![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: Vex Not the Roses
Author: seraphcelene
Summary: Olivia does not tell him that there are more than just things that go bump in the night
A/N: I wrote it in the 11th hour. After two weeks and four different versions this is the one that decided to finish itself. Couldn’t think of a title. Couldn’t keep to the plot or the tone. Themes? What's that? A prompt, you say? Pshaw! It’s all over the map. Unbeta’d. Written for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
minim_calibre for the Character of Color Multifandom Challenge. The prompt is at the end of the text so you don’t laugh too hard at how far a field I traveled.
Spoilers: Hush
Rating: NC-17
"Haiti is in your blood," Marie always told her granddaughter. Long before Olivia gave up straightening her hair. Long before the afros and the wild curls. Long, long before the locs.
"Haiti is in your blood", she would say, as she taught Olivia the prayers of the Sevis Gine. Marie showed her granddaughter the proper way to make sacrifice. Who to call on and how. And Olivia's parents were, happily, none the wiser until the one time with the zombie.
After that, Olivia was packed up and sent away to boarding school.
***
"The demons, the things that go bump in the night," Rupert says, "the monsters under your bed, are real."
Olivia pretends that she does not know this. Stares absently into space, gently petting his forearm crossed beneath her breasts.
“Scary,” she says distantly, dreamily.
“Too scary,” Rupert asks.
“I don’t know.
The lie is almost easy to tell. Smooth, but perhaps too quick off the tongue. It doesn’t change anything, not really. She was never planning to stay.
***
Boarding school made Olivia cry. Her British parents and her Haitian Grandmother made her cry. The loneliness and the stares, and she missed the smell of Peze in the morning.
And then she met Astor, a beautiful boy with red lips and the bluest eyes she had ever seen. Astor kissed her once, told her she was beautiful: "The Queen of Sheba," he said and Olivia loved him.
He took her for long walks on the grounds. Held her hand by the lake. Kissed her in the theater balcony.
***
Olivia leans up and kisses him. Dips her tongue into Rupert’s mouth and tastes the bitter sweetness of the wine he’s been drinking. Presses her mouth hard against his as if she can eat his disappointment away. For a moment Rupert is tense, no longer the pliable, passionate lover who greeted her at the front door. Olivia pulls back gently, coaxing him with her mouth to follow. A breath. Rupert gives her that. A moment of hovering rejection before he leans in and closes the space between them.
It’s a smooth move, but perhaps too quick. The press of his mouth on hers too desperate, too much of please stay and not enough goodbye. Leaving is going to hurt, she can tell already.
He bites into the overripe fullness of her bottom lip and then licks away the small hurt.
***
It took less then two months for Astor to coax Olivia into bed. The first time was in the greenhouse surrounded by the scent of blooming orchids.
She loved his red lips and his hands and the way that he seemed so full of light. So very different from her own darkness. She loved to watch his hand smooth over her skin, loved to watch his body plunge into hers.
***
They undress, there, in the living room with the lights on and the curtains drawn. Perhaps the front door is locked, though neither of them can remember.
Rupert suckles at the round puff of her nipples, blackberries he once teased, and Olivia did not find it funny. The half-smile died slowly when her eyes rolled heavenward.
After the crack about her nipples, Rupert never says anything un-PC. He never asks Olivia questions about her hair or how it's possible that even she manages to darken in the summer sun. There is something about his tentativeness that she likes. But in bed nothing changes. Even when she watches him hunched over her, a ghost in the darkness, she can’t control her body’s reaction.
Mostly she keeps her eyes closed.
***
Olivia and Astor took walks less and less frequently. He never held her hand. Then just before Christmas she asked him about Alison, a white-blonde Dresden doll that all the boys had been chasing since the end of summer.
Astor shrugged. “Depends on what you’ve heard,” he said.
“Astor…”
“You know I like you, Olivia. You’re so beautiful. Your skin. Your hair. Your eyes.” He pressed his thumb into the lush fullness of her lips. “Your mouth.” And he kissed her.
