you're too young & eager to love

3rd writing session piece, and let's just call it a wash. I may be misusing this phrase. The point is that Luke and Haven deserved better from me today, and I did not rise to the occasion. So sorry, my darlings.

Here are two sections of a piece that are crammed together despite not fitting in ANY way. My brain broke.

--



Stay away from the ones you love too much.
These are the ones who will kill you.
- Donna Tartt




“I love you,” she says into his mouth, her fingers against the back of his head with her nails like talons gripping his neck. Luke swallows those words like he swallows her spit and the taste of beer on her tongue.

By the time he’s done kissing her, her lips will be swollen, but it’s the aching bruised feeling between her thighs that Haven will be most proud of. Haven is like that: she appreciates pain, she sees it as a badge, a thing to be carried, and the longer you can carry it the stronger you are. She’s been shouldering a series of sleights and heartaches and grudges since before puberty, so her endurance is impressive. It’s a mental thing, she knows, this ability to persevere and prosper despite hardship, to make lemonade from the world’s most bitter lemons. Not everyone has it. Sometimes, she has even doubted Luke. He’s not as strong as she is, which is why he’s always needed to be coaxed, to be lured, to be quelled.

After they’ve battered each other, pushing the boundaries of their spirit and their bones, she lays across him like snake-skin. Their chests are together, slick with sweat, and she’s still straddling him, her knees on the outsides of his thighs and chafed red from the cheap carpet. There’s that pleasant ocean sound in her ears from her heart and pulsing blood, but there’s his breathing too, mingled with hers. With her face turned into his neck, she can feel each breath he takes. She counts them until she reaches ten.

Haven tilts her head up and bites his earlobe.

It’s too hard, and Luke sucks in a hiss with surprise, jerking his head to the left.

She laughs, her grin like a knife against his jaw when she nestles back into his space. One of his hands strokes the small of her back lazily.






When she turned seven, Sam Elders took a Walmart-brand ice-cream cake from the freezer and sat it in the center of their kitchen table. It was a vanilla flavored dome of white and yellow frosting with rainbow sugar confetti decorating the top, and the summer heat was already causing the edges to melt because that was the year their AC had broken. Haven can still remember how loud the plastic protective shield had been when Sam had broken the sticker seal and pulled apart the cover. It hadn’t seemed right, the loudness of that thin, cheap plastic.

She could smell the cake immediately. Without a working air conditioner, all the unclean smells of the house had seeped to the surface, and the air was thick and stale; the cake was the first fresh thing she had smelled in a week.

“Good girls get cake on their birthday,” her father had told her, his voice only slightly slurred.

“I didn’t get cake last year,” Haven said.

“Well you mustn’t have been very good last year, but this year, this year you were great.”

Brandishing an old butter knife in one hand, Sam eyed a slice then cut out a piece of the cake. It was a thick triangle, much too big for a seven year old, with a solid inch and a half of ice cream between two layers of vanilla cake. Haven watched with a pang of disappointment as he cut the slice in half before flopping both pieces on separate paper plates. He took the larger of the pieces, then he pushed hers towards her across the table, and she ate the cake with her fingers.

“If I’m really good today,” she asked, licking the frosting from the corner of her mouth, “can I have another piece?”

“Two pieces of cake in one day? Nobody’s that good,” he said.

“I’ll have Luke’s piece then. He won’t care.”

“Luke isn’t getting a piece.”

“Why not?”

Sam had eaten his cake in three bites. He’d washed it down with his leftover beer, and he took another swallow before answering his daughter. “It’s not his birthday, for one, and for the other…” he shrugged, leaving the thought unfinished.

Haven eyed the cake. It sat like a beacon, melting in the center of the table. Her mouth was still cold and sweet from her slice. “He wasn’t very good?”

“When is he ever?” her father had responded with a scornful sneer, and even then Haven hadn’t been able to understand Sam’s disapproval of Luke. Luke was nearly two years older than her, still a child himself, but it was Luke who usually made her breakfast and made sure she washed her face and brushed her teeth before they left to wait for the school bus each morning. It was Luke who held her hand when they crossed the street, and Luke who made sure their brown paper bags were full of snacks that they could share during lunch time. If Luke hadn’t been good, then she didn’t know how she could have been.

