the reason why fake dating fics are so enjoyable is because they are a combination of slow burn and established relationship fics. the reader is able to picture what a relationship between the 2 characters is like, but there is still an element of suspense and a chance to develop this relationship because they are not actually dating. in this essay i will
okay, so, admittedly i misread this, but it was already turning out in a super fun way so i just decided to run with it. have a little something from post-canon!
On the third ring, Joaquin has to step out of his math class, because whoever’s calling him is calling instead of texting and that means it’s serious.
All eyes are on him as he whispers an apology to his teacher and steps out into the hallway. He’s sure it’s not just because of the call; having magic powers tends to make him a target for people’s stares, nowadays. Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to have gotten him much else. An exemption from math class, for example.
The door swings mercifully shut behind him, and Joaquin presses the phone to his ear. “Uh, hi, whoever this is?” he whispers, because one of the hall monitors is a few doors down and eyeing him suspiciously. “This isn’t a good time.”
“Hey, kid! Am I on the right frequency?”
Joaquin freezes and cranks up the volume. “Uh, sorry… is this—”
“Taako,” the voice on the other end drawls. “Y’know, from TV? And also the end of the world, keep fuckin’ forgetting about that one. Uh… listen. I’ve got a bit of a—uh, we have a bit of a situation here, and—”
“Whoa, just—hold on a sec.” The hall monitor is definitely staring now. “Where is here? Where are you? How did you even get my number?”
“World savior privileges. So the thing is—”
Joaquin blinks. “Oh my God, are you… are you here in this world? Like, actually here?”
He can practically hear Taako’s shrug through the phone. “Near as I can tell.”
I like how fanfiction culture decided to drop all pretense about self-insert oc characters hooking up with canon characters and just leaned into “character x reader” stories. These were just non-existent in my early FF days, we’re talking 15+ years ago, and they’re everywhere now. I appreciate it, chase your bliss dears
GOD I WISH I HAD THAT SPINE OF STEEL
WHY DID YOU LEAVE OUT THE BEST PART, THIS IS A LEGEND
me, staring down ao3: ok i’m desperate for fic about this pairing but like… how desperate
You’re not desperate until you’re staring at fanfiction.net
Fools. you’re not desperate until you’re staring down an empty word document.
And there it is.
That storyline cuts pretty close to the id, you know? And it’s just one of a large number of similarly… charged storylines (soul bonds, every fuck-or-die scenario ever written…) that you see very very often in fanfic, and from time to time in profic as well.
And the profic? Almost uniformly sucks.
Because pro writers either have some shame, and relegate the purest, most cracklicious iterations of those stories to drawerfic that their workshop buddies will never see, or else they’re shameless. But they usually have to be shameless alone– and so their versions are written so solitarily that they don’t have any voice of restraint, to pull them back from the Event Horizon of the Id Vortex when it starts warping their story mechanics.
But in fandom, we’ve all got this agreement to just suspend shame. I mean, a lot of what we write is masturbation material– not all of it, and not for everyone, but. A lot of it is, and we all know it, and so we can’t really pretend that we’re only trying to write for our readers’ most rarefied sensibilities, you know? We all know right where the Id Vortex is, and we have this agreement to approach it with caution, but without any shame at all. (At least in matters of content. Grammar has displaced sex as a locus of shame. Discuss.)
And so we’ve got all these shameless fantasies being thrown out into the fannish ether, being read and discussed, and the next thing you know, we’ve got genres. We’ve got narrative traditions. We have enough volume and history for these things to develop a whole critical vocabulary.
We have a toolbox for writing this sort of thing really, really well, for making these 3 A.M. fantasies work as story and work as literature without having to draw back from the Id Vortex to do it.
a friend was asking, in light of me promoting@iddyiddybangbang about the use of the word “id”. This post really helped fandom define the term for itself.
I used to be such an uptight miserable jackass that I *hated* this concept for a while (even while I was writing werewolf porn, idk). NOT ANY MORE.
If you have a passing familiarity with who Jack Harkness is and that Star Trek exists, you’ll be able to follow this one. Aka, Horta Bangs A Who.
Says Ellen of her inspiration: “… this started when I thought of how Naraht was totally Jack’s type except for being a large acid-secreting rock with no recognizable genitals.
“And then I thought, this is Jack. He’s not going to let a little thing like that stop him :-D.”
