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There’s something haunting about this.
About Rin, of course—hair just a little messy and wet, strands sticking to her forehead and cheeks with the moisture, her white, strategically stressed around the frilly skirt part, dress thick enough so it doesn’t go see-through even when it’s wet in places, too, skin dewy with it, her black combat boots thick and pulling the picture together, disappearing together with her hair—but about this whole thing, too. Most of all, actually.
The way it all comes together: her, half-sitting, half-draped over that window with the shattered glass, the skirt of her dress getting stuck on it when she shifts too much; the wall that used to be white but is now very much not white; the intricate black-metal paneling—with all those fancy curlicues and swishes—of the broken window; the glass and dirt and broken wood and chipped off paint on the floor; the way ivy grows into the window, surrounding her, capturing her.
It’s beautiful. It’s beautiful, especially with the doleful expression on her face, her brows furrowed up just a little, just enough, her lips a little pouted, a bit of red lipstick dabbed on them, her eye makeup smudged like she’s been crying; which she hasn’t, for the record, not this time, he did it this way on purpose.
It’s beautiful, and just for a moment, it’s like Mickbell doesn’t exist at all. Like he’s fading away, like he’s not a person but some higher (or lower, arguably) being watching her, through the lens of his shitty phone camera, and even there she manages to be beautiful. She’s always beautiful. It’s going to destroy him one of these days, swallow him up whole with bitterness.
“Can you bend your knees?” he asks out loud without thinking about it, voice scratchy from disuse, and that’s where the spell breaks, where all of it shatters. Where his presence muddies it, breaks it, makes it dirty and twisted and wrong where it had been so perfect without him.
Except it doesn’t, apparently, because even as a wave of blistering shame rushes over Mickbell, flipping in his stomach, making his skin burn all over, Rin’s gaze shifts over to him slowly, before she lifts her knees, putting her shoes on the windowsill, too. Leaning her head back a little further, exposing her throat more, and she’s as beautiful as she was before. She’s always been good at this.
“Right,” he says, to no one in particular, his stomach still knotting up, but really, when is it not?
Shifts where he’s kneeling, glass scrunching underneath him—but not cutting him yet, which is good—so he can get a better angle, and it’s times like these where Mickbell wishes the most that he had an actual camera, a good one. Not when she’s naked underneath him, not with his hands around her throat and that desperate look in her eyes, not when he tastes tear-salt under his tongue, her face red, red, red, her body covered in bruises.
No, it’s moments like these that really make it burn inside of him. That make him ache for it, ache for the possibility, the tools to frame Rin like she deserves to be framed. His beautiful, perfect gothic horror doll. God, he’s so obsessed with her that it’s embarrassing.
Rin, for her part, doesn’t say anything, of course.
.
Interestingly enough, it’s only a little uncomfortable.
The dress is wet in certain places—from the rain outside that’s still brushing her arm ever so slightly where she’s holding on to the windowsill of the broken, open space that used to be a window, now just looking like a cage with the metal paneling being all that’s left—fabric thick, so it blooms into it, sticking to her skin. Her hair is wet—or damp, rather, it’s not like it’s dripping—too, sticking to her face, cooling her down where her heart is racing.
It’s only a little uncomfortable, the wind rushing into the abandoned building, cutting Rin to the bone, making her teeth chatter, but most of all, it is exhilarating. It always is.
There’s something about this, she thinks, letting her head knock back into the window frame, one arm dangling over her raised knees, tilting her chin up a little more because she knows he likes that. There’s something about this, about watching Mickbell shift and crouch down on his knees, about the focused expression on his face, about how it’s almost reverent where he’s looking at her through the camera.
Always, always through the camera. It doesn’t feel sticky right now, however, doesn’t taste bitter-sour on her tongue, and she’s not naked, either. It doesn’t feel sticky right now, however, quite the opposite: it makes Rin feel powerful, for some reason. Beautiful, even, devastatingly so.