Haven had wanted to save him a slice anyway (she knew her father wouldn’t remember the cake by the next day, and it would sit in the back of their leaky freezer until it became freezer burned and inedible), but Sam had tossed the whole thing into the trash with a look of disgust. He’d left the kitchen drinking his beer, and Haven couldn’t remember the taste of the cake an hour later. It had felt like something to mourn, but she hadn’t.

Here we go, the final set of shorts, the second half of the thank-you gift! daintiestmartyr, I hope you enjoy!

Notes!

* There’s some repeat kiddos in this second set of shorts, but I intentionally tried to make them differ completely in tone, mood, and, well, even the subject matter. Also, it’s okay to have favorites. There, I said it!
* The Haven and Luke short is toxic as hell. It’s essentially a drunk fight-and-fuck scene, but things get nasty and violent. I also begin in the middle of it, so there’s not much context as to WHY they’re fighting. I just wanted them to fight. Fair warning.
* In an effort to not write sex scenes for every single short (I have to practice writing something else, damn it), I accidentally get Margot and Jasper into a bit of a tiff. So sorry. They deserve better. I don’t know how to write happy scenes! They're so boring! I said that too, okay!
* Harper and Oriol’s short is set a short time after they’ve started getting physical as a trio with Zane but before they’re going behind Zane’s back together due to their ~pair bonding~.
* Introspective!Palmer is the hardest thing to write. He really doesn’t get enough time/attention in my brain, so I struggled to, well, think about what he’d think about.
* The final short introduces a new set of characters! As a surprise! I kept it all vampire-centric to avoid stepping on fleshing out the nun’s personality and details and all that creative licensure. I’m also really digging the idea that older vampires “claim” territories, so Gideon gets to claim Linemell, running off lesser vampires and defending his turf until some bigger baddie comes in. If that ever happens.

( so Eden sank to grief )

This is a thank you to my dearest of dears, daintiestmartyr, who made me one of the best gifts I have ever received: a character-themed personalized calendar. Since she gave me 12 character-themed months, I am doing the same! … Except with writing rather than visuals since I have all the artistic skills of an undertaker.

I've been having a bit of trouble with my writing, probably because I haven't been keeping up with it as well as I should, so I tried to focus these as shorts and go off of the idea of focusing on a moment rather than having each short tell an actual full narrative. So! That's the idea.

Part One! 6 more to follow (eventually).

( I loved her against reason, against promise, against peace ... )

I'm trying to use my quarantine time productively by writing at least 1000 words a day. No better time than the present to get back into writing, right?

Haven, Luke, teen-aged years, and debauchery.


( I can't find the cure )

Companion piece! Or at least a piece from Haven's POV when her and Luke are teens and stuff is ~happening~.

( nobody saw it coming but the little red devil in me )

Sooooo, Haven has been on my mind lately. Probably due to the copious amount of Lady Gaga I've been listening to while driving around in this Virginia heat. I'm glad I followed my gut and decided to write with the siblings.

Originally, I was going to do the first half from Luke's POV and then write a second half with a different scene from Haven's POV that thematically connected, but ... I didn't want to push my luck. I'm happy with how this came out.

Thanks to my muffinpants for being encouraging and for finding a suitable quote for me to snag!


( hear my sinner's prayer )

Woo! Porn!


----





Haven steals one of the wife’s fur coats.

This is how she thinks of Rowena - not by name, but by title. The wife, the cripple, the recluse. Haven is only the maid by contrast and only during business hours. She’s also the mistress, the con, and the sister. Titles keep their roles compartmentalized. Easy. Manageable. Haven slips into each role as easily as slipping into warm bathwater.

Sometimes, the roles overlap. When she steals the coat, she is both herself and the maid, overcome with deviance in both forms. The coat is rabbit fur and as white as snow. Just looking at it, hanging, forgotten in the back of a closet already full of designer labels, Haven’s stomach twists with an old familiar craving. She can feel its richness when she runs her palms over the fabric, sinking her hands into the plush flesh. When she slides her arms into the sleeves and turns her face into the collar, she doesn’t see a maid wearing an ill-fitting coat in the mirror’s reflection. She doesn’t see a girl who grew up stealing soda cans from the local corner store or a teen who used to blow high school boys for a quick five bucks. She doesn’t see a woman whose entire life has been a story of cold jail cells and petty crimes.

