Old SNL fanfic
Tina/Amy Fics
Title: Jokes and Laughter
Fandom: SNL
Pairing: Tina/Amy
Rating: PG
Word Count: 280
A/N: Lyrics from Crazy Love vol 2 - Paul Simon.
'She says she knows about jokes. This time the joke is on me'
Amy loves the sound of laughter. To her it sounds like applause, a peal of approval and adoration. Laughter suits Amy, it is the perfect accessory to her vivacious personality and blonde curls. She is aware of this; it is why she tells jokes. Joke after joke will fall from her mouth and she will smile in anticipation, waiting for the laughter to electrify her.
Amy started it as just another joke. The play-acting and the flirting were just a way to gain attention -one more way to provoke that precious laughter. She would touch Tina playfully and it was just another way to illuminate her life
Tina is different. She loves laughter but is uncomfortable when it rings around her. To her laughter is a weapon; jokes are small, caustic arrows. Tina is not loud and energetic like Amy, she prefers to sit quietly and aim laughter pointedly at others. Joke after joke will fall from her mouth and only the corner of her lips will upturn in a knowing smile. She is small, dark and predatory.
Tina responded to it as just another joke. The play-acting and flirting were just potential laughter to be deflected - one more thing to defend herself against. She would comment wryly and try not to ache from a ‘joke’ that she found all too serious.
Tina allows Amy to touch her playfully, she lets her bask in the laughter of the after show party just as usual. But tonight there is more. Afterwards she pulls her aside and presses their closed lips together in a forceful kiss. The laughter stops. With Tina’s lips bruising her own Amy realises the joke is on her.
Title: Clever Girl
Fandom: SNL
Pairing: Amy/Tina (implied Tina/Jimmy)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2318
AN: Amy's POV.
I have always secretly wanted to be clever. Sure, I’m witty and more than a little entertaining but one class clown does not a genius make and that’s what I want to be - a genius. Or at the very least someone who is smart enough to realise knocking back unpronounceable drinks at some d-list celebrity’s d-list LA party is not going to make me feel much better about my life
As far as I can gather this desire to be brilliant emerged at a young age. I can still recall the faint whiff of disappointment when my report cards labelled me as ‘lively’ rather than ‘studious’ and a, sadly failed, attempt to intellectualise myself as a teenager by wearing black and smoking long, thin cigarettes in the school back building with a boy who thought he was Bob Dylan.
Unfortunately I never managed to shake such delusions of grandeur, they having been following me doggedly ever since. Why else would my 20 something-year-old eccentric self have possibly wanted to be friends with the thoughtful dark haired girl who (occasionally) wore thick rimmed glasses and (occasionally) wrote plays about Catherine the Great fucking a horse? Obviously I had been hoping some of the smart would rub off on me. Of course that’s why I started sleeping with her as well…
I repeat that last bit out loud hoping someone will notice the comment and applaud my sparkling wit. No one does…
I remember one night in Chicago I half jokingly told Tina about my secret intellectual ambitions. She laughed at that. Not the spiteful laugh she uses on people she disdains but a soft laugh that was muffled by the pillow we were sharing. She had turned to me with that wicked Tina glint in her eye and told me not to worry my ‘pretty little head about it.’ As she put it ‘ you’re always guaranteed a career as a playboy bunny. I however am destined to spend my life as a lonely, obsessive writer.’
Whilst I always enjoy being told I am a ‘hot blonde with a body that just won’t quit’ (Tina’s words not mine) right at this moment - with a luminous drink in one hand and a cell phone in the other - I am back to wishing I was a genius. I sink further into my chair and imagine an alternate universe where Amy Poehler is smart enough not to get smashed and make cross country calls to someone who almost certainly does not want to speak to her right now. As I dial her number I picture a perfect world where I have the brains to peer over a pair of glasses, make a pithy comment about the absurd party around me and resist the urge to call Tina in the middle of the night.
***
The phone rings for a farcically long time, it’s shrill tone a pitch perfect match for the screaming starlet at the opposite end of the bar. I begin to wonder if, in my idiocy, I have managed to dial the wrong number when the ringing stops and clear air crackles into life.
”Hello you’ve reached Tina Fey. May I ask who’s calling?”
