Fanfic, omg.
Fandom: Queer as Folk
Title: Lindsay
Characters: Lindsay Peterson, Brian Kinney
Rating: PG-13
Summary: A series of moments befalling miss Peterson and mister Kinney... It’s a college fic.
Disclaimer: QaF isn't mine, if it was, do you think I'd bother writing fic?
Many thanks to sugardares for being a wonderful beta and spurring me on to write more and more.
Lindsay
Due to ennui, bad weed and various bottles of cheap beer Brian finds himself crashing a sorority event. And yeah, maybe he doesn’t feel like repeating the sucking and fucking a second time that night, he feels pretty fucking adventurous when he steps through the wooden door, Alpha Kappa Chi whateverthefuck written above it signalling solidarity but really meaning stay the fuck out if you don’t belong.
“Brian?” A young woman from his art history class hurries toward him. Standing there, wobbling and snickering as he slowly munches his way through a plate of cucumber sandwiches, he tries to focus his eyes on her. Her hair is long and blonde and it falls lazily over the white cotton fabric of her shirt, and for a moment or two he thinks that the brown colour of her eyes is identical to Mikey’s.
“Sandwich?” He offers her a moist, half-eaten piece of triangle-shaped toast, pokes a cucumber slice deeper inside the two layers of wheat bread and smiles drowsily.
“Brian? What do you think you’re doing? This is a sorority house,” she snaps ignoring the toast that’s dangling near her face and grabs her coat, pushes him outside before the other girls take notice.
“You can’t be here,” she huffs as she tries to find the left sleeve of her light mauve woollen-cloth coat, the one with fake fur on the hood and a flower lining. Brian drops the sandwich, helps her with the coat, and brushes a few stray strands of her too soft hair out of her mouth.
“Hey there… Linda? Lovely evening, don’t you think?” His voice is full of mock politeness and he fumbles about in his pockets for his old lighter.
“It’s Lindsay,” Lindsay corrects and declines an offered cigarette, gives him a dirty, impatient look and shuffles her burgundy leather walking shoes.
“What are you doing here?” She sighs and Brian watches vapour dance from her mouth and nose mixing and mingling with his smoke.
He shrugs.
“Hey, you wanna go somewhere?”
The question hangs in the air. Brian can almost feel it swell up and he waits for the inevitable crack, wonders if he should have just gone get laid somewhere, anywhere.
He watches her ponder the question, smiles when the woman finally walks past him down one two three four wooden stairs and turns her head slightly to the right, waits for him to follow.
They walk through the campus. An occasional bump of shoulder against shoulder or arm against arm lulls Brian into a comfortable haze. Everything about Lindsay is just so fucking comfortable and warm. Her voice is soft but not too girlishly sweet in his ears.
“Brian, where are we going?”
He eyes dark rusty ladders that lead to the roof of the department of antique history, smirks and pockets the lighter he has been playing with ever since they left the sorority house.
“I thought it was obvious.” He cocks his head upwards before slowly turning around, starting to make his way up the ladders, two rungs at a time.
“Brian? Brian! Don’t even think about…come down right now.”
He leans back, looks down at Lindsay who is covering her mouth and nose with her hands, offers her his left one.
“Come on Lindsay, live a little.”
--------
The summer of 1990 is bright and humid. The air is heavy and still and everything smells like wet dogs and sausages, sweat and salt. Brian tugs at Lindsay’s hand and leads her to a small empty park. He talks about stupid facile things that make her eyes sparkly and her smile wide. He reads her like an open book. People are easy when you know the basics. People are easy when you’re smart.
Brian’s sneaker pokes at Lindsay’s bare foot and they’re lying on the warm sunburnt ground. She’s wearing a red top, no bra, her faded denim shorts are grass-stained and her hair is loosely knot in a messy ponytail. He rubs his nose and cheek in the crook of her neck because she smells clean and like apples. She’s the only one in the fucking city who smells clean and not like sausages and dogs.
She smiles.
“What do you see?” Her voice is soft like white cotton.
“Mmmph?”
“In the clouds? Do you see anything? Figures?” He turns his head a little, Lindsay’s collarbone sticking out and poking at his skull, his eyes squinting and watering in the bright sunlight.
“What the fuck?”
And the moment’s gone.
--------
He reaches the roof and helps her take the last five steps on the ladders, pulls her up easily by tugging her upper arm until she’s standing beside him, slightly out of breath, smoothing out her coat and skirt.
“Now what?” She asks a little accusingly, like just being on the roof of their school isn’t good enough.
