Maeve Wiley (
complexfemalecharacter) wrote2020-12-07 03:09 pm
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It's almost Christmas and Maeve, for the first time in her life around a holiday, has a boyfriend. Well, not a boyfriend, because she and Steve haven't exactly used those words or even talked about what they're doing and she still occasionally thinks about how much she'd like to shag Rowan, but really, for all intents and purposes, she's got a boyfriend.
That in itself is hard enough to deal with, but now she's realized she'd got to get him a gift or look like a complete asshole. Money isn't a problem, she's still getting her handouts from the city itself, plus she's got her side hustle up and running again, and that is what she's doing right now. Making extra cash to buy Steve a Christmas gift.
Wearing a pair of tight black jeans, her heavy combat boots, and the biggest black cargo jacket she could find, Maeve is leaning against the outside of an Ahab's Coffee, a warm drink in one hand, a stack of papers in the other. She's met three college students so far and they've exchanged essays for cash, and she has two more she's waiting on.
So of course those pricks from the high school wander by. She can't even remember their names now, she'd barely gone to any classes before fucking off and getting her GED instead. Ethan she remembers, because of something Rowan said about his brother dealing drugs. The other two are Ethan's cronies, idiots with close cropped hair and broad chests and she knows exactly the sort of guys they are before they even speak to her.
"Hey, I remember you," Ethan says. "You're that one with the book. Part of the whole sex cult, right?"
"Yeah, you got me," Maeve answers in a bored voice. "You're super hilarious, now move along."
One of the others, the bigger of the two, steps closer to Maeve. He's trying to be intimidating and she doesn't love his proximity, but she only tips her coffee cup back and takes a sip, her eyes on him the whole time. He's not close enough yet, but he will be.
"Sex cult?" he asks and Maeve smiles sarcastically.
"Yeah," Ethan says. "She's a real slut. I bet she'd even fuck you."
"Would you?" the guy asks and Maeve waits. He steps closer. Then closer. He's trying to get a look at her tits, which would be hilarious given her enormous jacket if he wasn't such a complete creep. One more step brings him in range and Maeve lifts her knee as hard as she can, jamming it swiftly into the soft and delicate and stupidly vulnerable balls between his legs.
The idiot drops and Maeve steps over him, moves over slightly, then resumes leaning against the wall and waiting for her clients.
That in itself is hard enough to deal with, but now she's realized she'd got to get him a gift or look like a complete asshole. Money isn't a problem, she's still getting her handouts from the city itself, plus she's got her side hustle up and running again, and that is what she's doing right now. Making extra cash to buy Steve a Christmas gift.
Wearing a pair of tight black jeans, her heavy combat boots, and the biggest black cargo jacket she could find, Maeve is leaning against the outside of an Ahab's Coffee, a warm drink in one hand, a stack of papers in the other. She's met three college students so far and they've exchanged essays for cash, and she has two more she's waiting on.
So of course those pricks from the high school wander by. She can't even remember their names now, she'd barely gone to any classes before fucking off and getting her GED instead. Ethan she remembers, because of something Rowan said about his brother dealing drugs. The other two are Ethan's cronies, idiots with close cropped hair and broad chests and she knows exactly the sort of guys they are before they even speak to her.
"Hey, I remember you," Ethan says. "You're that one with the book. Part of the whole sex cult, right?"
"Yeah, you got me," Maeve answers in a bored voice. "You're super hilarious, now move along."
One of the others, the bigger of the two, steps closer to Maeve. He's trying to be intimidating and she doesn't love his proximity, but she only tips her coffee cup back and takes a sip, her eyes on him the whole time. He's not close enough yet, but he will be.
"Sex cult?" he asks and Maeve smiles sarcastically.
"Yeah," Ethan says. "She's a real slut. I bet she'd even fuck you."
"Would you?" the guy asks and Maeve waits. He steps closer. Then closer. He's trying to get a look at her tits, which would be hilarious given her enormous jacket if he wasn't such a complete creep. One more step brings him in range and Maeve lifts her knee as hard as she can, jamming it swiftly into the soft and delicate and stupidly vulnerable balls between his legs.
The idiot drops and Maeve steps over him, moves over slightly, then resumes leaning against the wall and waiting for her clients.
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While she conducts her shady business, Slackjawed Cunt takes off. Flattened Ballsack is getting up, and Butcher is watching with gentle amusement as he struggles. Ethan the Cunt is still down, so Butcher does him(self) a favor and picks him up by the shirt, adjusting it like he's the kid's barber after a shave and not like he's going to fucking kill him if he sees him again. And he will.
