#or if people are looking for paid work in fandom spaces since entry levels are drying up

[hmsmilkbone]

insane the way fandom art spaces are changing. at least 500 applications for every single zine nowadays. woof.

[starlightinhumanform]

24/7: Chapter One

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Ship: Romantic Loceit, Platonic Demus, Platonic Logicality 

Summary: James (aka Janus) works the graveyard shift at a open-all-night convenience store. Logan is a college student who stays up way too late, way too often. While pulling all-nighters, he often visits the store James works at. As time goes on, James begins to care about Logan as more than just a customer. 

Warnings: Moderate Language, Some suggestive jokes, Mentions of ignorant/negative sentiments regarding vitiligo, Mentions of intoxication— some implied to be underage (please tell me if anything needs to be added)

Genre: College AU, Coffeeshop AU but weird (that’s literally the best way i can think of describing it), Mutual Feelings, Fluff 

A/N: — Janus’ name in this AU is James (mostly because when I began planning this, his name hadn’t been revealed). I may still include his name by writing in a name-change but we’ll see lmao — I do not have vitiligo and do not personally know anyone with vitiligo; Janus’ experience with the condition is based entirely on my research. That being said, I did my best to give an accurate representation but I do not claim that it is flawless in anyway. If there are any improvements you think I can make in this area, please please let me know 🖤🖤🖤 Love you all 🖤✨

Ao3   Fic Masterpost    Fic Request Info

James’ first shift started normally. That is, as normally as he could assume 24 hour convenience store shifts could be. It’s not like he had much experience with it.

Being his first day, he had assumed that the manager would’ve at least stuck around for a while. Instead, the woman had pointed out the bathroom plunger— advising him to not let anyone steal it— told him how to use the slushie machine, and said that if someone tried to rob the store, let them take the money; she even showed him the quickest way to open the cash register. Then she left within the first hour of James’ shift.

James didn’t mind being alone but he couldn’t fight down the frustration at his manager for abandoning him without actually telling him anything useful. He kept worrying that someone would ask a question that he couldn’t answer. What if the customer got angry and then he got reported and lost his job on the first night? Not to mention every time someone walked in, he was ready to bargain for his life with the $225.67 and a random condom in the cash register.

The adrenaline was getting to his head, stirring up usually dormant worries. He couldn’t stop glancing down at his hands. They were warm tan, patterned at random with lighter splotches. He had a condition known as vitiligo which made areas of his skin lose their pigmentation. For the majority of the time, it wasn’t a big deal; the worst part was the weird looks people gave him and even then, he could usually brush them off. Still, there was always the occasional idiot who felt the need to say something rude or inform him that he showed signs of demon possession. He hoped beyond everything that one of those incidents didn’t occur while he was alone in the store.

Thankfully, the only customers for the next few hours were a couple groups of teenagers at varying levels of intoxication and a traveling family made up of two parents suffering from highway-hypnosis and a small child who tried to climb into one of the drink refrigerators.

By one in the morning, the flow of incoming patrons had completely stopped. By that point James had already thrown back an entire 5-hour Energy drink and reorganized the chip rack— twice .

When the entry bell finally rang again at around two, James’ head was buzzing so badly he wasn’t sure if he had imagined the sound or not. A young man walked in— college aged with messy hair and glasses. He disappeared into the rows of brightly coloured plastic bags without a word and so quickly it made James once again question whether or not he was hallucinating.

It wasn’t until the man had made his way back to the counter, setting down a bag of chips and a couple energy drinks, that James was sure he existed. The man’s hair looked like it hadn’t been brushed in two days and his dark circles were so deep they could be seen from beneath his squared glasses. Yup, definitely a college student.  

Despite the obvious signs of exhaustion, the man was undeniably pretty. Counter to his tired scowl, his eyes were bright and alert, framing a sharp nose. The way he kept his strong chin tilted slightly upwards and walked with purpose gave him the appearance of someone who actually knew what he was doing with his life— so basically, the opposite of James.

James was hardly ever self conscious about his appearance but this man— this stupidly pretty, oddly perfect man— made James squirm just a little bit, made him wonder if he was living on one side of some scale while the customer lounged on the other side. James tried to shrugged it off, focusing on the items in front of him instead.

The man spent the entire interaction at the counter muttering to himself and never once making eye contact. It was a little strange, but he was cute and James was bored so he decided to just appreciate the entertainment while it lasted.

