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isoscele · 7 years

Text

you could meet someone who’s lost like you

Fandoms: Coupleish, Carmilla

Warnings: drinking, bar fights, death/reincarnation, minor homophobic language

Words: 9.7K

Summary: Two people screw things up in a couple of different lives. Flower shop customers are stalked, fights are picked, and questions aren't quite answered. (or: dee and rachel, lafontaine and danny, and some combination thereof)

AO3

When Dee is eight years old, Amy tells them that she has an imaginary friend named Rufus and that he always lets her braid his hair, Dee. Dee says that they have imaginary friends too, a whole group of them. Practically grownups. Their names are Laura and Carmilla and Perry and J.P, and Dee loves them all in ways they do not yet have the words to describe.

Amy talks to Rufus when she thinks Dee is being mean or annoying, saying things like, “I’m glad we’ll be friends forever,” to the empty air at the bottom of the slide. Dee decides that they and Amy had different ideas of imaginary friends. Dee can’t talk to theirs on the playground when Amy won’t share her jump rope. They have people in their head, sure, but these are stagnant people who do terrifying things. These are people who cannot in the slightest be connected to Dee’s calm, tranquil suburban lifestyle, but are always wriggling in the back of their mind. There are events too (imaginary moments?), a whole storyline of them, linking together some conspiracy about vampires and colleges. Dee remembers because they were there. Not as Dee, of course, but as a cool big kid with really neat hair and a love of science, which is Dee’s third least favorite class.

Rufus is abandoned after Amy decides that braiding hair isn’t that great anyways and it’s a little babyish to have imaginary friends. Dee will spend the next fifteen years wondering why it isn’t so simple for them.

When Dee is twelve years old, they tell their parents that they have a story in their head. “Like a movie,” is what they say exactly, a long movie in the perspective of someone you never quite see. They aren’t allowed to watch scary movies with the Connelly kids down the block until they’re in high school, but apparently there’s no age limit on the dreams, terrifying blurs of blood and fangs and worrying so keenly for the ones they love. It’s easier to imagine the whole thing as some elaborate work of fiction to keep Dee entertained during the boring parts of social studies class (which is most of them).

Rita and Peter Warson trade a look that Dee will later identify as “is-this-thing-our-kid-is-doing-normal.” Dee waits patiently in the doorway to the kitchen, scuffing their shoe against the tile even though their mom always tells them not to.

“Maybe you’ll be a writer one day,” their dad says finally, and their mom lights up.

“Oh honey, that’s wonderful!” she says. “You should write it down. I’d love to read it.”

“I can’t write it down,” Dee says. “It’s not fair to them.”

Their parents share a second, more dubious “is-this-thing-our-kid-is-doing-normal” look. This time, they come up empty.

“The people in it,” Dee clarifies. They pause for a moment, and then add, thoughtfully, “I think they might be dead.”

“Sweetheart,” their mom begins, but seems to fall short.

“I hope not,” Dee says quickly, because it’s not like they want people to die in the movie in their head, they just aren’t quite sure how it ends yet. “I like ‘em.”

“Well,” their dad says, so obviously grasping at straws. “Keep us- keep us updated, huh?”

Their mom opens her mouth to add something but just then Amy bursts through the screen door and yells that the stupid eighth-graders stole her charm bracelet again and do they still have the water guns Dee’s mom always threatens to throw out because this is war and the house is wrapped up into merry chaos yet again.

It’s only later, washing the muddy war paint off their cheeks, that it occurs to Dee that maybe they should just keep their mouth shut about the whole past-life thing. Amy doesn’t seem to understand it either, and Dee is quickly coming to the conclusion that if there’s ever anything in their life that Amy doesn’t understand, it’s pretty much a lost cause that anyone else would get it better.

They go to bed and dream about monsters crawling from the wide, gaping chasm in the ground.

When Dee is twenty-two, Rachel Mannt strides into the apartment for the first time with a stupid hat and a stupid accent and the face of one of Dee’s imaginary friends.

It takes twenty minutes of Not Paying Attention to This Roommate Interview At All for Dee to decide that they are never going to mention their strange and complicated past life to Rachel. There’s no point. Faces look similar; there are about sixteen British actors that they couldn’t tell apart if ordered to at gunpoint. But this girl . . . it’s uncanny.

It’s not like Dee cares too much, anyway. If it were Laura or, God forbid, Perry, it would have been a different situation entirely, but Dee never really liked Danny even when she wasn’t a semi-evil vampire, so they aren’t going to tear themselves apart worrying about it.

Dee spends the two days prior to their new roommate moving in picking apart everything they’ve ever thought they understood about their life. They paint angry things, taking pride in the slashes of red and swaths of purple that shred the canvas. They sleep a lot, ignoring the uneasy dreams. They clean up.

They manage to get through the move-in day without having to reveal that they don’t actually remember this new person’s name because they were a little preoccupied at the time, okay? They help unpack a shit-ton of boxes and tune out Amy’s delighted proclamation that she and New Roomie like all the same shows and try to decide if they should take down the curtains to increase the aesthetic appeal of the living room.

They don’t talk to Probably Wears Leggings and Like, Cardigans and Stuff for most of the day. There’s just a lot to do and if this tall musical theatre fan has a problem with a grumpy and antisocial roommate, maybe this isn’t such a good fit after all.

The first dinner is order-in-pizza. Amy does most (all) of the talking.

“Is there good food in London?”

New Roomie jumps, like a child caught in the act of drawing on the walls. “I’m sorry?”

“Good food,” Amy repeats, taking a bite of pizza as if to demonstrate.

“Er- yeah, some,” Impeccable Jawline says awkwardly. “Yeah. There’s- there’s some. Good food.”

Something deep and vicious inside Dee is thrilled that everyone in this situation is equally uncomfortable.

“Mmm,” Amy says, in that voice she almost entirely uses for unimpressive dudes. “Interesting.”

It’s almost tangible, the amount of effort Amy’s putting into making this work. Dee isn’t looking forward to their sister leaving for the night.

Not-Danny eats her pizza with a fork and knife. Barbarian.

The second day, Dee barely sees their new roommate at all because she and Amy are gone before Dee even wakes up. They won’t admit to spending the whole day sulking, but they do.

They were born with a whole world inside them, a world that left them scarred and exuberant and filled with so much visceral emotion, it was hard to keep track of, sometimes. They were born with memories of impossible things, a left eye that aches on bad nights, and PTSD.

They don’t remember the name of their roommate, but it’s not Danny, she’s not Danny. She’s someone else, someone who has a whole life, an unmarred past, present, and future that organize themselves in nice little rows, unlike whatever knotted existence Dee’s leading.

She doesn’t remember what Dee does, because Dee remembers things that never happened. It’s as simple as that, really. They need a roommate and here one is and they aren’t going to torture themselves about it. It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s all good. They’ll find a new identity for this girl and it’ll all work itself out.

Amy and New Person Who Dee Had Never Met Before Yesterday come through the door, laughing and laden down with bags. Dee smiles, says something airy and sarcastic, and life proceeds as it tends to.

That night, Amy goes back to her apartment. Dee turns in at a reasonable hour for once, and gets three hours of sleep before everything changes.

When the door opens, a sliver of harsh hallway light cuts across Dee’s face. They ignore it, pretending to be asleep with a vigor never before experienced.

Three footsteps, and a heavy pause. They can almost taste their new roommate’s apprehension, tall, probably-alive whatsherface and damn, there’s no way they’re going to survive this.

They listen to the uncertain creak of the floorboards underneath Miss-Turns-On-Loud-Music (seriously though, kudos to her for not even blinking at Amy’s Internet questionnaire) for about twenty minutes before coming to the conclusion that they’re just doomed to dance around each other forever and drown in potential PTSD awkwardness.

Joy.

And then Tall Brit draws a deep breath and says, “LaFontaine?” and everything in Dee’s brain just kind of stops because how does she know that name?

There’s a long pause and then Not-Danny sighs and retreats taking care to be quieter this time. Normal new-roommate courteousness, nothing awkward here, nope.

Dee rolls over again, sure that she’s gone, and stares up at the ceiling, unable to process this new development.

Would it be worse if the whole thing was a weird extended figment of their imagination or if it wasn’t? Twenty-three damn years of uncertainty and then out of nowhere the person Dee least wants to see. Some pissed-off demigod from a lifetime ago exacting revenge.

Sighing with the eternal exasperation of someone who just wants to live a peaceful, vampire-less life, Dee hoists themselves out of bed and trudges down the hall, squinting into the too-bright lights and berating themselves for letting Amy put the ad up in the first place. They’d rather settle for the dude in the winter coat who’s apparently afraid of baths.

She-Whose-Name-Dee-Wasn’t-Really-Paying-Attention-To is crouched on the couch and staring at one of Dee’s most recent pieces, one overflowing with color and vibrancy and life. Dee wants to tear it apart with their bare hands, a cruel reminder of a somewhat simpler time. SWNDWRPAT’s fingers tremble on her kneecaps and her hat is a little lopsided. Not so composed now, is she.

Dee leans against the doorway, trying to look casual and in control of the situation. “Hey.”