She sees her face framed in fur and feels strength settle over her shoulders as the fabric shifts into place. She takes it off when she hears someone at the end of the hall but adds it to a stack of clothes for the dry cleaners, already knowing she won’t return it.

Haven takes it because she wants it, because in her heart she will always feel six years old: greedy and grabbing things out of her reach, things that, even as a child, she knew her poor fingers would never be able to afford. White trash, her town had called her, marking her as garbage in a town already over flowing with children of refuse. So now she puts on diamond earrings and rings that shine with solitary, sparkling jewels – rings that would weigh her down if she were ever caught in a flood – rings that her brother steals from department stores and the smooth hands of older women. She spritzes expensive perfume filched from top shelves onto her wrists and the pulse points of her neck, soothed by the smell of money.

She turns trash into luxury.





Their apartment is bare, devoid of the usual sentimentalities. Luke finds her in their living room, a shock of white against their lone piece of furniture – a threadbare couch they’d lugged up from a street curb upon moving and covered in old, mismatched blankets. Her legs are stretched out, propped up on a chipped glass coffee table, and she’s naked except for the fur. The coat hangs open, draping over her breasts, and the sleeves are too short at the wrists so he can see a string of sapphires decorating her left arm.

He smells like sunshine and freshly cut grass. There’s a smear of dirt across his jaw from where he rubbed his face while wearing his gardener gloves. In dark jeans and a shirt stained with sweat, Luke looks the part he’s trying to play: an honest man, lumbering away for a honest day’s pay. But the split of his mouth when he grins and the predatory, leisurely way he drags his eyes over her shatters the illusion. It’s an expression he hides well during the day, but the last bits of the charade fall away when he kicks the apartment door closed behind him.

“Welcome home, dear,” Haven croons in a fake aristocratic accent – something between Katharine Hepburn and Ingrid Bergman. “Hard day at the office?”

“Nothing a dry martini and a blowjob won’t fix,” Luke says with a smirk, pulling his shirt off by the collar. “Nice coat.”

“Do you like it? I got it for you.” She arches on the couch and lifts her arms, letting the fur slide against her body and slip against her skin so that her nipples show.

“I don’t think that’ll fit me.”

Haven laughs and curls her fingers, beckoning.

Luke ignores her outstretched hand and sits on the edge of the coffee table, picking her feet up in the process and placing them back on his lap. He has callouses that rub against her skin when he digs his fingers into the arch of her left foot, grinning at her from beneath the fall of his hair when she moans. He travels upward, massaging her calf, skimming the sensitive skin behind her knee. She rubs the toes of her right foot against his thigh.

When he crawls forward, she drops her legs, letting her knees cage the shape of his body. He ghosts his mouth across the curve of a breast, a collarbone, an ear.

His hands go to the coat, pushing down her shoulders, and Haven jerks beneath him, catching him by the back of his neck.

“Leave it on,” she murmurs, her mouth against his throat.





She's shaved bare at the apex between her legs, and although he's pushed himself into her space, balanced above her with one arm on the back of the couch, she opens her thighs beneath him, expectant and indulgent. Luke holds her eyes and sucks two fingers into his mouth before letting them explore. She's already slick as oil, but when his knuckles brush her sex, Haven draws in a breath like a hiss. He quirks an eyebrow, gentle in the way he pets her now, sliding a wet finger experimentally up and against her.

"Did he fuck you earlier?"

Luke uses pronouns to refer to David, something he started once Rowena’s husband became wrapped around Haven’s finger. He doesn’t even bother with titles. Haven hasn’t bothered to point this out to him; she knows who he’s talking about, and she nods, her mouth dry but her eyes bright.

"You're sore," he says with a frown and the empty-husk sound of a scoff.

Haven shakes her head slowly, biting her bottom lip. She's prone to telling lies, but her body betrays her, like all bodies eventually do. Luke keeps his hand between her legs and adds another finger, calling her bluff with a scowl when she keens, low in her throat, like an alley cat. He's slow - careful - but persistent, and her body adjusts to him. He curls his fingers up inside of her and keeps his thumb on her clit, rolling the pad of his thumb in maddening circles that aren't quite quick or hard enough to do more than keep the fire in her belly at a simmer.

