TITLE: Princess Charming
RATING: PG-13
PAIRING: Pre Mark/Joanne
PROMPT: 8, Disney
SUMMARY: Maybe there is something wrong with the Loft water...
A/N: Consider this to be "vaguely interesting literature...on crack." . Right.

"Did you have a favorite Disney movie when you were little?"

There was silence for a moment, while the randomness of this question was contemplated. Roger and Collins shared a 'God-save-us' look, while Joanne stared blankly and Mark wished he had his camera to capture the pathetic feeling of the moment. Maureen was too busy examining her cuticles to properly register the question. After a brief pause, Collins lifted an eyebrow. "Have you been into the Stoli again? You know that stuff is only for special occasions-"

"Oh, piss off," Mimi snapped back, irritated. "It was a serious question."

"No...it really wasn't," Roger corrected, and Collins shook his head.

Mimi sighed, and rolled her eyes. "Mine was the Little Mermaid."

There was more silence. "She's going to tell us why, isn't she?" Mark stage-whispered, in a tone full of dread. Roger snickered.

"Because," Mimi went on, belatedly, "after all the stuff that stood in her way, she got to live the life she wanted, and she got the guy she loved."

"Right, so, she defies nature and mutates into a human, rips Prince Eric away from the life he's comfortable with, and manipulates everyone around here until she gets what she wants. How sweet," interrupted Roger, sounding sarcastic and rather bored.

Mimi made an affronted noise. "Just because she– Hey...how did you know his name was Prince Eric?"

Roger flushed bright red, scowled, and looked away, mumbling something incoherent about younger cousins, barely heard over Collins' roar of laughter. "Oh now that's rich! Roger, the closet Disney geek! So come on, Roger, tell us, did you identify more with Beauty, or the Beast?"
"Fuck you," Roger muttered, without any real conviction, possibly too busy trying to find his ego, which had promptly whimpered piteously and run into hiding.

"You know, in the original version, the Little Mermaid dies and Prince Eric marries another girl," Mark said, absently. Mimi looked at him, horrified. "What?"

"Way to kill the mood, Markie," Collins answered, before erupting into more laughter at Mimi's rather downtrodden expression.

"I think I'm going to get my nails done." The announcement from Maureen stunned everyone into silence once more, although she herself never stopped scrutinizing her hands. "What do you think?"

"I think maybe you ought to save the money for that lobotomy the doctors were talking about," Joanne answered with a cynical tilt of her brow. "God knows you need it." Mark promptly began laughing so hard he snorted. He paused, considered the noise, snorted again, and then fell into another fit of laughter.

"Christ, is there something in the water here?" Collins asked with vague interest.

"Maybe that's your problem," Roger added, examining Maureen. "Left over contamination of Stupid from living here."

"Yeah well, it wouldn't surprise me," Maureen shot back testily, before rising from her chair and tossing her hair back. "I'm out of here." She shot one last waspish glance at Joanne before exiting the loft with a swagger and a slam of the door.

"Melodrama much?" Mark muttered at the still shuddering door. Joanne huffed a laugh.

"That's Maureen," she said, with a little bit of forced lightness.

He sighed. "Yeah, I know. Believe me, I know."

"Well," Collins said, after a minute, standing up as well, "I'm outta here too, guys. They fixed the ATM at the Food Emporium, so I gotta go rewire it again."

"Uh, yeah, have fun with that," Roger offered, smirking.

Collins just shrugged. "You know the code." They all nodded as he walked to the door, pausing with his fingertips resting against the handle. "Oh, and Mimi?"

"Hmm?"

"My favorite movie was 'The Aristocats.' That Tom O'Malley was my role model." He winked at her and slipped outside, leaving Mimi to giggle happily.
Roger leaned over and pinched her on the leg playfully, grinning when she squealed. "You up for a beer at the Café?"

She smirked. "Oh, I guess I could handle a little alcohol."

"It is past noon, after all," He added, and she laughed as he helped her to her feet. "You two wanna come?" He looked from Joanne to Mark.

Mark shook his head. "I've got some editing to get done before this weekend, since someone decided to waste 2 hours of film."

Roger grinned wickedly in return. "How was I supposed to know the lens cap was still on?" Mark rolled his eyes, but smiled indulgently all the same.

"What about you?" Mimi asked Joanne, who had made no move to get up.

"You're going to the Life Café?"

"Yeah..."

"What are the chances of Maureen being there?"

Mimi thought for a moment. "Probable to...duh."

Joanne gave a little, bitter laugh. "Then thanks, but I'll pass this time."

"Later!" Roger said with a shrug and a wave, as he and Mimi sauntered out the door, arguing good-naturedly over the merits of peeling beer-bottles.

