fic: jurassic park is on channel seven (cloverfield)
jurassic park is on channel seven
cloverfield. it's a total disaster movie cliche, and she's sure of it - when it all goes to hell you start holding on to intangible things like the truth. marlena; marlena/rob. AU. 2328 words. rated r.
notes: for
thisisironic! because she asked me to! and because i can never resist her. it's true. also, because lizzy caplan is awesome. um, that said. clearly there are spoilers for the film in the fic, it's AU, and it was super fun to write. the end.
it was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the rosenbergs, and i didn’t know what i was doing in new york.
(the bell jar; sylvia plath)
Maybe now that Godzilla’s nasty, pissed-off twin brother or whatever is ravaging the city she can start trying to be honest with herself.
Okay. Let’s start here. So it’s like 75% a lie when she told Hud that she doesn’t, like, even fucking know Rob. It’s total bullshit, because, well, she does.
Kind of.
You know, in the drunken, not quite but sort of almost there biblical sense. Or however that works.
In this case, it works like this: they got totally tanked one night (Lily’s idea, if she remembers correctly) and this was way too many months ago to count on one hand, so, right, before Beth and the gossip but probably not before Rob was absolutely head-over-heels gone for her, but whatever. They were tanked and they collided in ways only the completely wasted ever do, with tongues and reaching, grabbing hands, that kind of thing.
It’s not like they slept together (which, when phrased this way, sounds like the saddest consolation prize maybe ever, especially since, let’s be honest here, Rob Hawkins is what one would refer to as majorly hot).
It’s not even like she remembers most of it; it was the hickey on the edge of the collarbone that served as a reminder, and then - most likely set to some trashy techno track or something - it was flashback city and she was sort of remembering choice details of Rob and his mouth and the blunt edge of his teeth.
Whatever. This was before Japan and before Rob slept with Beth and monsters ate the city and all their friends and stuff.
Apparently, time gets to be divided in eras like that now.
Once again - saddest consolation prize maybe ever.
She wasn’t lying when she told the camera that she had only met Rob, like, four or five times.
It was the second time they had met each other that they almost did it in the stairwell at a party hosted by someone’s mutual friend.
She’s in her twenties, she likes to remind herself. She should be instantly granted latitude for this kind of shit. Or something.
There’s a dim moment against the wall of a Sephora she actually used to fucking shop at, which is crazy to think about, but she was running low on black mascara when she was getting ready for the party earlier, Rob’s Japanese party, bon voyage bullshit she wasn’t even going to attend, because, right. Almost-sex in a stairwell at a stranger’s party after too many rounds of flip cup and too many tequila shots doesn’t really make you the kind of lady who wants to ever show her face again. Or, really, a lady at all.
This isn’t the point here.
The point is, there was the black and white of the wall of a Sephora and there was still dust collected everywhere on her, in her eyes, nose, coating her black jacket a matte kind of brown-gray nastiness and she had thought dimly that maybe those crazy Christians were right, that, like, Pat Robertson wasn’t totally off his rocker or what-the-fuck-ever, and this monster thing was an answer to the moral blight their society had cast on the world. Which is just totally nuts. And so not what’s happening.
Her hand had been on Rob’s arm at the time. They all were kind of frozen, Lily, Rob and her, looking up, watching buildings rip away. Her fingers had curled tight, the jacket of his suit light beneath and she could feel the muscle tensing.
Somehow this has all come down to a matter of chances and the ability to stand them. It makes her want to vomit, and it’s so gross, because she can already taste the bile threatening in the back of her throat. So, so gross.
The military has come around, blowing shit up or whatever. And it’s so surreal, like Tom Cruise or something should come gallivanting down the street with a rocket launcher any second and save the day. Or maybe Will Smith. He’s cooler these days.
This stream of consciousness is unnecessarily devoid of any kind of real importance. The flickering of the lights in the subway station is kind of distracting from it anyway.
But it’s something, right? Because Lily looks all sad and tragic in her party dress and messy hair and Hud’s still taping for fuck’s sake and Rob’s on the phone with his mom, telling her that Jason’s dead, and you know, if thinking of Will Smith or Tom Cruise or whatever makes this that much bearable, then so be it.
This so does not mean that the Scientologists have won.
Hey. She might have a new theory here.
She totally wants to smack him.
He keeps saying, “Beth!” over and over again, like, somehow shouting her name in confined spaces with little alien dudes or whatever skittering all over the city is going to, like, help or something.
And for the record, she isn’t jealous or anything. It’s not like she wants him to be yelling “Marlena!” all wild and desperate and Heathcliff-on-the-moors-like, even though she totally trumps Beth in the whole nonexistent better-name-to-be-yelled-in-situations-of-extreme-crisis contest she isn’t competing in.
It’s just stupid. And she doesn’t have patience for this kind of shit.
He’s trying to wander away and Hud is staring all blank at a Pepsi machine and Lily might be crying in the corner. Not that Marlena blames her or anything - very little sounds more appealing than that at the moment.
Still, she follows Rob, for whatever reason. Maybe it’s because she is a good person, and, well, letting him wander back up to the streets of the city is sort of akin to signing his death warrant or pulling the trigger or whatever. And Marlena is a good person, most days, and so is Rob and really not deserving of a gruesome death by ginormous monster. Or, military crossfire for that matter.
“Dude, Rob, chill!” and her voice sounds ridiculously hoarse and so unlike her, but she keeps yelling anyway. “She’s all the way in Midtown, man! Midtown! We can’t just, you know, march through the middle of the city. Rob! Just…stop.”
