Original FIC: it's that stirring in our hearts that we can't name (F/F, R)
Title: it’s that stirring in our hearts that we can’t name
Author: aphrodite_mine
Summary: We meet in darkness, we leave in darkness. A riff on Jack & Diane, written for usakeh for helpbrazil2011. My second ever werewolf story, and I am not sure that it counts.
Info: OCs, Lara/Yvonne (femslash), 2600 words. Beta by seeksadventures.
Disclaimer: Not intended to infringe upon Jack & Diane (after all, the film isn't even in production yet) or upon the Josh Pyke song "You Don't Scare Me" that the title is taken from.
--
"That's just kind of a metaphor for how frightening falling in love is." - Ellen Page
It’s 2005 in New York City, and the summer is hot. Lara is a creature of habit, but even she considered heading home after work instead of stopping in to Pink for her usual sandwich (grilled chicken, sprouts, tomato, mayo on rye) and two of the house beer. The promise of her bed divested of comforter and the window unit and fan pouring chilled air directly on her was almost worth the break in routine. But, of course, walking by Pink proved alluring enough that she pushed open the darkened door (pausing, for a moment at her see-through reflection) just like every other work day, sighing when she realized that the bar was just as hot on the inside as it was on the sidewalk -- the humidity may have cut minutely, but that would soon be made up by dancing bodies.
Cindy at the bar nodded, waved, unable to make herself heard over the booming music. That was part of what Lara liked about this place. All of the words she’d edited all day long at the paper oozed out of her head, a paragraph at a time, first from the ungodly loud music, and then from watching the girls trickle in, their bodies moving lithely to the sounds pumping from the speakers, and finally from the soft buzz of the beer in her veins. Sometimes she went home, her head throbbing a little, but she never had a hang over, and she was never late to work the next day.
Sitting down at the bar, she shrugs out of her work blazer, a constructed piece of light-weight fabric the did well to hide her preferred wardrobe of wife-beater tank underneath. Lara hands that, folded, and her laptop case, to Cindy over the bar, and Cindy (a robust, short redhead), in return passes her a full-to-the-brim glass of beer and a plate already prepared with sandwich and chips. She feels guilty for even considering skipping, and then glad she hadn’t.
Halfway through her sandwich, she lights up, alternating bites with sips with puffs, and before the cigarette is down her fingers, the club is full (early, but then, everyone seems to start early on weeknights). Girls are everywhere, buzz cuts, long flowing hair, girls in jeans, in leather, in dresses, in ties, girls with cleavage and girls with barely any tits to speak of. Most are dancing -- it’s hard to resist with the music this loud. There are a few wayward boys, boyfriends, or onlookers. The heat keeps rising, with every one that comes through the door, enters the pack. None of it bothers Lara, not when she’s long ago sweat through her shirt, the thin fabric clinging to her skin. The only thing cold about her are her fingers, occasionally grazing the condensation on her beer. This bar may be the hottest place in the city.
She dabs out her cigarette in an ash tray that wasn’t there moments before (Cindy is arms everywhere, sparing a second to nod between drinks served up to thirsty, sweating patrons) and casually turns to the dance floor, and it’s one of those things that happens in movies, maybe, but not even then, not like this. One of those moments where the crowd parts in a way that seems choreographed, now, looking back. And Lara can see between the moving bodies to one in particular, a head of golden, maybe wheat-colored hair (blue and purple in turns, under the changing lights of the club). She’s wearing a dress, the kind that doesn’t give anything away, that doesn’t have obvious details like: a flower pattern, or: stripes. There are splotches of white on pink, maybe, or that might have been the lights. And her skin is ripe, glistening under the lights of the club.
She seems to move slower than everyone else. Her hair is on a different agenda. Lara takes a slow sip of beer, unable to move her eyes. Watching. There could be a thousand eyes on her that night, and for all she knows, there are. She wouldn’t have noticed.
--
“It’s been more than a week, Yvonne. You’ve got to get out some time.” Actually, she’s been graduated for a month and a half, but who’s counting. And she’s busier now, possibly, than she was in her final week of undergrad. Busy with applications, busy keeping up to date and studying, and figuring out where she wants to go from here.
