Hi, all! It’s been forever. Here’s a 1578 word fic I wrote set in my Momsverse AU, where Laurel’s foster kid is Stephanie Brown and she’s also dating Felicity, who has a kid of her own. Previous installments have been Present Tense, Cautionary Tale, and The Nightmare Fallout. This one’s PG-13 for a couple of swearing instances and takes place when they’re comfortably living together and being cute and domestic because life is hell but fiction is great.
Buzzing from a persistent phone was a bad enough sign while dating a vigilante. But when said vigilante picked up that phone, squinted at the screen, slammed it back onto the nightstand, and proceeded to burrow deeper under the covers, that was an entirely new one for Felicity.
“Please tell me that’s not work,” she said, cracking one eye open. “If you get up, Shay will get up, and then we’ll all be up. Can’t they find somebody else?”
“It’s not work.” Laurel pulled a pillow over her head.
“Then why is it buzzing?”
“Because life is hell.”
“Something had better be on fire.” Giving in, Felicity levered herself up on one elbow and stretched over her girlfriend, reaching for the phone and the nightstand. “And if it’s not, it’s going to be when I get a hold of whoever it is.”
Laurel grumbled. “It’s the Legends group chat.”
She did not emerge from under the pillow, and the phone was locked. Felicity could have made short work of the security, but instead she just tapped the button on the side to silence it. Why Laurel couldn’t have done that herself, she didn’t know.
Wait: “The Legends are in town?”
“No. But they’re in this time zone. Or period. I don’t know, they’re halfway across the world which is why they’re texting at four in the fucking morning.” Laurel reached out blindly with one arm, nearly clipping Felicity’s chin with her elbow as she located a handhold and tugged. “Please don’t validate them with attention. They’ll never learn otherwise. It’s time for sleep.”
“You’re the one who didn’t silence your phone,” Felicity said grumpily, but Laurel did have a point. She acquiesced to the tugging and cuddled in, grateful for the body heat since they’d set the thermostat too low again. She was just drifting off to sleep when the sound of a pitiful cry broke over the baby monitor.
“Goddammit,” she said, but Laurel was already shoving the covers off. “You don’t have to, it’s my turn.”
“Penance for my sins of not shutting my phone off,” Laurel said, collecting the object in question from the nightstand. She stumbled a little on the way to the door, grunting as her shoulder hit the wall. Felicity was sure she heard her mutter, “Besides if I don’t answer them, they’ll probably just show up in person and it’s a school day.”
Felicity couldn’t argue that one, so she decided just to go back to sleep instead.
At some point, Laurel must have settled Shay back down to sleep, for she was curled up next to Felicity, phone clutched in one hand, when the alarm went off. She groused wordlessly, batting at Felicity when she tried to shake her awake.
“You said it yourself, babe,” Felicity said, sing-songing the words just to tease her. “School day. Wakey-wakey.”
“Give me coffee or give me death,” was the reply from somewhere in the covers.
Steph at least proved easier to wake than her foster mother, as the teenager was already up and working on her combinations against the training dummy Oliver had given her for her seventeenth birthday. She bounced from foot to foot, chattering away at Felicity about school and an upcoming history project as Felicity made coffee. Felicity could not remember a single cheerful morning from her own teenage years, but she kindly did not inform Steph that she might be an alien.
She also felt no remorse in sending both her and Shayna in to haul Laurel out of bed after the coffee was ready. Probably mean, but Laurel would be upset at being late for work the day after a night off.
She looked somewhat more awake and put together as she joined Felicity and the girls for breakfast. She set her phone on the table, facedown.
“Are they still going at it?” Felicity asked.
Steph looked up from her last minute calculus homework. “Who?”
“The Legends,” Laurel told her foster daughter. “And yes. It’s led to a very intense debate. People have taken sides. They’re writing manifestos. Well, Ray and Nate are writing manifestos. Sara’s just mooning them, as far as I can tell.”
“Over what?” Felicity asked. “Please tell me they’re not fighting. I don’t think time can take another Strudel Incident.”
“Gideon has built in protocols to keep that from happening again,” Laurel said.
Like that would actually stop the Legends. “Seriously, what are they arguing about?”
Laurel sighed. “Shayna.”
Even the toddler turned to give her a puzzled look over that one.
“Sara,” Laurel said with that patented mix of fondness and aggravation that applied to her sister, “was apparently bragging about being Aunt Sara, which means Nyssa is Aunt Nyssa by privilege of marriage. Except that an argument started that since you and I aren’t married, can Sara actually claim ‘auntship?’ And if Sara gets to be Aunt Sara, Ray wants to be Uncle Ray. And then Nate had opinions and it escalated from there, as you can imagine.”
