Fic: Beast part i
Title: Beast
Rating: (PG-13)
Character:Victor Vadles, Andres Iniesta
Warning: a mugging
Disclaimer: not true
He had just looked so small and joyful. Victor had needed more.
Victor had been so good; he had almost forgotten what it was like to want someone until he spotted him
i
Victor had spied him through the chips in the black paint which had once carefully covered all the windows facing the street. There he was, sitting at the bus stop his head buried in some book. A deep burgundy scarf wrapped around his neck, a black jacket buttoned up. Plastic shopping bags spread around him, their contents nearly spilling out.
He smiled to himself, a soft smile meant for no-one but himself and born of nothing but his sheer enjoyment of the book. His bus came, and he left. Victor stayed pressed to the window frame for hours, his nails biting into the soft, decayed wood.
Victor should never have seen him. He tried to avoid looking at the people who lived in the city. He rarely allowed himself to peer out into the wider world, to watch the people race by forward in their lives. His looking out had merely coincided with this man’s bus time. It was nothing it, wasn’t fate.
Victor knew that the man’s soft smiles would quickly turn to horror or worse disgust if he ever saw Victor.
**
But memory could be a powerful thing; Victor began to compare the stranger’s smile to what he remembered of his mother’s. He had to see him again just to prove that he was just a man.
So Victor pressed himself against the window again, his fingers finding the grooves made yesterday.
But the man wasn’t there. Victor watched for hours but he didn’t show up. Not on the next day, or the day after until Victor began to think he’d imagined him.
But then, he was back. The same jacket and scarf, but a new book, this one didn’t make him smile. He frowned instead, deep lines furrowing his forehead. Victor wanted to reach out and smooth them away. He looked at his hands, huge and clumsy and hideous, not fit to touch such perfection.
He turned his back to the window, breathed in and counted to a thousand. He didn’t look back until he was sure the man would be gone, and then he gazed intently at the place where he had sat, that was all someone like him deserved.
But he couldn’t resist looking out for him again. He had been so alone and so good for so long. He was just looking; he could look and not touch.
The man didn’t even know; didn’t realise anyone was picking up the smiles that he threw away so effortlessly.
**
He came once every seven days, probably to shop in town judging from the bags, probably shopping for one. Victor didn’t want to hope for him to be alone, but he didn’t want anyone else to have a claim to him either.
It got darker, the man started to wear a heavier coat. The coat was navy, it must be getting colder. Victor wasn’t usually aware of the changing seasons; he never went outside.
**
The man was late one day. Victor watched his bus come and go. The panic returned, maybe he’d created another imaginary friend. He stayed at the window watching and pleading with the universe that the man would show up; would be real.
He saw the man come running round the corner; he looked spectacular with his cheeks flushed. He looked around in dismay when he realised he’d missed his bus. A vicious spark of pleasure ran through Victor when he realised this meant he could watch the man for longer.
The man settled down to wait for the next bus. He took out his book, began to read by the light of the streetlamp.
Victor was so caught up in the softly orange lit plains of his face that he didn’t notice the group, not until they were on top of the man; taunting, jeering.
They slapped the book out of his hands and Victor saw red.
He ran to the door and pulled it open, it clung swollen to its frame, its rusted hinges screaming in protest. The fresh air hit him like a slap in the face; he nearly choked with the unfamiliarity of fresh air. He froze in the doorway paralysed by something a little like fear and a little like memory. The muffled kicks and groans from the street jolted him back to reality.
He ran out toward the commotion and tried to shout at the group of teenagers to leave but all that came out of his throat was a painful strangled roar. They looked up startled and scurried rat-like back to their sewers.
The man was lying prone on the ground. It looked like he’d been knocked out, but he was still breathing, his chest rising and falling rhythmically. Victor turned the man’s face to look, his eyes widened then flickered shut. Victor pulled him into his arms and carried him inside.
**
And then, the man was inside the house. Victor laid him in mother’s old room, with its faded floral curtains and dusky pink bed sheets. The man belonged in there, with the beautiful and delicate things: the perfume bottles, the dancing figurines, the sparkling jewellery.
The thought of him in Victor’s cold hard bed was inconceivable.
Victor brushed his hand down the man’s face avoiding the reddened areas, very carefully touched his hand to the man’s hair, it was so soft against his palm. The man shifted closer.
