#but believe me there are more than just those two lovebirds who are actually lesbians i just gotta write them in now oh fuck

[relencomp]

Listen Here. Yeah, You. I Have Something To Tell You.

I need to talk about the book I’m writing so badly but everyone I know is asleep or dead(?) and I hear Tumblr is cool about writing and stuff.

it’s got lesbians and big guns and magic and shenanigans.

I hear that sells like hot cakes here. Come take a bite.

[tiliamericana]

Muay Thai: 1.13

“I can’t believe you’ve done this,” said Agatha acidly as Nairi held the door to the pizza place open for her.

“I’m sorry,” said Nairi, no longer feeling particularly apologetic after a week of saying nothing but. “We’ll only be here for what, an hour? And then we can go.”

She didn’t love that she was already on edge. It was hardly the first time in her life that she was deliberately sitting down to spend a couple of hours with an unpleasant man, but it was still frustrating. She liked spending time with Agatha and Linden who were only occasionally frustrating, but they tended to get tense and catty with each other, and Nairi’s teeth were aching at the thought of dealing with that on top of Simon.

Well. They were usually catty, but when not talking about relationships they could be relied on to be friendly-catty rather than terse-catty.

Linden was sitting alone at one of the tall tables near the centre of the restaurant, and she waved at them as they approached, her smile wide. “Hey guys!” she said as Nairi sat down across from her, and if her smile was fake then she at least sounded pleased—or, well, relieved, at any rate.

“No boyfriend yet?” asked Agatha archly, sitting next to Nairi with a disapproving curve to her lips as their eyes met.

“He’s running late,” said Linden, clasping her hands together in front of her and making her bracelets jingle. “Promised he’d treat me to a nice big pie and dessert to make it up to me, though!”

“Nice of him,” said Nairi, snagging a complimentary breadstick, more out of habit than hunger.

“Very,” said Agatha, inspecting a menu without looking up.

Linden’s expression faltered. “Yeah,” she said anyway.

Nairi knocked their ankles together under the table in an attempt to reassure, and Linden flashed her a grateful look, the tension across her shoulders loosening a little. “Things are going well then?” she asked, pouring herself a glass of water and pushing the jug towards Agatha, who ignored her.

“As well as they can be,” said Linden, nodding a little too much, her bracelets jingling again. “I mean, things get bumpy occasionally, but we really haven’t known each other for long in like, the grand scheme of things. We already know we like each other, so we’re just feeling everything else out as we go.”

“Oh goodie,” muttered Agatha, pushing her glasses up her nose again before setting the menu down and joining the conversation. “Nick likes this one, then?”

Linden snorted. “Simon’s not that exceptional,” she said dismissively. “Nick thinks he’s too flaky.”

Agatha glanced at her watch conspicuously. “I wonderwhy.”

Linden gave her a sharp curve of a smile, darkly amused. “Look, that might be a dealbreaker for Nick, but he’s not the one dating him. I can handle a little flakiness, and besides, he’s working on it.”

“Is he working on anything else?”

“Yes,” said Linden, looking Agatha right in the eye. “Nick told me—I promise he won’t call you that ever again, I even slapped him around a little to make it stick.”

“Right,” said Agatha, unimpressed in the face of Linden’s humour. “Because if he does then I’m just going to leave. Why does he even talk like that in the first place?”

Linden wrinkled her nose. “It’s his masters, I swear, he spends his entire time with his nose up the ass of these old school poets, and then he like, forgets that language has changed in the last eighty years? It’s really annoying, he literally called me the ‘whore of Babylon’ the other day and then got offended when I told him to fuck off because I ‘didn’t get the compliment’.”

Nairi snorted.

“Oh! Such a catch! I suddenly understand why you’re so determined to make this relationship work,” drawled Agatha.

“It’s a better basis for a relationship than some I could name,” said Linden snidely, narrowing her eyes across the table.

Damn, Agatha’s last boyfriend must have been a real piece of work. “There’s always going to be worse relationships out there,” said Nairi diplomatically. “And I mean, people are even meeting and dating on the internet these days, everything starts somewhere.”