Felicity realized she was staring with her coffee mug halfway to her mouth. Carefully she put it down. “They’re…arguing over what my kid’s going to call them? That’s what led to them blowing up your phone at four o’fu—dging clock in the morning?”
“Yes,” Laurel said, grimly.
“Hold up. I’m your actual legal kid,” Steph said. “If Sara is Aunt Sara to anyone, it should be me.”
“Yes,” Laurel said again.
“So why does Shay get all the attention?”
“Do you want to call them Aunt or Uncle So-and-So?” Laurel asked.
Steph paused. “No,” she said slowly, as though discovering it for herself as she spoke.
“Exactly. Though every single one of them has chimed in that they would be honored by the title, so there’s that.” Laurel reached out and squeezed Steph’s shoulder. “You know they consider you their favorite mascot.”
“Ha, ha,” Steph said, but she looked a little pleased as she ducked back to focus on her math homework.
“I’d say that I can’t believe this has led to an argument this big,” Felicity said. “But that’s a lie. I fully believe it.”
“Yup,” Laurel said, picking up her phone and walking it on its edges across the table. Felicity could see that she had 72 new messages.
“How is that even an argument?” Felicity asked.
“I don’t know. At one point I saw a message from Sara about ‘blood is thicker than water’ and then Nate, being the twerp he is, pointed out that it’s actually ‘the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb.’ Which means friendship bonds are stronger than family bonds. So I learned something, amid all of the inanity. So there’s that.” Laurel twirled her phone around, clutching her coffee in her other hand like a lifeline. “None of them, by the way, have thought to ask either you or me to weigh in on this.”
“You’re in the group chat,” Felicity said. “They probably consider that your giving approval.”
“They don’t know I’m in there. Somebody tried to add Dinah and got the wrong one. Nobody has noticed.”
“Honest mistake. There are like thirty of you now,” Felicity said, grinning when Laurel wrinkled her nose at her.
Shay, gnawing on a strawberry slice, blew bubbles at the both of them.
“This is going to become an all-out war if we don’t do something,” Felicity said.
“Probably.” Laurel handed Shay another strawberry slice.
“So are we going to do something?”
“Honestly? I’m not sure. I’m kind of impressed by the caliber of arguments they’re making for and against their case.” Laurel shrugged. “It’s a little like a busman’s holiday for me.”
“Would it bother you to have them all be Shay’s honorary aunts and uncles?” Steph asked Felicity.
“And with one simple question, she proves herself capable of more logic than an entire group of time travelers,” Laurel said dryly, as Steph and Felicity laughed.
“If they promise to stop blowing up my girlfriend’s phone at all hours of the night, they can try and convince Shay to call them any non-offensive thing they like,” Felicity said. “It’s ultimately up to her.”
“Okay, good.” Steph turned to Laurel. “Can I see your phone?”
“Don’t set it to Thai again, please, that took me over an hour to get it back to English.” But Laurel handed over her phone.
Felicity made a mental note to check in on Steph’s hacking ability, as Laurel hadn’t even unlocked the thing and Steph had the messaging app open in record time. Her thumbs flew over the keyboard for a few seconds before she hit SEND and handed the phone back.
There was a pause and then seventeen messages seemed to come through at once.
“What did you just do?” Felicity asked.
“Oh, nothing much.” Steph buffed her nails on her school blazer and blew on her fingers. “Just ensured that Shayna’s going to have the best birthday presents from now ’til, like, eternity. If they want aunt or uncle status, awesome birthday gifts are the bare minimum. You’re welcome, little sis.”
She leaned across the table, fist extended. Gleefully, Shayna bumped her own strawberry-juice-stained fist against Steph’s knuckles.
Felicity met Laurel’s eyes over her coffee cup, mostly to hide her smile. “Have I mentioned lately that I love our life?” Laurel asked, and Felicity toasted her with her mug.
On the table, now ignored, Laurel’s phone continued to buzz away furiously.
16. Describe your WIP that currently has the highest word count.
Lemme check. Huh. The unposted and the posted are...eerily alike. They’re both f/f and involve small children. But longest WIP right now is a slow burn friends-to-lovers rewrite of AOS Season 3 if Jemma had come back from Maveth pregnant. It’s currently stalled because I know what I have to write to stick to the plot, but I just don’t wanna. Especially in light of Daisy getting her agency removed yet again in the latest episode.
