Love, Matthew Dickman<\/b>
We fall in love at weddings and auctions, over glasses
of wine in Italian restaurants
where plastic grapes hang on the lattice, our bodies throb
in the checkout line, bookstores, the bus stop,
and we can\u2019t keep our hands off each other
until we can\u2013
so we turn to rubber masks and handcuffs, falling in love again.
We go to movies and sit in the air-conditioned dark
with strangers who are in love
with heroes like Peter Parker
who loves a girl he can\u2019t have
because he loves saving the world in red and blue tights
more than he would love to have her ankles wrapped around
his waist or his tongue between her legs.
While we watch films
in which famous people play famous people
who experience pain,
the boy who sold us popcorn loves the girl
who sold us our tickets
and stares at the runs in her stockings each night,
even though she is in love
with the skinny kid who sells her cigarettes at the 7-11
and if the world had any compassion
it would let the two of them pass a Marlboro Light
back and forth
until their fingers eventually touched, their mouths sucking
and blowing. If the world knew how
much they loved each other
then we would all be better off. We could all dive head first
into the sticky parts. We could make sweat
a religion. We could light a candle
and praise the holiness of smelliness. Imagine standing
beneath the gothic archways of feet,
the gilded bowls of armpits. Who doesn\u2019t want to kneel down
and pray before the altar of the mouth?
For my part I am going to stop
right here,
on this dark night,
on this country road,
where country songs come from, and kiss her, this woman,
below the trees,
which are below the stars,
which are below desire.
There\u2019s a music to it. I can hear it.
Johnny Cash, Biggie Smalls, Johann Sebastian Bach, I don\u2019t care
what they say. I loved you
the way my mouth loves teeth,
the way a boy I know would risk it all for a purple dinosaur,
who, truth be told, loved him.
There is no accounting for it.
In fact there are no accountants
balancing the books of love, measuring
the heart\u2019s distance and speed.
In the Midwest, for instance,
there are fields of corn madly in love with a scarecrow,
his potato-sack head
and straw body, standing among the dog-eared stalks,
his arms stretched out like a farm-Christ
full of love. Turning on the radio
I know how much AM loves FM. It\u2019s the same way
my mother loved Elvis
whose hips all young girls love, sitting around the television
in poodle skirts and bobby socks,
watching him move across the screen like something
even sex dreamed of having.
He loved me tender for so many years
that I was born after a long night of Black Russians and Canasta
while Jailhouse Rock rocked.
I love the way my screen door, if it isn\u2019t latched shut,
will fling itself open to the wind,
how the clouds above me look like animals covered in milk.
And I\u2019m not the only one.
Stamps love envelopes. The licking proves it.
Just look at my dog
who obviously loves himself with an intensity
no human being could sustain, though you can\u2019t say we don\u2019t try.
The S&M goddess
who brings her husband to the mall,
dressed in a leather jumper, leading him through the food court
by a leash. The baker who scores
his wife\u2019s name into the thin skin of the pumpernickel
before peeling it into the oven.
Once a baby lizard loved me so completely
he moved into my apartment and died of hunger.
I was living there with a girl who loved to say the word
shuttlecock. She would call
me at work and whisper shuttlecock
into my ear which loved it! The blastoff
of the first word sending the penis into space.
Not that I ever imagined
my cock being a spaceship,
though sometimes men are like astronauts, orbiting
the hot planets of women,
amazed that they have traveled so far, wanting
to land, wanting to document the first walk,
the first moan,
but never truly understanding what
has moved them. Love in an elevator.
Love in the backseat of your parent\u2019s Chevette.
Love going to college, cutting her hair, reading Plath and sleeping
with other girls.
Sometimes love is lying across the bed
but it might not be yours.
And sometimes it travels into a hostile territory
where it\u2019s hardly recognizable
but there all the same.
I know a man who loves tanks so much
he wishes he had one
to pick up the groceries, drive
his wife to work, drop his daughter off
at school with her Little Mermaid
lunch box, a note
hidden inside, next to the apple, folded
with a love that can be translated into any language: I HOPE
YOU DO NOT SUFFER.
<\/blockquote>
<\/a>","comments":"https:\/\/subterrain.livejournal.com\/65184.html?view=comments#comments","category":"sentimentalism"},{"guid":"https:\/\/subterrain.livejournal.com\/64033.html","pubDate":"Wed, 30 May 2012 19:18:41 GMT","title":"fic: pretty sure things","author":"subterrain","link":"https:\/\/subterrain.livejournal.com\/64033.html","description":"I forgot to post this after Yuletide 2011. Oops. It was originally posted here<\/a> at AO3.
fandom:<\/b> Parks and Recreation
pairing:<\/b> Jean-Ralphio Saperstein\/Tom Haverford
words:<\/b> 2278
warnings:<\/b> strippers; blowjobs
summary:<\/b> Five things that Jean-Ralphio did for Tom Haverford on his birthday
Tom's birthday is on a Friday, so the Tuesday beforehand Jean-Ralphio calls up the Glitter Factory and asks what their specials are for the weekend.
\"What do you mean, specials?\" the woman who answers the phone says.