“I’m not sure what you don’t understand about the word busy.” But she says it smiling, knowing she’s going to give in, because she always does, even when there’s a paper due the next day. Because sanity is important in a doctor. No one wants a doctor who can’t cut loose once in awhile. Right?
“I’ll let you choose the place...” Judy’s cajoling is playful, she hams it up, tugging on Yvonne’s sleeve, throwing puppy-dog eyes.
So they go to Pink, even though Judy is far from gay and Yvonne isn’t “looking for anything like that right now” by which she means a hook up, Judy is quick to clarify with a shit-eating grin, and an arm punch. So Yvonne glares at her, sets aside her medical textbooks for the night and throws on the first dress she finds, runs a brush through her hair, and looks expectantly at the door while Judy painstakingly finishes applying her make-up.
“What! There could totally be straight guys there!”
And maybe there are, but Yvonne doesn’t notice. As soon as she hits the wave of music and heat and bodies, something comes over her. She doesn’t even weave towards the bar for a drink, she just, slowly, sinks into the rhythm and closes her eyes. Her hips are moving on their own, in circles, maybe. There aren’t big steps to this, just whatever her body needs to do.
Strong beats hit her body like a magnet and in between she opens her eyes, perhaps remembering Judy, or perhaps drawn by something bigger, and the first thing she sees are another pair of eyes. On her. A woman sitting at the bar, tall and thin, leather heals locked in the metal rungs of her stool, her hand wrapped tight around a beer.
Her eyes drift closed again, unconsciously at peace with the gaze of this woman on her. The allure of the music pulling her in again, her body swaying, her flicking out the tiny rhythms her hips don’t hit. There, again, Yvonne blinks open and there’s the glasses-wearing visage, tugging at the ponytail at the back of her head, shaking her hair loose. Her lips are pinkish. She licks them.
Yvonne swallows. Nods.
Gestures, a crook of her finger.
And for the first time in maybe years, Lara leaves her sandwich and her drink and she gets up to join her on the dance floor. Her back dripping with sweat.
The song changes, faster even, forcing them closer, and Yvonne laughs, baring her throat, moving her body closer to the woman, pressing her thigh against the stranger’s, feeling the heat on heat, multiplying.
Through the glasses, she can see that the woman’s eyes are grey, her skin tan -- spattered with freckles, she notices, as a stream of white light passes overhead -- almost olive. Her throat works, she loosens slowly, by degrees. Yvonne touches her temple and smiles.
As the beat changes, they seem to move identically, the heat growing between them by degrees. Yvonne hasn’t felt this way in--
"I'll be right back," and the woman near-runs to the restroom, stopping for a long gulp of her beer to quench the thirst billowing up in her throat. Dry as a bone, she must be. (She checks her face when she hears the door settle behind her -- sweaty and warm, but fine, fine enough. Still herself. She looks pale, almost, in the sudden, bright light of the bathroom. Afraid, but invigorated).
Yvonne follows her. Pushing the door open again, causing the woman to turn, startled. She doesn’t wait for permission, or for the bystanders to clear out. Just does it. She kisses her, backing her up against the sink, stopping momentarily when the woman yelps, jumping up with a hand to her ass. (Yvonne can see the water stain in the mirror.)
She grins, going in again, but the woman growls, a dark noise that pushes Yvonne backwards instead. They back into a stall, ignoring the few women left, milling around for the show. Are they drunk? Yvonne knows she isn’t. She locks the door behind them, kicking away the toilet paper on the floor, during a moment’s clarity.
“God damn!” a woman yelps, gleefully from the sink area.
Yvonne arches forward, pushing her hand against the woman’s stomach first, then rising, brushing against her chest. She can feel nipples harden, peak. And she’s -- ooph -- back against her side of the stall. She bumps her head, thrusts her hips forward, fighting this out for dominance, breathless. She didn’t come here for this. She must be drunk, she must be...
"My name is Yvonne," she says, and her fingers burn trails onto Lara's back, through the top, under the top. And Lara half expects to find marks when she gets home, twisting around in front of the mirror, looking for heated fingerprints claiming her back as someone else's.
--
When Lara turned sixteen, her parents kicked her out. It was all a big misunderstanding. She thought they were out for the night, and they thought she was straight. So, naturally, coming home at nine and seeing her head between the neighbour’s thighs was a bit of a shock for everyone involved. They were only her parents, so she wondered, sometimes, if was that big of a loss.
