No Lifting the Curse
by ALC Punk!

With one hand wrapped around the trailing drainpipe and one braced against his shoulder, she shifts, letting one leg slide up to wrap around his waist. And she can't take the one off the ground because that's keeping her from falling.

Or maybe she's already fallen and his hands are dragging at her, pulling her tighter into him and it's so right the way they fit here.

Street noise tries to distract her, and she stares over his shoulder, her eyes glazing when he pushes in and pulls out and the rhythm is broken when the car driving by lets loose a pumping bass that rattles her brain and dances in her teeth.

A part of her brain wants to analyze this. Catalogue and classify and bury any meaning under a hundred thousand different permutations of computer programs she might once have written.

Washes of color fill her vision when the lights of the cars sweep over them. Over him.

She wants to believe this is everything and nothing.

There is sweat soaking the both of them, they've been dancing in the club they've just left. She invited him out here. Bent close and whispered things into his ears that would once have made her flush bright red. Now she just says them, knowing they will get her this end result.

Dancing one way, and now dancing another. Except this isn't dancing.

She knows what it is, she whimpered it once, long ago.

Twice, thrice, she's lost count of the number of times she's said this word, begged for it, bent over for it, backwards, forwards, once or twice upside-down.

Anything for the way this feels, the way he (any he) feels when he's buried inside her and she's got bricks scraping her back raw.

Broken nails and scabbed elbows and her knees have been black and blue for months now.

Raw and visceral, and it's not a complicated equation anymore. She might once have scoffed at being desirable. Might once have laughed or mocked or simply disbelieved. She knows better now. Understands the power in push-up bras and red lipstick and strappy fuck-me red pumps.

She remembers being so very jealous of Rachel Summers. Of wanting to be like her, physically, so that men would notice her.

Sometimes, she thinks, she's gone too far.

Men notice her all right. They never stop noticing her.

Not that she minds. Not when she gets this for her pains.

"Oh, god..." It's the first thing he's really said since they started dancing. Maybe he simply didn't want to treat her as human.

She's almost okay with that.

He thrusts that one last time and she arches up, changing the angle, grinding down onto him, the back of her head scraping against the bricks. And she's glad it's not short anymore, although snakey tendrils of sweat-soaked hair are annoying when they stick everywhere.

A series of grunts and other unnameable sounds come from him, and she feels him begin to sag inside of her and against her, and hangs on to the iron above and the ground below. She hasn't reached completion, but that's half the thing she doesn't care about.

"Damn." His voice is muffled, his mouth buried next to her throat.

She remembers a long time ago, when she told Kurt and Piotr that she had never lost hope. Never given up. Things will always work out in the end, she'd said. Or thought or felt. That had been before. When falling to Earth and burning to death and being left behind and watching the one man you might actually love walk out of your life... seemed like a dream. When the real dream was a broken mirror that reflected a hundred thousand people in pain. It was all a lie. Or she was all a lie.

Or the man in her arms was.

In between the moments, something shifted. The man leaning against her pulls away, steps back. She lets him go, dropping her foot to the ground and moving slightly so that she's less precariously positioned.

She watches as he pulls out a handkerchief and cleans himself off. Her skirt is still up around her waist, her panties not quite back where they belong. But she doesn't ask to use the hankie, especially since it's now full.

For a moment, he looks at her.

Kitty considers asking him for money, but she's not quite that crass yet. Although if they're all this bad, she might have to. Just to get something out of this deal. She's not going to take him to task for not making her come, though. That's not what this is about.

"So, uh..."

"Don't bother." Her voice is amused. "Calling me would take effort, after all."

He blinks. "Look, I--"

"You don't even know my name."

That stops him again, and he steps back, suddenly looking uncertain.

"Not that I mind. It makes it a little... less formal, less rigid." She moves, standing straight and releasing the drainpipe, shoving away from the wall. Her movements are still predatory, but she's almost tired. "Less safe."

"Do this a lot, do you?"

The question surprises her, and she blinks. "More than I want." The honesty feels wrong somehow, but she's standing five feet from a street where hookers get paid by the blowjob and cars get jacked as a matter of course.

He shakes his head. "And here I thought I was the one using."

"Nah." The confidence slips back into place and she turns away, straightening her skirt. "That would be me. You weren't... bad." A flick of her fingers.

"Good to know." And he's suddenly *there* at her back, his arms sliding around her and pushing her forward into the bricks.

She doesn't struggle because he can't hurt her anymore than she's already destroyed herself. And his hands are sliding down her body, one dragging the skirt up while the other spreads her legs. His fingers slide into her.

A strangled sound escapes her lips and she drops her head back onto his shoulder.

"Hrm." The fingers shift, his hand pressing into her.

There are bricks against her chest and he's pressing into her back and his fingers are sliding in and out. And then he bites down at the juncture of neck and shoulder and her own voice pushes its way out of her lungs, and if it had been still her cry of release would have shattered the air.

Instead it's barely heard over the traffic.

A horn honks while he simply holds her upright as she gathers her scattered wits. This was not how this worked. He was supposed to not care, he was supposed to go away and not push her into orgasm.

There was an unwritten contract, she thinks irrationally.

He still hasn't let her go. And his hand--she shudders as the fingers play across her, sliding in and out and stroking just so. It's almost too much, she just *came*, and--this doesn't seem to deter him as his thumb and fingers manipulate her. Stomach muscles tighten, legs lock, and she's suddenly wondering if this was such a stupid idea after all.

Then she can't think because his other hand is under her shirt playing with her breasts and his tongue is doing unspeakable things to her ear.

And it's all too much.

She wonders if this is what rose petals feel like after they've been thrown to the four winds.

"Hey." Her voice is shaky. She tries again as his hand stills. "Hey. Um..."

"You didn't scream that time." He sounds almost reproving.

"Well, um..." She could get away, she thinks. She could phase through the bricks or through him or simply air-walk upwards. Could have done it the moment he grabbed her.

"Maybe next time." The fingers shift and only one is now sliding in and out of her.

It's very distracting.

The pad of his thumb drifts over a nipple and she whimpers softly. Her skin feels extra-sensitive, or maybe it's just all the blood rushing here and there. Or the bricks. It doesn't matter. There was once an order to this, she thinks as her eyes open and she finds herself staring up at the wall and the drainpipe.

"What's your name?"

"Does it matter?"

"Kitty." She replies softly. "My name is Kitty."

The hands on her body still, and the chest against her back shifts, the arms sliding up to simply hold her. "You're a very strange girl, Kitty."

A laugh escapes her and she sags into him more, fingers scrabbling the bricks to hold her up as everything she's done crashes over her. "Yeah. I've heard that."

He shifts, straightening her, hoisting her up slightly. "This is going to sound stupid."

"Oh?" She hasn't the energy to mock him anymore.

"Wanna come back to my place?"

"Will you tell me your name?"

His lips brush her cheek, gentle and soft. "Maybe." he breathes. He had onions with dinner. And beer. Maybe vodka, too.

"No." Her voice is clear and gentle. "Thank you, but no."

"Ah. I won't be calling you."

"I know."

She waits until he's gone, waits until the cars streaming past have gone at least another mile away. And then she leaves the alley, leaves the club. And wonders if she'll do this again.

-finis-

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© 2005 ALC Punk!