mericlecure (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mericlecure) wrote2031-04-23 03:00 am
mericlecure) wrote2031-04-23 03:00 am
Entry tags:
Storylines
In-Game Lines || Drama Lines || Romance Lines || Fluff Lines
Dead Men Walking
Mystery, Supernatural Elements, Noir-esque
Maggie could never forget when she heard the news: when she heard that Johnny had been killed. After a night of too much fun and not enough care his car met a locomotive coming eastbound from Chicago at over 100 miles per hour; one cheeky musician named Johnny Menkin, his two buddies, and the speeding barrel of grease and steel they were traveling in went up in flames. It made the radio about an hour later, when Maggie was walking home with a paper bag of groceries and heard the broadcast through Mrs. Finchley's open window. She can't remember, exactly, what went through her head when she heard it -- after the disbelief. She remembers not believing a word of it, but then at some point belief sunk in; and she can't remember what exactly happened past then. Somehow she got home, maybe she put away the groceries and maybe she didn't. At some point she had cried, she didn't know when she started nor when she stopped, but when she came to she knew she had cried. But she also knew that she had to get to work, and had to shower before then, and put on her make-up, and then head down and out to sing at the lounge where Johnny Menkin would be playing no more.
...Except it didn't work out that way. Sure, Johnny wasn't playing but only an evening later he was there. She didn't see him come in -- an irrational part of her had kept an eye out for the dead man -- but when she sat down for a break between sets he was suddenly there, sitting across from her at the table, a cheeky smile in place as he took advantage of her shock to steal the drink out of her hands. He wasn't a ghost. He said the body found wasn't his. He said he was leaving, and he wanted her to come with him on the 11 o'clock train out of town. After working past her fit of emotion, she agreed. She finished her set. She ran home. She packed. She met him at the station. The cheeky man she had loved had come back from the dead, and she wasn't going to lose him again or question that miracle too closely.
They were leaving, they were going to have a new life together, she told herself it was happily ever after. ...Except it didn't really work out that way either. Sometimes, Johnny just doesn't seem the same guy she had spent years head-over-heels for. She can't explain it, really; just sometimes he's different. He doesn't like to talk about the past, and sometimes he seems to forget details that he shouldn't: like how he never showed any interest before the accident, or ignoring they left his wife a widow grieving over the charred body that isn't his.
Maggie notices that Johnny gets money, sometimes a lot of money, and Johnny is dodgy in explaining how or why. She's just found three men's IDs -- all with different names and different ethnicities -- in his things. She doesn't know the men, and she certainly doesn't know any good reason for Johnny would have them. Something doesn't add up, too much doesn't fit for her to keep silent about it, even if she isn't sure she wants to know. And the truth is? She really doesn't.
Heavily inspired by an episode of a TV show. Be assured there are gratuitous additions and changes to original source. I'm partial to playing 'Johnny'.
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The Tease & The Tension
It's getting hot in here; ...but we're keeping on the clothes.
I'd like to write a scene wrought with the kind of tension that makes you hold your breath waiting for more to happen... and then keep waiting... and then keep waiting. But nothing happens. I want that heavy hook-up potential that calls for cold showers. The growling sense of frustration that, when you're reading, makes you want to chuck a book against the wall and ravage it all at the same time! You've seen it in books and movies and TV: those couples. Except they're infuriatingly not couples at all! No, no matter how awesome the chemistry, how you could swear you can see the longing desire dripping of one/both faces, they never even kiss! Like, what the hell?!
This scene is pretty flexible. It could come at the angle of the one-sided unrequited romance, or both parties feeling the tension but neither acting on it, or the kind of thing where neither party is interested in the other but they have the kind of natural chemistry that would make readers and characters around them think: "You're kidding, right? Come onnn" ...i.e. one of those duos that are frequently mistaken for having A Thing when people see them interact with each other.
However, one angle I don't want to work at it from is Fate or Circumstances keeping them apart: i.e. one or both are married, or they work together and their workplace forbids relationships among workers, etc. etc. I want it to be perfectly allowable if these two get together, but they aren't due to their own actions (or inactions, more likely), disinterest, mis-assumptions, etc. It's not Fate or the World keeping them apart, it's them. And that makes it all the more annoying.
Think of... Liz and Jack ("30 Rock"), Olivia and Elliot ("SVU"), John Sheppard and Tayla/Wier (SG-Atlantis), House & Cuddy ("House"); I can play either guy or girl.
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Bro-mance
It's guy love, between two guys~~
They may be complementary opposites, or their personalities are identical twins, but they are always at least one thing: the perfect (albeit possibly dysfunctional) team. The incredible duo! The fantastic frats! Like seriously: Can I getta a Soul-n'-checkMate up in here?? If ever there was any doubt that two souls so perfectly suited for each other can actually find and bond in today's large world in this cynical age, it's dispelled immediately when you see these two. Sure, they're guys. And no, they aren't gay (though maybe some people might wonder...). And, sure, any third-wheel girlfriend of one may feel like she has to enter into a custody battle with the other just to get her girlfriend-time in... but that's what she gets standing between such Perfect Bro-Love.
Considering there isn't much in the way of a moving plot outside of 'I'd like to write characters with this relationship', I feel like this line is best suited to be used in addition with another. There's potential for it to be a line with three characters: Bro 1, Bro 2, and The Girlfriend. If that scenario works out, I'm partial to playing the guy not dating the girl, who kinda has an amusing antagonistic thing going as he plays tug-of-war for his buddy's time with The Girlfriend.
Think... Turk and J.D. ("Scrubs"), House and Wilson ("House"), Shawn and Gus ("Psyche"), Sirius and James ("HP"), Sirius and Lupin ("HP");
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