the hunger of compulsion in your face.

[extemporally]

So yesterday night was not such a good one, in interpersonal terms -- gotta love parental guilt-tripping, hooray! But then yeats and I started talking about the AU where Stephane Lambiel is a footballer, and I ended up tearing up... I swear it was poignant at the time, you guys, I SWEAR. Only now it just seems mildly hilarious.

I did the I Write Like meme and came up with Stephen King far too many times, considering that I've never actually read anything by him. I also got Nabokov once and Dan Brown a couple of times (therefore we should all just BURN THIS MEME TO THE GROUND). So, linking to this instead!

Basically I'm posting so I can repost the Charlie/Meryl/Tanith (heavy on the latter two) ficlet I wrote for realwomenfest. It is very self-indulgent, but I'm kind of proud of it! Eh. Also, cleaned up and stuff:

Meryl told herself she wasn't inappropriately pissed off when her partner and her best friend got together. No, she decided, it was completely appropriate to feel a little irritated, annoyed, and worried at the state of things. This relationship (which Meryl swore she knew wasn’t her business) had too many ways of going awry – Charlie was too young. Tanith was too ruthless. He could be passive aggressive. She was prone to being flaky. So it was okay to feel like her heart was being squished out of its proper place, oozing through the gaps in her rib cage. Thinking about skeletons made her remember that stock image she'd seen in her anthro textbook; the one of two skeletons curled around each other in a dug-up grave. She wondered if she'd ever be not alone.

When Meryl got pissed off or – it was okay to admit this to herself – just sad, she went swimming. When she was fifteen and Charlie was fourteen he'd teased her and said, "Make sure you don't develop swimmer muscles, you'll be too heavy to lift." After that she hadn't spoken to him for a week. Practice had gone fine nonetheless, but Mr Chafetz had glanced at them nervously, deciding not to intervene. The cold war had only ended when Charlie apologized by offering her gummy worms.

In the pool Meryl was doing slow laps, calm and even. Breaststroke rather than freestyle. She'd reached the edge of the pool and was about to push off again when she saw Tanith – who peeked down at her and gave a wave, the fluttery kind with the fingers. "Hey," she said.

Tanith never looked out of place in any situation or anything she happened to be wearing, let alone her sleek one-piece swimsuit. Meryl's hair obviously wasn't at its best, and she felt self-conscious in her polka-dotted bikini as she pulled herself out of the pool. Even though she knew she couldn't help it, she could smell the chlorine on herself. Tanith's own skin smelt warm, of sunblock and strawberries.

"What's up?" Meryl said, leaving her legs in the pool and kicking up a tiny whirlpool. She could do that, because no one else was there. Meryl tried to keep her voice innocuous and pleasant, because technically there wasn't anything wrong between the both of them, or between her and Charlie. If there was anything going wrong between Charlie and Tanith she didn't want to know it either. Technically, she was pleased for the both of them. Technically, things were just great.

"Nothing," Tanith said. She flashed a quick smile at Meryl, and leaned over to tuck a lock of Meryl's dripping hair behind her ear. Despite the casual contact Meryl felt her knees go weak. It was just as well that she was sitting down.

"Just, you know, checking in," Tanith continued. "We haven’t spoken in ages, I feel like a shitty friend, and you probably think I'm a complete bitch for taking all Charlie's off-ice time now. How are things?"

The problem with choosing bros over hos, Meryl thought, was that this generally assumed they were mutually exclusive. Although Tanith didn't look it, she kind of really was a guy's guy. Dating Evan Lysacek for over a year probably did that to you – Tanith could hang out with Charlie for hours on end, cuddled on the couch with Charlie's arm slung around her and wearing a stained sweatshirt, the other hand devoted to stroking one of her tiny dogs. She was versatile that way.

Meryl kept her eyes on her knees as she told Tanith about the math class she was taking that semester.

"That's good," Tanith said. "I mean, the TA sounds like he... isn't a very nice person," - she never swore, that was one of the things Meryl liked about her, and when she did, it was great, "But at least you don't have to pay for the book, that would suck."

Rarely for Michigan, the sun was coming down full-throttle that afternoon. Meryl closed her eyes and purred at the warmth, and Tanith laughed at her. She hadn't moved away, and their knees were still touching.

"What about you?" Meryl asked. It was kind of a stupid question to ask. Tanith made the drive down to Ann Arbor every week. Hell, she saw Tanith every weekend. Granted, most of that time was spent seeing Tanith and Charlie cuddle, but still. Meryl tried not to be bitter. Feelings were kind of inconvenient in this endeavour.

"Nothing doing," Tanith said, smiling wryly like she knew that was a weird thing for her to say, "What about you? It seems like you're so sad these days, Merrie."

Unbidden, tears sprung to Meryl's eyes. It was surprising to her, because she didn't know she was that torn up over Tanith and Charlie being Tanith & Charlie herself. Hell, she didn't even know who she was jealous of. Meryl ducked her head and hoped Tanith wouldn't notice, but Tanith was way too perceptive for that. She wiped at Meryl's face with her thumbs as Meryl focused on getting her feelings back under control and not making any sounds.

"I'm sorry," Tanith said. "I wouldn't have mentioned it if I'd known it'd make you this upset." Her eyes were wide, and Meryl couldn't decide if she was lying or simply being disingenuous. They'd been friends for a very long time, and Tanith should have known that nothing made Meryl cry more than kindness.

"Oh, Merrie, oh, Merrie," Tanith said to herself. A hand on Meryl's dripping hair, she gazed off over to the distance as if she had thoughts she wanted to keep to herself.

"Oh, Tanithy," Meryl said. Her voice was very nearly not-wobbly, and she was proud of that.

"I don't want you to be sad," Tanith said, even though she hadn't done very much lately to make Meryl happy. "Please don't be sad."

"I don't want you to not be happy," Meryl countered. No matter what they did, one or more of them would always end up the loser. Meryl’s own problem was that she wanted too much. It was why she tried not to look when Charlie and Tanith engaged in obvious expressions of PDA in her presence.

Tanith didn't reply. When Meryl outwitted her she always resorted to other ways of winning the argument. This time, she leaned forward, grasped Meryl's chin, and kissed her carefully and purposefully. It was as if she wanted to tell Meryl that it was no accident.

Meryl suspected her mouth tasted of chlorine, even though she hadn't opened her mouth while swimming in the pool. That stuff got everywhere. Tanith simply tasted like Tanith.

"Charlie -" Meryl said, when they broke apart. "This is going to break his heart." Even though she'd taken that bio class freshman year, she still thought and spoke in those terms.

"No, it won't," Tanith said. She was beaming now, as if she'd won something infinitely more precious than Meryl could know. "We'll talk to him. You'll see."

I suck at emails/comments/lots of things recently. My apologies!