A Life of Unquiet Desperation
by DevilChild
Fandom: Finder
Rating: Mature Themes
Pairing: Lynne/Jaeger (sort of)
Author's Note: Written for Rush-That-Speaks in the New Year Resolutions 2006 Challenge.
Copyright and Disclaimer: Finder is copyright Carla Speed McNeil. I make no claims to ownership or creation. This bit of not for profit modern folklore (thank you Prof. Jenkins) is mine.
What they don't get, what they'll never understand, is the sheer rage driving Lynne Grosvenor.
That ...thing... in the other room is not a father. Never was. Never will be.
Mother's all hooked in, dreaming her life away, and ~snicker~ people pay for it. Like what comes out of her head is so damn special.
Rachel and Marcie, look (more or less) like Llaveracs.
He's got that thick, straight Medawar hair (even more so now that he's dyed it black) but the delicate Llaverac face.
When he dreams ... it's not the kind of art that the Llaveracs are known for. There's not a viable market for the worlds in his mind.
He doesn't have the Medawar body. Sturdy and thickset. Just the hair and the aggressiveness. No place for him at the academy.
(Neither clan really wants him — or his sisters.)
He's invisible.
And when, by choice or omission, nobody sees you? It's one thing to be a Finder, who moves unseen unless he wants to be seen, but when you're one of the Lost?
He can't be his mother.
He can't be that ...wreck ... in the other room.
He won't be Rachel.
Marcie's too young to have developed that much of a personality yet, but Lynne likes the little flashes he sees, and he tries to steer her as best he can. But. He doesn't think he can be Marcie, either, because there are places for Marcie, and she's not driven by rage the way he is.
When you're one of the Lost, you'd best start finding yourself, he thinks.
Lynne looks in the mirror. He's got a male body, but a woman's face. He's not a Llaverac. He's not a Medawar.
His name is both a man's and a woman's. Netural. Neither.
He's in the middle of puberty, no longer a boy, but not yet a man.
He's nothing.
No.
Not nothing, just not anything else ... yet.
Lynne thinks of Jaeger, his mother's half-Ascian sometime boyfriend. Both Sin-Eater and Finder, caught in the in-between, constantly on the hustle, constantly inventing himself.
Lynne looks in the mirror.
Not Llaverac. Not Medawar. Female face. Male body.
Caught in the in-between.
If he's going to invent himself, he might as well go all out.
Hell, he'll invent what's already there. Force them to take a good fucking look at what their eyes glide over.
He picks up Rachel's lipstick ....
~oo(0)oo~
It's been 15 years, but Lynne knows Jaeger when he sees him. No one else has his eyes.
In one of her (acclaimed) essays, Marcie compared Jaeger to the neighborhood cat. You know he's not just yours, but when he shows up on your doorstep, you love and feed him anyway and you're happy to take what you get. Mother did, and never asked questions about Jaeger's other wanderings.
Lynne remembers seeing Rachel first try her budding sexuality on Jaeger. He looked (what man wouldn't?) but didn't touch. (And he didn't laugh at her clumsy attempts, either.)
Lynne remembers seeing Jaeger make time for Marcie, reading her that silly book.
Lynne remembers being invisible to Jaeger. Well, not really invisible. Jaeger picked up on the Otherness of Lynne long before Lynne decided to revel in it. And, Lynne didn't really need Jaeger, at least not in the way that his mother or Rachel or Marcie had.
Still, that doesn't mean that Lynne didn't want to be offered his pound of flesh. And it doesn't mean he won't try and get it.
~oo(0)oo~
Mother was no Magri White, but Marcie's garnered something of a name for herself by refusing to plug in and share the wonders of her mind that way. You get the written word from her and nothing else.
Lynne watches. He always has. And he's spun his talent for seeing what most people do not into gold by showing them what they've missed or turned away from.
And not just showing. No. He never misses an opportunity to rub their faces in it. Like showing the world just what the fuck being Magri White had done to Magri White, and not just Magri, but the people who had been bent, folded, mutilated and spindled because of the horror that had lurked in Magri's subconscious, repressed, denied, until no force in the world could keep the lid on it and it exploded out in an orgy of rage and need.
(Lynne didn't show them any vids of him and Magri fucking. Nothing hidden there. Nothing to hide. Nothing not seen by anybody who saw them together. The body language said it all. No need to show more.)
