#every fic with this concept specifically is top tier

[fanfic-gremlin-ft-trauma]

the boys are eepy :)

[punkypiscesell-writes]

when it comes without a warning - ch. 2

previous chapter

Javier Peña x plus size f! reader

summary: first dates and revelations.

tags (updated after each chapter): fake dating AU, strangers to lovers, romcom, 90’s vibes, angst, small town dynamics, casual sexism, slow burn, pining, insecurities, drinking, smoking, food related descriptions, mentions of family, innocent touching, flirting. The picture in the header is just for the visual and isn't an indication of the reader's skin color. Not beta read.

word count: 22k

notes: Hello and happy spring!! Firstly, thank you if you’re keeping up with this fic even after my inactivity here. It means the world to me. If you’re following this fic and have followed me bc of it, have reblogged the previous chapters, or have commented, please know I’ve seen your lovely messages and reactions. My ADHD has been ADHD'ing pretty hard these past couple of months and I've been dealing with a lot of overwhelming feelings. Even though I haven't answered you personally yet, just know that I’ve seen your feedback and I appreciate every single one you who has been reading this story so far. I will eventually answer you all. Thank you for the patience and I hope you'll enjoy this extra long chapter <3

dividers by cafekitsune

The knot under your shoulder blade throbs as you listen to Abigail speak. She has a thick folder open against her thighs, the front cover reading ‘wedding inspiration’ written in swoopy cursive. There’s everything from pictures to pieces of fabrics and laces, writing here and there, post-it notes in different neon colors, and paint sample cards glued on the pages to indicate the theme for each section.

The different tabs on the edges of different pages are already worn out, telling you that this folder isn’t new but well-loved and thoughtfully collected. She flips through each spread effortlessly, going back to the tabs to find a specific flower and table setting style that should inspire you to create a cake fitting for whatever she wants.

Your pen presses against the notebook in your own lap, ‘Abigail and Noah’s wedding’ written neatly on the top of the page. You already drew a couple of drawings for possible cake designs and decorations after Abigail showed you pictures of buttercream roses and tall and wide five-tier wedding cakes.

“They’re just for inspiration, focus on the details here,” she traced her finger against the glossy, thick paper and you looked at the white frosting and the style the ribbons had been piped on the cake.

Under the pictures in your notebook, you’ve written down questions about the flavors and wishes they have for the cake. After all, it’s an important part of the reception. So far, you’ve managed to figure out the general style and some color options yet haven’t found answers to any of the other questions you have asked Abigail. She’s so excited about the possibilities that it’s almost overwhelming to go through them all.

“There was this lemon and raspberry tart,” she starts, her wistful eyes looking towards the patio doors.  “We had it when we were in Laredo. Noah had some business meetings there and I wanted to join him.” She smiles at you, her thoughts in that moment between her and her future husband. “It was like biting into a cloud. It was so light, but creamy and just melted in my mouth. The lemon was so tart in the custard, it was almost like a spritz of fresh lemon juice that just burst with flavors when I took a bite. And the raspberries were as fresh as they come. They were sweet and gentle, almost soft in how they tasted.” She opens a new page from her binder and shows you pictures of different types of lemon and raspberry tarts. She pushes it towards you for you to see all kinds of desserts with the same concept. Your mouth waters even thinking about the tart she’s describing.

“You know, when I sat with him and we shared that tart, I think it was just a normal workday too, nothing special, and suddenly I knew that I could marry him. We had been together for a couple of years by then, but I had never really seen him as husband material.” Abigail looks almost incredulous as she tells you how she felt in that moment. “I had always imagined marrying someone who isn’t like Noah and suddenly I just kinda knew I could marry him too. That he is someone who I could imagine the rest of my life with.” There’s a bittersweet undertone in her words, unbelieving how she came to understand her feelings and wants for her future. Just a random day like any other and there Abigail was having dessert with her boyfriend and everything changed. You would probably reminisce at that time the same way she does.

 You write down a short description for the flavors and why they’re important.

Abigail’s mom comes back into the wood toned living room that is now tinted gray. It’s one of those cooler, humid days when rain falls steadily from the sky. She’s carrying a hefty pile of bridal magazines in her arms and her footsteps write a rhythm for the constant downpour that hums against the roof.

“Okay, so,” Abigail begins with her excited voice that reminds you of blowing bubblegum bubbles and popping them against your lips.  Your focus shifts back to her immediately. “You know how much I love peppermint, Noah loves oranges and we’re both obsessed with that chocolate cake you sell every Christmas time?” Abigail demands you answer her rhetorical question with a nod that mirrors hers. “We want an orange peppermint chocolate cake!” Abigail’s sweet smile is a little too sweet considering what you just heard.

The flavor combinations draw all the moisture from your mouth and sour in the back of your tongue. Her eyes get that Abigail-like innocence in them again, bordering on forcing you to accept her suggestion without questions. The knot in your upper back burns and your knowledge is screaming at you to speak up.

“I haven’t heard anyone using peppermint and orange together with chocolate before.” Abigail’s face drops immediately. “Maybe I could find a way to combine them in the decorations? Fresh mint leaves and candied orange would look beautiful together. The cake could still be chocolate. The color options are great too, we can use something natural, white chocolate, or even dark chocolate. It’s also easy to use colorings to make it exactly as you wish.” Your voice is soft as you try to gently let her down and urge her to find a more palatable cake.

“We’d appreciate if something would also taste like orange and peppermint, we don’t want a cake that is like cardboard after all,” she giggles and you smile with her, unsure about why you’re smiling after hearing her backhanded remark. Does she think your cakes taste like cardboard? You can’t fixate on that right now.

How on earth are you going to make it all work if she insists on this one specific cake? Abigail’s mom flips through the pages of one of the bridal magazines with carton thick covers. She’s looking for something, trying to decipher the writing on post-it notes riddling the edges of the pages.

You turn your focus on the notebook in your lap. You don’t want to write the words down under each other, but you do; peppermint, orange, chocolate. Maybe you just have to follow her wishes and make a cake like any other. Let her taste what it’s all like together. Or maybe, just maybe, you’ll make the flavors work like never before.

“I could make orange chocolate and peppermint chocolate cakes. They’d look identical of course, but that way the flavor profiles will be a bit more agreeable, and they might also work better together that way.” You turn your notebook to Abigail and quickly draw a two-tier cake, separated by arrows that point to the words you’ve scribbled down.

“The problem is that we want a three-tier cake and all of them have to be similar by looks and how they taste.” There’s an edge in Abigail’s tone.

“Sweetheart,” her mom sounds calm. Her presence is like a balm not only for the bride’s stress but also for the static in the air between you and your longtime friend. You didn’t think she was really listening to your conversation, only preoccupied by the magazines, as she opens a new one on a spread with aesthetically pleasing pictures of table settings.

“She has been baking cakes for years now, you have to trust her when she says something doesn’t work. You want the day to be perfect, don’t you, pumpkin?” She brushes her daughter’s hair behind her ear. Abigail sighs, and it draws all tension out from her shoulders.

“Then let her come up with the cake. You’ve given her a lot of inspiration already.” Abigail’s mom nods at you in a way that reminds you of your own mom. When she’d know something everyone else also knew, but she still managed to make it seem like a secret that only you had the privilege of realizing.

“Yeah, okay, you’re right. Professionally, what do you think could work then?” Abigail softens. Her mom smiles and gets back to the magazine in her hands.  

“You said something about cream being one of the main colors?” She hums in agreement. “What if the cakes had white chocolate butter cream? I could look into making a Swiss meringue buttercream as well if you’re not into the idea of white chocolate, and the decorations could include orange slices in some form and mint leaves?” The ideas come to you fast, a steady stream of possibilities.

“It could also be a dark chocolate cake with a bourbon and orange syrup that could highlight the orange flavor?” You have to write it down. Abigail reaches for something on the table, a post-it note and a pen, to write your suggestions down into her folder.

“If you really want the cakes to taste like oranges and peppermint and chocolate, I will try to make it work but I can’t make any promises of it working out well. For the tasting I’ll make a few different versions that you can choose from.” Saying it all out loud starts a checklist in your head that you try to write down as fast as possible, in an effort to not forget anything.

The few things you wrote about the memory Abigail shared earlier peeks out under your thumb when you’re about to turn the page. “You didn’t ask for it, but can I make something with lemon and raspberries?” You suggest. Abigail’s mom perks up immediately.

“You caught onto the story too, huh?” She winks at you. Another secret between the two of you, just like you used to have with your own mom.

“The dessert story?” Abigail almost rolls her eyes. “It’s so boring, there’s no sparks or excitement, just a boring realization!”

“Isn’t that what’s the exciting part? That you found out your true feelings for Noah in such a mundane moment?” You ask her, smile on your lips, surprised to hear her dismiss the special moment.

“I guess?” She surrenders with a shrug and matches your smile. She fills her words with emptiness. “What would you make from lemons and raspberries?”

You draw Abigail in by giving her the details of gentle vanilla and tart, but sweet lemon, with fresh raspberries that would round out the flavors and bring everything together. You try to keep her earlier wish in mind, but the more you talk about the second option and the emotional connection the ingredients have, the more excited you get about baking a tester cake with the ingredients. Maybe you imagine it all, but Abigail doesn’t seem to hate your ideas. On the contrary.

Her mom brings you homemade lemon and orange lemonade after a few hours of throwing ideas around, with chocolate chip cookies that you brought from the bakery. Abigail grimaces when the sweet citrus and buttery chocolate crumble together in her mouth.

“If chocolate is like this with lemon and orange, I’m not sure if I want it after all.” You all laugh. The joke wrote itself. You try not to smile too wide to hide the satisfaction her reaction gives you. You’ll follow Abigail’s wishes, but maybe your job as a professional baker isn’t going to be as difficult when you try to convince your customer which flavors work together and which don’t.

After hours of planning, the knot under your shoulder blade is spreading its flames to the back of your neck and base of your skull. Your notebook is thick with inspirational pictures and notes, better indicating what you’re asked to do than what you could’ve illustrated with your blue ballpoint pen. Your calendar has all the important dates and deadlines marked down, now you just have to write them down into the order schedule too.

Standing up from the too soft couch makes you roll your shoulders back when you say goodbye to Abigail’s mom. The tightly wound muscles complain harder and burn with blood flowing through them. 

“I heard a crazy rumor the other day,” Abigail laughs out of nowhere as she walks you to the door. You hand her your shoulder bag while you put on your jean jacket. It’s dry, at least, after the rain colored the light blue denim dark on the shoulders.

The rain hasn’t eased up. It was drizzling lightly early in the morning when you got to the bakery, and got heavier when you left Lili by herself, and you made the drive to come meet Abigail. It has turned into white noise in your ears over the hours. You’re really not looking forward to driving in rain when the roads have a layer of water on them.

“Hmmm?” You swap the slippers Abigail’s mom borrowed for you to the flat-bottomed sneakers you had on when you got here.

“That…” Abigail laughs again, harder like she just told you a hilarious story you should already know about. “That there’s something between you and Javier Peña.” Her laugh is still friendly, a little giggly, but there’s a layer of forcefulness and hardness that she wouldn’t normally have if she actually thought something was funny.

You can’t help the smile that also spreads on your face. Nerves start to sizzle in your belly, bubbling deep and rising steadily towards your chest where it spreads and makes you forget about the pain in your shoulder. You fix your necklace, run the small links between your fingers to make sure it’s not snatched on anything.

“Where did you hear that?”

“Lili saw you two getting cozy, at your bakery no less!” Now you’re both laughing. The tickles of butterflies lift the sound easily through your vocal cords, effortlessly twining with Abigail’s high-strung snickering.

It worked. You reach for your bag which she happily gives you while you avoid her searching eyes. The floor is much more comforting of a companion. You’re not sure what Lili has told people. How Abigail worded it though, the interaction might’ve caught some extra legs along the way. 

“Well?” Abigail pushes. Her mouth is tight and her brows high up. She has always been bad at hiding her impatience.

When you’ve been with her, the demanding tone directed at someone else, she has always come off as powerful and straightforward, someone who gets answers and things done. But now that you’re at the receiving end of her insistence, she is more intimidating than anything else, even with a smile on her face.

“Well, we’re going out this weekend, it’s not a big deal.” You remember every word from your unwritten script you prepared in case Abigail asks you about Javier. Even with your friend waiting for you to tell her more, the smile on your face isn’t hard to keep intact. Your cheeks start to ache from it.

“What do you mean you’re going out? Like on a date?” You didn’t prepare for this. You had only planned to tell her about how Javier had asked you out and Lili had seen something private. Abigail isn’t privy to anything you had planned with Javier.

How you told him when people would be most likely to get baked goods from you. Or how he made sure to walk in at the peak of morning rush hour and stand in line. You had prepared a small order for him to pick up, some breadcrumbs Chucho had asked for a while ago and a couple of cream puffs, with salted caramel pastry cream. You were interested to hear what Chucho thought of the new version of his favorite pastry.

“Trust me, it’ll get people talking,” Javier assured you on the phone the night before, when you finessed the scheme. It was silly, like you were part of a play, and you were the only two actors who knew about it.

He came in the bakery at the right time, just as you had planned. What you didn’t expect was the shit eating grin on his face and the head nods at people looking at him, greeting each with a soft “mornin’”.

He stood in line with his freshly groomed mustache, in a red plaid button-up shirt that was a little heavier than his usual t-shirts. He stood tall, shoulders squared, chin proudly high and his aviators on his eyes. You waited impatiently in the bakery, the little bag of breadcrumbs in your hand and the small box of cream puffs in the other.

Lili called for your name, and you were in the shop before she could say anything else. You met him at the register. Javier took his sunglasses and looped them on his shirt. There was easiness in his eyes and a rumbling coffee tinted good morning on his lips.

The secret between you two made you smile. He answered it by taking a piece of paper from the back pocket of his jeans, a pen from a little cup on the counter, and wrote something on it. Lili followed the interaction like she was looking at zoo animals, her neck stretched to catch a glimpse of his note and a bug-eyed stare when he paid, left a generous tip, and held the piece of paper between his index and middle fingers like a cigarette, taking the order from you with the rest of his hand.

Your fingertips brushed against his when you took the note. His brows jerked up when you held your hand still against his for a second longer than he had anticipated. The seed was already planted. Lili was intrigued. There was no harm in showing her, and the people behind Javier, that it wasn’t just any note. It held meaning.

“See you Friday,” slipped from his mouth. The bakery stood still for a breath and a second after that and then he was out the door. The sun was on his hair, sticking to the brown that curled on his temples and the back of his neck, right above the neckline of his shirt.

“I told you,” the note read. It’s still in your jeans’ back pocket even though he gave it to you a few days ago. You just haven’t had the chance or reason to change your jeans. You’ll throw it away when you put them in the laundry anyway.

“Yeah, like on a date,” you answer Abigail a little taken aback. Maybe it was wishful thinking, but you expected even a hint of excitement, maybe some thrilled questions since you going out on a date is such a foreign thing to happen.

“How?” is the only thing she asks. You stare at each other, disbelief on her face while your smile shrinks and gets replaced with confusion that pulls your brows together.

“He asked me out?” You shoulder your bag. This conversation with Abigail is like you’re freefalling, the floor suddenly gone under your feet.

“Out of nowhere? You don’t know him. Have you even met him?”

“We got to talking on New Years, at your engagement party.” Every word sounds like a defense, like you’re building a case for yourself against a ruthless prosecutor.

“But you were supposed to be hanging out with John. You’ve gone out with him too?”

“Oh god no!” You laugh, but Abigail’s question was genuine. “Why would I? He’s an asshole.” You have no remorse saying it out loud.

“Hey, that’s not fair. I know he can come off as a little harsh at first, but you just have to get to know him more.”

“I don’t think so…” you roll your eyes at her, the words huff out with a snort. You try to push past her towards the door, but she grabs your arm. Her fingers press into your bicep.

“Clearly there are things you don’t know about Javier.” There’s urgency in her voice. She looks almost… scared?

“What don’t I know?”

“Javier is… He’s not a good man. I know many women whose hearts he has broken, and I don’t want to see you on that list.” Abigail’s forcefulness dissipates and is replaced with empathy that sweeps across her features.

The arch of her brows is a little too downward, her eyes a little too soft, her mouth a little too sad. Like you’re a child who must be told what to do, who doesn’t understand what’s good for her. Why you get a sense of being pitied by her, you can’t be sure, but it’s burning the nerves away and the bubbles in the pit of your stomach aren’t fun anymore. They’re popping one by one into teeth grinding annoyance.

“Can I make that decision on my own?” Your voice stays even, even with the irritation tightening the back of your jaw and locking it defiantly. Her hand softens against your arm. She swallows, a new type of determination settling in her eyes.

“Javier is a player,” she rushes to reveal, puffing air from her lungs that still has the tart sweetness of lemonade laced through it. “He has a very particular type and none of his relationships have lasted longer than a few months, if that. I’ve also heard that when he was in Colombia, he was sleeping around a lot.” Her words hold weight that she probably doesn’t even understand.

“Okay, so he was in Colombia and he got around… don’t you think it’s a bit weird you’re accusing your fiancé’s good friend of being promiscuous? Why do you even care about that?”

“Oh god no! No, that’s not what I mean! I don’t care who he sleeps with in the future or how many women he has slept with in the past, but I don’t want you to become just a conquest for him.” She shakes her head almost shocked that you’re turning the question on her rather than swallowing what she’s saying without any questions.  

“What did you mean then?”

“I’m saying this because…” Abigail takes another breath, preparing herself for whatever she is about to drop on you. Her cheeks blush and she looks at you straight in the eyes, wide like she’s once again asking you for something and making it sound like it’s your idea.

“I’ve known him for a long time. You know how I and Noah met? Because Noah was his best man at his wedding!” She pauses and waits for you to react. You can only stare at her, speechless by her reveal. “Javier left his bride at the altar, in front of all our families and friends, humiliating her. He didn’t even show up!”

Each word that Abigail shushes from her mouth is full of venom, her anger and unresolved disappointment so clear that they throw you into a church, in the audience as one of those family members who had to bear witness to whatever happened at that wedding.

Abigail urges you to believe her, standing close, her hand still gripping your jean jacket against her palm, hanging onto hope that you understand what she’s saying. That the warning isn’t meaningless and she’s not saying any of this out of nowhere.

“The next thing I know, he’s on his way to Colombia trying to save the world or whatever. You have to know this because you can’t trust him. You’re too nice! You’re not protecting yourself from him so I’m doing it for you. He’s not good news and I think he’s using you.” She breathes deep, a heavy weight visibly drops off her shoulders as she straightens her back, calmness settling over her features.

What the hell are you supposed to do with this information? How on earth can you defend someone who has betrayed someone’s trust by not coming to their own wedding? The burden Abigail sheds from her shoulders now lays harshly on yours, the reality of not knowing Javier at all sinking in. You can’t let that show through, not now when your plan with Javier has barely even taken off. Not when the other option is someone you don’t want to see ever in your life. You have to suck it up and then bring it up with Javier. You’ll either figure this out and ask him to explain himself. Or you’ll tell him you don’t want to be in any more contact with him than what is necessary.

This is exactly the reason why you don’t date. You don’t want to end up in the middle of people’s messes. You don’t want to deal with people’s dirty laundry. You don’t want to deal with hurt feelings or broken promises. Worst of all, you don’t want to be dealing with broken families.

You have enough experience of that of your own, you don’t have to have that from someone on the outside as well. Your body is trying to admit defeat by making yourself small in front of Abigail, who is chipping away at your confidence by standing taller every second that passes.

“What’s he using me for?” You try to gain back some standing in this conversation. Abigail huffs out a breath and throws her hand in the air from your arm.

“Are you serious?” The frustration is so thick in her hushed voice, and in the air, that you could cut it with a knife. Every time she breathes the heavier it is for you to be standing in front of her.

You never expected to be opposite from your friend, stubbornly asking a question that makes you a teenager who is begging to make her own mistakes even when someone is warning her that she’ll only get hurt if she doesn’t open her eyes and take the warning seriously.

“I don’t know,” she speaks too loud. Abigail looks over your shoulder immediately, expecting to hear her mom say something in the living room. “I’m trying to protect you here. If I were you, I wouldn’t trust him. I don’t want to see you wasting your time on someone who doesn’t care about you, at least not in the way you deserve.”

Your jaw twitches and you swallow but your mouth is so dry that it’s almost like your body is rejecting your wishes to get the uncomfortable tightness away from your throat. What a nightmare. You should’ve considered asking Javier if he has any skeletons in the deepest corners of an empty, dark closet.

Being cornered by none other than Abigail of all people isn’t something you want to experience ever again. You never wanted to be on the receiving end of her frustrations but here you are and you’re going to be making a fool of yourself for a man you don’t even know. 

“I don’t need your protection, Abigail.” You clear your throat. “We’re just going out on a date. I’m not marrying the guy. I can handle myself.”

“I’m just worried he’s –“

“I don’t need you to be worried. I’m an adult, I can take care of myself.” Maybe it’s your inexperience of never really having dated anyone or never experienced being in a relationship with anyone. Maybe Abigail is genuinely being protective. You just have a gut feeling that something isn’t adding up here.

No matter how many times she says she’s trying to protect you, you’ve never seen her like this. Abigail is fiercely loyal, you know that. You’ve known that this whole time you’ve been friends. She will defend the closest to her until there’s no one else standing. It’s part of her nature. To care in a way that reassures you’re one of a kind in her life and she won’t leave you on your own.

She has proven that time and time again. Like when you were in college and someone stepped on your feet at a house party. Abigail pushed the guy away, her finger against his chest, making sure everyone in hearing distance heard how the guy didn’t even have the decency to apologize.

Or how she always made sure to tell you how pretty something looked on you when you were insecure about it. A new shirt or a dress that was shorter than your usual dresses. She built your confidence up word by word, like a sister, always standing by you and ready to psych you up until you believed it yourself. Until you were able to psych yourself up as well.

Being against her, against her warning, and trying to stand here on top of the building blocks of confidence that she helped you find, suddenly they’re wobblier than you’d want them to be. You try to keep your shoulders open, your back tall, eye to eye with her.

The more you watch her, see the flustered twist of her mouth, her skin pale and an unexplainable hardness flaming in her eyes, the more you’re convinced she’s not necessarily protecting you. She’s warning you, but not because she’s afraid of you getting hurt. She’s trying to say something. She’s trying to make you see it. But no matter how hard you try to see through the troubled look on her face, no matter how you listen to her, you can’t catch it between her words.

“Where are you going at least?” She finally breaks the tension. It deflates, so do your shoulders while she gathers determination to not make this into a disagreement.