She almost jumps, eyes comically wide. Her hat falls off entirely. “Ah! Sorry, I- I thought you were asleep?”

Part of them wants to ask how she came to that conclusion, but they aren’t that mean. “Nah. I-,” they pause, rubbing the back of their head, “-this is pretty weird, huh?”

Their attempt at humor goes unnoticed. Danny (no, not Danny, someone else whose name maybe starts with an R?) becomes very interested in her shoes.

“Sorry for pretending to be asleep,” Dee says because dammit, they’re going to act like an adult if it kills them. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

Absurd-Lover-of-Hats sucks in her cheek, considering the heavily-stained carpet. “It’s okay,” she says, almost a monotone. “I- you look a little like someone I used to know. That’s all.” She sounds like she’s trying to convince herself of this, too, and they feel for her. Really.

There’s not an easy way to have this conversation, and part of Dee is still kicking and screaming at the very idea. They’re done with demanding knowledge, okay, they’re done and denial is actually quite nice once you get the hang of it and it’s been twenty-three fucking years, twenty-three years of thinking they were insane and having nightmares of events that never happened and they would’ve been fine continuing with this relatively nice existence, really.

They can’t say any of that. They’ve never even tried to before. It’s completely uncharted territory.

“So!” they settle on, bright as they can manage. “Are you still undead?”

They wince immediately afterwards because what the fuck, Dee.

Roommate-Who-Dee-Has-Probably-Now-Alienated-Forever looks up, eyes wide like Bambi or something (they don’t know, okay) and makes a soft, strangled noise.

Tact is a thing. A thing that Dee should probably use more.

“Er, sorry,” she says, “did you- do you remember?”

Dee joins her on the couch. “Yeah,” they say and damn, this is hard to talk about. “I remember everything.”

Total silence. That should’ve been a question on the roommate survey. Do you have a weird past life that involves vampires and swords and sentient buildings that you may or may not share with the occupant?

“Do you know any of the others?” Danny-Not-Danny asks suddenly. “It was awfully inconvenient, you know, being born in London and all, and I can’t find any Facebook pages for some reason- anyway, I don’t suppose you’ve encountered anyone else?”

“Just you,” Dee says, pretending they can’t see their new roommate deflating in front of them.

“Right,” she mutters, drawing lines on the floor with her sock. “Well, better than nothing. I thought I was the only one for ages.”

“So,” Dee says, “do you think this means it really happened?”

“Yes,” she says, with an enviable certainty. “It has to have. It- it has to.”

Sometimes, when Dee closes their eyes, all they can see is blood, curly hair and an awful, awful smile. Sometimes, they dream of a light so hungry, so terrible that it swallows everything else and they wake up unable to distinguish between real and not-real.

Sometimes they taste death on the back of their tongue, spit and blood and salt.

“This sucks,” they say. “This really, really sucks.”

She looks almost pitying. Dee wants to throw up. How did it end again? Did anyone win? Who was saved?

“Remind me of your name?” they say into the silence. “I don’t want to keep calling you Danny.”

“Rachel,” she says and right, that was it, a good, straightforward name.

Dee nods, closes their eyes. Rubs their forehead. “Sorry for forgetting.”

More awful silence, and then Rachel shifts off the couch and leaves for her barren, just-moved-in room to nightmares and invasive thoughts, most likely. Dee sits and tries not to think about anything.

Silas University never existed. Googling Laura Hollis provides pictures of thousands of ordinary women who bear no resemblance to the firecracker of a freshman that they once knew. Googling Lola Perry- well, that’s a more unique name. Rachel is a shell of Danny. Somehow, they’re still an atheist.

They need a cup of coffee, or maybe something stronger, but they don’t move from the couch until the sun is almost over the horizon and the bleakness of the night gives way to some fragment of a future.

The next eight months pass without ever really passing at all, in a blur of selfies and shopping and rearranged furniture. Dee’s very good at avoiding things they don’t want to talk about and apparently Rachel is too, because they don’t bring it up, not even when it’s inhumanly late and Amy’s passed out on the carpet and the moon looks bloody from here.

Rachel is a considerate roommate. She tiptoes when Dee’s asleep, replaces the coffee filters, and washes every dish she uses, including some she doesn’t. She seems perpetually anxious around Dee, perhaps some remnant of simpler times when eyebrows were blown off and anglerfish gods were the most normal bit of Sunday breakfast.

On bad nights, Dee wakes up to Rachel’s cries, muffled by the world’s thinnest walls. They don’t want to think about what Rachel might wake up to, sometimes. Nightmares are a part of life, and they don’t talk about it and don’t talk about it.

Sometimes, when they know she needs it, they add a knock of alcohol to the coffee in the morning without really knowing why.

Dee dreams of Perry a lot, and Laura sometimes and even Vampire Pants, but never once Danny, not in all twenty-three years of confusing, bloody nightmares, until she just happened to move in and then they can’t escape her eyes, dark and soulless, after the shift. Can’t escape this tired, traumatized TA with red hair and no stupid accent and blood smudged on her fingertips and a whole summer behind her. It feels like every dream, no matter how it starts, ends with Danny.

Everything is made more complicated by Amy’s instant liking of Rachel. It feels unfair sometimes- why don’t you share a traumatizing past life with her, if you like her so much- and definitely a little annoying. Amy is Dee’s person, sometimes the only one in this life who doesn’t make them ache with longing for the old one. They want Rachel to find her own anchor, one who doesn’t come with Dee in the kind of package deal you can never break.

In the end, though, it’s fine. Really. Dee paints and sleeps and drinks, Rachel finds hats more ridiculous than her last hats and brings in cushions with the Union Jack on them and acts pretty much entirely unlike Danny, enough that it’s sort of okay to be around her this much.

This honeymoon period of neutrality comes to an abrupt halt while they’re building the fucking desk and Dee is perhaps a bit drunker than they should be for this conversation.

When they pull up the email that’s far more official than anything they’ve ever received in their life, every slurred thought is wiped clean for several seconds. Distantly, they feel that maybe they should be upset because what the fuck, Rachel but they struggle with the actual execution.

They pass the phone to Amy and a single sentence occurs to them, dreamlike and very clear. I want her out.

They never really liked Danny that much, thinking her too rough around the edges, too likely to act without thinking. Rachel seemed better, calmer, but clearly it was all a well-constructed act because this right here is a very Danny move.

Dee’s angry, angrier than they really ever get, because it feels like an insult. They spend over twenty years building a façade of a reasonably normal kid, if not the perfect daughter their mother always wanted. Twenty years of believing they were crazy, reading up on people who remembered past lives as clearly as this, twenty years of missing people they had never met with everything in them.

Twenty years of an awful, aching loneliness they will never be able to describe. They were torn from the people they considered their family and inserted into a new one as some sort of new person, and they had to figure out what was Dee and what was LaFontaine and what was new and what was old, so old.

They never told Amy about the memories. They tell Amy everything.

And for what? Was it all just leading up to this, sitting in front of a dismantled desk after eight months of awkwardly tiptoing around the first sign that maybe there was something bigger than them at work and learning that Rachel told the government they were dating?

You don’t get to use me to stay, Dee thinks, wildly. I built this life out of nothing after the fiasco that was my last one. You don’t get to swoop in here, disrupt everything, and use me in this stupid, stupid way so you can continue to disrupt everything.

People are talking and people are shouting, they are shouting, and they are saying none of what they want to say. Rachel leaves and Dee is glad to see her go, glad to let her get the fuck out of their life already because enough is enough.

“I like her, you idiot,” Amy says. “She’s got a big heart.”

“Her heart’s not what you like about her, so shut up,” Dee says. Sometimes they’re so close to rolling over in the permanent sleepover-dark of their room and spilling everything. All the secrets, all the worry. All the people who are nothing more than shapes in their constant dreams.

They want to tell Amy everything, but they also really don’t, because then they can never ship their whole damn previous life off to Britain, pip-pip cheerio, and forget about the whole thing. Go back to their starving artist lifestyle and pretend until they drive themselves into the ground.

They won’t go around acting like Rachel’s datemate, okay, they won’t. They won’t hold hands and use sickening pet names and give cheek kisses because they should be doing that stuff with Perry or J.P. or anyone, really. Dee doesn’t hold a lot of stock in should-be’s, but Danny, stupid tall Danny who probably still has a puppy crush on Laura, is the worst possible person for this scenario.

“We’re more than she has back home,” Amy is saying. In a lot of ways, Rachel is more than Dee has ever had, period, and probably vice versa, but they can’t bring themselves to care.

Amy wants Rachel to stay, and Amy sees no reason why she shouldn’t. Because Amy doesn’t remember watching a shell of someone you once at least trusted stride across the room and lift up a superstrong immortal vampire by the throat. Amy doesn’t remember the blood and the anger and the horrific noise Matska Belmonte made when the locket was crushed.

Amy stalks off. She always has to have the last word, but now she doesn’t need to fight for it, because Dee isn’t trying to say anything. They grab the bottle and take a long swig, staring at the partially-constructed desk, which looks about four seconds away from falling apart.

