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animorphsljUntitled Fan fiction (please...someone, come up with a good title!)
Rating: M for sexual references and coarse language
Character: Jordan
Spoilers: Ahoy.
Word Count: 1,327 words
"Being a bitch is easy. It's finding the alternative that's hard.” – David Levithan
In an alternate world, somewhere buried beneath Douglass Adams and H.G. Wells, her sister is alive. In that world, Jordan knows, Rachel struggles between being a bitch and being nice and being alive, like fucking alive in that sense of doped up on too much medication and a boyfriend who struggles whether or not he wants to have sex with her.
But Jordan knows reality. She knows all too much of paparazzi and dark sunglasses and flowers on where her sister should have been buried, but that stupid boyfriend of hers – or whatever he was, since he was a hawk most of the time – had flown off with the urn. She knows all too much of her mother’s disappointed eyes when she quits gymnastics and pierces her eyebrow and dyes her hair brown and red and blue and purple, anything to get away from Rachel. She knows all too much of moving in with Dad and changing her name to Jordyn – that’s Jordyn with a damn Y not an A or an I, like that singer on television who won that show – and being the Other Daughter.
It’s funny, Jordan thinks bitterly as she presses her hand against the window. Her parents have three daughters: The Dead Daughter, The Other Daughter and The Good Daughter. She used to be good, she used to be easy going and her mother used to look at her hopefully when Rachel never came home that night or she had torn clothes, hopeful that whatever crowd Rachel was running with Jordan wouldn’t. She’d never planned to be The Bitch, The Other Daughter, the one Mom only writes occasionally and doesn’t ask to come back for Thanksgiving.
Sometimes, Jordan wonders if Rachel were still alive if she would still be good. She vaguely remembers a day or a week, everything blurs into one another when she tries to remember the War Years before she knew, where Rachel was nice and mean. It seemed like they were two of her, but Jordan could never be sure. Her memory’s fuzzy like that. She blames the alcohol she snuck from Dad’s cabinet when he wasn’t looking. Jordan wonders if she’d be good and smiley and that Rachel would be The Other Daughter, fucked up on meds and unable to work in the real world, unable to function.
What does it mean to be good?
The question peers up at her from the page and she frowns at it. The better question the college should ask her is: What does it mean to be bitchy? Bitchy is easy, Jordan thinks.
(She’s gone back to Jordan for college and whatever may come after; she sometimes says it like “Jord-ann” but often it is the way Rachel used to say it when she was annoyed “JordinJordinJordin!”)
Being bitchy is like breathing. She now knows what it was like to be Rachel: violent, angry, bitchy. Bitchy is easy. It is easier to snub the boy who likes the same literature as her than to go out with him. It is easier to roll her eyes at the girl who is wearing the ugliest skirt she’s even seen than to recognize it as the skirt she’d worn in the tenth grade and she gave away after going through clothes-she-did-not-wear-anymore. It is easier to pretend Rachel’s death does not bother her than to admit she could use a few Lexapro.
Jordan’s not sure why she is applying to some Christian college like this, but she’s determined to seize all options, even ones where she doesn’t care about religion.
She’s only coming back because he insisted and maybe she’ll get drunk enough to fuck him. She’s always wanted to. She’s let the natural sunshine yellow grow back and she’s kept it, hoping, wishing, wanting. Stupid fantasy. Stupid. But she keeps it anyway.
*
“I’m so glad you could come.” He places his hand on her shoulder. She takes in his appearance. Rachel would say it’s abnormal, disgusting, despicable. His Armani suit is sticking to his frame and his dark hair is slicked back with an unnecessary amount of gel.
“Yeah, me too. Whatever. Where’s the alcohol?” She narrows her eyes. Enough eyeliner highlights the blue irises, and she hopes and prays that he will pretend she is Rachel and fuck her to get a fantasy they both need and want and crave.
“Aren’t you still a kid?” He raises an eyebrow.
“Aren’t you?” Jordan quips back and slips into the large crowd of people straight for the bar.
She recognizes the man standing next to her clutching a vodka. She’d recognize him anywhere. Funny how you only really see a person once or twice, but remember them for lifetimes after. He still has focused eyes and a thin face.
“Hey.” She elbows him as she grabs the bottle of Smirnoff and drinks out of the top, not giving a shit about the bartenders or other people. This is what it is to be bitchy, she thinks.
“Um. Hey.” His eyes glance at her and then look away.
Jordan waits for him to say something, maybe about the time or her hair or…hell…anything. He doesn’t. They drink and listen to the clock ticking away and after she’s tired of trying to imagine him in her alternate world where her sister lives, she walks away.
*
In between listening to him with his slick hair and his slick fucking attitude discuss the new book launch tying in with the movie, and the new covers, and how he is so fucking happy everyone could make it, she is drunk and chatting up everyone she sees with a plastic smile on her face. (this is what it is to be good, she thinks, warm and delightful with alcohol flowing through her veins, pumping them instead of blood)
After his speech is done, he drinks too much and stays steady until everyone is gone except her. He eyes her and Jordan wonders what he is thinking, but doesn’t care. He loosens his tie as he comes over and she giggles. He is still the same as she remembers, except older. She is older too.