Abigail is still standing in the doorway when you get to your car and shut the door behind you. The rain-streaked windshield distorts her figure, with more drumming against the roof and hood at a steady rhythm. You take a deep breath, and then another before you start your car. As soon as the engine roars to life, Abigail is out of the doorway.

The rain falls heavier when you turn to the road leading back to town, and even harsher when you’re in the middle of nowhere. It forces you to lighten your foot against the gas pedal when your wipers are working overtime, and you still can’t see a thing outside the window.

The car jerks forward and keeps on going until you’re not the one slowing your pace to a crawl. It’s the engine too. A red light blinks on the otherwise dark dashboard warning you of what’s to come. Your hands immediately sweat against the black leather on the wheel when the car tangibly slows down.

You try your best to get it on the side of the road safely before it shuts off. The tires bump down from the asphalt onto the gravel, before driving over the thick grass that only leads into a ditch. You breathe through your mouth as you steer your car to stay on the flat edge even when you’re blinded by the downpour.

You shake your head. This can’t be happening. You listen to the rain beat against the metal cage around you, head empty of any thought that might help you find a solution. The red light on the dashboard… The battery. Of course it would do this on a day when you’re stranded on a lonely road.

It’s an older car, the seller even told you that you might have to check on the battery at some point after driving a specific amount. There are still miles left until that point, yet here you are. Your shoulder complains when you lean your head backwards and close your eyes against the headrest.

Something approaches. The rain gives way to a heavy rumble that suddenly gets closer and closer. You hit the emergency light button on your dashboard and not even five seconds later a massive semi-trailer barrels past you, shaking the car and leaving it in a cloud of water that pillows behind the freight.

You rub your fingers against your eyes, and up towards your hairline. No matter how long you sit here, nothing will change until you do something. Your phone. You rummage through your bag, take out your notebook and your calendar, then your wallet and CD-case for car ride tunes. Your bag is empty, your phone nowhere in sight.

“Fucking shit,” you mutter, seeing your phone on the bakery table. You called the wholesale earlier when you ordered a few different jams. Strawberry, apricot and raspberry. “Fuck!” You hit your head against the steering wheel, bumping your hand against it and setting the horn off. It startles you, like you’re not allowed to wallow in frustration even for a few minutes.

Your options are limited. You can walk to town and get drenched while doing that. You can wait until the rain calms and then start walking. Or you can cross one of the fields to call for a tow truck, risking getting bitten by a snake or something. None of those choices appeal to you.

You close your eyes and lay your head against the steering wheel again. You can only think of the look on Abigail’s face. The worry that honestly looked like she was more annoyed than really worried. If you didn’t have to think about this dating thing at all, there’d be nothing to stress about. If she hadn’t sprung this all up in the first place, you could be burying yourself in work and everyone would be happy.

The rain seems to only get stronger. It’s pouring from a bucket, alienating you on the road, making you an island with no bridges to anyone. You can’t shake Abigail’s story from your mind. How foolish of you to think this wouldn’t kick you in the back at some point.

You haven’t even had a proper conversation with the man yet and here you are, sitting miserable in your car, forced to mull over someone’s life choices based on what you heard from an outsider. There’s only Abigail’s word to believe and you’re still trying to think of possible reasons why Javier ended up leaving his bride at the altar.

The rain waves over you. It quiets and makes you believe it will finally give up when another, heavier wave rolls in and envelopes you in its arms. Through the white noise of your car’s roof being beaten, you hear a motor.

Your side window is streaked with water, the side mirror is covered in a damp haze. The headlights of a car blink through it, approaching in a crawl. At least it won’t splash you like the truck did or swing you off the road and into the ditch that is most likely already full of water.

The car, a pickup truck, drives past. The taillights flash red when the car slows even more and parks in front of you, backing up until it’s only a couple of feet from your bumper. Great. Either they’re going to help you, or it’ll be someone who will only creep you out. The truck though. It looks familiar. The rusty maroon and the blocky white stripe on the side. You’ve seen it in town so at least you’ll most likely know the driver.

The driver’s door opens. You can’t make out who it is through the rain, only a tall, wide frame that jogs towards your door. You recognize Javier’s face only when he’s about to knock on the window. His hair is already dripping. His eyes are squinted even though it doesn’t help much in this downpour. You roll the window down, your head suddenly empty.

“Need a ride?” It’s a quick question. Water pours over his face, sticks to his moustache and trickles into his open mouth. You don’t have to think long. “Take your stuff,” he orders, and you happily comply.

He’s already by his truck when you lock your car doors and rush to the passenger’s side with your bag in your arms. The warning lights blink against the wet ground as your shoes get soaked and through your socks in an instant.

Javier opens the door for you from the inside and you pull it open the rest of the way, falling in with your things in your arms. You pant, from the adrenaline of getting saved from your four wheeled island and rushing to his car as fast as you can. It doesn’t help that suddenly Javier makes your head spin and uncertainty stir your gut when you look at him. The damp of your clothes turns into wetness as the water from the rain seeps through the layers of your jean jacket, your t-shirt, through your jeans, right to your skin and under it.

“Hi,” he sighs, looking at you with a smirk on his lips, even his eyes glinting in the grey of the weather that tries to suck the warmth from the brown.

“Hi,” you breathe out and it relieves some of the tension that stirred in your head.

“You like to hang out here just for fun or…?” He starts the car and gets it going on a crawl. His hands squeeze the steering wheel loosely, almost relaxed, unlike you.

“Yeah, sure. I was having a party with the blinking lights, didn’t you see?” The breathed-out chuckle makes you bite your lip, to keep your smile under control.

“Trust me, I saw. And it looks like that party has ended.” How ironic of him to tell you to trust him. You still smile but tension builds up in your jaw immediately.

“Thanks for stopping, I was kinda losing hope out here.” You try to put on your seat belt, but the clutch doesn’t want to stay in place.

“Happy to help.” He shakes his head slowly, from one side to the next, his eyes flashing on your hands as you battle with the belt. “Let me get that.”

He keeps his focus on the wet road, while pushing your other hand away by just covering yours with his. His thumb presses the loop down. His palm covers your hand easily as you keep the latch in place. His skin is so warm, sucking the cold right out of your bloodstream. The buckle finally clicks into place. He draws his hand back, a quick glance your way as his fingertips accidentally slide against the outside of your hip.

“Thanks.” You don’t want to make it weird. You focus looking out the window and the rain-streaked windshield.

 “Where are you going, the bakery?”

“Well, no, not anymore. I need someone to come and tow my car. The battery is fucked.” 

“Gary’s it is.” You’ve never been there. You got your car checked over in the next town over, where the seller had it. Since then, you’ve always gone there to get your car cleared, twice every year since you got it. The mechanics there are older, who know cars inside and out, understanding every sound and every hiccup. There hasn’t been a time when they’ve failed to give you a good deal if something has to be fixed. This time it doesn’t matter. You need your car.

“What were you doing out here anyway?” Javier sounds conversational, casual with his question.

“I met up with Abigail, to talk about their wedding cake.”

“They ordered one from you?” He switches the wipers to go back and forth a little slower, as the rain finds a lazier rhythm.

“I’m giving them one.” Javier nods and you think he hums in understanding. You remember the story about the tart. Raspberry and lemon fill your senses. Even the thought of them wets your mouth and the idea of a sweet, gentle lemon-flavored cake with fresh raspberries and vanilla frosting puts your brain to work. Maybe you’re hungry.

As fast as you remember the tart, your thoughts shift from cakes to Abigail’s reveal.

You glance at Javier from the corner of your eye. It’s hard for you to imagine him walking down an aisle to wait for his fiancée to join him. Let alone standing at an altar in a black suit next to someone in a white dress and bouquet of flowers in her hands while a bunch of people stare at them and wait for them to vow to be together forever. That idyllic life and Javier Peña in the same sentence are like water and oil in your mind.

Maybe you can’t say anything about him in his drying hair that is curling at the ends. The mustache that he hasn’t trimmed in a couple of days and the five o’clock shadow on his jawline that is now at least a couple of days old. The neck that could be carved by someone with a chisel, long and strong, richly tan even in the cold lighting.

How many button-up shirts does this man own, as you’re seeing him once again in a new one, this time in dark blue with long sleeves. His fingers tap against the steering wheel, a rhythm only in his head, the radio silent.

You can’t judge a man you don’t know. You can only see the surface, not what he’s really like. He could want that idyllic family life and a big wedding, but he keeps a low profile about them.

He tilts his head towards you, a minor movement, like he wants to hear you better. His dark lashes frame his focused eyes, looking even thicker in the gloom of the rain. His head leans more towards you. Maybe you need to just ask him about it, the wedding, his failed marriage that wasn’t even a marriage. It’s on your mind. It’s better to get rid of it now than let it simmer and keep you wondering.

“What?” His chin leads the turn of his head, suddenly catching you red-handed in taking him in. For the first time you’ve really gotten a chance to look at him. If you would’ve known better, you would’ve made sure to not get caught because you don’t stand a chance against the deep brown of his eyes that read you in a heartbeat.

The question is on the tip of your tongue. You’re about to ask if he can explain himself, tell you more about his past.

You sigh, “Nothing, was just thinking about this arrangement of ours.” You let the questions slip from your grasp.

Technically you’re not lying. Abigail’s words are under your skin and your candor about something else on your mind is only a way for you to avoid turning a stone you’re not ready to. The road turns and buildings are finally appearing through the downpour.

“I’ve been thinking about it too.” His unexpected confession spikes your heartrate instantly. His voice goes a bit lower, a little shakier. Javier is still as confident as ever, but there’s a light tinge of ‘what if’ coloring it.

“What about it?” You sound a bit more worried than you’d like to.

“Look, when you said yes to this whole circus, I’m grateful for that.” You already hear the but in his voice.

Immediately you’re on a carousel, going over the few instances you’ve been in contact with Javier. If you’ve told him something that would make him second guess you and your intentions. You have no secret intentions. You just want to get through this wedding without any extra attention.

Though, how Abigail reacted, that might’ve been a useless wish.

“I just can’t stop thinking how we have to fake something just because someone is being a little… eager.” The shake of Javier’s head is the cherry on top of the irritated thought that makes it sound like he has been thinking about this for a while.

“You think we should still do it?” Him saying no would release you from any stress you’re already predicting to experience the closer the wedding is getting. You wouldn’t have to think about keeping your stories straight or how you literally have to seem like you like this guy any more than just as a friend.

Are you even friends, you can’t put a finger on that.

But him saying no would also end this new connection you’re having. Even though you don’t have time for dating, Javier’s presence and knowing he’s in this situation with you does give you a sense of comfort. If he became your friend in this town that sometimes manages to shove your face in loneliness, you wouldn’t say no to it.

“Yeah, I’m in. Won’t mean I’ll be happy about people pushing their noses into our business.”

“I’m with you on that.”

“What have you been thinking?” He asks. His other hand drops from the steering wheel, and he glances at you, trying to dig into how you’re dealing with all this.  

“I…” The words get stuck in your throat. This is a perfect chance. Ask why he left his bride at the altar, a little voice in your head urges. Your mouth goes cinnamon dry and your jaw clenches, not letting any words out.

You can’t help the uncomfortable laugh that makes the mood shift from open honesty to awkwardness immediately. “I’m gl—” Your voice catches and you have to swallow before trying again, “I’m glad I can do this with someone who understands what we’re pretending, that’s all.”

“Yeah.” Javier isn’t dumb. You can hear how he knows you’re hiding something. He knows you’re not telling him what’s really on your mind. He doesn’t have time to get into it as you reach Gary’s Garage. As soon as he turns the car off, you open your seatbelt and jump out, briskly walking in through the front door.

The smell of gasoline and oil hits you immediately, the second smell being air freshener, closely followed by tire rubber. You’re taken back to childhood, and your grandpa’s garage where every spring you checked your bike over.

He helped you paint it more than once, always allowing you to use whatever colors were your favorite. There you stood, with the bike’s skeleton turned upside down with some parts covered in tape and plastic to protect the colors you already liked and the parts that had to stay bare.

Your grandpa stood beside you with paint respirators on both of your faces, spray paint cans in hand. When you were younger, the can was so big that you had to hold it with two hands, and it still kept slipping from your grasp. When you got older, you could hold it easily.

Being around Javier is like being around a magnet. You hear him get in through the door. You take a step back, like he’s able to pull you towards him. He doesn’t say anything, you don’t even hear his footsteps. He hovers, like two same poles rejecting each other. You look at him and immediately he comes closer, to stand right behind your back.

“Ah, Peña! What can I do for you?” A younger looking guy wearing a dark grey overall stained with black oil appears from behind a hood of a car. He rubs his hands on a rag tied to his belt loop, before scrubbing his hand through his dirty blond hair that’s in need of washing.

“Follow my lead,” Javier whispers in your ear before placing his arm loosely over your shoulders. You meet the guy at a small service desk. It’s covered with a plastic desk cover that has yellowed at spots and has different car brand logo stickers glued to it. People have tested a pen at the corners, random loops and something that looks like boobs cartooned on the mechanics’ side.

“I’m cashing in that favor your dad owed us.” You immediately turn to Javier, but he shuts you up by squeezing your shoulder. His thumb is right at the edge of the knot under your shoulder blade, pressing against it in a way that makes you pull your shoulders back and wince in discomfort.

“My girlfriend is having some car trouble.” He says at the same time, notices your pain and backs off from the squeeze, only having his hand lay gently against the tight muscle. It’s warm and it seeps through the layer of damp denim and cotton on your skin.

The mechanic looks at you with wide eyes, then at Javier, then back at you with his brows lifting and an unbelieving smile forming on his lips. You know him. He’s a flirt. You’ve had to deal with him before, when he has come to the bakery with his wife.

“Javier, I believe my dad can only do favors for you or your dad, no one said anything about a girlfriend.” He says the word like it’s a joke. You breathe against Javier’s hand, which in this moment manages to keep you calm.

“No worries, I can—”

“Rick,” Javier cuts you off. Another gentler squeeze forces you to listen to him, just like he commands Rick. “I believe your dad said that he owes me one after I helped him fix that fence you had promised to help him with. He didn’t say anything about there being conditions.” Rick looks between you two once more, until he focuses back on Javier.

“So, what’s the problem, what happened?”

“Ask her, it’s her car.” Javier’s hand slides off your shoulder, leaving you to stand on your own two feet. The wide shadow of him behind you moves away and as he does so, you gain confidence. The heels of his boots hit the concrete floor, and with each step your confidence bursts to life, like he’s pulling it out of you to deal with a nuisance just like any other day. You hear the door, you’re alone.

“I was driving, and the battery light came on and then the car stopped, J—” You catch yourself, his words fresh in your ears, “My boyfriend picked me up, but the car is still on the side of the road.”  You can tell Rick doesn’t believe you when you use that word for Javier.

No wonder. Only a couple of weeks back you had to deal with him, and you didn’t use Javier’s status as your boyfriend in one of your jabs back at him.

“Your boyfriend,” Rick starts and leans forward with a sly smile on his face, against the small counter that separates you from him. You can smell it on him, the low blow that he’s going to serve. “Are you two really together? Because I know a sweet thing like you could do so much better.” He raises his brows at the same time, thinking he got you.

You stare at him. Your mind drains of every possible comeback that you’ve perfected over the years when thinking of different scenarios where you’d need to have a snarky comment at the ready. Rick is one of those men who will look at you once, insult you, and think you’ve fallen head over heels in love with him based on that one interaction. Even when he’s married.

Your head blows up with all the ideas what you could say to him, mixing into a ball of nothingness that makes you mute. The longer you stand still, the more he’s convinced he has won you over, finally.

You take a step forward, even shaking yourself up with the bold move. You lean your hip against the counter, curving your back in the process, and smile at him, just like a sweet thing would. The door opens and lets in fresh air. Javier. He stops a bit further away; his presence isn’t enveloping you. But there’s still that pull.

It’s just you, and Rick, you tell yourself.

“Is that so?” You place your hand right next to his and tilt your head.

“Mmhmm,” he hums, ecstatic about the attention you’re giving him.

Javier’s slow steps echo from your left to your right side, until he’s standing where you can see him from the corner of your eye. It shouldn’t be hard for you to keep up with the act with him there, but suddenly your focus wavers and the fearless imaginary conversations, where you know every single word, you want to say, are pointless.

“I really like when little ladies like yourself know their customers. I still remember when you recommended that creamy thing to me, just because you knew I’d like it.” Rick blabbers on. Javier’s eyes narrow, but you keep your cool like it’s an armor.

“I think I recommended the cream doughnuts to your wife, when your in-laws were coming to visit?” You ask innocently. Javier hides his mouth behind his hand immediately, turning from you.

Maybe with this guy you don’t even have to try coming up with something snappy. Rick chuckles. He almost manages to trace his fingertip against your wrist, but he’s not close enough. You make yourself stand still. What you’d really want to do is slap him.

“I know it was meant for me. You don’t have to hide it. Listen…” Rick stands back up, a cocky look in his eyes. “I bet I know why you recommended them to me.” Your face must tell him to continue.

“I bet you’d love to try my doughnut, and my cream.” The way he says it, sleazy and so full of himself, with his tongue licking his lips to emphasize the very obvious double meaning, is supposed to be the thing to make you fall on your knees in front of him.

Instead, it takes everything in you not to burst out laughing right at his face, or to keep yourself from slamming your fist in his eye. The smile Javier was trying to hide earlier isn’t there anymore. He’s far from it. His eyes are hard and venomous under his brows, dark in a way you haven’t seen yet even from the corner of your vision.

“You know what I’d love?” Rick perks up at your question, thinking you’re finally catching the bait with a smile. He wishes.

“I think I’d give you exactly what you’re looking for, sugar.” You can’t help the laugh that finally makes you break. Rick chuckles with you and he reaches his hand towards your face. You step back right before his dirty fingers make contact with your cheek, and you drop the smile, the cute voice and look him straight in the eyes.

“I want you to get my damn car and change the battery. Then you’ll call me when it’s done because I need my car. Please.” You emphasize the word with a smirk that only appears for a second, until you’re giving him stone and ice again. Rick’s face turns to disappointment and annoyance. Javier takes a step forward, pulling out a folded map from his back pocket and smoothing it against the table.

“It’s here,” he says, his voice low, his finger pointing at the road where he picked you up in a demanding manner.  

“You can call the bakery when it’s done.” You tell Rick with finality in your voice while Javier folds the map back up. You don’t want to stay in the garage any longer than necessary. As soon as Javier is done, you grab his hand and pull him along with you.

“Bitch,” you hear Rick mutter under his breath when you’re almost at the door.

“Thank you!” You singsong to him, rolling your eyes just as you step outside into the humidity. At least the rain has calmed, but it seems like it has gathered in the air, like a weighted blanket on top of everything. Your heart is pounding in your chest, barely staying in place rather than jumping through your throat. You breathe in the watery air and blow it out slowly.

“I think you deserve a drink after that,” Javier bumps his arm against yours. You look up at him, your hands still linked together and see the impressed smirk on his face.

“What?”

“You don’t come across as someone who’d have that in you.” He speaks nonchalantly, like it’s just a normal day at the office to witness you talking back to a slimy guy like Rick.

“You have no idea.”

“Come,” he says, pulling you along with him across the street. You match your steps with his.

Javier opens the door for you. A red-themed, all-day breakfast diner welcomes you in with the smell of pancakes and bacon, the complete opposite of what’s on the other side of the street. It doesn’t smell poisonous, or like you’ll lose brain cells after inhaling the smell for long enough.

Javier finally lets go of your hand and you walk in front of him towards the line. The diner is full. Booths with red tables and worn-down red leather couches are occupied with families and workers from all over the town.

The waiters and waitresses are wearing the same uniforms, red pants and white t-shirts, with little aprons on. Orders are getting yelled out from the kitchen, the mood an exciting mix of delight and stress. People are getting welcomed in by name, asked how they’re doing, and their usual orders are placed without them having to say a word.

“Did it really happen?” Javier asks against your ear, his presence like a backpack. “With the cream doughnuts?”

“Oh yeah, the guy comes in with his…” You look around yourself, see a couple of little kids nearby, and turn more towards Javier, “Fucking wife and she asks what pastries would be good for the in-laws. I remember her saying that it can’t be anything too fancy, but something more interesting than cookies. And he takes the suggestion as a double entendre,” you huff and shake your head. Either she doesn’t know her husband is like that or then she’s just turning a blind eye. Or maybe she likes it.

More people walk in as a new wave of rain rolls over the town and forces the line to squeeze together. Javier steps a little closer. His warmth and broadness hover right behind you, brushing against your back every few seconds.

Someone tries to walk past you and forces you to squeeze yourself right against Javier. A puff of warm air hits your neck, right above the collar of your jean jacket. You almost apologize to Javier for stepping so close, but his proximity drives you to forget about it. The darkness in his eyes isn’t like in the garage, but it burns in a different way. It’s not scary, but open, bordering on vulnerable, and it punches against your chest in a way that manages to draw all air from you.

“Thanks for coming with me and using your favor on me.” You say instead, heavy debt sitting on your shoulders as the line stands still. There’s something happening in the kitchen, after you hear a great splash.

“It’s nothing, we rarely go to Gary’s anyway. Had to get that favor out of the way somehow. But I don’t think you needed me.”

“If I was alone, I don’t think I could’ve been like that to Rick, and I also would have to pay full price for the battery.” Javier chuckles. It’s a small sound, light and airy, like he’s hiding a real laugh behind it but not ready to reveal it yet.

“You’re welcome then.” A waitress announces they’ve dropped a gravy canister in the kitchen and will need a few more minutes before they can resume serving all the customers.

“He deserved it,” Javier says after a moment of people rumbling their disappointment and understanding. Someone pushes past you again. Javier’s hand instinctively lands on your shoulder to guide you.

“I should’ve asked you earlier, if it was okay for me to touch you?” He almost takes his hand off you but someone else makes their way through the crowded diner as well, and once again he’s guiding you to squeeze closer to him, away from their fast feet and body that would otherwise bump into you.

“Yeah, I mean, I guess we can’t be afraid of some hand holding and casual touches, right?”

“Yeah,” he agrees. He doesn’t pull his hand off you, which you expect. He’s tentative with his touch, unlike in the garage. It lingers lightly, but then presses steadily against you, his thumb on that damn knot, and once again your shoulder complains. You flinch and turn your head away from the pain, gasping out a breath in discomfort.

As on cue he lifts his hand even though you can still feel the heat of it. “You okay?” You roll your stiff shoulders even though it doesn’t seem to help at all.

“I’m fine. Just a tight musc—” your words cut out with a sharp inhale as he finds the spot instantly.

“Here?” His thumb rubs against it in a tight circle, presses gently but enough to cause the knot to burn.

“Uh-huh,” you squeak, and tilt your head away from his hand.

