#unwritten prequel my beloved

[angels-heap]

*raises hand* I want to know about the barney/Lauren fic!

OKAY SO. In late 2019/early 2020 while I was writing The Ghost in You, I was also writing a companion fic in my brain that followed Lauren, Barney, and Gordon pre-rescas, from the time they all met until the day after the Incident. Working title was “Every Breath You Take” because (1) I suck at titles, (2) I’d already titled two fics in that series after 80s songs and wanted to stick to the pattern, and (3) the whole concept was that Lauren thought she was successfully spying on Black Mesa and uncovering conspiracies – which she was, to be clear – but the G-man was also watching her.

I kept telling myself not to start earnestly drafting the fic until The Ghost in You was closer to done, both because I didn’t want to manage two longfics at once and because I felt the prequel would hit harder after readers learned more about Lauren through post-HL2 Barney and Gordon’s recollections. Then, of course, the 2020 fandom bullshit happened and I basically scrapped the idea, though it lives on in my head and in a handful of drafts and phone notes scattered across my devices.

It’s highly unlikely that I’ll write the fic at this point, despite my renewed interest in the fandom, mostly because my 9-5 job (which is really more of an 8-10 job) won’t allow me the time or flexibility to take on another project that big. So, for anyone who’s curious about what could have been…

Context: Lauren is a food service/cafeteria worker at Black Mesa, assigned to the cafeteria near Sector C at the time of the story. This is how and where she met Barney (as explained in The Ghost in You). A running theme of the prequel was to be how service workers (especially female service workers) were essentially invisible at Black Mesa due to the various -isms and prejudices of the time, which meant Lauren could get away with a lot with a little stealth and social engineering.

I’ve forgotten and/or never got around to drafting a lot of the connective tissue between the major plot points, but here’s a rundown of all the important beats I can find/remember:

Story opens with Barney telling Lauren about “ponytail guy” (Gordon), the new AnMat scientist who always eats alone and never seems to talk to anyone. Lauren challenges Barney to approach ponytail guy and to her surprise, they hit it off. Barney won’t shut up about how nice and interesting his new friend is all night, and the next day, when Barney shows up to help her move her stuff into his apartment, he brings ponytail guy with him! Lauren’s wary of him at first, due to a general distrust of scientists, but eventually warms up to him through dunking on Barney and a mutual interest in sci-fi.

Lauren’s team caters a working lunch for Dr. Breen and other higher-ups. She inadvertently overhears something she shouldn’t have about the Lambda Complex’s unacceptably high casualty rate. She recalls hearing rumors and noticing that some of those scientists have gone missing recently, but had assumed they quit/moved/retired. Now she’s not so sure. She vows to keep closer tabs on Lambda Complex scientists in the future and decides not to mention any of this to fellow conspiracy nut Barney—at least, not yet. Not until she has proof.

Interlude: Lauren and Barney have a conversation about who they’d want a “hall pass” to sleep with, no questions asked, without it affecting their relationship. After some back-and-forth, they decide to write their choices down on scrap paper and swap them. Lauren picks Leonardo DiCaprio. Barney picks Gordon. He instantly protests that he didn’t understand the game, but Lauren knows better. She’s also not surprised, and she likes Gordon well enough, and she feels secure enough in their relationship that she doesn’t exactly feel threatened that Barney’s also attracted to Gordon. In fact, she finds the whole thing kind of hot, but she’s not inclined to tell Barney that yet. It’s more fun to let him squirm and see where things go.

Over a span of several weeks, Lauren hears rumors that several more Lambda Complex scientists have suddenly disappeared. She starts casually asking around and gets stonewalled at every turn, which only raises further suspicions. She asks Gordon what he thinks and he shrugs the whole thing off as a rumor. On her way home from Gordon’s apartment, she sees a pale man in a blue suit watching her from a distance. He makes eye contact with her, straightens his tie, and walks away.

Lauren picks up extra shifts as a custodian to gain access to Sector E facilities, based on a hunch. She pretends to get lost and strategically “stumbles across” one of the specimen labs, where she discovers Xen fauna in various stages of dissection and skims some unsecured lab notes. When she's caught by a condescending scientist who's clearly in a hurry, she simply plays dumb and gets escorted back to her work area with a warning. After that shift, she returns to her and Barney’s shared apartment to find that he and Gordon are celebrating the news that Gordon’s up for a promotion to the Lambda Complex team, pending a letter of recommendation from Dr. Kleiner. Lauren instantly knows that this cannot be allowed to happen and starts scheming.

Next time the three of them get together, Lauren casually asks Gordon if he knows about Xen, to which he replies, “Zen? I’ve never relaxed a day in my life.” (This conversation is also referenced in TGIY). This confirms that he has no idea what he’s about to be sent off to do, so she resolves to set her plan into action. After Barney and Gordon conk out on the couch, she steals Gordon’s swipe card and manages to convince the guard in Sector C (a friend of Barney’s) that Gordon asked her to drop something off in Kleiner’s office. He escorts her in and looks away long enough for her to steal Gordon’s letter of rec out of Kleiner’s outgoing mail tray. She smuggles it out, rips it to shreds, and flushes it down the toilet. G-man watches her leave.

