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rionaleonhart) wrote2010-10-18 10:56 pm
rionaleonhart) wrote2010-10-18 10:56 pm
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Fanfiction: Urgently Seeking New Flatmate (Peep Show, 1sentence claim)
I have completed a ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
1sentence claim for Mark Corrigan/Jeremy Usborne of Peep Show! Fifty sentences on the relationship between Mark and Jeremy under the cut. I hope you enjoy reading them more than poor Mark enjoys being their subject.
Title: Urgently Seeking New Flatmate
Fandom: Peep Show
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Mark/Jeremy
Summary: Written for1sentence, using the Beta prompt set.
1. Walking
They’ve been lost for hours on the dark possibly-moors, and it’s cold and they’re hungry and Mark’s legs are sore and Jeremy is being unbelievably annoying, and Mark realises with a horrible jolt that he’s still far more comfortable here than he ever was having dinner with the woman he was planning to marry.
2. Waltz
Jeremy asks him to dance on his birthday; actually asks him to dance, like Mark is the heroine of some Jane Austen novel and he’s being fucking courted, and the worst part is that in a moment of going-to-die-alone weakness Mark almost considers it.
3. Wishes
Jeremy snoring in the bed beside him, Mark covers his face with his hands and pleads with the god he doesn’t believe in to turn back time to – to – Jesus, has his life really never been going in the right direction?
4. Wonder
There are things Jeremy is absolutely ruthless about, things in the pursuit of which he will throw away any shred of human decency he might possess – sex, musical success, the bizarre obsession that he is convinced is ‘love’ – and Mark is more than a little unsettled to realise that he needs to add ‘making Mark stay’ to that mental list.
5. Worry
Mark’s been arrested, which is a bit shit, really, and he should have known this was going to happen if he let Jeremy and Super Hans get into drug dealing, so Jeremy thinks Mark should have tried harder to stop them, it’s really all Mark’s own fault, and now he’s made Jeremy eat all his ice cream because Jeremy’s worried about him, so he can’t exactly not eat all the ice cream, but Mark’s not going to see that as the totally reasonable and human thing it is, so basically Mark’s a dick.
6. Whimsy
Oh, yes, spin-the-bottle, all very fun, all very not-uptight; well, now Mark has kissed his flatmate and spent some time afterwards trying to hide a very unwanted erection from his possibly-girlfriend, and he is determined that he is never going to do anything that could conceivably be described as ‘a bit of fun’ ever again.
7. Wasteland
“All you’ve got is me, Mark,” Jeremy insists, and Mark stares at him and runs a quick mental inventory of his life – it can’t be that hopeless, can it? – and realises, Christ, it’s true.
8. Whiskey and Rum
There’s someone in the bed with Mark; he can feel a warm body pressing against his back, and the moment he realises it he’s so tense he might shatter because he can’t remember last night, he can’t remember who this is, and he’s going to have to make awkward conversation and what if she wants a relationship and oh fuck is that a man?
9. War
“How can you think,” Mark demands, his voice cracking, “that costing me my job is morally equivalent to a snide comment about your music?”
10. Weddings
Although Mark can’t say he’s disappointed to find that being married to Sophie doesn’t actually entail in any way sharing his life with her, he can’t help wondering at times what an actual marriage would have been like, and it hits him when he’s switching on the oven with one hand and calling Jeremy to ask when he’ll be back with the other: it’s this; marriage is this.
11. Birthday
Jeremy’s present to Mark, it turns out, is uninviting everyone from the party, and beneath his not unwarranted outrage Mark is pathetically grateful; it’s exactly what he needed.
12. Blessings
All things considered, it’s not as completely horrible as Mark was expecting.
13. Bias
“I can’t believe you’d go out with her and not me,” Jeremy complains; “this is so unfair,” and Mark stares at him before saying, “Three things, Jeremy: firstly, she’s a woman; secondly, I see you all the time, and thirdly, Dobby has the distinct date-situational advantage over you of never having put laxatives in my food.”
