Wrote more Starlets angst from my new unnamed AU in a haze so here’s that
Cold air. A warm touch trailing across skin. A soft pressure around her hips. A figure above haloed in light, obscured by shadow, speaking.
“It will only hurt a moment”
She can’t move. She’s awestruck. She’s terrified. She feels her heart ache two fold in ways so opposed it rips her in half.
She tries to say something, maybe ask what’s going on, but all she can manage is a shaky moan. She tries again to no avail. Panic sets in. What starts as an attempt at speech devolves into strangled screams.
The touch, once gentle, presses harder into her chest, blunt and heavy, until it sharpens all at once, something in her cracks and the warmth turns searing hot.
“Hold on just a little longer”
“I’m shocked you’ve made it so far”
Roxanne gasps and sits bolt upright, knocking her head into something hard.
Normally, she would apologize, but she’s too busy trying to steady her breathing. She yanks off the sheets and comforter. Everything is too warm and too heavy. She’s back there again on the asphalt and she can’t get up, she can’t call for help, she can’t—a pair of hands rest on both sides of her face. They’re cold against her rising fever and bring her back into the moment.
She’s home. She’s safe. They’re right here. They’re fine. Eyes finally adjusting to the dark, Roxanne can make out Marnie in front of her, concern etched across her brow. Jolene sits up to the other side of her, hand clutching her forehead in pain, but her worry matches Marnie’s.
Roxanne turns to Jolene and asks, “are you okay?”
Jolene lets out a small laugh at the absurdity of the question. “I should be asking you the same thing, Rox. Yes, I’m okay, but you were groaning, no, practically screaming in your sleep. You woke up Marnie, and when she couldn’t shake you awake she had to get me up to help call out for you.”
All Roxanne can manage is an “ah,” unable to articulate herself more. Turning to Marnie, she sees her start and stop in a way that has become familiar. She wants to say something but can’t. Watching her struggle makes something twist painfully inside of her. “Oh, Mar.” Placing her hands over Marnie’s, she offers a sympathetic squeeze.
Marnie only frowns deeper. Roxanne tilts her head in confusion, speaking again. “I’m sorry I woke the both of you up. You should be getting your rest and my silly nightmares messed that up for you.”
Feeling the hands drop from her face and down to her shoulders, Roxanne finds Marnie to be in even more distress. She mouths something that she can’t make out in the dark.
Having recovered from her hit to the head, Jolene speaks up for her, “She’s probably saying something like, ‘your nightmare wasn’t silly, it was fucking terrifying, and we’re worried about you, so stop acting like this isn’t a big deal.’ Except maybe like… more posh than that.”
Marnie nods vigorously, though she wrinkles her nose at the “fucking” and “more posh” comment, and Roxanne lets out the smallest laugh, really no more than a quick exhale, but it dissolves some of the tension in the room just a little.
“You’re right, I’m sorry again, I guess.”
Marnie opens up her mouth to say something again, stops herself and reaches a hand over to a lamp on the bedside table. She waits for permission, and when Roxanne nods she turns on the light. They all flinch a little at the contrast, but it’s worth it to let Marnie retrieve her pen and paper so she can enter the conversation.
She hastily scrawls out a sentence. Do you want to talk about it?
“Like what happened in the nightmare?”
Pausing for a moment, Roxanne considers if she does. It’s not like she wants to hide anything from them, but she has this strange sense of guilt, like she doesn’t deserve to lean on them. On top of that, there’s the eerie intimacy of the dream. It was painful and violent, but something there was equally raw but entirely gentle. It felt private. Then again, it wasn’t as though she hadn’t shared anything with the two of them either.
Noticing her hesitation, Marnie writes down another note. It’s okay if you don’t want to right now.
Jolene chimes in with agreement. “We can just sit here with you if that’s what you want.”
“I think I’d like that. It’s all so fresh right now. I don’t want to think about it.”
As Marnie leans over to turn off the light, Jolene settles in next to Roxanne. She wraps her arm around her, and when Marnie slides in on her other side, she does the same. This weight and warmth is different. It’s less sickly than that of her dream.
“Goodnight, I love you both.”
“We love you too, Rox,” Jolene replies, and Marnie gives a concurrent squeeze.
Roxanne falls into a dreamless sleep afterwards. Though she doesn’t wake up feeling as refreshed as she’d like, she does feel safe and loved, and that’s more than enough for her.
