Chapter Text
“Libby I told you, I can’t be seen with these freaks,” Ancap hissed as Libertarian pulled up in front of Ancap’s school in her pristine beige Ford Mustang, aforementioned freaks cluttered in the back. The shotgun seat was free for Ancap.
“Pot calling the kettle black, weirdo,” Socdem, the worst of the bunch, snipped back before getting hug-assaulted by Progressive perched to her left.
“Don’t say that, Socks-”
“Don’t call me that,” Socdem blushed.
“-I’d love to be freaks with you! To be special you-”
“Have to be different, yes we know, Pro,” Socdem let herself be squished into Progressive’s gray sweatshirt, struggling only slightly.
“Are you two done now?” Conservative nervously chuckled from beside them. Ancap had already gotten into the car, not without rolling her eyes.
“Should’ve said ‘normies’,” she whispered under her breath.
“You can get your own car if you don’t like the arrangement, sugar,” Libertarian lilted as she shifted gears. Ancap had taught her that, and it would’ve been Ancap who owned that car if she’d been a pussy like her, but she won’t tell her cousin that.
Libertarian worriedly squinted at her from the side. “What’s got you so sour?” she asked under the bickering of her annoying friends.
“Nothing,” Ancap shrugged. “Just drive.”
It’s that summer that they had both turned sixteen, and Libby passed her license test with flying colors because Ancap taught her to not give a shit about the learner’s permit and just learn. Libertarian got her car and independence before all their peers.
Ancap on the other hand got caught smoking weed and was immediately sent off to a day school for troubled teens and told she could only get her license a year later, when the delinquent school supposedly had had some impact on her negative behavior. Libby was nice enough to pick her up from there every day.
Admittedly, this was on Ancap; all of her cousins smoked weed, but she was the only one who chose to light a blunt right during the big thanksgiving family dinner to “send a message”. Ancap could curse all of her past selves.
Ancap’s and Libby’s seventeenth birthday the summer after was celebrated together as always, in front of the sprawling art deco mansion of grandpa Capitalist; the lush summer gardens were littered with garlands in yellow and white and gold and so many people Ancap conveniently forgot to invite her friends again. They didn’t need to know she was rich; they’d only use it against her.
Of course, Libby invited her friends. The annoying trio she went to school with were glued to the hors d’oeuvres like every year because Socdem couldn’t help herself and Conservative loved talking to the wait staff. It took only one bad conversation between Conservative and Progressive to turn both of them infinitely more annoying: Ancap had listened in when Progressive explained to her taller and richer friend that average waiters and waitresses (Progressive always used both the male and female form) were horribly mistreated and underpaid, and so Conservative made it her christian duty to talk to at least a handful of them at every. Single. Gathering. There was something deeply absurd about Socdem munching on mini pulled pork sandwiches while Conservative tried to get the waiters (and waitresses!) to divulge their plight like they weren’t working professionals.
Of course, Progressive made a point to come up with new, more creative ways the wait staff were exploited whenever Conservative finally thought her conscience at rest, a perfect feedback loop of waiter harassment. Libby’s friends truly were the worst.
Progressive eventually tore herself away from the bizarre scene to sit with Ancap and Libby, dutifully greeting guests at the estate entrance. Ancap ignored them in favor of smiling sugary-sweet at aunts and uncles and great aunts and second degree cousins and friends of the family she was embarrassed to be able to recognize.
“Yo, Hoppean!” she exclaimed with genuine excitement when one of their closest cousins finally arrived, unironed Hugo Boss dress shirt buttoned the wrong way and bags under her eyes.
They hugged, Hoppean patting Ancap’s back a little too hard like every year. Maybe the pats got harder with time, she mused.
“Look at you,” Ancap smiled brightly, holding Hoppean by her shoulders. “Stayed up all night on your forums?”
Hoppean waved her head in a way that signaled “yes, but Libby doesn’t need to hear it”, then abruptly stopped when she spotted Progressive sitting on their welcoming table. Progressive was faster at sneering though.
