RPFapalooza!
I have written ficlets. Two originally in comments in other people's journals, one that would have been a comment if it weren't over 1000 words long (but still a ficlet because I say so), one that's the result of Very Serious Discussions about SYTYCD. Speaking of which, new icon, keywords "no experience wins anyway," because I am apparently rooting for them now.
Totally behind on comments and friendslist. Will start dealing with that tomorrow.
But first! Survivor Amazon/Muppets because fox1013 was feeling down a couple of weeks ago. Rob Cesternino and Gonzo, might be spoilery.
Muppets, Rob knows, are fictional. They are made of felt. Some of them don't even have legs.
However, and this is a big however. However. A Muppet is stalking him. Sitting around in his backyard when Rob is inside, following him to the grocery store in an old Buick. Lying in wait. If it is possible to be menaced by an inanimate felt object, then Rob is being menaced.
Rob is trying to eat breakfast, and the old Buick is parked in front of his house. The Muppet has a pair of binoculars around its neck. It's that blue-gray one with the long nose. Rob decides, that's it, he's going out there. He puts on a bathrobe and a pair of flip-flops.
He knocks on the window. There is a flutter of white wings, and he thinks, holy crap, Muppet chickens. The Muppet takes its time rolling the window down. "An autograph, Mr. Cesternino?" it says.
"Fine," Rob mutters, signing.
"And one question."
"What?"
"If we were stranded on an island together, would you vote me off?" the Muppet said.
Rob would vote off his own mother. Not that she would hold it against him. "Nope," Rob said. "All the way to the final two. You and me."
"That's what I thought," the Muppet says. He starts the car and floors it, and the Buick rumbles down the road in a cloud of improbable dust.
*
For annavtree in that comment -> prompt -> comment porn meme, skating RPS, Jeff Buttle/Chris Mabee, diabetes warning.
Chris's mom makes the best breakfasts ever. Fluffy scrambled eggs, pancakes so light they're almost crepes, three kinds of breakfast meat, home fries with onions in them, fried tomatoes, corn muffins she bakes herself. Everything fried or carbs or fried carbs, so basically Jeff gets to indulge in it once a year, the morning after Chris's birthday. When he was younger, they were younger, their relationship was younger, she used to call him early in the morning and tell him to get his shoes on, and he'd ride his bike over. Now he spends the night, because it's been a long time since anyone had any illusions about that.
Chris is still in bed or maybe he's made it to the shower, but Jeff's right here at the kitchen table, because there is no way he is letting his breakfast get cold. His boyfriend is spoiled rotten. His fiancé, he reminds himself, rolling the word around in his brain, that new word. Chris asked him last night: "I want you to be my birthday present," he said, and they laughed, because it sounded a little trite, like something from a song, but getting engaged is like that anyway.
Jeff sits on his left hand and eats with his right so Chris's mom doesn't see the ring. He fell asleep wearing it, not because wearing it was so deeply romantic, but because they'd been talking and having sex and then they fell asleep before Jeff could think about it. And it was still there in the morning, with the white gold and the diamonds and the huge symbolic gesture. Jeff doesn't know where Chris's mom stands on this. He doesn't know if she has a stance. But he thinks Chris might want to be the one to tell her.
Chris comes running down the stairs, so loud you could hear him down the block, like he does. "Mom, mom, did he show you?" he says.
"No, he did not," she says. "I was starting to think you chickened out, kid."
Jeff holds up his hand and turns it so Chris's mom can see. He grins, but he doesn't stop eating his pancakes.
*
For callmesandy in the same meme, skating RPF, summer camp AU, Tanith/Brooke, Johnny/Ben.
"Peach? Who orders peach?" Tanith said.
"I do," Brooke said.
"Is peach even a real flavor? Like, is it even ice cream if it doesn't have chocolate in it?" Tanith's scoop contained brownie batter, fudge ripple, and possibly marshmallows. If she was going to cheat on her diet, she wasn't going to waste the opportunity on fruit.
