Inspired and abetted by the Lovelorn Quilters, I would like to present this high school romcom AU featuring Darien and the Vestige.
Darien and the Vestige are high school seniors, and the Vestige and their family have just moved into Darien's school district. He's the handsome and popular captain of the soccer team, and when the Vestige joins the team too, a rivalry flares up as they both try to assert themselves. But they soon discover that they make a great team, and they become a dynamic duo on the field while their rivalry dynamic turns more to banter and eventually flirting.
And then at their first game, they meet each other's parents...
Meridia is Darien's toxic girlboss single soccer mom who takes any slight against herself or her son super personally, while Molag Bal is the Vestige's toxic stepdad who's always pushed them to be the best at everything because he's living vicariously through taking credit for their accomplishments. The parents immediately hate each other and try to pit their kids against each other while the kids just want to have fun playing soccer and attempt to date. Hijinks ensue.
(It's mentioned like once in the first or second episode that the Vestige's mom is away for work or something, and then she's never acknowledged again. Fan theories abound as to where - and who - she actually is, but the writers seem to have actively forgotten about her, especially once the Meridia x Molag Bal shipbait takes off.)
The cast also features Skordo as their beefy jock friend and Gabrielle as their book nerd friend who's secretly crushing on Darien (or maybe not so secretly once we get to the inevitable love triangle subplot).
Along with the overarching soccer season plot (which probably culminates in the team winning the championship thanks to the power of teamwork and stuff), many of the standalone episodes revolve around the Vestige's other activities as they try to live up to Molag Bal's unreasonable expectations that they excel at literally everything.
Highlights of the series include:
Episode where there's an important test coming up and Molag Bal is too busy with his work to help the Vestige study (he's a rich CEO known in corporate circles as the Prince of Brutality for his ruthlessness), so the Vestige goes over to Darien's house for a study session and Meridia takes this as an opportunity to prove her superiority as a parent by drilling the Vestige so they'll ace the test even though normally she'd love to see them fail. She later rubs it in Molag Bal's face that she's a better parent to his own kid than he is. (It's speculated that this actually gives him the idea that it might be useful to keep Meridia around.)
Episode where Darien mentions his favorite type of bread and the Vestige wants to bake some for him (because they're crushing on him) so they go to ask Meridia for the recipe and immediately regret it because Meridia takes it as a direct challenge for his affections. This culminates in a bake-off between the Vestige and Meridia, which is resolved by Darien going "holy crap two breads!" and thinking they're both awesome.
Episode where edgelord goth kid Veya invites Darien to a party at her house, and he's like okay that's unexpected but accepts because he thinks she's just being nice, and when he gets there it's all the local weird goth coven kids (including elder goth Leythen) and Veya's weird mom Nocturnal (wearing only a bathrobe) is presiding over this dark ritual that Darien gets pulled into, and when he wakes up after blacking out he's been turned into a vampire. 😮
But really they just get Darien drunk and after he passes out they do a really elaborate and convincing makeup job (because most of them are also theater kids and they brought their heavy-duty stage makeup that doesn't come off when he washes his face) and he's enough of a dumbass to think he actually is a vampire, leading him to go to hilarious lengths to hide his new "condition" from his mom and like stay out of the sun and stuff.
It turns out Nocturnal has a long-standing beef with Meridia dating back to their own high school days, and she thought it would be really funny to "turn" Darien into a "vampire" to mess with her old rival. Thankfully, before Meridia can find out what "happened," the Vestige is like "you know that's just makeup, right?" and gets some actual makeup wipes to get him cleaned up and everything's fine.
Holiday episode where Darien wants to find the perfect gift for the Vestige and gets helpful advice from everyone (which is not actually helpful), but everything he tries to buy or make for them gets ruined or stolen (including by Meridia and Molag Bal). In the end out of desperation he gives the Vestige something random he's had on him the whole time and they love it because it's from him. ❤️
High school musical episode where half the cast of the school play gets sick right before dress rehearsals, so the jocks and nerds are enlisted to fill the roles so the show can go on. The Vestige was already playing the lead role (because of course Molag Bal would expect no less of them), and Darien gets put into the role of the romantic lead opposite them and their parents are LIVID. But it's also the first time they get to smooch and maybe it turns out to not just be a stage kiss. 😘
Also, Skordo gets put into the role of the charismatic comic relief character, which everyone expects him to be terrible at, but his deadpan deliveries are hilarious so he's the surprise star of the show. And it turns out Gabrielle has an amazing singing voice but has always been too shy to sing in front of other people, but as soon as she opens her mouth everyone is entranced.
Also at some point someone will make a reference to the time Darien mistook stage makeup for being an actual vampire and we'll all get a good laugh out of it.
