Fic: you'll end up where you were (Karl/OFC)
Dear Gods, what is this RPF madness. I DON'T EVEN KNOW.
Title: you'll end up where you were
Pairing: Karl/OFC
Length: 1300 words (what?!)
Rating: R?
Notes: The results of a case of writing-style envy and a little too much time doing nothing this afternoon. And I guess I kind of like how it turned out. Title and cut text from "3rd Planet" by Modest Mouse.
you’ll end up where you were
“There can be no reasonable expectation of this ending well.” She would like him to tell her that she is wrong, that is won’t end, that it is false or fatalistic to assume an ending to this - this thing between them, whatever it is, that has only barely begun.
“See, that’s where you’re wrong, love.”
Yes, she thinks. I like him, I really like this guy. “How’s that?”
“There’s nothing reasonable about this.”
She’s not sure how to interpret that - the words, the almost flat delivery, the slight movement of his right eyebrow. She turns to the window and stares at clouds for a full minute, during which time she absolutely does not think of songs about vain movie stars. Of course there’s nothing reasonable about this; he’s already written it on her thighs and her throat and the small of her back.
She is already marked and versed in the unreasonableness of the thing.
She wants a cigarette but decides she will make do with another drink. She wishes briefly for that bygone era of smoking on airplanes and tidy suits and pillbox hats, but that’s silly because she hates tidy suits and hats and honestly doesn’t like smoking that much either.
She kicks a bare foot out against the seat in front of her, deciding on her response.
“No, that’s not the part that’s wrong.”
“Oh?”
“I have no business throwing out words like expectation.”
- -
The precise moment it actually begins - ah, she is fooling herself if she thinks she is capable of pinning that down; time is circular and fleeting, moments and notions of such are ephemeral at best - when it begins is also when it ends. She knows this. Like buying milk or eggs, to enter into an affair is to know there is an expiration date. If only people came with little black ink date stamps: best by AUG 07 2011.
She could read it in his palm, perhaps. But aside from the lifestyle of her chosen profession, she is not a gypsy.
It’s in the shortened bow of his upper lip and the elegant length of his fingers and the perpetually-half-undone buttons of his shirt: he is not necessarily quantifiable.
She likes this about him.
- -
Most likely, it begins the first time she hears his name drop from the mouth of the director and she wonders if he tastes as good as he looks - not what he might be like to work with, not if he’s actually as big of a nerd as all that Trek press made him out to be, just lusty speculation.
That might have been the moment.
- -
A great floppy hat shades her delicate skin from the equatorial sun as she reads through colored pages of newly printed changes. It’s a disaster, she thinks, and she might mean him, she might mean the freshly-garbled dialogue they’re expecting her to spout today.
“It’s a disaster,” she laughs.
“It’s fucking ridiculous,” he agrees from the chair next to hers. He isn’t laughing.
It is the thirteenth time they’ve had this exact conversation. She is not the least bit superstitious, of course. She needs a smoke, and not one of those outrageous cigars he’s forever chomping on while looking dangerous and vaguely cartoonish.
- -
It’s not the first time she’s been fucked on an airplane. Long-standing member of the club, right. So, the urgency catches her by surprise. This isn’t just a mile-high lark, something to relieve the boredom. It’s sweat and scraping fingernails and rough muttered curses. Bruises she’ll add to the catalogue.
This is before the reasonable expectations conversation.
She rips a button from his shirt. She will find it later, much later, in her pocket, and wonder where it came from.
- -
The audition is a semi-formality, but important all the same. Collected brains and talent and words and chemistry - collected and tested in the sterility of an office with a few extra chairs. It makes her feel like a white rat or a rabbit in a cage. She thinks of herself in these small terms at times like this; there is something fucked up and/or Freudian there.
He, it turns out, is more like a dolphin in a water show, to keep with the caged animal metaphors. He is a grandly fun and friendly and ridiculous and makes some joke about a towel, and that is probably what makes her think of dolphins. So long and thanks for all the fish. He seems fully capable of bursting into song and flying to the moon.
He takes up space - physical, psychic. She can smell him - simple, man - and the lusty speculation kicks up a notch.
She stays cool - that is her role, here, there, everywhere - and the director and the producer and the collective seem to like what they see. Chemistry test: positive.
He shakes her hand both before and after the audition. It’s not the uncomfortable gesture it might have been; he looks her straight in the eye and smiles and - that, maybe that was the moment.