“I had the same problem, always when I was stressed it would lock back up, right here.” He presses on the muscle and makes you gasp for air. He almost sounds like he’s talking to himself rather than you in the full diner. You wouldn’t hear his voice if he wasn’t as close as he is.

Javier massages the spot over and over, slowly bringing blood flow back into it. You could get used to it, his touch, the large hand on your shoulder, the thumb that manages to circle the pain exactly at the right point, coaxing the tension onto the surface. 

“Why don’t you go to Gary’s often?” You could close your eyes. You’re already leaning against Javier’s palm, almost against him, but the question stuck with you.

“Because of his son.” You giggle as the knot starts to open and his answer hits you at the same time.

“You?”

“No, I never go there.”

“Wonder why,” his voice sounds like it’s right next to your ear.

“Yeah, the tip jar won’t be full after my car is fixed.” The soft vibrations of Javier’s chuckles run in through your ear and spikes your skin with goosebumps. You tip your chin against your chest, unable to hold in your own gentle laugh.

Your shoulder is still a bit sore a few days later, but it doesn’t complain anymore when you need to turn your head. You can pull out the hanger with the little black dress you haven’t worn too often and when you get your head through the neckline and zip up the back, the muscle doesn’t burn like you would’ve just spent hours in the same position decorating a cake or sitting by a desk typing out orders and invoices.

You smooth out the dress and look at yourself in the mirror. Is it too short? The hem falls on your mid-thigh, covered in see-through black pantyhose.

You turn and run your hands over your backside. It’s okay, not too short.

Your phone rings once before it stops completely. Javier. You told him to call and let the phone ring once to let you know when he’s downstairs at six. You look at the clock. He’s five minutes early.

Your heart starts to slam against your ribs. You blot lipstick on your lips and rub your finger against them to spread the red more evenly. You check your purse for the umpteenth time since you packed it right after work.

You step into your black pumps, giving your posture a boost. You check your necklace in the mirror last, the chain empty against your chest. You really should find a fitting pendant for it. To replace the one your mom had but lost right after your grandpa died.

You turn your keys in the lock and as soon as your door clicks, nerves spike.

“It’s an agreement, nothing more,” you repeat to the irrational side of your brain that keeps telling you that you’re going out on a date.

A pungent, odd smell drifts to your nose as you pass your neighbor’s door. That same irrational voice says you forgot to wear deodorant. No, you didn’t, as you smell your pits. And it also doesn’t smell like sweat, more like some heavy duty cleaning product. It must be your neighbor. There’s some pumping, 70’s disco music playing in his apartment and the vacuum cleaner is on, clanking against the wall closest to the corridor.

A buzzing wall scone illuminates the corridor in dim yellow, leaving the stairs dark until another, flickering wall scone welcomes you into its sepia toned embrace at the bottom of the stairs. You take steps carefully down, holding onto the handrailing with your dear life, your feet getting used to the high heels after wearing sneakers for months.

You can’t even remember the last time you wore heels. This time it’s appropriate. The restaurant Javier has reserved your table at is a fancier one, right outside of town. You’ve never dined there, but you once delivered a cake there for the 60th birthday party of the richest family in town. You’re not sure whose birthday it was, but the place looked dressy.

The steps descend into darkness and your legs turn into cement. You have to stop and hold your hand against the wall for a moment. The light at the bottom of the stairs doesn’t illuminate this far and the narrow window on top of the door is a joke at letting in light. Though there’s no natural light left anyway. Evening and twilight have already fallen.

It’s not the dark that holds you in place. It’s the voice in your head. The irrational one, the one that likes to live in a fantasy from time to time. The one that made up all the images of a soulmate who you’d buy a traditional home with and where you’d have a mantelpiece filled with family photos.

The one that made you wake up with a smile on your lips when it was barely morning because you dreamt about Javier. In the dream you were sitting next to him, and you were happy. You knew he was the one. When reality finally caught up with you, you were horrified of what your mind had concocted in your sleep.

This time the voice likes to remind you that you’re going out on a date. When you get down the stairs and open the door, Javier is going to be standing next to his car and there’ll be no turning back. You’re pretending something that will hold meaning to some people and others won’t bat an eye.

You shut that voice down immediately. You’re only helping each other out, taking care of a joined problem and that’s it. No matter what people think or don’t think, you’ll be done with this act immediately after Abigail and Noah’s wedding.

You can go back to normal. You can forget it ever happened even when people would ask why you two parted ways. It will probably give you some good, shared laughs with Javier every once in a while, when you bump into each other around town or if he happens to come and pick up something for his dad from the bakery.

You take a deep breath and take the steps down. Under the flickering wall scone you tell the voice that it’s not a date. You’re just seeing each other to get the ball rolling. People have to see you two in public so your scam will be more believable. That’s all it is, and that’s all it’s going to be.

You open the door. Javier isn’t next to his car like you thought he would. He’s standing behind the door, a palette of emotions running over his face at once. Surprise, calm, nervousness? Until his eyes take you in by looking you up and down from your eyes to your dress to your pantyhose glad legs to your shoes and back up again to your eyes, settling on a soft smirk.

“I was going to ring the doorbell,” he points at the buzzer with his thumb, your name written with bulky letters on a sticker.

“Sorry, I had to make sure I had everything.”

“That’s fine!” He stands still, in front of you, a sudden silence filling you with awkwardness.

“Well…” And you laugh a short laugh, one that could be mistaken for a confused ‘huh’.

“Ready?” Javier melts into action, letting you walk out of the doorway.

“Yeah, let me just lock this.” He waits patiently for you to lock the door behind you. He’s hovering again. You see him from the corner of your eye, his black boots that shine dimly under the streetlights.

He’s not wearing jeans, as you somehow thought he would. He’s in dark slacks, his white shirt a crisp contrast to the shirts he usually wears. He opens the truck door for you, and waits patiently for you to get in.

He offers you his hand when you’re about to take support of the car door to sit on the worn leather of the front seat. You smile and take it, his skin burning hot against your warmth, gentle yet firm as he holds it until you’re in.

You try to smooth the hem of your dress under you, but it’s already in place. The leather imprints against the backs of your thighs, the only saving factor is your pantyhose, keeping your skin from sticking to the seat that gets toasty from body heat in no time.

Javier waits for a car to pass until he hops in on the driver’s seat.

“You got your car back,” he says, the lights on his truck flashing on the rear of your car.

“I got it the day after we went to the garage. Apparently, Gary had to send his son to pick up the battery from Laredo.” You still made sure to personally tip only Gary. Rick wasn’t getting any of it. No matter how it was a favor for Javier and Gary was adamant in following through, you couldn’t leave without paying something.

“Good.” Another silence falls between you two.

Javier drives in a way that is secure, even on the darkest roads, where the only sweeping light illuminated against the asphalt is from the headlights. He’s relaxed. His other elbow rests on the open window where warm wind blows in at the comfortable speed he’s driving. His other arm lays against his thigh, yet both his hands are on the steering wheel. He knows these roads. He has driven them countless times over the years.

The restaurant is like a mirage in the distance. It appears through the dark with a golden haze. Javier fixes his back against the leather seat the closer you get. Your heart rate spikes when he parks the truck in the far end of the small parking lot, full of cars.

Cicadas chirp as the engine shuts off, your door towards the solitude of night. He’s out the door before you’ve opened your seatbelt buckle, and he opens the door for you just as you lay your hand to open it yourself. His white shirt illuminates against the restaurant lighting, working as a safety barrier between you and the vast emptiness where there’s nothing else than miles of farming land.

He's still not saying anything, neither do you. Your mind is blank, and the only sound that echoes in your ears are your matched footsteps. Your heels click and his boots scuff every few steps against the ground. The sound of the cicadas drifts off the further away you get from the tall grass and bushes.

The hem of your dress caresses against the back of your thighs until there’s another feeling. It’s very soft, barely there, but it’s still there, on the small of your back. Javier’s hand. It’s not intrusive or forced, but careful and measured. His fingers drag lightly against you when he pulls his hand back to open the door for you and let you walk into the restaurant first.

“Welcome to the Velvet Fig, how can I help you tonight?” A chipper, blonde woman asks, her hair in perfect curls and her teeth as white as the pressed tablecloths.

“I have a reservation, under Peña.” You stand next to him clutching your purse in your hands. You scratch the fabric with the nail of your thumb, standing with your back straight and a tingling in your lower back.

Javier’s arm is almost against yours, still far enough that you’d need to lean towards him if you wanted to truly press against him, but still close enough that the hair on your arm is standing still and reaching for the feel of him. The hostess runs her finger along the page of her reservation book, taps it twice and then lifts her face to smile at the two of you.

“This way Mr. Peña.” She takes two menus with her and leads you through the restaurant. Javier lets you go first, following behind you. You get the same sense of him as you did when you met him for the first time.

His warmth radiates towards you, like you’re attracting it, and he’s happy to make you feel it. It makes you aware of him, almost hyper aware of how close he is and how he follows each of your steps with his own, matching them so he won’t step on your heels.

You catch someone’s eye as you walk past them. An older lady with graying hair. She’s possibly with her husband, who is sawing through a well-cooked steak. She observes you from your head to the hem of your dress. If she was wearing pearls, she’d clutch them.

The judgmental look in her eyes is enough to give you a few extra inches of confidence and you smile sweetly at her with a little head tilt, passing her by without giving her a second thought. The whole restaurant is full of people like her. Older couples. People with money. People who will look at you down the bridges of their noses, giving you a mental score to decide how deserving you’re to be in here.

“Here you go,” the hostess presents a round booth table for you and Javier at the far end of the restaurant. It’s quiet here, even with the other booths full. A small bouquet of red roses sit in a small vase in the middle of the table, a candle in a frosty glass candle holder next to it. Javier waits for you to get seated before he slides in from the other side.

The velvet of the seat catches against your pantyhose, and you try to fix your dress the best you can in the narrow space. The hostess places the menus in front of you on the table and claps her hands together gently, to not draw attention to herself with a loud noise.

“A waiter is going to come take your drink orders in a few minutes.” Her pleasant attitude is so well crafted that you could almost believe that’s what she’s like when she takes off her black pencil skirt, high heels, and white little collared blouse.

You’ve seen her before though.

She has come to the bakery a couple of times. You never forget the faces of those who complain. She didn’t see you at first, but you sure heard her laughing about how she would’ve added more butter to the brioche and made the brownies cakier than fudgier if the bakery was hers.

She also found some big words to critique your choice of opening hours, thinking the bakery would do better if it stayed open until late in the evening since no one can come in during the day like she did, right before closing, while looking at the empty shelves and discounted brown paper bags with the last bread rolls in them. Luckily she’s not in charge of your business.

“Thank you,” both you and Javier say at the same time, immediately locking eyes right after. The hostess leaves, and so does your confidence. Once again, you’re in a game against Javier, the game of who breaks under pressure first. He looks at you with unblinking eyes. They’re honey dipped in the warm mood lighting, almost melting in the way he’s keeping you nailed to your seat.

“I don’t know why, but I’m nervous,” you throw the towel in immediately. You can’t win against this guy, you don’t even have a chance. A smile appears slowly at first, from the corners of his eyes, until it breaks through and spreads onto his lips.

“Me too, this isn’t something I do often.” He smooths his hand against the tablecloth and brings the folded thick cotton napkin closer to you.

“Fake date women to keep people from asking too many questions about your personal life?” You crack the joke and immediately regret it when he turns his attention back to you with a smile on his face, but seriousness in his eyes.

“No, take women out on dates.” A vague sound that resembles an “ah” comes out of your mouth as his answer strips you of any other words. What can you even say when his answer sounds like a lie. Or at least if you look at Javier, it seems impossible that he wouldn’t be going out on dates. A thought crosses your mind. Maybe, just maybe him ditching his bride at the altar had another reason entirely.

“You mean… You’ve…” Your slow words make his brows get a quizzical arch in them. You have to clear your throat and make sure no one else will hear you.

There was a guy once who you had a crush on. You had just started college and he sat next to you in one of your classes. You once asked to borrow a pen from him, he once asked to see your notes from the previous class that he had missed.

Since then you became friendly, your thoughts racing ahead of you a million miles an hour. Once, when you were having lunch in the cafeteria, there was another guy who came to sit with you. Andrew and Christopher, Andy and Chris for short. They tried to be subtle, but the sentences they finished for each other and them sitting like they were glued together only told you that Chris was off the market. The last you heard they live in San Francisco now.

“I totally get it if you’re trying to hide and I would never let anyone know…” you whisper to Javier, almost apologetic he has to be in a position like this with you.

“What?” He leans closer to you, clearly not catching onto what you’re trying to imply with your unsaid words.

“If you’re… you know…” A waiter walks past your table with a big, expensive looking wine bottle in hand. You lower your voice even more. “Gay?” Your voice is barely above a whisper, protective of his privacy and secret already. He leans back, stares at you, and then breaks into a rich baritone laugh. He finally looks away with his cheeks tinting pink in the low lighting.

“No,” Javier breathes out the word between chuckles and shakes his head. “I’m not gay, I just haven’t been out on dates. With anyone.”

Your mouth goes dry. “Oh, fu—” you break the curse word with a light exhale as the waiter briskly appears from the shadows.

“Good evening, I’m Jonathan and I’m going to be your waiter this evening.” He smiles at you both and whips out a little notepad and a pen. You reach for the glass in front of you, ready to take a sip of anything to make the sandpaper feel of your tongue go away. It’s empty.

Javier eyes at the motion from the corner of his eye. “If you haven’t had time to look at the menus yet, you can find the drinks on the last page, and I can tell you about some cocktail options as well if you’re interested?”

“We’ll start with a bottle of water, thank you. Would you like some wine?” Javier asks, the pink on his skin settling down.

“Rosé?” Your voice is begging for some moisture.

“And a glass of your best rosé for my date,” Javier orders effortlessly. Jonathan writes it down swiftly, already a seasoned veteran in his job even though his skin is still smooth and there’s a boyish twinkle in his eyes.

“Water for the table and a rosé for the lady, I’ll be back in a moment.” He leaves just as smoothly as he appeared.

“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to make assumptions, I just thought I had put two and two together and… I’m sorry, it also wouldn’t be my place to even know if you were,” you ramble while your palms start to sweat.

The gentle smile on Javier switches to his eyes narrowing while getting stuck on words that start the game up again. The way he listens to you, intense and all his focus on you, makes you shut up. He doesn’t care that Jonathan comes back with a thick glass bottle of water in one hand, which he places on the table next to the flowers, and a tall wine glass in his other hand, which he places in front of you.

You smile at him while Javier’s acknowledgement is mostly just a quick side look and a quiet “thank you”, that he says to you rather than the server. It doesn’t take too much investigating to know what exactly he heard between your words.

“You had put two and two together, huh?” There’s no backing out now.

“There’s something I heard…” He’s somehow even closer now, leaning his forearm against the table, crowding you with his broad shoulders, his smell that’s somewhere between leather, soap and cigarette smoke and his voice that’s still ringing in your ears.

To some his presence could be intimidating. It could make them cower, make them lose their own voice and submit to him. Yet when you sit next to him, you don’t get the urge to back down. You see the softness in his jaw, the curiosity that twinkles somewhere in the smooth crow’s feet next to his eyes, in how he patiently waits for you to keep on going no matter what it is.

“Abigail said something about you almost getting married?” Javier’s sudden, but subtle inhale is an answer in itself. He turns from you and busies himself pouring water for you and for himself.

“So that’s what was bothering you in the car the other day.” He doesn’t even look at you. It’s only an observation.

He most likely saw how relieved it made you to say it out loud after holding onto questions you know you’re not going to get answers to anytime soon. He’s a brick wall and he’s not going to say another word.

“Should I know something, so I won’t be blindsided with whatever people tell me?” If you’re still playing the game you two have been unconsciously playing, you’re winning by heaps. This game just seems awfully unfair and not something you’ll celebrate winning.

“You already have something on your mind?” The cold look on his face could shut up anyone.

“What happened between you and her, your ex-fiancée?” Javier lifts his chin almost in defiance. He breathes through his mouth, his lower lip puffing out under the now well-groomed mustache. Then he looks at you, crowds your personal bubble again.

He holds his arm over the back of the velvet couch you’re both sitting on. His eyes are unfocused just past you, his thoughts taking him back to another time in his life. To another version of him.

“We had a rough patch for a few months because of a job I applied for, and we were talking about splitting up. She told me she was pregnant and that changed everything.” His voice is monotonous, like he’s reading a script.

Then his eyes focus on you and a mirthless little smile invades his face with pain. You’re instinctively ready to plant your palm against his cheek, to let him lean on you for a moment. You press your hands together tighter to keep yourself from exploring that action.

“We were going to get married, until the night before the wedding when she told me she made it up. She was holding out hope I would still marry her but we both knew that wasn’t going to happen. I left, she stayed, life moved on.”

“Where did you go then?”

“I took a job in Colombia.”

“Tell me about it,” you urge him without a pause.

His shoulders stiffen instantly. He takes you in, watches you with unblinking eyes, and like he gets zapped by an electric shock, he notices how close he is to you.

As he pulls himself slowly away from you, the first thing you notice is how the heat from his body leaves you as well.

Then it’s his breath from his parted lips that doesn’t blow gently against your face anymore.

Then it’s his smell.

His arm slides against the back of the dark velvet of your seating, his hand against the thick tablecloth.

Then, it’s his knee. When he pulls the last few inches of his body away from you, his knee leaves yours under the table. It was a steady pressure, a connection of clothed skin against clothed skin, yet it was branding you hot.

You hadn’t even noticed it until now when it’s gone. Almost like his knee had always pressed against yours under tables, in secret but still in plain sight if you knew what you were supposed to look for.

Your knee cools fast, even in the comfortable warmth of the restaurant.

Last, he turns his face from you. You’re sensitive to the loneliness next to him when he shuts himself off from you. Milliseconds tick away and each gives your brain a jolt of restlessness.

You’d want to reach your hand out, not necessarily to even touch him, but to get closer to him. Not for your sake, but his.

The hurt he doesn’t want to talk about hangs heavily over him and the longer he’s quiet, shut away from you, the likelier it is that the topic is off limits. Never something for you to know about, or something for you to even ask about. It’s a hard line and he’s drawing it in the sand.

Jonathan strolls in, breaking the tension in the air.  “Have you had time to decide on the menu options or would you like me to tell you about our specials?” You scramble to open your menu and straighten your back, fixing a smile on your face to tell him that he’s not disrupting anything. The worry in his eyes calms instantly.

“What are the specials?” You ask him just as Javier takes the menu in his hands, opens it slowly and drifts back to the present moment.

Jonathan starts to repeat a list of dishes from his little note pad, pointing at each with his pen. The ingredients and options fly right through your ears, and nothing sticks to the Teflon of your understanding.

You nod your head while reading the menu at the same time, hyper aware of Javier’s tight jaw and presence next to you, heavily pressing against your right side. He wants to say something, but Jonathan is still reading the list he has written down.

“I’ll have the pasta, please,” you tell him before he can start with the desserts.

“The lemon and shrimp pasta?” Jonathan raises his brows, his pen immediately ready to write.

“Sure!” You smile, only remembering hearing the word pasta, but not any of the other ingredients.

”Steak for me, medium rare, please,” Javier shuts the menu and hands it to the server.

“Anything else you’d like?”

“We’re waiting for that rosé we ordered?” Jonathan’s face flashes bright red, immediately going back to his notepad and finding the right ticket.

“I’m so extremely sorry, I’ll be back with it right away.” He ducks his head low and speedwalks away.

“You don’t have to know more about Colombia than what you’ve probably already heard from people and their big mouths,” Javier’s low voice mumbles as he turns back to you.

It’s deep enough to vibrate into your ears and send shivers down from the back of your neck to the small of your back. There’s an intensity in his eyes that melts immediately when he sees you run your necklace between your fingers and the wide-eyed shock as he’s suddenly talking to you again.

The assumption hits you like a slap across your face. “I haven’t heard anything, just that Chucho’s son is back in town. How would I have known the guy I met at a party would be him? Or that he’d ask me to fake date him so people wouldn’t ask questions? And you really think I go around seeking gossip and making decisions about others based on those?” The words flow fast and sting in the back of your throat as you try to calm the odd tension between you two.

Jonathan flies in with a fancy full bottle of wine in his hand and another tall glass between his fingers.

“As compensation we’d like to offer you a free glass of wine, if that’s okay. I’m incredibly sorry I forgot to bring this earlier.” His boyish features carry shame in a self-deprecating way that manages to zap even more energy into your annoyance.

“Yes, thank you.” The smile on your face is tight, but you can’t let the irritation spill into your voice. Javier is still sitting turned towards you. His figure relaxes. His arms visibly lose their hard stiffness even in the corner of your eye.

You don’t have enough patience for tantrums from a man who you’re on a pretended first date with. Instead, you watch Jonathan pour the rosé into the tall, high-rimmed glasses. The drink flows in like the time has slowed down, your questions to Javier hanging between you two. Yet Jonathan doesn’t seem to notice or care that now his presence isn’t welcomed. You want to hear what Javier has to say.

“I’m sorry,” Javier says immediately when Jonathan is out of earshot. He takes a deep breath and taps the fingers of his right hand against the table. “I’ve been…”

“Your dinner will be served shortly.” Jonathan comes back once more with utensils and places them onto your napkins.

“Thank you,” you repeat in unison with Javier, relieved Jonathan leaves. The whole restaurant is booming with chatter, your conversation with Javier staying under the volume. You take a deep breath and take a sip of your wine.

“Good?” The sweeter notes hide the first signs of dryness in the warm pink wine, until they spread around your tongue like a blanket.

“Good,” you answer and set the glass down. You turn towards Javier as well, finding him once again closer than you expected. “What were you about to say?” He bows his head down and shakes his head lightly.

“I’ve been waiting for you to ask me something that I don’t want to talk about since I took you to town earlier and you still managed to surprise me.” He calculates each word, his voice slow and soft, each word following each other in a careful manner.

Slowly they bring out his confidence again. His knee taps against yours and then settles there. This time you’re sensitive to the feel of him, unexpected and still completely expected from him to use his body to ground you.

“You’re welcome?” The bite in your tone has shifted into sarcasm. The wine spreads warmth through you. Your second sip gently relaxes you in the moment.

“People like to talk here, that’s how they’ve always been and will always be. I’m sorry that I was too much in my own head to give you the benefit of the doubt.” He’s sincere. It’s obvious from his unwavering eye contact and the determination that has settled between his brows.

He leans slowly against the back of the couch. His other arm rises naturally behind you, to rest on the velvet. He’s taking up his space while still making your little booth a bubble just for the two of you. He’s not demanding you to be in it, he’s also not forcing you to even stay still with your knees knocked together, yet here you are, with no intention to move.

