Jaidon (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cridecoeur) wrote2011-06-05 08:41 am
cridecoeur) wrote2011-06-05 08:41 am
Entry tags:
a corps perdu; freyja/liv; scene one
title: a corps perdu
author:cridecoeur
pairing: freyja/liv
rating: pg-13
word count: 1963
a/n: oh, look, yet another universe. this is one of the, like, million stories i keep going back and forth on for OBB. lesbian horror! with werewolves! and names picked for thematic reasons! no, really, this isn't me just being weird, again, there is history behind them. this feels like the first story with real atmosphere i have written in a long time. i approve. also, i have no idea what time dusk actually falls in the canadian wild, so i googled and took my best guess.
Gloaming spread across the countryside like blood blackening dirt as would happen, yet, yet, but not now. Colors seeped out of the sky and the lights inside the van came on one by one. Finn plucked at the strings of his guitar, picking out the chorus of On The Edge of Never, and Freyja thought that was only appropriate, being, as they were, halfway between Vancouver and the end of the world. She felt that old melancholy settle in her the same she’d felt as she wrote that song, poised on the edge of her bed, pencil clenched between her teeth and words sticking in her throat, as the crickets chirped out in the yard and the sun came down.
Lorcan was already asleep, splayed out across the van’s middle bench, and Liv was sitting beside Freyja in the back, her hand gentle on Freyja’s knee as if she knew her mood, that quiet settling in her, bleaching the van’s rattling to white noise, clenching in her gut. Freyja shifted her leg to one side, so that Liv’s hand was conspicuous on her inner thigh, just beneath the hem of her skirt, and Liv smiled and stroked her fingers over the downy hair there. Freyja thought:
I met Liv first while dreamwalking. She was sitting on a park bench in October, though we were dreaming in April. The leaves were glowing red and orange, there was snow on the ground, and I was in the shape of a wolf. She let me lay at her feet, her calfs bracketing my flanks, and she talked to me as if she knew me. I took out a notebook the next morning, and drew her face, though I didn’t need to. I never forgot what she looked like.
I met her, the second time, in a coffee shop on an empty street, either very late or very early. She was standing behind the counter, her cheek cradled on her palm, wrapping one strand of hair repeatedly around her fingers. She looked up, when the bell over the door rang, and I watched the shock blossom over her face. She recognized me, though I’d been a wolf when we’d last met. She made my coffee and asked if she knew me, and I said, in a way.
The third and fourth times were in dreaming, as well, the same dream as before. The fifth was back in that coffee shop, mid-afternoon, this time, when Liv’s apron was sloppy and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, loose strands tucked behind her ears, looking harried under a rush. She looked up to see me walking in the door, and she blinked several times before smiling. I remembered to ask for her number that time, and she gave it to me.
She thought, I have her now, a reminder that these were not the days she’d written On The Edge of Never, when her walking with Finn had meant sharp edges and wasting sickness, when he’d been dying at his own hands, without ever raising that hand against himself, when she’d cleaned the bottles from his bedroom, burnt teaspoons from the dresser top, the vomit from the bathroom floor, when she’d watched Lorcan walk away for want of another solution, before Liv, before Odd, before Resurrection.
“Hey,” Liv said, interrupting Freyja’s deepening thoughts, “Come here,” and, with a guiding hand on Freyja’s neck, pulled her head down to rest against her shoulder, “You need to get some sleep.”
“So do you,” Freyja said, quietly, careful not to overcome her mood with her own voice.
“So do I,” Liv said, matching the gentleness in Freyja’s voice, stroking one hand through Freyja’s hair. “So do we all,” and for a moment, by her tone, Freyja thought Liv wasn’t talking about sleep, at all, and maybe she wasn’t, but when Freyja looked up at her, Liv was watching Odd in the driver’s seat, looking grim-faced and determined, as if he could will away hard-packed snow and the dangers of a snow-enclosed rural road, and Finn who was plucking, plucking at his guitar strings, not even chords, anymore, just notes dying in the air, and Freyja couldn’t think of what else she might be trying to say, so she closed her eyes, wrapping one arm around Liv’s waist and pulling herself closer, pressing her face against Liv’s throat.
“We should wake up Lorcan,” she said, lips brushing against the thin skin just below Liv’s pulse point; she could feel the heat of blood just beneath Liv’s skin. Liv shivered, and her hand on Freyja’s neck tightened. “It’s his turn to drive next.”
