Author's Note: I posted this on AO3 a couple months ago so it's not exactly new but thank-you ff/net, for finally adding a Girls category. Took you long enough.
Title from Gem Club's 252.

/

New York City is an infected wound, most days; gaping and moist and in desperate need of alcohol. Some days it feels exactly like RENT in all its gritty glory and she's reminded of why she came here in the first place, with her skin so new and raw the air actually felt like acid.

New York City after kissing Jessa on a ten thousand dollar rug is a supernova. She has stardust embedded in her so deep it makes her veins glow – a deep silver under the amber flush of the streetlight; the exact color of Jessa's earrings. They catch in the light as Jessa tugs her further down the street, slipping through shadows like water through fingers and all that's going through her head is Jesus making wine from water, and how much she'd love to transform, and if Jessa asks it was the wine we drank.

It was the wine.

Jessa has a mission, it seems, her fingers like claws, an iron grip; and the city seems to bend for her – streets elongating and twisting and rolling over hills that aren't there, so that the two of them stumble further into the dark and Jessa's hand is still so warm.

Warm like lips, she thinks, like a thumb brushing the shell of her ear; a whisper from the girl who made the word cunt sound like a miracle as they escaped that ten thousand dollar rug (and the stain she almost regrets).

She doesn't realize they've come to a stop until her hand is left cold in the absence of skin and her name is said like electricity.

"Marnie."

Jessa's lips quirk into what might be a smile on anyone else but is laced with such teasing and amusement it's nearly a sneer.

"You know I once peed in this exact spot?" Jessa says with a hint of a chuckle, pointing down at the curb beside them. "Years ago. Hannah – well it doesn't matter, but it was the best fucking pee I ever had while plastered."

And this is the X on her treasure map – a beaten stretch of sidewalk only familiar for the stain she left years before, most likely when she was still calling Marnie "that strange friend of yours, Hannah, with the stick up her ass" and mixing saris with combat boots because cultural theft was in that year.

But then a finger rests on the skin of Marnie's wrist and Jessa's drawing her out again, out of her thoughts, plunging her into a pool of ice water the way she does whenever she sinks her claws into Marnie's mind.

"Hey," she all but murmurs, "Marnie – I must say you actually really surprised me tonight. Maybe you're not as uptight as it seems."

"I'm not- I don't think I'm completely sober, so-"

Jessa's gaze drifts downwards until Marnie can feel it warm on her lips – and Jessa's always had that sort of ethereal glow to her, the kind that lingers long after she's gone, so Marnie shouldn't be as surprised as she is to find her cheeks hot under Jessa's unwavering watch. The girl's a star – not the sun, because she's too sly for anything to stick around long enough to depend on her, but maybe Rigel or Bellatrix and yes- she has always reminded Marnie somewhat of the character from the Harry Potter movies, with the crazed look she sometimes gets and her blatant disregard for the workings of this world.

"You really shouldn't have wasted your one allotted lesbian hookup on such a sack of shit like him," Jessa says now, abandoning her treasured spot on the curb and carrying on down the street. "I'm sure there are much more deserving men to witness a kiss like that."

Jessa's three steps ahead, hair trailing down her back like Rapunzel in a story that doesn't require a man to do any rescuing. Her comment is picked up by the slight breeze that shakes the damp streets and Marnie only catches wisps of it; cottony filaments that make as much sense as the shoes she chose to wear tonight: ankle-breaking but shimmery, the sort of thing she thought she might see on Jessa, which may or may not have been her reason for choosing them after Jessa proposed a girls night.

("Just the two of us," she'd said while still hugging Marnie's pillow, cross-legged on the bed. "Without Hannah and her crackbag of shitiness.")

And then there's a rustling and click and cigarette smoke drifts back with the last of Jessa's words, like maybe they weren't really meant to be heard and more just left to dissipate.

"He did kind of have a boxy face," Marnie comments, a smile pinching her cheeks.

Jessa passes the cigarette back without even looking; full faith that Marnie's fingers will find it the way they do.

