April themed challenge.

[merikuru]

Here is our M/March master list!


Fire Emblem: Three Houses

Dedue/Ashe, "Peaceful Wisteria" (by sarajayechan)
Felix/Dimitri, "Brave" (by sarajayechan)
[S] Felix/Dimitri, "Understanding" (by sarajayechan)

Smallville

Clark/Lex, "No Need For Wishes" (by queenkatyastar)


April's challenge is:

Apriladies!

Got some girlslash? A lady bromance? Sisters (whether bound by the blood of the battlefield or the water of the womb)? Femmes fatales? This is where it all belongs. Let's have some ladies!

All fics written for this challenge should be posted as a comment on this entry (a comment with a link to an offsite post is also fine). If your work has spoilers, please add an [S] tag to the comment title. If it has mature content, please add an [MA] tag.

This theme challenge will end on April 30th, 11:59 PM Central Standard Time.

Comments

Now and Then, Samantha/Teeny, "Homecoming"

[sarajayechan]

Things happen in life, and you can't control them. She held Crazy Pete's words close to her heart for over a decade, but they never sank in. Her parents' divorce, growing apart from her friends, her grandmother's death, a string of failed relationships because she kept running away.

She couldn't run away from the promise they'd made, and seeing Teeny again made her regret ever leaving in the first place. Watching her rise to the top, seeing her on magazine covers, remembering when the gorgeous bombshell was a pretty girl who stuffed her bra with pudding balloons and snuck onto the roof to watch drive-in movies for free. The girl who held her in her arms and gave her half her string of love beads while she cried over Dad leaving.

Why did I ever let you go?

Two months after the reunion, Teeny's latest movie wraps up production and Samantha's moved into an apartment just outside the Gaslight Addition. She invites Teeny to spend the night with her before she goes back to LA.

"Nice place," Teeny murmurs as she surveys the living room. It's nothing too fancy, not the studio apartment Samantha always dreamed of, but it's no hole in the wall. Against her better judgment she let Chrissy help with the decorations, and she hates to admit the flowery pastel curtains and pink light bulbs are kind of soothing.

"You want something to drink? Coffee, tea, wine?" The bottle of white is a housewarming gift from Mom and Bud, along with a basket of fancy soaps she doesn't use.

"Wine sounds good." Teeny makes herself comfortable on the sofa, and for a moment Samantha is awestruck at how well she fits in with the living room's general feel. Her off-white sweater, gold miniskirt, shiny beige heels, perfect complexion accented by the deep red of her lips.

Was she always this gorgeous?

She snaps out of her trance and pours two glasses of wine. She doesn't drink, her vice was always cigarettes and now that she's almost completely off them she doesn't want to risk another addiction. But the occasional glass of wine is no big deal, and having Teeny here is reason enough to pop open the bottle.

They slip into small talk easily enough. As much as Samantha loves Chrissy and Roberta, it's been too long since she's had a moment alone with Teeny like this. Such moments were few and far between after that summer, and none of them as poignant as that night in the treehouse.

Teeny had always been there. While Chrissy struggled to break away from her mother's smothering and Roberta discovered boys, Samantha and Teeny managed to hold it together until they went off to different colleges. Samantha had expected awkwardness, but right now, it was as though Teeny had never left.

"If you want the truth," Teeny says at length, "I think the real reason my marriages never worked was because none of them were you." Samantha blinks, setting her glass down.

"Teeny?"

"I'm not even sure if this counts as coming out, but...Sam, you were always my favorite, and one of the only regrets I've ever had was-"

"Stop." Samantha swallows, tears prickling at her eyes. "Don't read my mind. It's creepy." And Teeny's putting down her own glass and grasping her hands, pulling her close. "Teeny-"

"Seeing you again for the first time was the highlight of my life," Teeny whispers. "And I wonder if maybe..."

"If maybe I was always a little in love with you?" Sam smiles tearfully, and Teeny snickers.

"Now who's being a creepy mind-reader?" Their gazes lock, their lips come together, and everything feels right.

Girl Meets Word, Riley/Maya, "No More Apologies Allowed"

[sarajayechan]

It's been a week since they chased off the bully, and Maya still insists on spending the night at her house. Mom and Dad don't even bat an eyelash, it's not like she doesn't already keep a toothbrush, pajamas, and a change of clothes there.