The first time Yvonne kissed a girl, she was playing doctor and her neighbor in the apartment complex complained of a broken heart. She scooted next to Yvonne on the family couch (bought with hard-earned American money) and kicked her feet (which Yvonne highly doubted was a symptom of heart disease) and said “Kiss me, and it’ll beat again.”
Around the time Lara was old enough to drink (legally) she settled on never having a real relationship. Relationships meant giving up too much. Giving up control, specifically. One-night stands, on the other hand got the job done. By the time she turned twenty-seven, the only numbers in her cell phone were for work, local food delivery, and the cab company. It might be sad if she thought about it.
There was a man, when Yvonne was in high school. They would have sex in his car during her lunch period, and after, grope for hastily-tossed clothing while watching the clock in the drive-thru. She got her first C that year. When she left for Columbia, her little sister wrote her a card that said "Good luck!" and tucked it into her bag. She didn't find it until packing for Christmas.
--
Lara’s dreams are wild that night.
The kind where she kicks off all the covers and alternates the shivers with the sweats.
She thinks she yells out, must have, because she startles to a noise, and no one else is home, the neighbors are quiet for once, the television is dark. She sees remnants of a forest, feels the wind at her back. The moon just over the horizon, bright, and full. Shakes it off, turns over and sleeps again, fitful.
The dreams come again, and this time she remembers. The gnashing of teeth, the sharpness that rips from her fingers as she claws at the earth, first, and then at the others. Everywhere is red, and red is everywhere. Behind her eyes and in front, liquid. The hunger inside her. The girl in the lavender (or was it white?) dress, running barefoot through the woods. She looks back, once, and Lara knows her face. Her heart leaps and she howls, muscles coiled.
She wakes up kneeling in bed, panting, heart racing. It doesn't get better after holding still and collecting her thoughts. She feels her stomach rise, and scrambles from the covers for the hallway bathroom, curling over the toilet, hacking up bile.
She doesn't call Yvonne, though she remembers, clearly, the pretty blond penning numbers and folding a paper crisply, handing it over with a smile, she remembers sliding it into her back pocket. She remembers tucking blond hair back and running her thumb across the smoothest cheek she'd ever felt.
She remembers everything, possibly, but how she got home, and how she manged to leave her livelihood at the bar. She calls in late to work, stops by Pink to pick up her laptop and blazer. Cindy gives her a raised eyebrow and her things.
Her phone rings the next night, and she doesn't know how Yvonne got her number (Cindy, damnit) but she did, and she can't not answer it, because she's already got her hand on the phone and she's pressing answer before she can think about things like consequences and her mind is a mess of gnashing teeth and pulsing hearts. "Hello?" and her voice is radiating this ridiculous need that she prays doesn't convey across the airwaves.
--
They meet for coffee. Tea, for Yvonne. Of course, she thinks. Her hand settles on Lara's while they wait. It's nicer than she thought it could be.
There are hours when they talk about mundane things like novels (Yvonne's favorite is To The Lighthouse, “Dense, for pre-med, right?”) and growing up (Lara's never left the city) and shoes (Yvonne likes Lara's but would never wear them, she says, laughing) and the sun sets and it's time to go, they both seem to sense it. Lara's hand tightens on Yvonne's. She can feel the words "I love you," beat in her heart. It makes her wish she'd eaten something. Her stomach is so empty, and she wants this so very much.
--
“I’m leaving.”
“What?”
“Not now, but. Soon.”
A breath. “Where?”
“England, probably. Maybe the West Coast.” She shrugs. “I wanted to tell you before this got serious, but...”
But it already has. Lara bares her teeth and it looks like a smile. She takes Yvonne’s hand. “Thanks for telling me.”
They walk a few more blocks in silence until the racing in her blood is too much and she can’t keep going like this, not with Yvonne’s hand is so soft, and her smile is so sweet, and her eyes crinkle at the side, and her hair is swept back so effortlessly, and Lara is against her in the space of a heartbeat, hands around Yvonne’s face, cupping her cheeks, lips against her’s, the rush of hunger and need pulsing through her muscles pushing her forward and holding her back.
It lasts for only moments, but they both pull away breathless.
