#and thanks to hashtag-art for giving me permission to write a fic | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

ladylynse · 5 years

Text

Forewarning: [FF | AO3] All Dipper knew was that there was something buried in some special thermos behind the shack; all Danny knew was that he had no idea how he'd gotten here.

Inspired by this beautiful piece of fanart by @hashtag-art, who very kindly gave me permission to write this fic. This story is also for @bibliophileap. Happy birthday!

“The book mentioned there might be something stuck in some special thermos that’s buried just behind the shack,” Dipper explained as he sank the spade into the ground again.

Mabel eyed him, unimpressed, and made no move to pick up the trowel that rested a few feet from where Dipper stood. “What else did the book say?” It lay open at his feet, but she couldn’t make out anything from where she sat.

Dipper tossed the dirt aside and looked guilty. “I’m not sure.”

“You didn’t read it?”

“No, I read it. I just couldn’t make it out.”

“So the page had water damage or something?”

Dipper shook his head. “It wasn’t in English.”

“So—?”

“It’s in some kind of code or made up language.” Dipper stepped on the spade, widening his hole. “I can’t crack it. Or translate it. And I don’t exactly want to ask for help.”

He didn’t know who they could trust. He’d always been more suspicious than her, but their adventures this summer just seemed to cement his conviction that his suspicions were valid. Personally, she still thought he was a bit crazy, but he was her brother; that was expected.

“Not a cipher you know, huh?” mused Mabel as Dipper continued his work. “Even after you went through that code book two years ago? Impressive, bro-bro. This author of the journals must be good.”

“It’s the only page coded this way, though. That’s what I don’t get. There’s text hidden on other pages, but nothing else is the same as this.”

“Then maybe—” Mabel broke off as she heard Dipper’s spade hit something. He dropped to his knees to paw at the loosened dirt, and she crawled forward to see what he’d found. Buried treasure, maybe?

Except it wasn’t treasure; she could see that now. It was metal, dulled from its time in the earth, but it didn’t look like anything valuable. Even as Dipper worked to scrape the dirt away, it…. It really did look like an old thermos someone had forgotten about.

“What’s supposed to be inside again?” Mabel asked slowly.

“That’s the part I can’t translate.”

Bright, lurid green peeked out from beneath the dirt now, along with…buttons? Not just any old thermos, then, though she had no idea how it was supposed to be special. Mabel met Dipper’s eyes, and he bit his lip as he reached for the lid.

He couldn’t get it loose until she held the thermos in place while he turned with both hands, and then it came off with a pop. They both pulled back as smoke—vapour—something—began to swirl out of the thermos.

Genie? Mabel mouthed, hoping to catch Dipper’s eye, but he was too focused on the churning mist. It was beginning to form a humanoid shape now. She watched in silence, wondering if they were about to get three wishes—or some less pleasant surprise.

The vapour thickened, darkening in some places and lightening in others until the figure—the boy? Genie? Ghost?—almost looked solid.

And then he fell to his hands and knees with a very solid thud and let out a groan. Mabel would have shrieked if Dipper’s hand wasn’t suddenly covering her mouth; she hadn’t even realized he’d moved beside her, though she wasn’t surprised to see he’d grabbed the journal, too. She nodded slightly, and his hand dropped.

The boy had his back to them; he might not even have seen them. All she could see now was a shock of white hair and his weird black and white suit—not entirely unlike what Blendin had worn, though it looked to be made out of a different material.

“Aw, crud, how long was I in there this time?” The boy—whatever else he was, he was definitely a boy—climbed unsteadily to his feet. And then he stopped, looked around, and turned.

Saw the Mystery Shack.

Saw them gawking at him.

“Uh….” Bright green eyes blinked. “You’re, um, not who I thought you’d be.” He looked down and saw the empty thermos that had been his prison. He bent to scoop up the lid Dipper had dropped, and even though the thermos itself was still partially buried in the ground, he had no trouble pulling it out. He had barely touched it before it was free and clean of dirt to boot.

He must have noticed that they hadn’t moved, because he shot them a smile as he screwed the lid back onto the thermos. “You’ve, ah, probably guessed this, but I’m Phantom.”

“Ghost,” Dipper muttered.

Phantom frowned. “It’s Danny Phantom, actually,” he said slowly, “which is clearly not ringing bells with either of you. Um, where exactly am I? I don’t remember any Mystery Shack thing around Amity Park.”

Mabel glanced at Dipper, but he didn’t seem to know the name, either. He also wasn’t making any weird facial expressions to convey that she shouldn’t answer, so she said, “We’re in Gravity Falls.”

He scratched his head. “Is that in Wisconsin?”

“Oregon,” Dipper answered, narrowing his eyes.

“How did I wind up in Oregon?” Phantom—Danny?—asked, though he didn’t seem to expect an answer out of them. “Does Vlad have another cabin out here or something? Do you guys know Vlad Masters? Or have you heard of him?”