- -
Sometime in the third week of location shooting, she takes up smoking in earnest. To cover up her sudden nerves at being in an affair with this...man. To feel a little more European, put on a layer of sophistication, to tell herself she doesn’t care - it’s just a movie affair, right.
He doesn’t like the taste of it in her mouth - her reacquired bad habit.
“Tough,” she tells him. “I’m not overly fond of cigars, myself.”
It’s not a fight. She’s itching for a fight, the way she spits the words at him. But he just laughs and starts rolling up her skirt.
Fucking men.
- -
She’s living on coffee and vodka and cigarettes and it is entirely his fault.
She is losing her fucking cool. Lost it. Gone.
Not supposed to fall in love with your goddamn affairs, girl. That’s lesson number one.
- -
The slinky black dress with the cuts up to here and down to there is made for exactly this, the hasty reacquiring of each other in a small dark room - a closet, okay - during the premiere.
“Try not to leave any bruises this time, okay,” she requests rather politely while another part of her is wondering if they are missed at all. During the fucking premiere - what a cliche.
To stay cool, that is her role in all of this. But the corners of her eyes prick with tears when she realizes he hasn’t marked her at all.
She sips champagne at the party and wonders if it even happened. If she can’t feel his fingers or his breath or see the trails they left behind, did it even happen? The physicality is so tenuous, like a memory of a memory.
It has been months.
People should come with expiration dates. Affairs always have an expiration date. But only milk and eggs come with little black stamps to warn you.
She cries. Later. Crying over soured milk.
- -
It starts over drinks, actually.
The casting becomes official and he invites her out for a drink, very casual, the dolphin from down under (wrong country).
“I’ve always wondered about you,” she confesses easily. Potent potables on an empty stomach and voila! her tongue gets loose, along with the definition of always - she had no idea who he was until he was trying to kill Matt Damon in that one movie, and even then she barely thought of him afterwards.
“I doubt it,” he says, and it’s like he can read her fucking mind, that indulgent look in his eyes.
“I have, I really have.” She slaps her hand onto the bar for emphasis.
“It’s easy. I’m an open book.”
“That’s one of the top ten lies of all time. But you know that.”
“Maybe. What are the other nine?”
“I don’t remember,” she laughs.
They laugh. The sun is slipping past the water’s edge and it’s already dark in their corner of the universe. His thumb slides against her lower lip - the beginning and the end.
Title: you'll end up where you were
Pairing: Karl/OFC
Length: 1300 words (what?!)
Rating: R?
Notes: The results of a case of writing-style envy and a little too much time doing nothing this afternoon. And I guess I kind of like how it turned out. Title and cut text from "3rd Planet" by Modest Mouse.
you’ll end up where you were
“There can be no reasonable expectation of this ending well.” She would like him to tell her that she is wrong, that is won’t end, that it is false or fatalistic to assume an ending to this - this thing between them, whatever it is, that has only barely begun.
“See, that’s where you’re wrong, love.”
Yes, she thinks. I like him, I really like this guy. “How’s that?”
“There’s nothing reasonable about this.”
She’s not sure how to interpret that - the words, the almost flat delivery, the slight movement of his right eyebrow. She turns to the window and stares at clouds for a full minute, during which time she absolutely does not think of songs about vain movie stars. Of course there’s nothing reasonable about this; he’s already written it on her thighs and her throat and the small of her back.
She is already marked and versed in the unreasonableness of the thing.
She wants a cigarette but decides she will make do with another drink. She wishes briefly for that bygone era of smoking on airplanes and tidy suits and pillbox hats, but that’s silly because she hates tidy suits and hats and honestly doesn’t like smoking that much either.
She kicks a bare foot out against the seat in front of her, deciding on her response.
“No, that’s not the part that’s wrong.”
“Oh?”
“I have no business throwing out words like expectation.”
- -
The precise moment it actually begins - ah, she is fooling herself if she thinks she is capable of pinning that down; time is circular and fleeting, moments and notions of such are ephemeral at best - when it begins is also when it ends. She knows this. Like buying milk or eggs, to enter into an affair is to know there is an expiration date. If only people came with little black ink date stamps: best by AUG 07 2011.
She could read it in his palm, perhaps. But aside from the lifestyle of her chosen profession, she is not a gypsy.
It’s in the shortened bow of his upper lip and the elegant length of his fingers and the perpetually-half-undone buttons of his shirt: he is not necessarily quantifiable.
She likes this about him.
