17.5 Fic: Crashing/Burning

Tak   Tak   Siobhan dropped her trance, glancing around the room, her mind catching up to the present, trying to gauge the time and guess the noise at the same time.   TAK   The window.   Mika moved back from the glass as she unlatched it. He was climbing in before she could ask what he was doing, and when she saw the look on his face, she wasn't sure it was a good question anyway.   "You good?" She whispered instead.   He shook his head. His hair was a wild mess, he'd probably been fidgeting with it.   "Let's go. I can't sit still, you wanna go burn something?"   She blinked, shivered in the cold air. It was definitely past midnight. "Like, with fire?"   "Duh, yeah"   He was shifting from foot to foot, buzzing.   "Yeah," she shrugged, "why not?"   Been a minute since we properly broke something.   She crossed to her closet and grabbed a sweater and some leggings while he paced the room.   "Something happen?" She sat on the bed to pull the leggings on.   "I'm pissed off, that's all. Not at you."   She snorted. "I should hope. I'm the best damn thing to ever happen to you." She pulled the sweater over her head.   "Damn straight.” He was smiling at her when she could see again. “Let's burn this fucking city to the godsdamned ground."   Yup. Something happened.   She bounced onto her feet and into her shoes and let herself out the window. She hung on to the gutter edge while Mika hopped down, pushing the shutters closed after them.   Once they were past the garden, they could speak above a whisper.   "So what're you thinking? We could probably get a fire going in the boneyard or someth-"   "I dont want a campfire, I want to burn something. Something big."   He was nuts. She'd be lying if she said it wasn't exciting. Usually it was her sneaking up on his place, rapping a rhythm on the wall, listening over her held-breath heartbeat for the soft squeak of the front door, seeing straight through his feigned annoyance and exaggerated yawning, his acting like his body wasn’t thrumming with the same adreneline as hers.   “Something big, huh? There's that condemned place in back of fifty-second-"   "Perfect.” His grin was positively faustian. She had to speed up her steps to keep up.   “You need me to slow down, short stuff?”   “Oh I’m fine, but if you’re tired already...”   He broke into a sprint.   The neighbourhood was dead quiet this time of night. Her footsteps racing after him seemed to echo. It didn’t matter. Half the residents were summering in various idyllic towns and cabins around the coast, and the rest were sawing logs. The only sound besides their feet was the gentle warbling of a garden stream.   She caught up with him at a low post fence. He hopped it, she ducked it.   It put them on a main street. They slipped through the shadows between street lamps, making their uninterrupted way north. It had to be late, there weren’t even any guildies about. Not that they could see, anyway.   Block by block, the houses got smaller, plainer, closer to the road, to each other, then stacked up like kids' building blocks.   "Smash-houses," they were called. Plain, hastily assembled dwellings all crammed together in a pile. Most of them were supposed to be temporary housing that just never got around to a more permanent state.   They cut a three block swerve to avoid Mika's, hopped a fence onto fifty-second. Followed it up to the north quarter, near the wall.   The condemned house rose like a ghoul. It wasn’t a particularly huge building. Two floors, but low ceilings. Half the siding had been torn off, leaving gaping holes in the wooden corpse.   All the lights on this street were out, even the streetlights. They’d never worked; another project started for clout and never finished. Ugly iron poles stabbing through the coblestones.   Without a word, they walked three blocks past the target before crossing the street and circling back. There was a gap in the wall on the side; might have been a window once, before the shutters started rotting on the ground below it. No glass in this part of town.   Mika paused, letting her slip ahead to peer in from a distance. She would have made some comment about human blindness in the dark if the whole stealth gimmick wasn’t so fun.   She craned her neck to see. No movement, except maybe a mouse or something scratching in a corner. Bits of furniture still lay around, mostly broken or rotted.   She gave a nod, waved the all-clear. He lifted himself up on the top of the windowframe and slipped through feet-first, turning to offer her a hand in.   Pulling on his arm gave her enough leverage to get a foot on the frame. She landed inside before she could adjust to the smell of dust and dry-rot. He’d not left her much space. He’d not let go her wrist, either.   She looked up into his smirking face, brows raised.   “Please tell me we’re actually going to burn something and you didn’t just bring me here to make out in a ruin.”   He laughed, almost too loud for the illicit nature of their presence.   “Can’t it be both?” But he stepped aside.   The cause of condemnation was immediately obvious as soon as she could look around. The ceiling had caved in, splintered boards still piled on the floor. Moonlight reached through the boards of the second level like spider-threads. Must be holes in the roof, too.   “What a dump. This was a great idea. We’re doing the city a favour, really.”   “When are you going to learn that all my ideas are good?” Mika was making his way toward the ruins of what once must have been a brick stove.   