MACARONI, CEPHALOPOD, SKINTIGHT JEANS.
I HATE EVERYTHING ABOUT WHAT I CHOOSE TO BE SOMETIMES.
God. Only for you, Emma. (IT'S HER FAULT, YOU GUYS. I MAKE HORRIBLE PUNS ABOUT TEENAGE DREAM AND SHE SAYS THINGS LIKE "BUILT A FORT OUT OF SHEETS" AND THEN, SOME 800 WORDS LATER...)
this is a crack-founded existence, my brain hurts, I need to write a letter because that is my essay homework because I am in fifth grade so the answer to my life at large is crack. And also tree-based shenanigans, girl, secret Shelley, I am looking at you now. Qv:
put your hands on me
de Borja theatrical AU. Lucrezia/Cesare
~800. PG-13
(Set at the end of Lucrezia's seventeenth birthday party, which is also the cast party for Sforza's Romeo & Juliet-the first go-round, that is, while it's still in workshop. Yes, this entire thing is timelining as it goes along. Yes, there is a huge fucking context for everything I write in this AU. I hate everything. Why is it huge. It is a literal novel in my head, and the Sforza saga alone is huge and messy and precisely recounted and augh I did not plan this in the beginning and now it EATS EVERYTHING, GIVE IT A FUCKING INCH. Go away and leave me, story. Go away, of all the things that could commandeer my brain, why is it you. My point being: post-messy-revel, post-messy-showbiz, annnnnnnd: action!)
This was simpler when they were smaller.
The blankets were an Aladdin's cave, and even in the dark when they couldn't see each other's faces they had gripped small hands to small hands and told whispery stories that didn't belong to them in awed voices. There are more hipbones, now, and she crawls in on a slide of back and elbows, tucking her feet up under his thigh. They sit knee to knee, an uncomfortable grind of bone to bone, until she slips one of hers between the two of his, wrapping her arms around the hilly progression of limbs.
“Hi,” she says, resting her chin between their crooked legs.
He touches her lightly on the cheek. “Hello.”
It’s been a long night.
She lets her eyes fall closed, momentarily, and her legs splay out, knocking pillows askew and blankets out of their corners-they had pulled the blankets off her bed without care for shape or form, and these walls are not solid, these walls seem fated to come down. “Jericho,” she sings out, and he shakes his head.
“Did you drink the whole bottle, Crez?”
She crooks her leg around his hip. There. That fits. That has always fit.
“I’m only a little hazy, Chez. It’s passed.”
He is silent, and the sound of their breath, unsynchronized and rough, is the only sound that passes there, warming the air, warm in the air and in the raw heat that still burns at the back of her throat, the remnant of strawberry-tinted wine cottoning on her dry tongue. She curls her arms around one of the pillows on the ground and lies back, her head just brushing the edge of the perilous wall made by the edge of her bed. O, perilous mouths, she thinks and sticks out her tongue as if she could suck the air in against it.
“Pinturrichio’s doing Isabella.”
“What?”
“I mean, Measure. He’s doing Measure,” she lilts, Shakespeare slurring between chapped and sticky lips, “still for Measure.”
“And you are-”
“Hopeful,” she says definitively. It's pleasant, lacking specifics. It's pleasant, after these Juliet-riddled months, to lack definition, to wait and see. That's all-that gets to be all, now. “I am hopeful.”
“Not a hopeful play.”
“Comedy,” she says, and he says, “No.”
“No.”
“Brutal play, actually.” His hands rest on the edge of her hips; her shirt has crumpled up around her ribs, and she feels his fingers stroke lightly over her skin. Her eyes drift shut. Idly, she wonders if he knows he’s doing it. “Silent. Sexual. Ends badly.”
“Marriage, I thought?”
“Yes. No. The wrong marriages.”
“It’s got to be better than R and J.” She giggles tipsily. “The workshop went badly. I swear to god, one of these days I’m going to tell Sforza-”
“Has he done something-”
“Done? God. No. I think he’s gay.”
