The Black Donnellys fic: quietly stars have stalled
quietly stars have stalled
the black donnellys, jenny (jenny/tommy), r, 2812, words, spoilers up to the world will break your heart, for girlintheattic-- i promise i’ll write you pr0n- i’ve had too many jellybeans and you get this instead.
soundtrack for dirty liars: palomar, “our haunt”, talking heads, “sugar on my tongue”, björk, pj harvey, “satisfaction (cover)”
Jenny will tell you herself, quietly, that she wasn’t there when it happened.
I will comb myself into chains
In between the tap dance clan
tori amos, the bee keeper
*
That night, Pop coughs i love you, molly.
Her chairs squeaks as she leans forward, eyes wide and her breathing short. She waits, almost desperate to hear it again.
It’s been years since she’s heard her mother’s name, dying in confession as she reaches for his water. Her fingers still when they hit the glass, her eyes closing because she knows.
- Jenny will tell you herself, quietly, that she wasn’t there when it happened. Instead, it’s the elevator that stills a sob as she grabs coffee instead.
*
The diner kisses close! with a turn of the sign.
She stops for a moment, the fabric of her dress brushing against her knees. Her thumb stills over a smear against the glass and she frowns, stepping back and peering over the corner. She grabs a rag, returning and squeaks away the dirt stain.
Turning back, she drops the rag and her fingers skim the countertop as she stills all the way at the far end.
Jenny thinks about Ma again, about Pops, and i love you, molly. There’s still a picture in the office, if you look, wild curls and singing eyes- Molly eternalized as a drinking song.
The bell rings when she remembers coffee before the wake and Helen Donnelly is a tired smile and world-weary, four sons and a widow with no chance of breathing. You want an explanation about before? It’s pretty clear that no one wants Helen’s eyes and Jenny, no different, still wants that choice. A choice.
She sighs.
Meat cutlets and vegetables, sauces and bread- they all line a mix of pastries at the other end- Kate Farrell is hosting the wake today and she can’t remember why she really came back, if only to stare at grieving food.
“You gonna sell the place?” Helen steps forward, fingers curled around the strap of her purse. Her eyes dart to the side, to the glass, and Jenny remembers the headline of the Post- Violence surges in Hell’s Kitchen once more.
She takes a stool, rubbing her eyes, and looking around the only place she’s ever really know. You have to understand, she did think about leaving. Homework and books spilled from every corner of the diner, late night Chemistry and all night English papers. And there was Pops, Dad at varying degrees, a light smile as he watched. It was his way of hoping, even she couldn’t ignore that.
“Yeah,” she breathes, unsteadily. She swallows after Helen tries jenny, shaking her head and tugging at the hem of her dress. “It’s something I gotta do.”
The diner thickens in silence after one of them sighs and her gaze drifts to the closed office door. It’s something she’s got to do, she thinks silently, closing her eyes. Her legs start to swing and she lets herself go to another place, another time (and maybe, she’s lying; maybe she remembers Molly, there’s always stories), but stops.
“I’ll see you in a bit.”
Helen nods, turning away slowly. She forgets the coffee.
*
She will say, by then, maybe weeks later- the decision’s already been made.
*
In a moment, this will be a passing thought:
“Came to say goodbye?”
Tommy filters in behind her, still at the frame of the door. He says nothing and she doesn’t turn around, one last load of laundry in between the last of the boxes.
They won’t talk about it. She knows they won’t talk about it. It’s desperately ironic, all the things they said they’d do as kids from i promise, no secrets to you’ll be the first to know, has long faded from between them.
“Somethin’ like that,” he says softly.
She keeps her back to him, afraid, still, to see him and think, remember what it was like to have his mouth pressed against her throat, to crave skin against skin and that ache. People talk clichés in the most minimum of senses, but what she knows, is what shouldn’t have happened. Not like this. But it did and there’s nothing more to say.
- she’s loved Tommy Donnelly for years, but now, it’s time to leave it like that.
“Ma says make sure you call ‘er.”
She nods. “Yeah.”
He sighs, there’s groan from the bed, the weight shifting down. Her lips purse at the pressure of his hand on her shoulder, falling to her back.
