PPG One-Shot: Zero-Sum Game (Brick/Blossom)
Summary: Brick and Blossom run into each other at Princess’ murder-mystery themed birthday party. It’s all good, old fashioned enmity and petty sniping until they accidentally get stuck in a room together. Trapped with only each other for company, they may just find a little common ground and settle the score once and for all.
xxx
Some friends over on Instagram decided to do a smut challenge this month just because. Enjoy, sinners! [Cross-posted on my AO3, link in my profile.]
WARNING: Very NSFW content ahead beginning at the ♕ symbol. Please take note of that E rating and read at your own discretion.
xxx
Princess Morbucks towered over her gathered audience from the second floor balcony of a palatial chateau in the heart of wine country. Draped in a mink stole and wrapped up in a scarlet mermaid cut gown, she struck quite the commanding presence for a dead woman.
“I’ve been murdered!” she announced. “And the culprit walks among you.” She pointed dramatically at her guests below.
“Lookin’ pretty fly for a dead lady!” whooped some hedge fund chode in a fedora.
“Shut up, Christian. Your character is canonically mute,” Princess snapped. “Everybody else, get chatting. And you better find my killer before midnight.” She raised her champagne glass in a toast, and the room reciprocated.
All except for one.
Brick sipped his champagne out of a vintage flute with a scowl. Princess never skimped on quality. If he was going to be here at this overblown costume party surrounded by Peloton girl bosses and tech bros, he supposed it was the least she could do.
A socialite he recognized from the outermost circumference of Princess’ social circle approached Brick in a hurricane of poodle skirt before he could escape. “Brick Jojo! I thought I recognized you.”
“Marina Moreau,” he greeted her.
“Dashing as always, I see.” Marina dragged her talon-sharp nails over the high, wing collar of his starched evening shirt and tapped the white bow tie affixed at his throat.
“As always,” he said, unsmiling.
She retracted her hand from him and pressed it to the elegantly twisted pile of box braids on her head to play off his lack of enthusiasm cool and smooth. “So, found any clues yet?”
Brick took a sip of his champagne. “No.” And he didn’t plan on it, either. It was Princess’ prerogative how to throw her own birthday party, and if that meant he had to dress appropriately for the time period and remain in attendance for the duration of the evening, he would do it to the absolute best of his abilities. But no one could force him to partake in this childish Clue charade.
Marina, for all her social graces, had her limits too. “Well, the night is young.” She raised her champagne glass to him with a polite smile and conveniently spotted another friend in the crowd at just that moment. “Oh, Laura!” She waved enthusiastically. “Sorry, excuse me.” She was already dashing away before she could finish her apology, perhaps as thankful to be out of there as Brick was.
He took a breath and decided he had better navigate to some quieter corner where he was less likely to be roped into the evening’s frivolity. Without his phone on him (house rules, if it wasn’t in circulation in the 1950s, then it wasn’t allowed inside), he was looking ahead to a very long evening of one of his least favorite pastimes: people watching. It wasn’t that Brick couldn’t sit still with his own company for an extended period of time; rather, he was quite adept at solitude and often preferred it. But people were, by and large, excruciatingly dull to observe. He cared very little for social niceties, and found small talk in particular an exercise in medieval torture. Which was not to say he was incapable; if he wanted to, Brick could have worked this room with the finesse of a weaver spinning straw into gold.
But that would require effort, and right now, Brick had the willpower only to drink the rest of this champagne on the beautiful but very stiff-looking chaise in the corner. Perhaps later, as the guests fanned out into the staged rooms and secret passages of the historic manor Princess had rented out for the evening’s festivities, he would find a moment to actually hang out with his best friend on the one day of the year he couldn’t say no to her self-indulgence no matter how ludicrous.
Brick side-stepped a chatty circle of guests eagerly discussing the “murderer’s” ransom note someone had found pinned to the wall on a dagger and splattered with red corn syrup, only to literally bump into a passing couple. It was only his quick reflexes that redirected his remaining champagne onto the floor, rather than onto the woman’s exquisite dress.
“Excuse me—” he said at the same time as she said, “Oh, I’m sorry—”
The full-body heatwave of laying eyes on someone beautiful momentarily took the air from his lungs. She was movie star glamorous in white organza and a shower of black seed pearls, all collarbone and painted lips and a waterfall of red hair.
And then, she had to go and open her unfortunate mouth. “Brick?”
The flush of unexpected attraction immediately fizzled and died the moment he recognized that nasally voice. He didn’t bother to hide his wince. “Blossom.”
Blossom’s surprise morphed into the simmering distaste that was more at home on her pretty face whenever he came into her line of sight. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t recognized her immediately. It had been a long time, and he wasn’t prepared for her.
“Polaris,” said the guy on her arm. He wore a top hat and a monocle and thrust out a hand for Brick to shake.
The shock of seeing Blossom Utonium—former arch nemesis and forever pain in his ass—in person for the first time in over a year was all it took to short circuit Brick’s sense of self respect and make him automatically shake the offered hand.
