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The Locket
Summary: “You’re unusual,” he snorted and laughed, replying dryly, “Yeah, well; I’m not the one wearing a Disney Princess locket, am I?”
Author's Note: Dedicated to VelvetSea, my wonderful beta and muse.
When he first mumbled out the question, the words half voiced and sliding out of his lips as if they were uncertain of whether they wanted to be told, she hadn’t even realized he had spoken. She took a quick draw from the cigarette, letting the smooth grey smoke billow out of her mouth unused, and continued to open and close the plastic clasp she wouldn’t stop touching. “I said,” he began again, clearing his throat, startling both her and the words he wanted to say from their hiding places, “where did you get your necklace?”
She shied violently; his words making her remember he was there. She clutched at the locket tightly and slowly turned her head to look at him, trying to believe he was there and not just a ghost of her mind coming to life as her thoughts strayed. “I- I bought it a few years back. With an old friend. Why?”
“It’s just a bit childish, don’t you think?”
She looked down at it, the small face of her favourite Disney princess looking up at her, the shiny paint that had caught her attention and the glitter that seduced her had long chipped away, the ugly colour of the plastic staring up at her instead. She had never noticed that the small locket she had worn around her neck for three years had even changed its appearance: to her the pink colour would always be bright, bright, bright, and the glitter would always mesmerise her once again. She laughed uncertainly, sad, as his words changed the thoughts she had kept of the necklace in one instant. “I suppose it is…”
He reached out suddenly and disengaged her clammy fingers from the warm- disgustingly warm- pendant, and she jumped and shivered as his calloused fingertips touched the smooth, pale skin. He stared at the faded picture, rubbing his broad thumb over it, sweeping over the smooth plastic slowly as if his finger completely covered the picture it would simply disappear, a small glimpse of a childhood gone forever. He leaned toward her neck, trying to inspect the locket, completely mesmerized by it the same way she had been, little more than a naive child herself.
“I like it,” he breathed out, the words hanging in the air between them, flowing in the small space that separated them, their naked forms nearly upon each other once again.
She swallowed heavily as he came closer, uncomfortable but feeling like the moment as if it somehow fit them. She moved her arm jerkily away, as if it behaved on its own accord, and mashed out the cigarette, trying somehow to erase the adult things that had tainted her life in the few years between the now and the introduction to the necklace. “Why?”
“Hmm?” The word was more hummed than anything, not spoken, vibrating against her arm pleasantly.
“The necklace,” she clarified awkwardly, “why do you like it?”
He thumbed over the sensitive skin of the inside of her arm, rubbing comforting circles that made her spine tingle and the chills continue the way up until she shivered violently beneath his warm touch, jerking her eyes when he started to chuckle softly, his chest brushing against hers every time he took a breath. “It’s… unusual.”
“You’re unusual,” she groaned out, immediately wondering why those ridiculous words tumbled from her mouth because she knew there were plenty of others she could say, something that would make him react exactly as he wanted her to: make him laugh, surprised, and lean forward to kiss her gently, pulling her closer by the locket and would hold her tightly as if he actually wanted to be there with her, as if he didn’t already have his mind focused on something –or someone- far, far away.
“I’m not the one wearing a little girl necklace.” She frowned and nodded, looking away from him, trying not look at him, trying not to see the cocky grin on his face as he mocked her without caring how she felt in the process. He only talked to hear himself speak, only moved to see how people reacted to how he moved his limbs, the sinewy muscles melding into rough and large muscles that could make a girl feel scared as much as she felt protected. “Hey, hey!” He was holding her chin now, turning her toward him, his warm, thick calloused fingers holding the smoothness of her skin. He could crush her jaw with the move of a finger without a thought, but by the way his eyes studied her then, the green searching to find exactly why she turned away from him, why she was so affronted, so he could find out why he said that made her want to cry.
“I’m sorry,” the words curled out from his perfect edible lips, lazy and gorgeous as the trail of smoke from a cigarette, or the slow way oil flowed in a puddle of water. His arm wrapped up her side under the sheet, stroking at the supple skin of her hip, running his nails over the highly charged nerves there, making her feel as if her body was on fire.
His hand gripped at her hip, holding her tightly against him, as if he wanted to keep her tight, wanted to keep them together, wanted to make two into one.
When their lips touched, it was with a hesitancy she never would have expected from him. His lips were soft and smooth, and they seemed to quiver and tremble between hers. His breath was warm and tasted hot, it seemed that colour or temperature would not seem to have its very own taste, but they do, and half the time the only way to describe how it feels, how it tastes is to name it.
He slipped his fingers between the chain and the long column of her throat, pulling her closer, tipping his chin at an awkward angle, the stubble on his face and neck rubbing against her skin, making it red and raw as if it wanted to bleed but wasn’t sure how.
There was a muffled groan between the two of them, whether from pleasure or pain, the sound of something breaking deep inside, the heart or the resistance, and she pulled away, trembling and shivering as he leaned in for more. “Please-”
“Please,” she interrupted, holding onto her locket, not wanting to look at him as he pulled away, startled and wondering what he did so wrong, “please. I don’t want to.”
