/ pandering slurs .

[sinthia clark-kaplan]

The slight tingling of her gums took away from the pain of knawing rather heavily on the inside of her left cheek. Sometimes, if she bit down hard enough, there would be the faint metallic taste of blood, and she'd wash it down with a drink. Not phased by much, if by anything at all, it never once occurred to the young woman that perhaps this wasn't healthy for one's skin, and it would be almost certain that if you told Sinthia such things that she would internalize it, much like everything else, and then ignore it completely. But that was the problem with this girl. Retaining information was never much of her strong point, not because she lacked the capacity in that regard, but because she simply didn't care to. She was a fan of the little things, the exactness of a haircut or the specific beats one might use when they tapped their fingers on the bar, perhaps it was the use of too many narcotics out of turn, or the way the mind of a drummer worked, but whatever it was, she was incapable of paying attention to the larger picture. She, in short, preferred thin strokes. As it stood, everything was far too sharp, combined with the slight problem of her chattering teeth. Sobriety was not a costume that fit her well, and you could tell by the way her hair stood slightly imperfect and on end that it was a state she rarely found herself in. However, this wasn't to say that she wasn't functioning. On the contrary, there was much to be said for productivity when you constantly lingered on the line of okay and not. There seemed to be no problems with the constant of shaking hands and the rushing sound of blood to the ears, so long as the functions of eating, sleeping, and vomiting were still possible. October was brisk, yet the chill a but more cutting than usual. Her coat was vaguely designer, worn in and slightly threadbare from leaving it in one too many bars and taking it to too many gigs. No doubt, the DNA of many strangers, mingling against her in the small, tight confines of dive bars, lingered on it. It would have never occurred to Sinthia that it needed a good washing. Unless, of course, her mother told her to. Her teeth clanged together like a horse at a bit, though it was not drug induced this time, but instead an effect of the cold. Slender, white hands lifted a cigarette to her lips, a habit that she only enjoyed at times like this, and she inhaled slightly, blowing sloppy smoke rings into the air and smacking her lips together. She had eyes for the doorman, hanging off his every word and tugging at his sleeve in a manner that was flirtatious and promising in all the wrong ways. He had let them in, well ahead of the crowd. She had to throw him a bone of some sort. In Sinthia's world, one might be surprised to know that didn't mean taking him home. On the contrary, she was rather selective about her partners, though ironically enough her favorite one (or atleast, the one that bored her the least), sat inside, brooding and cranky and pretending to hate her as usual. However, she knew on some level, his fondness for her was not absent. It was just easier this way. It was difficult, after all, to try to explain to the people that knew you that you wanted to fuck your cousin. But her time with the doorman was up, leaving a jaded red mark of makeup on his cheek, allowing him the last of her Lucky Strike and turning her back on a street that was so painfully East Village. The door she passed through was nondescript, nothing marking that it was one of the better bars in the current location. However, none of that would have mattered to her much, as it would seem, these things people her age were usually proud of were things that were lost on Sinthia. She would be content in the plastic booths of a Taco Bell, for all she cared. But when Jonny had finally agreed to hang out with her, she thought it best that he be allowed to pick the place. Although her physical feelings towards him were slightly incestuous in nature, it never occurred to Sinthia that someone might classify them as taboo. The ink that peppered his skin in the form of The Queen and a few too many Stars of David did nothing but add to these feelings, and that was exactly where she touched him now, snaking back into the stool beside him before she had disappeared for her second smoke break of the evening. Her smile was dreamy, languid and her eyes glassed over in a way that too many cocktails did to a young woman. Those same, slender fingers that smelled of cigarette danced up his arm, clutching to him as she leaned over the bar. "Something sweet, I'm thinking raspberry, yeah? Something that will stain this guy's cock when I take him home later." She's almost fantastical, the way she speaks, as if nobody else would dare to say such a thing. Sinthia motions a thumb at Jonny as the bartender busies himself, her hand falling to his thigh in a more discreet placement. Always too touchy. "I've decided that when we're done here that I'm craving both chicken nuggets and Pad Thai. I can't have one or the other and I absolutely need both, and we are making a fire in the fireplace ASAP, because my feet are fucking cold and unless you want to be rubbing them all night, they need to be warm before I go to sleep." The drink is slid easily into her hand, and she plucks a raspberry that garnishes the rim, sucking the sugar from it and chewing in a manner that would assume was thoughtful, but instead was just vacant. She could understand in some manner why he loved a place like this. It was quite Jonny, dark and intimate and ultimately just a hole in the wall. The people that surrounded them were of those they saw at least every fortnight, their circles small and comprising of all the same places. She, on the other hand, was not familiar with it all, having grown up far from this scene. Although he pretended not to be glamorous, he was that, in a way. Being poor in New York City was nothing if not completely misleading. "Why didn't you come out for a cigarette with me, you twat? Actually, nevermind, I'm really horny." TAG: jonny kaplan MUSIC: tic tac toe - logic. NOTES: srry it's short and dumb.

