for any story longer than 2k words or so, you're going to want to plan it out in detail. try out a few different outlining methods until you find one that sticks. for me, i like a good 3 3 act structure broken down into 3 mini acts per act, then 3 scenes per mini act, 3 beats per scene, and so on down the chain until i get to the smallest bites i can manage.
describe everything, and don't describe anything. "she walked from the kitchen to the living room and sat down on the closest armchair, crossing her legs" is all well and good, but tells us more about the physical movement than the scene itself. "her posture was tall and collected as she walked, and she inspected each chair with a steely gaze before finding the one she wanted." tells us less about the physical movements, but more about the character. know which one you want to prioritize, and do that.
learn your grammar rules. punctuation, dialogue tagging, prepositional phrases, all that jazz. okay now forget them, and write. okay now remember them, and edit. okay now forget them again, and RE-edit, and ask yourself "would it actually be more expressive if i broke this rule there?
even if you're writing third person, you are Always in someone's head. use that. write their internal thoughts, their physical sensations, what they feel, what they smell.
EDIT EDIT EDIT. if you're anything like me, you're probably starting your writing journey by trying to write perfect first drafts and ignoring everyone that tells you otherwise. my hot take: that's actually fine. BUT your Glorious First Draft, when you look at it the next day, is probably about 70% as good as you think it is. go back and edit it, even if you don't think you need to.
be very clear about the scene in your head, and let yourself write about half of it. the rest stays in your brain space. trust readers to fill in the blanks.
thesaurus.com is your friend. especially when you find yourself repeating the same word 80 times in 1 scene.
there will be a moment while you're writing that you think you're done with the scene. you are wrong. write more scene, and if it really wasn't necessary, you can cut it out later.
daydreaming through your scenes is the best way to get them in your head, AND to get to know your characters better. sit on your bed and talk to a wall for a bit. the "i look insane" feeling wears off after a while.
there are two kinds of writing days for me. i call them "floor days" and "ceiling days." "floor days" are where i turn my brain off and just write anything i can think of. descriptions of objects around me, short passages of dialogue, action scenes, whatever. the point is quantity over quality. you're "raising the floor" of your writing skills by making your low-effort stuff better through practice. "ceiling days" are where i really try to Write Well. pushing past my comfort zone, writing the things i struggle with, very detailed sense or emotional descriptions. these are quality over quantity, aka "raising the ceiling" of how well i can write on my best days.
lost on what to write? what do you want to read? whenever i find myself clicking through tags on ao3 and sad that there's nothing i like that matches my criteria, i jot it down in a little notes doc so i can remember it next time i get writer's block
there will come a time, possibly very soon, that you will be embarrassed about the quality of your writing. probably for good reason. (source: my old fics.) do NOT delete it. instead, go through your old fic and rewrite it in a separate doc. you get some editing/revision practice, you get to look back on your weaknesses, AND your fic will still be out there for people to enjoy.
and i PROMISE YOU there are going to be people who enjoy it. the fics i consider to be my most embarrassing, poorly written, typo-riddled works still get comments years later from people who it resonated with. even if that person isn't you anymore, it's someone.
hope some of this is useful to you anon. happy writing!
wading my way through this neighborhood (chapter one)
i literally don't know what to say about this one. i banged out like 10k of an anarcia spider-man au in mmm about two days. so. enjoy!! playlist linked here. ao3 link here.
Anetra is a friendly neighborhood superhero trying not to fall headlong into New York City's tangled crime web while also trying to avoid falling head over heels in love with her roommate. She doesn't really do a good job at either.
Although she’s typically winningly optimistic, Anetra is forced to admit that she might really be in deep shit this time.
She dives to the ground to dodge a punch from one of the men blocking her exit from this alley, and just as she hits the asphalt her phone begins to ring, loudly, because she definitely didn’t need another thing to worry about.
Whenever she wears her suit, she keeps her phone tucked in her bra, against her chest, safe from prying eyes or a damaging fall. Crucially, she also always silences it when she’s out on these little suited-up webslinging jaunts.
Except for this jaunt in particular, apparently.
This time, Anetra forgot to turn her ringer off before leaving, and the ringtone Marcia gave herself (Boss Bitch, by Doja Cat—Marcia swears it was worth the dollar Anetra had to cough up to buy the song) starts to echo through the slim space of the alley she’s been cornered into.
The man in front trying his best to pummel Anetra into the brick walls on either side of him pauses at the sound of the music.
Everyone does, honestly, including Anetra, standing in a defensive position and blinking a little in disbelief behind her mask as Doja spits out lyrics about high-heeled shoes.
“Um,” Anetra says, heroically. The man in front offers up nothing but a threatening crack of the neck, and then he’s lunging for her again, followed by his buddies.
Normally, Anetra would just throw a web up to the sky, land it on one of the roofs of the buildings forming this alley, and neatly pull herself out of this situation. Easy money. However, this alley is barely wider than her wingspan—she’d need more room than she’s got to effectively aim.
Also, with the way these dipshits have been bearing down on her, she barely has enough time to throw her arms up and block the punches, let alone take a step back to use her webshooter.
She doesn’t know who they are, or who sent them, or why they are so intent on rocking her shit.
Over the past six months of being the Spider, she’s made a fair few enemies from sticking her nose where people think she shouldn’t be—she’s learned most of the hallmarks of the underground’s major players that way.
But these don’t look like any of the lackeys she’s used to. They don’t bear the MIB branding across their chests that Mistress’ henchmen are required to wear or the LaDuca crest on the lapel that all of Loosey’s guys have.
It’s disconcerting—Anetra continues running through her mental list of people who most likely want her dead, and these men don’t seem like they’ve been sent by any of them.
With the same repeating thirty seconds of Doja’s voice as a backing track, Anetra drops to a low squat as the man in front swings another wide hit at her head. She takes advantage of her new position to lunge for his knees, then shoves her shoulder into him and wraps her arms tight around his calves to force his legs to buckle—the man’s now-overloaded weight brings them both crashing to the ground.
Anetra rolls away easily from the tackle, gets to her feet to try and assess the situation, but the space she’s clawed out for herself is gone as soon as it was made when the rest of the men charge at her.
“Jesus, guys, can I catch a break?” she asks breathlessly, throws one hand up to catch the fist flying at her face as another guy goes for her ankles and she has to leap out of the way. “I’m serious, here. Could use a breather. What about you?”
“Smart-ass spider,” one of them grumbles, finally breaking the professional silence the whole group has been keeping up until now, and Anetra flashes him a winning smile that she only wishes a little bit that he could see as he tries to headbutt her against the wall.
She’s lucky that these men don’t seem to be actually combat-trained in any way. They’re moving the way most hired muscle does, bear-like and unpracticed, the style of brawling that’s borne out of being consistently bigger than your opponents. They’re used to steamrolling people Anetra’s size easily, so they’re throwing punches that Anetra can block without thinking while she tries to formulate her escape plan.
Her phone has finally stopped ringing, but it chimes to signal a new voicemail as she triangulates a gap to slip through in the wall of muscle.
A brief sting of guilt passes through Anetra. She’s been missing a lot of Marcia’s calls lately.
She’s rarely home now—when she’s not working, she’s out being this strange masked vigilante, and these days it seems like every small crime that she stops leads to another, worse one cropping up a few blocks down.
She already had the suit on under her clothes when she left the apartment earlier, shouting a goodbye to Marcia with some lame excuse about covering some other dancer’s shift at the bar—she was actually headed to an abandoned studio space downtown to fuck around with her web calibration for a while. She’s managed to master some kind of formula.
Again, the suit was already on under her clothes. What was she supposed to do when she heard a scream from the alley, ignore it?
Yes, she thinks to herself bitterly, pinning herself against the wall to barely avoid getting kneed in the ribs.
What had started as an easy job—it was a simple mugging, she could shoot a few webs the guy’s way and leave him strung up easily, let the victim get free—had suddenly transformed into a much bigger problem when several of these men had showed up. She should’ve been home an hour ago.
The guilt twists, intensifies. She’ll buy Marcia dinner later this week, or something. They can get takeout like they used to, when Anetra was fucking normal and couldn’t walk on walls.
Hey, wait a minute.
Anetra scans the too-close walls on either side of her. It’ll be a hell of a Hail Mary jump, but maybe—
While she’s distracted, a meaty fist makes contact with the side of her face, hard enough to make her ears ring. She stays standing, years of practice from gone-wrong taekwondo fights keeping her feet under her, but just barely.
She spits some blood from her mouth against the fabric of her mask, tries to let her vision right itself, but then another hit catches her in the gut and her breath leaves her.
Okay. Okay, shit. She’s kind of losing control of the situation, here. She needs to get her half-formulated plan back on track.
She narrowly dodges out of the way of a third punch, throws a clumsy kick that she feels make contact with flesh, then stumbles backwards until she can feel the bricks of the alley’s back wall against her back.
Her head is spinning, but she tips her head back, ignoring the awful sensation of the blood from her nose and mouth running down her throat.
She assesses the slice of sky between the buildings. Her heightened instincts do the math for her on just how precise her jump needs to be to get her to safety—if she misjudges this, she’s either going to slam herself against the wall and do the henchmen’s job for them, or she’s going to fall right back down to earth. Also probably doing their job for them.
Speaking of which, over the distraction of their second fallen companion, the three remaining men begin their charge towards her. They’re each sporting a grin that says they think they’ve won, probably elated at the sight of blood staining Anetra’s mask and the heavy breaths she’s taking.
Anetra kind of admires the confidence.
With a clumsy wink that they can’t see, she crouches low, and then when they’re almost on top of her she leaps straight up into the air, her best shot, sticking her arms out in the cramped space to hopefully catch on the walls of the building. Pleasepleasepleaseplease—
It’s a near thing. She’s not capable of jumping all the way to the rooftop, but her fingers graze both walls thirty feet up. Just barely, but it’s enough contact to give her purchase on the surface. The invisible hook of her wall-clinging ability catches her on each side, keeps her bracketed between the buildings and out of reach of the men below.
The resulting giggle from her is a little delirious to her own ears, but she hopes it sounds victorious to them.
“Fuck all of you,” she shouts, grinning, curls her knees up to her chest and pushes off to hop up onto one of the roofs—made accessible with the minimized distance—and peer down at them from there. “Tell whoever sent you, they aren’t gonna get my ass that easy!”
Instead of being frustrated at her cockiness, as she would’ve expected, they’re all unnervingly calm. One of them tilts their head like they’re studying her.
“She won’t give up, you know,” that one says. “It’ll end in a lot less pain for you if you come with us now.”
“Hang on, it really doesn’t seem like we’re on the same page here, guys,” Anetra shouts, trying to sound breezy even though the ominous words send something skittering down her spine. “Who is she?”
The man who spoke grins crookedly. Maybe she didn’t sound as breezy as she thought.
“You don’t need to know,” he yells up at her. “All you need to know is that this won’t be over until she has you.”
“Don’t care!” Anetra chirps, maybe a little frantically, and casts a web to a billboard on an adjacent rooftop so she can swing away from the scene as fast as possible.
As the wind whips at her, a little abrasive against her tender bruises and scraped skin under the suit, the threatening words echo through her head.
This won’t be over until she has you.
She’s certainly had to develop a thicker skin since becoming New York’s resident superhero. Between the death threats and the unflattering mid-swing pictures people post online (the latter might genuinely be affecting her more negatively than the former), she’s had to figure out how to shove all of this Spider stuff into a big ol’ box in her brain and leave it there while she lives the rest of her life so that it can’t get to her.
This threat feels too real to put in that box, though. The way it was delivered, the way that man had looked up at her with something like pity in his eyes when she refused to bend—it makes her breath come a little shallower than is comfortable as she thinks about it.
Her heightened senses that came with that stupid spider bite don’t just help her assess the situation in fights, they also tell her when something’s wrong. If she doesn’t attend to the feeling and follow her instincts, the sensory overload of it all usually triggers a migraine.
She wouldn’t be too worried about this mysterious she that sent those men to collect her, but the hair on the back of her neck is standing up and she’s clenching her teeth without thinking about it.
Something about this is wrong, her body is telling her, and she has no idea what.
Suddenly desperate to stop thinking about it, she swings herself to a somewhat secluded rooftop, free from prying eyes, and pulls off her mask to give herself a second to breathe.
The sun is starting to set. She’s chosen one of the taller buildings in the area to rest on, so she can really take in the view, the pink-orange-gold-yellow tone of light shifting every hard angle of the city to something softer and sweeter.