“I will,” Liv said, but, as always, she hesitated before pulling out of the circle of Freyja’s arms. Freyja had never once needed Liv to tell her she was wanted, Liv’s body spoke before she ever could.
Lorcan made a low sound, not-quite-moaning, in his sleep, soft and unsettled, and Liv set one hand on Freyja’s arm around her waist, squeezed, and then pulled away, slipping around the bench seat to crouch beside Lorcan, setting one hand on his shoulder. “Lorcan,” she said, softly, at first, then, louder, “Lorcan,” shaking him - Liv was cautious about waking a person from dreaming; she’d once said to Freyja, “Do you know that when you wake up in the middle of REM sleep, you’re paralyzed for a little bit? What if it didn’t wear off?” Freyja told her not to worry about that. What you had to worry about were the things you brought with you out of dreams. Now Liv worried about both.
“Lorcan,” she said, again, “Wake up,” and this time Lorcan grumbled, rolling onto his back, throwing his arm across his eyes. “Fuck,” he said, “Fuck. Cut it out. I’m awake,” then pulled his arm away only to scrub one hand across his face. “What time is it?”
Liv tilted herself backwards to get a look at the clock glowing on the console. “Three o’clock,” she said. “Your turn to drive.”
“Shit,” Lorcan said, pushing himself upright on the bench seat. “Okay.” He leaned forward and tapped Odd on the shoulder. “Hey, man. Stop. I got it,” and Odd grunted, uncommunicative as he often was, but braked, slowly. Before he pulled to a stop the van jumped suddenly, rattled, and thump, thump, ran over something large enough to shake her. Odd swore and swerved too late, sending the van fishtailing and all her residents bracing themselves if they were lucky enough. Finn hit the dashboard and Liv fell backwards into the console, while Lorcan and Freyja caught themselves on the seats in front of them. The van careened and plowed into the deep snow on the roadside.
Hisss said the van, upon halting. Her engine had died and when Odd tried to start her again, it rolled over, rolled over and made a sick, whining noise.
“Fuck.” Odd said. “Shit. Everyone okay?”
Liv levered herself back up. She looked disoriented, her eyes hazy when she looked up and caught Freyja’s gaze. Finn wash motionless for a sick, dragging moment, before pushing himself backwards into the seat. When he looked back, also catching Freyja’s gaze, there was blood leaking from the corner of his mouth. Freyja thought I saved him for this before he wiped the blood away and smiled shakily.
“I’m okay,” Liv said, at the same time Finn said, “You almost broke my guitar,” which was the most serious thing he could say without Odd thinking he was bleeding inside. “Busted my mouth,” he added, licking his lips, smearing red over them, “But I’m alright. What did we hit?”
Odd stared out at the dark forest lining the snow-packed road. The engine was steaming. “I don’t know. I didn’t see anything.” He rubbed one hand across his face. “Hand me my stuff would you?” and waited as Finn reached down beneath his feet to where both Odd’s coat and hat and scarf were crammed down tightly, along with his. Odd pulled them on as Finn passed them over, then said, “Alright, I’m going to see,” and pushed open the van’s creaking-old door.
Lorcan fumbled for his own coat and then with the sliding door’s handle, before rolling her open. “Come on,” he said, before disappearing outside the van as well. A moment passed before both Odd and Lorcan reappeared where the van’s headlights were shining. Lorcan pulled at the ends of his long hair bristling out from beneath his hat and turned to say something to Odd. Liv slipped out from between the seats, having layered up while Freyja had been looking elsewhere, and Freyja followed her example, leaving Finn to kick the passenger’s door open and follow, looking somehow smaller swallowed by his over-stuffed coat.
The wind was bitingly cold and the snow sparkled under the van’s headlights. At the very edges of her shining were swerving tire tracks, cutting a half-circle through snow, gravel smeared through by the van’s tires. Freyja reached for Liv’s hand as they stood behind Odd and Finn and Lorcan. The night was quiet for miles until a low soft growl cut across her fragile silence.
Limping into the beams of the headlights now was a wolf, a bigger wolf than Freyja had ever seen herself or of which she had even seen pictures. The wolf had luminous eyes, like lamp-lights from out of the dark, that flashed as it turned its head to regard them. Liv squeezed Freyja’s hand tighter as Finn sucked in a breath and Lorcan took a startled step backwards.