It wasn’t until James went to hand the man his receipt that he seemed to even become aware of James’ existence. James held out the thin slip of paper, apparently causing the man to flinch backwards. His reaction was strong enough to make James wonder if he was one of those people— the type that thought vitiligo was some sort of deadly, contagious disease.

His eyes darted up quickly, his gaze sharp as it scanned over James’ face, “You’re not the normal cashier.”

He was taken aback by the accusing tone in the man’s voice, “No, I guess I’m not? I just got hired; the other guy got let off… something about trying to steal the plunger.”

“Oh,” His face transformed into a noncommittal scowl that James simply could not read, “Expect me regularly.”

The man turned on his heels and walked briskly to the door as James stood frozen and mystified behind the counter, “Oh, uh… see you soon then.”

——————

James woke up to the smell of something burning. He didn’t even remember dragging himself home and collapsing in his bed but based on the smell bothering him he evidently had made it back. No one could burn food quite like his roommate.

“Remus what the fuck are you doing?” James shuffled out to the kitchen where his roommate was poking at something on the stove.

“Making lunch.”

Based on his bed head and near-complete lack of clothes (Remus always slept in booty shorts and nothing else) James could guess that he had woken up only a few minutes earlier himself, “Dude that does not smell like anything humans should eat.”

Remus gave him a wicked grin and James decided not to push the subject. He walked out of the room with a sigh and hoped that the smell would clear up soon.

He made his way into the living room, sitting down and flipping open his laptop. James groaned at the lack of new email notifications. No new emails meant no new job acceptions.

“Guess I’m working the night shift again.”

James was grateful he got the job at the convenience store— no question. Getting a job as a college dropout was both necessary and nearly impossible at the same time. He was lucky to get a job at all and being a graveyard shift, he got paid nearly double the normal wage for his position. For now, his sleep schedule would just have to suffer.

——————

The weeks drifted by and James fell into a dull, but easy rhythm. He would go to work every night, spend the hours rearranging chip bags, guarding the plunger, and— if he was lucky— the pretty college boy would come in for a few minutes to grab salty food and a caffeinated drink.

James wasn’t sure when it became “lucky” for the man to come into the store. Maybe it was lucky because he was entertaining, always preoccupied and wandering around the store like his mind was a hundred miles away. He had this odd sort of duality— somehow both spaced out and intensely focused at the same time. It was like he was concentrating on the dimension beyond the one James was living in. He floated through this world, always preoccupied with world in his head. It was endearing and intriguing and James found himself looking forward to seeing the man. James wanted to see the world inside his head, to know what was so captivating that he had no use or interest for what was outside of it.  

The student was quickly becoming his favourite customer— something James never thought he would have— and he genuinely enjoyed having a chance to talk to the other guy. He was handsome, obviously intelligent, and, if given the chance, James definitely would’ve asked him out for a drink.

As it was though, James looked awful in his uniform so he would never have the confidence to make a move the only times he ever saw him.

James started to watch for him. The man came at least once a week, always between midnight and four in the morning. He must have lived nearby because he always walked over instead of taking a car like most of the other patrons. Either that, or he lived further away and walked all the way just for a bag of chips and an energy drink.

It was a Thursday like any other when he walked into the store and James’ curiosity got the better of him.

“So,” James leaned across the counter as the man sat his items down, “you come around here often?”

He tilted his head quizzically, “Yes? I do come here often? You’ve seen me.”

“No I— it was a joke,” James resisted the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose. This was… not going the way James would have hoped, “What’s your name? We might as well get on first name basis since we see each other all the time.”

“I’m Logan,” Logan seemed surprised by the question.

“I’m James.”

Logan gave a curt nod, “I know.”

“But— how? I—“

“It’s on your name tag,” And with that, Logan turned and marched out of the store.

——————

Logan laid on his back, arms and legs spread over the entirety of his bed. The only leftover space of the bed was occupied by Patton, one of his housemates.

“So how did the all-nighter go?”

Logan groaned, “Well… it sure as hell did go all night. I’m so fucking tired.”

“This is what you get for viewing the entire American university system as a challenge.”

He squinted up at Patton. With his blond hair and round, smiling face he looked like the direct inversion of whatever pale little zombie Logan currently felt like, “I gotta stop staying up so late.”

“I don’t know, you kind of seem to like it,” His housemate patted his leg and stood up to walk out of Logan’s room, “By the way, where do you keep going? I hear you leaving the house, like, super early all the time.”

