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Entry tags:
[clubbingfic!]
Right. Katie. Post-Paley clubbing Katie.
In the end it comes down to darkness, to shades of glass and shades of meaning, to anonymity. In public she's learned to wear large glasses that cover half her face. She buys hats and scarves and hides the shining conspicious blonde of her hair, because it's easier. She never thought she'd be sick of being noticed, but when all she wants is to nick down to the shops for milk and then collapse on the couch with a bad movie and turn her brain off, being accosted in the supermarket and smiling and saying the right things is too tiring to be worth the gratification.
This is similar. Not the same, but similar.
(Shades of meaning.)
She feels both more and less exposed. More feted, less familiar. She's been in front of a crowd all day and right now she needs...this. A snatched window in which they are just friends out to have fun and nobody knows her name and feels thoughtlessly entitled to address her by it, laughing and familiar, simply because she wears someone else's for a living.
It's as dark as her glasses and the muffled interior heat seeps through limbs long accustomed to the Canadian fall, and the music throbs through the wooden floor and up through her feet, tingling along the periphery of her senses. She feels like giggling, so she does. She feels like dancing, so she does. She feels like -
well. That's a whole other matter.
"Drink?"
She nods because it's crazily loud, he had to press his mouth to her ear to be heard in the first place, she'd forgotten what it was like to not be able to hear her own thoughts past the pressing din of a place like this. It's exhilerating. She looks directly into the lights and then at his face and for a moment there are fireworks writhing behind her eyes and she's grateful because she heard the smile in his voice and doesn't want to have to see it as well.
By the time he returns, juggling bottles of cider, she's laughing with Tahmoh about the fact that they're old enough to remember the original of whatever cheesy eighties song they're currently dancing to the remix of. It's got a good beat. She lets it seep through her body, grabs the half-empty bottle from Jamie with a grin, tosses back her head. When she's not looking at Grace, not looking at the other skinny painted perfect girls in the club, when she's just got her eyes closed and her lips around the neck of a bottle still slick with his own taste, she almost feels pretty.
By the time someone recognises her, she's loosened up enough to take the compliment with a genuine smile.
By the time Grace begs off with a headache and Tahmoh rolls his eyes good-naturedly as he agrees to drive her back to the hotel, she's taken off her pinching fashionable shoes and is dancing in bare feet.
By the time Jamie's hand tucks around her waist and pulls her close, they're in a corner even darker than the rest of the club.
And by the time she forgets herself and holds onto the collar of his crumpled shirt and kisses him, the music is swirling through her veins like alcohol. Her foot knocks an empty bottle and it skims sluggishly across the floor with a high tinkling noise that blends with the synthesised melody. It takes a loud, drunken age before his fingers release her shoulders and his lips stop finding new angles from which to press against the corner of her mouth, and then he's looking at her and oh god, no fireworks, just the shadowed ink-blue of his eyes under the lights, and his mouth is moving and she can't hear a thing.
Probably for the best. She can't read lips, but she fills in anyway - can't, married, bad idea, professional relationship - and suddenly she wants to be the girl that locks herself in a grimy club bathroom and cries until her mascara streaks her cheeks. But she swore a long time ago never to be that girl, and this is professional fucking screen makeup and probably wouldn't budge anyway.
"Jamie," she says, or she thinks she says, but there's a staggered beat like a broken heart pounding through her head and she can't hear her own voice so maybe it comes out sounding more like I love you and maybe she'll regret all of this in the morning.
It's very dark and they're still far too close.
She pauses and prays for a miracle, watching his lips, helpless.
He smiles.
In the end it comes down to darkness, to shades of glass and shades of meaning, to anonymity. In public she's learned to wear large glasses that cover half her face. She buys hats and scarves and hides the shining conspicious blonde of her hair, because it's easier. She never thought she'd be sick of being noticed, but when all she wants is to nick down to the shops for milk and then collapse on the couch with a bad movie and turn her brain off, being accosted in the supermarket and smiling and saying the right things is too tiring to be worth the gratification.
This is similar. Not the same, but similar.
(Shades of meaning.)
She feels both more and less exposed. More feted, less familiar. She's been in front of a crowd all day and right now she needs...this. A snatched window in which they are just friends out to have fun and nobody knows her name and feels thoughtlessly entitled to address her by it, laughing and familiar, simply because she wears someone else's for a living.
It's as dark as her glasses and the muffled interior heat seeps through limbs long accustomed to the Canadian fall, and the music throbs through the wooden floor and up through her feet, tingling along the periphery of her senses. She feels like giggling, so she does. She feels like dancing, so she does. She feels like -
well. That's a whole other matter.
"Drink?"
She nods because it's crazily loud, he had to press his mouth to her ear to be heard in the first place, she'd forgotten what it was like to not be able to hear her own thoughts past the pressing din of a place like this. It's exhilerating. She looks directly into the lights and then at his face and for a moment there are fireworks writhing behind her eyes and she's grateful because she heard the smile in his voice and doesn't want to have to see it as well.
By the time he returns, juggling bottles of cider, she's laughing with Tahmoh about the fact that they're old enough to remember the original of whatever cheesy eighties song they're currently dancing to the remix of. It's got a good beat. She lets it seep through her body, grabs the half-empty bottle from Jamie with a grin, tosses back her head. When she's not looking at Grace, not looking at the other skinny painted perfect girls in the club, when she's just got her eyes closed and her lips around the neck of a bottle still slick with his own taste, she almost feels pretty.
By the time someone recognises her, she's loosened up enough to take the compliment with a genuine smile.
By the time Grace begs off with a headache and Tahmoh rolls his eyes good-naturedly as he agrees to drive her back to the hotel, she's taken off her pinching fashionable shoes and is dancing in bare feet.
By the time Jamie's hand tucks around her waist and pulls her close, they're in a corner even darker than the rest of the club.
And by the time she forgets herself and holds onto the collar of his crumpled shirt and kisses him, the music is swirling through her veins like alcohol. Her foot knocks an empty bottle and it skims sluggishly across the floor with a high tinkling noise that blends with the synthesised melody. It takes a loud, drunken age before his fingers release her shoulders and his lips stop finding new angles from which to press against the corner of her mouth, and then he's looking at her and oh god, no fireworks, just the shadowed ink-blue of his eyes under the lights, and his mouth is moving and she can't hear a thing.
Probably for the best. She can't read lips, but she fills in anyway - can't, married, bad idea, professional relationship - and suddenly she wants to be the girl that locks herself in a grimy club bathroom and cries until her mascara streaks her cheeks. But she swore a long time ago never to be that girl, and this is professional fucking screen makeup and probably wouldn't budge anyway.
"Jamie," she says, or she thinks she says, but there's a staggered beat like a broken heart pounding through her head and she can't hear her own voice so maybe it comes out sounding more like I love you and maybe she'll regret all of this in the morning.
It's very dark and they're still far too close.
She pauses and prays for a miracle, watching his lips, helpless.
He smiles.