\"C'mon, girl,\" says Jean-Ralphio, ducking his head and turning towards a shoe rack to shelter his voice. He's standing in the soccer cleats section at work, and it's a lull, but he doesn't need his manager riding his jock about the cell phone policy. \"Like, specials.<\/i> For special occasions? You know what I'm saying.\"
\"You want a special? Call McDonald's. The breakfast buffet's six ninety five, and lap dances are twenty.\" She hangs up on him.
Jean-Ralphio is not interested in the breakfast buffet. Lap dances, maybe, but this is not just your daily happy hour bump-n-grind. This is Big T's big day. Shit's gotta be wild.
So after his shift ends at seven, he gets in his car and drives over there. Just to, you know, see what's wild. Or has the potential for wildness.
The club is still pretty empty this early. There are a couple of old guys in tragic windbreakers at the buffet, a couple sporting a leatherier look at the bar. Jean-Ralphio perches himself at the rail by the stage, and keeps the singles fluttering for the tattooed blonde in the sailor costume dancing to Kid Cudi. It doesn't take her long to start paying attention to him. And when her set's done, he waits around until she reappears on the floor in a black ultramini and a silk wrap, and then he offers to buy her a drink.
\"No thanks,\" she says. \"I'm on a cleanse. But you can buy a dance, instead.\"
So that's the first thing Jean-Ralphio does for Tom's birthday: research.
--
The second thing Jean-Ralphio does for Tom's birthday is pretend that all those whitebread work friends of his don't exist, so he doesn't have to invite them to the party where they'll just irritate the strippers and ruin the whole night.
He thinks he's being hella thoughtful on that front.
He invites Detlef, but the guy's so old he doesn't know how to answer texts, probably.
And he invites Donna. He has to leave a note under her windshield wiper, though, because she's blocked his messages on facebook, twitter, text, gchat, skype, goodreads and pinterest.
She still says no.
That's cool, though. It's cool. Jean-Ralphio and Big T and Cherry from the Glitter Factory and two of her friends. Yeah, it's cool.
--
So that's the third thing he does for Tom's birthday: three strippers and endless lapdances in the champagne room.
Friday night rolls around and Jean-Ralphio's staggering around like a rock star with his forelock twisted low over his face and his blazer cuffs rolled up past his wrists all delicate, like he's about to dismember a partridge using a dessert fork and a tiny gold-chased dagger.
He's drunk, to be honest, before he leaves work, and he catches a cab to city hall: swans in, swans out with a tiny Haverford in tow.
He invites that chick April to come with, because she's standing right there in houndstooth tights, glaring.
Whatever, yeah, so. He swans out, with a tiny Haverford in tow.
Back into the cab. Cranking the Timbaland CD he bought for the cabbie's player. Sharing his cologne sampler \u2013 because Big T, while always dashing, always fly, could not have known he'd be whisked like a paper bag princess straight from riding desk to a mystical, fantastical, gorgeous level of existence horizoned by mounds of scented cleavage.
Jean-Ralphio scheduled two hours on that sacred plane with Cherry, and her friends Roxie and Anita. He put it on the Amex his parents gave him so he'd stop rap-busking on Main Street in Eagleton. And he has all this cash from the cash toilets at Entertainment 720, which he maybe bid on at the closing-out auction using, yeah, the Amex his parents gave him so he'd stop rap-busking on Main Street in Eagleton.
Cherry greets them as soon as they come through the door, and some secret stripper signal has Roxie and Anita on them in seconds. Roxie with her bright orange Cleopatra-cut hair and a royal blue high-cut thong, and Anita looking funereal in satin gloves and tassles. She's got a kinda Elvira look going on, and when Jean-Ralphio gazes at it appreciatively she meets his eyes, unsmiling.
\"Hi Tom. Happy birthday,\" Cherry greets the boy like they're long-time friends, and Tom for his part grins goofily back at her.
\"Let's see how happy we can make it,\" Roxie adds, putting a freckled arm around his shoulders. Tom's face is at about tit height on her. He looks happy about it.
\"Ladies, shall we?\" Jean-Ralphio waggles at them, and Cherry adjusts her silk shrug and leads the way across the floor in her five-inchers, one hand in Tom's. Roxie trails along on his other hand, and Anita pushes her inky hair over her shoulder, doesn't quite sigh, and follows.
Jean-Ralphio drops the hand that he offered to her, because she didn't see it probably, and trails after all of them.
So then he buys like, a lot of lap dances. The girls are chain-dancing Tom's lap. And then they do two, and then three dances all up on him together. Tom is drowning in lap dances like a kid in a ball pit. He smiles out from between pasties and tiny triangular scraps of fabric. He is covered in glitter. His pants look like they're sewn out of disco balls.
Jean-Ralphio holds onto his knees and leans forward attentively and occasionally flags one of the girls down to make a suggestion. Like when Anita wasn't grinding very hard and stuff. Or when he thought Cherry should ditch the shrug.
Or when he suggested they get down to the business of the five-way. Or, okay, a threeway for Tom and just a regular two-way for him and whichever one Tom doesn't want.
Anita is the one who is resting this round, sipping water while she perches nearby on the couch, so she's the one who takes it on herself to say, \"Doesn't work that way, sorry.\"
Jean-Ralphio shakes his head. \"Sexyface, I know it doesn't. But you remember that it's this man's birthday.\"
\"I remember,\" Anita says, and gets up to take her turn on Tom's lap.
