Not Pretty, But Something.

TITLE: Not Pretty, But Something 1/3
AUTHOR: Belinda (eyebrowofdoom@yahoo.com)
SERIES: Fucking Normal People 1/?
DISTRIBUTION: gimme a little sugar and just ask...
RATING: NC 17. Contains SLASH, ie explicit m/m sex; drugs, coarse language, and other reasons for living. Also allusions to past sexual activity between what were probably minors.
SUMMARY: During the events leading to his betrayal of Greg McConnell, Blaine Tuttle reflects on his history with both Greg and Sebastian Valmont. Blaine's POV.
NOTE: CI 2 was an unpleasant hallucination caused by some funky gear probably supplied by an unscrupulous Blaine, and none of its back story holds, as far as I'm concerned. :)
FEEDBACK: Feed the kraken! Squeak! I mean, roar! Both sugar and roughage welcome in a balanced diet.
DISCLAIMER: the characters are from the movie Cruel Intentions, and do not belong to me. This fic has no connection to the makers of the movie and I receive no money from writing it.


With a last, suggestive stroke to the glass shaft of the bong on my desk, Sebastian leaves my room, coat tails flying. And, though there are a number of things I'd rather have from Sebastian, I take his money from where he's left it on the desk. And I call Greg McConnell to move our little rendezvous forward.

"Ok, dude. Cool," Greg says to the change of plan, "See you then."

*Dude*? What, are his jock buddies listening in the background? Sure, he's got his little scared voice on, talking at, like, a third of the volume he was when he first picked up. But when a man calls you up and says your name in the honeyed little voice I just did, who the hell turns around and calls that man *dude*?

I think it means his jock buddies *are* there, and he is *very* happy to be getting off the line.

Aw.

God knows who he tells the jocks he was talking to. Maybe his mother. I wonder if I could do a good telephone mother impersonation. Enough to fool anyone listening in the background, but leaving Greg in no doubt just who he was talking to.

Open season on baby names. *Sweetie*, *Pumpkin*. *Schnookums*.

Hmm.

God, I think I'm starting to get hard. First Sebastian tearing around in here like a caged beast. Getting to talk nasty to him, getting to say shit like "pillow-kissing." Telling him about the things I do with boys who aren't half as pretty as him.

Now this. Thinking about the colour Greg's face would turn.

***

So I spend the rest of the day trying not to brush my crotch against anything. Such a waste to wank when you're about to get paid to get some. The best part being, that it's some you wanted anyway.

I take a few calls, then, feeling all customer-friendly, I take a walk up my block and make a drop-off at the park. With all the big backyards, the elms and the wide streets, the park is almost a pointless place around here. Though Sebastian and I used to walk my dog down here and cruise for girls.

Girls for him, that is. Though it wasn't always out in the open, that that was the case. I came out to Sebastian right there on that park bench. It was this one time -- we were fourteen or so -- when he came back from the far side of the park with this blonde he'd been feeling up, and I was still just sitting, talking to her friend, a brunette, on the park bench where we'd met them. As they were walking away, Sebastian was checking out the brunette's ass. "Like two halves of a ripe peach," he was saying. "Jesus, did you even get her number?"

I said, "No."

"No?" he said, loud and theatrical. If there's anything Sebastian gets righteous about, it's pussy.

"I don't want her," I said, clearly.

"Are you queer or what?" he demanded. His lips were pursed, his eyebrow cocked.

It just slipped out. I said, "As a matter of fact, yes."

His face was frozen in the same position.

"The fact is, I'd much rather have you," I said. "But since I know that's not going to happen, I'm just along for the ride."

For a long moment he stared. Then at last, a small smile appeared. "Interesting," he said.

I threw my shoulders back against the bench. Tried to keep from laughing out loud with relief.

"Somehow," he said, "though I'll admit I didn't see this coming, I'm not entirely surprised."

"I should hope not," I said, in the sweet little fag voice I'd just recently started practicing in private. I winked at him.

He grinned right back. That's Sebastian for you. That little treasure about me wanting not just any boy, but him specifically? He just rolled with it, and filed it away for reference.

My straight boy customer, in a letter sweater, heads back to his car. I get up off the particular bench I chose, sentimentally, to sit on. I’ve got body lotion to apply.

***

It's night, and Greg comes round.

He's wearing sweats, taking my stairs two at a time. I can see the compression strap marks on his ankles where the sweats pull up as he climbs. Tossing around those *tragic* bangs like one of those big dumb... what are those dogs, Great Danes?

And he gets to the top of the stairs, and I'm only half way up. Then he's all embarrassed because it's my house, and he doesn't want to just wander off down the hall without me.

He hovers on the landing and waits for me to walk the rest of the way up like a fucking normal person.

Jock.

Hasn't said a word yet. Except "Hey" at the door. But that's not a word, that's a syllable.

I look up at him with big, lashed eyes as I squeeze past him on the landing. Though it's not a small landing, and I can't imagine where all the space has gone.

In the kitchen, I put on my best, sweet little nasal voice and offer him a soda.

"No, thanks," he says, shaking his big dumb dog ears.

He's standing in the middle of the kitchen. Just standing, hands together in front of him. Most people gravitate towards furniture: they lean on the bench, or something.

Not him.

Wait. Tell me that's not the required posture during the national anthem.

"It's nearly started, come on," I say.

I hold the kitchen door open for him, a little too long, and brush his hand with mine as I'm letting go.

***

We have a history of a kind, Greg McConnell and I. Closeted jocks... if that's not a tautology. Gotta love 'em.

Greg was one of that group of guys that didn't like the look of me from day one at school. My bleached hair, my preppy style. That "hey, faggot" shit started from the jock crowd right off the bat. They'd be round their table in the cafeteria, and there'd be these rumbles as you went past. Sometimes they threw straws.

