Fic: Eat, Pray, Whatever
Title: Eat, Pray, Whatever
Fandom: New Year's Eve (2011)
Rating: PG
Wordcount: ~2200
Summary: Written for yuletide 2012, for SadieFlood. It's the first day of the new year, and progress is all about momentum.
Originally posted here at the AO3
When she wakes up on January 1st 2012, she's still wearing her dress and her shoes, although when she reaches up to pat the disaster of her hair she finds that her flower has vanished. Her eyelids feel heavy and a little bit glued together with unremoved mascara, and she can taste the lingering sweetness of drinks in ill-advised colours, and she can't remember the last time this happened - collapsed across her bed wearing last night's clothes and last night's makeup, poised on the brink of remembering just-enough and too-much about what happened last night. College? But she remembers herself in college, and she suspects not.
She kicks off her shoes and toes into fuzzy slippers before she pads out into the living room on a missile-straight course for water, tea, and Advil, in some combination.
While she waits for the tea-kettle to boil, the little calendar she keeps on her refrigerator door catches her eye. December 31st is ringed in red, and she remembers looking at that just yesterday morning and regretting another year of unfulfilled resolutions gone by. Well, December 31st is done - finished off with a kiss in Time Square, just like she wanted, exorcised with a little all-night dancing. She wriggles her toes in her fluffy slippers and smiles a little. This year's going to be different, she thinks, and says it out loud to feel the shape of the words in her mouth, to make them real: "This year's going to be different. I'm going to change."
She likes the way it sounds, so she says it again: "This year, I'm going to change!"
Out in the living area a bundle of blankets on the couch shifts and Paul's spiky-haired, bleary-eyed face emerges.
"If you're looking for a place to start," he says, "you could get a less uncomfortable couch."
-
Paul takes one look in her refrigerator and vetoes her offer of breakfast, opting instead to drag her down the street to a diner down the street, which she walks past virtuously every day on her way to the bakery where she stops off to get her organic coffee and wholemeal muffins. This place has cracked vinyl seats and a coffee-ring on the table-top in front of her, which she scrubs at discreetly with a paper napkin until the waitress comes over and catches her.
"I'll take number four," Paul says. "That's the one with two of everything, right?"
"Right," says the waitress. She's pretty and young, with a broad appealing smile and a nametag that reads Madison.
"Awesome, thank you, Madison," says Paul, with unnatural enthusiasm and the sort of broad grin that magazines photoshop onto movie stars. His flirting is effortless. Ingrid has always considered flirting, like a lot of things involving the opposite sex, to be at best awkward and complicated and at worst excruciating.
"And for you?" the girl asks her, in a kind of off-handed pleasant way that lets Ingrid know she's been taken for Paul's mother, or aunt, or some other older harmless female relative. She feels her hackles start to rise. It's not that she wants people to think that she and Paul could ever be - well - the principle is, she feels like she's being discarded, to her face.
"Just toast, thank you," Ingrid says, sharper than she means, handing the menu back.
"Uh-uh. She'll have a stack of pancakes," Paul interrupts. He makes an exaggerated gesture, indicating a height about a foot off the tabletop. "I mean, a stack."
"With blueberries," Ingrid tries.
"With syrup," Paul counters. "Are you writing this down, Madison? I don't want to see any blueberries on her plate. In fact, don't even put those pancakes in the same part of the kitchen as the fruit, okay?"
"Okay," says the waitress, with a drawn-out first syllable and a sharp second one that broadcasts effectively how crazy she's starting to think they are, the pair of them. "Drinks?"
"Fruit juice," says Ingrid, weakly.
"She means two black coffees," says Paul, shameless.
Ingrid waits until Madison leaves before she says, "You're enjoying yourself, aren't you?"
"Ingrid Withers," Paul says, not even bothering to pretend that he's not watching the slight sway of the waitress's hips as she walks away. "I am loving life."
Ingrid glares at him. But the pancakes, when they come, are delicious.
-
"Oh man, I needed that," Paul says, heavily, leaning back against the booth seat. "So, what are we doing today?"
His plate is empty of the first-and-second of everything. Ordinarily Ingrid would judge, but today she's too busy chasing syrup around her plate with the last bites of pancake. So busy that it takes her a moment to even register what Paul's said.
"Hmm?" she says, through pancake and syrup."What are you talking about?"
"Progress is all about momentum, okay. We gotta keep your momentum going," Paul says. He pushes his empty plate to the side and leans forward, looking suddenly so business-like that it's almost possible to forget that this is the boy who, somewhere in the hazy region between midnight and dawn, taught her how to moonwalk. "What do you want to do today?"
