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Velveteen	By : kenaz Category: S through Z > Velvet Goldmine Views: 7429 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Velvet Goldmine, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Velveteen
- 1
"What is REAL?"

Jack Fairy raised kohl-rimmed eyes in the vanity mirror. His hand levitated to the bauble in his ear, a replacement for the emerald pin Brian had nicked on some other night, at some other party. The glass caught the muted light from a lamp draped with a scarf and sparkled dully.

"It's a thing that happens to you when someone loves you," Jack explained with contrived patience. "Not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become real." He turned back to the mirror and picked up a powder puff, artfully caressing the arc of his cheekbones and leaving a bloom of iridescent kisses behind.

"Does it hurt?" asked Brian.

Jack's mask slipped when he shrugged, revealing the haunted look beneath. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

But Brian had already seen his eyes go shifty and knew it was bollocks. Of course it hurt.

"It doesn't happen all at once." Jack uncapped a bottle of Malmaison and dabbed it liberally behind his ears before jerking the tatty old Herm�s off the lampshade and knotting it jauntily around his neck. The room was suddenly awash in light. "You become."

He rummaged a bit too intently through the vanity drawer and Brian knew he wouldn't say anything more; the actor had delivered his soliloquy and the curtain had dropped. Applause, applause. House lights, up.

Jack turned, his mouth lurid-slick with ruby gloss, and grinned. He held a tiny square of paper between his fingers.

"It's Christmas Eve, dearie, don't be maudlin. Here. Stick out your tongue."

* * *

There once was a lad, and in the beginning he was really splendid. He was all flash and glam, as a rocker should be; his coat was velvet and fur, he had real leather trousers, and his velour vest was lined with pink sateen. That night at the party he wore a sprig of holly behind his ear and the effect was charming.

The house was filled with sycophants, poseurs, and a low-hanging veil of fragrant smoke: incense, hash, and cigarettes. Jack Fairy was all in black, a sybaritic priest doling out white blotter Eucharist to the waiting tongues of his acolytes; Curt paced the floor like a wolf. Beautiful boys and vapid girls whirled from room to room, rhapsodizing over art and music in words they didn't understand and couldn't spell, gesticulating wildly.

Brian framed himself in a doorway and let them come to him, his eyes following the vibrant trails that echoed their frenetic movements. The acid had crept up on him. His eyes were nearly black under the drug's peculiar sway; pupils eclipsed irises, a penumbra of icy blue shining behind. Every breath was sharp in his lungs, and the sound of voices advanced and retreated in stereophonic waves.

It was well after midnight when Curt grabbed him by the belt and pulled him, knuckles warm and knobby against his tailbone, into a bedroom with coats piled up on the bed. He pushed him up hard against the door as he locked it. The smoke he blew out of the corner of his mouth left his lips in a measured hiss and he ground his roach out beneath his heel before they kissed, leaving it there on the floor even though there was an ashtray on the nightstand. Curt's breath was familiar and acrid-sweet with whiskey, nicotine, and reefer; his stubble grated on Brian's chin. He closed his eyes. The moon outside was like a spotlight, and it came through the window and pierced his lids.

"I'm fed to the fucking teeth with small talk," Curt grunted, pushing his hands up Brian's shirt. The calluses on his string fingers left gooseflesh in their wake. He imagined Curt's fingers pushing through him, into his spongy flesh�Curt's hand breaking through the shell of his ribs�Curt's fingers wrapping around his beating heart.

"Do you know the story of The Velveteen Rabbit?" he asked, watching Curt fumble with the buttons of his vest, wadding it up and tossing it on the floor where it lay in a pile of blue velour and pink sateen, a discarded skin.

"No," Curt answered after too long a pause.

"It's about a toy rabbit that wants to become Real."

He started to tell the story, but Curt was only half listening. His voice trailed off as he pushed the clumsy, callused hands away and reached efficiently for Curt's zipper, hearing him groan when the metal teeth parted and his half-hard cock spilled out. It brushed against his lips, stood willfully against his tongue. Brian gave head like he did everything else: exquisitely, deliberately, and with an air of complete indifference.