A realization that strikes them each rather differently, as it transpires.
“You’re churning,” Makalaurë observed, as Maitimo did another length of the carpet. “If you keep it up like that you’re going to wear a spot in Grandmother’s rug and you know Father will get the pained line between his brows.”
“Grandmother’s carpets don’t wear,” said Maitimo, executing another pivot and striding back towards the hearth. “Valar, perhaps I should take a page from her book and just sleep until I am never seen again.”
“That’s a little overwrought,” said Makalaurë, a phrase which from his mouth would usually be enough to shake Maitimo from his turmoil to observe dramatic irony in action. “So you have been kissing Findekáno in the garden, so what?”
“Not just in the garden,” said Maitimo, running a hand through his hair and then stopping as it reminded him of Findekáno’s touch. And not just kissing, he didn’t add. “Also on the veranda, by the canal, under the bridge, next to the peach vendor…”
“So what? What of that is so bad that you need to banish yourself to Námo’s realm rather than continue? I know it’s embarrassing to have an infatuation, especially with someone so…buoyant, but it’s not like Findekáno’s hideous.”
That brought Maitimo to a halt. “He’s not hideous at all,” he said, frowning. “Why would one be embarrassed to be seen with him? He is handsome and well-built, noble and full of life, fun-loving and kind, and why say you ‘buoyant’ as if it is something shameful? He has energy, certainly, but it is of the sort that uplifts rather than wearies and a quality most befitting a prince. Stop laughing,” he said, annoyed, as Makalaurë chortled from the divan. “It is not the optics that concern me – well, not entirely – but it is precisely what you say!”
“What do I say,” said Makalaurë, composing himself.
“Infatuation,” said Maitimo wretchedly. “To him I am but an early crush realized, a light and happy affair to look back on fondly when we are old and wed to others. I thought I could bear it, could stand to suffer the kisses and – and other things, by the peaches and so on, but…”
“But?” prompted Makalaurë, his smile fading.
“I think I love him.” Maitimo sank down, missing the ottoman by a good foot, and landed on Míriel’s weaving with a clatter of long limbs. He folded forward and buried his head in his arms. “Help me, whatever shall I do? He cannot know, he mustn’t, I should not put such pressures on him but brother…” Maitimo lifted red-rimmed eyes. “I cannot take this torment much longer.”
“So,” said Irissë, running wax over her bowstring. “You and Maitimo, eh. How’s that going?”
“Excellent,” said Findekáno, wiping glue from his fletching. “I shall marry that man someday.”
Sometimes
Kenma feels like glass right before shattering.
Stress, some call it, or anxiety. Not a panic
attack (he knows what those feel like) but a bit like not breathing even though air
is still flowing and is it possible to drown on land he wonders. Can
you run out of oxygen even when breathing.
It’s people—sometimes
people are too much. Or it’s everything all at once. Because if it’s one thing
then it’s a million things all piled on top and so he retreats. He flees when
he can to a place where there are no people and he takes out a game and he
plays that game and he’s not playing so much as putting back a piece of himself
that somehow fell out along the way. Kenma has lost Kenma and he doesn’t
know where to find him. It’s not the game that’s important. (But the act—the
retreat, the remove, the playing. He doesn’t need the game he needs a process
that is solely his own.)
Somewhere in the
playing, oxygen returns. The glass that felt so fragile feels less like it’s
about to break. And he can be Kenma again; he can be quiet, and observant, and
he can interact with people, and everything can be fine.
What is it like, he wonders. What is it like not to be
this way.
But. He can take care
of himself. He has ways to cope, and he knows that’s more than some people ever
get.
And when the day is
done—school, volleyball practice, people and people and people, he can go home.
Sometimes that means crawling under the blankets and recharging, and sometimes
that means Kuroo.
When no one can see
them, Kuroo wraps his arms around Kenma, and sometimes Kenma continues to play
his game or read a book or do his homework, but sometimes he just leans in and
breathes in Kuroo’s air and all the pieces of Kenma that feel so fragile are
knit back together in the warmth of Kuroo’s body.
Kuroo doesn’t say
anything most times—and that’s the nicest thing about Kuroo, he understands the
value of silence—but sometimes, like today, he’ll murmur just nonsense things
that are gentle to hear.
