Okay, so here's a really good joke: I wrote something. And then (okay, here's where it gets good...wait for it...) And then, I PUT IT UP HERE! Hah, oh man, I'm almost crying just thinking about it...but seriously. I'd practically convinced myself I was near done with this site. Obviously, I couldn't resist the pull of a senseless Rae/Jinx-ish oneshot when it knocked. What can I say? Lesbians are my kryptonite.
I put a buttload of songs into this. Whatever I was listening to while I was writing it, I'd put in there, either a lyric or the song title. Can you guess which ones? Hmm?
Disclaimer: There is just so much stuff below that I simply do not own, that if I named them all, you're head would explode. Or something. I'll just stop talking, okay? Ya'll good with that?
"What the hell are you here for?" Jinx flicks a bit of cigarette ash off her nose. I know she doesn't smoke anymore; in fact, I'm the one who got her to stop. "I thought we agreed on a sort of restraining order. You know, just for safety's sake."
"We did." I agree. "In fact, we've promised a lot of things. Like when you promised me you wouldn't smoke anything ever again."
She gives a conniving puppy-dog grin. It's equal parts cute and terrifying in the most electric of ways. She uses it when she wants to intimidate somebody without letting them know she wants to intimidate them. "Ah, you know me, honey: troublemaker by heart. I can't especially help it. Dreadfully sorry for not living up to your rising expectations." She was always such an expert at sounding cheery when she really wanted to stab you, or strangle you, or kiss you and then shoot you in the head. I've gotten used to it, so I have some warning before I have to dodge a bullet.
"We'll…we'll talk about the smoking later. I'm here for something else."
"Hah! Seems to me you're implying we'll have a later. Babe, you know me. You know I don't exactly do later." She laughs like an angry dog, rolling her bony shoulders, stubbing her cigarette out on the nice wooden counter. "I mean, seriously, thanks for the memories and all that shit, but we don't have time for later, and we don't have time for a future."
She is going to try and weasel her way out of this whole thing, I just know it. It's her kind's way of conducting business: if things aren't going in your favor, slowly and inconspicuously inch toward the nearest exit. If it's a window, nonchalantly glance out of it and gauge if you could survive the fall, or if there's anything to grab onto. She calls it the fine art of escapism. I used to call it quirky, and now I just call it cowardice.
"If we don't get a natural later, I'll make one." I threaten. She, of course, knows I am serious, because I have no other emotion. She stops her almost invisible fidgeting.
Jinx pouts rather adorably. Too late to fall for that guise, though. "Ah well. If I don't get a later, make sure to be dancing at my funeral, honey." She bites her lip, and I feel the ink drops of anxiety in her machine gun mind. She's wrapping her head around her current situation.
"I wouldn't kill you." I murmur and take a step closer. "I want you to see what tomorrow brings. I really do. I just want to talk."
All I get in response is an angry little mutter from her, her lowered eyes, and a terror and morose emotion smoothie. Yum-yum, my favorite flavor from psychotic, semi-malevolent, possibly dying ex girlfriends.
"What was that?" I croon, reaching out to hold her cheek. Her muscles start to shrug me off, then they stop, because her brain is shrieking at them that we are not screwing around right now. Better not dismiss the demon on you doorstep, because that'll just make me all the angrier.
"Bullshit." She says in an exquisitely calm voice, the voice she used to talk to me in when we were curled up in bed together. Even though that was the only noise, I would always be half asleep and could never hear exactly what she said. I wish I had listened now.
"Well, I didn't originally intend it that way, but with this attitude it may just be. I am extremely liable to change my mind, something I picked up from you. So we'll do anything when the time's right, okay? Does that sound good for you?" She moves her head a bit, half of a nod and half of a shake. Torn over her choices, I see. "I'll make this simple: shall we sit down on your couch and talk?"
"Sure." She sighs. Then she straightens up, throws her long hair over her shoulder, and cracks her knuckles. "Sure. Why the fuck not, eh?" She grabs my hands and almost skips over to the couch, an angry and hysterical movement. "Now sit your pretty little ass down right here and let's have us a discussion! Maybe we can even put on some music, right? How about some Stones; I remember you're a Stones girl. Ventilator Blues good with you? Oh wait, no, how about we do something more fitting: Dead Flowers! Sister Morphine! Sympathy for the Devil! Because why the fuck not, right? Why the fuck not!"
I slap her. "Just because you're scared doesn't mean you have to start acting crazy."
"Shh, don't start talking more bullshit. You know crazy is my natural defense. And if it's worked for a good twenty plus years I see no reason to change that now."
We're both quiet. She isn't going to make this easy. I mean, of course I knew it would be somewhere between cleaning up a trucker bar bathroom after Taco and Tequila Night and passing a kidney stone on the pleasantness scale, but she's hell bent on dragging this out to its last breath. Fine. Let her. I literally have all the time in the world.
"So. What have you been doing with your life?" I ask, lacing my fingers together cordially.
