oh hello f-list, newbies and old faithfuls, one and all
So I am stealing this from my darling featherfish because it is a very, very rad idea and also some of you are shy and I wish you wouldn't be because I really don't bite unless you're into that.
So without further ado, I give you:
In past Christmases, I have left an open invitation to write little fanfic drabbles for LJ holiday presents. I'd like to do that ( Read more... )
So without further ado, I give you:
In past Christmases, I have left an open invitation to write little fanfic drabbles for LJ holiday presents. I'd like to do that ( Read more... )
She’s dangerous they all say but they’re all talking about the wrong she.
They all mean the one on the motorcycle with the buzzcut and the lean, muscled shoulders pirouetted across with tattoos. They mean the one in the shredded black jeans and the bikini with the chainmail straps. The one with the rings in her ears and the rings on her fingers and the ring through her right nostril which compels everyone over the age of forty-five to make some stupid joke about getting through airport metal detectors.
“Battle Anne Fiala is less than half a bad decision away from a correctional facility,” they say.
She just laughs because after all these years, people are finally calling her by her real name and if they feel like they need to pronounce it like a death sentence, all the better.
The thing is they’ve got it all wrong, they can’t see past the way that she’ll look you dead in the eye, pull her lip up into a sneer and run her tongue slow along the point of her incisors like some kind of animal, free and vicious and wild.
What they’re missing is the girl in the filthy baby blue cardigan behind Battle on the bike, with an arm wrapped tight around her waist and the red, red hair all tangled from the wind and the Bonne Bell bubblegum scented chapstick on a lanyard hanging from her belt loop. Her hi-tops are covered in white-out and highlighter daisies and her eyes crinkle up at the edges when she laughs and she’s always, always laughing. She’s found that if she laughs enough and she smiles enough, people tend not to hear what she’s really saying. But if they listened they’d be scared, they’d be running for their lives. Maybe it’s all just easier this way.
“Let’s be bad,” she says, her chin on Battle’s shoulder, “let’s be real bad.”
“There’s really no other thing to be,” Battle says and they get off the bike, holding hands.
Battle looks at her, her shortcake, her pumpkin, the only one she’d ever learned a thing from and they’re both grinning manic in the dimming light, walking down the sidewalk and waiting for the streetlamps to turn on. Watching her scuff at the sidewalk with her sneakers, pausing intermittently to check whether the smiley faces she’d drawn on the soles had worn off yet.
She’s got a whole new way of waging war. They’re both unafraid. She’s got a crowbar in her backpack, all covered in little doodles of spirals and hearts and stars and gasmasks. Battle’s borrowing her Bonne Bell chapstick and kissing her soundly on the lips for luck, while the streetlamps burst into brightness around them. Battle can taste the fake waxy bubblegum taste and something else that’s faintly bitter and when she pulls away she can only think that her babygirl looks far better with her red lipstick smeared all around her lips like blood, but maybe that’s just egoism.
And they’re looking, oh how they look, but they’re all still looking in the wrong direction.
And isn’t that about to change?
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