#so now I sometimes download ao3 fics because what if one day I look back on one of them fondly and it's deleted | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lala-ladybug · 3 years

Text

Healing Hands: Chapter 1

Hello hello! First fic here, it’s a Maribat AU with a side of Sword Art Online. Or what I remember from having watched the show once about five years ago. We’ve got Marinette and minimal class salt, Young Justice but only the good parts, and primarily Jasonette. Please spread the word (I am a tiny sideblog) and let me know what you think <3

Read here on AO3

Chapter 1: You have no idea how many baddies I’m going to blow up because of you

Friday, at long last. Marinette could not have exhaled a bigger sigh of relief. It was mid-way through the school term, her commissions were ramping up, and Hawkmoth had become frustratingly active. Her duties as class president had only increased as she and her friends neared the end of lycée, not to mention all the studying she was doing for the baccalauréat on top of her regular school work. Commissions were booming now that her popularity as the anonymous designer MDC was soaring worldwide. She wouldn’t give any of it up for the world, but she might enjoy getting more than three or four hours of sleep for once.

There was only part of her life that had gotten easier since that day three years ago when she was entrusted with a pair of spotted earrings and an old god to match. Ladybug started out with one partner, but she now had a whole team to share the responsibilities of keeping their city safe. Ryuko and Viperion became permanent fixtures of the Parisian rooftops, and Bourdonne replaced Queen Bee after the infamous (albeit self-inflicted) unmasking of Chloe Bourgeois. The people of Paris looked to these heroes with pride and trust.

And Marinette Dupain-Cheng, now the Guardian of the Miraculous, looked to her partners with trust as well. She had decided that with her in charge, she could no longer keep secrets from her friends, from her new Order of the Guardians. She discussed it with Chat Noir, and he had smiled and agreed that it was time. And one day, when Ladybug gathered her teammates on a remote rooftop in the dead of night, she said only “I trust you,” before allowing her transformation to fall.

She wasn’t nervous, not really. She knew Kagami and Luka had good hearts, and she had seen firsthand how much Chloe had grown. Those three accepted her civilian self, her true self, without half a thought, and followed their leader in dropping their transformations as well. Chloe got her quips in while Ladybug looked to Chat Noir.

He passed his gaze over the faces of their friends and smirked like he was holding in a laugh. As he said “Claws in,” Marinette could hear the laugh in his voice, an intonation that sounded so very familiar, and oh. Of course.

Adrien Agreste beamed at his friends, both in the mask and out, and said fondly, “I’m so glad it’s you.”

The rest, of course, was history. For the year and a half since then, the five heroes of Paris had kept the city safe from threats magical and mundane alike. Hawkmoth had, of course, gotten craftier and more vicious with his attacks, sometimes choosing to send bursts of weaker akumas over the span of a week, sometimes waiting a month before sending an especially brutal villain their way.

But it was nothing that the Order of the Guardians couldn’t handle. Even though it could get exhausting after a while, which is why the incoming weekend was a welcome reprieve. There was another reason why this particular weekend was so exciting, which was that a new video game, Mindscape, was debuting. It would be released at midnight EST, which was 6:00 in the morning for Paris.

“Today’s the day, girl!” Alya squealed as she flagged Marinette down on their way to the classroom. “We are so lucky that our class won that raffle to get these exclusive passes. I bet I’ll be the first blog to get the scoop on this new tech they’re using!”

Marinette giggled and started to reply, “Super lucky, right? I’m excited too, I heard--”

“You know,” Lila cut her off as she sidled up to Alya. “I’m not saying that I didn’t enter us to get those downloads, but I was a big help with beta testing.”

How she managed to time that comment just as the three girls crossed the threshold of the classroom, and how she managed to know that nearly the whole class would already be there to hear it, Marinette would never understand. She only had to wait a moment before the rest of their friends rushed to the door to thank Lila.

“This opportunity is amazing, we are incredibly grateful!” Max was first in line, ever the technology-enthusiast.

Kim pushed his shorter friend out of the way and vigorously shook Lila’s hand. “You have no idea how many baddies I’m going to blow up because of you.” Lila looked a little overwhelmed as he continued to shake her hand all the while, and she gave him a nervous smile.

He was soon pushed out of the way as Alix muscled her way to the front next. “I definitely owe you for giving me the chance to kick his ass in a brand new way!” She jerked her head to where Kim had landed on the floor, pouting at her.

As the rest of the class who would be joining them in the game’s premiere expressed their thanks, Alya looked on with an affectionate smile. She was so very happy that she now had two kind, selfless best friends. Her smile fell a little as she noticed Marinette stoically edging her way around the crowd and up to her seat, not having said a word to Lila. Alya just wished that her two besties would get along.

Alya put a hand on Lila’s shoulder and smiled her thanks before following Marinette to what was once their shared desk. “You really should thank her, you know,” Alya implored hopefully.

Without turning around to face Alya, Marinette paused and shared an incredulous look with Adrien, who was already seated at his shared desk with Nino. She then shrugged and replied, “Lila never actually said that she got us the passes,” before continuing up the steps to her seat at the back of the class. Alya shook her head and sat down. It was always like this, a cool indifference from Marinette whenever Lila came up. They were both such incredible people, Alya couldn’t understand why they didn’t get along.

As for Marinette, she was semi-content to let Lila be as long as her lies didn’t hurt anybody. Her unrealistic promise to take away all of Marinette’s friends was never fulfilled, and honestly the amount of emotional energy it used to sap from her just wasn’t worth it anymore. Marinette had no idea how Lila was going to get her hands on a copy of the game when Mari was, of course, the one who had won the raffle. She distributed the special access passes herself, and Lila certainly hadn’t gotten one. If this was the way that she wanted to make friends, she would eventually have to face the consequences.

But for now, Lila was basking in her praise. That is, until she glanced at her phone and gave a small gasp of dismay.

“What’s wrong?” Rose asked, concern already etched on her face.

Lila covered her mouth with one hand and started rapidly blinking back tears. “It’s my VIP copy of the game. There was a mixup in the mail and it won’t get here in time for tomorrow morning! I’m so sorry everyone, it looks like you’ll have to do it without me....” She buried her face in her hands and her shoulders trembled with barely restrained sobs.

The class shared a worried look, and Sabrina piped up, “It’s okay Lila, you can borrow my copy.” Lila immediately looked up and surged forward to clasp the hands of her friend.

“Really? But won’t it have the same problem?” Sabrina smiled and shook her head. “Nope, it’s a digital download! I don’t mind, you can always trade it back when your VIP pass arrives later.”

Lila gave her a brilliant smile, any tears long-since dried. “Oh, thank you so much Sabrina! I’ll see what I can do about getting you a VIP pass too once mine gets here.”

At that moment, Chloe walked in, and one look at the scene displayed in front of her had her rolling her eyes at her former best friend. She gracefully swept up the steps to join Marinette at the back of the classroom and whispered to her, “Aren’t they all digital downloads?”

Marinette, who had started unpacking her bag to prepare for class, inclined her head and gave the blonde a meaningful look that indicated yes, they were indeed all digital downloads. Chloe snickered and started preparing her own side of the desk.

After the fiasco of outing herself as Queen Bee, Chloe had lost the minimal support and tolerances she had been allowed before. It gave her time to truly reflect on how she acted and treated other people. She had since been quietly making amends with those she’d wronged, and the person on the top of that list was Marinette Dupain-Cheng. It took time and a lot of effort on Chloe’s part, but she mellowed out and did a lot of growing up. She still spoke her mind, though.

“Huh that’s strange, I got the VIP package too, but mine was a digital pass,” Chloe loudly proclaimed, studying her nails nonchalantly as the rest of the class turned to look up at her.

Lila grit her teeth into a forced smile and replied sweetly, “Well that’s because mine was an original beta testing copy that they had to update for the full game.” She turned her attention to Marinette and a note of false concern crept into her voice. “Oh Marinette, I hope you’ll still have time to come too! I know you’ll be busy this weekend with planning the spring class field trip. It would be such a shame if it didn’t happen because you were too busy playing a video game.”

Marinette suddenly felt very warm under the gazes of the entire class. She stammered out, “Oh-of course we’ll get to go! Don’t worry, I have a meeting with the school board on Monday.” Trust Lila to sniff out the one thing that had slipped below her radar.

Lila’s eyes lit up with an opportunistic gleam. “That’s great! Where will it be?”

“Well, uh, the school board has to review the location, so I don’t want to get your hopes up, but I can tell you that it will be in, um,” her eyes flicked around wildly and landed on the posterboard of different flags from the prior week’s lessons. “America!”

The class burst into excited chatter moments before Madame Bustier arrived and the late bell rang. Marinette released a breath and sagged in her seat. Saved by the bell.

Chloe gave her a sidelong glance and murmured, “America, huh?”

“Shut up,” Marinette shot back.

* * *

Madame Bustier tried to get the class to pay attention, she really did. They struggled through their lessons before lunch, the volume of side conversations between deskmates swelling all the while. The moment the bell for lunch dismissal rang, the students exploded into conversation as they left the classroom.

Marinette waved as Chloe and Adrien walked off to go meet Kagami and Luka at a nearby cafe. She breezed into the patisserie across the street from Francois Dupont and gave her surprised Maman a kiss on the cheek.

“I thought you were going out with your friends for lunch?” Sabine asked, balancing a tray of eclairs on her hip. “I forgot I have to plan our class trip!” Marinette replied cheerfully as she hurried into the kitchen to quickly fix herself a croque-monsieur. She gave her Papa a hug as she finished preparing her meal. He shouted up at her to not make a mess as she retreated into her room to eat at her desk.

She gave a small snort at that. It was nearly impossible for her to make a mess of food when she had over a dozen Kwami there to clean up after her, but he didn’t know that. She greeted said Kwami with a delighted grin and a wave as she set her plate down by her desktop computer.

“Marinette, why are you back so early?” Tikki asked, “is everything okay?” The other Kwami swarmed around her as she woke her computer up and logged in.

The girl waved one hand nonchalantly and opened up a web browser with the other. “Everything’s fine, I just forgot about planning the class trip!” She took a huge bite of the sandwich and started typing furiously. Several Kwami dove after the crumbs that sprayed everywhere.

“Ohhh, I see! Do you have an idea of where to start?” Tikki zoomed around Marinette’s shoulder to hover next to the monitor screen.

Marinette had the same determined gleam in her eye as when she finally found the perfect fabric for a design. She said confidently around a mouth full of ham, “America.”

* * *

By the time the lunch break had finished, Marinette had a preliminary list of cities on the East Coast of the United States. She had researched Gotham first, but it looked far too dangerous and gloomy. Next was New York City, which she determined was too big. Philadelphia was historic, but in a way that would definitely bore her classmates. Boston was too cold despite its excitement. Which left Metropolis as the perfect candidate. It was also protected by the perfect superheroes, Superman and his family, so she was absolutely confident the school board would approve of the city.

Of course, the meeting on Monday would need more specifics than just the city, but she was pleased with her progress so far. Marinette shut down her monitor, grabbed her backpack and plate from lunch, and went downstairs to the kitchen. She quickly scrubbed and dried her plate in the sink before waving to her parents as they bustled around, accommodating the tail end of the mid-day rush.

Marinette walked across the street with a spring in her step and, spotting a tall flash of blue hair, half-jogged up to her group of friends.

“Hey guys, sorry I couldn’t make it to lunch!” She grinned apologetically at Kagami and Luka.

“That’s alright Melody,” Luka gave her a side hug, “Chloe told us you were busy planning your class trip.”

Adrien slung an arm around Kagami’s shoulder and pulled his girlfriend closer to whisper conspiratorially to her, “I hear we’re going to America.” She laughed softly at his antics and at Marinette who stuck her tongue out at him. Kagami then said to Marinette, “That sounds delightful, Marihime. I trust you will still be joining us tomorrow morning?”

Marinette’s eyes lit up with excitement at the prospect of playing the game with her friends all weekend long. “Definitely! I’m going to finish preparing for the school board meeting tonight so that we can play the second it comes out.”

“If you can wake up on time,” Chloe teased.

Marinette crossed her arms defensively and stated with pride, “I already set three alarms, thank you very much!”

Adrien burst out laughing at that. “Leave it to our everyday Ladybug,” he winked. Her face flushed as she pouted. He chuckled again and kissed Kagami on the top of her head. “See you later, mon coeur.”

She and Luka waved to the rest of the group as they left to return to their own schools. The three Francois Dupont students watched them go for a moment before returning inside.

“So, you and Kagami have plans?” Chloe asked.

“Yeah! Our parents gave special permission for a sleepover at my place tonight so we can play the game right when it comes out tomorrow.” Adrien rubbed the back of his neck, a nervous habit he had never quite abandoned. “But I’m not sure how often we’ll be able to be online with you guys after this weekend. You know how busy our schedules are....”

Marinette elbowed him lightly as they walked. “It’s a blessing you both managed to convince your dad and her mom to let you come to the launch at all! We’ll play together when we can, it’s no big deal.”

Adrien smiled gratefully at her and held the door open for both Marinette and Chloe as they entered the classroom. Alya was already there, and once she spotted her best friend (well, one of them), she skidded down the steps with a huge grin and held an invisible microphone up to Marinette.

“Thank you Nadja, and good afternoon Paris! This is Alya Cesaire, and today I am joined by young fashion designer Marinette Dupain-Cheng. Mlle. Dupain-Cheng, can you give us an exclusive scoop on the trip you’re planning for your class?”

“Good afternoon Mlle. Cesaire,” Marinette giggled, “Unfortunately, the trip has yet to be approved by the school board so no details just yet. But I can tell you with certainty that we will be visiting the resident city of some popular American superheroes.” She winked as she finished in her best interview voice.

Alya gasped and dropped her pretend microphone as she hugged her best friend. “Really!? Oh my gosh girl, you are the best!”

Marinette laughed and hugged her back as Alya jumped and spun them around. Once they pulled apart, she told the brunette, “As soon as the school board gives me the green light, you’ll be the first to know.”

The late bell rang and the girls practically skipped to their respective seats as Madame Bustier called the class to attention. Well, “attention” in the loosest sense of the word. They struggled once more through the majority of their lessons, but Madame Bustier seemed to sense defeat and she let them chatter excitedly for the last twenty minutes before dismissal.

Kim and Alix were boasting about how they were going to stay up all night, while Max encouraged them to maximize the time they would be able to play the next day by getting a full night’s sleep in before the launch time.

Lila bragged about her role in the creation of the game from its conception to even having suggested the highly anticipated date of release. Adrien pointedly ignored Lila in the row behind his and discussed the music they had recorded and mixed for the game with a very enthusiastic Nino.

Sabrina looked on a little sadly until Mylene, Ivan, Rose, and Juleka invited her to join their Disney movie marathon double-date instead. Mylene was too nervous to play the game so Ivan chose to sit out to support her, and video games weren’t really Rose and Juleka’s style. Sabrina’s face softened as she gratefully accepted their invitation.

Nathaniel turned around in his seat to talk to Marinette about the art rendering and the programs they used while Chloe scrolled aimlessly on her phone.

By the time the bell finally rang, the class was beyond excited to go prepare for the launch the next morning.

Marinette, to her credit, swallowed her enthusiasm and sat down to fully plan out their trip to Metropolis. It was grueling work, researching the safest hotel that was still in a central location. It had to be affordable but not shabby, too, because they had a limited budget. She eventually settled on the reputable Wayne Hotel, apparently part of an enormous corporation called Wayne Enterprises, and then began to build an itinerary with different events from there.

She worked nonstop the rest of the night, with the exception of a brief dinner break, and it was nearly 11:00 at night by the time she finished. Marinette sat up from her desk chair and stretched, then double-checked that her alarms were set before finally heading to bed.

#marinette dupain cheng #jasonette #sword art online au #virtual reality #miraculous ladybug #miraculous ladybug fic #maribat #maribat fic #healing hands

60 notes · View notes

lilydalexf · 3 years

Photo

Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with tatooedlaura (Laura Sprys)

Laura has 28 fics at Gossamer, but the big treasure trove of her stories is at AO3, where she has 193 fics. Thank goodness for the richness of the X-Files and for talented, creative people like Laura who can find so many interesting ways to tell tales in the show’s universe. Big thanks to Laura for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)?

Maybe reading mine but reading older fic in general is something I still do and something I still find entertaining. I do wish i could get into my old fics and post a warning that some of those were written before the author: ever had a drink, ever had sex, ever had a boyfriend, ever lived on her own, ever had a real job, or ever experienced much of anything in the real world.

Then again, fanfic is a perfect time capsule for the age and it’s always fun to see where the originals started and how they’ve grown.

What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it?

Back in the day and up and through today, it has always been a fun experience. From it, I’ve learned to love writing. I’ve learned that fans are crazy, weird, wonderful, generous, talented, committed, passionate, and imaginative. In a fandom, you can think whatever you wish and write about anything you like and because I’ve been around so long, I’ve gotten to watch the storylines shift and the relationships change ...

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)?

Originally, I never had much interaction with people other than ones who sent emails commenting on my fanfic … the internet at my parents house was dial-up and I had to access through the AOL free disks that arrived in the mail so, for the most part, I didn’t have the bandwidth or the connection speed to do more than upload stories and download episode guides.

Good lord, I remember submitting a story and having to wait upwards of two days to two weeks before the new batch of stories was posted ... then ephemeral came around and you could actually have your story up in under a day ... all ya'll who started on tumblr and ao3, you have it great, let me tell you :)

One thing that stands out in my mind still (and I’m still friends with her on Facebook) was a woman from western Canada who I stumbled across somewhere while looking for the blooper reels. She offered to send me her copies on VHS for my collection. I don’t think she asked for payment and one day, a package arrived from a lovely woman near Lethbridge, bloopers playable, tapes labeled in clear printing. I still appreciate that 20 some odd years later :)

What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general?

Fandoms are crazy places. Tread lightly at first but enjoy what you want, ignore what you don’t, rewrite what you hate, and write what you love. Don’t be an asshole when you don’t agree with someone … when you do, tell them …

What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show?

I was on board from the first episode. It was a show about two people who you felt were destined to be together but weren’t, and wouldn’t be for years. It was a cop show about aliens and a monster show with cops. I was in the right place at the right time in the right frame of mind and there was just something that clicked and I never looked back. Friends were not allowed to call me on Friday night and once it switched to Sunday, I made sure that my parents got us on early evening bowling league so we’d be home in time to watch. Even my boyfriend (eventual husband) knew to shut the hell up from 9-10pm, even if he was sitting next to me on the couch (with my parents in their chairs watching as well)

Also, my 56-year-old dad had a crush on Scully from the start so that was entertaining as hell as well

What got you involved with X-Files fanfic?

I have been writing stories in my head for literally as long as I can remember. Watching some episode, I honestly don’t remember which one, I suddenly had an idea for a story about Mulder and Scully. I had never written a story with pre-existing characters before and it was totally foreign to me. How do you write a character with a current storyline. It was weird, it was difficult, it was some of the most fun I’d had writing up to that point.

Suddenly, I didn’t have to explain or describe the characters, think of jobs and mundane things … they already had those … and it was great.

Honest-to-God, my first fic was written, in pencil, on a yellow legal pad by flashlight while lying with my head at the foot of my bed so I could see my parents coming down the hall if they happened to wake up at midnight to go to the bathroom. Later fics were written by the light of an 10” TV/VCR combo with me still lying with my head at the foot of the bed. I still have those old legal pads somewhere and I remember having to type them in secret, having to wait until the house was empty for 20 minutes to an hour at a time. Uploading them was always unnerving because of the slow dial-up and the fact that I didn’t have my own email address, but had to use my dad’s. I’d have to make sure to check it whenever I could, intercept the feedback I’d get off gossamer.

I was such a damn rebel.

What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom?

Well, I now know how to interact with people given tumblr and AO3 but it hasn’t changed much. I contribute a little more now that I understand posting on social media but mostly, I still just write like a fiend and post, read voraciously and give kudos and likes often, comment some and reblog.

Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files?

I dabbled and have a favorite ‘Fringe’ fic … I tried to read a Harry Potter fic once … I type ‘West Wing’ occasionally in ao3 and tumblr ...

And nothing, absolutely nothing, has ever caught me like the X-Files did in regards to the fandom experience.

I have shows I watch and re-watch and re-watch but no two characters have ever had me writing and thinking and planning like Mulder and Scully. No other combo has ever made me write upwards of 300,000 or more total and still have plenty of stories to tell.

I’m okay with this.

Who are some of your favorite fictional characters? Why?

Aside from Mulder and Scully and the gentlemen three of Frohike, Langley, and Byers … I love all Scully’s nieces and nephews in my ‘Life’ series … I also love Corduroy (picture books), Harold (purple crayon fame), Neville Longbottom, the characters from my own novels, Katniss (book not movie), Anne Shirley, Elnora (from the Limberlost), Will Stanton/Merriman/Barney/Jane from ‘Dark is Rising’ and 10,459 others …

I’m a children’s librarian so most of my favorite books are those written for the younger and YA crowd. I like my job :)

Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully?

I watch this show all the damn time. I will think about Mulder and Scully when I have nothing else to think about, normally writing and editing whatever story I may have in the hopper at the time about them.

My husband laughs when I have the show on. He knows all the episodes with me and it’s one of my comfort shows that I don’t have to pay attention to when it’s on. During it, I have edited books, decorated cookies, been sick, been recovering, simply wasted a perfectly good day because I could.

My 17-year-old daughter keeps it on while she does homework and works out.

It’s a staple at our house and no one is allowed to make fun of it, even though we all know that parts are completely ‘make fun-able’

Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom?

I read fic all the time … I have worked my way through AO3 starting from the beginning and if it was more easily readable on a phone, I’d work my way, once again, through gossamer.

Restated from above: I dabbled and have a favorite ‘Fringe’ fic … I tried to read a Harry Potter fic once … I type ‘West Wing’ occasionally in ao3 and tumblr ...

Do you have any favorite X-Files fanfic stories or authors?

I have all kinds of favorites on tumblr but right now, I honestly don’t remember most of the names … I pretty much read everything that comes through my dashboard and every few days, i read through the newest posts on AO3 … I love you all!!

What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise?

Of X-Files fics, I love my newer stuff … I read “Life” and its sequels every few months … ‘Your Place or Mine’ is another one I will read … actually, I’ll just say it .... I read all my own fic over and over again …

With fic, you get to write the characters as you want to see them and write situations that you want to see … I write for myself most of all and I love to read what I wrote :)

Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online?

