Danse Macabre Snark,pt2 of ch 1

[yaoihuntresse.livejournal.com]

First of all, I want to thank those that gave some honest advice and I promise that I will watch myself with the later stuff. So I did some editing from my original one and hope you like it.


She looked up at the ceiling, closed her eyes, and sighed.

Ronnie: Only a few more pages, Ronnie, only a few more pages...

"Anita, you live with two of them. You sleep over with two more of them. You are never alone. When are you going to have time to run in and get a test, let alone have the privacy to use it?"
"I can pick one up at work on Monday."
She stared at me. "Monday! It's Thursday. I'd go fucking crazy if I had to wait that long. You'll go crazy.

And you'll take it out of the other eight members of your harem.

You can't wait nearly four days."
"Maybe my period will start. Maybe by Monday I won't need it."
"Anita, you wouldn't have told me if you weren't pretty sure you needed a pregnancy test."
"When Nathaniel and Micah get back, they'll jump in the shower, we'll get dressed up, and go straight to Jean-Claude's. There won't be time tonight."
"Friday, promise me that Friday you'll get one."
"I'll try, but. . ."
"Besides, when you start asking your lovers to use condoms, won't they figure something out?"
"Jesus," I said.
"Yeah, I heard you say if you'd used condoms you'd be safe. Don't tell me that you're not going to want to use them for a while. Could you really have unprotected sex right now, and enjoy it?"

Could this not sound like a Lifetime Movie?

I shook my head. "No."
"Then what are you going to tell the boys about this sudden need for condoms? Hell, Micah had a vasectomy before you even met him. He's like super-safe."
I sighed again. "You're right, damn it, but you are."
"So pick up the test on the way to the thing tonight."
"No. I'm not going to rain all over Jean-Claude's meeting. He's planned this for months."
"You didn't mention it to me."
"I didn't plan it, he did. The ballet isn't really my thing." Truthfully, he hadn't mentioned it to me until they were coming to St. Louis,

He had to make sure there was nothing good on TV or she'd never come with him.

but I kept that part to myself. It would just give Ronnie another reason to say that Jean-Claude was keeping secrets from me. He'd finally admitted that the Masters of the City all coming here had been something he hadn't planned, at least not from the beginning. He'd just negotiated it so the vampire dancers could cross many different vamp territories without problems. Jean-Claude agreed the meet was a good idea, but he was also nervous about it. It would be the largest gathering of Masters of the City in American history.

Yep, all four of them.

And you don't bring that many big fish together without worrying about shark attacks.
"And how will Mr. Fang-Face feel about being a father?"

You mean this guy?


I know the show was mediocre at best, but even he doesn't deserve this.

"Don't call him that."
"Sorry, how will Jean-Claude feel about being a daddy?"
"It's probably not his."
She looked at me. "You're having sex with him, a lot. Why isn't it his?"
"Because he's more dian four hundred years old and when vampires get that old, they aren't very fertile. That goes for Asher and Damian, too."
"Oh, God," she said. "I'd forgotten that you had sex with Damian."

Maury Povitch would so totally kill to have these guys on his show.

"Yeah," I said.
She covered her eyes with her hands. "I'm sorry, Anita. I'm sorry that it's weirding me out that my uptight monogamous friend is suddenly sleeping with not one, but three vampires."
"I didn't plan it that way."

The author did.

"I know that." She hugged me, and I stayed stiff against her. She wasn't being comforting enough for me to relax in her arms.

Anita: Damn it, Ronnie, your arms are too limp! Squeeze harder, harder!

She hugged me tighter. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm being a jerk. But if it's not the vampires then who else but your houseboys."
I pulled away from her. "Don't call them my houseboys. They have names,

Thing 1 and Thing 2

and just because I like living with someone, and you don't, don't make that my problem."
"Fine, that leaves Micah and Nathaniel."
"Micah is fixed, remember? So it can't be him."
Her eyes went wide. "That leaves Nathaniel. Jesus, Anita, Nathaniel as the father-to-be."
A moment ago I might have agreed with her, but now it pissed me off. It wasn't her place to disparage my boyfriends. "What's wrong with Nathaniel?" I said, and my voice was not entirely happy.