[jonny kaplan]

If Jonny had a spiritual home, some spatial habitat for his very soul, he was pretty sure it would look a lot like this. More than look like this, it would be this. A bar that served good whisky as standard without charging a small fortune for the small measure of liquid, a bar with sticky floors and sticker women, a bar that played music you could fuck to and feel blazed even when you weren't. Fairy lights that somehow maintained the dishevelled, rustic feel of the place, instead of being whimsical and, frankly, girly. A place that'd make you a sweet pink tinged cocktail if you asked, but you had to ask, because like fuck are they putting that on the menu. Everything about it made him feel at ease, and despite not particularly enjoying the sensation of being at ease - it was, after all, a sensation so rare for him that it paradoxically bordered on making him uncomfortable - he still found himself back here, sitting at the same bar stool nursing the same brand of scotch, night after night after night. It was probably a similar sensation that drove him to repeatedly return to the wanton embrace of his supposed cousin, that promise of comfort, of not needing to try too hard to impress anybody. It had taken Jonny a good few years to realize it, but the very effort of refusing to succumb to the effort of trying to impress others was simply the forsaking of one suffering for another. As life would repeatedly drum into him, Jonny had finally realized at around the age of around nineteen that the opposite of trying wasn't not trying, but trying hard not to, and forced apathy was quite possibly more draining than effortless earnestness. And so for once Jonny wasn't trying. Slumped at the bar, a slight look of distaste on his face as he watched melting ice dilute his drink, he didn't even feel bad that he was here again. Worse still, he didn't even judge himself for his choice of company, despite the fact that not 12 hours ago he was spewing all sorts of vitriol about her. Watery blue eyes followed her movements as she suggestively leaned against the bar, words dripping with seduction as she placed her predictable order. It would be cliche to say she oozed sex appeal, not to mention inaccurate-- 'oozed' would suggest that it came naturally, something she couldn't help even if she had wanted to, a visible and potentially debilitating medical condition. But everything about Sinthia was contrived, at least as far as Jonny was concerned. Her very genuineness, that "lack of filter" she was so often lauded for, it all seemed to him some act, and a hammy one at that. Not that he moved her tanned hand from his lap when she placed it there. In fact, it was the act that Jonny found sexy - the fact that he was so convinced it was an act and that only he could see through it was like seething through her clothes to the underwear beneath, and further when she occasionally let the mask slip. Turned on not by her sexiness but by his disbelief that it was sincere, Jonny slipped closer to her, lips brushing against her neck as she made her gauche proclamation. She smelt of perfume and cigarettes, a heady combination that always reminded him of her, despite the fact every woman he'd ever known had worn the same two scents like a second skin. He littered kisses down her neck, so conspicuously bare when compared to his own inked skin, going to pull away but pausing. His breath no doubt hot against her cheek, he dropped his voice down to a whisper that only she would be able to hear over the general din. "You're embarrassing yourself." Opinion issued, Jonny straightened up, ordering a refill by way of a small nod. Nodding along with her rambling with as much of a lack of enthusiasm as he could muster (and it was true that such things had to be mustered), his mind wandered to the promise of another cigarette, and he wondered how much longer Sinthia would want to keep up this pretence of a date before she would concede to leaving. It was a small show of empathy that she had let him choose the venue for this doomed charade, and exactly the sort of behavior to which she was prone, being outwardly carefree and indifferent but inwardly calculated. She made small concessions to Jonny because she knew to play to his ego, and despite him knowing that she knew this, he couldn't help but end up playing up to it. Despite making relatively few demands of others and often showing an eagerness to please, it was funny how frequently she wound up getting her way. "I don't have a fireplace. 'Sides, we're going to your place as soon as you feel you've downed enough 'vodz', since I've promised Eden I'm not fucking you any more and I'd really hate to be shown up as anything but a man of my word." God he wanted to light up right now. Fidgety, he stood up, pulling his jacket on. Funny how much he pretended to let her call the shots too, really. It was clear that he was done and she would just have to be too. Finishing his drink, the dingy room blurred ever so slightly. Not drunk but not sober, Jonny's angst was softened at the edges, his lust for the girl manifesting itself in small affectionate gestures. Standing behind where she sat, he slipped his arms around her tiny waist, nuzzling down into her neck again and breathing in the smell of her shampoo. "Finish your drink Malibu Barbie," he mumbled, words ever so slightly slurred, "I wanna take you home and fuck you so hard you'll feel it for weeks." CREDIT: ur code, which i totez stole for visual uniformity and not bc i'm lazy, k. MUSIC: Mozart. NOTES: WELL THIS WAS LITERALLY THE WORST PILE OF SHIT I'VE EVER WRITTEN.

