get weemsical

Also starring Gwendoline Christie in the "Danceteria" part 🪩 from minute 6:00 to 7:44.

She has a small part but leaves her mark, as always 🔥

so she doesn't respond. running her mouth, as she always has, does not help. she focuses on her fingers, larissa's hair, pale and soft and beautiful and lovely, and she thinks back to that apology youtube video. (and if an apology doesn't work, she'll need to go on /AITA, already knowing that, yes, she is TA, and source advice from strangers).

the youtube video said to focus on her actions and use i statements to acknowledge her wrongdoings. but that's exactly the problem. millicent releases a painful breath through her teeth.

❛ we seem to fall into a pattern of misunderstandings. ❜ now the i statement. ❛ misunderstandings that i acknowledge are caused entirely by my poor communication skills and my abrasive, sadistic, and cruel personality. ❜ she chews on the inside of her mouth, keeps going only because larissa seems to so desperately be making herself small, castigating herself to an armchair, because of millicent. ❛ now, i am going to be extremely blunt. i hope i can convey that i am resorting to these measures not because i wish to flay you any further but because i would like to make myself less painful for you to be around. ❜ she pauses. ❛ obviously, there is a mutual physical attraction… ❜

she's sure.

but is she? does larissa desire her as much as she desires larissa? does she — yes, millicent, you stupid idiot. this afternoon wouldn't have happened otherwise. surely larissa isn't so skilled an actress she faked — you're being irrational, millicent. you're assigning evil intentions to larissa, who has been kind and accommodating to you when you have not been, only because your intentions are evil.

it's fine. it's fine. just a blip. larissa hasn't pulled away yet.

❛ there is a mutual physical attraction, ❜ she repeats, because that is what the facts point to as much as her mind, in that moment, screams otherwise. ❛ but this attraction. if it extends beyond physical appreciation…? ❜

physical appreciation. HA. you are the most beautiful woman i've ever seen, millicent wants to say. no one has hair like yours, like starbeams and everything you mentioned in your poem. you have a manner of moving that would make anyone instantly adore you. the way you carry yourself, the wideness of your sweet eyes, sparkling and…

❛ and i do appreciate you physically, ❜ millicent stammers, because she's afraid she's started wording things in a way that — augh. bad. rrrruhfhfghussghhhhh. ❛ i will make it clear, right now, that there is no higher beauty in a human being. i'd stuff and display you and — um. well, i am very fond of the way you look and the way you carry yourself. ❜

yes.

and yet.

…and yet.

you came into my museum and said things about me when i wasn't there to defend myself. you ripped yourself apart to save me from the storm horse. this afternoon i could have sworn you loved me. outside, you said you were devoted to me and that i am difficult. you cleaned my hand in the washroom and apologised to me when i should have been apologising to you. you chose me even after i told you i was going back to the storm horse. i chose five other people over you. morticia is saying things about me to you that i can't hear, but i can imagine.

and i'm still going back for the storm horse and nothing we say or do in the next four days is going to charge that.

but she doesn’t say any of that because not only was she in remedial literature but! remedial english expression. also.

❛ larissa, ❜ she says finally, because she doesn't know what else to say. she lowers her head, looks down at her legs tucked beneath herself. ❛ i don't understand. five days is five days. what’s going to happen when we go back to london? are we going to — do you intend to — i thought this was a business arrangement. and if it's strictly a five-day arrangement, i don't… ❜ she reaches for her hat. it's downstairs. she tugs on her hair instead. ❛ if it is five days, you understand we are setting ourselves up for emotional distress when this comes to an end ./? ❜ (she doesn't know whether it's a declaration or a question. maybe it's both.) but larissa knows it'll hurt. and yet she's chosen millicent again. how can one person be so attracted to suffering? only someone who doesn't know any different...

It’s no wonder that Larissa is being so cold, when she’s found Ammonia seven glasses deep in French white wine, alone in a bar for the fifth night in a row, after the blonde herself snuck into her apartment and scolded her dishonesty and stormed out while Ammonia sobbed in her living room -

How could she think that there was once affection under all of that rage?

Does Larissa care enough to take the open stool beside her? To notice that Ammonia hasn’t moved - even her tail, between the wooden legs of her own perch? They haven’t spoken in so long; not one text, not one call, just Ammonia lost in the ink-black depths of what she did wrong, sinking deeper and deeper no matter how many drinks she threw back.

She swallows the rest of her vouvay in one go, hoping to drown her consciousness with it - and when that doesn’t work, she buries her face in her hands. “You care,” Ammonia thinks out loud, voice low and dry and slightly slurred while she tries to make sense of her darling, “you care that… that a former student of yours violated your trust.”

Which Ammonia is not upset about at all. It is her own lack of critical thinking that has her inner hackles raising. Even if she had only Larissa’s best interest in mind - which she did, at least an attempt at such - she was still impulsive and naive and stupid because how could Larissa possibly be anything but angry with her, once she found out?