Yvonne touches the tears in Lara’s eyes.
“I know.”
Author: aphrodite_mine
Summary: We meet in darkness, we leave in darkness. A riff on Jack & Diane, written for usakeh for helpbrazil2011. My second ever werewolf story, and I am not sure that it counts.
Info: OCs, Lara/Yvonne (femslash), 2600 words. Beta by seeksadventures.
Disclaimer: Not intended to infringe upon Jack & Diane (after all, the film isn't even in production yet) or upon the Josh Pyke song "You Don't Scare Me" that the title is taken from.
--
"That's just kind of a metaphor for how frightening falling in love is." - Ellen Page
It’s 2005 in New York City, and the summer is hot. Lara is a creature of habit, but even she considered heading home after work instead of stopping in to Pink for her usual sandwich (grilled chicken, sprouts, tomato, mayo on rye) and two of the house beer. The promise of her bed divested of comforter and the window unit and fan pouring chilled air directly on her was almost worth the break in routine. But, of course, walking by Pink proved alluring enough that she pushed open the darkened door (pausing, for a moment at her see-through reflection) just like every other work day, sighing when she realized that the bar was just as hot on the inside as it was on the sidewalk -- the humidity may have cut minutely, but that would soon be made up by dancing bodies.
Cindy at the bar nodded, waved, unable to make herself heard over the booming music. That was part of what Lara liked about this place. All of the words she’d edited all day long at the paper oozed out of her head, a paragraph at a time, first from the ungodly loud music, and then from watching the girls trickle in, their bodies moving lithely to the sounds pumping from the speakers, and finally from the soft buzz of the beer in her veins. Sometimes she went home, her head throbbing a little, but she never had a hang over, and she was never late to work the next day.
Sitting down at the bar, she shrugs out of her work blazer, a constructed piece of light-weight fabric the did well to hide her preferred wardrobe of wife-beater tank underneath. Lara hands that, folded, and her laptop case, to Cindy over the bar, and Cindy (a robust, short redhead), in return passes her a full-to-the-brim glass of beer and a plate already prepared with sandwich and chips. She feels guilty for even considering skipping, and then glad she hadn’t.
Halfway through her sandwich, she lights up, alternating bites with sips with puffs, and before the cigarette is down her fingers, the club is full (early, but then, everyone seems to start early on weeknights). Girls are everywhere, buzz cuts, long flowing hair, girls in jeans, in leather, in dresses, in ties, girls with cleavage and girls with barely any tits to speak of. Most are dancing -- it’s hard to resist with the music this loud. There are a few wayward boys, boyfriends, or onlookers. The heat keeps rising, with every one that comes through the door, enters the pack. None of it bothers Lara, not when she’s long ago sweat through her shirt, the thin fabric clinging to her skin. The only thing cold about her are her fingers, occasionally grazing the condensation on her beer. This bar may be the hottest place in the city.
She dabs out her cigarette in an ash tray that wasn’t there moments before (Cindy is arms everywhere, sparing a second to nod between drinks served up to thirsty, sweating patrons) and casually turns to the dance floor, and it’s one of those things that happens in movies, maybe, but not even then, not like this. One of those moments where the crowd parts in a way that seems choreographed, now, looking back. And Lara can see between the moving bodies to one in particular, a head of golden, maybe wheat-colored hair (blue and purple in turns, under the changing lights of the club). She’s wearing a dress, the kind that doesn’t give anything away, that doesn’t have obvious details like: a flower pattern, or: stripes. There are splotches of white on pink, maybe, or that might have been the lights. And her skin is ripe, glistening under the lights of the club.
She seems to move slower than everyone else. Her hair is on a different agenda. Lara takes a slow sip of beer, unable to move her eyes. Watching. There could be a thousand eyes on her that night, and for all she knows, there are. She wouldn’t have noticed.
--
“It’s been more than a week, Yvonne. You’ve got to get out some time.” Actually, she’s been graduated for a month and a half, but who’s counting. And she’s busier now, possibly, than she was in her final week of undergrad. Busy with applications, busy keeping up to date and studying, and figuring out where she wants to go from here.
“I’m not sure what you don’t understand about the word busy.” But she says it smiling, knowing she’s going to give in, because she always does, even when there’s a paper due the next day. Because sanity is important in a doctor. No one wants a doctor who can’t cut loose once in awhile. Right?
