Bride of ficsnips
There be sex behind two of these cuts. Yes, there be. And language. And italics.
I am you and you are me but we are nothing
She kisses Jim Keats on the pavement thirty seconds after leaving Gene behind. It feels inevitable. It feels like falling, like the last drink, like a shock wave battering against her skin, and for all that she wants it; his mouth is cold, and she doesn’t love him, and desire slices through her wherever his hands touch. There’s a horrible, flinching relief in it -- in coming to the end of herself, in knowing what she can’t stand to know.
He fucks her over her desk, ten minutes later, and she doesn’t shut her eyes and doesn’t pretend she’s anywhere but where she is, with him; Gene held her as though she’d vanish, and Keats bites her neck, and she comes for him more easily than she has in her life. Over and over, racking through her hard enough to be frightening, and her history is a thousand thousand lies and betrayals and destructions narrowing down to this one moment, to her howling into his hand pressed over her mouth.
He kisses her again afterwards and leaves her with the photos scattered across the desk; man, scarecrow, weathervane, cards from a nightmare tarot. She’s exhausted in every fiber, every imaginary cell, and no one will be coming to carry her home.
[Mick Flannery -- Safety Rope]
I keep falling in and out of love with you
I never loved anyone the way I do you
Effy’s fuckhead little boyfriend rings him up at oh-arsehole-thirty in the morning, sounding measurably less coherent than anyone he’s ever encountered, so that it takes a good three minutes before Tony can extract even an Anwar-quantity of sense from him.
“Slow down, whatever your name is,” he says. “What? Jesus, what? Shit. All right. I’ll text you the address. Put her on.”
He’d recognize Effy’s breathing anywhere, and he’d have to; she gives a tiny, gulping sigh and says his name so quietly the phone barely picks it up, and Jesus fucking Christ, he’s not away a year and some sixth-form twat’s managed to break her. Or a pair of them have, from the sound of it, but then trust her never to do the thing halfway.
Fuckhead the first, the vaguely responsible one, turns out to look even more of a wanker than he might have predicted -- his face actually looks scientifically designed to be punched -- but Tony barely spares him a look: Effy’s in the passenger seat, Effy who’s grown since the last time he saw her, a lengthening in the bone that seems to have hollowed her out. Effy who looks rougher than he’s ever seen her, after the accident, after her fucking overdose, unconscious in hospital she didn’t look this bad --
“Go home,” he says to fuckhead, after she’s been handed out of the car -- wrapped in his fucking comforter, like she’s freezing, and she won’t let him take it away. “You don’t know where she’s gone. Tell all your cunt friends.
“Chelle’s fucked off,” he tells her, once fuckhead’s burned rubber: it’s to the point where it doesn’t bother him to say. “Just you and me, sis.”
She doesn’t make a sound, doesn’t move, until just as he’s positive he’s going to have to carry her again -- her sparrow-boned little weight, and she’s taller, but if she’s put on an ounce since that night he’ll be seriously surprised -- she says “Love” and bursts into thin, exhausted tears.
“Nothing like it,” he agrees. “Come on. Let’s hose you down.”
[Diamond Rings -- It’s Not My Party]
I am the ground-zero ex-friend you ordered
disguised as a hero to get past your borders
When it comes to people she thinks she knows she can trust, Zoe Reynolds oughtn’t be allowed out on her own. Tessa could find it ingenuous, if she so chose, or even charming, as opposed to what it is: useful and eventually fatal. There’s nothing more dangerous, she considers telling the girl, than a spook with all the brains and none of the temperament; but it suits her that Zoe be flawed in this particular way, cracked just wide enough open to leave a fingerhold for anyone who cares to exploit it.
As long as anyone is herself.
For someone who lies for a living, too, Zoe is painfully transparent: Tessa’s spent enough interesting times in the field to notice it when someone’s vibrating at the sight of her. It’s the sort of flattering attention she’d all but given up on drawing without putting some effort behind it -- which she does, as soon as she’s noticed, and Zoe responds like the newest and naivest of targets. She falls, for God’s sake, for the coffee trick.
Getting her into bed is a matter of days, not weeks, after that; and of kissing the I don’t normally do this right off her pretty mouth, and of learning the particular rhythm of hard and slow that sends her screaming off the edge. It never hurt anyone to cultivate an asset in the presence of their enemies (and wouldn’t Harry like to know), and to be perfectly honest -- as she likes to believe she always is with herself -- the sheer physical side of it isn’t bad either. She’d even almost acknowledge being attached.
She goes to the meeting on Hampstead Heath not knowing -- for once -- what it is she expects to gain as a result of it; seeing Zoe in a panic is almost satisfying, in an odd way like probing at a half-healed wound, and if pressed she supposes she’d admit to hopes of turning her. Of being -- what? -- partners in crime, apprentice and master, of being able to laugh with someone at the stupidity of it. How sentimental, at her age.
But there’s an undercurrent to it, too, one she doesn’t recognize until she’s in Harry’s office listening to him blather about pensions and integrity: it’s the ghost of what got her involved with Johnny Marks, what thrilled in her veins every time she spun intuition and bullshit into a credible debriefing. If she falls, she’s always known, she’ll go down in flames, and by her own doing: Zoe the chance too far, the bullet in the chamber, the last gorgeous risk of them all.
[The Dresden Dolls -- Truce]
This entry was originally posted at http://thatyourefuse.dreamwidth.org/188116.html. Please comment there if you can.