There were about a dozen of them crammed into Jeremy's Volvo, parked in the gravel lot outside the best ice cream place in Colorado Springs. Actually, right now, about half of the car's recent occupants were sitting on the hood or cross-legged on the ground, leaning against the tires. It was a pretty random group, whoever had been in earshot when Jeremy had whispered his plans for the evening's jailbreak, one last trip into town before camp ended. Tanith and Brooke had stretched out in the hatchback seat, the backwards bench that she'd called the "way back" when she'd fought for the chance to sit in it as a little kid on her way to skating lessons.
"I had a great aunt who used to make ice cream in a coffee can," Brooke said. "She'd put canned peaches in it. She died when I was, like, nine."
"Ha, way to make me look like a bitch," Tanith said.
"I made that up," Brooke said. "I actually just like peach."
"Meanie. I'm stealing your ice cream." Tanith dipped her spoon into Brooke's plastic cup, leaving behind a streak of quadruple chocolate.
"Hey, you got chocolate in my peach," Brooke pouted.
"It's real ice cream now," Tanith said. She tasted her stolen spoonful. It was so different from her own choice that possibly it should have been categorized as a different dessert, light and vaguely spicy with something she couldn't identify. "This isn't bad."
Brooke leaned over Tanith's arm to steal some chocolate for herself. She basically shoved her breasts in Tanith's face to do so, which was pretty unfair even if it was just carelessness. Maybe to her, those five or six kisses in the crafts cabin had been formalities, but Tanith didn't kiss anyone without meaning it. A whole year of Evan had been proof of that. Two weeks of nature and togetherness had been the nail in that coffin. For the first week, they'd tried to put it back together, sitting together at campfires and at meals, but he'd start conversations and she'd have nothing to say. The USFSA photographer had taken a picture of them at one of the afternoon singalongs, and Tanith was bracing herself for that photo, the two of them looking in opposite directions, trying not to hate each other.
Summer was like that, the one part of the year when they had enough time for beginnings and endings. Tanith twisted her body around to look through the windshield at Ben and Johnny, who were sitting on the hood of the Volvo. Johnny was wearing a red fake-satin tiara with tinsel streamers attached to its three points and "I ♥ America" embroidered in gold. He'd been wearing it all day; God only knew where he'd found it. But, he'd explained, "I can't get in trouble for it. It's patriotic." It was the kind of thing that Ben also found hilarious, and Ben stole it from him every time he looked away. For the chance to touch him as Johnny wrestled it back from his hands, probably. They'd decided to put an end to their fling when they went back to the real world, and no matter how much that was the right and responsible thing, it made Tanith sad. Not because she preferred Johnny so much to Merrie, although she did slightly, but because it meant Ben would never be completely happy, could never have everything he wanted.
Not that any of them could. The day before, ditching the doping seminar to sit on the steps of their cabin eating Flav-R-Ices and gossiping, Tanith had suggested that the four Mean Bitches get a house together, back in Detroit. Everyone had given an excuse: Brooke had been thinking about moving in with her boyfriend; Meryl was worried she'd be distracted from studying; Alissa wasn't sure she was ready to move away from her family yet. All of that made sense, and it probably wouldn't have happened even if they'd all been on board. But it had stuck to Tanith like a personal insult, like her friends didn't love her enough, like nobody loved her enough. She wondered whether that was what had driven Evan away, if she'd needed too much love from him and he'd run out, if it had been her fault after all.
Brooke had finished her ice cream and was drumming her spoon against the empty cup, a complex but steady rhythm, the accompaniment to an imaginary song. "What are you singing?" Tanith said.
Brooke giggled and rubbed her nose. "Oh, you know," she said. "'Some people call me the space cowboy. Some people call me the gangster of love.'" They sang the chorus together, loud and out of tune, Tanith getting the words mixed up. Caroline came running up with her camera. Tanith shook her head, but Brooke pulled her in by the shoulders and whispered, "Smile, damn it." It might have been the camera, or the chocolate, or the glow of the moonlight on the gravel, but something made it seem right to kiss Brooke.