“You’re
amazing, Kenma, you’re so amazing and so strong and incredible. I love you and
I love you.”
And somehow through
all that Kenma finds himself again.
A/N: *sobs* I have
been super stressed out lately, and needed to write some incredibly
self-indulgent stress-reliever self-care short fic with my favorite introvert.
I got an anon prompting me for more Fingros. I’ll get to it soon (…it’s a good prompt!) but clearly I’ve been letting the side down so here’s some garbage I wrote ages ago for partner in crime @imindhowwelayinjune while we were doing Treat Me Soft. It’s literally just this but with the OTP. Sorry not sorry.
“Alright,” Fingon said, hoping he sounded soothing and not vaguely panicked. The surgeries were done. No complications, the healers had assured him. Everything had gone as well as could be expected and Maedhros was as healthy as anyone in his situation could be. Which was not close to healthy enough, Fingon thought, his heart aching. “Eat the lembas.“
Rose fidgets with the sleeve of her robes en route to Naboo, so much that the hem frays under her fingers. Just a few stray green threads, unraveling from the neat stitching and tickling her wrist, especially when she crooks her hands. Rose hardly notices—it’s not the first time she’s worn second-hand anything; her usual jacket has so many patched holes Paige had joked it could double as a rutaanil strainer. (Rose shuts her eyes, and thinks of Paige sitting beside her on the transport; Paige with her legs splayed, looping her arm carelessly over Rose’s shoulders; her sharp chin jutting out and her necklace catching the overhead lights. C’mon, em gái, she’d laugh. I’d like to see any of these assholes repair a calcinator, their fancy sleeves would catch fire.
This image comforts Rose, and with her eyes shut, she smiles.)
Still, when she bows before the Queen of Naboo, all Rose can think about is her fraying sleeve, the tangle of green threads at her wrist. She wonders if everyone can see it—if that’s what they’re whispering about, all the ambassadors and diplomats with their painted-pale faces. Or maybe they’re whispering about her, the hairstyle she’d hastily done and redone aboard the transport, the callouses and electrical burn marks at her fingers and palms. Rose thinks of General Organa and tries to channel that same effortless command, elegance, but her robes are fraying and her hair is falling out of the careful braid and maybe she should have insisted it be General Organa. Maybe she should have refused.
I’m a mechanic, she wants to blurt out, though the Prime Minister of Naboo is speaking now, and it would be worse to interrupt him. I’m just a mechanic, I don’t know…
“The Resistance begs your aid,” Rose says quickly, once there is a pointed silence. She’s not sure if she was meant to speak just then, because the Prime Minister’s mouth thins with disapproval and the Queen’s expression remains still and unreadable as stone. “I hope that, in time, we may come to an agreement,” she adds, desperately.
The Queen of Naboo nods as though she’s a marble sculpture, grudgingly; as though even bending her neck requires tremendous work and she isn’t sure Rose or the Resistance merit such effort. Rose bites her lip and burns with embarrassment.
A courier whisks her from the chambers soon after, and guides her to a luxurious suite full of beautiful things. “The Queen wishes you to be comfortable,” he says briskly, and then he’s gone.
Rose pictures Paige in the room, picking up the pretty baubles and scowling—or maybe just bemused, her mouth a crooked line between amusement and annoyance. What the hells is this trash? Does a queen really think people can be bought with pretty glass and soft sheets?
“They are soft sheets,” Rose murmurs. She’s lying back on them still in her robes, wondering whether she should contact General Organa and ask for an extraction—she’s the wrong person for this, for how important this is. She’s just a mechanic. She’s—
Rose, Paige says, and Rose can shut her eyes and picture her face. That fierce sincerity, the look that usually meant it was one-hundred hours and Paige was mostly-drunk. She always got like that, after she’d been drinking. Rose, don’t let them make you smaller, or meaner, or harder than you are. Don’t let them think you’re any less than them, just because—
“Because we came from nowhere and nothing,” Rose breathes. The familiar refrain.
“After all, that’s where heroes come from,” Rose murmurs, in time with the vision of her sister. Paige grins, and shifts forward to kiss Rose on the forehead. Never forget it, she says, and Rose swallows. Opens her eyes.
She’s alone, in the room.
.
0.327-alpha galactic standard.
TICO, ROSE: No progress to report.
.
