the moth;

❝it has been a beautiful fight. still is.❞ - Charles Bukowski. Marlene Mckinnon. 25. Barmaid at The Leaky Bucket. Order of the phoenix

[siriuslybro]

Paint Me Like One Of Your French Girls || Sirius & Marlene

[blazingmarlene-blog]

siriuslybro:

Sirius snickered at the thought of Dumbledore sending him on some mission into the fashion world. “Oh, I’d excel in fashion. This bone structure? I’d be a regular Mister Congeniality.” Conversations with Marlene were always so easy, so light-hearted. “But I can definitely think of a few people I’d rather be friends with instead of the Hadids, or… can you imagine? The Jenners?” He gave an exaggerated shudder at the very thought.

Even in his own world filled with spray paint and a bandana covering his mouth, he couldn’t help but notice Marlene stiffen considerably at the mention of Operation Auror. “I know, nobody likes a cop.” There was a long history of police misconduct in London, and in plenty of places in the UK. Dirty cops weren’t strictly an American problem like a lot of people thought. “But a cop who has sex with my cousin? I can hardly imagine anything worse. God, at least she didn’t sleep with Narcissa. Can you imagine?” He knew he’s said he wasn’t going to, but he blacked out one of the model’s teeth out of sheer disgust. “If anyone had sent me photographs of that, I think I would have thrown up.”

Sirius had just put the finishing touches on his artwork when he heard it, the ringing of the sirens. “Fuck,” he cursed, throwing up his hood and bundling his spray cans into his backpack. “Take it with you, no prints, let’s bounce.” He slid down the ladder in one swift movement, the sirens and red-and-blue lights growing closer and closer, car eventually skidding to a halt by the fence just across from them. “Mar, move!” He called over his shoulder, making a run for it, but only once he was sure Marlene was following him.

Her laugher echoed at the thought of Narcissa and Florence together, a rather graphic image of them snogging in bed flashing through her mind. And then Sirius blackened the model’s tooth and there was nothing to fear from her anymore. It was all rage and hilarity.

“I didn’t know if your cousin has sex. Reckon it could probably fuck up her hair, right?”

She heard the sirens a second too late. Her entire body stiffened at the sound, both alarmed and electrified by their call. Marlene jumped up from her spot, grabbing at the can they’d used to blacken the camera with a gloved hand. It was then that it happened: there was a cramp in her leg, painful enough to slow her down for a moment. She heard the siren call and marveled at the blue electric light before Sirius’s voice snapped her out of it. In a second Marlene was running and running through the pain, ignoring the shouting voice behind them.

They got to a corner and she pulled Sirius to the side, leading them both to hide behind a dumpster. “We need to lose them and hit the tube. No way they can find us after that”, Marlene whispered. She was grinning like a cat.

[blazingmarlene-blog]

dorcastheexplorer:

Dorcas smirked to herself, careful not to look at Marlene directly. She glanced down to her skirt. “Thanks.” she said, voice low. She rolled her neck, half to relieve the joints in her neck and half to make sure no one else was around. All she saw was a mothers group near the play structure and the odd old couple strolling the paths. She reached into her sweater pocket and produced a micro SD card. 

“Same to you,” she said, louder this time. “How do you feel about factory report backlogs?”

The odd blend of stress and exhaustion had made Marlene overly aware of her surroundings. She was growing half-suspicious of the stare of a redheaded young mother when Dorcas slipped out the SD card. Marlene took it between her chipped blue nails, her hand quickly sinking back into the pocket of her hoody – let the ginger bitch think she was buying smack.

“Gotta know them to destroy them”, Marlene quipped.  The weight of the card felt strangely satisfying in her grip but it didn’t temper the frustration that came with her last question. “Nothing on Regulus Black?”

[majidfletcher]

MARLENE MCKINNON | @blazingmarlene

A visit to the Leaky Bucket was always necessary at the end of a particularly long workday. Trading the scent of hot glue and wood polish for tobacco and craft beer made for a much better alternative in his eyes. And a chance to finally see Marlene wasn’t too bad of a perk, as well.