I write them all the damn time. I have tons of snippets and half-finished that I occasionally glean things from but while sometimes, old stuff morphs into new, sometimes, it just needs to gather that dust and live a quiet little forgotten life in some backhand folder on my dropbox account ...

Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work?

First question is answered above.

As for other creative work, I have published two YA novels, have the third in that series in editing … I have five other novels in the hopper in various stages of ‘good lord this needs an edit or twelve’ …

I am writing things constantly in my head or on my laptop … most is crap … stome sticks … some turns into fic and some turns into books …

But the point is, I am writing, in some form, at all time :)

Where do you get ideas for stories?

Some two sentence conversation will spark an idea … the line of a song will inspire an idea … a word will start a sentence which will turn into a paragraph which will tumble straight into a story … and sometimes, stuff just pops in my head for no damn reason at all ...

What's the story behind your pen name?

On gossamer, I am L. Sprys because that was my name at the time :)

On tumblr and AO3, I’m tatooedlaura because my name is Laura and I have, now, six tattoos (yes, I spelled it wrong in my handle but that’s life) … when I decided on the name, I think I only had two

Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions?

They do now … it took me years to crack and tell them … my husband has never read them, nor have any of the people I have told (as far as I know)

Now, I don’t really care who knows … I’ll tell them I write smutty X-Files fanfiction and family-friendly X-Files fanfiction …

I am too old at this point to be embarrassed by what I like to do. If they laugh at me, I tell them they only get to laugh when they’ve published a book and I pull up my books on Amazon … I’ve only had to do that once and it shut them right the hell up …

Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now?

Gossamer: L. Sprys

Tumblr and AO3: tatooedlaura

Is there anything else you'd like to share with fans of X-Files fic?

I love you! I see you! I appreciate you! I hope you enjoy! Don’t judge me for my grammar issues! I will never be able to spell the word ‘excersize’!

(Posted by Lilydale on April 27, 2021)

#old school x #xfiles fanfic #xf fanfic #xf fanfic author interviews #tatooedlaura #laura sprys

50 notes · View notes

inevitably-johnlocked · 3 years

Note

Hi Steph!! I was wondering if you knew of any really long fics (like 25k or more) that are only one chapter, I travel a lot sometimes and some places don't really have good enough internet for multi chapter fics. So yeah, any really long one chapter fics about John and Sherlock would be appreciated. Thank you!

Hey Nonny!!

LOL OKAY FUNNY STORY. I almost replied to this with “oof I’ll have to read EVERYTHING so I’m sorry.... and then... I remembered.......

I put chapter counts on everything 🙃😐

I’m not the brightest crayon in the box. 🖍

Anyway, so yes, I can definitely rec you some fics! BUT I should also offer you two suggestions you can totally do to read ANY fic!

On Ao3, you can click on the “Entire Work” button to load ALL chapters of a fic (it’s the very first button along the top) and in turn you can then just read it all there!

And the very last button along the top, you can Download copies of the fic to your phone or computer with eBook file types (AZw3 for Kindle, ePub for iPhone’s Books app, and MOBI is for other mobile devices and e-readers), the HTML if you want to read it as-is in a web-browser, or the PDF format which is a universal file format that is supported by everything, even web browsers, so it’s a good one to download if you don’t know what format you need :) If you read on an eReader, though, I can’t recommend enough just downloading the format for your device. You get to keep a copy of the fic AND the eReader keeps it nicely formatted. It’s a BRILLIANT, BEAUTIFUL feature that Ao3 gave us, because I like downloading all my fics and read them later in iBooks. Once you start that, Nonny, you can’t do it any other way. AND at the VERY END of the fics, it links BACK to the original post so you can bookmark, kudos, and comment on it!! <3

So yeah, two options you can do to solve your poopy internet and still read long fics hee hee! <3

ANYWAY EXCUSE FOR A NEW LIST LOL.

ALSO, side note, check out @silentauroriamthereal; a large chunk of her fics are both long AND one chapter, so it’s a good place to go and she’s a brilliant author so I don’t think you’ll be disappointed! <3 Plus a lot of her fics are on this list, so I am sorry hahah.

AND I wanted to make the list a bit longer than I had, so I picked fics over 20K, if that’s alright :) As always, if you wrote a 20k+ single chapter fic, let us know!

SINGLE CHAPTER FICS OVER 20K WORDS

A Life Well-Lived by Kate_Lear (E, 20,121 w., 1 Ch. || Original Male Character, Sherlock Woos John, Jealous Sherlock, Reluctant Bi-John, Past Abuse, Insecure John, Reassuring / Caring Sherlock, Protective Sherlock, Understanding Sherlock) – John got scared off men by an abusive past relationship. Sherlock has to try and woo him while not scaring him off with protective possessive rage.

The White Lotuses by SilentAuror (E, 20,340 w., 1 Ch. || Slow Burn, Domestic, Romance) – One day John realises that he just isn't where he belongs, which is back at Baker Street with Sherlock. So he goes back and Sherlock, in his own way, courts him. Romance.

Out of the Woods by SilentAuror (E, 20,471 w., 1 Ch. || Post S4, Romance, Slow Burn, Flirting, Drunk Sex, Practical Jokes, POV Sherlock, Bottomlock, Possessive John, Pining Sherlock, Frustrated Wanking, Frottage, Hand Jobs, Blow Jobs, First Kiss/Time, Virgin Sherlock, Love Confessions, Soft Sherlock, Dancing, Bum Appreciation, Hanging out with the Yard) – Sherlock is fairly certain that John has taken to flirting with him of late, but can't be entirely certain of it. At least, not until a case takes them into a forest, along with Lestrade's team and something happens that will change everything about their lives...

You're On the Air by prettysailorsoldier (M, 20,616 w., 1 Ch. || Unilock, Matchmaking, Radio, Christmas, Christmas Fluff, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, Sherlock POV, Pining Sherlock, Flirting, Bisexual John) – The Consulting Detective and The Woman dominate the airwaves of their university radio station, doling out advice on everything from meeting the parents to sexual positions. When their ratings start to dip before the holidays, however, manager Mike thinks it's time for some fresh blood, and who better to fill in the gaps than rugby captain--and notorious flirt--John Watson? Part 1 of 25 Days of Johnlock

whiskies neat by Ellipsical (E, 20,660 w., 15 Ch. || Alternate First Meeting, POV Second Person Sherlock, Slow Burn, One Night Stand, Rimming, Blow Jobs, Anal, Soldier John, Crying, Emotional Lovemaking, Switchlock) – Home and hearth and whiskies neat, or, alternatively, Sherlock Holmes falls in love.

Achieving the Together-Coloured Instant by teahigh (E, 20,776 w., 1 Ch. || Est. Rel, PTSD, Codependency, Fluff & Angst, H/C, Smut, Demisexual Sherlock, Experiments) – John wonders if this is how it’s going to be: A life speaking in code, because they’re both too stupid to figure out how to say, “I love you.”

Winter's Delights by Kate_Lear (E, 21,173 w., 1 Ch. || Holmes Family, Christmas, Fake Relationship, Friends to Lovers, Bed Sharing, Domestics) – Sherlock takes John home for Christmas to meet the extended Holmes family. Part 1 of Winter's Delights

Love Is by SilentAuror (E, 21,508 w., 1 Ch. || Angst, UST / URT, Post HLV, Romance) – At Mrs Hudson’s urging, Sherlock finally decides to tell John how he feels about him. Part 1 of Love Is

echoes through time by chellefic (E, 21,619 w., 1 Ch. || First Time, Romance, ACD & BBC, Epistolary) – Mummy sends a trunk from the Holmes cottage in Sussex to 221B. Its contents alter the way John and Sherlock see themselves and one another.

Ghost Stories by SwissMiss (M, 22,256 w., 1 Ch. || Pining, Holmes Family, Christmas, Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn, Bed Sharing, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, First Time) – Sherlock's parents think he and John are a couple. They might be onto something.

Sonatina in G Minor by SilentAuror (E, 22,574 w., 1 Ch. || Case Fic, POV Sherlock, Angst, UST, Sherlock’s Violin, Post-S3, Romance) – John has come back to Baker Street, but Sherlock doesn't understand the strange tension between them, even after he begins teaching John to play the violin at John's request.

The Kepler Problem by kinklock (E, 24,270 w., 1 Ch. || Sci-Fi AU, Alien Sherlock, Space Repairman John, Alien Biology, Horny John) – Working in uncharted space exploration was not as exciting as John had hoped, especially when it turned out to be mostly bot maintenance on uninhabited planets. However, the mystery of the repeated, unexplained malfunctions on planet BAK 2212 might turn out to be exactly the kind of adventure he'd been craving.

26 Pieces by Lanning (E, 28,236 w., 1 Ch. || H/C, Torture, First Time, Happy Ending, Schmoop, Past Abuse) – Mycroft gives Sherlock the apparently simple task of solving a puzzle box containing a stolen microchip. It isn't simple.

The Wisteria Tree by SilentAuror (E, 29,773 w., 1 Ch. || Post-S3, Emotional Love Making, Amnesia/Memory Loss, Sherlock Loves John So Much, Sherlock POV, Romance, Angst with Happy Ending, First Times, Hurt/Comfort, Est. Rel., Retirement) – Sherlock wakes up from a month-long coma only to discover that he has no memory of the previous six years to his own shock as well as John's...

Shallow Grave by SilentAuror (E, 31,672 w., 1 Ch. || Romance, Angst, HLV Fix It, Infidelity, Pining Sherlock, First Person POV Sherlock) – Starts as Sherlock's plane is taking off at the end of His Last Vow. When he finds out that Moriarty is alive and that he's being recalled from his mission, Sherlock decides that he should have told John how he felt before he left. So he walks off the plane and kisses him.

The Midas Touch by flawedamythyst (E, 32,231 w., 1 Ch. || PODFIC AVAILABLE || Magical Realism || John has a Magical Cock, Dub Con, Healer John) – John Watson has a medical condition that means everyone he sleeps with is instantly healed of all illness and injury. This causes complications when Sherlock breaks his arm, and even more complications when Sherlock falls in love with him. Yes, this is a story where John has a literal magic healing cock. It's a lot less cracky than you're probably imagining. Warning: Contains complex issues of sexual consent, although not between Sherlock and John.

The Whore of Babylon Was a Perfectly Nice Girl by out_there (E, 32,897 w., 1 Ch. || Past Drug Use, Blowjobs, Toplock, Mentions of Switching, Rough Sex, Background Cases, Sherlock’s Past, Sherlock’s Sexual History, Experienced Sherlock, Past One Night Stands, Fingering, Cuddling, Possessive Sherlock, Paris Holiday, Bed Sharing, Naked Lie-Ins, Bathing Together, Confessions, Worried Sherlock, Laying in Bed All Day, Meddling Mycroft, Naked Lazy Day) – Sherlock walks into a room and takes all the space right out of it. He does the same inside John's head.

Our Enthusiasms Which Cannot Always Be Explained by withoutawish (M, 32,961 w., 1 Ch. || Christmas, Fluff and Angst, H/C, Post-TRF, Case Fic, Mild Gore, Sherlock Whump) – The list that is tacked haphazardly on the refrigerator of 221B reads, ‘Kidney(s), and/or a full cadaver (preferably male, late 30s, under six feet tall), bag of fresh toes, sixteen cow’s eyes (corneas retained), dual exhaust hand –held flame thrower, an unopened first edition copy of Joseph Conrad’s 'Heart of Darkness', and no less than ten abhorrently gruesome murders in the upcoming month.” The one neatly hanging next to it simply reads, “Sex.” One of these lists is not John Watson’s. If John Watson were to put what he really wanted in list form, to live in a land somewhere beyond ‘almosts' now that Sherlock Holmes has indeed returned to him, he would never be able to look his flatmate in the eye ever again.

Bedtime Stories by Liketheriver (M, 34,388 w., 1 Ch. || Emotional H/C, Romance, Angst & Humour, Bed Sharing, John First Person, TRF, John Whump) – John's POV during Season 2 and beyond when Sherlock takes up semi-permanent residence in his bed. A collection of codas and missing scenes wrapped up into one long fic and topped with a bow that takes the story beyond Reichenbach and into happy territory once more. Part 1 of Bedtime Universe

The Yellow Poppies by SilentAuror (E, 34,952 w., 1 Ch. || H/C, Nightmares, HLV Fix-It, PTSD, Trauma, POV Sherlock, Doctor John) – Sherlock is threatened and assaulted in the hospital immediately after having been shot in the heart, first by Mary, then by Magnussen. As he recovers at Baker Street with John and plans the attack on Appledore with Mycroft, he fights to work through the trauma caused by these two visits. Set during His Last Vow.

The Unfinished Letters by SilentAuror (E, 37,391 w., 1 Ch. || Post S3 / S3 / HLV Fix it, Angst with Happy Ending, Romance, Infidelity, Depression, Case Fic, POV Third Person Sherlock, Love Confessions, Pining Sherlock, Letters) – A fire at Baker Street leads John to read something he was never intended to see: a notebook of half-written, unfinished letters Sherlock wrote during his time away...

Set in Stone by SilentAuror (E, 39,309 w., 1 Ch. || Romance, Wedding, Therapy, Fluff and Angst) – Sherlock and John are back from Ravine Valley and planning their wedding. However, as they move past the trial of the human traffickers, Sherlock can't help but wonder if he's imagining that John is becoming a little distant. Surely he isn't getting cold feet about the wedding... Part 2 of The Ravine Valley series

Act IV by SilentAuror (E, 39,707 w., 1 Ch. || First Person POV Sherlock, HLV Fix-It, Infidelity, Angst, Drama) – After Sherlock is shot, John moves back into Baker Street. They spend the autumn together as John tries to make sense of his life and make some important decisions about both Mary and Sherlock. Canon-compliant, excerpts from His Last Vow.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse by SilentAuror (E, 50,635 w., 1 Ch. || Post-S4/S4 Divergence, Case Fic, For a Case / Reverse Fake-Relationship, Conferences, Marriage Equality, Travelling / New York, Pride, Homophobia, Bottomlock, Marriage Proposal, John POV, Sexuality, Love Confessions, Emotional Love Making, Public Hand Jobs, Blow Jobs, Passionate Kissing, Needy/Clingy Sherlock, Virgin Sherlock, Touching / Hand Holding, Bed Sharing, Little Spoon Sherlock, Intense Orgasms) – John and Sherlock go to New York to attend a conference run by the National Defence of Traditional Marriage Coalition in order to investigate the potential bombing of the annual Manhattan Pride parade. As the conference unfolds, John finds himself repulsed by the toxic ideology being presented, which becomes relevent to his own unacknowledged issues and his friendship with Sherlock...

#steph replies #johnlock fic recs #my fic recs #long fics #single chapter fics #Anonymous

105 notes · View notes

kaider-is-my-otp · 4 years

Text

Shaving

Just realized I posted this on ao3 but not here, so... This was also my first fic, oops.

Kai is stalling, so Cinder helps him look presentable. Cute Kaider fluff.

When Cinder woke up, Kai’s side of the bed was empty. That wasn’t anything unusual- as an emperor, he was usually the first one up. She knew Kai still hadn’t left for his office for another work day because she heard water running in the bathroom sink through the open door.

She yawned and stretched in her boyfriend’s large comfy bed, thinking for a moment if she could stay there for entire day. Deciding it would be hugely inappropriate for a queen to roll in bed all day, she swung her legs to the side and slowly got up. Feeling dizzy for a second, she pulled down her shirt- actually, it was one of Kai’s old shirts that she tends to sleep in whenever she visits the palace- and made her way toward the bathroom.

Cinder pushed the door and saw Kai standing above the sink. He was dressed in sweatpants and a t-shirt, not in his fancy imperial attire he had to wear for meetings. His hair was messy as usual, falling slightly across his forehead. When Kai saw her reflection in the mirror, he gave her one of his breathtaking smiles. Cinder thought he was absolutely beautiful.

“Morning,” he said, turning around to wrap his arms around her and pull her into the bathroom.

Cinder gave him a peck on the lips and pushed few strands of hair that fell on his forehead. “Good morning. I thought you’d already be gone by now.”

Kai shrugged his shoulders. “I may be stalling a little bit.”

“You know you’re going to be late for that meeting if you don’t hurry up? We don’t want Torin and Prime Minister Bromstad going mad because of you.”

“They’ll be fine,” he said in a nonchalant voice and lowered his head into the crook of Cinder’s neck. “I just need few minutes with you and then I’ll be ready for the day.”

Cinder smiled and wrapped her arms around his neck. He pressed few kisses into her neck, knowing well enough where her most sensitive spots are. Cinder breathed out and tightened her grip around him. She glanced over his shoulder and saw the reason why water was running earlier. Sink was filled with warm water and next to it stood few items that gave Cinder a clear image why Kai was stalling.

She bit her lip to stop the grin. “You’re stalling because you don’t feel like shaving, do you?”

Kai’s lips on her neck turned upwards. “I just don’t feel like doing it,” he murmured.

Cinder sighed, knowing how much it bothered him sometimes to be perfectly groomed and neat at all times. As a queen, she understood the pressure. She placed her palm on one of Kai’s cheeks, feeling slight stubble on her skin.

“You know you can’t go to the meeting like that.”

Kai lifted his head, turning it to press light kiss on the palm that was still on his face. “I know. Torin would send me right back. I was mentally preparing myself to do it when you came in and distracted me.”

She didn’t let his smirk and smooth talk change her train of thoughts. “Come on, Kai. You know I would pay to wear cargo pants all day and have grease spots on my face, but we have to at least look presentable.”

“Are you saying I don’t look presentable like this?” He smiled, but Cinder noticed a tinge of uncertainty in his voice.

She smiled and kissed both of his cheeks, feeling the hairs under her lips. “You’re as handsome as ever, but that doesn’t change the fact that you’re an emperor and it is expected of you to look like one.”

Kai sulked for a second, kissed her forehead and turned around to shave. Cinder stared at him for a second, then walked towards the wide sink. She put both her hands on the marble top of the sink cabinet and lifted herself up so she can comfortably sit and watch Kai. Goosebumps rose on her bare leg as she was wearing only Kai’s old shirt, but her metal leg didn’t feel the cold of the marble top.

Kai gave her a questioning look with raised eyebrow as he leaned down and rinse his face with warm water. He grabbed a towel to dry his face a bit, casting another distasteful look at the shaving equipment that stood next to Cinder.

“I can help you if you want,” Cinder said without a lot of thinking, observing all the bottles and razors that lay next to her.

“Really?” Kai asked, sounding surprised she suggested that.

“Of course,” Cinder said, now looking up at him. “I’ve seen you do it before. Besides, Thorne does it, so how hard can it be?”

Kai smiled and tossed the towel on the other side of the counter. “True. All right, love. I give you official permission to ruin my face.”

Cinder frowned at him and kicked him in the knee with her metal foot. Lightly, of course. She started picking all the bottles that were next to her, reading at the same time magazine article on how to shave guy’s beard that she downloaded in her head.

“Hm, no, this is an aftershave, it’s too early for that,” she muttered to herself. “Do I need a shaving cream or gel? I guess cream would be easier…”

Kai kissed her temple, took one tall bottle and gave it to her. “Here, go with this one,” he said with a barely covered laughter in his voice.

Cinder took a bottle from him and pulled at his shirt so that he now stood between her knees. She removed the cap and pressed the nozzle till the almond-size dollop was on the palm.

“Uh, this is going to get all in my joints,” she said as she rubbed her metal hand and flesh hand together to get the foamy texture. Once she was happy, she started applying cream evenly on areas of Kai’s face that needed to be shaved.

All that time, Kai didn’t move an inch, as he looked at her in awe, with mouth hanging slightly open. He placed his hands on Cinder’s thighs and moved closer to her. She tried to ignore the warmth that came with his closeness, focused completely on her mission.

Once she was done, she leaned back a bit to look at him. He looked a little bit ridiculous with white shaving cream on half of his face and neck, but still somehow irresistible with the small smile playing on his lips. She nodded, content with her work and dipped her hands into the sink to wash away the remains of cream.

“Alright, now I let it sit for few minutes, right?” she asked and Kai nodded, looking at her like she was the most adorable thing he has seen in his life.

Cinder rolled her eyes, but couldn’t help the smile forming on her lips. She was suddenly much more aware of Kai’s warm hands on her bare thighs as he traced little patterns and circles with his thumbs. She lifted her hand and swept away few more too long hairs that fell on his forehead.

“You might need at haircut soon too,” she said in a low voice as she pushed her fingers through his soft hair.

Even after years spent together and seeing him as much as their respected obligations allowed them, she still wasn’t completely used to the fact that this boy was hers. That he wanted her as much as she wanted him. When she would start to feel uncertain and doubt herself, Kai could almost sense it, even if he was on Earth and she was on Luna. He would give her a pep talk through the portscreen, ending every call with declarations of love that were now completely normal to them, almost a reflex.

“I love you.” She felt the need to say it.

Kai smiled, his copper brown eyes shining. “I love you, too.”

They stared at each other for few more seconds, smiles wide on both their faces. Then Cinder turned and searched for a razor. She found it and looked at Kai, feeling uncertain for the first time.

“What if I cut you?”

Kai let out a short laugh and shook his head. “I’d be surprised if you don’t. Stars know I��ve cut myself ten times first time I shaved.”

“That must have been quite a sight,” Cinder said, laughing at the thought.

“You have no idea. My father and Torin almost had a heart attack,” he said, smiling at the memory. He took Cinder’s hand that held the razor. “Here, let me show you.”

His hand was around her wrist and he pressed the razor blade on his cheek, not too firm or too light. He guided her hand as they made a gentle stroke across Kai’s cheek.

“There, it’s not that hard,” he said and rinse the blade under the water. “Now you try.”

Cinder took the blade from him, took a deep breath and repeated the process Kai just showed her. Her hand was a bit unsteady at the beginning, but she quickly got used to the feeling and found a perfect amount of pressure to put on Kai’s sensitive skin. A spark of pride grew in her as she made light, gentle strokes, reveling perfectly shaved skin underneath.

She did cut him, though. Only once, when she lowered her hand to shave a part of his neck, but didn’t hit the right angle. Kai let out a small gasp and Cinder knew she had cut him.