She can see lights turning on in people’s apartments as the daylight fades, can see a few different rooftop bars start to fill up with patrons from up here. It’s a nice reminder that even with the isolation of her extremely unique life experience, she’s not alone. Someone’s always awake, someone’s always looking at the same skyline you are.
With her legs swinging off over the edge of the roof, Anetra pulls out her phone to finally listen to Marcia’s voicemail.
“Hey, it’s me!”
Despite her heart hammering around anxiously from both leftover and still-present adrenaline, Anetra manages a smile at that.
“Who else is it going to be, you dumb bitch?” she mumbles, rhetorical and fond.
“I’m figuring you probably just got caught at work and that’s why you’re not home. I was going to hold dinner for you, but I’m starving, so you snooze, you lose, Neech. Don’t know what to tell you. Your tacos are definitely going to be cold when you get home, and that is karma, is what that is.”
She pauses for a second. Anetra listens to her breathe, think about what she wants to say next. Her nose was probably all scrunched up when she recorded this like it gets when she thinks too hard.
“I miss you,” she says, and then the evening is quiet again, excepting the buzz of voicemail static. “Um. Anyway. Taco meat will be waiting when you get home. Please eat it. Or—just eat something with a modicum of protein. I’m begging you.”
Anetra has a full grin on her face when the message beeps, signaling its end. She swipes over to Google and searches up “modicum”, relying on autocorrect since she has no idea how to spell it, then sends Marcia a screenshot.
TO: marcia 🌸💖💫🧚💕🌷💗✨💝
(The emojis weren’t Anetra’s idea, believe it or not. Marcia gave her very specific instructions on which ones she wanted next to her name.)
[Attachment: 1 Photo]
You had to use this word right
Like needed to
You couldn’t have said “a little bit” or any of the various synonyms available to you, you needed to use that one
FROM: marcia 🌸💖💫🧚💕🌷💗✨💝
AHAHAHAHA
so sorry
Anetra smiles, but it slips from her face quickly as she realizes the fast response time is most likely worry-based.
I’m headed home now, she texts, wanting to quiet Marcia’s anxieties. Only a few minutes away :)
ok yay, Marcia sends back. The bubble appears, then disappears, then comes back again, indicating some rethinking. did the dancer shift end up ok? u just had to stay late?
Yeah
It’s all Anetra can really give her, even though the single-word response will only further Marcia’s suspicions. The doubling up on questions is already enough of an indication of her doubt.
Yara was on my ass tonight, she texts to try and cover. Yara Sofia is the manager at the bar, who lets Anetra come in for a dancing shift once or twice a week after her waitressing hours, and she is on Anetra’s ass all the time, even though it’s always out of love. It’s a real half-ass of a redirection, but Marcia, always graceful and always sweet, follows her lead anyway.
omg what did she do
Anetra takes some time to craft a decently wild story about Yara’s unorthodox marketing methods (she mentions Yara’s vibrant Onlyfans career, which is very real) to provide some scaffolding for her lie about her whereabouts.
Once she’s sent it, she gets to her feet, pulls her mask back over her face, and stretches, taking in the last of the sunset as the colors bleed out of the sky. The artificial lights have flickered on all around her now, doing their best to replace the sun’s warm glow and coming up just a little bit short.
She sends a web out to a streetlight on a parking garage nearby and hops off the roof. Since she’s still a little shaken, it takes her longer to find her rhythm than it normally does.
Cast out the web. Feel the resistance when it catches on a building or a lamppost or a tree. Swing from that node forward, let your body hurtle through the air, almost freefalling but not quite. Release, then cast again.
Cast, feel, swing, release. Definitely don’t think about the person with a vendetta against you who tried to get you killed earlier today. Cast, feel, swing, release.
“It’s Spider-Man!” she hears from below a few feet ahead of her, bringing her mostly out of her head. Within the crowds on the street, more than a few people have their faces upturned to gawk at her, but that exclamation in particular came from a little girl on her dad’s shoulders.
Anetra waves at her as she swings by on a streetlight, and the kid waves back, practically a caricature of cuteness sitting on her dad’s shoulders with her missing teeth and pigtails. Not a man, she wants to correct sunnily, but she stays mute. The public’s general assumption that she’s a dude keeps her cloaked in an extra layer of secrecy, and she can’t afford to shed any of those.
Sometimes she wants just a little bit—a modicum, one might say—of recognition. At least a small sign, somehow, that people get what she’s putting herself through, that what she’s doing isn’t for nothing.
But she understands that that’s not worth sacrificing her identity and her safety for, even if this life feels like it’s grinding away at her slowly. The isolation of it all is hard, but it’s for a reason. She can’t risk any of the Spider’s shit finding its way into Anetra’s life, because then that endangers all the people who know Anetra, tangles them all in the Spider’s web.
The Spider doesn’t have friends who can get hurt. Anetra does.
That man’s crooked smile shines in her mind like an afterimage of a bright flash. She lands hard on her feet in the alley behind her building, his words biting at her heels and hounding her.
Nothing from a fight’s ever stuck with her like this before. Chills travel down to the very ends of her extremities, and sparks scatter across her vision, the very first warning sign of an oncoming migraine.
Something is coming for her.
She zips up her sweatshirt so her suit is hidden, rips her mask off and stuffs it in the pocket, tries to shake off what’s left of the Spider unsuccessfully.
One shuddering breath is all she has time for before she’s cramming her key in the lock and opening the door, shoving it hard with her shoulder because it always sticks in its frame in the summer with the New York heat.
“Hi!” she shouts. It’s late, but Marcia doesn’t go to bed for at least another hour on weekends, so she’s loud just for the sake of it, just to jog loose the calcified anxiety in her mind.
“Hey!” she hears yelled in a singsong reply from the front room. After quickly making herself a taco from the ingredients Marcia left out, she heads that way with her hands in her pockets, a little more urgency in her step than usual.
On days where she spends more time in the mask than out of it, when the mental box she’s forced around her little vigilante hobby won’t stay closed and terrifying images flash through her mind every time she closes her eyes, she needs to get back to herself again, and Marcia’s always been her key for that.
She knows Marcia inside and out. Marcia knows her outside and in. They’ve been roommates since they both moved to New York, connected through one of those terrible Facebook groups that every desperate person moving to a big city joins on some wild hope that they’ll be able to find everything they need to survive in the posts there.
Anetra didn’t find everything she needed (no one on Facebook knows where to find good Puerto Rican food), but she did find Marcia. On her sappier days, she’ll say that that’s about the same thing.
Marcia is facing away from Anetra when she comes into the living room, sitting on their saggy old couch with her feet tucked up against herself and her laptop balanced on her knees. When she hears Anetra’s footsteps on their creaky-ass floor, though, she tilts her head all the way back over the arm of the couch so she can see her, and then she smiles.
Anetra feels her shoulders relax, and lets out a sigh under her breath. She’s okay, she’s here. Everything is well.
“Hi,” she says again.
“Hey,” Marcia says, repeating herself as well to go along with the bit. She’s still smiling, a few veins in her head popping with the upside-down position. “Oh, good, you found the tacos. You gonna say ‘hi’ again, or can I ask you how work was?”
“Work was fine. Now, sit your ass up or you’re going to pass out with all that blood rushing to your big head,” Anetra warns, hopping onto the other side of the couch and poking Marcia’s calf with her foot.
“Just fine?” Marcia asks once she’s readjusted into a normal seated position, ignoring Anetra’s jab about her head. Usually she’d make a bit out of it, act all wounded and everything. It makes Anetra a little nervous.
“I mean, yeah,” Anetra says, shrugging to sell it. “What, you want all the gory details of how my pelvis got a lot closer to a lot of old men’s faces than I ever wanted it to?”
“No, ew, no,” Marcia replies, scrunching her nose up in disgust. She’s wearing her glasses, so the gesture is a little funnier than it normally is. “No, I just—they’ve been asking you to take a lot of extra shifts, is all. Waitressing and dance. Is that okay? Are you… is, um. Is money okay?”
It’s a clunky way to ask a sensitive question, but it’s always been a clunky topic between the two of them. It’s very simple, really. Marcia comes from money. Anetra does not.
As far as how much rot generational wealth can cause in a brain, Marcia’s on the good side of things: she’s fairly aware of the privilege she’s held and continues to hold in society, lives modestly on her own teacher’s salary without help from her parents, and challenges her peers from youth on their wealth and what they’re choosing to do with it.
However, she still grew up a rich kid, and that’ll fuck a person right up.
There are things she’s never even had to begin to conceptualize because of the many layers of plush societal protection she was swaddled in from birth. It makes her a little dense on certain topics, like service jobs and financial etiquette, even after almost ten years away from her parents’ lifestyle.
“Money’s fine,” Anetra assures her, a little tightly. Marcia knows she’s very lucky to have a gold-lined safety net at the ready whenever she needs or wants it, and she consistently reminds Anetra of its application to her as well.
Never mind that Anetra would maybe rather die, eat shit, and give herself over to the mysterious woman that wants the Spider dead before she accepts help from Marcia’s parents.
Anetra feels a little guilty. Marcia can be naïve when it comes to money stuff, but she would have good reason to believe Anetra’s hurting for cash right now, with how many times she’s said she’s covering a shift or dancing late when she’s really out tangling webs all over the greater metropolitan area.
“It’s not the money,” she says, gentler now. “I, um. I’m putting in the hours to try and get a better time slot when I dance. Kind of want to go for a more respectable crowd than the ten-to-midnight folks.”
Marcia nods, slowly. She takes her glasses off and stares at them intently while she polishes them with her pajama top.
“Dick move on my part, bringing up money,” she says quietly. “I’m sorry.”
“Hey, no, it’s all good,” Anetra says easily, because it really is. Marcia never means any harm. Her parents are assholes with no intent of ever redistributing their wealth outside of their family tree, and Marcia’s entire adult life has essentially been an exercise in atoning for that in any way she can think of—including offering trust fund money to her club dancer/waitress/general service worker roommate.
Anetra understands making what you can out of your shitty upbringing, she really does. She just tends to prickle at the slightest insinuation of charity. And Marcia is anything but subtle.
“I—You would tell me, if something else was going on?” Marcia asks, gaze still fixed on her lap, her voice a little faint. Her eyes flick up to meet Anetra’s, just once.
Well, Marcia, there was this spider in your coworker’s girlfriend’s lab that we toured that one time, and it bit me, and now I can traverse walls like gravity isn’t even real and I have superhuman reflexes and I can sense oncoming danger and I built myself these gadgets so I can swing all around the city and I’ve been using all these aforementioned abilities to fight crime—
“I would,” she says, cutting off her train of thought as she tries to get Marcia’s eye contact back. It’s a lot simpler than all of those other things she wants to say. It’s also a lie, or a partial one.
Not if it’s going to hurt you.
They don’t lie to each other if they can help it. But Anetra can’t help it, not in this circumstance, not if she wants Marcia to stay safe, so she meets Marcia’s eyes and compels her to believe her answer.
She sells it at least enough to get Marcia to relax, and she smiles again, a little wearier this time than before.
“Well, if stuff does come up, you know you can talk to me,” she offers, putting her glasses back on. “And I hope you get that evening gig. It sounds classy.”
Anetra snorts. “Nothing at Piranha is ever going to be classy.” She’s eager to move away from the topic at hand. “What are you working on?”
Marcia grins, and turns her laptop screen to face Anetra. “Just the choreography for the recital,” she says, the anxiety starting to fade from her posture as she sits up excitedly, shifts so that they’re sitting right next to each other. Anetra can feel the warmth of Marcia’s body through the layers of her sweatshirt and her suit.
“Oh, shit, yeah. Landed on a theme yet?” Anetra asks, clicking through the different tabs Marcia has open.
“Nothing’s good enough,” Marcia sighs, shaking her head and taking back control of the cursor to navigate to the document where she has all her brainstorming laid out. “I don’t want to do another recital where the teacher makes all the little girls dress up like flowers. That’s been done. It’s tired.”
“Oh, for sure,” Anetra says with mock seriousness, and then starts giggling when Marcia shoves her.
Anetra doesn’t really understand this whole world of dance that Marcia moves through with ease. She was a taekwondo kid. This is not her lane.
Obviously, that doesn’t stop her from attending every recital with a bouquet to throw at Marcia when the curtain falls, making it her personal mission to cheer the loudest for the kids out of everyone else.
She also likes to put in her opinions when Marcia brings her work home, like here, now, helping her decide on whether her middle-grade students’ suggestion of “Night of 1000 Beyoncés” as a theme is realistically going to work. Anetra sketches out a few test costume ideas while Marcia searches up some different medleys she can choreograph to.
