#if you can already guess the trajectory of this or the ID of the blue guy i am KISSING you on the mouth (consensually)

[beskad]

by blasteratyourside

Rating: Mature  |  Words: 5,022  |  Chapter: 1/15

Relationships: Din Djarin & Grogu | Baby Yoda, Din Djarin/Cobb Vanth

Additional Tags: Mand'alor Din Djarin, Religious Guilt, Deconstruction, Mandalorian Culture (Star Wars), Tatooine Slavery (Star Wars), Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn, Mutual Pining, Clothed Sex, Sharing a Bed, playing fast and loose with canon and legends, written prior to s3, alternating pov, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, religious trauma, Let them say fuck, din gets another razor crest because i say so, no beta we die like Deputy Scott

In the eyes of some, obtaining the Darksaber through rite of combat gives the wielder the sole rightful claim to Mandalore's throne.

Din Diarin is an exile with no intention or desire to take up the title of Mand'alor or unite the galaxy's disparate, scattered Mandalorians. He seeks only to be redeemed in the Way of the Mandalore, to return to the Armorer with his foundling and rebuild the Tribe that was lost in his defense.

Few beings still living have set foot on the poisoned surface of the planet Mandalore and after weeks of searching for a guide, Din is no closer to purification than the day he was declared apostate. That is, until Fett contacts him with a lead - and a request.

[xkurzel]

Hello. I know you’re busy but someone must write genius Brittany taking Santana on what she thinks is a boring date to the museum of mathematics

“Britt, hey!”

“Hi!”

Santana wraps her arms around Brittany’s back with a breathy laugh, closing her eyes as Brittany giggles into her ear and wraps strong arms around Santana’s shoulders. Brittany embraces with her whole being, lifting Santana off her feet, and Santana can’t help but giggle.

It feels good to have Brittany here in New York.

Far too good, Santana realizes, as Brittany sets her back down slowly, keeping her in her arms, and her whole front slides down against hers.

Santana clears her throat and takes a respectable step back and out of the embrace, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear.

“So, where do you want to go?”

/

It was a little awkward, at first, getting used to being with each other again but not with each other.

(Kurt certainly didn’t make things any easier by loudly mentioning he and Rachel will be gone majority of the weekend with the most smug look on his face before Santana had to literally push him out of the door.)

But after a stilted round of small talk as Santana busied her hands with getting Brittany’s duffel bag all settled and put away, they found themselves sitting on the couch, feet tucked under themselves and chatting like there haven’t been months and new cities between them.

“Okay, but you have to promise you’ll give it a chance.”

“Brittany,” Santana laughs at the nervous expression on Brittany’s face, her lip caught between her teeth, “I promise.”

“Even if it’s boring.”

Santana’s smile grows wider. “I doubt it’ll be boring.”

“You don’t even know what it is yet.”

“Well, then, out with it! We only have a weekend for your visit. Come on, I promise I won’t judge.” Santana holds out her pinky finger for good measure, wiggling it towards Brittany.

Brittany rolls her eyes fondly, linking her pinky around Santana’s, before her mouth twists into a shy smile. “Okay, well… I want to check out the Museum of Mathematics.”

“You couldn’t have picked something with alcohol?” Santana deadpans before bursting into giggles over the expression that crosses Brittany’s face. Santana tightens her grip around Brittany’s pinky as she tries to pull away. “I’m kidding!”

“God,” Brittany shakes her head, “New York’s definitely changed you.”

“Oh, you love it,” Santana says breezily, raising an eyebrow.

“Yeah, well…” Brittany trails off, glancing off to the side, smile tugging at her lips.

Santana taps at Brittany’s thigh with her free hand, tugging her up off the couch with their still linked pinkies. “Come on. I think MoMath has a deal for NYADA students and we can steal Hummelberry’s IDs. Dibs on Kurt’s.”

“Ugh, you’re the worst.”

/

Santana barely gets their ticket stubs back from the ticket attendant before Brittany’s tugging at her arm and dragging her into the Museum of Mathematics.

Brittany quickly drops her grip, opting instead to grab a museum map from the information desk and spread it wide open, smoothing out the folds. Her eyes are bright blue and giddy, her hands fluttering over the page.

“I want to check out every exhibit. Especially the square-wheeled trike. It looked so fun from the pictures I saw online, but it apparently has really long lines so maybe we save that one for when it’s less busy. Ooh, there’s two floors, too.” Brittany’s eyes cut over to Santana when she doesn’t respond to find her gaping at the expansive first floor and the whizzing colors and shapes and models spread all throughout. “What?” Brittany says around a grin.

“Nothing, it’s just… I wasn’t expecting a math museum to look like this.”

Brittany laughs at the wide-eyed look on Santana’s face. “What were you expecting?”

“I dunno. Like papers? How is all of this stuff about math?”