“Stars, I’m sorry. I knew I didn’t get this one right.” She ducked her head to see the damage. Kai reached with his hand and wiped away a small droplet of blood.

“Don’t worry, it’s nothing. It’s under the chin anyway, so no one will even see it. It might be easier if you pull the skin down. The blade will glide smoother.”

She did as he said and pulled lightly at his skin with her cyborg hand. Kai didn’t even flinch when the cold metal touched him, already used to the feeling. She gave him no more injuries as she continued to work on all the delicate angles of his face.

Once there was no more white cream on his face and she was sure she shaved every part, she set the razor aside and reached for the towel next to her. She opened the faucet and soaked it. Then she put wet towel on his face, cleaning the leftovers of the cream.

Kai tucked his hands under her thighs and pulled her to the edge of the counter, closer to him. He wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her on the lips. Cinder kissed him back, trying to stay focus on his face, not his lips. But it was to no avail. Warnings flashed across her retina display as Kai deepened the kiss, pulling her so close their chest were pressed together. Cinder circled her arms around his neck, playing with strands of his hair. Wet towel fell to the floor with a quiet slap.

“Aftershave,” Cinder mumbled against Kai’s lips. “I need to put you an aftershave.”

“Mhm,” was all Kai said before he captured her lips again. She didn’t complain.

They finally separated few minutes later, Cinder catching her breath and Kai flushed deep red on the tips of his ears. He pressed another small kiss on her nose, then moved away from her to rinse his face above the sink. When he was done, he grabbed the bottle of aftershave and gave it to Cinder.

She open the cap and poured a small amount on her right hand, the cold liquid instantly cooling her palm. She rubbed it gently into Kai’s skin, feeling his soft skin under her palm.

“Done,” she said and leaned back to marvel her work. He truly looked beautiful. His skin was clean and almost glowing, so tender to the touch. She couldn’t keep the grin off her face.

Kai looked at his reflection in the mirror and nodded in approval. “I’m impressed. I don’t know why, though, since there’s nothing you can’t do perfectly the first time.” He looked at her and flashed her a knowing grin. Cinder was sure if could blush, she would be flaming red right now.

“You should go get dressed,” she said and nudged him with her leg. She hopped off the counter, washed her hands in the sink and left the bathroom. Kai was right behind her as he walked toward his closet to get dressed.

Cinder flopped on the bed, sneaking a peek at Kai through the open doors of the dressing room as he was changing. She caught a glimpse of his bare back when he took off his shirt. Nerves in her brain hummed and it took every ounce of self-control not to pull him on the bed next to her. He needed to go to the meeting.

“Will I see you at lunch?” Kai asked after few minutes when he walked out of the dressing room, dressed in a fit appropriate for an emperor.

“Sure. I just have to call Winter to check the situation on Luna, but other than that I’m free.” She got up from bed, grabbing clean clothes for herself and getting ready for a warm shower.

Kai came behind her and hugged her. He rested his head on her shoulder and pressed a kiss at the side of her neck. “I’ll miss you when you leave in few days.”

Cinder grunted at his sugary sweet voice. “I’m sure you’ll only miss my amazing shaving skills.”

“That too.” Kai laughed into her neck. He glanced at his wristwatch and sighed when he saw what time it was. “Now I really have to go or Torin will be here any second.”

He kissed the side of her head and made his way to the door. With his hand on the doorknob, he stopped and glanced at Cinder. He walked towards her again, wrapped her in another hug and kissed her one more time.

Cinder smiled under his lips. When Kai finally pulled away, he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

“Now I can go.”

#kaider #emperor kai #linh cinder #the lunar chronicles #tlc #shaving #emperor kaito #fluff

60 notes · View notes

heylissaaaaa · 4 years

Text

Words Slip Out

Pairing: James “Bucky” Barnes/Reader Summary: An unexpected question at an inopportune moment Word count: 5.3k Warnings: fluff and angst (mostly fluff and moderate angst), mild hurt/comfort, mild (non-graphic) injuries, moderate violence, A/N: Hello lovelies! This was written for another one of the ever-wonderful @star-spangled-man-with-a-plan ‘s challenges, with the word prompt “verklempt: completely and utterly overcome with emotion”. It’s also a prequel to the one-shot I wrote for Star’s last challenge, called Rainbow Afternoon, but you don’t have to read that one to understand this one. For registered users on AO3, you can also read this fic here.

You had found the ring by accident.

It was hidden, of all places, in his sock drawer. One of the greatest spies and assassins in the whole world, and he’d tucked in in the back corner of his sock drawer. You were going to tease him something awful after he proposed. Never going to let him live this one down.

Though, to be fair, you supposed he thought you wouldn’t have any occasion to be in his sock drawer. And normally, he’d have been right. But then you’d lost a bet on how long a frozen sausage can be in the microwave before it explodes, and laundry duty for the both of you was the punishment. He probably hadn’t put two and two together.

You didn’t touch the ring box, wouldn’t dare open it, only finished putting away his clothes and shutting the drawer. But that didn’t mean you would - or even could - stop thinking about it. What did it look like? How long had he had it? Did anyone else know? You were positive Steve did, probably Sam too. But had he confided in anyone else?

Your mind flit through question after question until it landed and stuck: how was he going to ask you?

Nothing big, of that you were sure. He liked making grand romantic gestures - liked the blush on your face, because you didn’t - but he wasn’t one for crowds. Would he wine and dine you first? Would he do it with the rest of the team watching, or wait until it was just the two of you? Would he wake you up with it one lazy Sunday morning? You didn’t have any answers, each scenario as likely as the last, but in all of them you could feel his love.

You were still lost in thought when Bucky came back from hanging out with Sam and Steve. They had a standing day out twice a month that had become something sacred. The only outsider ever to go with them was Tony, when he was up for it and had the time.

“Doll? Hey,” he said, smiling when your eyes focused and you finally registered that he was in the room. “I knocked and you didn’t move. What’s that pretty mind thinking about so hard?”

He knew you well enough to know when you were lying… unless you said something that would distract him. So you shrugged, gaze drifting down his body and back up again. “Your butt,” you said, as casual as if you’d said you had been thinking about the weather. “How was boys’ day?”

It worked like an absolute champ. “Great; a blast,” he said curtly, shoving his jacket onto a hanger and kicking the door shut. “More importantly, tell me more about these thoughts of yours concerning my butt.”

You grinned and accommodated him when he crawled up the bed towards you. International super spy, sure, but still very much a man.

Two sharp raps on the front of your open door and then Bucky strode through in full tactical gear. You were belly down on the bed, reading a magazine, and sat up when you heard the knocks. “Suit up. We have to go,” he said. He tossed a manila folder towards you.

“What do you mean ‘we’? I thought you were going with Sam,” you said. The two of you didn’t go on missions often together; you went with Natasha, and he went with Sam or sometimes Steve. Opening up the folder, you began to look over the information it contained. It looked like a fairly simple mission: data extraction from an abandoned production facility owned by a Hydra front.

He rummaged through your closet until he found one of your body suits and tossed it your way. “Something else came up. One of the agents we were tracking disappeared; Sam’s going after him and you’re coming with me,” he explained. “Besides, you’ve got more technical experience than either of us to begin with.”

You changed in the bathroom and followed Bucky out of the room. The rest of the file was half-read, half-recited to you by Bucky on the jet as you made the few hour trip toward your target. The factory was built several miles outside any town, surrounded by forest on all sides, and for that you were grateful. You weren’t expecting any resistance, but the knowledge that the nearest innocents were well out of range was comforting.

“Ready to go?” he asked, checking over the various buckles and straps of his gear one final time.

Palming one of your handguns, you leaned over to press a kiss to his cheek. “Let’s make it quick and then we can stop for burgers on the way home?” you asked, a little bit of childlike hope in your voice that made him laugh.

The data you were looking for was in the manager’s office above the warehouse floor. The door that Bucky opened groaned on rusted hinges, catching on the doorframe that didn’t quite sit right after so many years without upkeep. Stepping over the threshold after him, you were met with a maze of pallets piled high with cardboard boxes and wrapped in cellophane. This was a facility abandoned at a moment’s notice. Ceiling-high shelves leaned against the walls, half full of more unmarked boxes.

“You head up to the office, I’m going to poke around down here,” Bucky said. You waved him off and started wading through the sea of crates and pallets. At the other end of the room you found a set of metal stairs leading up to a room that overlooked the whole floor through very large windows. The door was open when you peered in. Bookshelves lined the wall to your left and the desk faced the wall to your right. A picture frame on the wall reflected light from the monitor. In a warehouse that was supposed to be empty, that could not be good.

Rounding the corner of the desk, your stomach dropped. “Oh shit,” you breathed.

“What happened?” Bucky’s voice demanded in your ear, but you were only half paying attention to him.

The main monitor was indeed lit, a pop-up window showing the progress of the deletion command that someone had initiated. It was almost halfway finished. You were quick to the computer, fingers flying over the keyboard as you attempted to salvage what you could. Only then did you remember that he’d asked you something. “Buck, they’re erasing everything. They knew we were-” The first shot rang out and cut you off, followed by others. He grunted in your ear. “Bucky!”

“I’m fine. Keep going.”

You glanced up from the computer, scanning the warehouse floor below. Bucky was just visible, hiding behind a wall of crates closest to you. He didn’t look to be harmed, and your heart stuttered in relief. Further away, you saw the agents. “I see maybe, eight of them, all armed. They’re splitting in three. I’m working as fast as I can.”

He didn’t respond and you turned your full attention back to the monitor. Someone must have been on the other end with remote access, because the computer was actively fighting you for the information you were trying to salvage. One hand jabbing at the keys, you reached into one of your suit pockets, pulled out a thumb drive, and plugged it into the side of the monitor. A few more minutes of cyber-battle, and you were finally able to start the download onto your drive. “Ha! Take that you bastard,” you muttered, flipping off the screen and whoever was on the other side.

So engrossed were you with the task at hand that you almost missed the sound of heavy footsteps on the stairs leading up to the office. “Shit,” you spat. You weren’t finished, but it would have to do. You were out of time. Tying up what loose ends you could, you ripped the drive out of the port.

A bullet whizzed by your left shoulder and you knew you were really out of time. Going around the side of the desk facing the windows, you crouched down and went through your exit options.

The door was out, for obvious reasons. You could hide here and try to fight them, but the desk wasn’t very good coverage and the office itself was way too small to be an advantage to you. You looked around again, and groaned. Bucky was going to be so pissed off at you, but you tried to justify yourself as you stared up at the window.

You took a deep breath, stowing the thumb drive in your suit. Covering as much of your exposed skin as you could, you shot up from behind the desk, got a little bit of a running start, and crashed through the window.

“Look out below!”

Bucky whipped around right as you hit the ground with a yelp of pain, tucked and rolled to his side in a shower of glass. Pain exploded up your left leg, lighting up that entire side of your body. You’d definitely landed wrong on your ankle. Pulling yourself up into a sitting position, you moved over to sit with your back to the crates.

One of the agents peered out the broken window, and you shot him right between the eyes. He was the only one to make that mistake.

It was quiet in the warehouse now. Most of the first group were severely injured or dead, but you knew there were more coming. If you were going to get out, you had to go now.

Next to you, Bucky was scowling. You could feel it boring into the side of your head. “Are you out of your mind? I would’ve come up and got you!” he hissed.

You brushed stray pieces of glass off your suit. “Oh relax. I got the rest of the data and a sprain is better than a bullet hole while I waited. Now, come on,” you said, holding your arms out towards him. He didn’t move an inch and instead continued to stare over at you accusingly. “Up and over, Barnes, we’re on the clock and we’ll move faster if you carry me.”

The prospect of proximity seemed to snap him out of his stupor and he had the audacity to break out a lazy grin. “Sweetheart, if you wanted to get into my arms all you had to do was ask,” he said, though he stood up and help you to your feet. Putting one arm around the back of his neck, he hoisted you over his shoulder so you could watch his back as he ran with you.

The buckles of his gear pressed against your stomach, and you were sure your elbow did not feel particularly nice digging into his shoulder blade, but neither of you complained. “Think we can go back the way we came?” you asked.

Bucky shook his head. “More of them coming that way,” he stopped with his head tilted, listening. “They’ve gone around the sides too. We’ll have to backtrack into the offices and circle around.”

No sooner had he made the decision than another two dozen agents were streaming through the main and side doors. “Time to put those morning runs to good use,” you said, firing off a few shots towards the lines of men racing toward you.

The hallways weren’t very wide or tall, dingy white walls and gray tiled floors depressing under the fluorescent lights. “I’m starting to think this place wasn’t quite as ‘abandoned’ as Stark told us,” Bucky grumbled, flinching out of the way as a bullet raced past the side of his head. You didn’t answer, too focus on trying to keep your balance over his shoulder enough to aim as you returned fire. The arm you were using to hold yourself up with was starting to tremble, and you were having a hard time breathing with Bucky’s shoulder squished against your abdomen.

When you emptied the clip of your handgun you shoved it back into its holster and reached down for the other one you were carrying. No way were you going to try and negotiate reloading with the position you were in. You were lucky enough as it was that Bucky swerved around a few sharp corners, giving you a second’s reprieve from the gunfire.

Some of the men had gone around to try and cut you off from the front. Bucky blocked the shots they got off and fired back, not stopping as he jumped over their fallen bodies.

The crowd of agents was thinning now with each round you fired, far less following and no more jumping out in front of you. Bucky kicked down a door and then you were outside, albeit on the other side of the warehouse, but you were that much closer to safety. Still, the click of your third empty weapon - you’d stolen Bucky’s too - made you curse. Because of course, of course, there was one agent left. Completely out of bullets and there was still one agent standing.

It wasn’t far, you didn’t think, so you could try to outrun him. Bucky no doubt had more stamina. But as another bullet lodged itself into a nearby tree, you knew you had to do something else.

Bucky yelped as one of your hands braced itself lower on his back, and the other began groping down by his left thigh. He stumbled a step before he could regain his footing. “Woah, hey, Jesus. Be careful down there, would ya? I was kidding about getting frisky.”

“Don’t get your hopes up, hot shot. Just keep running,” you huffed, making another swipe for his legs and grumbling when you missed.

“What are you-?”

Your shout of triumph interrupted the rest of his question as your fingers finally wrapped around the hilt of the knife strapped to his thigh. “Fucking finally,” you muttered, and glanced up to where the last agent was still tailing you. One quick steady breath to aim and the blade flew from your fingers. You watched with a detached sort of satisfaction as if flipped, end over end, to land neatly where the agent’s left eye had been.

Patting the small of Bucky’s back, you let yourself go limp against him with a heavy sigh. “I think we’re okay,” you muttered. You turned your head to the side and caught sight of the now-empty holster. “Thanks for the knife, babe.”

You felt him slow underneath you and turn, swinging you slightly to one side. A moment’s hesitation and then a sharp inhale as he took what had happened to his knife, the body still visible behind you. “Christ,” he groaned. And then, quietly, breath on a sigh, “Marry me.”

It thundered in the silence that followed.

The shadow of the jet fell over you and you pushed off of Bucky, landing in front of him with only a slight wince. His ears were pink and his eyes were wide, betraying his own shock at what he’d said.

You blinked at him. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Well, um- I-”

“Now? You’re doing this now?” It sounded harsher than you’d meant it, coming out of your mouth, and you felt bad about that. But you were upset, damn it! This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen - not on a half-failed mission, sweaty and injured, after you’d both just killed two dozen men. It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

He went redder. “I don’t know! You had me all… verklempt!” he sputtered.

“Verklempt? Where did you even-?” You shook your head, turned your back on him, and hobbled up into the jet. You were still muttering to yourself as you tossed yourself down into the pilot’s seat and began readying to leave. Bucky stood outside, staring at you, until you snapped, “Get on the fucking jet, Barnes.”

Turning back toward the console, you heard the heavy thud of his boots, and the impact as he sat down. It was silent the rest of the way home. You wanted, several times, to turn and look at him. But the thought that he might already be looking at you, that you might end up looking at each other, stopped you.

When the jet landed at the compound, Bucky stopped you before you could hit the button and let down the ramp. “Would it be so bad? Being married to me?”

Part of your heart broke, and it softened the lingering scowl on your face. You were still upset. But you also couldn’t leave him to think that was why were angry. Cupping the side of his face in your hand, you ran a thumb over his cheekbone. “Of course it wouldn’t, Bucky. Nothing would make me happier,” you murmured.

There was something he wanted to say, more than one thing you wanted to say, but no room left in the jet for either of you. Biting the inside of your cheek, you dropped your hand and let down the ramp.

Tony, Steve, and Natasha were waiting in the hanger when you got back. That all three of them were there was a little odd, but you were so determined to get away that you didn’t give it too much thought. “Nat, darling, take me to the infirmary please?” you asked with more cheer than you felt, half-hopping over to her to avoid putting pressure on your injured leg.

She looked between you and Bucky, searching for the answer to a question she hadn’t yet asked. Turning around without a word, she bent down so you could climb on her, piggy-back style.

You tapped her collarbone as you passed Tony, and she stopped. Wedging a hand between your front and her back, you felt around until you found the zipper for the pocket you’d stashed the thumb drive in. You shoved it towards Tony’s chest. “I got as much as I could,” you said. His hands came up over yours to take the drive, and Natasha led you away from the hangar. Behind you, you heard Steve and Bucky talking, but couldn’t make out what they were saying.

Natasha waited until you were changed and sitting in the med bay, one of the nurses cleaning the cuts on your arms, before she pounced. “What happened?” she asked, in that nonchalant way she had that let you know she was keenly interested in the answer.

You sighed, shoulders dropping. “With the mission or with Bucky?”

A pause, in which Natasha searched your face, eyes flicking back and forth. “Both,” she said.

“They were waiting for us when we got there, had already started wiping everything. I got maybe half of it, had to jump out a window.” The nurse - Daniel, you thought his name was - snorted as he straightened up, having finished with your arms. You gave him a wry smile and a shrug as he moved on to examining and then wrapping your ankle.

“And Barnes?” Natasha pressed.

You looked away from her, jaw clenched. “Asked me to marry him right before we got on the jet,” you started, and told her the rest of what had happened. Your voice was thick and your throat burned with the tears you were trying to keep at bay. Now that the shock and adrenaline was wearing off, you felt a little dumb.

“You’re upset, but not surprised.”

A helpless shrug was all you could give for a moment as you negotiated the sobs tightening your chest. “Found the ring a month ago, maybe. I’ve been waiting for him to ask.”

She let out a breath, coming to sit in a chair next to you. “And this wasn’t how you pictured it going.”

“I know it’s a dumb thing to get worked up over, and I know he didn’t mean it like this.” You couldn’t get his face out of your mind, the way he sounded when he thought you were refusing him. “And I wasn’t expecting anything big or extravagant; you know I don’t care about that kind of attention. But I just- was hoping for something… else. Something special and normal and not tied to this job.”

Daniel gently interrupted, his hand warm on your shoulder. “You’re all set. Get some rest, keep your ankle iced and elevated. If the pain gets too intense, you can take some ibuprofen or Tylenol, whatever you prefer.”

“Thanks, Dan. I appreciate it,” you said, returning his wave as he left.

Natasha was there as soon as you were upright, an arm under your own. “Hey, why don’t you come hang out in my room for a while? It’s closer than yours,” she said. You wanted to decline and go back to your own room, but she continued before you could. “We can watch something if you want, make some popcorn. I’ll even steal some of Sam’s M&Ms for us.”

You smiled in spite of yourself. “With an offer like that, how could I refuse?”

Together you hobbled over to her room where she brought you over to her bed. Once you were settled back against the headboard, a pillow under your ankle, she left for snacks while you scrolled through Netflix looking for something to watch.

You’d gotten through Natasha’s list, trending now, and popular on Netflix twice when you noticed that she still hadn’t come back. It didn’t take that long to make popcorn, especially since her room was one of the closest to the kitchen. You were starting critically acclaimed movies when she slipped back into the room, a large bowl under one arm and a bag of ice in the other.

“I was about to send out the search party,” you said, pausing on Molly’s Game to read the description.

Natasha handed you the bowl and laid the ice over your ankle. From a pocket in her jacket she revealed two bright yellow packets of peanut M&Ms. “Sam was in the kitchen, just got back,” she said. She settled down on your other side and grabbed a handful of popcorn. “Oh I wanted to see that.”

“It sounds good,” you agreed, and queued up the movie.

You didn’t remember when it ended, only that at some point the TV was switched off and Natasha was running a hand through your hair. The bed shifted as she got up, and then her hand was on your other side, gently shaking your arm. “C’mon, sleepy, let’s get you back to your room.”

You groaned and shook your head, not even bothering to open your eyes. “Jus’ wanna stay here,” you mumbled.

Natasha scoffed and started to pull you into a sitting position. “No way. We both know you hate going to bed without your routine and waking up in rooms that aren’t your own. I will not be put on the wrong side of morning-you for that,” she said. You grumbled, but knew she was right. If you fell asleep without going through your routine, it guaranteed you’d wake up in the middle of the night feeling gross. You put an arm around her as she helped you off the bed.

As the pair of you walked down the hall, you noticed an alertness to the way she moved and looked around that puzzled you. It was subtle, and would be unnoticeable to most others, but you knew her pretty well. It wasn’t mission alertness, cold and wary, but more like… anticipation, excitement.

It spiked as you approached your bedroom door, which was now closed. “Nat, what’s going on?” you asked.

She didn’t answer except to nudge you with her hip into reaching for the handle. You opened it slowly, and the breath caught in your throat.

Bucky stood in the middle of the room, dressed in jeans and a Henley. His hands were clasped together behind his back like he would fidget otherwise. The overhead lights were switched off. Instead, candles covered the long windowsill against the back wall, the entire top of your dresser, and most of the desk in the corner where Bucky liked to clean his guns and knives. It gave the room a warm, soft glow, but it wasn’t what drew your attention.

The entire room was filled with pale pink peonies, one of your favorite flowers. There were blooms laid loose among the candles, both with and without stems, and others in different glass vases. You wanted to run your fingers over their petals, get close enough to see the specks of deep crimson you knew would be there. The whole room smelled like peonies, not intoxicating or cloying, but beautiful and fresh.

Natasha removed your arm from around her neck and backed away, making sure you were steady enough on your own. You barely noticed, too focused on the flowers and the man who’d gotten them for you. “Hey Buck,” you breathed, stepping into the room and shutting the door.

