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The dolly – what was her name? He’s forgotten, or else, he’s just never seen her before – stands facing him, head on, her hands planted firmly on her hips. Her expression is stern, angry, even; eyebrows drawn tight in a frown, pretty pink mouth thinned. This, teamed with her cotton-candy pink sweater and skirt that goes below her knees, makes her look like a fucking warden.
She’s a tiny thing, only coming up to his chest, but the glare she fixes Peter with is enough to make him take notice, at the very least.
He’d been trying to recruit her brother, Baelfire. Weird name, if you ask him, but his pickpocketing skills, quick wit and resourcefulness has been something the Pan’s had reported back to him by many of the Lost Boys.
He’s given him a choice: join, or don’t. The threat wasn’t spoken, but it’s still there. There’s been many a boy whose life has been ruined in the wake of saying no to Pan. Upon being given the choice, this particular boy hadn’t answered – knowing perfectly well what would happen if he refused, and now this crazy dame – Baelfire’s little sister – is demanding that he be left alone.
Peter eyes her, his flinty gaze sweeping from the toe of her spotless Mary Janes to the top of her curly head. She is a pretty thing, he decides, with wide dark eyes and dimples in her cheeks, even when she’s frowning. She’s flushed, from what he can see of her skin (she’s not exactly a wild card), her chest heaving with the force of her confrontation. Her hair isn’t exactly blonde – not the bottled kind he’s used to seeing, anyway – but more of a tawny colour, and it lies in slight disarray over her shoulders, like a lion’s mane, bound only by the pink bow she’s tied in amongst the curls.
You leave my brother alone, she’d told him, her fingers tightening where they gripped her own hips – he can’t tell whether it’s in anger or a seeking of comfort – he doesn’t need to get involved with the likes of you.
He’d scoffed, said the likes of me? not intending to hear a response, but the girl’s scowl had deepened marginally, and she’d told him yes! The likes of you, stealing and causing trouble – Bae’s better than that. Better than you.
No-one, in all Peter’s years, had ever dared to chew him out like that. Oddly, it doesn’t make him angry. Instead, his heart races and he can feel a bubbly kind of excitement, of adrenaline running through him as he surveys the tiny girl’s scowl.
Baelfire doesn’t seem much ashamed of having a girl fighting his battles. He looks scared for her – as he should, Pan thinks – but not ashamed. They’re a tightly knit group, that family, and he feels his fingers itch with the urge to tear it apart.
“Cool it, sweetheart,” he tells her lazily, through the cigarette that dangles from his lips, “this ain’t none of your business.”
Obviously, this is the wrong thing to say – or the right, depending on how much he wants to rile her up – because she goes from shakily confident to absolute concrete, her spine straightening and eyes flashing and teeth baring, in about two seconds.
“None of my business, Peter Pan?” she asks, and the way she curls his name up in her mouth and spits it out gives him chills running along his arms, “None of my business that you’re trying to make my brother join a gang?”
He takes the cigarette, lights it, and takes a drag. He blows smoke from the corner of his mouth before answering, relishing the sour burn on his tongue.
“S’no place for girls.” He retorts, a little stunned, but oh how her anger flares, flashing bright behind her skin like fireworks.
Her nostrils flare, and she gives a little start, muscles bunching – as if she’s about to pounce. He smirks at her, smooths his hair back.
“Peter Pan,” she says shrilly, her voice trembling in sharp contrast to the solid plant of her feet, “you can get bent.”
She whirls away and leaves, dodging through the crowd that has gathered to watch the pink-and-pastel girl stand up to the school’s resident bad boy, the greaser, the Pan. The words she hisses aren’t particularly scandalous, but coming from such a prim little dolly as her – well, it’s basically a big fuck you.
Peter grins, watching her go. He takes another drag on his cigarette, blows the smoke out to where her figure retreats. The silvery, broken-off strands weave through her form like ghosts. “Felix.” He says, beckoning to the skinny, fair-haired boy who acts as his right-hand man. “Who’s the dame?”
He asks because Felix makes it his business to know everything about everyone – not just the relevant people, like Pan. He brings potential recruits to his attention, scopes out their backgrounds, does all the research. He’s part of the reason the Lost Boys are so successful in their … recreational activities. They know who people are, where they’ll be, what they do.
His second in command squints, chewing on his thumbnail. “Name’s Wendy. Wendy Darling.”
“Wendy Darling.” He rolls her name round his tongue, through his sharp teeth. Tastes good and sweet, like honey dripping off his gums. “What’s her deal?”
A shrug. “She’s got three brothers. Two younger, one older. Kinda tame, this is a first for her. Doesn’t usually kick up dust like that.”
Peter flings the cigarette stub on the ground, pressing down on it with his boot heel and grinding it into the dirt. “She a wet rag, you think?” He hopes not. He hopes Wendy Darling’s wild as a Lost Boy, crazier than a bag of cats, something he’s never really wished for in a girl. Usually, he likes the paper shakers, the preppy dames with short skirts and tan legs, who know not to talk while he’s got his hands up her shirt.