"Uh," says Ingrid. "Sleep?"
"Nope," says Paul, shaking his head. "Bad idea. You go home and you're gonna start talking yourself into the exact same - Miss Withers, don't shake your head at me."
"I really need to sleep," says Ingrid. "For one thing, I'm a lot older than you, and for another, I have work first thing tomorr - oh. Ohhh," she says, everything coming back to her in a rush, what she's done by quitting her job and the enormous, devastating economic stupidity of it. She would like to sink into the floor, but she settles for putting her head down on to the tabletop - which is unsanitary, but the situation is desperate.
"Okay, see," she hears Paul say, "this is why we need to keep you moving."
"You can move me in the direction of my office," Ingrid moans, shaking her head against the cold tabletop and the scratch of stray sugar grains, "so I can beg for my job."
"Here's a better idea," Paul says. "Check, please?"
-
Ice-skating at the Rockefeller Centre is one of those New York things that Ingrid's never gotten around to.
"How did I let you talk me into this," she says, stepping inelegantly onto the ice. "Oh god, oh god, I'm going to break my leg."
She's complaining, but it's more for form than out of an actual desire not to do this. There it is again, she thinks, that reckless thrill twisting in her stomach, the kind that makes her want to ride vespas around the city and dance all night with people half her age. It makes her feel a little like the person she's always wanted to be: somebody who doesn't get tied up into knots about how stupid she's going to look. She edges forward with little strides, deliriously happy every for every second she doesn't fall on her face.
"Hey," Paul says, next to her. "Look at you go."
Ingrid slides forwards gingerly and squeaks out a noise somewhere between a shriek and a laugh as the blades wobble precariously under her.
"Come on," Paul says, nudging her elbow gently, not to screw with her balance. "You just gotta commit to it. This isn't something you can half-ass."
To show her what he means, he commits to a long sweeping skate ahead of her that takes in the curve of the rink and ends in an aborted spin that he'll later swear was intentional, and true to character there's nothing at all half-assed about the way he hits the ice because of it: he cycles backwards for an extended moment like someone trying to stay upright on a rolling log, so ridiculous that it deserves a Benny Hill soundtrack.
She laughs so hard that she overbalances and hits the ice a bare second after him, flat on her back, puffing huge clouds of laughter up at the clear blue sky.
-
"I'm gonna have bruises on my bruises," Paul tells her, and there is something awkward about the way he's sitting, hunched forwards over his coffee on the hard Starbucks chairs. He groans. "I'm gonna have bruises on those bruises.
Ingrid smirks. "What happened to your spirit of adventure?"
"It remembered it has to sit on a scooter for eight hours tomorrow," says Paul. "The third, I mean, definitely the fourth time was totally your fault, at least."
"You grabbed hold of me," Ingrid reminds him.
"I was trying to freaking - to prise you off the side of the rink!" Paul says. "You definitely could have fallen in a way that did not take me out."
Ingrid chooses to blow across the surface of her much-needed venti (mocha with extra whipped cream, for a New Year's treat) and ignore him, much in the same way as she's trying to ignore how her whole body feels like she's been beaten with sticks. She hides a persistent smile against the rim of the mug, not to give him the satisfaction - but from the way she finds him looking at her, she's not being very successful.
"You know what we should do, after this?" Paul says, with a careless, movie-star grin. "We should go to the top of the Empire State Building."
"Why?" Ingrid asks. She wraps both hands tighter around the big mug, enjoys the warmth seeping into her chilled hands. "Because the ice wasn't cold enough?"
"Well," says Paul, cryptically: "Perspective."
-
Eighty-six floors up, the perspective's pretty amazing. It's not late, but the light is easing from sharp cold winter glare to something softer and redder. The observation deck's as quiet as she's ever known it, and she and Paul stake out a spot where they can stand and watch New York: the small faraway bustle on the streets, the light glittering on her skyscrapers.
"You know, some people say the world's going to end this year," Paul says, after a long moment of surprisingly companionable quiet. "Randy - my roommate - he showed me this article about some Aztec -"
"Mayan," Ingrid corrects, automatically; the old anthropology minor in her. "And that's just stupid."
"Hey, I'm not arguing true or false here," says Paul. He gives her a sidelong, knowing look. "I'm just asking, how pissed would you be if the world ended this year, and you'd spent it just living your life the way you always did?"
He says it lightly enough, but something about it pricks at a persistent fear she's tucked away inside her for years, the less thought about the better because she's been afraid, sometimes, that if she looked it in the face it could swallow her whole. She sniffs, telling herself that it's the cold, but the admission slips out of her anyway, quiet and a little tremulous: "I'd be - I'd be pretty pissed."