They can imagine Future Dee looking back at this moment and shouting. You idiot! they would say. The only lead you’ll ever get and you just let her leave the country? Now you’ll always wonder, and you’ll never be any closer to an answer. Dee generally likes to imagine that Future Dee is pretty wise beyond their years and also incredibly successful, so maybe they know what they’re talking about.

Dee picks up their phone, abandoned on the couch cushion after the initial revelation, and tries to pull up the kind of courage they used to have. It feels like they’re about to plunge into a hurricane of knives again.

They call Rachel.

Dee definitely didn’t want to make a video, and Amy said that nobody would see it. This is the kind of classic moment that every sibling knows to store and whip out in the future when Amy tries to rope them into something again. Hey, remember that time you made me and my almost-fugitive fake girlfriend Internet sensations? Yeah, so do I, funny how that worked out.

There are nearly fifty comments on their first video, and it’s only the third night since they put it up. Dee really, genuinely does not care what strangers on the Internet think of them, but still they find themselves awake at two in the morning, perched on the couch with a laptop on their knees and scrolling through every last one.

They’re so absorbed in ladykiller0457’s questionable use of emojis that they don’t even hear Rachel coming down the hall until she’s right next to them and looking over their shoulder, squinting into the screen that Dee never bothers to turn down the brightness on.

“You’re up late,” she says. Noncommittal and almost nonjudgmental. It’s a good first move.

“So’re you,” Dee says, clicking to read the six responses to gam3rg1rl’s “zomg so cutttteeeee!”

Rachel perches on the edge of the couch, as if she’s waiting to be asked to leave. She’s been walking on eggshells ever since the whole “I-may-have-included-you-in-my-elaborate-lie-to-the-Canadian-government” thing, which brings Dee a small amount of pleasure. “Amy told us not to pay attention to the comments.”

Dee grunts because they don’t really care about these opinions at all, and they’ve been studiously ignoring a whole lot of misgendering but they have to do this, and if Rachel doesn’t understand that, it’s her problem.

There’s a long, awkward pause- at least, it’s probably awkward for Rachel, Dee doesn’t really care whether they talk or not- and then Rachel shifts and her foot taps anxiously against the carpet.

“Find anything yet?” she whispers, in a tone of voice that makes it very clear that they’re talking about this now.

Dee shakes their head. “I wasn’t expecting anything.”

They’ve become stars overnight. Their faces are all over the Internet: gifs of their awkward kisses and excited discussions about these new contenders in the couple-blogging game. Amy’s original post hit 30K notes sometime mid-afternoon.

Surely, someone will notice. Someone will think they look familiar.

“I don’t know,” Rachel says. “Queer vlogs about adorable new couples seem right up Laura’s alley.”

This cannot be the first time either of them have said Laura’s name aloud, but a shiver cuts down Dee’s spine that makes it clear that it is. Rachel’s looking at her socks again.

Dee surprises themselves by laughing loudly because it’s true. They can imagine so easily Laura sitting in front of her computer with her TARDIS mug and Carmilla snarking in the background, making her way through a foil-wrapped package of cookies, the sort of floury kind she really likes.

Except it wouldn’t be Laura, and there would be no mug or Carmilla or famous yellow pillow. There might still be cookies, but Dee doesn’t know. They don’t know anything at all.

Dee clicks to load more comments and Rachel waits, knees drawn up to her chest and looking smaller than she ever has. The screen slices their faces with precision. Dee’s eyes sting and they don’t know if it’s the tears or the brightness or the hour or some sick combination of all of it.

“Don’t stay up too late,” Rachel says, standing up. The top half of her body dips into shadow, anonymous once more. Dee tries to look at her, but soft pink and turquoise bruises cloud their vision after staring at the screen and they can’t make out anything.

Dee wants to say something like I am an adult and I will stay up however late I please, maybe to remind her that they’re not some fire-blooded Summer Society girl under Danny’s jurisdiction, but they swallow it. Too much discussion too close to home for one night. “Okay,” they say instead.

They wait until Rachel’s door snaps shut to let their head fall against the couch cushion. The room has a muted quality, interrupted by sleepy static.

They’re never going to find anything. Rachel was born in London, who knows if any of the rest even speak English, or if they watch YouTube or follow Amy’s tumblr or even want answers. There are those who associate Silas with things much, much worse than anything LaFontaine was part of, surely.

Hell, maybe everyone’s already seen the video. Maybe all the people Dee never stopped caring about know that they’re alive and okay and making disgusting couple videos, and God, everyone probably thinks they’re dating Rachel, which is just, no. There are worse people, face-wise, but Dee might never stop being just a little bit afraid of the person with blood in her hair and iron in her eyes.

An alert pops up to tell them that their laptop is at ten percent, and this is what breaks them out of their trance. They shut it and the room goes dark, all at once. They close their eyes, massage the lids. They have two commissions to finish by Wednesday, and inspiration has left very suddenly, like the empty hole on campus where gods used to live.

They dream of dipping their hands in paint, vibrant blues and yellows, and holding Perry until she’s covered, nothing left but eyes and mouth and hair. Staining her throat, her cheeks, her sharp stripe of nose so no one could ever forget that they go together. Tracing her jawline, patterning her shirt, never letting go, not ever again, promise.

If you asked Dee when they and Rachel became pretty much cool, they would probably say the Brownie Baking Incident or That One Time with the Giant Jenga Set.

In truth, it was some blurred stretch of time in between. You live with someone, you paint where they can look over your shoulder, you make videos in which you pretend they’re the love of your damn life, and at some point you just have to acknowledge that they’re pretty important to you.

It’s nice to have someone who doesn’t question anything, either. Dee disables Siri on every device they own. Rachel sometimes walks around with two fingers at her throat, checking her pulse like it might disappear at any moment. That’s just the way it is during Apocalypse Buddies Being Roommates Take Two. It’s a funny kind of symbiosis, and even the things they don’t talk about feel easier.

If Rachel hadn’t shown up when she did, Dee might have spent the rest of their life lying to themselves, and the thought makes them sick sometimes.

Other times, they wish they could sleep again. That they could pass it all off as a wild figment of a child’s imagination that just never went away. That they could live the life of someone for whom the past really is in the past. Because when it’s not, it’s kind of hard to have a future.

Dee’s always been of the opinion that when your entire worldview is turned on its side, the best thing to do is have sex, and a lot of it.

They like sex and they’re pretty awesome at it. They’ve heard Amy’s psychoanalyses many times before, and they want to clear up that there are no sorrowful, intimate reasons for the parade of bed-buddies. It’s just nice to have a connection with someone else that has no strings attached. It’s nice to desire and feel desired.

It has nothing to do with Elena, okay? They don’t know what sorts of things Amy is telling Rachel, but it’s nothing as deep as that.

Ugh, if Rachel starts pitying them for that whole debacle, they’re going to lose their mind.

The thing with Elena was that she was so incredibly present and she made Dee feel so incredibly present, too. That was the most important thing. Dee was constantly living a life that wasn’t necessarily theirs, and Elena made them feel like-

Well, that isn’t important. Elena was there, and it felt like she would always be there, which was stupid. You can love someone for your whole life and then wake up someone else, forced to learn how to live without them. You can love someone for your whole life and then they die, or else you do or, worst, you’re asked to help kill them for the greater good of the world. Shit happens.

Rachel and Amy throw an intervention, which is completely uncalled for because Dee is fine. They’re stressed, they work a lot, and sometimes they just want to relax. Naked. With someone else.

There are a lot of really good reasons to hate Rachel, sometimes. Sometimes she talks about things she doesn’t know the half of, sometimes she snoops through Dee’s stuff like she has any right. Sometimes she lies to the government and drags Dee into her schemes. Sometimes there aren’t any reasons at all, but Dee hates her anyway, sees her curled on the couch and typing something on her phone and hates her, hates her, hates the damn fool, the martyr, the untouchable soiled beast, all the pieces of her that combine like a supernova into this person who makes Dee eat when they’re working so hard on a painting that everything else fades into the background.

Sometimes it’s just easier to hate Rachel, because Rachel accepts hatred, lets it sink deep under her skin and weave itself into armor. Rachel is still so incredibly strong in ways Dee doesn’t feel like they can ever be, and they hate that too.

Ed is good. Solid. He’s funny and encouraging and yeah, he’s got an amazing butt. Ed wants so badly to do right by them, and sometimes they feel bad because he’ll never be the kind of person they would die for.

(Maybe, possibly, they should stop judging romantic partners on that basis.)

Dee’s been dating him for a couple of months when they roll over in bed, take a moment to admire his shirtlessness, and start talking without allowing themselves a chance to stop.

“Do you believe in past lives?” they say, hushed like a middle-schooler, and for a moment they think he hasn’t heard them, but then he opens his eyes and looks at them for a long time.

“Why do you ask?” he says, voice turning upwards with a little bit of a laugh.

“Just curious,” they say, acutely aware that they should not be talking about this. It feels like sacrilege. Like a betrayal to Rachel in the next room over, reading some dumb paperback.

“Mmm,” he says. “Are you asking if maybe we’re destined to be together?” He’s still joking, but they’re not.

That absolutely isn’t what Dee is asking, but okay. “No,” they say. “Forget it. It’s fine.”

