Closed Post: #SelfCare

[sorrowandsorrow]

Eat your heart out, Castle Whitespire. Eat your heart out, Eliot Waugh. Janet doesn't need any of you, because she found this stupid mansion's stupid Jacuzzi all by herself. In the aftermath of the zombie uprising (by the way: what the fuck?), she must have been putting out some kind of extra desperation, caked in sweat and zombie dust and the dirt of the mansion's grounds, because as she stomped down the hallway to her bedroom, something told her to open a door. And she did. And there it was.

It was fucking glorious, and she was too selfish to wait that time, but she has a date to set up. Susan will find a neon orange Post-It stuck to the door of her room this morning that says: Found it. Meet me at seven o'clock tonight, third door on the right when you hang a left past that ugly chandelier with the swans. --J

She even doodled a little crown symbol over the letter to make her point clear.

When Susan does make her way to the room with the hot tub, she'll see Janet in a black bikini with a glass of prosecco in one hand, another frosty glass sitting on the tiles next to her hand. With that hand, she's propping herself up as she takes a sip. Her legs are dangling into the Jacuzzi already, but she hasn't switched on the jets yet.

Comments

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Psychoanalyst?" Janet can't help the glance of incredulous amusement. "Like... Freud?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Among others," Susan says. She finishes her glass of prosecco. "She's familiar with his work, of course, and trained briefly under Anna, but I believe she's part of the middle group now."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Whew," Janet says dryly, and pretends to wipe sweat from her brow. "I was wondering how to break it to you that in the twenty-first century, we mostly think Freud was full of shit."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I like Freud," Susan says, amused. "I find his ideas fascinating." She twists around and pours herself a second glass of prosecco. "But I have gotten the impression from several people here that attitudes toward his work... shift."

[sorrowandsorrow]

Janet watches Susan move with some interest, how her shoulders are speckled with condensation. "I mean, he has cultural impact, that's for sure. Everyone talks about Freudian slips and Oedipal complexes. But I wouldn't say anyone takes him all that seriously."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan settles back, catching the angle of Janet's glance. She takes a long sip of her fresh glass, summons every speck of the imperious boldness she can remember feeling when she was twenty-seven and fifteen years a Queen of Narnia, and says, lightly, "He's got a series of essays on homosexuality that I keep intending to read." It's still under her pillow. She'll get around to it.

[sorrowandsorrow]

A smile spreads across Janet's face, one of those smiles of hers that either terrifies or captivates people the first time they see it. It can be a decent litmus test, actually. "I'm a little afraid to find out what Freud of all people had to say about homosexuality, but I like the spirit of inquiry you have going here."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan likes this smile; it's fierce and wild and appealing. "I've been told it's largely favorable," she says.

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Oh, really?" Janet asks with some incredulous delight. "I wouldn't have expected that from old Sigmund. You'd better report back."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"He does have merit," Susan says, hiding the ghost of a smile behind another sip. "Shen Yuan proposed a - book club, of sorts. You're welcome to join."

[sorrowandsorrow]

Janet's next laugh is not ladylike at all. It's more of a snort. She leans back and sinks a little deeper into the water. "I can't even imagine what it would be like to do a book club with that freak of nature," she says, with the tiniest hint of fondness. "Obviously I want in."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Raising her eyebrows, Susan shifts over a few inches until there's a jet angled squarely between her shoulder blades. It feels marvelous, and she's torn between closing her eyes in rapture and watching Janet. "I sense a story."

[sorrowandsorrow]

Around a thoughtful sip of prosecco, Janet considers how to tell this one. Hell, she considers where to even start. "He got here and immediately accused me of being the mastermind behind this whole place," she says finally. "Specifically, he thought I'd brought everyone here to make them gay."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan's brow furrows. "I must admit," she says. "That's a new one, for me."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Yeah, it was insane." Janet rolls her eyes. "I don't even know how he got that idea. I mean, the toxic levels of repressed homosexuality probably weren't helping. It was contaminating the groundwater. The groundwater of his brain."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan hides a fleeting smile behind her glass. "I probably shouldn't share this," she says - though Shen Yuan hadn't asked her to keep it in confidence, he had seemed a little lost the night they met. "But he kissed me when we first met." Wryly: "The final nail in the coffin of his heterosexuality, I believe."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Oh my God!" Janet exclaims, with all the pure delight of someone who's just gotten an unbelievably delicious morsel of gossip. "Wow. Oh my God. Not for nothing, but if he kissed you and he wasn't into it, he really must be a stone-cold Kinsey 6."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan smirks. "Yes," she agrees. "I believe I am rather a good litmus test for that sort of thing. It's why I forgave him his shoddy scientific reasoning."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Thank God he didn't try that on me." Janet makes an eloquently disgusted face, then has to laugh a little and turn it into a smile directed at Susan. "You can't expect sound scientific reasoning from a guy who smoked weed because he thought it would turn him gay. I mean, he was already gay, so that's shoddy reasoning in and of itself."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I don't know," Susan says, reflectively. "I can understand it taking time, allowing yourself to come to terms with such things." She pauses. "I do think his mind was already made up to accept it, though. Otherwise he would have avoided confounding variables more effectively."

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Oh, he definitely knew on some level. I'm not trying to be a dick," Janet says, even though she kind of is, "but some of the stuff he said while he was coming to terms was just -- it really pissed me off. I think it would have even pissed off Eliot, who's infuriatingly calm about people being homophobic freaks to him."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Ah. So there's a deeper story there. Susan feels a queer sort of kinship with Shen Yuan¹, and doesn't necessarily want to probe, but - "That sounds... tremendously unpleasant."

¹Pun intended

[sorrowandsorrow]

"Yeah, no kidding." Janet sighs. She's reluctantly fond of Shen Qingqiu (or whatever his name is) now, but she really was genuinely so fucking mad at him. "Water under the bridge now, I guess. He figured it out. Most people eventually do."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan shifts so that the jet hits her in the middle of her shoulder blade - a sore spot that keeps cropping up. She does close her eyes now, relishing the feeling. "This tub truly is a delight," she says, and then opens her eyes again, flicking her gaze over at Janet. "You were right. No need for Fabio."

[sorrowandsorrow]

There's a kind of visceral satisfaction in watching Susan relax like this after all the painful care and poise Janet has seen in her since they first met. Bold with bubbly and pleasantly flushed with the heat of the water, she slides closer and bumps her shoulder against Susan's, only the once. "Fabio doesn't deserve our company."