Eventually, while they’re working side by side, as one in the morning comes and goes and two A.M. swiftly approaches, Anetra feels herself starting to drift off. Her body feels as if it’s melting into the couch, and without the adrenaline from earlier her bruises are really starting to ache. Her jaw feels tender where the guy clocked her with his fist, and she tried to clean off her nose but there’s definitely some dried blood up in there that’s making breathing uncomfortable.
She yawns widely, sticks her tongue out like a cat. That’s usually a surefire way to get a giggle from Marcia, but when it’s met with silence Anetra glances down to her side and breathes out a quiet laugh.
Marcia is slumped over, asleep, her head on Anetra’s shoulder. She’d been silent for a while, but Anetra hadn’t thought much of it, perhaps a little too singularly focused on the Destiny’s Child costume design she was working on instead of her overtired roommate next to her.
“Alright. Bedtime,” she murmurs, mostly for herself, not expecting a response.
First, she has to slip out from under Marcia without waking her, which she manages with a considerable amount of effort. She eases the laptop from the other woman’s lap, then plugs it in and lays it to rest on the coffee table. She moves to the kitchen to put away the tacos Marcia left out for her, feeling a delayed wave of tired gratitude at the gesture as she does, and finally sets the dishwasher to run as wipes down the countertops.
When she goes back to the living room, picking up pieces of paper and assorted trash as she does, Marcia is still out for the count. Her often-worried expression is always smoothed out when she sleeps, the normally constant lines of anxiety at her brow or temples thankfully absent.
Anetra stands there paralyzed for a second.
Something warm and sacred, a feeling that outpaces verbalization, beats in her chest.
Before she can let herself really feel it, Marcia is blinking awake, slowly, stirred by some invisible force, and whatever was striking through the lightning rod of Anetra’s body vanishes, renders her mobile again.
“R’you watching me sleep?” Marcia mumbles, teasing, stretching her body out long from the tightly curled position she had fallen asleep in.
Anetra tosses one of the crumpled pieces of paper she grabbed off the floor at the blonde’s head to take some of the weight out of the air between them. “Obviously,” she says, lobbing the joke right back. “How else am I finally going to achieve my mission of killing you after all these years?”
Marcia catches the paper ball out of the air easily, yawning as she does so. “Playing the long game, I see,” she replies. The bit isn’t worth entertaining further, so Anetra doesn’t try, instead goes to grab Marcia’s arm so she can haul her up off the couch.
“Come on, bed,” she coaxes. “You hate sleeping on the couch. It’s a bad couch, we should get a new one.”
“Nee-trah,” Marcia whines, gone childish with sleep, and Anetra just shakes her head and sighs before bending at her knees to throw Marcia over her shoulder like she weighs nothing.
She does this all the time, it’s a bit between them, but it used to be harder, before superstrength. It seems like an obvious statement, but it speaks to something she’s learning over and over again: her life has been irrevocably changed. She is different now, as much as she doesn’t want to be.
Marcia shrieks out a surprised laugh and flails wildly for a minute, like she always does just to be funny, but then she goes limp so it’s easier for Anetra to carry her.
“Should fall asleep on the couch more often,” she muses appreciatively, her voice getting raspier as she lets her drowsiness creep back over her, and Anetra snorts, jostling her a little bit to at least keep her awake until she can toss her on her bed. “What time do you have to get up tomorrow?”
“Not till nine or something,” Anetra replies, punctuating her statement by throwing Marcia over her shoulder onto her crumpled bedspread, then launches herself into the air to land hard at her side, giggling at the way the mattress momentarily buckles under her. “I don’t work tomorrow. What about you?”
Marcia flops over on her stomach and groans against the fabric of her quilt. “Seven. I don’t have class till nine, but Jan wants me in early so we can talk logistics for the recital at the end of the week.” She turns her head to smile beatifically in Anetra’s direction. “No chance you wanna go in my stead? Deal with Jan’s mania?”
Anetra winces and shakes her head vigorously. “Nope.” She stretches her arms long over her head, then looks over to where Marcia’s pouting and laughs. “What if I bring you lunch? We can eat together after your class.”
Marcia visibly brightens and nods. “Yes, please. Suki’s?”
Anetra hops up off of Marcia’s bed and salutes. “Tomorrow at noon,” she promises.
“It’s a date,” Marcia answers, yawns. Her eyes start to fall closed with the end of the conversation, and Anetra stands in the doorway for just a moment.
She had a crush on Marcia, way back when in those early days, debilitating and whole-heart-seizing. Her mouth went useless whenever her roommate asked her a question, and her heart would pick up to a terrible, pointless speed whenever the other girl leaned over her to plug in her phone or to grab the last egg out of the fridge.
Recognizing immediately that falling for your roommate is a terrible cliché at best and severely endangering your living situation at worst, Anetra never gave the feeling air, since it would’ve been more than a little stupid. She put her nose to the ground and worked her ass off, waitressing at the bar during the day and dancing at night, and eventually, with no time to dedicate to it, the crush died off like an uncared-for plant.
Marcia’s her best friend, and she wouldn’t trade that for anything, but sometimes that crush wakes up a little bit, shifts and rumbles around her chest.
Maybe it was never really asleep. Maybe, by not giving something air, all you do is make it writhe around and become more stubborn, more insistent.
Well. Whatever. She never told Marcia then, and she certainly can’t tell her now. It would be foolish to think something ever could come of it besides losing the closest person in her life.
She’s been working to get over this feeling for years—for years—at this point. She will, she can.
She leaves the doorway and goes down the hall to her room, slamming a mental lid shut on her waxing nostalgia as she does so.
As soon as her bedroom door falls shut behind her, Anetra shucks off the top layer she has on, her sweatshirt and pants discarded so that she’s just wearing her suit, then shrugs her way out of that too. She shuffles down the hall to their shared bathroom just in her bra and underwear, and sits heavily on the toilet lid to assess the damage from the fight earlier.
She sighs as she probes her various bruises with light fingers, flinching at the deep pain she can feel beneath the faintly tinged skin. Tomorrow, they’ll all be vibrant and awful and hard to explain, but for now all she’s got is a terrible ache, with no evidence of its presence. It’s kind of infuriating.
Other than her for-now-invisible bruises, her nose is tender from the hit earlier, but otherwise seems fine, and even though she sustained a few really rough hits it seems like she didn’t break any bones.
Once it’s established that altogether, she’s fine, she exhales, heavy. Heavy enough that her shoulders start to curl inwards with the deflation of her lungs. Her neck goes loose, and her head slumps forward over her chest.
She’s so tired.
It’s a kind of tired that has settled in her bones. She can’t sleep this off, she can’t shake this easily. The only way it feels like she’d be able to rest again, really rest, would be to hang up the mask, sitting in the pocket of her hoodie down the hall, for good.
She’s in too deep with this whole flip-side world to even entertain the idea of doing that.
For a while, she stares blankly at the tile at her feet—it’s cheap New York apartment tile, unevenly discolored and easy to stare at while you get lost in thought—but eventually, her aching body necessitates getting up from the uncomfortable toilet lid and picking her way back down the hall.
As she walks through her bedroom door, she strips off her bra and throws on a shirt to sleep in (it says EVERYBODY GET FOOTLOOSE! in egregiously large letters on the back, leading Anetra to believe that one of Marcia’s show shirts might have found its way into her laundry) before hauling her pained, overworked body into bed.
She’s exhausted enough that her eyes fall closed automatically, but then that memory from the alley today flashes behind her lids like a vision.
It’s the not knowing that kills her. The first few weeks of having powers was like this, too, a whole new world of danger where every other step was a stumble, but there were no consequences then. If she trips up now, with this mysterious woman on her tail, then she’s just going to fall and fall.
She needs to get her feet under her before that happens, she thinks to herself, turning over in bed and yanking the covers up to her chin. She doesn’t work tomorrow, so after lunch with Marcia, she can throw the mask on and snoop around under the radar, see what she can find out about this person who wants her dead. Once she has something like a plan in place, the anxiety’s clawed grip on her neck and chest relaxes slightly, allowing her to slip out of consciousness.
It doesn’t leave Anetra in complete peace, though. Her dreams are flashes of pure horror, painted in wailing, assaulting color, and she jolts awake soaked in sweat and pinned to the mattress with fear.
Her alarm clock reads 8:48. She knows she won’t get back to sleep, so she peels herself out of bed and walks out into the empty apartment with some half-baked idea of making some breakfast. She catches her sallow-looking reflection in the hallway mirror on her way to the kitchen, and points some finger guns at it.
“Lookin’ good,” she jokes softly, for absolutely no audience but herself, and tries to smile. It’s kind of freakish with how bad her eye bags have gotten, so she just stops looking. She makes a mental note to ask Marcia if she can raid the huge tub of different skincare products she has going in the bathroom, see if anything will fix the skin issues brought on by becoming a neighborhood superhero.
Because she has the morning free, she uses the time to take care of business.
First, she dunks her whole suit in a bucket and scrubs at the bloody patches with hydrogen peroxide until the water runs clear, then goes downstairs to the laundry room to chuck the whole mess in a washing machine. While she waits for the cycle to be done, she turns on some mindless show and cleans out the gunk from her webshooters, meticulously picking at the mechanisms with a bobby pin. Once she’s moved the suit over to the dryer, she folds herself up all wonky on the couch and searches up some variation of “femme mob boss new york” for at least an hour until she gives up because she realizes it’s pointless and at this rate she might end up on a watchlist.
She doesn’t have a guy in the chair, okay? It’s just her stupid ass stuck with trying to figure out all this shit. Sometimes Google has answers.
After her pointless search, it’s just a matter of finally changing out of her pajamas, getting her suit out of the dryer and putting it in her backpack, and then hauling ass to Suki’s so she can beat the lunch rush and make it to Marcia’s studio in time.
They’re regulars here. It’s an oft-established pattern at this point, really. Whenever Anetra comes in to pick up lunch, Suki is usually there, and will try to engage Anetra in a conversation in Japanese, which Anetra definitely can’t speak. Then she inevitably switches to English, and asks after Marcia and what bullshit their neighbors are up to this month.
“When are you going to make that girl stop eating only vegetables?” she asks ruefully now, packaging up their order behind the counter. “Not healthy.”
“She’s vegetarian, Suki,” Anetra tells her with a snort, filching one of the mints from the register dish. “It’s a moral choice.”
Suki just clicks her tongue. “She needs meat,” she mumbles stubbornly. “Twig of a thing. You are certainly a bad friend if you aren’t making her eat meat.”
“I’ll let you know how me telling her that goes over,” Anetra replies, rolling her eyes good-naturedly, and opens her phone to check Marcia’s location. She’s on the north side of the building, so she’s still stuck in her first-grade class. The parents are probably bugging her again.
“Oh! I have news,” Suki says eagerly, interrupting Anetra’s idle scrolling, and Anetra locks her phone and puts it to the side, giving the older woman her full attention. “That Spider? On the news? I saw her.”
Anetra feels her body temperature shoot up exponentially, then plummet. She shivers without being aware of it. “Come on. What?” she scoffs, knowing she’s laying on the disbelief a little thick.
“In the alley outside of my apartment a week ago,” Suki says, and nods seriously. “With my own two old eyes. These two fuckers—” Suki prioritizes learning curse words in practicing her English—“were in the alley, breaking glass of my building, spraying paint all over the side of the wall, and then before I could even turn from the window, there she was! Immediately!”
“Everyone thinks it’s a man,” Anetra says carefully. Her throat hurts suddenly. She remembers that day. Two little racist shits, spraying awful words on the wall, a bruised old man slumped against the side of the dumpster who had probably tried to stop them earlier. “Did you see the face?”
“Ah, no,” Suki says, and Anetra’s heart only calms a tiny bit. “If everyone thinks it’s a man and it isn’t, then I can be the only one who is right.”
“It’s probably just some dude trying to be a hero,” Anetra says dismissively, and Suki raises an eyebrow, shakes her head vigorously. “He’s probably already tired of it.”
“Sophie, in my kitchen, she also saw the Spider in an alley. Last night! Last night, she saw her! Sophie, come here!”
A girl in an apron and a hairnet pokes her head through the swinging kitchen door, a fresh black eye ripening on her face, and Anetra’s eyes widen before she can stop her reaction.
The fucking girl from last night.
“Sophie, you saw the Spider! Right?”
“They saved me,” Sophie says kind of quietly, not coming any farther into the restaurant. “Some guy pulled me into an alley when I was walking home, and they—they got him off of me, I was able to run.”