After the first day of negotiations, Rose comes back and carefully does not break every object in her lovely room, which is full of glass and stone and sunlight glittering off the nearby water. She does sit on the edge of the bed with her hands carefully folded in her lap, and thinks very hard about breaking all the lovely, delicate things, and the satisfying crunch some would make under her work boots. (She packed them, her boots. Just in case.)
She does drop a plate that evening at dinner. Accidentally.
The Queen of Naboo does not even in look in her direction.
.
17.327-regal galactic standard.
TICO, ROSE: No progress to report.
.
In truth, Rose had protested when General Organa had suggested she assume the role of diplomat. “I—I’m sorry?” she’d asked, tentatively, when the General had suggested it. “I’m not….I don’t think I understand.”
It’d taken four different people, only two of which were Finn, to explain to her the proposal, and get her to accept. “Every report of your conduct has suggested that you are charming, capable, and cool under pressure,” General Organa had said smoothly, though Rose had quietly and hysterically thought she was not cool under this specific pressure and also what in all hells. “These are invaluable qualities in a diplomat.”
“I’m a mechanic,” Rose answered weakly, but no one seemed to hear. She’d had a few weeks of preparation, and then they’d put her on the first transport to Naboo.
And that was that.
.
I miss you, Rose transmits over however long a terrible distance between her and Finn. Their exact locations been withheld from the other, citing security concerns. The Resistance is small and each sentient still swearing loyalty to it is precious, they cannot afford to bargain such thing on lax security standards.
Still.
I wish I were there, she writes. I wish you were here. I wish I had someone—
Sometimes, she gets message delivery error notices, and she stares at them so long her eyes blur.
Rose goes to bed early those nights.
.
The Queen of Naboo is busy with domestic administrative duties, so Rose goes down to the stables as a way of distracting her from the monotony of her rooms. (She’s found six puzzleboxes and three hidden passageways and she’s bored, she can’t be surrounded by pretty and useless things anymore or she’ll start smashing them. Even writing back to Finn—whose last transmit was almost entirely black-censored, due to classified information—can’t stave off the boredom.)
Naboo doesn’t have stables of fathiers, the way Canto Bight did; they’re a waterlogged planet, and so their pets and beasts are aquatic. Still, Rose can’t help grinning as she dips her hand in the broad pool and the creatures—she’s not sure what they’re called, but they’re smooth and funny to touch, ticklish—lap at her fingers. The skinny ones twine around her wrists and mouth at her skin, and she giggles.
She names the spotted, aggressive creature twice her size ‘Rey’ because it seems to fit, the serious, hard-headed Jedi. There’s a smaller, thin animal that darts close and then away, and she calls that one ‘Finn’ because its scales are so bright and its mouth seems to smile. The prettiest one is ‘Poe’ obviously, since even Paige had been in love with Poe, because everyone is in love with Dameron, Rose, even if we don’t prefer male humans overall.
Rose is trying to coax out the dark-scaled, uncertain creature hiding in the rocks when a strange voice startles her:
“They like you.”
Rose forces herself to stay still, since she has Organa—a dark-grey, huge creature—wound around her hand. The creature is humming, just below the threshold of human hearing, and Rose isn’t interesting in disturbing her. “I like them,” she says simply.
The woman comes to sit beside her on the edge of the tank, and Rose vaguely recognizes her from all the many conferences. A handmaiden, or some sort of representative; maybe a duchess. Even General Organa’s knowledge of Naboo internal politics was shaky. They knew that the Queen had handmaidens, and often these were nobility unto themselves, but that was all.
“You’re the ambassador of the Resistance,” the strange woman says, and Rose half-shrugs.
“I suppose.”
“You don’t seem certain about that. Don’t you know who you represent?”
Rose smiles. She shakes off the Organa-creature, and straightens up, meeting the handmaiden-or-duchess in the eye. “A week ago, I was a mechanic. Diplomacy is…not exactly where I saw myself going.”
“Hm,” the woman says, noncommittally. Rose watches as she rolls up her sleeve, and dangles her hand in the water. The Poe-creature immediately swims up to the surface, and twines around the strange woman’s hand, trilling in a way that’s almost-audible, just enough to give Rose a low grade headache.
(Sometimes when she comes, the creatures are singing, just below the frequency of human hearing; Rose likes to lie down then, and grit her teeth and think of Paige, and Finn, and telling the both of them about the songs of these nameless creatures, which she could feel through her skin.)