“Now I know you haven’t dated anyone in a while.”

Him sitting like that, relaxed and his attention on you and your words, in the nervous tick of you touching the minimal links of your necklace, gives you enough confidence to bring the conversation back to something that surprised you as well. He chuckles. It’s an action he might not do too often as he hides his smile by looking away from you.

“How did you know about this place then, if you’ve never been here before?” He brings himself back to you and leans forward. You don’t know how he does it, but once again he’s closer. So much closer. He drops his left hand behind you onto the seat, and the length of his arm presses across your back, like an extra support.

“See that man over there?” He pointedly looks at a table in the middle of the room, the same one where the judgmental woman was sitting earlier. She has left and has been replaced by a much younger woman in a tight top and her hair in a perfect updo with strategic flyways curled on her temples and the back of her neck.

Across from her sits a man with salt and pepper hair and a body that is wide and round. He smiles at the woman who is holding the menu in her hands, an uncomfortable server standing next to them with her notepad open. You don’t hear them, but you can imagine the man urging his date to order anything she wants from the list, while she’s struggling to make a decision between a salad or fries to go along with her rib eye. You nod your head and lean your ear a little closer to Javier. He inhales right next to it and breathes out so slowly that the air gets trapped between you two. He does it without tickling your ear.

“He caught his ex-wife cheating while he was away on some cruise with his girlfriend. Guess who won the court case because the judge knew him in school and is now flaunting his alimony to make the ex-wife jealous.”

“You serious?” Javier hasn’t fallen far from the tree of this town.

“Yeah. Little does he know the ex is going to sue him for the alimony and will most likely win because he has been hiding his assets. Or that’s at least what people have been saying, because he comes here every week with the girlfriend.”

“You know what?” The younger woman gives her menu back to the server, and she folds her hands under her chin. The innocent move with the smile she has on her face is so rehearsed that the performance could be from a low budget movie that gets people talking for about a week because of the age difference between the actors and then everyone will forget about it.

You turn to look at Javier, your noses only inches away from each other. You can count every pore on his face, the deep brown of his eyes like burnt candy, aware of your proximity before you even focused on him, his attention on you like it had never even left.

“You’re a great gossip,” you say jokingly, but not really joking.

“Ugh,” he gasps out a chuckle and turns back to the other guests with a shake of his head. “You can thank my dad for that, he always tells me what’s going on around town. I don’t really care what people are doing unless someone I know is involved.”

“Have you heard any juicy rumors about someone you know lately?” Curiosity takes over.

“You,” he says, almost proud when you whip back to him with your eyes wide.

“Me?”

“Yeah, a little bird tells me you’re seeing Javier Peña.”

“Oh great, haha, very funny.”

“That’s what I’ve heard.”

“Wait, are you serious? People are actually talking about us?”

“Yes,” Javier laughs. “And now they’ll be talking even more.”

“How would you know?” You bring your wine glass to your lips. A couple of tables over is a woman, probably in her forties, who stares at you two intently.  She looks like someone who you’ve seen at the bakery before too, but you can’t remember her name.

With a jolt she notices you’ve caught her, and she immediately looks away. A few tables from hers a couple of older people are both looking at you from the corners of their eyes, shamelessly whispering to each other every once in a while, while still watching you. Have these people been watching this the whole time you’ve been sitting here, or did they just start?

“This place has a reputation. If you want others to know about your status or you just want to be seen, you come here, and everyone will be talking about it in a few days if the gossip’s juicy enough.” Javier explains into your ear.

“And the note trick, at the bakery? You knew that as well”

“Outsiders will always want to know what a note says if it’s given to someone visibly enough to make it seem like a botched attempt at trying to be sneaky.”

“You know awful lot about things like that,” you wonder out loud while you scan the whole restaurant. Your eyes sweep past someone very familiar.

“Abigail and Noah are here,” you whisper to Javier, and smile at him. He catches on immediately.

Even though you’re not looking at her anymore, you can still sense her eyes drilling into you. She’s making your date with Javier something that’s forbidden. You can already hear her voice in your head tell you off for not cancelling the date even after her warnings about him being untrustworthy.

“Like I said, this place has a reputation. Some people come here just to see what they could talk about for the next week.” he says into your ear. His breath tickles against your skin. So, she’s here to check if you’re really going out with Javier. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe she’ll let her obsession of you finding a date for the wedding go and she won’t bat an eye when you show up there with a date who she hasn’t chosen for you.

“Relax. They might be watching us, but we don’t have to care about any of them.” As soon as he says it, any of them, you notice that it’s not just a couple of people who have noticed you. It’s everyone.

Some are more discreet, hide their prying eyes into checking the time on their wrist watches or hiding behind their hands as they fix their hair. The booth you’re sitting in might be by the back wall, in the dim lighting, but it doesn’t mean that you would be invisible to others. On the contrary, it seems like you’re sitting at the perfect spot for others to see you two sitting almost skin to skin, his arm behind you, still pressing against your back and giving you something to lean on when the dread hits.

This isn’t about a date for a wedding anymore. This is something that will follow you to the bakery, to grocery shopping trips, to the post office. The only ones who will stay in the dark are people who don’t live in your town, and even those who might hear rumors but won’t understand who are the two who have now apparently found each other. This was supposed to be simple, an arrangement so the people who won’t get off your backs about a date would stop talking. Now, everyone else will be doing the talking instead.

“Why are they all so nosey?” You try not to show distaste on your face with the question. You still have to school your nose and upper lip to stop wrinkling.

“Maybe they’re bored,” Javier questions out loud, sounding like he has thought about this before too. “Or then it’s because it’s you and it’s me. They know me well enough, they know my history. Do they know yours?” It’s a genuine question which you don’t know the answer to.

“I’ve lived here for years now, I shouldn’t be a stranger.”

“Maybe not, but you’re not from here either.”

“And that’s a problem?”

“No,” Javier laughs, almost too obvious for him to even answer you. He shakes his head and a smirk settles onto his lips that makes the other side of his smile crook up bringing out a playfulness that tells you this isn’t the first time he has used his knowledge to create such scenarios where you’re at. He knows the patterns and details, he knows how to get under people’s skin. Most importantly, he knows how to use those details to his benefit.

“You’re enjoying this aren’t you?” You ask him genuinely curious to know what’s going on inside his head. He doesn’t hide it either, the mischievous glint in the burnt amber of his eyes that are searching for your reactions every second as you take in the situation you’re in.

“It beats the sweaty farm work.” You can’t help but laugh and he joins you.

“Can I ask you something?” the laughter ripples into gentle smiles where you try to hide your fear he’ll lock himself away from you again. He waits, still relaxed, not showing any signs of pulling away from you this time.

“In Colombia,” you pause to see how he responds. He swallows and breathes out a long breath, all the air from his lungs, but still refuses to leave you stranded. “What did you do there? What were you working on?”

“You really haven’t heard?” He asks instantly. His brows dip lower and his eyes narrow. His knee is locked against yours.

“No, I haven’t.”

“What are you thinking I did there then?” Flipping the question to you.

“Hmmm,” you sigh out and lean back a little. His arm presses against your back almost like he’s making sure that you won’t fall off the couch even though there’s no risk of that happening. Or then he’s keeping you from moving away too much.

You look at him, truly look at him. You’ve seen him before too, but those have been times when it has almost been like watching him through a curtain. You’ve been too afraid to show him that you’re truly seeing him for who he is.

The face is a given. All the freckles from staying out in the sun for long, the gold flecked eyes, the well-trimmed mustache, the plushy lips that are about to crack into a wider smile as he watches you watch him. The thick arches of his brows and the lines between them from frowning tell you he has spent a long time stressed, even worried. His tanned skin is another.

But then there’s the strong neck, the chest that wants to peek through the neckline of his button-down, his wide shoulders that protect and support, the strength of his biceps bulging through the cotton of his shirt. He turns his head a little and his nose reminds you of those roman historical figures you read about in school. He’s fit, but in the way that he does a lot of physical activities, rather than hitting the gym seven times a week.

“I honestly don’t know. You could work in IT based on your extensive shirt collection, maybe an engineer of some sort, or then you were, I don’t know, in military? You seem disciplined enough.” He actually laughs at that, and it pulls you back in. He sighs, mutters “disciplined enough, hmmm,” to himself and watches you, in similar manner as you did him.

It’s impossible for you to decipher what he sees when he looks at you like that, with his eyes a little squinted, slowly moving from one part of your face to the next, looking at your hair, then down your neck, to the necklace, and down still, moving quickly past your chest to stop at your middle and the hem of your dress that rests high up your pillowy thighs.

He’s kind with his observations. You could easily fall into insecurity and unease, but he makes sure he’s soft with his expression and how he handles you while you’re sitting so close to him.

“I think I’ve heard a joke somewhere, about a baker and an ex-DEA agent walking into a restaurant…” You immediately tut at him and almost roll your eyes too, shaking your head, when he takes your wrist into his hand and presses gently, forcing you to focus.

“That’s why they care, because of the life I’ve lived somewhere else, the people I’ve come to contact with.” His answer makes the sarcasm drift off from your answer to him. He’s not joking. The hand on your wrist stays, but it forces you to take in the information he has given you.

“So you were…” How do you even ask someone about a life that included, maybe still does, so much danger. He finally looks away, to his hand locked around your skin. “You were in Colombia working as a DEA agent?”

“Yes.”

Of course you’ve seen the news over the years, about cartels and drugs. Of drug lords and the complicated power play people have had to play either as outsiders or as participants.

No wonder people were talking about Javier coming back home after everything that went down there. The whole town must be proud of him. He looks up, through his lashes, somehow the light in his eyes darker.

The people in town, even in this restaurant, might feel proud of him, but the look in his eyes tells a different story. The others might put him on a pedestal, see him as a hero of some sort. He disagrees.

“You want to ask me about it?”

“Do you want me to?” it’s not your choice or decision. He has to be the one to tell you about it, in his own time, if he ever feels comfortable enough.

“Not now,” Javier straightens his back and lifts his chin, his eyes following something.

“Okay!” Jonathan strolls back in just as you turn to look at what Javier was already following. “The pasta for the lady,” he places the plate with steaming fettuccine pasta topped with parsley, thin lemon slices and fat shrimps in front of you.

“And here’s the steak, medium rare,” Jonathan turns the plate in front of Javier, the piece of meat glistening in the low lighting, green beans and a creamy dollop of mashed potatoes next to it, a quenelle of what looks like seasoned butter melting over it.

“Thank you,” you repeat at the same time with Javier again, like little kids trained to say the right words at the right times. Jonathan nods and sweeps past your table, head held high like an ostrich looking around with its tall neck. He observes his surroundings and immediately moves faster when an older man’s hand raises up a couple of tables over.

You follow Javier’s lead in taking your cutlery in your hands and twirl pasta around the fork. It’s salty, tangy, a little sweet, and the shrimp comes through with a fishy meatiness that you wouldn’t have missed until at the last moment.

Javier eats slowly, enjoying each bite, forcing you to pace yourself as well. If you were alone, and at home, you would probably listen to the rumble in your stomach and be done with the plate in a record amount of time.

While you eat, you forget about the others around you. There’s only you and Javier. The silence between you two is comfortable, almost soothing you to forget about your friend sitting on the other side of the restaurant with her fiancé, still keeping an eye on you and your every move.

Javier is cutting a piece off his steak when the knife slows down in thought. You help more pasta in your mouth when he sets his cutlery down completely and reaches for his wine glass. Now Abigail’s observing eyes aren’t the only ones you can feel on you.

“You asked me questions, I think it’s fair if I ask you something as well.” He’s calm and collected, while you nod with your mouth full. You wipe some of the sauce from the corner of your mouth hastily and try to chew so he doesn’t have to wait for an answer for long. You’re an open book, whatever he asks, it can’t be worse than what you asked him.

“You wanted to know if there’s something you could be blindsided with. Is there anything like that I should know about you?” There’s a last little bit of pasta waiting between your teeth and you stop chewing immediately when you hear his question.

Maybe you were being a little naïve, thinking he’d ask something specific about where you grew up or how you ended up in this town, how you met Abigail or how your bakery came to be. An open-ended question like his, it makes your thoughts spiral out of control. Your fingers reach for your necklace, and you can’t look at him.

“Uhh,” you mumble when your mouth is finally empty. “I’ve never dated anyone before.” It seems like the safest answer. His eyes are fixed on your necklace, until they’re not. Disbelief settles on the lines between his brows.

“You’re joking.” He’s not even asking, only stating his disbelief.

“There just hasn’t been anyone who was special enough. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve gone out on dates but those have never evolved into anything more serious.” Javier huffs out a breath at your answer.

“What?”

“Seems hard to believe you would’ve never dated anyone.”

“Well, you better start believing.” The song with the similar lyrics starts playing in your head. He shakes his head, and then focuses back on your hand that’s still playing with the golden chain against your chest.

“That’s a beautiful necklace.”

“Oh, thanks!” You press it against your skin with your palm.

“Has someone given it to you?” You blink at him, head emptying immediately. You try to smile but have tears pricking at your eyes instead.

“From my mom.” Your voice is eerily steady, so much steadier than you usually would have it.

“It must be special then?” Javier’s voice drops. His observing nature doesn’t miss the change in your mood or the way you look away from him. Your hand drops to your lap, but your throat is filling with heaviness.

“Yeah,” you manage to choke out before you clear it. There hasn’t been a moment when Javier’s presence would’ve been too intense, too observant or too close. Yet now he’s too close.

The knee against yours is still pulling you in like a magnet and the pressure is too deep. His watchful eyes see too much, and you have nowhere to hide. Your discomfort is too palpable that even you’d want to get away from it.

You force yourself to pick up the fork and collect the last pieces of pasta onto it. You put it in your mouth and chew slowly in hopes of getting your throat to understand there’s no reason to be afraid. Javier won’t push it. If he would, he already would’ve done it.

He sits silently next to you, his hand resting on his thigh. You focus on it and the way his fingers curl against the dark fabric of his slacks. His knuckles are only a fraction of an inch away from your thigh. Luckily he doesn’t reach you.

“Are the toilets where?” You turn to him suddenly, catching him off guard. The gentle sadness on his face could break your heart if you weren’t so determined to leave for a moment. He’s sensitive to you, how you want to physically get away from his questions.

“It’s fine, she is living a good life. Sometimes I miss her. I… I’m sorry if I’m being weird about it but I don’t think about her that often really. We are doing our own thing.” You’re sensitive to him as well. You can’t leave him hanging or give him the impression that something is completely wrong with you or your mom.

“Okay,” he nods, accepting anything from you at this point.

“The toilets?” You ask again and he looks past you.

“I think they’re behind the corner there,” he points a finger towards the host’s table. You smile at him, a reassurance that you’re okay, before you make your way to the ladies room.

There’s no one else in the small toilet. Two stalls with open doors and a sink with a round mirror on the wall make you sigh out long. Your eyes sting with salty tears, so does your nose. You lock yourself in one of the stalls and take a wad of toilet paper from the dispenser, dapping at your under eyes frantically to not make the tears smudge your mascara. You take deep breaths in and blow them out slowly through your mouth.

The door to the toilet opens and closes. Heels click against the tiled floor. The woman on the other side of the stall opens the faucet and water starts splashing against the ceramic bowl. The normalcy of the action, even when you can’t see the other person, calms your racing memories. You dry the last remnants of wetness from your cheeks and flush the toilet paper.

Abigail is turned towards you when you open the stall door.

“What did he do?” She asks immediately when she sees you. You stand in the doorway, unable to move. This is the first time you’re talking since you last saw her at her house. What she said still stings, how she thinks Javier is using you and you’ll only be a conquest for him. Little does she know you’re both using each other and not for what she thinks.

“Nothing, I’ve just been a bit stressed.” You walk past her to the sink and start washing your hands in the running water. When you turn the faucet off, Abigail’s attempted calm breaths sound too loud in your ears.

“Please be honest with me. He clearly hurt you someway already, proving my point.” She places her hand on your shoulder and the too sweet look in her eyes, too much empathy, wipes away any sincerity she might’ve otherwise had on her face.

You shake your head and wipe your fingertips along your lower lash line. Your reflection in the mirror looks decent still, the tears haven’t turned your eyes red, and your makeup is still intact.

“Abigail,” you turn to her and look at her in the eyes. “He didn’t hurt me. We are having a good time together. I’ve been stressed lately, and it has nothing to do with him.” Your lies seem pretty believable to your ears. If confronting her wasn’t as serious as it now is, you’d be laughing how the last sentence couldn’t be farther from the truth.

“Are you sure? Because it looked like he said something that upset you and I don’t want to see him do that to you.” She rubs her hand against your shoulder, exactly where you’ve had the tight muscle. It’s not comforting for you, instead it makes you tighten your shoulder, and it complains immediately.

“Yes, I’m sure! You don’t have to be worried about me. I love you, but let me handle this on my own, okay?” Abigail sighs and drops her hand. She looks disappointed, almost like she was looking for the juiciest gossip just like Javier said.

“Okay then. But there’ll come a day when you will be hurt by him, and I’ll be there for you when that happens.” She tilts her head, and the empathetic downturn of her eyes almost makes yours roll a complete 360.

“Will you be there for me even when nothing happens?” You ask Abigail. Her empathy resolves into a smile that you’ve come to recognize as insincere. She still looks warm, just like a friend would. But there’s a tightness in her cheeks and the corners of her mouth that makes your alarm bells go off in your gut. You realize why that is. The smile doesn’t reach her eyes, they’re hard and keeping an eye on you. Just like out in the restaurant, when she was watching you and Javier eat.

“Come here,” she coaxes and pulls you in for a hug. You wrap your arms around her and feel her stiff body against yours. “Of course I’ll be here for you, no matter what goes down! You can always count on me.” She squeezes you against her one last time before she lets go but keeps her hands on your shoulders.

“I’ve missed you!” She gushes and shakes you gently. It has always made you laugh when she has done that. Almost like it’s a tradition for her to tell you she has missed you, driving every word home by shaking you by the shoulders. The tension between you to reminds you of the sweet times you’ve had together but you don’t get that sense of relief of someone missing you now.

“I’ve missed you too,” you tell her. For the first time ever it’s only a half truth. There have been times when you’ve missed Abigail a lot, and there have been times now that you’re not as close friends anymore, where you’ve found yourself to be missing her. Saying those words makes unease fall to the pit of your stomach and it stays there. Almost like this is the last time things will be somewhat normal between the two of you.

“Will you be ready soon?” She asks.

“No, I don’t think so.” You try to find smooth mellowness as you walk back into the restaurant hand in hand. “We might order some dessert still.” You tell her. You shouldn’t look at her, but you do and there’s no smile or empathy on her face. Only cold doubt that she tries to hide with a laughed out “aha!”.

“I hope you enjoy the rest of your date night,” you tell her and move to let go of her hand.

“Remember what I told you,” she holds on tight, forcing you to turn to him.

“I’m okay, there’s nothing to worry about.” She nods and lets go.

Javier is watching you when you turn to come back to your table. His eyes follow Abigail as she walks behind you to the opposite direction. When you’re only a few steps away from sitting down, he looks up at you and smirks.

“What was that about?”

“Nothing, she’s worried you’re going to use me.” You scoff and scoot back next to him. Were you really sitting this close to him? Your knees knock together again and stay there. The pressure that radiated against you earlier has disappeared and you easily welcome his physical touch again.

“Is that so?” His eyes linger on your thighs when you fix the hem of your dress after you’ve settled back in your seat.  

“I think you were right. She just wants gossip.” He quickly glances at her, then shakes his head.

“That doesn’t surprise me.”

“Where are the plates?” You were almost ready to fix yours up for taking.

“The server got them and offered me this,” Javier gives you the dessert menu bound in dark leather.

“I was just thinking we could get something!” Your enthusiasm about a possible dessert is contagious. He leans closer to see the pages of the little booklet in your lap. You turn it towards him. Javier leans his other hand behind you again. It would be so easy to bend towards him, to make space for yourself against his shoulder. It doesn’t seem right, you don’t know how he’d react. How even you would react.

“Find anything interesting?” He mumbles against your ear. The sound makes you swallow instantly.

“The triple layer chocolate cake sounds interesting.” Heat rises up with chills on the spot where his breath gently tickles your skin.

“I agree.” He signs for Jonathan to come by your table, and he takes the lead naturally. Javier takes the menu from you when you hold it out for him and his back straightens when he speaks with the server, ordering two pieces of cake.

“Actually, let’s share a piece, if that’s okay with you?” You ask Javier. His lips part as he looks at you and his lower lip naturally puffs out.

“I’m fine with that.” He turns back to Jonathan and changes the order. His eyes glint as he looks at you two, a little mischievous edge to them. You’re not sure if Jonathan is from town or from somewhere else, but the knowing look he gives you two is a good indication of your plan working. Maybe you just need to lean into the flirty gestures and weirdness of going out with someone only for show.

Javier turns back to you as Jonathan makes his way to the kitchen. There’s disbelief in the low smirk of his, intrigue in the few smile lines next to his eyes.

“I was looking forward to eating a slice by myself,” he accuses, clearly more offended he didn’t come up with the order on his own, but you outshone him in his own game once again.

“I was thinking, let’s give them all what they want. I can give you more chocolate cake from the bakery any day anyway.”

“I chose wisely. Not everyone has a bakery and access to chocolate cake at all times.” He makes you laugh, genuinely bursting a bubble of restriction and bringing out a sound that starts with gentle giggles and ends with your teeth showing and your eyes scrunching shut for a second.

When you open them, Javier’s smirk has evolved into a gentle smile, almost proud of his success in finding what kind of humor works on you.

“Look,” he begins and brushes his fingers against the lines between his brows, smoothing them. “I didn’t want to overstep with my questions, I’m sorry.” The words hold meaning. How many times have you been apologized to, sincerely? You can’t remember. There are no expectations, only honesty.

“I forgive you.” You let go of the rest of the heaviness. Javier smiles and nods. He moves his hand behind you, so his arm is gently pressed along your back again.  

Jonathan comes back with the chocolate cake. It looks decadent, moist, the layers thick and the filling creamy. There’s a generous dollop of Chantilly cream next to it on the plate. The taste isn’t bad either, even though you would’ve added a little espresso in the cake to bring out the flavors of the chocolate more. It doesn’t matter in the end.

You notice Javier taking a piece and close his eyes for a second after tasting the cake. His spoon hangs from his fingers and he eats slowly, even more so than his dinner.

“You like it?”

“Your chocolate cake has to be a hundred times better than this or I’ll be disappointed we didn’t order that second slice.” Maybe it’s the wine, it most likely is the wine, but you laugh again. He’s milking them from you now, and it’s almost unfair you haven’t managed to make him laugh yet.