“No, no,” he says. “You’ve caught my interest now. What kind of thing are we talking about?”

“Just-,” they swallow. They hadn’t known how hard this would be to say. “Just people being other people before.” That’s a terrible explanation. They hope he tells them so and goes to sleep.

“I think,” Ed says, “that in my past life I was a Mongolian sheep herder.”

“A Mongolian sheep herder with a really nice butt,” they say, relieved that they don’t have to go further than that.

He laughs, sleepy and safe. “It’s all the hills, luv.”

“Oh, I see,” they say teasingly. He pulls himself up on his elbows to meet their lips. He was a Mongolian sheep herder and they were the mad-scientist best friend of someone possessed by an ancient goddess, and now they’re here, together, and probably about to have sex.

It could have been a whole lot worse.

Dee is drunk!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So. Fucking. Drunk. But it’s okay, they get to be drunk because- because everything is shit and it’s just like- what the fuck, why can’t they just be, like, happy? Just for a little while?

They don’t believe in karma and stuff, but this is probably something kinda like it. LaFontaine wasn’t so bad, they think, but like- like, they did try to kill a god. So maybe they’re cursed now. Yeah.

So Ed has a fucking wife. That’s real fun.

They don’t really taste whatever it is they’re drinking at this point. They’re just ordering the cheapest thing, and a lot of it, from this sort of seedy hole-in-the-wall bar because they can’t go to their usual one because that’s where Lauren attacked Amy and it’s just, no.

It’s sort of nice to be this drunk but it’s also pretty bad because it doesn’t make anything better, just numbs it for a little while, and they know it. They just don’t want to think about things, like, at all, pretty please with a cherry on top.

They especially don’t want to think about the look Rachel gave them, the worst look they’ve ever seen, holding Amy’s arm and watching her bruise. They don’t want to think about the stupid cliché things Ed spouted like it would save him when they confronted him. And they really, really don’t want to think about what he said about Rachel, because they aren’t in love with her, okay? They’re just not.

They order another glass of whatever the fuck they just had (probably in those exact words) and lay their cheek against the horrifyingly sticky bar to get a better sadness angle.

Which is why the dude who slides into the stool next to them looks sideways and a little bit glowing.

He orders something pretty stupid-sounding and then turns to them and says, almost confidentially, “How’s it going down there?”

“Bad,” Dee says.

“Aw, I’m sorry to hear that.” They don’t like his smile. They also don’t like his eyebrows, which are super thin, like almost transparent. You can’t trust someone whose own eyebrows ran away.

They consider turning and letting the other cheek marinate in whatever the hell is on this bar and not talking to him, but this cheek may be permanently glued down.

“What’s your poison?” he says, nodding to the glass the bartender just set down.

“Arsenic,” they say, baring their teeth, or at least trying to. It may look a little more like a grimacy smile.

He laughs. They don’t like his laugh either, add that to the list. “Not what I meant, lady.”

“I’m not a lady,” they say. They don’t want to be having this conversation.

“Figures,” he says. He takes a long swig of his drink, which looks as stupid as it sounds. “You got dyke written all over you.”

They sit up. Their vision tilts a little, but mostly stays loyal. “What the fuck?”

“You know,” he says. He still sounds casual, like this is a typical Friday night conversation for him. Maybe it is. Jesus, they should have known. Their internal Douche Detector needs fine-tuning. “The hair, the clothes . . . you gotta see how it looks, sweetheart.”

“Don’t call me sweetheart,” they say automatically. “Please tell me how what I choose to do with my appearance concerns you in the slightest.” That was a lot of words. Go, Dee. They’re kicking his ass.

“Come on,” he says. “I just meant, you know, you’re a walking stereotype. Chill, okay?”

“I will not chill,” they say. “I kicked my boyfriend out today and I’m pretty drunk and you’re being a total dick. I will not chill.”

“Kicked your boyfriend out?” he says. “Lucky guy. Afraid he’d find out you fuck women?”

They punch him in the jaw.

It’s a good, square punch. Thumb outside the fist and everything. He falls backward off his stool and that feels pretty awesome. Then he gets to his feet and grabs their wrists.

Dee hasn’t taken many self-defense classes outside a couple basic workshops held at various Pride events. LaFontaine did, though, so Dee twists their hands, finds the break between thumb and finger, and yanks back.

The bartender looks extremely unconcerned. Dee has time to think that they should probably take this outside when Total Dick swings at them. They dodge, but not very well, so the fist connects with the side of their face. Some absurd part of them thinks his hand will get stuck on the residue of the (very gross) bar. It doesn’t.

Things sort of happen very fast after that. They do go outside, and it’s kind of cold and Dee thinks they should have brought a sweater or something. They’re on the ground, and he’s on the ground (not at the same time) and they both land some punches or wild kicks or whatever they’re trying to do. His hair is longer than theirs, so they grab it and twist him around at some point, or maybe he does that to the collar of their shirt. It’s hard to keep track of.

In the end, they’re sitting on the curb at the end of the street with an Uber on its way and a lot of dried blood on their face. They just got into the fourth bar fight of their life. They think they maybe won, but they aren’t sure. They definitely made that homophobic asshole feel pain, which is good.

They’re sort of thinking about how Rachel is probably worried, and then they’re just thinking about Rachel in general and also Danny but mostly Rachel. They’re thinking about her with her knuckles wrapped in bandages and carrying Carmilla from the depths of hell or whatever. They’re thinking about the videos, about how they gave them all those fans who are sometimes kinda creepy but mostly cool and how they took their boyfriend.

They’re thinking about kissing her.

The Uber pulls up and they kind of fall into the backseat. The radio’s on low, mostly static with a little bit of pop music.

They mumble an address and they’re watching the streetlights out the windows, warm tears of orange and yellow. They’re thinking about all the terrible light and darkness they have seen.

“He was right about her,” they tell the driver, who looks completely noncommittal.

“Mmm,” he says, turning left.

“I think I like her,” they continue. “Like, like like her.”

“Congrats,” he says, very flatly.

“I’m kind of a mess,” they say. It’s hard to look at the road and the stars above it without seeing their own reflection. The blood is all over, splitting their face into LaFontaine and Dee, alive and dead, coexisting somehow.

They’re dropped off at the steps and they haul themselves inside, hoping Rachel will have gone to bed, tired of waiting up.

No such luck. She’s on the couch, and she’s so shocked and concerned and something in Dee twists their mouth into a smile even though they don’t find anything particularly funny.

Rachel is dabbing at their face gently, angry and upset and sweet. She has a nice face and she’s talking, she’s saying things she probably doesn’t mean, stuff like you bloody toaster, which isn’t a very good insult so she must not really be that mad.

Dee’s talking too, talking about how Ed was right, because he was, in a lot of ways. He was stupid and they hate him and his stupid face and stupid butt but he was right about some things.

They kiss her and she doesn’t tense up, not even a little bit. She leans in, kind of, almost like there’s a camera right there but there’s not.

They kiss her and they feel in control. All these gods, and they couldn’t keep them apart. All these gods, and Danny who loved Laura and LaFontaine who loved Perry, Dee who loved Ed, Rachel who loved (loves?) Amy, and what a tangled mess it is, how can something like love exist like this?

The door opens, and Amy’s standing there. Rachel looks up and Dee sits, eyes half-closed, thinking about how their nose hurts and Rachel’s lips are nice.

What a tangled mess it is.

Two months is not the longest time Dee and Amy have gone without speaking, but it’s up there. They’re not too concerned; they’ve done worse things to Amy than steal her gal pal, and she usually forgives them.

Rachel’s pretty torn up about it, though. Dee can sense her guilt from across the room. She’s really starting to fit in as a Canadian.

(Also, the job with their mom? She will owe them. For the rest of her mortal life. Not an exaggeration.)

So Rachel’s off learning how to be the world’s best flower girl (hopefully she’ll figure out the difference between dahlias and chrysanthemums; come on, even Dee knows that one), and Dee is pushing through their third-worst artist’s block in the past five years. The new apartment is quieter, and feels less like a home.

The music is almost to its highest volume, a song Dee never bothered to learn the name of. They take a sip of coffee, and this time it actually is coffee and not paint water. Small blessings.

They work for about three hours and they can feel that they’re almost past the rut. Maybe twenty more minutes of painting aimlessly, and they’ll be in the home stretch.

And then Rachel just sprints into the room, hat dangling off her ear like an absurd Christmas ornament and Dee quietly gives up their hope of getting anything else done tonight.

“Dee,” Rachel gasps, and then, with more urgency, “Dee.”

“What?” Dee says, attempting to find a place to set down their brush that won’t leave a stain.

Rachel just stares at them, somehow looking incredibly solemn while still panting.

Europeans. “How was your first day?”

“Dee, I-,” she stops, leaning against the wall. She swallows visibly. “There was-,”

“Slow down,” Dee says. “What’s going on?”

Silence.

“Rachel . . .”

“I saw Perry,” she blurts and suddenly the whole room twists like the knife in their gut and oh God, they need to sit down.

They don’t make it to the couch, instead dropping where they stand. They knock over the cup of paint water and it spills. They watch it spread across the floor, filtering the tile reddish. Perry.

