Telling Stories: Less Than Strangers
By Missy SERIES: Telling Stories:
Title of fic: Less Than Strangers
RATING: PG-13ish (For discussion of mature themes; language)
PAIRING: Shirley/Richie Cunningham
DISTRIBUTION: To Squeaky, LW, Kai and FG so far; any other archives are welcome to ask, but disclaimers must be included, my email left intact. send a URL, and provide full disclaimers as well as credit me fully. Please inform me if you are going to submit my work to any sort of search engine. Please do not submit my work to a search engine that picks out random sets of words and uses them as key words, such as "Google"
Please contact me in order for this story to be placed on an archive, or if you want know of a friend who would enjoy my works, please email me their address and I will mail them the stories, expressly for the purpose of link trading. MiSTiers are welcomed! Please do inform me that you'd like to do the MiSTing, however, and send me a copy of the finished product. I'd also love to archive any MiSTings that are made of my work!
CATEGORY: Monolouge, I think; Songfic series
FEEDBACK: PLEASE?!
SONG USED: "Less Than Strangers" By Tracy Chapman
SPOILLER/SUMMARY: Shirley's situation is far more desperate than she would ever let on..
NOTES: Yes, this is a songfic; and, bear with me, it's also a songfic series, featuring songs that aren't of the era the show is set into -___-. Bear with me, though; I do believe that the song fits very nicely into the setting of this particular series. The previous titles in the series are "Speak The Word" (Lenny/Laverne) and "Keep The Walls From Falling Down" (Squiggy/Rhonda), "Fiction In The Space Between" (Carmine); and following titles will be "Dreams and Visions" (Concluding fic)

All lyrics from this series W/By Tracy Chapman; lyrics culled from: http://rzsunhome.rrze.uni-erlangen.de:81/~sichglei/tracy/songs/ltellsto.html#top

Thanks to Allie, Paris and FG for Beta

***
She was alone.
You and me
Had some history
Had a semblance of honesty
All that has changed now

Her hands were rough, callused, too used to the feeling of a washboard beneath them. The power had been disconnected for a week, something she considered a bit of a blessing.

She would never really forgive herself for what she had done, but times were desperate. The milk had gone sour, and whatever work she picked up never seemed to be enough. So when tabloid reporters came to her on the impression that she had once been Carmine Ragusa's fiancee, she didn't turn down their hundred-dollar checks. It was enough to keep her family fed for another winter's day in a tiny Germanic town.

There were five children in the house. They absorbed her energy to the point of exhaustion. No one in the little town they had decamped into would hire her; she carried everywhere the stigmata of being a divorcee.

Walter proved to be her intellectual better. It was what she had never dreamed of, but had a quiet fear of; complete and total abandonment, in a strange land where she didn't speak the language. The risk she had undertaken to marry a doctor. A man who had promised her eternity, then left at the first sign of trouble.

I thought I saw you yesterday
I thought I passed you on the street
I swear I saw your face
I was not imagining
That you stole a glance my way
You walked away from me
My heart it may be broken
But my eyes are dry to see

Bones were visible beneath her pale skin. She swore that, when staring at her wrist, she could see blood traveling through veins. All the more so, under a cheap red dress that felt so tight. It wasn't even her style.

Hunger and maternal instinct had made her wily. Shirley held one clear memory within her mind from the week's endless milieu; Richie Cunningham, alone and in army fatigues, eating in the town's lone café.

Carefully, she sprinkled her cleavage with the last of her good perfume; French. Walter had given it to her for their second anniversary. The last they would ever spend together.

Sitting before the mirror was a woman whom she did not recognize, whom she didn't want to become, even now, as she walked within her skin.

She wondered what Laverne would think of her now and, desperately, wished for a way to get word to her. This would prove impossible, she feared. She hadn't the money for a disposable pen.

Shirley ducked into an expensive linen coat. One thing kept her going.

How can it be
We are less than strangers

Five downy heads, buried under blankets so that the winter's chill wouldn't catch within their chests. She kissed them gently before turning down oil lamps and departing their shack, an expression of determination worn bluntly on her face.


Move on to "Telling Stories: Dreams And Visions"