“Jenny.”
Her eyes close. “Don’t.”
*
And so she leaves.
You have to understand why and to do that, it takes a lot of unraveling of weddings and family history. There’s a dress in the closet, in the front, and black, out of habit. It should say it all, quietly, like the rest of the things she pretends to not hear, not know, or not understand.
“I got nothin’ left,” she tells a friend tiredly.
Few and far, there are others outside the neighborhood. Jenny likes a girl at Colombia, a lawyer almost- these are the people that no one sees, remembering only the husband.
It’s time for something new, they all summarize the same thing.
Welcome Chicago into the mix.
*
Her apartment is tiny.
There are pictures on her walls, obscure and abstract, colors turning into interpretation. She has a mild spill of books and magazines like anyone else, you see, wine in the kitchen and scotch under the sink.
Mail is few, a scattering of bills, and a couple course catalogues that she’s thinking about.
She gets a job, at a bar, after settling. She knows she’d be a better waitress, though, but settling (define, to settle: [1.] to quiet, calm, or bring to rest. [2.] to make stable; place in a permanent position or on a permanent basis) is much more of the same routines.
-a secret: she skims a local bakery, a breakfast shop, and smiles no thanks when there’s an offer after talking apple tarts with the owner’s wife. She craves daddy and has to walk away.
At night, it’s the news as she gets ready for her shift at the bar. And on Sundays, in the beginning, Helen Donnelly calls just to see, masking it with the usual thick complaints about the new grocery store by the school and a remember, so and so? so it matters.
She will admit to a date, one or two, and she remembers Samson, a try for something else, and vocabulary for avoidance.
She doesn’t miss it, if you ask her.
*
Tommy calls her once. It’s been months, right?
“How is it?”
She pauses, out of surprise, fingering the end of her ponytail. The Stones skim the air, skip- it’s an old record player. She tastes the lie quietly, flipping a choice of responses in her head. An ache starts to stir again, thickening in her throat. Her eyes close.
“Okay,” she hesitates, toeing a tile in front of her. She ignores the echo of nostalgia in his voice. “It’s okay.”
It’s funny, how painful generic is. People are better liars than being drab, often forgetting things like color and tone, the thickness of a voice. There’s body language too, but remember this, there are miles swimming between the two of them. And this is how secrets start.
(she doesn’t like it, she’ll admit- a secret, but you can’t tell)
A sigh brushes her from the other end. She listens to a car horn and curse, Sean laughing in the background at something Kevin says. A soft smile tastes a nostalgic distance. She remembers voices, she remembers scars, but stops when she aches fort home.
“Yeah?” Tommy sighs.
And from time to time, asking for particulars, pushes her into a moment of return. She does ask herself, if you’re curious, what would’ve happened if she stayed back home. But she remembers being on her knees, soap staining her jeans as the rag scraped across the blood on the stairs.
She tries not to go back to wanting to be okay with it.
“Yeah,” she tells him after awhile. “Yeah.”
*
She settles, really, with the temptation to visit.
But no one needs to know this.
*
It’s years later when they find him and, remember, Jenny’s long left the city.
Frankie talks about a voice message, swallowing a breath: all i said is, you gotta come home, kid.
*
Re: him.
see: the husband, the outsider, the school teacher, and the dealers.
There’s a memory, a good memory, of the kind of laugh that Jenny gave him the day that they met. But understand, it’s the only one he did get and everybody remembers.
Tommy’s the only one that doesn’t talk about the wedding.
*
“Did you know?”
It’s the first few hours of living out of a suitcase, eyes dark and palms pressed together. Oh, yeah, it’s church.
The hollow walls echoing after a sermon, a night later, makes her eyes close as Tommy takes a seat next to her. This kind of thing is on-repeat in their neighborhood, year to year, generation after generation- it can be funny, if you want to laugh.
He doesn’t say anything.
“Tommy,” she murmurs, her fingers curling in her jacket as they pull into fists. “Did you know?”
There are police reports and missing person files being shredded. They won’t let her see the body, but last night, here’s a good one, she had a nightmare- graying flesh and no eyes, lips dried and cracked, there would’ve been blood. She wonders if they cracked his legs to fit him in the oil drum.
