TeleCapitale's Bits and Pieces

https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeleCapitale

[capitaletele]

Hiiiiii hello hi

So I'm going to hopefully use this place as a repository for headcanons and snippets and half-written things that plague me and languish in my drafts. They may or may not be turned into actual stories at some point.

My actual finished stuff is up on AO3, mostly locked to registered users @ TeleCapitale.

Feel free to use my asks if you want to send fic prompts, thoughts or share your own headcanons!

[capitaletele]

Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Cristal/Johnny Rockfort Characters: Cristal (Starmania), Johnny Rockfort Additional Tags: Starmaweek 2, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, More tags to be added when I've slept, 5 Times Summary:

“Or,” she says, sidling closer to him, making her voice seductive, “we go for the jugular and take Janvier out, once and for all.”

“How,” he breathes, eyes locked on her lips. She licks them a little – a low blow, but she’s never been afraid of playing dirty. She bats her eyes a little. He doesn’t stand a chance.

“We blow up the Tower with them all inside.”

He jerks back like she’s just slapped him. “What? Cristal, no, are you insane? No!”

5 times the "Coup d'éclat" conversation went a little differently.

[capitaletele]

My contribution to Day 4! (I know, I’m doing this one a time delay 😅 Let’s pretend I’m in a different timezone!) 

Rating: Mature Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Stella & The Maid Characters: The Maid, Stella Spotlight, Original Characters Additional Tags: Starmaweek 2, Drugs, Canon-Typical Behavior, Accidental Voyeurism, Canon Compliant, Mentions of Stella/Others, Mentions of The Maid/The Secret Agent, Press and Tabloids, Mildly Dubious Consent Summary:

“I know she’s not home, I’ve been waiting for— Look, I just can’t stay any longer. Can someone come pick her up?”

“I’m sorry, sir, I’m afraid I don’t understand? Who is this?”

A burst of sound that must be the man sighing into the phone.

“I’m the lady’s driver.”

Ah, this settles it. Someone’s gotten hold of the phone number and is trying to pull some kind of prank. Stella left in a taxi today, because the chauffeur has Tuesdays off.

Set sometime during canon: Jane gets a phone call to warn her that someone needs to pick Stella up from "the hairdresser's."

[capitaletele]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

And if you’re wondering wth I’m talking about, this is the reason I basically pulled an all-nighter yesterday! I was writing a modest number of words, and a WHOLE lot of html 🤓

[capitaletele]

Starmaweek Day 3 - brainstorming

So this is not a fic because I'm incapable of making my brain work tonight, after spending all night yesterday working on Day 2's offering.

But I also can't break the streak??? So I have to post something and this will be it until probably the amnesty period when I'll try to write it for good.

[Please don't tell me stuff like "you don't need to make it that complicated / just pick one and leave the rest / it doesn't matter what you write, etc.!" My brain works the way it works and that's just how it is! I can't force the process or nothing happens.]

Prompts for Day 3 are: Midnight, pre-canon, "Besoin d'amour," and that's tricky. I like to take all the prompts together and see if they point towards something when taken as a group, because taking just one often feels too wide-open. Having less choice is often helpful to get me started, rather than waffling endlessly about "what if this? but what if that? but what if there's a better idea out there somehow?" etc.

Still, with these prompts, there are a few directions things could go.

Pre-canon is pretty obvious, until you start thinking about it. When does canon start? Is it "before the events depicted in the show" or "before the character makes their appearance?" It could be interesting to play around with timelines: showing characters at different stages of their lives and development.

Of course, "Besoin d'amour" inevitably makes me think of Cristal. It would be so strange for me to write a story where it applied to anyone else exclusively. So she has to be there somehow, but also, I don't want to write all my fics Cristal pov either. Variety is the spice of life! So perhaps it's more of an ensemble fic.

There are many ways the characters need love - and they're not looking for the same kind of love, either. They're all pretty much looking for the love of an audience (literally or not.) Stella and Marie-Jeanne might be looking for self-love. Johnny and Marie-Jeanne are looking for romantic love. Apart from fame, Ziggy is looking for... Sex? I guess? So that could also be an interesting way of framing it: different characters entering the plot looking for different kinds of love. You could even try to structure things around the 6 Greek words for love, if you wanted to be a real nerd about it (which I'm obviously not!! I'm cool!!!)

Midnight is straight-forward, but when I thought about it, I also started thinking about midnight as like, the magical hour. Cinderella, whose carriage turned into a pumpkin at mightnight, etc.

None of these really gel into anything coherent for my exhausted brain. These are the ideas I've tossed around today while I was supposed to pay attention to other things:

Johnny and Cristal somehow meet when they're young. Perhaps they don't know who the other is. I thought maybe they could have met on a train (don't ask me why.) Maybe Johny was coming to Monopolis and Cristal was.......... that's where it stopped.

Then I thought about more characters all crossing paths on this hypothetical midnight train, encountering each other, looking for connections. Then my brain decided that was "Les uns contre les autres" aka yesterday's prompt, and as such, Not Allowed.

Then I thought about a Cinderella AU. Again, that's how far it went, because it doesn't actually make sense except for the midnight thing.

Then I thought about a different midnight for each of the main characters, spread out over their childhoods/teenage years/pre-canon adult years, that would exemplify the way each character is looking for love. Like, "Midnight, 15 years ago, Stella is doing blabla. Midnight, 10 years ago, Cristal is doing whatever. Midnight, the day before [canon event], [character] is [doing something thematically relevant and also narratively interesting." I like that idea but finding the right times and events for each is just beyond me in my weakened state.

So there you have it! A whole lot of not much! I'm just going to hope that by the time I'm functional again and amnesty comes around, one of these ideas has percolated into something workable. Or - more likely, tbh - that a completely other idea will pop into my head!!

[capitaletele]

Starmaweek Day 1 - Home, Technology, SOS

I don't usually post whole fics on here, but today kicked my ass and there is no way I can figure out a title/tags and AO3 formatting tonight. So, have this placeholder as proof that my homework was done sort of on time!

[Title TBD], Johnny/Cristal/Sadia, rated M, 3k words.

This is a pretty direct sequel to my space!AU fic, Vers d'autres galaxies, and I'm afraid it will make no sense without reading that first. If you read it in this form, please make sure to also check out the edited version that will go up on AO3 sometime tomorrow! 😅

🛸

Lately, Cristal had been dreaming of Before.

In the dreams, she was back on Monopolis, the most central of the Central Planets, and everything was easy again. She glided through her old life, effortlessly following the schedule she knew by instinct. She was surrounded by beautiful, shiny things. She was a beautiful, shiny thing. Everyone loved her.

Sometimes, Johnny and Sadia were there with her, playing various roles except for their own; sometimes she was by herself. It didn’t seem to make a difference. She felt at peace either way.

The dreams always ended the same way. Come home, a voice whispered. Come home.

She startled awake.

It was Sadia’s face she saw first, and for a second it filled her with a primal sort of fear. But Sadia slept on, undisturbed, her brow furrowed like she was caught in her own dreams.

“Nightmare?” Johnny rasped behind Cristal, making her jump a little. Her heart was pounding. He pressed his lips to the back of her neck with a sigh, shuffling closer in the dark.

“Yes,” she whispered, because she couldn’t tell him the truth. “I’m okay. Just another nightmare.”

🛸

They said that, after the Janvier Corp station blew up, the Western System had collapsed into chaos. It turned out that when all of your infrastructure and half of your population relied on chips, and then the servers went offline overnight, it was pretty hard to keep things running smoothly.