No matter how many worlds they live in, Perry will always be the most important thing in them.

“Are you sure?” they say quietly. They know the answer.

“Yeah,” Rachel says, crouching next to them. “She was all in a rush, talking about- about buttholes, and her dog, and- never mind. Are you okay?”

A laugh scratches its way up their throat, almost mournful. Mother of fuck.

“Yeah,” they say. “Oh yeah. I’m great.”

“Dee-,” Rachel says, then stops. She looks regretful, some perfect mix of concern and sorrow, like she practiced it in the mirror.

“So, what?” they say. “You and-,” they can’t say it, they can’t say her name, “-you and her just stopped in the middle of the store and stared at each other? Like a fucking rom-com?”

“Well, no,” Rachel says. “I- I don’t think she remembers.”

Wow is that a punch in the gut. Dee’s laughter shakes, turning into more of a wheeze.

“I mean, she might!” Rachel says quickly. “I don’t know- I don’t know her situation.”

“She just strolled into my mother’s flower shop,” Dee says. “Perry.”

“Yeah,” Rachel says. “Yeah, she did.”

They’re both quiet for several minutes. All Dee can think of the way she looked after whatever it was Laura and Carmilla did, shocked and a little scared, standing in the Dean’s horrendous dress and trying to find a way to make it okay. To make it normal.

“I wish I could have seen her,” Dee says. The paint water is making little rivets through the cracks in the tile. “I- she was so close, and now- now she’s gone.” They’re not crying, okay, they’re not, it’s just- twenty-three years and she was a customer of their mom’s flower shop. Dee’s mom met Perry before Dee did, and it’s just- augh.

Rachel is quiet for a long time and then she says, “Do you know Cal?”

The fuck? “No.”

“She- she works there too. She does deliveries.” Rachel clears her throat. “On her bike.”

Is Rachel’s method of comforting friends just abruptly switching the topic? “Uh- good for her?”

“She- she knows the addresses of a lot of the shop regulars,” Rachel says, looking like she hates herself for even suggesting it.

Oh. Huh. That . . . was not something that had occurred to them.

“Okay,” Dee says.

“Okay?”

“Yeah,” Dee says. They rub their knuckles, trying to figure out when this weird, elongated dream became their life. “I mean, it couldn’t hurt, right?”

It looks like Rachel thinks it could hurt very much, but she doesn’t say so. “All right,” she says slowly. “I guess I’ll go get the car started.”

Dee hasn’t been inside their mom’s flower shop since they were nine. Somehow, it manages to make them feel like a little kid all over again, following Rachel through the glass doors and staring at the colorful flowers everywhere. It always felt like stepping into another dimension, some fairy world where time passed slower.

There’s a girl strapping a helmet on behind the desk. She looks up at them and her brow furrows. Dee wants to melt into the floor.

“Hey, Rachel,” she says. “Did you . . . forget something?”

“Cal!” Rachel says, with a smile that looks a lot more like a grimace. “I was just . . . thinking, you know, about the woman who was in here earlier- with the curly hair?”

“Oh,” Cal says. “Rachel, look- you did fine today, don’t worry about it. Okay? There are going to be a lot of customers, you can’t beat yourself up about this.”

“No,” Rachel says. “I just, you know, wanted to apologize. Make sure she got what she needed, since I was so preoccupied.”

“I would recommend just letting it go,” Cal says. “You’re new, you’ll make mistakes. It’s fine.”

“I just want to make sure the . . . baby shower thing went okay,” Rachel says and wow, this isn’t working at all. “Do you . . . have her address by any chance?”

Cal raises an eyebrow and Rachel winces. “What?”

“Her address,” Dee jumps in, deciding that this is going nowhere without their help. “You know Rachel, can’t rest until she makes sure no one could . . . possibly be mad at her.” They dig their fingers into Rachel’s arm.

“Yep,” Rachel says, looking pained. “I can’t have her thinking I don’t care about her . . . butthole.”

Dee almost chokes.

“Do you mean buttonholes?” Cal says.

“That- makes a lot more sense,” Rachel says. “But still, I came off as sort of . . . standoffish, don’t you think?”

“No,” Cal says. “You came off as new. Seriously, going to customers’ houses when you think they might be unhappy with you is not a good business plan. Trust me.”

“Please,” Dee says, because if they get this close only for her to slip through their fingers, they’re going to scream.

Cal stares at them a long time.

“Why is this so important to you?” she asks and Dee doesn’t know what to say.

Rachel steps in. “Dee here thinks she might be an old friend of theirs. They lost touch a long time ago, but they were close in university.”

Dee tries to plaster their most innocent look on their face. “I just want to reconnect.”

“That’s really unconvincing,” Cal says. “But you know what? Fine.”

She leans over the counter and scribbles something in a notebook before ripping out the page and handing it to Dee. It has roses patterned along the edges, and GRACE written at the top. Underneath is the address, someplace not three blocks from the shop.

“Don’t do anything creepy,” Cal says, tossing a key to Rachel, who does a terrible job catching it. “And you’re last in, so you get to lock up.”

And with that, she’s out the door, leaving Dee feel a little dizzy and a lot unprepared for whatever is going to happen next.

Rachel squeezes their shoulder, watching Cal’s retreating back. “Ready?” she says.

Dee swallows. “Yeah,” they lie. “Let’s go.”

Rachel pulls into the driveway of a house that looks so Perry it makes Dee’s stomach hurt. The hedges are trimmed into perfect blocks, the grass is mown, and the roof connects with the brick in a very pleasing ninety-degree angle.

Rachel turns the car off and sits there, blankly staring out the windshield. Dee traces their seatbelt buckle, but doesn’t move to get out.

“Do you ever wish you could be more like them?” Rachel whispers, voice almost reedy with emotion.

Dee doesn’t say anything, fiddling with the top button of their shirt. They have an inkling as to what Rachel’s saying, but they hope they’re wrong. “What do you mean?”

“Danny,” Rachel says, and it’s the first time she’s ever said the name. “She was- she was so brave. Loyal. Selfless.” She touches the tip of her spine, as if remembering the knife, the dried blood. “At first, I mean.”

LaFontaine was smart. LaFontaine never gave up, no matter what. “And you think you’re not?”

“I don’t know what I am,” Rachel says, and she sounds close to tears.

Dee reaches out and takes her hand, squeezing it. “It’s okay,” they say, and they mean it. They’re these half-people, wandering around and trying to figure out the purpose behind everything that’s happened to them, and maybe there is no purpose. Maybe they’ll walk through that door and Perry won’t have the answers they’re looking for. Then what?

Rachel gives an undignified sniff and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. “Thanks,” she whispers. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make this all about me. Do you want to knock, or should I?”

Dee opens the door, stepping out into the sun. They turn to look at the curtained windows. “I will,” they say, because they need to. This is their moment.

Rachel follows them up the path, actually wringing her hands. Something is churning in Dee’s stomach, and they don’t think they’ve ever been afraid like this. Gods and monsters pale next to Lola Perry.

They ring the bell, a tiny plastic circle smaller than their finger. They squeeze their eyes shut, unable to look at whoever will answer the door.

It swings open and Dee’s eyes are still closed. They can’t look. They can’t do it. LaFontaine would have been able to look.

“Flower shop girl?” she says and Christ, why didn’t Rachel warn them about her voice? It’s so much deeper now.

Rachel doesn’t say anything and Perry doesn’t say anything and Dee has to open their eyes, they have to.

Perry looks regal, like she’s a goddess again. She’s leaning against the doorframe, waiting.

She doesn’t remember. Dee knows immediately that she doesn’t remember. Her eyes flit over them, disinterested. Oh God, it’s her, it’s her hands and her eyes and her words, it’s Perry and Dee wants to throw themselves into her arms, see if she’ll catch them. They want to hold her and kiss her. They want to paint her.

“Perry,” Dee croaks, feeling like they’re going to throw up. “I- Perry.”

She looks politely disengaged. “Who?”

“Perry,” Dee says again, more urgently this time because who gives a fuck, really? They can’t believe they and Rachel spent two whole days tiptoing around each other. They should have grabbed her arm and asked her to be their lifeline. They should have talked about all the things they’re still avoiding.

Some things are more important than some random girl thinking you’re a weirdo.

They repeat themselves. “Perry, Perry, it’s me- it’s- it’s LaF-,” never in their life could they have imagined they would be standing here, going to pieces on these nice stone steps, introducing themselves as the person they can never be. Begging her, silently, to respond. To love them again.

“I’m sorry,” she says, “what’s going on?”

Rachel finds her words. Thank God for Rachel. Dee loves her too, loves her like they can’t breathe and maybe they can’t. Maybe they still can’t.

“Are you Lola Perry?” she asks, straightforward and to the point. “Do you remember us?”

“I remember you,” Perry says, still looking so damn confused and Dee wants to squeeze her hands until blood runs to her brain and reminds her. “You sold me- you attempted to sell me flowers this morning.”

“No,” Rachel says and how can she be so calm? “No, that’s not what we’re referring to.”