\"JR,\" says Cherry, because that's what he told her to call him. \"Why aren't you over here getting in on this? C'mon. C'mon.\" And she takes his hand and gentles him over onto the couch beside Tom. \"That's right. You fellas enjoy the show.\"
Anita seems to be doing her best, borrowing Cherry's shrug, to make sure that the only one who can see the show is Tom.
But Jean-Ralphio doesn't mind. He makes eye contact with Cherry. Meaningful eye contact.
She takes it to mean that he wants another drink, apparently, because she pours him one out of the champagne they bottle-serve here for an amount that made even him wince, and sweeps over to hand it to him before settling into the deep, dubious couch beside him.
\"We agreed,\" he turns his mouth to say into her ear, \"You know, for his birthday. Some extras? A birthday special?\"
Cherry smiles at him. \"I remember we agreed that we don't do that,\" she says. And then she starts another lapdance, this time on him, not Tom, so he pays for it. But he doesn't enjoy it because the whole time he's wondering how he's going to make this night special for Tom if there's not going to be any three-ways or five-ways happening back here in the VIP room.
As she's finishing up he puts another couple of singles in her garter and taps his ear. She leans close, dropping back onto the couch with him, and he says, \"C'mon, girl. I have another two hundred here. Show the boy a good time.\"
Cherry's either fighting off a genuine laugh, or she just tends to smile when she pities a dude. \"Kid, I was pretty clear that we aren't escorts. Different skill set.\"
He makes a pleading face at her and turns his mouth into her ear again, smelling strawberry and hairspray. \"But what am I going to do? The boy's depressed, his wife left him, you know. Like, six months ago.\"
Cherry's ever-present smile is benign and unreachable. \"Right here, right now? You can buy him more lapdances,\" she tells him. \"That's what you can do.\"
\"But I don't want to buy more lapdances! I want a blowjob!\" Jean-Ralphio complains, smacking the couch's arm for emphasis, and Tom twists his head away from Roxie's cleavage, looking concerned.
\"Dude?\" Tom asks. He's got sparkles in his eyebrows.
Cherry is still smiling. Roxie is watching, still grinding away on auto-pilot. Anita, perched on the coffee table in front of them, crosses her tanned legs, eyebrows up.
\"Just go,\" says Jean-Ralphio. \"All of you. Thank you, ladies. Thank you.\" He stands up to usher them out.
\"You've still got another twenty minutes booked in here,\" Cherry says, and she must have some sex worker clock in her head running, because there is no watch, no phone, no time that Jean-Ralphio can see.
\"I know,\" he says.
\"You don't want us to stay?\" Roxie asks, untwisting the hip of her thong, absently shuffling bills.
\"Uh, yeah we do.\" Tom puts in. He's gaping at Jean-Ralphio from the couch, a bit of an obvious trouser-tent going on. \"We definitely want them to stay!\"
\"No way,\" says Jean-Ralphio. \"This isn't what I wanted. This isn't-\" he puts a hand through his forelock, shuts his eyes. He is a stressbomb. He opens his eyes, and shoos at Cherry. \"Go on, get out,\" he says.
\"You're sending away the girls? What kind of birthday is this?\" Tom squawks. He goes to stand up, but Jean-Ralphio puts a hand to his forehead and tips him back down into the couch. \"Why are you doing this to me?\" Tom cries.
Cherry is already gone, and Roxie pats Tom's head on the way out.
Anita is standing at the end of the couch, Cherry's forgotten shawl dangling from her arms. She rocks a bit on her feet: heel to toe, and the muscles in her legs flex.
\"It's not nice to ask us to break the rules,\" she says to Jean-Ralphio. She's still smirking. She never fucking stops smirking.
\"Yeah, well, it's not nice to get us all-\" Jean-Ralphio starts.
She puts up a hand to stop him. \"The rules say we don't touch the customers, but you know, back here you could probably get away with touching yourselves.\"
Jean-Ralphio blinks at her, detecting an offer. He can't quite pin down what it is. He squirms a little. \"So like, you're saying,\"
Anita folds a leg to perch on the edge of the couch. \"I'm saying you should give your friend the birthday blowjob he deserves.\"
Jean-Ralphio lets out a hoarse laugh, a laugh which is pretty much identical to the one that Tom is cackling.
\"Yeah, okay,\" Tom says.
While Jean-Ralphio says, \"Yeah, okay<\/i>.\"
And then they both look at each other.
Anita pushes a coil of dark hair back over her shoulder. \"Well,\" she says. \"Go on.\"
\"I'm not-\" says Jean-Ralphio.
\"Either am I,\" Tom puts in. \"My ex-wife<\/i>, you know-\"
They both look at Anita. She rolls her eyes and drops the shawl over the couch. She picks up the champagne bottle and refills both their glasses and says, \"So buy another dance from me while you do it.\"
It's a good suggestion.
So that's the fourth thing Jean-Ralphio does for Tom's birthday: a kinda fumbling, messy, weirdo blowjob on a faux-leather couch in the back of the Glitter Factory while Anita Foxx simmers watchfully over both of them.
The two of them don't make eye contact, or anything. There's a part of Jean-Ralphio that wants to pull up and compliment Tom when he sees the forty-dollar violet Ted Baker briefs that Tom is sporting under his trousers. Or, like, high five about Tom's long, smooth, stiff dick, because if Jean-Ralphio was a girl, he would be all about getting penetrated by that thing. The boy is packing.