[sinthia clark-kaplan]

“I’ve decided to completely skip food and allow you to do exactly that.” Sinthia almost wished that this was foreign to them. She almost wished that the feeling of his face, buried in the back of her hair, wasn’t something that she had felt a million times before. Perhaps that was an exaggeration. Well, almost. Despite it being customary, there was a little too much alcohol sitting in the chemical make up of her skin, causing a brief, unashamed shudder to fall down the length of her spine. As much as she hated him, thoroughly and completely incapable of understanding the way that he was, Sinthia Clark, now a Kaplan, could not for the life of her ignore the urge she had to bounce up and down on his dick every time he asked – whether it be rudely or politely. There was the slight arch of her back, the subtle movement of her rear as she pressed it into his crotch, and like the touch of her hand on his thigh; she was unashamed of that too. Whilst Jonny might of thought he understood her in complete, from start to finish, he only had it about half right. Her stupidity, her lack of filter, while they were easy masks she wore, and although there were points where the young woman genuinely did not care – it would be wrong to say that she was completely without regard for anyone else. In fact, in some sick, twisted way, she was just trying to be morally sound. Whilst she enjoyed badgering him, ruining moments and days and even weeks of his life, the repercussions that came were far more welcome than the effort to actually attempt to be his friend. He hurt everyone. From Claudia, to Atlas, to inevitably Sara, it would not do to try to befriend him. It had not served anyone any good as of late. “Trust me, babe. I'm not going to be the only one unable to walk when I finally get my mouth wrapped around you.” But, their friendship (if you could even call it that) was not a complete waste. Before her claw marks littered his back, before they decided that hate fucking was the only way that they could tolerate one another’s company, there was something else entirely different. If Sinthia was shy about anything, it was indeed the musical background she carried around like a badge from war, her father absent, passing nothing to his daughter except his uncanny ability to converse with rhythm. They had tried it, once. And it all but ended in the upmost heartbreak. Perhaps that was the beginning of everything Jonathan hated about her, for it was her fault in the end. She was the reason his future was ruined. He had said that enough times, even while he fucked her into the mattress. There was no contempt for him, has he buried his face in her hair, her lips smacking together as she sucked on an ice cube, unceremoniously chewing on it moments later. A giggle fell from her lips, obviously approving of this idea he had cooked up. They always knew that the evening would end up this way regardless. The past 24 hours had nearly ruined the costume she wore in almost effortless pride. Although she didn’t care to admit it, Jonathan was the only one that noticed it was ill fitting in places. Ultimately, there was a self consciousness that lay stirring under her skin, whether from inherent daddy-issues or the complex that comes from moving all over the country in youth, Sinthia could never really pin point what exactly made her this way. In the same breath, when she looked at Jonny, all she could really see was sadness. He was pathetic, and not in a way that was meant to be degrading, but in the way that pulled sympathy and empathy from her unwilling grasp. Perhaps that was why she continued to go to bed with him. They were different flavors of melancholy, but they were melancholy all the same. Slender, smoke stained hands slid down the glass, draining the last sip in one mouthful. Before she could even wipe the rest of the drink from her lips, she turned in his grasp, their bodies pressed against the bar as their mouths came together. It was an act of affection they usually preferred to leave to the dark alleys on the way home, stopping only to shove one another against the flatness of East Village brick. It was brazen, and if insiders to the situation stood near, it was quite possible it would ruin them both. Yet, if there were two people in the world who gave the least amount of fucks, it was the joint venture of Jonny and Sinthia. As cruel fate would have it, the haze of air stood still, and it was as if ice slid down the bones of her spine. That’s all it took, two chords, and the achy, soft whisper of her own voice ringing throughout the bar, followed in a slow succession by the voice of the man that she currently had her arms wrapped around. It crossed her mind to stand completely still, and perhaps if her cellular biology didn’t shift, it would all be fine. The music would stop, and it would fade. But fate was really fucking cruel. And they were the most unlucky people in Attaboy that night. TAG: jonny kaplan MUSIC: nothing in this world - paris hilton. NOTES: this is literally shit..