I snort. That ridiculously efficient greeting makes her sound like a secretary, yet it suits her perfectly.
”It’s me dummy”
”Oh hi Amy”
I had expected her voice to be laced with the kind of fury reserved only for maintaining order in the re-write room at 3am in the morning. However she sounds strangely energized and not at all annoyed to be woken up in the middle of the night by a drunken call from her friend/girlfriend/illicit lover (whatever she chooses to refer to me as in her award winning memoirs) Across the distance I hear the faint clack of a keyboard and it all makes perfect sense.
”Are you working?!!”
”Well you know me - it beats drinking alone,” I roll my eyes - she’s ironic even when she isn’t trying.
“Jeff’s away,” ‘you’re away,’ remains unspoken. It’s not like she’d let me spend the night in their bed anyway, “ so I thought I’d try and get some of this bastard sitcom script hammered out.”
”Tina it’s 5am”
”And?”
I can’t really argue when Tina uses that tone of voice. Such modulated calm makes working alone at 5am seem perfectly normal rather than neurotic. It’s that voice that smoothes out her mask of, ‘the clever one,’ whilst I am busy falling apart in the chaos of LA.
”So…” dead air doesn’t sit well with her when she’s in this mood, “ What’s up Aims?”
I don’t know whether to answer ‘everything’ or ‘nothing.’ I don’t even know why I called her anymore. Its not as though I can gain intellectual validation from the very person who makes me feel stupid for falling in love with her. Nevertheless, words stumble out my mouth, drunkenly falling on top of one another.
” Well I’m at this party just sitting here thinking about stuff and, umm, remember that night in Chicago when you told me I could be a playboy bunny? Well I was just wondering why am I always the funny one and you’re always the smart one….then I was wondering if we’re not both just idiots for still doing this and how it’s not really funny at all - but that’s besides the point. The point is….do you have Hugh Hefner’s number?”
” Umm. Okay.” She doesn’t know whether to be amused or concerned. I can tell. ”Are you high?”
”Nooooo”
It’s true. I haven’t touched a joint since she told me she hated the taste of pot the last time we stood kissing quietly in her office.
”I may, just may, be a little drunk though”
”Poehler,” she sighs the exasperated old woman sigh that appears frequently at the SNL after show parties, “you do realise I can’t put you in a taxi from here right?”
”Dude! I do have a husband to do that you know”
I would have kicked myself the minute the words dropped from my mouth if my shoes hadn’t somehow gotten tangled up in my bag.
”Right. Of course you do.”
I could practically see her etching my name onto her shit list - right below George W. Bush, Ann Coulter and Bill O’Reilly. Her voice puckered into sour little point;
”Well perhaps you should go find Will then. Goodnight…”
”Wait!”
I could feel righteous indignation rising up from the tips of my inebriated toes all the way to my tousled hair. I know she likes to judge those with less moral poise and control over their mouths than her and usually I just smile along accommodatingly. However just this once I want call her out on her double standards. Possibly it’s the alcohol talking. Or possibly I’m just jealous that she can continue to undress me at night and act like everything is normal during the day.
”You have a husband too - although I know you like to forget that.”
I expect a razor sharp comeback to whiplash around my ears and leave me gasping for air. (Her rejoinders always left poor defenceless Jimmy flat on the floor) Instead there is silence. Then her voice comes wavering over the line.
”I know. I’m sorry”
Her unwillingness to fight knocks all the hot air out of my big mouth. The crack in her voice is what disarms me. It reminds me that she finds this every bit as hard as I do - she’s just better at pretending. We’ve always been this way - me the exhibitionist, prone to loud outbursts and dramatic breakdowns, she the writer, performing on a more subdued level. She’s a clever girl - she won’t cry onstage, she’ll wait until the audience has gone home.
I stumble over words, veering madly, trying to find something to say before she hangs up and retreats into herself,
”I saw Jimmy at some party earlier tonight.”
Of all the topics to land on.
”Fallon?”
”How many other grown men do you know who still call themselves Jimmy?”
”Good point”
I can tell she’s got her composure back in place now (plastered neatly over widening fault lines) and is intrigued as to where this might be going. I am too.
”I asked him how he did it”
”Did what?”