Dee wants to get down on their knees and beg. Say we’re normal now, isn’t that what you want? Isn’t that what you always wanted?

“Would you like to come in?” Perry asks, sounding uncertain.

“No,” Rachel says, “no, I think it would be best if we got going. Dee?”

They nod. They can’t seem to move their feet, but Rachel takes their hand and pulls them and they detach. Perry’s standing in front of the door, forehead creased in such a familiar way. Tugging one of her curls- an old nervous tic. Dee can’t watch her anymore.

Rachel stops before getting into the car. “I’m glad you got to forget,” she calls, and then she ducks into the seat very quickly.

Dee swallows what feels like one of those spiked balls medieval people dragged around sometimes. They look out the window, determinately away from Perry. Rachel turns the key in the ignition and the radio comes on, a gentle song. It washes over them like waves on the beach they went to as a child, when the ground is disintegrating below your feet and all you can do is let go.

Rachel makes hot chocolate and they lie in bed together, knocking knees in a commiserative way. Most of the lights are off.

Dee remembers how it ends sometimes, moments like these when the rest of the world is stripped bare, leaving only hard truths. They had won. The evil was defeated. Laura and Carmilla took a long, romantic walk and Perry fussed over their eye and their scratches and Danny- well, Danny never did get a happy ending.

They remember that it was warm and things were growing in the gardens. Perry kissed them, which was nice. The sun had just started to crawl out from behind a tree when the towers fell, and by then nobody could have been saved. All that screwing around in magic and talismans and deities, all those things they could never have understood.

They had run. The school was coming down in a shower of stone and spark, great plumes of smoke reaching for the sky, for release. They had been hand in sweaty hand, tripping over each other. Victory was still in their blood, so close they could taste it.

The campus fell without drama or fuss. They fell with it, and they don’t know how many others.

They remember hurtling towards the ground, broken bones and promises, blood in their mouth, and then they don’t remember anything at all.

Rachel is asleep, mug tipped precariously. Dee rescues it and sets it aside. Somehow, they found each other across continents and oceans, and they built this home of second chances.

I’m glad you got to forget, Rachel had called to Perry, and Dee is too, sincerely. They’ve lived a life with the cruel aftertaste of death at the back of their tongue, counting stories. LaFontaine was a normal kid once, and Dee never got that privilege.

They pull the blankets around their shoulders. They look over at the girl who died twice and got back up again both times. Passing cars paint shapes across their ceiling, warped light filtered through the window.

“Goodnight, Danny,” they say, and they let sleep come.

#apologies in advance for the gross overuse of tags #i just don't think anyone ever goes on the coupleish ao3 page and i want people to see it #coupleish #couple-ish #carmilla #lafontaine #danny lawrence #kaitlyn alexander #sharon belle #fic #my writing

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theunaccomplishedwriter · 7 years

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Breaking the Surface - Chapter 1: Cold Awakening

Hello there! Apologies I've been absent for quite a while with my writings but I've had a severe case of life happening. That and writer's block. I've been reading a lot of other people's fics though and this is something I've been thinking about writing for a while. Just glad I've finally got something published after so long! I'll try and keep this updated regularly since life has given me a break for the moment. Please leaves comments and tell me what you think! Any feedback will help me make this work the best that it possibly can be! So, without further ado, enjoy!

"Lance!" Becky yelled, causing Lance to groan and pull the covers over his head as if they could protect him from his already irate girlfriend, something which was becoming a default mode for her, even at the ungodly hour of seven in the morning.

"Lance!" Becky called again. "Lance if you don't get up right now I will come up there and kick you out myself! You know I will!"

With the memories and bruises still fresh from Becky's last gentle attempts to get him out of bed, Lance reluctantly tossed the covers off and groggily got out of bed. Lance still wasn't sure why he had to get up at the same hour that Becky did, it wasn't as if he had anywhere in particular he had to go anyway.

Grabbing a towel and heading towards the shower, he pushed the bedroom door open and mechanically headed towards the bathroom, his brain going on autopilot so he didn't see or hear the despairing look and exasperated sigh Becky tossed at him as his dishevelled frame trudged passed her.

Twiddling with the shower knobs and tentatively placing his paw under the water, Lance stepped into the small cubicle, allowing the water to flow over him as he stood there passively. While Lance knew, and had been reminded by Becky several times that he constantly looked as though he had been dragged through a hedge backwards, Lance did try to make himself somewhat clean and presentable. But, with things going the way they were, there didn't really seem to be too much point in worrying about his general hygiene too much.

Without paying too much attention, Lance went through the motions of lathering his fur with shampoo, rinsing it off and spending an inordinate amount of time drying his fur and spines. He really needed to get fur dryer but he accidentally busted Becky's the other week and Becky wasn't about to lend him his new one, so he'd been stuck with a towel dry for a while now, which was hellish and all but impossible to get his spines done.

Eventually giving up, shaking the excess water off his quills and allowing them to drip dry again, Lance wrapped his towel around himself and chucked his dirty clothes in the washing basket, not wanting another argument about the whole cleanliness thing this early again.

Heading back into the bedroom, with Becky too preoccupied with getting ready for work to give him anymore disparaging looks, Lance rummaged through one of his boxes for some clothes. He didn't blame Ash for dumping his stuff in those boxes and shoving on the street. Well, at the time Lance remembered a lot of colourful words being shouted at the impassive front door but he'd been freaking pissed then.

"She's overreacting." Lance had thought. "It's not like I was going to do anything. She was just jealous. So some other girl likes me. What a fucking surprise! Had she not met me? I'm me! I'm the fucking bomb! Who wouldn't be interested in me! Hell, if I weren't me I'd been interested in me! She just can't handle the fact that she may have some competition. That's it. Just can't hack someone friendly competition. She'll be crawling back soon. This was all temporary. Just a bump in the road. It's not like I'm gonna do anything with Becky. I mean, she's nice and all but, I mean come on! I'm not that fucking shallow! This was all just temporary. Just temporary…"

But she didn't come back. The door remained firmly shut and no matter how loud Lance would shout, no matter how often he texts or called, Ash remained as silent as the grave. Day after day he'd turn up and the same silence was his only reward for all his loud efforts.

He'd been rooming with Becky since he was kicked out. Sleeping on the sofa, obviously. He wasn't in to her. She was nice and liked to play at being a musician, but that's all she was, just someone to play along with. Nothing serious. Nothing permanent. Then he saw the concert.

Becky left but, disparaging her efforts but, as soon as she was out the room, Lance scrambled to the remote to watch her play again. She was… amazing. Her voice. Her guitar skills. Her power. That's what it was. Her sheer, unbridled, unadulterated power. She had those mammals on their feet cheering. Cheering for her. Just her. He watched, jaw slightly dropped until he turned the TV off, walked over to the kitchen, and pulled a bottle of Glenfiddich.

"How can she do this to me?" Lance had thought, chugging down another mouthful of whiskey from the bottle, the bottle nearly empty and an hour being lost to his internal venom. "She fucking needs me! I made her! What's she without me? A two-bit guitar player and I fucking showed her how to play! Could barely strum a G chord when I met her and now she's thinks she's Jimi fucking Hendrix or something! Those people they… they don't know talent if it appeared in front of them with a massive neon sign and a firework display spelling it out with a choreographed display happening round it. Fuck them all! Fuck her! Set free? SET FUCKING FREE! Set free from what?! She wasn't trapped! She didn't fucking escape anything! All I did was tell her a few truths! I'm not the bad guy here! She's the conniving bitch here! I'm the good guy!"

Downing the rest of the whiskey, Lance slowly got up from the sofa, his legs nearly buckling from the sudden movement. Looking to the bedroom where Becky had not re-emerged from, Lance stared at the door for what seemed to be an eternity, his mind contemplating his next move as the alcohol sloshed the rational thoughts out of the way, as he moved towards the door and was thoughts and warnings were consumed by the oblivion of the blackout.

Waking up, he didn't remember what had happened, but he could feel the shame and regret hit him like a freight train. Looking over, he saw Becky asleep, her mouth forming a little smile as she lay next to her guilt-ridden partner. He placed his head back on the pillow, staring up at the bland white ceiling. There was no going back. He didn't mean it, but he couldn't undo it now. He'd become the very thing that Ash had sung about. Someone to escape from. To be set free. And now he'd ensnared another in his web. Whether it was the bottle of whiskey or his feelings, he had to run to the bathroom to get all the bile out of him, knowing whatever he brought out of himself, it would be a mere fraction of what lay within him.

The first few days were so beautiful for Becky. She kissed him so loving every morning, played with him at gigs, made dinners just to show how much she cared. She wasn't the best at any of those things, but she tried. Goddamn she tried. He remembered her saying how perfect everything would be. How their life would be glorious and beautiful, not matter what anyone else said. Their relationship was all that mattered and they would have a life and home that matched. She was so hopeful, so caring, so… fucking naïve.

So here he was. Six months down the line on a dreary September day, still living out of the boxes that his ex had thrown out of their old flat while he lived a half-existence with a girl he never loved and turned her love of him into a deformed and decaying thing, it's colour faded from its early bright hues to a near blackened husk of its former self.