Chips were still taboo here, in the East. But norms could change; there had been a time when the West had regarded implants and augments with suspicion too. The influx of Western refugees had already started changing things. The news talked about efforts to rebuild the Western network, about expanding it to the East – finally putting an end to the animosity that had pitted the Systems against each other for decades.

Maybe that’s what those dreams were about, Cristal thought. Maybe, somewhere, signal was up already, and tendrils of it were reaching out to her across the vacuum, whispering to her broken chip.

Maybe that day Sadia would wake up in the bed they all shared, remember the last command she’d been given before the explosion, and kill Johnny and Cristal without a thought.

Before, Sadia could have given her the exact estimate, the calculations automatically updating with each news item she received from the network, but Cristal didn’t need statistics. It was enough to know that it was likely just a matter of time.

🛸

The knowledge wasn’t enough to make her keep her distances from Sadia, which was perhaps a little sick, certainly less than sane. Maybe Cristal’s sanity had been left behind in the Dark, fractured the day she’d first kissed Sadia in front of Johnny, almost a year ago now. She’d thought they were going to die then too.

“Damn,” Johnny said when Cristal climbed on top of him that night, after she’d made Sadia shriek with pleasure. “What’s gotten into you?”

She shut him up with her mouth on his and tried to forget about the ticking time bomb embedded inside Sadia’s skull.

🛸

It took a little digging, but finally one of their semi-regular clients, an electronics supplier, provided a helpful lead.

“Alright, I have news,” Cristal told Johnny and Sadia when they were all sitting around their last meal of the cycle. “It wasn’t easy, but I think I’ve found someone who can help with our chip issue.”

Sadia looked up sharply from her bowl. Johnny kept slurping his noodles, making a little curious noise.

“She says she’s done it before, on other refugees. I think we can afford it.”

“Afford what, exactly,” Sadia said.

“Taking your chip out.”

Sadia was silent for a few long seconds.

“Someone’s got experience with that? Here?”

Cristal nodded. “She’s from the West. She worked at a chipping center on Rio or something like that, I don’t remember the details.”

“Wow, very reassuring.”

“Well, I didn’t ask for references! Why the interrogation?”

“Like you wouldn’t ask a few questions before you let some random hick inside your brain.”

Would Cristal let someone root inside her skull in the back of some illegal shop? The thought made her shudder, but this wasn’t about her.  

“I would if I knew it would keep you and Johnny safe,” she replied.

“Aw, thanks, babe,” Johnny volunteered around his mouthful, and Sadia scoffed. She looked at Cristal in silence for a few moments, then she shrugged and said: “Okay then. I’ll do it if you do it.”

Which wasn’t at all what Cristal had anticipated.

“Huh?” Johnny asked.

“I will get my chip taken out,” Sadia repeated, over-enunciating in that infuriating way of hers, “if Cristal gets hers taken out too.”

“Oh, okay?” he said, looking over at Cristal. “How much would that cost?”

A cold sweat was running down Cristal’s back. She could lie to them, say they didn’t have the credits. “We could cover it, I guess. But my chip isn’t a priority.”

“If you don’t want to, then I guess we’ll wait,” Sadia said, going back to her meal like she’d just put an end to the conversation.

“Fuck, Sadia, they’re trying to rebuild the servers! I know you see the same news feeds as me. You really wanna take that risk?”

“Not really, no,” Sadia said. “We probably shouldn’t wait too long then, huh?”  

Johnny piped up. “Do you want to give me that contact’s info? I can send out a few feelers, ask around about their reputation?”

“No, I-” Cristal stuttered. “I mean, yes, thanks, but-”

She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, and she didn’t really understand why. Sadia hadn’t said no, hadn’t reacted like perhaps she was already under the chip’s control again. There was no reason for Cristal to feel so… Horrified.

Sadia and Johnny were both looking at her, and she realized she’d stood up, sending her chair clattering behind her.

“I have to-” she said, and tried to walk out in a way that didn’t look completely like she was running away for no reason at all.  

🛸

“Hey,” Johnny called as entered the cargo compartment, some unknowable amount of time later.  “I thought you’d be here. You okay?”

Cristal shrugged, burrowing further in between the huge rolls of fabric the Panther was hauling this month. She hadn’t wanted to go back to the large cabin they shared, and the small space that was nominally hers but she rarely used felt too cold, too sterile.

She watched as Johnny leaned against the wall, crossing his arms. He was waiting her out, she knew, giving her an opportunity to explain herself, like there must be a rationale for her behaviour, even if he didn’t get it yet.

If only she could have explained.

“She has a point, you know,” he said, gently. “It’s not really fair, making her do it by herself, when you’ve got a chip too.”

“Nice to see whose side you’re on.”  

A shadow passed over his face, and she regretted the dig immediately.

It had been almost a year since they’d gotten rescued, and five months since they’d sold the Jag to buy this transport instead, a sturdy hauler big enough for three people to actually live on. They’d had to insist for Sadia to join them aboard, but sometimes it was still hard, sharing Johnny. He knew it, and made a lot of effort to reassure her about it.

She closed her eyes and tried to find her calm. Her hand went up to her neck automatically, finding the faint line of scar tissue behind her left ear.

“I’m not the one who’s a threat, that’s all I’m saying. I controled my chip; it didn’t control me.”

“That was true before, but we don’t know what would happen if they rebuilt the signal.”

“Then I’d just break it again,” Cristal said mulishly, even though she still didn’t understand exactly what had happened to make the chip’s control over her fail. She didn’t even know for sure it had been something she’d done.

“Cristal,” Johnny said, like he was thinking the same thing.

“It’s not the same! Her chip made her kill me!”

“Cristal,” he said again. “Clean slate. You agreed. What’s going on with you?”

She could feel her throat closing around a sob she couldn’t control, and she burrowed into her sweater, trying to hide the wave of misery that was spreading over her. What was going on with her?

“I don’t know,” she said, and it came out wobbly, and then she was crying, great gulping sobs tearing out of her. She tried to curl into herself, but Johnny pulled her up and wrapped his arms around her, and she clung to his shoulders helplessly as she cried, a deep sense of loss stealing over her.

“Hey, hey,” Johnny hushed, rocking her back and forth in his arms. “Shhh, baby, don’t cry, it’s okay. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, alright?”

He was so sweet to her, and he loved her so much. It only made her cry harder.

🛸

There was no time to talk over the next cycle, because they were reaching their destination. There was cargo to unload, payment to organize, new clients to find, and at least Cristal was too busy to think about anything other than work.

The dreams kept plaguing her in her sleep, though, except she slept in her private cabin – a coward’s way out – so there was no one to hold her when she woke from them, sweaty and disoriented. In one of them she saw her mother, who smiled and stroked her hair, much more nicely than she had since Cristal had been a child.

She didn’t understand. She hadn’t talked to her mother in months even before she’d joined the Etoiles Noires; the woman was a harsh critic, cold and demanding, not a maternal bone in her body.

The next cycle, she dreamt of Jen, the camerawoman who’d joined her onto the Hangar. Cristal realized guiltily that she hadn’t thought of her once since then. She wondered what had happened to her, if she was alright. If there would ever be a way of finding out, if she gave up her chip – her last bridge to who she had been before, her last link with the world as she’d known it.

Oh.

“Wow,” Cristal whispered in the dark, suddently wide awake. “Stupid.”