” Saw you everyday and pretended not to care. I asked him how he made it look like his heart wasn’t beating a little faster every time you touched or talked to him”
Shit. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. One crisis diverted and I march merrily onto another. It turns out that when I’m drunk I ignore ‘STAY CLEAR: emotional minefield ahead,’ signs even more than usual.
She answers nervously, curious in spite of herself, “What did he say?”
”He said I should already know - I’ve had a lot more practice.”
Silence rumbles ominously in my ear. For a minute I’m sure she has hung up, but no she’s just sifting through her arsenal of jokes, trying to find a suitable response to keep this in safe, if dysfunctional, territory,
”Jesus - you sound like you’ve stepped out of a soap opera. Or worse - out of Oprah’s book of the month.”
I could laugh at this Give some equally weak reply (‘Well I am in LA’) I could let it pass and accept her way of saying something and acknowledging nothing, but tonight I feel like playing with fire. I bat back silence and count to thirty, because I’m stupid like that.
”Amy don’t do this”
”Don’t do what” Playing dumb is my forte.
”Don’t back me into a corner. Don’t make me talk about ‘us.’ You promised”
I had. I remember the exact phrase I’d used as I persuaded her to continue an affair we’d left fading in the Chicago past. ‘No strings attached’ I’d whispered as I’d pushed her backwards onto her desk. That was another moment I could have done with some more intelligence. Although I’m not sure how much a few extra IQ points would have helped either of us against wilful ignorance. As we lay down we both knew strings were already tangled around our entwined bodies.
”Seems like talking about ‘us’ is the only thing we can’t do Tina. I can perform with you; I can be your best friend, I can screw you - but God forbid I actually talk to you.”
”Don’t start with me Amy,” The anger that had been absent before was now edging into her voice. She hated having her authority and rights of silence revoked, “ You could have had it different. If you’d just said the word in Chicago…” even now she won’t say the word ‘love’ herself. She’s afraid it will substantiate whatever this thing is between us “…I swear it would have been different. This is your choice Amy.”
Again she’s right (as she likes to think she always is) Deep in my fuzzy memories I can remember the fight. She’d wanted more, I’d wanted less. I remember watching her leaving and sitting silently staring at the slammed door. It hadn’t seemed like a permanent dead end back then - I had practically my whole twenties ahead of me, a life of boys and chaos and fun. It would be nice to have a clever girl around to pick me up the floor once in a while but I didn’t need her weighing me down all the time. So I let her walk away. Of course she didn’t turn around either - but it hardly seems to matter anymore. How can anybody be blamed when a relationship doesn’t exist?
I sigh.
”People change”
”So do situations,” She retorts. That barb must have sliced her a little too. But hey, if I can open up old wounds she should feel free to lacerate a few new ones. All I can do now is make sure these cuts don’t sting too much.
”Look Tina you’re right,” I prepare myself to back-pedal all the way into last week, “ I shouldn’t have brought this up. I’m just tired and drunk and trying to make sure I hit my ‘I’ll regret this in the morning,’ phone call quota for this month. I’ll let you get back to your future Emmy winning script and I’ll sit here and get more wasted and try to find out some scandalous gossip for next Saturday’s Weekend Update.”
Whoever said ‘dying is easy, comedy is hard,’ is a bigger idiot than I am. We can float over any problem with a well-placed joke; it’s the way we die inside a little every time we are apart that is hard.
She just laughs with relief, thrilled to be on more stable ground.
”What’s the name of the club you’re at?”
I fish a soggy napkin from a pool of alcohol and read out the club’s name, bemused at what is going on in her incomprehensible brain.
”Good. Now I’m going to phone an LA company and order you a taxi for 3am. Will you be able to get in it or do I have to fly over to remove you from the gutter tomorrow?”
”I’ll be fine. What on earth would I do without you?” the friendly banter expertly hides a genuine question.
”I dread to think,” she answers knowingly.
My voice fills with what I hope is the suitable amount of affable affection,
”See you next week. Goodnight Fey.”
”See you soon. Night Poehler”
I’m about to flip my cell phone shut when I hear her breath still clouding up the line, doubtless she is waiting to see if I manage to hang up correctly. I know I will never be a genius so I give up trying. Instead I put intelligence and good sense to one side and bring the phone back up to my mouth,
”I love you,” I whisper.