There are words exchanged and they are sloppy at best, just like the way he kisses her and she is warm all over, but a different warm than alcohol and a different warm than happy. She knows this isn’t right as she grabs hold of his hair and he undoes the buttons of her shirt. But she doesn’t care. They can both get the fantasy they want. Wanted? Jordan isn’t sure anymore except she is blonde and blue eyed and doesn’t mind being called Rachel for once; its been too long since she was mistaken for The Dead Daughter.
*
When she wakes up the next morning, her legs tangled in his and she smells of husky, like him, she blinks and tries to remember where she is or who she is. Everything hits her like the hangover she is about to have.
She puts on her clothes and doesn’t muster a goodbye. She doesn’t need to. She is Jordyn (again), bitchy and angry and not her sister. When she gets home, she will dye her hair black and remember oh-so-fondly of how she lost her virginity while pretending to be someone more spectacular, giving into a fantasy she neither wanted nor longed for again. She will only remember it vaguely when he goes on a talk show late at night and laughs how he slept – how he fucked like an animal, is more like it, Jordan thinks, hailing the next cab she sees - with Rachel.
She won’t be Jordan again. Jordan is dead. Jordyn is the Other Daughter, bitchy and not wearing the pink tulle dress of Glinda the Good. She breathes alcohol and the letters she writes to Rachel as JordinJordinJordin! are buried underneath a box of old diaries. No one will ever find them. No one will ever find her.
Rating: M for sexual references and coarse language
Character: Jordan
Spoilers: Ahoy.
Word Count: 1,327 words
"Being a bitch is easy. It's finding the alternative that's hard.” – David Levithan
In an alternate world, somewhere buried beneath Douglass Adams and H.G. Wells, her sister is alive. In that world, Jordan knows, Rachel struggles between being a bitch and being nice and being alive, like fucking alive in that sense of doped up on too much medication and a boyfriend who struggles whether or not he wants to have sex with her.
But Jordan knows reality. She knows all too much of paparazzi and dark sunglasses and flowers on where her sister should have been buried, but that stupid boyfriend of hers – or whatever he was, since he was a hawk most of the time – had flown off with the urn. She knows all too much of her mother’s disappointed eyes when she quits gymnastics and pierces her eyebrow and dyes her hair brown and red and blue and purple, anything to get away from Rachel. She knows all too much of moving in with Dad and changing her name to Jordyn – that’s Jordyn with a damn Y not an A or an I, like that singer on television who won that show – and being the Other Daughter.
It’s funny, Jordan thinks bitterly as she presses her hand against the window. Her parents have three daughters: The Dead Daughter, The Other Daughter and The Good Daughter. She used to be good, she used to be easy going and her mother used to look at her hopefully when Rachel never came home that night or she had torn clothes, hopeful that whatever crowd Rachel was running with Jordan wouldn’t. She’d never planned to be The Bitch, The Other Daughter, the one Mom only writes occasionally and doesn’t ask to come back for Thanksgiving.
Sometimes, Jordan wonders if Rachel were still alive if she would still be good. She vaguely remembers a day or a week, everything blurs into one another when she tries to remember the War Years before she knew, where Rachel was nice and mean. It seemed like they were two of her, but Jordan could never be sure. Her memory’s fuzzy like that. She blames the alcohol she snuck from Dad’s cabinet when he wasn’t looking. Jordan wonders if she’d be good and smiley and that Rachel would be The Other Daughter, fucked up on meds and unable to work in the real world, unable to function.
What does it mean to be good?
The question peers up at her from the page and she frowns at it. The better question the college should ask her is: What does it mean to be bitchy? Bitchy is easy, Jordan thinks.
(She’s gone back to Jordan for college and whatever may come after; she sometimes says it like “Jord-ann” but often it is the way Rachel used to say it when she was annoyed “JordinJordinJordin!”)
Being bitchy is like breathing. She now knows what it was like to be Rachel: violent, angry, bitchy. Bitchy is easy. It is easier to snub the boy who likes the same literature as her than to go out with him. It is easier to roll her eyes at the girl who is wearing the ugliest skirt she’s even seen than to recognize it as the skirt she’d worn in the tenth grade and she gave away after going through clothes-she-did-not-wear-anymore. It is easier to pretend Rachel’s death does not bother her than to admit she could use a few Lexapro.
Jordan’s not sure why she is applying to some Christian college like this, but she’s determined to seize all options, even ones where she doesn’t care about religion.
She’s only coming back because he insisted and maybe she’ll get drunk enough to fuck him. She’s always wanted to. She’s let the natural sunshine yellow grow back and she’s kept it, hoping, wishing, wanting. Stupid fantasy. Stupid. But she keeps it anyway.
*
“I’m so glad you could come.” He places his hand on her shoulder. She takes in his appearance. Rachel would say it’s abnormal, disgusting, despicable. His Armani suit is sticking to his frame and his dark hair is slicked back with an unnecessary amount of gel.
“Yeah, me too. Whatever. Where’s the alcohol?” She narrows her eyes. Enough eyeliner highlights the blue irises, and she hopes and prays that he will pretend she is Rachel and fuck her to get a fantasy they both need and want and crave.
“Aren’t you still a kid?” He raises an eyebrow.
“Aren’t you?” Jordan quips back and slips into the large crowd of people straight for the bar.
She recognizes the man standing next to her clutching a vodka. She’d recognize him anywhere. Funny how you only really see a person once or twice, but remember them for lifetimes after. He still has focused eyes and a thin face.
“Hey.” She elbows him as she grabs the bottle of Smirnoff and drinks out of the top, not giving a shit about the bartenders or other people. This is what it is to be bitchy, she thinks.
“Um. Hey.” His eyes glance at her and then look away.
Jordan waits for him to say something, maybe about the time or her hair or…hell…anything. He doesn’t. They drink and listen to the clock ticking away and after she’s tired of trying to imagine him in her alternate world where her sister lives, she walks away.
*
In between listening to him with his slick hair and his slick fucking attitude discuss the new book launch tying in with the movie, and the new covers, and how he is so fucking happy everyone could make it, she is drunk and chatting up everyone she sees with a plastic smile on her face. (this is what it is to be good, she thinks, warm and delightful with alcohol flowing through her veins, pumping them instead of blood)
After his speech is done, he drinks too much and stays steady until everyone is gone except her. He eyes her and Jordan wonders what he is thinking, but doesn’t care. He loosens his tie as he comes over and she giggles. He is still the same as she remembers, except older. She is older too.
There are words exchanged and they are sloppy at best, just like the way he kisses her and she is warm all over, but a different warm than alcohol and a different warm than happy. She knows this isn’t right as she grabs hold of his hair and he undoes the buttons of her shirt. But she doesn’t care. They can both get the fantasy they want. Wanted? Jordan isn’t sure anymore except she is blonde and blue eyed and doesn’t mind being called Rachel for once; its been too long since she was mistaken for The Dead Daughter.
*
When she wakes up the next morning, her legs tangled in his and she smells of husky, like him, she blinks and tries to remember where she is or who she is. Everything hits her like the hangover she is about to have.
She puts on her clothes and doesn’t muster a goodbye. She doesn’t need to. She is Jordyn (again), bitchy and angry and not her sister. When she gets home, she will dye her hair black and remember oh-so-fondly of how she lost her virginity while pretending to be someone more spectacular, giving into a fantasy she neither wanted nor longed for again. She will only remember it vaguely when he goes on a talk show late at night and laughs how he slept – how he fucked like an animal, is more like it, Jordan thinks, hailing the next cab she sees - with Rachel.
She won’t be Jordan again. Jordan is dead. Jordyn is the Other Daughter, bitchy and not wearing the pink tulle dress of Glinda the Good. She breathes alcohol and the letters she writes to Rachel as JordinJordinJordin! are buried underneath a box of old diaries. No one will ever find them. No one will ever find her.
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no subject
Date: 2011-03-27 11:48 am (UTC)Putting on the mod hat for a moment though - could you include a rating/warning for this? Since it involves adult themes, it does need one.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-27 12:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-27 12:10 pm (UTC)And then went OOOOH JORDAN FIC and after I read it belatedly realised, "...oh yeah, that needed a warning" XD...Actually. Speaking of Jordan fic. I was looking for this one fic of Jordan at Rachel's funeral/wake a while back, but I couldn't for the life of me find it. Was that by you, by any chance?
no subject
Date: 2011-03-27 12:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-27 12:27 pm (UTC)clearly Jordan just spends all her time at funeralsI'm curious about this Jake-funeral one now though! Do you happen to have a link?
no subject
Date: 2011-03-27 12:34 pm (UTC)Jordan lives at funerals jkjkBe aware it was written in 2008 and um...yeah, well...yeah. LOL.
no subject
Date: 2011-03-27 12:45 pm (UTC)Anyways, you shouldn't be embarrassed! It's very good! XD
no subject
Date: 2011-03-27 12:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-27 12:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-27 12:50 pm (UTC)Also clearly you should celebrate the fact that you are nearing the end of uni by writing fic of Jordan at everyone else's funerals as wellno subject
Date: 2011-03-27 10:50 pm (UTC)That one where Jordan goes to everybody's funerals but her ownOn it. Stat. Right after I write like 3 papers and drown myself in how much uni sucks here. jkjkno subject
Date: 2011-03-27 10:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-27 09:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-27 10:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-28 03:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-03-28 07:14 am (UTC)All the timesometimes I ship M/J for the undertones of M/R.