Mirror, Mirror
This series is by Oro (ladyloisette0@yahoo.com) and BJ (allcanadiangirl@lycos.com). It's a crossover series of the West Wing with Sports Night, Finding Nemo, Apocalypse Now, Monday After the Miracle, Grease, ER, and CSI: Miami, in which we pair up characters who look exactly alike. Call it a conceptual experiment. We dedicate this to Luna, because we know how much she loves silly pairings.
Disclaimer: We do not own these characters. Eight of them were created by Aaron Sorkin and five were created by, uh, other people who are not BJ and Oro. One is the main character in a movie based on real events, but still looks like Moira Kelly in our minds. Ok? Ok.
Children of the Sun
By Oro (ladyloisette0@yahoo.com)
Will Bailey/Jeremy Goodwin (The West Wing/Sports Night)
He caresses his lover's cheek, mesmerized; he's never thought his other half would be so much like him, but so different. Jeremy is so unlike him, in so many ways, but his taste is so familiar in Will's mouth, his tongue moving over Will's lips.
It is as though time has stopped – in this city in which Jeremy is merely an unnoticed guest amongst the crowd, in this hotel room in which Will is trying to disguise his identity for fear of press; an ungodly hour lasting longer than it normally would've. They succumb to this pleasure that seemed so wrong – and still does, in the back of Will's mind – as their identical fingers and tongues explore these all too familiar bodies, tasting themselves in each other.
"It's like looking in a mirror," said Jeremy the first time he saw Will. And Will just nodded, because all he could think of was what a cliché that was, that mirror bit, but not really one because then it would just be a porn cliché, and he wasn't too sure that's where he wanted to go. He still isn't; not that it matters much.
And he keeps thinking that he doesn't want Jeremy looking at him; that it's shameful or unchristian (though they aren't, really), that it's just plain dirty, maybe. Maybe. Maybe if he looks closely at Jeremy he'll find his own flaws and hate himself even more so, his blemishes making him uglier than he thought he was in the first place. And Jeremy just says, "Wow," in a raspy voice, his expression semi-charmed, fascinated. He doesn't seem to have the tact to grasp this fear of Will's, or doesn't seem to have the humanity to admit that he's scared, too.
They forget, afterwards, that they don't even know each other. Jeremy wraps his arm around Will as though he was her – his girlfriend, Natalie – but he smiles and says that what Natalie doesn't know can't hurt her. Will wonders how someone becomes such a bastard as his fingers play with Jeremy's hair.
Will lays flat on his stomach, engrossed in his thoughts and the sound of Jeremy's calm, steady breathing. He'll probably never see Jeremy again – you know, New York and D.C., and maybe Europe in the future, who knows. The distance issue somehow makes it easier for him to deal, but not entirely so.
He'll end up looking at himself in the mirror and finding the usual flaws, he knows, but turns around anyway to examine this man's face. Look at his reflection and find a million and one sins, and he'll think he was just all alone, for he had guilt on his side, and they'll never even phone each other again.
(Casey will say, "Look at that picture in the paper, Jeremy, he looks just like you! You got brothers you didn't tell me about, Goodwin?" –he'll smile politely and reply that he doesn't, Casey, and Casey will tsk and nod his head saying that maybe there really are coincidences in life.)
(It's Not) The Worst Thing I Could Do.
By BJ (allcanadiangirl@lycos.com)
Abbey Bartlet/Rizzo (The West Wing/Grease)
Behind the library Abbey sees a leather coat and dungarees. Cuffs turned back, up, collar up around a mess of dark brown hair, white heels. A thin ribbon of smoke twisting up over Rizzo, who turns. Snub nose and bright red lipstick.
Behind the library Rizzo takes a deep drag on her cigarette and hates this school with all her heart. Hates her parents for moving east. Hates the chill and stony edifice of the whole place. She turns and slumps against the brick wall of the library.
She holds the cigarette tightly between her lips as she searches her beaded purse for gum and lipstick. Her feet ache dully and she's glad she brought tennies for the ride home.
Abbey sees Brett's car on the other side of Rizzo. She'll have to walk right past her, smell the moldy scent of cigarette smoke, and the bath of Downtown Girl underneath. She knows Rizzo will tap the toe of her shoe mockingly as Abbey passes. Abbey doesn't mind when Rizzo makes fun of her--she thinks Rizzo is brave, daring. A heroine. Abbey wants to be as defiant and herself. Dungarees and white heels.
Abbey sees Brett walk up to his car and swing the door open roughly. He throws his letter jacket into the back seat and gets in behind the wheel. She swallows and steps forward, clutching her books tightly to her chest, a little breeze blowing gently up her legs, under her skirt. She shivers.