Anetra swallows hard. “Wow,” she says, tries to nod. She’s never seen anyone she’s saved after the fact before. It makes her chest tight, her eyes burn. “That’s—I’m glad you’re okay.”
“See? She saw the Spider too! She is helping us,” Suki says determinedly, jabbing a finger against the countertop. “She is real.”
She’s holding the order in one hand, so Anetra grabs it from her quickly, stumbles backwards a little bit. “I. Um. I have to get this to Marcia, Suki. Sorry. Bye, Sophie.”
Suki eyes her a little too closely for comfort. “Okay,” is all she says. “Have a good day, Anetra. Say hello to Marcia.”
Anetra scrambles out the front door, bag clenched tightly in her fist. The box she keeps the Spider in in her head breaks open, bursts free, spills webs and fear and responsibility all over every other thought in her head.
She’s kept the two parts of her life separate for months now, she’s been okay, but now they’re coming together in a way that sets her teeth on edge. Is Suki in danger now? She’s unknowingly closer than a lot of news outlets to guessing who the Spider is. What about that girl, Sophie? Will she be all right? Did saving her once mean that she’ll be a bigger target later?
The streets seem too fenced in by the lofty skyscrapers on all sides all of a sudden, and Anetra feels trapped. She bows her head and walks faster, tucking her chin closer to her chest.
Marcia’s studio building comes rising into her periphery, all light metal and huge panes of glass, but the gorgeous design doesn’t soothe Anetra like it usually does. All she can think is how exposed that building is, how anyone could look in and see her with Marcia on almost any floor of the studio.
When she walks in, though, the panic abates slightly. No one here is talking about the Spider. It’s a uniquely focused atmosphere, the way taekwondo tournaments were for her back in the day. No one is talking about anything but the thing they came here to do, from the tiny six-year-olds enthusing about pliés to their beleaguered parents to the sharp-featured prima ballerina running through her fitness program with her teacher.
Anetra maneuvers through the herds of different layers of tulle to get to the front desk, where Robin, the desk receptionist, hands over a guest pass badge without asking for Anetra’s ID and gives her a tired smile.
“Hard day?” Anetra asks, and it’s settling, to go through this familiar exchange.
“It’s the first day of a camp week,” Robin says dryly. “A million little kids, all sprinting around this huge studio space, and all the upperclassmen think that it’s suddenly my fault that these children are underfoot even though this happens every single fucking year—sorry,” she edits herself, not sounding sorry at all. “Every single year.”
“Yikes,” Anetra says, laughing a little bit.
“Go give Marcia her lunch break, she needs it,” Robin tells her dismissively, waving her hand in the direction of the elevator. “Everyone gets fucked over on a new camp week. She definitely hasn’t sat down all day.”
Anetra gives a little salute. “Will do,” she confirms, tapping the top of Robin’s desk to punctuate her statement. “Good luck not getting fucked over.”
“Honestly, I fucking wish I could get fucked over—I won’t get to see my girlfriend until next week at this rate with the overtime hours they’ve stuck me on,” Robin mutters, slouching in her chair.
Laughing at the other woman’s exaggerated pout, Anetra begins to mime obscenely making out with the back of her hand until Robin screeches at her to stop, and then she hightails it to the elevator while giggling as the other woman readies to chuck something at her head.
She just barely wedges herself into the packed space, and her phone buzzes as the doors close.
FROM: marcia 🌸💖💫🧚💕🌷💗✨💝
SOS!!!!!!!!!
The nine exclamation points are honestly pretty typical for a text from Marcia, but the all-caps is a slight flag for alarm—when the elevator doors slide open to the sixth floor, Anetra steps with a quick pace past all the other open studios to get to the one at the end of the long hall.
“I’m sorry, but I really believe—” is the first thing Anetra hears, Marcia’s voice sounding more than a little exhausted. Marcia is sweet, the sweetest person Anetra knows, but she’s not a pushover, and her voice has taken on that edge that it does when you’re about to cross her line.
“I don’t care,” a woman’s voice interrupts. “You don’t bring this shit into a classroom. That’s for whatever you do at home—Lord knows I don’t agree with that, either, but you will not get my daughter involved in this life you chose.”
She pauses, likely about to barrel into an even more fervent tirade, but that’s when Anetra makes her entrance, unaware of the exact circumstances but ready to roll with pretty much anything.
“Marcia?” she asks, schooling her face into a pout of concern as she pokes her head into the studio space. “Sorry to interrupt, I just thought your lunch break started a few minutes ago.” She holds up the bag from Suki’s, then cuts her gaze pointedly to the clock above the door.
Marcia’s posture noticeably relaxes at the sight of her. A tiny smile flickers across her face.
“Yeah, I’m sorry, ‘Netra, I’m just wrapping up here,” she says sunnily, then turns back to the woman who has a blood vessel popping in her forehead. “I’m so sorry, but as I said, the Pride parade march was a clearly labeled part of this week’s camp, and if your child showed distinct interest that comes from them, not from me. If you’d like for them not to attend, that is between you and your kid and I don’t get involved. If there’s nothing else—” Marcia tilts her head and beams, her eyes flashing dangerously—“I only get an hour for lunch, and I’m going to spend it with my girlfriend.”
It’s a joke, a bit, and one they’ve done more than a few times to get out of sticky situations like this, actually, but Anetra’s cheeks never fail to warm at least a little bit when Marcia calls her that, even if it’s to make a point to a bigoted woman in a kid’s dance studio.
“This isn’t over,” the woman in question grinds out through a clenched jaw, crossing her arms over her chest. Despite her words, she thankfully abandons the conversation and stalks over to the other side of the room where her kid has been chatting with their classmates.
Anetra waves brightly at the woman’s retreating back. “Have a nice day,” she chirps, and Marcia barely manages to suppress a snort of laughter at the false tone as she walks over to meet her.
“Hey,” she says softly, her posture sloping forward into Anetra’s orbit, reaching out a hand to tug at the sleeve of her t-shirt. She’s like this, always; she needs to touch things to get herself back. Anetra has never once minded. She mirrors it and leans in right back.
“Rough morning?” Anetra says, keeping her voice low so the kids still packing up across the room won’t hear their conversation.
Marcia rubs her temples and manages a dead-eyed smile. “No. Why do you ask?”
Anetra slings an arm around her shoulders and traces a soothing pattern with her thumb. “I’ve got an order of veggie rolls with your name on it,” she says sweetly. “Plus we have a whole hour of your break for you to rant about everything that went wrong with camp today.”
“I don’t want to waste your time…” Marcia protests feebly, but it’s just noise and she knows it, knows that they both understand the entirety of lunch will be spent with her complaining and Anetra nodding along gamely. A grin breaks through, a real one, and she rests her head on Anetra’s shoulder happily.
Anetra is watching the last of the kids trickle out the door, waving to the few that are return dancers from last year that recognize her as Marcia’s roommate, when she feels Marcia stiffen next to her.
“Wh—” she starts asking, beginning to turn to check in, but then there’s the light touch of fingers on her cheek that finish the job for her and she’s looking right in Marcia’s eyes, inches away.
The prickle she’s been growing resignedly used to over these past few months skitters up and down her spine, the one that tells her pay attention or something’s up. The noise of it, the feel of it folds easily into the whole-body hum that’s happening under Marcia’s focused gaze, until everything in her is tuned towards the blond standing at her side.
“Trust me,” Marcia whispers, so quietly she barely moves her lips, and then when Anetra has nodded without even entirely being aware she’s done it Marcia is leaning in, kissing Anetra square on the mouth.
They’re two queer roommates. They’re open and generous with sexuality, that’s kind of in the handbook. They’ve made out when they’re drunk before on a dare, Marcia kisses Anetra on the cheek when she gets home sometimes. Casual intimacy is nothing new for them.
This is the same as all of that on the surface—Anetra doesn’t know why she’s being kissed soundly under the fluorescent lights of the studio, she assumes it’s for some bigger reason—but this is the first time she’s ever felt Marcia’s lips against hers when she’s completely sober. This is the first time she can taste that stupid expensive chapstick Marcia always buys, a waxy herbal flavor over top the sensation of spit and flesh.
Marcia pulls away, her eyes a universe, and Anetra’s constant crush is snapping at her heels again. This time, though, she can’t push it away—it’s gained sharper, exigent teeth.
She blinks a few times, and the world around them, which had faded into silence, comes crashing back in with sound and color, the studio space now apparently empty and the lights overhead seeming even brighter in the absence of anyone else in the room.
“Um,” is all she can manage. She casts around for a joke to make, something to make it seem like she wasn’t as affected by that as she was. Marcia is just smiling at her like it’s a regular Tuesday.
“Sorry, that fucking parent’s watching us through the window,” Marcia tells her, inclining her head just slightly, and Anetra whips around not-at-all-subtly to see the woman from before duck out of the hallway when she realizes she’s been caught. “Wanted to give her a little bit of a show.”
“Ah,” Anetra says weakly, the realization that she actually maybe never got over her crush on her roommate making her voice shake a little on its way out. “No, yeah, totally. Stick it to the man. Or woman.”
“Anyway,” Marcia continues breezily. “You have Suki’s for me, and I got an hour. Wanna eat up on the roof?”
Anetra just nods, and Marcia pushes off the wall they were leaning against to go grab her bag from the corner. Anetra takes the time to breathe in through her nose and out through her mouth and shut away all of this to be dealt with later.
Being the Spider is hard. It’s the hardest thing she’s ever had to do. But most of the problems that arise from that can be solved with a well-placed punch or a couple webs tangling something (or someone) up.
This isn’t that.
She’s still got to do some reconnaissance on this person who’s got it out for her today. After lunch, she can swing around for a while and hope that a solution to this newly reinvigorated crush appears in the skyline while she does so.
Marcia skips back over to her, smiling wide.
“Ready to listen to me for an hour?”
It was sunny when Anetra left home, but it’s overcast and a little drizzly now. Neither of them mind as they curl up in two plastic chairs sat opposite each other on the roof, the access door propped open behind them with Marcia’s class binder.
Anetra can almost forget the charged moment in the studio, chucking the wrappers of the plastic silverware at each other and laughing at the stories Marcia tells about her kids’ antics.
“Fucking Michael F., then, what does he decide to do? Tries to execute a lift with Marie without telling me first. Not only does that not fit at all with the choreography, they’re also eight. They can’t tie their own fucking slippers up.”
Anetra nods sagely, like she’s also an experienced dance teacher and not some half-waitress half-dancer at a gay bar. “I think—” she starts, but then the access door creaks open.
That prickle, again, at the back of her neck, except this time Marcia shows no signs of suddenly jumping her bones, so Anetra sits up straight, casts an eye around, feels around for her backpack with the suit and webshooters in it.
“Hey,” she hears from behind them, and although her mind relaxes at the recognizable voice, her body stays alert, won’t shut down all her heightened warning systems.
“Hey, Kerri,” Marcia says through a mouthful of sushi, waving with her chopsticks. “Finally got a break?”
“Yes, finally,” Kerri grumbles, shuffling towards them, running a hand over her face.
Kerri is the prima of the company’s production of Swan Lake that they’re putting on this season. Marcia is Anetra’s favorite at the studio, always, unquestionably, but Kerri is raw fucking talent. She’s still young, but moves with the lithe grace of someone with twice her training. She dances so fluidly, all while keeping her eyes locked on some invisible, unreachable horizon. She’s kind of miraculous.
She’s also, at this moment, looking more than a little exhausted when she slumps into one of the vacant chairs by the two of them. Kerri and Marcia continue to chat for a while using dancer jargon Anetra only barely has a grasp of, and Anetra just sits there silently, her whole body ringing in alarm like a sheet of metal someone hit with a hammer.
Her knee jogs up and down anxiously. She has no reason to be afraid of Kerri. She knows Kerri, not well, true, but she’s been in Marcia’s orbit since she was a newbie at the studio. So why is she on high alert?
“You okay?”
Marcia’s voice cuts through the static of Anetra’s overpowered sense input, clear concern coloring her tone.
“Yeah, I—yeah,” Anetra says, shaking her head slightly as if jostling something loose. The ringing in her ears has grown louder. “Yes. Sorry. I just have to get going.”
“Oh, yeah, of course,” Marcia replies, obviously still worried. She gets to her feet quickly, gathers up all their trash. “I’ll talk to you about being a TA for that technique class next week?” she asks Kerri, and when she gets an elegant nod she smiles. “Okay, great. My lunch break’s over, anyway. Let’s get going, ‘Netra.”
Anetra nods a little weakly, almost unable to hear over the buzzing in her ears. Marcia takes her hand loosely, and she lets herself be tugged down the stairwell back down to the lobby. Every sound is grotesquely amplified, every light feels too bright. The months-old bite on her calf pulses and aches.