Someone rattled the doorknob and cursed and Curt pulled away, stuck up his middle finger at the door, and shouted rude things until the rattling stopped. He skulked across the room and flicked off the light, but the moon was still full and bright outside the window and it lit the bed like a stage. He lingered near the door for a moment, looking back at Brian all drunk and hard and satyr-like, and he smiled.

"Fucking beautiful."

They pushed the coats onto the floor and peeled off the rest of their clothing, their velveteen skins. Brian wrapped his arms and legs around Curt like vines and breathed him in, breathed him deep: sweat and unwashed hair, smoke and alcohol, musk and leather. He could feel every touch at once, the aftershock of Curt's fingers still tangible after the hand had moved. He watched, disassociated, as Curt's hand stroked him, the chipped black varnish glinting in the ambient window glow. Beneath the varnish there was tender pink skin and dirt under the nails.

"Make me Real," Brian whispered and rolled to his hands and knees.

And then Curt was on him, in him, murmuring filthy poetic nonsense into his neck, but it wasn't enough. It didn't hurt yet.

"Harder. Make me Real."

"God�" The voice was strained and guttural, sex and heat. "Oh�Fuck�!"

And just for a moment, plummeting into pure white light with Curt, Brian got a taste of what it was, what it felt like, to be Real, and it was bittersweet at the back of his throat, the ghost of a taste remembered on his tongue.

* * * *

They lay in a tumble of limbs and Curt wiped his hand on the quilt.

"So what happened to your little rabbit?"

"Wasn't mine. It was just a story." Brian shivered and grabbed for the pack of smokes on the nightstand. They weren't his, and he upended the ashtray when he reached back for the matches. Curt's hands reflexively danced up and down his arm, his fingers carelessly fretting chords on his flesh, but the friction didn't warm him. He fixed his eyes on the ascent of smoke and hoped Curt wouldn't talk any more. His own tongue felt like a leaden slab in his mouth.

"But how'd it end?"

Brian rolled over and leaned across the edge of the bed to stub out the fag on the heel of Curt's boot, watching the cherry come away from the paper. The carpet singed and let off a whiff of burnt hair before the ember went out. He disentangled himself from Curt and rooted around through the coats on the floor until he found his vest. It reeked of smoke and cologne and he slipped it on, but he was still cold. He rubbed the velour between his fingers, watching the nap change colour.

"Brian?" Curt's face was sleepy concern.

"I don't remember," he lied, looking away toward the window. The lower pane was cracked, and the two halves of Curt's reflection didn't quite line up. All in all, that seemed about right. "Doesn't matter."

"I know you're watching me," Curt told him. "C'mere."

But he didn't. He just stared at the window, and through it, seeing himself and Curt and the headboard of the bed transparently juxtaposed against the night outside.

"You are real," Curt whispered, and Brian knew he believed it. It was a lie, though, a beautiful lie. He was glad when Curt began to lightly snore, his arms and legs twitching like a dog in dreams, the boy raised by wolves just another sleeping fiction.

Snow was falling, gently circling in the updrafts, and Jack Fairy stood outside, bathed in the light of the moon with his arms outstretched, watching hypnotised as the tiny flakes vanished on his coat. He turned and saw Brian at the window and he smiled before closing his eyes and throwing back his head. Snowflakes drifted across his lashes and melted on his teeth.

It's Christmas Eve, dearie, don't be maudlin. Here. Stick out your tongue.

Brian grinned with half a mouth and then turned away from the window and crawled back into the bed where Curt's body put out heat like a furnace. Curt curled instinctively around him and drew the draught of the window out of his skin. Brian picked up an unresisting hand and twined their fingers together, feeling the rough edge of calluses and the uneven veneer of chipped black varnish.

Someone rattled the doorknob again. Curt snuffled against his shoulder, jerking in his sleep, but Brian's blood still thrummed desultory and restless in his veins and he could hear the clockwork ticking of his own thoughts, louder even than the music on the other side of the door. It doesn't happen all at once, Jack Fairy had told him. You become.

He wondered if he would even realise it if it happened.

****

A/N: The opening paragraphs paraphrase liberally from Margery Williams' story The Velveteen Rabbit. Malmaison by Floris is the cologne that was supposedly favored by Oscar Wilde, but he was unavailable to confirm this for me because he's dead.
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Velveteen