty and Liv and everything twisted up there, and see, Franky is fucking things up just like she knew would happen. It’s easier to be annoyed by that, and Mini puts the cluelessness out of mind, because who cares what Franky wants from her, she’s not getting it.
(Sometimes, she thinks that’s a lie. Sometimes, she thinks she would give bits of herself away even if there was nothing left, if she thought she would get enough back to make her happy.)
But the point is, Mini doesn’t need it. Mini doesn’t need Franky’s niceness any more than she needs apologies from Nick. Mini keeps her chin up, just like her mother used to tell her, acts like this was all according to plan, this weird new gang and no more Nick for a boyfriend and somehow Franky fitted into everything in a way she still doesn’t understand, not fitting any of her parameters.
She starts over. New labels, new parameters, a whole new order of things, but she can still have some control and that’s familiar.
She doesn’t need niceness when she’s made of harder edges now, when desiring something soft and sweet was silly in the first place.