They shook their heads.

“But….” He looked at the thermos again. At the hole in the ground. The shovel, the trowel, even the journal under Dipper’s arm. “If you guys don’t know about Vlad, why…? How did I get there? How did you find me? Were you even looking for me?” He took a step back, then another, and then he just…vanished.

“Maybe he’s a friendly ghost?” Mabel offered when he didn’t reappear.

“He’s in the journal. In code. He can’t be that friendly.”

XXXXXXX

Danny couldn’t remember what had happened, and that’s what scared him the most. He’d been caught in a Fenton Thermos before, loads of times, but he usually remembered it happen. Plenty of those times he’d been caught by Jazz, accidentally or on purpose, or by one of his friends, or he’d been caught unawares in a fight, and then he at least remembered there being a fight, but this time….

This time, everything was muddled.

Nothing about this place seemed familiar from the air. He wasn’t far from a town (not Amity Park, not Elmerton, not anywhere he remembered travelling to with his parents), so he checked it out in case the kids had been lying to him. They didn’t trust him, maybe because they weren’t used to ghosts or maybe because they’d only heard horror stories. He couldn’t really blame them for that. Most people didn’t grow up with ghost-obsessed parents.

Unfortunately, the girl had been telling the truth. This place was Gravity Falls, which no doubt meant it was in Oregon, which meant he had absolutely no idea how he’d gotten here.

Danny settled on a large bough of a maple tree just outside of town and pulled the Fenton Thermos from his pocket. It was in good condition—better condition than the one he usually carried, assuming he remembered to bring it with him. But this thermos was also almost dead, the display barely visible in the daylight, and his presence inside of it was probably the only reason it had lasted this long. If he didn’t recharge it, it wouldn’t be good for anything but soup.

“Why am I here?” Danny whispered. The thermos had been buried. Vlad had no reason to do that to him. If he’d just wanted him out of the way, sure, but not when he still wanted Danny as a son—or, at the absolute very least, a mentee.

He had to be missing something. There must be some clue, somewhere, and if he could just find it—

But there was no way those kids were going to trust him, even if he went back to them for help. He’d seen how they’d looked at him. It wasn’t just them being scared; they’d been wary, too. Maybe they’d run into ghosts before after all. He knew as well as anyone how many unsavoury ghosts were out there. Not everyone was nice once you got to know them.

He might get further with them if he pretended to be normal. He could tell the truth once he knew they wouldn’t try to exorcise him or something. But in case they had run into other ghosts….

Danny concentrated, letting some of his power seep into the thermos to recharge it. He’d rather risk ending up inside the thing again than not having it when he needed it. If he kept it with his suit, he could get it when he needed it and wouldn’t arouse suspicion by carrying it around as Fenton.

Light flared around the thermos and died away, and he flew back down to the ground. The Mystery Shack wasn’t far from town, and given the number of signs nailed to trees around here, it wouldn’t be hard to find on foot. And if it took a bit of time for him to get there, well, that was probably a good thing. Showing up immediately after Phantom had wasn’t going to win him any favours.

Too bad he’d already told them his name was Danny.

XXXXX

Dipper tapped the page of the journal. “He said he was a phantom.”

Springs creaked as Mabel crawled onto his bed behind him to read the description over his shoulder. “He was in black and white,” she pointed out, “and seemed more preoccupied with this Vlad Masters guy than causing pain.”

“That’s because we didn’t summon him. We just released him. Which means we need to catch him again before he tricks anyone into actually summoning him.”

It would take more than a mirror to stop him; Dipper was certain of that much. Of course, the journal was a little vague when it came to the best way to stopping phantoms, but if that thermos thing had contained it for this long, it would work again. Of course, that required him to get the thermos back, and the phantom had taken it. And he wouldn’t have the opportunity to get it back until he found the phantom again.

The easiest way to do that would be to summon it, but Dipper wasn’t going to play into Phantom’s hands. He knew how dangerous ghosts could be, and he wasn’t going to underestimate this one. Especially when it had gotten its own page in the journal.

Well.

Page was a bit of an exaggeration. It was more a small section of a page, mixed in with a collection of other eclectic notes, which was why he’d gone digging in the first place. The author of the journal hadn’t steered him wrong before, and he was surprised the ‘special thermos’ had contained something so dangerous. And why would there be words of code on the page that didn’t match the code used in the rest of the journal? It didn’t make sense.

He’d been hoping for something helpful, some clue about the author, not…this.

“How are we supposed to catch him without summoning him ourselves?”

“He might come back since he knows we’re here. He might think we’re easy prey, being kids.”

Mabel hummed in consideration. “Well, if he doesn’t, I guess it’s not the first time we’ve had to summon a ghost.”

“I’m not summoning him. That’s the one thing the book says not to do, Mabel. I’ll just figure out how to exorcise him without summoning him.”

