(Nice, Deb, the both of them.)
I only wrote one.
Turpitude
For as long as he can recall, he has tried to mold himself to the expectations of others. A dutiful son, an attentive student, a loyal employee, first to the Council, then to Angel.
Cast in the role of betrayer, he struggles to find his lines. Judas, she whispers with a smile from just beyond the curtain. Not so pure, not so loyal, not so good as to resist everything she offers. In his bed, he lets her teach him. It's just another template: turpitude instead of rectitude, vice instead of virtue.
Just another set of expectations to be met.
I like that in your second one, Deb, I got such a tactile sense of Tara, like if I touched the words on my screen, I'd hit warm and fragile flesh.
I was looking over all the words, and grumping because one of my favourite words - portend - wasn't for my birthday. And the person who used it wrote a pretty fic, but used it as a NOUN.
MUNCH
Wolfram and Hart is a monument to entitlement and privilege. As far as I’m concerned, it’s a substitute phallus with tons of windows. Yeah, right, like if I’m compensating that much, my biggest problem is catching the light of day. Not that I know much about daylight anymore...it’s been, what, six weeks, and I’m beginning to forget how it felt.
Lilah walks around like she owns the place, I like to watch that. Who am I kidding? I love to watch her walk anywhere. I’d watch her take her trash out, filled as it would be with avocado skin, apple cores, and yogurt cups. Like Felicia’s. Yes, one sad desperate morning I watched Felicia take the trash out, so much did I want to plead my case for why she shouldn’t leave. Instead, I wanted to leave myself.(You don’t have to look shocked...I did let a gorgeous blonde literally suck the life out of me, you know.)
Our feet barely make any sound in the plush carpet, probably made from the skin of the oppressed. Outside, it’s the kind of beautiful night I could never appreciate as a human.
There are papers in a neat pile on the conference room table. A place for everything. I took a juvenile pleasure in disarranging all that order. And I was fast, too. I was done before Lilah got back with some kind of Hitler youth leader or something. Ken to Darla’s Barbie. “Detective Munch,” Lilah said.(Would I never get tired of my name shaped by those lips? And with a title, yet?) “may I present my associate, Lindsey McDonald.”
Aryan Ken shook my hand. “You’re Lindsey?” I put my glasses back on. I no longer needed them for vision, of course, but they comforted me. Reminded me of battles won and lost ideals, and of course, the tiny tactical advantage gained from looking over them at people. “Not what you expected?” he said, his gaze so keen that if he wanted to eyefuck me, I knew I’d need lube.
“Honestly?” I said, pretending I didn’t notice them both offering me chairs. In a place like this, I’d prefer to pace. Keep moving...maybe it’s a holdover from the pogroms.
Lindsey, who was probably not holding that particular bit of baggage ,sat in the biggest chair at the head of the table.Wow, executive foreplay, I thought. “No,” he said, smiling an All-American smile, “lie to me. I’m an attorney. I’m used to it.”
“Cute,” I said, sitting on the edge of the table. “Well, in that case, your name doesn’t make me think of a freckle-faced blonde with a D-cup.”
“We’d really prefer it if you didn’t sit there,” Lilah said. “That table has a very prominent place in the firm’s history.
“Not like it could have when we’re through with it, babe. “Better dead than adult is my motto I think.
“Well, we can make one of your dreams come true...not that one.” And suddenly I’m eye to eye with more cash than I’ve ever seen. A year of Stanley Bolander’s life, cash-wise, sits on that desk.(We’d talked salary once, only briefly. Then, he’d threatened to gut me. For being crass, although that wasn’t what he said.) “Blood?” Lilah said. I’m so obsessed, I think she said “Love?” and if I could, I’d blush.
Then, I’m surprised by a cut-glass decanter of the red stuff. “We have A and B negative.”
”Nothing but the best. Are there orchids in this too?”
“Taste it and see.” And she lets that provocative sentence hang in the air between us.
I’ve read that sometimes demonstrators get offered water laced with something to throw them off, and I suspect Wolfram & Hart has too.
“No thanks. I’d prefer to stick to business. You aren’t hiring me to be an undead gourmet. What are you hiring me for?”
“To be our eyes and ears. To move aside any obstacles as we take out AI.”
”I’m guessing by obstacles, you don’t mean federal regulators.”
“No, I mean Darla.”
”I live with Darla. She made me.”
“Who better? You were a detective. You know how often people get killed by their nearest and dearest...But don’t worry, if she stays out of the way, you won’t have to do it.”
And just like that, she’s gorgeous again, even with the heart of a Colombian drug lord...I’d love to tell you I found her hideous, but the one thing I can’t do undead is lie.
Thanks! I just had a feeling that that's what the Munchkin would see, even if Lindsey is really from Devil's Asshole, OK. And he has quite the gimlet stare, Lindsey.(And I really do think of my high-school friend Lindsay who fits the description of the Lindsay Munch was expecting, every time I type that)
KAY
As a cop, I hardly remember the first time I hit the streets. As a uniform, anyway. They all blend together, and I was real ambitious then, mostly trying to learn how to move up to the next stage. I listened to older cops, who showed me that, and a few other things after hours I’dve been wiser to pass up, huh? But hindsight’s always 20-20.
My first murder I remember. A kid named Rollins got shot for his running shoes. Talking to his mother’s still the hardest thing I ever did.Partly because she didn’t believe me....she must’ve thought this redhaired white lady coming to her door was one of those hidden-camera things. I put it down right away, though. Cause his brain-dead friend kept the shoes. I still can’t imagine the kind of person that would do that. Much less something like the Adena thing...if I’d been faster picking up, that’d be in my lap, not Timmy’s.
Part of me thinks I’dve been able to do better with it, but who knows?You don’t get much time for what-if in Homicide. My first time on the street as a “rogue demon-fighter” started with a phone call too(Every time I say first time, I hear Munchkin in my head saying “You never forget your first time,” and I picture him making one of his faces.)
Cordy was on the phone, just ordering office supplies or something, when she got really pale and started sweating. She cried out and dropped the phone.”I see it,” she said. “It’s big and hairy.”
”What did you take, Cordy? I warned you about those party girls at acting class, didn’t I? That’s gonna end up nowhere nice, huh?” I wished Munchkin was there, with all his extra-curricular experience.
”It’s not drugs,” Gunn said. “She’s having a vision.”
“A vision. Like when the Indians go on quests and shit?”
“Nah, more like newsbriefs. From The Powers That Be.”
“Our Cordy...the one that thinks pretty people should have special parking places? Has a pipeline to God. And I thought I’d seen everything.”
”Not God, exactly. The Powers....Wesley was very definite about that. You know how he gets.”
“Yeah. What do we do?” This was making me wish for a simple OD. I hated having to ask for help.
“First, I heard that. And second, now we ask Cordy whether she can identify anything...places or people.”
“Cordy, “ I said. “Focus now. What do you see?”
”The sign says ‘Factory outlet’
“Have you been there before?”
“Did I stutter? It’s an outlet mall. My mom did...while my dad was doing his Michael Millken impression.”
I was surprised that she’d even try to front while suffering so much, and I felt bad to learn her dad had been Inside. That’s a tough break for any kid, and she was just a little more than a kid now. I held the trash basket as she heaved.(I’m really getting to enjoy all the glamour of Hollywood....I should have taken time off sooner.)
Oh, erika, this is intriguing.