Dangerous, with the way Mickbell keeps ducking his head whenever he catches her eye above the edge of his phone. It’s that feeling, she thinks, that makes it much harder than the cold air and the rain to breathe right.
“You’re beautiful,” he says, cutting through the icy-hot silence, voice hoarse in a way that rushes down Rin’s spine headily. There’s something tugging at her ribs, tugging, tugging, tugging, and her knuckles go white around the windowsill as her gaze flickers over his form on the floor.
You’re beautiful, he says, and he really only ever calls her things like that when it’s like this: when he’s not touching her, when she’s not naked, when he’s not sneering, when it’s nice. When he finds another new, abandoned place that has enchanted him with that glittering in his eyes and he takes her there.
Takes her here, in this case. It feels nice, somehow, to be let in like that; feels nice that he trusts her with this. No one else usually does. It’s nice, and even though this building is a little dingy—just an abandoned apartment complex, not an old Victorian house or castle or something she knows he’d like even more, and she guesses she would, too—there’s something romantic about it.
The shattered glass. The swollen wood. The half-rusted metal. The chipped off paint and wooden splinters covering the floor. The half-rotten old sofa in the corner of the room. Rin gets what Mickbell likes about this: it is romantic.
It’s so romantic, she thinks as she listens to the crunch of glass shards under his shoes, under his knee, raking gross little shivers down her spine. All of it is romantic. Not that she’d ever tell him that.
“Mhm,” she hums, brows twitching together, unsure of what else to say. It’s weird, whenever it’s like this; whenever Mickbell is nice, or at least pleasant enough. And that in itself is weird, Rin guesses, because he’s actually like this most of the time. He only gets gross when he takes her clothes off.
Well, mostly. He says gross things like this, too, but that Rin can deal with.
Mickbell rolls his eyes and she shivers against a breeze as he shifts again, leaning to the side to get another angle of her. It’s cute, almost, how much he’s into things like these; the photography, the locations, even her clothes and the makeup. He’d probably hate it if she told him that, though.
“Can you, like…” he starts, brows twitching together, letting go of his phone with one hand to gesture around. “Uh, drape over the windowsill?”
Whatever that means.
When she slides down the window, careful not to cut herself or get too stuck on any of the glass shards or get tangled up in the metal paneling, his eyes are covered by the phone again, his lips pressing together tight. There’s another pang in Rin’s chest, and one of these days, she thinks she’ll just die. Who knows, maybe it’d even look beautiful through Mickbell’s screen.
“No, not like that. With your legs out the window…? Is it cool if your hair gets on the floor?”
Rin wrinkles her nose, but it’s not like she’s not already dirty, not like she doesn’t already have to take a shower the moment she gets home.
(Things do tend to go like that with him. Even if for different reasons than usual this time.)
“I can try,” she grumbles.
And try she does. Sits back up straight to turn her back to him—which does make her prickle with an uncertainty that has always excited her in that way that makes her dizzy, near-nauseous; for a moment, she considers him shoving her out of the window, but there’s too much metal in the way, and he wouldn’t do that, anyway, he’s not even mad right now—to try and put her legs through the metal paneling so they can dangle outside, getting showered by this feather-light rain that soaks her to the bone, slowly but surely.
Her teeth are chattering again when she carefully leans back, back, back to drape herself over the windowsill, hooking her legs around the outer edge so she doesn’t slide off when her torso hangs off it like this. Her hair is touching the floor like this. Gross.
When she looks at Mickbell again, there’s something shining in his eyes that almost makes her let go, that makes her shiver harder than the cold does.
“Hurry up,” Rin hisses, glaring at him, upside-down as she is. “I can’t hold this for long. And it’s cold.”
Which does seem to shake him out of it. He makes a weird noise from the back of his throat—trying and failing to come up with something to say back, she thinks, wrinkling her nose—before shifting again to get a good angle. His other knee hits the floor, too. Rin has never felt this boiling hot and icy at the same time.