It’d been a little too long since he’d last seen her, for his liking. A little too long since she’d poured him a drink. A little too long since they’d gotten higher than two kites. A little too long since they’d stirred some pots and started some trouble. The fact that he couldn’t pinpoint the last date immediately in his mind was a problem for him. It was probably that last meeting with The Order about the retaliation arson. Also known as – too long ago. 

So he steps through the doors with a flourish, strides long and swaggering. Sliding onto a barstool, he raps his knuckles into the hardwood of the bar top, an indistinct beat, as he waits to be noticed by her. But he decides to call her attention, instead. His words break through a boisterous laugh –

“Aye, beautiful, you come ‘ere often?”

[blazingmarlene-blog]

She was particularly chipper that night. It was the start of a shift, some blessed, delusional hour in which nothing seemed more promising than an evening of cheesy pickup lines and spilling beer on herself. Marlene moved along at the bar like something electric, throwing her yellow smile at anyone who looked her way.

A woman with pink hair called for her with a grand gesture and suddenly she was pulled into a group picture, waiting for some chick to press the screen of her cell. It ended with a roaring kind of laughter. Marlene was wondering whether Pink Hair’s smile meant that she didn’t have to go back to her apartment that night when something tore her attention away. Fletcher, in all his scummy glory, held more color than anything else.

“Fletch, you wretched shite!” Her voice was loud, ecstatic, filled with the same chemical energy that ran through her body when she threw herself across the counter to hug him. Marlene pulled away with a playful punch in his arm. “What the fuck kind of hole have you been hiding in? I mean, I get that no one who uses ‘beautiful’ to pick up chicks has ever been anywhere near a cellphone, but there were letters in 1952, right?  You could have written or some shite.”

[dorcastheexplorer-blog]

25 Oct. 2017, 1:36 pm, open to all.

Late lunches had become such a staple of Dorcas’s life that it always surprised her when she was able to sit down and eat her sandwich before the bread turned stale. The fact that today’s shoot was actually on break on time had thrown off her entire schedule. She wasn’t even hungry, so she was just sitting in the park holding her turkey sandwich and debating tearing off pieces for the surrounding ducks.

She liked being in the park. There were always people around, which meant she could be alone with her thoughts without actually having to be alone. Mostly, she liked watching the people coming and going. Sometimes, if someone sat just a little too close, she’d listen in on their conversations and test herself on how much she could remember later on.

[blazingmarlene-blog]

The sunlight was as unfamiliar as the venue. Marlene leaned into the tree behind her, tired but too uncomfortable to fall asleep. It didn’t feel right to be out that early and the hoodie and sunglasses made her look far too much like someone hiding something.

And then, at long last, Marlene saw Dorcas. She made her way across the park almost immediately, sinking into the bench next to her without so much as a glance. And with a look of fabricated boredom, she began to browse through her cellphone.

“So tell me, love, what’s new in the great big misery machine? Bitching outfit, by the way.”

[siriuslybro]

Paint Me Like One Of Your French Girls || Sirius & Marlene

[blazingmarlene-blog]

siriuslybro:

“The fucking Hadid girls,” Sirius snorted, rolling his eyes. “Hate them. They’re the biggest airheads I’ve ever seen, and didn’t one of them do a photoshoot in black-face?” He was almost ashamed of himself for knowing that. He waved a hand, playfully dismissive. “Hey, my family is in the fashion industry, I make it my business to know this kind of stuff, okay?” Celebrity gossip wasn’t really his thing, but it could be useful sometimes. He liked knowing who the House of Black was working with and what shady business they had been involved with. “I think the Hadids are too stupid to be actual criminal masterminds though.”

Sirius always had eyes in the back of his head. It was a skill developed by years of casual criminal activities. Vandalism, fisticuffs, destruction of property, anything that would send a message. Sometimes he even did it just because it was fun. “Herpes is the least of her worries. A cop from Operation Auror shagging a Death Eater? They should be ashamed of themselves. Maybe we should ask Frank and Alice to dig some dirt on that whole situation?”

“Don’t know, but I wouldn’t advertise all that knowledge, if I were you. Keep that up and one of these days the great big wizard’s gonna send you on an undercover mission to figure it out”, she quipped. Not that she’d put it past Dumbledore to ever ask something of the sort. One had to appreciate just how ruthless the merry old fuck could be. “A few months pretending to be friends with the Hadids. Imagine that shite.”