“Said?”
“Just play shit. Smart guy. I kind of hate his face.” She exhales hard, blowing against a stray piece of hair. “I might be lying.”
“About the hate?”
“About the smart. I think he thinks it’s a love story.”
He laughs quietly, leaning in between the curl of her legs, his fingers fitting between the slope of her ribs and she gasps sharply in spite of herself, skin prickling. “And?”
“It’s-it’s a stupid story. I mean it’s about the stupid. And the youth. It’s about being young.” Sforza watches them-watches her-with a covetous face, and she understands. Gallop apace because her heart gallops apace, Juliet’s, hers, a fountain of youth running too fast. And running out. Not a love story, never a love story. “He reads it like it’s simple. It’s not. Maybe it is. I’m sick of this workshop; it makes me a kid.”
“So.” It’s dark, but she can hear the grin in his voice. “It’s to be Measure, then. Of all plays.”
“I didn’t pick,” she says, “I don’t know why,” and he skims his thumb over the edge of her waistband, and she hisses through her teeth again. Her skin feels itchy with Romeo and Juliet, with its remainder, but she can believe she’s thrown it up with the last of the wine-and now her throat is raw and her stomach is empty and hollow and reverberating in ticklish patterns under the brush of his fingers. She tightens her grip on the pillow in her arms. The lights are off and the air is warm even where the blankets aren’t touching her, leaving her mouth dry and secret and silent, wordless when she opens it. She is blind and boneless and warm and for a moment the evening peels away, leaving nothing but closeness and blankets and the push of air between them. Romeo and Juliet is gone, and her very bones feel light. Her brother’s hands fit hollow against her hips, and the bones tip up to meet him, airy inside and out. She might fly.
“Peace.”
“As in-”
His voice is confused, his hands still against her legs, and she manages a half-laugh, words dusting in her throat, old and not hers. “Peace: you will stop my mouth.”
It’s a promise she’s projected; it’s one she knows he can fulfill. The zipper of her jeans peels back and she raises the pillow to her mouth. Her brother’s hand slips between her legs, and she sinks in her teeth.
God. Only for you, Emma. (IT'S HER FAULT, YOU GUYS. I MAKE HORRIBLE PUNS ABOUT TEENAGE DREAM AND SHE SAYS THINGS LIKE "BUILT A FORT OUT OF SHEETS" AND THEN, SOME 800 WORDS LATER...)
this is a crack-founded existence, my brain hurts, I need to write a letter because that is my essay homework because I am in fifth grade so the answer to my life at large is crack. And also tree-based shenanigans, girl, secret Shelley, I am looking at you now. Qv:
put your hands on me
de Borja theatrical AU. Lucrezia/Cesare
~800. PG-13
(Set at the end of Lucrezia's seventeenth birthday party, which is also the cast party for Sforza's Romeo & Juliet-the first go-round, that is, while it's still in workshop. Yes, this entire thing is timelining as it goes along. Yes, there is a huge fucking context for everything I write in this AU. I hate everything. Why is it huge. It is a literal novel in my head, and the Sforza saga alone is huge and messy and precisely recounted and augh I did not plan this in the beginning and now it EATS EVERYTHING, GIVE IT A FUCKING INCH. Go away and leave me, story. Go away, of all the things that could commandeer my brain, why is it you. My point being: post-messy-revel, post-messy-showbiz, annnnnnnd: action!)
This was simpler when they were smaller.
The blankets were an Aladdin's cave, and even in the dark when they couldn't see each other's faces they had gripped small hands to small hands and told whispery stories that didn't belong to them in awed voices. There are more hipbones, now, and she crawls in on a slide of back and elbows, tucking her feet up under his thigh. They sit knee to knee, an uncomfortable grind of bone to bone, until she slips one of hers between the two of his, wrapping her arms around the hilly progression of limbs.
“Hi,” she says, resting her chin between their crooked legs.
He touches her lightly on the cheek. “Hello.”
It’s been a long night.