Then some of them worked out I was going to be their contact for coke, and it started to tail off. But Greg's main currency was the dirty look, and that never went away from any of them.

You know the difference between me and dorks? Dorks give a shit.

I mean, really.

The alliance with Sebastian helped, I admit. He'd been in too many panties. He was untouchable -- a kind of fiefdom of one.

Anyway, one day in tenth grade it went around that something had gone down with the football team photo that was up on a noticeboard. The third person I talked to said somebody had written "virgin" and an arrow at Greg. And that Greg was absolutely ready to rumble about it.

I thought it was pretty funny. That he was a big dumb asshole.

I'd had one of those fucked up cafeteria confrontations with Greg about a week before, as you do when you're one of the people that walks past that table and gets noise made at you. I'd been walking past and he'd said, "What the fuck are you looking at?"

I'd said, "You, sweetheart." What else was I going to say?

The jock table had just absolutely erupted with noise. The way the jock table does.

That had been the week before. Then, on the day I heard about the business with the football photo, it was the end of period five, gym. Everyone else had finished and left for period six. I was running behind time changing, I guess. Silly me. If I were a female teenage virgin, the serial killer would have chosen that moment to strike.

The scenario was not entirely dissimilar.

Greg came marching around the corner of the locker bank. Sweat pants, bare feet, no shirt.

He stomped over, grabbed me by the shoulders and shoved me against the lockers.

"What the fuck, you freak!?" he yelled.

He was standing over me -- much taller than me. His hands on my shoulders. He was sweating. I could smell it, acrid and yeasty.

I mouthed "ow", from where my head had hit.

I looked him in the eyes, and his stare was indigo black -- he had more pupil than iris.

For all that I'd bumped my head, he hadn't actually pushed me against the locker that hard.

I was just getting this *vibe*. I was still staring up at him, and it seemed like far too much time had elapsed for it to make any sense to say anything now.

I thought about how fragile, really, the casing of bone was around my spinal cord. Then I reached out and laid one hand on his hip.

He didn't move a muscle. The skin around his mouth maybe flattened, maybe loosened a little bit.

I moved the other hand onto his other hip, and again he didn't react.

I dropped my gaze from his. Like handling my own spine, which in a way I was, I slipped my fingers under the waistband of his sweatpants.

He moved his hands onto the locker on either side of me and leaned forward right over me, resting the top of his head against the locker. His collarbone was maybe an inch from my lips. The smell of his sweat was intense.

I eased his sweatpants down his hips.

Any time now my mother was going to turn up with my dog when it was still a puppy, in company with the bull I can't run away from, and the man who keeps stealing my bike. And that ice sculpture that was in the middle of the class that one time.

He had the tiniest trail of hair beginning half way up his ribcage.

Getting a man with an erection out of a jockstrap is something you should really be able to have a joke about. But I couldn't see anyone there in the mood for a laugh.

I touched his bare hip briefly, feather-lightly. Then I took his cock in my hand. Trailed it all over with fingertips. Cupped his balls. I squeezed my hand up between our bodies and spat in my palm.

I jerked him off with all the dexterity I could muster for the occasion. No warranty on how much that was.

The closest thing he made to a noise was a kind of "Ah" when he came on my t-shirt, followed by hot, jerky breaths I could feel on the back of my neck.

He leaned hard on my shoulder as he straightened up. Didn't look at me. Strode off.

The sneaking into my dorm room shit started later that month. The first time I opened my door and saw him there, I said, "What do you want?" He twitched like he was going to bolt.

Finally he settled for just shuffling a half step forward, and then another, and then another, until he was standing right up close to me. He just stood there with big, scared, doe eyes.

I'm not a habitual friend of abandoned animals, you know? I was at sea. I cupped his elbow with one hand. Took a step back, coaxed him to follow so he was clear of the door and I could swing it shut and lock it.

With the same slow steps and hand on his elbow, I eased us back against the wall. He knew this position. He rested his forehead against the wall above my shoulder. He went for my belt.

It took us four goes before I could get him over on the bed and actually making out with me before anyone's pants came off. But we made real progress after that. By the end of the tenth grade, we were fucking, sucking, the works. There was always the same shit afterwards, of course. I’m all cuddly and full of come, and he’s like, "God, what the fuck are you doing? Get off me, you freak!"

*Blah, fucking blah*.

***

The credits are rolling on the movie, and Greg’s appointment with destiny is right on schedule.

We'd started out very clearly each to his own side of the sofa. We were two guys watching TV.

Then I, for one, shifted about to get comfortable. The best sofa in the world does have a centre of gravity in the middle, after all.

Ten minutes in, Greg's knees had fallen open, and then so had mine, as they do when men relax on sofas. Then a bit later he carelessly cast a hand onto the cushion between us. Another five minutes and I shifted a bit, stretched a crick out of my leg.

Later, he rearranged him arms, then dropped his hand again, and it happened that it fell to brush the back of its knuckles against my leg.

Three quarters of the way through, and our askew knees happened to be touching. Greg does have such long, athletic legs, after all.

I had been sitting still a long while, and finally I had to have a good stretch, arms right above my head, and when I settled myself back down again, my ass was in a slightly different position. Now we were so close, he didn't have anywhere to put that hand that had been in the middle, so he had to stretch his arm out along the back of the couch behind me.

I jigged my knee up and down a little bit, idly, as you do when you're watching television. Snuggled right up against him.

Now the movie is finished, and here we are. There is a faint shift in the springs of the couch. Greg practically has his arm around me. I guess he's processing that information.

*tbc*