Where do I begin? He's a were-lepord who was a drug-addicted teenage prostitute that was so brutally tortured throughout his life that he can not longer say no to any abuse proposed to him. Then later was forced to perform in brutal porn films where he had to rape and abuse werewolves. Though he's clean now, he clings on to Anita for protection and is only improving himself to please her. He's also been marked as Anita's personal animal servant and plays maid at her apartment. Yeah, a guy with this much baggage isn't exactly going to be father of the year material.

She put her hands on her hips and gave me a look. "He's twenty and a stripper. Twenty-year-old strippers are the entertainment at your bache-lorette party. You don't have babies with them."


I let the anger seep into my eyes. "Nathaniel told me you didn't see him as real, as a person. I told him he was wrong. I told him you were my friend, and you wouldn't disrespect him like that. I guess was wrong."
She didn't back down or apologize. She was angry and staying that way. "Last time I checked Nathaniel was supposed to be food, just food, not the love of your life."

For your information, Anita has a condition where she has to feed off people by having sex with them.

"I didn't say he was the love of my life, and yeah, he started out as my pomme de sang, but that doesn't..."
But she interrupted me. "Your apple of blood, right, that's what pomme de sang means?"
I nodded.
"If you were a vampire you'd be taking blood from your little stripper, but thanks to that bloodsucking son of a bitch you have to feed off sex.
"Sex, for God's sake! First that bastard made you his blood whore, and now you're just a—" She stopped abruptly, a startled, almost-frightened look on her face, as if she knew she'd gone too far.
I gave her a flat, cold look. The look that says

Any threat that is made will be blocked by the author so she can keep talking about Anita's penguin collection.

my anger has moved from hot to cold. It's never a good sign. "Go on, Ronnie, say it."
"I didn't mean it," she whispered.
"Yeah," I said, "you did. Now I'm just a whore." My voice sounded as cold as my eyes felt. Too angry and too hurt to be anything but cold. Hot anger can feel good, but the cold will protect you better.

Say what?

She started to cry. I just stared at her, speechless. What the hell was going on? We were fighting—she wasn't allowed to cry in the middle of it. Especially not when she was the one being a cruel bastard. I could count on one hand the times I'd seen Ronnie cry and still have fingers left over.
I was still angry, but I was puzzled, too, and that took a little of the edge off. "Shouldn't I be the one in tears here?" I asked, because I couldn't think of what else to say.

Oh Anita, must you always be the center of attention?

I was mad at her and I'd be damned if I would comfort her right now.
She spoke in that breathless, hiccuping voice that serious crying can give you. "I'm sorry, oh, God, Anita, I'm sorry.

Ronnie: That I'm just filling in one of the oldest Mary-Sue traits where all members of the same sex must be absolutely jealous of you.

I'm just so jealous."
I raised my eyebrows at her. "What are you talking about? Jealous of what?"
"The men," she said in that shivering, uncertain voice. It was like she was someone else for a moment, or maybe this was just part of Ronnie that she didn't let people see. "All the damned men.

* rapidly sticks two fingers in mouth and makes a gagging sound *

I'm about to give up everybody. Everybody but Louie, and he's great, but damn it I've had lovers. I hit triple digits."
I wasn't sure that being able to number your lovers at over a hundred was a good thing, but it was something that Ronnie and I had agreed to disagree over a long time ago. I did not say, Look who's the whore, or other hurtful remarks I could have made. I let all the cheap shots I could have made go. She was the one crying.

See folks, if you make the other person look bad, you're pardoned from any reckless things you're doing.

"And now I'm giving it all up, all of it, for just one man." She leaned her hands against the cabinet as if she needed the support.
"You said sex with Louie was great. I think you've used words like fantastic and mind-blowing."
She nodded, her hair spilling around her face so that I couldn't see her eyes for a moment. "It is, he is, but he's just one man. What if I get bored, or he gets bored with me? How can just one be enough? The ast time we were both cheating a month after the wedding." She looked up at that last remark, her gray eyes wide and frightened.

I guess she means the wedding she was a bridesmaid at in the second book. Otherwise this story would come off a lot differently.