~oo(0)oo~
Jaeger's so straight, so of course Lynne dresses like a woman. Not to the extent of putting on a pair of breasts, but there are ways to dress to suggest so that people will see what they want to see Clothing is a such a fantastic tool for getting what you want, Lynne thinks, and Lynne knows that good workmen never quarrel with their tools.
It's not hard for him to sidle over and strike up a conversation when he tracks Jaeger down to a dive frequented by ... well, all the Others who don't belong. Lynne knows all the unwritten rules that govern the spaces deeded to the in-between people. He feels right at home. It's his place, too.
The ground out stub of a hand rolled cigarette shows that Jaeger's been smoking lest his Finder sense of smell be overwhelmed by all the odors of life in the city. Good. Lynne was careful in his use of scented products (he didn't want to drive Jaeger away with strong perfume) but he has no idea if Jaeger will remember him by smell. And since Jaeger's been smoking, well, he might not peg Lynne's identity until they've hit the point of no return.
For a grifter who goes through life like an alley cat, the years have been surprisingly good to Jaeger. The skin's a bit more windburnt and there are a few more crow's feet around the eyes, and the tiniest hint of silver in that thick mop of black, but in his eyes .... In those exotic, slanted, half-Ascian eyes, Jaeger's an eternal 25. Lynne still sees mischief and adventure in their depths.
It's easy, almost too easy to drag Jaeger down the hallway and out into the alley and back him up against a wall and kiss and grind, and oh yeah, get him hard.
Lynne breaks off the kiss with a low, throaty chuckle of triumph.
"Does your momma know you're making a play for an old flame of hers?" Jaeger says with a knowing smirk.
Well, fuck. Busted.
Lynne keeps a poker face. A life spent with cameras has taught him how to show only what he wants others to see. "How'd you figure it out?"
Jaeger gives him look that says, 'are you daft?', but replies, "Smell."
Lynne sighs. "Thought so." Pause. "But you so rarely spent any time close to me. I didn't think you would remember. Damn it."
Jaeger reaches out like he's going to ruffle Lynne's hair, but Lynne stops that with a frosty stare. He's not a little boy any more and he's not Marcie.
"How long have you known?"
"Not as long I should have." Jaeger laughed a bit. "I had this feeling that I thought knew I knew you from somewhere, and when we went down the hall and I got a better whiff, I knew I knew you from somewhere, and when you pounced me and stuck your tongue down my throat, well, that's when it all clicked."
Lynne smiled a bit. "Well, I almost had you."
"Oh? And how far were you planning to take this?"
A look from Lynne answered that.
"Heh." Pause. "I'm not queer."
Lynne crossed his arms and glared. "Neither am I."
"Then what's all this?" Jaeger gestured at him.
Yes. What was it?
"I ..." Lynne trailed off. Hardening his voice, he said, "I wanted my pound of flesh, Jaeger. I wanted you."
Jaeger howled with laugher, slung an arm around Lynne's shoulders, and started walking them out of the alley. "Why?"
"To see if I could. Because Mom, Marcie, and Rachel all got you. But I never got anything. So, my turn now."
"But I don't have anything to give you. You were always so contained, Lynne. Nobody, nothing could touch you. After what had happened ... nobody was ever going to hurt you again."
"Damn right," Lynne said as they made their way down the alley.
"Well, that's why I can't be your Sin-Eater, Lynne. You aren't ready to let it go."
"What?!" Lynne stopped in shock. Jaeger had always been so tetchy about anything related to being a Sin-Eater, to hear him even say the words was ....
"You heard me," Jaeger said softly. "I can't be your Sin-Eater."
Lynne spent several moments looking at those unsettling amber eyes, seeing himself reflected in them ... seeing .... "No. No, you can't, Jaeger. Just like I can't be yours, either. Just like my mother couldn't. Just like nobody can."
"Nope. Guys like us, we just have to ... make our way through life. "
Because there was nothing else to do, Lynne took Jaeger back to his house, parked him on the couch, and went to bed. In the morning he woke to an empty house and the smell of coffee. Jaeger always made the best coffee ... Lynne poured himself a cup.
On the couch was a sketch.
Jaeger looking into a mirror, a distorted fun-house mirror, and the face that stared back was Lynne's.
Beneath, in Jaeger's bold scrawl it said:
Seeing what others do not. Moving unseen until we want to be. Rage no Sin-Eater can consume. Forever neither and both.
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Last Updated: 4/6/08