[ddc] testosterone boys & harlequin girls.

Bang bang bang!

In her slate grey sheets, a petite brunette flinched. In her dinky yet tastefully decorated bedroom, she rolled over and buried her face deeply into a plump vanilla-scented pillow. By nature, Maisie was a light sleeper. She wasn't asleep for long and when she was, it came in fits, dribs and drabs. She never got enough and rather than a night owl or an early bird, she bundled through life like a permanently exhausted pigeon.

Her glossy dark curls were sprawled across her pillows like a chestnut halo, obscuring her pretty face from view as she rolled over again, frowning in her sleep. It had been a traditional London summer day; humid and rainy. It had been non-stop all day, fat raindrops hitting her window and slinking down the panes. It felt like winter already. Maisie had deadlocked her door, run herself a bath and poured herself a glass of wine and had an early night.

Bang bang bang!

With effort, she cracked one eye open and winced as the bright light from the moon filtered through her cheaply thin curtains. Fumbling blindly on her bedside table, she grabbed the clock as she squinted at the face. 4 AM. Maisie sighed and flopped back onto her pillow and pulled her duvet up and over her face to form a cocoon. Chances are it was Peter, her perpetually drunk next door neighbour who kept thinking this was his home and Maisie was Tina, his long suffering girlfriend. Nope.

Bang bang bang!

"Gah," Maisie grunted, throwing back her quilt and wincing as her bare feet hit the wooden floor and she recoiled. Her hair was messy and she was sure she hadn't removed all of her mascara so she probably had super-cute and coveted panda eyes. Absently, she tugged the hem of her large and comfortable pale blue tee shirt so it fell around her thighs. She padded along the corridor towards her front door, knocking the vase of peonies off the side table but managing to catch it before the china smashed, sloshing water all over the floor and her bare feet.

"Okay!" Maisie yelled at the door, for once having no regard for her neighbours either side of her paper thin walls. What the Hell was going on now? She didn't live in a particularly safe or fancy part of London but she was doing okay. She didn't bother to turn on the light as she was already annoyed and the bright light would push her over the edge.

The knocking continued which raised her ire even further. Gritting her teeth, she yanked the door open. She must look like some sort of harpy, with her hair in knots, smudged make up and a ratty old shirt. Good job she had no one to impress.

"What?" Maisie hissed, much like the folklore creature as she panted and then held her breath as a familiar face swam into focus. Johnny. She hadn't seen him in three months and "boyfriend" was a loose term. He wasn't loyal to her in the slightest. Maisie had been swept up in his whirlwind, flattered by the attention and once upon a time, she was in love with him. Love had faded to mild annoyance now, come to think of it. Johnny was glorious in a old fashioned James Dean kind of way. His smile was disarming, his hair tousled in a way that looked like he'd just rolled out of bed with a supermodel, the way he called her baby and his battered leather jacket. How could a mere mortal like her ever resist?

Swiftly, she blushed but didn't open up the door any further. From the smell of stale alcohol and cigarettes, he'd been at the newest, hippest party in some funky disused warehouse. And again, she'd not been invited. "Yes?" Maisie asked primly. She never had gotten around to breaking up with him properly.




@Sophie

Johnny wasn't drunk. It was after four in the morning, and the initial binge that had gotten him in the mood to go out had faded into a fuzzy apathy and a dull aching for something interesting. The party had been fine; plenty of scantily-clad girls with low self confidence and an even lower tolerance. Most of them had had too much to drink by 1, and the thumping bass had been excuse enough to skip any small talk. Boring.

He had found his mind wandering to Maisie, the closest thing he had to a steady girlfriend. She was clever and had, for a while, made him feel smarter, too. After a while his admiration of her intelligence and that good nature that had once made him feel more valued had turned instead to envy and a constant feeling of unworthiness. Her doting attitude toward him had instead made him feel small. He knew he was never going to be smart enough for her, never was going to be successful enough to live up to her career. She was working at the Ministry, for Christ's sake.