***
Rupert tells Olivia how much he loves the way her body curves and bends. The sinewy length of her legs and arms. The narrowness of her hips always seems to surprise him.
He moves down her body, licking across the rise of her belly, just beneath the navel. He slides a finger inside her and Olivia arches hard against his hand.
"Built like a racehorse. For running," she says as he traces his mouth across her thigh. His fingers work ceaselessly.
She chokes, a hoarse moan breaking from her throat and she can feel his smile on the most secret part of her.
***
A week later Astor and Alison were officially a couple. He walked her from Russian Literature to the lunchroom. Picked her up from swim practice and held her hand in the hallway. Olivia saw them, everywhere. Alison watched Olivia from the corners of her eyes. She leaned up and whispered into Astor’s ear, slid her arm around his waist and they laughed.
For two weeks Olivia let it go. She didn’t cry, didn’t scream. Bad behavior wouldn’t win him back. Tantrums wouldn’t fix anything.
***
Rupert bites and suckles, Olivia cries and shakes against his mouth and hands. He crawls up her body, licking across her belly and her breasts, those blackberry nipples. When he reaches her face, he kisses her, pauses as he tastes the goodbye on her lips and the flavor seems to decide something in him. Makes him rougher than usual as he pushes her thighs apart and settles between them.
“Olivia,” he calls. “Look at me.”
Gently rubbing himself against the outside of her body, he calls her name.
Olivia shakes her head, tilts her hips to take him Rupert forces her down.
“Look at me,” he says.
***
The poppet nailed to the tree in the cemetery was the beginning. No tears. No wailing. No objections. Only a sort of message left for those who knew how to read it. A doll, her hem dipped in blood, nailed to a tree.
Alison, swimming laps during practice, went under with a cramp. There were many arms splashing in the pool. Hers were not unique.
Someone screamed when the body floated to the surface.
After that Astor held Olivia’s hand in the hall. Walked her from Geometry to the Common Hall. He kissed her beside the lake and made love to her in the greenhouse amidst the roses.
Olivia took Astor home for Easter. Introduced him to her parents and took him to visit her Grandmother.
Marie did not let him into the house. “No,” she said, staring hard at Olivia. “You have been very wicked, ma petite.” She looked at Astor and shook her graying head. “This,” she said. “This is no good. Take him home. Let him go. This is no good.” And she closed the door.
Olivia thought about keeping him. Wanted to keep him. She told him to call her The Queen of Sheba and he did.
In the end she remembered her Grandmother’s face and she sent him home.
She did not tell her Grandmother about the poppet on the tree or about her deep satisfaction at the sight of Alison face down in the pool.
When Maria looked at her granddaughter sideways, out of the corners of her eyes, Olivia thought she knew the truth anyway.
***
Olivia opens her eyes and stares up at her lover. She watches as he pushes inside her. Watches as he begins to break beneath his own rhythm.
She does not tell Rupert even as her body reaches for him, begging. Olivia does not tell him how although she is not manbo, she knows the spells and the rituals, the knowledge kissed into her forehead by her grandmother before she learned to walk.
Olivia does not tell him that there are more than just things that go bump in the night. She does not tell him that she knows. Never mentions a distant cousin sent away to live with her teacher, her Watcher.
Olivia never tells Rupert that his secrets aren’t really secrets. She does not tell him that there are worse things then The Gentlemen, Les Messieurs. She does not tell him that perhaps she is one of them.
She is not staying, after all.
Prompt: Olivia, power and irony
Author: seraphcelene
Summary: Olivia does not tell him that there are more than just things that go bump in the night
A/N: I wrote it in the 11th hour. After two weeks and four different versions this is the one that decided to finish itself. Couldn’t think of a title. Couldn’t keep to the plot or the tone. Themes? What's that? A prompt, you say? Pshaw! It’s all over the map. Unbeta’d. Written for
minim_calibre for the Character of Color Multifandom Challenge. The prompt is at the end of the text so you don’t laugh too hard at how far a field I traveled.Spoilers: Hush
Rating: NC-17
"Haiti is in your blood," Marie always told her granddaughter. Long before Olivia gave up straightening her hair. Long before the afros and the wild curls. Long, long before the locs.
