Alanna doesn’t actually expect Meredith to say yes. That already feels like a miracle, and then Meredith compliments her too. “Thanks,” Alanna says, too bright, too close to gushing over it. Every time Alanna feels as though they’re on the brink of friendship though, she’s wrong—and every time, when Meredith disappears again, it seems they’re further back than they started. Alanna is used to friendships being hard, used to them taking work, but in a different way. With her old squad, it had been Alanna hard at work to make herself somehow interesting and nonthreatening, all at once. It had been showering the head cheerleader in compliments, and expecting none for herself. It’s markedly different with the Vixens. For the most part, people here seem to want her around. Failing that, they obviously tolerate her presence, and sometimes that’s enough.
In every case though, she’s known where she stands, whether it’s at the bottom of the pecking order or truly a part of the group.
Meredith is completely unknown. Unpredictable. One second they’re holding hands in the beach, Alanna tipsy and happy for what feels like progress, and the next they aren’t speaking for months. One second Meredith won’t meet her gaze, and the next she’s agreed to something as absurd as ping pong.
And Meredith isn’t even good at it, so clearly she hadn’t agreed in order to best Alanna. “Oh, jeez. You okay?” Alanna asks, reaching out automatically to brush away any red spot on Meredith’s cheek, even if it’s already buried underneath Meredith’s own hand. Alanna stops herself just in time, dropping her hand like it hurts before she actually manages to make contact. That would’ve been a very, very bad idea, for any number of reasons.
Alanna scoops up the ping pong ball instead, ducking under the table for a brief moment to compose herself. She lets out a breath. Steadies herself. When she resurfaces, she’ll be normal.
And sure enough, Alanna pops back up with a smile in place, and resists the urge to giggle at Meredith’s perplexed question. It wouldn’t be an unkind laugh—the furthest thing from that—but that doesn’t mean Meredith would see it that way. Instead, she shrugs, and when she takes her place on the other side of the table, Alanna purposefully fumbles the ball too.Nonthreatening. She’s good at that, and even with Meredith explicitly offering Alanna the lead, she doesn’t know how to take it—even if she wants to, even if it’d be nice to show Meredith that Alanna can be competent and confident too, underneath all the frills and the insecurities. “I don’t really know what I’m doing either,” she lies. Her old cheer captain had one of these tables. For party games, mostly, but they’d played too. Why not?
She scoops the ball up again, and bounces it across the table towards Meredith as slowly as she can manage. “I’ve heard you gotta go all in though. Use your whole body, not just your arms.”
Meredith goes very, very still when Alanna reaches forward to brush the sore spot on her cheek. When she pulls away at the last second, Meredith rushes to rub at the spot herself, a beat too late, as if she can power through the awkward moment if she looks busy enough. “Yeah, I’m fine.” When she looks back at Alanna, she’s already moved on, disappearing under the table to get a ball or something. Something normal, because it’s clear to Meredith that she’s the one making this weird, and if she can just relax for half a second maybe this interaction can actually go somewhere.
Meredith nods at the advice, and repositions the racket in her hand. “Okay, I think I can try that.” When the ball reaches her she manages to bounce it back for the first time, and lets out small smile. A few rocky passes back and forth and two false starts later, she’s gotten the rhythm.
Even after she’s figured the game out she still hesitates to go too hard at it, avoiding any opportunity to seem aggressive. Mere’s had enough of that with Alanna already. Instead of trying to score she passes the ball as directly to the other Vixen as possible, in what’s maybe the most polite game of ping pong any Exy banquet has ever seen. When the silence grows too long to ignore any longer, Meredith says the first thing that comes to mind, a question she’s heard thrown around all night. “So, what are you doing for break?”
Part of her is terrified by the potential of failed, awkward smalltalk with Alanna, especially while she’s trapped in the middle of a game where she hasn’t scored a single point. Meredith doesn’t know why she cares so much, why it matters so much what this one girl thinks of her, but she really doesn’t want to fuck this up. What she needs is a conversation with Alanna where things go well, but also not-- too well. The safety of a middle ground. Easy, comfortable, and arms length, where she tries to keep most people. It bothers her that Alanna has seen so much more of her than she never intended to show, both her anger and the softness of her hands in saltwater. It doesn’t feel easy at all. It feels dangerous.