Brittany shakes her head, lips slightly upturned, folding up the map and tucking it under her arm, so she can grasp Santana by the shoulders and look her straight in the eyes. “Santana, math is in everything,” she states matter-of-factly. Santana just arches an eyebrow in response, still looking a little dumbfounded and somewhat dubious, so Brittany shoots her a wide grin. “Don’t worry, I’ll show you.”

/

The square-wheeled trikes were definitely worth the wait, solely for the expression on Santana’s face of pure disbelief when the tricycle started moving after a hesitant first pedal, even after Brittany had explained the math while they were in line.

The two quickly jump from exhibit to exhibit, exploring the first floor. Brittany helps Santana map out the right trajectories to get the robot basketball shooter to sink a shot successfully and Santana lets out a loud whoop when the ball swishes through the net that draws enough attention to them that they both end up in giggles. Santana swats at the keyboard to mess up the formula Brittany’s inputting into the Formula Morph, ruining the 3D model of a cat that Brittany was trying to create. (Santana’s heart thuds solidly in her chest when Brittany enters in a formula that creates a 3D heart before Brittany quickly fiddles with the numbers and it goes away in a flash.) Santana nods along, staring up at Brittany as she rushes out the explanation of the math behind each exhibit, her hands animated and gesturing, and Santana understands almost none of it but is awed by all of it.

They’re waiting for the elevator to head to the second floor when Santana catches something on the screen nearby that’s running through a slideshow of recent math news.

“Brittany, is that your name?” Santana marches over to the screen, pressing a finger right to where it says: Recently proposed by MIT student, Brittany S. Pierce.

The screen flashes onto the next item but Santana runs her finger over where Brittany’s name was, her mouth still agape.

Brittany scratches the back of her neck, cheeks tingeing pink. “A bunch of people helped, though. It wasn’t just me.”

Santana quickly shakes her head. “Their names aren’t on here, Britt.” She turns back to the screen, waiting for the news item to scroll by. “Wow,” she breathes out once Brittany’s name reappears and she’s able to read more about the blonde’s recent project before it whisks away again.

“You sound surprised,” Brittany muses beside her.

“No, not surprised. Proud,” Santana says simply and her heart swells with it, the pride she feels for Brittany, of Brittany.

Brittany’s eyes go soft and her voice goes quiet when she responds. “Thanks.”

/

They’re tackling the Math Square on the next floor, the crowd having waned as the day went on and as the two got lost in all of the exhibits so the floor is mostly empty, when Santana finally gets the courage to ask.

“So how’s Boston?” Santana walks slowly along the path of the maze being projected on the floor, the surrounding area around them dim and dark to let the projected light display properly.

“It’s cool,” Brittany says, somewhere along the other side of the maze. Santana keeps her eyes on her feet as she places one in front of the other, taking measured steps. “Different.”

Santana hums, taking a left turn and following it down to a dead end before turning around and trying another path. “Yeah? Good different or bad different?”

“More like weird different.”

“How so?”

“I don’t know. Like… I thought I’d be taking actual classes when I went to college. But instead, I’m mostly in a room with a bunch of old guys who just stare at me a lot while I do math.”

Santana glances up to where Brittany is in the maze, her arms outstretched to keep balance as she takes one step in front of the other like Santana’s doing. “That is weird.”

Brittany shrugs, making her way down a path to her right, and Santana tries to remember if she already took the one she’s on already. “Yeah. But I mean, the program’s why I got early acceptance and a part of my scholarship so I guess it’s okay. I do get to take some regular classes, though.”

Santana takes a path that leads her somewhere new and she tries to focus on her steps and following Brittany’s voice as she makes her way through the maze. “And how do you like those?”

“I like those more since I get to take them with some friends. And no, they’re not all nerdy, before you ask.”

Santana grins at how well Brittany knows her. “I wasn’t going to.”

“Mhm, sure.”

Santana waits a few beats, taking a few steps ahead aimlessly and watching the way the squares light up beneath her feet.

“How about New York? How do you like New York?”

She tries to sound as casual as possible when she says it but she doesn’t think she succeeds by the measured hum she gets in return.

Santana keeps her head down, her face obscured by her hair, but she’s too busy watching her feet that it’s only until she sees a pair of worn Converse at the end of a dead end that she finally looks up.

Santana doesn’t know quite how she got here or maybe how Brittany made her way over to her but they’re standing in the middle of the maze, light softly projected all around them in the dim of the room, the maze casting a muted glow on their skin and their clothes and coloring them all differently.

Brittany’s giving her a look that feels too familiar and Santana feels that pull she’s spent months trying to resist, the pull she’s always felt, tugging ever present, like a string drawn straight through the center of her chest.

“Can I be honest?”

“Always.”

Brittany’s smile curls around the curves of her lips. “I think I like New York better.”