But probably either of those moves would strain the bounds of their friendship and business partnership. So he maybe tries to imagine what he would want if he were receiving a blowjob on a faux-leather couch in the back of the Glitter Factory while Anita Foxx dances on a coffee table in front of him. Step 1: lots of licking. Step 2: lots of sucking. Step 3: definitely, definitely coming in his mouth. There really aren't lot of clean-up options, otherwise.
The weirdest thing for Jean-Ralphio is the noise Tom makes when he comes. It's like, a sad little sound. A needy little whine. It's a sound Jean-Ralphio recognizes. It's a sound he's made, before. So maybe it's the best thing, not the weirdest. And how Tom's hand falls in his hair when it happens.
Anita touches his shoulder when he sits up, a wrist at his wet mouth. \"Looks like you're better at that than I am, anyway,\" she says. She's not smirking, anymore. Just smiling.
Dazedly, Jean-Ralphio finds another few bills to hand her. She takes them, picks up Cherry's shawl, and leaves with a murmured, \"Happy birthday, Tommy.\"
For a second, they look at each other. Then they don't look at each other.
Then Jean-Ralphio says, \"Waffles?\"
And that's the fifth thing Jean-Ralphio does for Tom's birthday: he spends his last thirty bucks on waffles at JJ's Diner.
<\/a>","comments":"https:\/\/subterrain.livejournal.com\/64033.html?view=comments#comments","category":["slash","fic"]},{"guid":"https:\/\/subterrain.livejournal.com\/63968.html","pubDate":"Wed, 30 May 2012 16:10:21 GMT","title":"fic: used to be a poor girl","author":"subterrain","link":"https:\/\/subterrain.livejournal.com\/63968.html","description":"New record for small fandoms: I fucking guarantee you guys this is the only story of its ilk. Until the movie comes out and they cast KStew as Marie, and then I will be Queen of France.
I'd love to give you guys a primer - unemployed liberal arts degrees take up high-volume low-profile kidnapping as a career path & get their asses handed to them - but basically you should read the book<\/a>. Not least because my friend
![](\"https:\/\/l-stat.livejournal.net\/img\/userinfo_v8.png?v=17080&v=915\")
<\/a>onthatgonzotip<\/b><\/a><\/span> wrote it and it's really good and legit broke my heart in places and left me wanting more. More sex, more feelings. More sad cuddling. Isn't that always the way?fandom<\/b>: The Professionals<\/a>
pairing<\/b>: Tiffany Prentice\/Marie McAllister
Words:<\/b> 3527
Warnings:<\/b> None, light R. Spoilers throughout.
Summary:<\/b> Tiffany Prentice pays what she owes.
A\/N:<\/b> Title from Die Antwoord's Rich Bitch<\/a> which is what I'm trying to listen to instead of Laura Jane Grace<\/a> or Herman Düne<\/a> on endless repeat like the sulking monster I am.
It's not exactly the kind of place where you can believably ignore someone standing right in front of you, but that doesn't stop the girl from trying. Tiffany has to knock the table with a hip before she can get Marie McAllister to look up from autopsying her bagel.
"Marie! I thought that was you," Tiffany says, in a tone she's cribbed from her mother. It's probably a genetic predisposition to take particular delight in recognizing people in places they don't want to be recognized. The sale rack, the Planned Parenthood parking lot. In this case, the muddy Dunkin Donuts on the highway between the federal pen and the airport.
Even now they're looking at each other, Marie's face is blank. Tiffany removes her sunglasses, pushes a wave of hair out of her eyes. She is kind of in disguise. Visiting Sawyer is one of the things the lawyers forbade her doing. "You think they don't keep records of who visits?" Ferris said, all stern father figure and jabby finger. "They do. And they will note<\/i> your name<\/i>."
She can't do much about her name. But she carries an off-brand purse when she's in Detroit. Maybe that's what's throwing Marie off.
Tiffany cocks her head, swishes her coffee in the paper cup. "I'll join you, if you don't mind. I'm just heading back to my hotel."
Marie pulls her head back as Tiffany swings into the booth with her. "Actually," she says.
"I guess we've never met, right?" Tiffany says. "Isn't that weird? I feel like I know you."
"We've met," Marie mutters.
"We sat on the same side of the courtroom but it's not like we really got to know each other," Tiffany says. She sips her coffee. It needs more sugar.
Marie's hands have fallen off the table. Her bagel sits splayed and gory in its paper wrapper, chunks of tomato escaping. She does not look like she was mourning the missed opportunity for bonding. She looks like she's mourning something, though. Her skin is dry, her curls limp. It's not hard to guess who.
Tiffany manipulates an emptied packet of sugar up into a twist of nappy fibre, opens her mouth because Marie won't. "So you're visiting Sawyer, too? Weird. Wouldn't it have been funny to run into each other in the waiting room?"
Marie says, "I have to go."
Tiffany stands up with her. Marie gives her a look, but doesn't protest when Tiffany follows her out into the parking lot. It's April, it's raining. Marie heads right out into it, pulling the hood of her sweater up. Tiffany hesitates under the awning in her suede boots: the parking lot is equal parts gravel and puddle. Then she dashes after her, collar up, shoulders hunched.