[jonny kaplan]

Silk fabric smooth under his fingers, her body reassuringly certain in his arms, Jonny let the moment sit for a moment. Slackened by his habitual distaste for more or less everything, Jonny had a tendency to move at a glacial pace. Desperately resentful of the poetic, it was not that he was amongst life's observants - he didn't slow better to give himself perspective, to stop and smell the roses. He moved slowly because he had from a very young age been certain of one thing, and that was that wherever you were going was never going to be any better or worse than where you've just been. So why rush? Many of his mannerisms were exact though unintentional replications of those of his mother, and had his father paid even ten seconds of attention to his son, he might have noticed all the telltale signs of depression. But Jonny wasn't depressed, not in any literal sense. He was terminally bored. He was angry, a clean, sourceless rage always bubbling just under the surface of his skin, sometimes boiling over, sometimes seeping through in barbed remarks and his determination that no one around him should enjoy life any more than he did. Not that there weren't moments of lucidity. Sometimes he could see his actions for what they were, his unscrupulous destruction of other people's happiness in the cold light of day. Guilt was amongst the wide range of emotions not readily available to him however, so often he would brush these to one side. After all, Sinthia kept coming back again and again, putting her hand to a naked flame though she knew it had burned before and would burn again. There were minute changes. Still cooled by their most recent altercation (mere hours ago!), Jonny's disinterest in her babbling had been yet more severe than usual, and now that the room was blurred at the edges his grip on her was that ever so slightly tighter. He snorted at her comment. Always one for one-upmanship in this department, Jonny need only say that he wanted to take her home for her to pour out a dozen little filthy sentiments, her hot whispers against his ear making him itchy to leave. Sinthia's body pressing itself against his was oh so familiar, and he closed his eyes, forehead resting against the back of her head as he fought his reluctance to go down this well-worn path. It wasn't too hard to ignore as it happened, engulfed as he was by the scent of both her perfume and her shampoo, her body warm and tight and curving in all the right places. She was the kind of woman whose looks could drive men to the very stupidest of acts, and time and time again he had proven himself to be particularly susceptible to her irreverent charms, though he'd sooner stick his dick in a blender than admit it. And then the song started. Within only the fewest of chords, what had previously been background noise, dimly playing throughout the night, had taken on a life of its own. It was all Jonny could hear. It was hard to believe that something he himself had created could cause him so much discomfort, and with such immediacy at that - it was as if the song was a child he had abandoned at the side of the road, coming back to confront him about his brutal neglect. It was all too present to even think about ignoring. His whole body froze. Giving up on a promising career in music had been no easy feat for the man. Indeed, the loss of this prospect had been so severe on him that it was in no small part a source of the relentless brooding for which he was so well known today. More to the point, it was almost completely the source for his enduring hatred of Sinthia. Arms still around the woman he despised more than ever, he seized up so severely that should she try to escape she'd find it a struggle. With a duet of their voices to soundtrack his rapidly ascending sobriety, Jonny was able to look at her through the eyes of his not much younger self, to feel the rage that had deadened into distaste with fresh indignation. As if it was her fault. As if he would ever admit that maybe it wasn't, not entirely. Having started up a band as an outlet for all that angst of his, had Jonny known it would all be stripped away from him one day he'd never have set himself up for the fall. In fact, the band had been a reaction to his being unable to take up a Cornell scholarship, since even that was way out of his price range. way out. Having come so close only to have everything taken away had ruined him, and the band was all he had.... until they almost made it big, but dissolved. As much as he knew that history repeated itself, he didn't quite expect it to repeat so rapidly - Cornell, gone. Music, gone. His mom, even, gone... though that last one admittedly bothered him the least. Arms finally falling away from the warmth and comfort of Sinthia's body, he reached across and picked up her drink, his adam's apple bobbing as he downed the sugary pink liquid. Wanting to grab his coat but deprived of this satisfying exit gesture by the unfortunate fact that he was already wearing it, Jonny straightened up from his customary slouch, gaining a few inches as he did so. Without offering a word to his companion, he pulled out a few notes and pushed them across the bar, covering her tab more because he didn't feel much ownership of his money these days than out of any gentlemanly inclination. Leaving and stepping out into the cold night air, it wasn't until he was out that he remembered to breathe, taking in so much air at once that its very chill reached down into his lungs. Much less claustrophobic.    After a few deep breaths he pulled out a cigarette, finally turning to the face her. "You're the worst fucking thing that ever happened to me, you know that right?" MUSIC: my tears as I wonder where my grasp of English went. NOTES:IT WAS NOT LITERALLY SHIT HOLLY

[sinthia clark-kaplan]