Mabel huffed. “Why did you let him out again?”

Dipper knew better than to answer that, so he ignored her, and she eventually got bored and headed downstairs to visit with Soos and Wendy in the shop.

He went back to searching the journal for answers it didn’t want to give, trying more variations of common and not-so-common ciphers on the coded message that must relate to the phantom. He didn’t think it would be a way to defeat Phantom—the author of the journals would have had no reason to put that in code—but it had to be important. It had to be. If he could just—

“Dipper! Get your butt down here!”

Dipper groaned as Mabel’s yell interrupted his train of thought and he lost track of it completely. Worse still, a glance at the clock confirmed that she hadn’t been gone that long. He closed the book and shoved it into his backpack to hide it; he planned on stuffing more ghost-hunting provisions into the bag anyway.

He slung the backpack over one shoulder and headed down the stairs. Mabel was waiting for him by the door between the shop and the private quarters of the house. Soos was out of the room, maybe showing someone around, maybe helping Grunkle Stan with something, and Wendy was talking to some kid at the counter.

Mabel jerked her head towards the boy and raised her eyebrows.

He gave her an appropriately confused look in return.

She stuck out her tongue in annoyance—real or mock, Dipper wasn’t even sure—and turned around. “Hey, Danny, this is my brother, Dipper.”

The boy turned, and Dipper blinked.

The resemblance between the boy and Phantom was uncanny.

And considering they both went by Danny….

“Hey,” Danny said, smiling and raising one hand in an acknowledging wave. “I ditched my parents in town. Wanted to get away from them before they did something embarrassing, which usually happens within five minutes of arriving anywhere.” He glanced around. “Does this place live up to its name?”

“Pay up and judge for yourself.” Wendy popped her gum and leaned forward. “Assuming you make it out alive. Some pretty creepy things have happened here, you know.”

Dipper knew exactly how much truth there was in Wendy’s words, but he hadn’t expected this Danny guy to look so thoughtful.

Danny pulled some change out of his pocket and frowned at it. “Not sure I brought enough with me,” he said. Dipper squinted, but the money looked real enough from where he stood, and it—and Danny’s speech patterns—weren’t super old or anything like that.

He wasn’t about to write off Danny’s similarity to Phantom as a coincidence, though.

Not after everything else he’d learned was true this summer.

Especially when it felt like he’d just barely scratched the surface.

Besides, if Phantom could impersonate a human, maybe that’s what the coded message said. And maybe he wasn’t really a phantom after all if he could do that; he might just be pretending to be a phantom. Maybe he wasn’t even really a ghost. Mabel was right; the description wasn’t perfect, and the entries in the journal were meticulous. Dipper couldn’t imagine the author getting something like this wrong.

But if this Danny was dangerous, maybe the author hadn’t studied him long enough before hiding him away.

Except…. If the author had known he was dangerous, they’d have said that. They wouldn’t have put any warning in a code that couldn’t be broken. Maybe the author hadn’t known what Phantom really was. Maybe they hadn’t even known what the thermos contained.

But if they hadn’t, who had told them about the special thermos in the first place? And why wouldn’t the author have just dug behind the shack like Dipper had to find out? The book was full of other instances where the author had gone searching for something to satisfy their curiosity.

Dipper didn’t notice that Mabel had offered to cover the difference in Danny’s admission fee until she was handing money to Wendy, and by then it was too late to protest—or prove—that Mabel’s money was most likely his, just ‘borrowed’. He wondered if she’d asked him when he’d been too busy to notice or just informed him when he’d been too busy to notice.

Mabel grabbed Danny’s hand and pulled him towards the entrance, but she shot a look at him over her shoulder, and Dipper realized she was trying to buy him time.

He just didn’t know what to do with it. He didn’t know what Phantom was, what Danny was, didn’t know if it really was a coincidence that he looked like Phantom and shared a name and happened to be visiting Gravity Falls just then (though all of that was why Dipper didn’t think it mere coincidence). And he didn’t know how he could find out. If Danny had given a last name, Mabel hadn’t told him, so he couldn’t even run into town to see if Danny’s story held water.

Wendy raised her eyebrows at him. “Are you just going to stand there or are you going to go in with them?”

Dipper hesitated, but he hadn’t told Wendy everything yet, and he didn’t want to start with this mystery in the journal. “I’ll catch up with them in a bit.”

Wendy smirked. “Giving Mabel some time alone with her new target?”

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” Dipper said. He’d been less enthused by Mabel’s rotating—and, more to the point, highly questionable—boyfriends so far. He was pretty sure some maybe-phantom wouldn’t be on her list, but there were some things he really didn’t understand about his sister, and that was one of them. Hopefully Danny didn’t turn out to be a vampire. That would really take the cake. Although he had never heard any lore about vampires turning into mist, so….