Victor suddenly saw his crude boorish hand marring this face. He recoiled, burnt by the reality of himself and of this man. Chest heaving, he sprang to his feet and fled the room.
A cool breeze teased his matted hair; he’d left the front door open. He thudded down the stairs to shut it, each step taking him away from the man in his mother’s bed.
As he gazed out the door’ he saw the man’s book lying abandoned in street. He thought of how the man’s face had glowed as he’d read it. He walked out to it cautiously, continually on the lookout for another assailant. He lifted the book and smoothed its crumpled pages. He held it to his chest as he ran back into the house and slammed the door.
The book had fallen into a puddle. It was damaged, almost ruined. Victor took it to his room.
He didn’t sleep at all that night, he stayed attentive with his ear pressed to the wall trying to hear the stranger breathing.
**
Dawn broke casting her burning gaze onto the room in which Victor slept. She took in the peeling magnolia paint, the black mould which crept in from the window and the faded and worn carpet.
Victor looked at his bed; with its greying and ragged sheets lying crumpled across its narrow expanse like an abandoned lover.
He heard the man stir, he held his breath. The man startled and stood up suddenly. It sounded as though he stumbled; Victor wanted to see desperately. The door of his mother’s room opened.
“Hello?”
“Is anyone there?”
Footsteps down the hall, a knock on the door, tentative.
“Hello?”
A pause, awaiting a reply, Victor’s jaw was wired shut.
The handle turned, the door started to move. Victor lunged towards it.
He arrived too late, the door had been opened the man was standing there, looking surprised. His eyes were blacked and swollen, his lips had been split badly and he seemed to be favouring one leg. He was nonetheless breath-taking.
He opened his mouth, words came out. Victor hadn’t heard anyone speak in so long he had almost forgotten what language was.
“I’m sorry, did I wake you? I just woke up I don’t know the time because they took my phone. Thanks for rescuing me by the way.” He laughed nervously. His laughter and his voice echoed through Victor and the house.
Victor gazed awestruck at this creature in his home, the fundamentally wrongness of it overwhelmed by the desire to keep him there and simply have him.
“I’m sorry, I’ve woken you up and it’s probably really early and after you let me stay…”
“Sorry, I’ll leave.”
Victor reached out for him; couldn’t stop himself in time and his arm stretched towards him between them like a crag stretching out into the sea. The man looked at his arm with curiosity.
Victor gestured to his face, his voice still lost somewhere.
“Ah yes, I should go to the doctor do you have a phone?”
Victor shook his head, the man’s eyes widened.
“Really? Um well, do you have the time even?”
Victor nodded and step forward, closer to the man, close enough to brush against him, He headed for the stairs. The man followed him down and into the hall. Victor looked pointedly at the grandfather clock in the hall.
“It’s four in the morning?” the man asked in a whisper. Victor nodded, he trusted the clock absolutely. It had been his mother’s proudest possession; he wound it religiously.
“Gosh, that’s early.”
The man looked worriedly at Victor, who nodded.
“No-one will be about, and we don’t have a phone.” The man continued turning back at the clock and frowning. He chewed his thumb nail.
“Ah wait! There’s a phone box just down the street, I can ring a taxi.” The man beamed at Victor. He was so thrilled to leave Victor behind.
He started toward the door. Victor followed him. “It’s okay I’ve bothered you enough, I’ll be fine on my own.” He then lurched alarmingly to the side. Victor steadied him quickly, hands on his waist, he face so close and bruised and beautiful. Their eyes met.
The man looked away, “Or maybe not.” He laughed again. It rippled through Victor like a pebble dropped into a rock pool.
“Could you help me?” The man asked nervously.
Victor nodded.
They made it too the phonebox, the man’s body burned into Victor with every step. The man called a taxi. They sat side by side on a bench waiting for him to arrive. The man shivered, Victor shifted closer; he turned to smile in response.
“My name’s Andres by the way. I didn’t get a chance to introduce myself before.”
A badly dented taxi pulled up.
Andres stood to go, but didn’t turn away. The driver beeped his horn.
“Victor.” He rasped the word was like sandpaper in his throat.
“Thank-you.” The man said sincerely, his eyes were gentle again. He walked away. Victor turned away and returned to his home. To the quiet, to the safety, to the darkness.
PART TWO
http://scamall.livejournal.com/3508.html