The wolf, Freyja noted, didn’t have a tail. If it weren’t for that and the wolf’s meandering gait, she wouldn’t have thought it had been hit at all. It regarded them for a long moment, stretching, before turning away and disappearing back into the woods.
“Back in the car,” Odd said, his tone brooking no argument, “before it comes back.”
They all piled back into the van, her doors bang, bang, hissing shut. The cold had already penetrated inside. Freyja imagined the cold blue their lips would soon be if the van didn’t start again, if the heater wouldn’t catch. When Odd turned the key in the ignition again, her engine once more rolled over, rolled over, then died.
“Fuck.” He said, then, “Finn get the map out.”
Finn scrabbled at the console before getting her open, but even as he was pulling out the map of the territory, Lorcan was fumbling with the buttons on his phone, his face illuminated in the screen’s soft glow.
“Holy fucking God,” he said, low, as if afraid he’d shatter the moment. “I’ve got a signal. All the fucking way out here.”
Odd turned around in his seat to stare at Lorcan then said, “Call in an emergency,” as if someone might reach them in time to keep them all from freezing. Perhaps, Freyja thought, luck would be with them and they wouldn’t be found dead on the roadside some distant morning when the next van or truck passed down this lone road.
Lorcan punched in the numbers and then said, as someone on the other side picked up, “Fuck, we’re broken down out in… “ and Freyja stopped listening as he relayed all the information he had down the phone line. She looked out through the dash window, already frosting at the edges, but the wolf hadn’t reappeared in the mean time. Overhead the moon shown full and round in the sky. Curious she thought before she felt Liv’s hand on her shoulder and turned back to the rest of them, the trouble at hand, the slowly-freezing van and her friends.
“Alright?” Liv asked, and Freyja nodded, distraction curling away into the night, wherever the wolf had gone.
A few minutes passed with Lorcan talking down the line, until he snapped the phone shut. “They’re on the way,” he said, “apparently we’re not too far from a town. They’ll take us there.”
Odd looked back in the car, catching first Lorcan’s gaze, then Liv’s, then Freyja’s. “Alright,” he said, “so we wait.”
This story was also posted over here where a very kind Canadian helped me sort out my setting.
author:
cridecoeurpairing: freyja/liv
rating: pg-13
word count: 1963
a/n: oh, look, yet another universe. this is one of the, like, million stories i keep going back and forth on for OBB. lesbian horror! with werewolves! and names picked for thematic reasons! no, really, this isn't me just being weird, again, there is history behind them. this feels like the first story with real atmosphere i have written in a long time. i approve. also, i have no idea what time dusk actually falls in the canadian wild, so i googled and took my best guess.
Gloaming spread across the countryside like blood blackening dirt as would happen, yet, yet, but not now. Colors seeped out of the sky and the lights inside the van came on one by one. Finn plucked at the strings of his guitar, picking out the chorus of On The Edge of Never, and Freyja thought that was only appropriate, being, as they were, halfway between Vancouver and the end of the world. She felt that old melancholy settle in her the same she’d felt as she wrote that song, poised on the edge of her bed, pencil clenched between her teeth and words sticking in her throat, as the crickets chirped out in the yard and the sun came down.
Lorcan was already asleep, splayed out across the van’s middle bench, and Liv was sitting beside Freyja in the back, her hand gentle on Freyja’s knee as if she knew her mood, that quiet settling in her, bleaching the van’s rattling to white noise, clenching in her gut. Freyja shifted her leg to one side, so that Liv’s hand was conspicuous on her inner thigh, just beneath the hem of her skirt, and Liv smiled and stroked her fingers over the downy hair there. Freyja thought:
I met Liv first while dreamwalking. She was sitting on a park bench in October, though we were dreaming in April. The leaves were glowing red and orange, there was snow on the ground, and I was in the shape of a wolf. She let me lay at her feet, her calfs bracketing my flanks, and she talked to me as if she knew me. I took out a notebook the next morning, and drew her face, though I didn’t need to. I never forgot what she looked like.
I met her, the second time, in a coffee shop on an empty street, either very late or very early. She was standing behind the counter, her cheek cradled on her palm, wrapping one strand of hair repeatedly around her fingers. She looked up, when the bell over the door rang, and I watched the shock blossom over her face. She recognized me, though I’d been a wolf when we’d last met. She made my coffee and asked if she knew me, and I said, in a way.