"Drink your water. Then I'll take you home." There will be no engaging with the subject of love--who feels it for whom, whether it's real or a fantasy or an inconvenience--while Ammonia is this drunk. Larissa has already wiped the stricken look off of her face from minutes ago, when she'd been wishing Ammonia had slapped her rather than said so much, so candidly, so callously. She supposes she deserves it, either way. That Ammonia has a right to be hurt, to feel used and lonely and misunderstood.

why does she relax by playing with her collar in such a manner...?

millicent silently crawls back to her initial position behind larissa. instead of touching her hair, the back of her hand rises to larissa's cheek, then to her forehead. is that larissa that's warm? or is it millicent?

❛ two master's, ❜ she says uneasily, because she must say something. ❛ impressive. ❜ and it is, but she'd expect nothing less from larissa weems. it takes a visionary to run a school like that.

she tries, with her other hand, larissa's other cheek, the other side of her forehead. and she comes to the conclusion that larissa weems is likely not experiencing delirium.

with this information, she sits numbly, then resumes her work on larissa's hair. slowly, carefully, gently, she divides it and begins a braid much like her own, except it won't be bunches of unmanageable curls. it'll be that silky starlight she's dreamt of braiding again ever since orkney…

The sense of relaxation and appreciative desire from moments ago is quite gone, even though Millicent is now braiding her hair. That reaction--Millicent clambering frantically back across the bed as if Larissa were some groping brute. If she didn't know for a fact what they'd done in this bed this afternoon, and how very much Millicent enjoyed it, she would truly believe she disgusted her; but isn't it possible that both things can be true--that she finds Larissa both useful and disgusting? You and Morticia would have gotten along so well in school, she thinks dourly.

She keeps looking for successes in this day--a way to make it a triumph, or even a stalemate, and she can't. No matter which way she looks at it, she's lost every battle. She's been jostled between extremes since they set foot in the airport, let alone in France. Her mother's cold, Millicent's heat, her own dread. Trying to manage every response, to never let on how affected she is; to avoid screaming or crying or yelling, even when deeply provoked. When is it her turn to behave badly? Why doesn't she get to cower, or scowl, or stomp her foot, or break a glass?

Larissa has begun to sulk. She can see why Millicent likes it so much. She tries out a scowl, just for herself, where Millicent can't see. That's enjoyable, too.

𝐌𝐎𝐒𝐓 𝐌𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓 𝐍𝐎𝐓'𝐕𝐄 𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐖𝐍 𝐀 𝐅𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐇 𝐎𝐅 𝐑𝐀𝐆𝐄 𝐔𝐍𝐓𝐈𝐋 𝐈𝐓 𝐂𝐋𝐎𝐂𝐊𝐄𝐃 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐌 𝐈𝐍 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐎𝐔𝐓𝐇; weems didn't need to say anything ──── didn't need to lash out [ ... ] it was something you knew intuitively like your reflection in a cracked mirror, staring back at you in a hundred different ways and skewed by different angles. different as it might seem in the moment, you still knew what it looked like. could taste it from her pulse in the back of your throat. the open mouthed scoff is met with a half-lidded pair of eyes that say 'careful,' without not needing to bark to get the point across.

skin hums against skin. just for an instant. in another life you might've teased the flashes of color burning over her face, but what the fuck was the point? didn't take a genius to see she was already having one hell of a night all on her own. I DON'T HAVE A DATE is met with an understanding hum, despite you found such a thing difficult to believe.

❛ ────no date because you didn't ask, or because you got blown off by whoever you did ask? ❜ is murmured noticeably without the intention to pry, but simply to keep the conversation going. again, it's like discussing the weather. in vi's own experience, there were far more important things.

a sweep from head to toe is exchanged between the two outcasts, one after the other. to larissa's elegantly backhanded compliment ( if that's what it could be considered, ) vi simply shrugged her shoulders and ducked her head. ❛ mm. yeah, well .. discount or no discount, th'last thing my people need t'worry about is sending me scratch for a school dance. ❜ she props the cig between scarred lips, and brushes a bit of ash off her own shoulder. cards one of her hands through her hair. then, makes the decision to offer @scyftan the last of their sin.

❛ ain't the prettiest, but it works. at the end of the day, that's all anybody can ask for. ❜

    Vi offers her the last drag. It punctures the web of tension between them and leaves Larissa feeling stupidly, pathetically grateful. Of course Vi's people don't want to send her money for alterations, or a new suit. Everyone knows she's a charity student. And here she is, being generous with Larissa, who's never really given her the time of day, who's insulting her, and...

    She takes that last drag. It really does taste disgusting, and she can feel it withering her vocal cords. But the escape from the party was more important, and so is this feeling between herself and Vi--a sense of camaraderie. Well, she hopes it's there for Vi, too. Larissa's not sure she knows how to tell that sort of thing anymore--whether someone really likes her or not; whether someone's really her friend.

    "Blown off," she says, finally, with the last exhale of smoke. She stares out into the courtyard and smiles unpleasantly to herself. "There's only room for one princess at the ball, isn't there?" She drops the butt and grinds it into the cobblestone with one foot. Tomorrow, when the student events committee comes round, they'll gasp and grumble at the evidence of miscreant students, carousing with their illicit substances.

    Speaking of which. Larissa opens her clutch purse. The thought of going back in there is miserable; they need some further excuse to dawdle. Luckily, she's as much a miscreant as Violet Lane.

alright tis another wip because it's 4AM and I have to wake up in *checks time* 4 hours