Fic: Life in Mono (Chapter 2, Superego; Sonny/Portlyn)
Title: Life in Mono
Fandom: Sonny With a Chance
Pairing: Sonny/Portlyn
Status: 2/10 (Superego)
Notes: This is the first part of this chapter. The next part should be up by Monday.
superego
“You just expect me to drop everything and run off with you after you sit there blowing poison in my face and - and insulting me? I'm supposed to be rehearsing right now!”
Sonny knows she's gesticulating wildly, and she knows she might be slightly overreacting; she feels like a low fire has been enkindled at the pit of her stomach. When she whirls around to face Portlyn, Sonny feels it rise into her throat.
“But you're not," Portlyn points out calmly and gets this indulgent-yet-exasperated look that Sonny thinks might mean she's holding herself back from rolling her eyes. Instead she throws her cigarette to the ground and squashes it under her pointy shoe. "And I didn't insult you. I asked you a question. Nicely.”
Sonny wonders if Portlyn picked up her execution of nicety from watching her own creatively-cruel television drama.
“You know what?" Sonny asks, piqued and suddenly thinking that, just maybe, whoever wrote the So Random cavorting regulations might have been onto something, because so far, associating with the cast of The Falls just seems to mess with her head. "Stop trying to sound all...all misunderstood.”
When Sonny says it, she means it as a lame picked-from-the-surface, throw-away comment, because that fire's reached her brain and is lapping at the underside of her cerebellum, and she's allowed to have muted off-days when there's a pretty girl staring her down with enough intensity to singe something. Portlyn, though, obviously seems to think differently.
She's on her feet the next instant, looking completely calm and swiping dust from her skirt, but she's pushing her bracelets away from her knuckles like she's going to punch someone and there's this unguarded look on her face that tells Sonny she struck a nerve beneath that made-up surface.
“It's not like you would know, would you?” Portlyn sneers it as she crosses her arms over her chest. She's cold and almost taunting, shifting her hips to show her agitation and then veering into the Mackenzie Falls persona that got her standing here in the first place. "So. Last chance."
“I told you,” Sonny says. Slowly and with more caution. She crosses her arms low over her flip-flopping belly in confusion. “I can't. You're not the only one who does a show here.”
There's nothing then, no reaction from Portlyn, just a slow-blowing wind that can't make either of them move and the sour feeling at the pit of Sonny's stomach. Portlyn may keep her lips sealed, but she doesn't take her eyes away from Sonny, and that says enough for now. Sonny starts to turn away.
“When I was eleven," Portlyn starts very suddenly. "I stuck my tongue to a frozen pole outside my house on a dare. It got stuck, and so my friend ran inside to get some warm water, only she made it too hot. I ended up chipping my front teeth.” When Portlyn breaks off the sentence, Sonny thinks her mouth is curving into a grin, only it's entirely too wooden. She then runs her tongue along her two front teeth to further discredit the thought. “Bet you couldn't tell.”
Sonny's struck dumb as a rock; she has absolutely no clue why Portlyn's telling her this. But then again, maybe that's not true. She can't imagine Portlyn as the kid who acted on stupid dares, even though Portlyn seems to be talking more about her dental work than any unexpected quirks in her personality.
“I'm seeing this band play later,” Portlyn calls again like a question. She sounds a bit annoyed with Sonny's silence, but this time Sonny's answer is ready before Portlyn asks - god, Sonny hopes she asks - buoyed down only by the soft weight of her own tongue. “Everyone will be there.”
"Why do you care?" That wasn't the right answer at all, and Sonny surprises herself by saying it.
"Because they're everyone," Portlyn replies, and Sonny realizes they're on completely different wavelengths.
"No," Sonny says. "I mean. Whether or not I go. It's not exactly like we know each other."
Portlyn looks at her long and hard, flexing her fingers at her sides, before Sonny gets an answer.
"Maybe because you're a comedian," she shrugs. "And I've been bored most of my life."
