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David had noticed the girl maybe a week ago. They got new blood in Santa Carla on the regular, especially in summer, but she'd caught his eye, as some of the drifters inevitably did. It might've been her top— she was wearing a corset that had probably once been white but had weathered to an ivory like bone. It was still amazingly stark against her brown skin, even up against the unhealthy cast of someone who'd been homeless and struggling for a while.
David would have assumed that she turned tricks, but he'd watched her turn away one of the less offensive semi-regular johns, even after an offer to share his coke. She'd been trembling as he'd flashed the baggie at her, and David had seen track marks on her arms the other night, walking by her asleep in a corner on the boardwalk. He'd been interested by her refusal, and then— frustrated, he supposed, when he'd later seen her deeply and obviously in the throes of some kind of high, chatty and open but so clearly artificial. Her eyes had been glassy and bright, like some kind of taxidermied animal.
And then tonight he saw her curled up in another anonymous little nook, settling down for the night, and he needed to know. His boys trailed after him, not sure of his game but—as always—willing to play.
She was painfully skinny up close, the spread of her collarbone jutting through her skin, her face sharp and drawn without any fat to lie over the bone, her eyes huge in her face as her skin pulled away from them. Her corset had surely fit her better once, but now David could have looked down it and probably seen her navel past her breasts. He didn't, of course— he wasn't sure that it wouldn't put her on edge.
"Evening," he drawled, and watched her grip on her duffel bag tighten.
"Evening," she said back. She wasn't high. Wasn't welcoming either. Well, he couldn't blame her for that— she was thoroughly cornered with the four of them there, and even more than she knew.
"You're new in town?" David continued, cocking his head just enough to seem genuinely interested.
"What's it to you?" she asked, and David bit back a smile.
"We haven't seen you around," he said, gesturing to his boys. "We like to get to know new arrivals."
There were snickers, as he'd expected.
"I'm David," he continued like he couldn't see how warily she was glancing at the space between them, not nearly enough for her to duck through and run. "And here we have Marko, Dwayne, and Paul."
"Can't they introduce themselves?" she asked, with just a bit of bite, and David smiled. He liked that.
"We're not sure about Dwayne," Marko said, "So we let David do it so he doesn't feel left out," and laughed at Dwayne's holler and slap at him.
"And can you?" David asked her, letting approval-but-shut-up-for-a-second flow over his link with the boys.
"Star," she said, voice harsh like a dare.
"Star, mm?" David said, smiling at her. "Got a special connection with the universe?"
She tilted her chin up, a little flash of arrogance that looked beautiful on her. "I might."
"Gonna tell our fortunes?" Dwayne asked, overeager.
"Do some cartomancy?" Paul added, and David realized he hadn't known there was a specific word for that.
"Maybe read our palms?" Marko piped in.
"Boys," David said indulgently. "Don't crowd."
Star's eyes flicked between them, but she didn't look scared now, nor like she didn't care— she looked like she was thinking, and thinking hard. David took another step in, not touching her, not yet.
"But maybe I do want my palm read," he said, turning his hand over in front of her.
Star snorted. "For five bucks I can be a palm reader, sure."
David pulled a (slightly stained) bill out of a pocket, offering it between two fingers along with the flat of his hand. Star took his hand and the money, wiggling her fingers in a vaguely mystical and very mocking manner.
She did go still for a moment, thumbs meeting in the center of his palm. She was warmer than he was, albeit not by much. Whatever she'd been taking, whatever she'd been going through, had nearly ended her.
"Well I can't see your life line at all," Star said abruptly, back to mocking.
"Oh?" David asked with a grin. "Does that mean I'm already dead?" He could hear the boys snickering.
"It means I can't see through leather, asshole," Star said with a grin in kind, lightly slapping his still-gloved palm.
"We can't have that, can we," David said, raising an eyebrow. "Go on. Take it off."
Dwayne wolf-whistled, and Paul and Marko laughed. Star glanced at them, a little unease sneaking into her expression, but David drew her attention back with a wiggle of his fingers.
Star didn't quite meet his eyes, but she dug her nails under the edge of his glove without hesitation, pulling the leather down over his palm. Her nails weren't sharp enough to cut (unlike his) but they scratched just a little against his skin. She had a number of cheap rings on, and they glittered in the light from the boardwalk.
David smiled down at Star as she pulled his glove free and turned it right-side out before handing it back to him. He tucked it into his pocket with his handkerchief as she took his hand between hers again and stared down like he was something for her to pick apart.
"Y'know, even your right and left hand will have different creases," Star said, a little distantly. "I could bullshit something about a public face and a private one, but I think I should charge extra for two hands."
"You'd be right," David drawled in amusement. "But I only need the one."
"Pity," Star said over the boys snickering. "But let's get started. There are four major lines on the palm. I mentioned life— the others are heart, head, and fate." She traced the top edge of his palm. "This is the heart line. It's used to read into your emotional relationships, hence the name. You..."
David tilted his head, just a little. She'd had very little to cold-read from him, and he was interested to see if she played it off as not being serious or if she would try to come up with something that sounded good.
"You have a deep heart line, but it has far more than one crease," Star opined. If he had been human, he probably wouldn't have heard the tiny quiver in her voice as she guessed. "You're devoted to those you truly care for, but there's not any one person for you."