Mark and Joanne sat in the resulting quiet for a moment, slightly uneasy. It wasn't often the two of them were alone together, as the whole issue of Maureen had always seemed to bar any close friendship.

"So," Mark said suddenly, shifting a little closer to her on the couch,"What was your favorite Disney movie?"

Joanne blanched. "Er..."

"Mine was– " he glanced around the apartment, as though expecting foreign spies and the CIA to be listening in. "–The Lion King." She actually cracked an amused smile at his admission, and he flushed a bit. "Purely from a professional standpoint, of course. The animation was amazing."

Joanne smirked at him. "Professional. Right." His blush deepened, and he gave a vague half-shrug.
"Well, maybe I liked the idea behind it too. All about the struggles of finding someplace to call home." He paused, and bit his lower lip, frowning. "But he gets there eventually, doesn't he?"

The smile on her face softened a little at this, with a new understanding about the blonde in front of her. "Yeah, he does." You will too, someday. She didn't say it, but they both heard the words well enough. Even his ears turned red, then, and she decided to spare him further humiliation. "So, my favorite Disney movie?"

He smiled cheerily to cover up his discomfort. "Yup!"

"Well..." it was her turn to flush and fidget a little. "You'll laugh."

"Probably," He agreed, contritely, and she let out a startled splutter of laughter.

"Fine. My favorite move was always...Sleeping Beauty."

Predictably, Mark erupted into peals of mirth. "Sleeping Beauty? You?"He hiccupped a little. "You're about the last person in the world I would expect to be waiting for a Prince Charming."

She glared at him, though the slight smile tugging up the corners of her mouth muted the effect. "Come on. Who doesn't dream of some wonderful person in white dashing in on horseback to sweep you off your feet?" Mark blinked, pointed at himself, and started in on another round of hiccups and giggles. She rolled her eyes. "It would just be nice to...to take a nice long rest up in my tower and let the other person do all the work in the relationship for once, you know? Instead of me fighting through all of it, it could be their turn."

Mark's laughter died down, and he seemed to contemplate her words for a moment. "That all makes sense," he said amiably, then smirked a little. "Right up until the Maureen part of the fairytale."

She huffed out an annoyed breath. "You don't have to tell me that." Maureen was nobody's 'ideal,' and they both knew it.

They fell into silence then, Joanne trying to will away her blush, and Mark shifting around uneasily. "Well," he spoke finally, "I'm sure you'll find your Prince- er, Princess Charming one of these days." She just shrugged non-committaly, and silence lapsed again.

Eventually, Joanne chanced looking over at Mark, to find Mark looking back. He blushed again, though he didn't know why, and she cleared her throat, decidedly flustered. Somehow, the eye contact refused to be broken, though, and their heads seemed to keep drifting closer and closer together. So perhaps it was only natural that Joanne leaned forward and kissed Mark, which was exactly what happened.

It was a decent kiss. Mark finally found out what Maureen saw in Joanne, and Joanne finally learned that kissing a guy- or maybe just kissing Mark- wasn't half bad. In fact, as lips slid across each other in smooth, soft heat, Mark began to seriously contemplate how under-appreciated Joanne actually was, and Joanne was in deep thought about why she'd never tried this before. Her lips parted the tiniest bit in a soft sigh, and, unable to resist, his tongue slid into the warm, silky recesses of her mouth, bursts of light seeming to flare up behind both their eyelids.

However unfortunate it is, all good things must eventually come to an end, and so it was then that Mark remembered he was kissing Maureen's girlfriend. Her lesbian girlfriend. As he remembered this, Joanne...well, Joanne realized she was actually kissing a man. Did Mark count as a man? Yes, she decided, he did, and she was kissing him. That, of course, was the end of the kiss.

"What the hell was that?" She spluttered, wrenching herself away from the blonde, and fighting the urge to burst into a long stream of profanity or hysterical laughter.

"How the hell should I know? You kissed me!" Mark snapped back, very nearly wringing his hands.

"But- but- but you're a man!" She insisted, staring at him. Not a bad kisser, either, but she wasn't going to think about that.

"Thanks for noticing," he muttered back.

"Well!" She said, and then they were quiet again. "I think that's my cue to go," she offered, finally, in a jumbled rush of words. Mark didn't look at her, but nodded his head so violently she thought it might fall off. "Right."

She got up then, and very nearly ran to the loft door, pausing after she wrenched it open to glance hesitantly back at Mark, who was glancing at her. He blushed again and looked away, and she let out another incoherent splutter, and then, she left.

But for the rest of that day, and for many days after, both of them had the same, unbalanced thought running through their heads: Maybe not Princess Charming after all? Oh hell!

fin