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freaoscanlin · 6 years

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Extra, Ride or Die

a-windsor replied to your post: All right, I want to write some Lauricity today....

I need some Nyssa discovering Lauricity is a thing. Sara can be there or not. But Nyssa figuring it out would be Awesome

Even though Nyssa al Ghul grew up without any contextual clues about healthy sisterly relationships due to her own troubles with her sister, she’d knew enough to be aware that the Lance sisters’ rivalry was very much Not Normal.

She had no idea how it normally worked between sisters when they weren’t overachievers—though the others certainly wouldn’t have called them that; she believed the term Thea had used had been “Extra” with an implied capital letter—but she figured even then the two would be considered strange. They were “ride or die” (another Thea term) for each other after Sara’s return from the League, but they could also fight as viciously as mortal enemies. They took pride in each other’s achievements, but also griped about the other reaching said achievements first.

The most puzzling for her was when Sara threw a knife at a practice dummy and turned to Nyssa. “I didn’t even get to be the gay cousin first,” she said.

Nyssa merely slanted a look at her. “My condolences.”

“I mean, I’m bi, but it’s a thing. An established thing. And she beat me to it.”

“You have a gay cousin? You’ve never told me of such a person.”

“No, of course not. My cousins are from Iowa and they’re straighter than their teeth—my aunt’s an orthodontist,” Sara said, waving that explanation away as unimportant. “Bad joke, I’m sorry. But Laurel! She hooked up with the class lesbian before I could. She couldn’t even let me have that.”

“The...class lesbian?”

“It was the early 2000s, every class had one out lesbian.” Sara waved that off and viciously attacked the training dummy as she told Nyssa the story, evidently working off her anger years later.

Years after that, Nyssa barely even remembered the conversation as she picked the lock to Laurel’s apartment. Passing through Star City meant that there were many ex-League buildings where she could crash, but in her days of retirement from the League, she’d become both a spendthrift and a woman who liked her creature comforts. Laurel’s guest bedroom had the best mattress in Star City. Her friend was no doubt out fighting crime either legally or through vigilantism, so she wouldn’t mind. “My door’s always open to you,” indeed.

When she pushed said door open, though, she realized how gravely she had miscalculated, and that perhaps she should have knocked.

At least she could take pride in her trainee’s reflexes: the second the door swung open, Laurel rolled off the other woman on the table, snatched up the first thing that came to hand, and hurtled it at Nyssa’s head. Were Nyssa anybody else and therefore slower, it would have knocked her quite silly.

“What the—Nyssa?” Laurel had snatched up her tonfa, but she lowered it now.

“Nyssa’s here?” Felicity scrambled to her feet, yanking her shirt closed. She jerked her glasses into place and gaped.

“What are you even doing here?” Laurel asked, tossing aside the tonfa so she could shrug back into the upper half of her uniform. She had a red mark on her neck.

“At the moment, I am deeply regretting that I didn’t knock,” Nyssa answered honestly, more amused than anything. Felicity had begun to flush bright red. “I didn’t see, ah, anything, if that’s what concerns you.”

To Laurel’s credit, she recovered quickly, stepping over to hug Nyssa—and retrieve the tablet she’d thrown at Nyssa’s head. “You scared the hell out of me. Come in.”

“My apologies for interrupting.”

“That’s—that’s okay.” But Felicity looked a little wild-eyed as she buttoned up her shirt. She cleared her throat. “I should maybe—I should go. Yeah, I should definitely just....go.”

“Are you sure? We didn’t even order the takeout yet.”

To Nyssa’s trained eye, it looked like it would have been some time before that would have happened, if at all. She said nothing.

“No, no, it’s okay. I’ll just grab something on the way home. And I really should get some work done tonight. I’ll see you later?” There was a lot unspoken in the look Felicity exchanged with Laurel, and Nyssa decided politely not to notice. She stepped to the side, nodding at Felicity as she left.

The second the door closed, she turned and raised an eyebrow at Laurel.

“It’s new,” Laurel said. “Like...today new. Don’t read into it.”

“Hm,” Nyssa said.

“And don’t tell the others.”

“You are concerned that I have somehow become close enough to anybody but you on this team to consider them a bosom companion?” Nyssa said.

Laurel let out a shaky laugh. “When you put it that way...Is something the matter? Do you need my help with something?”

“I was merely passing through and thought I might ask the use of your guest bedroom for the night.”

“Help yourself—to the room and anything in the fridge, though there’s not much there. We were planning on ordering something. Eventually. I’m going to go get changed.”

By the time Laurel emerged, dressed more comfortably in a pair of lounge pants and an ancient Starling City Flock T-shirt, Nyssa had located a bottle of ginger beer and some crisps and had shed some of her armor in the guest bedroom. “I don’t supposed you’d give me like a day so I could tell Sara myself?” Laurel asked without preamble.

“A day or two, I can grant you, but I don’t keep secrets from my beloved.”

“I know.” Laurel wrinkled her nose. “I can’t figure out if she’ll be happy about this...development or if she’ll just be like, ‘I told you so.’ It’s hard to tell.”

“She might be a little testy. She clings proudly to her identity and her place in the family.” Nyssa ate a crisp. “She once confessed that she was upset not to be the first ‘gay cousin.’ She told me all about your hooking up with Isabelle DeWitt.”

“Isa—” Laurel ran her hand down her face. “I didn’t hook up with Izzy! God. How many times do I have to tell her that? It was Seven Minutes in Heaven, for god’s sake. On a dare. I really did think I was straight.”

Nyssa debated asking what Seven Minutes in Heaven was, but decided she’d rather not carry that knowledge around. “Izzy?”

“My friend from the volleyball team—who admittedly, yes, came out of the closet later that year. But I thought I was straight. Sara can keep the First Gay Cousin title. Though she’s bi.”

And that, Nyssa thought, was the “ride or die” component of the Lance Sisters. They’d defend each other to the grave—literally—even while they exasperated the hell out of each other.

“She’ll be pleased to hear that,” Nyssa said. “I think she’ll be pleased to know she’s definitively not the only gay cousin, no matter how you identify.”

“Yeah, jury’s still out on that, I’ll get back to everyone later.” Laurel picked up her phone. “And speaking of relationships, can I make one request?”

“In the future,” Nyssa promised, “I will knock.”

Laurel didn’t even blink that Nyssa had anticipated her question. “Thank you.”

“Though I can’t say the same of Sara.”

“It’s her that will be scarred for life, not me. I don’t care.”

And that, Nyssa decided, was everything one needed to know about the Lance sisters.

#nyssa al ghul #laurel lance #felicity smoak #laulicity #lauricity #nysara #arrow #arrow fanfiction #fanfiction #frea replies #a windsor

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