"Not bad," David acknowledged. She'd clearly read into how he'd confronted her, and she'd likely spun that bit about multiple creases to account for what she thought must be true, that he would have a string of short-term flings. She'd even been careful to not specify romance, leaving an opening for his deepest relationships being with the boys.
Little does she know, thought Paul, and David bit down on a nasty grin. His boys.
Star paused for a moment, clearly hoping for more of a reaction, but David had no intention of making this easy for her. She pulled a face—she knew exactly what he was doing—and ran the tip of her index finger down the center of his palm. David could hear how hard she was thinking, but he refrained from going any further.
"Head line next," Star said, and traced a different, diagonal line. "This shows not only intelligence but creativity. Yours is strong and continuous— you know what you want, and you know how you're going to get it."
Vague enough to be applicable to almost anything, but he hadn't given her much to work with.
"Does that mean I'm always going to get what I want?" David asked, trying to catch Star's eye.
"Nothing is certain, especially when it overlaps with other people," Star nearly snapped. She took a breath before anyone said anything, and continued, "But you're well-equipped to figure out how you're going to get what you want. You're creative, you're the one who comes up with ideas. The curve of your head line tells me that."
The way I'm obviously in charge tells her that, David commented to the boys, and listened to them snicker.
Note she said ideas, not plans, Marko jibed.
I could be a big picture kind of guy, David said, playing along.
"Well," he said aloud. "Let's hope I can be convincing this time."
"I haven't heard any ideas yet, apart from the palm reading," Star shot back, but David thought he saw a hint of a smile.
"I'm waiting for the right moment."
"Don't take too long," Star said.
"Do you have somewhere to be?" David asked, still friendly.
"Sleeping," Star said, drily, stifling a yawn.
"The night's still young!" Dwayne called. "Why waste it?"
"There's more security during the day," Star said, bitterly, and that hooked something in him.
"Set up under the pier," David said. He could feel the boys sharing a look behind his back, but they rose to his unexpected desire.
"It's quieter and darker than the beach," Paul offered.
"And those rent-a-cops don't like going down there," Dwayne added.
"You get couples making out and some other people looking for privacy, but they tend to do their business and clear out," Marko said.
"Why?" Star asked. "Do they clear out, I mean."
"Can't say. Nothing's ever bothered us down there," David said with half a shrug. When you were the thing going bump in the night, of course you could do what you wanted— but Santa Carla residents knew that under the pier at night wasn't a place you wanted to be, and some of that extended to the daylight hours too.
"I... thanks for the suggestion, guys," Star said, still cautious.
"Now," David said, drawing everyone's attention back, "Didn't we still have some palm reading to do?"
"Yeah." Star looked back down at his hand like she was trying to hide. "Two more. This—" she drew her finger down the center of his hand again, and he enjoyed the near-ticklish sensation "—is your fate line." She paused. "Or rather, it's where your fate line would be. If you have one, it's so faint I can't see it. And that means that your life isn't guided by fate— you make your own future."
Pretty reasonable guess, after his earlier skepticism. But David wasn't sure if the idea that nothing was destined was a comforting one to him— that the people he was going to spent eternity with could have been missed, could have been lost before he'd ever found them. That he might have died before he'd ever...
"And your life line," Star continued, and her tone had changed slightly. "There's breaks in it," Star said, thumb running across the crease in question. "Here, near the top, and here..." Almost at the heel of his hand. "I remember those can signify change— big change."
David licked his lips, mesmerized in spite of himself. Star's sudden, quiet sincerity was intoxicating.
"Makes sense," he said quietly. She glanced up, and he shrugged a shoulder, finally offering her a little more. "Santa Carla. Everyone here is escaping something."
Star laughed for a second, sharp and pained. "Sure you don't just mean running from something?"
"I am." David paused, trying to decide how much of himself he should strip off in front of this girl, in front of his boys. "I'm done with my father. I left him behind a long time ago, and I have a real family now."
"Brothers," Marko affirmed, hand brushing against David's shoulder.
"Brothers," Paul and Dwayne chorused. They didn't reach out physically, but David could feel them all the same, and he sank for half a second into the warmth of their affection.
"No one can tear us apart. No one gets to hurt us, ever again. We're free of that." He said it and he meant it, and he could tell Star heard it— the sudden longing in her was impossible to miss. And there it was, what she'd been chasing, what she'd been using to try to feel. Freedom. Including from consequences. After all, was it really freedom if the world could still hurt you for it? The world had hurt them all for what they were, for who they'd chosen to be, and they were all prepared to hurt it back. David had been given that gift, and he'd given it to his boys in turn.
Star was still holding his hand.
"Here," David said, letting his fingers curl around hers, using his left hand to tilt her chin up. "Let's take your hard-earned five dollars and go blow it on something to eat."
Star glanced at their entwined hands, then up at his and his boys' faces— her eyes were flaming, now, nothing like the flat dull look of a junkie with nothing left to live for but the next hit. She looked at them each in turn, assessing, lingering even further on Paul, and when her shining eyes returned to David he grinned with the thrill of it. Not burned out yet, this star— and he knew how he could keep it from happening. Forever.