#prairie doll sneak peek

[sunshinebunnie]

Banner by @purpleyin

*~*~*

She cautiously approached the other woman, who watched her much the way the birds one of her Society Hill matrons kept did—head tilted slightly to the side, eyes glassy with the quixotic ability of looking both thoughtful and vacant in equal measures. Her heels clicked softly against the wooden floor, unconsciously shifting her weight to avoid the spots where the boards creaked and groaned. 

When she was finally within a couple feet, Lexi forced herself to stand straight as she proffered her hand, saying, “I don’t believe we’ve met before. I’m Lexi Howard.”

Lexi was surprised by the strength in the other woman’s grasp as her fingers closed around her own. “Faye,” she replied, silence building awkwardly between them for several long seconds until she belatedly seemed to realize Lexi was waiting for her whole name. “Faye Davis,” she eventually added with a perfunctory squeeze of Lexi’s hand before dropping her hand back toward her side. 

Taking a half-step back from her, Lexi waited for Faye to continue with the expected social niceties of explaining her relationship to the O’Neills. 

Faye looked at her with a sort of bored indolence that felt so reminiscent of Cassie that Lexi had to repress a small shudder that ran down her spine.

*~*~*

[sunshinebunnie]

Hello to the author of my all-time favourite Fexi fic (I mean Prairie Doll)!

Since it's Christmas time, I have a few Christmasy questions for you 🎄

What's the favourite Christmas gift you've ever received? Do you have favourite Christmas carol? What are your favorite Christmas drink and treat? What time do you wake up on Christmas morning?

Thank you so much for the delightful ask, @mimbletonia-mimbulus!

Fav Christmas gift? Hmmmm....When I was in high school, I asked my dad for tix to go to Ireland with my mom. (They're divorced.) My mom's from there originally, but hadn't been back in over 20 years at the time, so it was one of those "this is for me, but it's really for us" gifts. I got to a bunch of stuff with her and meet some of her oldest friends that I'd always heard stories about, but never really had faces to go with names. It was super nice.

Fav Christmas carol? Does "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" count???? (That song is so outrageous and over the top AND I LOVE IT!!!) If we're going more traditional though, I will belt "Hark the Herald Angels Sing!" every time I hear it. Guaranteed.

Fav Christmas drink & treat? Hmmmmm.....that's hard. I'm not entirely sure I have one to be honest. I've been a tea drinker my whole life, but I'm not sure I'd necessarily consider it a special "Christmas" drink, even though it's the only thing coming to mind right now. lol. As for treat, it's been a hot minute, but my Nana used to make me a tin full of homemade apple hand pies. She came of age in the 1930s, so she was one of those old school bakers that made her crusts from scratch and still used actual lard. 🤤🤤🤤 I would pretty much devour the entire tin of pies before I even left her apartment on Christmas. Unfortunately, my mom is not a baker and she never got the recipe from my Nana before she died (despite me asking her repeatedly--not that I'm salty about it...lol), so I haven't been able to have them in over 20 years. 😭😭😭

Christmas wake-up call? Way too damn early, that's for sure. lol. To be fair though, I have 2 small humans, so I'm still in the stage where they're waking up at the ass crack of dawn on Christmas Day while my husband and I blearily try to convince them to at least go back to bed until after sunrise before they go looking for what Santa left them. lol

Also, since it appears you made the NICE list this year, doll, I hope you enjoy a little gift from me to you! (under the cut)

A wee snippet from the forthcoming chapter of Prairie Doll!

“Now see here, Fez,” Custer hissed as he leaned further across the counter top, the stench from his mouth fumigating Fez’s lungs with every unavoidable breath he took. “My, uh…girl…here has found herself in a bit of a debt with some…unfortunate…people. I offered to let her work it off with them, but they weren’t, uh…how you might say interested in that arrangement.” (Fez was immensely grateful Ash was in the back. Even though he had no great love of Faye, Fez knew even he would be hard pressed not to send Custer through their glass storefront window.)

“And this is somehow my affair because…?” Fez asked in that same bored tone, hoping to speed up this discussion.

“Right, right,” Custer chuckled. “Straight to the point. Always liked that about you, Fez. Always liked that about you.” He took the poorly gnawed beef jerky out of his mouth and waved it haphazardly in the air like a school marm’s pointer. “See, you and I have business, right? And as business partners in a common enterprise, I thought to myself, who would be in a position to help me resolve Faye’s little…misstep with these good folks? Fez!”

“Ain’t loaning you money, Custer,” Fez said with a sharpness that was all Kitty O’Neill.