"Don't," Brooke said, but before it had time to ruin their friendship, Ryan was yelling at everyone to get back in the car, and people were gulping down the last of their ice cream and squeezing into seats. Johnny and Ben squished into the way back, pushing Tanith and Brooke tight against each other. Ben was wearing Johnny's tiara. Jeremy closed the hatchback, and the four of them sat, uncomfortably close and silent, until Ryan started up the car. Brooke gave Tanith a belated kiss back, and by the time they'd pulled out onto the main road, there were two happy, doomed couples making out in the way back. It felt like the last scene in a movie, a heart-shaped fade-out on the embracing leads. Tanith hated that it felt so much like an ending.
*
And for everyone who's been squeeing with me about So You Think You Can Dance, Dominic's first homosexual experience. With Danny, because who else? Spoilers through last week, i.e. the most recent elimination.
You weren't, like, required to be gay or anything. Dominic got to his hotel suite and picked his bed, and five minutes after that, Danny and Jimmy were trading dick stories. When they looked at Dominic all, "Dude, you gonna join us? Dude, you gonna beat that?" Dominic shrugged and said he was straight, and they were like, "Good luck with that." And not in a mean way, but like they meant it. Live and let live, the three of them had that in common.
It wasn't like Dominic had anything against gay guys. Sure, he and his boys would call each other "faggots" and whatever, but they didn't mean it. Same way you talked about your skills 'cause you hated yourself a little, always had to be covering that up. Most of being real was lying, Dominic learned that a long time before he learned to spin on his head. Being gay gave those guys a license to just be whatever, none of the bullshit Dominic'd had to pick up. And they were way fucking better than he was at dancing with girls like they wanted to have sex with them. He liked Sabra in more of a brother-sister way, preferred his women with a little more up front and a lot more in back, but he was getting a fast education in how that didn't have anything to do with anything.
And then Jimmy got voted out, and it was just Dominic and Danny in the hotel suite. The producers kept saying they were going to move people around so it wasn't just two people in a suite, but nobody seemed to get around to it. Dominic liked the privacy and not having to fight over the bathroom. The only annoying thing Danny did was, he jerked off kind of loud. Dominic could usually turn his music up over it, but there was one night when Dominic had been rhumba-ing for, like, ten hours and his ears were fucking ringing and all he wanted to do was sleep. So he got up and knocked on Danny's door like, "Shut the fuck up, man," and Danny was quiet for like two minutes and then he started moaning Dominic's name, not like he was actually thinking about Dominic or anything, just to be even more annoying. Or maybe he was, maybe he had been the whole time, that would be kind of awesome.
Danny finished, and once it got quiet Dominic was asleep in no time. The rhumba was fucking tiring. But Danny knocked on his door and woke him all, "Sorry, man, sometimes I get selfish and don't realize it until later. I mean, I'm working on that, and I'm sorry."
If Dominic had been awake, he would have accepted the apology. But he was sleeping, so he muttered, "Blow me."
Danny said, "Anytime, sweetheart." He blew a kiss.
Dominic was awake enough now to laugh and say, "Fuck you, man," and throw a pillow. Danny must have seen that he meant friendship, because he hung around for a minute. That minute was long enough for Dominic to think, a blow job might not be so bad. Everyone liked blow jobs. It wasn't like he was getting any the way things were, none of the girls offering and no time to go out and find someone outside America's top fourteen dancers. He could lie back and pretend it was a girl. He said, "Hey, wait a minute."
"Seriously?" Danny said.
"Yeah," Dominic said. Danny left, and Dominic thought he was walking away pissed off, but he was actually just getting a condom. Dominic took off his boxer shorts and closed his eyes and tried to think of girls, but what he kept thinking of was guys with really great extension and long, clean lines, guys who could do seven turns on point, guys who could do things he was torn between thinking he should never even attempt and thinking someday he would learn how to do even better than them. People who had skills were hot, period. And it was a really good blow job, especially for with a condom. He got off, quietly, and he wasn't sure what to do, whether he was supposed to kiss Danny or return the favor, or if a handshake would do. He said, "Thanks, man."