"I don't make these things up," Jessa says. She sidesteps a puddle of vomit and reaches back for the cigarette, knowing smoke is filtering through Marnie's lips as graceless as it has since college when Hannah decided it was in their best interest to learn to blow smoke rings. "Next time we go home with the grey-haired man. Especially if his car is older than you."

Marnie laughs. It's clunky and too loud for the hour but Jessa seems to find her feet back on earth at the sound and finally falls into pace beside her, elbow bumping elbow, grazing the hat Marnie still has tucked under her arm.

"And next time I get to kiss you first, all right?"

It's a quiet comment; cheeky, probably said in jest like nearly every other thing that comes out of Jessa's mouth. But she's solid at Marnie's side and there's a plankton-sized honesty to her words, an almost insecurity, like the brief flashes that show up sometimes in her eyes; gone as soon as they appear, only ever visible when it's too late for anyone to still be awake and spinning tales.

(And Marnie's only seen a handful of them over the years, so rare she mostly forgets until it happens again; caught amid an offhanded comment about her mother, or the mention of someplace she went as a child.)

"I-" she starts to reply, but is cut off by a quiet "oh fuck, yes" and Jessa taking off down the street towards an incredibly small playground that's barely lit by one flickering streetlight.

The conversation is lost by the time Marnie catches up and then she's too busy trying to dodge Jessa's outstretched legs from the swing to bother finishing her sentence.

"I'm going to kick you in the cunt," Jessa declares with a warrior cry, kicking her legs so viciously she nearly topples off the swing completely. She clips Marnie's shoulder and makes another attempt with even more vigor.

Marnie makes a grab for her feet and after only managing to get a hold of her ridiculous pair of shoes, resigns herself to throwing her head back in laughter and just planting herself in place as Jessa's target – a bull's-eye in the dark, waiting for the dart to pierce.

/

New York City is grimy at sunrise. Movies always paint it as some sort of cleansing vision, a baptism under the chalky pale light, like the holiness of brick and discarded needles in a sandbox is the exact sort of thing to erase the past night's mistakes. But it's not unholy, either; just grimy, clammy and grimy, like the break of a fever.

The tang of metal may be as close to pure as either girl is allowed as they watch the sunrise from the top of the slide, both lying with their heads hanging just over the edge.

Marnie's sure they meant to go home at some point. It was brought up and agreed upon sometime after Jessa kicked her into the sandbox but then there was another structure to climb and more bars to hang from and after skirts flipped upside down and a knee was scraped it just seemed more fitting to stay.

"I bet like fifty people have had sex right here," is all Jessa says in the long stretch of hour spent at the top of the slide, before the sun pierces the horizon. "I'm sure Hannah has something to say about the diseases we might be catching right now."

Marnie's breath catches in her chest as the usual anger and frustration bubbles up again, this time for that stupid abortion, but always for some flaky absence or another. It would be so easy to just let it all out here and now; bitch and maybe cry and definitely get that painful edge to her voice that always signals exhaustion and she's so tired of this, but Jessa's hand brushes up against hers and she anchors the words back down deep for another time not spent in an almost comfortable silence.

She tries to think of cleansing when the sun breaks through the night sky. It's a dirty sort of beautiful, the way the light drips over the city, and she's sure there's at least some sort of purity in there, that maybe she could find if she were someone whose mind worked like that; someone who saw things through a prism, all fractured and whimsical.

She tries to ignore the soft stroke of Jessa's pinkie against the knob of her wrist, the feather touch that's been going on so long she's sure it's imagined, but Jessa has a certain rhythm to her breathing that matches the small circle being etched into Marnie's skin and any other day she wouldn't even think to notice it but she still wears the ghost of a kiss on her lips and there's still something burning.

"We went to Mexico, when I was small," Jessa starts almost silently, just the warm tone of her voice breaking through the surface of silence. "Mum and Dad and me. Saw the pyramids. Ate something that had Mum shitting herself. Laughed."

The stroking stops long enough for Marnie's heart to pick up, not so much a drum but an echo of the first beat that struck her chest so hard and firm.