"Right," says Paul. He smiles at her - not his movie-star smile, the smile for show. This smaller, softer smile makes him look older and younger all at once, and she thinks about the wisdom of youth, of being twenty-five and knowing with an inborn certainty that you can do anything you want. You live more, some paths you choose and others you're forced down, and ways shut off - but it's nice, now, to look at Paul and remember the open horizon.
"So don't wait until, like, the last day of the year to get your resolutions done this time," he teases. "Take the whole year. Write a book. Go live in an ashram. Eat, pray, whatever."
"Oh, please," Ingrid scoffs.
"Hey," Paul says. He nudges her with an elbow. "I saw that yoga mat in your apartment."
"It's low-impact," she snaps back, but without heat. "And you should remember that we're eighty-six floors up right now."
Out over New York, dusk settles. For the proper metaphorical impact, she thinks, it should be dawn, not sunset. But she likes this, too, this quiet rose-coloured moment at the cusp of one thing and the next: suspended in a moment of becoming.
-
The cab drops Ingrid off at her place first. It sits at the curb for a minute, the driver letting the meter run up while she tries to think of a way to say goodbye to Paul.
"I suppose I should say thanks for," she begins, and doesn't know how to continue. "Well, you know."
"Hey, no problem," Paul says. He laughs. "It was an - interesting twenty-four hours."
She doesn't know what to do next - shake hands? Kiss him on the cheek? Instead she gets a sudden fit of awkwardness and does neither, just shuffles out of the cab and gives him an uncomfortable little wave from the curb, which he returns, half-laughing.
"Guess I'll see you around," Paul says, but in it she hears the finality of a goodbye.
"Bye, then," she says
Paul swings the cab door shut and she thinks, this is it. She imagines Paul going back to the roommate, saying something like, dude, I had the weirdest day. She ducks her head and turns, fumbling in her handbag for keys.
"Hey, wait," Paul says, and she turns to see him leaning half-out of the taxi. "The dog - you want me to come by and pick you up Monday? We can swing by a pet-store on the way."
The irrational flood of her relief makes her laugh. "Yeah. Yeah, sure."
"Okay, cool," Paul says, smiling. He settles back into the cab. "See you Monday."
"Okay," Ingrid calls, as the taxi eases out from the curb. "Monday!"
Fandom: New Year's Eve (2011)
Rating: PG
Wordcount: ~2200
Summary: Written for yuletide 2012, for SadieFlood. It's the first day of the new year, and progress is all about momentum.
Originally posted here at the AO3
When she wakes up on January 1st 2012, she's still wearing her dress and her shoes, although when she reaches up to pat the disaster of her hair she finds that her flower has vanished. Her eyelids feel heavy and a little bit glued together with unremoved mascara, and she can taste the lingering sweetness of drinks in ill-advised colours, and she can't remember the last time this happened - collapsed across her bed wearing last night's clothes and last night's makeup, poised on the brink of remembering just-enough and too-much about what happened last night. College? But she remembers herself in college, and she suspects not.
She kicks off her shoes and toes into fuzzy slippers before she pads out into the living room on a missile-straight course for water, tea, and Advil, in some combination.
While she waits for the tea-kettle to boil, the little calendar she keeps on her refrigerator door catches her eye. December 31st is ringed in red, and she remembers looking at that just yesterday morning and regretting another year of unfulfilled resolutions gone by. Well, December 31st is done - finished off with a kiss in Time Square, just like she wanted, exorcised with a little all-night dancing. She wriggles her toes in her fluffy slippers and smiles a little. This year's going to be different, she thinks, and says it out loud to feel the shape of the words in her mouth, to make them real: "This year's going to be different. I'm going to change."
She likes the way it sounds, so she says it again: "This year, I'm going to change!"
Out in the living area a bundle of blankets on the couch shifts and Paul's spiky-haired, bleary-eyed face emerges.
"If you're looking for a place to start," he says, "you could get a less uncomfortable couch."
-
Paul takes one look in her refrigerator and vetoes her offer of breakfast, opting instead to drag her down the street to a diner down the street, which she walks past virtuously every day on her way to the bakery where she stops off to get her organic coffee and wholemeal muffins. This place has cracked vinyl seats and a coffee-ring on the table-top in front of her, which she scrubs at discreetly with a paper napkin until the waitress comes over and catches her.
"I'll take number four," Paul says. "That's the one with two of everything, right?"
"Right," says the waitress. She's pretty and young, with a broad appealing smile and a nametag that reads Madison.