She turns her gaze and Tommy turns his up to the ceiling, crystal cherubs and St. Peter’s eternal judgment. She thinks births, weddings, and too many funerals- it’s the neighborhood, it’s the only constant truth that they’re all united by, everything else falling to secondary.
“I knew.”
Her eyes close. And it’s her worst fear on repeat, cycles of lies resurface and she’s once again faced with the fact that she took a backup plan.
(when she talks like this, know that she sort of knew- any woman will tell you, Ma Donnelly used to say, you know when he’s gone- but denial, denial always seems so much sweeter)
Her shoulders slump. “You knew,” she breathes, she can’t help it.
She wonders if Pops ever did too, if that’s why people sighed oil drums and poor, sweet girl when she worked through the diner. It isn’t betrayal drying her throat, no, she’s older now.
This? This is sadness, spilling into her. She plateaus into the moment, her hands resting against her legs and her gaze falling away. She doesn’t know what to say, but can you blame her? She isn’t ready to play a widow yet, still, after all this time.
- silly Jenny, you’ve been doing this for years.
“Can we go?”
She feels the shift, the pew moaning as he stands. Tommy’s hands shove into his pockets and she sighs, following onto her feet. Her teeth skim her lip and she looks up one more time.
“Please?” And she doesn’t want to have to say it again.
He nods. “Yeah.”
*
You were thinking wistful, right?
Hey, this isn’t the movies. Nobody wants to hear here’s to you, kid for a smile because no one tries to believe that anymore.
*
“Things aren’t the same.”
Helen pours her coffee, peering over paperwork with her as another day turns into two, a third into four.
Jenny blinks, looking up with curious eyes. But the older woman’s gaze is across the street, staring at the looming university. Tommy’s long dropped out and they both know why, but the gaze that she has, that Helen carries, makes her swallow- It’s a reminder, go visit Pops.
“It looks the same to me,” she says dryly, distancing herself quickly from the conversation.
Helen snorts, nodding to the morning’s paper.
“You’re not stupid, Jenny.”
She sighs.
*
A walk down memory lane.
Yeah, that’s right. She’s taking one, after seven, her hands shoved into her jacket pockets. Her steps are familiar, pass the church, the school, and finally she stills in front of home.
What was home- but no one ever touches technicalities.
The come in, we’re open! still peeks from underneath a twin set of wooden planks. The city bought the property from her, she reminds herself- it is the only way out of here, cutting all ties. But who really cuts all times? (Another way of saying lousy attempt, Jenny.)
But still, it’s kind of strange, kind of sad, standing here on the sidewalk and staring. She closes her eyes and then opens them, fully aware of how she ended the history of the place. They say Pops was going to sell it after Molly’s death. Molly, Ma, kept in impeccable order and what could she do?
“Ma figured you’d be here.”
Her lips curl and her shoulders start to slide, her foot scuffing the sidewalk. “Yeah,” she murmurs. “Just wanted to see, ya know?”
He steps from behind her, to her side, and she can’t remember the last time she’s really had a look at him- she still doesn’t turn, you know, she knows that she’ll react that fast.
“You ever gonna look at me?” It’s a tease, lazy, and she fights a school girl’s flush. Hers were always angry, humiliated, and fierce- she laughed wildly like her Ma, Pops used to say, and was just fiercely angry when the time came. Black and white, spurts of predictable color, but Tommy, Tommy always knew how to push deeper.
She shrugs, turning her gaze to the side. So she doesn’t look at him, but she’s closer and staring at his hand as it clenches.
“I’m happy,” she says softly.
He sighs. “I know.”
But it doesn’t stop him from reaching and her from letting him because there are miss yous that cannot be avoided. His palm presses against her and she tucks her fingers into his.
He pulls her forward. She almost smiles.
*
It’s goodbye at his throat.
She moans his name as he slides between her legs, his mouth falling at her breasts. He takes his time to taste her, his tongue flicking against her nipple and his hands pressing into her hips. It’s as if he’s terrified he’ll forget (again), his motivations to stake a claim desperately unpredictable- they were never fearless with each other.
