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"It looks like we'll have to dig the car out in the morning," said Tallulah with a sigh. It was clear from her tone that unburying the Prius from beneath three feet of fresh powder wasn't exactly her idea of a perfect New Years Eve. At least she could be assured that this snow storm was perfectly natural - the weather service was predicting blizzard conditions in most of the Northeastern United States. No ice princesses about it - just cold fronts and cloud patterns.

She turned away from the window where fluffy white flakes were falling from the darkening sky, and settled onto the couch in front of the electric hearth. It looked real except for the part where it wasn't. "So much for skiing, huh?" she asked Jaimie. It had been snowing heavily for most of the day, starting during their drive up, and while the front yard of the cabin was decorated with snowmen and forts and the aftermath or a pretty competitive snowball fight (during which Tallulah had valiantly attempted to defend her title of Ice Slinging Champion of the World and lost, also valiantly), they hadn't managed to hit the slopes.

She pulled Jaimie's laptop towards her across the coffee table and flipped it open. "You want to find something on Netflix? I think there was microwave popcorn in the basket with the coffee-"

It wasn't exactly the trip that Tallulah had planned, but then she'd gotten used to things going awry. And this wasn't a total loss, at least. They were having fun, and knowing her luck... one of them would have probably broken a bone if they'd actually managed to make it past the bunny hills.

Tallulah sat with the cursor poised over the web browser, studying the desktop. She hadn't been sure what she'd been expecting it to look like - she was not the sort of person to analyze people's personalities based on their wallpaper, and if she was she would find the space background either soothing, suitable, or just assume it was what came with the computer and Jaimie hadn't changed it. The folders were equally innocuous, "pictures" and "homework" were both things she'd expect to find on any computer and they weren't particularly innovative titles.

The third folder, though, was intriguing, if only because it looked like it was titled in code. Tallulah allowed the cursor to drift slowly towards it, then paused and listened for the sounds of the microwave from the kitchenette. Pop.... pop.... popop. Jaimie was occupied, but it was rude to snoop. She knew how mortified she would be if anyone dug through the files on her computer.

"Don't do it, Tallulah," she sighed, and launched the browser. She summoned Netflix out of the bookmarks menu, and frowned at how slowly the progress bar was going.

"Always trust middle-of-nowhere internet to suck," she sighed, and hit refresh like it might make the world move faster.

The lodge promised wifi, but it was piped over from a main building fifty yards downhill and in this weather that was kind of spotty. Tallulah futzed with the computer's internet settings in hopes of scoring a faster connection, but that just made it angry and left her frantically trying to get it back to the snail's pace it had been going at. Finally, the Netflix homepage came up.

She glanced over the back of the couch and grinned at the sight of Jaimie doing some kind of strange popcorn-worshipping dance. "It's recommending Zombieland," she called, glancing at the screen and wondering what she had watched to make the computer think she had a taste for "Sarcastic Horror-Comedies."

"But, um, Jai?" she asked, clicking the movie and waiting for the details page to load. It was painfully slow. "I'm not sure it's even going to play this."

It might be time to start looking for other forms of entertainment. She minimized the window. The cursor drifted back towards the mysterious folder.

Tallulah really, really wanted to click it.

"Yeah," frowned Tallulah, maximizing the window again as Jaimie came over, popcorn in hand. It had timed out. She hit refresh, and this time the whole thing went kaput and told her that they simply were not connected to the internet. She quit the browser.

"Well," she said, looking up at him and taking the bag. "So much for that."

And then, just to see if it got a reaction, she asked "What's this file labeled KT-fic?"

She clicked on it, to demonstrate her point, and was very surprised when it contained row after row of... Word documents? Well, she'd known Jaimie was a writer. So now it was just a question of what those word documents contained...

He was, all things considered, surprisingly nonchalant about the file, which was either because it actually wasn't a big deal to him, or because he was trying to downplay it. He looked a bit sheepish to be caught writing about anime, but beyond that... It was no big deal.

Tallulah leaned over and patted the couch cushion next to her. "Come on," she said, "Story time." Once Jaimie took a seat, she curled up next to him and balanced the computer on both their knees. "What should we start with?"

She scrolled through the neatly-labeled documents before choosing one at random. Opening it up, she scanned the first few lines. "You wrote... Naruto fanfic?" she asked, finding the setting only vaguely familiar at best. Then she read a few lines past that, turned to Jaimie, and gave him an incredulous grin.

"Jai, you wrote Naruto smut?!"

"Yeah, but, Jai," said Tallulah, leaning against him as she continued to skim through the story. "It's not just that you wrote Naruto fanfic. You wrote Naruto smut."

Because he had apparently chosen to not say anything about it the first time, it bore saying again. She highlighted a section of text and read it out loud, as dramatically as she could without any real acting training. "Hinata's eyes widened as Naruto's jacket dropped away. All of his ninja training had left him buff and fit, but the scars that crisscrossed his ripped abs were reminders of her suitor's rough past."

Here, Tallulah turned to look at Jaimie. "Well," she said, after a moment studying his reaction. "I can already tell you that you have a long and successful career ahead of you, Mr. Leontyne. As a Harlequin ghost writer."

She turned back to the computer once more. "Shall I continue?"

Tallulah gave him a wary glance, but chose not to comment, although she did feel momentarily awful. She'd recently been taking advantage of having a boyfriend with rich parents, and hadn't considered that they might cut him off. After a moment, though, she went back to reading out loud.

"Naruto gazed at Hinata and realized she was looking at his scars. 'I'm sorry if you don't want me like this,' he murmured, and Hinata shook her head and ran to his arms, wrapping him in a tight embrace. 'No, no,' she whispered, as Naruto placed a trail of kisses along her neck. 'I could never not want you.'"

Tallulah stopped reading and raised an eyebrow at her increasingly sheepish-looking boyfriend beside her. "Really?" she asked, and ruffled his hair with a laugh. "There's got to be forty stories in the file - is every single one of them anime porn?"

"Leave them wanting, huh?" asked Tallulah, slumping against his chest. She thought about it for a bit, then smiled slyly and added, "Hey, at least it's grammatically correct. And I assume I am just getting to the good part, yes?"

She looked to the screen once more, found her place, and kept reading. "Naruto's lips moved lower, where they came into contact with the collar of Hinata's jacket. She stiffened. 'Why do you hide underneath this?' asked Naruto, trying to remove it. Hinata shook her head, 'I need it for protection,' but she slowly relaxed as Naruto assured her of her safety, and finally he disrobed her."

At this point, Tallulah's eyebrows began a slow but steady climb up her forehead as she continued to read. "She fell desperately into his embrace, and he into hers, hands roaming, lips seeking, as they slowly sank to the soft, grassy floor of the clearing. Hinata looked to Naruto, a question forming on her lips that he answered with a kiss and-"

She gave Jaimie a playful slug in the arm. "Jai, this is dirty!"

Conspiratorially, she asked, "Do you want me to keep reading?"