Title: Dust Underfoot

Author: Lady Altair

Rating: M

Summary: It seems rather tragic, that he will never see how golden he truly is, will never see himself as anything but Black.

Author's Note: For the Cuban Sombrero Gal as part of the Reviews Lounge Ficathon!

Something inside Marlene twinges in a strange, faded facsimile of pain, too distant and abstract to truly hurt. She explores the feeling, detachedly curious, as she studies the uncomfortable, fidgety set of Sirius' shoulders where he's seated across from her. His friends sit in one of the better lit booths in the pub and he is looking for a way out so they won't see her, won't see him, won't see anything that could put him and her together to make a them. Marlene McKinnon is nothing to be proud of.

And she knows that. She's nothing to parade around with, nothing to bring home to your family (and that is Sirius', sitting there laughing in the golden light) and on any other day she'd be entirely proud of it. She's well aware of the uncomfortable silence that she brings with her, the venom haze that seeps out of her robes like the stale cigarette smoke to kill the conversations before she's even close enough to hear them.

They're laughing together, just a few feet from where she sits with Sirius and a world away, as well. She's watching them, and she can feel Black getting nervous across from her, like she's the sort of girl that's going to turn back to him and say 'oh, look, your friends! Aren't you going to introduce me?' She swishes her drink in her hand, almost wishing she took her Firewhisky on the rocks for the added drama of clinking ice as she contemplates the four at the table, at the empty chair somehow left open for the man sitting across from her. That's the kind of accident that speaks to real friendship; there's a space for him even when he isn't there, and it's given without a thought.

In the whole wide world, there's not one chair saved for her. The thought comes upon her and it's a good thing Firewhisky doesn't freeze; she's got enough of that in her veins to keep the blood flowing and her pause is even less than fleeting.

The moment settles into a strange little vacancy in her chest. She writes it off and leaves him to it, throwing back the dregs of her drink before she goes. Fuck you, she thinks vaguely, sliding out of her seat and striding out the front door, meandering through the tables in the most obvious way possible, poisoning the room. The conversations die as she threads through, and Sirius' friends stop laughing as she saunters down her runway; Marlene McKinnon has always known how to steal a room. She meant for that; she won't sneak out like a secret, Sirius Black doesn't get her for free.

"Later?" he calls after her, trying to speak quietly. She shrugs her shoulders and doesn't deign to turn her head back to him.

"Whenever, Sirius." He can't stand her nonchalance, can't stand that if he doesn't find her, she'll find another. She won't simper and pout, she won't wait. Sirius Black is a star, accustomed to girls hustling each other for the best vantage, to smile under the limelight of his attentions whenever he condescends to bestow them. Things have always come so easily to him, but Marlene never, ever will. Marlene McKinnon is a black hole, and Sirius' starlight is all rather lost on her.

It's too nice a pub for her, anyway. Too many lights, too much shining wood and rich dark leather, clean glasses and laughter, and the barkeep had started serving a look of paternal disapproval along with the alcohol around the fifth round of Firewhisky. Sirius goes to join his friends, to take that chair and complete the table; it's their sort of place. He'll probably explain her presence away as Order business, but it doesn't really matter; they'll ask and he'll have to answer and she'll still exist.

Marlene fucks off the The Fox and Fey; it's stumbling distance from her flat and most certainly her sort of place; dark and seedy, cloudy pints and chipped wineglasses, scarred countertops and mismatched, badly-mended furniture that's seen more than a few shady brawls. Not a place for friends; the patrons here generally come alone.

The dirty, jaundiced light is kinder on her ashy skin, and the witch behind the bar is the sort too busy avoiding any reflections of her roughened, fading beauty in the poorly polished surfaces around her to spare any thought for Marlene and the empty glasses she's lining up along the bar. Apathy and disinterest colors the pub in dirty greys and browns, and Marlene sculls the warm amber liquid until the colors blur together and the chair underneath her is as good as any other.

Hours later, Sirius saunters in like he belongs. Maybe he believes he does, and Marlene half-grins at his arrogance—he'll disavow the Blacks with every breath, but all he has to do is turn his head, take a step, level a gaze, and his Black blood screams out louder than any words he could ever speak. He thinks he belongs here, walks in as though he's been born to this pit, but he does not; he has someone to walk out to, a space saved, someone to sit and laugh with in a pub so unlike this one. That is a luxury no one in here is privy to; Sirius struts in and it is a choice.

The pub goes very quietly uneasy at his entrance—he's got that brash, brazen undercurrent of an Auror or an Enforcer beneath the leather jacket and heavy boots, and the denizens of the Fox are far enough along towards the blacker side of the spectrum to distrust that. He doesn't notice the frisson of cool wariness that weaves through the room; no one who belongs here could ever miss it.

She thinks about stringing Sirius along a little while, sticking to the craggy, thirty-something Scouser who's been buying her drinks just to grind him a little, but the alcohol has dampened some of her spite, and she decides to save them both the trouble, and her benefactor a trip to St. Mungo's. He calls her a worthless slag as she abandons him, mourning all of his hard-earned Galleons that have gone for nothing, but that's hardly the worst thing she's ever been called.

The street outside glitters with the tiny sparkles of a hundred thousand glass bottles ground to dust underfoot. Marlene admires them as she climbs on the motorbike behind Sirius, the little bits of broken beauty sprinkled in the filth of the Liverpool gutter. They are sharp in the blur of her vision when nothing else is. They're really nothing; the last remnants of unremarkable bottles of lager and liquor—they wouldn't be beautiful but for their surroundings, the filth and dirt of a gutter made to glitter.

Sirius smiles at her cheekily over his shoulder, and she can almost feel the swell of arrogant triumph rising up in his chest as she wraps her arms around him—like she's some prize he's won. What a prize, indeed—beautiful enough, just like those sparkles in the gutter, and just as sharp, broken, and ultimately worthless.

With the sticky slick leather of his jacket warm under Marlene's cheek, she realizes with the honest clarity of intoxication that Sirius is not like those broken bottles at all, not something made beautiful by the contrast like those pretty little sparks under her feet; not like her at all. He is beautiful all on his own. He crushes crystal to glitter in the dark, ruins beauty to be this, leaves behind his golden friends, leaves their circle incomplete and comes into the dark places he does not belong. It seems rather tragic, that he will never see how golden he truly is, will never see himself as anything but Black.

If she were less selfish, she might regret that. But she just holds on for the ride, enjoys the night, and, three days later, does it all again. She thinks of that empty chair sitting open somewhere and knows she should feel sorry, but she won't step around what Sirius has already ground underfoot.