"Same time tomorrow?" Danny said, and he was pretending to just joke around, but both of them knew that dancing was mostly about lying.
Totally behind on comments and friendslist. Will start dealing with that tomorrow.
But first! Survivor Amazon/Muppets because fox1013 was feeling down a couple of weeks ago. Rob Cesternino and Gonzo, might be spoilery.
Muppets, Rob knows, are fictional. They are made of felt. Some of them don't even have legs.
However, and this is a big however. However. A Muppet is stalking him. Sitting around in his backyard when Rob is inside, following him to the grocery store in an old Buick. Lying in wait. If it is possible to be menaced by an inanimate felt object, then Rob is being menaced.
Rob is trying to eat breakfast, and the old Buick is parked in front of his house. The Muppet has a pair of binoculars around its neck. It's that blue-gray one with the long nose. Rob decides, that's it, he's going out there. He puts on a bathrobe and a pair of flip-flops.
He knocks on the window. There is a flutter of white wings, and he thinks, holy crap, Muppet chickens. The Muppet takes its time rolling the window down. "An autograph, Mr. Cesternino?" it says.
"Fine," Rob mutters, signing.
"And one question."
"What?"
"If we were stranded on an island together, would you vote me off?" the Muppet said.
Rob would vote off his own mother. Not that she would hold it against him. "Nope," Rob said. "All the way to the final two. You and me."
"That's what I thought," the Muppet says. He starts the car and floors it, and the Buick rumbles down the road in a cloud of improbable dust.
*
For annavtree in that comment -> prompt -> comment porn meme, skating RPS, Jeff Buttle/Chris Mabee, diabetes warning.
Chris's mom makes the best breakfasts ever. Fluffy scrambled eggs, pancakes so light they're almost crepes, three kinds of breakfast meat, home fries with onions in them, fried tomatoes, corn muffins she bakes herself. Everything fried or carbs or fried carbs, so basically Jeff gets to indulge in it once a year, the morning after Chris's birthday. When he was younger, they were younger, their relationship was younger, she used to call him early in the morning and tell him to get his shoes on, and he'd ride his bike over. Now he spends the night, because it's been a long time since anyone had any illusions about that.
Chris is still in bed or maybe he's made it to the shower, but Jeff's right here at the kitchen table, because there is no way he is letting his breakfast get cold. His boyfriend is spoiled rotten. His fiancé, he reminds himself, rolling the word around in his brain, that new word. Chris asked him last night: "I want you to be my birthday present," he said, and they laughed, because it sounded a little trite, like something from a song, but getting engaged is like that anyway.
Jeff sits on his left hand and eats with his right so Chris's mom doesn't see the ring. He fell asleep wearing it, not because wearing it was so deeply romantic, but because they'd been talking and having sex and then they fell asleep before Jeff could think about it. And it was still there in the morning, with the white gold and the diamonds and the huge symbolic gesture. Jeff doesn't know where Chris's mom stands on this. He doesn't know if she has a stance. But he thinks Chris might want to be the one to tell her.
Chris comes running down the stairs, so loud you could hear him down the block, like he does. "Mom, mom, did he show you?" he says.
"No, he did not," she says. "I was starting to think you chickened out, kid."
Jeff holds up his hand and turns it so Chris's mom can see. He grins, but he doesn't stop eating his pancakes.
*
For callmesandy in the same meme, skating RPF, summer camp AU, Tanith/Brooke, Johnny/Ben.
"Peach? Who orders peach?" Tanith said.
"I do," Brooke said.
"Is peach even a real flavor? Like, is it even ice cream if it doesn't have chocolate in it?" Tanith's scoop contained brownie batter, fudge ripple, and possibly marshmallows. If she was going to cheat on her diet, she wasn't going to waste the opportunity on fruit.
