#thank you maddie!!!!! i can't believe this fic is gonna turn 4 years old next year jfc

[lesbiancolumbo]

the fact that i got to see this before the general public remains a huge honor so. end of first chapter of i've got a match. hello. HELLO

i've got a match has a very special place in my heart bc it was the first sidjay fic i wrote after a real devoted community popped up -- and it was a real word of mouth kind of thing lmao! which is why you got to read it like 2 years early because i wasn't on ao3 yet and hinting at it like crazy and you just DM'd me and asked for it! (which, for anyone reading, is like a surefire way to get me to do anything lol)

one of my favorite moments from the lehman canon is when sidney and jj play gin in hunsecker fights the world, so anytime i can incorporate them playing cards, i'm gonna do it. i also took inspiration for sidney's being in a wheelchair from the holy gospel ("the coded queer lives of a hollywood classic" by david thomson):

The odious cop, Kello, has beaten up Sidney on the street and carried his limp body away. Is he dead? Or would it be possible for J.J. to come down to the street to reclaim the broken body, carry it upstairs, and put it in the room left free by Susie’s departure? That is not an enviable future for a very odd couple. Maybe Sidney lives in a wheelchair, crippled and needing to be looked after. Just so long as he can exchange barbed lines with J.J.

so that was what bounced around in my mind as i wrote this. this scene at the end of the chapter is the culmination of most of my favorite dynamics re sidney/jj: that they don't talk about their true feelings at all, that everything between them is an extremely elaborate game that results in a Winner and a Loser, and that no matter what anyone else on this website thinks or says, j.j. loves sidney more.

i don't plot fic out in advance -- i write them as i go, because i'm insane -- but i knew as soon as i put sidney in that wheelchair that he was gonna purposefully try to stumble out of it to see if j.j. would let his ass tumble to the floor. i also knew that at some point sidney's memories were going to start filtering back to him, and decided that after an extremely (for them anyway) tender round of sex that that would be the perfect place for it, because with those two i like blending moments of tenderness and moments of violence all in one.

also this was the first time i ever wrote from j.j.'s perspective which i remember as being extremely difficult because he was (then) a tough nut to crack. but very rewarding, and some of my best work remains in this chapter. :)