🛸

She padded through the dark corridor to the big cabin, expecting – a little sourly – to find Sadia and Johnny there together, but there was only one lump snoring under the covers. She lingered in the doorway, looking at Johnny’s hair spread over the pillow, marveling at how small he looked, alone in that bed.

Then, she let the door woosh closed, and went to find Sadia.

She walked straight past the door of her private cabin and towards the small rec room. Sure enough, the display was on, projecting a thick green forest into the room, the sound of rain and wind and birds filling the space.

Sadia was lying on the synthetic floor covering. It was the cheap kind, bright green tufts that felt nothing like real grass, or at least not the kind that Cristal remembered. But perhaps Sadia didn’t know that.

“Hey,” Cristal called out, tentatively.

Sadia raised her head and let it drop back down, not moving. It could have been a dismissal, but Cristal chose to see it as an invitation.

She settled next to Sadia on the prickly carpet, careful not to touch her. She could hear Sadia’s breathing over the ambient sounds, slow and measured. Careful.  

“I’m scared,” Cristal said, finally, looking straight up into the translucent canopy. “Are you?”

Sadia didn’t say anything, which meant she was.

Cristal continued: “I didn’t even realize that’s what it was. I was so angry at you for even suggesting that my chip could come out too, and I didn’t understand why.”

 “Go on.”

“I’ve been having these dreams,” Cristal said. “I didn’t know what they meant.”

“Nothing. Dreams don’t have meaning.”

Cristal hushed her with a laugh. “Maybe mine do. Humor me.”

“Fine.”

“I’ve been dreaming about my old life. About the people in it, the way it felt to be who I was, back there. Loved by all, famous, successful. Beautiful.”

She thought Sadia might try to protest – she clearly appreciated Cristal’s body, even without the filters – but she didn’t, and Cristal was grateful. They both knew what it felt like, when you’d gotten used to seeing yourself a certain way, and then you couldn’t anymore. It had been one of the first things they’d bonded over, something Johnny, try as he might, could never truly understand.

“And I thought – the chip was my hope of having those things again, maybe. If we ever went back home.”

She felt the way Sadia reacted even without looking over.

“Home??”

“I know. I know, okay? It was stupid, and shallow, and selfish. I didn’t even realize the thought was there, in the back of my mind. And anyway, Monopolis was never really home. Not in any way that counted.”

Home was… Well, Cristal didn’t really know. It wasn’t something she’d spent a lot of time thinking about, too busy moving forward to think about putting down roots.

“Okay, I’m done. Your turn.”

“Well, first of all, keeping your chip would be stupid as shit. That’s just common sense, doll.”

“Hey!”

“It’s true. It’s a stupid risk. We don’t know what kind of feed they’re building, what it could do or what it would really secretely be used for. We’ve been there before, right? And before you say anything, there’s no guarantee your little hack would have held.”

“That’s what Johnny said too.”

“I know, he told me. That boy’s smarter than he looks. Well. Sometimes.”  

A laugh escaped Cristal’s lips. She felt lighter now, and she turned onto her side so she could look at Sadia’s, at the way the green light was catching on her cheeks. Some kind of insect’s projection was walking across the bridge of Sadia’s nose, and she wished she could brush it off as an excuse for touch.

“But mostly, if the feed ever did come back,” Sadia continued, her eyes catching Cristal’s, “I didn’t want you to hold yet another advantage over me.”

“I— What?”

Cristal’s mind reeled. At the beginning, she’d felt wrong-footed constantly.  Sadia and Johnny understood each other, and the kind of things that were needed to survive in the East. They’d come from the same world, or at least their worlds had much more in common with each other than Cristal’s had with either of them. Her brief stint with the Etoiles Noires didn’t measure up. It was only by the end that she’d gained enough control over her chip to be useful in any real way, and even that had been short-lived.

“Come on, I’m already the third wheel here, crashing your perfect little life. And that’s fine, I get how it is, but I couldn’t take being at your mercy in any other way.”

“Sadia, what?” Something dawned on Cristal then. “Hey. Why do you think we asked you to move on here with us?”

Sadia shrugged.

“I don’t know. The sex is good, but I don’t think that would have been enough for you. Gratitude? I did save your lives. Maybe a dash of pity. I was a wreck, back on the Jaguar. Still kind of am, if we’re being honest. I’m not really made for—” she gestured around the ship widely “—all this. I thought I could do it, but I don’t know how much longer I can keep not thinking about the Dark all around us, so you might be rid of me soon anyway.”

God. Cristal did reach out a hand then, taking Sadia’s chin between her fingers and nudging her head so they could look at each other.

“Fuck, Sadia, I didn’t—”

But she’d known, hadn’t she. Sadia had said how much she hated space, loudly and often, from the first day Cristal had known her. But Johnny loved it, and they’d needed a quick way to make a living, and Cristal just hadn’t thought about it. And somehow, all that added up to Sadia’s conclusion: that she wasn’t really wanted here.

“I’m sorry,” Cristal said, holding Sadia’s gaze, and then leaned in, putting a chaste kiss against Sadia’s surprised lips, pulling away before she could reciprocate.

“Okay, come on.” She clambered to her feet, pulling Sadia up with her.

“What are you—” But Cristal was off already, dragging Sadia behind her by the wrist until they got to the main cabin.

The door opened and Cristal stepped inside, still holding Sadia close. She sat them both on the edge of the mattress.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” she called, and when that wasn’t enough, she nudged Johnny’s shoulder a few times. “Wake up.”

Johnny groaned and shifted under the covers, throwing an arm over his eyes. “Not yet,” he grumbled, and Cristal shook him again a little harder.

“Wake up! You need to set a new course.”

“What? Why? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. Our chips need to come out, that’s all.”

“I thought we were waiting?”

“No, we’re not,” Cristal said. “Right?”

Beside her, Sadia nodded. “Right.”

“Also, we need to find a house. A real one, on land.”

“Huh? What’s going on, it’s so late. Or early?”

“We’ve all been very stupid,” Cristal said, laughter bubling out of her chest. “Sadia didn’t even realize that we love her.”

A small hiccup sounded in the dark behind Cristal.

“Yeah, okay, that is pretty stupid,” Johnny slurred. “But could this all this wait, like, two more hours maybe?”

“Yeah, maybe it can,” Sadia said in a thick voice. “I’m pretty exhausted all of a sudden.”

“Stop being stupid and get in here, then,” Johnny said, lifting up the covers on each side of himself. “We can talk more when it’s not the middle of the night.”  

Cristal slid into the bed, warm from Johnny’s body, and plastered herself to the solid shape of him, breathing him in. A hand found hers – Sadia’s, snaking over Johnny’s side to tangle her fingers with Cristal’s. She kissed the back of it, holding it close to her chest as she felt herself get pulled into sleep.

She hoped she would dream of home – the real kind, not the substitute she’d accepted in the past. She still didn’t know exactly what it would look like, but here, safe in the arms of the only people who’d ever truly known her, she thought she could feel out the shape of it.

🏡

The end :)

[capitaletele]

This is now on AO3 in cleaned up version, with about 700 extra words of transitions and clarifications 😅

[capitaletele]

Starmaweek Day 1 - Home, Technology, SOS

I don't usually post whole fics on here, but today kicked my ass and there is no way I can figure out a title/tags and AO3 formatting tonight. So, have this placeholder as proof that my homework was done sort of on time!

[Title TBD], Johnny/Cristal/Sadia, rated M, 3k words.