“Displeasure to see you, welfare queen,” Hoppean crinkled her nose. Progressive just rolled her eyes.
“Have fun starving in a ditch with no one to take care of you,” she mumbled after Hoppean had passed them by. “That’s by far your shittiest cousin, why do you keep inviting her?” she turned to Libby.
Libby shrugged. “She’s family.”
“Shitty family.”
“Leave it to leftists to not get the basic concept of family,” Ancap pulled out a cigarette that Libertarian immediately snatched out of her hand.
“Ancap!” she whisper-shouted. “What did we talk about? Not in front of family. You’ll just get in trouble again.”
Ancap pointedly took back the cigarette and shoved in back into its packaging, once again hiding it in her purse.
“As I was saying,” Progressive chose to ignore the interaction, “you two shouldn’t celebrate together.”
Ancap’s hand at once found its way to her temple; not the astrology talk. Every single year since Progressive had found that crystal online shop they’d had to listen to the same rant about Libby being a Virgo and Ancap a Leo which is why they shouldn’t celebrate on the same day; somehow, that would piss off the stars as if they weren’t just gas balls hurtling through empty space.
“Sorry, Pro, I keep forgetting...what’s my rising sign?”
Progressive didn’t even sigh; like an overly enthusiastic broken record, she loved repeating herself. Ancap combed her chin length locks over her face to hide from the misery.
“You’re a Virgo with Taurus rising, and Ancap is Leo with Aquarius rising-”
“The incel cow and the sea lion,” Ancap giggled under her breath, mad with annoyance.
She had been heard. “Hey! Maybe I can remember it this way!” Libby cooed, suddenly leaning close and placing her soft hands on Ancap’s shoulder.
“Glad to be of service,” Ancap leaned in, too, gently bumping their heads together. They had the same hair color, the same blue eyes; they looked remarkably similar. Only their structure differed: Ancap’s face was longer, thinner, more angular, and if you squinted, you could see her eyes were more steel than sky.
“Oh, it’s Neocon,” Libby whispered, sitting back up straight. Ancap rolled her eyes, but followed suit. Neocon was both the black sheep and the most promising member of their extended family; born an heir of both their and Conservative’s clan, he established an amazing connection between the two bloodlines despite neither of them liking him much. Both accused him of being a spineless twat when he wasn’t around, but coddled him like a prince when he was.
Libby jumped up from her seat to enthusiastically hug him, a gesture he loved to patronizingly demand of all female family members younger than him.
“Hi, Libby!” he grinned at her with the whitest teeth Ancap had ever seen. They were almost blue. “All grown up, a young woman!”
Libertarian giggled coyly, waving on her feet. “I’m only seventeen!”
“And so beautiful already. You’ll make your future husband very happy, I’m sure. Especially with your wonderful long hair!” He semi-playfully tried to tug open her ponytail, and Libby shockingly almost let him.
Future husband. Blergh, Ancap frowned at his gelled back hair and his perfectly tailored suit. She would’ve liked him a lot more if he was fat or at least had male pattern baldness at thirty, but sadly, Neocon was in tip-top shape. Vanity and good genes would do that to you.
“Happy Birthday to you too, Ancap,” he grinned, but it looked purposefully stilted, like he wanted her to know he didn’t like her. Ancap schooled her face into something between bored and condescending; two could play that game.
“You’re more growing up into a goblin than a princess, though,” he “joked” with no cordiality. Ancap hated herself for it, but her face froze.
“Aw,” Libby interjected, “what’s wrong with Ancap?” A soft hand patted Ancap’s head, fingers shortly running through her frizz. “I think she’s very pretty, just different.”
Ancap swallowed.
“You don’t know what men like, sweetie,” Neocon was still grinning that slimy wide grin that just begged for an NAP violation. “Just look at her hair.”
“And what exactly is wrong with my hair?” Ancap asked, feigning smugness. She still regretted it.
