complexfemalecharacter | (no subject)

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Nothing," she answers. "How the fuck do you think I ate most of the time back home?"

It had been her only option a lot of the time and she'd only had a problem relying on the food vouchers whenever the twats at school found out about it and gave her shit. But that was just one more thing she'd had to harden herself against and she'd done just fine there.

Her shoulders rise and fall in a shrug and she grins back at Billy, her lower lip pulled slightly between her teeth. "Way I figure, I haven't mentally been a teenage girl for a long time now. Started paying my own rent when I was fourteen, I'm not exactly worrying about going out and partying."

Yeah, Butcher, too. Things weren't top-tier at the Butcher residence, but at least they ate.

Their food is ready at the same time, so Butcher grabs them both in one hand and sort of tosses Maeve's plate at her. This is how Billy stays comfortable: hot and cold. Since this girl is entirely innocent in the way of grander sins - like levelling buildings and shrugging off civilian casualties - his gruffness is edgeless. It's odd, but he thinks he feels... normal. Not a lot of laypeople are so cavalier about casual violence. She never seemed afraid. It's going to be tough to forget that when this conversation is over.

"You ain't missed much," Butcher assures her, though he doesn't suppose he got to be much of a teen, either. Some are violent. Most aren't that way because they have to be. "Party's only good if you can't remember it, anyway."

Maeve snorts and gives Billy a look far older than her years as she unwraps her tacos.

"Not if you're a teenage girl," she quips lightly, as if it doesn't mean anything much. But even though Moordale wasn't a big city and even though there wasn't a lot of the worst kind of shit in the world that happened there, she still knows there's not a single girl or woman who lived there who wasn't aware something like that was always a threat.

It's still a threat. Maeve doesn't accept drinks she hasn't poured herself or watched a bartender pour. If she doesn't remember a party, she knows it's because something awful happened to her. That's how it is for most girls. Not for guys, of course.

"Or a woman at all, really," she adds thoughtfully as she takes a big bite of her taco.

Fuck, he almost winces a little. By the time the feeling makes it to the surface, it's expressed in little more than a twitch of lips against their typical direction. Funny how distance - an unknowable amount of distance - and unfamiliarity can make a person forget things.

"'S fair," Butcher says, sparing a glance down to consider her. Poor girl. Some people deserve the life they have, but it doesn't seem too much like this one does. The worst thing she's probably guilty of is a broken heart, and it seems like there's a lot that's happened to crack through. In some ways, he knows the feeling. That's what he's really doing: reading her face and seeing the bits he recognizes.

That's dropped in favor of eating his food, as well. There's really nothing he can say about what's been said, so he doesn't.

That he doesn't protest, doesn't do any of that not all men bullshit, or start spouting statistics at her meant to prove her wrong does a lot toward endearing him to her further and Maeve grins as she finds a bench and hops up to sit on the back of it, her boots on the seat.

"And that," she tells him through another mouthful of taco, "is why half the male population of Darrow High hates me. I don't even go there and I've already made enemies of them all."

She says this in a voice that suggests she doesn't care and for the most part she doesn't. Maeve has made friends here, people more like her than any of her friends had been back home. She misses Aimee's cheerful optimism and the way her light could bright just about any day, but she feels most like herself, most comfortable with Rue and Robin and Rosie.

"What is?" Butcher asks with a mouthful of food. "Bit of a buzzkill but you ain't kneed no one in the bollocks in an hour." He shrugs as if to say who knows.

There's something else there, though and Billy feels like he knows her a little bit now.

After swiping at his beard, he asks neutrally, "why do you care, then? Don't say you don't." He's pointing at her with his free hand, but it's no interrogation.

"For the most part, I really don't," Maeve answers with a shrug. "It sucks when someone looks at you and makes a snap judgement, but I'm also not going to lose sleep over some fool with a rich daddy thinking I'm a slag. But that shit sticks. It follows you around. It ruins peoples' lives sometimes. Just because I don't end up slitting my wrists over it doesn't mean some other girl won't and that's fucking bullshit, isn't it?"

And Maeve doesn't think it makes that girl any less strong. Because the girl is always blamed for it. Always.

"I care in the grand scheme of things," she says, gesturing. "Men needs to be held accountable for the shit they start, even if it's just calling some girl a slut because she won't give you a handjob behind the bleachers after school."

"Aye," Butcher says carefully, watching her wrap herself up in it. The only reason he looks amused is because he considers himself absolved. Right or wrong, that's the truth. Sure, there were loads of things he'd done as a boy that he wasn't proud of, but most of it was done in the name of protecting his brother. As an adult, his record with women is less spotless. Sometimes sex was the quickest or only way to get something. When you're on a warpath, it takes more than things like keeping promises and being considerate to keep a person in line.

Raynor's not even the one he did the worst. Before he met Becca, Billy was a very, very different person. He was supposed to get her back or die before he had to deal with any of that. Now, in this new place and its terrible quiet, he may be paying the piper.

"I ain't gonna argue with ya. We do hateful shite because we get away with it. Don't need to be in a boys club like the military to see that."