The complete unpredictability and erratic tendencies of Sinthia's nature were on the contrary, completely calculated. At least, this had one time been the case, and the notion that this was still the same was up for debate. She had quite literally faked it until she made it, and as it went, the more and more she told herself that she didn't care, the more and more she found that she didn't. Her youth was spent sensitively, softly, and the way that she had conducted herself as a child was a far cry from the way that she had come to be in that exact moment. She didn't appear fresh from her mother's womb, kicking and screaming, in fact, she made very little noise at all on the metaphoric plane of things. Sinthia grew up in the center, and yet very much pushed to the side of her mother's circle of attention. The winning of her scholarship to the remote boarding school in Connecticut didn't do anything to help that matter. Whilst Debra Clark worked hard to rid herself of her maiden name, she was proud of the little blonde never the less, but it was around that exact same time that Sinthia started pretending not to give a shit. Thus, it wasn't a complete lie when she alluded to the idea that anything Jonny said didn't affect her. It most certainly didn't. However, there was the question of the rather tight grip he had her placed in, and for only a fleeting moment, Sinthia wondered if he was capable of physically hurting her. Surely she had driven him to the point of nearly insane rage before, but there was something about this particular moment in which she didn't feel entirely safe. This was not to say that Jonny would do such a thing. Upon reflection later, Sinthia would remember that those feelings were indeed foolish, and that she had nothing to worry about. No matter the amount of verbal assault he abused her with, or the amount of bruising that decorated her hips in the shape of his hands after the nights that they spent together, he wouldn't harm a hair on her head. Strangely enough, as soon as he seized up, he let her go, and she pretended to ignore the sudden change in him. Perhaps it stung more than she was willing to admit now that he wasn't treating her with such affection. She hated him, with a blind fucking rage that she masked with severe attempts to be annoying. But she hated him not because of his fundamental make-up, but because there was still a part of her, however tiny, that wanted his approval. The sweet sugar of her smile slid onto her face with ease, replacing the lust driven movements her lips had taken. She lingered, calculating the situation, blowing kisses to the bartender. If she was hasty, he would know that his behaviour unnerved her. She ached to embarrass herself again, throwing the mixologist a gaudy wink and brushing her fingers along Jonny's back with a giggle, her mouth falling open in a dark grin as they exited. The night air was cooler than when she had left for a cigarette prior, and the blonde took the time to actually cinch her coat around her waist, the fabric drowning the tanned biology beneath. Her lungs screeched with a desperate attempt for warm air before they suddenly became accustomed to the frigid october temperature. East Village around them echoed with nothing but silence and the tapping of her rather beat up designer pumps. She was hard on her clothing, on her possessions, not at all dainty and graceful like most women wanted to be. She wouldn't apologize for the scatter of her limbs, and Sinthia found she was often scarred and bruised for one reason or another. The dark shadows of her eyes followed his movements as the flare of his cigarette lit up their spall space of night. It took all that she could for her not to knock it from his hand in a slight impulse of rage. But the fact of the matter was that she could not help but feel a little unnerved by the playing of the song that ultimately meant the demise of their professional and platonic relationship. They were a struggle of creative minds, their talents a mix of oil and water. As much as they wanted to mesh, to work, they were a chemical compound that simply couldn't react to one another. they were explosive, but they were also nothing. Ultimately, they never made sense together, no matter the context, and the idea that they were kissing cousins of some variety simply spoke to the extreme measures in which their relationship was fucked up. The idea of hating him was completely appealing, and when he acted like this, she completely forgot any and all affection that she had previously been able to muster. Her eyes flashed with a bright annoyance, and she dug her hands into the pockets of her coat, nails picking at the thread and Sinthia did something uncharacteristic. She snapped at him. "Oh, because you're just a fucking blessing, right? Like, please. Shut the fuck up." The lithe blonde stopped in the middle of the street, foot stamping impatiently as she dug around for her own cigarette, lighting it with a shaking hand and dragging deeply as she passed the same hand over her forehead, trying to smooth out the lines. The mask was slipping. "Literally if anything, I make your life way fucking easier than it is. I'm the scapegoat for everything you can't bother to fucking own up to. Claudia not talking to you? Me. Failing at music? Totally my fault. Your failed relationship with Atlas? Whoops, my bad. Inevitably, when you're not friends with Sara anymore, I'll end up taking the blame for that. I might as well have slit your mother's fucking wrists because even though I didn't know you or her, that almost also definitely had something to do with me." There's a brightness in her cheeks and in her throat, face flushed with cold and perhaps a little bit of emotion, no matter the kind. "In case you were so thick not to notice, that was my future too. And I'm really done giving a shit about you, your feelings, and your whiny little voice. Literally. Shut. The. Fuck. Up." MUSIC: mall muzak. NOTES: ugh hate it.