Title: waiting for someone else
Fandom: Ponies (TV 2026)
Rating: Mature
Length: 1031
Content notes: n/a
Author notes: I guess this is loosely about anticipating, in that it is about waiting? Anyway, my first fan_flashworks entry! And also the only fic I have ever written for this fandom. Is it the only fic I ever will write? Unclear
Summary: Ivanna and Twila understand each other, but they both know Twila would rather be with someone else. A specific someone else.

“You do not love me,” Ivanna says. She has a cigarette clamped between her lips, which she speaks around. A slow tendril of smoke curls upwards from it. Her words are both accented and distorted, but Twila has no difficulty comprehending them.

“No,” Twila agrees, thinking fast. Ivanna’s finger traces delicately over her chest: the dip just below her collarbone, sliding down her sternum, following the curve of her breast. The sensation makes her thoughts diffuse and disappear, ink in water.

“You are waiting for someone else.”

“No!” says Twila again, this time more vehement. They both know this no is a lie.

She plucks the cigarette from between Ivanna’s lips, and takes a slow drag. Does she have to love Ivanna in order to have sex with Ivanna? Can enjoying Ivanna’s company enough to risk everything on these stupid, secret trysts not be enough?

Twila blows out smoke in a steady stream. “Well, do you love me?”

Ivanna says, “I want to see America,” which is pleasantly honest. She lifts her hand from Twila’s skin, and holds it out expectantly.

Twila doesn’t hand over the cigarette. Instead, she sucks in another lungful of smoke.

It makes sense, Twila thinks. Sex is the tool you use to get out of your stupid claustrophobic town, your stupid claustrophobic life, your entire stupid claustrophobic country. She supposes that growing up in Moscow might feel a little like growing up in the world’s most populous small town.

“America is trash,” she says, because she can’t be the thing that Ivanna is looking for.

Ivanna doesn’t buy it. She snatches the cigarette back. Her wrist is so narrow, her skin so thin. Twila stares at the blue veins on the underside. “In America, you don’t swap radio parts for cookies.” She stabs the air with the cigarette, underlining her words. “You can buy any LP. No one is watching you in America.”

Twila realises she doesn’t know whether or not this is true. No one was watching her. But they would watch Ivanna.

“You can’t marry me,” she points out, suddenly unsettled. “So I can’t take you there.”

She lets herself consider it for a moment: dresses herself in a wide-lapelled burgundy suit jacket, Ivanna in white—a full skirt, crocheted lace trim, close-fitted at the waist, bell sleeves. It’s her mother’s wedding dress, she realises. There had been a photo by her father's bed, the glass of the frame dusty and cracked.

When she lifts the veil in her mind, it’s not Ivanna’s face beneath it, or her mother’s.

Another face: doe-eyed, anxious. White teeth pressed into berry-coloured lips.

Ivanna props herself up on one elbow, and stubs the butt of the cigarette in the ashtray on the bedside table. “You are thinking of her.”

“Of who?” Twila asks, but she can already feel her face growing hot and tight. Twila doesn’t blush, she lies to herself; there’s nothing that makes Twila Hasbeck blush.

“You know who I mean. I am just foreplay.”

“Don’t be stupid,” says Twila.

Then Twila says nothing for a long time, because the only things she can think of are also stupid.

In the corner of the room, a transistor radio plays, volume low. Twila supposes they should turn it up, so that they can’t be overheard. But Ivanna is nobody; if someone had bugged Ivanna’s apartment, they would have to bug every home in Moscow. On the wall, the clock ticks, gentle and regular. Ivanna slides a drawer open, fumbles in it; her thin hand produces a book of matches. Scrape. Hiss. She lights another cigarette.

Finally, Twila says, “I told Bea about us.”

Ivanna stiffens, her hand with the cigarette an inch from her mouth.

“It’s fine, it’s fine, she was fine.”

“When? What did you tell her?”

“After the first time.” Twila reaches up and brushes her thumb over the soft hair at the nape of Ivanna’s neck. “She said” —Twila puts on Bea’s voice— “I went to Wellesley.” Twila rolls her eyes. “Can’t do anything first.”

This probably means nothing to Ivanna. Ivanna probably doesn’t know what Wellesley implies (to be honest, Twila isn’t sure she knows what Wellesley implies), and Ivanna definitely doesn’t have a need to prove herself as good as Bea like a constant itch under her skin.

“I told someone once,” Ivanna says softly. “I thought she was a friend. I thought we…”

Twila picks up Ivanna’s free hand and laces their fingers together. The creases of Ivanna’s knuckles are still a little sticky, still smell of Twila’s body.

Twila says, “I wanted her to be angry.”

This, Ivanna understands immediately. “Jealous?”

It’s excruciating. Twila covers her face with her hands, dragging Ivanna’s trapped fingers along.

“Your whole body is turning red,” Ivanna teases. “You cannot hide.”

Half-laughing, humiliated, Twila turns over onto her stomach, pressing her face into the pillow. She speaks directly into it, voice muffled. “I wanted her to want to be my first.” She almost hopes Ivanna will not hear.

Ivanna snorts. “I was first? You did well.”

“Thank you,” says Twila, pleased despite herself.

“You were my first as well,” says Ivanna, suddenly serious again. “But you are also not the first I wanted.”

In the long seconds that neither Twila nor Ivanna speaks, it is not silent. The sigh of an exhale; a single comprehensible word on the radio—Amerikanskiy—quickly buried in Russian chatter; pots clattering in a neighbouring kitchen.

Twila twists her neck, rolls onto her side, peeks up at Ivanna. Ivanna is watching the window, eyes faraway. Afternoon sun lights the closed curtain from behind. By November, the sun will no longer reach Ivanna’s window: it will be blocked by the next building to the south.

“Well,” says Twila. She pulls Ivanna against her, first by their still-joined hands, then by the shoulders. Part of her—always—is imagining a different body: a little softer, a little cooler, a faint floral perfume that can’t be bought in Moscow. “We’re here now,” she says. “I’m with you right now.”

Ivanna’s taut muscles relax into her.

“Maybe.” She shrugs, a movement that Twila feels rather than sees. “But you are still waiting for someone else.”