He had to figure this out. Mabel thought the same thing he did—that Danny and Phantom were connected somehow—or she wouldn’t have called him down in the first place. She’d let him know whatever Danny said to her, so there was no point in eavesdropping, but he couldn’t possibly dig up something on Danny in such a short period of time, and they’d already looked for any trace Phantom might have left behind.

The only thing Dipper could think of doing right now was to test his theory that Danny and Phantom were connected, but the only way he could think of doing that—

He was going to regret this.

“If Mabel asks, I’m upstairs,” he told Wendy, but Mabel wouldn’t ask, because Mabel would know. Mabel had probably come to this conclusion the moment she’d seen Danny, and her distracting him by taking him on a tour had been her way of telling Dipper that all this stuff was more his territory than hers.

He’d have to try summoning Phantom—and face whatever consequences came with that.

XXXXX

There was something wrong here, but Danny couldn’t figure out what it was. He hadn’t noticed it at first, but it slowly became harder and harder to listen to Mabel as she excitedly pointed out one exhibit or another. He knew at a glance that most things were fake, but some of the others—

Danny shivered, but he couldn’t shake this feeling he had, and now he wasn’t sure if it was wrongness at all; now it felt like there was somewhere he needed to be, something he needed to find, something, something, something—

Maybe this was why he was here? If it wasn’t Vlad, it had to be something. Heck, even if it was Vlad, Vlad wouldn’t be above trying to use him to get something, though Danny had no idea what that something might be. Or how to avoid playing right into Vlad’s hands.

Maybe he should just try to go home. He didn’t need to stay here. He could head into town. Buy a map—or at least look at one, since he was out of money. Or phone Jazz or Sam and Tucker to come and pick him up in the Spectre Speeder or even the Fenton Jet. How long had he been gone? It was still summer, but that didn’t tell him if it had been a day or a week, and if it was a week, Jazz would be frantic, especially if Sam and Tucker weren’t able to fill her in on whatever had happened, and whatever excuse they’d told his parents would be coming apart and—

Danny felt in his pocket, found his phone, and pulled it out. It was dead. Again. He really needed to start carrying a charger….

He looked up to see Mabel staring at him. He didn’t know if she’d asked him a question or if she’d just noticed that he wasn’t paying attention to her.

“Do you guys have a phone I can use?” he asked. It wasn’t tactful—he would’ve had to have been paying closer attention to Mabel’s one-sided conversation to figure out how to best slip in a question like that—but for some reason, it was hard to concentrate, and— “I was supposed to meet up with my sister.” He was rambling now, lies mixing with truth. “She’s going to freak if she thinks I got lost. It’ll be long distance, though. Is that okay?” He couldn’t offer to pay, not when he’d used the last of his change to get into this tourist trap.

Mabel blinked in surprise but nodded. “Just don’t tell Grunkle Stan,” she said, even though he had no idea who that was. She led him through another door half-hidden behind a stuffed jackalope, into a hallway, and through to the kitchen. She pointed to a phone mounted on the wall.

“Thanks,” he said. He knew a handful of numbers by heart, and Jazz’s cell phone was one of them. He’d call her first—she could deal with their parents and tell Sam and Tucker and figure out a plan to get him home—and then��

“We’re sorry; you have reached a number that has been disconnected or is no longer in service. If you feel you have reached this recording in error, please check the number and try your call again.”

“I…must’ve misdialled,” Danny said slowly, hanging up before trying again. He’d thought—

“We’re sorry; you have reached—”

No.

He knew that was Jazz’s number. He knew it, and he definitely hadn’t gotten it wrong the second time.

He dialled it a third time anyway.

“We’re sorry—”

Danny slammed the phone back onto its hook. He couldn’t even pretend it was something wrong with the line. This phone wasn’t cordless, even though he could see the cradle for a cordless phone on the opposite counter. Whatever this was, it wasn’t just some power outage somewhere. Back home, he’d suspect Technus was planning something, but here….

“Her phone must be dead, too,” Danny heard himself say. “I…I should go. See if I can find her. Or my parents. I didn’t exactly tell anyone where I was going.” Truth in his lies again. “They’re going to be wondering where I am. They won’t know I followed the signs for this place. They won’t be looking for me here.”

Mabel said something, but he wasn’t listening to her. He just needed to go, to find out what had happened, to get a hold of Jazz or Sam or Tucker or anyone—

He wasn’t sure he remembered to say goodbye before he went out the kitchen door and started running for the path in the woods.

He was sure to wait until the path twisted and the trees closed off behind him, hiding him from the shack and anyone who might’ve been watching, and then he transformed, and then—

Something grabbed him, pulled, and Danny screamed.

XXXXXX

Mabel heard the cry from upstairs. It wasn’t Dipper’s, but she told Wendy it was, told her that Dipper was just surprised, and waved her off as she took the stairs two at a time. Dipper was sitting on their bedroom floor with the journal. He’d shoved the rug and a few stray clothes and balls of yarn aside and drawn a circle in the middle of the floor with chalk. A few candles burned even though sunlight still streamed in from the window.

