Questionable

[intheheart]

Title: Questionable
Rating: PG-13
Summary: They do questionable things.
Warnings: racist/sexist/classist language, mentions of rape culture and sexual harassment, blink-and-miss-it child abuse, erasure/dismissal of asexuality, concern trolling, adultery, general treating of people as objects.
Notes: I just let my villains talk for a while. For the record, Adam is Zack's father.



1. A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want?

There's nothing quite like a cigarette.

Riker inhales, a long slow drag that'll be his last until Neely gets more. All the more reason to savor it.

He's sitting in the exercise yard, in plain view, but the guards don't hassle him. He's a model prisoner, doesn't give anyone any trouble; no skin off their ass to let him have the occasional smoke.

Prison could be worse. He gets fed regular and the prison librarian's nice, and if it sucks that he can't so much as shit without someone watching...

He lets it go, inhales again.

Nothing like a cigarette.



2. To lose one parent... may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

Florence just blinks one day and realizes she hasn't spoken to her parents in three years.

She didn't plan it, it just sort of happened. Ever since the... the event she's been drifting away from her family, from her friends, from everyone she's ever known, drawing in on herself, mulling over her mistakes.

She used to be so certain of herself.

Her parents won't understand. They don't know about her event, and anyway they're still so sure that they're right. So are her friends. They know what's right.

She doesn't know. Not anymore.

She could call them now. She doesn't.



3. In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.

The irony of it all is that Fatimah has everything she ever wanted.

When she was a girl, she dreamed of being married, having children. She'd feed her dolls, put them to bed, kiss a pillow and pretend it was her husband. The reality of it was even better—she'd never thought how good sex could be.

She still has her husband. She still has her children. She has the nice house and the good life, and she still has a baby in her. She loves being pregnant.

She forgot to wish for fidelity.

It's always the things you forget.



4. I have nothing to declare except my genius.

People don't treat him right. Nobody ever did except his parents, and even then Brad's not sure about his mother.

Like, take Gail. That bitch got herself knocked up and then expected him to fix everything for her, like it was his fault. Couldn't cut him a break, oh, no, she expected him to marry her, and then when he shut that down she wanted him to pay for her baby shit and crap like that.

Users, that's all they are; her, and everyone like her. Just want to use him.

Well, fuck 'em. He doesn't need anyone but himself.



5. All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That's his.

Irene's mother was a beautiful woman, the archetypical Southern belle. Smooth, polite, and dignified, Joleigh Jackson ran her home and her family with the cliched iron fist in a velvet glove.

Irene remembers her as a tall, cool presence, sipping drinks on the porch, directing servants in a quiet voice, her skirts swishing around her legs. Irene likes to think she's lived up to that, kept the dignity of the family intact. She might never have married, but she's stayed true.

Lawrence hasn't, and her throat still closes over thinking of his cruelty. But she's held the line.

Hasn't she?



6. To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

Lorelai loves life. Like, really loves life. She loves everything about it, and is that a bad thing? She likes to dance in the rain and try new coffees and wear all her jewelry at once, bracelets jingling on her wrists, earrings in all three of her ear piercings.

She thought Aaron liked to live too. He was game for dancing in the rain and trying new coffees, and while he didn't have any jewelry to wear he'd steal his sister's nail polish. But she never thought he'd be so uptight as to hate sex. God.

Oh well. His loss.



7. It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearance.

They say appearance isn't everything, but that's exactly wrong. Appearance is everything. After all, that's the only way that people know things about you.

Tara Carson is determined to control hers. Shell be the best, the prettiest, the peppiest woman on the block. She'll be sweet and clever, and her little girl will be just the same.

She won't have the rumors again. She won't walk as fast as she can with her head bowed and her cheeks flushed, trying to outrun the whispers. She won't have that for Ellen, either.

She'll be perfect. They both will. No matter what.



8. Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.

They're just jealous.

It's an excuse, Yvonne knows, that lesser people use to disguise their flaws, but for her it's the simple truth. She's beautiful, she's sexy, and she's fun—what the hell else could any man ask for? Women hate her because she's everything they wish they could be. Men hate her because she hasn't chosen them. It's really that simple.

She can bat her eyelashes and crook a finger and enslave a man. She's done it—look at Hugh! She's older now, but she can do it again, easily.

She's perfect, and they're wrong. She'll hold to that.



9. Questions are never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are.

Adam doesn't know how Elizabeth found out. Not that it matters—she looked at him with that cool, thoughtful gaze, and the next thing he knew he was on the street.

He'd be upset, but it's probably what he deserves. He could go to Lorraine, and the baby, but it's not really something he wants to do—he's had his fill of babies, and this one's ruined his life.

Fuck. He thinks it was one of the kids, answering the wrong question. He loves them, he really does, but sometimes he could just—

It doesn't matter.

He'll find a hotel.



10. Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.

Madison is the youngest in a family of perfect people. There's her parents, all polished and toothy-white smiles. There's her sister Reagan, lean and tanned in tennis whites. There's her sister Kennedy, bubbly and blue-eyed in high white heels.

And then there's Madison.

She tries to be perfect and most of the time she is, blonde and red-lipped in white lingerie. She's better than everyone else, that's for sure. But she messes up and she goes home and she looks at her sisters and her parents and...