Spearmint all over her tongue. Rizzo looks over when she hears someone approaching slowly. Abbey King, books and yellow cardigan, white blouse, plaid skirt. She smirks. Saddle shoes.
Abbey clears her throat and keeps walking. Rizzo likes the wavy pigtails that fall forward over Abbey's shoulders, and the bitten pink of her hesitant smile. Rizzo grins. Sandra Dee, she thinks.
"Hey," Rizzo says, snapping her gum, stubbing her cigarette out on the brick wall.
"Oh. Hello," Abbey says. "How are you?"
Rizzo tips her head against the wall. "Swell," she drawls, back to smirking.
Abbey blinks past Rizzo into the parking lot. Brett's car is gone. She didn't even see him--
"Oh," she says, and feels stupid.
Rizzo looks to the parking lot too. She laughs. "Missed your ride?" she says.
Abbey shrugs, trying to smile back. "No, I'll walk, I'm just surprised he didn't wait for me is all."
Wise, Rizzo nods. "C'mon." She ducks her head and walks to the parking lot.
Abbey follows. She was going that way anyhow.
Just around the corner, out of sight, is a motorcycle. Rizzo stops beside it and pulls a pair of tennis shoes from the bag hanging on the side.
Abbey watches, open-mouthed, as Rizzo switches out of her heels. Rizzo mounts the bike and starts it.
When Abbey doesn't move, Rizzo sighs. She wonders if this ever gets less uncomfortable.
"Get on," she says.
Abbey starts. "I've never--"
Rizzo smirks again, a familiar crooked cruelty for Abbey. "'Course you haven't."
"I don't think my mother would--"
Rizzo grins, not mean or friendly. Wicked. "It's not the worst thing you could do."
In fits and starts Abbey smiles back. She tries to make it wicked, but Rizzo just sees keen.
I Whip Myself with Scorn, Scorn
By Oro (ladyloisette0@yahoo.com)
Ainsley Hayes/Calleigh Duquesne (The West Wing/CSI: Miami)
She wears her hair up these days – it's too hot not to – she wears skirts, and her stockings are thinner, cheap polyester sticking to her skin, glimmering when she moves her legs. Her heels meet the stairs with a click, and she feels somehow overdressed as she reaches for the apartment keys inside her bag.
When she opens the door, Ainsley is already there, and she's almost not overwhelmed by this. Almost; it will take time to get used to the way they move exactly alike and breathe alike, and maybe it will never happen, maybe. She walks into the spacious apartment, heels clicking on the floor, smiles to avoid embarrassment. And it feels genuine when Ainsley smiles back, her lips twisting back in a way so familiar that Calleigh can feel the same expression stretched on her face. She drops her bag on the floor and says, "hey, baby," and the words echo from Ainsley's lips.
She kisses Ainsley, and her doubts are stifled as warmth washes over her. Her fingers trail over Ainsley's neck, feeling her pulse, and she's reminded again of what it's like to live, to breathe (you're surrounded by death all day and sometimes, you tend to forget). She breathes into Ainsley's mouth and gently bites on her lower lip. She lets go for a moment, dropping her bag on a nearby wooden chair.
Ainsley chuckles, blushes, she's still not used to being like this with another person, still not used to looking into her own eyes, crystal clear, and listening to her own voice whisper sweet promises. Calleigh pushes her down onto the sofa they picked out together, her body sinking onto soft, light pink cushions she digs her fingernails into as Calleigh's fingers caress her cheeks.
She thinks idly of how it's never cold in Miami, thinks of springtime in Washington, D.C, and of things her momma might say if she could only see her right now. If she could only see them right now. Her back arches at Calleigh's touch, and she should be stronger than this. The nights here are hot and sticky on her skin, and she thinks she can taste the ocean in the almost liquid air.
Moonlight shines on Ainsley's hair, and Calleigh is sure she can hear her own blood flow in Ainsley's veins. Nothing else matters.
The Most You Can Hope for it is Some Knowledge of Yourself (That Comes Too Late).
By BJ (allcanadiangirl@lycos.com)
Jed Bartlet/Benjamin Willard (The West Wing/Apocalypse Now)
In one of the conference rooms beyond the Sit Room Jed waits.
The CIA Director comes through a door through which Jed has never been.
The man sits across the table from Jed and opens a file on the mirror-bright surface.
Fluorescent light glares on an eight-by-ten photograph. A young man squints grimly up at Jed.
Another photo is slid across the table. Same man, older. More lines, less hair, grey everywhere. A twist to his mouth, a scar from the bridge of his nose to his ear.