First season finale episode where the Vestige's bio dad Varen shows up and wants to take the Vestige to live with him, and the season ends on a cliffhanger as the Vestige has to decide whether to go or stay. This is very angsty because leaving would mean getting away from the toxic stepdad situation, but it would also mean having to move again and not getting to be with Darien anymore.
Ultimately this is resolved in the very next episode when the Vestige decides to stay, thereby conveniently maintaining the show's status quo but also making a very meaningful sacrifice for the sake of their looooove.
Science fair episode focusing on Gabrielle where Darien has to choose whether to partner with the Vestige or Gabrielle and he ends up going with Gabrielle (probably because he feels bad about paying so much attention to the Vestige even though he's been friends with Gabrielle for longer). This is probably where the love triangle subplot really kicks in and her feelings for him almost come out but she has to try not to be angsty while she's focusing on winning the science fair grand prize which has always been her dream.
The Vestige ends up partnering with Skordo, and their attempts to come up with a project provide the comic relief of the episode. They ultimately get sidetracked spending most of their time helping Gabrielle and Darien with their very elaborate project, because they know how important this is to Gabrielle. Their "presentation" ends up consisting of Skordo smashing different types of rocks while the Vestige asspulls geological facts, which is surprisingly effective and actually gets them a decent grade despite their lack of preparation.
Gabrielle and Darien do indeed win the grand prize, at which point Meridia will be super smug and Molag Bal will have to be dragged away for trying to beat up the science fair judges.
Weird dream episode where Meridia and Molag Bal are magically really nice and they get married and everything's great and they're the perfect family, but it's super freaky for the parents to be acting this way so the cognitive dissonance snaps the Vestige out of it and they wake up. (The Merlag shippers will be absolutely insufferable over this episode.)
After about three seasons (at which point someone will make a crack about how it's crazy how much has happened during their senior year) they'll go off to college, which will mostly be an excuse to introduce a new group of wacky castmates. This will also be where a bunch of fans say the show tanked, and there will be heated animosity between the show's "original" fans and the ones who like the new characters.
So after high school graduation, the Vestige is of course going to the University of Coldharbour, since Molag Bal is a major benefactor and he of course expects them to go there to continue his legacy.
Darien has a lot of soccer scholarships so he can pretty much go wherever he wants, except that Molag Bal made sure he didn't get a scholarship to UoC and tries to block him from even getting accepted. Everyone expects Meridia to forbid Darien from going there to keep him away from the Vestige, but she's pissed about him getting denied (and also secretly she would miss the whole toxic UST dynamic with her parental nemesis) so she instead decides it would be funny to donate a bunch of money to the university so they have to let him in, which is great for him because what he really wanted was to stay with the Vestige.
And also Skordo and Gabrielle end up going there and nobody really questions it.
Mannimarco is the university's skeevy president, and there will be at least one subplot about his corrupt handling of school resources for his own power-hungry benefit, but nobody will ever actually do anything about it because we need to have a love-to-hate villain that a subset of fans will also thirst endlessly for.
The university's teaching staff includes Professor Dynar as the wise mentor figure who seems really strict but gives the kids sage advice when they need it. Professors Titanborn and Sahan are definitely crushing on each other but won't admit it until the kids engineer some sort of confession, while Professor Tharn is the know-it-all dean of the politics department who makes snarky comments about everything and claims to hate his colleagues' antics even though he's somehow always hanging around with them.
The new cast of classmates can include charismatic flirts Raz and Naryu, who will provide immediate threats to the stability of the central couple's relationship and new additions to the already massively contentious shipping wars. They will be immediately hated by Vestien devotees even though they're obviously supposed to be cool and likeable, and they'll probably get paired off together once the "will they won't they" well has run dry and everybody accepts that the Vestige and Darien are going to stay together.
The series finale is a fast-forward episode where the Vestige and Darien are finally getting married. Their parents have gone to great lengths to sabotage their relationship, but Meridia ultimately gets mad about Molag Bal thinking HER SON isn't good enough for HIS OFFSPRING and is like I'LL SHOW YOU and goes into momzilla mode planning her vision of the perfect wedding. And then Molag Bal gets mad about her trying to upstage him so he throws tons of money into making sure this will be the grandest most lavish wedding ever, while making it all about how HIS OFFSPRING won over HER SON which of course was his grand scheme all along.
And then at the actual ceremony it turns into a surprise double wedding (that everyone saw coming) when Meridia and Molag Bal finally stop pretending they don't want each other. (No one will question the legality of this union considering we still don't know what happened to the Vestige's mom, although fan rumors will circulate that the original plan was to have her suddenly show up to interrupt the wedding but this idea was canned when the show failed to get renewed.)