All I can hear is static.
Title: Hard Candy: Prologue
Author: Alice
Rating: PG
Word Count: 666 (lol)
AN: Lyrics from Hard Cand - Counting Crows
’Time expands and then contracts when you’re spinning in the grips of someone, never just an ordinary girl’
Tina realises it has been 10 years since they first kissed the minute she sits down in her office and actually allows herself to think. She has been procrastinating all afternoon, fiddling with menial tasks and running down corridors after people she doesn’t want to talk to, all in an attempt to forgot the shattering fight she and Amy shared that morning. She has been so focused on avoiding the recent past that faded history has crept up and caught her unprepared in the silence. Given that the last image she has of Amy is a flurry of blonde hair and righteous indignation yelling at her to ‘go to hell,’ memories of two girls huddled together against the bitter Chicago winter, all soft smiles and warm lips, offer an unwelcome contrast. Then and now. Where had they gone wrong in-between?
Ordinarily it wouldn’t have taken Tina until 4pm to realise the significance of a date. She has an internal roll call of days to remember and everyone knows she is ruthlessly efficient in her ability to stick to timetables. Her whole life is scheduled down to the last minute - work time, writing time, meeting time, bagel time, show time, anniversary time - the list of duties is endless. Occasionally she wonders if this organisation is just pointless bustle in exchange for wilful ignorance, a way to keep busy and avoid thinking too much about what the seconds slipping past actually mean.
She would have ticked off this landmark date just like any other if it weren’t for Amy’s influence. Tina doubts Amy has ever remembered an anniversary in her life. Whilst she hops from one scheduled event to another Amy bulldozes through life - obliterating all attempts of organisation (and nostalgic sentimentality) along the way. When they are together time seems to concertina. Moments fall on top of one another - the first kiss, the first tentative night their bodies arched together, the first secretive glance at an after show party - all tumbling in a rush to get to the here and now. Unlike anyone else Tina remembers Amy in pictures not time.
Often she wonders what it would be like to live life so relentlessly in the present as Amy does. When they are together it seems like the easiest thing in the world - hands and lips are all she can focus on and the minutes seem golden. However when they part this intoxicating urgency is gone and all Tina can see is wasted time, she has nothing to show for hours spent in Amy’s arms -she always walks away afterwards. This chaos suits Amy well but Tina recognises that it wouldn’t agree with her on a permanent basis. She instinctively knows that she doesn’t possess enough breezy charm to get away with forgetting things, disarray matches Amy’s wink and smile - it would only clash with her glasses.
Today is ample proof of the difference between them. Whilst Amy would undoubtedly forget the exact date of their first kiss, weeks later she would present Tina with a crumpled bunch of flowers and everything would be okay. In contrast all Tina has gained from living in the present is unwittingly telling her girlfriend she is pregnant on the 10-year anniversary of the day they first got together. She likes her comic timing to be laced with irony but wishes this hadn’t extended beyond the stage. Now she knows irony is only guilt free behind the Update desk.
No, Tina will stick to her carefully laid timetables. It is much easier for time to be a practicality rather than a regret. She will get up and find another task to plan her time around and in her mind she will draw a neat red line through their 10-year anniversary.
Next year she will have a different date to remember - the day she and Amy finally broke up.
Tina/Amy Drabbles
Title: Performance
Fandom: SNL
Pairing: Tina/Amy
Rating: R
Word Count: 170
Disclaimer: I made it all up I swear!
AN: From Tina's pov.
Instinctively you know that Saturday night is her favourite part of the week. Every 7 days she will laugh excitedly as she is carried away by the bustle of the live show. Onstage she is deceptively small. However she is like a livewire, whipping electricity all around her. The studio lights beat down on her blonde head and she glistens with the heat of performance.
After the show that heat will consume you. She always leaves sticky fingerprints on your breasts as her fevered hands trail down your body. In your darkened writing room there are no bright lights, but her intense kisses spark against your collarbone and burn into you. Once a week her focused energy beats down on you, and you are forced to arch against her warm tongue.
Late on Saturday night she only ever has an audience of one. However this is her favourite part of the week. She knows that the best kind of performance comes when your moans make up her applause.