Marie's Toyota is a shade of burgundy so dated it will never be cool again and there is a long moment while the girl fusses with the driver's side lock and Tiffany can feel her hair going from damp to drenched.
Tiffany takes a breath. "Sawyer says you could use some help."
A pause. No response. Marie opens the door, throws in her bag.
"I'm at the Hyatt downtown," Tiffany says. "Prentice."
Marie looks up at her from the driver's seat, squinting in the rain, one hand on the door.
"Look. I owe you," Tiffany says.
"Yeah, you sure fucking do." Marie swings the door shut, and Tiffany has to step back to avoid the splash of mud off the tires.
She waits two days. Sitting in the lounge downstairs with explicit instructions impressed upon the front desk staff regarding calls or visitors. She still can't relax. She sips an inadequate whiskey and watches the doors. Men approach her. She dismisses them. They keep coming, so she makes an example of one. Then they stop.
On the third day, she calls Sawyer.
"She's not biting," she complains.
"I told you she wouldn't. She doesn't like you."
"That's not my fault."
"It's not?"
"Why's she so judgmental?"
"You sold us out."
She huffs. This again. "It was worth it though, right?"
A pause on his end. Eventually: "Yeah."
"How's Tess?"
"Good."
"I told you she would be."
"She is."
"You can't tell Marie that?"
"What?" he says.
"That Tess is doing good."
"She knows."
"So why the fuck isn't she showing up, then?" Tiffany pushes away from the desk she's perched on. She crosses the suite to peek out the blinds. The city's not that bright, as cities go. Her reflection in the glass is an uglier version of herself.
"I told you," Sawyer says.
Tiffany sighs. Next he'll say it's because there's a war on. Blondes versus brunettes. Marie can't be that stupid. Or even that proud.
"So where is she, then?" she asks. "If she's not coming."
"Dunno. Home? She's probably gone home."
"Where, Seattle? Do you have an address?"
"Not Seattle," Sawyer says. "Here. She stayed here."
It's not stalking if you know the person, Tiffany reasons. She sits in her Avis-tagged Fiesta half a block down from the tiny house Marie rents. Half a house, really. She seems to live on the top floor, with some blustery frat boys living below and keeping a moldering couch in the overgrown yard out front. They share the front door. For a second on the first day, Tiffany mistook one of the guys for a new boyfriend, and enjoyed a spike of vengeful triumph. How's your high horse, Marie? And who's the martyr now? But no, the downstairs guys are young and smoke constantly on the front step and Marie makes a special point of upbraiding them every time she catches them at it. They jostle and flip her off as she walks away.
By day two Tiffany decides she's actually a pretty good recon scout. She's figured out that Marie's working at the Gap in a mall ten minutes down the freeway, and according to her phone bill, she's living under her own name. Starting over. She's rebuilding.
On day three, Tiffany is successfully eating a softshell taco without spilling any salsa juice on herself when Marie taps on the windshield.
"What the fuck?" she sees Marie say.
Diluted salsa hits Tiffany's collarbone, slides down her neckline. She scoops at it and rolls down the window simultaneously. "Marie!" she says, using her mom's country club voice again. "What a surprise!"
"So at what point were you planning on knocking on my door?" Marie says. She's wearing a bomber jacket and a pair of raybans that make her officially way better disguised than Tiffany will ever be.
"I didn't think you'd be into that," Tiffany says. She pulls scads of napkins, crumples her giant mess into a ball that she stuffs in the paper bag. She probably smells like she's been manning a deep fryer. She straightens the neckline of her wrap dress and crosses her legs because she's put-together. She smiles up at Marie like the girl's a cop or a professor.
"You wanna wash your hands?" Marie asks, and the question itself is kind of resentful, obligatory.
"Um, definitely," says Tiffany.
Marie's house: a bedroom in the front painted the colour of seaglass. Pencil drawings on the walls. A cramped kitchen full of dirty pans with a window overlooking the neighbour's pantry. Shelves full of paperbacks. Tiffany tries to not act surprised that it's not all Goodwill and IKEA.
"You're really settling in to the place," she says. She puts an elbow against one wall to unbuckle her heels.
Marie kicks off her sneakers. "I've been here for six months. So."
"Oh god, it's been that long?"
Marie pulls a pair of glasses out of the cupboard, runs the tap over her wrist. "Why, how long have you been stalking me?"
"Just a week," Tiffany answers. The scuffed hardwood is clean and warm under her bare feet. It makes her feel at home. She steps up to the sink to wash her hands, dribbles a pearl of dish soap. "Since you rejected me."
Marie folds her arms and sips from her glass, staring over the rim.
Tiffany takes the other glass, beading on the counter between a baking sheet burnt dark and a cauldron of cool oily water. "You cook a lot?" she says.
"Usually," Marie says. "I like preparing my own food."
"I bet," Tiffany says. "After that you probably have a thing for fresh veggies."
Marie stares at her, still and silent. Her glass hangs in midair.
"Sorry," Tiffany says. "That was stupid. I didn't mean to bring it up."
"You didn't?" Marie says, and her voice is stiff. "Because I will. I went to jail for two years, and I'm still on probation. What the fuck did you do? Read to poor kids on Sundays?"
Tiffany takes a step back, finds the edge of the counter with her hip. She searches for something to say. "I meant to come talk to you sooner," is what she comes up with.