The room is dark, the soundtrack outside is made of passing cars and drunken yells- but this is home, don’t you see, home and tangled in the sheets of a story that she can’t leave.
“Do you remember?” His voice is an echo, harsh and trembling as his cock brushes against her clit. “The last time?”
And how can she forget? She wants to beg him to move, but he’s settled and pressed, skin against skin and there are too many memories. What you won’t know is that Tommy was her first, before boyfriends and dad’s speeches, before curiosities, odds and ends. There’s a story about school and the gardens, school skirts around her hips and her panties in his pockets- they’ve kept this for years, continue to keep it as it will stay buried.
(It needs to.)
But here, now, her breathing starts to fade and her mouth meets his. Her tongue slides against his lip, into his mouth. Everything is too slow, hurts more, but she doesn’t panic- maybe they’re both punishing themselves, in the end.
“Jenny.”
She moans as he shifts against her again, her hand curling in his as he pins them to the headboard. “Jenny,” and again, he breathes her name against her throat, his tongue sliding against her skin.
Her lips part and her hips arch, her legs curling around his waist. She’s wet, ohgod, her skin is flushed, crawling with pleas to push him harder. But Jenny’s still Jenny, still wildly hers and no one else’s (she likes to say).
“Yes.” (Admissions set to kill her.)
Her eyes screw shut as his cock slides into her cunt, her nails scrapping his back, and her mouth against his shoulder.
“-never forgot-”
It’s inevitable.
*
Mid-morning, traffic is an alarm.
She’s awake, lashes pressing against his chest as he stretches and settles to watch her quietly. She smiles faintly, her fingers brushing over a scar.
But he goes first, his lips pursed. “If I asked you to stay, would you stay?”
You’d expect her to be quiet, thinking, but instead, she never flinches. He holds her gaze and she turns closer, the sheets sliding down and her breast peeking over. Her lips wet as his palm brushes over her nipple, her skin flushing.
But her eyes close, her tongue brushing against the back of her teeth. “If I asked you to come,” she pauses, shifting up. Her hair spills over her shoulder. “Would you come?”
He looks away.
You were expecting an answer, right?
end.
the black donnellys, jenny (jenny/tommy), r, 2812, words, spoilers up to the world will break your heart, for girlintheattic-- i promise i’ll write you pr0n- i’ve had too many jellybeans and you get this instead.
soundtrack for dirty liars: palomar, “our haunt”, talking heads, “sugar on my tongue”, björk, pj harvey, “satisfaction (cover)”
Jenny will tell you herself, quietly, that she wasn’t there when it happened.
I will comb myself into chains
In between the tap dance clan
tori amos, the bee keeper
*
That night, Pop coughs i love you, molly.
Her chairs squeaks as she leans forward, eyes wide and her breathing short. She waits, almost desperate to hear it again.
It’s been years since she’s heard her mother’s name, dying in confession as she reaches for his water. Her fingers still when they hit the glass, her eyes closing because she knows.
- Jenny will tell you herself, quietly, that she wasn’t there when it happened. Instead, it’s the elevator that stills a sob as she grabs coffee instead.
*
The diner kisses close! with a turn of the sign.
She stops for a moment, the fabric of her dress brushing against her knees. Her thumb stills over a smear against the glass and she frowns, stepping back and peering over the corner. She grabs a rag, returning and squeaks away the dirt stain.
Turning back, she drops the rag and her fingers skim the countertop as she stills all the way at the far end.
Jenny thinks about Ma again, about Pops, and i love you, molly. There’s still a picture in the office, if you look, wild curls and singing eyes- Molly eternalized as a drinking song.
The bell rings when she remembers coffee before the wake and Helen Donnelly is a tired smile and world-weary, four sons and a widow with no chance of breathing. You want an explanation about before? It’s pretty clear that no one wants Helen’s eyes and Jenny, no different, still wants that choice. A choice.
She sighs.
Meat cutlets and vegetables, sauces and bread- they all line a mix of pastries at the other end- Kate Farrell is hosting the wake today and she can’t remember why she really came back, if only to stare at grieving food.