“Oh, you know,” a confident, low chuckle. Maybe Neocon would die of a heart attack if she manifested it hard enough. “It’s too short, and too frizzy, and with your nose-,” he interrupted himself, looking over their small round as if to ask for permission, “you look so Jewish! Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
Ancap could feel the color draining from her face. For a split second, the whole world fell away, leaving only Libby, Neocon, and her. Her face was gray, and Neocon was still smiling and she could tell Libby was considering whether she looked too “Jewish” to be beautiful as if they didn’t look like sisters.
“Excuse me?” Progressive chimed in from the side, tearing Ancap out of her reverie. “What did you just say?”
Neocon turned around, surprised and clearly miffed his authority on what was okay to say and what wasn’t being challenged. Still, he kept his face affable, grinning at Libby’s friend. “Nothing, just friendly family banter with your friend.”
“We’re not friends,” Progressive dumbly replied.
Neocon was smart enough to know when to take an opening and book it. “My mistake. I’ll leave you to it then, have fun at your party, birthday girls!” he smiled one last time and Ancap hated herself for self-consciously touching her hair while he was still looking at her.
“Girl, your family is so racist,” Progressive said to Libertarian, but Ancap was only half listening.
“Oh, it’s not that bad,” Libby waved her off, sitting back down. Their knees touched and Ancap bolted from her chair, running into grandpa Capitalist’s mansion; she could still hear Progressive’s sarcastic “you sure about that?” behind her.
“Is Ancap okay?” Conservative walked up to them with Socdem in tow, looking concerned.
“Ancap is fine, she’s probably just fixing her hair,” Libby assured them.
Progressive shook her head. “You’re delusional.”
“What’s going on?” Socdem piped up, fishing pretzels out of her hoodie pockets.
“Libby’s family is giga racist.”
“No shit,” Socdem threw back some crumbs.
Libertarian rolled her eyes. “Okay, we’re not ‘giga racist’, if anything he got that from Conny’s side-”
“What? What did we do now?”
“Nothing,” Libby began to sound exasperated, “because nothing is wrong. Neocon just has a strange sense of humor.”
“Anti-Semitism: like a sense of humor, but with genocide.”
“What’d he say?” Socdem hopped to sit on their table.
“He told Ancap she looks ‘Jewish’, whatever that means.”
“Probably because of her long nose,” Conny chimed in.
“Oh you, too, now?” Progressive glared at her taller friend. “Poor Ancap, surrounded by a two whole clans of racists.”
“Shut up, Pro,” Libertarian suddenly snapped. It worked; the foursome fell quiet for a moment, shuffling around and staring at their feet while Libertarian tried to gather her thoughts.
She looked up at the upper floors of the mansion, walls gleaming white and gold. Grandpa Capitalist sure loved his stucco. Something about spending money to keep the economy flowing.
“Did y’all see a ghost or why are you looking so pale?”
Libby turned around. “Minnie!” she exclaimed, going in for a heartfelt hug. “So good to see you!”
“Easy man,” Minarchist tumbled back. “I’m not that sturdy,” her laugh was amicable and friendly, a poster child for the clan. “Damn my dad’s yellow fever. Could’ve been five foot ten like the rest of y’all, but instead I have to try harder for entrance exams.”
“So it is your whole family that’s racist,” Progressive sniped.
“I can’t be racist, I’m w-o-c,” Minnie smugly enunciated.
“Never heard of Uncle Toms?”
“See who’s the real racist! Can’t even tell Asian and African Americans apart. Shame!”
Libby stepped between Minnie and her friend, blocking the former’s response. “Wanna keep the post with me?” she addressed her cousin. Minnie sported almost the exact same silk Versace blouse Ancap had been wearing. She really ought to stop doing that.
Minnie looked around. “Where’s birthday girl two?”
“Just on the toilet,” Libertarian quickly said before anyone else could reply. Conny and Socdem exchanged a look, deciding without words to drag Pro away from the scene.