“I’ll let you choose the place...” Judy’s cajoling is playful, she hams it up, tugging on Yvonne’s sleeve, throwing puppy-dog eyes.
So they go to Pink, even though Judy is far from gay and Yvonne isn’t “looking for anything like that right now” by which she means a hook up, Judy is quick to clarify with a shit-eating grin, and an arm punch. So Yvonne glares at her, sets aside her medical textbooks for the night and throws on the first dress she finds, runs a brush through her hair, and looks expectantly at the door while Judy painstakingly finishes applying her make-up.
“What! There could totally be straight guys there!”
And maybe there are, but Yvonne doesn’t notice. As soon as she hits the wave of music and heat and bodies, something comes over her. She doesn’t even weave towards the bar for a drink, she just, slowly, sinks into the rhythm and closes her eyes. Her hips are moving on their own, in circles, maybe. There aren’t big steps to this, just whatever her body needs to do.
Strong beats hit her body like a magnet and in between she opens her eyes, perhaps remembering Judy, or perhaps drawn by something bigger, and the first thing she sees are another pair of eyes. On her. A woman sitting at the bar, tall and thin, leather heals locked in the metal rungs of her stool, her hand wrapped tight around a beer.
Her eyes drift closed again, unconsciously at peace with the gaze of this woman on her. The allure of the music pulling her in again, her body swaying, her flicking out the tiny rhythms her hips don’t hit. There, again, Yvonne blinks open and there’s the glasses-wearing visage, tugging at the ponytail at the back of her head, shaking her hair loose. Her lips are pinkish. She licks them.
Yvonne swallows. Nods.
Gestures, a crook of her finger.
And for the first time in maybe years, Lara leaves her sandwich and her drink and she gets up to join her on the dance floor. Her back dripping with sweat.
The song changes, faster even, forcing them closer, and Yvonne laughs, baring her throat, moving her body closer to the woman, pressing her thigh against the stranger’s, feeling the heat on heat, multiplying.
Through the glasses, she can see that the woman’s eyes are grey, her skin tan -- spattered with freckles, she notices, as a stream of white light passes overhead -- almost olive. Her throat works, she loosens slowly, by degrees. Yvonne touches her temple and smiles.
As the beat changes, they seem to move identically, the heat growing between them by degrees. Yvonne hasn’t felt this way in--
"I'll be right back," and the woman near-runs to the restroom, stopping for a long gulp of her beer to quench the thirst billowing up in her throat. Dry as a bone, she must be. (She checks her face when she hears the door settle behind her -- sweaty and warm, but fine, fine enough. Still herself. She looks pale, almost, in the sudden, bright light of the bathroom. Afraid, but invigorated).
Yvonne follows her. Pushing the door open again, causing the woman to turn, startled. She doesn’t wait for permission, or for the bystanders to clear out. Just does it. She kisses her, backing her up against the sink, stopping momentarily when the woman yelps, jumping up with a hand to her ass. (Yvonne can see the water stain in the mirror.)
She grins, going in again, but the woman growls, a dark noise that pushes Yvonne backwards instead. They back into a stall, ignoring the few women left, milling around for the show. Are they drunk? Yvonne knows she isn’t. She locks the door behind them, kicking away the toilet paper on the floor, during a moment’s clarity.
“God damn!” a woman yelps, gleefully from the sink area.
Yvonne arches forward, pushing her hand against the woman’s stomach first, then rising, brushing against her chest. She can feel nipples harden, peak. And she’s -- ooph -- back against her side of the stall. She bumps her head, thrusts her hips forward, fighting this out for dominance, breathless. She didn’t come here for this. She must be drunk, she must be...
"My name is Yvonne," she says, and her fingers burn trails onto Lara's back, through the top, under the top. And Lara half expects to find marks when she gets home, twisting around in front of the mirror, looking for heated fingerprints claiming her back as someone else's.
--
When Lara turned sixteen, her parents kicked her out. It was all a big misunderstanding. She thought they were out for the night, and they thought she was straight. So, naturally, coming home at nine and seeing her head between the neighbour’s thighs was a bit of a shock for everyone involved. They were only her parents, so she wondered, sometimes, if was that big of a loss.
