(no subject)
New fic up at AO3: Boy Meets World gothic.
• Farkle:
Your mother’s face shifts and changes in your family portrait. You hope she’s cast soon. Last night when she wished you sweet dreams, you pulled at her cowl, but you couldn’t see anything but a blank void.
Topanga
• Your mother-in-law catches your eye over dinner, and when she goes out to buy a ‘real’ dessert from the deli down the block, you jump up to see her out.
In the hallway, she clutches you, her eyes wet. ‘We don’t have long, they’re watching. I’m proud of you, honey.’
When she returns, you bicker over who’s the better wife, mother and cook; but when the guys are talking, you share a wink before getting up to clear their plates away.
• Some days you can’t remember how you met your husband. You’ve told each other your story so many times, you can’t be sure any more whether what you actually recall is being told or telling it. Did you ever live any of it?
You try and focus on your earliest memories, but you can’t remember before a clubhouse always shut to you, and a feeling of being second-best. Your whole life.
• In fact, a lot of your memories are a little fuzzy, lately.
The time your husband kissed another girl, back when you were teenagers, has naturally faded in your mind, over 15 years, law school, and two kids. But when the time capsule opens, it all comes rushing back and you can’t understand how you could ever have thought of him as responsible.
Shame suffuses you. Shawn is bemoaning Angela’s desertion, you notice absently, reflecting that you are no better than his ex, failing at the first hurdle, lacking faith in your relationship.
You wish briefly for a friend to call and hash this over, confused that you could be so convinced, even in youth, that you’d question CoryandTopanga, the one structure to believe in when your other convictions over time have altered and compromised.
But you haven’t had a real girlfriend since your college room-mate. You don’t think you can even remember her name.
Cory
• One day you wake up, and 13 years have passed.
You haven’t seen anyone outside your children for months, which is fine. Your life began the day they were born. When you try to picture before, you feel so dizzy and nauseous that it doesn’t even bother you that nothing came to mind.
It doesn’t matter if sometimes you get the weird feeling that you used to see your siblings, that Topanga had parents, that Shawn’s visits weren’t rationed to holidays, birthdays and sweeps.
Everyone you ever met will turn up eventually, in your apartment, or your class, or a ghost, fifteen years cold in their grave.
• Those who don’t teach history are doomed to repeat it.
• The apartment above you stays empty. The kind of things that would go on in there would be a show no one would watch.
Mostly you’re okay with this, like you’re okay with the ring box hidden in the back of your dresser drawer, okay with the searching look in your best friend’s eyes as he talks about wanting the same relationship as you, and the things he can’t have.
You love your kids, and your wife, and you have no regrets; although every year, you feel your inner self showing a little more, passing a little less.
What you and Topanga have works, and will continue to work.
Sometimes what might have been stings, though, and when Auggie casually throws out the idea that two best friends like Riley and Maya should just get married, you can’t help but look briefly at the fourth wall of your apartment and mug a little. Everyone laughs and laughs and laughs.
• One of the clearest images of your past is the dreams you had the year you got married. They never happened, and yet they’re brighter and sharper than say, the last time you saw Shawn, which has to have been at least three weeks ago.
The reason the dreams stayed in your mind was how absolutely real and absolutely terrifying they were.
They came in a set order.
Shawn kills everyone you know, to protect your relationship with Topanga. Then you kill Shawn.
The wedding is imminent, and Lauren is long gone. He’s the only threat left.
Then you run away to a world where your wife is a stranger. Everybody’s imperfect and happy. When she arrives, inevitably; you propose, equally inevitably. She says yes, but she’s got in the way of whatever it is you wanted from the place, and when the good-looking man takes over, you step aside to let him.
The scariest part, and somehow the saddest, isn’t the violence; but that you’re not even sure the dreams were yours in the first place. You hint from time to time about them to your wife and best friend, but they’re too alike and both deflect so expertly that you almost miss the shadows in their eyes.
The dreams stopped for 13 years, but after Christmas, the cycle began again. You’re older and tireder now, though, and it’s time this all came to an end, one way or another.
Shawn has a key to the apartment and a shovel, but no one’s ever won betting against Topanga and her killer shark instincts.
You’re not confident for your own chances, but game night was never really about winning. As you heft the knives on the countertop, testing the weight of each, you wait for your favourite person and your wife, and wonder who’ll be first through the door.
