Because, when girls talk about other people, in my experience, it's mostly other girls.
Name: Girls' Night In. (Prompt: Junk Food, by
peasant007)
Rating: Everyone. (If people haven't been spoiled as to Achenar, Rean, Ara and Calla's future spouses by now... then they haven't been here long.) Also, it's Canon. I'll reorganize and add to the fics page at some point...
Characters: Ara, Lydia, Calla
Summary: Friday night has become even more sparsely populated than usual. The girls have the junk food all to themselves for once.
***
It wasn’t so much that Aranel didn’t generally get along with other girls. It was just that she spent a lot of time with the guys, and she had become fluent in dude-speak over the years.
It was a useful skill: after all, her two best friends were dudes. She had a younger brother - might as well have had two, what with Elirand always around - and ever since high school, she’d sworn off large, girls-only groups of friends. She didn’t really care about fashion or celebrities anyway, and the only other subject of conversation among those large groups of girls seemed to be other people.
Which, dude, not cool.
This made the Friday before Halloween challenging, since not one of the guys were in residence. Amadeus and Rean were on a date. Achenar and Calla weren’t, because Achenar had just texted them all to say that he was dealing with a minor disaster in the physics lab, and to save him some pizza. No information on the type of disaster was forthcoming. Elirand was out with the latest temporary girlfriend, and Bastian was working fervishly on his final portfolio for “Archetorture,” and going nuts with the idea that he wouldn’t have enough stuff to fill it with by December.
Ana had abandoned the other three for a date. Aranel was fairly confident that she wouldn’t have to break the new girl’s kneecaps, so that at least was a pleasant change.
This left Aranel alone in the house with her choice of leftover thai food, Calla, and a temporarily grumpy-as-hell Lydia, wondering if she’d forgotten how to communicate in girl talk.
In an attempt not to break with tradition, they’d moved the battered couches back against the walls and had an equally battered gameboard sitting between them. Calla was currently reading the rulebook to Risk, while Lydia sorted all of the tiny wooden blocks by color and hunted in the couch cushions for more dice. The only thing currently occupying the board was an extra-large bag of cheese puffs.
At least, Aranel thought, she wasn’t stuck in the house with girls who complained about junk food. If that had happened, she probably would have marched down to the campus and asked to be included in whatever disaster had overtaken the physics lab.
“Anybody want a soda or something?” she asked.
“Nah.” Calla was still absorbed in the rules pamphlet.
“We still have any orange crush?” asked Lydia, coming out of her methodical sulk, and the two of them headed into the kitchen.
“Probably. Nobody else drinks it,” Aranel replied, before popping open the fridge. “Not in here, though: you’ll have to drink it warm.”
“You should try it.”
“Orange crush, warm? Rather not.” The fridge closed with a snap.
“It matches the cheese puffs.”
“That’s disgusting.”
Lydia smiled as they opened the door to the tiny, drippy basement, and entered without a flinch. Aranel wondered why Lydia’s comparative bravery had never seemed to rub off on her little sister.
“You’re the one who once ate a doughnut with ketchup.”
“How many times am I going to have to tell you people that it was a mistake?”
“Until the pictures disappear from the internet. So, every time.” Lydia smirked, and pulled a white can with a picture of an orange slice on it out of the box. They headed back upstairs.
“I only ate one bite.”
“That’s not what everyone says…”
“It was a small doughnut, okay?”
“Whatever, Ara.”
“What are you two arguing about?” Calla asked, looking up from the rules booklet.
“Whether or not orange crush and cheese puffs is more or less disgusting than doughnuts with ketchup,” Lydia replied.
Calla sighed. “Not that again.”
“I can’t help it if I’m fascinated by the fact that anyone could eat something like that, even by mistake.”
“Look,” said Aranel. “It was three in the freaking a. m., after a party. I didn’t really look at the plate. I thought it was a tater tot, not a doughnut hole. And I have since exacted revenge upon the enterprising future documentarist who managed to get that on tape. It is probably the most disgusting thing I have ever eaten, mistakenly or no. It does not actually qualify, because I did not actually manage to swallow it. Case closed.”
“Okay, I’m mildly disgusted right now, so can we just play Risk?” asked Calla.
“Yeah, if we had the slightest clue how to play.”
Calla gave Lydia a look. “What do you think I’ve been reading about? Everybody roll a dice to see who goes first.”
“Isn’t it die?” asked Ara.
“Yeah, because the language isn’t complicated enough. Do you honestly think we need another homonym? Besides, a dice is inherently plural. Therefore there’s no need to pluralize it.”
“How is a dice inherently plural?” Lydia asked.
“I don’t know, ask the Simlish major,” said Aranel.
“You have six sides it could land on,” Calla supplied.
“Calla, I’m going to call bull on that.”
“Shut up, poli-sci major.”
“We know that’s all you proto-pundits do,” Lydia added, sotto voce.
“Enough asides, O theater major. Shut up and drink your orange stuff.”
“All right,” Calla interrupted. “So, it looks like Ara won the roll - by blatant and unfair stacking of the odds -”
“Ad homenem argument much, Calla?”
“It’s a political game, Ara.”
“Ouch. Right in the feels, Calla. If she had feels, that is.”
“You know what, Lyidia? Just for that, I am invading all your countries.” Ara's glare at the freshman was too severe to take seriously, so Lydia just smirked back.
“Bring it.”
“Shut up and start placing your armies, both of you.” Lydia popped a fistful of cheese puffs into her mouth as a sign of her willingness to shut up, and Ana started placing armies in Austrailia and Madagascar. There was a long period of relative piece as they divided the map between them.
“You know, I was just thinking,” said Calla, once all the armies were in place, “do you think the boys ever wonder what we talk about?”
Aranel shrugged.
“Them?” Lydia suggested.
All three girls started laughing.