"Just living my life for the people who need a comeback, you know? I take turns being a Good Samaritan and an assassin and a raver and sometimes I get just drunk enough to feel fine." She smiles widely, wiggling her feet. She's playing the Rolling Stones through her head, several songs, all smashed together into one incoherent string of guitar and lyrics: 'With a needle and a spoon…And I shouted out who killed the Kennedys?...Sweet cousin cocaine…When your..spiiiine is…craaackin'…' She's doing this on purpose. "What about you? Or, wait, don't answer that, let's just cut the crap and get to the point. Are you here to kill me?"
I smile deceptively and, I like to think, rather cryptically. "That's for me to know and you to figure out."
"Oh goodie; I'm gonna die. Sweet Valhalla, I am coming." She lifts her arms up in some blasphemous rendering of a preacher addressing his listeners. "You know, Valhalla was put in the Norse mythos by the Christians as an equivalent to Heaven. They thought everybody needed a reward for living perfectly. What assholes, am I right?" She laughs doggishly again.
"Reminder: I am not here to discuss your views on religion, nor am I here to insult a decision made a thousand years ago. I am here to…" What am I here for? Hell if I know. "Have you been happy?"
She arches her eyebrows up. "Happy? Define that. I've got skinny boys playing at my place and I've got five thousand dollars in cash in my underwear drawer."
"Are you proud of those things?"
She puts up a finger, warning me to stop right there; she has yet more to say. "I am the prodigy and I am young and I am…" She gulps heavily and sighs. "And I am so. Fucking. Glorious. Raven, you can't even imagine what it's like. You can't even dream this." She looks up at me desperately. "I'm just marching to the drums of the damned here, honey. It's my own personal apocalypse. You don't know this feeling."
This takes me by surprise. I knew Jinx had been living life in the fast lane—the city's heightened security and paranoia could testify to that. I just never imagined she would be like this, whatever this is. I don't know what she is anymore, but she is so much more than she was the last time I saw her.
"Listen. I've fucked up so many times in the past it physically hurts me." She whispers swiftly. "I have walked into a playground with a loaded gun five times in the last two months, and I somehow never took it out. I threw a Molotov cocktail into one of Slade's warehouses and…" A tear falls from her eye. "I roasted a Goddamn marshmallow there. I don't know what I'm doing anymore, and…and there's just too many buildings in this city with roof access, Raven. There's just so many opportunities." She stops a while and pulls a pillow to her face and she trembles and breathes too deeply. I would love to give her a hug, but I really don't feel like indulging myself right now.
She looks up. "Huh. It's all west-north from here. That's what Gizmo said to me last I saw him, little punk. I told him it's not a real direction, that it's northwest, and he said exactly. That's what I'm talking about here, Rae."
"You're talking about made up directions?" I clarify, barely letting the slightest bit of sarcasm in my tone.
"Yes!" She pauses. "No! I mean…Yes! For the love of…maybe, alright? Maybe. Just maybe." She slumps. "All I want is for the world to remember my name." She leans forwards and gets too close, pressing into me, giving the gentle suggestion I lay down. I lower myself onto my back and she stretches out on top of me, staring down. "I'm sick and glorious, and the world doesn't have much room for that right now I guess." She wrests her head on my chest and just is for a moment.
"Got any good jokes? 'Cause I sure do need one." She sighs, twisting her pinkie finger around in my hair.
"Jokes, yes, but nothing good."
"What? That shit that Beast Boy continuously spouts out?"
"Exactly."
"Tell me one. Please."
"Alright." I try to think of any joke I've heard in that last few days that is somewhat acceptable. None come to mind. "How do you catch an elephant?"
I can feel her lips twitching up in a smile against my skin. "How?"
"You…oh God, I can't believe I'm about to say this, but…you sit around and make peanut noises." She starts giggling and looks up for a moment to meet my eyes. Her smile almost makes that awful joke better.
"What the fuck happened to us, Rae?" She laughs. "I mean, seriously. I still love you, you know that. I'm pretty sure you feel the same way. So what actually happened to us?"
"Life, I guess. Or priorities. Or social class. Or peer pressure. Or the law. Or, yeah, maybe just life." I push myself up a bit, propping against the couch's arm. She moves with me, wrapping her legs around my waist. Then she settles back down. I've forgotten how nicely our bodies fit together.
"You know what? I want to stay home for the end of the world. I think it'd be real cozy." She says wistfully.
"That's nice. You go do that."
"Will you stay home with me?"
"I'll probably be out there busting my ass to save it."
"Aw," she presses her lips into mine, and I don't really think it's a kiss, because it's too innocent. "Party pooper."
"Sorry for being the hero."
She doesn't respond for a while, and then she starts shaking, which scares me more than the silence. She slides off of me, sitting up, then stands and grabs at her hair. Her back to me, she starts walking to the door. I sit up, wondering what the hell it is this time. This is how it is, between us. One moment, we're Atlantis, and the next, we're just another ghost town in the ocean.
"Yeah." She says too shakily, getting her coat and opening the door. "You should be."
So. You bashing your head on the keyboard, wondering why I can't just stay in my little world of 'hey, I think I'll strictly write original stuff now!'? You desperately wishing you could find my original characters and their accompanying plotline so you could go out and shoot 'em all to give me more time for this sort of stuff? You even reading my way-too-early-in-the-morning (1:30 to be exact) blabbing? No? Alright then. That's...that's cool too. Just review, and I'll stop pretending that I'm funny.