“Is it a migraine?” Marcia asks softly, and it sounds like Anetra’s listening to her from several feet underwater.
“No,” she tries to say as normally as possible, tries to achieve how she would normally sound. “No, I think I’m fine. I just need to go home.”
“I’ll walk you home,” Marcia tells her immediately, determined, and Anetra shakes her head again, maybe a little too quickly.
She only gets this feeling when something’s about to happen. Usually, it’s an attack of some sort. She’s not endangering Marcia, not if there’s even the ghost of a chance that she’ll get hurt.
“I’ll be fine, Mar. I’ll text you,” she says dismissively, and the words sound small even to her, but they get Marcia to loosen her grip on Anetra’s arm.
“I… okay. Text me. I’ll see you at home?”
Anetra hates that she can hear the new uncertainty in Marcia’s voice. She hates that she knows that she put it there.
“I’ll see you at home,” she echoes, trying to put every bit of certainty she has into this one statement.
Marcia swallows, and Anetra can feel her eyes on her back as she all but runs out of the studio.
Once she’s out of sight of that terribly windowed building in an alley a block or so south, Anetra sinks to the ground, pressing the heels of her hands into her eye sockets.
“Ow,” she mutters. “Jesus Christ, this cannot be useful.”
She tucks herself behind a dumpster, strips and then pulls on her suit and mask. Her mind throbs.
She sprints up the wall, gets to a roof, and tries to breathe, gives in to the alarm bells her powers have been sounding off for the past few minutes straight. Her body tenses into a ready position instantly—she’s discerned over the past couple weeks that this feeling is most similar to a panic attack.
The adrenaline spike is overwhelming, but it’s all intentional, directed, pointed towards a prerogative that she hasn’t been clued in on yet. Sometimes, when she’s too scrambled, when she can’t follow the thread being led out for her, the heightened senses misfire and she ends up with a debilitating migraine.
She can’t afford to be laid up for the rest of the day; she needs to solve this, now.
“Okay,” she mumbles aloud to herself, darting up to the roof easily and casting a long, searching look to the streets below, letting her senses take over. “Okay, what are you trying to tell me?”
She cuts through the ambient noise of the city without effort to zero in on whatever anomaly is present, ignoring yelling children and car horns and—there.
A tug in her lower gut, not dissimilar to the feeling when a rollercoaster is about to drop, as she’s honing in on an alley in Midtown.
She’s swinging her way there before she even makes the conscious decision to do so.
When she lands hard on the ground in an abandoned stretch of sidewalk, she can feel her heartbeat in her teeth, every single cell in her body screaming at her that something is going to happen.
She rounds a corner, makes it to the alley she felt her hackles raise for, and the awful feeling somehow intensifies.
This is the alley from last night. Her blood is still drying on the wall a couple yards down.
Immediately, she’s up on the balls of her feet. If those fuckers from last night are back, she’ll pull absolutely no punches this time. This was a trap, that’s why, that’s why the space behind her eyes feels like it’s imploding.
She runs farther into the alley, fists up and head low, but no one bursts out—she stands there in the wind-whistling silence, tensed for a fight that isn’t coming.
Her shoulders drop. She’s breathing hard under the mask, and a spill of light blooms in her left eye, signaling an impending migraine.
“What do you want?” she screams to no one, and of course no one answers. She whirls around, ready to just punch the wall behind her until her suit tears and her knuckles bleed, but what she sees painted there makes her stop dead in her tracks.
A too-clean, too-perfect graffiti painting of her mask.
COME FIND MOTHER is painted in large, stark, even letters under the enormous paint job, a signature, a command.
Oh, fuck.
The dizziness that comes with all her migraines hits her in a terrible wave, and she has to sit down, staring up at the likeness of her face on the wall as it stares right back, the red slash painted over the left eye of the mask just like it is in real life.
Mother, she thinks through the oncoming fog, racks her brain and comes up with nothing. No one she knows of would use that as their moniker—it’s too old-fashioned, too traditionally powerful.
This development is newly unnerving. The city’s underground power structure is against the Spider, obviously, but none of them have actively singled her out yet besides this new player.
Mother isn’t like the rest of that structure, anyway; Mother is an unknown. Anetra doesn’t know what she’s capable of. And that makes her a hell of a lot more dangerous than the slimy mob bosses she’s used to fucking with, and this callout becomes a lot more fucking substantial.
Anetra stands up, her left eye beginning to black out with the migraine, and she stumbles a little bit. Home. She has to get home.
Unable to brave the subway in this state, and even more unable to walk the many, many blocks home, Anetra hobbles her way to the nearest northbound L tracks, casts a web to swing herself onto the top of the oncoming train and just hunkers down once she’s landed.
The wind is cool through her mask, soothing against the rising temperature of her skin, but it does nothing to calm her thoughts.
She feels stupid and small.
When she was a kid, and she wished for superpowers in the same way that every kid does, it was a fantasy about finally, finally having some control over her little life. No one can tell you what to do if you can punch through walls or fly at the speed of light.
The thing that her child brain couldn’t comprehend, though, is that your problems grow at a speed that outpaces your ability. If you could fly at the speed of light, then some time-space continuum thing would probably crop up that you wouldn’t be able to fix even with that speed. If you could punch through walls, then maybe you wouldn’t be able to punch through walls fast enough to save anyone.
And if you can swing around on webs and have a sense for danger, maybe someone will hunt you down for it, and you’ll have no idea how to stop them or who they even are.
Her migraine begins in earnest right as she stumbles through the front door, managing to lock it behind her as she walks through the house, closing all the curtains before the pain gets unmanageable.
“Suit,” she mumbles to herself. “Suit’s gotta come off.”
She flings it over her chair in the corner, then chucks a blanket over it as an afterthought to keep it hidden. Even that small action makes her head pulse. She grabs Marcia’s pajama shirt she threw on the bed this morning and tugs it back on before falling over top of the pillows, unable to even cross the room to close her own blinds.
She doesn’t sleep—she never can when she has a migraine. She just lays there until it passes. Usually, she feels the warning signs and prepares, grabs a cold rag and fills her waterbottle, but now she’s in the thick of it and all she can do is brace her body and wait for it to end.
Her door creaks open quietly after about an hour, and the small sound may as well be an ice pick above her left eye. She makes a small, pathetic, embarrassing little noise at the sensation.
Once the sharp ache dips back into a dull thud of pain, there’s soft footsteps over to the side of the bed, then the heavenly sensation of a cold towel being pressed to her neck—Marcia, Anetra thinks, and feels her whole body relax, just a little bit.
“You’re okay, baby,” Marcia murmurs, barely a whisper, the noise not aggravating the thrumming pain under Anetra’s skull. “I’m gonna close these curtains, make it darker in here.”
The word ‘baby’ sticks with Anetra for longer than it should.
Marcia closes all the blinds as quietly as she can, Anetra sighing at the slight relief it gives her, and then she comes back over to the side of the bed with Anetra’s waterbottle in her hand.
“You should drink water,” Marcia commands in her soft voice, and Anetra just sits up slowly, trying not to whimper at the pain the movement causes, and lets Marcia tip the bottle for her to drink from.
“‘M sorry,” she manages once she’s had a few sips.
“You don’t have to be sorry,” Marcia murmurs automatically, then chews on her cheek for a second, just watching her. “Just… why didn’t you tell me you were having a migraine?” she murmurs, her expression unreadable in the dark room. “I would’ve walked you home.”
Anetra doesn’t have the brainpower to lie, so she slouches back down among the pillows, curling up on her side.
“I didn’t want you to get hurt,” she mumbles into the fabric of the sheets.
Marcia’s confusion is palpable. “No one was gonna hurt me at the studio if I walked you home, ‘Netra. I—camp is stressful, but it isn’t—you should’ve told me,” she says, then flinches when she realizes she spoke too loudly near the end.
“Yeah,” Anetra whispers. “Yeah, maybe.”
“Tell me next time,” Marcia says, her voice near-silent. “You shouldn’t have to—you have people who will take care of you.”
Anetra says nothing, her words all spent, so Marcia’s footsteps quietly retreat towards the door. The door handle turns softly, and without being fully aware she’s speaking Anetra hears her own voice—
“Stay?”
There’s nothing but the sound of two people breathing for a moment. Then, Marcia’s footsteps start again, this time coming closer to the bed, and Anetra feels the mattress dip as Marcia lays down, her body warm at.
“Is this o—” she hears Marcia begin, softly whispered then broken off into quiet, and instead of saying anything Anetra laces her fingers with Marcia’s and holds their hands together over her stomach.
Gently, Marcia’s thumb rubs over the fabric of Anetra’s pajama shirt, an unconscious, comforting movement.
“You’re okay, baby,” Marcia murmurs again. “It’s all right.”
It’s a running joke between them that Marcia is always right, about everything, for all time.
Everything is not okay, not in the grand scheme of things, but in this present moment, the world shrunk down to just two people, Marcia’s right.
Summary: Ajay has decided that the time has come for him to apologize to Bailey. Things don't go as planned, however, and he gets more than he bargained for.
Pairing(s): Ajay/MC, Rory/MC
Word count: 1477
Warnings: Angsty angst cause we love suffering 😄
Song: This town - Niall Horan
Just a little heads up: I have two HSS MCs, Grace and Callie. Callie is the one that broke her leg. Bailey is Grace's aunt. Keep that in mind as you read. Now let's jump right in!
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The party was winding down, and although Ajay had more fun than he had expected, he still felt a bit uneasy.
Ever since Danielle accused Bailey of intentionally causing Callie to break her leg, he had been on edge. The possibility that Bailey, sweet dorky Bailey, could be capable of doing something so vile was ridiculous to him. She wouldn't even hurt a fly, as cliché as that sounded.
But he had to remain "neutral", he said. He couldn't let himself be led by his feelings instead of his mind. So he did something that made his stomach twist with guilt the very moment it happened.
He suggested that maybe, perhaps, Bailey could have done it.
It all went downhill from there.
The hurt in her chocolate eyes when he said that made his heart ache, but he couldn't take it back. Instead, he chose to distance himself from her to avoid the guilt. A selfish decision, he knew.
After Danielle admitted being guilty, Ajay felt relieved but only for a fleeting moment. He immediately remembered the look in Bailey's eyes, and right there, right then, he decided he had to apologize to her as soon as possible.
As soon as possible turned out to be the very night after the play premiered.
He meant to do it earlier, but the moment was never right. Or so he told himself. He actually procrastinated and avoided that talk until he couldn't do it anymore without feeling the weight of guilt bringing him to his knees.
So there he was, fiddling with his car keys, going over what he was going to say to her. He had everything planned out, including Bailey's possible responses. He was ready for almost anything.
When he decided he was done going over his words for the fifth time in a row, he looked around for her, only to find that only a few guests remained, lost of them helping the Ashtons to clean up.
He made the rounds, asking the few people in the room if they knew of her whereabouts. Casey, her twin brother, said he'd text her to ask her and did so but didn't get a response, before returning to cleaning duty.
After asking everyone to no avail, he was growing impatient. With a sigh, he decided to approach the one person he was avoiding to ask.
"Grace."
She didn't reply, and he realized she had her earphones on. He tapped her shoulder instead.
The girl looked up from the plastic cups she was stacking together for just a second before looking away, taking off one of her earphones with a sigh.
"What do you want?"
Ajay sighed heavily. He didn't like Grace at all. She was loud and obnoxious, always the center of attention, a mess and proud of it. Sometimes he couldn't believe Bailey was actually related to her.
Grace didn't like him either, that much he knew. But he honestly didn't care, so he ignored her dry tone before speaking.
"I was wondering if you knew where I can find Bailey."
"What for?"
"That is none of your business."
Grace nodded once before putting her earphone on again, continuing with her task. Ajay gave her a long, exasperated sigh before tapping her shoulder again.
"Fine. I need to talk to her. Apologize about what happened."
"You mean accusing her of breaking Callie's leg on purpose?"
"I didn't--" he stopped short, took a deep breath to calm down and nodded. "Yes. That. Can you tell me where she is or not?"
Grace gave him a long look, as if she were considering if she was going to share the information with him or not. She finally made a decision.
"She's outside, with Rory. The treehouse behind his house."
Ajay nodded and immediately turned toward the door, but Grace grabbed his arm to stop him.
"I wouldn't go there if I were you" she said, a knowing glint in her eyes before she released his arm with a shrug. "But you do you, man. Suit yourself."
Grace returned to her music and kept working, leaving him standing there, awkwardly, for a few seconds.