This is a pretty direct sequel to my space!AU fic, Vers d'autres galaxies, and I'm afraid it will make no sense without reading that first. If you read it in this form, please make sure to also check out the edited version that will go up on AO3 sometime tomorrow! 😅

🛸

Lately, Cristal had been dreaming of Before.

In the dreams, she was back on Monopolis, the most central of the Central Planets, and everything was easy again. She glided through her old life, effortlessly following the schedule she knew by instinct. She was surrounded by beautiful, shiny things. She was a beautiful, shiny thing. Everyone loved her.

Sometimes, Johnny and Sadia were there with her, playing various roles except for their own; sometimes she was by herself. It didn’t seem to make a difference. She felt at peace either way.

The dreams always ended the same way. Come home, a voice whispered. Come home.

She startled awake.

It was Sadia’s face she saw first, and for a second it filled her with a primal sort of fear. But Sadia slept on, undisturbed, her brow furrowed like she was caught in her own dreams.

“Nightmare?” Johnny rasped behind Cristal, making her jump a little. Her heart was pounding. He pressed his lips to the back of her neck with a sigh, shuffling closer in the dark.

“Yes,” she whispered, because she couldn’t tell him the truth. “I’m okay. Just another nightmare.”

🛸

They said that, after the Janvier Corp station blew up, the Western System had collapsed into chaos. It turned out that when all of your infrastructure and half of your population relied on chips, and then the servers went offline overnight, it was pretty hard to keep things running smoothly.

Chips were still taboo here, in the East. But norms could change; there had been a time when the West had regarded implants and augments with suspicion too. The influx of Western refugees had already started changing things. The news talked about efforts to rebuild the Western network, about expanding it to the East – finally putting an end to the animosity that had pitted the Systems against each other for decades.

Maybe that’s what those dreams were about, Cristal thought. Maybe, somewhere, signal was up already, and tendrils of it were reaching out to her across the vacuum, whispering to her broken chip.

Maybe that day Sadia would wake up in the bed they all shared, remember the last command she’d been given before the explosion, and kill Johnny and Cristal without a thought.

Before, Sadia could have given her the exact estimate, the calculations automatically updating with each news item she received from the network, but Cristal didn’t need statistics. It was enough to know that it was likely just a matter of time.

🛸

The knowledge wasn’t enough to make her keep her distances from Sadia, which was perhaps a little sick, certainly less than sane. Maybe Cristal’s sanity had been left behind in the Dark, fractured the day she’d first kissed Sadia in front of Johnny, almost a year ago now. She’d thought they were going to die then too.

“Damn,” Johnny said when Cristal climbed on top of him that night, after she’d made Sadia shriek with pleasure. “What’s gotten into you?”

She shut him up with her mouth on his and tried to forget about the ticking time bomb embedded inside Sadia’s skull.

🛸

It took a little digging, but finally one of their semi-regular clients, an electronics supplier, provided a helpful lead.

“Alright, I have news,” Cristal told Johnny and Sadia when they were all sitting around their last meal of the cycle. “It wasn’t easy, but I think I’ve found someone who can help with our chip issue.”

Sadia looked up sharply from her bowl. Johnny kept slurping his noodles, making a little curious noise.

“She says she’s done it before, on other refugees. I think we can afford it.”

“Afford what, exactly,” Sadia said.

“Taking your chip out.”

Sadia was silent for a few long seconds.

“Someone’s got experience with that? Here?”

Cristal nodded. “She’s from the West. She worked at a chipping center on Rio or something like that, I don’t remember the details.”

“Wow, very reassuring.”

“Well, I didn’t ask for references! Why the interrogation?”

“Like you wouldn’t ask a few questions before you let some random hick inside your brain.”

Would Cristal let someone root inside her skull in the back of some illegal shop? The thought made her shudder, but this wasn’t about her.  

“I would if I knew it would keep you and Johnny safe,” she replied.

“Aw, thanks, babe,” Johnny volunteered around his mouthful, and Sadia scoffed. She looked at Cristal in silence for a few moments, then she shrugged and said: “Okay then. I’ll do it if you do it.”

Which wasn’t at all what Cristal had anticipated.

“Huh?” Johnny asked.

“I will get my chip taken out,” Sadia repeated, over-enunciating in that infuriating way of hers, “if Cristal gets hers taken out too.”

“Oh, okay?” he said, looking over at Cristal. “How much would that cost?”

A cold sweat was running down Cristal’s back. She could lie to them, say they didn’t have the credits. “We could cover it, I guess. But my chip isn’t a priority.”

“If you don’t want to, then I guess we’ll wait,” Sadia said, going back to her meal like she’d just put an end to the conversation.

“Fuck, Sadia, they’re trying to rebuild the servers! I know you see the same news feeds as me. You really wanna take that risk?”

“Not really, no,” Sadia said. “We probably shouldn’t wait too long then, huh?”  

Johnny piped up. “Do you want to give me that contact’s info? I can send out a few feelers, ask around about their reputation?”

“No, I-” Cristal stuttered. “I mean, yes, thanks, but-”

She could feel her heart pounding in her chest, and she didn’t really understand why. Sadia hadn’t said no, hadn’t reacted like perhaps she was already under the chip’s control again. There was no reason for Cristal to feel so… Horrified.

Sadia and Johnny were both looking at her, and she realized she’d stood up, sending her chair clattering behind her.

“I have to-” she said, and tried to walk out in a way that didn’t look completely like she was running away for no reason at all.  

🛸

“Hey,” Johnny called as entered the cargo compartment, some unknowable amount of time later.  “I thought you’d be here. You okay?”

Cristal shrugged, burrowing further in between the huge rolls of fabric the Panther was hauling this month. She hadn’t wanted to go back to the large cabin they shared, and the small space that was nominally hers but she rarely used felt too cold, too sterile.

She watched as Johnny leaned against the wall, crossing his arms. He was waiting her out, she knew, giving her an opportunity to explain herself, like there must be a rationale for her behaviour, even if he didn’t get it yet.

If only she could have explained.

“She has a point, you know,” he said, gently. “It’s not really fair, making her do it by herself, when you’ve got a chip too.”

“Nice to see whose side you’re on.”  

A shadow passed over his face, and she regretted the dig immediately.

It had been almost a year since they’d gotten rescued, and five months since they’d sold the Jag to buy this transport instead, a sturdy hauler big enough for three people to actually live on. They’d had to insist for Sadia to join them aboard, but sometimes it was still hard, sharing Johnny. He knew it, and made a lot of effort to reassure her about it.

She closed her eyes and tried to find her calm. Her hand went up to her neck automatically, finding the faint line of scar tissue behind her left ear.

“I’m not the one who’s a threat, that’s all I’m saying. I controled my chip; it didn’t control me.”

“That was true before, but we don’t know what would happen if they rebuilt the signal.”

“Then I’d just break it again,” Cristal said mulishly, even though she still didn’t understand exactly what had happened to make the chip’s control over her fail. She didn’t even know for sure it had been something she’d done.

“Cristal,” Johnny said, like he was thinking the same thing.

“It’s not the same! Her chip made her kill me!”

“Cristal,” he said again. “Clean slate. You agreed. What’s going on with you?”

She could feel her throat closing around a sob she couldn’t control, and she burrowed into her sweater, trying to hide the wave of misery that was spreading over her. What was going on with her?

“I don’t know,” she said, and it came out wobbly, and then she was crying, great gulping sobs tearing out of her. She tried to curl into herself, but Johnny pulled her up and wrapped his arms around her, and she clung to his shoulders helplessly as she cried, a deep sense of loss stealing over her.