(Unposted? It’s 9k of established relationship, or Felicity wishing her girlfriend would just let herself have nice things, dammit)
Regarding the favorite fic thing, there are really too many too chose from! Many happened to be Laurel and Felicity. I also think it was due to you that I started shipping them together? (Like it never occurred to me) Anyways, before I ramble on, I think Present Tense is probably my favorite of them all :) (Oh, and Starling City Witchcraft !!)
Yeah, I’m really sorry about that. I mean, there are some great things in this ship, but they definitely qualify for rarepair status. I was not expecting anybody to say Present Tense: that fic and its half-finished sequel were kind of self-indulgent glurge. For somebody who doesn’t like to read much kidfic, I sure like to write it. Whoops. But it makes my day to hear that somebody likes it!!!!
But I regularly forget that SCW exists (*jazz hands*). The reason I kind of put that one on the back burner was that I realized it would be a fun original novel idea and kind of began retooling it a little. It would need to start a hell of a lot less in media res, that’s for sure, and Oliver as a character would probably only work as a disapproving older cousin rather than an ex because why even would the Laurel expy even tolerate him? What a tool. Readers would never believe any of the excuses I gave her.
(The way to fix it is to clearly make it a series, turn Sara into a cop and Laurel’s twin, and have the first book be Thea/Roy, the second book be Lauricity, Nyssara, and then a much better Oliver with McKenna)
I got a six-comments-full review on Counterfeit and Counterpart once. I mean, I’m talking they had to separate it into six comments because it was so long. That was a day where I just sat in awe that somebody had liked the work enough to go through and point out every detail they liked. But really, the reviews that have meant the most came from a story I wrote in the Chuck fandom, That Which is Greater. It’s kidfic, I have no small children directly in my life, and yet parents wrote reviews thanking me for having Violet be temperamental. It was a moment.
do you reread your own stories?
Often. I reread Letters Never Sent last night, actually. Nyssa still cracks me up. The truth of the matter is, if I’m writing something, it’s something I also want to see. So unless the story was traumatic in some way to write or I hate the fandom now, I’ll usually reread it.
how many unfinished ideas/stories are you working on at the same time?
Fewer than most people would think. Right now I’ve got the sequel to Present Tense (jokingly called Future Tense) and the sequel to Head Over Cleats on the backburner, but they’re not priorities. I’ve got an original f/f in the works, but all of these will get shoved aside on Friday, when I start a new original series. I’m doing Camp Nano for anybody who wants to reach out to me on that!
writing advice*
Two pieces: don’t get competitive and don’t get intimidated. I fall into this trap, too, where I look around me and I see all of the other authors doing these amazing things, while I’m over here with, like, what I feel are really lame story ideas. And the truth of the matter is, they’re not lame, they’re just familiar. We’re raised in a society that trains us–ESPECIALLY as women–to see everything as a competition, and writing isn’t a zero sum game. Somebody else’s success does not mean your failure, and their success does not take anything away from yours. There’s a post going around right now claiming that the popular writers aren’t good and it smacks of so much resentment that I want to shake it. So what if they’re popular, it doesn’t matter if they’re good or bad. Focus on you. At the end of the day, writing is the loneliest game there is: it’s you, the voices in your head, and the blank page. That’s where your focus has to be.
*Caveat: not every piece of writing advice works for every writer. If this doesn’t work for you, ignore it.
“I gave her some stuff I picked up in 2251,” Sara said when Felicity finally stopped talking. “She should be fine.”
“Are you sure? Last time you gave her something, she slept for two days.”
“If she’s not going to take the proper drugs she needs to get over being almost sliced in half by a demon, that’s on her.” Sara folded her arms over her chest.
Not so much alternate versions, but this idea did get altered a few times before it became an actual story. It was always based on the idea that Laurel’s pining away for Felicity, an idea that you’ll basically have to pry out of my cold, dead fingers. I have a few story ideas that start with this concept. I also have a few ideas where Felicity’s got a crush, too.
There is a sequel, though. Eventually.
11: What do you like best about this fic?
How indulgent I got to be with it. I was writing it as stress relief and oftentimes I try to hold my fanfic up to a certain standard and not let my iddy side out to play too much. I need to have reasons why the characters would do something other than I want to see it and the universe has to play by a sense of fairness that canon usually sets. Canon’s already established that Laurel would never kick Oliver’s ass, but in this fic I basically shrugged at that and set up a way for that to happen. And that goes for a lot of the fic. Laurel was allowed to be respected both as a person and for her abilities, and I got to play into some of the things that the show glosses over: how she feels about her alcoholism, how she defines her worth based on her job and her relationships. This fic was just 21k of character exploration, really. I didn’t have a plot. It was just writing what I wanted to see. And it tickles me pink that you like it so much!