(Somewhere in here, Barney and Gordon attend the infamous Christmas Party referenced in The Ghost in You, where they get super drunk and end up making out with each other while Lauren is out of town. Barney calls Lauren the next day and she just knows something happened between them, but she’s not mad. Barney hands Gordon the phone, and she gives him a minor heart attack by saying something along the lines of “Next time you decide to make out with my boyfriend, can you at least invite me?” This whole debacle could’ve been—and almost was—its own fic.)

Gordon’s transfer never goes through. Everything goes back to normal. Lauren continues to snoop around and becomes increasingly paranoid that the blue-suited bureaucrat is following her around (because he is). She mentions this to Barney, who shrugs it off (“Black Mesa’s crawling with suits”) and suggests that maybe she’s seeing things because she hasn’t been sleeping well. Lauren realizes he’s right, and maybe there’s more to her nightmares and restless sleep and constant body aches than the stress of uncovering an interdimensional conspiracy that she can’t talk about with anyone. She takes a pregnancy test. It's positive.

(Insert a scene referenced in The Ghost in You: Either the one where Lauren tells Barney about the pregnancy and he freaks the fuck out, or the post-Galaxy Quest conversation where Lauren asks Gordon if he thinks Barney would be a good father, from Lauren’s POV.)

Flash forward to the day of the incident. Lauren’s in New York when she hears news that something’s happened at Black Mesa. She starts calling Barney’s apartment phone (no answer, no answering machine) and Gordon’s (no answer, and she discovers that Barney recorded a goofy message on Gordon’s answering machine without his knowledge). Hours drag on with no news, and the rest of her family eventually goes out to dinner, leaving her alone, dialing Gordon’s number over and over, even after she knows in her heart that he’s never going to answer, just to hear Barney’s voice. Eventually, the line is disconnected mid-call.

(If you’ve read The Ghost in You, you probably have your suspicions as to how everything ends. I’m intentionally leaving this vague for now, just to preserve the ambiguity, but suffice to say that Lauren’s experience of her last phone call with Barney was a bit different than his. If anyone’s actually read this far, I welcome your theories.)

So, that's the fic! I'm sure its final form would've been much more interesting and cohesive than this outline, but I was proud of it as a starting point and it gave rise to so many of my cherished headcanons. Make of it what you will.

[lafiametta]

fandom meme

I was tagged by @wildcard47 — thank you!

In return, I’ll tag @arcticelves, @gigi-sinclair, @jeynepoole, @draculas-gay-daughter, @whalersandsailors, @radiojamming, and @pooraurora (but, as always, no pressure!)

Fandoms: 14 (at least according to AO3)

Number of fics: 46

Fic I spent the most time on: If we’re counting active time (that is, time was actually working, rather than just thinking about a half-written fic and feeling bad about it), then “Time To Take Her Home,” which I worked on for at least a good two and a half months before I got distracted by Mad Max: Fury Road. 

Fic I spent the least time on: I wrote “A Mission of the Utmost Importance” in a few hours, because it was a ridiculous Rogue One Christmas Shopping AU crack fic and like a mayfly, it was never meant to exist (unwritten in my head) longer than a day. 

Longest fic: “Time To Take Her Home” (Sons of Anarchy) at 54,441

Shortest fic: “The Target” (Rogue One) at 874

Most hits: “The Redeemer” (Mad Max: Fury Road)

Most kudos: “The Redeemer” (Mad Max: Fury Road) 

Most comment threads: “Parhelion” (The Terror)

Most bookmarks: “The Redeemer” (Mad Max: Fury Road)

Total word count: 328,063

Favorite fic: I will still always love “The Wilderness,” my Last of the Mohicans Alice x Uncas fix-it fic!

Fic I most want to expand on/rewrite: I’ve been toying around with working on a prequel to “You, beloved”/“Without feet” that’s written from Little’s perspective. It would consist entirely of awkward pining and clumsy attempts at conversation, but, hey, that’s Edward Little, you know? 

Share a bit of a wip/story idea you’re working on: I’ve still got a bunch of those kissing prompts from back in March and I’ve been working on a Hartving one. I’ll share the beginning, at least:

Lieutenant Irving’s cabin was small, narrow enough that Tom could have spanned his arms and come close to touching the walls, but it was snug and tidy and a great deal quieter than the fo’c’sle. At this time of night, the men would be readying themselves for sleep, smoking a pipe as they dragged their hammocks into place, talking and laughing amongst each other. Inevitably, one of them—Wentzall, more often than not—would loudly break wind and then blame it on the ship’s dog, a foolish joke that never seemed to get any funnier no matter how many times it was performed.

Lieutenant Irving, Tom was certain, had never farted for the amusement of an audience, much less tried to pin the responsibility on an innocent dog.