"I've been gaining experience," she tells them, and smiles, like it's no problem.



11. A little sincerity is a dangerous thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal.

Frank knows better than to ever tell the truth.

He didn't learn that lesson from experience, thank God. His father warned him early on, and he saw the difficulties others got into along the way. Look at his own life, for heaven's sake. If he'd told the truth to Rebecca when he proposed—that he needed a family to look respectable—she never would have accepted. Which might have been better, given the outcome, but the experiment was worthwhile in itself.

So he tells Amelia he loves her, and she smiles and flutters and accepts.

The truth is entirely unnecessary.



12. I can resist everything except temptation.

It was perfect while it lasted. His children at home and his wife to keep the house and his lover, his beautiful Arelie, anywhere he could get her. She was sweet and perfect under his hands and his mouth, all laughter and bright kisses. Farid shortchanged his family, dreaming of their future life, but he'd planned to make it up to them.

In his daydreams Fatimah just... faded away. He didn't think about it, usually.

He's lost Arelie. He's lost Fatimah too, not that he really wanted her. He's lost pieces of his children.

He'd do it again. Every time.



13. Nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

Vanessa was born with it. That's all there really is to say.

What has life taught her, anyway? That women don't get to speak or make their own decisions? That lesbians should just disappear and not trouble the straight people? That blue-collar people deserve to be beaten down?

Well, fuck all of that. She was born with everything she needed to know. That she's gorgeous. That she's perfect. That she deserves everything she wants and then some. She's not unarmed; she has her body, her intelligence, her convictions.

She'll get what she wants, and she'll make the world regret it.



14. The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

After Clara told him she wasn't interested in sex, Kevin did some reading, and what he found frightened him. Mental disorders that suppressed sexual desire. Post-traumatic stress from sexual assault. Creeping illnesses that cut off the sex drive. Hormonal imbalances with other, painful consequences.

He was scared for her. There was so much that could be wrong; how could she take it so lightly? How could she just dismiss her own health like that?

How could she leave him like that, when he was only worried about her? He wanted to marry her.

He just wanted her to be okay.



15. When people agree with me, I always feel that I must be wrong.

Max will not be what they want her to be. Who ever seriously expected her to follow the rules? Pretty, thin, quiet, compliant, all things she's not, never will be, never wants to be.

Pretty and thin means pandering to the male gaze, being eye candy for some jerk who thinks he's entitled to her body. Quiet and compliant means bowing to rape culture, acting like an object so men don't have to treat her like a person. Fuck that, all of that. She's her own, and if no one else can deal with that, well.

She knows she's right.



16. Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.

Rebecca can't help but hope that someday they'll forgive her.

She knows it's unlikely, and she knows she doesn't deserve it, but forgiveness is never really deserved, and there's always a chance. After all, they loved her once—Daniella laughing as they played together, Michael learning to walk, toddling from her hands.

She knows they hate her now. She's seen the judgment in Michael's eyes, the anger in Daniella's shoulders. They know what she's done, better than she does.

She doesn't contact them, but she follows their lives as best she can—she still loves them, after all.

Maybe.

Someday.



17. Journalism is unreadable, and literature is not read.

They're just stories, Henry tells himself in the first few days. Just headlines. Who even reads the paper these days? Nobody, that's who. The reporters'll get bored and find someone else to libel. It'll all blow over soon.

Except it doesn't. Article after article about company-sponsored sexual harassment (whatever that means) and apparently he's the poster boy for it? It makes him sick to think about it.

It's a pity he doesn't read more books someone wrote, and what the hell does that mean? Where do they think he got his ideas, his love?

He just wanted his happy ending.



18. The only things one never regrets are one's mistakes.

Was marrying Cecily a mistake?

Chris isn't sure. He knows he loved her at the beginning, or he thinks he did, anyway, and they had a good life. They made an attractive couple. They had a nice house, nice things. And of course they had children: Tyler and Rachel are his life.

Was leaving Cecily a mistake?

He doesn't know. He loves Kayla, or he thinks he does, anyway. He never fights with her. He sleeps better in his own bed. He makes his own choices now.

He doesn't know about mistakes. He just knows he doesn't regret a thing.



19. Anybody can make history. Only a great man can write it.

He doesn't understand how this happened.

For God's sake, he's George Colin Clark IV! His family built this city from the ground. They owe him, every goddamn son of a bitch owes him everything, and yet they're treating him like some kind of common criminal.

All he did was take what was his. All he did was pin it on some bitch who deserved everything she got. And now these... these immigrants look at him like he's scum on their shoes, when they're the scum, they're nothing, they...

He'll get off. No way this'll stick.

Then he'll get them all.



20. I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex.

Arelie sits on her front porch and knits, rows of a scarf slipping through her fingers. It's mindless work, hypnotic.

She is happy, she thinks, really and truly she is. She loves Dennis with all her heart, and the foster children they take in, she loves them too. She has work she enjoys that demands all her talents. She has a home, and a life. She is happy.

And if sometimes Farid touches her mind, if she sometimes dreams of holding their baby, the needles click away the thoughts, soothe the loss.

She's happy. She hopes she'll stay that way.