Spoiler Alert (Spoiler Alert #1)(7)
At her new workplace, she wouldn’t need to shield different parts of herself for fear of others’ disapproval. As of next week, billability no longer concerned her.
In fact . . .
It didn’t concern her now, either. Not anymore.
“Thank you so much for the invitation, Bashir.” When she hugged him, he patted her back tentatively. “I’m busy this weekend, unfortunately. I have to be at my new apartment, getting it ready for the move. But I’ll be back in town late next week. Can we do dinner then instead?”
When she pulled away, he smiled down at her, looking pleased. “Of course. I’ll check Mimi’s schedule and text you later tonight, after we get back from dinner at her family’s house. They live nearby, so I’m heading there now.”
Fuck billability, she thought.
“I plan to spend the evening eating a room service burger and writing Gods of the Gates fanfiction,” she told him. “Your night sounds much more exciting.”
He blinked at her for a few seconds before flashing an impish grin. “You only say that because you haven’t met my in-laws.”
She laughed. “Fair enough.”
“When we have dinner, I want to hear more about your writing.” His head tilted; he was studying her curiously. “Mimi loves that show. Especially the pretty dude.”
“Marcus Caster-Rupp?” Honestly, it could be any one of a handful of actors, but Caster-Rupp was undeniably the prettiest dude of all. Also the most boring. So boring, she sometimes wondered how one man could be so shiny, yet so incredibly dull.
“That’s the one.” He directed a pained grimace at the heavens. “He’s on her freebie list. Every time we stream an episode, she’s always very insistent about that.”
April patted his arm. “Think about it this way: She won’t ever actually meet him. None of us will, unless we move to LA and start selling vital organs to pay for our haircuts.”
“Huh.” His expression brightened. “That’s true.”
Before leaving the site, they thanked the drill crew. Then, after she exchanged one last round of goodbyes with Bashir, he climbed into his car while she boosted herself into the driver’s seat of the truck. With a farewell beep, she headed toward her hotel, while he drove to his in-laws’ home.
With each mile she traveled, invisible tethers surrounding her seemed to snap free, leaving her oddly, giddily buoyant. Yeah, she still had a personal drilling rig operating in her skull, but a few glasses of water would take care of the headache, no problem. And so what if she had dirt all over her jeans? Even contaminated soil couldn’t sully the essential, joyful truth.
She caught a glimpse of herself in the rearview mirror. Her smile was so wide, she might as well have been starring in a toothpaste commercial.
And no wonder. No wonder.
This was her last day in the dirt.
She was starting now.
WHEN SHE GOT back to the hotel, she dumped her jeans into a waiting plastic bag and got naked. In the shower, she scrubbed her body pink under the hot spray.
Her clean flannel pajamas felt like a cloud against her skin as she drained a glass of water and read over BAWN’s latest messages. At long last, he’d decided what to write for his next fic. Monday’s prompt for their upcoming Aeneas and Lavinia Week requested a showdown between Aeneas’s two lady loves, and BAWN had been contemplating the best way to handle it for days.
Since the two women haven’t met in the books or on the show, you could always come up with a fluffy alternate-universe story, which is what I’m doing, she’d written before work that morning, already knowing how he’d respond to that suggestion. Or—and I really think this idea might work for you—maybe Aeneas could dream about the showdown, so you can keep things canon-compliant and in his POV? What do you think?
The latter option offered plenty of opportunity for angst, so of course he’d chosen that one. BAWN was such an insightful writer, but April had to admit it: some of his fics were depressing as hell.
Less so now than when he’d started, though. Back then, even his Aeneas/Lavinia stories had been bursting with their hero’s guilt and shame when it came to Dido, all dirges and funeral pyres and lamentations. April’s first real conversation with BAWN on the Lavineas server, in fact, had involved her half-joking suggestion that he use the tag misery ahoy! on some of his fics.
For his mental health alone, it was better for him to focus on the Lavinia-Aeneas OTP. Clearly. Writing occasional fluffy fics wouldn’t do him any harm, either.
Tonight, though, she didn’t have time for the Good Gospel of Fluff. By the time she finished describing her own fluffy AU fic idea—Lavinia and Dido would meet as teenage combatants in a trivia contest, their feelings for Aeneas making each round of questions and answers increasingly fraught and hilarious—she was on the verge of losing her courage. Again.
Months ago, when she’d applied for her new job, she’d decided she was done shielding different parts of herself for fear of others’ disapproval. That applied to her fandom too.
On Twitter, to dodge possible professional disaster, she’d always cropped her cosplay pictures to exclude her face. But she’d failed to share her Twitter handle with fellow Lavineas stans for an entirely different reason.
Her body.
She hadn’t wanted her friends on the server to see her body in those Lavinia costumes. Particularly one of those friends, whose opinion mattered more than it should.