“Hi sweetheart,” he said, his voice as soft as yours. He rushed to your side when you took a step forward, putting an arm under yours and helping you sit on the end of the bed. Taking the spot next to you, he turned so that his whole body faced you. “How’s your ankle?”

“Just a sprain. Daniel down in the med bay says I’ll be right as rain in no time.” You looked around at all the flowers again, heart swelling as you took in the way the light shone on the pale petals. “These are some real pretty flowers, Barnes.”

He looked too, a fond smile on his face. “Do you like them? I got ‘em for my best girl,” he said, bringing a hand up to cup your cheek. Emboldened when you leaned into his touch, he shifted from by your side to kneeling between your legs. “See, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask her, but I messed it up. I was hoping she’d let me try again.”

“‘Course I would.”

“I want you to know: I had a plan. I was going to wait until it was warmer and take you to that park where we met. Remember, when you-”

“When I hit you with my bicycle, yes, I remember,” you grumbled. It was something he refused to let go of. Never mind he was the one that was so busy messing with Steve that he wasn’t looking where he was going. And never mind that he was fine, thank you very much. Did more damage to your poor bike than anything else.

His laugh made your chest warm and your heart soft. “I was half in love with you already after that. You made sure I was alright before completely tearing me a new one. You weren’t even phased by the fact that you were scolding the Winter Soldier, with Captain America looking on. He was on me for a week after that because I didn’t get your number. Then Tony walked you into the compound and introduced you as the new team member and, sweetheart, I was gone.”

Once upon a time, you’d been an agent for SHIELD and - after everything had happened - you’d been a little lost. Then, you’d woken up one day to a forwarded email recommending you for a position as a member of the Avengers. It hadn’t said anything about who’d made the recommendation, and you’d never had many friends in high places, but you weren’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. It was only after you’d officially joined that they let slip that Fury wasn’t quite as gone as everyone thought he was.

The position hadn’t been guaranteed when you’d met Bucky and Steve in the park, so you didn’t say anything in case it turned out not to be true. And facing them in the common room of the compound, seeing the moment they recognized you, was something you wouldn’t ever forget. “You dropped the coffee pot. I don’t think I’ve seen Tony that mad, or Clint that visibly crushed. He looked like you’d told him Santa wasn’t real,” you said.

“The point is, I had a plan,” he said, his cheeks a little pink. “But then today happened, and things went a little wrong. I kept thinking how they could have been way worse. Either of us could have come out with more than a couple of cuts and a sprained ankle. But you had my back and I had yours. And I saw that fucking knife sticking out of that guy’s head and it reminded me how strong you are, how capable and - I’m man enough to admit it - how incredibly hot you are. In that moment, I was overwhelmed by it. By how much I love you. By the reminder that this-” And here he finally took from his pocket the velvet ring box that had been gracing your dreams for a month. “This is all I want. A life with you for as long as I can, as long as you’ll let me.”

With steady hands, Bucky opened the ring box. The ring inside was a band of rose gold that went from smooth line metal at the bottom and morphed into vines about halfway up either side. The vines wound around a small opal. The longer you looked, the more you felt tears gather in the corner of your eyes, the pressure building in the base of your throat. The rose gold was warm and felt like being in his arms, and the opal shined the way his eyes did when he watched you laugh at his teasing. It was a physical offering of his love, of the life he wanted.

“Bucky it’s perfect,” you breathed. Your hand by contrast, was shaking when you lifted it for him to put the ring on. When it slid home and sat snug on your finger, joy lit up in your chest like fireworks, bubbling out of your mouth in uncontrollable giggles. You brought Bucky closer for a kiss so that he could feel it too.

“I paid a lot of money to get those flowers here, so I better at least get to see the ring before you guys start removing clothes!” Tony called from the other side of the door, startling the two of you apart. Bucky dropped his head onto your chest and you leaned yours against his, torn between irritation and amusement. There was a muffled impact, Tony’s yelp of surprise and maybe pain, and a “come on, man” that definitely came from Sam.

“Tony, have a little class, would you?” Steve hissed. In a louder voice, definitely meant for you and Bucky to overhear, he added, “Besides, they shouldn’t be doing anything with her sprained ankle!”

Bucky huffed a laugh and you could feel him gearing up to shout back, but you beat him to it. “I swear to God if I open that door and see anyone on the other side, you’ll wish you had a sprained ankle.”

“Come on boys, let’s give them some space. But we better see that bling first thing in the morning. You’re both expected at breakfast,” Natasha said, herding the boys away like a schoolteacher her children. You couldn’t help the laugh that escaped as their footsteps faded away, Bucky joining you. As annoying as they were, you did love your friends.

Bucky lifted his head, forcing you to lift yours too. You gave in to the kiss he asked for, but pulled away a few moments later. He lifted a brow at you. “I have one question,” you said.

The brow rose a little higher. “Shoot.”

You squinted at him a little. “Where exactly did you learn the word verklempt?”

#star's celebration challenge #bucky barnes fanfic #bucky barnes x reader #bucky x female reader #my writing #marvel fanfiction #Marvel Avengers #avengers fanfiction #Bucky Barnes #james buchanan barnes

138 notes · View notes

spockina · 4 years

Text

Kiss Your Best Friend

100% came to after i watched a bunch of ‘kiss your best friend’ tik tok challenges. no i’m not great with titles

the biggest thank you ever to @hearteyesforbuck for being the kindest, nicest person, welcoming me into this community, and reading this and giving me valuable feedback. thank you. <3

4.1k words / fluff

this is my first 9-1-1 fic. pls be kind to me

ps.: this was also posted on ao3!

Buck will be the first one to tell you that he isn’t the greatest person with pop culture – and that extends to technology. He’s not even embarrassed about it; it just never piqued his interest, and that’s about it for explanations. So, no, he doesn’t know that the Jonas Brothers are back together – in fact, he only has a vague recollection of who they are –, and the only reason he keeps getting new iPhones is because they keep calling him to offer a trade (and everyone knows shiny new things are always fun, okay?).

Chimney, on the other hand, is a pop culture pro.

“There’s no such thing as too old for apps, Buck,” he says, waving his phone around as if to prove a point, “because if I still have a phone in my hands, then I can still enjoy the damn apps that go in them, right?”

Buck nods, unsure of what else to say. He hates feeling unsure, more so if the subject is as dumb as popular-things-he-doesn’t-know-and-or-care-about.

“What I’m tryna show you,” Chim continues, as if Buck isn’t about two seconds from tuning out of this conversation entirely, “is a funny series of videos on Tik Tok. I promise you’re gonna laugh at ‘em.”

“What’s… Tik-Tok…?” Buck asks instead.

Chim sighs, but then laughs a little. “Ok, Buck, it doesn’t matter, come watch the videos!”

It starts with a soft, mellow song, and on screen he can see some pictures, all accompanied with text explaining them, that'sthats my best friend, we been best friends for 3 years now, he doesn'tdoesnt know i like him, and then it cuts to a cute moment of a blonde teen leaning in and placing a tentative kiss on said best friend’s lips. They laugh and then hug, and then the video ends. After that one come a few more in succession; some go horribly wrong, and some are funny. Most of them work out as planned, though.

Then Bobby calls Chimney from downstairs, and Chim pockets his phone to leave.

“That’s the ‘kiss your best friend challenge’, Buckaroo.” He says with a grin, all teeth. “Thought you’d enjoy it.” He winks at Buck, and then goes, yelling coming! and leaving behind a very confused and only somewhat amused Buck.

That’s how it starts.

So, no, Buck doesn’t really know the first thing about apps in general, what’s trending and what’s not, but he does know how to work the App Store. Knows how to find apps. Knows how to download Tik Tok.

It’s innocent enough at first. The videos are funny, for the most part, and it’s a mindless distraction, even if only slightly better than the games he’s used to, and only better because of the amount of variety he gets.

He can’t help but come back to the stupid videos (and why even call them challenges anyway? What’s challenging about them?) about kissing your best friend.

They’re mostly adorable, but some are heartbreaking. He’s soft, okay? No shame in his game. He’s a soft guy, who’s (mostly) in touch with his feelings. Some of the rejection ones are upsetting; God knows Buck has faced a couple of rejections in his prime, and they hurt.

He keeps watching them anyway.

This week has been a rough one. Eddie picked up an extra shift, which made Buck decide to pick one up, too, because why the hell not? Christopher wasn’t even going to need anything Buck could help with, as he already had plans with Abuela. That extra shift, it turned out, was a horrible mistake.

(Not really. Buck really, really does love his job. Loves doing what he does, loves knowing he’s helping people. Sometimes it gets exhausting, though. Sometimes he’s made to face what losing his friends, his family, Eddie would feel like, and those hurt days like a motherfucker.)

A huge house fire reached the two neighboring houses. They needed backup, the whole thing was insane. Half of the roof collapsed not even two inches from where Eddie was standing, twin girls in his arms, Buck watching from the ladder where he was ready to take the girls. It doesn’t matter how many times they go near death; every single time it happens in slow-motion. Everyone came out alive, but the bitter taste followed Buck’s mouth into the truck, where he places a hand on Eddie’s shoulder, and leaves it there until they reach the station.

“Plans for the evening?” He asks softly. They feel extra raw tonight.

“Not really.” Eddie replies, and the silence stretches. Buck thinks that’s all Eddie’s saying, until he clears his throat, continues. “Christopher’s staying with Abuela, and then Carla’s picking him up and taking him to school in the morning.” Another pause. “I’m just tired, Buck. I need to crash.”

Buck nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I know. I just. I won’t be able to,” he says, complete honesty without even thinking, and that’s probably his favorite thing about his friendship with Eddie. No filter, just truth. Mostly.

Eddie nods, but it’s more of a jerky motion. Buck doesn’t inquire further.

“You wanna grab a couple pizzas and some beer? We can pretend to watch a movie until we collapse.”

The suggestion sounds heavenly. Buck grins, nods, already picking up his phone.

“Domino’s fine? The usual?”

Eddie nods. “Your place or mine?”

In the end they only get the pizzas because Buck has more than enough beers for the two of them at his place.

They have three mostly empty pizza boxes on the coffee table, beer in hand, a half a dozen other bottles around the boxes, a movie they’re pretending to watch – but even as it plays on screen, Buck can’t pretend to know what’s going on. He’s sitting on the far end of the couch, with Eddie right beside him, head on his shoulder.

Buck’s a naturally tactile person. Craves physical touches, and the warmth of another person’s skin. Eddie wasn’t always like that; it took him some time to open up, and Buck doesn’t know if this is for him only, or if he’s as open with any of his other friends, but that doesn’t matter to Buck.

Buck moves his arm behind Eddie, so that they can both be more comfortable, and Eddie looks up a little startled, soft around the edges and glassy-eyed, which means he was probably on his way to falling asleep when Buck moved. He smiles at Buck, a small smile that’s open and honest and free. And Buck… Wow. Buck realizes, then and there, that he wants to kiss Eddie.

It’s only a second, and then Eddie’s looking back at the screen, burrowing just the tiniest bit more into the space Buck has made for him, taking a sip of his beer, sighing very softly.

And, oh. Oh. Buck understands now. Buck knows, deeply and suddenly, why they’re called challenges, and what the challenging part is about the whole kiss your best friend thing.

It’s a bet he’s not sure if he’s willing to take.

Buck can’t stop thinking about it.

He doesn’t remember when he knew he was in love with Abby. That’s always where their relationship was going to go, there wasn’t another option. They weren’t ever in it for anything other than being together. Sure, Buck tried, for the first time, to be a better man, and that was what moved them along, but Buck always knew how they were supposed to end up. Together. Which is why he doesn’t know when he realized he was in love with Abby. If the goal was to get the girl, then being in love with her was an integral part of the plan. He just doesn’t fucking know, which is making everything worse.

Because he’s pretty sure he’s in love with Eddie.

Because he didn’t know, and then he did.

Because it was easy to figure out.

Eddie looked at him, open and carefree, even if for just a minute, and Buck thought yes. And that was it. Buck thought yes, Buck thought he would do anything to just keep Eddie looking like that, soft, and safe, and tranquil. In his arms. Buck thought all those things in a millisecond, and he knew what they meant. He knows what they mean, because he hasn’t stopped thinking about them ever since they materialized in his mind.

I’m in love with Eddie.

Buck wanted to be a better man for Abby, and he was, but Eddie makes him a better man.

He hates knowing this. He doesn’t know what to do with it, because, while he would never do anything to jeopardize what he has with Eddie (this friendship, this trust, this love – that is above the romance part of things, and involves everything else – namely, Christopher, and the feeling of belonging he gets when he’s with them), he also knows himself. He knows this isn’t going to last very long before he bursts and makes a mess of things. He needs to think, but he has, has been doing nothing but think about this.

He needs to do something.

He just hasn’t figured out what just yet.

The idea comes, funnily enough, when they’re at a call.

The universe sure loves a good dose of irony.

Some (dumb) teenager stuck in the air vent, was what the 9-1-1 operator said. There’s a really big, sour looking man yelling at a teenage girl – who’s yelling right back at him – outside when they get there, a lady watching them, clear from her face that she’s both the girl’s mom and the man’s wife and that she’s given up on whatever’s going on. He half hears as Bobby tries to placate things enough to understand what’s going. The girl outside starts sobbing, but now he’s concentrating on the girl inside, upstairs in a bedroom, stuck in the air vent.

“Hey, can you hear me?” He says loudly, and gets some noise back that he’ll take as an answer. She’s already all the way in the vent, save for one foot hanging out from where she got stuck trying to move, a knee up and one leg straight. Stupid, stupid idea. “What’s your name?” He asks, and then they start to work.

“Sage,” she answers, loud. He’s not sure if she’s yelling or if the sound’s carrying, but he keeps being loud just to be sure.

“Ok, Sage, we’re gonna get you out, don’t worry! Wanna tell me whatcha doing in there?”

“Looking for a rat,” she replies, and Eddie huffs a laugh beside him, shakes his head. “Sorry, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, I just panicked!”

“Hey, don’t worry about my feelings, Sage, we’re fine. You wanna tell me what happened for you to hop up there?”

“What’s your name?” She says, and that takes him by surprise. His eyebrows go up, and he looks at everyone around before answering.

“Uh, it’s Buck. My name’s Buck.”

“Look, Buck,” she starts, and she sounds so, so angry, but also so very sad, “Baileya’s dad hates me, ok? I haven’t seen her in a month! She’s my best friend!”

“Ok, Sage, I’m gonna need you to take a few calming breaths before we continue, ok? Do you want me to breathe with you?”

“No, no, it’s okay,” she says, and then she’s quiet, and they can all hear her breathing deeply. “Okay, sorry. Look. Baileya’s dad he, uh, he thinks I’m a bad influence. He was supposed to be somewhere, fuck if I know, but he was only supposed to come back tomorrow. I haven’t seen B in a month –” that last part sounds so sad it breaks Buck’s heart a bit, “– and I just. I missed her.” She’s silent for a little bit, and no one presses for more, but then she speaks up again. “We saw his car outta the window and I just panicked. This air vent hasn’t had a pane for the longest time and I’m a fucking gymnast, so I thought I could just jump up here and hang out for a minute. I know it was stupid, but he would kick me out if he found me, and I mean that very literally.”

Buck looks at his team. They all know what this means.

Finally, Bobby says, “Well, Sage, you’re gonna be out of there in a minute, and you’re gonna get to see your best friend, and no one’s touching you under the protection of the LAFD, okay? Don’t worry.”

She sounds shaky when she says thank you.

When they get her out, she asks them to stay at the door so she can get all her things in her backpack, and Buck notices her phone was propped up against some books in a table in front of the bed. Everyone trails out and he lingers behind to protect her, but also to say, in an almost-whisper:

“Hey, Sage, why was your phone propped up like that?”

She turns tomato red in a second, flat-out. “I was, uh. I was. Um. Filming a thing.”

And of course Buck knows. He knows that angle. “A challenge?”

She looks surprised. “Yeah. For, um, for Tik-Tok.”

“Did you get to do it?”

“Yeah, Buck,” she says, and he wouldn’t ask, normally, but her voice says it all.

“Did Baileya like it?”

She smiles at him, almost as if she can’t keep it in. “Yes.”

He decides then and there that he’s not going to look them up, but he can’t stop thinking about the smile on Sage’s face when she said yes.

The whole way back to the station he keeps watching Chimney, who has noticed, but hasn’t asked what he’s looking at him for. He wonders if he was always obvious to everyone else, and only oblivious to himself. He wonders whether he’s obvious to Eddie or if Eddie is oblivious to him.

More than anything, though, he’s pretty sure he found a way to do something. He feels silly. It was staring at him this whole time. Or, well, he was staring at it, really, for quite some time, in fact.

It’s another Saturday, and he’s been psyching himself up for a week.

Sure, he’s figured out what to do, and he doesn’t wanna risk anything. That doesn’t mean he’s not jittery about it. So much, in fact, that Eddie notices as soon as he walks through the door.

Christopher jumps up as soon as he sees him, saying a long and excited Buck! and all but flinging himself at Buck, who has just enough time to drop the bags he has on the floor carefully and pick up Christopher in the same motion.

“How’s my Superman doing?”

“Good, Bucky. How are you?”

“Ready for a fun day with my favorite boys,” he replies, easy as anything.

He drops Christopher, and Eddie gives him a quick hug before picking up the bags he brought.

“What are these?”

“Well, it’s a nice day, thought we could, you know, make a day of it? You said you didn’t have plans and I have everything for a nice picnic.” He shrugs.

“I don’t see a basket,” Eddie teases.

“It’s in the car, you jerk.”

Eddie laughs. “Hey, Christopher, what do we think about a picnic?”

“Picnic!” is all the reply he gets from a very excited Christopher. “I’m going to change,” he says, already shuffling to his bedroom, and Eddie shakes his head.

“I also got us some beer, but that’s more for later in the evening. Thought we could order a pizza after Chris goes to bed, maybe?”

Eddie looks fake-shocked. “You want a whole entire day of eating not really health stuff? Who are you and what did you do to my Buck?”

And Buck knows, okay? Buck knows he’s just joking, but it still tugs at his heart, makes him feel like those butterflies people talk about are real: his head feels light, there’s a tingling on the tips of his fingers. Instead of any of the stupid things he wants to do, he just shakes his head, smiles.

“Nah, man, just wanted a nice day with the two of you, that’s all.”

Eddie’s smile is blinding. “Sounds good to me.”

“I’ll tuck him in and you order the pizza?”

“Yup.”

“‘K. Chris, go say good night to Buck.”

Christopher moves slowly. They’ve had a fun, long day.

“Good night, Bucky. I love you.”

“Good night, Chris. I love you, too.”

Buck listens to the sounds of the two of them as he orders the pizza. He thinks about how familiar it is, how at home he feels.

How he is, maybe, about to mess the whole thing up.

He sure has his excuses in place in case things don’t go the way he wants them to – “it’s just a joke, look, I can show you the other videos. It’s a challenge for Tik Tok. I just wanted to be down with the kids, Eddie! I thought you’d be game! It’s just for show!” – but it’s not going to stop things from being awkward for a little bit until they get back to normal.

When Eddie comes back, the pizza is there already, and Buck is nursing a beer that’s already halfway down, but has one out for Eddie, cold and fresh. Eddie collapses on the couch with a grunt.

“That boy’s getting big, por Díos, where did the time go,” he says, sitting up nicely, taking a swig of his beer.

They’re having a good time. But they’re never not having a good time. This is it, Buck realizes. He can’t imagine ever again feeling so at home in the presence of someone else. He can’t imagine loving a child so deeply; can’t imagine loving a man more for the way he loves his own son. This is it.

Eddie goes to the bathroom, and it’s Buck’s chance.

He puts the phone up against a vase Eddie has on the coffee table; knows Eddie enough to know he won’t notice, especially after two beers.

“Alright, what did I miss,” Eddie says as he walks in the living room, more conversationally than interested, and Buck knows it’s now or never.

“Hey, Eddie,” he says, slowly, which makes Eddie look at him immediately, confusion and worry written in the lines around his eyes.

“You ok, Buck?” He asks, placing his beer bottle on the coffee table in front of them, worry making him move more into Buck’s personal space.

Ok, Buck. Now or never. Do it.

“Yeah, yeah, I just. I. Look, Eddie, I just need to –” Buck cuts himself off in favor of moving entirely into Eddie’s personal space, meeting him in the middle where Eddie already was. The air between them mingles, Buck can feel the warmth they’re creating back on his lips.

“What are you doing?” Eddie whispers, sharp, and for a second Buck feels as if he has lost; this exact moment is suspended in infinity for Buck to commit it to memory, to remember his loss, forevermore. But then. Then, Eddie looks down at Buck’s lips, and licks his own. Buck needs nothing else. He goes in.

Eddie is very still when their lips touch, but Buck can absolutely not help but notice how soft they are. Eddie is all hard angles and big muscles, but his lips are so soft, how’s that even possible? And then Buck notices he isn’t moving. He isn’t even breathing, actually, holding himself taut. Buck’s thankful for his foresight of not touching Eddie anywhere besides the lips.

Buck backs away slowly, hoping that Eddie won’t look at him too close, hoping Eddie will take pity and just let him run away for the night. But Eddie is watching him intently, looking into the blue eyes that already feel wet, so obviously they look wet. But hey! Buck tried, didn’t he?

All the apologies and speech he had ready die in his throat. He’s not going to lie to Eddie; he doesn’t want to lie to Eddie. He should know. He should know that Buck is in love with him, heart-achingly so. He needs to know. So Buck doesn’t say anything. He looks around; for a second he had forgotten the phone was even there. He starts to get up, his mind a mess.

Eddie holds his wrist. Buck looks at where they’re touching as if it’s burning. Eddie tugs, hard, making him sit down.

“Did you mean that?" He asks, voice only above a whisper, but still crystal clear.

“What?” Buck says, confused.

“Buck. Did you mean to do that?” He asks again, eyes on Buck’s.

“Yeah,” he breathes out. “Yeah, Eddie. I’ve been meaning to. For a while now.”

Buck closes his eyes, then. Eddie's eyes are too bright, too beautiful for Buck to keep looking at. And then, Eddie’s hand is up against his neck, his jaw, against his cheek, resting there, thumb awfully close to the corner of Buck’s mouth. And then, Buck’s being kissed. For real.