Throwing on his usual get-up, Lance wiped away the last vestiges of sleep and cleared his mind of the bitter thoughts and headed out to get some much-needed breakfast. Schlepping over to the kitchenette, Lance quickly made himself some cereal and planted himself on the sofa, mindlessly skimming through the TV channels.

"Urgh, seriously Lance? Can you not do that at the table?" Becky said, still doing her last touch up of mascara with her pocket mirror.

"'Ow elsh am I gonna watsh the TV?" Lance responded slovenly, every word having to negotiate its way round the cereal in his mouth.

"Ew, that's so disgusting!" Becky grimaced, before turning to check herself in her pocket mirror one last time for any defects in her appearance before snapping the mirror shut, satisfied with her work.

"Sorry." Lance replied, swallowing the food and casting his eyes away from Becky.

"Got any more gigs lined up then?" Becky asked, her tone implying it was more to fill the dead air than out of genuine interest.

"No… nothing yet." Lance eventually muttered in response.

It hadn't been hard to get gigs initially. Becky and he got gigs quite regularly, even becoming the favourites at some bars. For two whole months it had been going fine. Even after Ash's rise to fame their bookings didn't dwindle. They all knew she'd been with Lance but just assumed they'd decided to split and both had gone in different directions. At least, that's what Lancer had been saying. He needed the gigs and, so long as they drew in paying customers, the owners were happy to give them time to play.

But then the article happened.

He'd been woken up by the phone ringing, with a very cold sounding manager telling him not to darken his door again. Three more similar calls later and very little explanations as to why all his gigs were being scratched off led him to search the internet. Maybe someone had written a bad review or something. It wouldn't have been the first but definitely the first that cost him gigs like this.

He didn't need to look far.

It was everywhere. An article with Ash promoting her new album and giving the story behind her hit single. A reveal all story. A reveal all story that included him. A reveal all story that included him that did not put him the best light. Or any light for that matter. It was a character assassination except the assassin in question had not only put a bullet in his head, but rather had dropped an atomic bomb over him. There was not a shred of light of him left, just the pit of blackness that was Lance, the ex-boyfriend who belittled an up and coming star's dreams before galivanting off with some seductress of equal ill repute.

It can't be that bad, right? Lance thought. I mean, who hasn't had a bad breakup? I'm sure this'll all blow over soon. Something else will come up and overshadow this. No problem, I just have to wait this out. That's all.

Waiting it out took a bit longer than expected. Booked gigs vanished, door slammed in his face, glares and outright abuse became the norm from animals he's never even met before as well as those he'd known for years.

It was when he was out with Becky on their way to one of the few bars that hadn't slammed its door in their faces that a boar strode straight across the road and stood in front of them, his eyes blind with rage, looking not at Lance, but directly at Becky, into her eyes, as if he was trying to look directly into her soul.

"You are a fucking whore." And then he spat directly into Becky's face and abruptly marched away.

With the boar stalking off, Becky wiped off the saliva off her face, flicked it to the ground, wiped her paws on her dress, grabbed Lance off and led him to the gig, his face still uncomprehending and unmoving. They played the gig, got paid, and went home. It had been their best gig yet. Becky, while not the best singer in the world, somehow broke through whatever barrier that held her back and let her voice soar. Even the mostly hostile crowd softly applauded her efforts. And all the while, through every song, every chord, every note, Becky smiled. A smile so simple, so innocent, so good.

Lance had never heard anyone cry so hard. She curled up on the bed, bawling her eyes out. Those choking, guttural cries were almost primordial. It was if the boar had split her in two, bearing her innermost self, open to the world to judge while she, flayed, could do nothing.

Through all of it Becky had been supportive. She told him not to take notice, held his hand, encouraged him to go out with her to do gigs, even going out of her way to book them for him when he was too depressed or drunk to do it himself. She'd been his support, a lifeline, a compass in this hostile and seemingly unnavigable sea of bile, trying to get him to the shore where her almost saccharine promises lay of everything just being fine. And now she was letting everything seep out and stain the sheets below her, as if everything that kept her up had snapped.

All Lance could do was feebly hold her. He didn't say anything. What could he say? That it would be okay? Even if he didn't truly love her, he couldn't lie to her like that. Couldn't promise those sweet dreams she promised him. It wasn't his way. All he could do was hold her so she wouldn't be alone.

She got a job in real estate two week later. It was good for her, she had always been a kind and chatty person so it suited her. She met other animals, animals who weren't interested in the music scene. Normal animals. Animals into gossip, fashion, TV shows, all that jazz. Good animals. It was just what Becky needed and Lance wasn't going to stop her. She needed something good in her life. Something normal. Something pleasant. Something that wasn't Lance.

It wasn't long later that the seams of their relationship finally started to fray. It was inevitable really, Lance could see it as soon as the headlines were plastered all over the online forums. But neither compelled themselves to end it. Instead, they existed next to each other. They lived their separate lives, said the occasional nice word, though those turned mean-spirited sooner than either had anticipated or wanted.

Becky reached for handbag and, with a last flick of her hair, began making her way to the door. Lance had to admit, for all the bitchiness that had surfaced from within her, she still looked wonderful. Maybe it was because Lance was looking up at her from the sofa, Becky gave out a sigh, and turned towards him.

"Lance" she began tentatively "I think it's time to face facts. You need to get a job."

Lance looked down at his cereal bowl glumly, avoiding her gaze. He knew this conversation had been coming, perched in the backgrounds of both their minds for a while like an unwanted guest. He didn't want to face it, but he knew he would have to silence its incessant cawing at some point, and it seemed the time had come.

"I… I know, but it's hard Becky."

"Have you been looking?" Becky replied with a bit of sharp directness in her tone.

"Well, you know" Lance said, rubbing his paw against the back of his head "I'm not exactly the most qualified person in the world…"

It wasn't a lie per se, Lance had good qualifications behind him, but they were just from secondary school and thinking back to the days when he tried to get a job to help him while getting into the punk scene, many saw his GCSE's of all A's as being someone who wouldn't exactly be there in a year's time, so they all turned him down.

But Becky wasn't buying it.

"Come on Lance, I know you're not stupid and you're not a teenager anymore. You've got some brains in there somewhere, so get using them and get a job! Anything Lance! Shop Assistant, Waiter, Janitor, bloody well anything!"

"You think it's that easy!" Lance returned hotly. "You think I can just turn up somewhere and go 'Hi, I'm Lance, that guy who broke what seems like the world's favourite singer's heart? Can I start Monday?' I'd be lucky to get out of there with all my quills on my back!"

Lance was stood up now and seeing red now, the bottled-up rage built up within him threatening to explode. "Half the world crosses the street to avoid me and the other half to shout abuse or worse! What chance do I have Becky? What fucking chance…" The anger left him, his legs giving way as he slumped back down on the settee.

"Hate to break it sweetheart" Lance continued dejectedly "but no-one's hiring a cheating scumbag, and especially ones whose only accomplishment in his field of choice was managing to strum the guitar without setting it on fire."

Huffing slightly and looking at her watch as if it was worth her time responding to Lance's mini-tirade or whether she should get going to avoid being late. Looking up, Lance saw the determination in her eyes. She wasn't finished.

"Look Lance, I don't want to deal with your self-pitying shit right now. I've got to go to work and it's getting old now. I got shit too, remember? A life that doesn't revolve around the pity show that is Lance Morgan." Lance winced. She only used her last name when she was making a point.

"Rent's not cheap you know" Becky continued, her voice rising in anger "and it's about time you started paying me back. Do you know how much time I've missed going out with friends? Buying things just 'cos I want them? Going to the pictures? Having fun?! It feels like an eternity and I've got a schmuck of a boyfriend who won't try anymore because of a few bad words!"

Becky's paws were trembling with anger and Lance's could barely keep eye contact with her, the shame tasting like bile in his throat.

"Do you realise how I feel? Being with someone I have to mother just to get him to do basic stuff? Jesus Lance, I'm younger than you! I don't need to be doing this shit! I know the world's been unkind to you but whoop-dee-fucking-do! I've not had an easy ride either you know? I've had the abuse, the comments, the looks, but look at me! I've got a job, I've got friends, I've got a life! You, you're just… a fucking embarrassment…"

Becky marched over to the front door, swinging open forcefully and stared out into the empty corridor. She seemed to stand there for an age before, she slowly shook her head. Not looking back to see Lance's face, Becky said quietly, anger still on the edge of her voice. "I don't care what it is you do Lance, just do something. Anything. You can't coup yourself up in here forever. I won't allow it. If you don't, then I'll…" Leaving the sentence unfinished, Becky left, slowly letting the door click shut behind her, leaving Lance with a pained look and cereals starting to go soggy.

#sing 2016 #sing #lance #becky #fanfic #new story #hope you like it #fanfiction #fanfiction.net #ao3 #archive of our own #breaking the surface #chapter 1

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rgmonzon-folio · 5 years

Text

From Glass Slippers to Lightsabers

At the tender age of three, I have usurped my parents and became Supreme Lord of the Television set. Under my command, the T.V. blared the Disney Channel 24/7. From what I can pluck from my foggy memories, I would sit at the lowest step of our staircase, swivel the big, black box that was our T.V. to face me, and watch as it blared to a fantastical life with a press of a button.