Title: Jokes and Laughter
Fandom: SNL
Pairing: Tina/Amy
Rating: PG
Word Count: 280
A/N: Lyrics from Crazy Love vol 2 - Paul Simon.
'She says she knows about jokes. This time the joke is on me'
Amy loves the sound of laughter. To her it sounds like applause, a peal of approval and adoration. Laughter suits Amy, it is the perfect accessory to her vivacious personality and blonde curls. She is aware of this; it is why she tells jokes. Joke after joke will fall from her mouth and she will smile in anticipation, waiting for the laughter to electrify her.
Amy started it as just another joke. The play-acting and the flirting were just a way to gain attention -one more way to provoke that precious laughter. She would touch Tina playfully and it was just another way to illuminate her life
Tina is different. She loves laughter but is uncomfortable when it rings around her. To her laughter is a weapon; jokes are small, caustic arrows. Tina is not loud and energetic like Amy, she prefers to sit quietly and aim laughter pointedly at others. Joke after joke will fall from her mouth and only the corner of her lips will upturn in a knowing smile. She is small, dark and predatory.
Tina responded to it as just another joke. The play-acting and flirting were just potential laughter to be deflected - one more thing to defend herself against. She would comment wryly and try not to ache from a ‘joke’ that she found all too serious.
Tina allows Amy to touch her playfully, she lets her bask in the laughter of the after show party just as usual. But tonight there is more. Afterwards she pulls her aside and presses their closed lips together in a forceful kiss. The laughter stops. With Tina’s lips bruising her own Amy realises the joke is on her.
Title: Clever Girl
Fandom: SNL
Pairing: Amy/Tina (implied Tina/Jimmy)
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2318
AN: Amy's POV.
I have always secretly wanted to be clever. Sure, I’m witty and more than a little entertaining but one class clown does not a genius make and that’s what I want to be - a genius. Or at the very least someone who is smart enough to realise knocking back unpronounceable drinks at some d-list celebrity’s d-list LA party is not going to make me feel much better about my life
As far as I can gather this desire to be brilliant emerged at a young age. I can still recall the faint whiff of disappointment when my report cards labelled me as ‘lively’ rather than ‘studious’ and a, sadly failed, attempt to intellectualise myself as a teenager by wearing black and smoking long, thin cigarettes in the school back building with a boy who thought he was Bob Dylan.
Unfortunately I never managed to shake such delusions of grandeur, they having been following me doggedly ever since. Why else would my 20 something-year-old eccentric self have possibly wanted to be friends with the thoughtful dark haired girl who (occasionally) wore thick rimmed glasses and (occasionally) wrote plays about Catherine the Great fucking a horse? Obviously I had been hoping some of the smart would rub off on me. Of course that’s why I started sleeping with her as well…
I repeat that last bit out loud hoping someone will notice the comment and applaud my sparkling wit. No one does…
I remember one night in Chicago I half jokingly told Tina about my secret intellectual ambitions. She laughed at that. Not the spiteful laugh she uses on people she disdains but a soft laugh that was muffled by the pillow we were sharing. She had turned to me with that wicked Tina glint in her eye and told me not to worry my ‘pretty little head about it.’ As she put it ‘ you’re always guaranteed a career as a playboy bunny. I however am destined to spend my life as a lonely, obsessive writer.’
Whilst I always enjoy being told I am a ‘hot blonde with a body that just won’t quit’ (Tina’s words not mine) right at this moment - with a luminous drink in one hand and a cell phone in the other - I am back to wishing I was a genius. I sink further into my chair and imagine an alternate universe where Amy Poehler is smart enough not to get smashed and make cross country calls to someone who almost certainly does not want to speak to her right now. As I dial her number I picture a perfect world where I have the brains to peer over a pair of glasses, make a pithy comment about the absurd party around me and resist the urge to call Tina in the middle of the night.
***
The phone rings for a farcically long time, it’s shrill tone a pitch perfect match for the screaming starlet at the opposite end of the bar. I begin to wonder if, in my idiocy, I have managed to dial the wrong number when the ringing stops and clear air crackles into life.
”Hello you’ve reached Tina Fey. May I ask who’s calling?”