Eddie kisses exactly like he does all other things: quietly, not showing off, but assured of himself and of what he’s doing; he’s a pro and he knows it.

Buck is about to shift into ‘two can play at this game mode’ when he remembers the phone recording.

He pulls away slowly, softly, regrettably, but covers Eddie’s hand on his cheek with one of his hands, moves it to his mouth to kiss Eddie’s palm. Free. Able and allowed to do this.

They smile at each other. Buck could stare at Eddie’s smile forever.

He reaches for his phone on the coffee table and says a fuck so heartfelt Eddie moves away from him on the couch.

“Buck?”

“It. Wasn’t. Recording.”

“What?”

Buck is, admittedly, a little late on the uptake of how bad that sounded. It takes him a while to explain the whole thing to Eddie, which of course includes showing him a few challenge videos.

"So you had a speech ready in case I flipped out on you,” Eddie concludes.

“Yup, correct."

A beat, and then: "You didn’t say anything, though."

Buck looks up at him, confused. "What do you mean?"

"You pulled back, and you didn’t say anything. You were just going to leave."

And, wow. Buck forgets, sometimes, just how perceptive Eddie is. He looks away for a second, but decides Eddie deserves honesty, even if it’s at the cost of baring his soul. He already did a lot of that tonight, might as well keep going.

"I realized I wanted you to know. Our friendship is the most important thing I have, and so I knew that, whatever happened here, you needed to know that I’m in love with you. I was sure we could get over it and back into our friendship eventually, but I just needed you to know."

Eddie nods, understanding, taking one of Buck’s large hands between both of his.

"Thank you, Buck. Not just for your honesty, but also for taking a chance on us."

They kiss.

A lot.

Eddie, bless him, not only is a good sport and has fun with the whole thing, but also helps Buck find pictures of the two of them.

"Hey, Chim! Come up here!” Buck yells as soon as he sees Chimney coming in through the station gates.

He’s happy. He feels like he might burst with happiness.

The past week has been everything he dreamed of, and more. Christopher was so happy he cried, which made Buck cry, which made Eddie sniff, which the two other boys in the room knew meant Eddie was trying not to cry. Buck was finally happy.

Sure it had only been a week, but he was ready to share that with the world. And he was going to start with Chimney.

“What’s up, Buckaroo? You look awfully chirpy for this early in the morning.” He then noticed: “Oh, hey Eddie. You’re up early."

"Someone had to contain Mr. Buckley over here. He’s excited."

”…Okay. Buck? Anytime now.“

"I just gotta show you this video on Tik Tok."

"Wait, what? You got Tik Tok? Look at you, Buck!"

Buck can’t help the blush. "Yeah, yeah, whatever.” He places his phone in Chimney’s hands. “Watch."

Chim presses play, and his mouth does some weird things, but he looks positively pleased.

"I knew it!” He yells when he’s done, excitement he can’t contain.

They hug, and Chim promises not to tell anyone until they do, offering them well wishes and relationship help, which they both wrinkle their noses at, but say thank you all the same.

Eddie moves into the kitchen, and Chimney takes the opportunity to say, so that only Buck can hear: “I knew you’d enjoy the challenge, Buck."

Buck knows he’s a sap, but he can’t help the smile. "Yeah, Chim. I’ll owe you one forever."

Chimney shakes his head at him, his smile so fond even Buck can see.

"Nah, Buckaroo. Just be happy. That’s all I want."

#buddie #eddie diaz #evan buckley #buck #911 on fox #buddie fanfic #i don't know what else to tag i'm shaking!!!!!! this feels like so much pressure #pls give me feedback i need it to breathe #lol ok #my words #i don't even know if i have a writing tag lmao???#ok here goes nothing

96 notes · View notes

transxfiles · 4 years

Text

Love Like You by two_drama_nerds_in_a_boat | @homeworkforpigeons

“Jane Kirk is sixteen, a sophomore at the Riverside public high school, and she’s never left Iowa. Not really. Visits to Starfleet California with her mom when she was a toddler don’t count, and she doesn’t let herself think about Tarsus at all. To be honest, she’s rather blocked out most of Tarsus - they tell her it’s the Human brain’s reaction to stress, fight-or-flight scenarios. But even though some of her memories might not be great, she knows she’s never met a Vulcan before.

Right now, there’s a Vulcan standing right next to her on the sidewalk.

And God, she’s pretty.”

Word Count: 4210

Find this fic on AO3

The alarm’s ringing again. Loud enough to wake her up.

She doesn't want to wake up. She never wants to wake up.

“Fuck,” she mutters, kicking her covers away and rolling out of bed. She doesn’t really have any reason to be upset, other than being woken up early - but she’s the one who set the alarm, so really, she shouldn’t be that frustrated at all.

“Stupid past me,” she mutters. “Jane Tiberius Kirk of last night, what were you thinking?”

Jane Kirk is sixteen years old. Practically an adult, she thinks, as most teenagers often do. Of course, Jane’s thoughts are a bit more justified, in this department. Raising yourself will do that to you. After your Dad dies on the day of your birth, and your Mom remarries an asshole and then abandons you, and then your brother ditches you on top of it all, you start to make your own breakfast and fold your own socks and make your own deadlines and shit. It happens.

Every day during the school year she wakes up like this, to the pinging of her alarm

She didn’t used to be like this; preferred sleeping in, getting to school an hour or two late. Sometimes not going at all. But a shitty report card gave Frank yet another excuse to call her a waste of space, and was the final tipping point for shipping her away for good.

(Tarsus… wasn’t great. To put it very, very vaguely. She was sent there at fourteen by a stepfather desperate to get rid of her, and she’s determined to never, ever go back. She knows it’s over, now, knows it can’t hurt her. That’s what the therapist told her. But it’s still there.)

It’s not the first day of school today, thank God. Just another mid-year one. A day of no importance. It’s almost insignificant enough that Jane might just consider skipping, except she knows she can’t skip, not after what happened on Tarsus two years ago. So she opens one of her dresser drawers and fishes around for clothes.

Jane Kirk is sixteen. She cuts her own hair with her mom’s bad kitchen scissors (she wouldn’t use Winona’s good ones, wouldn’t do that to her) cuts it short short short like she likes it, and she wears shitty t-shirts old enough to be considered precious artifacts if they weren’t so goddamn ratty. They say things like ‘Beastie Boys’ and ‘Talking Heads' and she even has one that says ‘Nine Inch Nails’. Old bands, from the 20th century or so, that are loud or angry enough to suit her just right, but old enough to be free online.

She gets dressed, grabs her backpack and her school PADD, running out the door and letting it slam behind her. She could technically be driving to school (she’s old enough by now - technically she won’t be able to get her real license until she’s seventeen, but sixteen is old enough for a permit, which could get her to and from school no problem) but Frank told her to fuck off after she kinda sorta drove his precious sports care off a cliff.

She doesn’t even regret it, not really, not even as she finds herself walking alongside the dusty Riverside highway.

It was damn fun to drive that car off a cliff. Fuck Frank.

Jane Kirk is sixteen, a sophomore at the Riverside public high school, and she’s never left Iowa. Not really. Visits to Starfleet California with her mom when she was a toddler don’t count, and she doesn’t let herself think about Tarsus at all. To be honest, she’s rather blocked out most of Tarsus - they tell her it’s the Human brain’s reaction to stress, fight-or-flight scenarios. But even though some of her memories might not be great, she knows she’s never met a Vulcan before.

Right now, there’s a Vulcan standing right next to her on the sidewalk.

And God, she’s pretty.

“‘M Jane,” she says. Trying to make conversation. “You waiting for the bus?”

The Vulcan’s eyes are intelligent, scanning her up and down, noting her backpack and the PADD in her hand, but no response comes. Jane realizes, for the first time, that she might not understand Standard. Which would be a bit odd - most people understand Standard, especially if they plan on visiting some middle-of-nowhere Terran dump like Riverside. But Jane’s never met a Vulcan, doesn’t know much about them. Their culture, their customs. It’s quite possible this girl never learned Standard at all, has never heard it before now (however unlikely that may be).

So Jane tries again.

“You going on the bus?” She asks, again, pointing to the little scrap of metal that’s a lousy excuse for a sign, the only indicator of there being a bus stop here.

The Vulcan girl looks at her. Barely nods - though the nod is there, that small sign of understanding, and Jane’s grateful for that.

“Neat,” says Jane. “I’m, uh, catching a ride to school.”

The girl says something in response, but it comes out awkward and quiet. Jane can’t tell what language it was meant to be, though she has some hunch it was an attempt at Standard. She’s really wishing she’d stolen some translator tech from school, now. She’d thought about it, before, but never had much use for it.

“I’m Jane,” Jane says, again, trying to salvage whatever it is that currently feels like it’s crashing straight into the ground right now. “Dunno if you caught that, before.”

She seems to understand what Jane’s saying, now, at least enough to know the name.

“I am Spock,” she says, Standard broken and heavily accented, pointing to herself.

“Nice to meet you Spock,” Jane says, for some reason unable to stop herself from grinning. “Welcome to hell.”

Spock seems to be around her age, though can’t say for sure - Jane has a hard time understanding specifics through the language barrier problem, and she’s never met a Vulcan before. She doesn’t know how the whole aging thing works with them.

Spock’s tall and wiry and absolutely stunning. She wears too-big sweaters, probably hand-knit by a parent, and bright purplish-blue eye makeup that Jane’s pretty sure doesn’t really fit the Vulcan norm. She seems clever, incredibly clever, which would make sense; Jane’s heard that Vulcans are insanely smart, eidetic memory or something like that. She’s sure it’s true; she can see it in Spock’s eyes. She’s intelligent.

Of course Jane wants to know everything about her.

But Spock doesn’t seem to speak much Standard, and Jane doesn’t know any Vulcan.

She doesn’t understand a word she says.

The bus arrives, they get on it, and when Jane sits down, Spock takes the seat beside her, back completely straight, hands folded neatly in her lap. Jane takes it as a good sign, and spends the bus ride to school rambling on and on about new research that’s come out in transporter tech, how they haven’t quite figured out the way to transport people long distances yet but they’re getting better, how she thinks she might know where they’re going wrong and how to fix it, and she tells Spock, and Spock listens, and no one’s listened to Jane in a long, long time.

They get off the bus and they go to school and it turns out that Spock’s in all the advanced classes, which is great, because Jane’s in the advanced classes, too. She wonders what the fuck Spock’s doing here, how she can manage in school when she barely knows the language, why anyone would even want to come to Riverside in the first place. But she doesn’t ask, because she’s not sure how well Spock would understand, anyway, and then it’s evening and Jane’s taking the bus home and she’s on her bed and on her PADD and stealing textbooks off the Internet. It’s not that hard, really; most of the time she doesn’t even have to hack the stuff herself. Someone else has done it for her, a similarly desperate student with no cash and no way to keep up in class without a textbook. Finding one that’ll assist her in this specific area of study proves a bit harder, but eventually she finds a website (passcode protected, membership required) and she gets past all that shit with ease, and she downloads what she’s looking for.

Jane Kirk is sixteen, and she’s smart, damn smart, and she considers herself pretty good with languages. But Vulcan is fucking hard. And for her, it shouldn’t be. She conquered most of Earth’s predominant languages within the span of a year, and she picked up SSL (Standard Sign Language) within a week. She can do Orion (quite a few dialects), Tellaran, even a bit of Klingon (which means she can introduce herself and say dick and fuck off and other such choice phrases). But Vulcan?

Vulcan’s a bitch.

(She means this in the nicest way, of course.)

She picks up her PADD, new textbook just downloaded, and she finds it almost impossible to get through. She can’t even really explain why. Maybe it’s just the general syntax that’s fucking her up. That’s happened before. Could be that the language is just nearly impossible for Human vocal chords to manage, in which case this would all be yet another lost cause. But she digs a bit deeper and finds out that, though broken, she might be able to get out something understandable.

She skips all lessons on written Vulcan; she won’t need that. She’s looking for the more practical uses. Conversational type stuff. She looks into phonetics, watching videos of spoken Vulcan.

She’s up until maybe 3AM, and she realizes she ought to get at least a bit of sleep before the sun rises again. She didn’t even realize the time until she looked to the top of her PADD. She’s never been good at noticing time passing when she’s caught up in something like this. But once she realizes she only has four hours at most to get some sleep in, she turns of her light and tucks her PADD away.

Jane’s sixteen. She’s tired, but she can’t seem to fall asleep. She thinks she’s in love with Spock. She realizes, for the first time, that she has no idea what love is.

They see each other all the time, thanks to school. It’s great. Before Spock, Jane really had no one. If they were down a person in Chem, she’d go without a lab partner. She worked by herself on History presentations, never went to study groups. Arguably never needed study groups, based on some of her recent test scores, but still, the socialization would have been nice. When she really wanted company, she stopped by the local bar. She was technically a minor, yeah, but the town was small and no one cared. It was unhealthy and far from safe, she knows that, but it was where she could go.

But now, she’s got Spock, and she doesn’t really do any of that anymore.

They stick to each other, through the school day, then before and after it. Hanging out under trees or in the wide open spaces between farms that no one really goes anymore. They’re walking through one of the empty fields right now, and Jane has her eyes on a gnarled old tree to climb. Spock doesn’t climb trees, so Jane’ll probably have to go on by herself, but she knows that Spock will be happy to stand and watch, talk maybe. It’s been a few weeks, now; they’ve both been getting better at communicating.

Jane points at the tree in the distance, question in her eyes.

Spock nods, and they begin to walk towards it. As soon as they reach the base of the tree Jane’s climbing, one branch, then another, up and up, glancing down every once and awhile to check that Spock’s still there.

Jane notices that Spock’s wearing one of those sweaters again. Spock’s always wearing sweaters.

“Ko-mekh?” Asks Jane, pointing at the sweater. Mother? She’s been meaning to ask about it, and hopes Spock’s able to understand; Jane’s Vulcan isn’t perfect, but she just finished up the chapter on family and interpersonal relations last night, and she’s feeling pretty good in that area.

Spock nods. “Gift,” she says, in Standard. “Hanukkah.”

“Oh! You’re Jewish!” Jane smiles. “Me too. My family's not really practicing though...” ...because my dad died and my mom's never home, she thinks, but doesn't say it out loud. She reaches for another branch just above her, only to find it the slightest bit out of reach. With a grunt, she jumps, grabbing at it with both hands and swinging herself around until she’s successfully made it up another level. Jane’s grinning, looking down at Spock who’s looking a bit smaller now. “Taller than you,” she says.

The Vulcan’s raising her eyebrow again. “Riyeht.” Incorrect.

“Not when I’m in a tree.”

Spock sighs, says something in Vulcan that probably translates to ‘Silly Human.’ Jane makes a mental note to look that up when she gets back to her house tonight. Figures it’ll be useful to know.

Jane’s sixteen, and tall enough for her age, and strong from working in the fields every summer. Strong enough to hold her own against Frank, even if she can’t really fight back. It’s fine, thought; Frank doesn’t hit her so much, anymore. She doesn’t know why. Might have something to do with Tarsus, or something to do with her getting older. She tries not to think about it. She still keeps her door locked at night.

When she sneaks back into the house this evening, she finds him passed out on the couch. He smells like shit - she plugs her nose as she walks past him, resigning herself to a shower as soon as she gets upstairs, just to get rid of the lingering stench. Done with the shower, she collapses onto her bed wearing the first clean clothes she can find (which in this case is a pair of jeans and a tank top), weary, eyes closed as she fishes around blindly for her PADD. As soon as she finds it, she opens her eyes, and flips through one of the Standard-Vulcan dictionaries she’s been using for reference.

If she’s reading it right, ‘Silly Human’ would be Duh-komihn. She flips a few more pages, but she can’t find a term for ‘Silly Vulcan’. She wants to call Spock now, but Frank could hear; the walls are thinner than they seem. She doesn't want to risk that. She’ll have to bring it up with Spock later. They're doing some project or another together in Chem, and they're meeting up for it tomorrow. She'll ask her about it then.

They’re getting better at communicating with each other.

It's useful for a variety of reasons - for one, Jane can understand Vulcan, and she knows for a fact that Spock isn't making fun of her all the time, which is a bit of a relief. And now Spock knows how much Jane swears, which is probably for the better, because hey, that's important shit to know. Jane asks her what the Vulcan word is for 'Silly Vulcan' after explaining her 'Silly Human' research. Spock tells her that they don't say 'Silly Vulcan' because Vulcans are incapable of being silly (or at least, that's what Jane thinks Spock tells her - she's still not the best at Vulcan, after all). Jane says that she doesn't think that's true, and Spock struggles to maintain her cold Vulcan facade, so so tempted to stick her tongue out at the duh-komihn.

"Vulcans do not lie," Spock mutters.

Jane keeps a list of the new things she’s learned about Spock. Right now, it looks something like this:

Good at chess.

Jewish

Human mother?

(Maybe) exchange student

Could theoretically climb trees but won’t because of ‘Surak’s Teachings’ or something like that.

Meditates

Enjoys ‘Narat do-toh’? NOTE: Vulcan game, like hide-and-seek

Can't lie - but that's obviously a lie. Yeah.

“What you writing?” Spock asks, after catching Jane adding something to the ever-growing list in her school notebook.

“Nirsh apc’koik du,” she says. No business you. She cringes at herself; she definitely butchered that. She was trying to say something along the lines of Not your business but she’s pretty sure she just completely screwed up.

Spock grabs the notebook, eyes skimming the page with superhuman speed. She raises an eyebrow, passing it back to Jane.

“List?”

“Oh quiet you.”

The corner of the Vulcan's mouth twitches in that way that's basically her version of a smirk. "A me list."

Jane's sixteen. She's smart, smarter than most sixteen-year-olds are, though she couldn't explain why. She likes coding (specifically hacking, though she's been told by multiple people that that's not technically legal) and learning languages and even the rare History lesson here or there. But she absolutely despises studying.

“Spock,” Jane whines, throwing herself across the desk. “When’re we gonna go?”

They’ve been cooped up in one of the far corners of the school’s (very, very, small) library for hours now. She’s honestly amazed it hasn’t closed on them yet, especially taking into account the annoyed looks the librarian won't stop shooting them. After her latest stink-eye, Jane thinks that they’re a minutes away from being forcefully booted. Not that it’ll deter Spock; whatever it is she’s currently researching, the Vulcan seems keen to continue until midnight if she must.

“Come on, look at me.” Jane tapped Spock’s shoulder.

Spock’s head snaps up, eyes locking on hers. Vulcans aren’t meant to show emotion, Jane’s heard, but the frustration in Spock’s eyes is clear.

“Listen. The librarian’s gonna kick us out any second now.” Jane’s gaze strays back to the angry woman at the front of the library, and she suddenly remembers every sin she’s committed in its vicinity (pre-Tarsus, of course, but still) and she gets a bit more anxious. “We really should go soon. Soon as in now. And don’t play dumb or anything because I know you’re smart and can read body language and understand at least a tenth of what I’m saying because we’re good at understanding each other.”

Spock runs a hand through her uncharacteristically mussed black hair.

“Ashal-veh…” she sighs, obviously tired. Spock mutters some other words in Vulcan, too, with the odd Standard phrase thrown in (she’s picked up a few of those - full immersion will do that to you). Jane opts not to listen; sleep-deprived ramblings tend not to be the most coherent, and it’s not really worth her trouble, anyway, since she barely speaks the language.

Jane raises an eyebrow. She’s been practicing, working on it in front of a mirror, trying to do it the way Spock can. She knows she’s not nearly as good as Spock, yet, but she’s sure that once she finally gets it down it’ll be hilarious. “You must be more exhausted than I thought. You don’t normally slip into Vulcan when we’re at school.” Jane paused. “Didja get enough sleep last night?”

Spock gives her that look of Stop questioning me or I will kill you.

“So that’s a no.”

Spock mutters something else, but Jane doesn’t catch it.

“Y’know, I’m pretty sure killing people is against Surak’s teachings,” Jane says, hands falling to the pockets of her jeans.

At this, Spock lifts the corner of her mouth ever-so-slightly - the closest Vulcans seemed to get to a smile.

“Now come on, you,” Jane says, tugging at the sleeve of Spock’s sweater. “School’s over. Come on now. Out of the library, we’re getting you home.”

“But-” Spock says, switching back to her accented Standard.

“I.” Says Jane, Vulcan sharp in her mouth as the librarian glares at them once again. Now.

Jane's house is empty today. Frank's gone out somewhere, work, she thinks, not investigating further. So she brings Spock over, because she can, because she wants to.

Jane's sixteen. She's bored. She's in love with her best friend, and and she wants to invite her over.

They go in through the back door, the one with the tattered old screen over it to keep bugs away. It squeaks when it opens, but they never oil the hinges. Jane doesn't have the time and Frank doesn't give a shit, and Winona's never home to hear it, so they leave it be. Jane walks into the kitchen, tile cool beneath her feet (a relief after the outside heat) and Spock follows her silently. Spock's very quiet in the way she moves - almost cat-like, though Jane's never really spent time with cats before. She thinks this is what they're like. She thinks it's a bit funny.

They hurry up the stairs to Jane's room, not wanting to spend time in the rest of the house. Even when Frank's not home something about being in any of the main rooms just feels a bit off. Jane's room is better; cleaner (though the bar for that is so low, it may as well be on the ground) and it smells a bit nicer than the rest of the house, especially when she opens the window, and she has a little old-fashioned radio that she turns on when they walk in the room. She gets a few stations in, up here, mostly the local ones that play mediocre music and report on news and sports and things. She turns the dial until she finds a station that doesn't sound like it's being eaten by static. There's a song playing on the radio, quiet and sweet, the lyrics about love or something like that. Jane's not listening to it too much.

“You ever been dancing, Spock?”

She raises an eyebrow, mutters something in Vulcan, feigns annoyance. But Jane knows her well enough, now, and she knows that Spock's just avoiding the question.

"Okay," Jane says, thinking. "Well, would you like to dance with me?"

Spock considers this for a moment, the same way she thinks through difficult test questions, or how she acts after she's just learned another odd Terran phrase. After a moment's thought, she nods. Jane reaches out to grab her shoulders, and Spock puts her hands on Jane's waste. They don't hold hands; Jane doesn't really know why, yet, but she knows it's not something Spock's too keen on. And then they're dancing, just a little, slowly and a bit awkwardly, the music coming from the radio washing over them, floating out the open window on a breeze.