“What are they called?” Rose asks, watching. “I’ve been trying to figure it out for days, but searching the holonet…”
“They’re called ildeni,” the girl says, and her absent smile is nice. Rose thinks in another sort of galaxy, they might be friends, and the thought is reassuring. “Or Naboo rays, as they’re known on other worlds. Usually, they’re very picky about who they like, I’m impressed they’re so attached to you.”
Rose blushes. “You’re the only one, then,” she mutters, staring down into the deep pool to avoid looking at the woman, her round face. She had dark, fine eyes and Rose liked them; just as Rose liked her hand as it stroked through the water, with it’s long dark fingers.
“You don’t think you made an impression on the queen?” the handmaiden asks.
“I have no way of knowing,” Rose says , as gently as she can. (She’s gotten good at this, at saying ugly things in a beautiful way. Not to alienate—) “But right now, we’re just…circling one another. I’ve seen enough negotiations between the First Order and the mining federation to know the difference.”
The woman glances at Rose. “You worked for the mining federation?”
“I served drinks to the mining federation,” Rose says sharply. She can’t quite keep the scorn out of her voice. “There’s a difference.”
Rose can feel her—the stranger, with her lovely skin, and her dark fingers, and her smile—looking. Still, Rose turns, and meets her gaze when the stranger says, “My name is Aldoré. I am a handmaiden to the Queen.”
“Rose Tico, ambassador to the Resistance,” Rose says. They shake hands, and both of their palms and fingers are wet with saltwater. “Pleasure to meet you.”
They go walking in the palace gardens, after. Rose finds herself explaining about Finn, and Poe, and Rey, and Paige, and the Resistance, and light—even Light, which was better and higher and different, somehow. About growing up hungry and angry and how nothing would feed them except revolt, and nothing would clothe them except resistance, and even then, Rose missed her sister. Sometimes sacrifice was just—it was just horror, and grief. Even if you believed in what you were fighting for.
Aldoré
listens, and she takes Rose’s arm, and they clutch one another in the gathering dusk. Aldoré says, “I grieve for your loss,” and Rose says, “Thank you,” and they are there, with the smell of the sea all around them and on their hands, and Rose thinks of Paige standing beside her, thinks of Paige saying, don’t be afraid, here I am, here I will always be.
Aldoré is beautiful, in the dusk; dark as the wrong side of the moon and lovely. Rose asks her if she’ll be at the queen’s dinner that night, and Aldoré shakes her head. “No, I’m sorry,” she says. “I have business to attend to.”
Dinner that night is stilted, quiet. Rose does not know what to say, and settles for saying nothing.
.
The next day, Rose receives a missive from the Queen of Naboo. Come, it says. We have much to discuss.
Rose barely sleeps that night.
.
43.39-aris galactic standard.
TICO, ROSE: Tentative progress. Request authority to negotiate terms of support.
ORGANA, LEIA: Granted.
.
Rose wears the same green robes, and when she bows before the throne, she knows that the Queen of Naboo sees the fraying threads at her sleeve. Mostly because the Queen of Naboo comes down from her throne and takes Rose’s hands, holds them up to her breast.
“I think,” Aldoré—or the Queen of Naboo, Rose still isn’t sure which except that she’s smiling the way the Queen of Naboo never did, her scarlet-painted mouth curling up at the corners—says, “that we have been remiss. We have been cruelly negligent.”
“Oh?” Rose asks faintly. Beneath the pale death’s mask of makeup, she can trace the outline of brown and laughing Aldoré, and she’s not sure how to think about that except hope fiercely that it somehow works out.
“Yes,” the Queen says. “After all, it was a Queen of Naboo who lit the ember of Rebellion. It seems only just that Naboo keep it burning. Kneel, Ambassador Tico.”
Rose wobbles to her knees in a borrowed, fraying green robe. Beside her, she can feel Paige, bright and hot and whispering, look at that, little sister, look at this; nothing and nowhere and no one and here you are. what did we say about heroes?
Rose Tico goes to her knees a mechanic, pressed into service as an ambassador because there was no one else and she was kind, maybe kinder than the rest.
Rose Tico rises up again to her feet wearing shimmering green, the color of hope, and leading an army.
just moving along like everyone else 