Sunlight was streaming through his partially open blinds. It was probably quite pretty but to Logan it just looked like a headache-inducing glare. He threw a pillow over his face, muffling his voice as he answered, “Booty call.”

Patton laughed as he stopped walking, “Yeah right. The day you answer a booty call is the day I will shave my head.”

Logan shifted the pillow slightly to look at Patton again. The man’s hair was his prize possession, like a curly fluffy cloud that he kept as a pet on top of his head. Logan didn’t know how Patton could afford the time and money he put into his hair. What he did know, however, was that Patton would never risk its safety. Logan frowned in (mostly) fake insult, “You really think there’s not a single person who would send me a horny text at three in the morning?”

“Nah I think there are quite a few people who would do that. I just doubt there’s anyone you’d actually find worth answering.”

Was there anyone he would actually answer? Logan stared up at the dark fabric above him. The pillowcase was a deep navy blue and if he really squinted, he could see the weave of the thread, a thousand random threads coming together to make a greater whole. The way the individual pieces created something far larger than themselves was fascinating to Logan. He had never given it much before, but he couldn’t help but wonder if he would ever find a random individual worth making something together.

In the darkness covering his eyes, a vision of the convenience store cashier flashed across his mind. The face he saw was light brown and across that warm canvas, lighter portions sprawled. For the first time, Logan began really thinking about that face. He had sharp features, tired eyes, and when he smiled with lips sloped upwards at a lopsided angle. His skin reminded Logan of the glossy photos of nebulae in his astronomy textbooks— bright splashes breaking up the sameness of the night sky. How had he never noticed that before? What was his name? James.

He heard the creak of their old floors beneath Patton as he walked out of Logan’s room. He probably thought Logan had fallen asleep as he lay there in silence. He was far from asleep, though. His mind was racing, trying to find the missed connections and continually finding new ones in the process. His eyes flickered as previously unrecognized thoughts began surfacing. And they didn’t stop. How had he never noticed?

“I’ve been going to that convenience store down the street,” Logan called as Patton walked away.

James.

Maybe there was someone for him.

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24/7 Taglist: @imma-potatoo

[incomingalbatross]

Fic: Guiding Light

@foundfamilybingo fill (very belated) for the “Lost/Stranded” square, in the Gravity Falls fandom!

@awesomebutunpractical, this is for you. Thank you for waiting, and for generally being the fun and friendly Tumblr presence/mutual that you always are. It is late and I am tired right now, but I hope you like this fic. :)

Characters: Stan Pines, Soos Ramirez, Abuelita Ramirez Warnings/Pairings/Ratings: None, none, gen Length: approximately 2k words

Stan had given Soos the week off and now he was starting to wonder why.

Sure, it was the kid’s first week of high school or whatever, and sure this was always a slack week in the tourist trade and maybe he didn’t need another pair of hands, but geez. He hadn’t thought about the fact that what’s-his-name, the latest cashier kid, would be leaving too. What, was he supposed to do everything by himself around here?

Ugh, fine, whatever. He might as well close up and get some work done downstairs—at least he didn’t have any kids hanging around underfoot, getting in his way, right?

See, if things had gone the way he’d maybe kinda assumed they would, with Soos showing up whether he was paid or not to babble about his new High School Experience and generally occupy Stan’s space for hours…well, Stan wouldn’t be getting anything important done, would he? No.

So yeah, it was a good thing that it seemed like the kid might’ve finally wised up—here it was late Tuesday, after all, and Stan hadn’t seen a trace of him since Saturday, which was practically a record.

Maybe, Stan thought… Maybe after three years of this kid underfoot, being weirdly obsessed with Stan and the Shack, high school would be the thing that finally sent life back to the status quo. With Soos moving on to whatever teenagers did nowadays, and Stan in the basement, uninterrupted again.

Good.

Stan was just turning to the vending machine, still grumbling under his breath, when the phone rang. Ugh, after eight o’clock? What was it, a vampire telemarketer?

“Hello,” he barked into the receiver.

“Mr. Pines,” a quiet, softly-accented voice responded, “would you send my boy home? It is getting late, and he will need to be up early for his new school tomorrow.”

Stan grimaced, surprised and vaguely offended. “What? I mean, maybe if I had him, but I haven’t even seen Soos today. I toldja I’d give him the week off!”