Then again, it isn't much of an answer. Or a response Sonny expected at all.
"You guys're supposed to make people laugh, right?" Portlyn continues and flicks her eyes over Sonny once and then twice like she means to say something else, or just say something by doing it.
Sonny gives a short nod, her mouth dry as the desert, her head a baffled mess.
"So," Portlyn says. She crosses her arms. "Maybe I need a laugh."
Then, like the whole thing is some wonderful dream, Portlyn smiles.
"Then,” Sonny says; she tries to sound collected, like she's considering. "I guess." The toe of her shoe is boring into the concrete below, her foot twisting at the ankle. She can feel her teeth exposing themselves too much in a goofy smile - so much she probably looks like an idiot. Sonny can't help it; she smiles wider. “I mean, okay. Since you kind of issued me a challenge and all.”
Portlyn looks taken aback, but only for a moment. She purses her mouth like she's holding something caged behind her lips before making a move toward Sonny and the rest happens like a drowsy, flickering dream. By the end of it, Portlyn's number is in Sonny's cell phone, which is folded tightly into her sweating palm like something precious. And Portlyn's walking away, but she's not walking away like before. Not really. But the body can be dumb, and Sonny feels like that hypnotic fire inside of her has just been doused out, allowing her to drift awake. She wonders then, what exactly just happened.
*
“Ooh, look at you, all dolled up.”
Sonny shoots a weak smile over her shoulder and hopes her mom thinks it's a sufficient response before dropping her hands to her knees, hunching self-consciously before the full-length mirror propped against her photograph-filled wall. Her hair is a bit more curled than usual, and Sonny isn't sure, but she thinks it might make her look like a less intimidating version of Medusa.
“Is it too much? What do you think?” Sonny bursts out as she senses Mom coming closer. She twirls on her heels, attempting a grin and feels her lips slacken lamely. “What about accessories? Blue brooch or magenta brooch?” With that, Sonny grabs two dark, taffeta rosettes from the nightstand beside her and holds them up to her lapel in turn, watching for the subtle changes stirring Mom's expression. “Maybe no brooch, or - ”
“How about you calm down and stop saying the word brooch? What is this? When you said you were going out, you didn't tell me it was a date.”
“Lets not broach that topic,” Sonny says, spitting laughter and leaning to pat Mom awkwardly on the shoulder.
Mom raises a thin eyebrow - her special I'm-onto-you eyebrow - letting Sonny know the subject hasn't been dropped, and Sonny turns once more to let her eyes dart along her very purple form in the mirror.
“What?" Sonny snorts innocently. "Different variations count as the same word now?”
Sonny's eyes focus on the swell of her own lips where a loose strand of hair glues itself like a fly to a sticky insect trap. Maybe she's wearing too much lipgloss. She glances up for tissue and sees Mom still looking.
Staring.
Sonny looks away and places one of her rosettes back onto the nightstand, letting her fingers work clumsily to unfasten the other in her hand, but Mom still won't relent, not when it comes to silent probing and those looks that are all eyebrows.
“Look," Sonny finally breathes, more to the rosette than her mother. "It's really cool that you're so supportive of me and all, but just because I make friends with a girl from work doesn't make it a date.”
“Alright,” Mom says easily, the word sounding like two hands going up in surrender. “No more. I won't mention it again. ”
“Good.”
Alleviatingly good, actually. Because it's not like Sonny hasn't been wondering - okay, agonizing over - what Portlyn means by tonight and what she meant by her insistence.
Once Sonny had gotten into the lobby of her apartment building that afternoon, impatiently pushing the lighted button to summon the elevator, she had thought about calling Lucy for an all-out squeefest, only Sonny wasn't sure what she could have possibly said about her and Portlyn at this point. The fact is, Sonny's totally gone for someone she hardly knows, and any good reason for it, if it exists, completely escapes her understanding.
