For @the-bark-is-worse because I always take her offhanded suggestions and run with them.
Arms laden with designer shopping bags, Marie Dufresne pushed her way through the front door of the condo (a loose term for the enormous dwelling) she shared with her uncle, not regretting a single purchase.
Whatever you want, Micro. It’s on me.
Of course, this celebration of her twentieth birthday wasn’t really all that different from the way he spoiled her in their day-to-day life, their relationship a magnitude of superficial materialism and depravity all its own, Kenny Ackerman sitting pretty above the law simply because they knew better.
“I’m baaaack!” she cried out to the foyer, singsong voice bouncing off the walls and the stairwell as she set down the bags on the white tile in a rustle of tissue paper and frosted vellum. Pushing her unruly golden curls from her face she noticed a spot of red on the floor, then another, then another, and she froze, eyes darting around for any indication of what may have happened.
“Kenny?” she called out, straightening, her voice much softer, much more timid. Sure the law and most of society knew better than to bother with anyone from the Ackerman Family, but that didn’t mean they were entirely safe. Danger begets danger, after all.
“Uncle Kenny?” she tried again, side stepping her purchases and following the blood trail into the kitchen where the man in question sat on a bar stool, booted feet up on the island counter, picking at his teeth.
He was completely fine.
There was a small gash above his eyebrow he didn’t seem to be bothered with and Marie sighed, shoving a hand onto her hip and shifting her weight, preparing to scold him. Kenny, however, would not be scolded today. Not by niece, not by lover, and most definitely not by his current combination of the two.
“Had a fight with Levi,” he told her, saving her the air she might need to question him about the blood on the floor he was planning on making his nephew clean anyway.
“A fight with—“ The sound of wretching pulled her attention towards the half bath off the kitchen and she shot a glare at the tall man lounging at the counter, “—is he throwing up?”
“He came at me all high and mighty so I knocked the brat down a couple pegs,” he said with a shrug, reaching behind him to grab an apple from the fruit bowl, “kid can’t handle a harsh truth, that ain’t my fault.”
Partially annoyed and partially disgusted with his ever flippant nature, she pulled a few bobby pins from her hair and pushed open the door to the bathroom where sure enough, her cousin was clutching the toilet bowl with white knuckles, emptying the contents of his stomach—and his nose—into the water.
“Good Lord,” she sighed, kneeling behind him and combing his hair from his face, pinning it back before leaning back and shouting back to her beau, “how hard did you hit him!”
“I didn’t hit him in the gut!” came Kenny’s defensive reply, though Marie wasn’t bothering to listen to his excuse.
“It’s okay, Levi,” she whispered, rubbing his back, “just get it all out and I’ll get you some water.”
She lifted herself up on to her knees, coaxing a tissue—no three— from the holder atop the sink and handing them to him when he sat back against the wainscoting, face sweaty and ashen. She whispered something else to him, he didn’t quite hear it, but her tone was soothing and maternal as it always was when she wasn’t either slutting it up with their uncle or invading everyone’s personal space with her positive energy.
She returned with a cool damp towel and she lowered the one languid hand he lifted to care for himself, dabbing at his forehead and neck, brows furrowed with earnest concern for his wellbeing.
They’d always been close.
“How’s the squirt doin’ in here?”
Towel clenched in her tiny fist, Marie whipped her attention towards Kenny looming in the doorway, half eaten apple hanging limply from one of his hands—the stance of a casual man.
“What the Hell, Kenny,” she hissed, pushing some more of Levi’s hair from his face and securing it on top of his head lest he need to vomit again.
“I didn’t hit him in the gut,” he repeated, “I juss told him the truth, that’s all.”
“Yeah?” she challenged, crouching on the balls of her feet, grey eyes aflame, “what could possibly be so bad to make Levi puke his brains out?”
He grinned, taking a bite of the apple, “You don’t wanna know, babe.”
Marie let out a snort, pushing her ballet slippered feet out from under her and sitting on the tile herself. “I came home to blood on the floor, my cousin throwing up, and you not seeming to give a shit about any of it so yeah, I do want to know.”
With a shrug and a careless raise of his brow, Kenny conceded.
“I’m his old man.”
Old man—what?
“What?” Marie asked, her voice largely disbelieving and suggesting he stop joking around, but as the words sunk in, she repeated herself.
“What?”
“He fucked my mother,” Levi croaked, his eyes narrow and hateful from where he sat, slumped against the wall, “just like he’s fucking you.”
Though her lips were moving, she couldn’t quite figure out how to make much sound. Admitting his origins aloud was too much for the black haired man and he lurched forward, heaving towards the toilet again and Marie snapped out of her stupor to help him, holding his shoulders for support as one again he expelled.
She turned, her eyes harsh yet glistening with unshed tears and Kenny softened his expression, something he did only for her.
“We’ll talk about it in a little bit,” he said, nodding to his son, “take care of him will ya?”
With little option otherwise, Marie did as she was told.
When Levi stormed from the house nearly an hour later, Marie sat in the kitchen, back against the wall, with no real desire to move. She’d managed to scoot herself out of the bathroom and away from the horrible smell of sick and betrayal, but couldn’t find it in her to stand. She was a ball of frayed emotions, her mind zipping from one thing to another and if they had been within her reach, she would have taken the sleeping pills she kept and woken in a day or so to pretend this had never happened.
Kenny entered, having conceded to cleaning the blood up himself and stood before her, his lanky form dwarfing the figure she shared with Levi.
“Guess I gotta explain myself, huh.”
She didn’t say yes and she didn’t say no. She simply stared at nothing, with no real line of vision.
“He thought he had no father,” she whispered, all heartbreak and accusation.
Kenny sighed, sliding onto one of the stools at the island. “Yeah? You had one and look how that turned out for ya.”
“But you were right there.”
He didn’t have the words for it, but she was right, and he was justified. They’d all lived in the family estate together, all the Ackermans. Kenny, Kuchel, Claire, various cousins. Their children had been raised more as siblings than anything else and Kenny had always thought his presence there had been enough.
Kuchel wouldn’t out him as the father. Despite the dubious nature of their physical relationship, he was her brother, her protector. She could never bring such shame upon him. She’d endured years of ridicule and false accusations, the general consensus being that Levi was born of her promiscuity and whoring, something that, for the sake of her brother, she never denied.
“Can you imagine his life Marie,” Kenny challenged, “for one second, imagine his life if it was public knowledge he was an incest kid. His parents are brother and sister. You think it would have been easy for him?”
No, of course it wouldn’t have. She knew that.
“You were trying to protect him.”
She wasn’t sure if she believed it, but in this moment, it was good enough. Insecurity was bubbling up inside of her and her heartbreak for her cousin crumbled into fear for her own future.
“And Aunt Kuchel?” she wondered, “do I need to be worried? Or jealous? Or—“
His gruff manner of pushing himself off the stool halted her words and he crouched down in front of her, boots on either side of her knees, like a spider staring down his prey.
“I love you, Uncle Kenny,” she breathed, words wavering through her shaky breath.
His hand grasped her throat, his long fingers coming up either side of her face to cradle her chin. It wasn’t the action of a gentle lover comforting a distressed paramour, but the sign of a possessive man who wasn’t willing to let go of his plaything.
“You are mine,” he reminded her, his words a deep rumbling growl, the promise of this a dangerous spark in his narrow eyes.
“I know,” she admitted, allowing, for the first time that day, her tears to drip from her lashes, running down her cheeks and his fingers, “but are you mine?”
His grip became tight on her throat as he leaned forward, voice low in her ear.