Brian walks to the edge, looks down and turns around with a wide grin.
“Now we jump!” He shouts and sways dangerously close to losing his balance, laughs when she shrieks and jerks him roughly back to safety.
”Brian, what the hell are you playing at?” She swats him hard on the arm and, mother of god, it kind of hurts.
“Oh, stop laughing, that wasn’t funny,” she says full of fake annoyance, amusement glistening in her eyes and mouth, and he knows that he will never get rid of her now, likes the idea of her in his life.
--------
The last day in June he brings her to the diner, spots Michael sitting alone in his booth eating ice cream, clutching the spoon like he's still in fourth grade. Brian walks over to him, Lindsay in tow, puts his arm around her small waist and wonders why his best friend is giving her his instant-death-glare.
”Mikey, what are you doing?”
“Giving Sally Hayes my instant-death-glare.”
”Why? What did she do?”
”She said Captain Astro was a bunch of humbug.”
Brian shrugs and pulls her closer to him making their hips bump. Her polka-dot summer dress is obscenely thin against his fingers and he thinks he could easily trace her bone lines, wonders if he should make Debbie feed her a greasy meal every week.
“She’s the dyke I told you about. Lindsay. Remember, Mikey?” Brian chuckles when she smacks him gently on the arm and glares. Lifts her hand and waves a little at Michael all smile and rosy cheeks.
Debbie loves her instantly. Of course she does.
“Well who do we have here!” She shrieks near Brian’s ear and pushes him out of her way as she takes Lindsay in her motherly embrace.
“Brian, this your friend?” He nods silently and tries to pull away when Debbie ruffles his hair, her left hand still resting on Lindsay’s bony shoulder.
“Aren’t you just something else! Isn’t she something, Michael? Something, I tell ya.”
Yeah, they’re both definitely something, Brian thinks, watches amused as Debbie ushers her to the booth and yells at a badly cross-dressing waiter called Bob to bring them coffee.
Brian is about to sit down on the opposite side of the two women, but Michael stands up and drags him by the arm to the front of the diner, muttering something about them needing to talk.
“What’s up?” Brian asks as he takes a seat near the cash register and a plateful of lemon squares, eyes on Debbie and Lindsay.
“I could ask you the same thing,” Michael starts and follows his gaze. “I haven’t seen you much lately. Summer vacation started weeks ago.”
“Busy, busy. You know how it is.”
“You always had time for your best friend before. And now you bring this, this girl here like she’s your goddamn fiancée…” Brian snorts disgusted at that, shakes his head and wonders if Michael is always going to be this way.
“She’s a girl, Brian. A girl.”
“Huh, no kidding. I hadn’t noticed.” Brian says sarcasm dripping down his tongue and he so doesn’t want to have this conversation, doesn’t need to explain himself to anyone.
Lindsay smiles shyly when Debbie asks her how she and Brian met, and what the hell did she do to her wayward son to make him act so calm and attentive. Brian chuckles and shakes his head when Lindsay whispers something to her ear that makes the older woman laugh loudly and squeeze her shoulder.
“You didn’t… you didn’t fuck her, did you?”
Brian shrugs and starts fiddling with his lighter; is about to say it’s none of his business but doesn’t have time before Michael stands up an incredulous look plastered on his face.
“Oh my God, you did fuck her.” He stares accusingly at Brian.
Brian stares back at Michael and thinks his face looks pretty damn hilarious at the moment. He's about to point that out but settles for watching him turn around and walk away, open the diner door and step outside banging it shut causing the new bell on top of the door clink cheerfully for a while.
Brian walks back to Debbie and Lindsay and asks if he’s ever going to get any service.
--------
The late fall night is brisk and dark, frostbitten plaster whines underneath his shoes as he takes one two three four steps and is back on the edge of the roof, sits down and from the corner of his eye sees her do the same.
Then it happens, and for the first time in years Brian is far from having control over a situation. Lindsay presses her red lips awkwardly against his, breathes through her nose, her breath warming the side of his mouth, and he swears he can feel her heart thumping in her throat sending small vibrations up all the way to her lips.
And there they are, on the roof, at night, upper lip against upper lip, her lashes tickling his cheek, lower lip against lower lip, her heart slowly descending back to its rightful place behind her ribcage, the thumping subsiding, and there they are.
And there they aren’t.
--------
“I want to have kids though,” she says thoughtfully and passes a joint back to him. They’re lying on his narrow bed on a February afternoon, both lazy and too comfortable to get up and catch their classes.
“Big, fat, rosy cheeked...”