“Wow, strong grip!” Polaris said. “Brick, you said?”
“Yeah,” Brick said, still checked out of himself.
Blossom, similarly disrupted, recovered faster. “Brick,” she said again, this time with the requisite spoonful of suck my dick superiority she was famous for. “I didn’t expect to run into you here tonight.”
He couldn’t agree more. Blossom and Princess worked together, and Princess mentioned on occasion that they had become closer over the years now that all the hormonal drama of their teenage years was long behind them. Brick supposed it wasn’t completely unexpected that Princess would have invited Blossom to her birthday party, given that the bar for an invitation was low enough to have admitted Princess’ entire pilates class, but still, a role-play murder mystery party? Princess must have been downplaying how close she and Blossom had become for Blossom to show up tonight in full costume.
“Technically, I ran into you.” Brick gestured with his empty champagne glass.
This, of course, was not an accomplishment to be proud of by any metric, except that it was an accomplishment he’d beaten her to, and Blossom frosted over. That gave him the energy to smile warmly.
“Well, no harm done,” Polaris said genially. He adjusted his monocle as he critically examined Blossom’s dress. “I don’t see a single splash on you.”
Blossom smoothed her white gloved hands over the flared skirt of her dress. “No, he didn’t manage to get me at all.”
Brick’s smile evaporated. Asshole. “You might want to take a closer look in better lighting. It’d be a shame to ruin that dress. Sabrina?”
Blossom’s smile turned rictus.
Polaris beamed through his monocle. “Wow, impressive eye! Are you a classical film buff?”
Brick didn’t need to be much more than breathing with a pulse to recognize a replica of the iconic Givenchy gown Audrey Hepburn had made famous in the 1954 classic. “Nah,” he said, and didn’t elaborate.
If awkward could be a noise, Polaris squeaked it out just then. “Oh. Well, anyway.”
Brick mercilessly stared right at him. Tall, dark, handsome but in safe way, like he drank green smoothies for lunch and kept a swear jar on his office desk. The type who probably knew Blossom could slay a monster fifty times her size in the same sense that one knows colonoscopies exist and happen but has never actually experienced one themselves.
The colonoscopy intervened before Brick could eye beam a hole through her date’s overactive Adam’s apple. “Brick and I went to school together,” she said. “Although, we’ve lost touch over the years.”
Polite and vaguely personal. Brick wondered if she actually liked this guy (a horrifying thought), or if she was trying to throw Brick off his guard somehow.
Polaris brightened, his relief palpable. “Oh, that explains it.”
It?
“High school?” he asked.
“And college,” Blossom said. Her pale eyes fixed on Brick. “The higher I aimed, he always followed. Brick’s always been difficult to shake.”
Like a herpes diagnosis, her poisonous expression announced.
“Our paths diverged when Blossom went to law school and I went into consulting,” Brick said. “If I followed anything, it was the money and not a cent of student debt.”
Blossom expertly restrained a super volcano behind her serene face. He was surprised she hadn’t begun to spark for how congenially she was looking at him.
“Oof, yeah, I hear you. I’m an attorney myself—antitrust specialist, uh-oh!” He said this last part with a hand guarding his mouth as if it were a dirty secret. Brick didn’t so much as blink. Polaris word vomited onward after a pause that was markedly too long. “But yeah, you know, there are days when I wish I could do it all over and just go backpacking in Peru or open a dive shop in Thailand, something totally off the grid and spontaneous.” He laughed self-deprecatingly.
“Uh-huh.”
When neither Brick nor Blossom said anything further, Polaris changed the subject. “So, Brick. Any idea who killed our hostess?”
Brick snorted before he could help himself. “If she has it her way, we’ll be here all night speculating with no end in sight.”
To his surprise, Blossom actually grinned. “Leave it to Princess to find a way to stay trending even in death. This is a vanity murder.”
Unfortunately, Brick found that funny. She wasn’t supposed to be funny.
“Hey, I bet we can solve it before everyone else,” Polaris said to Blossom. “Should we…?”
The excruciatingly unsubtle attempt to ghost the conversation was lost on no one. However, for the excuse to end this bizarre encounter, both Brick and Blossom were willing to take it.
“Of course,” she said. “I just want to get another drink first.”
Yeah, I bet you do, Brick thought. He’d want one too if he had to spend the night playing Sesame Street Sherlock with a dude who had the self-awareness of a lawn chair.
“Good luck,” Brick said, tipping his empty glass.
Blossom took his glass right out of his hand in a naked declaration of war. “I don’t need luck.”
Watching her sashay away to bus his empty glass tested Brick’s temper within an inch of nuclear fallout. A year since he’d seen her in the flesh (thirteen months, a week, and two days, to be precise—last year’s college reunions, a long weekend of glorious debauchery), and within five minutes she left him ready to pop an O-ring. He’d only seen her briefly that weekend at the tail end of a game of robo pound in the downstairs bar of the eating club they’d both been in, and those few minutes were enough. She didn’t play, of course—not in the general sense, just when he happened to be at the table. She didn’t even say hi to him. She probably wouldn’t have said hi to him tonight if he hadn’t literally run into her and her wilted lettuce leaf of a date hadn’t carried the conversation kicking and screaming.
