#slashre

suburbia laughs at the two of them     :     they sting with sin in natasha’s home,  filling her living room like the strangers they are     (     mara keeps jamie close.     this is not of note,  she looks and feels better by his side than she ever does alone,  but family affairs are a different beast          —          she chains herself to him,  an unholy anchor,  and squeezes his hand the whole way down.     ).          ❝     she put every ornament she could find up here.     it’s almost impressive.     ❞          the inside of her mouth tastes soured.     she keeps it moving before she can figure out why,  letting it chant out coldness where warmth should be.          ❝     i mean,  whatever makes her feel good about it.     ❞        the closest mara can get to celebration is judgment     :     it’s the same concept,  different slant.     the only variable is the smile she pairs it with.     her fingertips catch a ceramic snowman,  dangling from a branch and with feather-soft handwriting scrawled on the bottom   ---   natasha’s first christmas,  ‘81.     she inhales,  short and sharp from her nose,  muscle memory clearing away powder.     jamie’s behind her,  and she’s thankful to have something solid to look at as she turns around and holds her arms over her chest,  bracing herself against sudden smallness.          ❝     you think there was a sale going on for unhappy marriage decor?     ❞

                  i find myself hovering back to his channel, counting down to his next stream. 

@slashre / *

he casts her a dubious look from his peripheral.    still, he answers  /  still, he does not argue the finities of her question until they’re both sick in the face.    ‘ a four-minute recording of paul newman’s version of plastic jesus, i guess. ‘    it makes more sense to leave the full sentence lingering    ––––    the answer and the explanation.    he rarely has anything to say.    (    barring everything he does say, of course.    and there's quite a lot of that as it concerns their particular narrative.    )    instinctively, he adjusts the single earbud he’s wearing, opposite the side that charlie sits on.    it plays nothing but the grey-noise static of the ambience it deafens out.    ‘ do you have a better answer? ‘

(  txt:   colton jameson  )    say the word and i’ll old yeller you out of here free of charge

❝  oh,  fuck,  you’re my hero.  ❞    and her voice kicks itself up around the corners,  a flutter of abandon twirling into her rum-and-coke accent:  mara sprawls herself across an empty bathtub,  a nameless bathroom,  a makeshift bomb shelter safely securing her from the mouth of the party   (     there is a version of tonight that didn’t end this way,  a smooth path to trouble-free excess:  but that’s the easy way out.  she likes disrupting expectations where she can   –   thank god for jess,  the patron saint of mara’s rough nights.  thank god she’s never missed a call     ).    ❝  hey,  let’s go get somethin’ to eat.  just you and me.  ❞    translation:  let’s hit the road before jack notices.  her limbs tuck awkwardly beneath her,  and she groans,  the drunken catastrophe of her body already tugged sore.    ❝  whatever you want.  milkshakes if you want.  you want milkshakes?  ❞

❝   you hate it,  i can tell!   ❞     one by one,  her boots meet the bleachers’ metal steps on her climb to the top.   a split-second smile,  and she falls into place beside jamie.   morning sunlight catches the new color of her hair,  blue illuminated against a tired look     (     dye stains left on her wrists,  the darkness of four hours’ sleep clinging beneath her eyes,  she’s looked like last night too many mornings in a row.    ).     ❝   fine,  i don’t care.   i know it looks good,  i don’t need you to tell me.   ❞     from her backpack she fetches a plastic bottle of orange juice,  a few mouthfuls already chugged back and replaced with cheap whiskey.   she unscrews the top and takes a swig,  then passes it over.     ❝   oh my god,  you should’ve seen natasha’s face.   pretty sure she went into shock,  but she’s gonna kill me the second i get home.   ❞

♡   ...   sloane doesn’t like to think of herself as someone with money  (  her wardrobe, her home, every gleaming award she’s nabbed in her career would beg to differ, but lucky for her humility, she’s telling this story herself  ).  success stories lose their shine once they reach a certain metric of accomplishment, whether it looks like a hefty paycheck or a single step up the corporate ladder.  even after achieving both several times over, she keeps her face daisy fresh, an unassuming woman by design.   ❝   jess!   ❞   her tongue clicks, a light scold.   ❝   you know, if you want to see price tags everywhere you go for the rest of your life, that’s your decision.  but i choose to see people as people, no matter how much money either of us have.  and it’s done me good.   ❞   with open palms and a butterscotch smile, she gestures to the hungry mouth of her office, a rose gold magazine spread of neatness guided by pinterest’s steady hand.  she plucks two peppermints from the glass dish on her desk and pushes one jess’ way, french tips untwisting the other for herself.   ❝   besides, who says i trust everyone i work with?  maybe that’s your problem.  maybe you want to trust people but something’s holding you back.   ❞