He thinks of how Wendy would look with his jacket on her slim shoulders, her mouth red and bruised from his in the dim lighting of the passion pits. He thinks of how she’d taste – probably like bubblegum and sugar, he bets she’s always got some kind of candy in her pockets – and runs his teeth along his bottom lip. He knows he’d listen to her talk. Hell, he already had. He’d shut his fucking mouth as soon as her prissy lips parted – and it wasn’t just him.
Even the Lost Boys had stopped their jeering, their catcalls; from what he’s seen, Peter knows that Wendy doesn’t talk a whole lot. But when she does – well. People take notice. It’s a different sort of command for attention that he himself holds. Less awe and more shock.
Felix shakes his head. “Naw,” he slips a comb out from the pocket of his leather jacket, rakes back his hair, “not after that… uh, display.”
Pan laughs, loud and barking. It’s rough and splintery in the air, making him think of how fragile-looking Miss Darling would fare under his harsh gaze, his sharp mouth, his long fingers. “Cute little thing, ain’t she?”
Another shrug. “If that’s your type, sure.” There’s a question in the remark, a subtle little query that from anyone else would be cruising for a bruising, but from Felix is just a small gesture of their alliance. Tit for tat. Unflinching loyalty for a bit of honesty, an insight into his head.
Peter flaps his jacket, smooths back his hair. “Wouldn’t mind seein’ what she’s got under the granny panties, that’s all,” he says, gruffly, but it’s a lie.
He wants to figure Wendy Darling out – he wants to know her, to take her apart and see what makes her tick. What makes a girl like that gather the strength in her back enough to take him down a few notches. Or to try to, anyhow. He wants to play with her, to toy with that fragile good-girl bit she’s got going on (it has to be a bit – he feels sour and goopy at the thought of her being pure to the core) and make it fragment apart at the seams.
He wants her breathless, he wants her furious – seeing the anger in her has made him intrigued. She’s fascinating to him, a rare feat for anyone that’s not offering him power. He’d like to see what she’s made of.
He thinks of Wendy Darling, panting beneath him, her lips parted from the aftermath of a kiss. He doesn’t think of victory – he just wants her, wants to know who she is and what she does for kicks and does she smoke and if she does is it only ever out the bathroom window – and – and, shit.
Peter frowns. Blinks. Wishes the sudden torrent of thoughts about what’s her favourite food and does she like movies. He doesn’t do ‘getting to know’ people. He doesn’t do heart-pounding, sweaty-palmed obsession with good girls. With anyone. And yet, here he is, staring at the place she stood only moments ago, something warm and sharp in his chest.
Felix seems to sense this, as he does with most of Peter’s mannerisms and predictabilities, because he chuckles lightly and quirks a brow. “Careful, now. Wouldn’t want the great and powerful Pan to get snowed, would we?”
His lip curls at the word, his hand straying to the switchblade he keeps tucked in his belt. His fingers stop an inch short. The guy’s just teasing, after all, and he’s useful. Wouldn’t be cool to lose his right-hand man when they’re just beginning to break into the big leagues, would it? So he settles for a sharp glare and a “DTT, asshole.”
“What,” Felix retorts, “and look like you?” He claps Pan on the back, grinning. “Good luck with that dolly, cat. I hear she’s frigid as the North Pole.”
Peter shrugs him off, flashing a sinister smirk. “She’ll thaw.” He saunters in the direction of where Wendy flounced away, pulling another cigarette from the back pocket of his Levis and wedging it between his curled lips.
If there’s two things everyone knows about Peter Pan, it’s this; one, he’s dangerous. And two, he gets what he wants.
Right now, Pan wants Wendy Darling, and everything that she is.
Peter is a boy of sour things – sour smoke, sour words, sour heart. He could do with a little sweet, every now and then. And his current fixation is nothing if not sugary, even with her temper. He’ll unravel her, piece by piece, make her his and keep her – all he has to do is give her a dose of the old Pan charm, take her to a few dances, maybe out for dinner if he can scrape up the cash. She’s one of them sappy types, he can tell – one song in his arms, with her head on his chest, and she’ll be putty for him to play with.
The thought is fixed in his head, and like many other things, it’s not going to get out anytime soon. It’ll stay there, the image of her getting all frosty at him, her cheeks flushed and eyes dark, festering and bruising until it rots.
She’ll be his by the end of the month.
***
Wendy slams her locker door shut, breathing harshly through her nose. Her heart is pounding, hands trembling with anger, and – less so, but still there – embarrassment. Her hair is wild, damp curls clinging to the sides of her face. She yanks them back from her cheeks, annoyed, growling.
Bae chews his lip, watching with a concerned frown as she piles her books into her bag. “You, uh, you OK?”
“Oh, for sure,” she tells him lightly, sarcastically, “just dandy. Cloud nine, Bae.”
He grimaces at her tone. “Dumb question,” he mutters, “right.”
“I just – I can’t believe him!” she rants, acting as if he hadn’t said anything. “S’no place for girls.” she mimics, adopting a ridiculously deep voice and jerking her hand over her hair, mocking the almost twitchy habit those greasers had of continually combing back their locks. “This is nineteen fifty-eight! Girls can do what they like! What a – a hub cap.”