"Better run, cunts," Butcher growls. They do to the best of their ability. There isn't usually a terrible amount of satisfaction in bloodying children, but when they're like these little fucks, things are different.
"I respect the hustle," he says to her as she comes back. He doesn't ask her if she's alright because she clearly is. Billy respects that, too. "Name's Billy Butcher. Nice to meet a fellow Londoner." He holds out a hand to shake. It's a pretty civilized gesture from a man who gleefully knocked some kids around, but Butcher is always willing to pay respect where it is due.
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"Maeve Wiley," she answers with a smile and a shrug at the comment about the papers. "Getting paid to give the entire community college GPA a boost sounds like a good time to me. And I'm not from London, I'm from Moordale. I wish I was from London. Probably something interesting happened at least once a week in an actual city."
Nothing interesting really ever happened in Moordale. People were small minded in small towns.
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"Ain't missing much," Butcher responds, digging his cigarettes out from his pocket. Funny how this habit had also been in his rearview. The more shit changes, the less Butcher feels like changing himself. "World's full of cunts no matter where you go." He gestures toward where the lads have just run off to indicate that, hey, same is true with places out of the world.
Billy's aware that she's a college-age girl and he's a gruff old man, so he's doing what he can to be careful here. If he's on the run because he beat a fucker to death, that's fine, but he's not going to be pushed to the edges of this shite place because he's seemingly creeped on an unsuspecting young person.
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Not that there's any getting out of this place.
"Not to mention public transportation," she adds with a little, smart ass grin. "Try getting around a place without a car when all you've got is a shitty little bus route."
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It's not as good as New York, she's sure of that, but when compared to what she had, Darrow is bloody paradise.
"Maybe you just need to expand your list of hobbies," she suggests, looking amused, her lips curling into a grin she presses tight between her teeth. "Take up knitting or yoga."
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"I ain't stayed anywhere for very long," he confirms, exhaling a pleased enough steam of smoke. The pack is still in his hand, so he offers it to Maeve. "Maybe if I found the right yoga studio."
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"Maybe a book club," she suggests. "I can recommend a few good ones to start with."
She's teasing and she isn't. Daryl had taken a book from her to read, after all, and she'd expected that about as much as she expects Billy might. Daryl's like Billy in some ways, but he's quieter, too.
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Nope. Nothing he can think of. The only things he remembers from his childhood are very much like his adulthood. Maybe he'd wanted to be a writer or something. Answers to these questions might only be uncovered in intense therapy, and that's never going to happen.
"What else you got?" He smirks.
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She takes a drag of her cigarette, managing to look almost posh while she does, which is a feat for a girl who grew up in a caravan park, and she once again blows the smoke out the side of her mouth, away from Billy.
"Matchmaker?" she asks. "You could run a meet and greet for all the single and lonely people you know. Pair up someone like Ethan with a nice girl, preferably one who has razors stored in her vagina."
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At the last bit, Butcher fully laughs. It's a single sound, well-earned.
"Helluva contraceptive," Billy says on an exhale. The coffee he'd been drinking is forgotten on the table not that far from them. "S'good. Would be a shame for a cunt like that to multiply."
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Mostly she doesn't think about it. She doesn't regret the abortion, she doesn't even regret that some of the people here know about it. She's not prepared to be anyone's mum, probably not ever, but especially not right now. She doesn't regret not telling Jackson either. He would have only made things worse.
"So how did you get wrapped up in high school dirtbags?" she asks. "They don't really seem like they're on your level."
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So, when the question comes, he answers, bullshitless, "bar fight. The one whose nut you crushed is all elbows, and good old Ethan-- Let's just say we just saw he ain't chums with the Me Too movement." Ethan's head had been the closest thing to bash. It's not like he was trying to avenge some poor lady, he just wanted to fight, and that seemed a better excuse than the audacity of an elbow in a crowded bar.
"What about you? Go to school with these cunts?"
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Technically she hasn't started classes yet, but she's enrolled and she paid half her tuition, even though it took a good hunk out of what she's been saving, and the rest is on a student loan with no interest until after she graduates. Classes start soon, though, in about a month, and she figures she can say she's a college student now and it's fair.
"Some friends of mine do, though," she adds and then shrugs. "And they don't much like me for whatever reason it is this week. First time it was that I'm a homeless orphan, second time it was that I was in a sex cult, this time it's just that I'm a huge slag, apparently, and I'll fuck any of them for a fiver."
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People didn't like him much either his whole life. He has a rugged charm to him, but that can get buried pretty deep under a mountain of hair-trigger rage. So, it's a strangely placid moment that Billy takes a drag of his cigarette in solidarity. So unassuming that he doesn't notice that Ethan and his friends are mobbing toward his back with a bat.
