fan - short for fanatic, someone who enjoys a type of content, as in : a fan of lady gaga
fangirl/fanboy - an exessive fan, as in: those fangirls were screaming during the entire concert.
fangirling/fanboying - being in a fangirl/fanboy state, usually because you feel just so much emotion about the thing you’re a fan of in the moment, and is expressed by flapping hands, screaming, crying of joy, ect.
so. my idea:
fanby - enby + fan, as in : I’m a total delta rune fanby. (pronounced fan-bee)
fanbeing - fangirling but you’re an enby, as in : sorry I can't stop fanbeing over delta rune, its such a good game. (plus, its a pun)
fanbeing replied to your post “this tmnt legends game has me suckered, i have spent way too many…”
If I werent sio poor I d become poor in a second bc damn I really want mikey but he is a rare card and I REALLY want him…. it ll take me months til I get him
oh goodness i feel u there, i only have 1/70 for mikey and i’m suffering so much. and i’m pretty sure raph doesn’t drop anywhere, don’t you have to buy the epic pack to get him??
Mikey’s still ruffled-looking, despite his best attempts to appear rested and attentive, eyes gummy and droopy with sleep; but his whole expression folds at Leo’s soft admission, and he comes awake with a swell of that powerful empathy Leo has always admired and has never truly understood.
“Aw, Leo,” he says, and the scratchy sadness in his voice makes Leo feel acutely, abruptly ashamed. He hasn’t gone seeking comfort after a bad dream since he was a clumsy little toddler, and he knows Mikey worries - in his own, understated way - much more than he lets on.
“I’m okay,” Leo is quick to say, hands folding on his lap, where he sits on the edge of Mikey’s bed. “This nightmare was… different.”
The mattress is soft, springy and giving - Don found it in good condition, lugged it home with Raph’s help for Mikey, because sometimes it’s worth doing things just to see Mikey’s face light up - and Mikey’s room is warmed by the glow of the orange construction lights Casey “found” for him. It’s cozy and comfortable, and Mikey is watching him with guileless blue eyes in a bare, freckled face.
And Leo finds himself tracing steps back to the dream, from the safe harbor of Mikey’s kind company.
He’s small - smaller than his brothers, a whole head shorter than Donnie, barely as tall as Raph, and he blinks surprise when Mikey’s laughing blue eyes are gazing down at him instead of up.
“Hey, space cadet! Where’d you go?”
“What?”
“You were miles away, buddy,” Mikey says, and rubs Leo’s head fondly. It looks familiar, feels familiar, and the part of Leo that knows he’s dreaming is baffled - but another, bigger part of him just sticks his tongue out.
“C’mon, Leo, focus,” Donnie calls over from his perch on the edge of the roof. He has a computer gauntlet on his wrist lit up, a holoscreen running numbers Leo doesn’t understand. “I need you on your Ps and Qs.”
“He’ll be fine, Don,” Mikey tells him, turning away to address their gap-toothed brother. “You need to loosen up. Want a shoulder massage?”
There’s no ire in the way Don rolls his eyes. “Har, har. Get over here, Mike, I want your opinion on this.”
“Whatever you say, Bossman.”
Raph grins when Mikey joins their cluster, something bright and lively in his poison green eyes, and then his gaze flicks over to Leo, standing dumbly where he was left by the base of the rooftop water tower.
“Hey, Fearless,” he calls, and it’s friendly instead of mean, paired with a wolfish grin. “C’mere - it’s almost time to stomp some Foot.”
“Dude,” Mikey says, “good one.”
Something in the way he stands and talks reminds Leo of - Leo. The tails of his mask are long, almost the length of his shell, and he looks at them with fondness and pride; and Leo realizes that Mikey is the oldest.
Raph bumps him playfully when Leo comes to stand beside him, and it’s like when they were kids, having his best friend back without any of that sharp, ugly contention between them. They’re the little brothers, here, taken care of without being looked down upon - Leo knows, because he looks at Mikey with love and adoration in his young heart, and mirrors Raph’s grin because they’re the babies of the family, they’re free to make light and play while their big brothers iron out the plan. Mike and Don seem to lead together, and Donatello’s smile at Mike’s approval is a small thing, but it’s the most content Leo has seen him in a long, long time.