Sonny isn't like this. She doesn't have gossipy, front-page affairs with cast members from other shows. Not that that's what's happening, but when Sonny thinks about this whatever-it-is (this charge) between her and Portlyn, she imagines it leading there (sometimes) because Portlyn somehow burrowed her way into even the tiniest creases of Sonny's mind, and with nothing more than a few heavily-loaded looks, Sonny's brainpower cheapens down to a singleminded registry of neckeyeslipslegs. It drives Sonny insane, in a way that holds a knife to the throat of what Tawni had once described as her wholesomeness.
The last thing she needs is to discuss any of this with her mother, no matter how cool she is.
“So...is she pretty?”
Sonny cries out then. It isn't in protest, though. The sharp end of the needle pricks her thumb, drawing out a bead of blood like a tiny, red pupil.
“Aw, babygirl,” Mom coos, rushing forward.
Sonny sticks her thumb into her mouth up to the knuckle before she can reach her, but that doesn't stop Mom from hovering.
“It's okay, Mom." Sonny tastes the blood, grins around her throbbing finger, and hopes she doesn't resemble an infant too much or Mom will never leave her alone. "I just won't be playing any Thumb War tonight.”
It takes a few promises, a bit more probing, and a purple glow-in-the-dark band-aid for Mom to leave Sonny's room, and when she does, Sonny's thoughts are like the monsters under the bed - pouncing once the adults leave -and Sonny has to pore over the detail in her outfit to keep them bridled, as if they're a mess of unruly, helium-filled balloon animals.
*
When Portlyn comes to the door, she does two things that Sonny doesn't expect. The first one is coming to the door.
Portlyn stands in the stale hallway, decorated in sparkly silver and white. Her eyes are dusky and distant, outlined in a hard, black way Portlyn has never worn to the set. She looks good and bright enough to light up the entire building, maybe even the city. It makes Sonny feel underdressed - or just inadequate - like she should tell Portlyn she wasn't expecting her at the door so soon and flee back toward her room to change into a sequined top, maybe lose the jacket.
She doesn't; Sonny smiles instead, and Portlyn takes it as an invitation.
“Kitschy,” Portlyn comments as she looks around, and letting the words out toward nowhere in particular so they can roam the walls, she side-steps Sonny and makes her way into the apartment like she could belong nowhere else, circling the living room slowly with her hands clutching each other behind her back. Halfway around the coffee table, Portlyn walks toward Sonny and stops before her, peering down at the rosette pinned to her lapel before she lightly flicks the material with one ring-circled finger. “Nice brooch.”
Sonny shouts a “Thanks!” before Portlyn's words even clear the air, though when the first thing Portlyn actually said registers, Sonny frowns. “Wait a minute...”
She's going to contend against it, tell Portlyn that her mom still works long hours on principal and doesn't have time to worry about redecorating, and anyway, neither of them have the heart to replace the things they brought from Wisconsin, but then the picture before her actually registers, and it's all washed from her mind. Portlyn stands there in Sonny's living room looking brilliant and alone, her arms around her back. Alone. Looking wonderful. Without company.
Perhaps Sonny had pored over that gossipy magazine Tawni had thrown at her too much, because the thing is, Sonny realizes she had expected Portlyn to show up with an entourage of girls with names like Nikki and Italy.
She realizes she's staring then and sucks in a breath; Portlyn stands still. Sonny doesn't know what it means - her coming alone - but the reality seems to fuel a few date-night related thoughts, so in an uncertain moment, Sonny decides to tentatively say what's on her mind. What's actually been on her mind for weeks.
"You look -”
Portlyn cuts her off quick. Her voice sounds of burnt, bitter sugar, like the topping from the frozen crème brûlée she and her mom sometimes buy at the supermarket and then always leave too long under the broiler.
“So whenever you want to get going,” Portlyn starts. “My driver's waiting.”
“Er.” The half-word melts from Sonny's mouth slowly, and she moves to grab her patchwork purse off the arm of the couch to hide the wave of sudden embarrassment rising from within her. "Alright."
Sonny shouts a quick goodbye to her mom, who promised she would be in the bath until Sonny left, and then frowns all the way to the door.