Floating in the circle, breathing hard, was Phantom.

She didn’t break eye contact with him when he met her gaze. She didn’t know if she could. “Dipper?”

“It took a while.” His voice was hoarse. “Longer than it should’ve.”

Phantom stared. Looked down at the circle. Looked back at them. “Did….” He stopped. Licked his lips. Swallowed. “Did one of you make a wish?”

Neither of them answered. The journal had warned that phantoms would cause pain to those who summoned them, would trick people into thinking they’d summoned them, but the details were too scarce for her liking. And what she’d seen with Danny hadn’t convinced her that the book had everything right, at least in Phantom’s case.

“This was magic,” Phantom said. “It…it has to be magic.” He pointed at the journal. “Is that a spell book or something?”

He looked around when he was met with silence, but he didn’t leave the circle.

“Maybe you should just exorcise him,” Mabel whispered, but Phantom heard her.

He spun around, green eyes wide with panic. “No! Seriously, please, don’t. You can’t. I don’t even want to know what—” He broke off. Shook his head. “This has to be Desiree, right? Somebody made a wish. Back home, maybe. Or maybe this isn’t even real. I don’t know. But this…. It’s powerful. And I wouldn’t be dreaming something like this. It’s gotta be Desiree. I have to stop her. You have to let me go.”

He was trapped, then. Dipper had gotten it right. Not that she’d ever thought he might have gotten it wrong. It was Dipper. He was good at this kind of thing. Better than she’d ever be.

“Please.” He was looking between them now, floating as close to the edge of the circle as he could, his feet only inches above the floor. “If Desiree is here, that’s not good, and you rea—”

Mabel didn’t think she’d blinked, but now Phantom was sitting in the middle of the circle, crossed-legged, his head in his hands.

Mabel heard Dipper’s sharp inhale and knew he’d seen it, too. Whatever it was.

Phantom finally spoke without lifting his head. “If you stay on this road,” he mumbled, “you’ll find yourself on a path you can’t turn away from.” He looked up then, scowling, and added, “Apparently, I’m supposed to warn you, because someone decided I make a good poster boy for interdimensional safety and the consequences of the lack thereof.”

next | check out my other fics

445 notes · View notes

daomaikeng · 3 years

Text

cue emotional post!

uhhhh henloe! making this post has me on the verge of tears so please bear with me.

if you think i’m making this post as my version of “emotional otb admin who confesses their undying love for other admins”, then you’re absolutely right.

can i start by saying, i love you all???? now that you know that fact, let’s go ahead. i have never celebrated pride before. it was joining the 1d fandom that led me to explore different identities, that confirmed that i wasn’t a cishet girl. the fandom gave me the courage to ask myself questions, and find answers to them. it gave me courage to change my name, my labels, my pronouns, as i kept on learning more about myself. it introduced me to the queer community, something i had never been exposed to before. i have to thank louis for this. becoming his fan has changed my life. when OTB released, it felt like my “oh” moment. though it took me months after that to actually come out, the song gave me the push i required. which is why, i was overjoyed when i got the opportunity to work on this project.

we had a shit-ton of setbacks, leading to tears and frustration and angry keysmashes. huge UAs that could have changed the course of the project refused to respond to us. twitter was the absolute worst. they thought we were trying to push the attention away from Project KMM, when in reality KMM had died before it even began. before we even began. many people didn’t even know there was a project for OTB. personally for me, it was the worst month of my life. my life was once again torn apart.

through all of this, though, this project was the thing that kept me alive. it gave me a reason to power through the worst of days. it gave me a reason to ignore everything else going wrong in my life and focus. it gave me a reason to not scream when my mother laughed at homophobic jokes, because i knew i had to stay alive for this project.

the friends i made in this time feel more like my family now, instead of my biological one. so this is a post for all of you.

@dyingstars-x : seven!! they came up with the original idea. i don’t know what queer louie spirit possessed you, but i’m so so so glad you decided to post this. that one post had my mind dancing in circles and bursting with ideas. they have been the best parent to all of us, looking over everything, coming up with concepts in a few hours’ time, keeping us sane. idek how to put it into words but mostly- seven’s contribution has been priceless.

@saintqueer : JORDANNNNNNNN!! while all the admins have been working super hard and being amazing, hear me out- jordan is the backbone of this project. she reached out to seven, and within just a few hours of us confirming the project, they got to work!! their twitter talents are unmatched, trust me. she’s been so good at dealing with the UA drama; i truly could never. they also made tiktoks!! i want to say so much but i can’t formulate my thoughts. but you should all hail jordan. they just make me go dshfdkjfkdjhskfndk

@rainboww-paradise : mimi! despite her busy schedule she took out so much time to brainstorm with us in the first few days. (we literally said hi to each other and started brainstorming for themes it was a Mess). she kept on making time to make amazing graphics, and share gorgeous ideas, as well as being a person you can always rely on for motivation.