The anxiety returned with the mention of the auror’s misdoings, leading Marlene’s gaze to meet that of the woman in the billboard. And then the illusion was shattered. The paper was only paper, the model was no all-knowing goddess and she and Florence weren’t the same. Things were simple. Sure, Marlene had fucked up – she’d knowingly gotten into bed with Corban in the hope that they might provide her with some sort of information and she’d actually fucking enjoyed it. But she’d deal with the fallout if it came out. Florence, on the other hand, might have been a compromised party posing as an unbiased one.

“Fuck yeah. This whole thing stinks. Might be that she’s just got a vile taste and a broken bullshit detector, I guess...A likely prospect, considering that she’s a fucking cop.”

[siriuslybro]

Paint Me Like One Of Your French Girls || Sirius & Marlene

[blazingmarlene-blog]

siriuslybro:

“I wish Cissa was on the billboard. I think my cousin would look great with a mustache,” Sirius scoffed. “But you’re right, we can do better.” He shook the can of paint, mostly just out of habit and the tactile sensation of the whole thing. “Gotta make this sound… political. Everyone’s going to know the fire puns are about the Wembley fire, yeah?”

His black can was switched out for an orange one as he began to create the flames, mixing in some yellow and some red. “I like the way you think. Just keep an eye out too. Apparently some of those Operation Auror cops are more bent than I am. Did you see the pic of their boss snogging Evan Rosier?”

“Shouldn’t be too hard… Just spread it around that one of the Hadid gals got one and she’ll grow her own soon enough.” Her eyes took the deep roll that always came with the mention of Narcissa, still avoiding the sight of the woman behind her. “Ugh – maybe hotter than arson could be around somewhere? Artist’s choice, I guess, but you know I’m a literal gal.”

She spun around on her heels, and the horrible woman was in full sight again. And then Sirius mentioned the cop snogging someone horrible, and it was hard not to see those vacant paper eyes reflect every despicable time she’d fucked Yaxley.

“Yeah, and I hope Miss Congeniality is ready for a lifetime of herpes and blackmail.” A bad joke, a darted tongue - nothing felt bad if you could laugh about it.

[blazingmarlene-blog]

remlupn:

The rain outside was coming down in sheets, and Remus was eternally grateful for the shelter the Leaky Bucket gave him. He wasn’t explicitly intending for it to be a pub night, but it seemed the universe, or at the very least the weather, had different plans. Shaking what he could of the water from his hair, Remus shrugged off his coat and hung it on one of the many empty hooks that littered the Bucket’s entrance. A naive action, perhaps, but Remus’ coat was not very different for most of his belongings: tattered, old, and due for a replacement. It would not have been a tragedy had it gone missing.

He was hardly two steps into the door when he heard Marlene’s voice, loud and clear, ringing out above the usual din. Oi, lad, here! A friendly greeting, and one Remus met with a grin of his own. He sauntered over and slipped neatly into the open stool before her. The bar underhand was already sticky , and Remus suspected she’d been here a while. 

“Marls,” he grinned, eyebrows raising as she slid him the screen. Nimble fingers slid around the phone. “Jesus.” Remus looked back up at her and placed her phone back down on the bar. “Why’re you reading this shite? Are you trying to work yourself up into a frenzy – - don’t answer that.” Remus liked to think himself above the nonsense and, frankly, bullshit articles that seemed to spill out of the media’s every orifice. The truth is, he wasn’t. He gobbled it up just like the rest of them. “Just a pint, thanks. Eh, make it a Tennent’s. Some of us are trying to keep it together.”

“Anger keeps you pure”, she quipped. It was the one clean thing in her blood, balancing out the nicotine and the trash. “And you should never underestimate the court of public opinion. People listen to those despicable lukewarm tossers, you know?”

An angry tap of her hand against the wooden counter and then she was ready to fix Remus a pint. She strolled over to the other side of the bar, never diverting her attention from her friend. When Marlene returned, she knocked the glass against the counter hard enough for a little bit to spill.

“Suit yourself, love. But you’re missing out on the mixological wonders of the talented Marlene Liverbuster Mckinnon.”