• Farkle:
Your mother’s face shifts and changes in your family portrait. You hope she’s cast soon. Last night when she wished you sweet dreams, you pulled at her cowl, but you couldn’t see anything but a blank void.
Topanga
• Your mother-in-law catches your eye over dinner, and when she goes out to buy a ‘real’ dessert from the deli down the block, you jump up to see her out.
In the hallway, she clutches you, her eyes wet. ‘We don’t have long, they’re watching. I’m proud of you, honey.’
When she returns, you bicker over who’s the better wife, mother and cook; but when the guys are talking, you share a wink before getting up to clear their plates away.
• Some days you can’t remember how you met your husband. You’ve told each other your story so many times, you can’t be sure any more whether what you actually recall is being told or telling it. Did you ever live any of it?
You try and focus on your earliest memories, but you can’t remember before a clubhouse always shut to you, and a feeling of being second-best. Your whole life.
• In fact, a lot of your memories are a little fuzzy, lately.
The time your husband kissed another girl, back when you were teenagers, has naturally faded in your mind, over 15 years, law school, and two kids. But when the time capsule opens, it all comes rushing back and you can’t understand how you could ever have thought of him as responsible.
Shame suffuses you. Shawn is bemoaning Angela’s desertion, you notice absently, reflecting that you are no better than his ex, failing at the first hurdle, lacking faith in your relationship.
You wish briefly for a friend to call and hash this over, confused that you could be so convinced, even in youth, that you’d question CoryandTopanga, the one structure to believe in when your other convictions over time have altered and compromised.
But you haven’t had a real girlfriend since your college room-mate. You don’t think you can even remember her name.
Cory
• One day you wake up, and 13 years have passed.
You haven’t seen anyone outside your children for months, which is fine. Your life began the day they were born. When you try to picture before, you feel so dizzy and nauseous that it doesn’t even bother you that nothing came to mind.
It doesn’t matter if sometimes you get the weird feeling that you used to see your siblings, that Topanga had parents, that Shawn’s visits weren’t rationed to holidays, birthdays and sweeps.
Everyone you ever met will turn up eventually, in your apartment, or your class, or a ghost, fifteen years cold in their grave.
• Those who don’t teach history are doomed to repeat it.
• The apartment above you stays empty. The kind of things that would go on in there would be a show no one would watch.
Mostly you’re okay with this, like you’re okay with the ring box hidden in the back of your dresser drawer, okay with the searching look in your best friend’s eyes as he talks about wanting the same relationship as you, and the things he can’t have.
You love your kids, and your wife, and you have no regrets; although every year, you feel your inner self showing a little more, passing a little less.
What you and Topanga have works, and will continue to work.
Sometimes what might have been stings, though, and when Auggie casually throws out the idea that two best friends like Riley and Maya should just get married, you can’t help but look briefly at the fourth wall of your apartment and mug a little. Everyone laughs and laughs and laughs.
• One of the clearest images of your past is the dreams you had the year you got married. They never happened, and yet they’re brighter and sharper than say, the last time you saw Shawn, which has to have been at least three weeks ago.
The reason the dreams stayed in your mind was how absolutely real and absolutely terrifying they were.
They came in a set order.
Shawn kills everyone you know, to protect your relationship with Topanga. Then you kill Shawn.
The wedding is imminent, and Lauren is long gone. He’s the only threat left.
Then you run away to a world where your wife is a stranger. Everybody’s imperfect and happy. When she arrives, inevitably; you propose, equally inevitably. She says yes, but she’s got in the way of whatever it is you wanted from the place, and when the good-looking man takes over, you step aside to let him.
The scariest part, and somehow the saddest, isn’t the violence; but that you’re not even sure the dreams were yours in the first place. You hint from time to time about them to your wife and best friend, but they’re too alike and both deflect so expertly that you almost miss the shadows in their eyes.
The dreams stopped for 13 years, but after Christmas, the cycle began again. You’re older and tireder now, though, and it’s time this all came to an end, one way or another.
Shawn has a key to the apartment and a shovel, but no one’s ever won betting against Topanga and her killer shark instincts.
You’re not confident for your own chances, but game night was never really about winning. As you heft the knives on the countertop, testing the weight of each, you wait for your favourite person and your wife, and wonder who’ll be first through the door.