14. Burning
Mark would never have expected them to set the flat ablaze with their desire for each other, but Jeremy’s ill-advised attempt at a candlelit dinner was to prove him wrong in a very literal sense.
15. Breathing
“Nancy’s flown back,” Jeremy blubbers messily into Mark’s neck, taking in great gulps of air between sobs, and Mark pats him awkwardly on the back and tries to assemble his features into an expression of sympathy, concealing his main concern: he only washed this bloody shirt this morning.
16. Breaking
Mark, gazing down the many storeys to the unforgiving pavement below, finds himself thinking that, well, whether he dies or is simply severely injured he certainly can’t be reasonably expected to marry, and Jeremy only just finds him in time to wrestle him back into the flat.
17. Belief
Jeremy’s conviction that he’s a musical genius is driving Mark to breaking point, but he can survive this because he knows the One is out there, somewhere; one day he’s going to find her and start the life he should have been living for at least a decade by now, and until then he just has to cope with his flatmate’s delusion.
18. Balloon
“No, Jeremy, it is certainly not an acceptable condom substitute.”
19. Balcony
It’s like Romeo and Juliet, Mark reflects, except Juliet is a balding man-child in his thirties and Mark, rather than courting him, is begging to be let in after having been mugged for his keys, and ultimately the only parts of the comparison that hold are the balcony and the assured mutual destruction.
20. Bane
“There, there,” Jeremy says, patting him rather patronisingly on the head, “these things happen,” which would be infuriating enough even were it not for the fact that these things clearly happen entirely because of Jeremy.
21. Quiet
Jeremy – well, Jared – is leaving for his cult, and the impending prospect of a Jeremyless household somehow feels rather more bleak than Mark would have expected it to.
22. Quirks
“I’m not sure it counts as a ‘normal housemate quirk’ that I should be expected to ‘put up with’; do you have an actual compulsion to masturbate in my bed?”
23. Question
There must be a reason why he hasn’t simply thrown Jeremy out yet, despite having every legal, moral and self-preservational reason to, but as every explanation he can imagine is profoundly disturbing Mark tries not to think too much about it.
24. Quarrel
“It’s only fifty quid,” Jeremy protests, “and you’ve forgiven me for much worse things, so I didn’t think you’d mind,” and Mark splutters incoherently for a moment before managing to say, “That’s not how forgiveness works, Jeremy.”
25. Quitting
“I’ll still visit,” Mark says, awkwardly, “and – well, it’s completely unreasonable, really, but I suppose I could keep covering the rent, just until you find a job,” and Jeremy just keeps smiling and doesn’t hear a word.
26. Jump
For fuck’s sake, Mark mentally snaps at himself, can’t you just do something without overthinking it for once in your miserably repressed life?, but he’s still pulling away, apologising, rebuttoning his shirt with shaking fingers.
27. Jester
Mark takes a deep breath and says, in the flat voice of a man who has given up on everything, “Was the actual destruction of my watch the intention of the trick?”
28. Jousting
“You ruin my chances with Big Suze by telling her I’ve got chlamydia; I give you chlamydia; how is that not fair?”
29. Jewel
“I’ve not got much incentive to pay you if you act like this every time I give you the rent, have I?” Jeremy demands, and Mark presses his fingers to his temple and grinds out, “For God’s sake, Jeremy, I don’t want payment via robbery.”
30. Just
“Okay, first of all, Mark, I didn’t tell your girlfriend you were a murderer; all I did was imply it.”
31. Smirk
Mark hates Jeremy’s expression, like he’s won, but he certainly doesn’t feel like a victor himself, here on his knees, so he doesn’t openly take issue with it.
32. Sorrow
“You’ll cope without me, won’t you?” Mark asks, attempting a manly pat on the shoulder, and then he takes a step back in terror when Jeremy actually starts to cry.
33. Stupidity
Mark agrees to take Jeremy along to meet the One, because speaking to the One on his own makes him incapable of articulate speech in a way that clearly indicates the depth of his love for her but may possibly turn out to be a hindrance when they are, as he hopes they eventually will be, married; that night, he stares at the ceiling and listens to the squeaking of bedsprings through the wall and thinks that he really should have anticipated this.
