Author: EnterStealth
Plot: The Runaways discuss romance novels in an impossible timeframe. In which Nico is a secret Nora Roberts fan, Gert is a fat girl stereotype, and Karolina overshares.
Disclaimer: Story idea is mine. Nothing else is.
His Turgid Loverod
Nico threw the overly-saccharine romance novel across the room for the third time. "Twinkies," she announced.
Gert gladly put down her crossword (Samoan port? Seriously?). "How so?"
"There's no point behind Twinkies. They're unhealthy and dumb and you can't believe you're eating them. But sometimes you just want a Twinkie, you know?"
"Oh, do I," Gert nodded, understanding completely, and felt fat.
"This book is like a readable Twinkie," Nico continued, as if her analogy were somehow too vague. "I want it, I love it, but… There's no plot! Guys don't share their emotions so openly!" She waved her hands around in frustration. "My long-buried feminism hates your passivity, woman I'm supposed to care about!"
Gert nodded, musing on the subject of Twinkies, convincing Nico that she, too, cared about Mary Ella's inability to live a fulfilling life without Robert dictating her every move. (Why, young impressionable girls could read this trash! But hopefully they wouldn't, because Nico had counted the word 'thrust' seven times already in the first eight chapters, and it was starting to not look like a word anymore.)
So while Gert wondered if any of the ingredients in Twinkies were found in nature and Karolina carefully filled "Apia" in 37 across, Nico demanded, "I mean, is it even possible to feel intense disgust and giddy interest at the same time? Because that's how I'm feeling right now."
"Yes, it is," Karolina answered. When Nico and Gert both stared at her (There were rules about rhetorical questions, dammit!), she shrugged. "Xavin's kind of ugly," she explained. "And she's got a gross mole." She gestured towards her upper thigh. "But that's never stopped me. Well, okay, the first time, but never after that."
Nico silently retrieved her book and curled up in the couch again. Gert excitedly said, "Flour!" but no one asked.