Fair's fair, bitch that deep, dark, ugly part of him thinks. It's the part of him that was born rotten, the part that leaked sickness out from his pores and infected those around him, the part that made Haven as damaged as he is. It's this part of him that thinks she deserves her lot, that this is payback for all those nights she crawled into his bed at fifteen and curled her body against him like a comma, her ass flush with his groin, his shame a hardness she could feel in the night. If he makes her wait now, fingers wet and deep inside of her but tortuously slow, using the rhythm of a tightrope walker, it's only half of how he used to feel, circling his arms around her waist and rutting against her with his forehead pushed against the back of her neck and the smell of her like juniper and charcoal and grass stains and her skin soft but as hot as hellfire and the whole time knowing she was awake, knowing she kept her eyes closed to feign ignorance but feeling how she would roll her hips back against him, urging him towards a precipice that, if he fell, he could never come back from.

"Luke..." Haven whines, her back arching into a bow, one hand impatiently clawing at his hip. She's lifting her hips, twisting on the couch's old blankets, trying to will that simmer he's making her feel into a rapid boil.

For a moment, he wonders if this is how she sounds with Dave. If she can stretch out the adulterer's name with the same breathless desire she uses for his. If her tongue taps her teeth in the same way upon pronunciation. They're both one syllable. The thought makes the monster in his gut bristle.

"Is this what he does?" Luke moves his free hand, the one her thighs are not caging, and spreads his fingers low across her neck. He can feel the bump in her collarbone and the way her pulse thuds. "Does he make you come like this?"

Haven's flushed, her breathing shallow, but her eyes are still bright - still the eyes of a predator. Luke might have the reigns now, but she's waiting for her opportunity to strike. Still, there's no dishonesty in the way she shakes her head, and she looks fantastic surrounded by all that cream-colored fur, her blonde hair catching in a halo around her face, a blush of color streaking down her neck and over the tops of her breasts.

“Okay,” he says like it’s a kindness, leaning down to kiss her fully on the mouth, his tongue meeting hers while his fingers send her spiraling over the edge.





Haven fucks him afterwards.

She straddles his waist and guides him inside of her. She keeps the coat on, turning her face into the collar while she holds her hair from her neck, smelling money and salt and sweat. Luke holds her hips and watches her burn above him.

When she starts in with the filth, he doesn’t stop her. He grits his teeth and listens to all the words that tumble from her mouth. She tells him that she can feel how hard he is, that her brother’s cock is better than the husband’s, that she gets wet just thinking about riding him like this, that she wants to swallow his come and taste its sweetness.

She verbalizes his shame and lets him revel in it.





After, Haven peels the coat from her body like a second skin. She’ll pick it up from the floor in the morning and hang it in the hallway closet. It will shine like a pearl whenever she sees it, but she’ll skip past it with her fingers and choose an old leather jacket to run errands in or a crimson knitted cardigan for an early dinner in the city. The fur will be relegated to decorating a closet full of slip-on shoes and winter scarves.

She finds a Louis Vuitton tartan coat to replace it in six months, and when Luke asks what can be hocked for a quick thousand, she’ll toss him the fur without a second thought.

White trash, her town had called her, marking her as garbage.

Ugh. I hate it when your mind doesn't want to cooperate with your desire to write. Like, c'mon, brain! Get with the picture!

This was supposed to be a warm up, which it was, but it's nowhere near how I wanted to write the scene.

However, Haven is a hottie. Her outfit: http://celebmafia.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/farah-holt-free-people-collection-2015_1.jpg


-----


David notices her because of her breakfast: a flaking, butter-soaked apple turnover topped with two dollops of fluffy cream. She cuts big pieces with a fork and savors the balance of cream and tart chunks of apple in each bite, wiping flakes of pastry from the corner of her mouth with her fingertips. She’s been his waitress at the Cala D’Or Yacht Club before, but her tits are too small and her mouth too thin – he glanced past her until she would turn away and then, at most, he would admire the shape of her ass or the long stretch of her legs before returning to his scotch and cigar. But now, claiming his place at the bar three stools down from where she’s eating, David’s caught by the glimmer of her diamond earrings and her chipped red polish and the way her lipstick smears against the corner of her cup of black coffee.

It’s too early, even for a Saturday, to order a scotch, but he does it anyway.

Haven glances at him, and he motions to her rapidly disappearing breakfast. “My wife used to do that. Eat dessert for breakfast.”

“Sounds like a good woman then,” Haven says with a smile.

“Maybe.” He shrugs a shoulder noncommittedly and watches her lick a bit of cream from her finger.