But a drop-by, for old time's sake, would be different. A small dose of Maisie would be enough to boost his confidence; he could count on her to talk him up any time he was down. All he had to do was look depressed and that need to please others would be enough to keep her attention; let her be his savior for a while and then he could drift away when he pleased.

His fist fell heavily onto her apartment door, the last of the alcohol in his veins enough to make him not care about the hour. He banged again and again, more insistently each time. Why wasn't she hurrying up? It's not like she would be out, he knew her better than that. Finally, the door cracked open and Johnny replaced the annoyance on his face with his signature broken-inside smile.

"Hey, baby." His hand was steady on the door, applying just enough pressure to make sure she didn't slam it in his face but not pushing hard enough to give the impression that he was forcing himself in. She could be so fickle sometimes, upset by the slightest intrusion. Johnny always had to be careful not to give her the wrong idea. He stepped forward, sliding his hand along with him so as never to lose his in.

"Aren't you gonna let me in? I thought we could hang." The last word had a special emphasis, the ambiguity of it perfect for the moment. Step one was just getting her to open the door the rest of the way. "I've missed you," he added, sliding his free hand over his hair absently to try to fill the awkward gap that admitting such things always left him with.

Her mother was right; she was weak. In the stark lighting of her apartment building's hallway, Johnny's face was thrown into high relief. On anyone else, the lighting would have stripped them bare but he was always something different. Rather than looking washed out, he looked healthy, bright and dangerous. With his hair tousled and that Devil-may-care attitude, she couldn't think of a single person who was safe from his desires.

Hey baby.

Maisie felt her resolve wither and die inside of her as her shoulders sagged, her posture slumping a little as she slid down the wall slightly. Baby. It slipped off his tongue so easily. How many countless other girls had he called baby that evening, she wondered? "Hi," she whispered with a faint blush, loosing all of her previously prickly behaviour as she chewed on her lower lip anxiously.

It wasn't fair. Men like Johnny were dangerous. They had this broken down, puppy dog look. He seemed like a man in need of being bettered and she, for one, had an idea that she might be able to fix him. Deep down, she thought the same but as time progressed, he got wilder and wilder and more and more distant. In the shock of lighting, she could have sworn she could see a trace of lipstick on his collar. Fuschia pink. Not a shade she owned.

How long since they'd seen one another last? A month? More? Johnny was so close and he was doing that thing he did so well. He was never forceful. He played on emotions  as skilfully as a maestro. She offered him a gentle smile, wondering if he was using her as a last resort. Maybe he'd struck out all night.

I've missed you.

Maisie heard herself inhale a sharp breath and hold it. So casually cruel were those words, it was like he didn't know the effect he had on her. She'd noticed that Johnny's hand was on her front door, his broad shoulders blocking the jamb, like he already knew her answer. Swiftly, Maisie stepped back and let the door open wider, enough to let him in before she closed and bolted the door behind him. There was a brief second where she closed her eyes and prayed to the first deity that she could think of that she'd stop making the same sort of mistake.

"How was the party?" She asked gently as she finger combed her hair quickly, trying to tame it into some sort of style and feeling annoyed at herself for doing it. She'd just woken up and it showed. Johnny had been in her apartment countless times so she didn't wait for him to get settled. Instead, she dashed into the bathroom and at lightning speed, brushed her teeth, pinched her cheeks, dragged a brush through her curls and added a very subtle swipe of lipstick.

She didn't mention her lack of invite. Johnny was a musician…with varying amounts of success. She was well aware that he hadn't reached the stratospheric heights that he was hoping for but fell in love with the fast-paced, hedonistic lifestyle and the people that came along with it.

She flicked on the kettle and made two cups of coffee, hers with milk and sugar and Johnny's thick, black and bitter. He'd once been a tea drinker but thought that coffee better suited his rock and roll persona. She placed the baby blue mug down in front of him and took a seat next to him on the well worn sofa, folding her long legs beneath her comfortably. "Party turn out to be not so much fun?" Her tone was light but there was a faint hint of a steely edge to her tone. Johnny only wanted company when his other plans fizzled out.