The third and fourth times were in dreaming, as well, the same dream as before. The fifth was back in that coffee shop, mid-afternoon, this time, when Liv’s apron was sloppy and her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, loose strands tucked behind her ears, looking harried under a rush. She looked up to see me walking in the door, and she blinked several times before smiling. I remembered to ask for her number that time, and she gave it to me.
She thought, I have her now, a reminder that these were not the days she’d written On The Edge of Never, when her walking with Finn had meant sharp edges and wasting sickness, when he’d been dying at his own hands, without ever raising that hand against himself, when she’d cleaned the bottles from his bedroom, burnt teaspoons from the dresser top, the vomit from the bathroom floor, when she’d watched Lorcan walk away for want of another solution, before Liv, before Odd, before Resurrection.
“Hey,” Liv said, interrupting Freyja’s deepening thoughts, “Come here,” and, with a guiding hand on Freyja’s neck, pulled her head down to rest against her shoulder, “You need to get some sleep.”
“So do you,” Freyja said, quietly, careful not to overcome her mood with her own voice.
“So do I,” Liv said, matching the gentleness in Freyja’s voice, stroking one hand through Freyja’s hair. “So do we all,” and for a moment, by her tone, Freyja thought Liv wasn’t talking about sleep, at all, and maybe she wasn’t, but when Freyja looked up at her, Liv was watching Odd in the driver’s seat, looking grim-faced and determined, as if he could will away hard-packed snow and the dangers of a snow-enclosed rural road, and Finn who was plucking, plucking at his guitar strings, not even chords, anymore, just notes dying in the air, and Freyja couldn’t think of what else she might be trying to say, so she closed her eyes, wrapping one arm around Liv’s waist and pulling herself closer, pressing her face against Liv’s throat.
“We should wake up Lorcan,” she said, lips brushing against the thin skin just below Liv’s pulse point; she could feel the heat of blood just beneath Liv’s skin. Liv shivered, and her hand on Freyja’s neck tightened. “It’s his turn to drive next.”
“I will,” Liv said, but, as always, she hesitated before pulling out of the circle of Freyja’s arms. Freyja had never once needed Liv to tell her she was wanted, Liv’s body spoke before she ever could.
Lorcan made a low sound, not-quite-moaning, in his sleep, soft and unsettled, and Liv set one hand on Freyja’s arm around her waist, squeezed, and then pulled away, slipping around the bench seat to crouch beside Lorcan, setting one hand on his shoulder. “Lorcan,” she said, softly, at first, then, louder, “Lorcan,” shaking him - Liv was cautious about waking a person from dreaming; she’d once said to Freyja, “Do you know that when you wake up in the middle of REM sleep, you’re paralyzed for a little bit? What if it didn’t wear off?” Freyja told her not to worry about that. What you had to worry about were the things you brought with you out of dreams. Now Liv worried about both.
“Lorcan,” she said, again, “Wake up,” and this time Lorcan grumbled, rolling onto his back, throwing his arm across his eyes. “Fuck,” he said, “Fuck. Cut it out. I’m awake,” then pulled his arm away only to scrub one hand across his face. “What time is it?”
Liv tilted herself backwards to get a look at the clock glowing on the console. “Three o’clock,” she said. “Your turn to drive.”
“Shit,” Lorcan said, pushing himself upright on the bench seat. “Okay.” He leaned forward and tapped Odd on the shoulder. “Hey, man. Stop. I got it,” and Odd grunted, uncommunicative as he often was, but braked, slowly. Before he pulled to a stop the van jumped suddenly, rattled, and thump, thump, ran over something large enough to shake her. Odd swore and swerved too late, sending the van fishtailing and all her residents bracing themselves if they were lucky enough. Finn hit the dashboard and Liv fell backwards into the console, while Lorcan and Freyja caught themselves on the seats in front of them. The van careened and plowed into the deep snow on the roadside.
Hisss said the van, upon halting. Her engine had died and when Odd tried to start her again, it rolled over, rolled over and made a sick, whining noise.
“Fuck.” Odd said. “Shit. Everyone okay?”