"Haiti is in your blood", she would say, as she taught Olivia the prayers of the Sevis Gine. Marie showed her granddaughter the proper way to make sacrifice. Who to call on and how. And Olivia's parents were, happily, none the wiser until the one time with the zombie.
After that, Olivia was packed up and sent away to boarding school.
***
"The demons, the things that go bump in the night," Rupert says, "the monsters under your bed, are real."
Olivia pretends that she does not know this. Stares absently into space, gently petting his forearm crossed beneath her breasts.
“Scary,” she says distantly, dreamily.
“Too scary,” Rupert asks.
“I don’t know.
The lie is almost easy to tell. Smooth, but perhaps too quick off the tongue. It doesn’t change anything, not really. She was never planning to stay.
***
Boarding school made Olivia cry. Her British parents and her Haitian Grandmother made her cry. The loneliness and the stares, and she missed the smell of Peze in the morning.
And then she met Astor, a beautiful boy with red lips and the bluest eyes she had ever seen. Astor kissed her once, told her she was beautiful: "The Queen of Sheba," he said and Olivia loved him.
He took her for long walks on the grounds. Held her hand by the lake. Kissed her in the theater balcony.
***
Olivia leans up and kisses him. Dips her tongue into Rupert’s mouth and tastes the bitter sweetness of the wine he’s been drinking. Presses her mouth hard against his as if she can eat his disappointment away. For a moment Rupert is tense, no longer the pliable, passionate lover who greeted her at the front door. Olivia pulls back gently, coaxing him with her mouth to follow. A breath. Rupert gives her that. A moment of hovering rejection before he leans in and closes the space between them.
It’s a smooth move, but perhaps too quick. The press of his mouth on hers too desperate, too much of please stay and not enough goodbye. Leaving is going to hurt, she can tell already.
He bites into the overripe fullness of her bottom lip and then licks away the small hurt.
***
It took less then two months for Astor to coax Olivia into bed. The first time was in the greenhouse surrounded by the scent of blooming orchids.
She loved his red lips and his hands and the way that he seemed so full of light. So very different from her own darkness. She loved to watch his hand smooth over her skin, loved to watch his body plunge into hers.
***
They undress, there, in the living room with the lights on and the curtains drawn. Perhaps the front door is locked, though neither of them can remember.
Rupert suckles at the round puff of her nipples, blackberries he once teased, and Olivia did not find it funny. The half-smile died slowly when her eyes rolled heavenward.
After the crack about her nipples, Rupert never says anything un-PC. He never asks Olivia questions about her hair or how it's possible that even she manages to darken in the summer sun. There is something about his tentativeness that she likes. But in bed nothing changes. Even when she watches him hunched over her, a ghost in the darkness, she can’t control her body’s reaction.
Mostly she keeps her eyes closed.
***
Olivia and Astor took walks less and less frequently. He never held her hand. Then just before Christmas she asked him about Alison, a white-blonde Dresden doll that all the boys had been chasing since the end of summer.
Astor shrugged. “Depends on what you’ve heard,” he said.
“Astor…”
“You know I like you, Olivia. You’re so beautiful. Your skin. Your hair. Your eyes.” He pressed his thumb into the lush fullness of her lips. “Your mouth.” And he kissed her.
***
Rupert tells Olivia how much he loves the way her body curves and bends. The sinewy length of her legs and arms. The narrowness of her hips always seems to surprise him.
He moves down her body, licking across the rise of her belly, just beneath the navel. He slides a finger inside her and Olivia arches hard against his hand.
"Built like a racehorse. For running," she says as he traces his mouth across her thigh. His fingers work ceaselessly.
She chokes, a hoarse moan breaking from her throat and she can feel his smile on the most secret part of her.
