(A/N): Merry Christmas, everyone! We're back in 1966 with Evie, Pip, Vi, Hettie, and Lou. Tea has been made, and questions will be answered... sort of. So, I did the calculations yesterday, and if I'm correct (I THINK I'm correct), I wrote just under 500k words this past year (494,635 from Christmas Day to Christmas Day), including the chapters I've written, but haven't posted yet. That's over 40,000 words a month, basically, which is just... absolutely nuts. That's pretty much the equivalent of doing NaNoWriMo every month of the year, for a year- no wonder I'm feeling so burnt out. I'm going to finish out this (calendar) year posting a chapter every second day, but once the new year rolls around, I'm going to drop it to once a week- at least until either I've finished all 52 chapters for the year, or until I'm reasonably close to that. Hopefully it'll just be a few weeks/a month of two of slow posting, and then it'll speed up again to probably twice a week, but in the meantime, think of it as a sort of hiatus (where you still get content, just not as often). Again, I don't know if anyone is even still reading this story, but I guess if no one is, then at least I'll have a record of when I 'went on break' so to speak, for my own reference.
Trigger Warnings: A few more subtle triggers, in this one. Evie typical unintentional sort of biphobia/erasure, plus a fear of biphobia/homophobia (even though she knows Lisbet says she likes women, Evie doesn't think she'd be attracted to her- there's a kind of disconnect there, and I imagine she currently probably views it as 'I'm a woman. Lisbet is attracted to women. Lisbet can't possibly be attracted to me, which means she's only attracted to women in theory', which is, in fact, quite biphobic [and follows the line of 'you can't be bi/gay/etc if you haven't been in a relationship/had sex with someone of the opposite sex']. Evie doesn't mean to be thinking that way, again, there's just a bit of a disconnect for her [having only just found out that other people feel the same way she does, and still feeling extremely isolated from them as it is for numerous reasons], which she WILL fix, in time.) When I say those things (biphobia/erasure, and fear of biphobia/homophobia) they are (at least, I think) extremely subtle. I don't think it'll bother you unless you go looking for it, but again, I'm not going to leave it untagged, just in case. Oh, on that note, I'd also say it's maybe sort of slut-shame-y? As in, Evie's friends are judging her (they're mostly concerned/impressed) on her 'sexual escapade'- but of course, Evie didn't have sexual anything with Lisbet or Jerremyah, so again, it's sort of just... in their heads? But that doesn't change the fact that at this point in the story, Evie's friends DO think she had sex with Jerremyah at the very least, and they are like '...girl, who are you? What have you done with sweet, innocent little Evie?'
January 16th, 1966
Evie
Tarea Hugar; that was the name of the Hunter I'd forcibly ejected from my house- I'd have to remember that, for the next time I saw any of my new vampire friends. I wasn't sure if I'd said the right thing to him, about Lisbet and Jerremyah- and mostly likely the others, as well- not taking the way he'd tried to kill them- separate them- lightly, but Khal had told me to use my 'best judgement'. I was assuming that since he had the power to see the future, he'd probably already known exactly what I was going to say when he told me that, so it must all work out eventually... but only time would tell how long it would take to do so.
Pip had followed me into the kitchen to help me bring everything in- and to assist me in choosing a variety of breakfast-appropriate snack foods, in order to try to make up for the fact that he'd told me they'd all skipped breakfast, because they were too worried about me to stomach more than tea or coffee. We'd all been sitting in the living room for almost ten minutes, when I caught Vi staring at the bottom of my dress rather strangely. "What?" I asked, before taking a sip of my cup of tea, and she shook her head slowly.
"Nothing. It's just... I could've sworn that dress had an ink stain on it, yesterday." As I tried not to choke on my drink, she leaned forward to finger the hem of my dress, closer to the right side seam. "Right here, from where that pen leaked on my hand at work, and I forgot I wasn't wearing an apron." Did it say something about the difference between us that Vi's workwear was my clubwear? Maybe- but I certainly wasn't about to dwell on that, right now.
"Uh..." What- what could I say to that? Clearly, Lisbet's cleaning charms had done more than just remove blood and grime- but how was I supposed to explain that to Vi? The stain had been there last night, we all knew that for a fact, because she'd almost refused to let me wear the dress out in such a state- even if the ink spot was reasonably small, and a darker shade of blue, and the club was dimly lit- but it wasn't like she was planning to get rid of the dress... she just needed to get around to taking it to the dry cleaner. Oh! "I took it to the dry cleaner!" She stared at me dubiously- they all did.
Hettie's teacup clinked against her saucer as she set it down with more force than necessary, and she leveled me with a look that I knew screamed 'bullshite'. "Bullshite." Okay, it wasn't quite a scream- more of a grumble, really, though tempered by her fondness for me. "You took it to a dry cleaner last night, after you left the club, but before you got home this morning?" I shrugged.
"Overnight dry cleaner."