She wants him, she thinks. Which is probably not very smart, but absolutely nothing about this is, so. As long as she’s self-aware, it should be fine. It should be fine, then, because she knows he’s horrible, because she has it under control. Because she’s just doing what she wants to do.
He’s disgusting. Slimy rat-slug of a man who’s always leering at her, always yanking her around, always using her up until there’s nothing left of her. Perhaps it’s that nothing that Rin strives for so desperately, that she craves. Perhaps it’s that. Perhaps that’s always been what pulled her to him, because it’s not like he has anything else going for him, really.
Well, maybe Kuro. Kuro is very cute.
Mickbell walks over to help her untangle herself once he got all of the shots he wanted, and his hands that usually run cold—he’s way too skinny—feel almost searing on the skin of Rin’s arms. She’s full-body shivering by now, the cold and the rain soaked into her very being, watching how his Adam’s apple bobs when he swallows hard, and she wants, wants, wants him to smash her up against the wall like a porcelain doll. Then she’d really fit this place.
It’s a bit difficult: he puts his hands under her armpits and lifts her enough so she can use her core strength to pull her legs out from the metal paneling of the window, then she has to put her feet on the floor one after the other because he’s not strong enough to simply lift her to her feet. Or he doesn’t feel like it, it’s not like they’ve ever tried.
He pats her dress down once she’s standing, picking out glass shards and brushing away debris, and she feels more like a dress-up doll like this instead of whatever dangerous, beautiful thing she felt in her chest earlier. He’s not looking at her anymore; not really, not through the camera lens.
“You’re cold,” he mutters—like she didn’t say that already—then, shrugging out of his hoodie before holding it out to her. “Here, take this. It fits.”
It’s too big for Rin, of course—by a lot, Mickbell is not a short man—but that’s not what he’s talking about, anyway, so it’s not like that matters. It’s a black hoodie, and that’s what he means: it fits the whole picture, her whole… look. Recontextualizes it, too, probably—likely in a way he’d like, something about claiming her even more than he already has, eugh—with how she’ll be swimming in it.
Whatever. She is cold, so she slips into it, and some of the shivering subsides immediately as it envelops her, and her teeth stop chattering, too. Rin wrinkles her nose; the hoodie smells like cigarette smoke and sweat, almost… sour.
Whatever. “You wanted to show me the bed,” she says, jaw tight, rubbing at her arms to get some life back into them.
Mickbell, meanwhile, is fishing around in the pocket of his jeans, pulling out a battered looking packet of cigarettes and a somehow even more battered looking lighter. Her frown deepens.
“I thought you didn’t have enough money for cigarettes.”
“Bummed these,” he says, which does make sense for him, she supposes. “You want one?”
He snickers at the look on her face, shaking his head in amusement, cigarette balanced between his lips while he lights it. Really, he probably wouldn’t have given her one anyway, even if she had wanted one; he’s stingy about things like that. Stingy about just about everything.
Still, Rin watches how he takes the first drag, inhaling deep, deep, deep like there’s something inside of him he has to fill, the tip of the cigarette lighting up bright orange; the only spot of bright color all around. He groans a relieved little sound, head tilting back as he exhales, smoke whirling around in the air, and she wants, wants, wants him, feels sick with it. He always makes her feel sick.
“Let’s go,” he says, eyes darting around the room. “We should hurry up, you’ll catch a cold.”
“You’re the one who seems to find it necessary to pause to smoke right now,” she hisses, and Mickbell rolls his eyes, grabbing her around the wrist. Whatever, she thinks he’s muttering under his breath, but by then he’s already turned, and she has to hurry after him to keep up with him and his stupid long legs with how he’s yanking at her arm.