***
A week later Astor and Alison were officially a couple. He walked her from Russian Literature to the lunchroom. Picked her up from swim practice and held her hand in the hallway. Olivia saw them, everywhere. Alison watched Olivia from the corners of her eyes. She leaned up and whispered into Astor’s ear, slid her arm around his waist and they laughed.
For two weeks Olivia let it go. She didn’t cry, didn’t scream. Bad behavior wouldn’t win him back. Tantrums wouldn’t fix anything.
***
Rupert bites and suckles, Olivia cries and shakes against his mouth and hands. He crawls up her body, licking across her belly and her breasts, those blackberry nipples. When he reaches her face, he kisses her, pauses as he tastes the goodbye on her lips and the flavor seems to decide something in him. Makes him rougher than usual as he pushes her thighs apart and settles between them.
“Olivia,” he calls. “Look at me.”
Gently rubbing himself against the outside of her body, he calls her name.
Olivia shakes her head, tilts her hips to take him Rupert forces her down.
“Look at me,” he says.
***
The poppet nailed to the tree in the cemetery was the beginning. No tears. No wailing. No objections. Only a sort of message left for those who knew how to read it. A doll, her hem dipped in blood, nailed to a tree.
Alison, swimming laps during practice, went under with a cramp. There were many arms splashing in the pool. Hers were not unique.
Someone screamed when the body floated to the surface.
After that Astor held Olivia’s hand in the hall. Walked her from Geometry to the Common Hall. He kissed her beside the lake and made love to her in the greenhouse amidst the roses.
Olivia took Astor home for Easter. Introduced him to her parents and took him to visit her Grandmother.
Marie did not let him into the house. “No,” she said, staring hard at Olivia. “You have been very wicked, ma petite.” She looked at Astor and shook her graying head. “This,” she said. “This is no good. Take him home. Let him go. This is no good.” And she closed the door.
Olivia thought about keeping him. Wanted to keep him. She told him to call her The Queen of Sheba and he did.
In the end she remembered her Grandmother’s face and she sent him home.
She did not tell her Grandmother about the poppet on the tree or about her deep satisfaction at the sight of Alison face down in the pool.
When Maria looked at her granddaughter sideways, out of the corners of her eyes, Olivia thought she knew the truth anyway.
***
Olivia opens her eyes and stares up at her lover. She watches as he pushes inside her. Watches as he begins to break beneath his own rhythm.
She does not tell Rupert even as her body reaches for him, begging. Olivia does not tell him how although she is not manbo, she knows the spells and the rituals, the knowledge kissed into her forehead by her grandmother before she learned to walk.
Olivia does not tell him that there are more than just things that go bump in the night. She does not tell him that she knows. Never mentions a distant cousin sent away to live with her teacher, her Watcher.
Olivia never tells Rupert that his secrets aren’t really secrets. She does not tell him that there are worse things then The Gentlemen, Les Messieurs. She does not tell him that perhaps she is one of them.
She is not staying, after all.
Prompt: Olivia, power and irony
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-09-15 06:35 pm (UTC)From:It somehow makes me think of the novel Wide Sargasso Sea (http://www.amazon.com/Wide-Sargasso-Sea-Paperback-Fiction/dp/0393308804/sr=1-1/qid=1158344876/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-4074357-0268858?ie=UTF8&s=books) ... perhaps the taking of a slight, undeveloped character and forming a rich, spooky backstory. Or maybe the style (though it's been a long time since I read WSS, can't remember too clearly) ... or maybe the tinge of voudoun ...
I certainly will be viewing Olivia differently next time I watch those episodes.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-15 07:20 pm (UTC)From:But thanks.
no subject
Date: 2010-02-04 06:56 am (UTC)From:Terrific!
no subject
Date: 2010-10-24 11:47 am (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-10-24 01:18 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-10-24 01:45 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-10-24 06:27 pm (UTC)From:And, of course, Olivia has a fascinating face for the walk-on role she has in canon. Her character practically begs to be developed.
no subject
Date: 2010-12-02 08:33 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2010-12-03 07:10 am (UTC)From: