Mari and Moirine go to high school together during the 90s and try to navigate their weird relationship while listening to riot grrl music and ok this is a Gone Home au more or less.
Mari Llewelyn was tall, with the healthy anemic complexion of any Celt and dark brown hair. Her eyes looked brown too, but Moirine Burrell knew they were actually green, when you looked at them up close. Moirine Burrell also knew that Mari Llewelyn’s mother was Irish, that Mari had seven siblings and that her dad was dead. She knew that Mari was upset by her dad being dead. She also knew that Mari liked to hang out by herself and that she sometimes skipped class to hang out with a redhaired boy behind the school. She had thought they might be dating but then she had overheard one of Mari’s brothers telling one of his friends that she was gay. Moirine didn’t know much about that.
Mari Llewelyn had spoken to Moirine Burrell once so far.
It happened like this: on Monday, at recess, Moirine had been heading to class, her sketchbook under her arm when a blur of flannel and and denim had smacked into her. “Here,” the blur had said, “hold this,” and then it had handed her a lit cigarette. The blur had moved off again, round a corner, and the gym teacher had come barrelling into the corridor and spotted Moirine, now holding the cigarette.
That was when she’d been given detention for possession of cigarettes on school property.
On Tuesday, she found out the talking blur was named Mari Llewelyn.
By Friday morning, she knew a lot about Mari Llewelyn. They shared homeroom together for one thing, although Mari was never in it, despite how badly Moirine needed to talk to her about her getting her into trouble. Once, during registration, she’d looked outside and seen Mari leaning against a tree, waving at her, and had had to be pulled back from the window by her seatmate. They shared a science class together, and math, and English, but Mari had been present for none of these. In art class, she drew a girl with short brown hair and ears that were too big for her head, then erased the portrait so viciously that her rubber ripped through the paper.
After school on Friday, she shuffled into detention with a heavy heart. She’d told her parents that the cigarette wasn’t hers, but they hadn’t listened. She’d told the gym teacher, who hadn’t listened either. An hour’s worth of detention seemed like a heavy price to pay for a crime she hadn’t committed. Sitting at the back, she curled her hands on her desk and wished she was anywhere else. Beside her came the sound of chair feet, being scraped over the classroom floor and someone fell into the seat beside her. "Hello," her seatmate said. It was Mari Llewelyn.
Moirine turned around, hissed, "You!"
"Me," Mari agreed, her eyebrows knitting together in confusion.
"No talking," the gym teacher said, from her place at the front of the room. She had a book to read. "You're both in here for deeply anti-social acts - cigarette smoking-"
"It wasn't-!"
"Be quiet! Cigarette smoking and vandalising school property by drawing sexual organs on it." Mari didn't deny this accusation. In fact, she grinned. "Why don't you both just sit quietly and think about how your actions have impacted negatively on the wider school community?" With that, the gym teacher pulled out a book and proceeded to ignore them.
They were silent for a while, Moirine stewing as the girl beside her fidgeted and stared out the window. After a few minutes, Mari tapped Moirine on the shoulder. When she threw a glare at the other girl, Mari pointed outside, to the parking lot. One of the cars was surrounded by a small group of students. They seemed to be in the process of setting it on fire. Mari was watching this with her chin in her hands. Moirine watched it too, throwing the occasional look to the gym teacher, who was apparently absorbed in her book. Finally, Moirine raised her hand. "Um, Miss?"
"What?" Moirine pointed outside, to the arsonists. “Oh for fuck’s sake,” the gym teacher said, staring out the window. “My fucking car!” Then she was rushing out of the room towards the burning vehicle as the kids on top of it scattered.
“Now’s our chance!” Mari Llewelyn whispered into Moirine’s ear and she jumped to her feet.
Moirine reached over, grabbing Mari’s arm. Mari looked at her expectantly, and Moirine dug her feet in, trying to make herself an anchor.
"What's wrong?" Mari grinned at her. "We're liberating ourselves! This is just. A just protest! You were wrongly imprisoned and I'm a political prisoner."
"Political prisoner? You drew a bunch of...rude stuff on the bathroom walls!"
"What?" Mari shrugged, pretending innocence. "The boys draw cocks all over their bathroom stalls, what's wrong with a few vaginas in ours? This regime is impeding my right to freedom of expression! I'm nearly 90% certain that imprisonment without trial goes against the Geneva convention! It's a violation of my right to free speech! Therefore, escaping from their prisons is just and correct."
"You..." Moirine's eyebrows knitted together. "How are you not permanently grounded?"
“One woman, eight kids,” Mari’s face seemed to almost scowl for a second. “I’d have to blow up the school to get a mediocum of attention. Must be nice, being an only child. Your parents can dedicate as much time as they want to screaming at you.” Moirine said nothing. She wasn't an only child, but she didn't even speak up to correct that. It had suddenly occurred to her that her parents hadn’t been that upset at all. They hadn’t said anything to her when they’d found out. They'd signed the detention form and said nothing else. She looked at the ground, her hand still wrapped around Mari’s forearm. Mari’s eyes dipped to the hand on her arm. “What, you wanna stay anyway?”
Moirine said nothing, then shook her head. “You should go,” she said. “If you don’t want to stay.”
Mari said nothing for a good while, then took Mari’s wrist and tugged, apparently guilty. “Look, come on, there’s a concert on tonight. I was going to head over there after school. Want to come?”
“What kind of concert?”
“The kind with music,” Mari said, impatient. “Come on!”
"No," said Moirine.
"Don't be a gloomy gus," Mari said and tugged again. Moirine let herself be tugged out of her seat. "Come on! I'll take you there. Make up for the," she scratched her cheek. "Cigarette I planted on you."
Moirine let herself be tugged out of her seat. "Alright," she said.
A new fact that Moirine Burrell had learned about Mari Llewelyn was that Mari Llewelyn could play the guitar. Another new fact that had come to light was the fact that Mari Llewelyn could sing. She could sing very well. Moirine Burrell knew these facts because Mari Llewelyn had played the guitar and sang to her, in her bedroom. These facts also stuck out in her mind because at the moment Mari had begun to strum the guitar and had opened her mouth, the second the first notes of ‘Wonderwall’ spilled out of her roughly coincided with the moment that Moirine Burrell decided she was in love.
She’d taken that back later. Nobody should fall in love during Wonderwall. But she had kissed her, and that had led to...well, it had led to more kissing. They nearly knocked over the glasses of juice Moirine's mother had poured for them. "Stop," Moirine said and Mari pulled away. Moirine's hands stayed where they were, on Mari's slim shoulders.
"Are you alright?"
"No," Moirine pulled back finally, put her face in her hands. That was strange. This was...strange. She'd thrown herself at a girl who'd tried to frame her for smoking at school, just because she'd played her a song. "No."
No this wasn't right at all. But what was oddest about it? She searched for the reasoning behind her sudden, visceral objection to having Mari's mouth on hers and found it. "Did you play 'Wonderwall'?"
"Yes," Mari said and reached proudly for her guitar.
"No," said Moirine.
"No?"
"I'm not..." she paused, took the time to untangle her tongue in her head. "I'm not falling for a girl who plays me Wonderwall!"
Mari hesitated, hand on her guitar. She lifted it back into her lap and seemed to consider. She strummed a few notes and moved into an intro. "Smashing Pumpkins? Drown?"
"Okay," Moirine conceded. "That's better."
"Am I kissable?" Mari asked, pausing her strumming. "Datable?"
"Datable?"
"You know, going out, messing around, linking up, hooking up, you know, you know?"
"Um." Mari switched back to wonderwall. "Yes," Moirine said. "No. Not when you play wonderwall."
Mari brought her gifts. Nothing so obvious as flowers. Mixtapes she could hand to her between classes, handwritten labels. Sometimes with puns in the titles, sometimes with hearts or sweet notes. Moirine pushed notes into her locker, with coded drawings. Mari came over once a week to serve as a tutor, and played footsie with her under the table as her parents sat watching television in the next room over, neither of them dumb enough to try anything. Moirine went to Mari’s house twice a week, or more. There were more private places on the farm to try and touch, or argue or simply be a couple, free of restraint.
On the ground in the sparse woodland surrounding the farm, they wrestled or kissed. Mari lined up glass bottles and they took it in turns to knock them over with a rock. They talked around the subject of the future, held hands, did homework, sat in silence and looked at the stars.
Moirine wakes up with a head full of bad dreams. School is grey. Life means something when you skip class to go to a restaurant with your girlfriend. In dark cinemas, empty afternoon showings, they kiss in public and nobody can stop them.
"Oh come on," Mari tried to pull out another cigarette. Moirine snatched the packet off her, and took one out, trying to seem tougher than she was. "It's none of your business anyway. It's my life. I can take it, you know?"
"It's-- It's upsetting," Moirine settled on, finally. They were standing alone in the woods behind the school, stood above a ridge. The scenery was beautiful; their conversation less so. "And I don't like it when you do that. Joke about...things like that."
"Don't be such a gloomy gus," Mari pushed her and smiled, but the smile didn't reach her eyes. Moirine's hands closed up into fists.
"Shut up!"
"Or what?" Mari leaned back on her heels, pushing Moirine's shoulder.
Mari was badly balanced, so the subsequent left hook Moirine landed on her sent her spinning, falling backwards. Before Moirine could do anything, she was disappearing over the ridge. Running to the edge of the hill, she watched helplessly as Mari tumbled and fell, landing face first in the river. She followed her, rushing down the hill. She tripped and stumbled; rolled an ankle and kept going, falling to her knees at the bottom of the hill. Winded and horrified, she placed a hand on Mari’s back. She had never before, never before in her life felt dread; now it pushed its way up from behind her liver, reaching up to grab her heart and lungs. “Mari,” she said. There was blood in a cloud, floating up the brackish water. “Mari!”
Mari rolled over, her face wet, red seeping from her nose. She looked up at Moirine with something not quite present in her gaze. Lifted her hand. Moirine took it. “Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” Moirine said back.
“I’m sorry for hitting you.”
“I hit you!”
“Oh,” Mari seemed to be looking around in her memory for the reel of tape. When she evidently came up empty, she shrugged. “Okay, I’m sorry you had to do that.”
Moirine started to say something, then cried out. She had tried to curl her fingers around Mari’s open hand, only to feel a sharp spike of pain rush through her. “Let me see,” said Mari and she held out her hand to her. Mari held it in front of her eyes, then laughed. “You broke your knuckle,” she explained. “You broke your knuckle on my head.”
“Your hard head,” Moirine said and lifted Mari’s head to let it rest on her lap.
“My nose hurts,” Mari said, sounding more surprised than anything else. With her good hand, Moirine wiped the blood from her face, dipping her hand into the muddy water to rinse it off. Mari reached for her hurt hand and, taking out a handkerchief, wrapped it tight. When she was satisfied the broken knuckle was taken care of, she closed her eyes. “I like you a lot,” she said to Moirine. “But I will be very upset if I have a concussion.”
“I said I was sorry.”
“I know,” Mari found her good hand with her eyes still closed and squeezed. “I’m sorry too.”
The zine was coming together okay in Mari's dad's old workshop. Moirine's drawings all over the pages, pictures of animals, people, illustrating stories and articles. There were a few other drawings too, and some anonymous poetry (Mari's poetry, but Mari had sworn Moirine to secrecy). She admired the work for a little while (tentatively titled 'Animals Against the Machine') and then turned to Mari, who was busy painting a tenative title page. "We're not a weird couple, are we?"
"How d'you mean, love?"
Moirine frowned. 'Love' out of anyone else's mouth sounded...cliche. Dumb. She wasn't sure if she liked it. But Mari's tongue did something to the word that made it - something more intimate than simply bearable. There was so much she didn't understand yet about how Mari made her feel. From the way she saw Mari look at her from time to time, from how she took her hand sometimes, from the intangible, wordless, inviolable language they communicated in when they were in each other's arms, she guessed she wasn't the only one still learning. "We're the weird couple who make zines. And are...both girls."
"Nah," Mari went back to her painting. "We're the cutest couple in school."
"Really?" Moirine asked, eyebrow raised.
"Yeah, I mean, it's 50% me, it's got to be cute." Mari grinned at her. Moirine shoved her shoulder.
"Come on," she mumbled.
“We’re not too weird a couple at any rate," Mari said, eyes down. "You know the Korean guy? The basketball player?”
“The one with the dead twin?”
“Yeah,” when Mari rubbed her chin, the poster paint stained over her jaw, giving her an orange beard. Moirine giggled and gestured for her to come closer. Holding her cheek in one hand, she wiped the paint off with a clean cloth. “He’s dating that nerdy girl from the debating club. Er, Dancer or whatever.”
"I didn't know that."
"It doesn't seem to be obvious," Mari said. "But I saw them kissing down by the river, and holding hands in the music store. She had a stack of Mahler and he had a bunch of Madonna."
She turned her head as Moirine wiped her skin clean. Moirine sighed. “I’m sure there are weirder couples than us. But we’re very strange.”
“And charming, in a John Hughes kind of way. You’re the princess and I’m the archetypal bad boy.”
“Archetypical bad boys aren’t girls with paint moustaches,” Moirine pointed out.
Mari kissed her. "Now you've got paint on your face too."
Moirine reached for the paintpot and threw the contents at Mari, staining her white t-shirt blue. Mari retaliated, with green, and then purple. They turned into a rainbow together, in the little workshop. In a little wooden shack, stained with light and colour, Mari reached out and held her hand.
"You make me happy again," she said.
Edited 2014-04-30 00:22 (UTC)
i am gonna make it through this year, if it kills me
Mari’s room was better than the woods behind the school, but only by a hair. The walls were paper thin and, covers pulled up to her chin, Moirine could hear one of Mari’s numerous siblings cough across the house. One of the family’s dogs barked and Moirine suddenly regretted not asking if one could sleep in the room with them. It wasn’t suspicious, was it? To have a dog to play with during a sleepover? Mari’s arm was thrown around her, one of Mari’s legs tangled over hers, and there was no way anyone walking in right now could see the two of them and think, ‘friendly sleepover.’
“Are you awake?” Moirine asked, as soft as she could.
“Yeah. Yeah,” Mari rolled over, her hand coming to rest on a discarded, half-full pizza box. “Shit, sorry.”
The TV was still on, buzzing soft static into the air. With everything so dark and quiet, this room felt like a world in and of itself. Or it did, until another cough rattled through the house. “Shit,” Mari said again. “Bleddyn’s got to get that cold sorted out.”
Moirine put her arms around her and rested her head in the crook of her girlfriend’s arm. “If anyone walks in,” she said. “They’re going to know.”
“I don’t think my mam will care,” Mari said and frowned. She shook her head. “No, definitely not. She was alright with it when my brother came out. Maybe she’d be upset what with the having you over under a false pretext thing.” She stopped to think again, one hand lazily searching for the remote. “Or the premarital sex. Actually, mostly the premarital sex.”
Moirine shoved her, then slipped her hands up Mari’s dumb tartan pyjamas. God, she thought, even as she kissed her girlfriend’s hurt ear, pick a Celtic country motif and stick with it. Welsh accent, Irish mother, Scottish pyjamas...at this rate she’d be speaking Cornish or claiming to come from Brittany before the night was through… “I don’t want to get in trouble,” she said, to the wrong ear.
“Didn’t hear you,” Mari said, eyes on the ceiling. There was a poster up there, the lead singer of one of those bands Mari was into, all short hair and wild with energy, even in photos. They didn’t look like Moirine did; Mari’s favourite was tall, blonde and brown eyed, all sharp edges and androgynous t-shirts, tattooed and pierced. The opposite of Moirine.
“Do you like me?” She asked Mari’s poor ear, her hand resting above Mari’s heart, between her small breasts.
“Still can’t hear you.” Another cough rattled the walls. “Fuck’s sake,” Mari said, “I’m going to head over there and force some cough drops down his throat.” But she didn’t move. Moirine kissed her throat, Moirine’s nose pressed against her jaw; through her lips Moirine felt the vibration of a sigh well up inside her girlfriend. Mari reached over to touch her and another cough cut through their moment. Moirine lay her head on Mari’s chest. There was an empty vinyl sleeve propped up against the cupboard nearby; TV still churning out static, old record player by the door and the mess of two pizza boxes littering the floor. She placed one of her hands on Mari’s stomach and withdrew it at the sound of another cough; counted to ten. Her parents wouldn’t allow Mari to sleep over in a hundred years. Until they both left school and got a place together, this was the closest they had to being together, a real couple. Another cough. “I’m going to tell him to shut up,” Mari said, sitting up.
Somewhere down the hall a door opened and they heard a voice shout into the corridor, “Either shut up or sleep outside, Bleddyn!” Someone next door laughed; a third voice rebuked the shouter for being mean. Around them the house woke up and descended into a cacophony of arguments, noise and advice to help with Bleddyn’s cough. Moirine laughed, but beside her Mari had gone rigid with embarrassment.
“Just a few months more,” she mumbled.
“What?”
“Til we graduate,” she said and rolled over onto her side.
They mocked up band posters and came up with hypothetical band names in Mari's basement. One of her older brothers would sometimes sneak them a couple of beers, if they paid him. Sprawled out on the hardwood floor, judgement impaired by alcohol and paint fumes, they talked quietly.
"I like 'The Killers'," Mari said. "For a band name."
"No, it's too good," Moirine told her, secretly thinking it was a bit too violent. When she held her hand up in front of her face, the edges blurred. "Someone else probably has it."
"Yeah," Mari agreed, and took another swig of her cheap beer. "I like the poster, though." It was a painting of a guitar and a ukulele, their necks crossed. "Whatever name we have, has to be as good as the painting."
Moirine murmured an agreement. Mari laid her head on her shoulder and Moirine stroked her hair. "Are you going to fall asleep?"
"No."
"You look dumb when you sleep."
"I know."
"And you drool..."
"I know..."
"Especially when you drink."
"Especially," Mari agreed and then kissed her on the forehead. "I'm awful."
"I still like you," Moirine said suddenly.
"I know," Mari said. "We should go to prom together."
"I don't think anyone would be happy about that," Moirine said, her voice soft.
"Yeah," Mari admitted, voice trailing off.
"And you'd have to wear a suit."
"No."
"A nice suit."
"No."
Moirine tugged at Mari's t-shirt. "With a vest, and a tie."
"Hmmm."
"Your brother might have some. Well...one of them...you have about twenty."
"Four," Mari corrected. "Four brothers. Three sisters."
"Maybe one of them has a spare?"
"Hmmmm," Mari said. "I'll see."
"Now?"
"Ah, geez," Mari sat up and rubbed the back of her head. "Ah, geez. Owain might have one."
On the ground, Moirine giggled and rolled over. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, twenty minutes had passed and Mari was sitting next to her. "Did you put on a nice suit?"
"Open your eyes and see," Mari said, pulling Moirine's head into her lap. She was still wearing her ratty jeans, but she had on a nice blouse, and a tie borrowed from somewhere.
The rocks bouncing off the window were what woke Moirine up. Though, to tell the truth, she hadn’t been sleeping. She’d been lying in bed half awake, listening for sounds from the hallway. She listened again, and once more heard the distinctive sound of gravel cascading against glass. Swinging her legs off the bed, she pushed the window open and stuck her head out. “Mari!” she hissed, knowing only one person who’d dare sneak to the Burrell household this late.
Mari was crouching down by the bushes, gathering up more dirt and stones. “Hey!” She called back, in a stage whisper. “What’s up!”
“Get out of here! My dad’ll kill you if he sees you.”
“No he won’t, that’s illegal.”
“Shut up.”
“I’m coming up,” Mari told her. "We need to talk."
"No we don't!"
"We do!"
“I’ll come down,” Moirine sighed, knowing she couldn’t convince her to butt out.
When she came through the door into the gathering night, Mari was waiting for her. She fell into her arms, crashed against her, and her lips pressed against Mari’s. Mari held her, somehow solid despite everything. They looked into each other’s eyes. “I have a car,” Mari said, slowly. “We have all night.”
“We have forever,” Moirine said, and took her hand.
She was in line for a coffee when she spotted her, waiting at the counter. Ten, god, ten years? Eleven? She looked older than that now, familiar and very unfamiliar all at once. The only thing Moirine recognised were her elbows, sharp below her pastel cardigan. Mari was staring intently into space. Receiving her coffee she thanked the barista and took a sip, turning around. Their eyes locked; Moirine glanced away, but Mari had recognised her too, was stepping towards her.
“Moirine? Moirine Burrell?”
Moirine turned and pulled out a painful, tight smile. “Hi,” she said, preparing for awkwardness. Mari stepped towards her and, hesitating a little, held out her hand. They shook formally, two pumps.
“Been a while,” Mari said.
“Yeah,” Moirine said back to her. She didn’t know what else to say. Mari looked back at her coffee. Moirine was still three places back in the queue. This felt unreal, like they were on a TV show, the whole coffee shop an audience. “Ten years.”
“Eleven,” Mari confirmed. “Well,” she looked back down at her coffee, trying to figure out what to say. “I won’t keep you.”
“Alright,” Moirine said, feeling relieved more than anything else. Mari nodded and stepped away, leaving the coffee shop, waving over her shoulder. Neither of them vocalised a goodbye; it had been said more than enough ten years ago. Eleven, she reminded herself, and moved up in the queue as another person left it to collect their drink. Her hand still tingled with the pressure of the handshake.
She put the meeting out of mind. There were rewrites to concentrate on, rehearsals to get right, parts to workshop. By the end of the week she was exhausted, as were the others, so when the leading man suggested they all go out for pies at a nice place he knew, she agreed, only so she wouldn’t have to do any cooking once she got home.
The pies at Tweedle Dee’s were good and tasted nutritious, even if, she was sure, they were full of empty calories. And Richie was good company to sit next to, quiet Ava, playing her character’s sister beside her. She got so caught up in listening to the others talk, that when Richie elbowed her gently, she genuinely jumped. “There’s a lady over there who keeps looking over at us,” he whispered into her ear.
“Maybe she likes you,” Moirine whispered back, searching for the lady he was talking about. There were three seated tables ahead of them, one featuring two men chatting quietly, their heads close together. Another had a small family, but the mother seated with her back to them; a third a group of teenagers who were caught up in themselves. And at the counter, the manager, head down, apparently absorbed in a newspaper.
“I am extraordinarily handsome,” Richie agreed. “But I don’t think she’s looking at me.”
He held up his phone at an angle, the camera on. They stared into the screen together, able to see the rest of the dining room now, while looking as though they were sharing a text, or checking out an app. They scanned the diners again, and then it happened; the manager looked up from the paper to frown at them. Moirine gasped. It was Mari. “That’s the lady?” She asked, tapping the screen so that it focused on her face. “The one that’s been looking at us all night?”
“You know her?”
“Yes,” said Moirine, but couldn’t complete that thought. Yes, she knew her. “I’ll talk to her,” she said and stood up, walking over to the counter.
Mari had gone back to the newspaper. Moirine could remember a time when she would have ripped the paper out of her hands and thrown it to the ground. But they were both so different now. So she waited instead. Mari lowered the paper and they looked at each other. Mari cleared her throat. “Just to be safe,” she said. “You’re not stalking me, are you?”
“No!”
“Great,” Mari tapped her paper. Moirine watched her. Somehow, the memory of Mari she’d kept with her had been taller. Her hair looked grey too, in places. She couldn’t be more than thirty, thirty one. But there were lines under her eyes that suggested otherwise. “Just-- turning up to the place I always get coffee, then my business…”
“I thought this was Dee Cosimo’s place?”
“Nah,” Mari shook her head. “It was, but she was shit with financing, so I bought it off her before the bank could take it. She still runs the kitchens. I do all the rest.”
“What happened to being a doctor?” Moirine asked. Mari lowered her eyes, then shrugged.
“You still an actress?”
“Yeah,” said Moirine, glancing back towards her table.
“Cool,” Mari rubbed her jaw. "Saw you in that show last year."
"Two years ago," Moirine corrected.
"You were very good."
"I was only in it for an episode."
"Very good," Mari said again. "They'd be dumb not to bring you back."
"It's ending this season," Moirine said.
"Ah well," Mari was fumbling for the right thing to say. "I'm not a regular watcher."
"That's alright." This was awkward.
"Well," Mari said. "This has been grand." Not the word she would use. Moirine nodded and stepped away from the counter. Mari put her face in her hands. "I like my chefs," she said. "But they make shit coffee. Want to go find a better place? Talk for real?"
Moirine nodded, yes, alright, fine. Mari got her coat and called into the kitchen that she'd be back in the morning and Moirine said goodnight to her castmates and they went out walking. But they didn't find a single coffee place that was open, so they moved their stroll out towards the harbour, as though the ocean would be their witness.
Despite the summer, the night was cool and a breeze rolled in off the sea and chilled Moirine, in her light dress and cardigan. Mari noticed. “Are you cold?”
Moirine shook her head, then changed her mind and nodded, Yes.
“Okay,” Mari said and took off her thick jacket. She helped Moirine do up the zip and then button it as well. It smelled like Mari did. Mari put her arm around her and Moirine leaned her head against her shoulder and for a second, ten years, a decade, had never passed; time had pulled itself inwards and she was twenty again and they were together. It couldn’t last; she shrugged Mari’s arm off her shoulders and began to unbutton the jacket.
“We made such a mess,” she sighed. It had taken her years to sweep up the debris of her broken heart.
Hands in her pockets, Mari watched. “We’re,” she started, stopped. Started again. “We left each other because...the stuff we needed was in different directions, I guess.”
“I guess,” Moirine echoed, her voice hollow. Mari had slipped her hands into her pockets and was watching her, head cocked. That was a new pose; she wondered who she’d learned it from.
“Well,” Mari looked at her feet. She still wore jeans, but differently than before; a different cut, different colour, different style. Dress shoes now, instead of converses; a blouse instead of the band t-shirts. She even smelled slightly different, the trace of her on the jacket mingled with the smell of baked pastry. No more sneaked cigarettes on her breath. Moirine felt almost a little childish. But then she had changed too, hadn’t she? A new haircut, different make-up, a different way of holding herself that’d come from days of drama courses and nights of improv lessons. She didn’t dress so much like - how had Mari put it once? A constipated Sunday school teacher. Moirine smiled at the memory and folded her hands and looked at the ground too. Mari was still struggling for words. That was new as well; she was quiet, all of a sudden. There were silences now, when they walked, or ate, or drove. The silence of a person who’d realised, finally, that this world was not something that they could win, not the way they wanted to. “I think maybe, I mean. Our interests now - they kind of align, don’t they?”
“What are you talking about?” She asked and saw Mari flinch. Regroup.
“I want to try again,” Mari said, after a long moment. “I miss you. I’ve been…” her jaw set, but then she sighed and wiped her face with a hand. “I guess I didn’t realise how much I still miss you until you walked back into my life. There’s a hole in my heart where you used to be, and the memories I keep in there aren’t doing shit to keep it stopped up.”
They both let that hang in the air between them, looking away. There was a respectable distance between them now, a good foot or so. The words filled it up. Moirine took one of her hands. “Do you remember,” she asked, “when I woke you up?”
“You woke me up a lot,” Mari said.
“The time when the dogs were barking outside. And we could hear your brother coughing from across the house.” She could tell from the smile on Mari’s face that she knew, she remembered. “We talked about how easy it would be, when we graduated. How easy everything would be, when we were out of that little town.” Mari’s smile had faded. She’d turned, to look out at the pier, chin low so that the corner of her collar obscured a part of her face.
“It’s never that easy though,” she conceded. “Is it? Never as easy as you imagine it’ll be.”
“No,” Moirine agreed. Had either of them truly been prepared for the relationship that they’d had? Had they been old enough for it? Had they learned enough about the world, about themselves? She let go of Mari’s hand and stood next to her, watching the waves on the ocean roll gently to meet the sand, over and over, an unbreakable cycle. The jacket around her shoulders provided more than enough protection from the wind and she felt safe and sound within. Her knuckles brushed Mari’s, but neither of them spoke. It was enough, for now, to stand on the pier and watch the ocean as the tides changed and the water spread as far as either of their eyes could see.
The cottage was shitty and small and it smelled like must. Five people, two bedrooms, meant space was a premium. They were used to small spaces by now. Katsuo slept on the couch, Rea on top of him some nights, somewhere else the others. With Myja, he figured, the times she wasn’t with him. When she was on top of him, things got a little easier, the extra weight on his chest compressing his heart and keeping him there. If he woke up in a panic, all he needed was to look down and see her mussed up hair, her head on his chest, to hold her hand, and he felt - not okay. Things were rarely okay for him, even here. But he didn’t feel as bad.
Sometimes they chatted quietly, nonsensically. Sometimes they cuddled, all warm and secure. But tonight he was calm, and it was enough to hold her hand, feel her weight on his chest and watch the fan above make those odd whup-whup-whup-whup sounds as it rotated slowly, pushing stale air around the room. Rea yawned in her sleep and he put his free hand over the side of her face, to block out the moonlight. Or the...sunlight. Nothing seemed right in this weird landscape, only the sensation that this had somehow happened before gnawing away in his gut like a parasite.
He squeezed Rea’s hand and with through a haze of sleep she squeezed his hand back and let out a small noise. Even asleep, even unconscious, she tried to tell him everything would be okay. “Rea,” he said, but couldn’t think of anything else to say after that. She made a mumbling noise, like she was trying to reply. He put his other hand on her head. He squeezed her hand.
She squeezed back. Sometimes he tried to picture the end of all this, after he’d killed the inugami, after everything was over. What would they do? Go home to different worlds? Even at home they’d be in different countries - Japan and...fuck, the USA, right? Canada? He’d never actually asked. He didn’t know what to say, what he was supposed to say. Sometimes, late at night, everything felt like it was speeding towards some kind of conclusion. This all had happened before, he just couldn’t shake that sensation. He squeezed her hand. She squeezed back. Everything felt all messed up, like a swirling cloud of pain was heading their way. He squeezed her hand. Sometimes, there was a ball in his chest, tangling up his organs around it. She squeezed back.
Maybe staying here was key. He squeezed her hand. Maybe they should shut off their spaceship and stay on this little planet, for the rest of time. She squeezed back. Maybe this was where they could be safe, here, Wayward Son against the rest of the universe. We just need somewhere we can be safe, he thought, and lay in the dark and listened to the cottage breathe.
Dinner table. Soup by Silk. Rea had a fork. Katsuo lifted up his spoon. Rea lifted her fork and made it bow to his fork. Despite himself, Katsuo smirked. “The spoon says hello.”
“The fork is confused,” Rea explained. “The fork thought it was fake chicken nugget night.”
“The fork is useless.”
“The spoon is just jealous because it will never be as shiny and sharp as the fork.”
“The spoon says haha, good luck eating anything tonight.”
“The spoon’s kind of a dick.”
“Yeah…” Under the table his toes clumsily, gently, collided with her shin. He didn’t know how to do this. She reached over and took his spoon. He took it back. “I better watch the spoon. It’s up to something.”
They looked at each other. For a second he thought he might say something. He thought she might say something. They watched each other’s faces and discovered that they didn’t have to say anything. She bumped her toes gently into his shin. “Cool,” she said.
Katsuo and Rea have worked out which pots are the ones they can’t eat out of through trial and error. They know what times they can enter the kitchen and find someone else cooking. Their know whose cooking to avoid. They know everything there is to know about space travel, more than any astronaut. Any astronaut would feel sheer envy to see them, imperfect as they are, so perfectly wonderful at travelling through space and time. No astronauts could fuck with them, no NASA scientist could build a fort the way they do, no rocket could match their brilliance.
Rea builds a fort out of blankets and pillows. He knows it’s her fort because one of her sneakers is sticking out the entrance. The others don’t wear converses. The others don’t build forts in the bedroom. Katsuo pats her ankle by way of knocking. “Come in,” she says, so he comes in and lays on his stomach beside her in the dark. “Welcome,” she says.
“Hey,” he says. They lie in the dark in silence. Shoulder to shoulder, the silence a nice kind of awkward, a familiar darkness. He can’t see her, but he can hear her breathe, feel the warmth of her body beside him.
“This is nice,” she says after a little while. He can tell she’s trying to be genuine. It feels kinda genuine too, a nice warm sentiment that bubbles in his stomach and disperses into butterflies. He rests his hand on the small of her back. He’s still having the dreams, where he walks into a house and the insides are stained red and he squeezes her hand and she doesn’t squeeze back.
He needed to feel...useful. So he chopped herbs for Myja and fetched water for her potions. The water was on the other side of the settlement - the cottages all bundled up and bunched in a group, the well elsewhere. When he walked to the well and looked back, all the cottages teemed together, grouped themselves up.
When he walked back, the little houses seemed to grow together and it took him a while to find the right one, banging on the door. It took a moment for the door to open. When it did, the person inside the house wasn't Rea or Myja and he felt his chest tighten. "Who're you?"
"Who're you?" The person asked, looking annoyed.
"Who the fuck are you? What the fuck are you doing here?" He fell into anger before he worked out fully what happened, his jaw setting. He dropped the buckets, the water spilling out and into the mud.
“Hey,” Rea’s voice. He turned, the spilled water churning the dust to mud under his feet. His heart was pounding in his chest and adrenaline was rushing through him. Rea was here. He lowered his fists and stepped back, standing next to her. His heart was pounding. His hand found one of her wrists. “Hey,” she said. “We’re over one.”
“Right,” he said. It did sound right, coming from Rea. He glanced at the cottage in front of him, but the owner had closed the door. Shit. “Over one.”
“Right.”
“I spilled the water,” he said. “I’ll go get some more.”
She didn’t offer to come with him and he felt relieved, knowing she wasn’t treating him like some kind of basket case. But then he looked over his shoulder and saw her step back into the shadows between the two houses and realised she’d been waiting for him to make the slip up. He threw the bucket on the ground and left it there.
“You’re okay,” Detective Burrell said, folding Mari’s arms over her chest for her. Mari shuddered a little and felt more than a little bit sick. “You’re okay.”
“I’m okay,” Mari repeated, lying to herself. She couldn’t hear herself speak, not properly. Not the way she should be able to. It was muffled and distant, a ringing in one ear drowning out everything else. She was beginning to shake.
“Stay with me,” Detective Burrell said, her eyes on her. “Stay with me, okay? Keep your eyes on mine.”
“You’re so good at this,” Mari said. “So good at this. Even for a police officer. You’re good. You’re going to make captain.” She thought she saw Moirine blush and reached up to stroke her face. “My ear feels weird,” she told her.
“That’s normal,” said Detective Burrell. “When you get smacked in the ear with a revolver, I mean.”
“Goddamn,” Mari said. “Fuck. Motherfucker!"
"Just because you can't hear you, doesn't mean you should swear."
"Fuck you in the fucking face you lemon fucking dick face."
Detective Burrell made a face like someone who'd just, appropriately, bitten into a lemon. Detective Llewelyn stuck her tongue out at her, but felt guilty. After a decent amount of silence, she cleared her throat. "Frick. Frick you in the fricking face, lemon fricker."
"That's not much better."
"Wanna cut me some slack?" Detective Llewelyn asked, Detective Burrell swimming in and out of her vision. "Just got whacked up the head with a fricking gun."
“See? I told you.” Detective Burrell frowned and swatted at her, Detective Llewelyn leaning back enough that she missed. Llewelyn threw a fry at her. Burrell kicked her under the table. At the table behind them, Sergeant Dee turned around and subjected both detectives to her silencing, accusatory stare. “She started it.”
“I don’t care who started it,” Dee said. “I’ll be the one to finish it if the two of you don’t pull yourselves together.”
“Some dinner date this is,” Mari mumbled.
“It’s not a dinner date,” Moirine said. “This is a stake-out. What kind of adult would take their date to a burger joint?”
“A reasonably priced burger joint,” Mari corrected.
"I swear to god," Dee muttered through gritted teeth behind them.
"Ha!" Said Mari. "It's a steak out. Get it? Steak? Steak? Like the food? Steak?"
"I hate you," Moirine told her. "I do. I really do."
"You're my everything."
"Are you being serious or not?"
"Would I really confess my love for you at a burger joint?"
"A reasonably priced burger joint."
"I wouldn't steak any bets on our future. Maybe I don't have a big steak in this. Don't burger on it."
"You're losing it."
"That really was weak. Sorry, I got confused, the perp walked in and I was concerned with looking natural."
"He's the guy with the grey wig?"
"Yeah."
"I was wondering why Cosimo hadn't strangled you."
"She's sent me a lot of angry texts," Detective Llewelyn was watching their target in her compact mirror, pretending to adjust her hair as he was shown to a seat behind them. Burrell could keep both her partner and the target in view at the same time, if she angled herself slightly.
"Are you playing footsie with me?"
"A little." Llewelyn shrugged. "We're supposed to be a couple, right?"
"In a burger joint."
"A reasonably priced burger joint."
"Let it go."
"You're cold," Mari paused. "Frozen, even. Ow! Don't kick me under the table!"
"Oh shush, I didn't do that." Moirine took her shoes off under the table and clumsily propelled her toes into Mari's shin trying to play footsie.
"Ouch!"
"Sorry, okay!"
"Gently, gently!"
"Alright, alright..."
"This is the weirdest job ever."
"Sh, he's coming this way," Moirine took Mari's hand and they tried their best to stare lovingly into each other's eyes as their target passed them on his way to the bathroom. As the door slammed shut, they dropped the act.
"How long can we keep this up?"
"As long as possible," Dee answered from behind them. They looked at each other and rolled their eyes. It would be a long night.
“How was it?” Hyun asked. Rhea looked up at him, half a pancake still sticking out her mouth. There was syrup on her nose and he wiped it off with a napkin while she daintily swallowed the huge pancake she’d stuffed into her mouth.
“Nice,” she told him. “It was nice.”
“Just a nice place.”
“Nice view. Just kinda wish…”
“What?”
“Wish I could’ve seen it millions of years ago. What made it that way.”
Hyunsoo leaned back in his chair and nodded thoughtfully. "A river, right?"
"About seventeen million years ago," she nodded, cutting her pancakes into smaller pieces. "Maybe it would be better to watch it speeded up. Like how they do it with films of flowers blooming?"
"The camera would have to be on for a long time."
"Yeah," undone by this thorn in her plan, Rhea frowned and dipped her pancake into some syrup. "It'd be nice, though."
Hyun nodded in agreement. He reached over and placed his hand over hers. "Wanna go to Paris, next year?"
"Yes," she said and nodded too. "I'd love to see the Eiffel Tower." As Hyun smirked, she knitted her eyebrows together. "Is that a sex thing?"
"No..." he thought for a moment. "Yeah. Yeah, it kinda is...but that's not why I was smiling." He squeezed her hand. "I'm glad we're together."
"Me too," she told him and kissed him quickly on the lips. "Me too."
Hyunsoo eyed Acoustic carefully from across the room, taking his time to double check the list. “Hey,” he said. “Noona.”
“Yeah?” Rhea looked up from the couch.
“What’s the name of those ugly hypoallergenic cats? The ones that look like gremlins.”
“Sphynx cats,” Rhea looked back at her book. “But Siberian long haired cats are pretty good for allergies too. Why?”
“Checklist,” he mumbled.
“Oh,” Rhea looked at him, then back to her book. “Okay.”
Hyun’s checklist, as had become apparent to Rhea, was something Hyun had to figure out for himself. When he got back from work, he would prowl through their apartment looking for sharp corners to buff out, low surfaces, places fingers could get jammed, electrical sockets. Anything that might be a danger. He skimmed catalogues for childproof locks and doorstops, to keep doors open, to keep them from slamming shut on little fingers.
At night, at the end of a rough day, picturing all that could so easily go wrong, he would sit on the bed beside his wife and place a hand on her heavily pregnant stomach and try to calm down.
Rhea had her own coping methods. There were charts she’d formulated, lists and books to memorise. There were ideas, trends to figure out. Did parent-baby yoga classes help later in life? Did classical music? He could see her moving her lips slightly as she read through studies and worked shit out in her head. Different ways of coping.
"I'm nervous," he told her one night, as she flipped through a book.
And in the shade of Trellick Tower I spent a while trying to keep you tell all the people moving on, “hey something holy used to live here” now I’m a relic of a love gone by kneeling to address the sky
Yeah, when the crack sounds in the wood, you will know that I'm down for good. When the crack sounds in the wood you will know, old friend, that I'm down for good.
I want to try to stand my ground; dig my heels into the hills. Hope someone will come to write my ballads. No one will.
If you weren't so stupid, I could have loved you. And if you weren't so stupid, but you're pretty stupid. And if you weren't so busy, I could have loved you. But you work in an office and you've got other offers.
But let's not be friends, or else this will never end. Let's not be friends for sure, for sure.
And if you weren't so ugly, I could have loved you. It's something I tell myself when I'm down to get high. Lord. If you made me a coffee, I could have loved you. And I'd make you hot chocolate and anything you wanted.
Tell me, who is invited? So fucking delighted to see all the boys, you see. Tell me, why don't I fight it? What does it say about me?
And let's not be friends, or else this will never end. Let's not be friends for sure, for sure.
We'd adopt, we'd have dogs. I have all the things he's got. But I'm not.
So let's not pretend that there'll be a happy end. Let's not be friends for sure, for sure.
From the liquor stores to the train stop floors your filthy room, your drama blues I'm nothing if I'm not with you always right, always wrong dressed in black is like loving you theres nothing I haven't worn nothing I haven't said before
Remember when you lost your shit and Drove the car into the garden And you got out and said I’m sorry To the vines and no one saw it I need my girl I need my girl
I wanna hurry home to you Put on a slow, dumb show for you and crack you up So you can put a blue ribbon on my brain God, I'm very, very frightened, I'll overdo it
and i saw you pull your hair back. saw you messing with your earrings. saw you trying to smile. hey! you don't have to smile for me. the moon was rising over bridlington. and you had blood all over your hands. something was cracking in the rafters of our house. and you had blood all over your hands.
You can stand up, or you can run. You and I both know what you've done, And I will carry you home. I will carry you home. I will carry you home in my teeth.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
90s
detention
Mari Llewelyn had spoken to Moirine Burrell once so far.
It happened like this: on Monday, at recess, Moirine had been heading to class, her sketchbook under her arm when a blur of flannel and and denim had smacked into her. “Here,” the blur had said, “hold this,” and then it had handed her a lit cigarette. The blur had moved off again, round a corner, and the gym teacher had come barrelling into the corridor and spotted Moirine, now holding the cigarette.
That was when she’d been given detention for possession of cigarettes on school property.
On Tuesday, she found out the talking blur was named Mari Llewelyn.
By Friday morning, she knew a lot about Mari Llewelyn. They shared homeroom together for one thing, although Mari was never in it, despite how badly Moirine needed to talk to her about her getting her into trouble. Once, during registration, she’d looked outside and seen Mari leaning against a tree, waving at her, and had had to be pulled back from the window by her seatmate. They shared a science class together, and math, and English, but Mari had been present for none of these. In art class, she drew a girl with short brown hair and ears that were too big for her head, then erased the portrait so viciously that her rubber ripped through the paper.
After school on Friday, she shuffled into detention with a heavy heart. She’d told her parents that the cigarette wasn’t hers, but they hadn’t listened. She’d told the gym teacher, who hadn’t listened either. An hour’s worth of detention seemed like a heavy price to pay for a crime she hadn’t committed. Sitting at the back, she curled her hands on her desk and wished she was anywhere else. Beside her came the sound of chair feet, being scraped over the classroom floor and someone fell into the seat beside her. "Hello," her seatmate said. It was Mari Llewelyn.
Moirine turned around, hissed, "You!"
"Me," Mari agreed, her eyebrows knitting together in confusion.
"No talking," the gym teacher said, from her place at the front of the room. She had a book to read. "You're both in here for deeply anti-social acts - cigarette smoking-"
"It wasn't-!"
"Be quiet! Cigarette smoking and vandalising school property by drawing sexual organs on it." Mari didn't deny this accusation. In fact, she grinned. "Why don't you both just sit quietly and think about how your actions have impacted negatively on the wider school community?" With that, the gym teacher pulled out a book and proceeded to ignore them.
They were silent for a while, Moirine stewing as the girl beside her fidgeted and stared out the window. After a few minutes, Mari tapped Moirine on the shoulder. When she threw a glare at the other girl, Mari pointed outside, to the parking lot. One of the cars was surrounded by a small group of students. They seemed to be in the process of setting it on fire. Mari was watching this with her chin in her hands. Moirine watched it too, throwing the occasional look to the gym teacher, who was apparently absorbed in her book. Finally, Moirine raised her hand. "Um, Miss?"
"What?" Moirine pointed outside, to the arsonists. “Oh for fuck’s sake,” the gym teacher said, staring out the window. “My fucking car!” Then she was rushing out of the room towards the burning vehicle as the kids on top of it scattered.
“Now’s our chance!” Mari Llewelyn whispered into Moirine’s ear and she jumped to her feet.
Moirine reached over, grabbing Mari’s arm. Mari looked at her expectantly, and Moirine dug her feet in, trying to make herself an anchor.
"What's wrong?" Mari grinned at her. "We're liberating ourselves! This is just. A just protest! You were wrongly imprisoned and I'm a political prisoner."
"Political prisoner? You drew a bunch of...rude stuff on the bathroom walls!"
"What?" Mari shrugged, pretending innocence. "The boys draw cocks all over their bathroom stalls, what's wrong with a few vaginas in ours? This regime is impeding my right to freedom of expression! I'm nearly 90% certain that imprisonment without trial goes against the Geneva convention! It's a violation of my right to free speech! Therefore, escaping from their prisons is just and correct."
"You..." Moirine's eyebrows knitted together. "How are you not permanently grounded?"
“One woman, eight kids,” Mari’s face seemed to almost scowl for a second. “I’d have to blow up the school to get a mediocum of attention. Must be nice, being an only child. Your parents can dedicate as much time as they want to screaming at you.” Moirine said nothing. She wasn't an only child, but she didn't even speak up to correct that. It had suddenly occurred to her that her parents hadn’t been that upset at all. They hadn’t said anything to her when they’d found out. They'd signed the detention form and said nothing else. She looked at the ground, her hand still wrapped around Mari’s forearm. Mari’s eyes dipped to the hand on her arm. “What, you wanna stay anyway?”
Moirine said nothing, then shook her head. “You should go,” she said. “If you don’t want to stay.”
Mari said nothing for a good while, then took Mari’s wrist and tugged, apparently guilty. “Look, come on, there’s a concert on tonight. I was going to head over there after school. Want to come?”
“What kind of concert?”
“The kind with music,” Mari said, impatient. “Come on!”
"No," said Moirine.
"Don't be a gloomy gus," Mari said and tugged again. Moirine let herself be tugged out of her seat. "Come on! I'll take you there. Make up for the," she scratched her cheek. "Cigarette I planted on you."
Moirine let herself be tugged out of her seat. "Alright," she said.
anyway, here's wonderwall
She’d taken that back later. Nobody should fall in love during Wonderwall. But she had kissed her, and that had led to...well, it had led to more kissing. They nearly knocked over the glasses of juice Moirine's mother had poured for them. "Stop," Moirine said and Mari pulled away. Moirine's hands stayed where they were, on Mari's slim shoulders.
"Are you alright?"
"No," Moirine pulled back finally, put her face in her hands. That was strange. This was...strange. She'd thrown herself at a girl who'd tried to frame her for smoking at school, just because she'd played her a song. "No."
No this wasn't right at all. But what was oddest about it? She searched for the reasoning behind her sudden, visceral objection to having Mari's mouth on hers and found it. "Did you play 'Wonderwall'?"
"Yes," Mari said and reached proudly for her guitar.
"No," said Moirine.
"No?"
"I'm not..." she paused, took the time to untangle her tongue in her head. "I'm not falling for a girl who plays me Wonderwall!"
Mari hesitated, hand on her guitar. She lifted it back into her lap and seemed to consider. She strummed a few notes and moved into an intro. "Smashing Pumpkins? Drown?"
"Okay," Moirine conceded. "That's better."
"Am I kissable?" Mari asked, pausing her strumming. "Datable?"
"Datable?"
"You know, going out, messing around, linking up, hooking up, you know, you know?"
"Um." Mari switched back to wonderwall. "Yes," Moirine said. "No. Not when you play wonderwall."
"Give in."
"No!"
"Fine," she switched again.
"Datable," Moirine conceded.
"Datable," Mari said and smiled at her guitar.
i am a child in love
On the ground in the sparse woodland surrounding the farm, they wrestled or kissed. Mari lined up glass bottles and they took it in turns to knock them over with a rock. They talked around the subject of the future, held hands, did homework, sat in silence and looked at the stars.
Moirine wakes up with a head full of bad dreams. School is grey. Life means something when you skip class to go to a restaurant with your girlfriend. In dark cinemas, empty afternoon showings, they kiss in public and nobody can stop them.
funcussion
"It's-- It's upsetting," Moirine settled on, finally. They were standing alone in the woods behind the school, stood above a ridge. The scenery was beautiful; their conversation less so. "And I don't like it when you do that. Joke about...things like that."
"Don't be such a gloomy gus," Mari pushed her and smiled, but the smile didn't reach her eyes. Moirine's hands closed up into fists.
"Shut up!"
"Or what?" Mari leaned back on her heels, pushing Moirine's shoulder.
Mari was badly balanced, so the subsequent left hook Moirine landed on her sent her spinning, falling backwards. Before Moirine could do anything, she was disappearing over the ridge. Running to the edge of the hill, she watched helplessly as Mari tumbled and fell, landing face first in the river. She followed her, rushing down the hill. She tripped and stumbled; rolled an ankle and kept going, falling to her knees at the bottom of the hill. Winded and horrified, she placed a hand on Mari’s back. She had never before, never before in her life felt dread; now it pushed its way up from behind her liver, reaching up to grab her heart and lungs. “Mari,” she said. There was blood in a cloud, floating up the brackish water. “Mari!”
Mari rolled over, her face wet, red seeping from her nose. She looked up at Moirine with something not quite present in her gaze. Lifted her hand. Moirine took it. “Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” Moirine said back.
“I’m sorry for hitting you.”
“I hit you!”
“Oh,” Mari seemed to be looking around in her memory for the reel of tape. When she evidently came up empty, she shrugged. “Okay, I’m sorry you had to do that.”
Moirine started to say something, then cried out. She had tried to curl her fingers around Mari’s open hand, only to feel a sharp spike of pain rush through her. “Let me see,” said Mari and she held out her hand to her. Mari held it in front of her eyes, then laughed. “You broke your knuckle,” she explained. “You broke your knuckle on my head.”
“Your hard head,” Moirine said and lifted Mari’s head to let it rest on her lap.
“My nose hurts,” Mari said, sounding more surprised than anything else. With her good hand, Moirine wiped the blood from her face, dipping her hand into the muddy water to rinse it off. Mari reached for her hurt hand and, taking out a handkerchief, wrapped it tight. When she was satisfied the broken knuckle was taken care of, she closed her eyes. “I like you a lot,” she said to Moirine. “But I will be very upset if I have a concussion.”
“I said I was sorry.”
“I know,” Mari found her good hand with her eyes still closed and squeezed. “I’m sorry too.”
i wanna be your joey ramone
"How d'you mean, love?"
Moirine frowned. 'Love' out of anyone else's mouth sounded...cliche. Dumb. She wasn't sure if she liked it. But Mari's tongue did something to the word that made it - something more intimate than simply bearable. There was so much she didn't understand yet about how Mari made her feel. From the way she saw Mari look at her from time to time, from how she took her hand sometimes, from the intangible, wordless, inviolable language they communicated in when they were in each other's arms, she guessed she wasn't the only one still learning. "We're the weird couple who make zines. And are...both girls."
"Nah," Mari went back to her painting. "We're the cutest couple in school."
"Really?" Moirine asked, eyebrow raised.
"Yeah, I mean, it's 50% me, it's got to be cute." Mari grinned at her. Moirine shoved her shoulder.
"Come on," she mumbled.
“We’re not too weird a couple at any rate," Mari said, eyes down. "You know the Korean guy? The basketball player?”
“The one with the dead twin?”
“Yeah,” when Mari rubbed her chin, the poster paint stained over her jaw, giving her an orange beard. Moirine giggled and gestured for her to come closer. Holding her cheek in one hand, she wiped the paint off with a clean cloth. “He’s dating that nerdy girl from the debating club. Er, Dancer or whatever.”
"I didn't know that."
"It doesn't seem to be obvious," Mari said. "But I saw them kissing down by the river, and holding hands in the music store. She had a stack of Mahler and he had a bunch of Madonna."
She turned her head as Moirine wiped her skin clean. Moirine sighed. “I’m sure there are weirder couples than us. But we’re very strange.”
“And charming, in a John Hughes kind of way. You’re the princess and I’m the archetypal bad boy.”
“Archetypical bad boys aren’t girls with paint moustaches,” Moirine pointed out.
Mari kissed her. "Now you've got paint on your face too."
Moirine reached for the paintpot and threw the contents at Mari, staining her white t-shirt blue. Mari retaliated, with green, and then purple. They turned into a rainbow together, in the little workshop. In a little wooden shack, stained with light and colour, Mari reached out and held her hand.
"You make me happy again," she said.
i am gonna make it through this year, if it kills me
“Are you awake?” Moirine asked, as soft as she could.
“Yeah. Yeah,” Mari rolled over, her hand coming to rest on a discarded, half-full pizza box. “Shit, sorry.”
The TV was still on, buzzing soft static into the air. With everything so dark and quiet, this room felt like a world in and of itself. Or it did, until another cough rattled through the house. “Shit,” Mari said again. “Bleddyn’s got to get that cold sorted out.”
Moirine put her arms around her and rested her head in the crook of her girlfriend’s arm. “If anyone walks in,” she said. “They’re going to know.”
“I don’t think my mam will care,” Mari said and frowned. She shook her head. “No, definitely not. She was alright with it when my brother came out. Maybe she’d be upset what with the having you over under a false pretext thing.” She stopped to think again, one hand lazily searching for the remote. “Or the premarital sex. Actually, mostly the premarital sex.”
Moirine shoved her, then slipped her hands up Mari’s dumb tartan pyjamas. God, she thought, even as she kissed her girlfriend’s hurt ear, pick a Celtic country motif and stick with it. Welsh accent, Irish mother, Scottish pyjamas...at this rate she’d be speaking Cornish or claiming to come from Brittany before the night was through… “I don’t want to get in trouble,” she said, to the wrong ear.
“Didn’t hear you,” Mari said, eyes on the ceiling. There was a poster up there, the lead singer of one of those bands Mari was into, all short hair and wild with energy, even in photos. They didn’t look like Moirine did; Mari’s favourite was tall, blonde and brown eyed, all sharp edges and androgynous t-shirts, tattooed and pierced. The opposite of Moirine.
“Do you like me?” She asked Mari’s poor ear, her hand resting above Mari’s heart, between her small breasts.
“Still can’t hear you.” Another cough rattled the walls. “Fuck’s sake,” Mari said, “I’m going to head over there and force some cough drops down his throat.” But she didn’t move. Moirine kissed her throat, Moirine’s nose pressed against her jaw; through her lips Moirine felt the vibration of a sigh well up inside her girlfriend. Mari reached over to touch her and another cough cut through their moment. Moirine lay her head on Mari’s chest. There was an empty vinyl sleeve propped up against the cupboard nearby; TV still churning out static, old record player by the door and the mess of two pizza boxes littering the floor. She placed one of her hands on Mari’s stomach and withdrew it at the sound of another cough; counted to ten. Her parents wouldn’t allow Mari to sleep over in a hundred years. Until they both left school and got a place together, this was the closest they had to being together, a real couple. Another cough. “I’m going to tell him to shut up,” Mari said, sitting up.
Somewhere down the hall a door opened and they heard a voice shout into the corridor, “Either shut up or sleep outside, Bleddyn!” Someone next door laughed; a third voice rebuked the shouter for being mean. Around them the house woke up and descended into a cacophony of arguments, noise and advice to help with Bleddyn’s cough. Moirine laughed, but beside her Mari had gone rigid with embarrassment.
“Just a few months more,” she mumbled.
“What?”
“Til we graduate,” she said and rolled over onto her side.
Re: 90s
"I like 'The Killers'," Mari said. "For a band name."
"No, it's too good," Moirine told her, secretly thinking it was a bit too violent. When she held her hand up in front of her face, the edges blurred. "Someone else probably has it."
"Yeah," Mari agreed, and took another swig of her cheap beer. "I like the poster, though." It was a painting of a guitar and a ukulele, their necks crossed. "Whatever name we have, has to be as good as the painting."
Moirine murmured an agreement. Mari laid her head on her shoulder and Moirine stroked her hair. "Are you going to fall asleep?"
"No."
"You look dumb when you sleep."
"I know."
"And you drool..."
"I know..."
"Especially when you drink."
"Especially," Mari agreed and then kissed her on the forehead. "I'm awful."
"I still like you," Moirine said suddenly.
"I know," Mari said. "We should go to prom together."
"I don't think anyone would be happy about that," Moirine said, her voice soft.
"Yeah," Mari admitted, voice trailing off.
"And you'd have to wear a suit."
"No."
"A nice suit."
"No."
Moirine tugged at Mari's t-shirt. "With a vest, and a tie."
"Hmmm."
"Your brother might have some. Well...one of them...you have about twenty."
"Four," Mari corrected. "Four brothers. Three sisters."
"Maybe one of them has a spare?"
"Hmmmm," Mari said. "I'll see."
"Now?"
"Ah, geez," Mari sat up and rubbed the back of her head. "Ah, geez. Owain might have one."
On the ground, Moirine giggled and rolled over. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, twenty minutes had passed and Mari was sitting next to her. "Did you put on a nice suit?"
"Open your eyes and see," Mari said, pulling Moirine's head into her lap. She was still wearing her ratty jeans, but she had on a nice blouse, and a tie borrowed from somewhere.
Moirine batted the tie. "You look nice."
"Thank you. You do too, you little lush."
Re: 90s
Mari was crouching down by the bushes, gathering up more dirt and stones. “Hey!” She called back, in a stage whisper. “What’s up!”
“Get out of here! My dad’ll kill you if he sees you.”
“No he won’t, that’s illegal.”
“Shut up.”
“I’m coming up,” Mari told her. "We need to talk."
"No we don't!"
"We do!"
“I’ll come down,” Moirine sighed, knowing she couldn’t convince her to butt out.
When she came through the door into the gathering night, Mari was waiting for her. She fell into her arms, crashed against her, and her lips pressed against Mari’s. Mari held her, somehow solid despite everything. They looked into each other’s eyes. “I have a car,” Mari said, slowly. “We have all night.”
“We have forever,” Moirine said, and took her hand.
epilogue - (now i'm all messed up)
“Moirine? Moirine Burrell?”
Moirine turned and pulled out a painful, tight smile. “Hi,” she said, preparing for awkwardness. Mari stepped towards her and, hesitating a little, held out her hand. They shook formally, two pumps.
“Been a while,” Mari said.
“Yeah,” Moirine said back to her. She didn’t know what else to say. Mari looked back at her coffee. Moirine was still three places back in the queue. This felt unreal, like they were on a TV show, the whole coffee shop an audience. “Ten years.”
“Eleven,” Mari confirmed. “Well,” she looked back down at her coffee, trying to figure out what to say. “I won’t keep you.”
“Alright,” Moirine said, feeling relieved more than anything else. Mari nodded and stepped away, leaving the coffee shop, waving over her shoulder. Neither of them vocalised a goodbye; it had been said more than enough ten years ago. Eleven, she reminded herself, and moved up in the queue as another person left it to collect their drink. Her hand still tingled with the pressure of the handshake.
She put the meeting out of mind. There were rewrites to concentrate on, rehearsals to get right, parts to workshop. By the end of the week she was exhausted, as were the others, so when the leading man suggested they all go out for pies at a nice place he knew, she agreed, only so she wouldn’t have to do any cooking once she got home.
The pies at Tweedle Dee’s were good and tasted nutritious, even if, she was sure, they were full of empty calories. And Richie was good company to sit next to, quiet Ava, playing her character’s sister beside her. She got so caught up in listening to the others talk, that when Richie elbowed her gently, she genuinely jumped. “There’s a lady over there who keeps looking over at us,” he whispered into her ear.
“Maybe she likes you,” Moirine whispered back, searching for the lady he was talking about. There were three seated tables ahead of them, one featuring two men chatting quietly, their heads close together. Another had a small family, but the mother seated with her back to them; a third a group of teenagers who were caught up in themselves. And at the counter, the manager, head down, apparently absorbed in a newspaper.
“I am extraordinarily handsome,” Richie agreed. “But I don’t think she’s looking at me.”
He held up his phone at an angle, the camera on. They stared into the screen together, able to see the rest of the dining room now, while looking as though they were sharing a text, or checking out an app. They scanned the diners again, and then it happened; the manager looked up from the paper to frown at them. Moirine gasped. It was Mari. “That’s the lady?” She asked, tapping the screen so that it focused on her face. “The one that’s been looking at us all night?”
“You know her?”
“Yes,” said Moirine, but couldn’t complete that thought. Yes, she knew her. “I’ll talk to her,” she said and stood up, walking over to the counter.
Mari had gone back to the newspaper. Moirine could remember a time when she would have ripped the paper out of her hands and thrown it to the ground. But they were both so different now. So she waited instead. Mari lowered the paper and they looked at each other. Mari cleared her throat. “Just to be safe,” she said. “You’re not stalking me, are you?”
“No!”
“Great,” Mari tapped her paper. Moirine watched her. Somehow, the memory of Mari she’d kept with her had been taller. Her hair looked grey too, in places. She couldn’t be more than thirty, thirty one. But there were lines under her eyes that suggested otherwise. “Just-- turning up to the place I always get coffee, then my business…”
“I thought this was Dee Cosimo’s place?”
“Nah,” Mari shook her head. “It was, but she was shit with financing, so I bought it off her before the bank could take it. She still runs the kitchens. I do all the rest.”
“What happened to being a doctor?” Moirine asked. Mari lowered her eyes, then shrugged.
“You still an actress?”
“Yeah,” said Moirine, glancing back towards her table.
“Cool,” Mari rubbed her jaw. "Saw you in that show last year."
"Two years ago," Moirine corrected.
"You were very good."
"I was only in it for an episode."
"Very good," Mari said again. "They'd be dumb not to bring you back."
"It's ending this season," Moirine said.
"Ah well," Mari was fumbling for the right thing to say. "I'm not a regular watcher."
"That's alright." This was awkward.
"Well," Mari said. "This has been grand." Not the word she would use. Moirine nodded and stepped away from the counter. Mari put her face in her hands. "I like my chefs," she said. "But they make shit coffee. Want to go find a better place? Talk for real?"
Moirine nodded, yes, alright, fine. Mari got her coat and called into the kitchen that she'd be back in the morning and Moirine said goodnight to her castmates and they went out walking. But they didn't find a single coffee place that was open, so they moved their stroll out towards the harbour, as though the ocean would be their witness.
Despite the summer, the night was cool and a breeze rolled in off the sea and chilled Moirine, in her light dress and cardigan. Mari noticed. “Are you cold?”
Moirine shook her head, then changed her mind and nodded, Yes.
“Okay,” Mari said and took off her thick jacket. She helped Moirine do up the zip and then button it as well. It smelled like Mari did. Mari put her arm around her and Moirine leaned her head against her shoulder and for a second, ten years, a decade, had never passed; time had pulled itself inwards and she was twenty again and they were together. It couldn’t last; she shrugged Mari’s arm off her shoulders and began to unbutton the jacket.
“We made such a mess,” she sighed. It had taken her years to sweep up the debris of her broken heart.
Hands in her pockets, Mari watched. “We’re,” she started, stopped. Started again. “We left each other because...the stuff we needed was in different directions, I guess.”
“I guess,” Moirine echoed, her voice hollow. Mari had slipped her hands into her pockets and was watching her, head cocked. That was a new pose; she wondered who she’d learned it from.
“Well,” Mari looked at her feet. She still wore jeans, but differently than before; a different cut, different colour, different style. Dress shoes now, instead of converses; a blouse instead of the band t-shirts. She even smelled slightly different, the trace of her on the jacket mingled with the smell of baked pastry. No more sneaked cigarettes on her breath. Moirine felt almost a little childish. But then she had changed too, hadn’t she? A new haircut, different make-up, a different way of holding herself that’d come from days of drama courses and nights of improv lessons. She didn’t dress so much like - how had Mari put it once? A constipated Sunday school teacher. Moirine smiled at the memory and folded her hands and looked at the ground too. Mari was still struggling for words. That was new as well; she was quiet, all of a sudden. There were silences now, when they walked, or ate, or drove. The silence of a person who’d realised, finally, that this world was not something that they could win, not the way they wanted to. “I think maybe, I mean. Our interests now - they kind of align, don’t they?”
“What are you talking about?” She asked and saw Mari flinch. Regroup.
“I want to try again,” Mari said, after a long moment. “I miss you. I’ve been…” her jaw set, but then she sighed and wiped her face with a hand. “I guess I didn’t realise how much I still miss you until you walked back into my life. There’s a hole in my heart where you used to be, and the memories I keep in there aren’t doing shit to keep it stopped up.”
They both let that hang in the air between them, looking away. There was a respectable distance between them now, a good foot or so. The words filled it up. Moirine took one of her hands. “Do you remember,” she asked, “when I woke you up?”
“You woke me up a lot,” Mari said.
“The time when the dogs were barking outside. And we could hear your brother coughing from across the house.” She could tell from the smile on Mari’s face that she knew, she remembered. “We talked about how easy it would be, when we graduated. How easy everything would be, when we were out of that little town.” Mari’s smile had faded. She’d turned, to look out at the pier, chin low so that the corner of her collar obscured a part of her face.
“It’s never that easy though,” she conceded. “Is it? Never as easy as you imagine it’ll be.”
“No,” Moirine agreed. Had either of them truly been prepared for the relationship that they’d had? Had they been old enough for it? Had they learned enough about the world, about themselves? She let go of Mari’s hand and stood next to her, watching the waves on the ocean roll gently to meet the sand, over and over, an unbreakable cycle. The jacket around her shoulders provided more than enough protection from the wind and she felt safe and sound within. Her knuckles brushed Mari’s, but neither of them spoke. It was enough, for now, to stand on the pier and watch the ocean as the tides changed and the water spread as far as either of their eyes could see.
WWS
to the lighthouse (once more)
Sometimes they chatted quietly, nonsensically. Sometimes they cuddled, all warm and secure. But tonight he was calm, and it was enough to hold her hand, feel her weight on his chest and watch the fan above make those odd whup-whup-whup-whup sounds as it rotated slowly, pushing stale air around the room. Rea yawned in her sleep and he put his free hand over the side of her face, to block out the moonlight. Or the...sunlight. Nothing seemed right in this weird landscape, only the sensation that this had somehow happened before gnawing away in his gut like a parasite.
He squeezed Rea’s hand and with through a haze of sleep she squeezed his hand back and let out a small noise. Even asleep, even unconscious, she tried to tell him everything would be okay. “Rea,” he said, but couldn’t think of anything else to say after that. She made a mumbling noise, like she was trying to reply. He put his other hand on her head. He squeezed her hand.
She squeezed back. Sometimes he tried to picture the end of all this, after he’d killed the inugami, after everything was over. What would they do? Go home to different worlds? Even at home they’d be in different countries - Japan and...fuck, the USA, right? Canada? He’d never actually asked. He didn’t know what to say, what he was supposed to say. Sometimes, late at night, everything felt like it was speeding towards some kind of conclusion. This all had happened before, he just couldn’t shake that sensation. He squeezed her hand. She squeezed back. Everything felt all messed up, like a swirling cloud of pain was heading their way. He squeezed her hand. Sometimes, there was a ball in his chest, tangling up his organs around it. She squeezed back.
Maybe staying here was key. He squeezed her hand. Maybe they should shut off their spaceship and stay on this little planet, for the rest of time. She squeezed back. Maybe this was where they could be safe, here, Wayward Son against the rest of the universe. We just need somewhere we can be safe, he thought, and lay in the dark and listened to the cottage breathe.
He squeezed her hand.
dinner
“The fork is confused,” Rea explained. “The fork thought it was fake chicken nugget night.”
“The fork is useless.”
“The spoon is just jealous because it will never be as shiny and sharp as the fork.”
“The spoon says haha, good luck eating anything tonight.”
“The spoon’s kind of a dick.”
“Yeah…” Under the table his toes clumsily, gently, collided with her shin. He didn’t know how to do this. She reached over and took his spoon. He took it back. “I better watch the spoon. It’s up to something.”
They looked at each other. For a second he thought he might say something. He thought she might say something. They watched each other’s faces and discovered that they didn’t have to say anything. She bumped her toes gently into his shin. “Cool,” she said.
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Rea builds a fort out of blankets and pillows. He knows it’s her fort because one of her sneakers is sticking out the entrance. The others don’t wear converses. The others don’t build forts in the bedroom. Katsuo pats her ankle by way of knocking. “Come in,” she says, so he comes in and lays on his stomach beside her in the dark. “Welcome,” she says.
“Hey,” he says. They lie in the dark in silence. Shoulder to shoulder, the silence a nice kind of awkward, a familiar darkness. He can’t see her, but he can hear her breathe, feel the warmth of her body beside him.
“This is nice,” she says after a little while. He can tell she’s trying to be genuine. It feels kinda genuine too, a nice warm sentiment that bubbles in his stomach and disperses into butterflies. He rests his hand on the small of her back. He’s still having the dreams, where he walks into a house and the insides are stained red and he squeezes her hand and she doesn’t squeeze back.
“Yeah,” he says.
helperdog
When he walked back, the little houses seemed to grow together and it took him a while to find the right one, banging on the door. It took a moment for the door to open. When it did, the person inside the house wasn't Rea or Myja and he felt his chest tighten. "Who're you?"
"Who're you?" The person asked, looking annoyed.
"Who the fuck are you? What the fuck are you doing here?" He fell into anger before he worked out fully what happened, his jaw setting. He dropped the buckets, the water spilling out and into the mud.
“Hey,” Rea’s voice. He turned, the spilled water churning the dust to mud under his feet. His heart was pounding in his chest and adrenaline was rushing through him. Rea was here. He lowered his fists and stepped back, standing next to her. His heart was pounding. His hand found one of her wrists. “Hey,” she said. “We’re over one.”