34. Serenade
“Obviously it’s flattering that you’d dedicate a song to me,” Mark says, having refrained from blocking his ears with a valiant effort, “but don’t you think ‘My Twat Landlord Won’t Let Me Off The Rent’ might have fairly niche appeal?”
35. Sarcasm
Mark is apologising, cleaning spilled wine off Jeremy’s new shoes, and Jeremy says, “Oh, blow me, Mark,” and Mark meets his eyes from between his legs and there’s an extremely uncomfortable moment.
36. Sordid
He hadn’t exactly expected flowers or romance or even a shirt that hadn’t already been worn for three days straight – it is Jeremy, after all – but something about being shagged in the toilets at McDonald’s is still frankly depressing.
37. Soliloquy
Mark occasionally wonders whether anyone else is quite as prone to thinking in full sentences as he is; he’d be surprised if Jeremy had any internal voice at all beyond growling, inarticulate animal instinct, whispering ‘sex’ and ‘food’ and ‘somehow becoming an internationally recognised superstar on the back of indescribably dreadful music, to use the term loosely, in a genre that your flatmate thinks may possibly be called “techno”’, which is perhaps where the analogy breaks down.
38. Sojourn
“Jeremy,” Mark eventually works up the nerve to say, seven years later, “didn’t you say you’d only be staying for a couple of months?”
39. Share
“You’ve been a good mate,” Jeremy says, “and when they start sending me royalties, which they definitely will because the new track’s amazing, I’ll split them with you fifty-fifty – or, well, not actually fifty-fifty, obviously, but I’ll definitely give you something,” and, although Mark knows that there are no royalties to be had, he does sort of appreciate the gesture.
40. Solitary
Jeremy thinks about it a lot, but he’s never tried anything; he knows Mark will freak out and run away, because everything has to have so much fucking significance in his world, and then Jeremy will be on his own.
41. Nowhere
No job, no Sophie, no future, and Mark stares blankly as the flat is repossessed and Jeremy hisses “Didn’t you ever think of my life?” into his ear.
42. Neutral
“Jeremy, tell them they weren’t my drugs!” Mark begs, but Jeremy, after a glance at the stern-looking police officer, decides that it would be best not to take sides on this occasion.
43. Nuance
Jeremy isn’t a completely selfish bastard, Mark will concede, but he acts so very much like one that the finer points of his character are ultimately negligible.
44. Near
It hits Mark when he’s pretending to be a normal person for long enough to escape a conversation with one of Sophie’s friends that Jeremy is the only human being who really understands who he is, and that’s so incredibly depressing that he thinks he might actually cry.
45. Natural
“I may think creative expression is overrated,” Mark protests, “but that doesn’t mean I hate it; I’m just asking you to occasionally go about your daily tasks with clothes on, which I think you’ll agree is not unreasonable.”
46. Horizon
Some day, Mark is going to get out: out of this rut, out of this life, away from Jeremy, some day soon, surely, surely.
47. Valiant
“I can’t believe you’d shout at me after I just saved your life,” Jeremy says indignantly, and Mark breathes for a moment before saying, “Whilst I’m sure I must seem terribly ungrateful, I’m not sure it’s technically ‘saving’ if you were behind the wheel of the car that nearly killed me.”
48. Virtuous
There’s a big difference between thinking about something and actually doing it, and, okay, so he did actually do it, but he definitely spent a lot more time thinking about it first, and he didn’t really get hold of anything, and actually it’s basically like he didn’t shove his hand down Mark’s boxers at all, so he doesn’t know what Mark’s getting so worked up about.
49. Victory
Fuck Mark; you obviously can win at eating dinner, because Jeremy’s just done it.
50. Defeat
It happens after Mark’s wedding, after the Nancy-Superhans fiasco; they’re sitting on the sofa together, drunk and miserable, and when Jeremy leans in for a kiss Mark lets him because, well, it can’t possibly make things any worse.