I made a small helpless gesture, and said, "You're asking the wrong person, Ronnie. I'd planned on monogamy. It seemed like a good idea to me."
"That's exactly what I mean." She wiped at the tears on her face in harsh, angry motions, as if the touch of them made her even more upset. "How is it that you, my girlfriend who had only three men in her entire life, ends up dating and fucking five men?"
I didn't know what to say to that, so I tried to concentrate on the hard facts. "Six men," I said.
She frowned at me, her eyes taking on that look that meant she was counting in her head. "I only count five."
"You're leaving someone out, Ronnie."

Ronnie: You mean reincarnated Hilter?

"No"—and she started counting on her fingers—"Jean-Claude, Asher, Damian, Nathaniel, and Micah. That's it."
I shook my head, again. "I had unprotected sex with one more man last month." I could have said it differently, but maybe if we got back to my personal disaster, we could stop talking about Ronnie's penis envy.

Somewhere Sigmund Freud is spinning in his grave.

She needed more therapy than I knew how to give lately.
She frowned harder, then she got it. "Oh, no, no," she said.
I nodded. Happy to see from her expression that she got the full awfulness of it.

Anita: I like making my friends feel bad.

"You just had sex with him once, right?"
I shook my head no, over and over again. "Not just once."
She was looking at me so hard that I couldn't hold her gaze. Even with the tear tracks drying on her face, she was suddenly Ronnie again.

Where the words, "Punching Bag", appeared on her forehead.

Ronnie had a good hard stare. I couldn't meet it, and was left looking at the cabinets. "How much more than 'not just once'?" she asked.
I started to blush and couldn't stop it. Damn it.
"You're blushing—

You've pretty casual about your major sexcapades; you lost the right to play Little Miss Modest here.

that's not a good sign," she said.
I stared down at the countertop, using my long hair to hide my face.
Her voice was gentler when she said, "How many times, Anita? How many times in the month you've been back together?"
"Seven," I said, still not looking up. I hated admitting it, because the number alone said louder than any words just how much I enjoyed being in Richard's bed.
"Seven times in a month," she said. "Wow, that's . . ."
I looked up, and the look was enough "Sorry, sorry, just..." She looked as if she wasn't sure whether she was going to laugh, or be sad about it. She controlled herself, and finally sounded sad when she said, "Oh, my God, Richard."
I nodded again.
"Richard." She whispered his name, and looked suitably horrified. It was worth a little horror.

Because basing any character off your spouse is a bigger kiss of death and ticket to bitterness than having their name tattooed on you.

Richard Zeeman and I had been off-again, on-again, for years. Mostly off. We'd been engaged briefly until I saw him eat someone. Richard was the leader—Ulfric—of the local werewolf pack. He was also a junior high science teacher, and an all-around Boy Scout. If Boy Scouts were six foot one, muscled, amazingly handsome, and had an amazing ability to be self-destructive. He hated being a monster, and he hated me for being more comfortable with the monsters than he was.

Then why did you dump him for eating someone? Having your job, you should be used to this stuff.

He hated a lot of things, but we'd made up just enough to have fallen into bed in the last few weeks. But as my Grandma Blake told me,

"Anita, you are a total disappointment."

once was enough. Of all the men in my life, the worst possible choice to be the father would be Richard, because he of all of them would try for the white picket fence and a normal life.

Because special little snowflakes melt in that type of environment.

Normal wasn't possible for me, or him, but I knew that and he didn't, not really, not yet. Even if I was pregnant, even if I kept being pregnant, I wasn't going to marry anyone. I wasn't going to change my living arrangements. My life worked the way it was, and Richard's idea of do-mestic bliss was not mine.

She has the right to stick to her guns, but she's going to have to sacrifice a lot more if she wants to create a stable life for that kid. Even if she shoved him/her with a live-in nanny.

Ronnie gave an abrupt laugh, then swallowed it. I was glaring at her. "Come on, Anita, I'm allowed to be impressed that you've managed to have sex with him seven times in the space of a month. I mean, you don't even live together, and you're having more sex than some of our married friends."
I kept giving her the look that makes bad guys run for cover,but Ronnie was my friend, and it's harder to impress your friends with the scary look. They know you won't really hurt them. The fight was dying under the weight of friendship, and of my problem being more immediate than her years of issues unresolved.
Ronnie touched my arm. "Oh, it wouldn't be Richard's. You're having sex with Nathaniel at least every other day."
"Sometimes twice a day," I said.
She smiled. "Well, my, my..."
Then waved her hand as if to keep from distracting herself. "But the odds are that it's Nathaniel's, right?"
I smiled at her. "You sound happy about that now."

