Terry/Jennie, rec room

[x-siryn.livejournal.com]

Monday afternoon, Terry and Jennie meet up in the rec room for some good old fashioned vegging out. With VH1's 100 Greatest Heavy Metal Bands.



She's my cherry pie
Cool drink of water
Such a sweet surprise
Tastes so good
Make a grown man cry
Sweet cherry pie oh yeah

Terry nearly fell off the couch, laughing. "Classy. So classy. God in heaven, how can you not love the 80s? Sure they're the most delightful thing to have ever happened to music." VH1 was entirely too fond of their top 100 lists and God bless them for it. Terry hadn't even been aware that there were 100 Hair Bands before today and nothing, nothing could have gotten her out of the rec room until she knew every last one of them.

"Behold, the sounds of my childhood." Jennie gestured with the remote in hand, turning up the volume before setting it on the arm of the couch. Both girls were perched on one of the large couches in the rec room. Jennie had a textbook in her lap, which she was pointedly not studying. "Mom used to sing Guns 'N Roses to me as a lullaby."

"This is brilliant. Tom used to sing me protest songs but...oh my God, this is so great. Why wasn't I born ten years before?" Terry bounced in place, clapping her hands in soundless glee. "Can you imagine growing up with this music? Having that hair?"

"Oh my God, yes," Jennie leaned back against the couch and stretched, "though I think I would have been way more punk. But who doesn't want, like, a snakeskin miniskirt?" She reached out and lifted one of Terry's red locks. "Dude, we should so go find some Aquanet. I wanna see how big this can get."

Terry looked over at Jennie, blue eyes huge and excited, "Do you know that you have just decided my late Halloween costume for me? As soon as we find out who number one is, we should try that." Terry glanced over as the next band--Twisted Sister, of whom Terry had actually heard--came up. "I feel like I should be headbanging."

"With the spandex and the lycra and the ripped t-shirts and stuff." Jennie said, clapping her hands together. "We have to find snakeskin something." She sat up more on the couch. It had a tendency to try and eat her. "Also? Headbanging, you gotta put your whole body into it. Otherwise you hurt your neck." Jennie pulled out her ponytail and demonstrated with the chorus of 'I wanna rock'

"That still looks like I'd break my neck," Terry responded, watching Jennie with admiration. "How in the hell does that not give you whiplash?"

Jennie tossed her hair back like she was in some shampoo commercial. She hadn't bothered to do anything to it in the morning, so it frizzed out and stood up like she had put a bunch of hairspray in it. She giggled and tried to flatten it. "Years of practice, darling. Part of the whole 'misspent youth.' Be glad they're not doing the 100 greatest punk bands. Otherwise I'd show you how to mosh."

Terry laughed, "Punk I can handle. I'm just not up on all this ...hair. That's a good look on you, by the way, it's got a lot of...oomph." Terry's hands described an explosion around her head that very nearly matched the actual frizz that Jennie's hair had achieved.

"I'm very talented," Jennie declared, while gathering her hair and twisting it into a knot at the nape of her neck. "Who's next? Oooh. Dokken. With the extra 'k' for extra rock."

"I think I'm in love already. Love those power chords and that fabulous hall of mirrors and..." Terry cut off suddenly, leaning forward and grabbing for the remote. Her face was a perfect mask of intrigued confusion, "Jennie. Why are you in the Dokken music video? Are you a time traveler and you forgot to tell me?"

It was unmistakable. There, in the polka-dot minidress was a young tanned woman who bore a stunning resemblance to Jennie. She had the same facial shape, same figure. Except for the hair and the eyes. Hers were hazel and frosted blonde, respectively.

"Holy shit," Jennie said, leaning forward and bracing herself on the coffee table, textbook falling forgotten to the floor.

"Mom?"

Terry really did fall off the couch this time as she laughed and ended up laying on her back on the floor, red hair everywhere. "Jennie," she choked out between giggles, "I mean this in the nicest way possible but..." She had to stop, laughing to hard to get the rest of the sentence out. It was a couple minutes before she managed, "This explains so much."

"Oh. My. God." Jennie said, leaning even further towards the TV. "She never told me she was in a freaking Dokken video!" The girl exclaimed as her mother shimmied up and down a pole and pouted seductively. "Oh my God!" Jennie said again.