[siriuslybro]

Paint Me Like One Of Your French Girls || Sirius & Marlene

“Camera!” Sirius pointed from under his hooded sweatshirt, a bandana wrapped around his face to cover his features. “I got it.” He scaled the wall, using an empty milk crate to stand on while he sprayed black paint over the lens. “Any more?” He turned, looking over his shoulder at Marlene. Although his face was still covered, it was easy to tell he was grinning and laughing from beneath it.

The House of Black billboard was above them, the model on the campaign gazing down like some kind of divine entity. Made sense, considering his relatives probably treated her as such. “What are you thinking? I’m thinking something more than blackened teeth and a curly mustache. Maybe some kind of fire pun. ‘This year’s hottest fashion line,’ with a big burning bush around it.” He pulled the bandana down now that the camera was effectively rendered useless, a big grin on his face. “But I’m open to suggestions.”

@blazingmarlene

[blazingmarlene-blog]

The cry of camera came quick enough for her to turn her back on the billboard goddess, to flash a middle finger at the lens before Sirius covered it in black ink. Marlene took off her sky mask and laughed. And yet, the woman’s gaze never seemed to abandon her. Those wide paper eyes, turned colorless by the light, unsettled her far worse than she could explain.

“A mustache would be a waste of out artistic temperaments”, she spat, voice fast and steady above the unease.  And then she turned in Sirius’s direction, a great big crooked smile and a mop of messy hair. “Fuck yeah. How ‘bout ‘hotter than the hell our corporation should be sucking satan’s dick in’ underneath?”

[blazingmarlene-blog]

DATE: sunday, august 16h 2017

TIME: 3:12am

STATUS: closed to @elcctriic​

Press the head against the wall just right and she could still feel the people brush past her, hopping and dancing, each making their last ditch effort not to go home alone for the night.

Marlene had been talking. She’d done nothing but talk above the music, and now her throat was sore under the smoke and the cold, and she could barely remember with whom. There had been a med student earlier, a homeless woman, a wannabe gangster with a bloody nose. Blurs and specters, then, too distant to place.

Somehow, she had ended up there. Outside a seedy club bursting with social climbers, lowlifes, princes and criminals – outside the kind of place where you could find the occasional cat amongst the pigeons. And though they all looked the same from her spot in the dark, Marlene couldn’t keep herself from grinning when she saw the most feline of them all: Alecto, she remembered, she had come with Alecto.

“Holy shite”, she fumbled around her leather for a lighter and threw it the Alecto’s way. “Is it Bosnian Mafia night in there? I swear to god, I’m gonna punch the next beefed up white fucker who offers to show me his tattoos.”

[blazingmarlene-blog]

DATE: sunday, august 13th 2017

TIME: 11:30pm

STATUS: closed to @remlupn

The glass in Marlene’s hand was the only cool thing in the Leaky Bucket. There was a hum across the room, a persistent voice nagging her for another pint, a lonely fucker eyeing her up and down from his seat. So when she was done with wiping the last shot glass, Marlene felt the urge to smash it against the wall.

It was then that she saw Remus. Her irritation turned into an unbearable urge to speak to another human being, and she was loud Marlene once again, signaling the new arrival to sit at the counter.

“Oi, lad, here!” Her gestures were frantic. She took her phone out of her pocket, sliding it across the counter for him to see. It was an opinion piece: We’ve grown to see the Order as well-meaning idealists, the Wembley Football Stadium arson proves otherwise. “Fucked up shit, right?” Her hateful look spoke more than she could. It was hard to feign nonchalance, but Marlene did her best when she tapped the counter in front of Remus and gave him a sly smile. “So, what’s it gonna be? I don’t think Sirius is working until later, but I’ll be happy to provide you second rate entertainment until he gets here. My hair isn’t as great, but I’m a much better bartender.”

[blazingmarlene-blog]

STARTER CALL

[Like this for a post-reunion thread]

[blazingmarlene-blog]

TASK.