The thought freaks you out. You can’t be thinking about making him laugh. This arrangement needs some structure. That way there’s no danger of emotions getting in the way. You can’t get attached.

“What do you say about coming up with some ground rules for our little deal?” You drop your voice. He automatically leans closer and looks around you to make sure no one else hears you two from your little bubble of privacy.

“What do you have in mind?”

“Hand holding is fine, so is cheek kisses. Public touching in general.”

“What about what we’re doing now?” Javier looks between you two, the little proximity you have to each other.

“I think this is fine. Are you okay with it?”

“Yeah, it’s fine.”

“I also want us to have fun. This is a silly thing anyway, no need to make it complicated and weird.” He nods at your words and takes one more bite of the cake. He has left the best part, the middle, for you with plenty of cream still on the plate. “And dancing! We have to dance at the wedding at least.”

“I don’t dance.”

“What! Sure, you do! And even if you didn’t, you can’t be much more helpless than I am.” He blinks slowly and nods, not being able to argue back.

“I have a request…” Javier almost reaches for the water but then decides to go for the wine. He washes the cake down with it while his glass still has plenty left. “I want you to talk to me. Don’t keep things to yourself if something bothers you. We have to be on the same page about things and if we’re not honest, this won’t work.” What a way to bring the silly mood down.

“You’re right,” you can’t deny it. “Okay, so honesty, dancing and physical touch, I think we’ve covered our bases.”

“I agree.” He holds the wine glass in his hand and brings it towards you. Automatically you take yours into your hand as well and go to clink it against his. Javier pulls it back, a little naughty spark lighting his smirk and spiking your nerves.

“Just try not to fall in love with me,” he says under his breath, then clinks his glass against yours. “I could corrupt you.” He drops his chin but never drops his gaze. It stays on you from the shadows of his lashes that line those wickedly dripping, burnt honey eyes.

You clink your glass against his for the second time, surprising him. “You might corrupt me,” you try to match his mood, dropping your chin while mirroring his moves and keep your voice low. “But I won’t be the one falling in love.”

The grin on his face falters, the corner on one side shaking slightly before it falls, revealing something else in the confident exterior. A crack, a hairline fracture in the well-constructed personality of one Javier Peña. The chuckle that you laugh out loud surprises even you, but he immediately joins you, and takes a sip of his drink, now mirroring you.

There’s two bites of the cake left. Carefully you take a spoonful and smother it in cream. You bring it to your mouth and even from that angle you can see some of the whipped Chantilly fall from the edge. Immediately you drop your spoon and lean back against Javier’s arm and check your dress. Of course it landed on the hem. You sigh out a disappointed grunt and push the plate towards him.

“You can have the rest,” you nod towards the cake and take the napkin off the table to clean your dress.

“Wait,” Javier’s voice makes you look up. He stares at the corner of your mouth, almost fixated on it.  With his thumb and forefinger, he brings your cheek against his palm.

It’s the cream, a light and airy dollop of it stuck on your face. Javier reaches his thumb towards your mouth and takes the rest of the cream onto his finger, running the tip of it gently against your lip, more than is necessary.

His eyes are focused on your lips, how you swallow. His mouth opens instinctively with yours. You feel an exhale on your face, a little shaky, sweet from the dessert. Your face burns and your skin prickles with his touch, with him being so close that you can count his lashes.

Like a sudden realization his eyes lock with yours. “Is this okay?” You’re frozen in place, held by him, by his hand and by the dark in his eyes. By his breath and by his smell. By his body and his voice that rings in your ears. You nod, shutting up the voice in your head that is screaming at you that this isn’t just a fake date. It’s a real date.

No, it’s not.

Javier pulls his hand back, leaving you shaken and your skin tingling. You take a sip of your wine, much larger than it needs to be, and the dryness burns in your throat for a moment. You expect him to wipe his thumb on the thick, fancy napkin, but instead, and without a second thought, he brings the tip of his thumb against his lips and licks it clean.

“You can have the rest,” he tells you, pointing at the last piece of the cake. He lifts his hand when Jonathan walks past your table. “Can we have the check, please.” He writes with an invisible pen in the air and the server nods. You eat the last piece and make sure there’s no cream left on your face this time around. It would only be embarrassing if it happened again.

He digs out his wallet from his back pocket, picking out cash while looking at the piece of paper.

“I can pay my half of the bill.” Your purse pops open with a satisfying softness of the magnets separating.

“It’s my treat,” he waves his hand towards you, still focused on reading the bill. With neat handwriting he scribbles the tip amount on the receipt. “You can pay next time.” He looks back up at you when he has attached the money under a small paperweight on the little metallic platter.

“Ready?” He asks and you nod. He lets you scoot out of the booth first and then follows close behind. His hand lands, gently, on the small of your back and guides you to take a detour. You go where he leads you to. It doesn’t surprise you, but it does make you nervous. His hand snakes to take yours in his. His palm heats your skin up instantly, pressing an imprint in your hold.

“What’s little brother doing here, out on a date?” Javier jokes when you slow down and stop right in front of the engaged couple. Noah laughs and grabs Abigail’s hand. She smiles but her eyes are tightly on you and Javier.

“We heard someone might be coming here for a date as well, had to make sure I wasn’t hearing a bunch of hogwash. And here you are,” Noah swoons at you two.

They have dessert plates in front of them, a devoured crème brûlée for him, half a cheesecake still left for Abigail. Her hard eyes travel between you and Javier, up and down, until they focus on your linked hands.

Maybe it’s out of spite, maybe you’re looking for support, maybe it’s the wine giving you a little extra confidence, but you twine your fingers through Javier’s. You look up at him. His hand tightens around yours at the same time as his jaw flexes. He smiles, his shoulders a little more pulled back. He catches you in the corner of his eye. He squeezes his hand once.

“A special girl deserves a special date.” Fire flames against your cheeks immediately and you all laugh. Abigail’s voice is shriller than you’ve ever heard before. Javier squeezes your hand once more, then a second time, like a quiet “this okay?”. You reassure him by squeezing his hand back and lifting your other hand to cradle his bicep in your palm. Abigail notices it immediately.

“You’re coming to Laredo with us, right? All the ones in the wedding party and their partners are coming there for a weekend.” Noah asks. Javier tenses next to you.

“You have a lot of work and stress though, maybe it’s not the best idea.” Abigail opens her mouth immediately, talking for you.

“I think I can spare a weekend.” You smile at her and try not to let the sting of her putting words in your mouth cloud your genuineness. Abigail smiles back, but in that too sweet way to hide whatever she is thinking.

“Good!” Noah looks as excited as ever, his cheeks a little pink and his eyes sparkle in the golden mood lighting.

“We have to get going now, enjoy your desserts.” Javier takes a side step, letting you find your place next to him without having to detach from his arm and hand. With a final “bye!” you let him lead you out of the restaurant. His bicep tightens against your palm.

“Are you flexing your arm?” Javier laughs at the question, slipping away from your reach. Maybe that’s enough of an answer. His hand finally lets go of yours as you get closer to the doors. It effortlessly lands on the small of your back again. A gentle pressure, not invading or forceful, only spreading heat to your back.

“You’re perfect at that, so good.” He murmurs into your ear before he opens the door for you. You smirk up at him as you move past him. The words tickle in your ear, as does the look in his eyes and the smug smile on his face.

[vinelark]

in return for the fic recs i got last month, here are a few fics i read recently that i want to absolutely yell about from the rooftops:

Iron, Fire, Mirror-Glass by PurpleSoot: an early batman days AU where, while slowly healing from a spine-shattering injury, bruce finds an old book about the fae. in a fit of desperation he attempts a Summoning to try to heal his spine. enter: robin.

this story is fantastic—the kind of longfic with a plot so good and satisfying that finishing it leaves you on a reading high for at least a week. one of the best early days bruce fics i’ve ever read, with honorable mentions to excellent alfred and clark and jim and selina characterizations—but robin (dick) really takes the cake here. the balance of chilling, otherworldly, not-quite-human vs. playful, earnest, Still Just a Child…chef’s kiss. the way robin’s character arc drags bruce kicking and screaming through his own emotional growth is so well-paced and well-wrought that i already want to reread just so i can experience it again. this is one of those god-tier longfics that i can’t believe i got to read for free on the internet.

mid-reading testimonial:

The Lone Ranger Never Had to Deal with Bruce Wayne by @theskeptileptic: a tim-joins-the-family-early fic in which tim decides to do everyone (his parents) a solid by faking his own death and running away to canada, except his weirdo neighbor bruce wayne keeps butting in and messing up his plans.

this is one of the rare stories where tim doesn’t know batman’s identity yet, and even rarer stories where that somehow makes the whole thing even more compelling. this fic has two of my favorite things: small, lonely, moderately unhinged tim drake pov, and really good pangs—pangs that are expertly teased out through flashbacks that add context to the present action at exactly the right moments. also, a very fun cameo near the end. i had a blast reading this one, physically clutched my chest more than once, and am already looking forward to rereading.

mid-reading testimonial (feat. @cairoscene):

equivalent exchange by scribblemetimbers (wip): an au set during tim’s robin days in which tim discovers 1) crossroads demons are a thing and 2) people can make deals with them. deals that include bringing people back from the dead, so long as you’re willing to pay the price with your own life.

this fic is so…🤌‼️ it feels like everything i want in a fic so far, down to two incredibly specific concepts i love (bruce, in his grief, saying something harsh to robin!tim with disastrous consequences later + tim making a big secret sacrifice gambit) which are both done so so well, within a larger plot that is also done so so well. the way this fic cuts in and out of scenes at the exact right moments for max tension feels like a masterclass in causing me to tear my hair out (in the best way), and instead of assorted pangs reading it is just one big Pang. it currently leaves off on an agonizing cliffhanger but, again, in the best way. highly recommend. (thank you again @owlbats for the rec!)

exchange between me and my friend after i sent the link, which about sums it up:

and to cut this angst with some humor:

IRIS Log #1548 by @deadchannelradio: a night on patrol as recorded by the bats’ audio logs, centering around red hood getting flung into a ditch and everyone, eventually, getting home safe.

one of the top ten funniest things i’ve ever read—spiritually up there with send to all (and if you’ve seen my fic rec tag you’ll know what a compliment that is). this makes use of the audio log format SO well. the dialogue shines, the jokes land with excellent timing, and it moves at such a clip that it’s pretty much impossible to stop reading once you’ve started. every character shines in this, and i’ve randomly choked on laughter remembering the phrase ‘good god he got thrown like a corn hole beanbag’ like twenty times in the past few weeks.

mid-reading testimonial:

[steddieunderdogfics]

This week’s writer spotlight feature is:  @formosusiniquis! They've shared thirty-seven works with us in the Stranger Things tag with thirty-one of those featuring the tag Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson!

Our anonymous nominator recommends the following works by @formosusiniquis:

i'll play giles, you be spike

your eyes can be so cruel (just as i can be)

in the library there lived a hobbit

future in your hand (signed, sealed, delivered)

I've never read anything from Bec that I didn't absolutely LOVE! They have a real knack for building a scene and sucking you into the story, and they have incredible range in genre while still remaining in-character and realistic. -- anonymous

Below the cut, @formosusiniquis answered some questions about their writing process and some of their recommended work!

Why do you write Steddie?

Steve has always been a favorite character of mine since season 1; I fell off after binging the first season when it first came out but ‘d check in through mutuals to see what was happening with him. The fandom really brought their A game and after a couple days of falling face first back into it I knew I had to take a turn playing with their dynamic. It really has the best of both worlds with the opposites attract rivals thing but beneath the surface they have all these commonalities about the things that really matter and playing with them to get them to push through those differences is so much fun!

What’s your favorite trope to READ?

I will never not love enemies to lovers or a good slow burn romance. Both at once is just the best. Steddie specific tropes though - I can’t resist a different first meeting: Steve getting adopted by Hellfire or Eddie stalking Scoops, they’re all good.

What’s your favorite trope to WRITE?

I don’t know if this is a trope but my favorite thing to write is just Steve, Robin, and Eddie being teenagers. Just stupid banter and shenanigans. Or maybe a strange PV that you wouldn’t expect not always outside, though I do like that, but things like doing Eddie’s POV for my time loop fic today is a new day to find you or the reddit entries in Am I the Asshole?

What’s your favorite Steddie fic?

Impossible question, there are so many astounding fics in this fandom we’ve been so blessed. I could probably give you a top 5 based on trope alone. But a few favorites:

And Timeless Days of August - thegoodthebadandthenerdy ( @cauldronoflove ) - JJ is my favorite author in every fandom and this fic is gorgeous and majorly under appreciated. It’s more steddie heavy than the rest of the series which is a fantastic exploration of nancy & eddie’s friendship that everyone should read.

took you for a working boy - pukner ( @pukner ) - the gender in this fic is legendary, astounding even, and I absolutely adore the visual way it’s written. The stylistic choices made throughout are inspiring.

change up, high inside - GibbousLunation - had to include at least one Stevie fic. This one has it all: sports, steddie, and most importantly some god tier stobin.

Is there a trope you’re excited to explore in a future work but haven’t yet?

Honestly, before this fandom I never had much of a taste for omegaverse, but there are some real masterworks written by some amazing authors here and I’ve been tempted to see what gender fuckery I can get up to with secondary genders. That or fake dating.

What is your writing process like?

A hot mess. I usually come up with an idea like a fever dream, usually unhinged dialogue that I backwards engineer into something. Or I get some big sweeping concept that I have to wrangle into being feasible and I pick and prod at it for months alternating between it being the sole focus of my attention or basically abandoning it until it has my interest again.

Do you have any writing quirks?

I write about half of my fics dialogue first with some really basic emotional notation and then I’ll work backwards to establish the rest of the scene, what the characters are doing, how they’re moving, etc. A lot of the time the dialogue or specific character narration points hit the clearest for me, but then I’ll have to work a little harder to see how they’re sitting or moving through the room.

Do you prefer posting when you’ve finished writing or on a schedule?

Most of my fics are one shots or ficlets so they are finished via requirement to have something to post and that is definitely for a reason. The few times I’ve posted a wip that hasn’t been completely or mostly done it’s like the well of inspiration dries up so, better to post on a schedule for me.

Which fic are you most proud of?

Either of my Steddie Bang fics even though your eyes isn’t quite finished yet. They both just feel very intricate to me and any time I can manage to pull off something with a plot and substance I’m proud of myself.

How did you get the idea for future in your hand (signed, sealed, delivered)?

It was actually last year’s Steddie Summer exchange so initial credit for the idea goes to @oh-stars who asked for a childhood penpals fic that roadtrip to see each other and I was immediately enchanted. Epistolary storytelling is a favorite of mine and I couldn’t resist putting my own spin on it.

When writing in the library there lived a hobbit, what was something you didn’t expect?

Oh my god, probably the whole fic. As @oriarts can attest the first draft I attempted was needlessly and horrifically angsty. I scrapped like almost all of it and leaned into the RomCom of it all with some help from @thefreakandthehair who beta’d and it became an entirely different (and much better) fic.

What inspired in the library there lived a hobbit?

Inspired first by this gorgeous artwork by the aforementioned oriarts. Then also a little bit by my own experience as an overworked children’s librarian.

What was your favorite part to write from your eyes can be so cruel (just as i can be)?

So far it’s been the masquerade scene. I won’t include it here cause it’s so long, but it’s my favorite scene from the movie and to pay homage to it was a lot of fun!

How do/did you feel writing i'll play giles, you be spike?

That is the definition of silly goofy fic. Definitely one I had a lot of fun writing because the only thoughts in my brain were stobin banter and bad vampire jokes. As it should be.

What was the most difficult part of writing your eyes can be so cruel (just as i can be)?

So far? Finishing it. This has very much been a labor of love, but it’s also a fic that’s genre wise so far out of my wheelhouse that progress has been slower than I’d like it to be. It has been such a joy when everything is clicking that it makes the hard stuff not so bad.

Do you have a favorite scene and/or line from any of your fics?

It’s not Steddie, at least not fully but I am still so in love with all of my Stobin hivemind fic the bells, the joy (together in darkness), but the gender in this scene is pretty good.

Lying in bed together, the Thundercats night light he’d bought in ‘83 -- claiming it was a gift for a nephew he didn’t have -- casting a gentle glow on the room, he can feel Robin gently prodding at their connection again. The fragile space in their brain he’s started thinking of as the Wall. The thing their squishy human brains had constructed. A safety mechanism to keep them separate enough not to break. A coping mechanism that makes him miss her like a phantom limb even when she is lying inches from him sharing the same breath-warmed air. She doesn’t look him in the eye, they don’t care for eye contact. “Did you ever feel like this before we were us?” A girl, not a girl. A boy, not a boy. Both and nothing. Trying on clothes and terms and personalities that fit a size too small. Pinching your toes and leaving them blistered. Robin feels more at home with lesbian than woman and Steve has always just worn whatever personality people liked most, swapping them out like masks for one that works.

Do you have any upcoming projects or fics you’d like to share/promote?

Well my biggest project right now is to continue finishing your eyes which will happen!!! Other than that nothing concrete on the horizon. I’ve got a drive full of wips to look out for -- mostly stobin and steddie. I’ve also been tossing around the idea of a series of Stevie fics all inspired by Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess. So if any of that sounds any good feel free to bully me into actually following through.

Outside of these questions, Is there anything YOU would like to add?

Nothing to add other than how much I have really cherished my time in this fandom. Everyone I have interacted with has been truly so lovely and kind. It has possibly been one of my most enjoyable fandom experiences to date and I truly believe it’s because the fandom gets genuine joy from lifting up others and their hard work. So thank you all, I love you, I’ll be here forever.

Thank you to our author, @formosusiniquis, and our nominator! See more of @formosusiniquis works featured on our page throughout the day!

Writer’s Spotlight is every Wednesday! Want to nominate an author? You can nominate them here!

[potatoesandsunshine]

the tierlist trend seems kind of over... but i love ranking things :) here's the official anna potatoesandsunshine d20 opinions

told myself i wasn’t gonna write a whole long commentary about this but c’mon. that’s who i am.

💖BEST💖: to make it to this tier a season has to be either tailor-made for me specifically (the acofaf announcement made me feel like someone had seen my diary and it remains in my opinon The Best D20 Has Ever Been) or be something i never knew i needed. unsleeping city was one that i didn’t initially think i would care for (i’m just not super into urban fantasy) but it pretty quickly became a comfort food season for me. when i’m sick TUC 1 is what i put on. acoc and fhsy are a bit more complicated for me—those seasons are what got me really into the fandom side of d20 (writing fic, listening to fan music, etc) but pretty soon i realized hmm i don't really... enjoy the fandom side of this so much! so i hit the brakes on making fanwork pretty hard after those two, but they’re still two of the best seasons imo. 

Good ♥️: i like these! i rewatch episodes sometimes! i was surprised how much fun mentopolis was, but i fell in love with the season as it went on and i’m super happy it exists. we all know my eftbk feelings by now (it’s good but i wish it had a longer runway so we could have some more character development throughout). ravening war is tricky because it had some of the best character moments and dynamics for any season of d20 for me (i am the tragedy enjoyer! i love when a season makes me sad!) but the overarching illuminati plot just didn’t hit at all so that kept it out of the top tier. Mice & Murder Is The Most Underrated Season Of Dimension 20 And Everyone Should Watch It.

Had fun, won’t rewatch: what it says on the tin. if i finish a season it can’t make it into the bounced off tier, so even though i retroactively don’t super care for the seven i must’ve had a good enough time watching it in the moment. maybe the Hottest Take of this list is.... i think fh is more popular than is really warranted by virtue of being the first season. it’s good! it’s a good story! but i like fhsy so much more and i basically never go back and rewatch fh episodes. (DISCLAIMER fantasy high LIVE in brooklyn is my child and that episode should be carved out and stuck in the best tier. love it.)

Bounced off: also what it says on the tin. coffin run just didn’t catch my attention (might’ve been a me thing, sometimes if i’m not having a great time it’s harder to care about d20) and while i loved everyone on shriek week i had a tough time with the system. that one is worth a revisit when i have more time. aso and tuc2 are really tough for me 😔 it seems like people love aso so much and i’m happy for them but i tried to get into it probably six times, made it to episode two, and said “why am i watching this?” every time. i will never finish it. tuc2 felt even wilder to not connect to since i love tuc so much but i have a certain threshold for extended explanations of metaphysical concepts in the world and tuc2 blasts past that like every 20 minutes. tried maybe four times to watch the season (my best friend really likes it! she thinks i would!) but just couldn’t.

Active Hatred 🔪: tiny heist is the worst season of this show! i hate it! i can’t believe they had both jess ross and lily du and wasted them on this season!! (i was already sort of falling out of love with mcelroy content when this season came out, but this was what put my taz fandom in the grave)

Didn’t Watch (Yet): just haven’t gotten around to them 👍

[minetteskvareninova]

Notes:

A/B/O - I can imagine a good fic with this trope, but still very much Not My Thing

amnesia fic - That's not how human brain works. That's not how anything works. No. I reject.

angst - Honestly, this can be basically anything from mild miscommunication making two people believe the other one doesn't love them back to hardcore tragedy. Too nonspecific, is what I'm saying.

arranged marriage - cackles like the freak I am

baby fic - Nice trope! Not a top-tier, but still Appeals to me.

sharing a bed - The more I ponder this one, the more I like it. Even if it does make me feel like the most basic of basic bitches.

bang or die - softly NO

body swap - Not exactly my thing, but I guess it can be fun, like purely theoretically?

coffee shop - Pure cliche. I don't hate it, just mildly dislike it.

college AU - Another one that can go either way.

crack fic - I mean, if it's funny, why not?

crossover - Once again, depends what is combined with what, but I do have to say it Appeals to me in a way that, say, college AU doesn't.

dark fic - I am less keen on fics going darker than canon than the other way around, but it's not an unsalvageable concept either.

major character death - Again. Who is dying and how.

canon divergence - Nice concept for a fic!

enemies to lovers - I'd rather not. Too easy to fuck up.

established relationship - If it's not one of my NOTPs, then heart eyes

fairytale AU - I've always loved fairytales, and I am still a sucker for a good retelling, so sue me.

fake relationship - Would be a pretty fun concept if it wasn't so predictable. Like at this point it just makes me roll my eyes, because there's literally zero will they or won't they. THEY DO. EVERY SINGLE TIME. And I know that's the case with other tropes too, like arranged marriage, but those at least don't try to lie to you.

fix it fic - The best kind of fic!

fluff - Well, I guess I am a whore then.

friends to lovers - People who like each other getting into a relationship? What is this sorcery???

gen fic - Not my preference, but otherwise a perfectly valid concept and there should be more of them.

hurt-comfort - Again. Why not?

historical AU - I want to say that I wish there was more research involved, but… Let's face it. You are not writing serious media, and I am not reading it. Research is a nice bonus, but I'll eat it up regardless.

high school AU - Uh… I like when they are actually written as kids, either for humor or horror (in a dark fic)? Otherwise it just gives me Gossip Girl flashbacks. Ugh. No.

huddle for warmth - The guiltiest of guilty pleasures.

humor - Much like angst, too non-specific.

in vino veritas - Dunno. Can be funny, I guess (I am a base, unsophisticated creature and alcohol-based jokes never fail to make me laugh), but doesn't Appeal to me.

first kiss - I guess it could work in like a story about two teenagers falling in love or queer people discovering their sexuality or whatever. But mostly I don't get the big deal.

magic AU - Eh?

miscommunication - Haha NO

missing scenes - FUCK YES. My favourite stuff to write.

mutual pining - Just… Don't overdo it, please? Okay?

sex pollen - And you thought A/B/O is a stupid concept!

pregnancy fic - Again, I am a whore.

pwp - I read this one way too much for my own good, because they are quick, easy, and fun, but just because something excites me sexually, that doesn't mean I can't hold it in contempt, okay?

royalty AU - I am not proud of myself either, but I am not going to lie to you either and say it's not very much My Thing.

slow burn - I don't have the patience most of the time, but they are usually more emotionally satisfying, so that kinda evens out.

soulmate AU - This goddamn trope could go die in a ditch. That's not how love works, and it would suck pretty badly if it did!

time loop - Overused and uninteresting, at least to me.

love triangle - Can go very badly, but still. I love me some good love triangle.

unhappy ending - I'd rather not, but I'll admit, sometimes, it's necessary for the story, and I respect that.

unrequited love - Not very keen on it, but I don't hate it either.