- -
Most likely, it begins the first time she hears his name drop from the mouth of the director and she wonders if he tastes as good as he looks - not what he might be like to work with, not if he’s actually as big of a nerd as all that Trek press made him out to be, just lusty speculation.
That might have been the moment.
- -
A great floppy hat shades her delicate skin from the equatorial sun as she reads through colored pages of newly printed changes. It’s a disaster, she thinks, and she might mean him, she might mean the freshly-garbled dialogue they’re expecting her to spout today.
“It’s a disaster,” she laughs.
“It’s fucking ridiculous,” he agrees from the chair next to hers. He isn’t laughing.
It is the thirteenth time they’ve had this exact conversation. She is not the least bit superstitious, of course. She needs a smoke, and not one of those outrageous cigars he’s forever chomping on while looking dangerous and vaguely cartoonish.
- -
It’s not the first time she’s been fucked on an airplane. Long-standing member of the club, right. So, the urgency catches her by surprise. This isn’t just a mile-high lark, something to relieve the boredom. It’s sweat and scraping fingernails and rough muttered curses. Bruises she’ll add to the catalogue.
This is before the reasonable expectations conversation.
She rips a button from his shirt. She will find it later, much later, in her pocket, and wonder where it came from.
- -
The audition is a semi-formality, but important all the same. Collected brains and talent and words and chemistry - collected and tested in the sterility of an office with a few extra chairs. It makes her feel like a white rat or a rabbit in a cage. She thinks of herself in these small terms at times like this; there is something fucked up and/or Freudian there.
He, it turns out, is more like a dolphin in a water show, to keep with the caged animal metaphors. He is a grandly fun and friendly and ridiculous and makes some joke about a towel, and that is probably what makes her think of dolphins. So long and thanks for all the fish. He seems fully capable of bursting into song and flying to the moon.
He takes up space - physical, psychic. She can smell him - simple, man - and the lusty speculation kicks up a notch.
She stays cool - that is her role, here, there, everywhere - and the director and the producer and the collective seem to like what they see. Chemistry test: positive.
He shakes her hand both before and after the audition. It’s not the uncomfortable gesture it might have been; he looks her straight in the eye and smiles and - that, maybe that was the moment.
- -
Sometime in the third week of location shooting, she takes up smoking in earnest. To cover up her sudden nerves at being in an affair with this...man. To feel a little more European, put on a layer of sophistication, to tell herself she doesn’t care - it’s just a movie affair, right.
He doesn’t like the taste of it in her mouth - her reacquired bad habit.
“Tough,” she tells him. “I’m not overly fond of cigars, myself.”
It’s not a fight. She’s itching for a fight, the way she spits the words at him. But he just laughs and starts rolling up her skirt.
Fucking men.
- -
She’s living on coffee and vodka and cigarettes and it is entirely his fault.
She is losing her fucking cool. Lost it. Gone.
Not supposed to fall in love with your goddamn affairs, girl. That’s lesson number one.
- -
The slinky black dress with the cuts up to here and down to there is made for exactly this, the hasty reacquiring of each other in a small dark room - a closet, okay - during the premiere.
“Try not to leave any bruises this time, okay,” she requests rather politely while another part of her is wondering if they are missed at all. During the fucking premiere - what a cliche.
To stay cool, that is her role in all of this. But the corners of her eyes prick with tears when she realizes he hasn’t marked her at all.
She sips champagne at the party and wonders if it even happened. If she can’t feel his fingers or his breath or see the trails they left behind, did it even happen? The physicality is so tenuous, like a memory of a memory.
It has been months.
People should come with expiration dates. Affairs always have an expiration date. But only milk and eggs come with little black stamps to warn you.
She cries. Later. Crying over soured milk.
- -
It starts over drinks, actually.
The casting becomes official and he invites her out for a drink, very casual, the dolphin from down under (wrong country).
“I’ve always wondered about you,” she confesses easily. Potent potables on an empty stomach and voila! her tongue gets loose, along with the definition of always - she had no idea who he was until he was trying to kill Matt Damon in that one movie, and even then she barely thought of him afterwards.
“I doubt it,” he says, and it’s like he can read her fucking mind, that indulgent look in his eyes.
“I have, I really have.” She slaps her hand onto the bar for emphasis.
“It’s easy. I’m an open book.”
“That’s one of the top ten lies of all time. But you know that.”
“Maybe. What are the other nine?”
“I don’t remember,” she laughs.
They laugh. The sun is slipping past the water’s edge and it’s already dark in their corner of the universe. His thumb slides against her lower lip - the beginning and the end.