I snort. That ridiculously efficient greeting makes her sound like a secretary, yet it suits her perfectly.
”It’s me dummy”
”Oh hi Amy”
I had expected her voice to be laced with the kind of fury reserved only for maintaining order in the re-write room at 3am in the morning. However she sounds strangely energized and not at all annoyed to be woken up in the middle of the night by a drunken call from her friend/girlfriend/illicit lover (whatever she chooses to refer to me as in her award winning memoirs) Across the distance I hear the faint clack of a keyboard and it all makes perfect sense.
”Are you working?!!”
”Well you know me - it beats drinking alone,” I roll my eyes - she’s ironic even when she isn’t trying.
“Jeff’s away,” ‘you’re away,’ remains unspoken. It’s not like she’d let me spend the night in their bed anyway, “ so I thought I’d try and get some of this bastard sitcom script hammered out.”
”Tina it’s 5am”
”And?”
I can’t really argue when Tina uses that tone of voice. Such modulated calm makes working alone at 5am seem perfectly normal rather than neurotic. It’s that voice that smoothes out her mask of, ‘the clever one,’ whilst I am busy falling apart in the chaos of LA.
”So…” dead air doesn’t sit well with her when she’s in this mood, “ What’s up Aims?”
I don’t know whether to answer ‘everything’ or ‘nothing.’ I don’t even know why I called her anymore. Its not as though I can gain intellectual validation from the very person who makes me feel stupid for falling in love with her. Nevertheless, words stumble out my mouth, drunkenly falling on top of one another.
” Well I’m at this party just sitting here thinking about stuff and, umm, remember that night in Chicago when you told me I could be a playboy bunny? Well I was just wondering why am I always the funny one and you’re always the smart one….then I was wondering if we’re not both just idiots for still doing this and how it’s not really funny at all - but that’s besides the point. The point is….do you have Hugh Hefner’s number?”
” Umm. Okay.” She doesn’t know whether to be amused or concerned. I can tell. ”Are you high?”
”Nooooo”
It’s true. I haven’t touched a joint since she told me she hated the taste of pot the last time we stood kissing quietly in her office.
”I may, just may, be a little drunk though”
”Poehler,” she sighs the exasperated old woman sigh that appears frequently at the SNL after show parties, “you do realise I can’t put you in a taxi from here right?”
”Dude! I do have a husband to do that you know”
I would have kicked myself the minute the words dropped from my mouth if my shoes hadn’t somehow gotten tangled up in my bag.
”Right. Of course you do.”
I could practically see her etching my name onto her shit list - right below George W. Bush, Ann Coulter and Bill O’Reilly. Her voice puckered into sour little point;
”Well perhaps you should go find Will then. Goodnight…”
”Wait!”
I could feel righteous indignation rising up from the tips of my inebriated toes all the way to my tousled hair. I know she likes to judge those with less moral poise and control over their mouths than her and usually I just smile along accommodatingly. However just this once I want call her out on her double standards. Possibly it’s the alcohol talking. Or possibly I’m just jealous that she can continue to undress me at night and act like everything is normal during the day.
”You have a husband too - although I know you like to forget that.”
I expect a razor sharp comeback to whiplash around my ears and leave me gasping for air. (Her rejoinders always left poor defenceless Jimmy flat on the floor) Instead there is silence. Then her voice comes wavering over the line.
”I know. I’m sorry”
Her unwillingness to fight knocks all the hot air out of my big mouth. The crack in her voice is what disarms me. It reminds me that she finds this every bit as hard as I do - she’s just better at pretending. We’ve always been this way - me the exhibitionist, prone to loud outbursts and dramatic breakdowns, she the writer, performing on a more subdued level. She’s a clever girl - she won’t cry onstage, she’ll wait until the audience has gone home.
I stumble over words, veering madly, trying to find something to say before she hangs up and retreats into herself,
”I saw Jimmy at some party earlier tonight.”
Of all the topics to land on.
”Fallon?”
”How many other grown men do you know who still call themselves Jimmy?”
”Good point”
I can tell she’s got her composure back in place now (plastered neatly over widening fault lines) and is intrigued as to where this might be going. I am too.
”I asked him how he did it”
”Did what?”