She blinked hard, then cocked an eyebrow at me. "If you took the dress to the dry cleaner, what were you wearing while it was getting cleaned?" She asked smugly, like she thought she'd caught me out, but I simply shrugged again.
"I borrowed some clothes from- a friend." I'd almost said 'from Lisbet', or worse, 'from Lisbet and Jerremyah'- but as much as I trusted my friends, I wasn't sure that telling them the names of my new vampire friends was the best idea, just yet.
Hettie's brows shot up, then she narrowed her eyes at me a second later. "And would those 'friends' just so happen to be the bloke we sent you off with last night, and his wife?" Again, I almost corrected her with 'mate', but honestly, I think that probably would've been a bit of a tip-off- and also, they were clearly married anyway, so I don't suppose the distinction mattered that much.
"Yes, exactly." Their reaction to that was positively bewildered- I kind of enjoyed it, actually; being able to shock them for once, instead of always having to be steady, reliable Evie. "They're very nice- much nicer than that-" For once, I didn't cut myself off because I was worried about revealing something, but because I didn't have the words to convey my utter distaste for him. "-man." Pip looked vaguely offended, so I immediately reached over to pat his arm. "It's not- That's not my issue with him, I just- I don't have the vocabulary to be able to adequately insult him."
Hettie's grin was absolutely wicked. "Prick? Bastard? Arse? Arsehat?" I tilted my head to the side, contemplating that one.
"Is he the hat for the arse, or is he an arse with a hat?" They all seemed shocked that I was willing to go even that far- I wonder how they would react if they knew that I'd asked Greygorry what the word for 'fuck' was in French. Then again, cursing had always been easier for me when I was repeating what someone else had just said, rather than coming straight out with it off the top of my own head.
"He- uh... both?" Hettie said hesitantly, but one of the best- and worst- things about her was how quickly she recovered. "So," She said, once again cocking an eyebrow at me suggestively. "Did you and the bad boy at least get up to anything fun, before his wife found out?" Hm? Why would Lisbet 'find out', when she'd been the one to- Oh. Right. They didn't know about that- and I couldn't tell them, without... I couldn't tell them.
Slowly, a plan formed in my head, and Hettie and the others were gracious enough to wait- albeit with growing amusement slash concern. "Oh, his wife knew the whole time," I told them, and even as their eyebrows rose slightly, they all looked to Lou, who seemed the most unsurprised. Ah... clearly she'd caught something the others hadn't, then. "I met her first, actually, at the bar." Lou sipped her tea far more delicately than usual, and I was guessing that meant that this- Lisbet and I's initial encounter at the bar- was what she'd taken notice of. "She asked if I wanted to come back to her table with her, to meet her husband-" She'd said boyfriend at the time, but if they already knew Jerremyah as Lisbet's husband, I wasn't going to confuse them- and none of it measured up to the intimacy of 'soulmates', anyway. "-I said no, because I wanted to get back to you guys, but then... well..." They'd sent me off with Jerremyah, and they knew as much.
"So... what? She was trying to solicit you to have an affair with her husband?" I hesitated- because as much as they'd flirted with me, both before and after I'd found out that they were- that Lisbet was attracted to women as well as men, and I was apparently 'her type'... there had never explicitly been anything sexual about our encounter. But how did I translate being pinned between the two of them in that bathroom with their mouths at my neck into something I could actually tell my friends about? "Oh my God, that's exactly what it was, wasn't it?!" My unavoidable blush at the memory of what Lisbet and Jerremyah had done to me was apparently enough to suggest to Hettie that something sexual had, in fact, gone down, but while I was fine with them thinking I'd slept with Jerremyah- flattered, if anything, that they thought he'd go for me- I wasn't okay with them viewing it as something... illicit. Nefarious. Anything either of them had done to me was pre-approved between them, so an affair? No. But...
"It was their anniversary," I said, then held back a wince as I hoped they didn't ask me which anniversary it was. What was an appropriate number for how old they looked, but also conveyed their unending devotion to each other? Four years? Five? It didn't feel like enough, but I feared it never would. "They're really very nice people-"
Vi cut me off, looking just as astounded as the others. "I'm sorry," She spluttered out. "You were supposed to be an anniversary present?!"
(A/N): I imagine the cleaning spells are probably meant to return things to their intended state- AKA, a clean, ready to be worn garment/a clean, ready to be eaten off of dish, etc- rather than just getting rid of everything 'staining' the item, since that would remove the dye in any clothing. So, it removed the ink stain because it wasn't MEANT to be there, but left the blue fabric blue, because it was intended to be blue. I also imagine that if you repeatedly use really strong cleaning spells on unprepared garments, they'll 'bleach'- technically, removing all the color that has ever been applied- but most magical clothing such as robes, etc, have enchanted/otherwise magically protected or enhanced dyes used in their construction.
Next chapter is chapter 500 ~WOO!~