Relieved, Libertarian slumped back into her seat, Minnie squatting down with her.
“Anything you wanna tell me?” she asked when Libertarian’s friends were out of earshot.
Libby shook her head. “Nobody gets to pity our family.”
Minnie nodded, coming up with a playful excuse when the next guest asked about Ancap. Not all of the guests did.
There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re an awesome queen who deserves nothing but the utmost respect.
Ancap shook her head, hands clutched around the marble sink. Her distorted reflection looked back at her from the golden faucet, face and nose even longer than normally. If Neocon was the black sheep, she was the runt of the litter; the one no one expected anything of, no matter how much she argued, no matter how right she obviously was. None of it mattered, not her spine, not her philosophy, not her ideals; what mattered was black on white, what mattered were results. And even though it was unfair, even though it was just familial tyranny, her results read that she went to delinquent school, would never have the kind of connections Libby made because Ancap refused to fit in, refused to play nice with someone like Conny or Neocon or Progressive or any of those assholes who spat on freedom on their way to work. Ancap had principles that under no circumstance would be infringed.
She wasn’t a queen, she was an entrepreneur. She’d work her ass off, harder than anyone else in this entire family because she had a spine and would just take what she deserved. They’d see, they’d see, just you wait.
She swallowed, tearing away from the faucet to instead look into the mirror proper.
Okay, maybe she got what Neocon meant. Her nose was disproportionately big in her face and she was a lot more storkish than Libby, too. Maybe if she did her hair more? Running her hand through the fluff, she had to grimace; okay, whatever, she didn’t have the time to style her hair half an hour every morning to achieve those perfect curls Libby strutted around in because she had to get to school by bus and maybe she just didn’t like wasting time on stupid superficialities and god didn’t all of that sound like a bunch of shitty excuses.
She could feel her throat clogging up with unseemly slime and tears, but she wouldn’t have it. Bullshit! She liked her hair! And she liked it short! Why the fuck would Ancap care about what random men, not least some shitty-ass cousin-twice-removed thought! She was her own person, wasn’t she?
Biting her lip so hard she almost drew blood, Ancap ripped open marble-front drawer after marble-front drawer until she found a pair of old-timey scissors. Cackling for a moment, she lifted them up, watching mesmerized as the sun’s reflection bounced off of them in the unlit bathroom.
Whatever! Snip. So Libertarian had bigger tits snip and Minnie did better on tests snip, why would that be her problem? Snip snip. Nobody gave Hoppean any shit because Hoppean owned being a creep! Snip snip snip. That girl made everyone in a ten foot radius uncomfortable and nobody said anything because Hoppean made them feel like they were inferior, like it was her right to attack them. Snip snip.
Ancap could do that. Ancap was a doer. Ancap kept falling down and she’d keep getting up, again and again until people finally understood there was no way to get rid of her. Cockroaches and rats didn’t have any friends either, but she’d build a rat empire if she had to.
Panting, she put the scissors back down.
She liked boyish looks. She was a boyish person. Because she was free to do whatever she liked with her god-damned appearance, so help her god. Her body, her choice, she thought, looking up.
Her face fell.
She looked retarded.
Her hand cramped around the scissors as she assessed the damage. Well, she sure looked like she meant to be boyish now...no more of that half-assed shoulder length, now uneven locks stuck out like horribly sore thumbs between fully cropped hair, creating strange wavy patterns in the structure of her head. Heart beating into her throat over the thought that she’d have to interact with guests looking like this, she tried to align her bangs in a way that didn’t look like shit, eyes welling up when it wouldn’t fucking work. Maybe if she cut off more? Would that make it better? The back was uneven, leaving one half as a shortish mullet and the other as short as Neocon wore his hair. She looked a bit like a boy, but a terribly ugly one.
“Fuck,” she whispered and began to cry, looking at the mess she made of the bathroom and her reflection.
The door flung open and Ancap instinctively pointed the scissors at the intruder in defense.
“Ancap?”