Some wood cupboards still clung to the wall beside it, covers hanging on their hinges. He was looking through the mouldering remains of some crates and jugs below them. After a minute, he started dragging a clay jar almost half his height away from the wall, barely got it an inch, then stopped, looking around.   She moved closer. Sniffed the air.   Grease. Rancid, but incendiary all the same.   She grinned, “I’ll look for a bucket.”   “I’ll check upstairs.”   They creaked even underneath his string-bean weight. Dust shook down from what was left of the ceiling.   After a minute, he poked his head through the hole, hair hanging crazily down around his face. “Empty up here. Stand back a bit.”   She backed up, looking up.   Paper started falling down through the hole like snow. Newspaper mostly, but some that looked like they might have been letters before rain and heat and neglect washed all the ink off.   “Cool.”   She turned her attention back to the first floor as Mika continued tossing flammables down. There was a back door, or was it a back room?   One way to find out.   She made her way over, picking practiced steps over rusty nails, rat shit, and splinters.   It was either locked or so stuck it didn’t matter. She flourished her wand for nobody.   “Te dissolvam”   Drops of clear, greenish acid beaded on the latch and dripped down even as they ate through it. It looked like a sieve thirty seconds later.   A swift kick snapped it out of its frame, and she stepped out into the overgrown alley.   There wasn’t much back here but broken bottles and weeds.   She poked a few of the glassworks experimentally with the toe of her shoe. Found a half-one that didn’t look cracked.   Maybe.   She imagined dipping it into the grease-jar; it’d be impossible to avoid getting the shit on her hands. Uncool.   She turned around, beelining back to the one-time kitchen.   “Handle, handle, something with a handle...”   There!   A glint of metal in moonlight, fallen from one of the cupboards. The mug was tin, and badly dented. But it’d work.   Mika covered his nose when he came back downstairs.   “Having fun?”   “Time of my life.”   He looked across the room, observing her handiwork. A generous drizzling of grease in a spiderweb out from the respectable kindling pile of paper and splintered wood he’d compiled from above.   “Help me get this in the middle.” She’d poured most of it onto the walls and floor, but the jar was heavy in its own right, even without much of its contents left.   Between the two of them, they hauled it to the pile, tipped it over, and barely jumped back before it sludged onto their shoes.   Mika nodded, a slow grin forming. “I think that’s it.”   There was an itch in her fingers, a static in her spine. “Yeah. Yeah I think it’s ready.”   He looked around, eyeing the window they’d come in through critically. Its distance from the street was minimal. Favour or not, it’d be best if they weren’t seen.   She pointed toward the backdoor. He followed her through it. The alley was wide enough for two people to walk down, but not much more. The other side was stone smash-houses, not many windows, those that were there were shuttered. Like most, the wall was uneven; some suites jutted out, supported by dubious struts, others were set back, making balconies of their neighbours roofs.   She looked up at him, cocking one eyebrow. He nodded.   “Yeah, that’ll work.”   Most of the homes were probably empty, but there was no way to tell. Every scrape of shoe on brick sent a shiver through her nerves as she held her breath, waiting for the shuffling sound of a roused sleeper.   Once they were about ten feet up, she sidled onto a balcony, and got down on her belly to line up the shot.   They’d left the door open, but she coudln’t see the kindling pile from here. A gleam on the floorboards might have been one of the grease trails.   “Got the shot?” He’d dropped to a knee next to her, trying to share perspective.   “Yeah, gimme a sec.”   She stretched her wand hand forward, pressing her ear to the same shoulder, closing the opposite eye.   It was either a grease-trail, or just some shiny detritus. One way to find out.   “Fac scintillas”   The spark shot out like a firework. A brief flash that illuminated her hand pink and the bricks red.   They both watched with held breath as it flared below, flashing into a yellow snake, flaring toward the centre of the room. The rotted wood’s grey shades were being swiftly warmed to roaring gold.   He tugged on her arm and she scrambled up on her palms. The light of the blaze shone like beacons through the holes in the roof and cracks in the siding, lighting the edifice as they climbed. Between that and the electricity buzzing over her skin, getting to the top was child’s play.   Once there, she sat down and scooted forward, let her feet hang over the edge. Mika swung himself as he pulled up, landing in a similar way but with the additional benefit of making her think for a half-second that he was going to miss the edge and shatter on the broken bottles below.   He must have clocked her tension, because he paused to smirk about it before admiring their handiwork, brown eyes glassing over with flame.   The whole thing was going up like a powderkeg. They both heard the crash of shattered stone – the grease-jar, probably. Flames were licking through the eyeless window-gaps, lighting the weedy ground like a noonday sun. Smoke towered up, black and choking, fretted with sparks.   “So what happened?” she asked, reaching her arms backward to lean on them.   He scowled, but shifted to one side, fishing in his pocket. Pulled out something paper, handed it backward without looking at her.   She took it, whispering the magelight into the point of her wand to read it.  

Kauê Oliviera Miller

  She frowned, glanced up. He was still watching the fire. She flipped it over. Skimmed the contents. Made a face.   “Ew.”   “Right?”   “She didn’t even get your name right.”   “Not even two out of three. I’d say that, to be fair, I didn’t have this one last she saw me, but if she’d stuck the fuck around she’d know that, so.”   She smoothed it out and started refolding it. “So obviously you said no.”   “See I would, but that would require giving her the dignity of an answer.”   “What’d your dad say?”   “He hasn’t seen it.”   She paused, then pressed the last fold into place. Tapped him on the shoulder with the result.   He turned, eyes on hers first, then dropping to the paper glider.   “Unless you have a cooler disposal method?”   He took it, a smile slowly edging the shadows out of his features.   He lined it up like a dart. It caught an updraft from the heat as the flames started reaching up through the second floor. Singed in proximity, disappeared in a tailspin.   She watched him watch it go. He searched the blaze for a few seconds, then sat back, tension eased from his narrow shoulders.   “Feel better?”   “Yeah, a bit.”   He leaned back on his elbows, looking up at her.   “Thanks, Shiv.”   Something collapsed in the building, and a big chunk of the wall fell in. Lights were starting to come on around the neighbourhood. Shutters flew open, echoes of shouts.   She didn’t worry. Nobody ever looked up.   Almost nobody.   “Hey Shiv?”   “Yeah?”   “You free after work tomorrow?”   Nothing I’m unwilling to ditch.   “I could be. Why?”   He looked at the fire again.   “Was wondering if you wanted to hang out. Get a coffee or something.”   ‘Get a coffee?’   It was good he wasn’t looking at her anymore, because she couldn’t hide the confusion from her face. Since when did they sit around drinking coffee? She’d been waiting for that sentence to end with ‘see if we can scale the north tower this time,’ or ‘there’s that new statue of the Cat downtown, wanna tag it?’   You can’t be serious.   “What, like a date or something?”   There was a joke – or a hope of one, in her tone, but not in the flickered half smile or dropped gaze that answered it.   “Maybe. Could be fun.”   Shit.   “Oh.”   Goddamnit, Mika.   “I think I’m busy.”   She couldn’t keep her peripheral eye off his face when she said it. He closed his eyes briefly, but otherwise made no sign.   “Cool. I’ll just see you at work, then.” He started to get up.   “Sorry.”   “Nah, don’t be. I’m gonna head on home before the lions show up.”   “Yeah, me too.”   It was the same direction, but he wasn’t waiting for her, already swinging his feet over the other side of the roof, feeling for a foothold. She watched the rest of the burning roof collapse into fire for a head start.   He’d better not come back asking for a reason. She didn’t know if she had a good one. Sure, he was skinny, barely taller than her, bookish as hell, but it wasn’t like he was uncute. She definitely couldn’t fault him for being boring. Good kisser. But the idea of dating him felt like she swallowed something moldy.   Mika, whispering sweet nothings. Blegh.   She swung her legs, restless. Kicked the side of the building. It just hurt her heel.   Goddamnit. This was Fun. Why’d you have to make it weird, you fucking dork.   On the street below, a bucket brigade was forming. Firelight flashed on metal as the sound of boots pounded down the street.   Time to go.   She slipped down the side of the building. Glanced down the street in both directions. She was alone. Again.   “invisibilis,” she whispered, and set off at a brisk walk. Considered faking sick to get out of work. Decided against it.   If he thought he could get out of being an accomplice just because she wouldn’t be his damn girlfriend, he had another thing coming.