Fandom: Sonny With a Chance
Pairing: Sonny/Portlyn
Status: 2/10 (Superego)
Notes: This is the first part of this chapter. The next part should be up by Monday.
superego
“You just expect me to drop everything and run off with you after you sit there blowing poison in my face and - and insulting me? I'm supposed to be rehearsing right now!”
Sonny knows she's gesticulating wildly, and she knows she might be slightly overreacting; she feels like a low fire has been enkindled at the pit of her stomach. When she whirls around to face Portlyn, Sonny feels it rise into her throat.
“But you're not," Portlyn points out calmly and gets this indulgent-yet-exasperated look that Sonny thinks might mean she's holding herself back from rolling her eyes. Instead she throws her cigarette to the ground and squashes it under her pointy shoe. "And I didn't insult you. I asked you a question. Nicely.”
Sonny wonders if Portlyn picked up her execution of nicety from watching her own creatively-cruel television drama.
“You know what?" Sonny asks, piqued and suddenly thinking that, just maybe, whoever wrote the So Random cavorting regulations might have been onto something, because so far, associating with the cast of The Falls just seems to mess with her head. "Stop trying to sound all...all misunderstood.”
When Sonny says it, she means it as a lame picked-from-the-surface, throw-away comment, because that fire's reached her brain and is lapping at the underside of her cerebellum, and she's allowed to have muted off-days when there's a pretty girl staring her down with enough intensity to singe something. Portlyn, though, obviously seems to think differently.
She's on her feet the next instant, looking completely calm and swiping dust from her skirt, but she's pushing her bracelets away from her knuckles like she's going to punch someone and there's this unguarded look on her face that tells Sonny she struck a nerve beneath that made-up surface.
“It's not like you would know, would you?” Portlyn sneers it as she crosses her arms over her chest. She's cold and almost taunting, shifting her hips to show her agitation and then veering into the Mackenzie Falls persona that got her standing here in the first place. "So. Last chance."
“I told you,” Sonny says. Slowly and with more caution. She crosses her arms low over her flip-flopping belly in confusion. “I can't. You're not the only one who does a show here.”
There's nothing then, no reaction from Portlyn, just a slow-blowing wind that can't make either of them move and the sour feeling at the pit of Sonny's stomach. Portlyn may keep her lips sealed, but she doesn't take her eyes away from Sonny, and that says enough for now. Sonny starts to turn away.
“When I was eleven," Portlyn starts very suddenly. "I stuck my tongue to a frozen pole outside my house on a dare. It got stuck, and so my friend ran inside to get some warm water, only she made it too hot. I ended up chipping my front teeth.” When Portlyn breaks off the sentence, Sonny thinks her mouth is curving into a grin, only it's entirely too wooden. She then runs her tongue along her two front teeth to further discredit the thought. “Bet you couldn't tell.”
Sonny's struck dumb as a rock; she has absolutely no clue why Portlyn's telling her this. But then again, maybe that's not true. She can't imagine Portlyn as the kid who acted on stupid dares, even though Portlyn seems to be talking more about her dental work than any unexpected quirks in her personality.
“I'm seeing this band play later,” Portlyn calls again like a question. She sounds a bit annoyed with Sonny's silence, but this time Sonny's answer is ready before Portlyn asks - god, Sonny hopes she asks - buoyed down only by the soft weight of her own tongue. “Everyone will be there.”
"Why do you care?" That wasn't the right answer at all, and Sonny surprises herself by saying it.
"Because they're everyone," Portlyn replies, and Sonny realizes they're on completely different wavelengths.
"No," Sonny says. "I mean. Whether or not I go. It's not exactly like we know each other."
Portlyn looks at her long and hard, flexing her fingers at her sides, before Sonny gets an answer.
"Maybe because you're a comedian," she shrugs. "And I've been bored most of my life."
Then again, it isn't much of an answer. Or a response Sonny expected at all.