The first time Yvonne kissed a girl, she was playing doctor and her neighbor in the apartment complex complained of a broken heart. She scooted next to Yvonne on the family couch (bought with hard-earned American money) and kicked her feet (which Yvonne highly doubted was a symptom of heart disease) and said “Kiss me, and it’ll beat again.”
Around the time Lara was old enough to drink (legally) she settled on never having a real relationship. Relationships meant giving up too much. Giving up control, specifically. One-night stands, on the other hand got the job done. By the time she turned twenty-seven, the only numbers in her cell phone were for work, local food delivery, and the cab company. It might be sad if she thought about it.
There was a man, when Yvonne was in high school. They would have sex in his car during her lunch period, and after, grope for hastily-tossed clothing while watching the clock in the drive-thru. She got her first C that year. When she left for Columbia, her little sister wrote her a card that said "Good luck!" and tucked it into her bag. She didn't find it until packing for Christmas.
--
Lara’s dreams are wild that night.
The kind where she kicks off all the covers and alternates the shivers with the sweats.
She thinks she yells out, must have, because she startles to a noise, and no one else is home, the neighbors are quiet for once, the television is dark. She sees remnants of a forest, feels the wind at her back. The moon just over the horizon, bright, and full. Shakes it off, turns over and sleeps again, fitful.
The dreams come again, and this time she remembers. The gnashing of teeth, the sharpness that rips from her fingers as she claws at the earth, first, and then at the others. Everywhere is red, and red is everywhere. Behind her eyes and in front, liquid. The hunger inside her. The girl in the lavender (or was it white?) dress, running barefoot through the woods. She looks back, once, and Lara knows her face. Her heart leaps and she howls, muscles coiled.
She wakes up kneeling in bed, panting, heart racing. It doesn't get better after holding still and collecting her thoughts. She feels her stomach rise, and scrambles from the covers for the hallway bathroom, curling over the toilet, hacking up bile.
She doesn't call Yvonne, though she remembers, clearly, the pretty blond penning numbers and folding a paper crisply, handing it over with a smile, she remembers sliding it into her back pocket. She remembers tucking blond hair back and running her thumb across the smoothest cheek she'd ever felt.
She remembers everything, possibly, but how she got home, and how she manged to leave her livelihood at the bar. She calls in late to work, stops by Pink to pick up her laptop and blazer. Cindy gives her a raised eyebrow and her things.
Her phone rings the next night, and she doesn't know how Yvonne got her number (Cindy, damnit) but she did, and she can't not answer it, because she's already got her hand on the phone and she's pressing answer before she can think about things like consequences and her mind is a mess of gnashing teeth and pulsing hearts. "Hello?" and her voice is radiating this ridiculous need that she prays doesn't convey across the airwaves.
--
They meet for coffee. Tea, for Yvonne. Of course, she thinks. Her hand settles on Lara's while they wait. It's nicer than she thought it could be.
There are hours when they talk about mundane things like novels (Yvonne's favorite is To The Lighthouse, “Dense, for pre-med, right?”) and growing up (Lara's never left the city) and shoes (Yvonne likes Lara's but would never wear them, she says, laughing) and the sun sets and it's time to go, they both seem to sense it. Lara's hand tightens on Yvonne's. She can feel the words "I love you," beat in her heart. It makes her wish she'd eaten something. Her stomach is so empty, and she wants this so very much.
--
“I’m leaving.”
“What?”
“Not now, but. Soon.”
A breath. “Where?”
“England, probably. Maybe the West Coast.” She shrugs. “I wanted to tell you before this got serious, but...”
But it already has. Lara bares her teeth and it looks like a smile. She takes Yvonne’s hand. “Thanks for telling me.”
They walk a few more blocks in silence until the racing in her blood is too much and she can’t keep going like this, not with Yvonne’s hand is so soft, and her smile is so sweet, and her eyes crinkle at the side, and her hair is swept back so effortlessly, and Lara is against her in the space of a heartbeat, hands around Yvonne’s face, cupping her cheeks, lips against her’s, the rush of hunger and need pulsing through her muscles pushing her forward and holding her back.
It lasts for only moments, but they both pull away breathless.
Yvonne touches the tears in Lara’s eyes.
“I know.”