There was a slight pause from Soos’s grandma. “He has not been at the Shack today?” she repeated.

“No…” Stan’s gut was starting to catch up with his ears, now, and that wasn’t a good feeling at all. “Wait,” he said. “When did you last see him?”

There was a sigh from the other end of the phone—a worried sigh. He’d never heard Soos’s Abuelita sound worried before. “This morning, before school. He texted me after school that he would be late home—I have given him a phone now, he is a big boy—and said then that he would be visiting your Shack.”

“He hasn’t shown up that I noticed,” Stan said slowly. “But…if he has a phone, why call me?”

“He has not been answering,” Abuelita said, and the bad feeling in Stan’s gut solidified into a block of ice, cold and heavy.

This was Gravity Falls. And the kid had gone missing. That was a bad, bad combination

“I’ll, uh, I’ll look around,” he said quickly. “I mean, maybe he’s just outside, or wandered in here while I wasn’t lookin’, or something. I’ll find him—I mean, it’s Soos. Where would he have gone?”

There were a lot of bad answers to that question, he knew—“gone” and “gone willingly” were very different things. But he shoved that knowledge deep, deep down, where it could panic by itself and not distract him.

From the hum Abuelita gave in response, she wasn’t much more reassured than Stan. But all she said was, “Thank you, Mr. Pines. Please make sure he gets home when you find him,” and her voice when she said it was a bit closer to its usual untroubled calm.

“Yeah, sure,” he began, but she had already hung up.

He dropped the phone and ran his hands over his face. “Okay, think, Stan,” he said to himself. “It’s Soos, he’s got some weird thing against lyin’ at all, let alone to his grandma. So if he said he was on his way here, somethin’ must’ve happened on the way…”

But that was too wide an area. It could’ve been at school—second day would be pretty early for the “lock ‘em up and leave ‘em” level of bullying, but heck, it wasn’t like Stan hadn’t seen it before. (Though that target had never been alone at school…) It could’ve been in town.

It could’ve been in the woods, and that thought made his gut twist more than anything. He told Soos the woods weren’t safe, but if the kid tried to take a shortcut or something…

He shook his head. “I can’t do this alone,” he muttered, and turned back to the vending machine.

—

There was a spell, in Ford’s dumb journal. Well, there were more than a few spells, most of them either bizarrely useless or straight-up dangerous, but this one had been…special.

A spell to “trace the threads binding your heart to others,” his brother’s stupid fancy handwriting read. When tested, it produced several strands of light emitting from my chest outward, in various directions, until out of my sight. And then he went on about the colors of the lights, because he was a nerd.

A warning, however! The entry concluded. This spell lasted only an hour (it was somewhat annoying to constantly have invisible-to-others lights around me during that period, honestly!), and once it broke I was unable to recast it. There may be a time limit in which it needs to “recharge,” it may be once per user, or there may be another component required for repeated use of which I am unaware. In any case, this is something to be aware of. (Although it is a largely useless spell, so I don’t foresee that being much of an issue.)

Stan gritted his teeth, reading over the instructions one more time. He could’ve tried it before—he’d thought about trying it before—but, well. There were a whole lotta factors that could keep Ford’s “thread” or whatever showing up for him, even if it worked, and if it did what good would it do him? He knew where Ford was, or at least how to get there. No point using something that might not even work to check that he was out there. (If he weren’t Stan would know, anyway.)

But he’d always kept it in the back of his mind, anyway, just in case. In case it became useful…or in case, one day, he just needed to try for evidence the Ford was still out there, that they were still connected.

He only got to use it once, after all.

“Well,” he muttered now, slamming the book shut, “here goes nothin’, Soos. This better work.”

He shut his eyes and chanted the weird gibberish words Ford had written down (seriously, how was this magic? He could make up better magic-sounding words than that). Then, cautiously, he cracked his eyelids open again.

“…Oh, wow.”

There was a whole tangle of multicolored lights coming from his chest, enough that it took him a minute to sort through them. He didn’t look long at any of them, though, mind focused on Soos.

There was a cluster of strings all stretching off in the same direction (towards town, he figured after a second), two bright red-and-purple strands dancing around each other and zooming south next to a couple fainter multicolored ones, a quieter but colorful string stretching east, and…

Oh yeah. That one was definitely Soos.