Brian snickers at the image of Lindsay force-feeding her future children puddings of different colours until their eyes pop out of their sockets.
“Then you will have kids,” he says resolutely, gives the burning roll of paper back to her and watches fascinated as she inhales deep, holds the smoke in her lungs like she wasn’t the perfect girl, daddy’s little sweetheart, home by ten and always freshly laundered at family dinners.
“And get married. And I want a white lacy wedding dress and corkscrew curls.” She smiles exposing a straight row of pearly teeth, smoke coming out of her nose and open mouth.
“Yeah, definitely get married.”
Then what? A golden retriever and a white picket fence? he thinks, sits up and stubs the joint on the messy night stand, rubs his face with his hand, his short stubble tickling his palm.
“I want to grow old with someone I love and watch how our children grow up and get married, have children of their own.”
He snorts annoyed and shakes his head, thinks women.
“Don’t you want that, then?” Her voice carries a slightly disappointed tone like she thought that everyone would agree with something so natural, something so human.
Standing up on the bed Brian says that he will never be fettered by marriage or pathetic declarations, says that he will never grow up, spreads his arms for good measure like he’s above all that.
“Everybody grows up, Peter,” she whispers and lets out a loud squeal when he bounces on the bed and drops down to his knees with a grin. Lying back on the bed he touches her face, large hand cupping her flushed cheek, thumb pressing the cold tip of her nose.
“Don’t say that, Wendy,” he whispers.
They lie in silence, side against side, her ridiculously big red woolly sock tickling his bare foot, her beige skirt wrinkled and risen too high on her pale thighs. She turns her head to look at him, really look at him, blows her hair to the side of her face out of her eyes and nose, and breaks their mutual silence.
“I want kids, Bri.”
--------
He takes her back to the sorority house; on the dark veranda she stares at him for a long time looking sheepish but also a little relieved. She apologizes for the kiss a hundredth time and he shakes his head amused, takes her into his arms and presses his mouth on her hairline.
“Night, Lindsay,” he murmurs and lets go of her.
She opens the door, stands in the doorway.
“See you in class?”
”Uh huh.”
“Night, then.”
He watches her walk inside the brightly lit house and closes the door. Walks down the four stairs hands in the pockets of his black leather jacket, fingers feeling the smooth surface of his metallic lighter, BK engraved clumsily on the lid.
Title: Lindsay
Characters: Lindsay Peterson, Brian Kinney
Rating: PG-13
Summary: A series of moments befalling miss Peterson and mister Kinney... It’s a college fic.
Disclaimer: QaF isn't mine, if it was, do you think I'd bother writing fic?
Many thanks to sugardares for being a wonderful beta and spurring me on to write more and more.
Lindsay
Due to ennui, bad weed and various bottles of cheap beer Brian finds himself crashing a sorority event. And yeah, maybe he doesn’t feel like repeating the sucking and fucking a second time that night, he feels pretty fucking adventurous when he steps through the wooden door, Alpha Kappa Chi whateverthefuck written above it signalling solidarity but really meaning stay the fuck out if you don’t belong.
“Brian?” A young woman from his art history class hurries toward him. Standing there, wobbling and snickering as he slowly munches his way through a plate of cucumber sandwiches, he tries to focus his eyes on her. Her hair is long and blonde and it falls lazily over the white cotton fabric of her shirt, and for a moment or two he thinks that the brown colour of her eyes is identical to Mikey’s.
“Sandwich?” He offers her a moist, half-eaten piece of triangle-shaped toast, pokes a cucumber slice deeper inside the two layers of wheat bread and smiles drowsily.
“Brian? What do you think you’re doing? This is a sorority house,” she snaps ignoring the toast that’s dangling near her face and grabs her coat, pushes him outside before the other girls take notice.
“You can’t be here,” she huffs as she tries to find the left sleeve of her light mauve woollen-cloth coat, the one with fake fur on the hood and a flower lining. Brian drops the sandwich, helps her with the coat, and brushes a few stray strands of her too soft hair out of her mouth.
“Hey there… Linda? Lovely evening, don’t you think?” His voice is full of mock politeness and he fumbles about in his pockets for his old lighter.
“It’s Lindsay,” Lindsay corrects and declines an offered cigarette, gives him a dirty, impatient look and shuffles her burgundy leather walking shoes.
“What are you doing here?” She sighs and Brian watches vapour dance from her mouth and nose mixing and mingling with his smoke.
He shrugs.
“Hey, you wanna go somewhere?”
The question hangs in the air. Brian can almost feel it swell up and he waits for the inevitable crack, wonders if he should have just gone get laid somewhere, anywhere.