Look What I Found

Create a Fan Fiction Tropes Tier List - TierMaker

My tier list:

[amorevolousfaith]

Mando Fic Recs

Basically a collection of Din Djarin Smut listed under slightly specific categories that I've probably read more than twice.

SO MINORS BEGONE

Blogs - authors I follow and frequently read from

@the-scandalorian - Their writing so raw and in depth to me and I honestly could not recommend a better writer than this one right here. I’ve list lots of their fics below but make sure to check out their blog masterlist and follow them.

@mandos-sluts - does a lot of fics that involves exhibitionism and more than one person. Which personally I always struggle with so this writer is like a god in my eyes. 

@absurdthirst - Pollen Fic ROYALTY right here guys, love all their fics and would recommend ANYTHING on their masterlist. Their little day to day rants and blurbs are great too.

@man-slut-mando - Man is out here doing god’s work, and if that god happened to be named Sin that’s fine with me. This man’s voice is top tier work it’s self the fact he can modulate it makes it even better. Can not and will not recommed a better blog for audio works.

Pollen/ Drugged Fics which can also double as The Breeding kink Fics - Because those ALWAYS come out good.

Chemical Feelings by @absurdthirst - I really like this fic, if your new to the concept of pollen fics I recommend this one first, because it gives you an idea of whats going on before you get into the heavier stuff. All in all a great starter fic for the category. 

Dosed by @absurdthirst - First of all I’d like to point out this is one of my Favorite authors. Second, The plot line of how this all came to be was just too funny to pass up. Because who wouldn’t read how Mando got drugged at a Gas station and Shan’s lowkey gremlin behavior.

hunting on a foreign planet by @mandalorianfantasy - like the fic before the plot line of how this came to be is just too funny to pass up, only you just don’t know it until you read it. The reader is a fucking idiot but hey we love her effort. The smut was just as entertaining because Mando is just like what the fuck is happening but fuck it. And I’m living for it.

Fever In my eyes by @221bshrlocked - another good pollen fic then one a little more serious than the last two, once again breeding kink! There’s quite a bit of Mando’a in this one which I can appreciate, and I love how reluctant Mando starts off as before slowly its being chipped away. The header is to die for too.

Unfettered by @the-scandalorian - There are two version of the this fic, this one tell what happens if the chains hold. That’s all your gonna get because honestly it’s just so good I don’t wanna ruin it. But I will tell you the switch between Mando and who ever the hell that other guy was is so amazing, like fuck I wish I could write like that.

Unrestrained by @the-scandalorian - this is the other part to the two version fic, telling about what happens if the chains DON’T hold. Like I said before I don’t want to ruin it. BUT the blood rushing chase scene is so fucking amazing, a master piece really.

Antigen by @djarinsbeskar - oof when I tell you guys this fic is feral I’m telling you its FERAL. Like I’m talking raw animalistic instincts and this fic is probably one of the best pollen fics out there. Like breeding kink on POINT, and let me tell you as someone who consumed just about every breeding fic she can get her hands on defiantly one of the best. This fic alone is in my top three.

Periods - Because I’ve been there done that, and highly recommend, If not then just read these.

Kinktober Day: 28 by @mandosbinkie - I really loved the progression of mando slowly figuring out the little ins and outs of a womans cycle. Like This is a thing now? to I could go along with this! I also loved that snip of aggressiveness at the end because fuck ain’t that a mood.

Period Request by @mandosbinkie - loved how this one was wrote that Mando being the caring man he is ACTUALLY did his research, plus the side commentary was golden. But then we got along to fact where he just like FORGOT until it came time to put it use. But for some reason or another I just really like what he says at the end, I don’t know I just like it.

Threesome or More - because sometimes you need a little more spice to that spicy life.

Troublemaker by @housekenobi - Because Din is a tired dad just trying to sleep but he also deserves to get laid. Not to mention Boba out here being a fucking fiend like we don’t already know the man doesn’t possess a single ounce of shame in his body.

Open Hatch by @mandos-sluts by far one of my most favorite pieces simply because of the dynamic. Mando comes off a little dick-ish but hey I’m not complaining. The degradation is out of this world guys like, I’m pretty sure I learned a new way to write rough smut from this fic alone.

Boba and Din by @saradika - one of the authors I follow. This was requested and doesn’t even have a title but its my favorite threesome fic so I don’t care. SO let me tell you, this was the first threesome fic I read for this fandom and I have not read one that can top it. I love how it starts off and love the cute little snippy prompt, but fuck let me tell you when Din got thrown into the mix I was hooked. Like YES I want them to flirt with each other, YES I want them to spur each other on, BUT WHY isn’t there a part 2. I really need a part 2 guys.

Din, Luke, and Reader By @bsxcrxts​ - Not really a fic more like a headcannon in a non headcannon fashion. But look we ALLLL look for that Mando-Jedi parallel and lets face it the whole concept is hot. A Mando who doesn’t know how to stop giving and a Jedi who doesn’t know how is just the thing we all dream of being caught in the middle of. 

Bets/ On the Job - sometimes we fight, sometimes we just need to fuck it out.

The Ambiguous Bet by @mandos-sluts - another one from my favorite author. Not gonna lie when I started reading this my thought was this bitch done bit off more than she can chew and Mando’s gonna have to come save her ass. Well, Mando did come, but it was NOT to save her. The man got every little credit worth of what he spent in this fic.

Beskar and Lace by @firstofficerwiggles - not really a ‘bet’ kinda fic, but the reader is like 'Bet'. Its a kinda 'sure okay MANDO let me just DO this for you' kinda vibe. You’ll understand when you read it but, if you are looking for the tension fic OF ALL tension fics its right fucking here. Like this author DRAGGED it out, and its fucking beautiful.

Happenstance by @the-scandalorian - this fic is more on the ‘on the job’ side of things. Classic there’s only one bed, but I’m living for the reader's I’m too fucking tired to care attitude. I also like how theres little clipped scenes where both of them wake up with their hands on each other. It eventually leads to the smut we all want and I love this kinda sleepy but not sleepy stress induced sex haze.

Sequins And Wounds by @djarrex - I think why I like this is because even if it would suit Mando he not about matter of convince. He’s a very cautious man and would normally NEVER just go for it the way he did here. Another thing I liked, something I just got a kick out of, was the costumer service conflict. I can not TELL you how many times I’ve needed a shot before dealing with a costumer and if I knew I wouldn’t get fired there would be a bottle of tequila in my bag before I go into work. so after all that the Smut was just the icing on the cake. I loved the ripping of the dress and the buying of the new one, top tier good boy behavior right there folks.

Fluff/ Softness- Because it what we DESERVE.

Light Sleeper by @honeymandos - because the kid isn’t the only reason why Mando is always grumpy and tired. The reader, unlike me, is a light sleeper, Mando goes bump in the night, smut insues. Over all just soft and well deserved for Mando.

The ‘We Have To Blend In’ fics can also double as Jealously fics - I always love these because you never really know how things are going to go or how they’ll end.

The Salacious Cantina by @mandos-sluts - another author I follow. In this particular fic the reader is NOT happy. She gets over it. But anyway they’re trying to ‘blend in’ but these two still idiots still get called out. Totally worth it though.

Make you Mine by @xcertaindarkthingsx - another great example of going under cover but someone has be an idiot. Otherwise known as Mando get Jealous at work. Pretty much reader gets pushed into the frey for one job and it all goes to hell, man can’t keep his hands to himself so Mando gets possessive. 

Bite Marks by @sirius - Jealous Mando strikes again, loved that part of What is that? When the reader pulled out the dress she was gonna wear. Not to mention the term dudbro was used which is comedy gold. But then tension gets high and Mando nearly fucks the mission, a fight will result, then aggressive smut then after because that’s what we came here for.

When Shit gets Real - basically a collection of fics where shit goes down and theres smut.

The Best Things Dwell Out of Sight by @beskar-cowboy - This smut is apart of a series, but I’m just gonna list this right here. So basically one poorly timed moment causes a very oh-shit-what-the-fuck moment. The helmet has been was removed, I repeat the helmet was removed. Then there’s a moment where its like I don’t really know what to do with you so I’m just gonna fuck you. so yeah, I fucking loved it. 

Rage by @the-scandalorian - I think this is one of my top three all time favorites. Like I read it once then lost it and I went of six hour search through tumblr to find it again. But basically a job goes south and Mando being the fucking WARRIOR he is basically goes feral. Like the fight alone is ALL the foreplay, tension, and build up you need. And then , AND THEN, the smut is so raw, so full of need. Just fucking read the fic, you’ll see why it’s in my top three.

Series- because one post isn’t enough and I need more.

A very good night - @prolix-yuy THEE BEST™ Smut Series. Like Its a THREE part saga. but anyway each little series if basically one big smut fic where it’s broken down in the most delicious of ways and no I will not get over it. I what to be burned with this fic and take it to the afterlife with me. If you are reading this now I DEMAND you go read this fic and support this author because their mind if fucking magical. 

Bloodlust by @dindjarindiaries - This one is not finished, and I’m not sure if it will have a smut but his does get spicy. This is one of my favorite Mando series outside its cannon storyline. It has some Book Of Boba Fett spoilers so be warned, but other than that it’s mostly its own timeline. I love this because Din is finding the courage to function without his helmet, and even though he’s kinda a nervous wreak he still my favorite morally grey man who would kill you for a bag of credits. Boba Fett and his sidekick Shan are still being written in true gremlin behavior and I’m living for it. But my favorite thing about this fic is that it’s a whole undercover mission where the reader and Din find excuses to get spicy with each other and that my friends is Prime We have to blend in trope. My last and final note I will say is that Jealousy is a bitch but fuck she has a great sense of humor, no I will not elaborate.

Prompts/ Request Fic - Because sometimes the best thing come when you have nudge in the right direction.

show me, feel me, teach me by @parker-razor​ - Ooooh honey when I say innocence Kink I mean INNOCENCE KINK! I don’t know if I love more the learning process or the fact that this just started as a drinking game. The humor is one point too, love the fact that Mando had asked if she was saving herself, which those words specifically  paired with the awkwardness of the tone cracked me up. But from there it just escalates and I really don’t want to spoil anything so yes Read this. 10/10. would recommend. 

The ‘How Long Have You Been Standing There’ Fic by @just-here-for-the-moment - This is one of those fics where the tension will kill you before the smut does. It doesn’t help that this fic in particular is a double whammy with the breeding kink I practically LIVE for. But this fic was requested/ prompted so it goes here. But let me say this if Mando said half the shit he says in this fic he won’t be walking either if I had a say.

#15 and #9 by @letterfromvienna - its just a cheeky little fic with some bite to it. you know you have your usual bickering, can’t keep your hands to yourself kinda smut. Honestly its a great fic you don’t want something super soft or super rough.

Gold Chain by @queridopascal - I don’t know guys there's something I find extremely hot about this, I don’t even think I can explain this one. But hey, this author did a great fucking job writing this out for me, and honestly I’d be the person to pull on it like a collar.

Headcannons - because I like to be angry when there isn’t a fic about a fantastic idea.

Running Make-up and blindfold by @winchesterxxi - because running make-up is a tell tale sign that they know their shit. Mando may not seem like the type but I bet he’d get a kick out of seeing a little bit of smudged make-up and this headcannon only feeds that theory.

Fucking you in front of a bounty by @mandosbinkie - this may have more than one person, but it’s written as a headcannon so it’s gonna go here. Anyway alpha male front and center, one bounty doesn’t know how to shut the fuck up and YOU have to pay the price. Not really much of a price, I’d let him keep talking of Mando continues to retaliate in that way. 

Audio - No will not be taking questions at this time

The Mandalorian Hunts you and then he fucks you - look I found this and one of my philosophies in life is Don’t diss it til you try it. Well...I tried and hot damn did this man pull out all the stops. Highkey recommend listening to it alone with thick headphones though.

Don't have the link but the guy who did the audio from before posted a new video and let me tell I straight thought he was reading off a fanfic. Holy shit don’t come at me but that shit was amazing

Good Girl by @man-slut-mando - its literally two words but its so much more. I recomend anything by this blog but this is the first one I ever listened to so it’s going on the list.

Not titled but Ima call it weapon by @man-slut-mando - cheeky dialogue is my drug and no I will not be changing my mind. The tone he used is sending me and I don’t think I’ll ever get over this like ever.

[jawabear]

Din Djarin NSFW Alphabet

Not my GIF

A/N: Thank you for all the support on my last fic! it really didn’t deserve all those notes though.. But nonetheless, here is my NSFW alphabet for everyone's favourite Mandalorian (okay, maybe not everyone, but certainly mine). As with my other ones, my ideas and opinions may differ to yours and others so please be respectful of mine and others’ views of different characters. Enjoy. Sorry for any mistakes. Stay safe.

Genre: smut

Warnings: fem!reader, mentions of sexual activities, no actual sex though, Pedro Pascal comes with his own warning 

Summary: An A-Z of Din Djarin’s bedroom antics...

A = Aftercare (What they’re like after sex)

Din is a little awkward to begin with. He doesn’t really know what to do after sex. It’s usually you who ends up taking care of him after sex. But as time goes on and you end up having sex more often, he gets a little more comfortable.

And from this he will make sure you’re okay, not hurt or anything. He will ask if you need anything, if you’re thirsty or hungry. And then he will hold you until you fall asleep because he’s cute like that.

B = Body part (Their favourite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

On him, he’s not really bothered. He hadn’t every really thought about himself in that regard. And plus being covered in armour doesn’t really aid him in his decision making. But if he had to choose, he’d probably say his hands. They’re useful for many things. Fighting, shooting, fixing, flying and fingering...

On you, because he’s a soft little boy, he’d go with your eyes. He is a strong believer in the concept of the eyes being the window to the soul. And with you that is very much the case. He loves to look into your eyes, he’ll get lost in them in seconds. But more sexual the loves your legs. Especially your thighs. He loves to stroke them and squeeze them. And he loves when they press against his head as he eats you out....

C = Cum (Anything to do with cum basically… I’m a disgusting person)

When he does come it’s quite an overwhelming amount to be honest. He doesn’t really like to come inside you (unless you specifically say) because there is a lot and always the chance of pregnancy and neither he nor you feel ready for that. Plus he feels like he’s dirtying you and he doesn’t want to ruin your perfect body.

But, he will do what you say. So, if you want him to come inside you, over you, whatever, he will.

D = Dirty Secret (Pretty self-explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

Saying that though ^^ It’s fair to say that Din has a slight breeding kink. Slight being huge. It more to do with the fact that he does what to have a child with you. But also he would find it hot to fill you up completely.

He obviously hasn’t said anything but it’s hard to keep his thoughts at bay when you’re begging him to come inside you and you’re wrapping you legs around his waist to pull him closer to you...

E = Experience (How experienced are they? Do they know what they’re doing?)

Din isn’t all that experience. He’s never really cared much about sex before he met you. He had done it once or twice in his life but he didn’t really care much for it, he didn’t really have the time. He was far to preoccupied with his bounty hunting work to find a suitable partner. So it was kind of down to you to teach him. But you didn’t really mind.

F = Favourite Position (This goes without saying. Will probably include a visual)

He loves the classic missionary position. It’s easy and enjoyable.

But he is also a huge fan of you being on top, riding him. He loves to have you take control. And it gives him a better opportunity to feel your body.

G = Goofy (Are they more serious in the moment, or are they humorous, etc)

Certainly more serious. I don’t think Din is a very jokey person in or out of the bedroom. Sometimes you will try and make it a bit lighter but it doesn’t really work. Not that that’s a problem...

H = Hair (How well groomed are they, does the carpet match the drapes, etc.)

Being covered head to toe in armour means that Din doesn’t really need to bother with his appearance both upstairs and down. So he’s not particularly tidy. But as you haven’t voice any complaints (quite the opposite actually) he hasn’t bothered to tidy himself up down there.

I = Intimacy (How are they during the moment, romantic aspect…)

Din goes full romantic in bed. He will touch and feel every part of your body. He will caress and kiss every inch of your skin. He will make love to you. Because he has someone who loves him.

J = Jack Off (Masturbation headcanon)

Personally, I don’t think he gets the same satisfaction from touching himself then he would from fucking you.

There are a few occasions in which he has got himself off to the thought of you. But I think he would only do it as a last resort.

K = Kink (One or more of their kinks)

He had a hidden (but massive) breeding kink as mentioned.

I don’t know if the blindfold thing really counts as one because he does it so you can’t see his face while he fucks you but if it counts then this is a big one.

Also biting. Din is quite possessive and wants to mark you as much as he possibly can so that everyone know you belong to the Mandalorian. Plus it helps in muffling his moans, one) so he can hear yours better, and 2) he gets a little shy and embarrassed at hearing his own...

Does dry-humping count? Because that too. A big one. Just something about it really gets him going, plus it saves him having to faff with getting all his armour off.

L = Location (Favourite places to do the do)

Inside somewhere he knows and trusts. So mainly his ship, in his bed.

Although, there is the rare occasion he will take you in the cockpit. He will sit in the pilots chair and you will ride him. That’s about the only other exception to his bed.

M = Motivation (What turns them on, gets them going)

To be honest, I think it would take quite a lot to get Din going. Being a little sexually naive, I think you’d have to really go out of your way to turn him on. Meaning therefore that it is mostly you who initiates sex.

But there is the odd occasion that he will suddenly be in the mood for it. And then he doesn’t really hold back...

N = NO (Something they wouldn’t do, turn-offs)

I don’t think there’s a lot that he would do. At least in the early stages. He very much stuck to the basics because he found it enjoyable and he didn’t really need anything else. But when you started...let’s just say you were getting a little bored, you tried to coax him into branching out in his sexual preferences.

He would never hurt you. That was for certain. He doesn’t find tying you up to be all that appealing either, but if you really wanted him to do it he wouldn’t say no, he just perhaps wouldn’t enjoy it as much. He relates it too much to bounty hunting and he doesn’t think that’s a good mix, but you disagree.

O = Oral (Preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc)

He definitely prefers giving. Out of everything he’s done to you sexual, eating you out and fingering you has to be what he’s best at. Especially oral.

But he wouldn’t ever say no if you wanted to suck him off...in his pilots chair... because no one in their right mind would turn it down.

P = Pace (Are they fast and rough? Slow and sensual? etc.)

It really depends on his mood. Although, saying that, he doesn’t often take his bad mood out on you. It’s on those days (where a bounty has been particularly hard or frustrating) that he will be the one to initiate sex. And you certainly don’t complain. And it is also on those days where he is a little more rough and fast.

But most of the time he likes to take it slow. It is something he enjoys and something he wants to take his time in doing.

Q = Quickie (Their opinions on quickies rather than proper sex, how often, etc.)

He isn’t a fan. He doesn’t find them enjoyable as much as he would taking his time.

They have happens a few times, but by accident. As in you were taking it slow but something would come up, beeping and blaring of alarms would start and he would have to go quick to finish because he didn’t want to just stop.

R = Risk (Are they game to experiment, do they take risks, etc.)

He probably would be once you both started to get a bit more comfortable and adventurous. It’s still a learning process for Din so it’s a gradual thing but he’s all about making you happy and fulfilled so he will try most things you suggest whether they be risky or not.

S = Stamina (How many rounds can they go for, how long do they last…)

Din is a tiered man. Let him rest. Chances are he can really only go one round, but he knows this and makes it the best damn round you’ve ever had.

T = Toy (Do they own toys? Do they use them? On a partner or themselves?)

He certainly does not use them. (He probably doesn’t even know about a lot of them).

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

He kind of is a tease but he kind of isn’t. It depends on the mood. It’s he is going fast then he’s more likely to tease to rile you up more, but more often then not he just lets things happen in the bedroom.

V = Volume (How loud they are, what sounds they make)

Din isn’t much of a talker. He’s very much the silent but deadly type and he’s mostly the same in bed too. He isn’t partially loud, but he’s also not particularly quiet either. He isn’t a constant moaner, but lets just say it’s very easy for you to know when you’re doing something right and making him feel good. Then he will be a bit louder.

But he gets a bit embarrassed at the noises and buries his head in your neck to silence himself despite you telling him you want to hear him.

W = Wild Card (Get a random headcanon for the character of your choice)

He really really really wants to watch you get off. He’s heard you do it (not that you know that) and you sounded to be really enjoying yourself so he wants to watch you. And maybe learn a thing or two about how to properly touch you.

But yes, he really desperately wants to watch you touch yourself, maybe he’d touch himself too...

X = X-Ray (Let’s see what’s going on in those pants, picture or words)

I don’t think it’s a secret that he packing. He tries to act all cool about it saying things like “I’m not that big, am I?” But we all know he’s full of shit. He knows he’s that big. But to be fair, he hasn’t ever seen any other one so he doesn’t really have anything to compare it too.

But we all know that man is huge...

Y = Yearning (How high is their sex drive?)

It’s surprisingly low. Again, it depends on his mood or the day. He isn’t constantly in the mood for sex. Which he guessed made it more enjoyable.