1sentence claim for Mark Corrigan/Jeremy Usborne of Peep Show! Fifty sentences on the relationship between Mark and Jeremy under the cut. I hope you enjoy reading them more than poor Mark enjoys being their subject.Title: Urgently Seeking New Flatmate
Fandom: Peep Show
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Mark/Jeremy
Summary: Written for
1sentence, using the Beta prompt set.1. Walking
They’ve been lost for hours on the dark possibly-moors, and it’s cold and they’re hungry and Mark’s legs are sore and Jeremy is being unbelievably annoying, and Mark realises with a horrible jolt that he’s still far more comfortable here than he ever was having dinner with the woman he was planning to marry.
2. Waltz
Jeremy asks him to dance on his birthday; actually asks him to dance, like Mark is the heroine of some Jane Austen novel and he’s being fucking courted, and the worst part is that in a moment of going-to-die-alone weakness Mark almost considers it.
3. Wishes
Jeremy snoring in the bed beside him, Mark covers his face with his hands and pleads with the god he doesn’t believe in to turn back time to – to – Jesus, has his life really never been going in the right direction?
4. Wonder
There are things Jeremy is absolutely ruthless about, things in the pursuit of which he will throw away any shred of human decency he might possess – sex, musical success, the bizarre obsession that he is convinced is ‘love’ – and Mark is more than a little unsettled to realise that he needs to add ‘making Mark stay’ to that mental list.
5. Worry
Mark’s been arrested, which is a bit shit, really, and he should have known this was going to happen if he let Jeremy and Super Hans get into drug dealing, so Jeremy thinks Mark should have tried harder to stop them, it’s really all Mark’s own fault, and now he’s made Jeremy eat all his ice cream because Jeremy’s worried about him, so he can’t exactly not eat all the ice cream, but Mark’s not going to see that as the totally reasonable and human thing it is, so basically Mark’s a dick.
6. Whimsy
Oh, yes, spin-the-bottle, all very fun, all very not-uptight; well, now Mark has kissed his flatmate and spent some time afterwards trying to hide a very unwanted erection from his possibly-girlfriend, and he is determined that he is never going to do anything that could conceivably be described as ‘a bit of fun’ ever again.
7. Wasteland
“All you’ve got is me, Mark,” Jeremy insists, and Mark stares at him and runs a quick mental inventory of his life – it can’t be that hopeless, can it? – and realises, Christ, it’s true.
8. Whiskey and Rum
There’s someone in the bed with Mark; he can feel a warm body pressing against his back, and the moment he realises it he’s so tense he might shatter because he can’t remember last night, he can’t remember who this is, and he’s going to have to make awkward conversation and what if she wants a relationship and oh fuck is that a man?
9. War
“How can you think,” Mark demands, his voice cracking, “that costing me my job is morally equivalent to a snide comment about your music?”
10. Weddings
Although Mark can’t say he’s disappointed to find that being married to Sophie doesn’t actually entail in any way sharing his life with her, he can’t help wondering at times what an actual marriage would have been like, and it hits him when he’s switching on the oven with one hand and calling Jeremy to ask when he’ll be back with the other: it’s this; marriage is this.
11. Birthday
Jeremy’s present to Mark, it turns out, is uninviting everyone from the party, and beneath his not unwarranted outrage Mark is pathetically grateful; it’s exactly what he needed.
12. Blessings
All things considered, it’s not as completely horrible as Mark was expecting.
13. Bias
“I can’t believe you’d go out with her and not me,” Jeremy complains; “this is so unfair,” and Mark stares at him before saying, “Three things, Jeremy: firstly, she’s a woman; secondly, I see you all the time, and thirdly, Dobby has the distinct date-situational advantage over you of never having put laxatives in my food.”
14. Burning
Mark would never have expected them to set the flat ablaze with their desire for each other, but Jeremy’s ill-advised attempt at a candlelit dinner was to prove him wrong in a very literal sense.