Liv levered herself back up. She looked disoriented, her eyes hazy when she looked up and caught Freyja’s gaze. Finn wash motionless for a sick, dragging moment, before pushing himself backwards into the seat. When he looked back, also catching Freyja’s gaze, there was blood leaking from the corner of his mouth. Freyja thought I saved him for this before he wiped the blood away and smiled shakily.
“I’m okay,” Liv said, at the same time Finn said, “You almost broke my guitar,” which was the most serious thing he could say without Odd thinking he was bleeding inside. “Busted my mouth,” he added, licking his lips, smearing red over them, “But I’m alright. What did we hit?”
Odd stared out at the dark forest lining the snow-packed road. The engine was steaming. “I don’t know. I didn’t see anything.” He rubbed one hand across his face. “Hand me my stuff would you?” and waited as Finn reached down beneath his feet to where both Odd’s coat and hat and scarf were crammed down tightly, along with his. Odd pulled them on as Finn passed them over, then said, “Alright, I’m going to see,” and pushed open the van’s creaking-old door.
Lorcan fumbled for his own coat and then with the sliding door’s handle, before rolling her open. “Come on,” he said, before disappearing outside the van as well. A moment passed before both Odd and Lorcan reappeared where the van’s headlights were shining. Lorcan pulled at the ends of his long hair bristling out from beneath his hat and turned to say something to Odd. Liv slipped out from between the seats, having layered up while Freyja had been looking elsewhere, and Freyja followed her example, leaving Finn to kick the passenger’s door open and follow, looking somehow smaller swallowed by his over-stuffed coat.
The wind was bitingly cold and the snow sparkled under the van’s headlights. At the very edges of her shining were swerving tire tracks, cutting a half-circle through snow, gravel smeared through by the van’s tires. Freyja reached for Liv’s hand as they stood behind Odd and Finn and Lorcan. The night was quiet for miles until a low soft growl cut across her fragile silence.
Limping into the beams of the headlights now was a wolf, a bigger wolf than Freyja had ever seen herself or of which she had even seen pictures. The wolf had luminous eyes, like lamp-lights from out of the dark, that flashed as it turned its head to regard them. Liv squeezed Freyja’s hand tighter as Finn sucked in a breath and Lorcan took a startled step backwards.
The wolf, Freyja noted, didn’t have a tail. If it weren’t for that and the wolf’s meandering gait, she wouldn’t have thought it had been hit at all. It regarded them for a long moment, stretching, before turning away and disappearing back into the woods.
“Back in the car,” Odd said, his tone brooking no argument, “before it comes back.”
They all piled back into the van, her doors bang, bang, hissing shut. The cold had already penetrated inside. Freyja imagined the cold blue their lips would soon be if the van didn’t start again, if the heater wouldn’t catch. When Odd turned the key in the ignition again, her engine once more rolled over, rolled over, then died.
“Fuck.” He said, then, “Finn get the map out.”
Finn scrabbled at the console before getting her open, but even as he was pulling out the map of the territory, Lorcan was fumbling with the buttons on his phone, his face illuminated in the screen’s soft glow.
“Holy fucking God,” he said, low, as if afraid he’d shatter the moment. “I’ve got a signal. All the fucking way out here.”
Odd turned around in his seat to stare at Lorcan then said, “Call in an emergency,” as if someone might reach them in time to keep them all from freezing. Perhaps, Freyja thought, luck would be with them and they wouldn’t be found dead on the roadside some distant morning when the next van or truck passed down this lone road.
Lorcan punched in the numbers and then said, as someone on the other side picked up, “Fuck, we’re broken down out in… “ and Freyja stopped listening as he relayed all the information he had down the phone line. She looked out through the dash window, already frosting at the edges, but the wolf hadn’t reappeared in the mean time. Overhead the moon shown full and round in the sky. Curious she thought before she felt Liv’s hand on her shoulder and turned back to the rest of them, the trouble at hand, the slowly-freezing van and her friends.
“Alright?” Liv asked, and Freyja nodded, distraction curling away into the night, wherever the wolf had gone.
A few minutes passed with Lorcan talking down the line, until he snapped the phone shut. “They’re on the way,” he said, “apparently we’re not too far from a town. They’ll take us there.”
Odd looked back in the car, catching first Lorcan’s gaze, then Liv’s, then Freyja’s. “Alright,” he said, “so we wait.”
This story was also posted over here where a very kind Canadian helped me sort out my setting.
no subject
no subject