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femslashfeteTitle: The Tenacity of Love
Fandom: Spin - Robert Charles Wilson
Ship: Carol Lawton/Belinda Dupree
Prompt: #052 - jealous / Amnesty 11
Rating: G
Scope/Length: 924 words
Warnings: unrequited love, mentioned infidelity, minor spoilers
Notes: outsider POV, partly epistolary, background canon ships
Summary: Diane finally unravels the mystery of the bonds between her family and the Dupree family.
Dear Belinda,
I know I have no right even to write to you. But I can’t keep it in any more. I’m in love with you.
I wish you could know how beautiful you are, inside and out. The smile in your eyes, your kindness, your warm heart. Your delighted laugh. When I see you absorbed in your studying, with your hair hanging half over your face, cradling the book between your hands, it makes me jealous of ink and paper.
I know you can’t ever feel about me the way I feel about you. But I wanted you to know. That you are dear and cherished. That someone thinks you’re the most wonderful girl on this campus.
Love,
Your Secret Admirer
Diane grows up with her brother and Tyler and her parents and Tyler’s mother almost as if they’re one family. Sometimes she pretends they are. E.D. is absorbed in his work; what attention he has left over is for Jason, his heir. Diane, the female twin of the pair, merely came packaged with Jason as an extra. She is surplus, extraneous to requirements.
Carol barely pays attention to either of her children. If Diane receives any warmth, any maternal love in her childhood, it’s from Tyler’s mother. Sometimes she wishes Tyler’s mother were really her mother too. But she never wishes Tyler were her brother. Tyler is something else, mysterious and tantalizing, which she doesn’t have a name for.
Dear Belinda,
I never thought I’d be able to pour out my feelings for you like this. I think you must read them, because you’re that kind and generous. I’m grateful for that.
Everything makes me think of you these days. I went outside today and there was a tree with its bark the exact shade of your hair. As long as you’re somewhere nearby, I know the world is a good place.
When Diane is a little older, she understands what the almost-something between her and Tyler is. But she also understands that Carol and E.D. aren’t faithful to each other.
Even if Tyler’s father was E.D.’s best friend in college, it’s not the sort of thing E.D. would do: let the grieving widow and her son live in a smaller house on the property rent-free, pay for Tyler’s education. What if E.D. has been supporting Tyler the same way he supports Diane, because it’s what a responsible father would do? It all makes a horrible kind of sense. And so Diane never crosses any boundaries with Tyler and lets the unspoken something between them remain unspoken.
Dear Belinda,
I sometimes wonder what will happen after we graduate and leave campus for the last time. I can’t bear the thought of never seeing you again. I don’t need to be your best friend, or your friend at all. As long as I can still see you sometimes. As long as I know you’re doing well.
In college, away from her father’s eye, Diana has her first relationship with a nice young man she meets in her introductory English class. She breaks up with him after a few months, because she can't help comparing him to Tyler.
She has to resolve this, once and for all. During winter break, she goes snooping. It’s not ethical, and Tyler’s mother doesn’t deserve the invasion of her privacy. But Diane has to know.
The three boxes labelled MEMENTOS are an obvious place to start.
Dear Belinda,
You have only gotten more beautiful every day that I’ve known you. I wish only happiness for you, now and forever.
Diane wasn’t expecting the love letters. A thick bundle of them, all unsigned. The handwriting doesn’t match E.D.’s, and the content is impossible to imagine ever coming from his pen. It also doesn’t match the letters in the box labelled MEMENTOS: MARCUS. She carefully closes the box and slides it back into its place.
On her way back to the Big House, Diane thinks it over. There’s something just out of her reach; she needs to give it time to emerge.
In her room, Diane finds herself remembering that chilly October midnight when she was thirteen years old, the night when all the stars went out. She used Jason’s binoculars to peek in the house windows, one by one. Later she forgot what she saw, in all the fear and drama of the world maybe-ending. Carol in the spare bedroom, her body leaning towards a woman from the catering staff. The handwriting she has seen before, but not on E.D.’s desk. And everything becomes clear.
It wasn’t E.D. who connected their two families, who brought Belinda Dupree to live with them; how could it be? No, it was Carol, living near the woman she loved for so many years and never saying anything. Pouring out her heart in unsigned letters, but never touching. Drinking constantly to avoid thinking of the husband she didn’t love and the woman she did.
Diane murmurs a few lines in French to the unhearing walls of her room, relishing the poetry. Though she doesn’t think Carol ever read Cyrano de Bergerac.
An unpleasant thought occurs to her then. Like mother, like daughter? Is Diane going to spend the rest of her life hung up on Tyler Dupree? No, ridiculous. He’s a boy she shared part of her childhood with, that’s all. And when she goes back to college at the end of the break, she can finally put him out of her mind.
