independent mary dahl / baby doll from btas. penned by bri (they/them). est. 2013.

Mary was quiet a long while; they had taken the car up into the hills just outside of Santa Carla, a little indulgence before heading back into town proper. The glittering boardwalk, the crowded sidewalks on a Friday night. The moon glinted off the black water out in the dark.

"Coming home isn't always good for you," Mary said finally. She had made almost a show of not looking at Star, instead searching in her coat pockets for her lighter, for a crumpled pack of cigarettes. After a beat she found both and lit up, settling back cross-legged on the hood of the car.

"Sometimes it just reminds you why you left in the first place."

Mary looked up sharply — too sharply, and she almost hissed in a breath through gritted teeth, knowing confusion, then frustration, had flitted in half-beats across her face before it settled into diplomatic neutrality.

"Do you know something I don't?" Her tone was as casual as if he had made a prediction about the weather.

It was late; the circle of lamplight over her desk formed the borders of a country he had not been invited to cross. The tiny square windows of the skyscrapers opposite peeked in through slitted blinds.

"You're assuming I'll be there when you go visiting," she added after a moment. It was not a question, but it hung in the air in demand of an answer. Mary's fingertip rapped once on the ink blotter and then was still.

v sad to think how even when mary adores someone it comes w this underlying 'where were you when i was still kind' frustration but then it's like. when were you kind. how old were you when you learned that kindness was not an asset but a weakness

@ harleys on the dash I have a gift for you

The crunch of footfalls on snow and gravel. The creaking of the car as weight lifted up and out of the trunk. The muffled sound of human exertion.

Mary fixed her gaze forward through the gap between front passenger seats and out into the night, along the twin beams of the car headlights, to the almost indeterminable point where they converged to nothingness in the dark. Her expression was stoic, spine straight — a little porcelain doll in the back seat. The cold pressed in on the windows even as the heater thrummed.

"The mob uses this spot too," she said, voice quiet, carefully neutral. It had been a long and tense night. She didn't have the energy to spark the conversation up into a full blown fight. Not yet. The two men who had been hunched over the trunk made their way around the side of the car, labouring into the headlight beam towards the treeline. The light turned them, briefly, white as ghosts; a watery stain had seeped through the fabric of the bundle piled between their arms.

"People watch it. We should have gone somewhere else."

"For a friend like you?" Mary wrinkled her nose, shoved her sunglasses up onto her forehead — a casual but rough gesture, lazing one foot up and one foot down on the long precinct steps, squinting past Oswald at the downtown traffic. "I got a twenty and some leftover Xanax in my purse."

She had been hauled in at just after 1am; the mid-morning sun, weak and smog-filtered though it was, made a too familiar ache start up between her eyes. An overzealous cop, a snide comment (on her part) and a "parole violation" that wouldn't have been enough to hold against a mouthful of spit, let alone in court. But she was tired, and annoyed, and buzzing with frustration that the exact person she hadn't wanted to call had ended up being the one to post bail.

A pause. Another pause. A car horn sounded. "God, you're smug, anybody ever tell you that?"

been caught up w work, but hit the ❤️ for me to go through your meme tag and spam a lil bit

"Depends which part of the hour you think is better." Mary's reply came a little distracted, a little dismissive, but she grinned in spite of it, swiping her hair out of her eyes with the tips of her fingers. A rough, messy gesture.

The door to the kitchen cast a solid square of white light across the hall floor and encroached just that slightest fraction onto the living room floorboards. The sound of dishes clinking, running water, cupboards opening and closing trailed through as if it was riding the electromagnetic.

"If it helps you sleep at night, I don't pay them to like anybody but me." She was sitting on one of the couches, looking up at Harvey with an amused but shrewd expression; after a beat she gestured at the empty seat on the other side of the coffee table. "He's mad I said he couldn't put a bullet through the nicer half of your face."

As if only to be contrarian — she tapped her own cheek, the same side that, on Harvey, was gnarled scar tissue.

"But I figure, you come all the way uptown to talk to me, it must be important enough to hear you out." A little grin. "You've got the worse half of the hour left."

give me mary lowkey a bit obsessed learning what other people DID all day when they were kids bc like. she was booked and BUSY even she doesn't know how old she was when she did her first photo shoot for like cereal or oven mitts or children's shampoo