"Colonel Benjamin L. Willard," the Director says.
Jed knows. "I'm know of him." Know him. "And?"
"He's dead, Mr. President."
Jed sits back and presses his hands to the tabletop. This is not exactly a shock. Only something for which he has so long put off preparing himself it seems to have happened far too quickly.
"I see."
The Director pulls the photographs back with his fingertips. The paper makes a soft slithering noise as it goes.
"We'd like to have him buried near Arlington, sir."
Yes. Near Arlington. Never in. Not for the assassin, the man who never was anyplace in which he worked.
"Of course."
What will he tell Leo? Because it is Leo who will want to know. Jed doesn't want to know, never did, not from the first time he met Willard over poker and scotch in Leo's den, not from the last time they spoke--hushed tones between Panama and Manchester, last week of the first campaign.
Jed doesn't want to know. Leo will need to know.
"Tell me how," he says.
The Director winces slightly. "His throat was slit in an alley in Seoul."
Jed nods.
The Director shuffles his file together almost silently, and leaves through the same door.
He'll tell Leo it was natural causes.
Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star
By Oro (ladyloisette0@yahoo.com)
CJ Cregg/Peach (The West Wing/Finding Nemo)
She sits next to the fish tank, her nose glued to the clear glass (her breath fogging up the surface; she doesn't mind), her eyes following those of a light mauve-toned creature behind the transparent partition. A starfish she spent one hundred and forty dollars on at ebay.com stares back, its skin stuck firmly to the smooth surface.
She convinces herself she sees warmth in the black button-like eyes.
Her stomach cringes with loneliness, the tears forming at the side of her eye; water, she thinks idly, and she feels as if she might be inside a fish tank, too. Wetness smears her mascara on the glass, and the starfish looks as if it's reaching to comfort her. She places her hands on the cool divider, traces the creature's lines, and finally places her thumb against one of its pointy arms.
She wonders what it would be like to touch a starfish, if it would break in her hands or welcome her touch. Her fingers move in circles across the barrier, and she imagines living on the other side of it, breathing bubbles into her lungs.
A starfish watches her from behind glass and can't help but feel sorry for her. It watches the small pools that shimmer in the woman's eyes and spill on her cheeks in thin, dark lines. It waves, but she doesn't seem to notice.
(Twinkle, twinkle, little star, how I wonder what you are.)
Made a Mouth of His Eye (Which I Know Will Not Lie).
By BJ (allcanadiangirl@lycos.com)
Josh Lyman/Sean O'Brien (The West Wing/ER episode #1.20: "Love's Labour Lost")
It's not a gay bar because Josh doesn't go to gay bars and Sean isn't gay. They share this useless information--useless because it's not a gay bar and there's no reason to discuss gay bars in a bar which is not gay--in the men's room afterward.
Beer and spit and come on Josh's hand and the water doesn't seem to get warm no matter how many times he turns the tap. Sean leans against the hot air hand dryer, hands in his pockets.
Josh hums affirmatively when Sean says, for the third time, that he isn't gay.
Just that his wife is dead and his baby, and that he's having a hard time with the eighth stage of grief.
Josh asks what that is.
Sean says, "Accepting acceptance."
Josh understands that.
their wants were so numerous
By Oro (ladyloisette0@yahoo.com)
Mandy Hampton/Helen Keller (The West Wing/Monday After the Miracle)
They reflected half a dozen times in the silver mirrors of the tiny elevator, the crude fluorescent casting its grim light on them. Reflections of her own nudity doubled in black and white and blue made Mandy think she'd die if anyone were to walk in. She could get lost in a room like this, like a labyrinth of mirrors in a carnival she once went to when she was little.
Helen's hands explored her body as if she were Braille, her curves spinning into words: the verbs and nouns of a world she'll never see. The tastes she'll never hear spilled into her hands and her mouth like wine, making her dizzy with pleasure.
Her sigh was warm against Mandy's thighs.
Mandy's fingers dripped honey into Helen's dark hair, her hands moving to cup Helen's face. Blind eyes stared into her eyes as if she were everything. Between Mandy's legs, Helen's brilliant mind worked their story using past tense in symbols unfathomable to Mandy.
She bit her bottom lip until it bled dulce de leche, the butterscotch gliding into the back of her throat. She found sweetness in the bitter taste a cry held back, and the tang of release on her tongue at the realization that no one would hear it anyway.
She held Helen's hand in her own and they were identical; she needn't memorize her face, only her tongue on Mandy's skin and countless tremors that slid down her spine, long and cool as she leaned against the elevator mirror.