Wendy spins the dial on her lock, gives it a good thump to make sure it’s closed properly. The force of her fist makes the row of lockers on either sides rattle. Her brother puts a hand on her shoulder, pulling her to face him.
At seventeen, just a year older than she is, Bae stands about a head taller. This works to his advantage when trying to soothe her anger, as he peers down at her frustrated expression and gives her his kindest, most sincere smile. “Don’t go ape, okay?” he asks, softly. “I’m fine – Pan’s not gonna… uh, recruit me. Not now, anyway.” He jokes, and his sister lets a tiny smile tug at the corners of her lips.
She doesn’t want to tell him how she’d almost forgotten about that, until now – what’s got her so frazzled is the way that Peter Pan boy had looked at her. Hunger – raw starvation, almost – was the only way she could describe it. His gaze had swept from her head to her feet, flinty and dark, with a strange sort of interest she couldn’t – and can’t – explain.
Wendy knows about the leader of the Lost Boys gang. She’s heard all the rumours, of course she has, and she knows some of them to be true. The fact that he likes the girls who wave pom-poms about and have been told so many times that they’re not there to talk that they’ve begun to believe it, but doesn’t really go round with anyone often.
When he does deem to take notice of a girl, parading her round on his arm, they don’t say much. They don’t do much, except giggle and be demeaned by all Peter’s ‘friends’ – they certainly do not talk back, or tell him to get bent.
(she hates that; hates the way they are made to feel so unimportant)
Yet, there was no mistaking the savage curiosity that burned in his eyes when he looked at her – like she had something on her skin he wanted to taste.
The thought makes her shiver.
Peter Pan sweeps through the halls of school with a gang at his back; anything that is looked at with his calculating gaze is temporary. He’s never set his eyes on her, never spoken to her, until today. She, like everyone else with half a brain not on a power trip, avoids him like the plague.
“Can we just go home?” Wendy asks. “I’m tired and I – I wanna get my homework done.”
Bae smiles, nods, taking her elbow and steering her gently towards where the rest of the student body is churning, desperate to get out of the establishment and into the relative freedom of a Thursday afternoon.
They draw to a halt, though, when someone calls Wendy’s name.
Peter’s unmistakeable, lazy drawl seems to slither up her back from behind. She turns, even though she should just ignore him, go home and crawl under her sheets and try to shake off the way his eyes seem to be permanently stuck to her mouth, his lips twisted open as if he’s about to eat her.
Still, she turns.
He swaggers towards her, confidence gracing every step, his heavy boots thudding on the dirty floor. Their peers seem to part in the middle for him, watching as he looks down at her, sucking on his cigarette. His lips pucker around the horrid thing, twisting to the side, then he removes it and they slide into an easy smirk. The greaser holds himself with the kind of authority that comes from knowing all too well how good-looking he is – and that’s a fact, Wendy muses, staring up at him. He’s tall, lanky, with cheekbones that are strangely suited to the already-angular planes of his face. His hair is pushed back, golden-brown, and the leather jacket he wears compliments the cold edge of his leer.
“Sweetheart,” he greets her, hissing out a puff of smoke, “how’s it?”
“I – I’m sorry?” she asks, clutching at her book bag. She asks politely, despite her irritation – it was bad enough yelling at him in front of everyone, she doesn’t want to do it again.
(he likes it when she shouts, and that won’t do)
“How’s it goin’?”
“Oh. Oh, good, I’m – I’m good.” Wendy stutters out, swallowing. “And you? How are you?”
“All the better for seein’ your pretty face, sweetheart,” he says smoothly. He watches for her reaction, holding the cigarette pinched between thumb and forefinger, inches from his lips.
A thousand things she could say runs through her mind – thank you, what do you want, that’s nice to say – but she settles on silence, and an unbidden scowl ripples across the surface of her well-mannered façade. Annoyance pangs in her stomach, hot and gnawing.
“Was there something you wanted, Pan?” Bae asks bravely.
Peter doesn’t even look at him, doesn’t reply, simply rakes his gaze over Wendy’s face and gives an impish grin. He reaches out, and before she has time to recoil, drags the tip of his thumb under her bottom lip. He looms over her as he does so, moving his finger slowly while the others grip her chin.
The touch is gentle, but the way his eyes stick to her mouth makes something in Wendy quiver.
Then, abruptly, he pulls back. “Chocolate,” he tells her, holding out his thumb for her to inspect – and, sure enough, there’s a smear of the candy just above his thumbnail – and sticking his cigarette back in his mouth, “you got a thing for sugar, sweetheart?”
Her palms are slick with sweat, her mouth dry in contrast – but she manages to choke out a croaky “y – yes.”
Peter chuckles, the sound raspy and burning as the smoke on his breath. “Me too.” He murmurs, and departs.
He makes off through the sea of students, but not before dropping her a roguish wink and a quirk of his eyebrows.
Somehow, the tiny glance reeks of challenge.