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sanfangirl-cynicalromantic · 2 months

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It's Always The Quiet Ones

In which Elsa writes fanfiction, but she never expected one of her own friends to read it.

Elsa was antsy. The professor was reexplaining the topic to students who hadn’t been listening for what felt like the upteenth time. They had learned this subject three classes ago.

Now a college senior, Elsa didn’t appear to have changed too much in four years. She was still quiet, but more shy than haughty and aloof. She had shed her narrow tunnel vision to just ‘out out as soon as possible’ and instead had taken her friends’ advice - she had those now, too - to take a class out of pure enjoyment. But she needed this prerequisite. One of her said friends, Astrid, was also in this class so she could take a different elective, but Elsa was happy to share a class with someone she already knew. Now neither of them needed to make unnecessary conversation with other classmates and had an automatic go-to in the case of any group projects.

Her hands halted over her keyboard. There was no need for taking notes right now and she found herself navigating to a project she’d been stumped on for a while.

Not academic, but purely creative.

Fanfiction.

She’s not sure how it happened. She had sat down and watched a single episode of a show with her sister and then when an edit had come up later on her YouTube page she had idly clicked on it. One click had led to another until she found herself sucked into reading fanfiction feverishly under her blanket at night, too guilty to show her face to the empty room. Eventually, ideas had built up in her head and she had written a little piece. It had been freeing, knowing that she couldn’t be ‘not good enough’ because this was fanfiction, and anyone could write it. She hadn’t expected the heartwarming responses she’d gotten, or the spiral into madness as the dam inside her had broken and she scrambled to write all of her ideas down.

She had a sizable collection of works on AO3 after over three years, and had developed a signature style and carved a niche for herself in the fandom.

What she had gotten really good at was smut.

There was a saying, “It’s always the quiet ones.” Prudish pre-fanfiction Elsa, forced into socializations by her parents because apparently homeschooling online was ‘isolating,’ would roll her eyes, irritable at the guys who’d inevitably say so about her while wagging their eyebrows, hating being the butt of some joke she wasn’t sure she understood. Diabolical post-fanfiction Elsa now would flush guiltily at how true it rang. She still couldn’t say ‘sex’ in front of her younger sister without hesitating, but years of reading had opened her mind to ideas she’d never thought were possible, which had led to research, which had led to writing her own smut.

The professor had deemed today a review day, fed up with all the repeated questions, and after mentally answering all the problems so that if she were called on she could answer, Elsa opened up her special email account, drumming her fingers absently as she looked over her AO3 stats. She clicked away to the tab that held her WIP, taunting her. She needed motivation. She needed validation and an assurance that she could actually write a reasonably clever and hot story. She needed more comments.

She navigated to her drafts and selected a partially smutty oneshot she had written a little while ago on one of her sleepless nights. It had been a sleepless night for the couple on the other side of her wall. Good for them. She prided herself on being continually able to look them in the eye the next morning. She added a short little spiel in the notes, citing no beta and sleep deprivation to excuse errors (like she hadn’t already combed through the very explicit scenes of roleplay and creative positionsing to make sure everything was grammatically correct for her own sanity’s sake) before publishing it and clicking the tab closed decisively. The ninety minute lesson wasn’t even a quarter way through. She resolved to focus for the rest of the class.

Sadly, it didn’t get any more interesting. She made a conscious effort to engage and resist the effort to madly refresh the page and check for comments. Some people aren’t addicted to AO3, she reminded herself sternly.

About half an hour later, her ears perked up at the sound of an email notification. Coming from one of her seatmates. She forced herself to look straight ahead. Damn AO3 for making her develop a physical reaction to emails. People got emails all of the time and she doubted most of them were from AO3.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Astrid dig out her phone. She stifled both an amused grin and a resigned sigh. Astrid was very opinionated, and once she made up her mind her decision was final. And the thing was, she was most often right. If she had gotten her phone out, she had given up on the house today.

Elsa was not nosy by nature - she wasn’t - but she was bored and antsy and spending time with Anna had its side effects. Astrid’s expressions were minimal. Her boyfriend Hiccup could usually accurately tell what she was thinking by just a quirk of her eyebrow about half the time. The next person who could understand her half as well was Jack, who considered himself an expert on her and Hiccup’s relationship - at least, compared to the rest of the friend group. That was fair. Elsa considered herself a generally observant person who could relate to Astrid the most. Plus, she had the advantage (or maybe the misfortune) of having her dorm room situated right next to Astrid’s; the walls between them were excruciatingly thin. The phrase ‘it’s always the quiet ones’ certainly applied to Hiccup and Astrid as well. But Elsa understood Astrid’s preference for privacy, and so respectfully never commented on the things she overheard.