Jessa has a ghost in her words; it's as clammy as the slide and chalky as the sky and Marnie knows if she were upright she'd see the flash of someone small in Jessa's eyes – and it's for that reason that she stays flat on her back, giving Jessa the privacy she needs to continue sharing.

"I wanted a rosary so bad. They were practically giving them out on the street for free but Mum said no… said there were better things to believe."

Jessa stops and there's a bitter little laugh and a creak as she shifts in her place, wisps of her hair brushing against Marnie's cheek.

"You didn't kiss me because you wanted to be free, Marnie. You can't find that crap in a silly kiss for some whining fucking man. You like being told you're pretty and you like boys who make you feel wanted and you hate when they actually need you and I like that about you."

A tightness settles in Marnie's chest that seems to squeeze down on her lungs, like a sort of underwater pressure and a break of surface all at once.

"You can be such a shit," Jessa continues, a smile creeping back into her voice. "God, I love that about you. I love that you're so shitty."

"This isn't really a compliment," Marnie manages to say. Her voice has that stupid edge again and she fights to shove it back down but it won't budge.

"No," Jessa muses. "No, it's not a compliment. It's honest, though. Really fucking honest."

"You run," Marnie says, startled by the sharpness to her words. "Just pick up and go when it suits you, even if it leaves Hannah a complete fuckingmess every time you do it, that I have to clean up. I pick up the pieces, Jessa. You know that, don't you? You get to go on your frilly little adventures and Hannah is literally a shell and it comes down to me, to be there. Even when I hate her. Especially- especially when I hate her."

Her face is hot and she's sure she's as flushed as she gets whenever there's conflict, an embarrassment in middle school and even worse in her twenties, but such a common thing that she's nearly completely managed to ignore it this time when Jessa bursts out laughing and puts a hand on her cheek.

"Sorry- I'm sorry. Your face-"

"Jessa."

Jessa palms her heated cheeks and ghosts her fingers down the curve of her face, her touch growing lighter and lighter until Marnie can't feel it at all; can only see Jessa sitting upright, now, finger gripping a stray piece of hair.

"Your face," she repeats, softer. "It's ridiculous."

The tightness spirals out entirely, in such a rush Marnie's lungs let out a breathy sigh, and she has a split second of realization about the glint in Jessa's eyes before it's gone again – already around the corner, not a trace left behind – so much like Jessa herself it's almost painful.

She feels stupid for thinking Jessa was about to reveal some important truth just then; just let her have it at no cost, because she kissed her to make her stay, earlier. She feels foolish and pathetic and all sticky from playground equipment; from this city; from trying, for once in her life, to do something only because it made her feel unhinged.

"I bet you would've lasted five minutes into the threesome before up and locking yourself in a closet," Jessa says with a snicker. "All that manhood. All that sex."

Marnie swats at her, missing horribly. Her hand lands between the two of them. "I'm not a prude, Jessa. Charlie and I-"

"Were fucking lesbians," Jessa groans, slapping Marnie's thigh with an open palm. Her hair falls in her face and she leaves it there for a moment; an actual curtain between the two, hiding Jessa completely. "So boring. Where's the adventure? Where's the passion?"

"I really did love him," Marnie tells her, chest tightening again, as more light creeps across the sky.

"No you didn't, Marnie. He was comfortable. He was safe. Okay? You loved that he was yours, and now he's not. So just… fucking- get over it. This isn't college anymore; we don't have to keep being these people."

A quiet kind of frown quirks Jessa's lips as she turns to face the rest of the climber. Marnie knows she imagines the tremor as Jessa gathers her hair up to one side and lets it all fall, landing like a cloak around her shoulders, but there's a definite sort of dither to Jessa's movements; a tiny quaver to her iridescence like a nick in a force field. Something creeps through. It's startling and Marnie stares back up at the sky.

"I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting to be comfortable," she says quietly.

