( there it is. one last standing ovation to the tune of her center-stage heartbreak. it always was his favorite act. ani's lips tighten into a forced smile, eyes dull as backstage bulbs burned out, with the smooth abruptness of a quick costume change. becoming the woman who laughs along with her ruin like she hasn't been made the joke, all while the rest of the world plays her tragedies off like they're watching a fucking comedy.
the script flips. she skips her usual lines — doesn't give him the dignity of the familiar. shucks both shoes off, toes sinking into the shaggy velvet carpet like she's preparing herself for the next scene. one heartbreak closer to curtain call. showgirl-poised to take her bow. )
You think so? ( it floats up, soft and breathy. the kind of baby-voiced, ingénue performance that once earned her encores in smoky jazz bars. back when the act was fresh-faced and vibrant, and so was ani. now, it's just comfortable distance she sets between them. her stage voice, unreachable, center-light. jake, front-row again. ) Rehab glow, right?
( plain. unblinking. conversational, as if she isn't fitting herself into the role he's laid out for her, fluidly following his stage direction, with the aim of grating at him. ani slinks down the set dressing of her room. doesn't ask as she plucks a cigarette from the nightstand. lights it up to inhale deep, the way she used to smoke on fancy hotel balconies — cinematic in silk. like she was a breath you fall in love with just in time to get lung damage.
every single one of her fingers sits naked. the only sign she's being kept at all is in the bruised smudges of fingertips along the peach-skin of her thighs, visible through the window parting of her robe when she stretches out onto a chaise. a deliberate backstage glimpse, maybe. or just coincidence.
hard to say. ani makes everything look fluid, including the exhaled smoke she blows into jake's proximity, the slip into russian. low, satin. )
Wrong author for you, honey. You're Pushkin's type of guy, not Bulgakov's man.
(a modern eugene onegin in the making. what they are given doesn't take their fancy. they must have the forbidden fruit, or paradise will not be paradise for them. )
no subject
the script flips. she skips her usual lines — doesn't give him the dignity of the familiar. shucks both shoes off, toes sinking into the shaggy velvet carpet like she's preparing herself for the next scene. one heartbreak closer to curtain call. showgirl-poised to take her bow. )
You think so? ( it floats up, soft and breathy. the kind of baby-voiced, ingénue performance that once earned her encores in smoky jazz bars. back when the act was fresh-faced and vibrant, and so was ani. now, it's just comfortable distance she sets between them. her stage voice, unreachable, center-light. jake, front-row again. ) Rehab glow, right?
( plain. unblinking. conversational, as if she isn't fitting herself into the role he's laid out for her, fluidly following his stage direction, with the aim of grating at him. ani slinks down the set dressing of her room. doesn't ask as she plucks a cigarette from the nightstand. lights it up to inhale deep, the way she used to smoke on fancy hotel balconies — cinematic in silk. like she was a breath you fall in love with just in time to get lung damage.
every single one of her fingers sits naked. the only sign she's being kept at all is in the bruised smudges of fingertips along the peach-skin of her thighs, visible through the window parting of her robe when she stretches out onto a chaise. a deliberate backstage glimpse, maybe. or just coincidence.
hard to say. ani makes everything look fluid, including the exhaled smoke she blows into jake's proximity, the slip into russian. low, satin. )
Wrong author for you, honey. You're Pushkin's type of guy, not Bulgakov's man.
(a modern eugene onegin in the making. what they are given doesn't take their fancy. they must have the forbidden fruit, or paradise will not be paradise for them. )