I hummed along to the music my favorite Disney princesses would sing. I clasped my hands to my mouth at jaw-dropping twists and turns reminiscent to Aladdin’s carpet rides. My heart would pound along with the drum beats as Mulan fought China’s foes. I was completely enthralled in worlds within the black box, which kept me from the lure of potential playmates in our neighborhood of back-to-back row houses. The rubbery clop-clop-clop of their slippers as they chased each other on the eskinita pavement and their shrill cries of taya! were drowned by the whimsical tunes I never grew tired of.

Within the confines of our white walls and beyond the fairy tale renditions of Disney, I learned to create worlds of my own. I learned I could fashion my pambahay garb into gowns as magical as Belle’s and Cinderella’s, I learned to will images and drawings from books to come to life and undertake adventures of their own - under my own terms.

I even learned, despite my still developing skill with my native tongue, to speak English. I pieced together the words Mickey Mouse and friends uttered with their animated actions, and built my vocabulary before I even started going to school. Growing up, my parents would remind me that in my pre-preschool age I would only occasionally ask them what certain words meant - and it wasn’t long before I could speak coherent English sentences on my own.

Language weaved itself into the fantastic world of moving images, and storytelling took to a whole new level. I knew what magic and adventure meant, and I loved it.

It wasn’t long before my parents updated my old, vandalized boxed set of Grimms’ fairy tales - which was gifted to me during my first birthday. You could see it in an old photograph, where I was in the living room in blue jumpers, huddled with a pile of dolls and toys, beside me was the boxed set which I now wish I had preserved better. Luckily my parents eventually gave me other storybooks to enjoy, which got me into drawing as soon as I got school notebooks and crayons with blank pages at the back. At five, despite my scratchy handwriting and drawing skills, I wrote my first story, about Hello Kitty who dug too deep into her garden and found relics of an old world.

Of course you’d think all of these would be an immense advantage once I stepped into school, but with my classmates speaking Tagalog, I only became acutely aware of how different I was. And with the fact that I didn’t interact as much with other children compared to my T.V. screen, social interaction made me want to duck my head into my blouse the way turtles hid in their shells.

But somehow my classmates’ parents knew I could speak English, and they found joy in making me translate phrases into the language, to my utmost embarrassment. They found me smart and gifted, despite never having been on top of the class. Apparently, speaking in English made you smart.

Whenever I was singled out, I would squirm and try to hide behind my mother’s legs, who would in turn coax me to entertain the people fascinated in me. But that made me speak less, in fear of making mistakes and seeming less brilliant than people set me out to be - a trait I still have traces of to this very day.

Going into grade one, I decided not to highlight my difference, much to my mother’s dismay. Everybody else spoke Tagalog, so why should I do otherwise? But for some reason I had been branded, and people could not forget.

I revealed myself in writing, even in my earliest essays. Perhaps this marks the start of my love of the craft and my dream to become a writer, my dream to make people feel what I felt when I read or watched a Disney classic.

I learned to watch more action-packed cartoons in grade school, which aired in the usual Disney Channel. I was then introduced to a new world of heroes. While I did not fully trade my princesses with caped superheroes and super spies, I learned to anticipate stories in sagas when I went home from my classes.

I got hooked on stories of boys and girls with magical powers who fought crime and the dark forces of evil. There’s an allure in the charming protagonists, like Jake Long - the American Dragon, who went to school like me, but would switch to their secret lives through a magical transformation sequence.

American Dragon is one of the most beloved cartoons of my childhood, one that made me faithfully await new episodes as they aired. Its story was more complex than my preschool line-up of shows, as Jake came from a lineage that could transform themselves into dragons, with the task of protecting the magical world from evil, whilst maintaining daily lives as mortals. Plus, Jake still had to go to school. He had a sweat deal.

In that show, evil didn’t simply come from ugly monsters and beasts, as is the usual depiction in fairy tales. There was also evil among the dragons that supposedly protected humans and magical creatures alike, and evil among humans and magical creatures who were supposed to be protected.

These just made me love the story more - sprinkle in the classic subplot of Jake falling in love with Rose, who happened to be of a human tribe sworn to rid the world of dragons like himself, and I was hooked. For a cartoon written for the grade school demographic it was strangely complex (the fact that the main character is a Chinese-American in New York, with an African-American and Caucasian best friend also made it culturally diverse!)

This made me want to write my own novel and work for Disney all the more.

At eleven years old, we finally got access to the internet, which utterly changed the game for me. I was used to appreciating my animated media all by myself, my only companion the white walls of our living room, our Japanese-themed portraits behind the T.V., our wooden sofas, and the cold, green tiles with wispy patterns on the floor.

Internet showed me other people’s feedback on my beloved childhood classics - the shows which honed my hopes and dreams to this very day. People actually hated High School Musical, and I found that utterly heartbreaking.

I’m not the least bit joking - my anger surged like boiling water in a kettle when I read youTube comments from crude teenagers unabashedly declaring the HSM sucked. It was corny and unrealistic.

And I could not have it.

In turn I did some bashing of my own when High School Musical’s biggest rival came out - Camp Rock. I hated the Jonas Brothers with a passion on the sole grounds that they threatened the popularity of the High School Musical cast (which is ironic, because I later on learned to love the brothers’ sitcom Jonas L.A.)

Upon discovering fanfiction, I even learned that my writing ability was heaps and bounds behind other people my age, and becoming a famed author and a Disney employee became bigger and bigger of a stretch.

In a nutshell, the internet ruined my life.

I even made it a point to avoid movie reviews of the films my favorite Disney actors would star in, in fear of the jolting pain and anger I would feel at the critics’ responses. That is until I matured, if only by a fracture of a degree, to try not to let these words hit me personally. In the first place, it was strange, since they were never really addressed to me, but to my favorite films and shows, and yet I would feel like they attacked my family with bolos.

Looking back on my pre-teen self makes me laugh, knowing how truly childish I was. Thankfully as i went into my later teens, I learned to accept criticism for my beloved films, after all, it is a basic requirement for a subject in college called English 103, or Critical Writing.

College had went out of its way to shatter many of my previous beliefs and providing me with lenses with which to view the world. With several workshop classes, I received criticism for my own works, which in turned helped my to hone my future projects. However, the attachment I felt, and still feel, towards my favorite films and shows is natural, as I write this very moment and trudge through the BA Communication Arts program because of them. I guess I just learned to accept their flaws when putting them under a critical lense.

I learned that Disney made better and better films because they learned from their criticisms. Had they not, girls would still be passively waiting in the towers their stepmothers locked them in for their princes to save them. Now we have Rapunzel in Tangled, a girl with agency who chose to climb down her tower to free herself from Mother Gothel’s abuses. Rapunzel became not a subordinate to her male love interest but a partner. We’re also blessed with Moana, a Polynesian heroine that depicts non-Eurocentric beauty, with her thicker limbs, her rounder face and nose, and her curly, windswept hair. She didn’t need a man to complete her.

Now I could say with ease that Cinderella had been sexist with lines like “Leave the sowing to the women!” Ariel in the Little Mermaid had absurd motivations, as she was willing to sacrifice her entire life for a stranger she’d just met, whose only known quality was his good looks. I do admit I still need work accepting that Mulan is sexist due to its adherence to the gender binary, this film is an absolute favorite, but I recognize I still need to be objective, as what the academe didn’t pay me to say.

And yes, I came to realize that High School Musical is unrealistic. Also, my English proficiency didn’t make me a smart student or a better person, as college slapped in my face. And I’m okay with that.

I am thoroughly relieved I moved on from my pre-teen phase. Now I have discovered more groundbreaking shows and films, which defy the standards of a hero (with the emergence of an anti-hero,) the binary opposition between good and bad (with morally ambiguous characters,) the very idea of storytelling (with experimental forms of film and stories,) and so much more.

Eventually I picked up a lightsaber with the Star Wars saga, which is a whole new epic experience, given the classic original trilogy and the mess of a prequel trilogy. It was a new brand of fantasy for me, yet still equipped with the epic adventures and heroes of my childhood. I am less protective of this series however, as I was before my childhood faves. I may have a crush on Anakin Skywalker, if only for his brooding looks, but I could still recognize the acting for him was flat and robotic. And while the prequel storyline had great potential, the execution was poor, specially with the script’s dialogue.

But that only prompted the creators to redeem the saga with an epic seventh episode, with a fantastic heroine in the form of Rey, a complex villain in the form of Kylo Ren, and a possibly gay romantic subplot between Finn and Poe.

In my journey from glass slippers to light sabers, I learned that being told that you suck could help you not to suck in the future. Criticisms for films, books, T.V. shows for that matter, aren’t meant to put them down, likewise workshops in writing classes aren’t meant to have your work’s flaws pointed out so you would quit writing forever. Criticism was meant to make the future body of art better, serving as reminders for creators not to make the same mistakes.

Right now, I’m glad professors and peers have told me what needed fixing in my writing classes throughout college. Otherwise, I wonder if I’d ever make it to my senior year...

#nonfiction

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