Z = ZZZ (… how quickly they fall asleep afterward)

Din finds it difficult to sleep for many reasons. But sex always seems to relax him enough he falls asleep almost instantly. Of course, after making sure you’re okay.

Which is why you will often fuck him after a long day just so he will sleep.

13/12/20

[hmslusitania]

Hayley my dearrrrrr, to distract you from your work day being the worst (I'm sorry about that too!) tell us about your favourite film! Wax lyrical! Imagine me as that jeremy renner gif with heart eyes and his chin in his hands ^.^

I have instantly forgotten every film I have ever seen in my life

No, kidding, but I don’t have a like. Specific favourite??

My favourite movies are the Martian, the Mummy, the Lord of the Rings Extended Editions (a single film), Pacific Rim, and Contact. Like some of those are objectively good and well regarded, some of them are just so delightful you can’t really dislike them?

So..hm what’s the commonality? Everything is speculative fiction? If it isn’t sci-fi or fantasy there’s basically a zero percent chance of it lasting forever in my heart (notable exception for 9-1-1). All of them have Spectacular scores and I have the scores for all of them and listen to those regularly.

Idk!! They’re all (maybe slight exception for the mummy) Big Stories about Big Things happening but in the end the joyous conclusion and happy ending is only possible because of very small scale people caring about each other deeply?

Like in the Martian its a global rescue mission but it only really gets pulled off because of the crew caring about Mark, and in Lord of the Rings they only succeed because Sam carries Frodo up the mountain at the end, and in Contact Ellie survives because of the passing of the compass they got out of a box of goddamn crackerjacks, and hell the entire point of Pacific Rim is people caring about each other. Drift compatibility, the most top tier concept to come out of spec fic in the last ten years hands down.

Ask me anything my work day is crushing my soul

In the mummy Imhotep probably would’ve wreaked worldwide destruction and the plagues descending were sort of proof of that and it was Jonathan and Rick caring about Evy enough to go after her and be a distraction while she saved herself basically that circumvented that but that’s more of a stretch

[jlf23tumble]

I’d love to know you’re very most favorite 1D/Harry fics! Like the ones you’ve read over and over. Or if you’re not a re-reader, the ones you think back to often! Your ride or die fics, as it were.

You’re so sweet!! I am definitely a re-reader, mainly because I’ll see a picture, and it just makes me want to at least skim a fave fic, but this one’s a tough one, mainly because some of my faves have been deleted and/or their authors have left the D terrordome, which is fine, I have the PDFs clutched tightly to my chest, it just skews my final tally. It’s also hard because if I loved a fic, odds are I loved at least three other fics the author wrote, too, and none of us have that kind of scrolling time (well, clearly some of us do, lmaoooo, amirite?). Back to your question, though! To keep it under control, I created my own “21 Club,” but I cheated a bit and made it represent authors who have a lot of other fic I love, too, so you can’t go wrong digging in deeper. Puttin’ it under the cut!

No Control, thegirlwthekittentattoo, 2.6k, harry/louis. Anytime I see Harry's latest Rolling Stone shoot, I think of this fic, it has THAT level of power over me, plus it really makes me want to name my bra and give it the respect it deserves.

nobody knows like me, enbyharry/ @non-binharry, 3.5k, harry/louis. The tenderness and angst and sunshine and vintage summer of this fic!! Asia has a gift of making any of their fics feel a certain ~way, all of them different, but the vibes in this one, the gender of it all, truly next level.

all my lies are safe beside you now, HappyPrincess, 3.6k, harry/zayn. If you want to ACHE over fic, Nin's your author, any pairing, but there's something about this one, this Zayn, the way it makes you want to weep, so much beautiful ouchhh (a motif across a lot of their fic, gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous).

sensitive to pressure, momentofclarity/ @gaycousinlarry, 4k, harry/louis. Whew, my god, do I want to read so much more of the sweat and pube kink in this fic, @pubefest2020 had so many GREATS, but this one stuck with me for days.

mon petit, little one, publunchesownmyass, 5.6k, harry/louis. Big win for fans of recreational drug use and that chicken sweater! This author *delivered* last summer, and a lot of their fics are disappearing, so run don’t walk!

Only Thing That Can Quench My Thirst, eyesofshinigami, 6.5k, harry/louis. This is THE pube fic of all pube fics, I think about it all the time, it actually inspired @pubefest2020, and I personally begged the author to write more for it, but she was tied up (and very lovely in general to chat with). God, I love it so much.

Desperate Measures, sulkingroom, 6.9k, jeff/harry/glenne. This one hits different after all those great pictures from the wedding in Santa Barbara. That bathrobe!! I've actually read another tremendous Jeff/Harry/Glenne, but I'm gonna give it up for my fellow Pisces because I just love anything Melissa writes.

Are You Gonna Be My Girl? LoadedGunn, 7.5k, harry/louis. Everyone seems to have a specific fave of this author’s, but this one’s my eternal fave, Harry role-playing as Louis's first girlfriend.

One day to believe in you, mediaville, 7.7k, harry/louis. The way the dynamics in this story are written feels so very 2016, but the entire concept of Louis being cursed to tell the truth is just god-tier.

call me anything you like, but my name is, wishforwishes, 9.9k, harry/chasm. I rec it all the time, but I stg, I stare at the wall about it all the time, too, so there's that! The way this begins and ends with Zayn really does it for me.

give you my fever, beautlouis, 10k, harry/louis. I want to say this was one of the first fics I read in this fandom, and on one hand, it's so wildly outlandish but on the other it's so incredibly GREAT. I really struggled about which beautlouis fic to pick, so let’s just go with some firsts on every front, lol.

it ain't trickin' if ya got it, sarcasticfluentry, 10.7k, harry/louis. God, i wish this fic still had the pictures/tweets embedded, but no matter, I will rec this for every remote reason I can ever possibly think of, it’s that high on my list.

Tuxedo Dress-Up, Blake, 11.9k, harry/louis I swear, THIS is the fic I'd save in a fire, just the way they're both characterized is spot on, plus all the houses Louis shows him are so specifically SoCal, it just feels like home. Louis's exasperation does it for me, too.

Take Our Bodies Higher, @littlelouishiccups, 21k, harry/louis. LISTEN, I love phone sex operator Louis with every fiber of my being, but phone sex operator Harry? The way the client becomes the talker? HOO BOY, the last chapter, too, incredible.

precious little thing, mercutionotromeo, 21k, harry/louis. There he is! Phone sex operator Louis, at your service, but honestly the number of kinks covered here, nicely done (and another author whose work made this a truly tough call, heh).

Nothing You Can Do..., Teumessian, 28k, harry/louis. aka, the Pinterest fic, an eternal fave and so far ahead of its time in so many ways.

hush., Wankerville, 41k, harry/louis. I always struggle to think about which fic would be THE fic at the top of my list, and let me just say, this one's an eternal contender.

Tied Down, @ham-palpert, 48k, harry/louis. I will never stop rec'ing this, I also loved the author's moodboard for it, everything about it is so incredibly cinematic! A movie I'd watch!

Harry Styles Cooks..., sunsetmog, 61k, harry/louis. Yes, it's still a wip that hasn't updated in a year, and yes, this author has written the lourry fic of my dreams, but I don't care, I love this story, it’s the best crack fic ever.

Time Passed, coffinofachimera/ @belialsmiracles, 66k, harry/louis. DEAR GOD, read this fic and see if you can listen to Fine Line or see photos of Tokyo Harry the same way again, a MASTERPIECE.

Turning Page, purpledaisy, 67k, harry/louis. Harry's filming Dunkirk, and Louis's a scarred football star, and this reads like a goddamned movie, it sounds like a song.

(I truly do have way too many other fics and authors I love, but I had to keep this down to something manageable, and these were top-of-my-head ready!)

[serinesaccade]

yesterday i found your fic and that last anon reminded me that when i tried to write a comment it wouldn't post which was annoying. so I'm doing that here! you don't need to post it to your blog or anything I just wanted you to know how much I loved it. honestly, I can't even describe how much I adore your writing! And I love abo fics. I think it's because they have the innate-attraction elements of soulmate aus, but rather than divine fate it's rooted in biology and WAY more flawed

[this goes on and is INCREDIBLY LOVELY so I’m putting everything below the cut so I can gush in return oh god <3]

pt. 2 of me commenting on ur abo fic bc ao3 won't let me :/ The whole preppy-schoolmates-who-meet-once-in-an-arranged-marriage is just. yes omg. And the way Enjolras is so focused on escape he doesn't even notice Grantaire who has probably been crushing on him for months? perfect. How Enjolras is aware of his privilege but oblivious to the extent that it affects his life and makes his experiences differ from that of others is so realistic.

3. May I just say that Enjolras' longing for the freedom of university is hella relateable

4. Grantaire absolutely shattered my heart so props to you for that I guess. As always, his snarkiness is top tier. I love the way you have him mock the abo stereotypes. The concept of artificial bonding is equal parts hearwrenching and clever(I lied its mostly heartwrenching) The vision of Enj's parents sending over a single t shirt and teen R just clinging to it...ouch.

5 i think. Grantaire still needing the relief that comes from scenting after 4 years, and apologizing for it. And the way he was shocked that Enjolras would willingly provide that relief more than once?? god. oh my god. Also I got the sense that when he said he could go a week without like that comfort again he was calculating the absolute longest he could go without going into a mini-withdrawal or something similar. pain. unforgiveable, thats what you are. in conclusion JKEHFK i died. I am dead

Anyway I’m sobbing hysterically from your kindness but also YES

2. yes confirmed Enj is absolutely like “a stranger” and Grantaire’s just “MY LONGTIME CRUSH OH HEY THIS IS CHILL”. Honest to god if I had the research brain for this, this fic would’ve 1000% been set in the 1800s. I just. I could not. and now I am attached to them as preppy-schoolmates-in-modern-times-but-still-arranged-marriage 3. omg YEAH that freeing first rush of getting to college and finally being able to exist and breathe

4. sometimes I feel like I make Grantaire?? not bitter or snarky enough??? especially given his circumstances. Like it’s difficult to gauge R in the brick because we are told things about him and then see him ONLY in a very specific slice of time where I think he is behaving a little differently. every time I write him I am smashed in the face by the gentleness of the hat scene and just. he is a slippery character that I love to explore. so hearing this worked is so!! nice!!!

4b. yeah I knew for sure Enj would! not bond and leave!! He is a dumb boy but he’s not that stupid. I can promise you that if he’d done the bond bite in person and seen any part of the aftermath he would’ve stayed around. Enj’s parents suck and we know this but this is legit very heartless of them like. they just waved a hand when one of their waitstaff tentatively brought up that the new Monsieur Omega Enjolras might appreciate the clothes being cleared out of the absent Monsieur Enjolras’ room, and might they send some over? they were like *hand toss* send one, I suppose

5. yeah we’ll see more of R and his take next chappie but he! he does not expect nice things!! even though he deserves them

NOW I’M DEAD THANK YOU

I wanted to respond to this lovely review with an update but I legit. Cannot get it to a place I am satisfied with >:/ I have like ten thousand words so you’d think it would be done but it needs Help

anyway!!! thank you! much love

[pebblysand]

[writing rant - on the monetisation of fanfiction]

a couple of months ago, when i updated my long fic, one of the people on the comments wrote to me the nicest possible review (one of the ones that you keep in your feel-good 'saved' emails - you know the ones), which, amongst other things also said: 'If I could pay you for this...believe me, I would.'

in the moment, i kind of smiled and laughed, and thanked the person for their kind words before moving on with my life. yet, since then, i have to admit that this sentence has kind of been living rent-free in my head. i think it is also because since diving back into fandom a few months ago, i've noticed something that kind of shocked me at first: more and more fanfiction writers seem to be monetising (or attempting to monetise) their craft.

now, back when i started writing fanfic, we wrote fanfic on ffnet and livejournal. it was accepted that thou shalt never (ever) charge money for your writing or else the author and their mean, angry lawyers will come after you for damages and you will die a slow and painful death. we wrote disclaimers at the start of all of our posts and thanked the gods every day when we did not get sued.

i have seen this change gradually over the years. first, in the mid 2010s, the disclaimers went. then, i noticed that people were getting 'tipped' for fanart, sometimes even charging commission. from what i understand (though, don't quote me on this, i'm not an ip lawyer and this post is not intended as legal advice), this is because the way the concept of fair use is framed under us law makes it easier to monetise fanart than it does fanfiction. maybe this is why visual artists came first on this trend. later still (and more recently) i've noticed fanfic writers, doing the same thing.

to be fully honest, the first thought i had when i saw this trend, considering the fear of god (and his lawyers) that was instilled in me in the past, was: how on earth is this even possible? (i'll come back to that in a bit). the second, though, was: fuck, i wish i had the guts to do that, lol.

because, yeah, i will admit, the idea of getting paid for writing what i love to write does appeal, to a certain extent. i won't lie. dear fanfiction writers who've tried to do that recently: i one hundred per cent get it.

looking back at the last fifteen years, i would say that for me, writing fanfiction has been (in terms of time commitment and energy consumed) the equivalent of having an on-and-off part time job. a job that i have held for one or two years at a time, then quit for a while, before coming back to it when i needed (wanted) it again. i obviously can't realistically give you a number re:the actual total of hours i have spent at this since i started out, but i can give you an idea. recently, i started clocking my hours out of interest and calculated that a chapter of my current long fic takes roughly between one hundred to two hundred hours to produce (and they're around 10,000 words). at that rate, i'm probably working 20 hours a week-ish? sometimes more, sometimes less? something as small as a three-sentence fic (like this for instance), takes roughly two/three hours. i'll be honest, i have cancelled plans to write fic. when i'm working on a long project, i do tend to organise my life to give myself the time to write, so i opt for socialising after work during the week rather than on weekends, as i've found this is when i write best. i won't lie: it is - for me (i know some people write quicker, bless them) - a huge time suck.

so, yeah, i understand, in the capitalist society we live in, wanting to make that time count. our world has unfortunately, repeatedly taught us that time is money and getting more does seem like a nice bonus (as long as you have an audience for your art that's willing to pay, obviously). after all, year after year, i've seen a lot of my friends try and monetise their passions as side hustles, with varying success. at first, glance, i look at the time i spend on writing fanfiction and think: man, i wish i could get a bit back from that too. i couldn't even draw a stick figure to save my life but i assume that the time commitment and energy put into that kind of work is roughly similar for visual fanartists as well. i thus very much understand the sentiment, both with fanart and fanfiction.

additionally, though i appreciate this is a bit tangential, the fact that fanfiction is free, i would argue, hinders its potential to be as representative as it could be. it's a bit sad because on the one hand, the fact that it is free makes it completely accessible to the masses but on the other, it makes fanfiction quite exclusive to rich, privileged people who can afford to spend the time and energy putting content out for free. if i spend this much time writing fanfiction, just because i like it and it makes me happy, it's because my full time job pays me enough to cover my bills. if it didn't, i probably would have to forgo writing and get a proper side gig. if you look at my periods of inactivity on ao3, those also kind of coincide with the times in my life when i had to have more things going on to put food on the table.

so, now, assuming that monetisation is a thing that, as a fic writer, one might want to look at, the next question is: how do you go about monetising it? obviously, the law hasn't changed since the days where we were all terrified of getting sued (although enforcement has been quite lax over the years) so it's more about finding workarounds around the law as it is, rather than actively seeking payment for fanart.

from what i've seen: two main solutions seem to exist.

first, there's the tipping/buy-me-coffee technique. as i understand it, this involves either setting up a page on one of the dedicated websites or just putting up your paypal account link on your tumblr posts. with these links, people can then send you however much money they want (however much money they can afford/think you deserve?) on a one-off basis. they're not actually paying for fanfic because there is no actual exchange of services, it's basically like them giving money to charity, except that charity is a fanfic writer/ fan artist whose work they enjoy.

there are two main issues i see with this: one, legally, i'm not sure how much ground this actually holds. assuming you're quite prolific/successful, if every time you're producing new content, you receive dozens of tips, although you're not actively charging for your fanart, making the argument that your content isn't what these people are actively paying for seems hard. imo, the fact that this method sort of holds is that realistically, you're going to make very little out of this. even if you're really good, you might make what? a couple hundred dollars. now, sure, that's a lot of money for a lot of people but in the grand scheme of things, no one sues anyone for such a low amount. as long as you're not making 'proper' money from it, it is highly unlikely that anyone would come after you.

this being said, the second issue, from my perspective, is that this is not in any way, shape or form, a reliable income. it also does not represent, at all, the cost of the time and investment actually put into said fanfiction (or fanart, i assume). for example: if you're going to tip someone who's worked on something for, say, fifty hours, ten dollars, that's very good of you, but that isn't going to be 'worth' their time. it is only worth their time if tipping is done at as scale, which imo is quite unlikely considering you're putting your content out for free anyway. there are kind souls who will tip you, but not that many, meaning that ultimately, you're not working for free anymore, but you're still working at a huge loss.

additionally, because this income is not even reliable on a monthly/weekly basis, it isn't something that anyone can actually rely on, even if only to fund their coffee habit. it's nice to have, don't get me wrong, but from my perspective, is the legal risk outlined above worth the trouble for the $20/30 tips i'd get every once in a while - not really. such low amounts also don't help diminish the class issue that i talked about earlier. again, if you're going to spend fifty hours on something, you might as well work a minimum wage job - even that will pay you more and will be dependable.

second, there's patreon (and patreon-like sites). here, the income is monthly, people pledge on a subscription basis, which does solve the last point above. it might not be much, but at least it's regular.

the main issue i see with patreon is that it is contingent on the author providing more services on top of what they already provide. in most cases, the author will keep putting their usual content out for free + provide their patreons (depending on tiers) with more content, specifically for them. this, to me, makes this scheme even less appealing than the previous one because a) if i can't provide fanfic to potential patreons (again, you can't sell fanfic), i'm not sure what on earth i could give them (original content? that's not really the same market) and b) that's even more work on my plate. honestly, considering the amount of time i already spend writing fanfic, i have neither the energy nor the willpower to provide extra content for an amount that, regardless, will probably pay me less than a part-time job would. again, you'd have to scale this (i.e. have enough patreons) to make it all worth your while, and even in very big fandoms, even for someone waaaaay more successful than me, i doubt it would be likely.

lastly, as a side note, both of these "methods" are solely accepted if they occur on tumblr/writer's own website, rather than on the writer's ao3 page/fic. there was a post going around explaining why that is (nutshell: it endangers ao3's status as a non-profit archive) but as with all things, i seem to have lost it. [if you do have the link to that post/know what i'm talking about, hit me up and i'll rectify this]. this, regardless, supposes driving traffic from wherever you post your fics towards tumblr/your own website which, again, decreases your chances of scaling this.

so, in the end, where does that leave us?

i think, at this point, we've kind of reached a crossroad. ultimately, i see two ways to look at this:

option one: if you believe that fanfiction writers should be paid for their art, you also probably agree that the methods outlined above, while they do offer some sort of solution, are less than ideal. the ideal solution (for this option) would obviously be to allow fanfiction authors to be properly paid for the publication of their work through 'normal' publishing/self-publishing deals, without the need for a licence from the author (bar - perhaps - the payment of royalties). that would create a proper 'market' for fanfiction, treating it as any other form of writing/art form. it would mean a complete overhaul of the laws currently in place, but why not? ultimately, in a democracy, laws are meant to be changeable.

this being said, though, while my personal knee jerk reaction would be to shout 'hurray!' at this solution, i do not actually think i want this. or, maybe, only part of me does. the part of me who has been writing fanfiction for free for fifteen years is like 'hey, yay, maybe i could get paid!'. but then, there is another part of me that would like, maybe, one day, to write more original fiction (i already do a bit, but not much). that part of me is feels frankly a bit icky about giving up her ip rights.

would i be comfortable with people writing fanfiction of my original work? hell yes. that would be the dream. imagine having your own ao3 fandom, omg. however, would i be comfortable with people profiting from writing fanfiction of my work? honestly, i'm not sure. to me, the answer to that is: it depends (how much time investment was put in? how original the concept is? etc.) which, in fact, kind of brings us back to the current concept of licensing. and yes, maybe the current frame imposed by copyright law has also shaped the way i view the concept of property, and maybe i should be more of a communist, free-for-all kind of person, but unfortunately, i'm not that revolutionary.

also, and slightly tangentially, i find it interesting how profiting from fanficition/fanart is seen as more acceptable i certain fandoms rather than in others. taking the hp fandom for instance, even prior to jkr expressing her views on transgender rights, i often read things like: 'ah, she's so rich anyway, she doesn't need the money.' now, that argument has not only gained traction but is also reinforced by: 'ah, she's the devil and i don't want to fund her. it'd rather give my money to fanfic authors/buy things on etsy.'

while i completely understand the sentiment and do not, in any way, shape or form, support jkr's views, i do find that argument quite problematic. if you set the precedent that because someone is too rich, or because they've expressed views you disagree with, you don't believe that they should be entitled to their own intellectual property rights, i do wonder: where does this stop? this being justified for jkr could lead to all sorts of small artists seeing other people stealing/profiting from their original work without authorisation. 'i don't pay you 'cause i disagree with you,' would then act as a justification, with i find highly unfair. the fact of the matter is: jkr created hp. knowing that, the choice of buying hp products, regardless of her opinions is completely and entirely yours, but buying the same stuff unlicensed, from people who are infringing on her copyrights seems, to me, very problematic as this could potentially be scaled to all artists. either we overhaul the entire copyright system or we don't, but making special cases is dangerous, in my humble opinion.

option two: we choose to preserve copyright law as it is, for the reasons outlined above. this means that most people will not get paid for the content they put out and that the few that do will operate on a very tight, legal rope, and work for tips that are a 'nice bonus' but not a proper pay. this sort of perpetuates the idea that fanfiction is 'less than' other art forms, because in our capitalist society, things that don't generate money (things often made by women, may i add) are not seen as being as valuable as things that do.

for me, personally, while getting paid to write fanfiction sounds lovely (and makes my bank account purr) in theory, i think i side to preserve the current system. as an artist, i think that intellectual property protects us and our concepts from being ripped off by others, including by big companies who might find it handy to steal a design, a quote, anything, without proper remuneration. this is even more important for smaller artists who wouldn't necessarily have the means to defend their craft otherwise.

this being said, i do appreciate that it depends on why you're writing fanfiction. i think that topic probably deserves a whole different post in its own right but ultimately, most people write fanfic because it's fun. we know it's for fun, and not for profit. and if that's the case, then we're okay to receive compliments, reblogs and sometimes, for some people a little bit of an awkward tip for our work. for me, fanfic has been a space to make friends, to get feedback, to learn and to experiment without the pressure of money being involved. that's why i don't particularly mind doing it for free, and wouldn't even bother setting up a patreon or tip-me jar. i love being able to do it just for the enjoyment of myself and my five followers (lol), without worrying about scaling it, or making it profitable. not every part of our lives, not every passion has to be profitable. as we say in ireland, you do it 'for the craic' and nothing else.

this, though, as i already said, also depends on your means and level of privilege. to me, writing for free is fantastic and a bloody relief - it means being able to do exactly what i want. original fiction writing is full of rules, and editors, and publishers. in fanfic, i can write whatever i feel like, and i'm willing to forgo a salary in exchange of that freedom. again, i have a full time job that covers my bills. this does mean, though, that i don't have as much time to dedicate to writing as i would like to.

and also, the thing is: i'm a small author. i happily write in my own little niche. bar that one comment, it is highly unlikely that anyone would actually want to pay me (or even tip me) for my content. but when you look at very successful people, like the author of all the young dudes, i could see how they'd want to get paid for their art, and why they'd feel differently.

bottom line for me is: the flaws of the current systems of remuneration combined with my strong belief in copyright law as a means to protect small, original creators, means that i don't really think it would be right for me to get paid for fanfic, even if i was the kind of person who had the market for it. whilst it would be nice, this very long rant has, hopefully, explained why.