15. Breathing
“Nancy’s flown back,” Jeremy blubbers messily into Mark’s neck, taking in great gulps of air between sobs, and Mark pats him awkwardly on the back and tries to assemble his features into an expression of sympathy, concealing his main concern: he only washed this bloody shirt this morning.
16. Breaking
Mark, gazing down the many storeys to the unforgiving pavement below, finds himself thinking that, well, whether he dies or is simply severely injured he certainly can’t be reasonably expected to marry, and Jeremy only just finds him in time to wrestle him back into the flat.
17. Belief
Jeremy’s conviction that he’s a musical genius is driving Mark to breaking point, but he can survive this because he knows the One is out there, somewhere; one day he’s going to find her and start the life he should have been living for at least a decade by now, and until then he just has to cope with his flatmate’s delusion.
18. Balloon
“No, Jeremy, it is certainly not an acceptable condom substitute.”
19. Balcony
It’s like Romeo and Juliet, Mark reflects, except Juliet is a balding man-child in his thirties and Mark, rather than courting him, is begging to be let in after having been mugged for his keys, and ultimately the only parts of the comparison that hold are the balcony and the assured mutual destruction.
20. Bane
“There, there,” Jeremy says, patting him rather patronisingly on the head, “these things happen,” which would be infuriating enough even were it not for the fact that these things clearly happen entirely because of Jeremy.
21. Quiet
Jeremy – well, Jared – is leaving for his cult, and the impending prospect of a Jeremyless household somehow feels rather more bleak than Mark would have expected it to.
22. Quirks
“I’m not sure it counts as a ‘normal housemate quirk’ that I should be expected to ‘put up with’; do you have an actual compulsion to masturbate in my bed?”
23. Question
There must be a reason why he hasn’t simply thrown Jeremy out yet, despite having every legal, moral and self-preservational reason to, but as every explanation he can imagine is profoundly disturbing Mark tries not to think too much about it.
24. Quarrel
“It’s only fifty quid,” Jeremy protests, “and you’ve forgiven me for much worse things, so I didn’t think you’d mind,” and Mark splutters incoherently for a moment before managing to say, “That’s not how forgiveness works, Jeremy.”
25. Quitting
“I’ll still visit,” Mark says, awkwardly, “and – well, it’s completely unreasonable, really, but I suppose I could keep covering the rent, just until you find a job,” and Jeremy just keeps smiling and doesn’t hear a word.
26. Jump
For fuck’s sake, Mark mentally snaps at himself, can’t you just do something without overthinking it for once in your miserably repressed life?, but he’s still pulling away, apologising, rebuttoning his shirt with shaking fingers.
27. Jester
Mark takes a deep breath and says, in the flat voice of a man who has given up on everything, “Was the actual destruction of my watch the intention of the trick?”
28. Jousting
“You ruin my chances with Big Suze by telling her I’ve got chlamydia; I give you chlamydia; how is that not fair?”
29. Jewel
“I’ve not got much incentive to pay you if you act like this every time I give you the rent, have I?” Jeremy demands, and Mark presses his fingers to his temple and grinds out, “For God’s sake, Jeremy, I don’t want payment via robbery.”
30. Just
“Okay, first of all, Mark, I didn’t tell your girlfriend you were a murderer; all I did was imply it.”
31. Smirk
Mark hates Jeremy’s expression, like he’s won, but he certainly doesn’t feel like a victor himself, here on his knees, so he doesn’t openly take issue with it.
32. Sorrow
“You’ll cope without me, won’t you?” Mark asks, attempting a manly pat on the shoulder, and then he takes a step back in terror when Jeremy actually starts to cry.
33. Stupidity
Mark agrees to take Jeremy along to meet the One, because speaking to the One on his own makes him incapable of articulate speech in a way that clearly indicates the depth of his love for her but may possibly turn out to be a hindrance when they are, as he hopes they eventually will be, married; that night, he stares at the ceiling and listens to the squeaking of bedsprings through the wall and thinks that he really should have anticipated this.
34. Serenade
“Obviously it’s flattering that you’d dedicate a song to me,” Mark says, having refrained from blocking his ears with a valiant effort, “but don’t you think ‘My Twat Landlord Won’t Let Me Off The Rent’ might have fairly niche appeal?”