“Ashel-veh?” Jane whispers, knowing that Spock can hear her.

“You looked up the meaning?” Spock asks. Her Standard’s gotten better, just like Jane’s Vulcan isn’t so bad anymore.

“It was a bit harder to find, I’ll give you that.” Jane’s voice holds amusement, soft and warm and happy. “Not in my textbook, or anything. But eventually I found it in a dictionary.”

“Hm.”

“You called me darling,” Jane says.

“Yes. And you just returned the favor.”

“Yes.”

They're quiet. They listen to the music, soft and sweet in the background. The air is warm and muggy around them. Jane's holding on to Spock, resting her head on her shoulder, and she never ever ever wants to let go.

The grass is soft beneath them, if a bit damp, and the field is wide and open and empty and the sky feels vast and endless. Technically, it is. But it's not something you notice too often, with the tall structures constantly on the horizon and people crowding up every space known to man. Right now, it's just them. They're laying down in the middle of the field. They're young and naive and untouchable. They're looking at the stars.

"Do you have constellations on Vulcan?" Jane asks.

Spock says something about how drawing pictures based on lights in the sky is illogical, even if one does not know that they are simply burning balls of gas in space. Jane laughs, and immediately starts to show Spock all of the constellations she knows, spinning the stories that go with them. Ursa Major and Minor, Leo, The Seven Sisters, Orion...

"Illogical," Spock says once more. It's becoming her favorite word in Standard.

(Jane's favorite Vulcan phrase is 'bath-paik' meaning 'damn you'. She thinks it's funny.)

The stars are bright and stunning out here, where the light pollution can’t touch them. Jane finds herself reaching for Spock’s hand. She’s surprised when Spock offers two fingers to her - her index and middle - and Jane mimics the movement, unsure of what it means, and they’re touching their fingers together.

“I’m gonna be a Captain someday,” she says, quietly. "Like my dad."

It’s the first time she’s ever said it out loud, and it sounds like a promise she’ll forget to keep. But Spock’s here with her, holding her hand, and she feels calm. Calm in a way she can’t quite explain.

Jane’s sixteen, Spock maybe a bit older, though not much. They spend the night watching the sky as stars and starships dance in the darkness. Jane sneaks back into her house later that evening, after she and Spock both realized they had to go home. She falls asleep quickly, feeling content. For the first time in a long time, she looks forward to waking up.

#genderbend #my post #my fanfiction #twodramanerdsinaboat #love like you #the premise #spirk #femslash #star trek femslash #aos #aos fanfiction #star trek fanfiction #fanfiction #fem!kirk #fem!spock #kirk #spock

24 notes · View notes

drshojo · 4 years

Text

The World, My Childhood And My Hero Academia: Vigilantes

Hello friends!

Its Dr. Shojo coming at you with a post that will be divided into three parts!

Part One: The world as we know it!

The world has changed a lot since we last connected. For starters, TOILET BOUND HANAKO KUN HAS NOT ONLY A PHYSICAL RELEASE BUT A GORGEOUS ANIME! And not only that, but MY NEXT LIFE AS A VILLAINESS: ALL ROUTES LEAD TO DOOM! IS GETTING AN ANIME AS WELL! The last time I wrote about Katerina there wasn’t even an official English translation of that long-ass light-novel-title. And now?

A WHOLE ANIME. A BISEXUAL HAREM AWAITS! I am JAZZED!

Do you think it’s my fault? No matter, I’ll take all the credit. All the manga I talk about are getting anime adaptations. I’LL DO MY DUTY AND TALK ABOUT SOME MORE!

But first. Let us address the Covid-19 shaped elephant in the room

I deeply regret that it took a whole-ass pandemic to get me back to writing. In my defense, I bought an iPad and started drawing like 900 kokichi oumas. I was really busy with that. And then I started reading fanfiction. Then that got me thinking about how fanfiction such an interesting look into how people interpret fandom, use it for wish fulfillment and escapism, and good god is everyone OK cause that bulimia fan fic was super detailed....and I am officially on a tangent. Off track. Ahem.

We are all staying inside a whole lot more which means y’all probably need some reading material and Dr. Shojo has your back! Go read “Horimiya”! It’s amazing! Ahhhh, my work here is done! I'm serious, if you’re here for a Shojo rec, that’s it! There's also like 8 million more Otome Isekais to check out now. It’s like they’re multiplying like rabbits..............

As a Doctor, I must advise you to stay inside and read some manga and practice social distancing. Embrace your inner hikikomori.

Allright? All good? Okay now one final disclaimer:

This post is going to be talking about something a little different than usual and I want to start by giving you some context about who Dr. Shojo is in real life.

Part Two: Dr. Shojo Exposed

You see, when I was little I was obsessed with Japanese media. This doesn't surprise you at all I can tell. Probably because I walk around calling myself Dr. Shojo and shout about manga that you should read.

Anyways, the reason why I was obsessed wasn’t because of the big eyes or the spikey hair or the interesting new culture. It was because it tended to have more character development and overarching plotlines than the media I was used to in Canada. Dexter’s Lab, Magic School Bus, pretty much everything I saw on TV was episodic in nature, so imagine how much my mind was blown when I saw Naruto and Card Captor Sakura, heck, even Pokémon had the Indigo Plateau! Here were kids that were learning more and more each day and got to see enemies become friends and vice versa. They lived and grew older just like me. Except they were cooler than me. And had more interesting lives than me. I gotta tell you, I was so sad when I was 12 and Kero didn’t tell me I had latent magical powers. But there was magic in my life and it was the magic of a complex narrative story. And not only that, it had a sense of movement and had cool costumes. I was hooked immediately.

Also, fun fact, at that age I happened to be a complete and utter tomboy! I loved pretending to fight my friends in the playground and was really worried that puberty would ruin my life because being a girl sounded so CUMBERSOME.

Which leads me up to my confession. Before I became Dr. Shojo, I was in fact......Dr. Shonen.

Bleach? Naruto? One Piece? I've read every single chapter there is.

Hundreds of hours of watching fight sequences. Another fun fact, I only got into shojo because my aunt bought me volume 7 and 8 of Fruits Basket thinking “all mangas like the same right? Kids love comics?” It’s a tribute to how episodic western media was back then that she thought buying volume SEVEN and EIGHT was a REASONABLE PLACE TO START READING.

Now you might also say, Hey! Dr Shojo! Cardcaptors was a shojo! And you are right! but back then the anime was marketed to boys over here in the west and they actualy like, edited out episodes that they thought wouldn't interest boys?! Second fun fact, Once when I was in Grade 3 I was told I was not allowed to join a club under the stairs cause I was a girl and it was BOYS ONLY. The point of the club? To talk about how great Cardcaptors was! I Kid you not!

So anyways, your pall Dr. Shojo loves Shonen manga to this day!

The only reason I made this Dr. Shojo blog specifically about shojo is because, being a tomboy with no female friends, reading shojo manga was the first time I really thought about what it meant to be a girl and fall in love. And y i k e s. Shojo manga, like most media, fails miserably most of the time in displaying real world relationships. Or at least, it doesn't prepare you for how disappointing everything can be. When I had my first kiss, I was thinking about how it didn’t feel at all like how I felt reading Zen and Shirayukis kiss in Akagame No Shirayuki Hime. Those were formative years, and shojo was one of the only places I saw romance being talked about for younger audiences. I liked reading romances where no one had any sexual experiences and were figuring out what love meant to them. But let’s shelve this topic for now.

The point is that gender roles are dumb and if you have an open mind there's a world of stories out there for you. Take this time inside to read something you wouldn’t normally. Critically think about the ways that the worlds you see in stories and how you experience the world differ. What are the messages a story is trying to tell you? And why do you like the stories you do? Reflect on how the stories you tell yourself color your view of the world. Even mindless entertainment leaves an impression on us. Anyways.

Whilst you're doing that, I'm going to absolutely lose my hecking mind over the Shonen Jump series MY HERO ACADEMIA: Vigilantes!

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD!

Part Three: I downloaded the one month free trial of the Shonen Jump app and made you read all that, so I can tell you that today Dr. Shojo is going to rant about a spin-off of a shonen manga

THAT’S RIGHT, OF COURSE I READ HERO ACA AND YES I DID PICK UP THE SPIN OFF SERIES. SHONEN JUMP LETS YOU READ ALL THE NEW CHAPTERS FOR FREE ON THEIR APP. KIDS, IF YOU LIKE SHONEN AND YOU’RE PIRATING ON A SCANLATION SITE STILL GET OUT BECAUSE YOU DON’T NEED TO SEE THOSE WEIRD PLASTIC SURGERY AND DENTISTRY ADDS ANY MORE.

SHONEN IS HERE AND ITS LEGAL AND ITS FREE FOR YOU. GET OFF MANGA FOX OR MANGA ROCK OR WHATEVER THE KIDS ARE USING THESE DAYS.

OK, so by this point in the article you have learned two very important things about me: 1) I love Shonen manga and 2) I read a lot of fanfiction.

Specifically, I read an absolutely biblical amount of My Hero Academia fan fiction and let me tell you, A solid chunk of it is vigilante/ Deadpool / criminal with a heart of gold themed.

So when I saw Hero Aca had a spin off, and it was about vigilantes, I was NOT SURPRISED IN THE SLIGHTEST. Ao3 sure is powerful.

Now, if you will permit me a tangent in a post full of tangents—HOLY CRAP, THERE ARE TOO MANY VIGILANTE AUS. I CAN'T KEEP TRACK OF EM. IT’S THE ISEKAI PROBLEM ALL OVER AGAIN. I GET AN EMAIL A FIC HAS UPDATED AND I’M LIKE IS THIS THE FIC WHERE DEKU HAS AN ABUSIVE MOM OR THE ONE WHERE HE HAS SPLIT PERSONALITY DISORDER OR THE ONE WHERE HE’S VIGILANTES WITH HITOSHI. OH WAIT, nvm, it’s the one where deku has a healing quirk.

OH WAIT WHICH OF THE 6 DEKU WITH HEALING QUIRK VIGILATE AU FICS IS THIS ONE?! ARGH WHY DIDN’T I WRITE A DESCRIPTION IN THE BOOKMARK FOR THIS!

My gripes aside, there's a reason why there's such an abundance of vigilante story telling—

Deadpool made like an absolute buttload of money and people love sass and memes.

People have a desire for a story in which they see themselves. Or, how they think of themselves.They like a story about someone who maybe came from nothing. Someone who has less money, maybe someone who is unlucky and had some bad breaks. Someone who never learned they had magic, never got their Hogwarts letter, never saw Kero, someone who never got that God-level quirk from All Might. And if your on Ao3 They want someone who also has seen a lot of memes and kind of wants taco bell and is also questioning their sexuality a bit?

Enter our new hero VIGILANTE DEKU.

But the cannon can't do this, cause hey, Deku is the chosen one. Albeit, chosen by All Might, He’s got his own thing to do. But how can we still cash in on a vigilante story?

And thus enter our New-New hero KOICHI HAIMAWARI—code name Nice Guy and then later The Crawler. True to his relatable roots. He’s just a dude in an hoodie who can go about as fast as a bike.

First off, I love Koichi. He wants to be a hero and fight crime, but most of the time he has to run away because at the end of the day he's just a dude.

He’s cute but not wildly good-looking, A bit of a nerd but not like an extreme okaku. He’s got a part time job and hates violence.

And this is where Koichi really shines—in every day stuff. He helps out wherever he can. Often, that just means listening to people complain and maybe helping his friends out with whatever they’re going through. He’s the kind of guy who smiles, not because he's especially brave, but because he just takes things one at a time and doesn't sweat the past. I think it’s really telling that he missed getting into hero high-school because he skipped the entrance exam to help someone. He’s the kind of person who lets us experience the superpower of human decency and empathy. And you know what? That’s something the world need desperately.

This theme of human decency is really the driving force of Vigilantes—it’s a manga about how the laws are there for a reason but sometimes they unfairly impact the poor and vulnerable. It's about how a lot of criminals are just people who fell into bad social circles or on bad times. People have the capacity for cruelty and violence but that’s never all they are.

Now, speaking of crime, the entirety of Hero Aca falls into some murky water when it comes to its evil doers. Much of the fandom has a huuuuuge problem with how much the franchise is willing to sweep under the rug in the name of redeeming their baddies. RE: people getting mad about forgiving Endeavor’s child abuse, or Bakugo’s suicide baiting. Or Mineta’s blatant sexual harassment.

But this theme is in Vigilantes even more than it ever was in the main series. To start off with, there’s this guy who tries to rape Pop Step early on, and the later he later winds up befriending everybody. It becomes a running gag that each new villain winds up befriending the other villain guys and then they all open a cat café together.

Using jobs as a way to lift people out of lives of crime is great and all but in the story there is no nuance or consequences for past wrong and well.....it feels very weird. It's like Vigilantes plays at having an opinion about moral ambiguity and the complexity of human existence and then just.......lets everyone get along because who has time to get into all that. Make of that what you will but it sits weird for me personally.

Anyway, let's move on and talk about POP STEP our main girl!

I love pop stars and I love vigilantes and a guerrilla performer is defiantly a character I could get behind. And I think they do a good job with Pop. She is actually kind of shy, but has this secret edgy persona she puts on when she performs. She is every girl on tumbler in the early 2000s. I also looooove that they make her not that great a singer. SHE’S GOT PASSION AND CHARISMA and maybe not born talent but like why should that stop you! Talent can be earned through practice and this is a great lesson to show people.

Unfortunately, Pop is also a great example of everything wrong with romance in Shonen.

It’s established early on that Pop loves Koichi because she is the girl he rescued all those years ago and yada yada yikes we’ve heard this one before. Many times before.

Sure, it's fine that they’ve met before, but gosh am I sick of damsels in distress. It's like she can't love him just because she respects what a great guy he is in her life and in the community at large, no no, she just needs to be rescued on top of that. And LOLOLOL isn't it funny he never noticed she was a girl because she was a child with short hair?! Once he realizes she has boobs now they will for sure fall in love! That’s how love works!

She's just with him all the time—nothing romantic ever happens she just gets a little tsundere.

I am never ever going to believe Koichi likes Pop because he spends like sooooo much time with her and they never have like, a moment. The first time he considers her is when Makoto is like, ‘hey I would love to get together with you, but have you thought about if you are crushing on Pop’. (Also this entire plot point is suspect—she's arbitrarily falling for Koichi cause he.......is the protagonist?)

Say what you will about shojo, they give you the emotional conversations, the moments where you think.....ahhh I can see why she is falling for him. They give you context! Shonen likes to just say HERE’S A GIRL YOUR AGE. YOU CAN DATE LATER WHEN THE ADVENTURE IS DONE.

Just when they might get together, Pop suddenly turns evilllllll. The evilllll beeeees made her eeeevilllll (and more sexy).

*Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiighhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh*

Because why on earth would they get together if Koichi didn’t get to rescue Pop one more time?

I’m tired. These troupes are tired. I’m sure you are too. HOWEVER! If your still with me, Let’s move into why I'm really writing this post. Let’s get to the part that got me screaming to my friends, who by the way, don’t even care bout Hero Aca….but listened anyways. May you all find nakama like these my friends.

Anyways,

HOLY FUCK ERASERHEAD’S ENTIRE BACK STORY IS IN THIS AROUND CHAPTER 60 AND IT IS WONDERFUL AND ABSOLUTLY HEARTBREAKING AND IS ONE OF THE BEST CHARACTER BACKSTORIES I HAVE EVER SEEN AND IS THE REASON WHY THIS SERIES IS A MUST-READ FOR MAIN SERIES FANS.

AND BY ALMIGHT.

WHY. IS. IT HERE.

I present to you my late night text messages to my friends

ALSO, AIZAWAS TEACHER IS PRINCE?!?!?!

AHEM, so as you can see, I kinda lost my shit.

And now, I would like to formally defend my claim that DESPITE HOW AMAZING IT WAS, ERASERHEAD’S BACKSTORY HAD NO BUISSNESS BEING IN THE VIGILANTES SPIN-OFF MANGA.

Eraserhead, aka Aizawa Shouta, is a side character who is working with the police on some crime stuff. He is not a main cast member in this spin off. He’s a guest character that fans of the main series will be like OH COOL. GRUMPY CAT MAN LIKES CATS ON HIS OFF HOURS TOO. LOVE THAT FOR HIM.

So, my imagine my absolute surprise when Aizawa runs into Koichi and the following happens:

It starts to rain, so, like in any good manga, this means some great FORCED BONDING TIME

Except no. It doesn't because rather than start talking, Aizawa JUST STARTS REMEMBERING—ABSOLUTLY SILENTLY TO HIS OWN PRIVETE SELF—HIS ENTIRE TRAGIC BACKSTORY.

AND THIS GOES ON FOR CHAPTERS.

THIS GOES ON LONGER THEN ARC ONE IT FEELS LIKE.

I LOVE IT, BUT KOICHI IS ABOUT TO JOIN ATSUSHI NAKAJIMA IN THE DUBIOUS CATEGORY OF “PROTAGONISTS THE SERIES FORGOT ABOUT IN LIEU OF COOLER SIDE CHARACTERS”.

AND LO IT HAS NO BEARING ON THE REST OF THE PLOT, CHARACTERS, OR STORY

What the ever-loving-just WHY?

WHY?

WHYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY?

SURE, IT’S A COOL TIE-IN.

YES, OF COURSE I LOVED IT. I SHIP ERASER MIC, I DREW THIS FOR HECK’S SAKE:

AND YET I AM ANGRY.

I AM ANGRY BECAUSE MY FRIDAY WAS RUINED BECAUSE VIGILATES SUCKER PUNCHED ME WITH AN AMAZING STORY THAT REALLY WASN’T PLOT RELEVANT AND PROBABLY SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN THERE.

IS THIS WHY THEY TOOK LIKE NEXT-TO-NO CARE WITH POPS ARC?!?

I mean its ongoing, so it’s too early to say but—

In conclusion—

Excuse me one more,

AIZAWA WAS TAUGHT BY PRINCE!?!??!?!?!?!? PURPLE RAIN PRINCE!?!??!?!?!? WHAT!??!?!?!

It’s so ABSURD that I HAD TO WRITE SOMETHING ABOUT IT. I HAD TO WRITE PARAGRAPHS TO JUSTIFY YELLING ABOUT THIS ONE THING. WHAT THE ABSOLUTE—

Ahem,

Anyways, I hope you liked this weird rant/personal-story/random-diatribe in three parts.

If you’re reading this, thank you, stay safe, and I’ll be back with more shojo manga next time.

Ciao!

Dr. Shojo

(aka Dr. Shonen)

#my hero academia vigilantes #koichi haimawari #pop step #my hero academia #erasermic #Cardcaptors #Shojo manga #Shonen Manga #Dr Shojo #read Horimiya

75 notes · View notes

marisaaa · 4 years

Text

The story of us

Robron week day 7 - History (not the fic theme i cheated)

AO3 link here

Seb struggles with a relationship and Aaron gives him advice through his own experiences.

Seb was out on a date with his girlfriend. Emily, she was called. They’d met at school and had been dating for a few months now – it was their three-month anniversary. Seb had an idea to take her to the cricket pavilion, he made a picnic and they were going there for lunch.

Aaron and Robert were sat at the table in the kitchen, Robert was going over some haulage contracts and Aaron was scrolling through his phone when the door slammed.

They both turned towards the noise, glancing at each other briefly.

��Seb?” Aaron called, standing up from his chair and walking towards the door.

A red eyed and puffy Seb walked through the door, sniffing and wiping at his eyes. He was looking down at the floor, averting his eyes from his dad’s as he made his way over to the stairs.

“Hey, Seb.” Aaron rushed to grab his arm, “What happened?”

Seb pulled his arm free and sighed, still not making eye contact, “We broke up, that’s all.”

Robert put down the piece of paper he was holding, looking at Aaron who glanced back at him with sad eyes. “Oh, mate. I’m sorry.” He said gently.

Seb bit his lip and nodded his eyes, “It’s fine. It’s my fault anyway.”

“What do you mean its your fault?” Aaron asked, resting his hand onto Seb’s shoulder, “If you said anything, I’m sure she knows you didn’t mean it-”

“I told her I loved her.” Seb blurted out, finally looking between his dads.

Both Aaron and Robert’s mouths opened in shock, completely clueless on what to say.

Seb nodded and wiped at his eyes again, “I told her I loved her, and she couldn’t say it back.” He sucked in a harsh breath as he looked up the stairs. “I’m just- I’m going up to my room.”

He smiled sadly at the floor as he slowly made his way upstairs, quickening his pace as he got to the top and quickly closing his bedroom door.

Aaron let out a sigh and slowly wandered over to the table to sit opposite Robert. “Wow.” He breathed out, watching Robert nod and look upstairs.

“I can’t believe it.” He said quietly, “I didn’t think they were that serious.”

“Me neither,” Aaron admitted, “Do you think- what he said is the whole story?”

“What do you mean?” Robert quizzed, looking back at him, leaning his elbows on the table.

Aaron let out a breath and chewed on his lip, “I mean, do you think maybe she just- she stuttered or hesitated and he was- I don’t know, he was nervous and took it as denial.”

Robert looked like he was contemplating it before sighing and looking down at the contracts again, “I don’t know, but don’t push him. If he thinks we don’t believe him, we’ll never get anything out of him.”

“Gets that from you.” Aaron teased, laughing slightly when Robert pulled a face. “No, I think I know what to do.”

Seb was lying on his bed, his earbuds plugged in and a random song that he found on the family downloads playing. The blinds were shut, and his light was off. He tried to close his eyes and go to sleep, try to pretend that today hadn’t happened.

He tried not to look at the notifications popping up on his phone but the temptation was still there. He sneaked a look and saw the 5 missed calls and messages

Em: Seb please call me back, we need to talk.

Em: I need to explain myself, just please pick up.

He turned his phone over and shoved his head into the pillow. He was only sixteen. He knew his first love wasn’t going to be his last, he’d found that out from his dads and their own stories but actually living through it was a lot harder than he had expected.

A knock on his door kicked him out of his thoughts and he grunted into his pillow, wishing whoever it was could leave him to wallow. They knocked again though, and his room was suddenly filtered with light from the landing. He turned to face the open door to see Aaron stood there, a bowl in his hand.

“Your dad made- well burned popcorn if you want it.” He said gently, leaning against the doorframe.