Marie gestures with her glass, an impatient so-fucking-what? and her water sloshes onto the floor. Without thinking, Tiffany pulls a dishrag and pads over to sop it up. Crouching, she looks up at Marie.
"Cross-contamination," Marie mutters. "You just got floor dirt on my dish cloth."
"Sorry," Tiffany says, standing.
Marie shakes her head and takes the cloth, tosses it in the sink. "Whatever," she says.
Tiffany notices that standing like this, barefoot beside each other, Marie's a bit shorter than her. She's at maybe nose height. Less when she stands with one hip cocked angrily. Her hair smells familiar, one of those drugstore shampoos the girls in the dorms used to use, the one she could never name to buy for herself. Clean laundry, sharp flowers.
Tiffany drops her hand. "I was only trying to help."
Marie pulls out of range, steps over to the counter. Puts her glass down, shuffles through cupboards. "I'm having a drink," she says to her dry goods and spices.
Tiffany doesn't respond. She's kind of holding her breath.
"You still staying at the Hyatt?" Marie asks.
Tiffany can recognize polite conversation when she hears it. "Yes," she says. "I came to see Sawyer."
"He says you come a lot."
Tiffany snorts. "I bet he says that,"
Marie glances at her, and a little smile gets bitten off. "No, like, every month. You visit him every month. You fly here. From-"
Tiffany watches Marie pour vodka into pretty little glasses. They look like beach glass, tortured old shapes made new again. "New York. But you're the one who visits him every week," she says. "I didn't realize you were out, and then I didn't realize you were living here."
Marie hands her one of the little glasses. They clink rims softly. Tiffany watches to see if they'll drop or sip. She sips, demure.
"I have orange juice," Marie offers. "If you like."
"No," Tiffany says. "This is nice."
Marie glances at the table piled with books and jackets and paper, and says, "Do you want to sit?" and they go into the living room, where they look at a small collection of houseplants sitting on the windowsill. It's nearing four o'clock, but the sun is bogged in gray cloud. Marie doesn't have curtains. Her couch is a loveseat. They sit beside each other, thighs parallel. Tiffany crosses her legs and then uncrosses them but keeps her knees touching.
"I didn't really know where else to go," Marie says. She's doing it again: one arm buckled under her breasts like a safety harness, levering the drinking hand up and down to her mouth. "Sawyer's all-" she says, stops.
Tiffany waits until it becomes obvious that her waiting is making Marie uncomfortable. She reminds herself to take a breath. She reaches across the couch and takes Marie's hand. She says, "Breathe," like a therapist or a yoga teacher.
Marie glances at her, sharp-edged, and then laughs. She tosses her head and downs the rest of her vodka and laughs.
"I can't believe they replaced me with you. Brunette gets made so they pick up a blonde? Fuck that."
Tiffany smiles, uncertain. "I wasn't. It wasn't on purpose. I kind of made them take me."
Marie shakes her head. She smiles even wider. "You couldn't make Arthur do anything. Don't kid yourself." Her eyes are glassy, her voice is on the edge of splintering. She blinks and Tiffany sees tears spill, but she holds her face in profile as she palms them away.
Tiffany is still holding her other hand. She pulls it closer, edges over herself. "Yeah, but, I got them to take me along. They would've dropped me, otherwise. Lied and left me somewhere safe."
"They were good guys," Marie says.
"Yeah."
There are not enough words in the language, Tiffany thinks. Marie's hand in her lap is warm, and she runs a thumb along the dull bones of her wrist. Marie's pale skin and gentle fingers make Tiffany's hands look a little dangerous. Sparrowhawk vs. sparrow. She knows that's misleading, though. It would be stupid to think of Marie as a songbird.
Marie waggles her empty glass and pulls like she might get up. "Another?" she says, and it's not really a suggestion.
Tiffany doesn't want to let go, though. She tightens her grip, and Marie drops back into the couch like a kite tugged on a string. Marie looks over, gives an eyebrow. "You don't look like a teetotaler."
Tiffany kisses her. She stretches along the cushion and presses into Marie. She's had her share of broken toys. She knows the signs. Loneliness puts off a scent like a septic wound, but she's always been drawn by it. And she owes Marie. They both know that.
Marie is unprepared. Marie, maybe, hasn't been kissed in a while. Marie is soft and dry and tastes like vodka.
Tiffany pulls closer. Hooks a knee between knees, skirts a hand around the lowest rib, under the white cotton shirt, and her palm finds the spot there – fingertips brushing vertebrae – that makes Marie arch up involuntary, a sound in her throat.
Now Marie remembers how to use her tongue.
Tiffany is good with buttons, zippers, slipping. Marie's white button-down is a pleasure. A lacy splash of bra in eggplant. A freckle on her collarbone. Tiffany kisses it. Tiffany kisses the point of her pale shoulder, the one in reach. The glances she sends Marie are shy. She could be told to stop. Pushed off, kicked out. Marie's still making that decision, she knows. There's time.
Tiffany's black dress folds off in pieces, her bangles stay on. They clatter against each other in Marie's ear as she pushes Marie's hair back so she can kiss her throat, her jawline, the skin under her ear. That smell, clean laundry: she smells like all the pretty girls Tiffany's ever known.