If Hiccup frequenting Astrid’s rooms more often instead of vice versa coincided with an increase of publishing smutshots, well, her readers were nothing but happy.

Whatever Astrid was doing on her phone, it seemed to be taking a long time and had her completely absorbed. Her face was stony and cool, and the only reaction Elsa could see was the occasional raise of what she was pretty sure was an interested eyebrow.

At last, the lecture wrapped up and Elsa gratefully annotated her planner before playing it and her laptop neatly in her bag. Astrid stood up with her, still glued to her screen, and the automatically made their way to the group’s designated spot under the big tree on the west side of campus. Astrid had finally cracked a smile and was typing something on her phone. Probably to Hiccup, if she wasn’t scowling. Neither said anything because they weren’t the sort to fill the silence with unnecessary talk. Elsa didn’t mind, but was glad when she saw Jack and Hiccup waiting for them outside.

She supposed it was just one of those days where she got a craving for social interaction. There was no other reason she was looking forward to talking with Jact at all.

“How was class?” Jack called in greeting. She smiled politely at him, grateful he had started a conversation.

“It was ridiculous,” Astrid scoffed. “Nobody remembered anything from the previous lessons. It was an absolute waste of time.” Elsa shrugged in agreement.

“At least it meant he postponed the homework,” Elsa added, satisfied with her socially acceptable input to the conversation. She would still start the assignment of course, unless she had a stroke of inspiration for her WIP, but they didn’t need to know that.

“It’s the little things,” Jack agreed easily. Hiccup tried to put his around his girlfriend’s shoulders comfortingly; he knew nothing irritated her more than imbeciles. The only thing she hated more than idiots was anyone who dared to make fun of her boyfriend or slight him in any way - but in those cases, the reaction wasn’t annoyance, it was murder. Astrid dodged his arm and Hiccup cocked his head, confused.

“‘Fraid we’ll have to cut things short today,” Astrid said briskly, grabbing her boyfriend’s hand and making to leave. They all turned to look at her, surprised. She gave Hiccup a loaded look. His eyebrows shot up and he began to sputter immediately.

“Oh. Oh. Okay, yeah. Er - sorry um … something urgent just came up? Yeah, urgent, so we gotta …” he allowed himself to be dragged away just as an email notification chimed on Elsa’s phone.

A comment? She wondered eagerly. Probably spam, she reminded herself.

Jack was snickering and shaking his head. “Wish I had a girl who read smut,” he chuckled.

A girl who reads smut, you say? Elsa thought before she could tamp it down. She cleared her throat and took out her phone instead.

It was from AO3. Elsa’s heart sped up and she bit her lip to keep herself from letting out a shrill, undignified sound of joy.

axes-forever (Registered User) has left the following …

Aww, Elsa loved that reader. Their comments were never long, but they were funny and appreciative and had been with her and her writing since the beginning. She had checked their bookmarks once. There had been a reasonable amount, around eighty or so, which made Elsa assume that axes-forever was a bit selective - a compliment for her, since a good deal of her works had been saved. Aside from those, they seemed to be a big fan of Percabeth and Manorian, and Elsa could only approve of their good taste.

She opened the email.

[Istg I read this immediately after I got the notification in the middle of class. Worth it. You never fail to deliver.

Brb gonna go try those moves on my bf]

Elsa nearly dropped her phone as Jack’s words finally processed. Was he insinuating that Astrid read smut? She didn’t seem like the type, but then neither did Elsa. And considering some of the things she’d heard from the other side of Astrid’s wall … Well, reading smut didn’t seem far-fetched at all.

Wait … Astrid had been reading something on her phone during class only a little while after Elsa had just posted. Axes-forever had gotten the notification in class, and then said she was going to try those moves on her boyfriend. There were too many coincidences with Astrid’s unsubtle exit for them to not be the same person, weren’t there?

Holy shit.

She could be wrong, of course. She could be so wrong. What were the chances of her being right? But Elsa was naturally intuitive and she knew she had the right once she’d found it. She looked at the retreating figures of her friends with wide eyes.

Jack cocked his head to the side. “Hey, you okay?” he asked gently. “You look like you just remembered you forgot to turn off the stove or something.” Elsa let out a shocked laugh.

“No,” she said, shaking her head and smiling. “I just realized my plans to immediately go back to my dorm room aren’t a really good idea right now.” He barked out a laugh.

“Well … we could go get a coffee, if you’d like?” he offered with the slightest bit of uncertainty. Elsa felt something like a warm bubble expand in her chest.

“I’d like that,” she admitted.

#RotBTFD #Hiccstrid #Elsa writes fanfiction #Elsa writes smut #my writing #my fics #Astrid Hofferson #Jack Frost #Elsa #Hiccup Haddock #HTTYD

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