January 21: Fic Excerpt

[kinetic_elaboration]

Excerpt from a fic I have not yet started editing because I am WIPED OUT from class and I need to sleep:

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“Okay, this is worth the Sloanes,” she decides, as she sinks down onto her heels again and turns around. She realizes for the first time that she was smiling, because Daria is standing just a few paces away from her, and smiling in an unexpected, soft way, too.

“What’s that look for?” Jane asks.

“You wish you brought your easel with you, don’t you?”

Jane’s smile grows abashed, and she ducks her head and shrugs her shoulders. “How’d you know?”

She shrugs back. “Just a guess.” Then she glances away, takes in the view from the other window–more beach and Mildred’s closest neighbor, distant but visible, farther down the shore–and the two impeccably made pink beds. “Mildred put us in the same room. I guess she doesn’t care about our virtue.”

“Only young Thomas’s,” Jane agrees. “Or she doesn’t think two upstanding young ladies such as ourselves would ever engage in any depraved lesbian acts.”

“That’s the advantage of homophobia,” Daria says, catching Jane’s eye on the echo. Funny. But she doesn’t look away, and it isn’t actually funny, and they are in fact alone together in the least-used guest bedroom at the far end of the house. With four white-painted walls and a view of the ocean.