@thosefookinavacados : A!! they made all the wonderful playlists you can use, as well as handling the drabble fest with me. we were both diving into it with no idea of what to do, but we figured it out together. they’ve been the most hilarious companion in this.

@herefortommo : emma!! she gave you the streaming updates every day, as well as making those uquizzes???? it was really fucking hard, i don’t know how they managed to come up with so much. they always shared tumblr asks and all the nice comments you left on our uquizzes, and it was so much fun to read them. she also figured out how to use shazam and tiktok and deezer 😭

@1dwoodchuck : nicky!! she handled twitter most of the time, and she was SO good at it. like, seriously. she found out more about the UEFA league and kept coming up with creative ideas for tweets. she kept talking to UAs and roped most of them in to help us ✨✨

@fishandfrog and @secretheartmp3 who both helped us a lot at the start, even though they were busy afterwards 💕

honourable mentions to @staff for including us, UnitedByPop for writing an article about us, promoting it so many times, and including it in their monthly round-up. they did so much for us. also!!!! i was looking forward to this- a huge huge thank you to @dailytomlinson , especially cristal @ltyear for helping us when literally no one would. they’ve boosted our posts so many times and supported us, and it means a lot. you’re now my favourite UA. mwah.

special thanks to @thetriangletattoo , flo, who was basically part of the team without being a part of the team. she was so so so supportive of us, making gorgeous art, and giving us permission to share it on that bird app! they always used their twitter account to use our hashtags and boost our tweets. we always shared those tweets in the server, and every time we confessed our undying love for her. they were even featured in the staff post, and that’s huge! she was literally the sweetest angel ever, and we love them a lot ✨ (ps they also introduced the found family trope to this project, so yes flo, now you are my family)

lastly, a huge thank you to all the content creators of this fandom, whether you made fanart or gifs or graphics or wrote a fic. this was all made for you. sharing love and kindness is what fandom is about, and i hope this month highlighted that. this fandom has become my home, and i’m so happy that i get to share it with you wonderful people. thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for taking part, giving this project your time, and making this happen. thank you to everyone else who participated, whether it was boosting tweets or streaming or simply reblogging posts. your contribution is priceless.

thank you.

love, rae

#guess who’s emotional 🎉🎊🥳#feel free to rb

32 notes · View notes

scabopolis · 3 years

Note

Omg congrats on 600 followers! Honestly any fake dating with Jonah x Amy would be amazing, although I love number 44 and/or 48 on your Google Docs <333

This is my first Jonah x Amy fic and I offer two caveats: 1) I’m still not sure if there is a particular vibe people who read for this pairing preferring, so...here we are, and 2) I have only made it through 4x12 of Superstore but am pretty familiar w/ what happens the rest of the series.

Prompt: “You know we’re not actually dating, so why did you propose to me in front of my family?” / “I’m sorry, I panicked.” --- Title: the scene of the complication Fandom: Superstore Pairing: Jonah/Amy Other Characters: My crippling insecurity writing for a new fandom, sleep soft mornings, dumbs being dumb (but, like in a cute way) Additional Tags: friends to lovers (or idiots to friends to lovers??), fake dating shenanigans, alternative universe where Amy’s HS pregnancy test was negative and she and Jonah met in college Word Count: ~2,100 ---

It started with a chance meeting ten years ago, and somehow it’s brought Amy Sosa here: awake in her childhood room with Jonah Simms beside her, sleeping off upwards of half a dozen tequila shots. Maybe she shouldn’t be surprised. She knew that day they met in the lecture hall that Jonah was a person who would make her life exceedingly more complicated.

And ten years later, here they are, practically leaving complicated behind in the rear view mirror.

(“What are two hopes and one fear you have for your first lecture on your first day of college?” the guy sitting to her right asks.

Amy doesn’t answer at first but this stranger just waits for her, all blinking, bright eyes and freshman eagerness. It’s barely morning. Is this her life now?

“Hope one,” she says, holding up a finger, “that I’d sit next to someone quiet. Hope two,” she holds up another, “that no one would talk to me before I managed to find coffee.” She holds up a third finger. “And this moment right here is what I feared.”

For some reason, her shortness delights him. His smile is open and affectionate, and he nods in appreciation.

“Noted.”

And Amy fully intends to never speak to this wide-eyed panda boy ever again, but then their General Psychology professor informs the class that the person they’re sitting next to will be their assignment partner for the semester.

The next lecture her partner – his name is Jonah, she learns – brings her a cup of coffee and doesn’t speak a word until she takes a long sip.

Complicated.)