I imagine Geraldine’s interspersed dialogue to be not from her and Roxanne’s first time together, but *one of* their first times together. It was back when everything was a little bit hesitant and new. Geraldine is always soft with Roxanne when it comes to that in my mind (though she can be a little commanding I’m sure) but at the start she offered a lot more…reassurance? There’s always praise, but I think she put more effort in trying to quell Roxanne’s anxieties directly.
First times and the subsequent few times are hardly ever mind blowing from an objective stance, but Roxanne recalls them fondly because of Geraldine. Her bravado was gone and her walls were down, despite her best efforts to keep it cool. Geraldine earnestly wanted everything to be good for her, and it was clearly making her nervous. She always wanted that after too (again, shit at showing it), but her ego was through the roof by then, and even if that could be hot in its own way it wasn’t quite the same (not always bad just different).
Other nights, I think she has flashes of what her and Geraldine were like towards the end. Everything between them felt more like a distraction or tactic than actual intimacy. There was still the physical warmth and closeness, but emotionally it was cold and distant. Actually, Roxanne was still emotional and reaching out, Geraldine was distant.
On those nights, Maxine seems to be the more comforting one. She’s killing her with her bare hands, but at least it was quick. At least it was honest. Geraldine was killing her slowly. She was going to suffer a death by drawn out heartache. Roxanne would have let her do it too. Maxine almost gave her mercy in that way.
I have more on intimacy and how the trauma of the crash/her past with Geraldine affects her, but I have an angsty blurb about it that may become more than a blurb so put a pin in that.
To address other aspects of the au, I’m torn between the idea of them all just thinking they’re friends/roomates, vs both Roxanne and Marnie remembering they were dating Jolene, buf Roxanne just doesn’t remember her also dating someone’s else, Geraldine.
How much the curse wipes out and how much it replaces in this scenario is interesting.
I do think it’d be sweet to watch them fall in love with each other all over again (even if they never really fell out of it)
But also I like the idea of marnnane being like “I don’t remember why I held myself back from you,” and the lines of their relationship blurring seamlessly over the course of their recovery that it just makes sense to them that they should also be together. Also it would give Jolene some entertainment to watch them pine as she has the most to adjust to/recover from.
There would be lots of parallels to hiatus marnnane, but the memory gaps and general trauma would shift the timeline/interactions they had. Geraldine would and wouldn’t haunt their relationship at the same time. She’d haunt it in the sense that Holloway always haunts the narrative, and part of Roxanne will always feel Geraldine’s presence even if she doesn’t remember her, but neither of them can name whatever this wedge between them was. It still matters, but they don’t remember enough to address it in full.
On another note, a lot of how I write is stream of consciousness, and thus the way I distinguish a lot of character dialogue is by doubling back and thinking “oh they *wouldn’t* say it like that, so how would they actually?” Characterization is like an act of correction for me I suppose.
With Marnie in this, I kept running into the same issue that she had, which was whenever I thought she’d say something, she wouldn’t be able to. Marnie has her main strength taken away from her, and as someone writing her, I also had that strength taken away from me. Jolene isn’t bad at comfort, but her style isn’t always what’s needed. Her method is usually distraction/laughter, and Marnie is more likely to try and get to the root of the problem and unravel it from there.
This limitation also led me to write Marnie in a much more physical manner than I usually would. She was doing things I’d usually write Roxanne to be doing so that was an interesting experience. I think things shift back to her usual dynamic/communication style once they all learn to sign though. Maybe she’s a little bit more physical that she would be otherwise after helping both of them recover, Jolene especially as she needed a lot of physical support.
Another thing to note is that one of the scariest parts of sleep paralysis is that you can’t ask for help because yk, you’re paralyzed and can’t talk, so that provides a nice little parallel between Marnie and Roxanne, while the physical limitations of sleep paralysis parallel Jolene and Roxanne.
I have a few more thoughts on how not being able to speak affects Marnie but those will be for different rambles/fics/drawings we shall see.
Turning on the light in the middle of the night is Horrific Upon The Eyes, but I also liked the character moment that it shows for Jolene and Roxanne. They’re here to make space for Marnie to communicate even if it’s at their inconvenience.
Uhhhh but yeah those are my thoughts
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