"I'm sorry," she says into Marie's ear. She's practically climbing up the girl, now, and she gets impatient enough to throw a leg across and straddle her. She crooks her arms around Marie's neck and kisses her. "I am so, so sorry," she says.
Marie pushes her back for a second. Parted lips. Her fair skin flushed. Those wide dark eyes. She is shaking her head, and Tiffany glances at her once, twice. "Let's just not," Marie says.
"Okay," Tiffany murmurs. She kisses her again. Then she stands, folds to pull off her leggings. Bare skin. She wants all of Marie's bare skin against her own. Marie, on the couch, glances past her to the curtainless window.
"Bedroom," Marie says. She picks up Tiffany's dress as she stands. And the empty glasses.
Tiffany, panties and demi-bra, follows her to the kitchen. Marie is pouring another round. Tiffany sidles up against her. Pulls at the weak points in Marie's white shirt until it falls down her shoulders. Marie shrugs her away, and Tiffany recognizes that she's self-conscious. She nuzzles in, insistent. She loves Marie's breasts, pretty and cupped in purple lace. She likes the softness of her waist and hips, girlish, and she works at her belt and jeans from behind with quick hands.
She dips fingers down the line from Marie's bellybutton, and Marie lets the vodka bottle thump on the counter. She says, "Oh." She leans back into Tiffany, who presses warm and welcoming.
White cotton panties make Tiffany so wet, just the thought of them puts her back in boarding school, and her fingers find Marie maybe readier than she knows. She hums her teeth into the bowline of Marie's shoulder as her fingers slide. She anchors Marie's hipbone with her other hand, pins her against the table. She does what she likes done, a light touch, and Marie is doubling over, bracing against the disaster of a table, papers slipping, breathing. Tiffany follows Marie's angle, holds her down and rubs her there with her tits pushed up against Marie's shoulder blades, one thigh pressed between Marie's.
Marie's breath changes when Tiffany shifts stance and pushes the panties aside with her other hand. "Oh, sweetie," she says. "Oh, you're so wet."
Marie whimpers an admission of possible guilt.
Tiffany's right hand is a pianist, her left the cello's downbow. Her right on the sextant, her left on the oar. Marie sways and tightens like a sail. She's on the heels of her hands and the heels of her feet, the long lines of her calves taut where they descend into the heap of her jeans. Tiffany's mouth in her ear, all sweetness, "You need me to take care of this. Let me just help, okay?"
Tiffany tilts her elbow, her locked fingers, and Marie's spine arches and she says something incoherent in a tiny voice. Tiffany follows her body's arch, skintight, the pads of her fingers in whirlpool.
When Marie comes she cries, but it's not a sob. She turns her face away and twists in what she obviously wishes was silence. Her ass bucks into Tiffany's hips. She holds the stretch like a cat. Her shoulders are tensed, closed. Tiffany knew it was a little too much to hope she'd get to look at the girl's face while she came. For a moment she feels lonely.
Tiffany only ceases her small motions, gentler and gentler, when Marie's breath goes sharp and she pulls up. She shakes her head. She says, hoarse: "Holy shit."
When she turns to look at Tiffany, over her pale shoulder, it's a wary glance. Tiffany looks back. She might be smiling. She tastes her fingertips. Marie looks away.
"So," Marie says, scanning the table. She hands Tiffany her glass. She picks up her own and drops her shot down her throat.
Tiffany cocks her head, swirls the liquor. "So?"
Marie meets her eyes again. She adjusts the strap of her bra, it's fallen down her bicep. "Like I was saying. Bedroom."
Tiffany finishes her drink, and follows.
Marie's seaglass-coloured bedroom: white linen, clothing filed neatly. Tiffany lies in a swamp of rucked sheets and wonders how someone can live with their clothing folded away. Her clean clothes and her dirty clothes consume a dinner party's worth of furniture in her bedroom at home. In her apartment in Dumbo, discarded items and half-planned outfits occupy the entire floorspace.
"I own too many clothes," she says to the room.
Marie is half-asleep. "I hate clothes."
"No you don't. No one hates clothes."
"I work at the Gap," Marie says.
"Why?" Tiffany legitimately wants to know.
Marie shifts under Tiffany's limbs. She doesn't open her eyes. "Fuck you for asking."
"Is it the criminal record?"
"Is it the kidnapping and the murder?" Marie is mocking her tone.
"What if I can get you something better?" Tiffany says. "What's your degree in again? I could get you a PR job or communications or something. Would it have to be here? I could do Chicago, or Seattle. I don't know about Detroit."
"Fuck you," Marie says again. Her eyes are still closed.
Tiffany settles. She takes Marie's arm and drapes it more closely around herself, wriggles her hip in under Marie's hip. She breathes.
"I'm never going back to Seattle," Marie says after a while.
"Why not?"
"At the funeral Arthur's parents," Marie says, like it's a complete sentence. Like that's as fully as it can be explained.
Tiffany lets her thumb rub in circles over the vertebra at the base of Marie's neck.
"Anyway, my parents," Marie adds, later.
"Yeah," Tiffany says. She keeps waiting for Marie to start crying. But instead, Marie falls asleep. She breathes quiet and even. Tiffany stays tucked close. She'll be here when Marie wakes up. Maybe bring her out for dinner. She imagines everything else she could do for her: a job, a new city, a fresh start. Move her to New York, move her in, keep her close. Buy her groceries to cook dinner with. She imagines a year together, years, careers, a couple of cats. But Marie stirs, and sighs, and Tiffany knows that all her efforts to pay what she owes won't even make a dent in this girl's loneliness.
