author: aj (another_juxtaposition@hotmail.com)
rating: r
spoilers: through "the giants win the pennant," since that's as far as i've seen.
notes: sports night is new, and bitter sex is suddenly the cure to all ills. major thanks to jess and luna, because it would have stayed on my hard drive forever.

summary: she doesn't care much about these details, anymore.

for lena, who doesn't have a clue.

*

They hate her, she knows.

They think she has the world, sometimes, all of them. She knows it by the way they look at her, the way Dan's eyes narrow when she walks by, the way Dana is threatened and Natalie, perky little Natalie, ignores her. As if Sally couldn't simply step on her, squishing her, grinding her into the ground with an emphatic twist of a heel.

Sometimes, late at night when she arrives home from work to an empty apartment in the middle of New York, where there are too many lights and the walls are too thin, she hates herself too.

She had a moment of weakness once, when she let it all get to her. She had been tired of hating them, hating herself, hating it all. So she told Dana the truth about Casey, how she was just a temporary stand-in, something that was alive. She gave that to Dana because she wanted to give it to her, and she ended up giving them a reason to despise her. No one told Dana she wasn't giving Sally credit, that it must have been hard for Sally, because everybody loves Dana. There are two rules at Sports Night. Number one: Everyone loves Dana, the pretty pretty princess. Number Two: Everyone hates Sally, the evil ogre that eats little children for breakfast, cleaning her teeth with the bones.

There is no pity for Sally, ever. No one ever says, "Look, there's Sally, the poor girl working such awful hours, wasting such talent." The world hates ambitious women, especially tall ones. Dana is of course the exception to every rule, being everything that Sally is not. Dana earns her awards; Sally steals them. She could never deserve to win, especially over a nice boy like Jeremy.

Dana couldn't understand Sally because Dana has more. Dana's life is different, deeper and fuller, even if she is clueless to the fact. Dana has Natalie, and Dana has Casey and Isaac and Dan and Jeremy, and Dana has her job. She is where she wants to be and she can only go higher, and she didn't get there because her legs were long and she looked good in pinstripes.

Sally is alone, and Sally doesn't have the job. She's stuck working her ass off at 2 am with a second hand crew, and she's never going to get out of the early morning hours that no one cares about. But it's a life, she thinks, and sometimes she can almost believe it's more glamorous than it is. She's is stuck and she's dying, and no one notices because no one really cares.

She doesn't care much about these details, anymore.

So she latches on to things that are alive, she fucked Gordon because he was there and because Dana didn't have him and she didn't want to be alone anymore. And she screwed Casey because she gets home no earlier than 3 am from a second rate job and the first thing people notice about her is the way she looks.

Dan always looked at her as if Sally was three steps up the evolutionary ladder from bath scum, and he hated her before she slept with Casey. She loved seeing his face, the disgust register, when he put two and two together. She wanted to say to him, "That's right Danny boy, that's right. Dirty Sally fucked your best friend, and worst of all, he liked it."

Worst of all, he came home with her and then was ashamed.

Casey never knew that she listens to classical music, thinks Lizst is a bit too loud, but has a special place for Vivaldi. He doesn't know she took ballet lessons for 15 years before they told her she was too tall to be a real ballerina, and that was after she started throwing up. He doesn't know she's the oldest of five kids, that her mother and father are not-so-happily married and that she doesn't talk to them anymore, not after she came to New York, not after she left it all behind.

He doesn't know that she doesn't like New York, that when she first got there she felt claustrophobic because there is no sky, that she was followed every night for three weeks by a man who didn't have a home. He doesn't know she hates the smell of hot dogs on the corner, and that she can't stand humidity, and she's pretty damn sure he doesn't know that she's afraid of the squirrels in Central Park.

They never know, these men that leave their shirts behind, but never their shoes. With Casey, it was fucking but never love, never even liking. He wanted her to be Dana, and she didn't want to be alone.

Sometimes, he would be waiting for her outside the steps of her apartment building, and she would smile as if he really cared it were her. They would climb the three sets of stairs to her 4th floor walk-up, and she would grimace trying to ignore the yelling coming from the room next door. Sometimes she wouldn't even get the key out of the lock before he was kissing her, slamming her up against the door with its blue paint peeling, chipping.

She knew he didn't love her, didn't even like her, and she felt like a cheap prostitute in a run-down motel, but it was better than being alone. And now Sally doesn't even care that everyone at Sports Night knows she fucked Gordon and Casey, doesn't care that half the time she doesn't remember who the hell is in her bed. Because for a few brief moments, before she falls asleep, she can close her eyes and there is someone lying there next to her. And she can whisper into his ear, and he'll mutter something back, and it doesn't matter if he's thinking about a Dana, or a Susan or a Martha, because in that brief moment she can almost believe it's real.

Almost.

*

the end.
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