“What does she eat now?”

In truth, David doesn’t know. He hasn’t shared a breakfast with Rowena in more than six months. “She’s become something of a health nut,” he lies. “It’s all egg whites and avocado toast these days.”

Haven shakes her head as if she’s disappointed by this news then stands up, leaning forward to put her empty plate and mug closer to the edge of the bar. “My shift starts in ten minutes, if you’ll be needing a table.”

He won’t be, but he nods anyway. When she walks off, presumably to don the customary black blazers all the waitresses wear with their navy colored skirts, he watches her the entire time.





“So how’d you end up here?” he asks her three drinks later. The club has started to fill up with the usual crowd – silver-haired would-be sailors and rich patrons with nothing better to do with their weekend – but Haven has circled back to his table repeatedly, fetching him refills of his scotch without being told to, suggesting he order the Oysters Rockefeller because they’re on special, and making no comment about his lack of company.

Haven shifts a stack of menus to her hip. “I’m part-timing while my brother figures out how we can get rich quick.”

David surprises himself by laughing, and she flashes him a bright smile, one that is all teeth. “But really,” she says, picking up his unused menu and adding it to her stack, “I like the view here, and I need something to do while I figure out my life. I was back home for a while, taking care of my dad. Lost a little time doing that.”

“Family,” David says, and he means it good-naturedly, like they’re comrades, but Haven thinks he sounds disgruntled.

“More of a burden then a blessing sometimes, right?”

His grin is all the confirmation she needs.

She writes her number on his credit card receipt and isn’t surprised when he calls her the next day.





“Where are you off to?” Luke asks, an eyebrow raised, his expression difficult to read.

“Got a date,” Haven says with a smirk, adding another chunk of silver and gold bangles to her left wrist. She has a matching set on her other wrist, a half-open cuff on her upper left arm, and ten distressed bracelets cupping the flesh of her right. Every time she moves, she sounds musical.

Her dress is a slip of a thing, white embellished cotton that flutters down her body gracefully, cutting across her thighs like a whisper. Luke watches as she slips on high heels that cage her feet, the black fabric knotting behind her ankles. It’s the kind of outfit women wear when they expect to be undressed quickly, but he doesn’t tell her to stay home or to be careful. He doesn't tell her anything.





She is unlike every other woman David has ever met. He keeps an apartment in the city, a high-rise expensive piece of property that he’s brought women to before, but she doesn’t seem to even take in the luxury of the place. When he asks if she wants a glass of wine, she opens the bottle herself, and she sits on his leather couch with her legs curled under her, wine glass in one hand, and a flip of a smirk on her mouth.

He makes a dinner they do not eat.

He doesn’t call it a date, and he never promises her anything. When he kisses her, she acts as though she’s been waiting for it all night – her mouth opening to him easily, hungrily, tasting of merlot and strawberry lip balm. She doesn’t mention his wedding ring or the wife he alluded to at the yacht club. She opens to him without hesitation, and he pushes her dress up her hips with the hurry of a desperate man.

He’s a selfish fuck – something Haven was already expecting – but she moans encouragement into his ear and hooks her legs around his waist anyway. She arches her back when she’s expected to, kisses at his stubbled jaw, fakes an orgasm as he slices between her thighs and curses into her shoulder.

Afterwards, she’s surprised when he strokes her calf. There’s a tenderness to the way his fingers skim her skin. He pushes away her hair from her face and kisses her again, full-mouthed, like he’s trying to claim something he’s already caught.

She finishes her wine before leaving and takes the money he gives her for a taxi ride she doesn’t use.





“Fun time?” Luke asks when she comes home. He’s in the kitchen, eating a late-night snack of cereal, and he can smell the sex on her and see how her mouth is stained from the merlot.

She shrugs a shoulder, pushing a hand back through her hair. “Not really.”

“So no second date then?”

“Why? Would you be jealous if there was?”

He makes a noise that doesn’t quite answer her question, and she pulls herself up onto the counter across from him, her jewelry shivering against her wrists and arms. He puts his bowl down and then he’s there, knocking her knees open to stand between her legs, his hands warm on her hips. He leans in, nose close to her collarbone, and she sweeps her fingers through his hair, dragging them down the back of his neck.

She shivers when he drags his teeth across her pulse.