He headed for the door once again, but slower this time. Every step he took, was an opportunity to think and decide his next move.
Ajay soon found himself standing in the Silva's yard, looking up to a tall tree where a quite big treehouse was built. It's interior was illuminated by a dim light, and he could hear muffled laughter coming from up there.
Should he go up there and interrupt whatever they were doing, or take the high road and postpone his apology again? No. He couldn't do that. It was now or never.
Plus, they couldn't be doing anything important up there, right?
With that thought in mind, he proceeded to climb the ladder slowly, carefully avoiding splinters. As he climbed, he could hear their voices clearly as they talked.
"... the first person to see it for me was Casey" Bailey giggled softly after saying that, and after a silent pause, she spoke again. "So... what happens now that we've admitted we like each other?"
Ajay froze in place at that, just a step away from climbing high enough to make himself visible to them. He swallowed hard, closing his eyes for a moment.
He could hear Rory chuckle under his breath, before taking a step forward.
"Well, I think this is the part where we kiss..."
He didn't need to keep going to know what the silence following those words meant.
Without making a sound, he slowly climbed down the ladder until he was standing on the ground again. After a second he turned around and headed for his car without looking back.
Once he reached it, he leaned against it and took off his glasses, pressing the bridge of his nose with his eyes firmly closed.
He could hear steps approaching, but didn't bother to look up until the person spoke.
"You went there, didn't you?"
Ajay gave a long, drawn-out sigh before putting his glasses back on and looking at Grace, as she stood in front of him, arms crossed.
He didn't reply, but simply shrugged and averted his gaze. He might have looked as miserable as he was feeling, because Grace groaned loudly, rolling her eyes.
"Damn it."
"I feel like I should be the one to say that."
"It's just... I actually feel bad for you. And I hate it" she muttered bitterly, looking more annoyed than anything, glaring daggers at him. "Because you brought this upon yourself. You had your chance and you blew it, over and over again. And now you're here, feeling sorry for yourself."
She paused for a moment, as if she were expecting him to defend himself somehow, but he didn't. Instead, he just nodded along.
"You're right. And I hate it too" Ajay ran his fingers through his dark hair, looking away. He had a pensive expression. "It's funny in a tragic way, though. I like to present myself as someone that has everything figured out... but really, I'm just a mess."
After another moment of silence, Grace repeated, under her breath.
"Damn it."
Just then, they both turned around to the sound of Aiden's steps as he approached the car, a curious expression in his face.
"Are you ready to go?" he asked his girlfriend, holding her jacket for her.
She sighed and allowed herself to smile, letting him help her to put her jacket on before briefly pecking his cheek as she took his hand, nodding.
She turned to Ajay once more, as if she didn't know what else to say, but he beat her to it.
"Good night, you two" he said, voice as neutral as possible as he fished his car keys out of his pocket, giving them a nod. "I'll see you both around."
He turned around and climbed inside his car without a second glance at them. He could see them through the rear view mirror walking hand in hand toward Grace's car, and when they were out of sight, he relaxed on his seat behind the wheel.
He startled when his phone vibrated in his pocket, and when he pulled it out, he grimaced.
"sorry i just now checked my phone
casey says you needed me? 🤔
what's wrong??? where are you??"
Ajay stared at his phone long enough for the screen to go black for a few seconds before lighting up with a new message.
"ajay?? 😟"
With a sigh, he tapped the screen.
"Everything is fine.
Don't worry about it.
I'll see you around.
Good night, Bailey."
He tossed his phone to the backseat without a second thought and started the car. After one last glance at the Ashton's residence, he drove away into the night.
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Author notes: I'm feeling angsty today, in case you couldn't tell. Is this self indulgent? Hell yes, a lot. Sometimes you just gotta do what you wanna do, you know 🤷♀️ Despite that, I hope you enjoyed reading this, I sure enjoyed writing it. Thanks for reading!
PS: I'll be trying to add a Read more from mobile, but in case it doesn't work, you can block the tag "zig writes". Thanks for your patience.
idk if you do crossover stuff but since your requests are open...... tma and hatchetfield crossover?
so. i don't do crossover stuff. in fact, historically, i've never been much of a fan.
but this ask.
this fucking ask.
i was SUPPOSED to be doing oneshots for my fic requests. i was SUPPOSED to be spending no more than a couple days on each request. it was SUPPOSED to be fine and i was SUPPOSED to be normal about it.
almost two months later, this is the only request i have been working on. it bewitched me. there's not even an audience for this shit. i'm pretty sure it's just me and you, anon, who are going to enjoy this fic.
but now it's 6 chapters, with a very real possibility that i will expand it into a series.
here's your damn fic. please keep asking for more.
you have to pick the places you don’t walk away from (7/7)
ao3 link
In an effort to lighten the mood, she bumps her forehead against the other woman’s.
“What’s up?” she asks. “Talk to me, honey.”
Anetra reaches up, her hands now free of oil, and smooths some of Marcia’s stovetop-heat-frizzed hair out of her face. Last month, she got fed up with how long it was, and asked Anetra to cut it short. Even now, it only grows just past her jaw.
Anetra clicks her tongue, playing with the ends of Marcia’s hair. “It’s just August, you know?”
take their love and make it burn for you instead (chapter three)
heyyyy. chapters one and two up on ao3. ao3 link!
[REVIEW: How La La Land Fails to Make ‘Contact’ With Reality] Posted 12/14/16 by admin katiehomophobia.
Comments: Viewing 1-100 of 3.6k
pinkthingsoterrify: I cannot Jodie Foster this kind of behavior.
katiehomophobia [admin]: @pinkthingsoterrify HOLY MOTHER OF GOD.
Katya invites Trixie motherfucking Mattel into her home and turns her back on her. This is mainly due to the fact that she fears she’ll pop a blood vessel in her eye if she has to feign disinterest directly to the other woman’s face any longer.
“Sorry to interrupt your night,” Trixie says cautiously, followed by the creak of the door opening further—she must have accepted the invitation, then, stepped over the threshold. If Trixie is a vampire, Katya muses idly, she’s fucked.
“Not interrupting much,” Katya replies, still not facing her, electing to stub her cigarette out instead. Trixie Mattel is in Katya’s home. There’s still a fucking movie review with her name peppered throughout it pulled up on Katya’s computer. It occurs to her that she should rectify that, actually. “How can I help you?” she asks as she closes the tab of her broken website.
“Well, my name’s Trixie.” I know. “I’m subletting Kasha Davis’ place for a couple of months. She’s out for the night, so I can’t call her, and, um—” she gives a hissing exhale through her teeth, and Katya finally turns to face her, biting the inside of her cheek to keep herself from saying anything stupid — “my shower is broken, and I really need to fucking shower. She left your number, but I figured I’d just—” She makes a big, sweeping gesture that Katya can only assume is meant to convey come downstairs and knock on your door and absolutely turn your evening upside down because I’m Trixie motherfucking Mattel.
“Oh, the shower’s giving you trouble?” Katya asks, in a voice that sounds completely foreign to her own ears. She doesn’t fucking talk like this, like some extra from Grease. She clears her throat, adjusts her posture. “Sorry. There’s something wrong with your shower?”
“Yeah. Sorry, I know this sounds like an awful porn setup—I just figured I should consult somebody who lives here before I blow a thousand dollars on a plumber or something.” Trixie shrugs, and by god she’s beautiful, standing there in a floor-length gown like it’s nothing.
“I can come up and take a look at it, if you want,” Katya’s mouth says with absolutely no input from her brain. “The pipes can be kind of a bitch in this apartment. I assume that it’s the same story in Kasha’s.”
Trixie’s shoulders sink in relief. “Jesus, really? Thank you, I’ll owe you a meal or something—your name is Yekaterina, right?”
The full name makes Katya blink rapidly like she’s been struck across the face. The butchered pronunciation falling from Trixie’s mouth doesn’t carry quite the same weight as it did when her father yelled it in gruff, fluent Russian at her across the house, but even watered down, it has the same immobilizing effect.
“Katya,” she manages. “It’s Katya.”
Trixie nods, and although the twist of her lips tells Katya that she wants to interrogate that reaction, she doesn’t say a word about it. “Okay,” she says instead. It’s far too gentle for her to handle right now. “Katya.”
Instead of standing there dumbly for one second longer, Katya decides to grab her toolbox. It’s an old gift from her parents that she has never touched before, but by God, she will fake being butch for Trixie Mattel. She shimmies into some gym shorts and tightens her bird’s nest bun into something approximating secure, appraising herself in the mirror.
“Passable,” she says aloud.
When she strides back into the room, trying to project confidence and an intricate knowledge of shoddy California plumbing, Trixie’s standing where she left her in the living room. Her eyes are glued to the John Waters movie that’s still playing.
Katya allows herself a brief second to take it all in: there’s a gorgeous woman in a perfectly-fitted blush-pink gown standing at ease on Katya’s area rug, her mouth moving along absentmindedly to the filthy lines that Divine is spouting up on the screen, and she’s likely going to be nominated for a Golden Globe in a few hours.
“You a John Waters fan?” Katya asks loudly, startling Trixie and effectively shattering the beautiful, pink-edged peace of the moment.
“Oh, he’s my president,” Trixie says emphatically, to her credit seeming unbothered in the wake of Katya’s outburst. “I met him once at a film festival a couple of years ago and lost my mind about it.”
“Oh my god, shut up, oh my god. Shut the hell up. Really?” Katya asks, giddy and disbelieving.
Trixie grins, swipes her phone unlocked, and after a few navigational taps on the screen pulls up a photo of herself and motherfucking John Waters. Trixie looks young, wide-eyed and stunned by the flash but clearly over the moon to be standing next to her hero.
“I’ll be damned,” Katya says, shaking her head, and then grins toothily up at Trixie. “Nice peace sign.”
“Okay, whatever, I was nervous and—”
“You were a very entrepreneurial young woman making her way up in the world through the power of peace and excellent snuff film,” Katya says sagely, shifting the toolbox to the other hand.
Trixie rolls her eyes, which delights Katya to no end. She’s easy to needle, but is just as quick to give it right back, a relatively novel and exciting concept.
A lot of the time, Katya feels like she has to tone herself down when she first meets someone. Ease them in slowly to all of the barbs and the references and the flailing. Trixie is right there with her already—there is something wildly intoxicating about it.
“You got the tools,” Trixie notes, cutting a glance down to the rickety toolbox. “Instead of commenting on who I was meeting five years ago, did you perhaps want to actually do something with them?”
Katya snickers, but turns and lets Trixie lead her up to Kasha’s place, swinging the toolbox casually in her grip as they walk and trying not to objectify the next great star of America’s silver screen.
Because, well, wow. Mathematically speaking, Trixie is all curves. Bhaskara would go nuts if he saw the pink-clothed goddess his theories of sines and cosines had conspired to create. Her ass is at eye level as Katya follows her up the stairs, and she forces her gaze to her feet as her mouth goes dry.
She’s just here to fix a fucking shower (that she doesn’t know how to fix). She will put her metaphorical dick away for five minutes and muddle through this, so help her God, her unintentional months of celibacy and resulting pent-up arousal be damned.
Trixie swings the door open easily, having left it unlocked in her journey down to Katya’s place, and she holds it ajar so that Katya can follow her in.
Katya’s only met Mrs. Davis—Kasha, apparently—once or twice, but the interior decor of the apartment immediately makes sense with the personality she garnered from those brief meetings. It’s all extremely dated, gaudy pieces, once saturated with color but now more muted with age. The aesthetic of Kasha’s space seems like a hand-me-down sweater for Trixie—it doesn’t not fit her, with the blush pinks and ‘60s prints, but you can tell that it doesn’t belong to her.
She looks just a little out of place as she walks in ahead of Katya, sticking herself firmly by the pile of pink suitcases that must be hers. She points a finger over at a door with a big, garish LADIES sign on it, quintessentially middle-aged woman couture.
“That’s the bathroom,” she directs, shrugging. “I don’t know. You can give it your best shot.”
“I surely will,” Katya says, and turns her best, most winning grin on Trixie, just to see what she’ll do. She blushes a very pretty shade of pink and turns around, mumbling something about needing to find something in the myriad of suitcases.
Well. That’s an interesting response Katya doesn’t have the time to address right now.
She salutes and pushes through the door with the terrible sign, setting her toolbox down in the tub and flopping down to take a seat alongside it. She stares up at the showerhead. It doesn’t look like anything’s wrong with it, so that’s Katya’s first plan of action foiled, and when she stands up and taps it with her hand nothing magically starts working, so her second one is shot, too.