35. Sarcasm
Mark is apologising, cleaning spilled wine off Jeremy’s new shoes, and Jeremy says, “Oh, blow me, Mark,” and Mark meets his eyes from between his legs and there’s an extremely uncomfortable moment.
36. Sordid
He hadn’t exactly expected flowers or romance or even a shirt that hadn’t already been worn for three days straight – it is Jeremy, after all – but something about being shagged in the toilets at McDonald’s is still frankly depressing.
37. Soliloquy
Mark occasionally wonders whether anyone else is quite as prone to thinking in full sentences as he is; he’d be surprised if Jeremy had any internal voice at all beyond growling, inarticulate animal instinct, whispering ‘sex’ and ‘food’ and ‘somehow becoming an internationally recognised superstar on the back of indescribably dreadful music, to use the term loosely, in a genre that your flatmate thinks may possibly be called “techno”’, which is perhaps where the analogy breaks down.
38. Sojourn
“Jeremy,” Mark eventually works up the nerve to say, seven years later, “didn’t you say you’d only be staying for a couple of months?”
39. Share
“You’ve been a good mate,” Jeremy says, “and when they start sending me royalties, which they definitely will because the new track’s amazing, I’ll split them with you fifty-fifty – or, well, not actually fifty-fifty, obviously, but I’ll definitely give you something,” and, although Mark knows that there are no royalties to be had, he does sort of appreciate the gesture.
40. Solitary
Jeremy thinks about it a lot, but he’s never tried anything; he knows Mark will freak out and run away, because everything has to have so much fucking significance in his world, and then Jeremy will be on his own.
41. Nowhere
No job, no Sophie, no future, and Mark stares blankly as the flat is repossessed and Jeremy hisses “Didn’t you ever think of my life?” into his ear.
42. Neutral
“Jeremy, tell them they weren’t my drugs!” Mark begs, but Jeremy, after a glance at the stern-looking police officer, decides that it would be best not to take sides on this occasion.
43. Nuance
Jeremy isn’t a completely selfish bastard, Mark will concede, but he acts so very much like one that the finer points of his character are ultimately negligible.
44. Near
It hits Mark when he’s pretending to be a normal person for long enough to escape a conversation with one of Sophie’s friends that Jeremy is the only human being who really understands who he is, and that’s so incredibly depressing that he thinks he might actually cry.
45. Natural
“I may think creative expression is overrated,” Mark protests, “but that doesn’t mean I hate it; I’m just asking you to occasionally go about your daily tasks with clothes on, which I think you’ll agree is not unreasonable.”
46. Horizon
Some day, Mark is going to get out: out of this rut, out of this life, away from Jeremy, some day soon, surely, surely.
47. Valiant
“I can’t believe you’d shout at me after I just saved your life,” Jeremy says indignantly, and Mark breathes for a moment before saying, “Whilst I’m sure I must seem terribly ungrateful, I’m not sure it’s technically ‘saving’ if you were behind the wheel of the car that nearly killed me.”
48. Virtuous
There’s a big difference between thinking about something and actually doing it, and, okay, so he did actually do it, but he definitely spent a lot more time thinking about it first, and he didn’t really get hold of anything, and actually it’s basically like he didn’t shove his hand down Mark’s boxers at all, so he doesn’t know what Mark’s getting so worked up about.
49. Victory
Fuck Mark; you obviously can win at eating dinner, because Jeremy’s just done it.
50. Defeat
It happens after Mark’s wedding, after the Nancy-Superhans fiasco; they’re sitting on the sofa together, drunk and miserable, and when Jeremy leans in for a kiss Mark lets him because, well, it can’t possibly make things any worse.
no subject
But he's Mark. As depressing as it is to contemplate, Jeremy is the best thing in his life, and he's not likely to do better.
no subject
Oh, poor Mark. Someone give him a hug. Not you, Jeremy.
no subject
They really ARE such a case of 'can't live with each other, can't live without each other'.