He watches her ponder the question, smiles when the woman finally walks past him down one two three four wooden stairs and turns her head slightly to the right, waits for him to follow.
They walk through the campus. An occasional bump of shoulder against shoulder or arm against arm lulls Brian into a comfortable haze. Everything about Lindsay is just so fucking comfortable and warm. Her voice is soft but not too girlishly sweet in his ears.
“Brian, where are we going?”
He eyes dark rusty ladders that lead to the roof of the department of antique history, smirks and pockets the lighter he has been playing with ever since they left the sorority house.
“I thought it was obvious.” He cocks his head upwards before slowly turning around, starting to make his way up the ladders, two rungs at a time.
“Brian? Brian! Don’t even think about…come down right now.”
He leans back, looks down at Lindsay who is covering her mouth and nose with her hands, offers her his left one.
“Come on Lindsay, live a little.”
--------
The summer of 1990 is bright and humid. The air is heavy and still and everything smells like wet dogs and sausages, sweat and salt. Brian tugs at Lindsay’s hand and leads her to a small empty park. He talks about stupid facile things that make her eyes sparkly and her smile wide. He reads her like an open book. People are easy when you know the basics. People are easy when you’re smart.
Brian’s sneaker pokes at Lindsay’s bare foot and they’re lying on the warm sunburnt ground. She’s wearing a red top, no bra, her faded denim shorts are grass-stained and her hair is loosely knot in a messy ponytail. He rubs his nose and cheek in the crook of her neck because she smells clean and like apples. She’s the only one in the fucking city who smells clean and not like sausages and dogs.
She smiles.
“What do you see?” Her voice is soft like white cotton.
“Mmmph?”
“In the clouds? Do you see anything? Figures?” He turns his head a little, Lindsay’s collarbone sticking out and poking at his skull, his eyes squinting and watering in the bright sunlight.
“What the fuck?”
And the moment’s gone.
--------
He reaches the roof and helps her take the last five steps on the ladders, pulls her up easily by tugging her upper arm until she’s standing beside him, slightly out of breath, smoothing out her coat and skirt.
“Now what?” She asks a little accusingly, like just being on the roof of their school isn’t good enough.
Brian walks to the edge, looks down and turns around with a wide grin.
“Now we jump!” He shouts and sways dangerously close to losing his balance, laughs when she shrieks and jerks him roughly back to safety.
”Brian, what the hell are you playing at?” She swats him hard on the arm and, mother of god, it kind of hurts.
“Oh, stop laughing, that wasn’t funny,” she says full of fake annoyance, amusement glistening in her eyes and mouth, and he knows that he will never get rid of her now, likes the idea of her in his life.
--------
The last day in June he brings her to the diner, spots Michael sitting alone in his booth eating ice cream, clutching the spoon like he's still in fourth grade. Brian walks over to him, Lindsay in tow, puts his arm around her small waist and wonders why his best friend is giving her his instant-death-glare.
”Mikey, what are you doing?”
“Giving Sally Hayes my instant-death-glare.”
”Why? What did she do?”
”She said Captain Astro was a bunch of humbug.”
Brian shrugs and pulls her closer to him making their hips bump. Her polka-dot summer dress is obscenely thin against his fingers and he thinks he could easily trace her bone lines, wonders if he should make Debbie feed her a greasy meal every week.
“She’s the dyke I told you about. Lindsay. Remember, Mikey?” Brian chuckles when she smacks him gently on the arm and glares. Lifts her hand and waves a little at Michael all smile and rosy cheeks.
Debbie loves her instantly. Of course she does.
“Well who do we have here!” She shrieks near Brian’s ear and pushes him out of her way as she takes Lindsay in her motherly embrace.
“Brian, this your friend?” He nods silently and tries to pull away when Debbie ruffles his hair, her left hand still resting on Lindsay’s bony shoulder.
“Aren’t you just something else! Isn’t she something, Michael? Something, I tell ya.”
Yeah, they’re both definitely something, Brian thinks, watches amused as Debbie ushers her to the booth and yells at a badly cross-dressing waiter called Bob to bring them coffee.
Brian is about to sit down on the opposite side of the two women, but Michael stands up and drags him by the arm to the front of the diner, muttering something about them needing to talk.
“What’s up?” Brian asks as he takes a seat near the cash register and a plateful of lemon squares, eyes on Debbie and Lindsay.
“I could ask you the same thing,” Michael starts and follows his gaze. “I haven’t seen you much lately. Summer vacation started weeks ago.”