“Exactly,” said Linden, relaxing a little with a grin. “That’s a bad basis, we all know the internet’s for porn and arguing with strangers.”

“And LOLcats, don’t forget those,” said Agatha, nodding at her.

“How could I?” said Linden, her grin widening.

Nairi was saved from having to ask what the fuck a ‘LOLcat’ was by Simon’s arrival. “Hello ladies,” he said breezily, draping his coat over the back of the free chair with a waft of eau-de-cigarette over the table. He leaned in and kissed Linden’s cheek from behind before sitting. “Hello babe, sorry I’m late, transport was a bit of an issue.”

“You’re fine,” said Linden, smiling indulgently at him as he sat. “Just gave us time to work up an appetite.”

Thankfully, the process of deciding on pizzas and drinks, and then the conveying all of that information to the waitress meant that Nairi didn’t have to speak directly to Simon. It also meant that he didn’t try to speak with Agatha, who was coolly ignoring him from across the table with a total lack of eye contact that veered dangerously close to the border between ‘civility’ and ‘rudeness’.

Once the food actually arrived however, she was out of luck.

Pretty much every pizza on the menu that wasn’t explicitly vegetarian had some kind of bacon or ham or pork-based sausage in its toppings, so there wasn’t any quibbling or half-and-halfing on the one Nairi was sharing with Agatha. Simon, however, had ordered without asking Linden, which she’d ignored, much the same way she’d ignored Agatha’s quiet snort at him doing so. Nairi was about ninety percent certain Linden didn’t even like green peppers.

“So,” said Simon brightly, gesturing across the table with his wine glass. “How have you two been this week? Anything exciting?”

Agatha took an enormous bite of pizza and chewed loudly, glancing at Nairi. Nairi sighed internally and lowered her own slice to answer him. “Not terribly exciting. Work, mostly.”

“That’s right,” he said, chewing obnoxiously and giving Nairi a chance to start eating. Next to him, Linden was carefully tugging peppers off the surface of her pizza. “Lindy said you did some kind of fighting thing, right? MMA? Kickboxing? Sweaty punch ups in sports bras?”

“…I teach judo,” said Nairi eventually. “Early days at my dojo, I don’t have a lot of students yet, I’m afraid. Uh, Agatha’s working on a paper at the moment though, that’s a bit more interesting.”

“Really? What’s it about?” asked Simon, turning both his attention and his chewing maw towards Agatha.

“Diatomic elements,” said Agatha shortly. “It’s just about nucleics, I’m not reinventing the wheel or anything.”

Simon stared at her blankly. “Oh, of course. Uh, I’m afraid I’m not familiar, is your field—?”

“Chemistry,” supplied Agatha, turning her attention back to her dinner. “My PhD was on inorganic, but I’m still in the process of post-doc applications so I’m mostly twiddling my thumbs and writing contributions in the meanwhile.”

“Right,” said Simon, his face showing a total lack of comprehension. “Academia’s a lot like that, terribly stiff in the paperwork and appropriateness departments. The right body of work and all that—I know exactly how it feels, I was going to do my thesis on the erotic underpinnings of Virginia Woolf’s work and the reflection of her relationship with her husband, but my advisor was really very pushy about playing it safe and sticking to Eliot’s body of work in the immediate post-war era.”

“Oh yes, much safer,” said Agatha with no inflection in her tone.

Simon laughed loudly, leaning back in his chair and taking another long drink of his wine. “You know, Lindy said you had a sense of humour, and I must confess I didn’t quite believe her at first! Mistakes all around.”

He punctuated this with a conspiratorial wink across the table at her, though Nairi didn’t quite understand what was so funny about it. At a glance, neither did Agatha or Linden. Linden actually looked… embarrassed? It was only for a second, the expression gone almost as soon as Nairi noticed it, Linden covering the bottom half of her face with her glass as she took a sip.

“So how long have you two lovebirds been dating anyway?” Simon continued, not even glancing at Linden next to him with her small pile of peppers or his ignored slice of pizza on the plate in front of him.

