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Relationship: Dulcie Collins/Eddie Redcliffe/Cath York Rating: E Words: 5010 Summary:

“This is not a good idea, love,” Dulcie says, keeping her tone level. “I know I said I’d try to be more open to change, and I hear and respect your opinion, I truly do, but this is—it’s like the hobby farm. It’s really not going to work.” “I just think,” Cath says, bright-eyed and earnest, “that it would be a healing experience for me. For us both! To share that kind of intimacy. I am committed to working through my anxiety about you fucking your partner and I’m sure that would be so much more manageable for me if we fucked her first. Together.” (Eddie needs a gruck. Dulcie and Cath offer to help her out.)

Haven't been around here much lately but I'm poking my head back in for Yuletide yelling purposes! This year I both wrote and received F/F(/F) stories, which was a lovely experience and one I hope to repeat in future. Thank you again to @nerdsandthelike, who gifted me my beloved boat lesbians* from The Last Binding trilogy, Maud and Violet.

Dare (archive-locked, so you'll need to be logged into AO3 to read it) is a delightful missing scene set between the events of A Restless Truth and A Power Unbound, in which Maud and Robin make their first visit to Spinet House. The Maud POV is top-notch, and the fic works beautifully both as a bit of connective tissue showing the development of the partnership we see in action in the third book, and as a character study (particularly of Maud, but of Robin and Violet too, and while Edwin doesn't appear directly, he's there in Maud's recollections supplying some very Edwin insights into their relationship). And in one brief but consequential scene, it manages to evoke some of the thematic concerns of the trilogy, from the blurred lines between performance, illusion, and deception (particularly in Violet's case) to the motif of contracts as they relate to both magic and personal relationships. I loved it, and it's made me want to dig out the half-finished Maud/Violet draft in my WIPs folder and tackle it again—because we all need more boat lesbians in our lives.