“Hey, hey,” Johnny hushed, rocking her back and forth in his arms. “Shhh, baby, don’t cry, it’s okay. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, alright?”

He was so sweet to her, and he loved her so much. It only made her cry harder.

🛸

There was no time to talk over the next cycle, because they were reaching their destination. There was cargo to unload, payment to organize, new clients to find, and at least Cristal was too busy to think about anything other than work.

The dreams kept plaguing her in her sleep, though, except she slept in her private cabin – a coward’s way out – so there was no one to hold her when she woke from them, sweaty and disoriented. In one of them she saw her mother, who smiled and stroked her hair, much more nicely than she had since Cristal had been a child.

She didn’t understand. She hadn’t talked to her mother in months even before she’d joined the Etoiles Noires; the woman was a harsh critic, cold and demanding, not a maternal bone in her body.

The next cycle, she dreamt of Jen, the camerawoman who’d joined her onto the Hangar. Cristal realized guiltily that she hadn’t thought of her once since then. She wondered what had happened to her, if she was alright. If there would ever be a way of finding out, if she gave up her chip – her last bridge to who she had been before, her last link with the world as she’d known it.

Oh.

“Wow,” Cristal whispered in the dark, suddently wide awake. “Stupid.”

🛸

She padded through the dark corridor to the big cabin, expecting – a little sourly – to find Sadia and Johnny there together, but there was only one lump snoring under the covers. She lingered in the doorway, looking at Johnny’s hair spread over the pillow, marveling at how small he looked, alone in that bed.

Then, she let the door woosh closed, and went to find Sadia.

She walked straight past the door of her private cabin and towards the small rec room. Sure enough, the display was on, projecting a thick green forest into the room, the sound of rain and wind and birds filling the space.

Sadia was lying on the synthetic floor covering. It was the cheap kind, bright green tufts that felt nothing like real grass, or at least not the kind that Cristal remembered. But perhaps Sadia didn’t know that.

“Hey,” Cristal called out, tentatively.

Sadia raised her head and let it drop back down, not moving. It could have been a dismissal, but Cristal chose to see it as an invitation.

She settled next to Sadia on the prickly carpet, careful not to touch her. She could hear Sadia’s breathing over the ambient sounds, slow and measured. Careful.  

“I’m scared,” Cristal said, finally, looking straight up into the translucent canopy. “Are you?”

Sadia didn’t say anything, which meant she was.

Cristal continued: “I didn’t even realize that’s what it was. I was so angry at you for even suggesting that my chip could come out too, and I didn’t understand why.”

 “Go on.”

“I’ve been having these dreams,” Cristal said. “I didn’t know what they meant.”

“Nothing. Dreams don’t have meaning.”

Cristal hushed her with a laugh. “Maybe mine do. Humor me.”

“Fine.”

“I’ve been dreaming about my old life. About the people in it, the way it felt to be who I was, back there. Loved by all, famous, successful. Beautiful.”

She thought Sadia might try to protest – she clearly appreciated Cristal’s body, even without the filters – but she didn’t, and Cristal was grateful. They both knew what it felt like, when you’d gotten used to seeing yourself a certain way, and then you couldn’t anymore. It had been one of the first things they’d bonded over, something Johnny, try as he might, could never truly understand.

“And I thought – the chip was my hope of having those things again, maybe. If we ever went back home.”

She felt the way Sadia reacted even without looking over.

“Home??”

“I know. I know, okay? It was stupid, and shallow, and selfish. I didn’t even realize the thought was there, in the back of my mind. And anyway, Monopolis was never really home. Not in any way that counted.”

Home was… Well, Cristal didn’t really know. It wasn’t something she’d spent a lot of time thinking about, too busy moving forward to think about putting down roots.

“Okay, I’m done. Your turn.”

“Well, first of all, keeping your chip would be stupid as shit. That’s just common sense, doll.”

“Hey!”

“It’s true. It’s a stupid risk. We don’t know what kind of feed they’re building, what it could do or what it would really secretely be used for. We’ve been there before, right? And before you say anything, there’s no guarantee your little hack would have held.”

“That’s what Johnny said too.”

“I know, he told me. That boy’s smarter than he looks. Well. Sometimes.”  

A laugh escaped Cristal’s lips. She felt lighter now, and she turned onto her side so she could look at Sadia’s, at the way the green light was catching on her cheeks. Some kind of insect’s projection was walking across the bridge of Sadia’s nose, and she wished she could brush it off as an excuse for touch.

“But mostly, if the feed ever did come back,” Sadia continued, her eyes catching Cristal’s, “I didn’t want you to hold yet another advantage over me.”

“I— What?”

Cristal’s mind reeled. At the beginning, she’d felt wrong-footed constantly.  Sadia and Johnny understood each other, and the kind of things that were needed to survive in the East. They’d come from the same world, or at least their worlds had much more in common with each other than Cristal’s had with either of them. Her brief stint with the Etoiles Noires didn’t measure up. It was only by the end that she’d gained enough control over her chip to be useful in any real way, and even that had been short-lived.

“Come on, I’m already the third wheel here, crashing your perfect little life. And that’s fine, I get how it is, but I couldn’t take being at your mercy in any other way.”

“Sadia, what?” Something dawned on Cristal then. “Hey. Why do you think we asked you to move on here with us?”

Sadia shrugged.

“I don’t know. The sex is good, but I don’t think that would have been enough for you. Gratitude? I did save your lives. Maybe a dash of pity. I was a wreck, back on the Jaguar. Still kind of am, if we’re being honest. I’m not really made for—” she gestured around the ship widely “—all this. I thought I could do it, but I don’t know how much longer I can keep not thinking about the Dark all around us, so you might be rid of me soon anyway.”

God. Cristal did reach out a hand then, taking Sadia’s chin between her fingers and nudging her head so they could look at each other.

“Fuck, Sadia, I didn’t—”

But she’d known, hadn’t she. Sadia had said how much she hated space, loudly and often, from the first day Cristal had known her. But Johnny loved it, and they’d needed a quick way to make a living, and Cristal just hadn’t thought about it. And somehow, all that added up to Sadia’s conclusion: that she wasn’t really wanted here.

“I’m sorry,” Cristal said, holding Sadia’s gaze, and then leaned in, putting a chaste kiss against Sadia’s surprised lips, pulling away before she could reciprocate.

“Okay, come on.” She clambered to her feet, pulling Sadia up with her.

“What are you—” But Cristal was off already, dragging Sadia behind her by the wrist until they got to the main cabin.

The door opened and Cristal stepped inside, still holding Sadia close. She sat them both on the edge of the mattress.

“Hey, sleepyhead,” she called, and when that wasn’t enough, she nudged Johnny’s shoulder a few times. “Wake up.”

Johnny groaned and shifted under the covers, throwing an arm over his eyes. “Not yet,” he grumbled, and Cristal shook him again a little harder.

“Wake up! You need to set a new course.”

“What? Why? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. Our chips need to come out, that’s all.”

“I thought we were waiting?”

“No, we’re not,” Cristal said. “Right?”

Beside her, Sadia nodded. “Right.”

“Also, we need to find a house. A real one, on land.”

“Huh? What’s going on, it’s so late. Or early?”

“We’ve all been very stupid,” Cristal said, laughter bubling out of her chest. “Sadia didn’t even realize that we love her.”

A small hiccup sounded in the dark behind Cristal.

“Yeah, okay, that is pretty stupid,” Johnny slurred. “But could this all this wait, like, two more hours maybe?”