“Now, I ain’t said nothing about a loan, son,” Custer said with an all-too-practiced smoothness. “However, it is going to take a little bit o’...negotiating, let’s say, to make this go away. Man to man. I’m sure you understand, Fez.”

He only gave him a dead-eyed stare. His lack of response made Custer bristle, his fingertips turning a pale yellowish-ivory as he pressed more of his weight down on his hands, trying to lean further into Fez’s personal space. The red-headed man didn’t budge from his position behind the counter. Custer let out an exasperated huff when he realized his posturing was for nought. 

[sunshinebunnie]

Do you think you'll ever write for fexi again?

Thank you for the lovely ask, you adollable anon!!! In answer to your question--YES!! 100000000% YES!! I've been slowly (painfully) chipping away at the next chapter of Prairie Doll (my God, I have never had a chapter fight me as hard as this one has to come together...😭😭😭) but I also have a multi-chapter Fexi gift fic I've been working on, which I'm hoping to have up soon(ish). 🥰🥰🥰

*~*~*Here's a lil' sneak peek!*~*~*

There’s a roughness to the skin on his fingers that she isn’t expecting when he nudges her chin up to look at him—more like a tradesman’s hands than those of a convenience store clerk. Lexi has half a mind to ask him how his hands got so callused, but as she drops her mouth open to ask, his thumb seemingly traces over her bottom lip of its own volition and her brain suddenly loses all ability to function. She looks up at him from under her lashes, only to see his pupils are blown wide like he’s rolling on molly, his mouth a little slack like he’s in the presence of a god she doesn’t believe exists. They swallow at the same time, and the synchronicity of their movements sends another tingle down her spine. 

*~*~*

[sunshinebunnie]

Your fics are among my absolute favorites. Your smut is always on point, and you have such an excellent voice for Fez. I adore it. Prairie Doll is one of my favorites, and Private Dancer is the best smut in the whole fandom, bar none. Thank you for your service!!

THANK YOU SO MUCH, DOLL!!!!!! TRULY! I'm not sure what I did to deserve your amazingly kind, thoughtful words, but thank you thank you thank you!! I can't tell you how much it means to me to know you've enjoyed a couple of my stories so much. 🥰🥺🥰🥺🥰🥺 Given the wonderful talent amongst the smut writers in the Fexi fandom, that it a HUGE compliment to know you think so highly of Private Dancer!! Also, as a Prairie Doll fan, I hope you'll be happy/excited to hear that I've been hard at work on the next update and should have something to drop on AO3 soon! In the meantime, as a special treat from me to you for being so kind, please enjoy this little sneak peek of the next Prairie Doll chapter!

As she spied the books hidden in the dark recesses of the shelf, her fingers reached out to touch the spines as if they belonged to someone else’s hand. Gently pulling the books out by their flimsy spines, she flipped the covers open to the title pages, running her index finger along the thin, onion paper. There were two volumes of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. As she flipped through one of the volumes, she smiled as she found “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” contained within the anthology. She remembered reading it by candlelight to her sister some years earlier as Cassie had clung tightly to her arm in fright whenever the weak yellow flame flickered. The third book Lexi flipped through was a well-worn copy of Leaves of Grass. She could see where the thin cloth cover was already frayed along the edges; and there were faint reddish stains in the corners of some of the pages that she found herself gruesomely thinking looked like dried blood. Lexi had not had occasion to read any of Walt Whitman’s poems before, but she remembered doing fittings in the salons of some of the more “sophisticated” families back on Society Hill, hearing his book spoken about in hushed voices, concerns being raised by the family matriarchs about their young, unattached daughters’ passions being stirred up by such lewd reading material. Her eyes happened to fall to a random page and she felt like she was suddenly beginning to suffocate in her buttoned-up jacket as she read about “love-flesh swelling and deliciously aching” and “limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of love, white-blow and delirious juice.” She clapped the book shut with a sharp snap that seemed far too loud in her ears. Lexi hastily put the book back on the shelf behind the tin coffee pot, her fingers shaking a little as they pressed against the green cloth-covered spine. Her eyes looked furtively around for a moment. If Ash was right about her wearing her emotions so clearly across her face (and she grudgingly suspected he might be more right on that count than she wanted to believe), she felt her arms and hands begin to tingle in apprehension at what her face must say after skimming only a few lines of Mr. Whitman’s poetry. Desperately hoping for a more suitable distraction, she opened up the last book, the title page declaring the book to be about The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County and Other Sketches, which seemed to her to be rather silly.