Jonah snuffles in his sleep, his eyelids fluttering slightly. His hair is doing that thing it does when he’s hot or drunk or has run a hand through it too many times, where a single lock of hair hangs in the middle of his forehead. Amy resists the very real urge to brush it away. Because, yeah, she has those kinds of thoughts a lot and they also make things complicated. They’re friends. Maybe even best-friends, but definitely not ‘tenderly brush a lock of your hair away’ friends.

Do those kinds of friends even exist?

Jonah stirs again, and now that it’s clear he’s actually waking up, Amy reaches for her phone and opens Candy Crush. The last thing she needs is to get caught staring at him like some weird stalker.

“Oh, god,” he groans, his voice scratchy. He stretches out with another groan, his foot bumping against Amy’s as he does. Rather than move away, he kind of just rests it there on top of hers. And this is something she is all too familiar with. Drunk and/or hungover Jonah is yet another complication. More accurately, his propensity to cuddle indiscriminately is a very real complication.

“I need—” Amy reaches for the glass of water on her night stand and hands it to Jonah, stopping him mid-thought. “Do you have—?” She hands him two ibuprofen. “Thank you,” he says.

“You’re welcome.” She looks back at her phone.

Jonah swallows the two pills and drinks the entire glass of water, and then lays back down, curling slightly into Amy’s side.

“I made so many mistakes last night,” he says.

“I’m aware. As are your 80 Instagram followers.”

“I liveblogged it?”

“And tagged everything with the hashtag ‘best noche ever.’” He groans again and turns his face into Amy’s side. She sets her phone back on the nightstand. “What got into you?”

“Your dad is intimidating.”

“My dad?”

“Yes. Your dad. And then he and your brother kept pouring me shots—”

“I knew this had Eric’s fingerprints all over it.”

“Well, it was kind of my fault, too.”

She frowns. “What do you mean?” Jonah doesn’t answer and Amy kicks him under the covers. He looks up at her. His eyes are red-rimmed but also so sleepy and soft. Complicated. “Jonah.”

“They kept asking me questions. About you and me. And I was so worried I’d say something wrong, I kept taking shots to avoid answering.”

“You could have found me.”

“I know, but—” he trails off.

“But what?”

“I want them to like me.”

“Oh, Jonah.” She gives in and brushes the lock of hair off his forehead, and he looks up at her. “They’ve known you for 10 years. They’re never going to like you.”

“Thanks, I feel so much better.”

“I do have one more question.”

“Okay.”

“You know we’re not actually dating. Right?”

He closes his eyes and nods. “No. Yeah. I know.”

“So why did you propose to me in front of my family?”

“I panicked.”

“Panicked?”

“Your dad asked what my intentions were, and there were just so many shots.

“And that’s why you shouted ‘I intend to marry her!’?”

Jonah flips the comforter over his head. “I just got wrapped up in it all.” His words are muffled from under the comforter.

She’s glad for the moment of respite, with Jonah unable to see her. If Amy didn’t want things to careen so off track, she probably shouldn’t have agreed to let him come to her dad’s retirement party as her fake boyfriend.

(“I don’t see what the problem is,” Jonah says, spooning more cashew chicken onto his plate. “You don’t still have feelings for Adam, do you?”

“No. No. God no,” she says. “Absolutely not.”

“Alright. I’m clear on the no.”

“It’s just the last time I saw him— Well, you know.”

“I recall, yes.”

And he does. Jonah knows all about Amy’s high school boyfriend. The one she liked but never quite loved. The one she broke up with when the pregnancy test came back negative. The one she slept with again the summer after their senior year of college.

(An event that occurred in no small part because Jonah was dating Mindy and the two of them were talking about moving in together. Maybe moving to the west coast together and Amy realized there was a very real possibility she was going to be left behind.

Jonah doesn’t know that part of the story.)

Adam is also the guy who thought having sex in her childhood bedroom meant Amy wanted to get back together. He’s the guy bringing his very beautiful fiancée to her dad’s retirement party. Because he’s also somehow the guy who still helps her dad with home improvement projects. And Amy is just Amy – the one who doesn’t visit St. Louis enough, and is using her very expensive liberal arts degree to work as a survey researcher for Cloud9, meaning she’s basically paid to manipulate shoppers.

And, not that it should matter, but she’s also very single. Has been for a while now.

She mostly blames the man stealing chow mein from her plate for that. She blocks Jonah’s chopsticks with hers, and a piece of cabbage goes flying.

“Stop that,” she says.

“You’re not eating it.”

“I’m too annoyed to eat.”

“If you only ate when you weren’t annoyed you’d starve.”

“I hate you.”

She pushes the chow mein around her plate. God, when she thinks about it, this really is Jonah’s fault. If she could just find a way to get over this stupid, dumb, little crush that has creeped up – without her permission, mind you! – then maybe she could actually—

“I could do it,” Jonah says, interrupting her thought spiral.

“Do what?”

“Go with you to your dad’s retirement party. Be your fake boyfriend.”