Priscilla Mary Barnes + Clark Mckinnon

❝  Man hands on misery to man.    It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can,    And don’t have any kids yourself.❞ 

             Philip Larkin

Priscilla Barnes

Mary, Mary, quite contrary. There was once a girl from Croydon. Small, attractive, beast of a child barely into puberty, scowling amongst the pack of blonde sisters dragging her through the supermarket. There was a fight. Something rather nasty, that made the small girl rake her nails through a taller sister’s face. And in that small act of violence, the shadow of the girl’s hand covered the wrong side of her face and the artificial lighting came in service of her hidden beauty. The Man saw her – Mary Barnes was discovered.

At first, they came for the animal. A wild, young thing of photogenic beauty they admired for a moment before combing, bleaching and turning the light of a video camera its way. Mary gave them all she had. Her body, her spirit, her wickedness, things that had never mattered to her before and only did because she needed to get the fuck out of Croydon.

Then she was Mary the Bombshell and then she was Mary no longer. Priscilla Barnes was born to the big screen, the blonde, sphinx-faced beauty on the arms of every great man. At one point, she was even in Bond’s. And all the while she was bored, basking in money and entirely indifferent to the praise, scornful of the countless critics who called her a wooden ornament as well. Boredom followed her all the way to the altar with Clark Mckinnon, a man she was meant to love, surrounded by people who were meant to like her and not a single one of the blonde girls who had brought her up so well.

She knew they would all come for her, eventually. A woman could only elude time for so long, and Priscilla had never been one to ignore carnage of inevitability. She severed her ties to Hollywood with a child and a glorious retirement at the age of 32. She left her husband as well, and came back to London with her daughter.

There had been certain expectations for Marlene. Priscilla would have loved a soft girl. She would have loved a harsh one as well, if tempered with the right vision. But she had trouble loving the one she got. Marlene was troubled from the cradle, screaming and crying as Mary herself once had, biting into her wrists with her brand new teeth, demanding flesh and adoration, eventually resentful of the life she’d been given. Motherhood wasn’t a very appealing role, and Priscilla doesn’t understand the guilt that came with progressively slipping out of it: Marlene had more than she ever did. There were no excuses.

And then the light shone again. It all started with a favor: a desperate friend begging her to convince an investor of the worthiness of his venture. It was a role Priscilla played spectacularly, just as she played all the people she needed to multiply her acting fortune and make herself a stockholder in some of the finest Sacred 28 companies.

It’s been two degrees, a few fallen regimes, some marriages and a disowned daughter, but the camera is still rolling. A movie star as a facilitator is always quite the calling card, and there are plenty of methods to resort to if the glitter fails. Blackmail and violence are only two of a woman’s many weapons.

Clark Mckinnon

It’s gruesome that someone so handsome should care - so Clark doesn’t. Clear-eyed and Scottish born, a classically trained actor with an aristocratic background and the sort of class you couldn’t buy for millions. He’s been an audience favorite for many years, slipping in and out of the big screen as he sees fit, as adored by the plebs as he is by the critics. It’s not his fault. Some are born for greatness, while others are born to be great.

What people don’t see is that there’s a distinct calculation to the way he goes on an elaborate rant about Shakespeare before mentioning his favorite Marvel superhero and his participation in the latest movie, a very manufactured charm, as warm and it is vacant.

He loves Marlene. He loves her - he loves his beautiful, troubled daughter. It feels like the truth once you’ve repeated enough and it’s now enough of a lie to be seeped into Clark’s skin. So he invites her for lunch every month and smiles at her familiar face, tries to picture a little girl with a blonde halo that never really existed, and talks for a couple of hours. It’s not often that he tries to imagine what Marlene is thinking. Her kind of girl is impenetrable to him, as scary as her mother became once the mask of beauty and fickleness fell. But never in the few times he tries to make sense of her would Clark suspect himself of being the one thing Marlene is truly, truly indifferent to.

[blazingmarlene-blog]

avcarrow:

Where usually the insults wouldn’t stick, tonight they were on edge enough that some of the hits found purchase. Not many, not enough to invoke a response besides their usual derision – it wasn’t like she was deliberately insulting them personally, it was more a reflexive response to anyone with any kind of status above that of degenerate – but enough that they felt it.

“I’m sure you’d know all about those,” they said, drily, brushing a nonexistent speck of lint from their blazer. “Tell me, are you planning on spending the whole night sulking out here by yourself? No deviants – sorry, you call those friends now – to spend your time with?”