Just a little warm-up piece! Focusing on family dynamics and the morning after.

---

Their cinder block house has shifted. Like snow melting in the gutter - all that pristine pureness disappearing to reveal dead leaves and decay - something rotten is being exposed. Sam Elders isn't much of a philosophical man, and he certainly isn't well read enough to recognize a climax when it's happening in real life, but he knows moods. And when there's a bad one, thickening up the air with invisible rot, Sam almost always thinks there's a woman to blame.

The only woman he has to point a finger at is his daughter, and she looks as fresh as summer rain. Fresh, reinvigorated, flush with youth. Still, the mood lingers. The mood reminds him, persistent and nagging, as offensive to him as the sour smell of garbage.

Sam leans with his bad hip pressing against the edge of the kitchen counter, drinking his coffee black and watching his daughter. He scratches his jawline, calloused fingers rubbing against three days’ worth of stubble. He isn't sure what exactly is different about her - she has the same patch of freckles spanning her left knee, the same unabashed frankness, the same blonde hair streaked with tones of honey and gold - but he knows in his gut that something has changed.

Haven's wearing cut-off shorts and a velour sweatshirt in camo print, the sleeves pushed up to her elbows as she sits at the rickety lawn table (it's been posing as a kitchen table for four years now, oddly at home against the chipped mugs and hard plastic plates), spooning off-brand cereal into her mouth. She slurps as she eats, drinks the sugar-milk at the bottom of the bowl once she's devoured the last of the floating marshmallows and toasted oat pieces. Sam hides his frown, but he thinks even the way she licks milk from her mouth seems off, like the cat who finally caught the canary.

"Is this your way of telling me you're off to join the military or something?" he finally asks, clearing his throat with a lift of his greying eyebrows and a pointed glance to her sweatshirt.

"Well, there was a recruiter at the job fair last week at school." Haven taps her spoon against the rim of her bowl and runs her mouth across the back of her hand. She flashes him a playful smile - and there it is again, that something that's different, a smile that's more fox than lamb.

He snorts. "Job fair. What a bunch of bullshit."

She nods along, her easy agreement often punctuating her father's sentences. "I think Luke got polled as a potential police offer, do ya believe it?" Sam scoffs his answer as Haven watches her brother emerge into the hall as she speaks - he's stumbling out of her bedroom, thick with half-sleep and one hell of a hangover, struggling with pulling a pair of ripped jeans up over his naked hips. Haven thinks there’s a reluctant, dejected air about him. He’s slow to make his way into the kitchen, and when he does it’s with a yawn that hides the wince of his eyes.

Luke’s hair is sticking up in the back. Haven reaches out to smooth the unruly strands, her fingers coaxing them into submission slowly. Luke groans under his breath, folding his body into an out-of-place wicker chair at the table. He drops his forehead to the counter, his arms folding around his face as a makeshift pillow; his sister’s fingers keep digging through his hair, working their way down his neck. She can smell him: stale sweat and beer, cigarette smoke and ripped denim.

"Long night?" Sam asks.

Luke grumbles something the rest of his family can't hear.

"Jaime Holster had a party last night," Haven says by way of explanation.

"Yeah, well, your sister has been up for an hour." Sam has a way of speaking to his son that’s purely admonishment.

When Haven starts to rub the outside of his ear, Luke shrugs away from her irritably. His body jerks as though burnt. She grins and pats his shoulder as if to say no hard feelings here before getting up to put her bowl in the sink.

“I’m going to the mall. There’s a pair of boots for sale at Macy’s that I’ve been eying for a week now. Figured I’d treat myself.” She snatches the keys to the truck from the counter and kisses Sam on his grizzled cheek, heading out the door with a pep in her step and an off-key whistle on her lips.

Sam eyes his eldest, still dejectedly curled at the table. He pours him a cup of coffee – black, like his own – and places it down by Luke’s nearest elbow.

“Maybe take it easy on the Budweiser next time, son.”

Sam means it jokingly but Luke snarls something into his arm, head still buried in his self-made crevice of skin and table. Sam remembers being seventeen himself, full of spit fire and testosterone, his throat desperate enough for cheap Bud and watered-down vodka and his dick willing to rise for just about any free hand, mouth, or snatch, so he resists the urge to smack his son across the top of his head. The truth is, as much as it bothers him to admit it, Sam Knows Luke doesn’t have the same attitude, although Sam sometimes wishes he did. Luke is his mother’s son, through and through, bursting with too much self-control in his bones and willful ignorance in his brain.