"You guys're supposed to make people laugh, right?" Portlyn continues and flicks her eyes over Sonny once and then twice like she means to say something else, or just say something by doing it.
Sonny gives a short nod, her mouth dry as the desert, her head a baffled mess.
"So," Portlyn says. She crosses her arms. "Maybe I need a laugh."
Then, like the whole thing is some wonderful dream, Portlyn smiles.
"Then,” Sonny says; she tries to sound collected, like she's considering. "I guess." The toe of her shoe is boring into the concrete below, her foot twisting at the ankle. She can feel her teeth exposing themselves too much in a goofy smile - so much she probably looks like an idiot. Sonny can't help it; she smiles wider. “I mean, okay. Since you kind of issued me a challenge and all.”
Portlyn looks taken aback, but only for a moment. She purses her mouth like she's holding something caged behind her lips before making a move toward Sonny and the rest happens like a drowsy, flickering dream. By the end of it, Portlyn's number is in Sonny's cell phone, which is folded tightly into her sweating palm like something precious. And Portlyn's walking away, but she's not walking away like before. Not really. But the body can be dumb, and Sonny feels like that hypnotic fire inside of her has just been doused out, allowing her to drift awake. She wonders then, what exactly just happened.
*
“Ooh, look at you, all dolled up.”
Sonny shoots a weak smile over her shoulder and hopes her mom thinks it's a sufficient response before dropping her hands to her knees, hunching self-consciously before the full-length mirror propped against her photograph-filled wall. Her hair is a bit more curled than usual, and Sonny isn't sure, but she thinks it might make her look like a less intimidating version of Medusa.
“Is it too much? What do you think?” Sonny bursts out as she senses Mom coming closer. She twirls on her heels, attempting a grin and feels her lips slacken lamely. “What about accessories? Blue brooch or magenta brooch?” With that, Sonny grabs two dark, taffeta rosettes from the nightstand beside her and holds them up to her lapel in turn, watching for the subtle changes stirring Mom's expression. “Maybe no brooch, or - ”
“How about you calm down and stop saying the word brooch? What is this? When you said you were going out, you didn't tell me it was a date.”
“Lets not broach that topic,” Sonny says, spitting laughter and leaning to pat Mom awkwardly on the shoulder.
Mom raises a thin eyebrow - her special I'm-onto-you eyebrow - letting Sonny know the subject hasn't been dropped, and Sonny turns once more to let her eyes dart along her very purple form in the mirror.
“What?" Sonny snorts innocently. "Different variations count as the same word now?”
Sonny's eyes focus on the swell of her own lips where a loose strand of hair glues itself like a fly to a sticky insect trap. Maybe she's wearing too much lipgloss. She glances up for tissue and sees Mom still looking.
Staring.
Sonny looks away and places one of her rosettes back onto the nightstand, letting her fingers work clumsily to unfasten the other in her hand, but Mom still won't relent, not when it comes to silent probing and those looks that are all eyebrows.
“Look," Sonny finally breathes, more to the rosette than her mother. "It's really cool that you're so supportive of me and all, but just because I make friends with a girl from work doesn't make it a date.”
“Alright,” Mom says easily, the word sounding like two hands going up in surrender. “No more. I won't mention it again. ”
“Good.”
Alleviatingly good, actually. Because it's not like Sonny hasn't been wondering - okay, agonizing over - what Portlyn means by tonight and what she meant by her insistence.
Once Sonny had gotten into the lobby of her apartment building that afternoon, impatiently pushing the lighted button to summon the elevator, she had thought about calling Lucy for an all-out squeefest, only Sonny wasn't sure what she could have possibly said about her and Portlyn at this point. The fact is, Sonny's totally gone for someone she hardly knows, and any good reason for it, if it exists, completely escapes her understanding.