It’s warmer like this, fully inside—though most of the windows are still very much shattered, so it’s not like them being inside does all that much against the cold air—and with his hoodie on—as bad as it does smell—but soaked fabric and hair still sticks to her skin, and slowly, it’s driving her just a little insane. It doesn’t seem like it’s all that far, however; Mickbell peers into the rooms as they pass them—likely trying to see if he can find anything else interesting, or even valuable—one by one by one, until they’ve reached the very last door.
“It’s here,” he says, and only when he lets go of her does Rin’s wrist flare in vague pain. He’d like that, she thinks. He always likes how easily she bruises.
And it is here: they’re standing in the remains of a bedroom, and remains is right, because aside of the usual glass shards, chipped paint, broken wood and inexplicably a plastic tarp, the only thing that’s still in this room is a metal bed frame. Black and rusted in several places, adorned with those fancy curls at the headboard like the windows are. Fits well. Rin wonders why it was left behind.
There’s a mattress on the frame, too, nearly threadbare, dusty and discolored in places. Of course Mickbell would like it, this is right up his alley. He’d probably like fucking her here, too.
The thought comes unbidden, festering in Rin’s mind, rushing down her spine only to settle at the base of it. Only to make her freeze up right where she’s standing, something tight in her ribcage, heavy, heavy, heavy.
Until she’s imagining him with his hands all over her again, brushing over her skin, dewy from the rain, cigarette smoke puffing past her as he breathes, breathes, breathes, suffocating her. Until she’s imagining him pushing her down, rucking up the skirt of her dress, making glass shards fall into her hair. Until she’s imagining him photographing her like that again, after all.
“You okay?” Mickbell asks, and Rin flinches. “Are you too cold? We can leave, it’s fine, I have some nice shots already.”
He’s a bit blurry when she looks at him, her vision clearing when she blinks once, twice. Like this, she can watch how he lets his cigarette drop to the floor to stomp it out, how he lifts a brow at her. For just a moment, she thinks he can look through her, thinks he knows everything that’s rushing through her system like hot coals, but then his brows furrow and he sneers a little.
“Earth to Rin. What the fuck is your problem now, huh?”
She blinks again. Sucks in a sharp breath when she notices she’s forgotten to breathe.
“I’m okay,” she lies, and he rolls his eyes.
“Whatever,” he says, audibly, fishing around in his other pocket, this time, until he has his phone back in hand, gesturing with it. “You still ready to go?”
There’s something gaping inside of her, something empty, throbbing, throbbing, throbbing. She’s lightheaded all of a sudden, like she hasn’t eaten all day, even though she has. She scowls against the feeling, brushing her hair over her shoulder, weighing her down.
“I guess.”
Mickbell is grinning to himself—why, she wouldn’t know, maybe because of the backtalk, because he’s weird like that, isn’t he—staring at his phone screen already, so she simply makes her way over to the bed, hesitantly sitting down on the edge of it. It really is a little gross.
Rin likes that, though. It’s such a strange feeling, wriggling in the pit of her stomach like worms, making her dizzy and nauseous, but it’s so satisfying in such a weird way, every time. There’s never been any way for her to put this feeling into words.
Mickbell is the only one who understands it, anyway, even without words. His gaze flicks up to her, making something feverish roll over her as he looks her up and down.
Like this, when he’s looking at her, she doesn’t have to be anything special. There’s nothing she has to perform, no polite smiles, no small-talk, no dances she has to keep doing to keep whatever is going on with her and Kabru intact. No, she knows exactly who Mickbell is, and what he wants from her, and when he’s looking at her, all she has to be is a doll. Some piece of meat.
His muse, he’d called her one time, but really, Rin thinks that was sarcastic, because the condescending tone he’d said it in had made her teeth ache.
“What do you want me to do?” she asks instead of how do you want me, watching how his eyes thin with a smile. He’s so gross. She’s not naked, but she always feels like it, anyway, when he looks at her like that.
It fades just as fast, however. “Just lie down first.”