” Saw you everyday and pretended not to care. I asked him how he made it look like his heart wasn’t beating a little faster every time you touched or talked to him”
Shit. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. One crisis diverted and I march merrily onto another. It turns out that when I’m drunk I ignore ‘STAY CLEAR: emotional minefield ahead,’ signs even more than usual.
She answers nervously, curious in spite of herself, “What did he say?”
”He said I should already know - I’ve had a lot more practice.”
Silence rumbles ominously in my ear. For a minute I’m sure she has hung up, but no she’s just sifting through her arsenal of jokes, trying to find a suitable response to keep this in safe, if dysfunctional, territory,
”Jesus - you sound like you’ve stepped out of a soap opera. Or worse - out of Oprah’s book of the month.”
I could laugh at this Give some equally weak reply (‘Well I am in LA’) I could let it pass and accept her way of saying something and acknowledging nothing, but tonight I feel like playing with fire. I bat back silence and count to thirty, because I’m stupid like that.
”Amy don’t do this”
”Don’t do what” Playing dumb is my forte.
”Don’t back me into a corner. Don’t make me talk about ‘us.’ You promised”
I had. I remember the exact phrase I’d used as I persuaded her to continue an affair we’d left fading in the Chicago past. ‘No strings attached’ I’d whispered as I’d pushed her backwards onto her desk. That was another moment I could have done with some more intelligence. Although I’m not sure how much a few extra IQ points would have helped either of us against wilful ignorance. As we lay down we both knew strings were already tangled around our entwined bodies.
”Seems like talking about ‘us’ is the only thing we can’t do Tina. I can perform with you; I can be your best friend, I can screw you - but God forbid I actually talk to you.”
”Don’t start with me Amy,” The anger that had been absent before was now edging into her voice. She hated having her authority and rights of silence revoked, “ You could have had it different. If you’d just said the word in Chicago…” even now she won’t say the word ‘love’ herself. She’s afraid it will substantiate whatever this thing is between us “…I swear it would have been different. This is your choice Amy.”
Again she’s right (as she likes to think she always is) Deep in my fuzzy memories I can remember the fight. She’d wanted more, I’d wanted less. I remember watching her leaving and sitting silently staring at the slammed door. It hadn’t seemed like a permanent dead end back then - I had practically my whole twenties ahead of me, a life of boys and chaos and fun. It would be nice to have a clever girl around to pick me up the floor once in a while but I didn’t need her weighing me down all the time. So I let her walk away. Of course she didn’t turn around either - but it hardly seems to matter anymore. How can anybody be blamed when a relationship doesn’t exist?
I sigh.
”People change”
”So do situations,” She retorts. That barb must have sliced her a little too. But hey, if I can open up old wounds she should feel free to lacerate a few new ones. All I can do now is make sure these cuts don’t sting too much.
”Look Tina you’re right,” I prepare myself to back-pedal all the way into last week, “ I shouldn’t have brought this up. I’m just tired and drunk and trying to make sure I hit my ‘I’ll regret this in the morning,’ phone call quota for this month. I’ll let you get back to your future Emmy winning script and I’ll sit here and get more wasted and try to find out some scandalous gossip for next Saturday’s Weekend Update.”
Whoever said ‘dying is easy, comedy is hard,’ is a bigger idiot than I am. We can float over any problem with a well-placed joke; it’s the way we die inside a little every time we are apart that is hard.
She just laughs with relief, thrilled to be on more stable ground.
”What’s the name of the club you’re at?”
I fish a soggy napkin from a pool of alcohol and read out the club’s name, bemused at what is going on in her incomprehensible brain.
”Good. Now I’m going to phone an LA company and order you a taxi for 3am. Will you be able to get in it or do I have to fly over to remove you from the gutter tomorrow?”
”I’ll be fine. What on earth would I do without you?” the friendly banter expertly hides a genuine question.
”I dread to think,” she answers knowingly.
My voice fills with what I hope is the suitable amount of affable affection,
”See you next week. Goodnight Fey.”
”See you soon. Night Poehler”
I’m about to flip my cell phone shut when I hear her breath still clouding up the line, doubtless she is waiting to see if I manage to hang up correctly. I know I will never be a genius so I give up trying. Instead I put intelligence and good sense to one side and bring the phone back up to my mouth,
”I love you,” I whisper.