[ckret2]

So I've been deeply pulled into the Radiosnake pairing bc of your fantastic writing! Problem is, now I have fic ideas but no knowledge of the Hazbin background. Can you tellI me where I can get more Hazbin info? I've only watched the pilot and read your stuff. I heard there were comics??

That is an excellent question anon, because right now it is really hard to get Hazbin background easily.

Okay, so, the canon info on Hazbin Hotel can be sort of sorted into four tiers, from most to least canon.

Tier 1: The Definitely Canon

There is, of course, the pilot. And then there is an Angel Dust prequel comic, only seven pages of which have been released so far. We’ve been told it’s gonna be finished and we’ve had glimpses of in-progress prequel comics for a couple other characters—most prominently Alastor’s and Charlie’s—but so far that unfinished Angel Dust comic is the only one that’s been officially released.

Finding the in-progress comic pages is... a challenge. Nobody, as far as I can tell, has been specifically collecting all of the pages we’ve seen so far. I was able to scrounge up:

Couple more Angel pages

some Alastor pages

another Alastor page

a random Alastor panel

another random Alastor panel—I’ve seen the full page of this before, Alastor goes “Hello ladies!” and they go “HELLO ALASTOR~<3″ but I can’t find the full page now

There’s a smattering more canon panels on the artist faustisse’s twitter, but I haven’t dug them all out, and some of the posts I’m gonna link in a lil bit have a glimpse of another panel.

If you haven’t already heard of Helluva Boss, I recommend looking into it as well. It’s a second series being created by the same folks, different cast of characters but set in the same version of Hell, so any canon details we learn in Helluva also apply to Hazbin.

Helluva’s pilot is here. Plus a cute music video here.

Earlier this month, during a BLM charity stream hosted by show artist Ashley Nichols—she runs regular streams under the title “HuniCast”—they released a few sneak peaks of future Helluva scenes, all compiled here.

And that’s it for canon. Two pilots, a music video, a smattering of future scenes, part of one comic, a few WIP pages/panels from other comics.

Tier 2: Pseudo-Canon

Everything else we currently know about Hazbin (and Helluva) are things that the creators have told us. Consequently, they’re all pseudo-canon—and likely subject to change in the future as the shows and comics are further developed and released. Some details that were released/described in the past have been contradicted at other times, or else radically changed by the time the pilot came out.

(For example, when Alastor was first created years and years ago as an OC with no plans for Hazbin, he was a demon deer who could shapeshift into a human shape—now he’s a demonized human with a few deer traits. And Charlie and Cherri Bomb used to look very different.)

So until and unless they make it into canon, all these pseudo-canon details are subject to change and should be taken with a grain of salt—but, they also comprise most of what we know about the characters’ backstory and the as-yet-unaired characters.

Pseudo-canon info on Hazbin is scattered mainly between two sources: the creators’ twitter accounts, and livestreams where they take questions and talk about the making of the show. If you and livestreams do not get along (my ADHD and livestreams do not get along), or if you don’t want to wade years and years back into twitter accounts to dig up every scrap of info on the characters the creators have ever mentioned, collating all the pseudo-canon info is gonna be hard. (It’s gonna be hard even if you do want to sit through the streams and dig through all their tweets.) Lots of fans, me included, depend on the absolutely heroic work of various fans who are willing and able to watch hours-long streams and collate a list of canon factoids released during the streams. I’ve reblogged as many of these posts as I’ve been able to find:

Alastor’s sound design (on twitter)

Alastor's Sound Design (post I made with screenshots of weird—but very interesting—subtitles slipped into the aforementioned video)

Sir Pentious and Cherri Bomb’s sound design

Niffty and Husk’s sound design

Charlie, Katie, and Tom’s sound design

Intro song’s sound design

Happy Hotel’s sound design

details from Faustisse (including a pic of a couple costume designs. Most of these posts come from zatyrlucy, who’s been doing a fantastic job of going stream-by-stream to get lists of details from the regular streams by Ashley Nichols and by comic artist Faustisse.)

more details from Faustisse (including a pic of the Von Eldritch family dining room)

Faustisse 3 (better look at that table)

Dollymoon’s Hazbin Hotel Facts - PART ONE (Shoutout again to dollymoon for compiling these, we’ve never spoken but I am eternally grateful for this service. Dollymoon’s posts are THE single most reliable compilation of Hazbin Hotel’s nebulous pseudo-canon facts that I have found to date, including both links to the sources and timestamps where applicable. Dollymoon’s URL has changed since making this post so the “read more” link doesn’t work but the “source” or “reblogged from” links direct correctly to the new blog. Incidentally, the risk of other blog creators deleting their blogs/posts or changing their URLs is why in info posts like these, I always link to my own reblogs rather than their original posts—their original posts might vanish without warning, but I know I ain’t gonna delete my posts, so these links will still work in the future.)

Hazbin Hotel Facts - PART TWO

Hazbin Hotel Facts - PART THREE

Faustisse 4

HuniCast - Australian Wildlife Relief charity stream

I think this was a faustisse stream (the original source deleted these posts, so the comic pages that were originally behind that read more cut are now gone.)

Faustisse stream 6?

And those are all the masterposts of factoids I’ve managed to collect. If anyone has more masterposts, chuck ‘em at me.

Even this isn’t all the knowledge that’s been released about the show. The posts that dig the farthest back are Dollymoon’s, and even they don’t comprehensively cover all of Hazbin’s production. A couple of these characters, Vivziepop created as a teenager, so there’s some truly ancient concept art floating around out there that will have details that probably aren’t canon anymore... but might still be until something happens to actively contradict them.

Tier 3: The Wiki

The wiki is kind of an absolute mess. It’s a chaotic blend of things actually seen in the pilots/comic, things mentioned at some point in some stream somewhere, and wild fan speculation based on what they headcanon as plausible based on the above, all mixed together with very little indication for which is canon, pseudo-canon, fanon, or speculation. Most of the statements on the wiki don’t have citations.

(And, on top of that, half the main characters’ info gets split up into separate tabs instead of just having a normal-ass wiki page, AND their image galleries are on COMPLETELY SEPARATE pages that are linked to in one of the tabs, and the most important characters all have TWO SEPARATE GALLERIES. Which doesn’t have anything to do with the quality of the facts hidden underneath those tabs, but nevertheless drives me up the wall.)

Some things on the wiki were added according to info released so long ago it’s probably changed by now. Some are possibilities that got reported as facts. Other things on the wiki have unambiguously changed, or else are just flat-out incorrect. (For instance, at this moment Alastor’s page still lists him as an overlord, even though it's been confirmed that Alastor is not an overlord despite his power level because he isn’t interested in and didn’t pursue that position, per this stream. For a little bit, somebody’s fanart of their headcanon human Alastor got added to the wiki as concept art.)

tl;dr: the wiki should never be trusted as a primary source. The wiki’s better than it used to be. Even so, at this time, it’s only trustworthy to fill in the gaps of what you already know is true from other, better sources.

The thing it’s good at is it more or less compiles all the known info all in one place. Trying to figure out who the hell this Vox guy is is really hard if you’re reading for mentions of him in compilations of a dozen different streams, much less if you’re trying to comb through those dozen streams yourself, plus a dozen more, plus three different artists’ twitters. In comparison, it’s really easy to, say, just go look at Vox’s wiki page, where all the trivia is compiled. (And Vox’s page is actually one of the better cited on the wiki. Look at all those numbers!)

So, if you need to find out who this character is you’ve never heard of before, if you want to see a full list of the thus far named characters, if you don’t remember whether Alastor likes coffee or tea, if you want to know what Angel’s twin sister looks like, if you need a reminder of Sir Pentious’s death year... check the wiki. It’s an okay starting point.

But, if you see a “fact” on the wiki that you yourself don’t remember from straight out of the pilot, and it doesn’t have a citation that links to a tweet or a stream... regard it suspiciously. And do not trust it unquestioningly as fact until and unless you have seen the source.

Tier 4: Noncanon Creator Shitposting

I’ve mentioned Ashley’s HuniCast streams a couple times. The biggest draw of them is that she usually gets several of the voice actors in the streams, where they’ll happily say nonsense in their character voices. For the most part, they’re not sharing any actual canon info they’ve been given on their characters, just goofing around pretending to be their characters. Nevertheless, a lot of the things that happen in streams get accepted as broad fandom headcanons, like Alastor being into dad jokes. (My favorite, for obvious reasons, is this one.)

It’s easy to find the source audio for all this wonderful nonsense by searching youtube for “HuniCast highlights,” and then rummaging around for animatics people make out of the audio. The only one noncanon video of this sort I can think of that didn’t originally come from HuniCast is a lone one from Alastor’s singing voice (who’s a different voice actor than his speaking voice).

So, obviously, none of these are canon. But they do come from some of the people actually involved in the creation of the show, and they are in the characters’ canon voices, so a whole lot of people treat them as semi-canon anyway. (Even the wiki lists “dad jokes” among Alastor’s likes, which to my knowledge hasn’t come up anywhere except for HuniCast streams.) Since they’re so broadly-known, they’re worth knowing about as important sources of fanon, even if you don’t want to adopt them into your own headcanons. They’re basically the same level of canon as blooper reels.

[banyanas]

You're the renaissance fan, except that all the fics that I've read by you in fandoms that I actually know are absolute bangers and deserve WAY more attention than what they've gotten. Also you're the novelist bc you?? actually?? have your shit together??? like imagine outlining EVERY FIC CONCEPT AND THEN ACTUALLY FOLLOWING IT,,,WACK. Also your worldbuilding is TOP TIER and you write fuckin' amazing eldritch monstrosities that are fun as hell to read about even if they're in a fandom I don't know. You've got fine tastes in high fantasy and talking with you about it and blue/orange morality is a delight every time :D

HJKLADSA ARENNNNNN THANKS yeah some of my fics weren’t exactly hits but thats bound to happen in fandoms like Promare or Fire Emblem where romantic shipping is the name of the game. (Although funny note that the ‘obscure crossover’ thing with renaissance is that of all the Fire Emblems I chose to serve as the base setting inspiration, I didn’t go with Three Houses or Awakening. Nah son, it’s that old-ass SNES game that was never released outside Japan)

OUTLINING IS EXTREMELY USEFUL AND SATISFYING AND SOMEDAY I WILL CONVERT YOU FULLY. AND THANK YOU FOR THE WORLDBUILDING COMPLIMENTS i know we share a lot of tastes on that and on eldritch beasties so it’s always fun to just chuck shit into the Idea Soup and then come back and trawl for Bits later. Our tastes in specific flavors of blue and orange morality are so sexy bro

(”Even if it’s for a fandom I dont know” Someday i will pay u back for the hollow knight thing i SWEAR-)

Anyways this ask made me super happy. Come here so i can kiss u softly and platonically

[demyrie]

On the Resourcefulness, Intelligence and Grit of Fic Writers

My beta and starmate @rainbowstarbird and I have been writing fic since we were preteens. I specifically remember straining, in my seat, toward my screen and my 13th birthday so that I could Very Legally sign up for ff/net. Wild, right?

We are also students of narrative, specifically radical queer storytelling. One of our favorite things to do is go on errands (we’re old be quiet) and just brainstorm ideas with characters we love where they share our identities and struggles and do things we need or want to see. Or just ... get kinda horny, as today.

Rae exclaimed at some poor driving on our way to the house and accidentally said “room for two” and our brains went south, toward the double penetration line of thinking. We laughed, and laughed, and then Rae shrieks MAKE IT A PORN, GO and thus began the game.

Me: uhhh uhhh uhhh OH OH okay so, it’s!!! a bed and breakfast!!! and the hot married owners court and seduce a guest and DP them! ROOM!! FOR!!! TWO!!! it works on both levels!

Rae: Aaaaaaaa someone hasn’t made this a porn yet?! make it a fic!

and we did.

Me: oh shit who’s an OT3 we can play with?

Rae: WHITE COLLAR 

(for those who don’t know, White Collar is a delicious drama action procedural show where a white collar FBI agent, Peter, teams up with one of the greatest con men ever. A con man he’s tailed for YEARS, by the way, that HE put in jail, and together they solve art crimes and slowly rehabilitate Neal. Peter is amazing, soft soulful masculinity to a t, and has a very frank, beautiful, nurturing wife named Elle who is also amazing and Neal has never belonged anywhere and there is a LOT of tension as Neal edges closer and closer to letting himself be loved but then NOPES out to return to his scammer ways. The cast joked about a threesome. It’s heavy. Both Peter and Elle would do anything for Neal, and struggle with his inability to believe he’s worth love. Its. Ugh.)

Me: YES!!! SO!!! to theme, it would have to be married couple Peter and Elle running a cute little Bed and Breakfast that Neal stumbles upon and then he gets fuuuuuuuuucked

Rae: But I want peter to be a FBI agent?? Who is he, if not a lawman?

Me: AH! RETIRED cop/FBI agent peter, swayed into peaceful AND swanky bed and breakfast life by his canonically talented event designer wife Elle in the hopes of giving him some calm and space to come to grips with himself

Rae: YES! AS HE DEALS WITH HIS PTSD. his career took a slightly darker turn -- we can take one of the harder cases and imagine how it would have gone without Neal and how it would have shook him -- and necessitated a retirement from the field.

Me: and Neal is very off his track. He broke up with whatserface. Maybe he just got out of prison, or narrowly squirmed out of it after one of his art blackmail schemes went south. He doesn’t know whether he wants to go back to crime/art forgery, but he’s out of money and out of ideas and he pulls up at this small unassuming (BUT VERY TASTEFUL) bed and breakfast and immediately tries to scam Elle with a fake credit card to stay the night. 

Rae: Yes, he’s charming, but he’s off his game due to the recent upset and fumbles the delivery. Peter scents it immediately, being a cop, but Elle takes pity on him and just says honey let it be. Maybe he’s having some trouble. She’s so nurturing, and says ‘remember what we talked about in therapy, Pete?’ and frames it as letting go of hypervigilance, and being more centered like they’re learning in therapy. Because they need therapy. And the idea of a sexy older established couple openly talking and communicating to deal with their pain but also their boundaries is amazing. But also it’s hilarious how it becomes “Neal is a walking test of Peter’s ability to Calm Down” because Elle leverages it like REMEMBER? THERAPY? and Peter stomps off flustered and lets her get her way just like in the show

Me: yes and so they get attached to poor lost Neal, and extend and extend his stay night after night while he figures things out. so of course everyone gets to talking. Peter feels his Old Buried Gay Feelings awakening with such a beautiful guy hangin out, bein’ all charming and sweet -- which is an opportunity to bring up the “remember what we talked about in therapy?” line in a different context, a la dealing with neglected parts of ourselves and not just “problem” parts of ourselves to create a WHOLE self -- and Elle spots it from a mile away, as well as Neal crushing right back but being on his best behavior with this awesome couple just sorta letting him live with them. 

Rae: YES, like, he doesn’t want to mess this up, and he’s also not used to ... being good. Behaving. Or ... being trusted. All of this is fucking him up on a lot of levels, bringing him face to face with his hollow conceptions of self-worth, and it’s delicious. They LOVE HIM. and there’s so much angst about him dying to confess that he never really had the money to stay here in the first place, that he tried to scam them, as a metaphor for his intrinsic worthlessness.

Me: yes. they love him. And then they love him. At the same time. DP. Room for two.

[screams, high-fives, then contented silence. horny, contended silence]

Rae: But wait. ... it’s ... DP?

Me: *shrugs* Elle gives the strap. You know she does.

Rae: holy shit she do. DONE ITS A THING WE MADE A THING WOOOOOO

SO!

This is why fanfiction is magic. We took these characters and fit them to a cheap porn scenario just for the hell of it, and yet its much more than a scenario, and so much more than fitting a square peg into a round hole. It’s about the characters interacting AROUND AND WITHIN the scenario, the way all of their problems and complexes interlock in the new setting or AU, which enriches the scene and lends it emotional weight and momentum. It’s that amazing quote about “i don’t want porn in my LOTR, but LOTR in my porn”, but obviously it doesn’t always have to be an explicit scenario to reflect this amazing ability to ADAPT, IMPROVISE, AND OVERCOME in order to create incredible content!

Fanfiction is about learning identities and ways of being. Fanfiction requires a top view of characterization and a grasp of narrative flow: The important components of a character, and how many parts you can tweak or change and it Still Be the Character. It delves into those weird grey areas where you see THOUSANDS of different iterations of a character and some of them hit the spot, and some don’t, and we learn what we like. What we value, personally, and in these characters, as well as how OTHER people see traits that become HCs that let us learn about those populations, like a prevailing hc that someone is trans, or deaf, or nonbinary, or a spoonie, or etc etc etc and our world view gets a little wider, a little richer, and a little more empathetic.

It also means understanding the tiers of characterization, like what are defining traits versus secondary traits, and thus what (environmental) aspects you can change to bring out secondary character traits but still retain the core of the character while exploring material never approached in the show, just because you want to. Because you see something of yourself in this character and want to SEE YOURSELF in this character. It is amazing. IT IS AMAZING.

Yes, fanfic is the ultimate sandbox for “for the sake of” fantasies/stories and part of the transformative value is there’s no real NEED to adhere to characterization. There’s no pressure. We can go wild. It’s a blank slate, IT’S WHATEVER, but I think we consistently underestimate how fanfiction itself is an adaptive and analytical gladiator-ring-slash-orgy that we can emerge from MASTERS of characterization, exploration and expression, and just about every day is a study of What We Like and What We Want to See. Even, or especially, if the higher ups aren’t gonna give it to us off the cuff.

It’s amazing. Fic is amazing. I dunno. I’m just super happy with this thing we do.

So if you’re feeling weird about that fic you want to write, don’t. Just do it!

Rae and I are gonna make a podcast where we talk about this stuff. I’m excited. You in? :)

[charmingstrangeness]

If you still take questions for the writing ask (sorry I didn't notice it sooner!), then 2, 4, 5, 8, 11, 14! Bonus: 20, where Karamatsu and Katsura have a moment where they connect through pure painfulness and become best friends.

omg i completely forgot i reblogged that lmaoooo thanks for sending some!!!

fic writing questions

2. Favorite piece overall?

it’s a hard tie between oversight and the fisherman and his brothers, i’d say? from stuff i’ve published, at any rate. they were both a lot of fun to plan out and write and they both turned out really well. oversight could be a little better quality-wise but it makes up for that in heart.

4. Which has the most “you” in it, however you’d define that?

this is lowkey a cop-out i know i’m sorry but the answer is 110% an unfinished WIP i’ve been chipping away at for like a year and a half (not 2 get too into spoiler territory here but it’s a character study featuring karamatsu and music so i mean.)

5. What is an image/set of images that you’re particularly proud of?

every instance of painfully tacky fashion choices in any fic i’ve written (looking at you, oversight & distraction) also there’s a moment towards the end of the fisherman and his brothers where karamatsu is waiting for the fish to show up and he nonchalantly watches the wind just rip a tree out of the ground in the distance. that image just makes me laugh every time i think about it i love it so much

8. Favorite plot point/chapter/moment?

djfghlsjdhfg picking favourites uhhHHHHHH h e ck i’ll cheat and do a favourite for each i guess???

plot point - all the notebook shit in WtMC and like basically every scene it appears in i’m still so proud of that entire clusterfuck

chapter - rei’s POV chapter in day in the life. it’s getting close to two years since i wrote that fic and god knows it’s not my best writing but rei’s chapter was so much fun and it’s just sweet and hilarious and maybe in a few more years when my writing has further improved i’ll re-write it as a reigisa oneshot or something just because it honestly deserves to be written well.

moment - this isn’t specific enough for me to have a top fave so i’ll take this time to highlight the part in pacifists are the best mediators where sakamoto hoists takasugi over his shoulder and calls him an angry sack of potatoes; that’s a solidly good moment i’m definitely a big fan of it lmao

11. If I’m showing off just one of your pieces to someone, which one should it be?

the fisherman and his brothers is flat-out the single best thing i’ve ever written in terms of both concept and execution and i accepted a long time ago that nothing will ever top it. it also has a lot of edge on basically everything else i’ve written because it got some top-tier beta reader attention <3

in close second would be WtMC for basically the same reasons lol

14. Would you want to write canon for any of your fandoms (like be hired by showrunner to do an episode)? Which one?

do i even need to answer this i think everyone here knows the answer is osomatsu-san (although it’d be fun to write canon for gintama too but i think i’d do a better job for oso). my fic ideas list for oso is miles and miles long and almost every single idea on it would make a fantastic episode also lbh the fisherman and his brothers deserves to be animated & made canon i’m just saying

20. write me a little ficlet-whatsit using a character/image/line I shall now specify:

i dont want to skip this but i’m going to just because i’m a bit too writer’s block on, ironically enough, a zura & kara scene in the crossover fic (among a couple other scenes dkfjgkfd i have like every scene of this chapter started but not completed i’m in h e l l )

some food for thought so that i dont totally fail this question - an animated sequence of karamatsu and katsura arriving in the same room and both of their theme songs play simultaneously in a perfect mashup. also to consider: that episode where they all turn into zombies with unibrows (for context it was a tribute episode for kochikame’s 30th anniversary) and zura keeps trying to get everyone to call the zombies “mayuzomu” – in a crossover situation, karamatsu would be the first to use that nickname and katsura would be so smug that someone else was on board with it. however, instead of the nickname eventually catching on through sheer persistence, absolutely no one would use it just out of spite.