Given that it's a choice between the majorly psychologically-scarred wereleopard and the ex-fiance where the only things you have in common are sex and bitter feelings, it's not an easy one to make.

She shrugged. "Well, a choice of evils, ya know."
"Thanks a lot, Ronnie."
"You know what I meant," she said.
"No, I don't think I do."

Ronnie: Come on! Author is trying to make me the bad guy here. Now shut-up and play along.

I think I was ready to be angry about her thinking the men in my life were a choice of evils, but I didn't get a chance to be angry, because two of the men in my life were coming through the front door.
I heard them unlocking the door before it opened, and their voices came raised and a little breathless from the run. They'd been able to run faster, and farther, without me along. I was, after all, still human, and they were not. Standing between the island and the cabinets we couldn't see the door, but only heard them laughing as they came toward the doorway to the kitchen.

Nathaniel: Wow, that Ron Paul guy is so funny. Wait a minute...what do you mean it's not all an act?

"How can you do that?" Ronnie asked, voice soft.
"What?" I asked, frowning.
"You were smiling."
I looked at her.
"You smiled just at the sound of their voices, even with everything . . ."
I stopped her with a hand on her arm. One way I knew I didn't want them to find out about the maybe-baby was by overhearing a conversation. Their hearing was a little too keen to risk it. And here they came, my two live-in sweeties.
Micah was in front, looking back over his shoulder, still laughing, talking. He was my height, short, slender, and muscular in that swimmer sort of way. He had to have his suits tailored because he needed an extra-small athletic cut. You didn't get that off the rack.

All aboard the sue-trait train everyone.

He'd come to me tanned, and stayed that way from jogging outside, mostly shirtless, all summer and autumn. He'd added a T-shirt to the short-shorts today. His hair was that deep, rich brown that some people get after starting life as very blond. His dark hair was tied back in a low ponytail that couldn't hide how curly it was, almost as curly as mine. He'd taken off his sunglasses, so when I moved into his arms I could look up into his chartreuse eyes.
Yellow-green leopard eyes in his delicate face. A very bad man had once forced him to stay in leopard form until, when he came back to human, he couldn't come all the way back.
We kissed and our arms just seemed to automatically glide around each other, to press our bodies as close together as we could with clothes on. He'd affected me this way almost from the moment we had seen each other. Lust at first sight. They say it doesn't last, but we were six months and counting.
I melted against his body and

And pretended Ronnie's bored yawn meant that steam was practically coming out of her ears.

kissed him fiercely, deeply. Partly it was what I always wanted to do when I saw him. Partly I was scared, and touching and being touched made me feel better. Not long ago I'd have been more discreet in front of company, but my nerves just weren't good enough to pretend today.
He didn't get embarrassed, or tell me, "Not in front of Ronnie," the way Richard would have done. He kissed me back with the same drowning intensity. His hands holding me like he'd never let me go. We drew back, breathless and laughing.
"Was that for my benefit?" Ronnie asked, and her voice was not happy.

Are you white, blond-haired and blue eyed? Then yes.

I turned around, still half in Micah's arms. I looked at her angry eyes and suddenly was ready to be angry back. "Not everything is about you, Ronnie."
"Are you telling me you kiss him like that every time he comes home?" The anger was back, and she used it. "He's been gone, what, an hour? I've seen you greet him after a day's work, and it was never like that."
"Like what?" I asked, voice

Sounding like it was being taken over by a bitchy teenager.

sliding down. If she wanted to fight, we could fight.
"Like he was air and you couldn't breathe him in fast enough."
Micah's voice was mild, placating, trying to talk us both down. "Did we interrupt something?"
I turned to face Ronnie, squarely. "I'm allowed to kiss my boyfriend the way I want to kiss him without getting your permission, Ronnie."
"Don't try and tell me you weren't rubbing my face in it, just now, with the show."
"Go get some therapy, Ronnie, because I am fucking tired of your issues raining all over me."