A gunshot sounds down the street, and Don’s eyes narrow into white slits.
“The Foot will have to wait.”
They’re running, after that, and the dream darkens. Leo swallows sudden, dreadful bitters. There’s a knot of apprehension in his stomach, and he throws stealth to the wind to call out, “Mike?”
He sounds scared. Mikey throws a surprised look over his shoulder, and then gestures with a flick of one hand; Raph takes his place with a neat wall jump, and Mikey falls back.
“Mike, I have a bad feeling about this. I don’t think we should just charge in.”
Mikey’s eyes narrow a little - he trusts gut feelings, Leo knows, that’s universal of Mikey in any universe, he’ll listen -
“We’ll be careful, buddy.”
But the Dragons have them cornered almost immediately, and Leo’s heart is in his throat when Mikey takes a step that puts him in front of his little brothers. The fight is brutal, they’re outnumbered, there are police sirens getting closer from some far corner of Manhattan - every moment is tense and breathless because the Dragons have guns, any wrong move and -
“Leo!”
A crack of gunfire, and Leo hits the ground with a dizzying smack, and purple smoke curls up around them - time to disappear, but the world is spinning - “I gotcha, Fearless,” Raph’s voice in his ear and familiar arms around his shell, supporting and half-carrying - the manhole cover grates against concrete, and his grip slips on the rungs, and then the cover is closed again and they’re sheltered in the dark. Running again, running in the dark, and Donnie is talking into a comm link in his ear, fast and distressed, Mikey cradled in his arms -
“ - losing blood, prepare the infirmary, father, please, we’ll need your healing hands - “
“He’ll be okay,” Raph says, but his voice is soft and scared, and Leo blinks through tears that burn, and reaches with an inner eye he never had at that age but has now, and focuses on Mikey’s flickering flame, a spirit in bright, warm colors like fall leaves struggling to keep grip of a failing body -
“Don’t do this to me, Mike, don’t you dare - don’t you dare - Oh, god -“
Leo woke up abruptly, with tears in his eyes and Mikey’s name on his lips. And he hadn’t hesitated to shove back his blanket and run for the door - young and scared and desperately searching, with the dream’s footprint still impressed on his heart.
And it didn’t matter that Mikey was softer and smaller in the real world, and it didn’t matter that he looked up at Leo instead of down, it only mattered that he was solid, and that his fall-colored spirit sat safely in that peripheral plane, and that his hands, wrapped around Leo’s, were warm.
“Leo?” he asks, and it’s different and it’s the same all at once. The terror of the dream has receded - the terror he has put his little brothers through countless times, the bone-deep, universe-shaking “don’t leave us” - and already the dream is fading from memory.
Leo saves what he can, keeping a few parts close to his heart. Then he smiles at his baby brother - so rumpled and sleepy and worried, blinking round eyes at him through the half-dark - and borrows Mikey’s favorite question from their childhood.
...since he learned it was over. Since I stopped pretending that it could be fixed. My mood's been changing faster than Facebook's privacy settings.
I seem to have successfully dropped my relationship from facebook without it telling everyone. It's only polite. It's not like I want to advertise my sudden availability - the single / taken binary is not really how life is for me.
And sat in the facebook sidebar, avaliable to talk, is the one person I ever asked out. And I know he cares about me. He apologised for not realising how ill and sad I'd been getting. He really cares. And I love...
...I love someone. I love the fictionalised version of him, the can-do-no-wrong him, the public persona, the always-busy-being-cool him.
It's so damn hard being a friend and a fan.
And I'm so glad that I haven't tried to say anything to him in the last 60 hours. Because I remember. I didn't mean to ask him out. I told him that I loved him, the sort of subtle difference that isn't easy to spot.
And I'm writing this and crying so that I don't go into the other tab and cry at him. Because he has his own life, a real life, and I don't want to land on him like this again.
Has my relationship purely been a rebound from this? I was overjoyed at the time that this pinnacle of humanity "considered [me] a friend". He means so much to me. It was like Stephen Fry or The Doctor or Captain Jack Sparrow noticing you, realising you exist, not being ashamed to be seen with you. It still is.
And I know that nobody who knows who I am, who knows who this guy is, would be so foolish as to inform him of this.