Jessa makes a small noise; a hum. "There isn't, no. But it becomes a problem when it's the only thing keeping you someplace. You know I've actually enjoyed myself tonight, Marnie. I thought I might get a laugh and maybe forget a bit about losing my job but I actually had fun. I mean, the venture-whatever was a load of dicks, so that was a bit of a downer, but that was a really soft rug."

Marnie's lips curve up in a smile. "It was."

"And you – did you manage to get out of your head, for a bit?"

"I did, actually." Marnie pulls herself upright with the bar above the slide and comes face-to-face with Jessa, whose lips are pursed in what could either be a smile or a very mocking smirk.

"Good. Good for you, Marnie," Jessa says, reaching over to untangle a twig from Marnie's hair. "We'll have to get ditched by Hannah again sometime; do this again. Maybe without the mash-ups. You're not as uptight when you're putting on a show for a skeezy infant of a man. Did heactually have monkeys playing in the background or was I hallucinating from a head injury?"

"That was real," Marnie says with a laugh, fingers tugging through her hair where Jessa's had been just moments ago.

Jessa holds her gaze and tilts her chin slightly, searching for something. It feels like the start of a storm and the last rose on the Bachelorette and Marnie holds her breath, not knowing why, just keeping her eyes fixed on Jessa's; just keeping her head level and her thoughts a low hum. Her lungs fill as Jessa breaks away, giving no inclination as to whether or not she found what she was looking for.

She just nods slowly, firmly, and smiles without even a fraction of the heaviness leaving her eyes.

"I always have cared for you, Marnie," she says. "Possibly not in the way you expected, but enough to not want to see you moping around over some boy who takes an American Apparel advert on vacation. Forget Charlie."

"It's not- I don't think it's really that easy," Marnie starts, but Jessa cuts her off with a raised hand.

"Go have mind-blowing sex with a stranger. Join a gypsy troupe and travel Europe. Just disappear for three months and come home with tattoos in places only your lovers will ever find and don't explain them to anyone – not your mother, not your friends, not yourself. It doesn't matter. Just get out there and live a fucking life and stop caring."

"And if I just go home and eat a tub of ice cream while Hannah has sex with that nutjob in the other room?" She carefully tugs a bobby pin out of her hair and closes her hand around it, squeezing tight.

Jessa opens her mouth and just shrugs. "Tell her to wash her fucking forehead," she says. "Just do that. And keep being miserable."

Jessa makes a face and shrugs again and signals the end of this conversation before she's squirming past Marnie and skidding down the slide, her dress riding up enough to show the scrape on her knee from earlier; when she actually did fall off the swing and stood up with a slight bow.

She's going again, Marnie realizes. Shoes in one hand; hat in the other. She's taking off just like that.

"You even going to say goodbye?" she calls after her.

Jessa turns around halfway through the gate and squints back at her. "I was going to walk you home. Or would you rather stay here and get your morning shower from a homeless man's penis? Up to you."

Marnie lets out a laugh that flutters in her chest. "I'm coming!"

Jessa has her hat on and her hand extended when Marnie catches up; fingers wiggling expectantly, an invitation, waiting for Marnie to take it. She does and it's warm like when they made their way through the apartment lobby; warm like sun and summer and maybe something close to feeling free.

"We could be really great friends," Jessa tells her as she tightens her grip and swings their arms.

"Yeah," Marnie says, fighting to keep the tiny smile off her face. "Until you take off again."

Jessa nods. "Well yes. I like to think of myself as the Last Adventurer; the world won't wait for me to grow roots anywhere. I have to keep going. You understand that, don't you Marnie? I have to keep going. Even if I stop enjoying it. I have stories to create."

And people to leave behind, Marnie thinks, and things to escape.

But she hums her understanding and steals the hat from Jessa's head, placing it on her own, just focusing on the day breaking around them and the coolness of the disgusting city sidewalk under her bare feet and the heat of Jessa's palm against hers.

New York City is a cotton shirt as Jessa walks her home. The air is sweet and clingy, weighted with the changing of seasons; a fluttering flash of white on a clothesline.

She keeps her eyes on the horizon and her hand in Jessa's is safe.