Stan couldn’t have said how he knew this one—almost the brightest one there, woven out of red and purple and yellow all mixed with traces of blue—was Soos’s. He just felt it, as soon as he focused on it; it felt like Soos, somehow, warm and confusing but good. Important.

Time to follow the trail, then.

—

In the end, with the help of these ridiculous magic lights, it was almost too easy. “Almost,” because Stan would never, ever complain about an easy win if he could get it, and also because he knew how bad the things that could’ve happened were. But still. It was a little anticlimactic to just follow the string to Soos and then find him actually sleeping against a tree in the middle of the woods.

Stan just stopped and stared at him, for a minute, because really? Here was Stan, charging to his rescue in the middle of the night (okay, okay, nine PM, whatever), when it wasn’t even a work day, and what kinda welcome did he get? A sleeping teenager!

He looked okay, though, so that was good. And the rope of light between him and Stan looked…kinda cool, maybe, now that Stan could see both ends. It disappeared into Soos’s chest, just like on Stan’s end, but the colors changed when they reached the kid. On his end, there was still red and yellow, but the purple gave way to green and there was a lot more blue there. Weird.

Eh, whatever.

“Soos, hey, wake up, kid,” he said, crouching down. He was tempted to yell it, just for entertainment points, but after dark in these woods that was probably not a good idea. Instead, he reached out a hand to shake the boy’s shoulder. “C’mon, time to go.”

Soos blinked his eyes open immediately, looking up at him with those stupid starry eyes Stan had always thought kids were supposed to grow out of. “Mr. Pines!” he cheered, throwing himself at Stan. “I got lost but I knew you’d find me!”

“Oof,” Stan grunted, falling back under the kid’s weight as he caught him. “Yeah, sure, kid, I only gave you a week off, not forever. What’re you doin’ in the woods anyway? Talk about a dumb idea…”

Soos shrugged, arms tightening around Stan. “I, uh, I don’t really know, Mr. Pines,” he said, sounding guilty. “I was on my way to the Shack, cause I wanted to tell you how high school was, but…then I heard singing?” He sniffled. “And I know you always say not to go into the woods, but the singing was really pretty and I wanted to get closer, and then I met these people and they were really cool-looking and I think they said there was a party? But, um, I don’t really remember that part too well. I just remember walking in the woods with them and feeling sleepy, but then they stopped? And they were all, like, yelling at each other about somebody being, like, ‘marked by the Great Protector’ or something, and then they left. And then I realized I was lost in the woods, but Abuelita always said when I was little that if I was lost I should stay where I was and wait for somebody to find me. So I sat down to wait, and then I was still tired so I guess I fell asleep.”

He paused, and then sniffled again. “I’m really sorry, Mr. Pines, that you had to come looking for me,” he said dolefully. “I was really proud of being in high school now and being, like, mature and stuff…but then I went and Hung Out With Strangers and tried to go to a Strange Party and I’m really sorry! Am I…Are you gonna fire me? Or make me take extra time off work?”

“Moses, kid, of course I’m not gonna fire you,” Stan blurted out. Freakin’ wood folk, thinking they could take his kid… He didn’t know what they thought they were talking about with that “marked by the ‘Great Protector’” stuff, because Soos wasn’t marked by anybody, but they were lucky they’d run off before Stan got to them.

“I might make you come back to work early,” he added, “so you don’t have time to do stupid stuff. But…eh, you’re not dumb. You know the drill, right? You made a mistake, big deal. Learn from it and don’t do it again, capisce?”

Soos hugged him again, and okay, they were approaching a limit here. “Got it, Mr. Pines, sir!” he exclaimed, almost bouncing, and Stan groaned as he got back to his feet. Kid was too enthusiastic to live with, seriously.

“Yeah, okay, good,” he muttered, pulling the teenager up. “Let’ get you home then. Oh, and Soos?”

“Yes, Mr. Pines?”

He fixed him with a raised eyebrow. “Whatever you think you saw or heard out here, that’s the kinda stuff that’ll make people think you’re crazy if you talk about it. Got it?”

Soos nodded earnestly. “I got it, Mr. Pines. I won’t talk about it to anyone, even the guys at school!”

“Oh yeah? You made friends with any one those guys yet?”

And they began trudging home, Soos happily rambling about his new school experience. And if the lights winked out, finally, just as Stan refocused on them in search of Ford’s, before he could settle whether it was there or not…

Well, that was okay for now, he figured. He’d used the spell for something else important, in the end.