{ Commentary: 2 ER fics }

[delga]

Satiate (ER)
NC-17, femslash; Abby/Kerry
“Abby is not gentle, not like Kerry’s other lovers.”

Why oh why oh why do I try to write femslash? Because I am snowpenguin545’s flash slave, yes, but can I actually write it? No. Not really.

Abby pretends to sleep, but Kerry knows she’s still awake; she presses her face into the nape of her neck and pretends not to realise that Abby gets no rest. Abby’s so young and Kerry feels so old; she wonders if she should be flattered by the attention, except she thinks that maybe she’s not Abby’s only lover and maybe Abby just pities her.
I love Abby and I love depressive-tortured-hurt Abby. Abby is always the adored in these fics. I just noticed how I did this thing with Abby’s name and Kerry’s and I guess the idea was to point out that they’re two different people but that was obvious enough, right? So this is just…bad writing, heh.

Kerry hopes she satiates her in some meaningful way; wonders if she can mark her; thinks of biting that tender flesh and breaking the skin, red and raw. She wonders if she can leave a scar, like a brand, imposing herself on her lover with a small degree of permanence.
Title! Well, almost. Also, Kerry as the abuser. This really isn’t a nice fic.

Abby is not gentle, not like Kerry’s other lovers. She is brazen and coarse, a contradiction of smooth curves and sharp lines, and a face that is forever melancholy. Kerry thinks Abby knows no sense of whimsy, except, maybe, on those rare occasions where Kerry finds her in the break room with John, and then Kerry feels a biting jealousy, her bad moods get worse, and she ends the day with a headache, a bottle of wine and her own fingers, coaxing out an unsatisfying climax.
Ha, the end of this paragraph is unintentionally dirty, more than it should have been at this point in the fic and according to one of my original comments, this was the point at which I figured out where the fic was going. I think I need to revisit my old self and get her to explain it to me. The opening line is my favourite.

Sometimes Kerry doesn’t see Abby for weeks; sometimes she opens her door and there she is, stamping her feet and hunching her shoulders against the wind.
I really don’t understand why I stuck this paragraph in here. I guess the idea is that I had to get from Abby being with Carter to Abby coming back to Kerry.

It always ends the same way – Abby disappears, out of touch, out of sight and sense – and it’s crossed Kerry’s mind a few times to tell Abby that it’s time to stop, that it can only end in tragedy. Then Abby’s lips are on her breast, and Abby’s fingers press up hard against her clit, and she forgets everything, shuddering with delight as she comes.
I should never write sex, that much is at least very clear. What is less clear is that I actually like this fic even though it makes relatively little sense. I’m a little too overdramatic in bringing the angst, I think. But I write ER femslash for my girl Sarah because she’s worth it, and as long as she’s happy, so am I, lol.

fin.

in absence. (ER)
Angst; Kerry. Kerry/Abby, Kerry/Sandy
Kerry remembers, too.

in absence.
This was supposed to be happy fic! It was supposed to be about Abby being beautiful in her pregnancy. It…didn’t end up being that way.

--

The baby looks good on her, Kerry decides; Abby is all aglow, skin smooth and warm, her face happy; she’s not beginning to show just yet but there are more ways than one to tell her condition and Kerry knows them all by heart. She remembers them on Sandy, the turn in the eye, the smooth step she got, and the contentment, the way she used to smile, eyes closed, as she reclined on the couch.
The first two parts of the first sentence are what this fic was supposed to be about, dammit. And then somehow this whole fic became a bizarre homage to the departed Sandy.

Kerry remembers, too, what it felt like to carry a human being inside her body, and she misses it, her hand occasionally idling on her abdomen, so conscious of the loss. But then she sees Abby smiling at her in concern and she straightens. Now is not the time.
Note to self: stop writing about motherhood. You don’t know what you’re talking about.