“Right,” he said. It did sound right, coming from Rea. He glanced at the cottage in front of him, but the owner had closed the door. Shit. “Over one.”
“Right.”
“I spilled the water,” he said. “I’ll go get some more.”
She didn’t offer to come with him and he felt relieved, knowing she wasn’t treating him like some kind of basket case. But then he looked over his shoulder and saw her step back into the shadows between the two houses and realised she’d been waiting for him to make the slip up. He threw the bucket on the ground and left it there.
Fuck it.
ASW
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TYROL NINE NINE
earache
“You’re okay,” Detective Burrell said, folding Mari’s arms over her chest for her. Mari shuddered a little and felt more than a little bit sick. “You’re okay.”
“I’m okay,” Mari repeated, lying to herself. She couldn’t hear herself speak, not properly. Not the way she should be able to. It was muffled and distant, a ringing in one ear drowning out everything else. She was beginning to shake.
“Stay with me,” Detective Burrell said, her eyes on her. “Stay with me, okay? Keep your eyes on mine.”
“You’re so good at this,” Mari said. “So good at this. Even for a police officer. You’re good. You’re going to make captain.” She thought she saw Moirine blush and reached up to stroke her face. “My ear feels weird,” she told her.
“That’s normal,” said Detective Burrell. “When you get smacked in the ear with a revolver, I mean.”
“Goddamn,” Mari said. “Fuck. Motherfucker!"
"Just because you can't hear you, doesn't mean you should swear."
"Fuck you in the fucking face you lemon fucking dick face."
Detective Burrell made a face like someone who'd just, appropriately, bitten into a lemon. Detective Llewelyn stuck her tongue out at her, but felt guilty. After a decent amount of silence, she cleared her throat. "Frick. Frick you in the fricking face, lemon fricker."
"That's not much better."
"Wanna cut me some slack?" Detective Llewelyn asked, Detective Burrell swimming in and out of her vision. "Just got whacked up the head with a fricking gun."
burgers
“Yes, it’s very nice, Detective Llewelyn.”
“See? I told you.” Detective Burrell frowned and swatted at her, Detective Llewelyn leaning back enough that she missed. Llewelyn threw a fry at her. Burrell kicked her under the table. At the table behind them, Sergeant Dee turned around and subjected both detectives to her silencing, accusatory stare. “She started it.”
“I don’t care who started it,” Dee said. “I’ll be the one to finish it if the two of you don’t pull yourselves together.”
“Some dinner date this is,” Mari mumbled.
“It’s not a dinner date,” Moirine said. “This is a stake-out. What kind of adult would take their date to a burger joint?”
“A reasonably priced burger joint,” Mari corrected.
"I swear to god," Dee muttered through gritted teeth behind them.
"Ha!" Said Mari. "It's a steak out. Get it? Steak? Steak? Like the food? Steak?"
"I hate you," Moirine told her. "I do. I really do."
"You're my everything."
"Are you being serious or not?"
"Would I really confess my love for you at a burger joint?"
"A reasonably priced burger joint."
"I wouldn't steak any bets on our future. Maybe I don't have a big steak in this. Don't burger on it."
"You're losing it."
"That really was weak. Sorry, I got confused, the perp walked in and I was concerned with looking natural."
"He's the guy with the grey wig?"
"Yeah."
"I was wondering why Cosimo hadn't strangled you."
"She's sent me a lot of angry texts," Detective Llewelyn was watching their target in her compact mirror, pretending to adjust her hair as he was shown to a seat behind them. Burrell could keep both her partner and the target in view at the same time, if she angled herself slightly.
"Are you playing footsie with me?"
"A little." Llewelyn shrugged. "We're supposed to be a couple, right?"
"In a burger joint."
"A reasonably priced burger joint."
"Let it go."
"You're cold," Mari paused. "Frozen, even. Ow! Don't kick me under the table!"
"Oh shush, I didn't do that." Moirine took her shoes off under the table and clumsily propelled her toes into Mari's shin trying to play footsie.
"Ouch!"
"Sorry, okay!"
"Gently, gently!"
"Alright, alright..."
"This is the weirdest job ever."
"Sh, he's coming this way," Moirine took Mari's hand and they tried their best to stare lovingly into each other's eyes as their target passed them on his way to the bathroom. As the door slammed shut, they dropped the act.
"How long can we keep this up?"
"As long as possible," Dee answered from behind them. They looked at each other and rolled their eyes. It would be a long night.
AM
5th anniversary
“Nice,” she told him. “It was nice.”
“Just a nice place.”
“Nice view. Just kinda wish…”
“What?”
“Wish I could’ve seen it millions of years ago. What made it that way.”
Hyunsoo leaned back in his chair and nodded thoughtfully. "A river, right?"
"About seventeen million years ago," she nodded, cutting her pancakes into smaller pieces. "Maybe it would be better to watch it speeded up. Like how they do it with films of flowers blooming?"
"The camera would have to be on for a long time."
"Yeah," undone by this thorn in her plan, Rhea frowned and dipped her pancake into some syrup. "It'd be nice, though."
Hyun nodded in agreement. He reached over and placed his hand over hers. "Wanna go to Paris, next year?"
"Yes," she said and nodded too. "I'd love to see the Eiffel Tower." As Hyun smirked, she knitted her eyebrows together. "Is that a sex thing?"
"No..." he thought for a moment. "Yeah. Yeah, it kinda is...but that's not why I was smiling." He squeezed her hand. "I'm glad we're together."
"Me too," she told him and kissed him quickly on the lips. "Me too."
checklist
“Yeah?” Rhea looked up from the couch.
“What’s the name of those ugly hypoallergenic cats? The ones that look like gremlins.”
“Sphynx cats,” Rhea looked back at her book. “But Siberian long haired cats are pretty good for allergies too. Why?”
“Checklist,” he mumbled.
“Oh,” Rhea looked at him, then back to her book. “Okay.”
Hyun’s checklist, as had become apparent to Rhea, was something Hyun had to figure out for himself. When he got back from work, he would prowl through their apartment looking for sharp corners to buff out, low surfaces, places fingers could get jammed, electrical sockets. Anything that might be a danger. He skimmed catalogues for childproof locks and doorstops, to keep doors open, to keep them from slamming shut on little fingers.
At night, at the end of a rough day, picturing all that could so easily go wrong, he would sit on the bed beside his wife and place a hand on her heavily pregnant stomach and try to calm down.
Rhea had her own coping methods. There were charts she’d formulated, lists and books to memorise. There were ideas, trends to figure out. Did parent-baby yoga classes help later in life? Did classical music? He could see her moving her lips slightly as she read through studies and worked shit out in her head. Different ways of coping.
"I'm nervous," he told her one night, as she flipped through a book.
"Yeah," she said. "Me too."
FSTs
FSTs
Trellick Tower - Emmy the Great
And in the shade of Trellick Tower
I spent a while trying to keep you
tell all the people moving on, “hey
something holy used to live here”
now I’m a relic of a love gone by
kneeling to address the sky
Sudden Oak Death - The Mountain Goats and John Vanderslice
Yeah, when the crack sounds in the wood,
you will know that I'm down for good.
When the crack sounds in the wood
you will know, old friend, that I'm down for good.
I want to try to stand my ground;
dig my heels into the hills.
Hope someone will come to write my ballads.
No one will.
Golden Hour, orig, Mari and Moirine
Stupid - Brendan Maclean
If you weren't so stupid, I could have loved you.
And if you weren't so stupid, but you're pretty stupid.
And if you weren't so busy, I could have loved you.
But you work in an office and you've got other offers.
But let's not be friends, or else this will never end.
Let's not be friends for sure, for sure.
And if you weren't so ugly, I could have loved you.
It's something I tell myself when I'm down to get high.
Lord.
If you made me a coffee, I could have loved you.
And I'd make you hot chocolate and anything you wanted.
Tell me, who is invited?
So fucking delighted to see all the boys, you see.
Tell me, why don't I fight it? What does it say about me?
And let's not be friends, or else this will never end.
Let's not be friends for sure, for sure.
We'd adopt, we'd have dogs.
I have all the things he's got.
But I'm not.
So let's not pretend that there'll be a happy end.
Let's not be friends for sure, for sure.
90s
Coffee and TV - Blur
Sociability
It's hard enough for me
Take me away from this big bad world
And agree to marry me
So we can start all over again
I Wanna be Your Joey Ramone - Sleater-Kinney
we go downtown
put on our best frowns
give me a chance
I know I can dance
Manchild - Eels
Hold me in your arms
And let me be the one
Who can feel like I am a child in love
American Mary - The National
I didn't try to take your love away
I just never knew I had it
Not With You - Tegan and Sara
From the liquor stores to the train stop floors
your filthy room, your drama blues
I'm nothing if I'm not with you
always right, always wrong
dressed in black is like loving you
theres nothing I haven't worn
nothing I haven't said before
Epilogue:
Now I'm All Messed Up - Tegan and Sara
Now I'm all messed up
Sick inside wondering who
Whose life you're making worthwhile
I Need My Girl - The National
Remember when you lost your shit and
Drove the car into the garden
And you got out and said I’m sorry
To the vines and no one saw it
I need my girl
I need my girl
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Slow Show - The National
I wanna hurry home to you
Put on a slow, dumb show for you and crack you up
So you can put a blue ribbon on my brain
God, I'm very, very frightened, I'll overdo it
Going to Bridlington - The Mountain Goats
and i saw you pull your hair back.
saw you messing with your earrings.
saw you trying to smile.
hey! you don't have to smile for me.
the moon was rising over bridlington.
and you had blood all over your hands.
something was cracking in the rafters of our house.
and you had blood all over your hands.
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Safe & Sound - Capital Cities
Even if the sky is falling down
I know that we'll be safe and sound
Damn These Vampires - The Mountain Goats
Someday we won't
Remember this
Crawl 'til dawn
On my hands and knees
God damn these vampires
For what they've done to me
Youth - Daughter
Setting fire to our insides for fun
To distract our hearts from ever missing them
But I'm forever missing him
Grendel's Mother - The Mountain Goats
You can stand up, or you can run.
You and I both know what you've done,
And I will carry you home.
I will carry you home.
I will carry you home in my teeth.