Polaroid 600 :: A Series of Drabbles
[ bb/miranda . for Magickalmolly and edigo ] R
Polaroid 600 i
Maggie gives Billy a Polaroid camera as a going away present. It's surprisingly heavy and very plastic in his hands when he holds it. He thinks it doesn't feel like a real camera at all, but rather more like a toy.
"New place. New life. New people," she explains.
"Take a picture, Bill," she says, and pats him - much like one would a child - on the cheek. When she talks there's a smile in her voice and on her lips, and Billy is made slightly uncomfortable by the implication that his sister is trying not-very-hard to hide.
"...It'll last longer."
...
Polaroid 600 ii
There are freckles all over Miranda's body - across her back and along her shoulders, peppering her arms and the tops of her knees and honey-apple swells of her cheeks. Some of them are faint and barely visible, while others are distinct and perfect against the strawberry-blonde skin, and in all of their scattered and mislaid patterns, Billy likes to trace out words or pictures or other hidden messages that reinforce the secrets that Miranda's body tells him. Tonight, it's constellations - ancient mythology mapped out across the rises and falls of her fleshpink skies.
Billy documents each one with his camera.
...
Polaroid 600 iii
Billy likes the process as much as the result. There's the click and then the whir and then Miranda's body is painted a sudden florescenthotwhite by the flash. Afterwards, its silhouette lingers on, etched upon his retina in neon green.
When he finds Andromeda, Billy pulls the Polaroid from the mouth of the camera before tossing it into the cascade of Miranda's hair on the pillow. She is naked and bare and open beneath him as he straddles her thighs, tracking the summer skies across her back.
"Turn around," he whispers quietly, lowering the camera. "I want to find Cassiopeia."
...
Polaroid 600 iv
Miranda likes to leave her fingerprints all over Billy's Polaroids the same way she likes to leave them on his body - salt and sweat and the taste of the ocean, like her sex, against his skin. The denim of Billy's jeans brush up against the outsides of her thighs - rough cool fabric and smooth damp flesh. She flares at the touch.
"Enough with the astronomy lesson, Billy," she says heavily, twisting over in the sheets like an eel - flushed and ivory and threatening violence.
When she pulls roughly on the camera strap, Miranda offers Billy a kiss that's mostly teeth.
...
Polaroid 600 v
Billy watches as Miranda's wrist go taut and hard as she fists a handful of cotton; he wishes he still had his camera. She makes a noise that sounds like "ughn" as he pushes up against her, crawling into the darker, more secret places of her outstretched body.
Billy looks up towards her smeared-red mouth and there is a Polaroid there, clutched between her whitewhite teeth - a poor and blurry reproduction of their sex. Billy kills the urge to kiss Miranda; he drags his hungry tongue across the image of his own body instead.
