The Great Grey

"Aoife!" Eoin was loitering around the headquarters of the Greenstreet Gang again. Sean and his boys tried to beat him up yesterday, but he was not so weak as a fortnight earlier. All his hair was cut off and he had on new clothes. They were not new. They were Luc Wynn's old clothes, but to Eoin they were new. The sleeves were too long, so he was rolling them up. Eoin had gained weight, at least some.
He sat around and smoked cigarettes on a stoop in an alley. He was thinking about how to get back at Sean Claffey, get him good. Split his head, flatten his ugly nose. Then he saw a blonde, ratty girl slip out the door of the headquarters and he recognized her immediately. "Mad Knife!" he shouted. "Come 'ere. Yer deaf?"

Truth be told, Aoife O’Kelly had had a breakthrough. What? You may ask? Had she managed to glean a new pair of shoes to keep her feet safe? Or had she managed to scratch her scalp clean of unworthy and troublesome nits? No. She had managed to cook herself a handful of meat pies! Yes, you heard that right! A little pastry (unevenly cooked and… questionable in quality) stuffed full of stolen minced meat (of various origins) and carrots barely scrubbed clean. She had been rather proud of the achievement, and had hoped to sell the excess at the market. But without much success, Aoife had returned with her pockets full — an unsatisfied day that had left her mood soured and gloomy.

The next day, Aoife had decided to sow her revenge on those who had made her feel worthless. So, when she stepped out of the Greenstreet headquarters, Aoife had been quiet unaware of Eoin’s presence till she heard him the second time, the Mad Knife beckoning her over like a noise only dogs could hear as she stuck her head up and turned from side to side to look for him.

Eoin. Well, he looked better than the other day, that was for sure, as she made a raspberry with her lips and made her approach, extending her arm to pinch his cigarette between her finger and thumb before putting it to her mouth instead. “Yer hard as a rock, McDaniels? Or yer want somet’ing else?” She asked, narrowing her eyes with mischief.

Aoife, he thought, looked as nasty and ragged and wild as ever, scampering down the dirty alleyway. She was too scrawny, but her body was to Eoin the most enticing thing he'd laid his eyes on since wandering through market this morning and eyeing the steaks at the butcher. "C'mere an' get a feel, yer goin' to see," he said. She took his cigarette instead. Eoin looked up to her, then looked her up and down. Her dress was torn at the hem and had a big hole. He could see her slender ankle and it got him bothered. He stiffened up. Since he stopped smoking so much, his prick woke from its hibernation and it got in his way all the time. It seemed to want to make up for lost time. He'd forgotten about what a bother that was; Eoin did not have the brass for whores right now, he was saving up for something else.
He put a hand around her leg, where he knew she had the knife strapped to her thigh.
"Show me your knife, Mad Knife," he teased her and grinned. "That'll get me standin' tall."

His eyes stayed on her, stuck to her hands. With her, he never knew if she was going to slap him, bite him, lick his face, kick him in the balls. That's what made her a good time, he thought.
His stomach grumbled.
"Yer smelling like mince pie," he said to her and sniffed around the front of her dress. Her pockets were full and heavy. "What ya got there? Gimme some."

Aoife did not think of sex like a normal person, nor did she consider relationships as one ought to. After selling tricks for tin on the street some years back, Aoife had become unattached to the order of fucking and treated it more like scratching an itch, or a means to an end. If Eoin shuddered at the sight of her ankle, Aoife barely flickered an eyelid, and yet she played with the idea like a cat rolling a ball of twine — unavoidable and oh-so tempting.

She took the cigarette between her lips and took a drag without much thought, holding it there with little effort as she hoisted herself atop the wall by his side, knocking her side into his before she removed the vice from her mouth, tilting herself to look at Eoin with no suspicion, but rather the miasma of chaos that made her whole. Twisting her lips into a smirk, she watched him shift from her before his hand, larger and more commanding than she had previously imagined, clasped itself around her thigh.

Within the flicker of an eyelid, Aoife picked his hand from herself and put it to her mouth, pressing her front teeth into the stretch of skin that tensed between his forefinger and thumb — it was not a heavy bite, it was nowhere near the violence she inflicted on those she didn’t like, but it could still make a mark on supple skin as her ice blue eyes shot up toward him. With something akin to a growl, Aoife released him before laughing out loud with a cackle that Lugh himself would have heard.

“Yer wee gobshite, don’t yer touch me unless I tell yer to!” Aoife hollered, her fury quickly transitioning into entertainment as she slipped the cigarette back between Eoin’s lips, leaving her finger against his bottom one as she stared from eye to eye.

“Yer want one of me pies, mmm? I bet yer do, feckin’ greedy bugger y’are and all, but I can feed yer, if yer give me somet’ing in return.”

"Ow!" said Eoin when she bit his hand, but he did not pull it back out of her maw. "That's how yer goin' to do it, huh?" he laughed. "Go on and fight me -- that's what gets ya going'; I like it. I'm goin' t' make ya cry." he told her and to her rude request -- he would make no such promises.
She put the cigarette back in his mouth; he was still smiling and rolled his head from one side to the other, cracked his neck. He leaned his weight to her side and pushed her a bit with his shoulder, testing where to put pressure to find resistance. "What's it goin' to be? Ya know I'm goin' to give ya the world, darlin'."
Eoin laughed as if he told a grand joke. "Givin' me some pie in return is only fair." With a sly look, he took the cigarette stump from his mouth and extinguished it against the wall.