“Ahem!” Princess commanded attention from her balcony, where someone had given her a microphone and a generous goblet of wine. “It’s been over an hour, I’m told the murder weapon hasn’t even been found. Get your shit together find my killer before I start to decompose!”
The guests laughed and chatter picked up as they hightailed it out of the bar room to explore the extent of the mansion and start to piece together clues in earnest. Princess caught Brick’s eye and raised her wine goblet in his direction in a casual threat—have fun or else.
All things considered, Brick much preferred to take his chances against Blossom’s wrath than Princess’. So, he slinked to the bar to steal a new bottle of wine and quietly made his way through one of the side doors leading deeper into the house, feeling decently determined. If he was going to be forced to participate, then he would crush it. And most importantly, he’d crush Blossom’s dreams of winning this insipid mystery game.
xxx
As it turned out, having the power to cleave canyons and explode stars was not directly transferrable to sleuthing. Brick not only found himself behind several other groups in terms of clues collected, but he also couldn’t quite remember how he’d ended up in this corridor. The secret passageways were designed to be deliberately circuitous, and even his X-ray vision was no help when all it did was see through walls into rooms he didn’t recognize, anyway.
Brick took a drink of the bottle of wine he’d purloined. Perhaps if he just lingered in the corridors, Princess would eventually forget about him and he could go home. He wondered what progress Blossom had made. Probably not much with that human remora glued to her side. He chuckled at his own joke—you brilliant son of a bitch—and leaned back against the wall to savor the aftertaste of the wine.
A quiet grinding of stone sliding on stone didn’t worry him immediately, and it was his mistake. The wall gave out under his weight, and he tumbled through it on unstable legs, too surprised to react in time. He flailed on instinct, remembered the open wine bottle and the fact that he could fly, and tripped into an ungraceful hover just as the rotating wall shuddered back into place.
“No, damnit!”
Blossom put her hands on the wall Brick had just come through, but it didn’t budge. For all intents and purposes, it was a regular, ten-inch thick, granite wall no one was going to hear her shouting through.
“What the hell?” Brick set the wine bottle on a wooden end table. His eyes quickly adjusted to the low lighting in the windowless room he’d tumbled into. It was not a large room. There was a lone sofa with a stained painter’s sheet draped over it collecting dust. Wall sconces buzzed with electricity, but Brick saw no switch for them embedded in the stone that surrounded him on all sides. An armless, pale statue of a Grecian nymph posed in the corner. An old painting of a woman who looked suspiciously like Princess but dressed like eighteenth century French nobility with a beehive wig a foot and a half tall took up an obscene amount of the far wall. There was no door, not even a fire place.
“That’s my line,” Blossom huffed like she was slightly out of breath from pacing and shouting. “Not only am I still stuck in here, but now I’m stuck with you.”
“Hey, don’t put this on me.”
The look on her face told him that ship had already sailed.
Brick rolled his eyes. “Whatever. Let’s just go.” He moved to punch his way through the revolving wall, but Blossom’s Super-powered grip caught his fist before he got the chance.
“Don’t!” she hissed. “You’ll bring down the floor above us.”
He tried to yank his hand free, but she held fast despite his Super strength. “What the fuck do I care? I’m not staying in here.”
Ice bloomed under her fingers and seeped a dreadful, aching cold through the sleeve of his tuxedo jacket. “I said, no.”
Blossom had the malicious focus of the protagonist in a Korean revenge thriller, and for the briefest moment Brick faltered and slackened.
“If you use force, you’ll cause thousands in property damage,” she said. “And you could hurt anyone on the other side or above us.”
So what, he wanted to say. Might as well have said from the way her face curdled.
“Even if you don’t care about collateral damage, think of Princess. This place is a historical landmark. We’re talking a lot more than your average fine if there are any accidents tonight.”
Brick gathered his wits and pulled out of her grip, which she allowed this time. Frost flaked from his wrist and left it damp as his supernatural heat melted it away. “You seem to know a lot about it.”
“I negotiated the venue contract for her.”
Brick wondered what it must be like for a normal human lawyer to sit across the table from a Super who could eye beam a hole through his esophagus. He fantasized that guy was her flaccid date for the night and smiled to himself.
“So we’re stuck in here until someone opens that revolving door again,” she concluded, her focus shifted entirely to the wall in question.
Brick considered just punching through the wall, anyway. But as much as he hated to agree with Blossom, she had a point about Princess and the hell that would rain down upon him if he jeopardized her reputation in any way. “Right.”
At least he’d thought to bring wine.
Blossom watched him with shrewish hesitation as he tugged the painter’s sheet off the sofa—an antique, cherrywood settee upholstered in tanned velvet that looked like it belonged in an eighteenth century French court—smoothed his coattails, and sat down. He draped himself over the cushion, taking up far more room than he needed to, at the sight of her face pinching in quiet judgment. When he grabbed the wine and took a long sip from the bottle, she couldn’t seem to stomach his indulgence any longer.
“Enjoying yourself?”
“It is a party.”
She rolled her eyes and tugged at her bolt of hair. Wispy tendrils had sprung free of their fishtail confinement over the course of the evening. He imagined her tugging on it when she was irritated, or anxious, or bored and feeling like smashing something. She’d made healthy progress unraveling the thing in the short time since he’d first run into her. Which reminded him.
“Hey, where did Polenta go?”
Blossom gave him a comical look that lasted all of a half second before warping into something far more resting bitch face. “It’s Polaris.”
“Uh-huh.”
She didn’t return his grin, but she didn’t tell him off, either. “He’s probably looking everywhere for me.”
“Yeah, I bet he is.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Brick shrugged and took another gulp of wine.
Blossom resumed staring holes into the revolving wall, which unfortunately did not magically convince it to move. “He’s my coworker. He’s a nice guy.”
Well, well, well. “He’d have to be with such a stupid fucking name.”
Blossom chuckled humorlessly. “Don’t be an ass.”
Unlikely, considering she was enjoying it on some baser, indulgent level. The thing about Blossom was that her horse wasn’t nearly as high as she pretended it was. As someone who had known her since they were five and grown up alongside her, Brick was uniquely qualified to damn her achievements and delight in her fuck ups. Nine times out of ten, he was directly responsible for (or collaterally to blame for) them. She could be despicable, and she could be ruthless. And sometimes, when the cameras weren’t rolling or laws weren’t breaking, she could even be fun.
Brick hated that he knew these things about her. Butch said it was fate. Mojo said it was his mandate, whether he accepted it or not. And Boomer said it was unparalleled luck. How many people can say they’ve found their true and equal counterpart in another?
If you asked Brick (you’re not asking, he’s just telling you whether you want to hear it or not), he’d say it was annoying. He couldn’t escape Blossom no matter how far he roamed or how high he rose, because she would always rise just as high. She was the only person who ever could. And for better or worse, that gave them something of a common ground.
For example, their sense of humor.
“What do you even talk about with a guy whose parents named him Polaris? Cultural appropriation and kale?”
Blossom pursed her lips so hard not to smile it was a wonder she didn’t bite through them. “More like beard oil and the manifest destiny of SpaceX.”
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
She looked away to hide what he knew was a smile. “He’s a nice guy, though. A brilliant lawyer too.”
“He looks like his favorite movie is Joker, unironically.”
Blossom covered her mouth to stifle a laugh.
Brick leaned over his knees, a glimmer in his eyes. “I bet Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life saved him from a really dark place.”
“Oh my god, stop.” She couldn’t contain her smile anymore. “Just because he’s gauche doesn’t mean he’s secretly a mustache twirling alt-right.”
“He was wearing a fucking monocle, Blossom.”
She got herself under control and faced him, straight-backed and power posing. “I’m not standing here listening to you insult my date’s extremely period-appropriate costume. At least his says something about his personality.”
Yeah, that he’d jump at the chance to join Fight Club.
Brick got up and smoothed a hand down the front of his starched shirt. “You really think my suit has nothing to say about me?”
Blossom gave him a downright seedy once-over just to mess with him, he was sure of it. He suppressed a shiver nonetheless. “You look like Edward Cullen sullenly waiting another fifty years to seduce a troubled high school girl.”
It took a marked effort not to laugh. “I look good.”
“Congratulations.”
xxx
At some point, they ended up sitting side by side on the settee and Blossom got ahold of his wine.
“I can’t believe no one’s found us yet,” Blossom said as she took a drink. “Surely they’ve solved the murder by now. It was so obvious.”
Brick eyed her askance. “You and Potpourri solved it?”
Blossom shot him a dirty look. “Stop that.”
He took the wine back while she was busy being a sourpuss.
“Wait a minute.” Blossom grinned, and nothing good had ever come of a grinning Blossom. “You didn’t solve it, did you?”
Brick took a long sip of wine in lieu of answering.
Blossom shifted on the settee to face him, her skirt a tsunami of fabric slowly overtaking the space between them. “I bet you spent the night wandering around by yourself being unpleasant to everyone. No wonder Marina was gossiping about you.”
“What the fuck did Marina say?”
This, of course, was a mistake. But Blossom had always known how to poke him until hornets came alive under his skin. “Nothing unflattering enough to put a chink in your massive ego, don’t worry.”
God, she was such an insufferable bitch when she wanted to be, and Blossom seemed always to want to be when she was around him. He could still feel the phantom sting of a quarter on his temple where she’d “accidentally” launched it at the speed of sound in his direction during reunions last year. Sorry, didn’t see you there. Her friends, drunk on Beast and nostalgia, just laughed and resumed their game at the table on the opposite side of the tap room. Just when he’d successfully forgotten she was there and put all his effort into enjoying the glory days of college with his friends, she crept up on him like asbestos in the basement, not to be ignored on pain of mortal poisoning.
Whoever said Blossom Utonium was a paragon of virtue had never been stuck in a secret panic room with her and only one nearly-drained bottle of wine.
“What were you even doing wandering the halls by yourself?” She leaned in closer, and he clutched the wine bottle to him for protection. “Were you looking for me?”
“And you worry about my ego.”
“Did you think you could beat me to the solution?”
That patronizing tone had always had a way of bleeding him until he resurrected, determined to undo her and everything she had worked for with the mindless focus of a hungry zombie.
She leaned in even closer. He could smell her Dior perform, see the hollow between her collarbones and the path it carved to the promise of cleavage under the tube top of her starlet’s dress. Her lips were so red, and so very close. “Did you want to challenge me?”
It wasn’t as if Brick had never considered her. It was impossible not to consider what it would be like to fuck the shit out of one of the most beautiful women he had ever known. But this push and pull between them, this zero-sum game that required one of them to play catch up while the other flew on ahead, was just that: a game. As untenable as it was facetious.
Brick swished the wine, but the bottle was finally empty, so he tossed it unceremoniously on the floor. “Historically speaking, that’s rarely ended in my favor.”
Blossom smiled then. Like, actually, warmly smiled. He’d rarely seen it directed at him, maybe never. Her hand was cool through his lapel. “Aw. That’s almost gracious of you.”
“I literally could not have been more gracious.”
She laughed, and it was a nice laugh, not one of those condescending, noblesse oblige chuckles meant for the rabble. “Stop, this is too weird. I don’t like you being agreeable.”
“Well, I wouldn’t want to give Palindrome a run for his money.”
She shoved him. “You are such a dick. His name is Polaris, okay? North Star, mariner’s waypoint, a guiding light.”
“He’s done a shit job guiding you out of this room.”
“Oh my god.”
“I bet he gave up.”
“He did not!”
“He totally did. Even for a human nettle, no pussy is worth all this effort.”
Blossom’s frown turned serious then. “That’s disgusting.”
“It’s the truth.”
They sat up facing each other now on the far opposite sides of the settee, rigid and ready to draw like two gunslingers in a cowboy movie.
“Not that it’s even remotely your business,” Blossom said as she completely made it his business by talking about it, “but Polaris and I aren’t that serious. This is only our third date.”
“I absolutely have to know what he did to gaslight you into giving him even five minutes after your first date.”
“He was nice to me. I know that’s a difficult concept for you to wrap your costume pocket watch around.”
To which Brick took considerable offense, because that T-bar watch was the genuine article, not some Party City gimmick. Brick was good at a great many things, but fashion was something he was great at. And it was the mandate of one with impeccable taste such as him to be a fashion ambassador to the benighted Polaris’s of the world.
A fucking monocle.
“Okay. If holding the door for you and complimenting your hair is all it takes to get you to lift your skirt, then yeah, I guess that’s a little beyond my capacity—”
Brick was no stranger to the sharp sting of an open palm across his cheek. Coming from Blossom, however, it hit him with the angry force of a sledge hammer and rattled his teeth in their gums.
“Fuck you,” Blossom spat, low and snake-like. She got up and paced to the other side of the room, as far away from him as physically possible.
xxx
She deserved an apology. For all his posturing and honed disdain for Blossom, Brick received no pleasure from seeing her truly upset or in pain. He never had, if he was honest with himself. The game just…went too far sometimes. Sometimes it was her fault, but this time it was definitely his.
Blossom didn’t look at him when he approached and stood directly behind her. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I don’t know why I said that. I shouldn’t have said it.”
She said nothing. She didn’t even look at him. He may as well have not been there at all.
“I know my opinion on it doesn’t matter, but for what it’s worth,” he said, “I don’t believe that about you.”
“No, it doesn’t matter,” she snapped. Then, more subdued: “Don’t ever speak to me like that again.”
There was a tenseness to her shoulders, like a rabbit with its ears up ready to bolt at the first disturbance in the underbrush. This close to her, he could see the subtle flutter of the vein in her neck beneath her diamond-hard skin. She turned her head toward him slightly, probably wondering why he was still standing too close, and his eyes were drawn to her throat, now bared in offering.
Offering.
“Brick,” she said, cautious.
A little idea popped into his head, just a simple inspiration, and not a novel one. He’d had this idea before. His war with Blossom was generally cold in nature: they were two celestial bodies orbiting each other ever on the verge of total gravitational annihilation. They rarely crossed that line, but they had been known to edge each other close to it. It was in those more impassioned throes of shared animosity that Brick imagined other ways of settling their differences.
He always dismissed that lubricious voice encouraging him toward madness. Because that was what it was—madness. Madness that he couldn’t escape her no matter where his job or his friends or his goals led him. Madness that they were stuck in this windowless little room bored out of their minds, that no one had stumbled in after them yet. Madness that Blossom’s gaze flickered to his like she sensed it too.
♕
He moved slowly. Not so slowly that he looked like he didn’t know what he was doing, but enough that she could have slapped him again.
She didn’t slap him, but she did make a surprising little breathy sound when he brushed his fingers over her bare shoulder and pressed his lips to her throat.
He barely got a taste of her when she turned fully around and placed her open palm on his chest, but she didn’t push him out of her personal space. “What are you doing?”
Her eyes dropped to his mouth even as she said it, a formality for the record, plausible deniability.
“Do you want me to stop?” he asked, dragging his fingers along her arm to her dangerously loose fishtail.
She hesitated (she hesitated!) like she was curious (like she was curious!), and Brick moved before she could let something as useless as scruples extinguish the glaze of unmistakable desire in her eyes when she looked back up at him.
He kissed her properly this time, a collision of teeth and tender muscle as he pushed and she gave and he pushed her some more. For all her iciness, Blossom’s mouth was as warm any other’s, sweet and pliant like she herself was not, not for him, at least. The thought that maybe she was with Polaris made him loathe her easy submission to him.
Brick didn’t realize the rumbling sound he made was in the back of his throat and not just in his head until Blossom—her hand still pressed to his chest—dug her gloved fingers into his shirt and bit his lip hard enough to stun. He reacted to this latest attack by pressing her harder against the wall until there was nowhere left to go but through. It had been a minute since he’d been with a woman, and his erection was already as keen as a teenager’s against her thigh through the layers of organza.
She went along with it.
Fuck Blossom grew from a sinister seed buried in his grey matter into a creature of writhing limbs and gasping breaths as they made out against the wall like it was the single greatest idea Brick had ever had.
The thing about her gown was that it was one of those heavy, billowy sorts that required more than two hands to manage safely. It would take care and a little time to unlace it properly without causing any damage, and while Brick would have loved to watch her striptease him to the outer limits of his control, he wasn’t clocking that vibe tonight. Maybe next time.
My, aren’t we confident, he congratulated his own urges.
The sight of her flushed with her hair long and free of its braiding as she stood pressed up against the stone wall in that iconic dress put all thoughts of divesting her of it out of his mind. This was an image he wanted seared into his memory forever. The clothes would remain on.
Feeling good about his flawless decision-making thus far, Brick grabbed her by the hip and pulled her flush against the bulge in his pants. She made a gasping sound, indignation perhaps at his bossing her around in such a small space, but whatever protest she was revving up for devolved into a little moan when he kissed a tender spot just below her ear and palmed her breast over the bodice of her dress.
Brick didn’t pay much attention to their migration across the wall until they bumped the armless statue in the corner and it wobbled. Blossom froze. “Watch it.”
Even horny and wanting him, there was no overlooking her incredible talent for mood-killing with a choice tone of voice. Why god would gift such a smarmy, difficult woman with such a hot body was a strong argument for atheism, if you asked Brick. Unless there was some divine asshole up there punishing him by conjuring such an annoying personality into such a gorgeous woman.
But let’s face it: if Blossom didn’t have such a fucking annoying personality, Brick wouldn’t be here dry humping her against the wall while forty other guests roamed the halls in search of his best friend’s vanity murderer. She, at least, was a proper challenge who could hold his interest.
“Well?”
Brick smirked at her impatience. “It’s all demands with you tonight, huh.”
Blossom was surely about to tell him to go suck his own dick then if he was going to be like that, but he yanked her hair and shoved his tongue in her mouth to give it something to fill it that would please them both more than her complaints.
Pleased he was when she surprised him by threading her fingers in his hair. It was almost tender, definitely intimate (she was not attempting to cause him pain, ergo), and the tingling shiver he got from her nails gently scraping the base of his skull plunged him right back into the genius of his master plan for the evening.
Her hand boldly cupping his cock through his pants was a fantasy he lamented putting a stop to (Brick had always appreciated a partner who took initiative), but there was no way he trusted her to be amenable to his direction until she was totally relaxed. And besides, if he was going to watch Blossom fall beautifully apart, he wanted to have most of his wits about him to appreciate it properly.
Her skirt was not as heavy as it looked, and he was careful not to let it snag on the wall as he began to gather it up and trace a path up the inside of her thigh. Blossom bit her lip in anticipation, and that gave him a wicked idea. He sneered into a new kiss, letting her feel a bit of teeth, and broke it. She tried to follow him, but his index and middle finger wagged no in her face.
Through the haze of her lust, he could see her weighing it all out in her head, the consequences of submission and the reward for indulgence. Even if she refused, it would still be worth it to watch her come to terms with this newest depth of his perverted obsession with control and how far he was willing to go for an extra point on the leaderboard.
Her moment of consideration was barely a moment at all. She drew his fingers into her mouth and held his gaze, true to champion form. Except, Brick hadn’t anticipated the magnitude of the effect this sight would have on him: looking down on Blossom sucking his fingers, sliding her nimble tongue over their lengths, slowly working her way down to the knuckles, all while she watched him for a reaction. He supposed such an enthusiastic performance had earned the breathless “Oh, fuck” he could’t stop himself from gasping out.
The pop of her lips releasing his fingers had to be the saddest sound he had ever heard. Compared to that happy side quest, pushing her underwear aside and sinking his wet fingers inside her was almost underwhelming.
Except, the way she tilted her head back to the wall and hissed through her teeth.
Except, the slickness of his fingers that had just been in her mouth.
Her mouth…
Brick kissed her talented mouth as she writhed against him. When he pulled out and swirled his fingers directly over her clit, she whimpered against his lips. He entertained himself that that was his name she’d cried out as she tightened her fingers around the back of his neck in such a way that was becoming very difficult for him not to crave next time.
(Next time!)
Then again, he didn’t want to spend too much time on this. Just get her ready. Anything more, and she’d start to feel entitled. We can’t have that.
Predictably, she was not all smiles when he abruptly stopped touching her. Her snooty protest died in her throat when he licked his fingers clean with the most obnoxiously innocent look he could muster. Unfortunately, he continued to forget exactly who he was seducing and the lengths she would go to do a bit of bossing herself.
Her strength was Super when she pushed him across the room and forced him down on the settee, while she leaned over him. Her look was absolutely ferocious. “Comfortable?”
Brick spread his arms out over the back of the settee. It was not a large piece of furniture. It could accommodate the two of them sitting side by side with a couple inches of space in between, but certainly not enough to lie supine. Perhaps on all fours, but one look at her ample skirt and he decided that was not in the cards tonight.
He spread his legs enough to get well and truly comfortable, completely unashamed of the tentpole in his pants. Another brilliant idea came to him. “Room for one more.” He patted the tentpole.
The twitch of her lips told him he’d amused her, and she rewarded him by shimmying out of her underwear and tossing them onto the floor. She was quick about it, a rather impressive feat in heels and that gown, and now she was kissing him again, hot and hungry. Which made it a little hard to concentrate on finding the zipper in his criminally high-waisted trousers. Whoever decided that white tie formal required a nipple-high waistline and a waistcoat must have been an incredibly influential eunuch.
Blossom tugged his T-bar watch chain, a warning of her waning patience. He sat up straighter in order to get a better angle under the waistcoat and at last found the zipper on his fly. It took a bit of coaxing, but he got it down and out sprang his very eager cock against Blossom’s gloved forearm. It slapped her with an audible thump, startling them both a little.
Blossom looked down at him. “Hm.”
Brick flushed scarlet. That ambiguous little appraisal held too much power, and she knew it. Perhaps it was payback. Perhaps he deserved it (he definitely deserved it). He found himself unable to resent her that moment of comeuppance for long because she immediately wrapped one silky, gloved hand around him and leaned all her weight on the knee she had placed very alarmingly on the cushion right up against his balls.
But the sensation of smooth silk swiping over his head.
But the knowledge that she was soaked and aching for him under that lavish skirt.
Forget games and power. He wanted her, and it didn’t matter anymore that she knew that. “Get over here.” Brick pulled her hip to guide her to where he wanted her, but her hand on his chest stopped him.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked, as one talking to a misbehaving child.
Brick’s mind drew a total blank. He tried to anticipate what she was going to say next, and realizing it, he mentally kicked himself for being so goddamned slow. Thanks for that, he complimented his cock still happily twitching in Blossom’s hand.
“I’m not letting this,” she gave him a cute little squeeze that drained all the air from his lungs, “anywhere near me without protection.”
The way she said anywhere gave Brick several very sordid ideas, a clear déjà vu of scenes never to be, because this was a one-time thing and of course she hadn’t meant it like that. For all his charms and excellence, he knew there wouldn’t be a next time with her. This was merely a soft reset to even the playing field before they were back to undercutting each other. “Well, I could just…”
He could just…
A string of shockingly vivid images assaulted his mind then:
Coming all over Blossom’s chest.
His cum glistening on her breasts.
Her fingers painting a slippery path between her breasts.
Her fingers brought to her mouth.
Her exquisite mouth…
“Whatever lewd fantasy you’re imagining right now, forget it. I don’t know your history. I’m not about to risk it,” she said, dismally sensible.
For the record, Brick was extremely diligent about getting himself tested and taking the necessary precautions, but he surmised that his word alone wouldn’t convince Blossom. She wasn’t actively backing out, and he didn’t want to give her a reason to when they were so close to getting what they both wanted.
“Okay. All right. Let me just…”
She rolled her eyes and retrieved her clutch from the end table, popped it open, and drew out a shiny, tinfoil square. Brick’s relief at her preparedness only barely overshadowed the brief but scathing pang of jealousy. Blossom, always prepared. Prepared for whom? Surely not that damp cockwit Polaris.
In his preoccupation rolling the condom on and cementing his undying resentment for Blossom’s milquetoast date, he was slow to clock her kicking off her heels and rearranging her skirts to straddle herself over his lap until he felt the tip of himself sinking slowly into the warmth of her folds. He grabbed her hips and pulled her down over him in one brutal, swift movement that had them both choking under the new pressure.
She was so wonderfully tight. But he’d known that. He’d known she would be like this. Even her cunt was against him. Even this was a challenge. Brick wanted to tell her this, to watch her huff and squirm. But instead, he settled for getting her moving.
It took a couple tries, but they quickly got a rhythm going. Brick pulled her down as close to his hips as she could fit, and she rose slowly off him, unsheathing herself nearly to the end of him, before he reeled her back in. Her hair cascaded over her shoulder and pooled in her lap over her gown, shimmering with every thrust, and holy hell was she beautiful like this, happy and vocal with her hands clutching at him as if to absorb him and this moment into her memory forever. Pink sparks burst at her fingertips, an unexpected surge of power that went straight to his cock and made him invincible.
“I bet he couldn’t fuck you like this,” Brick said, mean and cocky and right.
Blossom was in her own head, her eyes closed to all but the carnal service he provided. Ignoring him even as she took from him. Brick didn’t like to be ignored. He let his own power leak out of his hands and sear her through her dress where he held her, and she tossed her head with a cry of pleasure.
“I bet you’ll think of me every time you let some nice, simple guy touch you and wish it were me instead.”
She opened her eyes and looked right at him, her fury a sight to behold. “You are so full of yourself.”
“You’re more full of me at the moment.”
Before she could snap back and steal the last word, he twisted his hips in a new angle that surprised her and made her open her mouth in a silent scream. Brick sat up and grabbed her chin, forcing her into a sloppy kiss even as he continued to flex and bend beneath her. He pushed more power into the small of her back where he locked her in place, delighting in the way she shivered and clung to him.
“You love this,” he taunted her.
“I…”
“You hate me but you love being with me. Say it.”
“Ah—!”
He felt her climax clench around him, wet and warm and wonderful pressure, her cunt happy and welcoming to him like she herself had never been. And in this too he took a specific and needling sort of pride, that if he could convince Blossom to want him, then he could convince the whole world.
Brick rode that feeling out to his own finish, taking comfort in the warmth of her, though he would never tell her this (he is keeping score, you know). Her breathing was hot and ragged against the hollow of his neck, and there was probably a lipstick stain on his collar. A small price to pay for the simple bliss of detumescing inside her as she held him.
He looked up once he’d caught his breath to find that Princess’ French court doppelgänger was staring coldly down at him from her ostentatiously large dais. Which, even for him, was a little too weird. He gave Blossom a gentle squeeze on her thigh and pressed a soft kiss to her ear.
She took a deep breath and rose her weight off of him with a little tinny noise when he popped free. Jesus Christ, he should really tell her to watch the sounds she made around him or they’d be here all night fucking on the ceiling. The spent condom made for a very sorry sight. Waste of cum, if he was being honest. There were better places for it, softer, warmer places, but Blossom was already settling on the settee next to him and burrowing down on the cushion.
Brick got up to dispose of the used condom, but seeing as there was no waste bin, he incinerated it in his hand, leaving not even ashes to remember it by. He then fixed his trousers as best he could and plopped down on the couch next to Blossom, who had taken advantage of his temporary absence to claim more cushion real estate for herself. Her underwear remained discarded on the floor, and she showed no signs of wanting it back.
It was a testament to both their languid moods that she draped her legs over his lap and he let her.
If only he had a cigarette. That would have completed the setting, costumes and coitus and all.
“I don’t hate you, Brick,” she said at length.
Her eyes were closed as she lounged. She still wore those elbow-length satin gloves, and her hair was splayed over the arm of the settee like slow-falling magma.
Brick leaned his head back and ran his hands over her smooth, bare legs, feeling oddly endeared to her in this moment. They said indifference, not hatred, was the opposite of love. Brick had never once been indifferent to Blossom, and that was no small accomplishment over the course of twenty-odd years and so many forgettable faces on both ends of the likability spectrum. In the end, she always remained.
“I don’t hate you, either,” he said.
Perhaps she couldn’t escape him any more than he could escape her.
Perhaps that wasn’t so bad, after all.
xxx
It was hours later when Princess finally found them locked in a secret room behind a revolving wall asleep on the couch like teenagers who’d stayed up too late watching a movie. She didn’t tell Polaris, Blossom’s date she’d only brought because she insisted on not showing up stag, even though Princess had assured her nobody fucking cared and anyway, tonight was about Princess, not Blossom. But there was no convincing her the moment Princess spilled that Brick was invited too and might show up.
It wasn’t that Princess had predicted things would end up here, but she hadn’t not predicted it. It was hard not to wonder when two of her closest friends spent so much of their time talking about each other.
She carefully dropped her monogrammed handkerchief over Blossom’s discarded underwear before a random staff member could walk in unannounced and embarrass her.
“I should leave you locked in here. Morons,” Princess muttered to herself.
Next time, perhaps. Next time, she’d go out of her way to make sure they had somewhere a little more appropriate to retreat to at her next soiree if they so chose. Somewhere with a door and a mini bar.
After all, Princess was nothing if not extremely good to her friends.
xxx
Blossom’s dress
Brick’s tux
Princess’ dress
Reblogs are very highly appreciated! If you like my writing, please check out my AO3 for more PPG fics, or the links in my Tumblr profile for Tumblr-exclusive one-shots. Thanks for reading. :)
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