But as Sam likes to say, there’s always a woman to blame.

Trying to get into the mindset of a new character - thanks to my Muffin for letting me join in on her madness.

Ladies and gents, may I present: Ms. Haven Elders!

(this is just unconnected scenes interrupted by lines of poetry by Reyna Biddy.)



----


“maybe I’m ashamed
to love someone just like me.
someone unafraid to bruise.
someone who knows how it feels to constantly lose the battle.
someone unafraid to be left empty.”



Her first experience with betrayal starts with her lungs burning. Her legs and arms pumping, blurring, the line of her body slick with sweat as she runs on her doe legs. In another life, she could have been a track star, a homecoming queen, a valedictorian, a silver screen starlet with a thousand different faces. In this life, she sprints away from the shouts of police and the glow of their flashlights, hurdling over a tangle of brush and a downed oak, the adrenaline coursing through her veins as raw as her daddy's moonshine. She's thirteen years old and as full of piss and vinegar as she is with fear.

She runs until she feels faint, and then she runs some more.

By the time she makes it home, her head is pounding, and her chest feels too small to contain her wildly beating her. Her shirt is soaked with sweat, her legs and arms scratched red from where branches and vines snapped her skin. Hands on her knees, pitched forward and gasping for air, she doesn't hear Sam Elders open the screen door of their cinder block house and step out into the night.

"Where's your brother?" Her daddy asks. He has the look of a parent who knows exactly what his children have been up to, but it lacks shock or regret.

"What?" She chokes out while her mind suddenly sends a warning as loud as a siren through her brain: Luke.

It's the first time she's thought of him since she started running.

She spins on her heel, still reeling, and is honestly surprised that he isn't behind her, just as out of breath and red-faced. She waits a full minute, somehow hoping to hear the woods crack at his approach. There's nothing but the wind and what might be distant, far off shouts.

"You leave him?"

When she stares back at her father, sloe-eyes wide, her daddy clicks his tongue. The sound is full of disappointment.

"I didn't - I thought .... what?"

"You're turning into your mama more and more, girl. Just running blindly ahead, not a look back."

Now Haven really thinks she might be sick. She pushes a hand back through her hair feeling the sweat gather on her palm. "He was right behind me."

Sam Elders spits near his daughter's foot. "We'll pick him up from the station in the morning." The screen door squeaks in protest when he opens it again and knocks against the frame once he's disappeared back into the house.

Haven stays outside, heart hamming in her chest, and waits for the sick feeling in her gut to pass.





“I wasn’t the kind of person you could love every day.”




Theirs is a town the rest of the world has forgotten: houses little more than shacks and row homes as slanted as roof barns, cracks battling with the weeds for space on the sidewalks, one solitary high school caging in boys who grew up hunting, fishing, and fixing trucks and girls who favored boots, crop tops, and smoking Pall Malls over Marlboros. Most of the kids turn into their parents, adults that are satisfied with hot dog eating contests every July 4th and frequenting a bar every Saturday night that seconds as a tow-truck company. Theirs is a town full of blue-collared workers – some of them good, some of them mean, and some of them Elders. For a place not known for its extravagance by any stretch of the imagination, the Elders are a different kind of folk altogether.

The live in a cinder block on the outskirts of an already dilapidated area with tick-infested woods as their backyard and crabgrass as their front lawn. They aren’t exactly social, but they aren’t private either. Most of the men have shared beers and burgers with Sam Elders for years, just as most of them have watched him lose money the same way he lost his wife. Rick Thorton is the closest thing Sam has to a best friend, but Rick can’t seem to figure out which parts of Sam’s life are fiction and which parts are fact, and that’s after twenty years of knowing each other. Janet Winters feels the same way, and she’s known Sam’s kids for half her life, having babysat for them when they were still toddlers and didn’t know beans.

It’s Janet that gets an odd feeling once the kids are three-fourths of the way to twenty. They’ve been taken care of themselves for years, but she still brings over tuna noodle casserole and tater tot delight once a month or so, figuring Sam never was much in the kitchen. Janet considers herself a good Christian woman despite smoking two packs a day and indulging in a box of wine per week, so she thinks it’s her duty to spread a little generosity - all of the Elders are in-and-out of trouble as regularly as the sun rises.

