parable
by Silvia
There is a fairy tale behind every fairy tale, with the moral the world wasn't ready for, that had to be spit-polished and dusted.
The seven dwarves poisoned her because she was leaving, because their cocks were too small and their mine was too big, and Beauty married the Beast the day after he changed, before slipping out on a Tuesday, to go back to her father and his haphazard inventions.
She missed him, but she had been missing him already. Sour, spoiled milk skin, too slippery beneath her fingers, and she couldn't take the bones of his chest. They dug into her cheeks.
This is where the happily comes in.
She said to him, while he was sleeping, "I lied. You were a monster," and she didn't leave a note, and wiped off the stairs as she crept carefully backwards. There would be no trace of her when he woke, and it gave her vicious satisfaction.
Her father had made a home in the woods, off the furthest road and the thickest foliage, and she slept drenched in sweat, three blankets piled over her back. She slept with a hand cupped to her shoulder, palm pressed against the faint impression from smooth-boned claws.
The scar itched when it rained, and she soothed it with her thumb.
"I know," Beauty said, "I know there's a better man inside you," and if
the house
and blankets
and memories
are the end,
this is the beginning.
The Beast believes her, and this is both of their faults.
Oliver says, "Just tell me," and Marcus does, through a steady grind of teeth, murmured into his open mouth. It tastes like victory.
But that is closer to the middle, and they didn't meet in the castle, but outside on the lawn.
Thin sneer and calloused ankles, wrapped around a face and a broomstick, and whispering, "Don't you fall." Swollen thundercloud eyes, and an outstretched arm, and the Quaffle, and Oliver's head went blank and golden sparked. He fell.
It was an accident, they said, and Oliver began to watch him.
He said for Oliver to stop looking, and said for Oliver to shut up, and the lawn was soft against Oliver's back when Marcus would push him. They could heal ribs like nothing, and sometimes they had to, but Oliver could say things to Marcus that no one else could.
Oliver could tilt his head up, as brick scraped shavings of earth and skin from his back, and tell Marcus that no, his boys won because they were better.
Oliver could stop one morning and tell Marcus that they had something to talk about. He could kiss Marcus within the shadow of a goal post, and Marcus couldn't hit him because he owed him. They both knew what Malfoy was playing at, knew Marcus wouldn't stop him.
Marcus would lay the flat of his hand against Oliver's cheek and push. Door bit into nose and forehead, teeth against his jugular, and Marcus would say, "Suck me," and then tighten the grip of his fists. Oliver would try, his head snapping backwards, a knee shoved tight against his stomach. Marcus would say it, but then fuck his fingers into Oliver's mouth, shivering.
"I believe you," Oliver whispered, just once.
Wild and furious things, the groundskeeper said, aren't all bad, not all, and Harry said music could soothe them. Oliver thought his voice must be music, for Marcus was beginning to thaw.
Oliver says, "Come with me, you love me, I know," because it's ending -- all those years, but it's over. He asks, and he has high marks, and a family who wants him, and reserve for Puddlemere United, and a smile on his face. Marcus shouldn't say yes, would not have said yes. Oliver says his name, very soft.
Marcus says, "I could play for the Falcons." And he does.
They make their bed, and lie in it, and Oliver wakes up one morning out of breath, as if he's been running.
The clothes he would need are in a dresser, and he opens it with care. The suitcase is in the closet, a closet that rattles, and a stranger with Marcus' face, but softer, murmurs, "What's that, baby?" and Oliver needs to get out of the room and the house and the town and his life.
The faucet at the inn slices hot along his wrists, and he holds them there, and then his arms. It doesn't feel clean enough.
The flat of the Chaser with a name like tinfoil in his mouth, a name he can never remember, makes him tired, and he slumbers on carpet.
He sleeps too much and dreams of faded bruises, stealing up in sallow splotches of yellow through a mass of purple and green. Oliver's rice paper skin, it was always crumbling underneath, blooming from the strain of rough, careless hands.
His skin is feverish, and he's buffeted by the wind during practice.
He asks that no one mention Marcus' name. Ever.
"You could just forget," Marcus thunders, within a single shrieking Howler, and then
he quiets
and says
he doesn't
understand.
And Oliver didn't mean to ask for this.
Oliver smears the ashes across his desk, melting across the palm of his hand, and promises to take it all back.
A good game is not about the game at all, Marcus once said, and stepped too close, and Oliver hated him, hated him.
A winning game is about what a person will do, even Oliver knows this. Oliver learned it.
The sidelines were new after Hogwarts, but then everything had been. On the field it's easier, with memory shored up upon memory, and Oliver breathes along with the hum of the crowd in the stands. The sun is dragging its heels, tiptoeing, and the dew that peppers the grass will make players slip.
On this sort of day, Oliver never could have taken him.
Oliver takes a hold of Marcus' broom handle now, and waits for the dart of his eyes, the flicker. "Do it," he tells him.
This is where the ever after begins.
"Take me out," Oliver says, and knows that they're older, and these brooms are faster, and the drop is farther. There are medics on hand, but they won't be expecting this.
They haven't seen this.
"I'll meet you at the bottom," Oliver whispers, and can't help but flinch back. Because the eyes. They're cold.
He's missed them.
Marcus' hands bite at his shoulders, thumb at his pulse, and things are starting, in motion.
"I lied. You were a monster," Oliver says, and kisses him.