"Tell me this is on YouTube. This has to be on YouTube because you have to post it to the journals because everyone has to see it because Oh MY GOD, Jennie. Your mom is in a Dokken video! Dancing. In a video." Terry scrambled for the remote to hit record, just in case.

"This makes me wonder if she was in other videos. Like that Tawney Kittaen chick in the Whitesnake video," Jennie said, and then clapped her hands over her eyes. "Oh God, please tell me she's not also in a video where she's writhing all over a Camero. I couldn't take it." She removed her hands from her eyes and stared at the television hungrily. It had been years since she had seen her mother. And even though this was a way younger version in very little clothing, it was still her Mom.

Terry climbed back onto the couch, folding her legs under her. The segment was coming to an end and she waved the remote toward Jennie, "Want to watch it again?"

"Please," Jennie said. Settling back on the couch. "Holy crap. My mother was in a Dokken video. I wonder if it was before or after she got knocked up by a Greek shipping heir." She shook her head. "I guess living in interesting times is a Stavros family trait."

Terry rewound back through the Dokken segment and the comedic talking heads that accompanied it then started over, "You look a lot like her. You should call them up and see if they want to do a remake."

Jennie felt torn between amusement and a sharp pain in her stomach. "Yeah, I do look like her. I'm not her though," she said quietly as she picked her textbook off the floor and inspected it for bent pages. She swallowed the strange feeling of grief that still bubbled up whenever her mother was mentioned. "I should totally find out if this is on YouTube and then email it to my Dad. Just for kicks."

"I wish I had something like this for my mother. I've got some photos that Sean gave me for my birthday last year but that's it." Terry shrugged carelessly. "Would your dad think it was funny?"

"Honestly? I don't know what he thinks. We never talk about Mom. For some reason," Jennie said. She tossed her bangs out of her eyes. "The man is still something of a mystery to me. Though, I think we both lucked out there. I don't fancy suddenly finding out I'm related to you. Via a supervillian."

"That'd be a twist, would it?" Terry rolled her eyes, "Sounds like something that would happen to Nathan one day. Find out that Mr. Summers is his cousin or something."

"Or his brother," Jennie added. "Though, isn't Nathan like old enough to be Mr. Summer's Dad?"

"Not quite, I don't think. Brother's possible." Terry pondered, "They both have that slightly scruffy look sometimes but that might just be that they forget to shave most days."

"They must get all absentminded what with the saving the world eleventy nine ways all day every day," Jennie said, while still staring at her mother do a strange dance around a pole. She knew her mother had questionable taste, but the polka dots were from a whole new dimension of wrong. "Though, some days I forget to shave too."

"Sure, so we all do. But we can wear pants. They have no excuse. They're bad influences too. When Bobby worked for Nathan, there were weeks when he'd been working and I'd end up waking up next to a wildebeest." Terry shuddered, humming along to the song unconsciously.

"Yeah, but you don't have dance classes with the anorexic ballerinas from hell," Jennie shook her head. "I swear, I must be the only one there that's not 5'10 and 90 pounds. Yet, I still have the most stamina out of all of them. Jealous bitches. --God Mom, how old are you here? And why are you wearing that?"

"I was thinking of taking a dance class next semester but you make it sound so charming, I may rethink." Terry frowned at the screen, "I quite like the polka dots. But did the dress really need shoulder pads? She looks like a linebacker."
"They're really fun," Jennie said. "You just gotta stick to the everybody dance class and not the dance for majors one. Which is where all the coke-snorting ballerinas are." Jennie shook her head at the TV. "You should have seen some of the things she made me wear when I was little. Mom loved pink," she made a face. "A lot."

"Avoid coked up skeletons, got it." Terry nodded decisively. "...I really want ice cream now. See what you've done? You and your mother?"

"We're evil like that," Jennie said absently. She shook her head, as if to clear it. "Say we go feed that craving?"

"Definitely." And later, Terry would hit up YouTube. The whole mansion had to know about this. For Justice.

Comments

[x-cypher.livejournal.com]

Oh, Dokken. I fondly remember discussions about "rokken with Dokken" with a friend back in the day.