So. She'll be here when she wakes up. That's what she'll do.
<\/a>","comments":"https:\/\/subterrain.livejournal.com\/63968.html?view=comments#comments","category":["fic","femslash"]},{"guid":"https:\/\/subterrain.livejournal.com\/61308.html","pubDate":"Fri, 18 Nov 2011 20:15:05 GMT","title":"Dear Yuletide Author","author":"subterrain","link":"https:\/\/subterrain.livejournal.com\/61308.html","description":"Well, thanks! First of all. Because Yuletide is my favourite time of year. I love the smallest fandoms most of all, and I'm always excited for new content. Even though my request strategy is always haphazard. So, fyi, this year I went with a theme. Unlikeable dudes in comedy. Maybe you like unlikeable dudes as much as I do? Even better, maybe you dislike unlikeable dudes as much as I do! That would be thrilling. Because the reasons I'm interested in these three are pretty clear: they are dicks. Dicks who manage to bang a lot of ladies. They are sometimes charming, always self-serving, unfortunately attractive (proof that the world is cruel?), and almost entirely transparent, yet women seem to overcome their intellectual revulsion & emotional self-preservation systems in order to ... I don't know. I don't know what it is. I am kind of hoping whatever story you choose to write, you'll tell me.
I'm into stories that reveal the small things that are so goddamn obvious in retrospect, but are never quite explained in canon. I like stories that tear open the seams a little, but neatly. I like something that turns an idea over and over, grinding down the roughest edges to something smooth and comforting. I don't care that much about getting the tone of the comedy right: we aren't screenwriters, we don't have Will Arnett's delivery available to us. We do have other tools, though, and it's the opening-up of the character that excites me.
When it comes to relationships and\/or sex: I'm interested in gender roles, power struggles, women who know what they want, men who provide it, negotiation, uncertainty, flirting, insecurity. Oh, and choking. That's always on the table.
And all that said, although all of these requests are presumed het\/gen, if you want to write me some slash, I AM SO COOL WITH THAT, OK. Throw all of this out if you'd rather right some m\/m blowjobs. Done fucking deal.
Arrested Development; GOB Bluth
Tbqh, I like that he's always talking about the sex workers he sees. He calls them escorts, call girls, whores, and occasionally there's the odd stripper. By the end of the third season we see what he actually does<\/i> with these women (cry, obvs). But given that all he ever does in the series is try really hard to please his brother & father, I'd like to see how that translates when he's in a situation where he doesn't HAVE to try. Trying is almost off the table, although no doubt he would anyway. If you'd like to write about Nellie<\/a>, that would be definitely the greatest in my books. And if you'd like to avoid the whole sex worker angle and just talk about what the fuck is going on with him, that would be A+, too.
The Guild; Fawkes(& also Codex)
Anything you do with these two would be great. I like it best when Fawkes steps out of his self-constructed role of General All-Round Fucking Asshole. For whatever reason. Curiousity, shock, shame. Shame especially? But I like that he is still also ultimately his awful self. As for Codex, her total self-delusion on that front is so absolutely sympathetic to me, and the points at which she seems to actually believe he is a relationship prospect interest me a lot. Idk, is this some sort of humiliation kink? God. I hope not. Like I say: ANYTHING YOU WRITE HERE WILL BE SOLID GOLD.
Community: Jeff Winger
I will probably love anything about this asshole. Drunken Britta\/Jeff makeouts. Endless Dean Pelton flirtations (!). What the fuck: his therapist<\/i>. Maybe find a way to explain that whole (gross) Annie thing, without actually... going there. Yeah. Basically, I'd like to read about him spending money, working out, and going to therapy & like, being forced to steam-wand Dean Pelton's costume collection in a maid outfit. I don't even. I like that most of his sexual relationships are shouldn't-have-done-thats. I like it when people have something on him. I don't like it when he's happy.
ADDENDUM: I realize a lot of this is way too specific, so please feel free to ignore half of it. And if something terrible has happened and you happen to hate whatever character you got in the fandom you offered, then just write something else. Or write about terrible things happening to them. My love\/hate here is pretty open to that. :)
<\/a>","comments":"https:\/\/subterrain.livejournal.com\/61308.html?view=comments#comments","category":"yuletide"},{"guid":"https:\/\/subterrain.livejournal.com\/60748.html","pubDate":"Mon, 07 Nov 2011 19:28:12 GMT","author":"subterrain","link":"https:\/\/subterrain.livejournal.com\/60748.html","description":"My three priorities these days are pretty much:
a) fretting about finding a new slack-ass part-time day job*;
b) making sure I see all the awesome people and places of Toronto before I'm sucked back into the snowy mid-continent limbo next-next-Wednesday**;
&
c) listening to terrible dance music, and watching fanvids set to terrible dance music.***
And in light of Article C, here is the only fanwork - based on a flitting search through AO3, anyway - that has really encompassed the whole of my [recent, undiluted, kinda weird] feelings about GOB Bluth of Arrested Development:
<\/a>sdwolfpup<\/b><\/a>