All I can hear is static.
Title: Hard Candy: Prologue
Author: Alice
Rating: PG
Word Count: 666 (lol)
AN: Lyrics from Hard Cand - Counting Crows
’Time expands and then contracts when you’re spinning in the grips of someone, never just an ordinary girl’
Tina realises it has been 10 years since they first kissed the minute she sits down in her office and actually allows herself to think. She has been procrastinating all afternoon, fiddling with menial tasks and running down corridors after people she doesn’t want to talk to, all in an attempt to forgot the shattering fight she and Amy shared that morning. She has been so focused on avoiding the recent past that faded history has crept up and caught her unprepared in the silence. Given that the last image she has of Amy is a flurry of blonde hair and righteous indignation yelling at her to ‘go to hell,’ memories of two girls huddled together against the bitter Chicago winter, all soft smiles and warm lips, offer an unwelcome contrast. Then and now. Where had they gone wrong in-between?
Ordinarily it wouldn’t have taken Tina until 4pm to realise the significance of a date. She has an internal roll call of days to remember and everyone knows she is ruthlessly efficient in her ability to stick to timetables. Her whole life is scheduled down to the last minute - work time, writing time, meeting time, bagel time, show time, anniversary time - the list of duties is endless. Occasionally she wonders if this organisation is just pointless bustle in exchange for wilful ignorance, a way to keep busy and avoid thinking too much about what the seconds slipping past actually mean.
She would have ticked off this landmark date just like any other if it weren’t for Amy’s influence. Tina doubts Amy has ever remembered an anniversary in her life. Whilst she hops from one scheduled event to another Amy bulldozes through life - obliterating all attempts of organisation (and nostalgic sentimentality) along the way. When they are together time seems to concertina. Moments fall on top of one another - the first kiss, the first tentative night their bodies arched together, the first secretive glance at an after show party - all tumbling in a rush to get to the here and now. Unlike anyone else Tina remembers Amy in pictures not time.
Often she wonders what it would be like to live life so relentlessly in the present as Amy does. When they are together it seems like the easiest thing in the world - hands and lips are all she can focus on and the minutes seem golden. However when they part this intoxicating urgency is gone and all Tina can see is wasted time, she has nothing to show for hours spent in Amy’s arms -she always walks away afterwards. This chaos suits Amy well but Tina recognises that it wouldn’t agree with her on a permanent basis. She instinctively knows that she doesn’t possess enough breezy charm to get away with forgetting things, disarray matches Amy’s wink and smile - it would only clash with her glasses.
Today is ample proof of the difference between them. Whilst Amy would undoubtedly forget the exact date of their first kiss, weeks later she would present Tina with a crumpled bunch of flowers and everything would be okay. In contrast all Tina has gained from living in the present is unwittingly telling her girlfriend she is pregnant on the 10-year anniversary of the day they first got together. She likes her comic timing to be laced with irony but wishes this hadn’t extended beyond the stage. Now she knows irony is only guilt free behind the Update desk.
No, Tina will stick to her carefully laid timetables. It is much easier for time to be a practicality rather than a regret. She will get up and find another task to plan her time around and in her mind she will draw a neat red line through their 10-year anniversary.
Next year she will have a different date to remember - the day she and Amy finally broke up.
Tina/Amy Drabbles
Title: Performance
Fandom: SNL
Pairing: Tina/Amy
Rating: R
Word Count: 170
Disclaimer: I made it all up I swear!
AN: From Tina's pov.
Instinctively you know that Saturday night is her favourite part of the week. Every 7 days she will laugh excitedly as she is carried away by the bustle of the live show. Onstage she is deceptively small. However she is like a livewire, whipping electricity all around her. The studio lights beat down on her blonde head and she glistens with the heat of performance.
After the show that heat will consume you. She always leaves sticky fingerprints on your breasts as her fevered hands trail down your body. In your darkened writing room there are no bright lights, but her intense kisses spark against your collarbone and burn into you. Once a week her focused energy beats down on you, and you are forced to arch against her warm tongue.
Late on Saturday night she only ever has an audience of one. However this is her favourite part of the week. She knows that the best kind of performance comes when your moans make up her applause.