“Busy, busy. You know how it is.”
“You always had time for your best friend before. And now you bring this, this girl here like she’s your goddamn fiancée…” Brian snorts disgusted at that, shakes his head and wonders if Michael is always going to be this way.
“She’s a girl, Brian. A girl.”
“Huh, no kidding. I hadn’t noticed.” Brian says sarcasm dripping down his tongue and he so doesn’t want to have this conversation, doesn’t need to explain himself to anyone.
Lindsay smiles shyly when Debbie asks her how she and Brian met, and what the hell did she do to her wayward son to make him act so calm and attentive. Brian chuckles and shakes his head when Lindsay whispers something to her ear that makes the older woman laugh loudly and squeeze her shoulder.
“You didn’t… you didn’t fuck her, did you?”
Brian shrugs and starts fiddling with his lighter; is about to say it’s none of his business but doesn’t have time before Michael stands up an incredulous look plastered on his face.
“Oh my God, you did fuck her.” He stares accusingly at Brian.
Brian stares back at Michael and thinks his face looks pretty damn hilarious at the moment. He's about to point that out but settles for watching him turn around and walk away, open the diner door and step outside banging it shut causing the new bell on top of the door clink cheerfully for a while.
Brian walks back to Debbie and Lindsay and asks if he’s ever going to get any service.
--------
The late fall night is brisk and dark, frostbitten plaster whines underneath his shoes as he takes one two three four steps and is back on the edge of the roof, sits down and from the corner of his eye sees her do the same.
Then it happens, and for the first time in years Brian is far from having control over a situation. Lindsay presses her red lips awkwardly against his, breathes through her nose, her breath warming the side of his mouth, and he swears he can feel her heart thumping in her throat sending small vibrations up all the way to her lips.
And there they are, on the roof, at night, upper lip against upper lip, her lashes tickling his cheek, lower lip against lower lip, her heart slowly descending back to its rightful place behind her ribcage, the thumping subsiding, and there they are.
And there they aren’t.
--------
“I want to have kids though,” she says thoughtfully and passes a joint back to him. They’re lying on his narrow bed on a February afternoon, both lazy and too comfortable to get up and catch their classes.
“Big, fat, rosy cheeked...”
Brian snickers at the image of Lindsay force-feeding her future children puddings of different colours until their eyes pop out of their sockets.
“Then you will have kids,” he says resolutely, gives the burning roll of paper back to her and watches fascinated as she inhales deep, holds the smoke in her lungs like she wasn’t the perfect girl, daddy’s little sweetheart, home by ten and always freshly laundered at family dinners.
“And get married. And I want a white lacy wedding dress and corkscrew curls.” She smiles exposing a straight row of pearly teeth, smoke coming out of her nose and open mouth.
“Yeah, definitely get married.”
Then what? A golden retriever and a white picket fence? he thinks, sits up and stubs the joint on the messy night stand, rubs his face with his hand, his short stubble tickling his palm.
“I want to grow old with someone I love and watch how our children grow up and get married, have children of their own.”
He snorts annoyed and shakes his head, thinks women.
“Don’t you want that, then?” Her voice carries a slightly disappointed tone like she thought that everyone would agree with something so natural, something so human.
Standing up on the bed Brian says that he will never be fettered by marriage or pathetic declarations, says that he will never grow up, spreads his arms for good measure like he’s above all that.
“Everybody grows up, Peter,” she whispers and lets out a loud squeal when he bounces on the bed and drops down to his knees with a grin. Lying back on the bed he touches her face, large hand cupping her flushed cheek, thumb pressing the cold tip of her nose.
“Don’t say that, Wendy,” he whispers.
They lie in silence, side against side, her ridiculously big red woolly sock tickling his bare foot, her beige skirt wrinkled and risen too high on her pale thighs. She turns her head to look at him, really look at him, blows her hair to the side of her face out of her eyes and nose, and breaks their mutual silence.
“I want kids, Bri.”
--------
He takes her back to the sorority house; on the dark veranda she stares at him for a long time looking sheepish but also a little relieved. She apologizes for the kiss a hundredth time and he shakes his head amused, takes her into his arms and presses his mouth on her hairline.
“Night, Lindsay,” he murmurs and lets go of her.
She opens the door, stands in the doorway.
“See you in class?”
”Uh huh.”
“Night, then.”
He watches her walk inside the brightly lit house and closes the door. Walks down the four stairs hands in the pockets of his black leather jacket, fingers feeling the smooth surface of his metallic lighter, BK engraved clumsily on the lid.