#did we really think waya could write a story without lesbians in it.... no fleeting romance that gets SLASHED....

[dogyip]

KILLED! AT CAMP SMILING TRAILS — little excerpt, word count: 768

"Don't do that," Morgan moved, propping herself up on her elbows to get a look around them. "What if someone sees us?"

Kit let out a sigh and shoved Morgan back down with a hand to her chest. Only a little more forceful than she was playful as she boxed the other in with an arm on either side of her. "Nobody's gonna see us, nobody even wants to be out here," she said, leaning in to kiss at her face. "Besides, I think this is the last place we'll get jumped for it."

"Right, I forgot everyone thinks gays are soooo cool here, why don’t we just go passionately swap spit in the dinin’ hall like Scotty and Reese do. Mhm?”

“Don’t be a dick. I just think this place ain’t the worst place to, hell, what’d you say? Swap spit? I mean, you’ve seen how Ruger is with that groundskeeper, we’re probably in good company.”

They were awfully close now, nose to nose, and despite her prior insistence, Morgan sat up a little just to press in and took every chance she could to brush her lips against Kit’s in sporadic half-kisses that made the muggy weather closing in on them almost pleasant. “Maybe.”

“Feels like more than just maybe—was I convincing?”

“Nah, ‘m bein’ intentionally unaware but you’re mighty easy on the eyes so it ain’t that hard if I’m real honest.”

A flash of Morgan’s shit-eating grin and Kit was sitting back with a scoffed laugh. “Whatever,” she said, narrowing her eyes against the sun beating down something nasty, shirt clinging to her skin from sweat alone and selectively damp around the sleeves. “We should get back, Reese’ll kill us if we’re not there for roll call.”

“We gotta get back after I fold, really?”

“Good way to keep you enticed, yeah?”

A sharp psssh left her, loudly, but she abided by the waved hand gesturing her up, groaning to her knees before stopping entirely, peering over the dock into the glittering, murky water. Morgan pulled the brim of her baseball cap down and leaned further in, the dock creaking with the movement, and her looking like she could dive forward about any second. “What’s that?”

“Jesus Christ, back up, if you fall in you’ll come back with like ten diseases.”

“Not,” she mumbled, absentminded, stretching awkwardly for something in the water. Kit loomed a bit away, hopeful to avoid the lukewarm splash back but standing all cross-armed and uncertain as she looked around at the sprawling woods encircling them, it dripped an itchy unease down the back of her neck she avoided by giving herself the task of moving forward and holding onto the end of Morgan’s shirt. “If I fall in now we’ll both get ten diseases,”

“Tight, wanna tell me why you’re fuckin’ fishin’ with your bare hands before I start to feel goofy as hell?”

Morgan didn’t answer. All she heard was the sound of water sloshing and the distinct absence of any other noise. No birdsong, no chittering katydids, no frogs or toads croaking away, hell, she couldn’t even catch the usual knocking of a woodpecker or two somewhere in the distance. Kit swallowed hard, focused on the opening in the woods that led to the path back to camp, shadowed and dappled in erratically shaking streaks of sunlight.

Sometimes those streaks converged. Warped. Twined around the shape of what she swore was a person staring back but then the wind would blow and the shadows scattered out again, vacancy returned.

She shivered, twitched away to—

—Morgan jerked her forward then pushed her back with a soaking wet hand, drip, drip, dripping to make dark dots across the wood. Kit stumbled sideways, clutching at the wet hand marks left on her shirt. “Fuckin’ hell, dude!”

“Sorry! Sorry, I tried talkin’ to ya, you didn’t say nothin,” she said, staggering to her feet. “You alright?”

“I’m - I’m fine,” Kit wedged a finger between her throat and her bandana to loosen it up a little and then she saw what exactly Morgan went searching for. Drenched, dripping, and donning the distinctive green smiley face on the tongue of the too-little shoe. “Is that…”

“…Yeah, I thought you said nobody comes out here?”

“Nobody does. We don’t even have a kid small enough to wear it here, anymore, at least.”

“Anymore?”

“First week of camp, some kid went home early, Ruger said he was bad sick. Wasn’t even around long enough for me to see him so I doubt he came out here,” she told her. “So where the hell’d it come from?”