“You gonna sell the place?” Helen steps forward, fingers curled around the strap of her purse. Her eyes dart to the side, to the glass, and Jenny remembers the headline of the Post- Violence surges in Hell’s Kitchen once more.
She takes a stool, rubbing her eyes, and looking around the only place she’s ever really know. You have to understand, she did think about leaving. Homework and books spilled from every corner of the diner, late night Chemistry and all night English papers. And there was Pops, Dad at varying degrees, a light smile as he watched. It was his way of hoping, even she couldn’t ignore that.
“Yeah,” she breathes, unsteadily. She swallows after Helen tries jenny, shaking her head and tugging at the hem of her dress. “It’s something I gotta do.”
The diner thickens in silence after one of them sighs and her gaze drifts to the closed office door. It’s something she’s got to do, she thinks silently, closing her eyes. Her legs start to swing and she lets herself go to another place, another time (and maybe, she’s lying; maybe she remembers Molly, there’s always stories), but stops.
“I’ll see you in a bit.”
Helen nods, turning away slowly. She forgets the coffee.
*
She will say, by then, maybe weeks later- the decision’s already been made.
*
In a moment, this will be a passing thought:
“Came to say goodbye?”
Tommy filters in behind her, still at the frame of the door. He says nothing and she doesn’t turn around, one last load of laundry in between the last of the boxes.
They won’t talk about it. She knows they won’t talk about it. It’s desperately ironic, all the things they said they’d do as kids from i promise, no secrets to you’ll be the first to know, has long faded from between them.
“Somethin’ like that,” he says softly.
She keeps her back to him, afraid, still, to see him and think, remember what it was like to have his mouth pressed against her throat, to crave skin against skin and that ache. People talk clichés in the most minimum of senses, but what she knows, is what shouldn’t have happened. Not like this. But it did and there’s nothing more to say.
- she’s loved Tommy Donnelly for years, but now, it’s time to leave it like that.
“Ma says make sure you call ‘er.”
She nods. “Yeah.”
He sighs, there’s groan from the bed, the weight shifting down. Her lips purse at the pressure of his hand on her shoulder, falling to her back.
“Jenny.”
Her eyes close. “Don’t.”
*
And so she leaves.
You have to understand why and to do that, it takes a lot of unraveling of weddings and family history. There’s a dress in the closet, in the front, and black, out of habit. It should say it all, quietly, like the rest of the things she pretends to not hear, not know, or not understand.
“I got nothin’ left,” she tells a friend tiredly.
Few and far, there are others outside the neighborhood. Jenny likes a girl at Colombia, a lawyer almost- these are the people that no one sees, remembering only the husband.
It’s time for something new, they all summarize the same thing.
Welcome Chicago into the mix.
*
Her apartment is tiny.
There are pictures on her walls, obscure and abstract, colors turning into interpretation. She has a mild spill of books and magazines like anyone else, you see, wine in the kitchen and scotch under the sink.
Mail is few, a scattering of bills, and a couple course catalogues that she’s thinking about.
She gets a job, at a bar, after settling. She knows she’d be a better waitress, though, but settling (define, to settle: [1.] to quiet, calm, or bring to rest. [2.] to make stable; place in a permanent position or on a permanent basis) is much more of the same routines.
-a secret: she skims a local bakery, a breakfast shop, and smiles no thanks when there’s an offer after talking apple tarts with the owner’s wife. She craves daddy and has to walk away.
At night, it’s the news as she gets ready for her shift at the bar. And on Sundays, in the beginning, Helen Donnelly calls just to see, masking it with the usual thick complaints about the new grocery store by the school and a remember, so and so? so it matters.
She will admit to a date, one or two, and she remembers Samson, a try for something else, and vocabulary for avoidance.
She doesn’t miss it, if you ask her.
*
Tommy calls her once. It’s been months, right?
“How is it?”
She pauses, out of surprise, fingering the end of her ponytail. The Stones skim the air, skip- it’s an old record player. She tastes the lie quietly, flipping a choice of responses in her head. An ache starts to stir again, thickening in her throat. Her eyes close.
“Okay,” she hesitates, toeing a tile in front of her. She ignores the echo of nostalgia in his voice. “It’s okay.”