Libby stood in the doorway, eyes focused on the pointy end of the scissors. Ancap was seldom at a loss, possibly never before, but she sure was now.
Should she pretend her hair looked the way she wanted it to? Or admit to her utter failure? Could she fake loving it until she made it, or at least until it grew back?
Libby broke the silence, chucking. “You really screwed up, sugar.”
Ancap let out a noise that was somewhere between a laugh and a sob, robotically lowering the hand with the scissors. “I sure did.”
Libertarian giggled. Ancap giggled, too. When the giggle threatened to turn into full-on crying, Libby held up a finger.
“Wait! I got an idea,” she said and dragged Ancap out of the room. Ancap had half a mind to dig in her heels and refuse, afraid to run into anyone in the hallway, but the mansion was big and most of the guests outside, and really, she trusted Libertarian with her life.
Up in the attic, Libby halted, throwing open their old box of costumes. Embroidery far too fancy for children’s Halloween outfits fell on the dusty floor as Libertarian worked her way through the disorderly heap. It was Ancap who had liked playing with them most.
“There!”
In the stuffy hot air of the attic, Libby held up a black fedora with a yellow satin band. It was an original of their grandpa’s, Ancap knew by heart, dumbfounded as Libertarian stuffed it on her head.
“There we go. You look much less stupid now,” Libby beamed.
It took a second for Ancap to register the hand mirror suddenly held up in front of her; she did look just a tiny bit less deranged and maybe a lot more like herself.
She had to grimace. What a stupid accessory. People would ask about it and make fun of her anyway and really, this whole situation could’ve been avoided if she hadn’t been such a pussy about one stupid comment from a man she neither liked nor respected.
Libertarian noticed her face fall and went back to rummaging through the old costumes. It took only a moment, then she turned back around with a bright smile on her face and a tophat on her head.
“See? It’s not weird if we both do it,” she smiled. Eyes focusing on a spot near Ancap’s forehead, she leaned closer, biting her lip theatrically while she fussed with Ancap’s shitty bangs to make them look more put together.
Maybe Libby had bigger tits and richer friends and nicer hair and a prettier face and bluer eyes and fuller lips, none of that mattered when Ancap knew she was Libby’s favorite. Libby appreciated her, Libby was actually nice to her, and Libby's judgement was so much more important than that of anyone else.
It took only a few inches to close the distance for a kiss.
Really, Ancap had acted on pure instinct. That was probably stupid. On the other hand: She trusted Libby with her life. How often was she going to feel that way about another person? If anything, the real stupidity was feeling that way about anyone.
Libertarian didn’t flinch or startle, or really react at all. When Ancap pulled back, bemusedly searching her face for a sign of upset, she couldn’t find anything. Still Libby. Still her closest friend and the only person who knew how to make things right for someone as proud and independent as Ancap.
Figuring she’d throw up on the spot from excitement if she didn’t, Ancap leaned in again, throwing her arms out to engulf Libertarian in the closest, tightest hug she had ever given anyone. Libby was warm and soft and hugged her back, equally warm and soft and there had to be a catch – good things didn’t come for free.
The kiss lasted longer this time, Ancap’s head full of ecstatic foam and all the things she should be doing right now. She’d been watching porn for half a decade; after kissing came groping tits, and after tits came fingering and after that she’d probably need some form of tool that she didn’t have on hand right now, so she’d just leave it for later, yes, now she just wanted to kiss and hold, all the stuff Libby was probably waiting for could come at a later point.
Ancap pulled away when a particle of dust flew into her nose, coughing and laughing.
“Let’s book it,” she said, eyes bright.
Libby giggled. “Crash our own birthday party?”
“I’d say it’s more of an anti-crash, really,” Ancap felt her usual confident self finally coming back out, lopsided grin sneaking on her face. “Come on, we can go to my friends’ place. They’re way cooler than the bozos here.”
The setting sun shone through the cracks in the wood, giving Libertarian’s face a golden glow. “Let’s do it.”