Fandom: Spin - Robert Charles Wilson
Ship: Carol Lawton/Belinda Dupree
Prompt: #052 - jealous / Amnesty 11
Rating: G
Scope/Length: 924 words
Warnings: unrequited love, mentioned infidelity, minor spoilers
Notes: outsider POV, partly epistolary, background canon ships
Summary: Diane finally unravels the mystery of the bonds between her family and the Dupree family.
Dear Belinda,
I know I have no right even to write to you. But I can’t keep it in any more. I’m in love with you.
I wish you could know how beautiful you are, inside and out. The smile in your eyes, your kindness, your warm heart. Your delighted laugh. When I see you absorbed in your studying, with your hair hanging half over your face, cradling the book between your hands, it makes me jealous of ink and paper.
I know you can’t ever feel about me the way I feel about you. But I wanted you to know. That you are dear and cherished. That someone thinks you’re the most wonderful girl on this campus.
Love,
Your Secret Admirer
Diane grows up with her brother and Tyler and her parents and Tyler’s mother almost as if they’re one family. Sometimes she pretends they are. E.D. is absorbed in his work; what attention he has left over is for Jason, his heir. Diane, the female twin of the pair, merely came packaged with Jason as an extra. She is surplus, extraneous to requirements.
Carol barely pays attention to either of her children. If Diane receives any warmth, any maternal love in her childhood, it’s from Tyler’s mother. Sometimes she wishes Tyler’s mother were really her mother too. But she never wishes Tyler were her brother. Tyler is something else, mysterious and tantalizing, which she doesn’t have a name for.
Dear Belinda,
I never thought I’d be able to pour out my feelings for you like this. I think you must read them, because you’re that kind and generous. I’m grateful for that.
Everything makes me think of you these days. I went outside today and there was a tree with its bark the exact shade of your hair. As long as you’re somewhere nearby, I know the world is a good place.
When Diane is a little older, she understands what the almost-something between her and Tyler is. But she also understands that Carol and E.D. aren’t faithful to each other.
Even if Tyler’s father was E.D.’s best friend in college, it’s not the sort of thing E.D. would do: let the grieving widow and her son live in a smaller house on the property rent-free, pay for Tyler’s education. What if E.D. has been supporting Tyler the same way he supports Diane, because it’s what a responsible father would do? It all makes a horrible kind of sense. And so Diane never crosses any boundaries with Tyler and lets the unspoken something between them remain unspoken.
Dear Belinda,
I sometimes wonder what will happen after we graduate and leave campus for the last time. I can’t bear the thought of never seeing you again. I don’t need to be your best friend, or your friend at all. As long as I can still see you sometimes. As long as I know you’re doing well.
In college, away from her father’s eye, Diana has her first relationship with a nice young man she meets in her introductory English class. She breaks up with him after a few months, because she can't help comparing him to Tyler.
She has to resolve this, once and for all. During winter break, she goes snooping. It’s not ethical, and Tyler’s mother doesn’t deserve the invasion of her privacy. But Diane has to know.
The three boxes labelled MEMENTOS are an obvious place to start.
Dear Belinda,
You have only gotten more beautiful every day that I’ve known you. I wish only happiness for you, now and forever.
Diane wasn’t expecting the love letters. A thick bundle of them, all unsigned. The handwriting doesn’t match E.D.’s, and the content is impossible to imagine ever coming from his pen. It also doesn’t match the letters in the box labelled MEMENTOS: MARCUS. She carefully closes the box and slides it back into its place.
On her way back to the Big House, Diane thinks it over. There’s something just out of her reach; she needs to give it time to emerge.
In her room, Diane finds herself remembering that chilly October midnight when she was thirteen years old, the night when all the stars went out. She used Jason’s binoculars to peek in the house windows, one by one. Later she forgot what she saw, in all the fear and drama of the world maybe-ending. Carol in the spare bedroom, her body leaning towards a woman from the catering staff. The handwriting she has seen before, but not on E.D.’s desk. And everything becomes clear.
It wasn’t E.D. who connected their two families, who brought Belinda Dupree to live with them; how could it be? No, it was Carol, living near the woman she loved for so many years and never saying anything. Pouring out her heart in unsigned letters, but never touching. Drinking constantly to avoid thinking of the husband she didn’t love and the woman she did.
Diane murmurs a few lines in French to the unhearing walls of her room, relishing the poetry. Though she doesn’t think Carol ever read Cyrano de Bergerac.
An unpleasant thought occurs to her then. Like mother, like daughter? Is Diane going to spend the rest of her life hung up on Tyler Dupree? No, ridiculous. He’s a boy she shared part of her childhood with, that’s all. And when she goes back to college at the end of the break, she can finally put him out of her mind.