Sonny isn't like this. She doesn't have gossipy, front-page affairs with cast members from other shows. Not that that's what's happening, but when Sonny thinks about this whatever-it-is (this charge) between her and Portlyn, she imagines it leading there (sometimes) because Portlyn somehow burrowed her way into even the tiniest creases of Sonny's mind, and with nothing more than a few heavily-loaded looks, Sonny's brainpower cheapens down to a singleminded registry of neckeyeslipslegs. It drives Sonny insane, in a way that holds a knife to the throat of what Tawni had once described as her wholesomeness.
The last thing she needs is to discuss any of this with her mother, no matter how cool she is.
“So...is she pretty?”
Sonny cries out then. It isn't in protest, though. The sharp end of the needle pricks her thumb, drawing out a bead of blood like a tiny, red pupil.
“Aw, babygirl,” Mom coos, rushing forward.
Sonny sticks her thumb into her mouth up to the knuckle before she can reach her, but that doesn't stop Mom from hovering.
“It's okay, Mom." Sonny tastes the blood, grins around her throbbing finger, and hopes she doesn't resemble an infant too much or Mom will never leave her alone. "I just won't be playing any Thumb War tonight.”
It takes a few promises, a bit more probing, and a purple glow-in-the-dark band-aid for Mom to leave Sonny's room, and when she does, Sonny's thoughts are like the monsters under the bed - pouncing once the adults leave -and Sonny has to pore over the detail in her outfit to keep them bridled, as if they're a mess of unruly, helium-filled balloon animals.
*
When Portlyn comes to the door, she does two things that Sonny doesn't expect. The first one is coming to the door.
Portlyn stands in the stale hallway, decorated in sparkly silver and white. Her eyes are dusky and distant, outlined in a hard, black way Portlyn has never worn to the set. She looks good and bright enough to light up the entire building, maybe even the city. It makes Sonny feel underdressed - or just inadequate - like she should tell Portlyn she wasn't expecting her at the door so soon and flee back toward her room to change into a sequined top, maybe lose the jacket.
She doesn't; Sonny smiles instead, and Portlyn takes it as an invitation.
“Kitschy,” Portlyn comments as she looks around, and letting the words out toward nowhere in particular so they can roam the walls, she side-steps Sonny and makes her way into the apartment like she could belong nowhere else, circling the living room slowly with her hands clutching each other behind her back. Halfway around the coffee table, Portlyn walks toward Sonny and stops before her, peering down at the rosette pinned to her lapel before she lightly flicks the material with one ring-circled finger. “Nice brooch.”
Sonny shouts a “Thanks!” before Portlyn's words even clear the air, though when the first thing Portlyn actually said registers, Sonny frowns. “Wait a minute...”
She's going to contend against it, tell Portlyn that her mom still works long hours on principal and doesn't have time to worry about redecorating, and anyway, neither of them have the heart to replace the things they brought from Wisconsin, but then the picture before her actually registers, and it's all washed from her mind. Portlyn stands there in Sonny's living room looking brilliant and alone, her arms around her back. Alone. Looking wonderful. Without company.
Perhaps Sonny had pored over that gossipy magazine Tawni had thrown at her too much, because the thing is, Sonny realizes she had expected Portlyn to show up with an entourage of girls with names like Nikki and Italy.
She realizes she's staring then and sucks in a breath; Portlyn stands still. Sonny doesn't know what it means - her coming alone - but the reality seems to fuel a few date-night related thoughts, so in an uncertain moment, Sonny decides to tentatively say what's on her mind. What's actually been on her mind for weeks.
"You look -”
Portlyn cuts her off quick. Her voice sounds of burnt, bitter sugar, like the topping from the frozen crème brûlée she and her mom sometimes buy at the supermarket and then always leave too long under the broiler.
“So whenever you want to get going,” Portlyn starts. “My driver's waiting.”
“Er.” The half-word melts from Sonny's mouth slowly, and she moves to grab her patchwork purse off the arm of the couch to hide the wave of sudden embarrassment rising from within her. "Alright."
Sonny shouts a quick goodbye to her mom, who promised she would be in the bath until Sonny left, and then frowns all the way to the door.