There were about a dozen of them crammed into Jeremy's Volvo, parked in the gravel lot outside the best ice cream place in Colorado Springs. Actually, right now, about half of the car's recent occupants were sitting on the hood or cross-legged on the ground, leaning against the tires. It was a pretty random group, whoever had been in earshot when Jeremy had whispered his plans for the evening's jailbreak, one last trip into town before camp ended. Tanith and Brooke had stretched out in the hatchback seat, the backwards bench that she'd called the "way back" when she'd fought for the chance to sit in it as a little kid on her way to skating lessons.
"I had a great aunt who used to make ice cream in a coffee can," Brooke said. "She'd put canned peaches in it. She died when I was, like, nine."
"Ha, way to make me look like a bitch," Tanith said.
"I made that up," Brooke said. "I actually just like peach."
"Meanie. I'm stealing your ice cream." Tanith dipped her spoon into Brooke's plastic cup, leaving behind a streak of quadruple chocolate.
"Hey, you got chocolate in my peach," Brooke pouted.
"It's real ice cream now," Tanith said. She tasted her stolen spoonful. It was so different from her own choice that possibly it should have been categorized as a different dessert, light and vaguely spicy with something she couldn't identify. "This isn't bad."
Brooke leaned over Tanith's arm to steal some chocolate for herself. She basically shoved her breasts in Tanith's face to do so, which was pretty unfair even if it was just carelessness. Maybe to her, those five or six kisses in the crafts cabin had been formalities, but Tanith didn't kiss anyone without meaning it. A whole year of Evan had been proof of that. Two weeks of nature and togetherness had been the nail in that coffin. For the first week, they'd tried to put it back together, sitting together at campfires and at meals, but he'd start conversations and she'd have nothing to say. The USFSA photographer had taken a picture of them at one of the afternoon singalongs, and Tanith was bracing herself for that photo, the two of them looking in opposite directions, trying not to hate each other.
Summer was like that, the one part of the year when they had enough time for beginnings and endings. Tanith twisted her body around to look through the windshield at Ben and Johnny, who were sitting on the hood of the Volvo. Johnny was wearing a red fake-satin tiara with tinsel streamers attached to its three points and "I ♥ America" embroidered in gold. He'd been wearing it all day; God only knew where he'd found it. But, he'd explained, "I can't get in trouble for it. It's patriotic." It was the kind of thing that Ben also found hilarious, and Ben stole it from him every time he looked away. For the chance to touch him as Johnny wrestled it back from his hands, probably. They'd decided to put an end to their fling when they went back to the real world, and no matter how much that was the right and responsible thing, it made Tanith sad. Not because she preferred Johnny so much to Merrie, although she did slightly, but because it meant Ben would never be completely happy, could never have everything he wanted.
Not that any of them could. The day before, ditching the doping seminar to sit on the steps of their cabin eating Flav-R-Ices and gossiping, Tanith had suggested that the four Mean Bitches get a house together, back in Detroit. Everyone had given an excuse: Brooke had been thinking about moving in with her boyfriend; Meryl was worried she'd be distracted from studying; Alissa wasn't sure she was ready to move away from her family yet. All of that made sense, and it probably wouldn't have happened even if they'd all been on board. But it had stuck to Tanith like a personal insult, like her friends didn't love her enough, like nobody loved her enough. She wondered whether that was what had driven Evan away, if she'd needed too much love from him and he'd run out, if it had been her fault after all.
Brooke had finished her ice cream and was drumming her spoon against the empty cup, a complex but steady rhythm, the accompaniment to an imaginary song. "What are you singing?" Tanith said.
Brooke giggled and rubbed her nose. "Oh, you know," she said. "'Some people call me the space cowboy. Some people call me the gangster of love.'" They sang the chorus together, loud and out of tune, Tanith getting the words mixed up. Caroline came running up with her camera. Tanith shook her head, but Brooke pulled her in by the shoulders and whispered, "Smile, damn it." It might have been the camera, or the chocolate, or the glow of the moonlight on the gravel, but something made it seem right to kiss Brooke.