“A few months,” said Nairi, her own dinner looking more unappetising by the second. “Since September, I think?”

“That’s about right,” said Agatha, the lines around the corners of her eyes easing as she glanced at Nairi. “Five or six months now.”

“Charming,” said Simon, polishing off his wine, smile bright and enthusiastic as he gestured. “You know I’ve always greatly enjoyed the figure of the lesbian, in real life as well as literature. Excising the men from the bed and the home—it’s always so representative of the purest form of womanhood, really illuminates the truth of femininity. And the politics of it! The ultimate commitment to the feminist ideal, the usurpation of the patriarchy from its most foundational stronghold in the home at the head of the family. Really brilliant stuff!”

Agatha’s eyebrows were somewhere around her hairline.

Linden laughed awkwardly, nudging Simon as she leaned in a little over her plate. “Well, I mean, it’s always gonna be a bit different from books, hun. People are people, real life is always more, uh—”

“Oh yes, yes, of course,” said Simon dismissively, nodding at her. “And writers have a tendency to exaggerate and eroticise that type of relationship as well.”

“And what exactly do you mean by that kind of relationship?” asked Agatha, tone sharp.

Nairi tensed as Simon opened his mouth and started bloviating again. Linden swallowed whatever she was going to say, giving up and quietly eating instead, leaning on one elbow.

Simon’s phone buzzed loudly, and he took a second to check it while Agatha sucked down on the straw in her water glass through her furious, pinched expression.

“Oh, I’m so sorry ladies,” he said, standing up as he punched a few buttons on his phone. “I have to run. I have thoroughlyenjoyed this discussion though, especially with you Miss Davids, we’ll have to do this again sometime—”

“Doctor,” corrected Agatha.

“Oh, that’s right, very good, attagirl!” said Simon breezily as he tugged his coat on, and a muscle in Agatha’s jaw visibly twitched.

“Oh, Si, really?” said Linden, frowning at him anxiously as he kissed her cheek. “But we were gonna go get ice cream af—”

“Really?” said Simon, with a piss-poor attempt at a surprised look. “I didn’t think so, babe, I had plans. There’s no need to end the night just because I’m leaving though! You should all have some fun, I’ll see you later, and I promise I’ll catch the next cheque!”

He was already walking away as he spoke, hand raised in farewell even as Linden opened her mouth in dismay. “Wait, Si, I can’t—and he’s out. Great.” She slumped in her seat as the door swung shut across the room and gave them a glum sort of smile. “Sorry guys, I kind of thought that would go better.”

“Really?” said Agatha under her breath, covering it with the movement of setting her glass down.

Nairi ignored it. “I mean, it’s not exactly your fault—” Agatha snorted “—do you want me to grab you a pizza you actually like?”

Linden gestured at Simon’s largely untouched pizza with an eyeroll. “No, I’ll live. Already gonna have to pay for this one.”

“I’ve got it,” said Nairi, tugging her wallet out. “May as well just pay for everything while I’m up. Do you want something a bit cheesier?”

Linden looked at her for a moment, expression unreadable, and then something in her relaxed and her mouth twitched into a wry smile. “Yeah. Thanks.”

Agatha turned her head as Nairi left the table, saying something she couldn’t quite hear. Her tone sounded dry rather than snappish, so Nairi didn’t think too hard about it. She got them another round of drinks while she was sorting out the extra pizza as well—it would probably go a ways to easing Agatha’s temper and cheering Linden up.

From the looks of things when she returned to the table though, they’d managed to have an argument in the few minutes she’d been gone.

“Better food and new drinks on the way,” she said, sliding into her seat and pretending she couldn’t see the angry twist in Linden’s lips, or the clenched tension in Agatha’s hands.

“Awesome,” said Linden, flashing her a sunny, fake smile as Agatha scoffed. “You know, I was just saying to Aggy that since this turned out to be such a bust that maybe we should try having a girl’s night instead, you know? Just us, maybe with Flo too.”

“Oh yeah,” said Nairi mildly, gently pressing the back of her hand against Agatha’s on the tabletop. “What did you have in mind?”