"Awesome, thank you, Madison," says Paul, with unnatural enthusiasm and the sort of broad grin that magazines photoshop onto movie stars. His flirting is effortless. Ingrid has always considered flirting, like a lot of things involving the opposite sex, to be at best awkward and complicated and at worst excruciating.
"And for you?" the girl asks her, in a kind of off-handed pleasant way that lets Ingrid know she's been taken for Paul's mother, or aunt, or some other older harmless female relative. She feels her hackles start to rise. It's not that she wants people to think that she and Paul could ever be - well - the principle is, she feels like she's being discarded, to her face.
"Just toast, thank you," Ingrid says, sharper than she means, handing the menu back.
"Uh-uh. She'll have a stack of pancakes," Paul interrupts. He makes an exaggerated gesture, indicating a height about a foot off the tabletop. "I mean, a stack."
"With blueberries," Ingrid tries.
"With syrup," Paul counters. "Are you writing this down, Madison? I don't want to see any blueberries on her plate. In fact, don't even put those pancakes in the same part of the kitchen as the fruit, okay?"
"Okay," says the waitress, with a drawn-out first syllable and a sharp second one that broadcasts effectively how crazy she's starting to think they are, the pair of them. "Drinks?"
"Fruit juice," says Ingrid, weakly.
"She means two black coffees," says Paul, shameless.
Ingrid waits until Madison leaves before she says, "You're enjoying yourself, aren't you?"
"Ingrid Withers," Paul says, not even bothering to pretend that he's not watching the slight sway of the waitress's hips as she walks away. "I am loving life."
Ingrid glares at him. But the pancakes, when they come, are delicious.
-
"Oh man, I needed that," Paul says, heavily, leaning back against the booth seat. "So, what are we doing today?"
His plate is empty of the first-and-second of everything. Ordinarily Ingrid would judge, but today she's too busy chasing syrup around her plate with the last bites of pancake. So busy that it takes her a moment to even register what Paul's said.
"Hmm?" she says, through pancake and syrup."What are you talking about?"
"Progress is all about momentum, okay. We gotta keep your momentum going," Paul says. He pushes his empty plate to the side and leans forward, looking suddenly so business-like that it's almost possible to forget that this is the boy who, somewhere in the hazy region between midnight and dawn, taught her how to moonwalk. "What do you want to do today?"
"Uh," says Ingrid. "Sleep?"
"Nope," says Paul, shaking his head. "Bad idea. You go home and you're gonna start talking yourself into the exact same - Miss Withers, don't shake your head at me."
"I really need to sleep," says Ingrid. "For one thing, I'm a lot older than you, and for another, I have work first thing tomorr - oh. Ohhh," she says, everything coming back to her in a rush, what she's done by quitting her job and the enormous, devastating economic stupidity of it. She would like to sink into the floor, but she settles for putting her head down on to the tabletop - which is unsanitary, but the situation is desperate.
"Okay, see," she hears Paul say, "this is why we need to keep you moving."
"You can move me in the direction of my office," Ingrid moans, shaking her head against the cold tabletop and the scratch of stray sugar grains, "so I can beg for my job."
"Here's a better idea," Paul says. "Check, please?"
-
Ice-skating at the Rockefeller Centre is one of those New York things that Ingrid's never gotten around to.
"How did I let you talk me into this," she says, stepping inelegantly onto the ice. "Oh god, oh god, I'm going to break my leg."
She's complaining, but it's more for form than out of an actual desire not to do this. There it is again, she thinks, that reckless thrill twisting in her stomach, the kind that makes her want to ride vespas around the city and dance all night with people half her age. It makes her feel a little like the person she's always wanted to be: somebody who doesn't get tied up into knots about how stupid she's going to look. She edges forward with little strides, deliriously happy every for every second she doesn't fall on her face.
"Hey," Paul says, next to her. "Look at you go."
Ingrid slides forwards gingerly and squeaks out a noise somewhere between a shriek and a laugh as the blades wobble precariously under her.
"Come on," Paul says, nudging her elbow gently, not to screw with her balance. "You just gotta commit to it. This isn't something you can half-ass."
To show her what he means, he commits to a long sweeping skate ahead of her that takes in the curve of the rink and ends in an aborted spin that he'll later swear was intentional, and true to character there's nothing at all half-assed about the way he hits the ice because of it: he cycles backwards for an extended moment like someone trying to stay upright on a rolling log, so ridiculous that it deserves a Benny Hill soundtrack.
She laughs so hard that she overbalances and hits the ice a bare second after him, flat on her back, puffing huge clouds of laughter up at the clear blue sky.