[canonicallyanxious]

this is soo selfish of me to ask but can I please ask what your thoughts are to how simon and bram find each other in the 'we fell like rain' au?? Like do you think it'd happen the same, because I guess they cant give away all that much away about one another without the other one guessing, bc they know a lot more about each other, being best friends? Like Simon could mention one thing about an oreo and I can imagine bram guessing it, haha. But Id really love to hear your thoughts on this! (1/2)

(2/2) bc that fic you wrote is sooo beautiful, I'm so curious as to how everything would play out in that world. I wonder if Simon might have been able to guess it in this verse?? Ahh, so many questions haha sorry! Love your writing

Hi friend! first of all thank you so much for your kind words and for thinking about we fell like rain!! It honestly means the world to me that you would want to know more about this verse like idk it’s just beyond amazing to me that anyone would want to?? second before i proceed i just wanted to say i believe very firmly in death to the author so if you have your own hcs and ideas about what happens next you are 1000000% free to have them and they are totally, completely valid - as I most likely won’t be continuing this verse, your guess is honestly as good as mine! having said that, here are some of the thoughts i have [with a cut bc yikes this got long]:

so first of all i think it’s worth mentioning that unlike Bram, i don’t think Simon would be quite as aware of his feelings for Bram; in simon vs, he’s very adamant about having a “policy of not falling for straight guys” in relation to Nick and so i feel like that would kind of carry over to Bram too if they happened to be close friends, especially considering Simon is much more oblivious and less self aware than Bram is; the feelings might be there, but would he recognize them as such? that’s harder to determine. i feel like he’s the kind of person who’d take his thoughts of how attractive Bram is and be like “but obviously everyone thinks that of him” kind of similarly to how Bram was with Simon in the fic lol

i can see it going a lot of ways, of course, but in my head the trajectory of the plot at least is pretty similar [at least in terms of their relationship developing through email, the blackmail plot, Simon being outed, etc.; one would have to imagine in addition to this their irl friendship would be developing, too - think of the pining!]. i’m not sure that i think Bram would figure out who Jacques was sooner than he did in canon [although you could maybe make the argument that he might have figured it out pretty soon in canon], mostly because he would probably try not to get his hopes up even more fiercely than in simon vs. i feel like his self-preservation instincts are pretty strong, so he’d be trying to protect himself from himself if that makes sense? in that sense, i feel like for him there would be an added dimension of, like, first of all trying really hard to get over irl simon [and maybe not being able to] and seeing similarities between jacques and irl simon as himself projecting his feelings onto jacques, subsequently resulting in lots of guilt and stuff. which could potentially cloud his perception a lot! but after a while i feel like even Bram wouldn’t be able to ignore it.

On Simon’s end, i’m not sure he’d be able to guess it either. It’s conceivable that he would! in my head though the fact that Bram actually mentioned the person he has feelings for in his original post would probably cause him to be even more careful about the information he divulges; it’s a big school but i’m sure Bram is well aware of the fact that most people would know who his “group” is. also there’s all the aforementioned not really in touch with his feelings and probably would make a conscious effort not to assume it was anyone he actually knew stuff

with all that in mind, in canon the emails were very much the one place these boys could be really open about themselves and talk about being gay, and that would still be a big thing in this verse, but i find the idea that the emails are the one place they can be open about being gay but not really much else about themselves to be compelling when juxtaposed with how Simon and Bram share lots of themselves with each other but they feel like they can’t be open about this one big thing. it would certainly be interesting to explore the feelings of that! 

and then you have to wonder how Bram would react to Simon being outed. if he hadn’t figured it out already he would DEFINITELY know then, but i don’t think he’d be ready to tell Simon that he’s Blue. there would probably be a lot of guilt there that he knows all this stuff about Simon that he feels like he shouldn’t know, because would Simon have told him if he’d known it was Bram [i mean, debatable that this doubt of Bram’s is all that founded, but you have to imagine the tumultuous heightened emotions of this situation]?? so maybe that would fracture their irl friendship too a little, if Bram was too overwhelmed with, like, the guilt of knowing all this stuff, plus the guilt of not being able to be there for Simon in the way he really wants to be [i.e - not posing as a straight ally], plus confusion over Simon potentially being into Cal. Blue pulling away in the emails - would Bram pull away in real life too? Hm. Maybe.

anyway, obviously i never got around to figuring out a proper outline so i really don’t know what else i would have changed if i had decided to continue with this verse [and honestly the fact that i figured the endgame at least would be the same made it easy to make the decision not to; i can’t write canon better than becky can!] but i like to think of the weight “it’s you” would have in this verse. like, maybe it wouldn’t have occurred to Simon before that very moment, at least not on a conscious level, but at the same time it wouldn’t surprise him at all. it would just make sense, on a level he wouldn’t even be able to articulate. and the relief that both of them would probably feel that they can finally be completely, 100% honest with each other? Fucking unreal, I would imagine.

in light of all that, i don’t think much would have to be changed from canon to make an interesting story. The interesting part [to me] would be how just this one change in the story could affect the complexity of their feelings. Same story, more or less, but a host of different emotions driving it!

Anyway. that’s pretty much all i’ve got on this subject. i hope this satisfies you, anon, though if you want to keep discussing this i’m honestly more than game. thank you so much for this opportunity to talk about this verse