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"Our friends are coming back," she warns, wishing she was more surprised by the sight of Ethan and company with a bat. They're really not very bright, that never have been, but this is an escalation from the first time Maeve dealt with them. Back then they had been hanging out with girls and stealing her book because they thought it was funny.
Now they seem to be messed up in something bigger. Something Maeve wants absolutely no part of.
"I'm not getting arrested, yeah," she says. "I'm not fucking up my future like that."
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Even Butcher didn't think these little high school twerps would be so stupid as to come back. His mouth bends down in a sort of go figure gesture. He shifts his weight so he's turned facing them now, Maeve a bit behind him. His neck turns toward her just a touch when she speaks.
"No, you ain't." This is meant to be reassuring, but he can understand how only a certain kind of person would feel safer with Butcher around.
"Ain't you the thickest twat," Butcher calls to the lads - only one of which has a weapon. "The three of ya: the loosest, floppiest cunts I ever seen." The kid is fucking furious. Ethan swings wide (so wide) and Butcher grabs the bat in one hand. There's a second of pity. Butcher jams the base of the bat into Ethan's face. It clatters to the floor. The two remaining boys were not prepared for this outcome. They're staring. For a second, they're all stuck standing in dumb silence.
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"I'd fuck off, yeah?" she says to the guys. "Pretty sure my new friend here gives even less of a fuck about your personal safety than I do and that's saying something."
"Shut up, slut," one of the nameless idiots answers and Maeve rolls her eyes. She's not sure how that reputation manages to follow her everywhere. In Moordale it was Maeve Wiley's a cockbiter and now it's just straight up slut. It's so predictable. So boring.
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Butcher's about to say something devastating, but the whole tide shifts when Dollar Store James Franco on the right calls out like that at Maeve. That violent itch slams into the space between his eyeballs. It's not some misguided sense of chivalry or a gross pass at impressing anyone - he just hates cunts. Cunts see some kinds of people as weaker than them, and they need these people to know that. There is nothing Butcher loves more than wiping the smug smile off what's left of a cunt's face.
Ethan is still down and gushing blood. He'll be down for a bit and the bat is rolling toward him. Butcher redirects the bat with a tap of his boot.
"Oi Maeve. Grab that, yeah?" He's not telling her to use it, but there's a suggestion. If she wants to keep her hands clean, she can help him a lot just by getting the blunt instrument out of some pathetic hands.
The other two are slow to react. It's like they want to get their asses kicked. If that's the case, Butcher holds his hand out for the bat and says," or give it here and I'll teach you a thing or two." It's not a huge deal if one of these dumb kids gets a punch on him while he's playing teacher.
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They all have such an inflated sense of self worth. She'd like to see that get taken done, at least a notch or two.
"A demonstration is probably pretty useful," she continues, smiling her tight lipped smile at the one who had called her a slut.
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"Lesson one," Butcher begins. Now, he jabs the tip of the bat into Shut Up Slut's Adams apple. He makes a terrible choking sound. "If someone's flappin' the old windbag, shut them up." That one stumbles back, so Butcher just knocks him over with a crack of the bat to the ribs. It will be a bitch to recover from, but he'll he down for good and that's the goal.
Cunt # 3 rushes him and gets a damn good punch in, square on Butcher's mouth. Billy seems right pleased. He bars the lad across the throat with the bat and holds him there. Blood gathers in his mouth and he spits it out away from all of the masses.
"Any questions so far?"
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Moordale wasn't dangerous, not really. It's a small town with a lot of entitled assholes, but Maeve had never felt truly threatened there. But she remembers what happened to Aimee, the literal wanker on the bus, and she's not going to let anyone get away with anything like that with her.
"Pretty straightforward," she says cheerfully. "You alright? You're bleeding a bit."
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Before he can spend too long there, he traps the young lad in an easy headlock and says, cheery enough, "what say I knock this cunt out and we find a taco truck or the like?" Sure it was his lesson to begin with, but this is like punching toilet paper and there is no satisfaction in that.
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It's not so bad, after all that, having someone think of her as a kid.
"Yeah, alright," she agrees. "I'm never going to say no to tacos."
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"Right, then!" He straightens, adjusting his shirt and the collar of his coat. "I'm starving." A booted foot steps over one felled cunt, then the other. He flips Ethan's one good eye off. With a swing, Butcher tosses the bat into a nearby dumpster. They are forgotten as soon as he sets his pace for the truck that's usually around here, somewhere.
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