There's an intoxicated Klingon who's demanding to see you.
I finished all the chapter revisions I can do, and it wasn't even bedtime, and I seriously over-owed annaalamode some IM-window fic. It is bedtime now, though!
Mirai Nagasu/Caroline Zhang, PG, 2011 Nats, underage drinking and girlkissing.
Mirai's a warm girl. That's what people think of her. She's bubbly and goofy, she's sarcastic and funny, she puts her foot in her mouth and giggles as she spits it out. She hugs her competitors and sucks up to her enemies. She's cupcakes and puppies and California sunshine, sweet enough to make Frank Carroll crack a smile.
That's what people think of her unless they are straight (or fake-straight) boys. Ice skater boys are nice, and they have their pick of girls so they look for the nice girls, the ones who won't grab them by the balls and twist.
Mirai may be a cupcake sunshine puppy if you're competing against her, but if you're trying to get into her tights, she is a wet, dirty snowball down your pants. The fake-straight ones are easy to break: all she has to do is call them on that. The real-straight ones need a wider variety of put-downs. She likes her boys taller, or her parents only let her date Asians, or she's holding out for someone cuter. All accompanied with a shrug and a signature giggle. Just being honest! No offense!
Mirai is so sweet she will make your teeth sting, and Caroline is sour. In the good way, like unripe mangoes, like gummi worms in sour-patch sugar, like a 3 AM jet-lag Golden Girls rerun in a foreign country. Caroline, who filled out in her hips and belly at sixteen, who stops speaking to her coaches for weeks on end, not to mention her mother. Who is the kind of beautiful not even the gay boys dare go near.
The first time Caroline told Mirai she was in love with her, they were thirteen and rooming together at Junior Worlds, drinking watermelon schnapps from plastic cups. Holding each other's hair while they barfed neon pink. Mirai has pretended ever since that she was too drunk to remember.
They are so much older now. They are trapped in North Carolina without a driver's license, and neither of them is going to Worlds, Mirai by a spin and Caroline by a mile. An ice-dancer boy, immune so far to Mirai's insults, has made her booze run. "Watermelon schnapps," she demanded. "Don't judge."
In their old age, they have learned that booze is stealthier in a coffee cup. Caroline raises hers. "To skating like shit."
"To loving you anyway." Shrug, giggle.
But Caroline knows Mirai better than that, knows nothing Mirai says is really an accident, nothing is really a lie. Caroline kisses her, sticky-pink and sweet-sour, and Mirai has never been a warmer girl.
*
Alternatively, please enjoy this video of what is basically my life, except that my cats are a different color:
Mirai Nagasu/Caroline Zhang, PG, 2011 Nats, underage drinking and girlkissing.
Mirai's a warm girl. That's what people think of her. She's bubbly and goofy, she's sarcastic and funny, she puts her foot in her mouth and giggles as she spits it out. She hugs her competitors and sucks up to her enemies. She's cupcakes and puppies and California sunshine, sweet enough to make Frank Carroll crack a smile.
That's what people think of her unless they are straight (or fake-straight) boys. Ice skater boys are nice, and they have their pick of girls so they look for the nice girls, the ones who won't grab them by the balls and twist.
Mirai may be a cupcake sunshine puppy if you're competing against her, but if you're trying to get into her tights, she is a wet, dirty snowball down your pants. The fake-straight ones are easy to break: all she has to do is call them on that. The real-straight ones need a wider variety of put-downs. She likes her boys taller, or her parents only let her date Asians, or she's holding out for someone cuter. All accompanied with a shrug and a signature giggle. Just being honest! No offense!
Mirai is so sweet she will make your teeth sting, and Caroline is sour. In the good way, like unripe mangoes, like gummi worms in sour-patch sugar, like a 3 AM jet-lag Golden Girls rerun in a foreign country. Caroline, who filled out in her hips and belly at sixteen, who stops speaking to her coaches for weeks on end, not to mention her mother. Who is the kind of beautiful not even the gay boys dare go near.
The first time Caroline told Mirai she was in love with her, they were thirteen and rooming together at Junior Worlds, drinking watermelon schnapps from plastic cups. Holding each other's hair while they barfed neon pink. Mirai has pretended ever since that she was too drunk to remember.
They are so much older now. They are trapped in North Carolina without a driver's license, and neither of them is going to Worlds, Mirai by a spin and Caroline by a mile. An ice-dancer boy, immune so far to Mirai's insults, has made her booze run. "Watermelon schnapps," she demanded. "Don't judge."
In their old age, they have learned that booze is stealthier in a coffee cup. Caroline raises hers. "To skating like shit."
"To loving you anyway." Shrug, giggle.
But Caroline knows Mirai better than that, knows nothing Mirai says is really an accident, nothing is really a lie. Caroline kisses her, sticky-pink and sweet-sour, and Mirai has never been a warmer girl.
*
Alternatively, please enjoy this video of what is basically my life, except that my cats are a different color:
Click to view