She brought a hand to her chest in a mockery of offense. Loneliness was not a problem. Not with the light and the fast mind, the assurances that she would find decent company in nearly anyone that came her way in that state.

“I know we’re not quite in the same circle anymore, but honestly, Amycus, there’s no need to resort to such base fucking insults: I have always been a friend to deviants. And they’re around – somewhere. Some people did have actual friends in their university days they lost touch with and are looking forward to seeing again, you know?”

[blazingmarlene-blog]

cyaxleymp:

For some reason the laugh they drew from her felt like a triumph, as if they actually cared about entertaining her, which they certainly didn’t. When it came to entertainment and Marlene, they only cared about their own entertainment.

“It sounds to me like you have a very solid handle on why we despise vulnerability, love. As you said, the weaknesses of others makes us. There is no upper class without the lower, after all. This is capitalism. ‘Let those who are actually concerned with peace observe that capitalism gave mankind the longest period of peace in history,’ Ayn Rand. Besides,” they said, raising an eyebrow, “You can despise something and still need it. Another thing I think you know intimately well.”

“Heartwarming to see you quoting Ayn Rand, seeing as the old gal died on government benefits.” They got a smirk out of her, but it was a crooked one, drenched in contempt. “Go quote that shit to the half of the world whose homelands are being torn apart because some foreign fuck really, really wants the oil or natural resource they’re sitting on. And please tell me how chemical weapons and dangling happily on the edge of nuclear fucking annihilation fit that narrative.”  

“You do really believe you’re better than them, don’t you? That you’re better and stranger and more beautiful and sentient than millions of people who get up to clean your shite every single day. That exhaustion and fear are just their natural state. That nature produced fodder and fodder for the cannon with you as its great shinning abnormality.” Her mouth was still curved into a smile, with laughter lines and exposed teeth, but her eyes began to glint with something other than contempt. It was the fast thing in her blood, she supposed, the great chemical god who demanded flesh. The night had barely started, but Marlene was almost out of veneer. “You’re wrong about that, love. You don’t need despicable things. You crave them. Like the baddest, strongest booze you wanna shove down your throat after a boring night.”

[blazingmarlene-blog]

cissas:

It took every inch of patience and tolerance Narcissa possessed to prevent herself from taking a step backwards, sheer stubborn will working against the creeping discomfort of her personal space being intruded upon. Her lashes narrowed and she held Marlene’s gaze squarely, far from keen to give the other any form of satisfaction. “I’m afraid it isn’t possible to ruin a reputation which has ceased to exist.” A single cold laugh was forced from her lips. She was beginning to hate this interaction. Public confrontation unsettled her; she much preferred fake grins and well-concealed insults. “Oh darling. You flatter yourself in thinking that I follow you.”

A frown crept its way across her brow. There was a feral bitterness to Marlene that may have evoked a hint of pity had she not been so utterly abhorrent. “You’re wrong, McKinnon, you didn’t even have half of what I have.” Narcissa shook her head, unwavering in the face of empty threats. “Unless you have the ability to peer into the future, forgive me for finding your words difficult to believe. There isn’t a single thing on this planet that could cause my life to turn into the train wreck that yours has become because I have worked hard to ensure that everything I have is protected.” She spoke through an unloving smile that passed across her lips like a shadow. “If you want to give dethroning me a go, be my guest. But it will only end in your tears.”

Her teeth were visible even as she rolled her eyes, somehow still ecstatic in all her rage. “My point exactly, blondie. You can’t threaten me with shit.” She marveled at the brokenness of the people she could have been. Some of them, like Corban, were malicious, while some were only stupid. But Narcissa didn’t strike her as either. She was only selfish, intentionally vacant, vain. And that was just about worse.

“Tell me you don’t have your head shoved far enough up your own ass that you think you can’t get sick or hurt or weak, and that all the loving minions that now treat you like the world revolves around your asshole aren’t gonna step on you the first chance they get. I don’t need to destroy you, Black. The first wrinkle and the subsequent plastic surgery addiction will do it for me, and I’d rather commit my efforts to fighting the things that made you who you are. You should commit yours to getting a fucking personality.”

[filministic]

American Pastoral (2016) dir. Ewan McGregor

[blazingmarlene-blog]

💖

“I don’t know.”