"Don't," Brooke said, but before it had time to ruin their friendship, Ryan was yelling at everyone to get back in the car, and people were gulping down the last of their ice cream and squeezing into seats. Johnny and Ben squished into the way back, pushing Tanith and Brooke tight against each other. Ben was wearing Johnny's tiara. Jeremy closed the hatchback, and the four of them sat, uncomfortably close and silent, until Ryan started up the car. Brooke gave Tanith a belated kiss back, and by the time they'd pulled out onto the main road, there were two happy, doomed couples making out in the way back. It felt like the last scene in a movie, a heart-shaped fade-out on the embracing leads. Tanith hated that it felt so much like an ending.
*
And for everyone who's been squeeing with me about So You Think You Can Dance, Dominic's first homosexual experience. With Danny, because who else? Spoilers through last week, i.e. the most recent elimination.
You weren't, like, required to be gay or anything. Dominic got to his hotel suite and picked his bed, and five minutes after that, Danny and Jimmy were trading dick stories. When they looked at Dominic all, "Dude, you gonna join us? Dude, you gonna beat that?" Dominic shrugged and said he was straight, and they were like, "Good luck with that." And not in a mean way, but like they meant it. Live and let live, the three of them had that in common.
It wasn't like Dominic had anything against gay guys. Sure, he and his boys would call each other "faggots" and whatever, but they didn't mean it. Same way you talked about your skills 'cause you hated yourself a little, always had to be covering that up. Most of being real was lying, Dominic learned that a long time before he learned to spin on his head. Being gay gave those guys a license to just be whatever, none of the bullshit Dominic'd had to pick up. And they were way fucking better than he was at dancing with girls like they wanted to have sex with them. He liked Sabra in more of a brother-sister way, preferred his women with a little more up front and a lot more in back, but he was getting a fast education in how that didn't have anything to do with anything.
And then Jimmy got voted out, and it was just Dominic and Danny in the hotel suite. The producers kept saying they were going to move people around so it wasn't just two people in a suite, but nobody seemed to get around to it. Dominic liked the privacy and not having to fight over the bathroom. The only annoying thing Danny did was, he jerked off kind of loud. Dominic could usually turn his music up over it, but there was one night when Dominic had been rhumba-ing for, like, ten hours and his ears were fucking ringing and all he wanted to do was sleep. So he got up and knocked on Danny's door like, "Shut the fuck up, man," and Danny was quiet for like two minutes and then he started moaning Dominic's name, not like he was actually thinking about Dominic or anything, just to be even more annoying. Or maybe he was, maybe he had been the whole time, that would be kind of awesome.
Danny finished, and once it got quiet Dominic was asleep in no time. The rhumba was fucking tiring. But Danny knocked on his door and woke him all, "Sorry, man, sometimes I get selfish and don't realize it until later. I mean, I'm working on that, and I'm sorry."
If Dominic had been awake, he would have accepted the apology. But he was sleeping, so he muttered, "Blow me."
Danny said, "Anytime, sweetheart." He blew a kiss.
Dominic was awake enough now to laugh and say, "Fuck you, man," and throw a pillow. Danny must have seen that he meant friendship, because he hung around for a minute. That minute was long enough for Dominic to think, a blow job might not be so bad. Everyone liked blow jobs. It wasn't like he was getting any the way things were, none of the girls offering and no time to go out and find someone outside America's top fourteen dancers. He could lie back and pretend it was a girl. He said, "Hey, wait a minute."
"Seriously?" Danny said.
"Yeah," Dominic said. Danny left, and Dominic thought he was walking away pissed off, but he was actually just getting a condom. Dominic took off his boxer shorts and closed his eyes and tried to think of girls, but what he kept thinking of was guys with really great extension and long, clean lines, guys who could do seven turns on point, guys who could do things he was torn between thinking he should never even attempt and thinking someday he would learn how to do even better than them. People who had skills were hot, period. And it was a really good blow job, especially for with a condom. He got off, quietly, and he wasn't sure what to do, whether he was supposed to kiss Danny or return the favor, or if a handshake would do. He said, "Thanks, man."
"Same time tomorrow?" Danny said, and he was pretending to just joke around, but both of them knew that dancing was mostly about lying.