“Yeah, maybe it can,” Sadia said in a thick voice. “I’m pretty exhausted all of a sudden.”

“Stop being stupid and get in here, then,” Johnny said, lifting up the covers on each side of himself. “We can talk more when it’s not the middle of the night.”  

Cristal slid into the bed, warm from Johnny’s body, and plastered herself to the solid shape of him, breathing him in. A hand found hers – Sadia’s, snaking over Johnny’s side to tangle her fingers with Cristal’s. She kissed the back of it, holding it close to her chest as she felt herself get pulled into sleep.

She hoped she would dream of home – the real kind, not the substitute she’d accepted in the past. She still didn’t know exactly what it would look like, but here, safe in the arms of the only people who’d ever truly known her, she thought she could feel out the shape of it.

🏡

The end :)

[starmaweek]

HIIII remember @starmaweek? Our awesome fandom week dedicated to starmania fanworks?

Well, we're back for a second edition! It will take place from the 1st to the 7th of June!

Below are the prompts for this edition and the rules (same as last year). We hope you'll have fun and be inspired! Do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions :)

Prompts: June 1st:

Home

Technology

S.O.S

June 2nd:

Naziland

World-building

"Les uns contre les autres"

June 3rd:

Pre-canon

Midnight

Besoin d'amour

June 4th:

Sweet

Secondary character(s)

Pretend

June 5th:

Clothes

Coup d'éclat

Fight

June 6th:

Historical AU

Accident

Jealousy

June 7th:

Hurt/Comfort

City

Dream

Rules

1. All types of content are welcome: fanart, fic, song covers, edits, shitposting, memes, collages… If you can think of it, we want it!

2. There is no mandatory minimum. You can fill one prompt or all of them, create several fills for one prompt, etc. Even the smallest works are encouraged! If you are inspired to write just one paragraph or even one sentence, we’d love to see it!

3. We accept any content (including NSFW, gore, etc.) provided that it is appropriately tagged

4. You can prepare your fills ahead of time or make them during the week

5. You can post your fills anywhere you’d like (or nowhere, we’re not the Monopolis police!) but Discord and Tumblr will be our hubs and therefore the most visible places to show off your creations. Use the tag #starmaweek2 or send your fill via our inbox to be reposted!

6. Prompts are meant to inspire, not constrain! If your fill doesn’t fit 100%, don’t worry about it, the point is to create something. You can interpret the prompts as freely as you want!

7. AI-generated fills are not allowed.

[capitaletele]

Starmaweek 2 is officially open!!!

I can't wait to see what everyone comes up with.

Last year was an exceptionally successful edition for me, and this year I'm going to try and match it? No promises though... Good luck to everyone participating, may inspiration find you!

[capitaletele]

WIP May doesn't even have days, who cares

"Don't move a muscle," Johnny says, licking across Cristal's lips, and he pushes up, making enough space between them that he can take off his shirt.

Cristal tries to use the opportunity to catch her breath, to get a handle on all the things she's feeling, to stop the crazy way everything is spinning — and then she looks over at Johnny, who's unzipped his strange uniform, and the spinning becomes a tornado and lifts her away.

There's something light-colored stretching tight across Johnny's chest, half-hidden where hair has fallen out of its tie and hangs in front of his shoulders, and it could be a bandage for a wound but Johnny's not been injured recently, and somehow Cristal knows that it can really only have one purpose — she can't believe she didn't—

Johnny stretches a bit and Cristal gets a clearer view of the fabric that's binding down his — well... her? — chest.

Cristal stares, and stares, as Johnny contorts and starts unwinding the material, groaning in relief once it's fallen away. Cristal's mouth goes dry. She averts her eyes fast, but not fast enough that the image of Johnny's breasts, small but unmistakeable, doesn't sear into her retina.

"Better, " Johnny says, stalking back towards her. "Now you?"

"I..." Cristal says, and Johnny pauses. His — maybe still his? — eyes follow Cristal's down, and he frowns.

"What?"

And then, when Cristal doesn't say anything: "But... You knew, right? You had to know."

Cristal looks at his face — their? — the same face, the eyes that look at her like she's the best thing in the world, the mouth that was just driving her insane — and shakes her head.

"Um, no. I really didn't."

"Fucking Sadia," Johnny says, under his breath, shoulders slumping, jaw clenching. "Look—"

But Cristal doesn't need, doesn't want to hear it. Not now, anyway.

She lunges, her hands wrapping around Johnny's neck — delicate, soft, entirely smooth — her lips seeking heat. In the end, that's all that matters.

[capitaletele]

10, 31, 33 ?

10. Top three favorite fic tropes.

Not sure it counts as a trope, but for angsty canons such as this one: FIX IT FIX IT FIX IT. This will come as a surprise to absolutely no one. I want future!fic where things are better, or maybe not that much better but at least they're alive to struggle through it. I want Canon Divergence where the bad thing gets averted. Just LET THEM LIVE for god's sake.

Something that has not been explored in this fandom yet, I think: when The Urges take over. That can be sex!pollen or very specific flavours of A/B/O, but in general I'm really into the stories where characters lose control in the face of their Overwhelming Need, and how they deal with it, and what happens next.

Also not explored - I think? Although massmedia and I were toying with the idea at some point: "identity porn," aka fics that center around someone's identity being hidden/unknown/lost. I don't think the trope is about amnesia initially but I'd put it under that column. Or stuff about Sadia being a double agent, or characters' secret identities are revealed... I really like those kinds of fics, and I def would like to read more in Stm fandom because I think there's a lot of unexplored potential there!

31. What was the most difficult fic for you to write (but in the end you made it)?

Hmmm. They're almost all difficult to write, except the ones that aren't. By which I mean, I basically have two gears: either a fic sort of jumps out of me fully-formed (usually because it's written to a deadline, or in the form of a prompt fill, hint hint) or it will take 2-3 years to *maybe* get finished.

I think the "hardest to write but was actually completed" to date have been male!Sadia (due to actual writing issues: how to write m/m where you really don't want to give one of the characters a name, but also have been raised to despise epithets??) and the space AU (due to the fact that it really should have been a 30K fic, except I had neither the skill nor the time to make it so.)

But I did make it in the end!! And I'm pleased with both of them :))

33. Give your writing a compliment.

It exists!!! Which is a victory in itself. I am not a writer, and on top of that, I am definitely not a "write for yourself" writer. Every story of mine that makes it to the publishing stage in our microfandom is a true miracle, and the fact that I've posted over 110K at this point is simply mind-blowing. (And would NOT have happened/keep happening if not for you guys, so. Eternal love!)

[capitaletele]

7, 32 and 40 for the ask meme ??? :)

7. Your favorite AO3 tag

I suck at picking favorites but I do love a good "porn with feelings" fic :D

32. Do you have a word/expression you always use in your writing?

I'm SURE I do. When I re-read my stories, I feel like I only use the same 3 words... But not on purpose 😭

One thing that comes to mind in this fandom (but it's pretty canon-specific 😅) is that my characters keep using variations on: "S/he wasn't smart, but s/he wasn't an idiot." But that's because I use a lot of Johnny or maid pov 😅

40. Write a 9-word fic

When Johnny became a cat, Cristal learned to purr.

[awizardcommandingsleep]

Yet another writing ask

Which of your fics would you keep the basic plot of but rewrite completely?

Anything that you'd like to write but feel like you're unable to?

How would you describe your writing style?

Do you have any OCs? Do you have a story for them?