“You think that’s a good idea?”

“I think it’s a great idea. Besides, I am very close to getting your dad to like me.”

“He’ll never like you.”

“It’s not that I didn’t like the painting—”

“—How would this even work?” she asks, cutting him off.

“I don’t know,” he says. “I think we act like we normally do, but maybe you can hold my hand and be nice to me.”

“Eww.”

Jonah smiles around a large bite of cashew chicken. She really needs to stop hanging out with him so much – he’s become immune to her insults. It’s rude.

And him as her fake boyfriend is a terrible idea. Truly awful. If Amy is looking to get over her crush and make things between her and Jonah less complicated, there are better ways to do it.

Except.

Except she kind of wants to.

“Okay. Let’s do it,” she says.

“Yeah?”

“Yes,” she says decisively. “But if you try and kiss me, I’ll cut your lips off.”

“That seems like a proportionate response.”)

“So, to be clear, I told you kissing wasn’t allowed, and you thought that left proposals on the table?”

He groans again from under the comforter. It’s a little sad and a lot pathetic. Poor guy.

She pats the comforter in the area of what she hopes is his shoulder. As annoyed as she is at having to untangle these threads, it’s not his fault. Not really. She knows her family is relentless. Amy slides down and flips the comforter over her head as well.

Jonah rolls over onto his side to face her. Amy does the same.

“It was better than Adam’s proposal.”

“Adam proposed?”

Amy nods. “Ish. If I remember correctly he said, ‘I’ll marry you if I have to.’”

“Yikes.”

“Right?” It’s cozy under this blanket. Intimate even. “You did say some nice things. Even if they came out kind of slurred.”

“Amy—”

“Sexy, huh?”

“I really didn’t mean to shout that to all of your dad’s—”

“Because it’s not true?”

“No!” Jonah winces and Amy isn’t sure if it’s ‘I have a hangover’ induced or ‘I am revealing too much’ induced. “It’s true. Of course it’s true. You are very, you know.”

“Sexy on a completely objective level? Or, are you saying that you, yourself, Jonah Simms, think I’m sexy?” Jonah goes completely still. Amy isn’t even sure he’s breathing. It’s entirely uncharacteristic and a little unnerving. She pokes his cheek. “Are you blushing?”

“Big time, yeah.”

That does enough to break the tension under their blanket enclave, both of them laughing, at first awkwardly and then more genuine. Once they stop to catch their breath, Amy notices they’ve shifted closer together.

This would be the perfect moment to flee from the scene of the complication. But the complications don’t seem so terrible at this specific moment. She blames that lock of hair of his.

“How long have you held this opinion?” Jonah frowns at Amy’s question. “Regarding my sexiness?” she clarifies.

“Amy—”

“What?”

“What are you doing?”

“I just want to—”

“Really? You really want to have this conversation?”

Jonah stresses the ‘you’ and Amy knows why he does. There isn’t a topic or feeling that is off-limits to Jonah – he’d happily discuss every feeling he’s ever had. It’s her. It’s always her.

Their faces are so close they’re practically sharing the same pillow. It takes no effort at all for Amy to close the distance between them, lightly brushing her lips against his. As quick as it began it’s over, and even in the dim light under the comforter, Amy can see Jonah’s eyes blown wide. She’s sure she looks just as shocked and she’s the one who did it.

“You said if I kissed you you’d cut off my lips.”

“Which is why I kissed you.”

“Oh,” he nods. “Makes sense.” Jonah taps out a slow but erratic rhythm against the side of his leg. She just knows he’s trying to stop himself from verbalizing every single thought in his head. “To be clear, was that a friendship kiss, or—”

So Amy kisses him again. This time Jonah recovers quickly from his shock, winding a hand into her hair, his palm cupping the back of her head. It’s just unbelievably good.

“Okay,” Jonah says, his voice unsteady as he pulls away. “That answers that.” He traces her jaw with his thumb. “Any chance we could do it some more?”

Amy rolls onto her back, putting some distance between them. “I don’t think so.”

“Wait. What?”

“Your breath is awful.”

Jonah breathes into his hand and sniffs it to confirm. “What if I brush my teeth?”

Amy sighs, long and exasperated. “I suppose that would be—”

Jonah is out of the bed in seconds, scrambling for his overnight bag, and Amy presses her lips together to hide her smile. From the way Jonah smiles, soft and delighted as he backs out of the room, she isn’t fooling anyone.

So far past the point of complicated, she thinks, her heart still racing. But then again, maybe complications that make her feel like this are okay.

#simmosa fanfic #superstore fanfic #jonah x amy #jonah simms #amy sosa #amy dubanowski #I hope you like it anon!#first fic for a new fandom is always the most nerve wracking!#why is that?#p: jonah x amy #c: jonah simms #c: amy sosa #tv: superstore #otp: fresh start #Anonymous #never stories

44 notes · View notes