--

She wonders what it would be like to press her fingers over Abby’s swollen belly, digits burning impressions into the smooth skin, feeling the life thrumming beneath the surface with nervous anticipation. She imagines Abby would hum with satisfaction at the contact, a loving caress on both sides of her body, and that touch – that breaking point – would be something to turn into. Kerry wonders what that would look like, whether Abby would open her eyes or let her head fall back the way Sandy’s used to whenever Kerry came to her, exploring, teasing, loving her with her fingers.
I think “wonders” is the verb that I use most often in my fics. Random trivia for you there. I love the first half of this paragraph, I can’t say why.

Kerry remembers arching up against Sandy’s mouth and hands; she remembers how strong the need was to touch and be touched in return, her forehead meeting Sandy’s nose and the brittle friction of skin on skin, flesh sliding over flesh, and how raw that was. She remembers kissing Sandy’s stomach and feeling Henry writhe inside and I love you, the sentiment becoming solid and real beneath her hands, beneath Sandy’s skin.
Ha, yes. An example of delga-hates-putting-dialogue-into-solid-prose, hence the italics. Formatting speech ruins the form of the paragraph and sticks a voice in the text where I don’t really want one so normally I forgo actual speech for what I suppose is remembered speech. All because the speech marks would ruin it. Also, in the case of the above paragraph, I love you could be a thought, something she said and/or what she feels. So the dialogue becomes multi-purpose. Huzzah.

Abby brushes past Kerry whilst she is nostalgic for the past, and it takes every inch of her control not to reach out and stroke her – her face, her wrist, her belly. Abby apologises, then ducks her head to look Kerry in the eye, and she asks, god, she always asks, are you okay? and Kerry always lies, yes, I’m fine, I’m tired. Abby isn’t convinced, but Kerry smiles reassurance before turning away; she cries in the bathroom, she holds her breath for as long as she can, daring herself to make a noise; and she remembers the ghost of Abby’s presence, and she’s always left wanting more.
Still doing that Kerry, Abby, Kerry thing. I didn’t even notice that before today. Also, Big Theme – wanting. Oddly, Abby is happy in this fic which is more a reflection of Abby being in canon now than anything else. I wrote this after seeing an episode of season 12 when Kerry goes in to have the results of the infarction in her leg sorted out.

--

She dreams about Sandy, sometimes, running from her, and she can’t keep up, can’t catch up; Sandy looks over her shoulder and smiles, laughs, and she is the most beautiful thing Kerry has ever seen.
OK, where the hell did this paragraph come from? I do not know.

But sometimes she turns, and suddenly it’s not her face, and it’s not her shape Kerry sees. Sometimes the woman turns around and it’s Abby, her hair flipping around her face in wind, and she’s skipping and laughing, and she’s running away.

When this happens, Kerry wakes up in a cold sweat, and she cries into the blanket, careful to muffle the sound so that Henry doesn’t wake up. Pressing her face into her pillow, she wonders if she could stop the loneliness by keeping up this pressure on her lungs, but before long they’re burning and she has to lift her face for air. She’s gasping, clawing at the absence beside her in the bed and she hasn’t felt so wretched in years.
I do not know what the breathing/not breathing/holding breath motif was about in this fic. I guess it was supposed to be about suffocating, about stopping…feeling? But seriously, why don’t people point out how daft these things are to me?

She remembers, she never forgets, and she’s afraid she’ll forget; forget what it means to love someone, to have them love her in return; forget what it is to feel skin on skin, a mouth pressed up against hers, and what it means to have human contact, solid and real beneath her hands, her thighs, her flesh. She curls up beneath the covers, holds her knees to her chest, tries to recall what it feels like to have real human contact, and she holds her breath; she counts. Her lungs burn, her throat burns. She remembers—
HA! Broken sentence because I didn’t know how to end the fic. I forgot how sad this gets at the end, and again the holding-breath thing which I cannot explain. I do like the repetition/inversion thing I have going at the start of the paragraph, though, so it’s not all bad. I just wonder sometimes what the hell I’m ingesting when I write fic in this way. I don’t think the fic is particularly bad but again, I don’t think it makes all that much sense.

fin.