What's a tag you never want to use for your works even when it applies?

What's your ratio for rating your works?

Your favourite ao3 tag.

How slow is a slow burn?

Thoughts on cliffhangers.

Top three favourite fic tropes.

Three tropes that are fine but overrated.

If you write in more than one language, what's the difference?

Rate your worldbuilding skills from 1 to 10.

Write and share the first sentence of a new fic. Just that.

What's your favourite plotless fic you have written?

Are one-shots really underrated?

Past or present tense? Why?

First, second, or third person?

Share a snippet from a wip without giving any context for it.

Do you work on a single project or many at the same time? How does that work for you?

Can you accurately predict how long your fics are going to be? If you can, what's your secret?

What is it about watching the same two idiots falling in love over and over again?

Dialogue or description? Why is the other one so hard?

Thoughts on flashbacks/flashforwards.

Is writing the whole thing beforehand better or worse than writing it as you go?

What would you describe as OOC?

Do you agree that one shouldn't start a story with a piece of dialogue?

Any writing advice that works for you and you feel like sharing?

What's the hardest thing about writing?

Describe a fic that almost happened, but then it didn't.

What was the most difficult fic for you to write (but in the end you made it)?

Do you have a word/expression that you always use in your writing?

Give your writing a compliment.

Do you write to improve? Or is that not a concern for you?

Thoughts on writing challenges/contests.

How do you come up with fic titles? What's the one you're most proud of?

Do you research before writing or while you write? Is it fun or boring for you?

"This never happened" fix-it fics or "this happened but" fix-it fics?

Wildest AU scenario you have written?

Write a 9-word fic.

[capitaletele]

Number 34 with Zéro and Stella ? 😈

Surprisingly, I have not forgotten these! This went a little off-road but I feel like you will not mind...

**

A kiss to pretend

Jane hasn't said anything negative about Zéro since that first week after the telegram came, after she realized Stella was serious about entertaining the offer.

It doesn't matter: Stella knows what she thinks. All of Monopolis probably does, considering Jane's stupidly expressive face and her love of gossip.

She judges Stella. She is disappointed in her. She pities her, most likely, and that's the part that Stella hates.

Judgement she can handle, as she has her whole life. Disappointment is her bread and butter these days. But the pained look on Jane's face whenever he drops a thoughtlessly insulting comment, the gentleness of her fingers on Stella's bruised wrist where he gripped her too tight...

Maybe he's right, and she should fire Jane, hire one of his vetted people instead; someone who wouldn't take liberties with her or get fresh with him, who would lower her gaze and scurry out of the room when he enters.

The thought makes Stella nauseous. The first time he brought it up, she had the absurd thought that she might not be able to get out of bed in the morning for anyone but Jane. She imagined Jane's life force as tiny golden particles, a dense cloud of them floating around her, landing on Stella when she stood close enough, lending her some of her vitality.

Or perhaps, Stella thought during the darkest days, she was more akin to a vampire, feeding off of Jane's energy, and eventually she would drain her maid until they were both empty husks. Perhaps she should really follow Zéro's advice, not for his sake but for Jane's. Perhaps if she were responsible, she would dismiss Jane while she could still save herself, instead of bringing her down when the inevitable downfall came.

But Stella is not that selfless. She doesn't think she could do this without Jane by her side. Which means that she needs to do whatever she can to put an end to Jane's unbearable pity.

Well. Whether the camera is rolling or not, Stella is an actress. The next time Zéro visits the villa, stepping by Jane without a glance and leaning in for his usual perfunctory kiss somewhere to the right of Stella's face, she angles herself so their lips catch. She anticipates his surprised recoil -- they don't do this, not in private -- and threads her arms around his neck, deepening the kiss until he gets with the program.

His hands grip her waist too tight and his tongue is too forceful, but she knows how to make a kiss look good.

When he breaks it off, breathless, eyebrows raised in surprise but eyes dark, Jane is nowhere to be seen.

[capitaletele]

Hiiii, hello, may I request 22 with sadiajohnny?

(Hiiii I have not forgotten about these! RL has just been crazy and I didn't have time or mental space for thinking about my Starmania darlings, let alone write anything down!)

** In a rush of adrenaline

This is Sadia-who-is-not-a-double-agent, who's a university activist who's mostly done revolution, like, in theory and not so much in practice.

And so the first time she goes with the Etoiles Noires and they get into it with some guards and have to flee and make a narrow escape, she doesn't even know what to do with herself. Her heart is pounding and her blood is racing so fast she can feel it in the veins of her neck, and all her limbs are shaking, but she can't show it because they all think she's an old hand at this, and if they knew they would laugh her out of their lives, probably. Rich little girl, talking a big game but nearly pissing herself at the first sight of action.

So when they get back to their hangar and everyone scatters, because this is par for the course for them, no one even got hurt or caught this time and there's not even that much bloody evidence to dispose of, she just sits herself down in a corner somewhere and tries to regain control of herself.

It doesn't really work - her brain can't stop replaying the moments where it could have gone really wrong, all the things she hadn't thought about, all the things she hadn't even known to think about. She could have gotten caught, she could have gotten injured, she could have gotten the others injured, and then what?

But just as she's getting ready for a real spiral, a hand lands on her knee, forcing it to stop bouncing. It's Johnny, kneeling next to her. He's only halfway out of his uniform, the sleeves pooling on the dirty floor (gross), and he reeks of smoke and sweat (absolutely disgusting), but she still lets him tug her up by the hand and lead her out to the alleyway, and her heart's still pounding and the blood still rushing in her ears, so that she can barely hear his "alright?" when he backs her up against a wall. She might answer or she might not, she doesn't really know; all she knows is that her hands need to stop shaking so she pushes them into his hair, and then they're kissing, all clashing tongues, teeth everywhere, panting into each other's mouths.

Perhaps she can stop feeling terrible about her bad decisions by making an even worse one. That's how it works, right?

[capitaletele]

Okay, and now this one is also on AO3, in a twice-as-long, Explicit version. I aaaaaaam what I aaaaaaam!!

[melancholic-cinnamon-roll]

One shot so amazing, i made a fanart of it

[capitaletele]

Hiiii, hello, may I request 22 with sadiajohnny?

(Hiiii I have not forgotten about these! RL has just been crazy and I didn't have time or mental space for thinking about my Starmania darlings, let alone write anything down!)

** In a rush of adrenaline

This is Sadia-who-is-not-a-double-agent, who's a university activist who's mostly done revolution, like, in theory and not so much in practice.

And so the first time she goes with the Etoiles Noires and they get into it with some guards and have to flee and make a narrow escape, she doesn't even know what to do with herself. Her heart is pounding and her blood is racing so fast she can feel it in the veins of her neck, and all her limbs are shaking, but she can't show it because they all think she's an old hand at this, and if they knew they would laugh her out of their lives, probably. Rich little girl, talking a big game but nearly pissing herself at the first sight of action.

So when they get back to their hangar and everyone scatters, because this is par for the course for them, no one even got hurt or caught this time and there's not even that much bloody evidence to dispose of, she just sits herself down in a corner somewhere and tries to regain control of herself.

It doesn't really work - her brain can't stop replaying the moments where it could have gone really wrong, all the things she hadn't thought about, all the things she hadn't even known to think about. She could have gotten caught, she could have gotten injured, she could have gotten the others injured, and then what?