Seb just shook his head and turned back around to face away from him. He didn’t leave, instead he just closed the door, turned a lamp on and sat down on the side of the bed.

“I don’t want to talk.” He murmured, bringing the duvet over his head.

He heard Aaron shuffle around and then something heavy was placed on his leg. “I don’t want you to talk, I want you to read.”

“What?” Seb asked, confused as he turned around in his duvet to sit up against the headboard. Aaron gestured towards the book that was now laying next to him on the bed. He picked it up. It was dark leather and had an elastic tie around the front to hold it closed. “What is this?”

Aaron took a deep breath in and unhooked the elastic band, opening the book. “It’s my diary.”

Seb scoffed, “You have a diary?”

“No. Not anymore.” Aaron quickly defended himself, “When I was younger. It helped, a lot. Before I had a counsellor, I would write all my messed up thoughts in that diary.”

Seb opened the front cover. He recognised the scrawl of his dad’s handwriting on the first page.

“December 4th 2014”

“Dad, I- why are you showing me this?” He stammered, closing the book and pushing it back over to Aaron.

“I thought you might like to see it from another point of view.” Aaron explained.

“What do you mean?”

“Read it.” Aaron told him as he pushed the diary back onto his lap and stood up, “You’ll understand what I mean.”

Aaron walked out the room slowly and quietly closed the door behind him, leaving Seb holding the diary on his lap.

It was weird. Seb felt weird, reading his dad’s diary. He knew that even though he was told to read it, he almost felt like he was doing something wrong.

His phone pinged again,

Em: I’m sorry, I really am. Please just text me or call me so we can talk. Whenever you’re ready.

He turned the phone off, pushing it off his bed so it landed with a thump on the carpet. He took a deep breath in and opened the book.

December 4th, 2014

I don’t know what’s going on. I want to scream it, I want to tell my mum, paddy, vic, anyone. I’m confused, I’m angry, I’m jealous. Why am I jealous? Because he’s with Chrissie?

Robert Sugden kissed me. He kissed me and then he came back for more. He’s hiding, though. He’s scared to admit what he really is.

Maybe I should just stay away from him.

Seb had heard this story a million times. How his dads were so in love with each other that they couldn’t keep away. How his dad didn’t regret the breaking up of his first marriage, as long as it meant he could be himself, with Aaron.

He skipped ahead a few pages, skim reading a few words every now and then. His writing was rather large on the page so he could get the gist of what each entry involved. Almost every page started with the word Robert.

March 26th 2015

Robert told me loved me. I know I’ve said it before, I know how I feel. It’s not just because I want him suffer. Ok, maybe I do, considering what he put me through. But I do love him. No matter how hard I try to tell myself I don’t, that he’s bad for me. I do. And I can’t get over the fact.

Seb groaned at the soppyness and skipped a bunch of pages. One page had scribbles and doodles around the outside, angry ones.

July 19th 2016

So, Robert’s moving in. I am happy, I’m excited. It’s a new beginning for the both of us and it makes our relationship seem more real.

It also means I don’t think I will have much time to write in here anymore. I guess that’s good. Finally, I have something in my life that’s steady, that’s constant. I love him, I really do. Sometimes I look at him and I can feel my heart multiply in size with the love that I feel.

I don’t tell him though. He does tell me and I know he means it but there’s this feeling in my stomach. The feeling that when I tell him, it’ll all be real. I’ll be transported out of this happy wonderland life that we’re living and get dumped in the real world.

Why am I scared?

Seb’s heart sunk. He knew that they loved eachother and he’d heard them tell eachother that loads of times. He couldn’t imagine it being that hard, especially not for them.

He turned the next page but it was blank. He turned another page and another until he found one with slightly neater handwriting this time, it seemed less – angry.

July 11th 2017

I guess we’re starting this up again, then? I’m surprised I even found it to be honest. I assumed it would have gotten lost in the move.

It’s crazy how time flies. Last time I wrote in here, we were moving into the pub. Now Robert’s having a baby.

He’s with Rebecca now. At a scan. My counsellor told me to write in here whenever I’m feeling down about it. I’m not upset anymore, she’s a constant reminder of what they did and it’s weighing me down, every time we see her, it’s right in my face.

I want him to understand that I’m okay with him having this baby. Sort of. I want to help him through this so we can face parenthood together. I love him, so I’ll love whatever is his.

Seb felt tears start to form in his eyes. He knew about their time apart before he was born. He knew what happened between his mum and his dad, what happened to Lawrence and Chrissie.

Seeing written evidence from that time made it real, made him realise how much his parents loved eachother, even when they didn’t communicate it properly.

As he turned over a few more pages, a printed photo fell out of the book.

It was the photo of them at Liv’s university graduation day. Her with the hat and the scroll, Aaron and Robert with their arms around her shoulders, and then himself. He was stood in a small suit, at seven years old, a big smile plastered on his face as he stood with his family.

He turned the photo around to see writing on the back.

Talk to her. We wouldn’t have gotten this far if we hadn’t.

Dad x

He waited on the bench outside the front door of the mill. He had the diary in his hands, resting on top of his bouncing knee.

He’d called Emily, he told her that they needed to talk and that they should meet here. He had also read some more of the diary. Parts where Aaron would write down all these feelings, but he never said them out loud, leading him to bottle things up and just make everything worse.

The crunch of gravel made him turn his head, his knee stopped bouncing.

“Hey.” Emily said gently, holding her hands together in front of her.

“Hey.” Seb returned quietly, pointing down to the space on the bench next to him.

Robert was making lasagne, banning Aaron from getting in the way of him in the kitchen, so Aaron was sat on the sofa. His knee was also bouncing nervously, knowing what Seb was doing outside – hoping that it would all work out.

“I can hear your heartbeat from here, Aaron.” Robert said, facing towards the countertop where he was placing the lasagne sheets into the dish.

“What if it goes wrong?” Aaron admitted, turning to face the kitchen, “What if he ends up getting his heart broken again?”

Robert turned to face him, “Then we’ll help him through it. Be here for him when he needs it. That’s all we can do.”

Aaron smiled and nodded but still felt anxious as he nervously bit at his nails.

The door opened as they were about to sit down to eat. Robert shot a glance at Aaron who looked back him nervously, dropping his fork.

“Hey, Seb.” He called as the boy walked in, “Yours is still in the dish if you want it.”

He had a massive smile on his face, sending relief through them both.

“Yeah I just need to go to the loo.” Seb answered him, but quickly swiped a piece of garlic bread off the table in front of them. He pulled the photo out from behind him, keeping the diary hidden. He slid it across the table towards Aaron.

“Thanks, Dad.” He said quietly and Aaron nodded, reaching out to take the photo. He slid it off the table and stood up, connecting it to the fridge using a magnet. “We talked, and she told me she loved me too. I surprised her when i said it earlier, then I ran off so…” he laughed and ran a hand through his hair.

Aaron smiled and looked at Robert knowingly, who narrowed his eyes. “Well I’m glad you made up.” He told him with a smile.

“Me too.” Seb answered as he walked backwards to the stairs, holding the diary behind him. As he slowly walked up the stairs, he turned around and made eye contact with Aaron who smiled and winked, before turning his attention back to his dinner.

#rw2020 #i completely forgot to post this earlier #robron fic #aaron dingle #robert sugden #seb white

24 notes · View notes

dettiot · 4 years

Text

Fic: Anakin vs. the Feelings

Title: Anakin vs. the Feelings Author: dettiot Summary: Anakin tries to cope with how he feels for Padme as their mission shifts.

Notes: Written for Anidala Week 2020, Day 7: Free Day. This is set just after my story Don’t Freak Out, which was a gender-swapped fusion of Star Wars and Chuck. I have a bit of a recap at the start of this fic, but if you’re not very familiar with Chuck, you might want to give the first story a read before this one. Find it on AO3 or on Tumblr!

XXX

Hi, I’m Padme, and here’s some things you might need to know.

My life is filled with spies, car chases, computer-stealing ninjas and me saving the day. You see, everything changed when I got an email from my college best friend, Sabe. I thought she was an accountant from Connecticut--but Sabe had been working for the CIA when she stole a whole bunch of government secrets. Big, important secrets. Really scary, nasty, you-get-killed-for-having-them secrets. Next thing I know, these super secrets are downloaded into my brain. Which means every moment of my life is in danger.

Fortunately, the CIA sent their best agent to protect me: Anakin Skywalker.

[montage of Anakin wearing a tuxedo, charming a woman at a cocktail party, taking out six bad guys effortlessly, looking at Padme and smiling]

Yeah, I know.

The NSA sent their best agent, too: Ben Kenobi.

[montage of Ben cleaning weapons, arguing with a roomful of terrorists, giving Padme a blank, judging look]

Yeah, he’s . . . he’s not so nice.

XXX

“You know this isn’t going to work.”

Heaving a sigh, Anakin Skywalker, CIA Agent, did his best not to think about all the ways he could kill Ben Kenobi without breaking a sweat.

It was a long list. Which gave him enough time to actually come up with some good reasons to counter Kenobi’s negativity.

“Look, it’s just as easy to bring Dr. Zarnow here as it is to take Padme to him,” Anakin said. “The Ring is crawling all over D.C., looking for Sabe. This way, we keep Padme off their radar.”

“That’s fairly cold, sacrificing the woman you used to be in love with,” Kenobi observed, an eyebrow going up as Anakin shifted his feet. “Because you weren’t just partners with Sabe, after all.”

It was true: he wasn’t just partners with Sabe. But . . . they hadn’t been much more than partners in a long, long time.

“Sabe betrayed the CIA by stealing the Intersect,” Anakin said, gathering some papers so he could hide his face from Kenobi’s piercing stare. “ Padme is a civilian. And a good person. She helped save General Stanfield when she didn’t have to. And all she’s asking is that we let her stay with her friends and family. It seemed like a fair trade-off to me.”

Kenobi tutted. “Intelligence agencies generally aren’t interested in fairness. But Yoda agreed with your crazy plan, so I’ll back you.”

“Thanks,” Anakin said, holding the papers against his chest, his arms folded over them.

“Don’t thank me. I’m just doing my job.”

The tone of Kenobi’s voice made it clear he thought Anakin wasn’t, which annoyed the hell out of him. But he had spent a long, long time holding his emotions in--and he wasn’t going to stop now.

So when Kenobi saw he hadn’t gotten a reaction, he grunted softly and left their quasi-office, also known as the home theater room at the Buy More.

He was probably going to his hotel, sharpening some knives or something. Not that Anakin didn’t have his own weapons to take care of, but . . .

Sinking down on the sofa, Anakin dropped the papers on the coffee table and leaned back, trying to get his thoughts straight.

His thoughts and his emotions.

If there was an agent he thought would turn out to be a traitor, Sabe wouldn’t have been his pick. She was smart, determined, dedicated. But also guarded, secretive, and slightly too prone to violence.

But even if she was a traitor, he wouldn’t have expected her to draw an innocent person into her web. But that was what Padme was: innocent.

It bothered him, seeing Padme involved in all this. Anakin couldn’t remember the last time he had so much contact with a civilian. He would have thought it would be boring. Grating. He had long ago accepted that his job meant sacrifice, meant keeping people safe so they could go about their normal, everyday lives.

But spending time with Padme . . . it wasn’t boring. There was something about her--a glow. She looked like Sabe, just shorter, but she was also so different from Sabe.

She was the last person he could imagine fitting into his life of secrets and shifting loyalties. He hoped Dr. Zarnow would be able to get the Intersect out of Padme’s head, so her life could go back to normal.

And he would be back to his normal life, traveling all over the world and kicking ass and . . .

Anakin shook his head. That was what he wanted: to get the hell out of Burbank and back to work.

XXX

There was something about Dr. Zarnow that Anakin didn’t like. The man came off as too glib. But it didn’t really matter what Anakin thought of him--not as long as he could extract the Intersect from Padme’s mind.

He stood at the Nerd Herd desk with Kenobi and Zarnow, listening to Padme and watching her on the cameras as she went through the testing to confirm the presence of the Intersect. Which seemed stupid to Anakin, but he hadn’t been asked.

“Amazing,” Zarnow breathed out. “The amount of data inside her head . . . how has she not injured herself?”

Injured herself? What? The Intersect was supposed to be safe--before Sabe had stolen it, it had been slated for implementation. Would the CIA and NSA endanger an agent by frying their brain?

And did that mean that Padme could--

Giving himself a bit of a shake, Anakin said, “So you can remove the Intersect from the subject’s mind?”

“Oh, yes. Quite easily. As soon as tomorrow night.”

Anakin looked at Kenobi, who nodded. “All right,” Anakin said, looking at Zarnow. “Agent Kenobi will take you back to your hotel. We’ll pick you up tomorrow night at ten.”

“Agree,” the doctor said, shaking Anakin’s hand before Kenobi escorted him out.

As he watched them walk away, he wondered at the strange feeling he had. What made him not trust Zarnow? There was absolutely nothing to say the doctor wasn’t to be trusted, but Anakin couldn’t help it. Sometimes, you just had to work on a gut feeling. It was what made him trust Kenobi, even though they barely agreed on anything.

It was his gut that made him trust Padme.

His eyes were drawn to the video screen, watching Padme. She was rubbing her temples, her shoulders hunched. When her hands fell from her face, it was easy to see the strain from the flashes.

The last thing he should be doing was staring at Padme, letting her hurt, when he should be taking her home and putting her mind at ease. After all, she would be excited to know that soon, this nightmare would be over for her. She could be safe, her loved ones would be safe, and she would never again have to think about Agent Anakin Skywalker.

And why did that make something inside him twist?

Shoving all the unhelpful emotions aside, Anakin stepped over to the home theater room. “Okay?”

Padme nodded, her face pale. “Yeah . . . did I do all right?”

“You did great,” Anakin said, reassuring her. “In fact, Dr. Zarnow thinks by this time tomorrow, you’ll be free of the Intersect.”

“Really? Wow,” Padme said softly, her soft brown eyes locked on his for a long moment before she looked away.

What was going through her mind? Gratitude, probably. Relief.

Or . . . could she be sad about an end to all of this? Seeing the last of him?

A sarcastic voice inside his head snorted. “Yeah, right, Skywalker.”

“This is a good thing,” Anakin said, not sure whether he was trying to make her feel better or himself.

“Yeah--yeah, of course,” Padme said. “Um, what time? Sola wanted to have dinner as a family. And . . .”

Anakin looked at her, noticing how she was gnawing a little on her lower lip. “What is it?” he asked softly, lowering his head a little to be closer to her.

“She said I should invite you,” Padme said, looking up at him. “I mean--I can tell her you can’t make it--”

“No,” Anakin interrupted quickly. “I can be there. I mean, I have to eat, and--and I’ll have to pick you up anyway, so . . .”

A soft, dazzling, disbelieving smile lit up Padme’s whole face. “Really?”

He had to swallow before he could reply. “Really.”

“Oh, thank you! I mean, I know you’ll be leaving as soon as the Intersect is out of my head, but it’s made Sola really happy to think I’m dating someone,” Padme said. “And she’s kinda mad that Jar-Jar had met you even before she heard about you. You’re saving my life.”

“No problem,” Anakin said, leading Padme out of the store and to his Porsche.

Padme kept chattering as he drove her home. Anakin stayed silent, trying to figure out the odd feeling going through him. It wasn’t until he was nearly to his hotel that he realized what it was.

Sadness.

XXX

Grimacing, Anakin used the toe of his boot to push aside a burned clump of metal and plastic, then turned to look at the remains of a late-model sedan.

“You’re sure Zarnow was in the car?”

“Security cameras show him driving away from his hotel in this car,” Kenobi said, drawing up beside Anakin. “Looks like the good doctor wanted to do some sightseeing and ran off the road.”

“But why?” Anakin asked, not really talking to Kenobi. He walked around the burned-out car, moving past crime scene techs. He nearly stepped on another piece of plastic, but something made him stop at the last moment.

“Kenobi!” he said, crouching down and pulling out a pen to push at the object.

“A cell phone?” Kenobi asked from behind and above him.

Anakin nodded, turning over the phone. “How much you want to bet there’s explosive residue on this?”

“No bet,” Kenobi said, folding his arms over his chest. “I never bet on a sure thing. So someone wanted to kill Zarnow.”

“Looks like it,” Anakin said, before his head jerked up to meet Kenobi’s eyes. “Padme.”

Kenobi’s eyes widened, and then in one movement, they each began running towards their cars.

XXX

When Padme opened the door of the apartment she shared with Sola and her husband, her eyes widened. “Anakin!”

“Hi, hi, sorry I’m late!” he said quickly, leaning down and kissing her cheek. He held the bouquet of flowers in his hand out to her. “These are for you. I brought wine, too.”

“Oh . . . thanks,” she said, still looking surprised. She put her hand on his chest and pushed him out of the apartment a few steps. “I thought, with the doctor being dead--” she whispered, glancing back towards her sister and brother-in-law. “I thought you weren’t coming,” she said.

“I’ll explain later,” Anakin said, desperate to get her inside. To get her under cover, away from anyone with a sniper rifle who wanted to take her out.

His stomach had been churning for the last hour, ever since he realized that anyone who killed Zarnow might want to move against Padme. Making himself stop at his hotel and change into a suit and button-down shirt, getting flowers and wine--doing everything to play the part of a boyfriend meeting her family--had been agony. Because whenever he thought of Padme with a hole between her eyes . . .

Padme looked confused, but she rolled with the punches. “All right. Come on in and meet everyone.”

Nodding, Anakin rested his hand on Padme’s back, feeling her warmth through her soft dress. He stepped inside the apartment, feeling instantly welcomed. Padme’s sister, Sola, and her husband Darred were both nice people. Jar-Jar was a little strange, but he was Padme’s best friend.

It all felt so . . . normal. Passing over the bottle of wine, exchanging small talk with Darred, watching Sola and Padme talk in the kitchen. Padme’s cheeks flushed at whatever her sister said, and Anakin wondered what they were talking about.

A knock on the door made Anakin tense. Darred called out cheerfully, “I’ve got it!” and had the door open before Anakin could get into position. He relaxed slightly when he saw Kenobi, although he still felt a spike of annoyance at the older man not trusting him to protect Pamde adequately.

“Hello there!” Kenobi said with a genial smile. “I’m Ben, a coworker of Padme’s. She invited me over for dinner, and I brought one of my famous chocolate souffles for the occasion.”

Anakin blinked. Well, he hadn’t seen that coming.

“C’mon in!” Darred said brightly. “Any friend of Padme’s, etc. etc. I’m Darred, Padme’s brother-in-law. That’s Anakin, her boyfriend, although as if you don’t know! Padme talks about him all the time, am I right?”

“All the time,” Kenobi agreed, smirking at Anakin.

He gripped his glass of wine tightly and tried not to blow his cover.

“And right over here is Sola, the light of my life,” Darred said, introducing Kenobi to her. “This is one of Padme’s coworkers, babe.”

“What are you doin’ here, Ben?” Jar-Jar asked, sounding suspicious.

“Oh!” Padme said loudly. “Silly me. I forgot I invited Ben. Let me take that souffle from you--doesn’t it smell great?--and we’ll get you some wine.”

And here he thought Padme could roll with the punches. She certainly was thrown by Kenobi’s arrival. Although Anakin couldn’t blame her for that--he would be confused by Kenobi just showing up, too. Especially with how he was acting.

Somehow, they all got through dinner, souffle and all. All too soon, Sola shooed Padme out of the apartment, telling her to walk Anakin to his car.

Echo Park was quiet as they stepped out into the courtyard. “So what happens now?” Padme asked him as soon as the door closed behind them.

“I don’t know,” Anakin said with a sigh. “Dr. Zarnow was the only one who could remove the Intersect.”

Padme scuffed the toe of her flat against the ground. “So . . . is it time for the bunker?”

“No, Padme,” he said, turning to face her. “I’ll figure something out. Something that will let you stay here. I promise.”

In the moonlight, her eyes were luminous. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

Anakin opened his mouth, wanting to make all kinds of promises to her. Promises that went against everything he thought he wanted.

But then he felt a sting against his neck. Padme’s eyes widened, and then she lifted a hand to her neck. “What . . .?” she slurred.

There was just enough time to see her hand drop, revealing a tranquilizer dart in her neck, before Anakin felt the same drug run through his system. Then his eyes closed and everything went dark.

XXX

If there was one thing Anakin Skywalker hated, it was waking up after being drugged.

Correction: waking up after being drugged and finding himself chained up.

Grimacing at the cuffs around his wrists, Anakin yanked again, trying to break the chain loose from the ceiling. But it was no good: this setup was solid. And the cuffs were latched so tightly around his wrists, he didn’t think breaking his thumbs would let him get free.

He ran his hands up the chains, then jumped, bringing his feet up. If he could brace against the ceiling, he could definitely get the chains loose . . .

But even at just over six feet tall, his legs weren’t long enough for him to reach the ceiling.

His curse was muffled, thanks to the duct tape over his mouth. Anakin dropped back to the ground and made his peace with waiting.

Padme!

The thought of her made the last fog of the tranquilizer clear his mind. Looking around quickly, Anakin realized she wasn’t here. There weren't any other restraints in view, so . . . where was she?

Anakin yanked again on his chains, trying to get free. He had to find her--he had to protect her!

It felt like the chains were looser, but before he could try again, the door of the dark warehouse slid open, revealing a small woman in a soft dress.

“Padme!” he barked against the duct tape. “What are you doing here?”

And why was he talking with the gag over his mouth? Maybe it was how angry he was at her being here. Because what the hell was she thinking?

She hurried up to him. “I know, I know, just shut up!” She reached up for the edge of the duct tape and winced. “Sorry!”

Then she yanked the tape off cleanly.

He grimaced at the sticky residue and the pain, then shook his head. “What are you thinking?” he hissed. “Go home!”

“No!” Padme said. “When I woke up, I flashed--Dr. Zarnow has been working with North Korea. He faked his death to throw you and Kenobi off the scent.”

“So he could take you and sell you to the highest bidder!” Anakin said angrily, glaring at Padme. “And so you came running after me?”

Padme glowered back at him. “I had to! You were in trouble!”

God, her desire to protect people was going to get her killed!

“I can take care of myself,” he said firmly. “Before Zarnow or anyone else shows you, you’re going back to the car. That’s an order, Padme.”