After about fifteen minutes of Katya engaging in a one-sided staring match with the faucet, Trixie shows up in the doorway sipping from a glass of wine.
“How’s it going?” she asks, her tone a little too amused for Katya’s comfort.
Fearing the jig is up, Katya purses her lips and decides to sell it even harder. Blaze of glory, and all that. “I’m going to be frank, this is worse than I thought,” she says seriously, pushing her glasses up her nose.
“Really?” Trixie asks, the teasing dropped from her voice as it’s replaced with real concern. “Fuck, did I do something to it?”
She looks genuinely worried, her brown eyes wide and fearful, so Katya gives herself a nice pat on the back for her own theatricality, which is rarely serviceable, and then drops the act to avoid fraying Trixie’s psyche further. “No, not really,” she says. “It’s just not working.”
“Jesus, don’t scare me like that,” Trixie says, grinning. Her tensed shoulders have gone slack in relief, but then she starts working her lip between her teeth as she realizes something. “I’m kind of fucked, then, aren’t I?”
“My shower’s open,” Katya offers, and then cringes a little bit at how that sounds. “I mean, you can borrow my shower tonight and I will make myself scarce when you do. If you want.”
“If I want?” Trixie parrots, mocking her with a wonderful, sly tilt to her mouth.
“I just figured you might want a chance to rinse off this cotton-candy coating,” Katya tells her, grinning at the banter, gesturing to the pink gown and pink earrings and pink detailing in her hair. She looks rosy and sugary-sweet in the lamplight of Kasha’s place. Delectable.
“Mm. You would not be wrong,” Trixie says dryly, cracking her neck to one side. “I… okay. If you’re serious, and you’re sure you don’t mind.”
Katya nods. “Wouldn’t have offered if I did,” she says cheerfully, because it’s true. “I’ll head out to the courtyard while you’re indecent, give you some space. Just stick your head out the window and shout when you’re done. Should be open.”
“I should ask you if you’re a serial killer, but you clearly are,” Trixie says carefully, and sure, Katya’s only known her for a little while, but she likes to think she can hear the edge of a smile in her voice.
She smiles back, the one that shows all her teeth, and cranes her head at a disturbing angle. “I wouldn’t do that to you, Tritzie,” she coos, and Trixie’s face scrunches up in disgust before she barks out a real laugh.
Katya hasn’t heard it before in any of the interviews she’s watched—this laugh is screechy and grating to the ears as it rises and falls like a wave. It’s such a perfectly distilled sound of human joy that all Katya can do is break right along with her, her awful smoker’s wheeze of a laugh folding in to Trixie’s scream.
“You’re a psychopath,” Trixie pants, catching her breath, holding her index fingers under her eyes to catch her tears from laughing. “Jesus Christ, oh my God.”
Katya, a little out of breath from laughing herself, just grins at her before hopping up out of the shower. “Come on, I feel like you might calcify to the floor if you stay in one place too long,” she tells her. “What’s all this for, anyway?” She gestures to the pink opulence Trixie appears to be draped in from head to toe—except her face, which is mysteriously bare.
Trixie was leading the way back out the front door, so when she stops in her tracks at the question it means she bumps into Katya. “Sorry,” she says automatically, reaching out a hand to steady her. It’s unthinkingly sweet. “Um. It was for a photoshoot.”
The walls that Katya could instantly sense when she opened the door and saw Trixie have clearly been thrown back up. She’s disappointed at first, but then a shiver of self-revulsion creeps up and down her spine at the uneven dynamic at work here, one that Trixie isn’t even aware of. Katya spent the whole day researching Trixie Mattel for her article—Trixie met Katya minutes ago, and has no idea who she is.
“Oh, cool,” she says simply, hoping the enthusiasm in her tone doesn’t come across as desperate, and drops it immediately, resuming the walk back to her apartment. Trixie will tell her if she wants to. If she doesn’t, that is none of Katya’s goddamn business. Katya already knows too much.
“Hold on,” Trixie says strongly, and it’s Katya’s turn to pause, keeping her feet rooted where they are as she turns her head around slowly like she’s in a screwball comedy. Her heart pounds. Does Trixie know too much? Did she see Katya’s computer? Does she know who she is? “Slow down. I need to find my shower stuff in these bags.”
“Oh,” Katya replies, more than a little stupidly. “Yeah, duh. Sorry.”
Trixie digs out no less than five different hair care products from one bag, then yanks a towel out from another, and then stands there working her lip between her teeth again until Katya figures out she’s probably trying to remember where her pajamas are.
“I have shirts,” she volunteers easily. “And pants, too, if you ask really nicely.”
Trixie snaps her gaze up, like she’d forgotten Katya was there. She laughs (not the same full-throttle cackle as before, which is extremely disappointing) and then releases a big sigh.
“Yeah, that would probably be easiest,” she says, pressing the heel of her free hand into her eye. “Thanks. I fucking hate moving.”
Katya almost decides to regale her with the tale of the time her mom had to move a sex doll out of her old Boston apartment, but then just as quickly decides against it. Probably not the time.
“Okay, here’s the shower,” she tells Trixie once they’re back in Katya’s apartment, the John Waters movie in the living room paused on a truly excellent expression on Edith Massey’s face. She points to the faucet, points to the showerhead. “It’s exactly like Kasha’s, but it works.”
“Mm,” Trixie says dryly, nods. She’s running out of humor, but so would Katya, if she had come out of a photoshoot of the caliber Trixie’s gown suggests and had to contend with herself to be able to take a shower.
“I’ll leave you be,” she promises, brandishing the pajamas she agonized over selecting for just a few minutes too long in her room.
Trixie snorts at the illustration of the Pan’s Labyrinth hand-eye monster over the front of the shirt Katya chose.
“Comfy,” she snarks, shakes her head, but a smile tugs at her mouth. “Thanks again, Katya. For all of this.”
“Oh, of course,” Katya says, waving a hand. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll be in the courtyard.” She jerks a thumb over her shoulder towards the window that looks out onto the pitiful little square of dehydrated grass. “Give a shout out the window when you’re done.”
Trixie nods again, then closes the bathroom door behind her. As Katya heads for the courtyard with her keys and a fresh pack of cigarettes, she hears the water start up, then the screech of Trixie’s voice: “Are you kidding me? It’s that easy?”
Katya smirks, shakes her head, then jogs down the stairs out to the front courtyard.
Sitting in the lone chair out here, lighting up a cigarette in the still of the night, makes it finally set in how fucking bizarre this all is. Katya feels like a witch. A soothsayer. She called out into the universe for Trixie, and now here she is.
She drafts a text to Willow.
So, a newly A-list Hollywood celebrity is using my shower, she types, then deletes it.
Trixie Mattel is in my home. Delete.
My pussy’s summoning powers are getting stronger, Mother… delete. She kind of stares at that one for a while, though.
She shuts off her phone without sending anything and takes an especially long drag on her cigarette. Telling anyone else about this moment feels like it’ll break it, somehow. This feels like a story to be savored, one that she should bring up on her deathbed at the last possible moment, having held it to her chest for decades but needing it to be spoken out into the universe. Once, oh, marvelous once… Trixie Mattel knocked on my door, and I lied about having plumbing expertise because I didn’t know what else to do…
Her first cigarette is dead, so she throws it to the ground, extinguishes it under her heel, and then lights another one.
The strangest part of all of this, really, after her obvious initial shock, is that it honestly doesn’t feel weird having Trixie in the apartment. She fits somehow, an impossibly tall Barbie that wound up among Katya’s матрёшка dolls and carved out a space for herself. She strikes Katya as someone who is used to that. She seems like she’s had a lot of practice carving out space for herself, in this world that doesn’t quite deserve her.
Everyone else in Katya’s life, when she first meets them, always feels a little bit like an invader. She spends so much time in her own head that real people take some adjusting to. But Trixie hopped over that hurdle easily, as if it didn’t exist, and now she’s occupying space in Katya’s head like she’s never not been there.
Is this comfort something to be concerned about? She pulls her legs up to her chest and crosses them at the ankles, puffs around her cigarette.
Addictive personalities are no joke, Mary. It’s something she has to be constantly careful of, lest she pull someone into her orbit and be unable to let them go. To extend the metaphor, it would only end in cosmic disaster—planets colliding, black holes being created, blah blah blah.
There’s a banging sound behind her that interrupts her thoughts, and when she turns instinctively she sees her window fly open to reveal Trixie. She’s lit from behind by the lamps in the living room, so Katya can’t make out her facial expression when she shouts, “Your water pressure sucks.”
“Yeah,” Katya yells back, not arguing. “Sorry.” It seems like the right thing to say, but she sees Trixie’s posture flinch.
“No, you don’t need to—that wasn’t a real complaint,” Trixie says hastily. “I—Jesus. Come up here, I hate yelling like this.”
Obediently, Katya stubs out the cigarette, wasting a couple hundredths of ounces of tobacco, and jogs back up the stairs.
“I was trying to be funny,” Trixie says petulantly as soon as Katya comes in the back door.
If seeing her in the gown, a red carpet glamoured vision, was a mindfuck for Katya, seeing Trixie Mattel in Katya’s Pale Man t-shirt that’s just a little too small and Katya’s flannel pants that are just a little too short is something else entirely. Something that hits her more squarely in the chest.
Trixie snorts, then. “You’re weird,” she says, uncrosses her arms and then starts to move before pausing where she stands.
Katya would like to kiss her, she thinks. Or ask her if that would be something she would want. She’s old, now, or older, and her methods of beguiling have dwindled to just point-blank requests.
Miss Mattel, care for a fucking?
That’s too much to say to Trixie, though, even for Katya, so instead they both just stand there, each seemingly biting something back.
“Do you like Pink Flamingos? I didn’t, really, the first time I saw it,” Trixie volunteers, still not having moved from where she’s standing by the kitchen table. “Too gross. I think I’ve only seen it the once.”
“Yeah?” Katya says. She feels stuck in a low gear, only able to supply simple one-syllable words. She clears her throat. “Wanna stay till it’s over?”
Trixie’s eyes widen. She smiles a little bit.
“Yeah, all right,” she says.
It goes back to being easy, after that one charged moment in the kitchen. Trixie sits on one end of the couch, both legs tucked under her primly, and Katya sits all splayed out on the other end. Divine stands disgusting and beautiful on the TV and bathes them in a blue-screen glow.
Trixie mumbles the lines along with Divine from the other end of the couch, her eyes locked and unblinking on the screen. Katya giggles.
“So you said you don’t like this movie?”
“It’s fucking abhorrent,” Trixie tells her, shaking her head. “But you can’t deny that Divine kills.”
“Well, yeah, she condones first-degree murder. I know the line too,” Katya says with a smirk, dodging out of reach of the kick Trixie attempts to land on her. “How did you even find this movie? Film class?”
“No, no, there’s this film critic I love—”
Trixie sits up eagerly, her eyes alight, and hives instantly begin to prickle over Katya’s chest.
“She writes these reviews every week. Sometimes they’re for blockbusters, sometimes they’re completely off-the-wall hidey-hole flicks, and sometimes she just goes on a multi-day rampage where she watches movies by the same director for days at a time. Sometimes even the same movie.”
“What’s her name?” Katya asks, hoping her voice comes out right. She can’t really tell.
“Oh, the site’s called I Like To Watch, but she posts under Katie Homophobia—” Katya’s hives instantly get worse, she can feel it, and her cheeks flame. “Nobody knows her real name, though. It’s crazy. She’s bigger than the New York Times some weeks, and she’s completely anonymous.”
“So she’s, um. She likes John Waters, then?” Katya asks, nodding at the screen.
“Yeah, she loves the original Hairspray. She watched Pink Flamingos, too, but that one she branded as disgusting. Good, too, she gave it a good review, but disgusting—I was intrigued, so I watched it, and I agree with her. Still do,” she adds, flicking a look back up to the screen.
“So do you borrow all your film opinions from, um. From Miss Homophobia?”
Trixie scoffs. “No.” She smiles then, pleased with herself. “Just most of them.”
“I don’t really watch many movies,” Katya says abruptly, some dumbass part of her trying to push herself as far away from I Like To Watch as possible with maybe the stupidest excuse ever fathomed.
“Oh?” Trixie asks, amused, and Katya realizes that she’s looking around at all the vintage theater display posters, the original film reel of Silence of the Lambs, the tall stack of film books on the coffee table.
“New movies,” Katya amends, sort of desperately. “I don’t go to the theater much.”
“Mm,” Trixie replies, apparently satisfied with that. She opens her mouth, but then closes it immediately—something shifts in her expression, and she says nothing.
