Author's note: This started out as a tribute to Shane MacGowan and Kirsty McColl, but it's also a tribute to everyone who has the patience to put up with an extreme introvert.
*
Christmas Eve in New York, there was nothing quite like it. Lights and cheers, drunks singing and celebrating and lovers kissing on street corners. All strung together like beads on an icy wind that could cut through the thickest coat.
It was a time and place for dreams to come true, or to be shattered. Sometimes even both on the same night.
It was the one time every year that Pod felt comfortable walking around in the open. In the self-centred gloom he could be just another figure hunched over in a puffy jacket, hat pulled down low and a scarf masking his face. Just someone going about their business like so many others.
It was the one time every year that he forced himself to leave the safety of the tunnels.
Oonagh knew that. She'd always known it. "There are nights like it all winter," she'd say. "Months and months when we'd be invisible in the crowd. Let's go out and enjoy ourselves!"
She'd gone, and he'd stayed, and then one time she hadn't come back.
He hadn't cried. Not with real tears. He wasn't even sure if he remembered how. It didn't come naturally to trolls anyway. The last time he'd cried was when they left the Old Country, so long ago he couldn't remember when. They stowed away on a steamer and he spent the whole voyage worrying about being found.
But Oonagh was there with him, and her optimism kept him going. It had even been fun, like the time she'd sucked him off despite his objections, and his moans were so loud that men in caps and thick pea jackets came to see what was happening. Oonagh giggled like a teenager while they hid. Luckily a troll's orgasm sounded just like the natural groans of a steamship at sea.
They'd had dreams back then. A new world, with opportunity and room for everyone. But guess what? There were no opportunities for trolls, just as there'd been no opportunities in the Old Country. Precious little room either.
For a while they tried, even Pod. They ventured out at night and did their best to appear harmless. But six feet of stone with a diamond heart stands out whatever you do, and it's a short step from standing out to becoming a scapegoat.
Pod finally convinced Oonagh to go underground with him. Into the new tunnels. She was reluctant, but he promised they'd venture topside whenever they could. "At night, and in the winter," he told her. "People don't pay attention to each other when they're cold."
But as time went by, and the disappointment became oppressive, it took more and more effort to leave his tunnels. Oonagh tried to be sympathetic, but there were limits. "You're going back to rock!" she complained more than once. "When was the last time you moved?"
In the end it had been too much for her, and she left for good. Pod couldn't blame her. In fact, in some ways he was relieved. He wanted her to be happy, he really did. But more and more, he realised that what made her happy made him deeply, profoundly unhappy.
They'd had fights. Huge shouting matches that even drowned out the noise of the subway trains rolling through the tunnels. More than once Oonagh had hit him too, and he'd been tempted to hit her back. She was as strong and hard as he was, of course, but it was a line he refused to let himself cross. The hurt wouldn't be physical, but the emotional pain it would cause was something he just couldn't bear.
Looking back, he wondered whether he'd been wrong. There had been something in Oonagh's expression the last time they fought, something in her eyes pleading for some response from him.
Instead, he just turned away. He told himself he was protecting her, but even then he'd known that it wasn't true. He'd just been too selfish to make an effort anymore. Too selfish to find the energy to do more than drink stolen petroleum and touch the rails.
Petroleum and electricity. It was a potent combination, and too many trolls he'd known had succumbed to it down the decades. The kick was unlike anything they'd experienced in thousands of years. Relief from the tedium of life in the tunnels.
Addictive.
Oonagh was stronger than he was, better able to resist the lure. Even she'd given in occasionally, though, and some of Pod's happiest memories down there in the dark were of them taking a hit together.
Petroleum to warm inside, an electric shock to make the heart shiver. The fucking was incredible. They'd rolled and roared and banged away at each other. The tunnels had shaken with their lust, and when they climaxed the whole city seemed to tremble.
But that all ended when Oonagh left. Long before she left, actually. By the end, Pod was taking hit after hit by himself, roaming the tunnels alone like they were undiscovered passages in his mind.