“Good thing I don’t take orders from you!” Padme said. A sound from outside made them both look in that direction, then Padme gave him an apologetic look. She plastered the duct tape back over his mouth before he could say anything more.

It was wrong to be . . . a little bit impressed, right? To admire how strong and determined she was, even when she was doing incredibly idiotic things?

She looked around and found a rusty crowbar, then hurried over to one side of the door, crouching in the shadows. He could see her readying the crowbar, even as he mentally tried to tell her to run, to get out of here.

And then Kenobi stepped through the door and Padme lifted her weapon to strike, only to stop just in time. “Kenobi!” she cried.

“Yes, yes, it’s me,” he said, holstering his gun. “C’mon. I’ve got Zarnow locked up in the car. We gotta get out of here.”

Kenobi showed no problem with yanking the duct tape off Anakin’s mouth. The older man smirked at him. “Nice job, bein’ bait.”

Anakin shook his head. “Thanks, I guess. How did you find me in the first place?”

“Trackers in the souffle,” Kenobi said. He reached up, wrapping his hands around the chains. “On three.”

Together, they pulled the chains free and within a few moments, they were all in Kenobi’s SUV, Zarnow unconscious, bound and gagged in the back seat.

Rubbing a hand over his face, Anakin looked back at Padme. “Are you all right?”

She nodded. “I’m fine. Kenobi found me, and then we found you. He took care of Zarnow while I looked for you.”

“I can’t believe you brought her with you,” Anakin grumbled to Kenobi.

“And leave her passed out in the courtyard? She woke up in the car on the way,” Kenobi grumbled right back. “Not my fault she’s got a scary-fast recovery period for such a little shrimp.”

“I’m right here, you know,” Padme said in annoyance.

Anakin turned in his seat to really look at her. “Yes, you are. But it was luck alone that allowed everything to work out. If this arrangement is going to continue, you have to listen to Kenobi and I.”

Padme’s eyes flashed. “Or you could teach me how to take care of myself.”

What? There was no way Padme could defend herself. She was so small, so soft . . .

“It’s not the worst idea,” Kenobi said.

“Kenobi!” Anakin said in shock, staring at the NSA agent. “You can’t be serious.”

“And why can’t he be serious?” Padme asked, sounding hurt. “No one would expect me to know what to do in a fight.”

Kenobi nodded as he parked outside the apartment complex. “She’s right. Being a damsel in distress only works in fairy tales.” He looked back at Padme. “We won’t go easy on you.”

She lifted her chin, her jaw set. “Give me your worst.”

“I haven’t agreed to this!” Anakin protested. “And I doubt Yoda will agree, either.”

“Then we won’t tell him,” Kenobi said smugly. “C’mon, Skywalker--afraid that the girl will kick your ass?”

Anakin grimaced. He could care less about Padme, or any woman, beating him in a fight. But Padme . . . she wasn’t cut out for this. She was normal, a civilian. She shouldn’t have to defend her life with punches and kicks.

But then he looked at her. At the hope in her eyes, at the courage in her face and body. And he knew he couldn’t stand in her way.

He had a feeling he would never be able to tell her no.

It was another strange, unique feeling that Padme brought out in him.

With a sigh, Anakin nodded. “All right.”

Padme’s face lit up with one of those smiles he would kill to get. “Thank you! Thank you!”

“All right,” Kenobi interjected. “Get inside. It’s late. See you tomorrow, Amidala.”

She gave them both another bright smile before hopping out of the car and hurrying into her apartment.

“This isn’t the right thing to do,” Anakin said quietly.

“It isn’t the right thing for you,” Kenobi corrected. “But then, it doesn’t matter what either of us want--it’s about what she wants,” he said.

And Anakin couldn’t argue with Kenobi on that.

He would do everything in his power to give Padme what she wanted. No matter what it was--he wanted to give her everything.

Even if it broke his heart to do so.

End.

#anidalaweek2020 #anidala #star wars #chuck #nbchuck #padme amidala #anakin skywalker #obi-wan kenobi

26 notes · View notes

lilydalexf · 3 years

Photo

Old School X is a project interviewing X-Files fanfic authors who were posting fic during the original run of the show. New interviews are posted every Tuesday.

Interview with Rachel Nobel / Rae Lynn

Rachel Nobel, aka Rae Lynn, has 2 fics at Gossamer, but she’s written many more X-Files stories than that. You can also find fics by her at AO3 and various other archives. She’s one of the rare, special authors who’s posted numerous fic during the show’s original run and again in recent years. Big thanks to Rachel for doing this interview.

Does it surprise you that people are still interested in reading your X-Files fanfics and others that were posted during the original run of the show (1993-2002)? Absolutely. I joined a Facebook group for fanfic writers where someone recognized my name and asked about some of my stories that have disappeared from the Internet, and I almost fell off my chair. On the other hand, I go back and read original-run fanfic all the time - the Wayback Machine is my best friend for all the late great fanfic archives. Like fine wines, they get better with age! What do you think of when you think about your X-Files fandom experience? What did you take away from it? I was fairly young during the peak of the fandom - I was only 12 when I started watching the show and discovered the fandom online. A few years ago, right around the time we learned the revival was coming, I wrote an essay I called "How 'The X-Files' defined my adolescence," in which I wrote: "If you think about it, 'The X-Files' is a lot like adolescence: You start out thinking it's going to be a little hokey, NBD, and then you end up in its thrall, captivated and occasionally hugely let down. A lot of people behave strangely, and no one gets out unscathed. Mulder, in his own weird way, is the perfect mirror for an adolescent: He doesn't fit in; his life careens between being utterly consequential to the fate of the known universe and being completely pointless; he's socially awkward and can't quite nail it down with the girl of his dreams."

So for me, the fandom is inextricably bound up with adolescence, that feeling of vacillating between desperate loneliness and being on the verge of something enormously significant. Take romance: I was a bit of a late bloomer, and when all my friends were exploring their first relationships I was watching Mulder and Scully navigate this beautiful, complicated, soulful relationship without ever even kissing. That was deeply affecting for me as a teen.

Social media didn't really exist during the show's original run. How were you most involved with the X-Files online (atxc, message board, email mailing list, etc.)? I started out on mailing lists - there was an EMXC mailing list and one that I think was called X-Angst. [Lilydale note: There was a mailing list called XAngst Anonymous.] This was back at the dawn of the Internet when I only had 10 hours of AOL access a month, and I remember using what AOL called a "FlashSession" to log on, download all the fanfic from the mailing list and log off to read it. I vividly remember the excitement of watching all that new fanfic flood my inbox! Later on I was on atxc. During the long summer between "Gethsemane" and "Redux," it felt like fanfic was at its peak. There was a group of about a dozen women who got together (virtually) to discuss a work in progress by Lydia Bower called "Primal Sympathy." We called ourselves the "Primal Screamers," and we had our own website with fanfic recommendations and other discussions (it cracked me up to locate us as an entry on Fanlore.org). I was still in high school at the time and I was the youngest member; I felt like I had been accepted into a cool underground club. I worshipped these women, who were fanfic writers themselves. They taught me everything I knew about how to be a decent, respectful, enthusiastic consumer and writer of fanfic and fandom. [Lilydale note: I’ve talked enthusiastically about the Primal Screamers here before, including their fanfic primer.] What did you take away from your experience with X-Files fic or with the fandom in general? In the '90s, I would have been embarrassed to tell anyone I read fanfic, let alone that I was writing it. Now, I look back on it and realize how talented and smart and passionate we all were. It's something to be proud of. What was it that got you hooked on the X-Files as a show? The first episode I ever saw was "Shadows," which was on in reruns between the second and third seasons. I don't think "Shadows" is an episode that anyone today would consider thematically significant, but something about seeing those office supplies float spookily through the air - it wasn't like anything I had seen on television, and I wanted in. What got you involved with X-Files fanfic? I've always been a person who, when I am interested in something, seeks to learn more about it. So I guess I got online as a 12-year-old with this new interest and discovered fanfic. It was thrilling to find out that so many talented people were taking characters I loved and bringing them to life for me. When the screen faded to black each week and I wondered, "That's it? What next?", fanfic was always there to fill in the blanks and take Mulder and Scully to the next level. As a teenager, I was self-indulgent enough to think I had something to contribute, too. Most of what I wrote in the '90s would today make me cringe. I remember literally paging through the dictionary in search of erudite words I thought Mulder and Scully would say! But occasionally I'll feel brave enough to read an old story and I feel encouraged to see a spark: a turn of phrase or a fragment of dialogue that I still feel proud of. I write professionally now, but I've never written fiction that isn't X-Files fiction, so it's something that has really allowed me to hone my creative juices in a different way. What is your relationship like now to X-Files fandom? Sometimes I feel like the Statler and Waldorf of the fandom, like I'm sitting up in the balcony grousing "Back in my day...!" Because the fandom is remarkably robust, and I've gotten involved with it to an extent on Twitter and AO3, and now all these young whippersnappers idolize Mulder and Scully just as much if not more as I ever did! Were you involved with any fandoms after the X-Files? If so, what was it like compared to X-Files? Not really, no. I've of course consumed a lot of media since The X-Files that I wanted to discuss with others - I'm a huge "Harry Potter" nerd, and I was outraged when Netflix canceled "The OA" - but strangely I've never had the urge to read or write fanfic about anything other than "The X-Files." Do you ever still watch The X-Files or think about Mulder and Scully? Every Thursday night! I watch a chosen episode with a group of fans on Twitter and tweet about it - #tbtXFiles. That's great fun. There are episodes I've seen dozens of times over the years and episodes I think I only ever watched once, and it's always enlightening to watch them again with a certain critical eye. When I was a fan during the original run, I really idolized Mulder; I loved episodes where we saw him in all his cracked genius glory. Scully was a trailblazer of a character, of course, but I think the fandom has evolved over the years to give Scully her due. Do you ever still read X-Files fic? Fic in another fandom? I was fairly stunned when the revival came around and I realized that people were still writing X-Files fic, and that a lot of it was so good. So yes, I do read fic on Archive of Our Own. But my heart is always with the early days of fanfic. In the revival when Mulder says "I've always wondered how this was going to end" - that felt to me almost like a love letter to fanfic authors who had been trying to answer that question for 25 years. Surprisingly, I've never had the urge to read fic in another fandom. Every time I try, it just feels like I'm cheating on Mulder and Scully. Do you have any favorite X-Files fanfic stories or authors? My favorite author back in the day was Kipler. Her stories were just like real episodes of the show I could vividly imagine in my mind. I adore syntax6, particularly "20" and "The Birthday Stories," because of the way she perfectly and poignantly captures vignettes that span the entire series. Another favorite is Dawn and her "Blood Ties" series - I started out as a "NoRomo," and Dawn was one of the authors who made me believe Mulder and Scully could have a romantic relationship that really worked. And I always had a soft spot for Profiler!Mulder stories, so to this day I mourn the unfinished state of the great Kronos fic "Ascent to Hell." One fic I always come back to that captures profiling Mulder really well is "Domination of Lies," by cslatton. And then there are stories that I consider classics: "Corpse" by Livengoo, "Oklahoma" by Amperage and Livengoo, the "Revelations" and "All Hallow's Eve" series by Windsinger. What is your favorite of your own fics, X-Files and/or otherwise? I have a soft spot for a story I wrote called "Human Credential." I was attempting, a quarter-century after the first season of the show, to set a story in the very early days of the partnership (which these days is one of my favorite kinds of fanfic to read), and I felt like I nailed it. Do you think you'll ever write another X-Files story? Or dust off and post an oldie that for whatever reason never made it online? I have been doing both of these, as a matter of fact! Or in my case, they are oldies that made it online but vanished when Geocities went belly-up, for example, that I sometimes go back to and reshape. Do you still write fic now? Or other creative work? As the swallows return to Capistrano, I seem to always return to writing fic at periods of transition in my life. The first time I "retired" from fanfic, I wasn't even in college yet! If one can be nostalgic at 21 years old for something one gave up at 17, I was nostalgic for fanfic, and I picked it back up again in grad school. Then I became a teacher and a wife and a mom and years passed, and the revival seduced me back into it again. But the vast majority of fanfic I've written is firmly planted in the first seven seasons of the show - poor Mulder and Scully never seem to get to grow up in my stories. What's the story behind your pen name? I wrote under a lot of pen names over the years! When I first started writing fanfic, no one knew anything about Internet safety and it didn't occur to me that it wasn't wise to use my real name. There was a period when I would have been mortified if anyone discovered my stories under my real name - now, at least I can write it off as a youthful indulgence! When I finally grew into a more mature writer, I started using the name Rae Lynn, which is almost-but-not-quite my real first and middle names. Do your friends and family know about your fic and, if so, what have been their reactions? As far as I know, unless my friends and acquaintances have done some sleuthing, only my husband knows I still write fanfic. And he's never read it, though he's kind enough to give me a glazed-eyes indulgent smile if I ever talk about it. Is there a place online (tumblr, twitter, AO3, etc.) where people can find you and/or your stories now? I am xraelynn on AO3! I have about a dozen stories there - some of them I wrote 15 years ago and some of them are brand spanking new. Is there anything else you'd like to share with fans of X-Files fic?

Fanfic is a true labor of love. Fanfic authors don't write fanfic for money or fame; they do it because they love it. Sites like AO3 and Tumblr have made it so much easier to show your appreciation to writers (::gruff reminiscing voice:: back in my day, you had to send them an email, and now you can just click the "kudos" button!). I can only speak for myself, but I really thrive on that feedback - otherwise I'm just Mulder in his cramped hovel of a home office waiting for Scully to nag me to shave my beard. Every so often I think about the fact that there is so much high-quality writing about these characters I've loved for decades just available on the Internet for free and it feels like a true gift.

(Posted by Lilydale on May 4, 2021)

#old school x #xfiles fanfic #xf fanfic #xf fanfic author interviews #rachel nobel #rae lynn

34 notes · View notes

artificialqueens · 4 years

Text

Lemon's Misadventures in Dating, Chapter 5 (Lemon x the world) - Mermelada

A/n: Hej hej hej! I’m very late in posting this to AQ after Ao3, so please forgive me! I hope you all like *~* filler chapters *~* because there’s a couple of them coming up! I’ve already written the next couple of chapters, but PLEEEAAASSSEE let me know if you have any requests or suggestions! Namely, should I attempt to write smut or not lol! Thank you again for all your lovely words about the fic, I love you all massively <3 <3

Having not slept in her own bed for the last two nights, Lemon decided to take a well-earned evening for herself, partly because she was running out of excuses for her parents as to why she’d been out so much lately, and partly to give the various bruises and bite-marks on her body time to heal. With Gus the dog snuggled into her side, she waited for The Sims to load on her laptop as Chromatica blared from her phone. She pressed on its screen to check the time, and saw she had received a new text message.

Dr Rita <3 [16:45] “I hope you survived your walk of shame, mon petit citron! Thank you again for a great night and day :-) x”

Rita was amazing. She was the epitome of a dark horse: she was so kind and patient with Lemon during her panic crisis, as she had so adorably put it, and made her feel all the safety and love she needed all morning. Yet not long afterwards, after some lazy chatter which had made Lemon inexplicably horny, she was once again fucking her to within an inch of her life. Speaking two languages was far from the only thing she could do with her mouth. They had even gone for lunch together after round 2 – and round 2.5 in the shower – before reluctantly parting as Rita prepared for her nightshift at the hospital. It was over lunch where they both agreed that pursuing anything serious wouldn’t be worth it, but they would definitely like to work on a friendship. Lemon had, however, still managed to charm her way into borrowing a hoodie from the older woman, both of them secretly pleased that it gave them a reason to hang out again. She quickly sent off a reply, thanking her once again for her help that morning and wishing her luck for the long night ahead in kidneyland with her love interest from the ward.

Looking back to her laptop, the loading bar appeared to have frozen. Rolling her eyes, she held down the device’s power button to restart it. The snoring lump beside her clearly wasn’t going to entertain her as she waited, so she bit the bullet and opened up her new favourite app.

She grinned upon seeing that her most recent message was from Kyne.

[16:20] Remember I told you about my roommate who works in a porn studio lol? She came home just now with a box of those custard tarts you were telling me about, they are so good!!! 🤤 You really do have the best taste 😘

That’s a lot to unpack, she laughed to herself, she’s persistent, fair play to her! Plus it turns out she actually WAS listening! I just hope they were clean… I’ll reply later. Now what about Kiara, eh Gus-bus? She was nice, let’s see what she’s said!

[09:12] How was the party? 🙂 I hope it was tudo bem!!

Lemon and Kiara had continued chatting yesterday until Lemon had to leave for her date, a ‘family party’ being the first reasonable sounding thing that came to mind when having to end their conversation. She hated lying, she really did, but how acceptable was it really to tell one Tinder-match that you were going on a date with another Tinder-match?

[17:03] It went well, merci! But I was too hungover to function all day lol 🤯

[17:03] How has your day been? 😊

Right, who’s next? Two new matches and a message from Boa! Let’s see what she has to say about me spamming her before she blocks me. Clicking on the girl’s message from last night, however, Lemon was pleasantly surprised that her texting blunder wasn’t the end of her chances.

[20:55] Lololololololololol no YOU’RE fun!!!!

[20:55] Clock the good grammar

[20:55] So what’s a girl like you doing on an app like this?

[20:56] 🍆🍆🍆

Now that was a question Lemon still occasionally asked herself, and she didn’t even know if she had an answer. So the best she could do was be honest.

[17:07] Well I’m recently single so I’m just seeing what happens, really, a few dates here and there to get me back on my feet again! To quote the great Kelly Rowland, I am down for whatever 😉

[17:07] How about you?

She had, once again, been well and truly sucked into the Tinder vortex. Closing her laptop and placing it on her bedside table, she nuzzled her face into Gus’s head, the dog making no effort at all to reciprocate the sudden attention. Squishing a kiss to his head, she turned back to the app, and her new matches: Scarlett and Ilona. They had both matched at around the same time, making their chat windows sit neatly at the bottom of Lemon’s screen. Sending them both standard “Hey gorge! What’s up? 😊” messages, she went back to swiping through profiles, although within less than a minute, a reply from Scarlett flashed at the top of her screen.

[17:13] Hey gorge! I’m doing much better now that I’m speaking to you 😉

[17:14] What’s up with you?

A bit of enthusiasm goes a long way, she smiled, maybe Scarlett is the one? Or maybe she’s too into me and I should be worried? Surely not!

[17:15] I’m glad I can help! I’m pretty good thanks, having a lazy night in tonight! Are you doing anything fun?

Lemon debated giving the girl more details of her night in, but she was worried about what she might think… She’s covered in tattoos and eats fire, for god’s sake, there is no way she likes Lady Gaga or The Sims. She probably listens to death metal and drives a motorbike and has a pet snake, I could never compete!

Fortunately, Scarlett was charming and very easy to talk to, and the two exchanged details - both mundane and exciting - through quickly typed messages. She learned that the other blonde was a lawyer, but had gone to circus school at weekends throughout university - which explained a lot - and was currently in an open relationship with her girlfriend. Lemon had never been ‘the other woman’ before, but as long as she wasn’t hurting anyone, surely it’s not that bad! Eventually, though, one message made Lemon’s anxiety start to creep in again.

[17:57] So I know this probably seems WAY too fast, so don’t worry if you don’t want to

Time seemed to stand still between this message and the next one. What does she want to do that’s fast? Sex? That’s not that big a deal, it must be more than that. Unless she’s into super kinky shit, which wouldn’t surprise me, does she want to piss on me? Does she want her girlfriend to piss on me? Does she want me to be her fake girlfriend at her sister’s wedding where we have to share a bed before eventually realising we loved each other all along? Finally, right on cue, the follow-up arrived.

[17:59] It’s my birthday on Saturday and I’m having a party at my house before heading out on the town, it’ll hopefully just be a few friends, and it would be cool if you could make it 🥳

[18:00] You can bring a friend if you want! But again no pressure!!

Wow, that wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought. She started blankly at her phone, letting her heart rate settle back down to its normal speed. A party, cool. I can do that!

[18:02] You had me worried for a second there! But that sounds fun, I’ll be there! 😀

Exiting the app, she hastily composed a message to Jan. Jan loved parties, she had such a natural charisma which she exuded effortlessly whenever she entered a room. She was able to chat to anyone about anything, and Lemon was always responsible for getting her out of tricky situations on nights out where her natural friendliness had been mistaken for something else. She would be the perfect person to deflect any potential awkwardness that may occur at a Tinder-date-she’d-never-met-before’s birthday party. As she awaited Jan’s reply (Please please please say yes, Jan, you’re my only hope!), she checked on the app again, swiping through countless samey-looking profiles. Until she reached one that she’d definitely seen before.

Priyanka, 29

Within 10 miles

I already swiped for this girl, look! There’s her in her lengha, there she’s at pride… Oh she has new pictures now, how weird! Priyanka did indeed have an additional two photos on her profile which Lemon hadn’t seen before: a professional-looking black and white image of her face and torso, showing her dark waves flowing down her shoulders, and her eyes directly piercing Lemon’s soul; and finally, a picture of the dark-skinned girl wearing a blonde wig, cowboy hat, and appearing to be screaming into a microphone… I do like a Hannah Montana fantasy, get it girl!

Just like before, Lemon swiped Priyanka’s profile to the right, but unlike last time, the notification she’d been hoping for appeared straight away.

Congratulations! You have matched with Priyanka!

Buoyed by the excitement of matching with somebody so quickly - and someone so gorgeous - Lemon jumped straight off the bed and started dancing, ‘Rain on Me’ blaring beside her for the third time that evening. Even Gus seemed to pick up on the change of energy, running up and down the bed, wagging his tail merrily. As the pair danced, the familiar ‘ding’ of a new notification sounded through the room. And again.

Briefly pausing to pick up her phone, she saw the two messages she had received. Firstly, from Kiara.

[18:12] Unnggghhh work today was the worst, but I found a really cute Portuguese café on my walk home! I have eaten so many natas lol. We could go sometime if you want to? 🙂

Before replying (yes, obviously… I didn’t download Duolingo yesterday for nothing!), she went to check on the second message, which was from her recent match, Ilona.

[18:12] See you on Saturday bitch! xox

Well that seems ominous.

#rpdr fanfiction #drcan #mermelada #lemon #rita baga #kyne #kiara #bitch on arrival #scarlett bobo #ilona verley #priyanka #submission #lmid #can1

6 notes · View notes