I am you and you are me but we are nothing
She kisses Jim Keats on the pavement thirty seconds after leaving Gene behind. It feels inevitable. It feels like falling, like the last drink, like a shock wave battering against her skin, and for all that she wants it; his mouth is cold, and she doesn’t love him, and desire slices through her wherever his hands touch. There’s a horrible, flinching relief in it -- in coming to the end of herself, in knowing what she can’t stand to know.
He fucks her over her desk, ten minutes later, and she doesn’t shut her eyes and doesn’t pretend she’s anywhere but where she is, with him; Gene held her as though she’d vanish, and Keats bites her neck, and she comes for him more easily than she has in her life. Over and over, racking through her hard enough to be frightening, and her history is a thousand thousand lies and betrayals and destructions narrowing down to this one moment, to her howling into his hand pressed over her mouth.
He kisses her again afterwards and leaves her with the photos scattered across the desk; man, scarecrow, weathervane, cards from a nightmare tarot. She’s exhausted in every fiber, every imaginary cell, and no one will be coming to carry her home.
[Mick Flannery -- Safety Rope]
I keep falling in and out of love with you
I never loved anyone the way I do you
Effy’s fuckhead little boyfriend rings him up at oh-arsehole-thirty in the morning, sounding measurably less coherent than anyone he’s ever encountered, so that it takes a good three minutes before Tony can extract even an Anwar-quantity of sense from him.
“Slow down, whatever your name is,” he says. “What? Jesus, what? Shit. All right. I’ll text you the address. Put her on.”
He’d recognize Effy’s breathing anywhere, and he’d have to; she gives a tiny, gulping sigh and says his name so quietly the phone barely picks it up, and Jesus fucking Christ, he’s not away a year and some sixth-form twat’s managed to break her. Or a pair of them have, from the sound of it, but then trust her never to do the thing halfway.
Fuckhead the first, the vaguely responsible one, turns out to look even more of a wanker than he might have predicted -- his face actually looks scientifically designed to be punched -- but Tony barely spares him a look: Effy’s in the passenger seat, Effy who’s grown since the last time he saw her, a lengthening in the bone that seems to have hollowed her out. Effy who looks rougher than he’s ever seen her, after the accident, after her fucking overdose, unconscious in hospital she didn’t look this bad --
“Go home,” he says to fuckhead, after she’s been handed out of the car -- wrapped in his fucking comforter, like she’s freezing, and she won’t let him take it away. “You don’t know where she’s gone. Tell all your cunt friends.
“Chelle’s fucked off,” he tells her, once fuckhead’s burned rubber: it’s to the point where it doesn’t bother him to say. “Just you and me, sis.”
She doesn’t make a sound, doesn’t move, until just as he’s positive he’s going to have to carry her again -- her sparrow-boned little weight, and she’s taller, but if she’s put on an ounce since that night he’ll be seriously surprised -- she says “Love” and bursts into thin, exhausted tears.
“Nothing like it,” he agrees. “Come on. Let’s hose you down.”
[Diamond Rings -- It’s Not My Party]
I am the ground-zero ex-friend you ordered
disguised as a hero to get past your borders
When it comes to people she thinks she knows she can trust, Zoe Reynolds oughtn’t be allowed out on her own. Tessa could find it ingenuous, if she so chose, or even charming, as opposed to what it is: useful and eventually fatal. There’s nothing more dangerous, she considers telling the girl, than a spook with all the brains and none of the temperament; but it suits her that Zoe be flawed in this particular way, cracked just wide enough open to leave a fingerhold for anyone who cares to exploit it.
As long as anyone is herself.
For someone who lies for a living, too, Zoe is painfully transparent: Tessa’s spent enough interesting times in the field to notice it when someone’s vibrating at the sight of her. It’s the sort of flattering attention she’d all but given up on drawing without putting some effort behind it -- which she does, as soon as she’s noticed, and Zoe responds like the newest and naivest of targets. She falls, for God’s sake, for the coffee trick.
Getting her into bed is a matter of days, not weeks, after that; and of kissing the I don’t normally do this right off her pretty mouth, and of learning the particular rhythm of hard and slow that sends her screaming off the edge. It never hurt anyone to cultivate an asset in the presence of their enemies (and wouldn’t Harry like to know), and to be perfectly honest -- as she likes to believe she always is with herself -- the sheer physical side of it isn’t bad either. She’d even almost acknowledge being attached.
She goes to the meeting on Hampstead Heath not knowing -- for once -- what it is she expects to gain as a result of it; seeing Zoe in a panic is almost satisfying, in an odd way like probing at a half-healed wound, and if pressed she supposes she’d admit to hopes of turning her. Of being -- what? -- partners in crime, apprentice and master, of being able to laugh with someone at the stupidity of it. How sentimental, at her age.
But there’s an undercurrent to it, too, one she doesn’t recognize until she’s in Harry’s office listening to him blather about pensions and integrity: it’s the ghost of what got her involved with Johnny Marks, what thrilled in her veins every time she spun intuition and bullshit into a credible debriefing. If she falls, she’s always known, she’ll go down in flames, and by her own doing: Zoe the chance too far, the bullet in the chamber, the last gorgeous risk of them all.
[The Dresden Dolls -- Truce]
This entry was originally posted at http://thatyourefuse.dreamwidth.org/188116.html. Please comment there if you can.