“All right,” he told her, his voice gruff and scratchy as his throat constricted around the words he forced out, the beautiful lies. “Okay, all right.”
She stared at him, the longing in her eyes and her relaxed but defensive stance as she lay beside him in the narrow, dirty cot of the motel she picked out making her look and feel younger than she was, made the both of them feel older than their years. The words that she blurted out, the half mumbled truths set between the brilliant lies startled him, leaving him feeling dumb but wanting more, utterly hypnotized by the soft, low tones of her voice.
“I thought you had known immediately when I picked you up at the bar that I shouldn’t be there. You had that knowing smirk on your lips that made me wonder exactly how well I was playing this game, this game that- apparently- I’m supposed to be the master at. You studied me over the rim of a shot of Jack Daniels the same way I had studied you across the room over a,” she laughed uncertainly, fondling the necklace, remembering, “ridiculous fruit cocktail that I’m pretty sure was either a Hurricane or a Sex on the Beach.
“For the first time in ages, I felt more like the prey than the predator. But I brought you back here anyway, ready to dazzle you, but something held me back the second time- something tangible but just out of my reach.” She yanked on the necklace, wanting to break it and run far away from it, far, far away. “This damn thing is the only thing that told me to stop, to just think about it. Was it wrong? Was it wrong, for once, to listen to my mind instead of my heart?”
He stared at her, struck dumb by the open book, the monologue she had just given him. She started to yank nervously on the chain once more, her other arm wrapping over her chest to find a sense of modesty that was far too late in the making. He swallowed heavily for a few moments, wondering how the hell to respond to that, after she had just bared her soul and wanted his advice on how to handle her troubles when truth was he could barely handle his own.
Yes, he had known that she was underage, as soon as he walked in the door and saw her staring at him. The look on her face was too eager, the way her hips jutted forward too obvious that she was only there to get one thing, and didn’t much care one way or another how she got it. He indulged her. “Don’t break it,”
“Huh?”
“The necklace- don’t break it.” His hands slowly slipped up her sides, palms skimming over her ribcage, able to feel the rhythmic outward and inward contractions they gave as her breathing sped up and trembled, her heart fluttering behind, rushing her movements and thoughts. He took her hand and detached it from the locket, and she looked at him, flustered, lost, as if she had just fallen into the sea and had lost her lifeline. He pressed her hand against the headboard, holding it there, trying to make her stay still; trying to let her guess about what he was going to say. “That locket,” he started, speaking soft and easily, “is just as much a part of you as the scar you have right below your belly.” She flushed and averted her eyes, cursing the lighting in the room. Even with all the lights off, there was still more than enough light to see by, a stark white haze filtering in from the window facing the inside of the motel, and the faded yellow and red lights of the highway right beside. She had hoped the lighting would cover that certain mark, but that wasn’t the case.
“Do you want to know where I got that scar?” The look in his eyes, the sincere, genuine kindness, made her go on again. “I got in a car accident, end of my sophomore year. My friend- she died.” She was rapidly bringing back tears, something she was unused to, and she wondered why she was telling this story to him when she had never told another living soul. “I saw her die.” She was hysterical; the way a butterfly would flap against the sides of a jar holding it in, utterly desperate to break free. He kept his hand on her side, holding her, trying to be comforting. “It’s the only thing I have left of her, only way I can remember seeing her happy.
“Tell me; is it childish now to have an empty plastic locket around my neck? Is it wrong to just remember how it was to be happy?”
“No, no it isn’t.”
She looked up at him, hazel eyes flooded with tears. “All I want is some protection. It comforts me, the locket, in the way that sex, drinking and rock ‘n’ roll can’t. Shouldn’t that be a good thing?”
“But you still do those things,” he pointed out.
“Don’t enjoy ‘em,”
If he wasn’t so caught up in her angst, that would have hurt. “The necklace is a part of you; you shouldn’t have to want yourself to be rid of it. Wouldn’t you rather be a child than a stuffy adult? Being an adult is so dull.”
“I want to get rid of it; it holds me back, forever holding me back.”
“Conscience… or your heart?”
“Both. Neither.” She shrugged and looked past him, over at the wall, staring at the painting of the sea, only half seen in the dusky light and shadows. The painting itself wasn’t of any peaceful summers day, of people young and old frolicking on the beach, completely ignorant of life’s woes. No, it was the crashing and roaring of waves during a storm: all gigantic waves rushing up, grey and dark, foaming- frothing with anger. She’d even go as far to say that the scene was in the middle of a hurricane. Hurricane. She was blurting out before she even realized, “and it leads me to men who might just be good for me.”
She grinned stupidly at what he did next. With a suddenness that surprised her, he lurched forward and kissed the locket as it rested against her collarbone. “Yeah?” He asked, words muffled against her skin, “I like it.”