I would say, "our heroine ladies and gentlemen", but I'm waiting for her to do something even worse.

"I confided in you," she said, voice strangled with some emotion I didn't understand,

Because God thought that creating a few people without empathy would "make things more interesting."

"and you put on a show like that in front of me. How could you?"
"Oh, that wasn't a show," Nathaniel said from just inside the doorway, "but if it's a show you want, we can do that, too." He glided into the kitchen on the balls of his feet, showing both the grace of his dance training and that otherworldly grace of the wereleopard. He pulled his tank top off in one smooth gesture and let it fall to the floor. I actually backed up a step before I caught myself. I hadn't realized until that moment that he was angry with Ronnie.

Whose done nothing wrong to him in person other than be disgusted at her showing off.

What little cutting remarks had she been making to him, that I hadn't heard?

That short shorts on men went out in the 80's and even then most of them couldn't pull it off.

When he told me she didn't see him as real, he'd been trying to tell me more than I had heard. That I'd missed something big was there in his angry eyes.
He tore the tie from his ponytail and let his ankle-length auburn hair fall around his nearly naked body. The jogging short-shorts just didn't cover that much.
I had time to say, "Nathaniel—" and he was in front of me. That other-worldly energy that all lycanthropes could give off shivered off his skin and along my body. He was five-six, just tall enough for me to have to look up to meet his eyes. His anger had turned them from lavender to the deeper color of lilacs, if flowers could burn with anger and force of personality.

Wow, even her boytoys look like Mary-Sues.

Nathaniel was in those eyes and with that one look he dared me, challenged me, to turn him down.

I didn't want to turn him down. I wanted to wrap his body and that skin-crawling energy around me like a coat. Lately almost any stress seemed to feed into sex. Scared? Sex would make me feel better. Angry? Sex would calm me. Sad?

Makes threatening letters to Annie Rice?

Sex would make me happy. Was I addicted to sex? Maybe. But Nathaniel wasn't offering actual sex. He just wanted as much attention as I'd given Micah. Seemed fair to me.

Nathaniel: Come on, I wanna make Ronnie cry, too.

I closed the distance between us with my hands, my mouth, my body. The energy of his beast spilled around us like being plunged into a warm bath that had a mild electric charge. He'd been one of the least of my leopards until a metaphysical accident had taken him from pomme de sang to my animal to call. I was the first human servant to a vampire to gain the vampire ability to call an animal. All leopards were mine to call, but Nathaniel was my special pet. We'd both gained from the magical bonding, but he'd gained more.

Like a weird growth on his neck.

He lifted me up, using just his hands on my thighs. Even through my jeans he made sure I knew he was happy to be pressed against my body. So happy that it forced a small sound from me.
Ronnie's voice came harsh, ugly, like she was choking on her anger. "And when the baby comes, are you going to fuck in front of it, too?"

Knowing Anita, probably so.

Nathaniel froze against me. Micah's voice came from behind us. "Baby?"

Comments

[suzycat.livejournal.com]

I... have not read this book.

Reports of Anita's appalling narcissism are not in any way exaggerated, are they? My GOD.

[yaoihuntresse.livejournal.com]

Yes, her narcissism is this bad.

[rodentfanatic.livejournal.com]

"No"—and she started counting on her fingers—"Jean-Claude, Asher, Damian, Nathaniel, and Micah. That's it."
I shook my head, again. "I had unprotected sex with one more man last month." I could have said it differently, but maybe if we got back to my personal disaster, we could stop talking about Ronnie's penis envy.

Wait, how the fuck does that work? Is she trying to say Ronnie is jealous of the dudes banging Anita and wishes that *she* could bang Anita?

"Don't try and tell me you weren't rubbing my face in it, just now, with the show."
Well, for you AND for us readers/haters, Ronnie

His anger had turned them from lavender to the deeper color of lilacs, if flowers could burn with anger and force of personality.
I WILL NEVER BE OVER THIS

Nathaniel was my special pet.
OH HOLY SHIT WOW

[yaoihuntresse.livejournal.com]

Obviously, LKH doesn't understand what "penis envy" really means.

Trust me, the next chapter is even worse.