It’s funny, how painful generic is. People are better liars than being drab, often forgetting things like color and tone, the thickness of a voice. There’s body language too, but remember this, there are miles swimming between the two of them. And this is how secrets start.
(she doesn’t like it, she’ll admit- a secret, but you can’t tell)
A sigh brushes her from the other end. She listens to a car horn and curse, Sean laughing in the background at something Kevin says. A soft smile tastes a nostalgic distance. She remembers voices, she remembers scars, but stops when she aches fort home.
“Yeah?” Tommy sighs.
And from time to time, asking for particulars, pushes her into a moment of return. She does ask herself, if you’re curious, what would’ve happened if she stayed back home. But she remembers being on her knees, soap staining her jeans as the rag scraped across the blood on the stairs.
She tries not to go back to wanting to be okay with it.
“Yeah,” she tells him after awhile. “Yeah.”
*
She settles, really, with the temptation to visit.
But no one needs to know this.
*
It’s years later when they find him and, remember, Jenny’s long left the city.
Frankie talks about a voice message, swallowing a breath: all i said is, you gotta come home, kid.
*
Re: him.
see: the husband, the outsider, the school teacher, and the dealers.
There’s a memory, a good memory, of the kind of laugh that Jenny gave him the day that they met. But understand, it’s the only one he did get and everybody remembers.
Tommy’s the only one that doesn’t talk about the wedding.
*
“Did you know?”
It’s the first few hours of living out of a suitcase, eyes dark and palms pressed together. Oh, yeah, it’s church.
The hollow walls echoing after a sermon, a night later, makes her eyes close as Tommy takes a seat next to her. This kind of thing is on-repeat in their neighborhood, year to year, generation after generation- it can be funny, if you want to laugh.
He doesn’t say anything.
“Tommy,” she murmurs, her fingers curling in her jacket as they pull into fists. “Did you know?”
There are police reports and missing person files being shredded. They won’t let her see the body, but last night, here’s a good one, she had a nightmare- graying flesh and no eyes, lips dried and cracked, there would’ve been blood. She wonders if they cracked his legs to fit him in the oil drum.
She turns her gaze and Tommy turns his up to the ceiling, crystal cherubs and St. Peter’s eternal judgment. She thinks births, weddings, and too many funerals- it’s the neighborhood, it’s the only constant truth that they’re all united by, everything else falling to secondary.
“I knew.”
Her eyes close. And it’s her worst fear on repeat, cycles of lies resurface and she’s once again faced with the fact that she took a backup plan.
(when she talks like this, know that she sort of knew- any woman will tell you, Ma Donnelly used to say, you know when he’s gone- but denial, denial always seems so much sweeter)
Her shoulders slump. “You knew,” she breathes, she can’t help it.
She wonders if Pops ever did too, if that’s why people sighed oil drums and poor, sweet girl when she worked through the diner. It isn’t betrayal drying her throat, no, she’s older now.
This? This is sadness, spilling into her. She plateaus into the moment, her hands resting against her legs and her gaze falling away. She doesn’t know what to say, but can you blame her? She isn’t ready to play a widow yet, still, after all this time.
- silly Jenny, you’ve been doing this for years.
“Can we go?”
She feels the shift, the pew moaning as he stands. Tommy’s hands shove into his pockets and she sighs, following onto her feet. Her teeth skim her lip and she looks up one more time.
“Please?” And she doesn’t want to have to say it again.
He nods. “Yeah.”
*
You were thinking wistful, right?
Hey, this isn’t the movies. Nobody wants to hear here’s to you, kid for a smile because no one tries to believe that anymore.
*
“Things aren’t the same.”
Helen pours her coffee, peering over paperwork with her as another day turns into two, a third into four.
Jenny blinks, looking up with curious eyes. But the older woman’s gaze is across the street, staring at the looming university. Tommy’s long dropped out and they both know why, but the gaze that she has, that Helen carries, makes her swallow- It’s a reminder, go visit Pops.
“It looks the same to me,” she says dryly, distancing herself quickly from the conversation.
Helen snorts, nodding to the morning’s paper.
“You’re not stupid, Jenny.”
She sighs.
*
A walk down memory lane.