-
"I'm gonna have bruises on my bruises," Paul tells her, and there is something awkward about the way he's sitting, hunched forwards over his coffee on the hard Starbucks chairs. He groans. "I'm gonna have bruises on those bruises.
Ingrid smirks. "What happened to your spirit of adventure?"
"It remembered it has to sit on a scooter for eight hours tomorrow," says Paul. "The third, I mean, definitely the fourth time was totally your fault, at least."
"You grabbed hold of me," Ingrid reminds him.
"I was trying to freaking - to prise you off the side of the rink!" Paul says. "You definitely could have fallen in a way that did not take me out."
Ingrid chooses to blow across the surface of her much-needed venti (mocha with extra whipped cream, for a New Year's treat) and ignore him, much in the same way as she's trying to ignore how her whole body feels like she's been beaten with sticks. She hides a persistent smile against the rim of the mug, not to give him the satisfaction - but from the way she finds him looking at her, she's not being very successful.
"You know what we should do, after this?" Paul says, with a careless, movie-star grin. "We should go to the top of the Empire State Building."
"Why?" Ingrid asks. She wraps both hands tighter around the big mug, enjoys the warmth seeping into her chilled hands. "Because the ice wasn't cold enough?"
"Well," says Paul, cryptically: "Perspective."
-
Eighty-six floors up, the perspective's pretty amazing. It's not late, but the light is easing from sharp cold winter glare to something softer and redder. The observation deck's as quiet as she's ever known it, and she and Paul stake out a spot where they can stand and watch New York: the small faraway bustle on the streets, the light glittering on her skyscrapers.
"You know, some people say the world's going to end this year," Paul says, after a long moment of surprisingly companionable quiet. "Randy - my roommate - he showed me this article about some Aztec -"
"Mayan," Ingrid corrects, automatically; the old anthropology minor in her. "And that's just stupid."
"Hey, I'm not arguing true or false here," says Paul. He gives her a sidelong, knowing look. "I'm just asking, how pissed would you be if the world ended this year, and you'd spent it just living your life the way you always did?"
He says it lightly enough, but something about it pricks at a persistent fear she's tucked away inside her for years, the less thought about the better because she's been afraid, sometimes, that if she looked it in the face it could swallow her whole. She sniffs, telling herself that it's the cold, but the admission slips out of her anyway, quiet and a little tremulous: "I'd be - I'd be pretty pissed."
"Right," says Paul. He smiles at her - not his movie-star smile, the smile for show. This smaller, softer smile makes him look older and younger all at once, and she thinks about the wisdom of youth, of being twenty-five and knowing with an inborn certainty that you can do anything you want. You live more, some paths you choose and others you're forced down, and ways shut off - but it's nice, now, to look at Paul and remember the open horizon.
"So don't wait until, like, the last day of the year to get your resolutions done this time," he teases. "Take the whole year. Write a book. Go live in an ashram. Eat, pray, whatever."
"Oh, please," Ingrid scoffs.
"Hey," Paul says. He nudges her with an elbow. "I saw that yoga mat in your apartment."
"It's low-impact," she snaps back, but without heat. "And you should remember that we're eighty-six floors up right now."
Out over New York, dusk settles. For the proper metaphorical impact, she thinks, it should be dawn, not sunset. But she likes this, too, this quiet rose-coloured moment at the cusp of one thing and the next: suspended in a moment of becoming.
-
The cab drops Ingrid off at her place first. It sits at the curb for a minute, the driver letting the meter run up while she tries to think of a way to say goodbye to Paul.
"I suppose I should say thanks for," she begins, and doesn't know how to continue. "Well, you know."
"Hey, no problem," Paul says. He laughs. "It was an - interesting twenty-four hours."
She doesn't know what to do next - shake hands? Kiss him on the cheek? Instead she gets a sudden fit of awkwardness and does neither, just shuffles out of the cab and gives him an uncomfortable little wave from the curb, which he returns, half-laughing.
"Guess I'll see you around," Paul says, but in it she hears the finality of a goodbye.
"Bye, then," she says
Paul swings the cab door shut and she thinks, this is it. She imagines Paul going back to the roommate, saying something like, dude, I had the weirdest day. She ducks her head and turns, fumbling in her handbag for keys.
"Hey, wait," Paul says, and she turns to see him leaning half-out of the taxi. "The dog - you want me to come by and pick you up Monday? We can swing by a pet-store on the way."
The irrational flood of her relief makes her laugh. "Yeah. Yeah, sure."
"Okay, cool," Paul says, smiling. He settles back into the cab. "See you Monday."
"Okay," Ingrid calls, as the taxi eases out from the curb. "Monday!"