Balancing aluminum-wrapped Tupperware on one hip, Janet knocks too loudly on the paint-split door. She’s surprised when Haven answers rather than Sam and more surprised to see the girl in a tank top that brushes the tops of her thighs but little else. Haven yawns, scratching the back of her neck behind her knotted hair, and pushes the screen door open with a half-awake but cheerful hello.

“You’re gonna catch your death in that getup, child. Heavens.” Janet says as she comes in, letting Haven take the Tupperware from her. “May I?” She shakes a pack of cigarettes she dug from her purse once her hands were free.

“Sure, Mrs. Winters.” Haven passes her an ashtray half-full of butts before putting the Tupperware on the counter and perching on the edge of an old recliner.

Their living room isn’t much, just like the house isn’t much. The windows have blinds that are half-cocked, like they’ve been stuck trying to wink, and the light that filters in is low and hazy. The carpet is stained, dirty, and Janet isn’t sure how Haven feels clean with so much skin showing.

“Where’s you dad?”

“Working on Mr. Tucker’s truck. He should be back in a few hours.”

“And your brother?”

Haven grins, an expression that splits her mouth and makes her look wide awake. “In bed.”

Janet rolls her eyes knowingly, puffing on her cigarette. “Is that where you came from too?”

“Yeah, but he steals all the covers. I’ve been trying to steal them back for half an hour.”

Janet makes a noise like a hum then coughs on the smoke in her mouth. “Aren’t you a little old to be sleeping together?”

For a moment, Haven’s expression turns cold. She plucks Janet’s cigarette from her left hand, surprising the old woman, and inhales smoothly. When she exhales, the smoke filters down over her bottom lip like fog. “Yeah, I’m all grown up now.”

She smiles before Janet can say anything and hands back the cigarette, sliding from her perched position to open the door. “Thanks for the casserole, Mrs. Winters. I’ll tell dad you came by.”

Janet smiles back, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. She murmurs something about enjoying the rest of the day and leaves without a second glance. As she heads towards the Ford she’s parked in the Elders’ driveway, she thinks about Haven’s expression, and the uncharacteristic coldness in the girl’s blue eyes. Janet’s known Haven her entire life, and she’s never seen that look before.

Not from her, at least.




“It’s just some nights I crave you when I know I shouldn’t.”




She’s seventeen, and Jaime Holster is throwing one of his notorious backyard parties on a Saturday night. Most of the adults in town know about Holster’s parties, including the local cops, but they’ve brokered an unspoken truce with the youth – a don’t ask, don’t tell policy that would make Clinton proud.

Haven wears shorts that are too short to be anything other than denim underwear and a crop top that shows how long and lean her stomach has become. Her blonde hair is thrown up into a messy bun, and there’s barely a lick of makeup on her face except for some eyeliner and strawberry flavored lip balm. She has an effortless attractiveness that other girls envy and try to emulate to little success. When Holster blares rock from a stereo system haphazardly balanced on the top railing of his deck, it’s Haven that starts dancing first.

She has a cold bottle of beer in one hand and the other in the air, her fingers tapping the beat along with her hips. When she tosses her head back and forth, her knot of hair shaking from the effort, two other girls that she could have called friends join in. Holster, never missing an opportunity, is the first guy to start dancing. He has the same confidence Haven possesses, and they grin at each other knowingly. By the time Manson starts playing, most of the party has become a pit of thrashing bodies.

Haven is sweating, throwing herself against the hive of arms and chests around her, laughing in a way that’s almost ugly, full-throated and close to a horse’s bray, her beer spilling and running down her arm, leaving her sticky and amber-smelling. She pulls her head back, avoiding an aggressive looking elbow, and leans into the escape Holster offers when he throws an arm around her waist and lifts her feet off the ground. He pivots, turning her in a half-circle, and she wraps her long legs around his hips, the majority of her weight supported by the gyrating bodies behind her and Holster’s hands under her ass.

She still has some of her beer, and she takes a drink even though it’s turned lukewarm, looping her free arm around Holster’s neck. He says something against her neck, something hot and half-drowned by music. She can feel that he’s hard and that he’s rutting against her, the fabric of his jeans chafing her thighs.

From across the yard, she can see Luke watching them. Watching her.

Haven winks and drags her nails down the back of Holster’s head.