Yeah, that’s right. She’s taking one, after seven, her hands shoved into her jacket pockets. Her steps are familiar, pass the church, the school, and finally she stills in front of home.
What was home- but no one ever touches technicalities.
The come in, we’re open! still peeks from underneath a twin set of wooden planks. The city bought the property from her, she reminds herself- it is the only way out of here, cutting all ties. But who really cuts all times? (Another way of saying lousy attempt, Jenny.)
But still, it’s kind of strange, kind of sad, standing here on the sidewalk and staring. She closes her eyes and then opens them, fully aware of how she ended the history of the place. They say Pops was going to sell it after Molly’s death. Molly, Ma, kept in impeccable order and what could she do?
“Ma figured you’d be here.”
Her lips curl and her shoulders start to slide, her foot scuffing the sidewalk. “Yeah,” she murmurs. “Just wanted to see, ya know?”
He steps from behind her, to her side, and she can’t remember the last time she’s really had a look at him- she still doesn’t turn, you know, she knows that she’ll react that fast.
“You ever gonna look at me?” It’s a tease, lazy, and she fights a school girl’s flush. Hers were always angry, humiliated, and fierce- she laughed wildly like her Ma, Pops used to say, and was just fiercely angry when the time came. Black and white, spurts of predictable color, but Tommy, Tommy always knew how to push deeper.
She shrugs, turning her gaze to the side. So she doesn’t look at him, but she’s closer and staring at his hand as it clenches.
“I’m happy,” she says softly.
He sighs. “I know.”
But it doesn’t stop him from reaching and her from letting him because there are miss yous that cannot be avoided. His palm presses against her and she tucks her fingers into his.
He pulls her forward. She almost smiles.
*
It’s goodbye at his throat.
She moans his name as he slides between her legs, his mouth falling at her breasts. He takes his time to taste her, his tongue flicking against her nipple and his hands pressing into her hips. It’s as if he’s terrified he’ll forget (again), his motivations to stake a claim desperately unpredictable- they were never fearless with each other.
The room is dark, the soundtrack outside is made of passing cars and drunken yells- but this is home, don’t you see, home and tangled in the sheets of a story that she can’t leave.
“Do you remember?” His voice is an echo, harsh and trembling as his cock brushes against her clit. “The last time?”
And how can she forget? She wants to beg him to move, but he’s settled and pressed, skin against skin and there are too many memories. What you won’t know is that Tommy was her first, before boyfriends and dad’s speeches, before curiosities, odds and ends. There’s a story about school and the gardens, school skirts around her hips and her panties in his pockets- they’ve kept this for years, continue to keep it as it will stay buried.
(It needs to.)
But here, now, her breathing starts to fade and her mouth meets his. Her tongue slides against his lip, into his mouth. Everything is too slow, hurts more, but she doesn’t panic- maybe they’re both punishing themselves, in the end.
“Jenny.”
She moans as he shifts against her again, her hand curling in his as he pins them to the headboard. “Jenny,” and again, he breathes her name against her throat, his tongue sliding against her skin.
Her lips part and her hips arch, her legs curling around his waist. She’s wet, ohgod, her skin is flushed, crawling with pleas to push him harder. But Jenny’s still Jenny, still wildly hers and no one else’s (she likes to say).
“Yes.” (Admissions set to kill her.)
Her eyes screw shut as his cock slides into her cunt, her nails scrapping his back, and her mouth against his shoulder.
“-never forgot-”
It’s inevitable.
*
Mid-morning, traffic is an alarm.
She’s awake, lashes pressing against his chest as he stretches and settles to watch her quietly. She smiles faintly, her fingers brushing over a scar.
But he goes first, his lips pursed. “If I asked you to stay, would you stay?”
You’d expect her to be quiet, thinking, but instead, she never flinches. He holds her gaze and she turns closer, the sheets sliding down and her breast peeking over. Her lips wet as his palm brushes over her nipple, her skin flushing.
But her eyes close, her tongue brushing against the back of her teeth. “If I asked you to come,” she pauses, shifting up. Her hair spills over her shoulder. “Would you come?”
He looks away.
You were expecting an answer, right?
end.