Which is easy enough, she supposes. And it’s not like she’s learnt nothing in all the time they’ve spent together—how long has it been anyway, a quarter year? A bit more?—so she flops down onto the bed like a plunge into icy water, lets her knees fall together and takes a bit of care to fluff out her dress and her hair, before letting her wrists fall next to her head on both sides.
There’s that look on Mickbell’s face again, like earlier. Like he’s looking at something holy, and for but a second he stares before remembering to lift his phone, before it disappears behind it, but Rin knows it’s still there.
You’re beautiful, he’d said with her on the windowsill. She wonders if he thinks her to be beautiful right now, too. Wants to hear him say it again, which is stupid, really.
“That’s good,” he comments casually, and it’s good enough. Steps closer to the bed, closer, closer, closer, until he’s looming over it, looming over her. Rin allows her eyes to blur.
For a while, there’s just the faint noise of Mickbell’s thumb tapping at his screen, the shifting of him moving a little to get another angle; glass and debris crunching on the floor, the sound of the fabric of his jeans and his shirt. Vaguely, she wonders if he’s not cold now that she’s the one who’s wearing his hoodie.
“Rin, look at me.”
Ah, so they’re at this part now. Her brows furrow without her input as she glares up at him, and even like this, she can see how a smile spreads on his face.
“Turn around,” he says, tone almost flat, but in that breathy tone that betrays his focus; he always gets like this when he gets really into it. For a moment, she’s almost inclined to argue, but then she simply huffs and rolls around, kicking her feet up behind her, glancing at him—or rather, the phone camera in front of his face—over her shoulder.
“Yeah,” he continues, a near-whisper, more to himself than to her. “You’re beautiful.”
He’s beautiful, she thinks. Not always—most of the time he’s not, actually—but there’s something beautiful about him in moments like these. About the way he peeks over the edge of his phone from time to time—still that same reverence in his eyes she can feel through the lens, too—about the way he presses his lips together or chews on his bottom lip, about the way he shifts, about the laser-focus in his posture.
About the way he’s looking at her. She wants to pull the hair tie from his hair and unravel it, wants to bury her fingers in it—no matter how greasy it might be by now—wants, wants, wants him to devour her whole, to burn her down to ash. It’s a terrible feeling, really.
(Something so very different from the feelings she has for Kabru, but she doesn’t want to think about him right now.)
Rin turns back around when he tells her to, and when he slips his phone back into the back pocket of his jeans, something inside of her flips. Are we done, lies at the tip of her tongue, ready to be spit out, but instead, she watches as Mickbell rounds around the bed to get on it, too, body tensing as if she’s not sure whether she wants to bolt away or throw herself at him.
So she does neither, frozen as he climbs over her, as he leans in to kiss her; and despite everything, that’s where she liquifies, icy heat settled in her bones, wrapping her arms around his neck as he brushes his lips against hers, as he presses closer, closer, closer. There’s something rattling in her bones, something so hungry she feels revolted, like when you haven’t eaten for enough time that just the thought of doing it makes you ill.
He told her one time, that smoking makes the hunger go away. She didn’t know what to do with that, what to say to that, and she still doesn’t, just slips the hair tie out from his ponytail, anyway, feeling his hair in her hand, feeling how it falls into his face and hers.
In the end, Mickbell doesn’t touch her all over, doesn’t push her clothes aside, doesn’t fuck her right on this bed with his camera and his sticky-hot breath all over her body. He just kisses her for a moment more, her arms wrapped around him like a lifeline, before pulling away.
“Let’s get out of here,” he says, tucking a strand of still damp hair behind her ear. “Lemme borrow your laptop so I can edit the pictures, okay?”
Rin rolls her eyes.
(She only lets him do this with the pictures where she’s not naked; she doesn’t want to see the other ones, not more than she already does, doesn’t want to think about them at all, actually, even when they of course never really leave her mind.)
“Whatever.”