They settle back into mutual silence for the rest of the movie, Trixie occasionally making retching noises at the dog shit scene and Katya staring blankly at one part of the screen without really blinking.
Trixie Mattel is an avid reader of I Like To Watch. Well. That’s certainly something.
It’s obviously kind of terrible, another card on top of the rapidly growing stack of Things Katya Knows That Trixie Doesn’t Know and Maybe Should Share With Her, but all Katya can find herself thinking of is if Trixie has ever commented on any of her posts. If they’ve ever interacted before today.
I would’ve known, she thinks vehemently to herself. I would have felt—something.
Pink Flamingos ends, and the TV segues right into Hairspray on autoplay after the credits roll. Katya looks over at Trixie, who looks right back and shrugs before settling back into the couch cushions to watch the movie.
After Hairspray’s over, of course it’s Female Trouble up next, and then at some point while Divine is strangling her daughter onscreen over dressing like a nun Katya falls asleep.
When she wakes up, her wall clock reads seven in the morning, barely legible in the low light of dawn, and Trixie’s snoring on the other end of the couch. She looks sweet, Katya thinks drowsily.
A noise is blaring from somewhere. It’s loud enough that it makes Katya clap her hands over her ears once she gains enough consciousness to hear it and figure out where it’s coming from: the pink phone on the coffee table, presumably Trixie’s.
Trixie’s phone is doing that thing that phones do when you get so many texts that your phone can’t possibly make enough noises to notify you of them all. It’s ringing, it’s buzzing, it’s chiming, all at once, and Trixie is sleeping through the whole thing.
Katya glances over at Trixie, snoring like a train, and then it hits her.
The woman sleeping on Katya’s couch has just been nominated for a Golden Globe.
Nominations started just before six, the Best Actress category would be happening around now, it all makes sense.
Katya should wake her up, she should hold the phone to her ear, she should at least plug the phone in before it dies.
All she can get herself to do at this moment, though, is just kind of sit there in the knowledge that everything is about to change. The feeling of standing on a precipice that she had last night when Trixie looked her right in the eyes and told Katya about her own film site returns full force. It makes her dizzy.
She shakes her head in an attempt to physically rid herself of the feeling. It doesn’t work, but it loosens something enough that she reaches over to the other side of the couch and shakes Trixie awake, hard.
“Trix,” she whispers as Trixie’s eyes peel open, the nickname coming far too easy, “Trixie. Your phone’s been ringing.”
Trixie’s eyes fly wide as she scrambles to sit up, and Katya knows she figured it out, too.
“Oh, shit,” says Golden Globe nominee Trixie Mattel.
Summary: Bailey is in need of a little pep talk at the cast party, and she finds it from the most unexpected source: her niece's boyfriend.
Pairing(s): Rory/MC, Aiden/MC
Word count: 956
Warnings: Extreme amounts of fluff ❤️
Song:
Just a little heads up: I have two HSS MCs, Grace and Callie. Callie is the one that broke her leg. Bailey is Grace's aunt. Keep that in mind as you read. Now let's jump right in!
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Even though it was her own party, hosted at her place, Bailey was feeling incredibly nervous.
She had been nursing the same red cup of soda for about twenty minutes, glancing around from time to time before taking a síp.
Her thoughts were interrupted by Grace's voice greeting her, as she and her boyfriend approached, making her startle.
"Oh! Grace and Aiden! Didn't expect to see you here!"
"Well, I might not be part of the cast but I did your kick-ass make up! If Sydney can be here, so can I!"
"And... I did compose a lovely piece for the play" added Aiden with a gentle smile, before shrugging. "But we can leave if you--"
"That's not what I meant!" Bailey interjected immediately, suddenly a bit more nervous. She sighed deeply. "I just meant... never mind. Of course you can be here, even if you hadn't contributed to the play. We're family after all."
"Awwwww!"
Grace approached her younger aunt to hug her tightly, making her almost spill what was left of her soda. Aiden stood by and watched, noticing just how anxious Bailey seemed to be... and how that anxiousness increased whenever her eyes found Rory, talking to a group of friends close to the window.
He felt a pang of sympathy deep inside him. He knew what was happening. And maybe he could help her out.
"I'm gonna go get us something to drink, I'm parched" Grace disentangled herself from Bailey and gave Aiden a quick peck on the lips. "Don't miss me too much!"
He watched her walk away with a tiny smile and a deep blush, before turning to the freshman next to him, taking another nervous sip from her cup as she side glanced the window.
"So... is tonight 'the night'?"
Bailey startled again, almost choking with her soda. She gave him a questioning look, and Aiden shrugged as he shoved his hands inside the pockets of his jeans.
"It's just... you're acting exactly like me, almost a year ago. The night I asked Grace to be my girlfriend" he explained, and couldn't help but sigh with a nostalgic gleam in his eyes. "I was wondering if maybe you were thinking of asking something similar to a certain someone."
His eyes found Rory as well, and Bailey looked away immediately, hiding the lower half of her face with her cup. She sighed heavily.
"Is it that obvious?"
"Perhaps only to me, since I can relate" Aiden turned to her with a little smile, arching an eyebrow. "So, are you ready to take the leap or not?"
"I don't know! I mean, I really want to but... what if he doesn't like me back?"
Aiden couldn't help but chuckle at that, receiving an accusatory look from the girl. He raised his hands to show that he meant no harm with it.
"Sorry, it's just... you really remind me of myself right now. I also wondered days and nights if Grace would like to date me or not. The very night I asked her, I almost didn't."
"But you did... and she said yes and now you're together" Bailey finished her soda before letting out a despondent sigh.
"But what if she had said no? What if she preferred to keep it casual, which definitely wouldn't work for me?" he questioned out loud, both to her and to himself, a pensive expression in his face.
After a moment of silence, and another stolen glance at Rory, Bailey spoke again.
"What would have happened then?"
"Well, quite frankly, it would've sucked" he replied with a smile, shaking his head as he spotted Grace talking to Erin and Casey, clearly forgetting about the drinks she was supposed to get. "But at least I would have known for sure, and would be able to move on. I'm immensely happy that it wasn't the case, of course. I love Grace, and I'm thankful for her every single day."
Bailey couldn't help but feel astonished and a bit overwhelmed at those words. Aiden and Grace were in love. It showed in the way they talked to each other and about each other, the looks they shared, even the simplest gestures such as Aiden composing melodies for her and Grace writing lyrics for him.
She wanted that kind of love for herself. And whenever she saw Rory, she felt that warm fuzzy feeling that romance novels talked about. Maybe it wasn't love yet, but it was enough for her.
And she wouldn't know if he felt the same about her if she didn't do something.
"I'm ready."
There was a glimpse of determination in her eyes as she left her empty cup aside, eyes on the window, where Rory laughed at something they couldn't hear. Aiden couldn't help but smile, feeling a strange sense of pride.
"Sorry, Erin was telling me the funniest story just now" Grace approached them again, two red cups full of soda in her hands. She raised an eyebrow at her aunt. "You're ready for what?"
"You'll see. Excuse me, I need to do something important."
Bailey walked away then, taking deep breaths and slow steps to calm down. He could hear Grace and Aiden talking, their voices lowering the more distance she walked.
"What were you two talking about?"
"About how lucky I am to have the most wonderful girlfriend."
"... I'm sure that's not true, but keep them compliments coming...!"
Bailey couldn't help but smile a bit to herself, and before she knew it, she was standing right beside Rory, Clint and Natalie taking notice of her right away.
Rory turned around and his eyes softened with affection at the sight of her, with a smile. She smiled too.
She was ready.
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Author notes: Hi! I hope you enjoyed this short little thing! I wasn't planning on writing it but inspiration hit so here we are. Thanks for reading! ❤️
(Tagged as "zig writes", in case you want to block that tag. Also as "long post". I'll try to add a Read more from mobile. Thanks for your patience.)
Summary: Damien knew very well that they weren't done with Eros yet. And even though he was a patient man, he wanted to make sure Nick knew his true feelings before it was too late.
Pairing(s): Damien/MC
Word count: 888
Warnings: None at all! Just pure unadulterated fluff, like the birthday boy wanted 💕
Song: Say it again - Marié Digby
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It was the middle of the night. Nick was peacefully sleeping by his side, but that wouldn't be the case for long if he kept tossing and turning in the bed.
Damien was really trying to rest as well. He was going to need it to face whatever Eros would throw their way the next day at the RHH Convention Center.
It's not everyday you try to save the president's life from the clutches of evil robots and a James Bond-like villain, after all.
Regardless, he couldn't stay still for more than three minutes or less. And just as he expected, Nick started to wake up a few moments later.
"No, no, no... shhhh" he immediately turned to him, soothingly caressing his arm in an attempt to keep him asleep. "Don't wake up, please..."
"Too late for that" Nick replied with a goofy grin, eyes barely open, but as mischievous as ever.
Damien sighed in defeat, but a tiny smile tugged the edge of his lips. He brought his hand to his boyfriend's face, softly as he yawned.
"I didn't mean to wake you up."
"I would hope so. We would have a problem otherwise" Nick was now fully awake, which meant that the relentless teasing was on again. "What is keeping you up so late?"
He didn't reply immediately. Mostly because he was trying to find the best way to phrase what he wanted to say. What he had to say.
"Remember the other day, back in LA? In the couch, I said that I--"
"--liiiiike me very much?"
Damien rolled his eyes at the interruption, but the smile on his face made it clear that he wasn't actually mad. He shook his head.
"The moment hasn't even started and you're already ruining it. Why am I not surprised?"
Nick buried his face on his pillow as he laughed heartily, muffling the sound just enough so they wouldn't have Nadia banging their door so they would keep it down.
"Sorry, sorry. Please, go on."
They both sighed, and as Damien could tell by his expression, Nick was actually listening now, intently. With his full attention, he continued.
"I know I said I was going to wait for a special moment, but... every moment with you is special. Sappy as it may be, it's true."
He cupped Nick's face with his hand, his thumb caressing his cheek as he stared deep into his eyes. He took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.
"I love you, Nick. I think I've loved you for a long, long time. And it's about time I said it."
He fell silent after that, closing his eyes, feeling his cheeks start to burn with embarrassment. For a few seconds he feared he wouldn't get a reply of any sort, but his eyes opened wide when he felt Nick's hand on top of his own, keeping him close.
"I love you too, Damien. I really do."
He took his hand and kissed his palm softly, sending a shiver down Damien's back.
"You're one of best things that's ever happened to me. Right up there with QuikFlix and Steve's lemon bars."
Damien scoffed at that, and Nick laughed once again, forgetting to keep it down this time around. When his laughter faded, his expression softened, and Damien knew that he meant every word, as teasing as they were.
He couldn't help but close the distance, pressing his lips firmly against Nick's. He could feel his smile against him before he kissed back eagerly, stealing a sigh from him.
Biting his lower lip ever so slightly, the promise of more in the near future, Nick pulled away, looking almost dazed. Damien couldn't help but smile at that, feeling proud of himself for being the cause of that reaction.
After a moment of confortable silence, Nick sighed with relief.
"It feels good to actually say it."
"Yeah?" Damien asked, placing a hand on Nick's waist to pull him a bit closer "Why don't you say it again, then?"
He made it sound as playful as possible, but he actually wanted to hear it again. It made him feel warm and tingly inside, and he liked that feeling very much.
Nick was able to see through his facade, and with a mischievous grin he pulled himself up with his elbow, looking at his boyfriend from above.
He leaned down so he could place soft kisses on his face. Once on his forehead, both of his cheeks, his nose, his chin, accentuating every caress of his lips with his whispered words.
"I... love... you... so... much..."
He finally landed on his lips, pouring his feelings out in that one kiss, repeating himself without words this time.
When he pulled back, Damien slowly opened his eyes, a stunned expression adorning his features before he broke into a grin. He looked the happiest Nick had ever seen him.
Nick fell on his back with a soft thud against the mattress, with Damien hovering over him and returning the favor of planting kisses across his face, though his were faster and more fervent, leaving him laughing softly.
He stopped a few moments later, resting his forehead on Nick's, once again staring deep into his eyes, seeing the same longing and devotion reflecting on his own.
"Hey, Nick?"
"Yeah?"
"Say it again."
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Author notes: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, NATE! 💞💕💓 I know it's a bit late, and a bit short, but I hope you still like it! I enjoyed writing it very much! 💖 I'll try to add a Read more to this, and I hope it works (I know many people are bothered by having to scroll through fics, but please understand, we're trying our best 😟). It'll be tagged as long post too. Thanks for reading! Hope you liked it!