“We have to go, I have to go to her, she needs me, okay, and if you want to stay, stay, hell if I care, but I have to - ”
“Are you even listening to yourself? How the fuck are you going to get there? Midtown is like monster central right now if you haven’t noticed, and let’s say you do get there. Let’s say you’re all manly and heroic and whatever and you make it all the way to her building and all the way up there and she’s alive somehow, what then, man? What then? You going to carry her all the way back here?”
“If I have to,” he interrupts, totally indignant and stupid and this only makes her, like, that much angrier. Which is really saying something. His arms are all tense at his side, bent at the elbow, and he gave Lily his jacket earlier and there’s a dark line of sweat on the back of his shirt, sticking close along his spine.
Instead of storming off away from her, he’s turned, about-faced all stern-looking and he’s still yelling about how if he has to, he’s going to and she’s yelling too, though kind of without realizing or meaning to, something along the lines of shut up and this is fucking stupid.
They’re doing that thing that she thought only people like Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy actually did: arguing in ever diminishing proximity until they’re close enough where she has a finger pressed hard against his chest and she can feel his breath across her face.
“You can’t - ” she says at the same instant his voices cracks on, “but I have to,” and she’s all pale and he’s kind of pathetic but she doesn’t stop him when his hands grab the side of her face, when his fingers dig in a little too much and it sort of hurts. If she’s really going to embrace this honesty thing, then she has to admit that she leans in when he does and even though the kiss is all about anger and definitely fear and there’s way too much teeth on both sides it all almost feels like relief to her.
Her jeans were skintight to begin with and dull fingernails scratch the skin of her hips as he tries to peel them off of her. She tries to kick her boots off, her heels scuffing the linoleum of the floor and he’s the one grunting with the effort of it all and their noses bump, her teeth graze his chin. Eventually she has her jeans balled up and hanging off her right ankle and her fingers are trying to get under his shirt, but he’s wearing, like, two of them, which makes the whole endeavor too difficult, because even though he has a hand scratching at the clasp of her bra the ceiling sometimes shakes and they didn’t even shut the door, and Christ, if Hud is taping any of this, she’ll find a way to kill him, fucking kill him. Even if Big Foot or T-Rex or Nessie gets to him first. She’ll still kill him.
Her fingers won’t stop trembling, which is making the whole undoing of the belt part of things more than a little challenging, but she’s trying, and the side of her hand keeps brushing the hard ridge of his cock and Rob freezes and groans and it’s actually really hot. When the button finally pops and there’s the clank of his belt and her hand is finally wrapped around him, he finally moves.
He has his open mouth pressed against the column of her throat, and, fuck, he doesn’t even take her black thong off, but instead just pushes it to the side. And that’s it. There isn’t some like romantic prelude or soft kisses and tangling of fingers or lame declarations - he just tilts her hips to him and thrusts in, all rough and desperate and her eyes flutter shut.
His hands are too tight against her hips and thighs and she dimly lights on bruises for a bare second, but it passes; Rob’s open mouth is slicking over hers and all her panting and moaning and other ridiculous noises are swallowed up by him.
And, oh my God, the world is, like, ending, or at least Manhattan is, and she’s fucking Rob Hawkins in what appears to be the former staff room in a totally abandoned subway station.
This, too, she chalks up to surrealism, but it’s sort of the good kind. Once she forgets why there’s the subway station, why they’re both covered in dust, how the taste of blood is completely inescapable and what that awful knot is doing in the pit of her stomach. It’s like taking multitasking to the highest level maybe, probably ever.
The ceiling is still shaking, and he’s still thrusting, her own hips bucking back against him, and it’s so crazy but she can still taste a faint coating of beer in his mouth (the party feels like it was fucking decades ago, man).
She comes first, almost seemingly by accident. One moment she is right there with him, the next, totally undone, clutching at his shirt and trying her damnedest to keep her mouth clenched shut. She bites the inside of her lip too hard. It’s totally bleeding, and then it’s totally on Rob’s tongue; it makes her shiver.
When he comes, he says her name - the first two syllables of it pulled taut and tight, the last one breaking, his mouth pressed against her ear. It rattles her, just a little, probably more than enough, and her hands are still digging into his shoulders, knees pulled up against his ribs. There’s a poster on the wall about, like, reporting unattended packages or something, and maybe it’s because her heart rate is coming back down and Rob’s breathing is slowing and for some absurd reason he still hasn’t pulled away yet, but is instead, like, stroking her back in this kind of soothing rhythm, but she so wants to start crying. Her chest feels too tight.
Rob won’t stop muttering oh god, oh god along the side of her face and his hand is still moving up and down her bare back, under her shirt.
Her hand slides up into his hair.
So, they walk back together to Lily and Hud. In silence, which is really probably for the best.
Hud is still staring at the Pepsi machine as if maybe at some point it might move or transform into an escape vehicle or something. Lily is still sniffling and thinking of bridges and Jason.
Rob and Marlena stand awkward in the doorway, because, right. They totally just fucked and she totally lied to Hud earlier tonight, because, well. She does know Rob, better than she should.
Marlena clears her throat.
“We’re headed to Midtown,” she sighs, and she doesn’t look, but she catches Rob’s curious glance to her out of the corner of her eye. “Let’s get going.”
Maybe it’s because she’s a good person, or whatever. Maybe it’s because she can still kind of feel the ghost of a hand along her back and it kind of rubs like reassurance.
It totally doesn’t matter.
They start to wander, and his arm, it brushes hers.
fin.