She lets her eyes fall closed, momentarily, and her legs splay out, knocking pillows askew and blankets out of their corners-they had pulled the blankets off her bed without care for shape or form, and these walls are not solid, these walls seem fated to come down. “Jericho,” she sings out, and he shakes his head.
“Did you drink the whole bottle, Crez?”
She crooks her leg around his hip. There. That fits. That has always fit.
“I’m only a little hazy, Chez. It’s passed.”
He is silent, and the sound of their breath, unsynchronized and rough, is the only sound that passes there, warming the air, warm in the air and in the raw heat that still burns at the back of her throat, the remnant of strawberry-tinted wine cottoning on her dry tongue. She curls her arms around one of the pillows on the ground and lies back, her head just brushing the edge of the perilous wall made by the edge of her bed. O, perilous mouths, she thinks and sticks out her tongue as if she could suck the air in against it.
“Pinturrichio’s doing Isabella.”
“What?”
“I mean, Measure. He’s doing Measure,” she lilts, Shakespeare slurring between chapped and sticky lips, “still for Measure.”
“And you are-”
“Hopeful,” she says definitively. It's pleasant, lacking specifics. It's pleasant, after these Juliet-riddled months, to lack definition, to wait and see. That's all-that gets to be all, now. “I am hopeful.”
“Not a hopeful play.”
“Comedy,” she says, and he says, “No.”
“No.”
“Brutal play, actually.” His hands rest on the edge of her hips; her shirt has crumpled up around her ribs, and she feels his fingers stroke lightly over her skin. Her eyes drift shut. Idly, she wonders if he knows he’s doing it. “Silent. Sexual. Ends badly.”
“Marriage, I thought?”
“Yes. No. The wrong marriages.”
“It’s got to be better than R and J.” She giggles tipsily. “The workshop went badly. I swear to god, one of these days I’m going to tell Sforza-”
“Has he done something-”
“Done? God. No. I think he’s gay.”
“Said?”
“Just play shit. Smart guy. I kind of hate his face.” She exhales hard, blowing against a stray piece of hair. “I might be lying.”
“About the hate?”
“About the smart. I think he thinks it’s a love story.”
He laughs quietly, leaning in between the curl of her legs, his fingers fitting between the slope of her ribs and she gasps sharply in spite of herself, skin prickling. “And?”
“It’s-it’s a stupid story. I mean it’s about the stupid. And the youth. It’s about being young.” Sforza watches them-watches her-with a covetous face, and she understands. Gallop apace because her heart gallops apace, Juliet’s, hers, a fountain of youth running too fast. And running out. Not a love story, never a love story. “He reads it like it’s simple. It’s not. Maybe it is. I’m sick of this workshop; it makes me a kid.”
“So.” It’s dark, but she can hear the grin in his voice. “It’s to be Measure, then. Of all plays.”
“I didn’t pick,” she says, “I don’t know why,” and he skims his thumb over the edge of her waistband, and she hisses through her teeth again. Her skin feels itchy with Romeo and Juliet, with its remainder, but she can believe she’s thrown it up with the last of the wine-and now her throat is raw and her stomach is empty and hollow and reverberating in ticklish patterns under the brush of his fingers. She tightens her grip on the pillow in her arms. The lights are off and the air is warm even where the blankets aren’t touching her, leaving her mouth dry and secret and silent, wordless when she opens it. She is blind and boneless and warm and for a moment the evening peels away, leaving nothing but closeness and blankets and the push of air between them. Romeo and Juliet is gone, and her very bones feel light. Her brother’s hands fit hollow against her hips, and the bones tip up to meet him, airy inside and out. She might fly.
“Peace.”
“As in-”
His voice is confused, his hands still against her legs, and she manages a half-laugh, words dusting in her throat, old and not hers. “Peace: you will stop my mouth.”
It’s a promise she’s projected; it’s one she knows he can fulfill. The zipper of her jeans peels back and she raises the pillow to her mouth. Her brother’s hand slips between her legs, and she sinks in her teeth.