aviary | CLOSED | prompt eight

[ The niggling itch under his skin is set off more by her own unease than his own perception of any third party. He's not attuned to that kind of thing, having grown up believing that whatever went bump in the night was probably just the neighbor's cat getting out again. There's a pinch in his brow when he glances back in the rearview mirror, head bobbing in a stiff sort of nod.

(Baby, she calls him, and he thinks it either means things are set to get better or she's gone crazy already. He knows how Polly Q works and never once has she bothered to be that kind of sweet, not to him and not to anybody.) ]

Text message, [ he says, free hand gesturing in the direction in which he'd left her phone. ] Didn't try reading it.

[ (Polly Q works one way, but Polly Q belongs to Sparrows. A little girl with a bad temper whose parents didn't want her, worth more shipped off to nowhere with no return address than taking up the spare bedroom and eating a girl-shaped hole through finances already stripped thin. Polly Q was nobody, and maybe still is nobody; she's never had anything, never needed and never wanted, but the girl hunched over in the back of Barry Weiss' car — she's different. She's something. If only by virtue of the fact that some dumb boy with nothing left to lose was willing to pack his only duffle bag on her behalf. It's maybe not the best bargain, but it's more than Polly Q ever had.) ]

Fuckin' right, y'didn't try readin' it.

[ More fumbling comes from the back of the car, interspersed with some cursing, all muttered beneath Polly's breath. There's a pause when she stops and takes a momentary breather, the pain coursing a little too loudly through her veins to just carry on, but it's not long at all before she's rummaging again, her hair hanging round her face in damp strands, the white too white against her face and her roots near to black in the ever-moving dark. When she finally finds it, and thumbs through to find the message, she curses again (louder this time) and throws the phone at the car door opposite, its battery splintering off and his screen cracking once, indelicately. ]

Jesus christ. [ Exhaling sharply, Polly drops her head into her own hands, that tenseness loosening to something slack and defeated. For a moment it seems as though she's going to cry again, her fingers crawling up into her hair while her arm throbs and throbs and throbs ]

[ It's a near miracle that he manages not to swerve when she throws her phone, the crack sending a jolt of surprise straight down his spine. ]

Careful where y' throw that thing, [ he calls, though his irritation is feigned at best. ] Haven't got the cash to spend on a new car, case y' hadn't noticed. 'Sides, 's just you an' me now, yeah?

[ The words stop somewhat abruptly, as if he'd realized that he'd just been talking in an attempt to fill the silence (in an attempt to reassure himself).

(Barry Weiss doesn't belong to anyone but himself — himself, and Polly Q, maybe. A little boy with a bad temper whose parents didn't want him, who didn't bother sending him away and didn't bother doing anything else, either. He'd been nobody, a failure in every career path except that of a vagrant, only ever worth as much as he had in his pockets.

But he has her, now. Kind of, anyway.) ]

Know y' don't need lookin' after, but you don't get t' argue this one.

[ From underneath the dirty mass of whiteblonde hair, she curses again. ] What th'fuck's that s'pposed t'mean?

[ She's not stupid, she knows what it means. It means, from here on out it's the two of them: Polly Q and Barry fucking Weiss, the biggest set of fuck-ups the world's ever seen. How long, she wonders, until it all falls apart, until he can't stand being around her anymore and turns out to be just like the rest. It's a miracle he hasn't up and hiked off already and there's a part of Polly that's convinced it would've only been a matter of time for them. They were salvaged by that she could only get off campus every once and a while, circumstances dictating that they'd see each other once a month, if that, fucking and fighting and fucking again before her twenty-four to forty-eight were over and it was back to the Academy all over again. There was no way, no way in fucking hell, that he'd have stuck around as long as he had if she was around all the time. And that's what this was, wasn't it?

Polly Q and Barry fucking Weiss. (She frowns under her hair.) Fuck, she thinks. I've fucked this up and we're fucking doomed.

Despite herself she sobs, the sound of it wracking her entire body and sending her into a fit of shivers and shakes. (Fuck you, Polly. Fuck you, you fucking asshole fuck.) Still, she tries to fight, though the followthrough is half-hearted and pathetic at beast. ] Y'don't get t'tell me what t'do, Barry. Okay?

[ With a lilt that betrays his words to be affectionate more than anything else: ] Shut up, Polly Q.

[ He's a fuck-up in every sense of the word, but once he gets his teeth into something (no irony intended) he doesn't let go. And he doesn't mean to let go of Polly Q. The more she'd stayed away, the more he'd wanted her, and now that they're together, he wants her more still, in a way that goes beyond fighting and fucking. Not maudlin, not with the way that they are, but close enough. Close enough that he says I love you and means it because it's never crossed his mind to lie to her, not properly.

And, truth told, it's almost always been that people run out on him than the other way around. (He doesn't blame them, in a distant sort of retrospect.) ]

[ Shut up, Polly Q, Barry says and — for once in her fucking life — she actually does what she's told. Not because she wants to obey (no, in fact, she wants to do the exact opposite) but because she can't bring herself to anything else. Her arm hurts, her back hurts, her eyes ache when she tries to follow the lights moving outside the car window and they ache whenever she closes them. In all her years at the Academy she's seen some heavy action and has taken some heavy hit, but this was different, this was damage done by her own sisters' hands. (And — first lesson — if there's one thing that can take down a Cartazonos girl, it's another Cartazonos girl; they're simply hotwired that way.)

Sulkily, irritably, Polly lets herself lapse into a long, trudging silence, the heels of her palms pressed against her shut lids, trying to push the pain out of her eyes like wine wrung from a grape. At long length, her voice finally quiet, almost defeated. ] Margaret. [ When she lifts her head a moment later it's just far enough for Barry to catch her dark eyes watching from the shadow of her own brow. ] It's Margaret Quinn.

My name.

[ One speed sign passes by in the window.

Then another. ]

C'n I call you Maggie?

[ Barry Weiss, ladies and gentlemen. ]

CLOSED | prompt eight | RUIN

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