But just as she's getting ready for a real spiral, a hand lands on her knee, forcing it to stop bouncing. It's Johnny, kneeling next to her. He's only halfway out of his uniform, the sleeves pooling on the dirty floor (gross), and he reeks of smoke and sweat (absolutely disgusting), but she still lets him tug her up by the hand and lead her out to the alleyway, and her heart's still pounding and the blood still rushing in her ears, so that she can barely hear his "alright?" when he backs her up against a wall. She might answer or she might not, she doesn't really know; all she knows is that her hands need to stop shaking so she pushes them into his hair, and then they're kissing, all clashing tongues, teeth everywhere, panting into each other's mouths.

Perhaps she can stop feeling terrible about her bad decisions by making an even worse one. That's how it works, right?

[capitaletele]

Okay, and now this one is also on AO3, in a twice-as-long, Explicit version. I aaaaaaam what I aaaaaaam!!

[capitaletele]

Hiiii, hello, may I request 22 with sadiajohnny?

(Hiiii I have not forgotten about these! RL has just been crazy and I didn't have time or mental space for thinking about my Starmania darlings, let alone write anything down!)

** In a rush of adrenaline

This is Sadia-who-is-not-a-double-agent, who's a university activist who's mostly done revolution, like, in theory and not so much in practice.

And so the first time she goes with the Etoiles Noires and they get into it with some guards and have to flee and make a narrow escape, she doesn't even know what to do with herself. Her heart is pounding and her blood is racing so fast she can feel it in the veins of her neck, and all her limbs are shaking, but she can't show it because they all think she's an old hand at this, and if they knew they would laugh her out of their lives, probably. Rich little girl, talking a big game but nearly pissing herself at the first sight of action.

So when they get back to their hangar and everyone scatters, because this is par for the course for them, no one even got hurt or caught this time and there's not even that much bloody evidence to dispose of, she just sits herself down in a corner somewhere and tries to regain control of herself.

It doesn't really work - her brain can't stop replaying the moments where it could have gone really wrong, all the things she hadn't thought about, all the things she hadn't even known to think about. She could have gotten caught, she could have gotten injured, she could have gotten the others injured, and then what?

But just as she's getting ready for a real spiral, a hand lands on her knee, forcing it to stop bouncing. It's Johnny, kneeling next to her. He's only halfway out of his uniform, the sleeves pooling on the dirty floor (gross), and he reeks of smoke and sweat (absolutely disgusting), but she still lets him tug her up by the hand and lead her out to the alleyway, and her heart's still pounding and the blood still rushing in her ears, so that she can barely hear his "alright?" when he backs her up against a wall. She might answer or she might not, she doesn't really know; all she knows is that her hands need to stop shaking so she pushes them into his hair, and then they're kissing, all clashing tongues, teeth everywhere, panting into each other's mouths.

Perhaps she can stop feeling terrible about her bad decisions by making an even worse one. That's how it works, right?

[capitaletele]

Hi I suggest Stella and Sadia, number 21 :]

Okay anon, I have a feeling this might not be exactly what you had in mind but sometimes the writer isn't really at the wheel, if you know what I mean 😅

**

A kiss on a place of insecurity

Sadia slips into the powder room and quietly locks the door behind herself.

She waited a respectable number of seconds before she made her excuses from the table -- not that anyone is paying her any attention tonight, everyone loud and self-absorbed, off their head on the promise of power and success, and probably on many other toxic substances too -- but she knoww better than to trust appearances. Zéro swears he trusts her fully, but she not as gullible as he is. She doesn't trust him one bit.

Stella is standing at the vanity, staring at her own reflection. If she's heard Sadia come in, she doesn't show it. She seems lost - in thought, or alcohol. Perhaps in nothing; just lost.

Sadia takes a step towards her. She's been watching Stella, ever since she came back to the surface and rejoined Zéro. She can't stop watching Stella, no matter how many times she tells herself to. She's had a fair share of disastrous attractions lately, and yet she still can't control it, no more than she could tamp down the way Johnny quickened her blood or ignore how Cristal's presence squeezed the air out of her lungs. She should have learned from that fiasco. It almost cost her everything.

And yet. Caution's never been her forte; a pretty dangerous flaw, in her line of business, but she doesn't care. She doesn't care much about anything these days.

Except for this.

She takes another step towards Stella. She's so pale, almost as pale as the pure white marble surrounding them. Her hair flows down her back in a river of gold, matching all the jewelry she's wearing. Her earrings have little Z shapes on them; Zéro's ownership mark, plain as day. The engagement ring is a horrible gaudy thing on her finger. It looks like it's wearing Stella, rather than the reverse.

It's only when Sadia's reflection appears in the mirror next to Stella that their eyes meet. Stella doesn't startle, just takes in Sadia's image next to hers in the glass, and Sadia sees it again: the lingering glance at her mouth, the way Stella has to deliberately detach her eyes and plant them back into Sadia's.

Stella squints slightly as if she's trying to remember her lines, so she can greet Sadia by name and ask her about a harmless aspect of her life in gratifying specifics, like the good politician's wife she's playing these days.

Her frown is getting deeper, so Sadia takes pity.

"Don't worry. We haven't been formally introduced."

She takes a step closer, and Stella doesn't move away.

They've never been this close. Sadia's much shorter than Stella, despite her heels, which puts her face level with Stella's shoulder, the side of her neck. She can smell the perfume that Stella must have dabbed there, exotic and heady. She can see the flutter of Stella's pulse in her throat. Through strands of hair, she can even make out the faint lines of scars along her jaw and behind her ear, still healing from recent surgery. By the time the election comes, they'll be invisible for real. But not yet.

Right now, there is still something real about her, and Sadia is probably one of the only people who've seen it.

Her hand shoots out without her permission, pushing a strand of red aside and reaching for the silver line, and Stella must see it in the mirror but she doesn't say anything.

When Sadia's thumb connects with Stella's impossibly soft skin, she can see Stella's pulse quicken. Stella tilts her neck, closing her eyes but letting Sadia see. Letting Sadia touch. She runs her finger across the hollow behind Stella's ear. The skin there is so thin, so pale, that she can see every vein. She can see right under Stella's skin. Right inside of her.

Stella lets out a shaky breath, her hands tightening on the edge of the marble countertop, her eyes still closed. Sadia takes a small step closer so she can put her mouth where her thumb was and lick at the blood under Stella's skin, tracing the ridges of Stella's sacrifice with her tongue, making her shudder all over.

She know she's smearing dark lipstick over Stella's neck, and it's such an idiotic thing to do, but at least it will be easily wiped off, the reddened skin covered by Stella's hair. She licks at the shell of Stella's ear and Stella leans back into Sadia, easy as anything, trembling into her arms, making her feel alive in a way she hasn't since she's left the tunnels behind. It feels something like vindication; like reassurance: she's still got it. It wasn't her.

She doesn't kiss Stella's mouth; she wants to, but that level of mess is too much even for her. The knowledge that Stella would let her is enough.

There are more pinkish scars, hidden under Stella's flowy dress, and Sadia kisses every single one she can find.

She doesn't wipe off her lipstick, after. When they're back at the table, sitting far apart - Stella on Zéro's right, Sadia way down the table with the lesser guests - that's all she can think of. The color she brought back to Stella's cheeks for everyone to see, but none to understand. The marks she's left on her, in other places, that only Stella knows of.

A temporary mark, this time; but as she meets Stella's eyes blankly from across the room, a polite smile on her lips, she starts plotting. Maybe next time she can find a way to make them last.

[capitaletele]

This now lives on AO3!

If you wish you could have liked it twice, now you can give it a kudos or leave a comment 😇