Mom and Dad are having dinner out with the Minkuses tonight, though. A group effort to make sure Mom is completely over what happened to Riley so she doesn't commit violence against a minor. Or that minor's parents for not monitoring their daughter's activities and letting her have a phone in the first place.

(It's for this reason Riley didn't tell Mom that Maya found the bully and decked her in the face. Then she'd be upset about Maya fighting. And that she didn't get to do it herself.)

"You don't need to keep staying here, you know," Riley says as Maya walks out of the bathroom in the same pajamas she always wears when she spends the night. "I'm sure your mom misses you, you could be going out with other people, hitting Demolition..."

"No thanks." Maya flops down onto the bed. "Mom understands you need me more than she does, and she's got a date with Shawn tonight anyway." Riley smiles a little.

"Well...that's good. But still-"

"Nothing short of being eaten by a velociraptor that rips the roof off this place is gonna pull me from your side, and even then I'll just kick its guts until it throws me up. I'll be covered in stomach acid, but I'll be by your side," Maya insists. Yesterday it was a hurricane blowing off the roof and sweeping her into Oz, the day before it was being abducted by giant purple aliens.

Maya stays, but does Riley really deserve it? Other kids were there when she yelled at Maya and threw ice cream at her, but no one's called her out. Maya ice creamed her right back, but after that it was like nothing happened. She spends the night, tucked into Riley's bed with her, arm thrown across her waist.

It should comfort her, but all it does is make her feel guilty.

"Why?"

Maya looks at her like she's sprouted antlers and started yodeling.

"Why what?"

"I don't deserve you. I called you a bully, I pushed you away." Riley sits down in front of the window seat. She doesn't deserve the bay window right now, either. "You forgave me too fast." Maya rolls her eyes, pulling herself off the bed and dragging Riley over to it.

"For what, being hurt? Being afraid to talk about the real problem? Being human?" She pulls them both down and throws a blanket over them, Riley finds herself practically in her shorter friend's lap. "How many times have I been a jerk to you when I was upset?"

"That's different," Riley mutters.

"No, it's not. You forgave me for being a jerk because you were more worried about me being okay than your hurt feelings. It's the same with me."

"But you're troubled. You've had-"

"If you finish that sentence I'm going to dump leftover spaghetti on your head tomorrow morning after you've washed your hair," Maya threatens. "I never got a free pass for being rude, and neither did you. I hit you with ice cream, you spent forty-four minutes in the shower getting it out of your hair, and that was it. It's over." And Riley knows she's right. She's known Maya since they were little kids. She's the one person Maya could never lie to, because Riley wouldn't let her.

"I was mean to you."

"I've been through worse. So enough of this apologizing and thinking you're a bad person for doing something I do to everyone, or next time I'll dump a vat of expired pudding over your head," Maya threatens, and Riley chuckles weakly.

"I still feel bad."

"I know." But Maya's hold stays tight and Riley slowly lets herself relax into the snuggle, burying her face in Maya's shoulder.

"You don't owe me anything," Maya continues. "No more apologies, no favors, no groveling. I got you back, and that's all I needed. End of story."

Riley smiles a little against Maya's shoulder.

"You're still here."

"I'll fight my way out of a velociraptotr's stomach to keep it that way."

Girl Meets Word, Riley/Maya, "Cake Fairy"

[sarajayechan]

It was a boring, ordinary Saturday until suddenly, Maya started craving cake. Not those packaged snacks with the fake creamy filling and the squiggle of icing on top, but real cake with fluffy frosting and sprinkles.

"And now I want some," Riley said. "Bakery?"

"No. I mean, sure, we could have our moms serve us fancy cake and pay five bucks a piece, plus a tip...or we could make our own."

And that was how Riley ended up helping her girlfriend carry home a giant tote bag full of cake mixes, six colors of frosting, and sprinkles. They couldn't decide what kind of cake they wanted to make, so they just bought one of everything.

(Except carrot cake. Too healthy.)

"At least the cashier thought we were having a bake sale and didn't make the tired old birthday joke," Maya laughed as they dumped everything out onto the counter. "Assuming we're gonna make all of these cakes. Riles, why didn't you stop me from grabbing every kind they had?"

"Why didn't you stop me from buying a rainbow of Funfetti frosting? And two kinds of sprinkles?" Pink, yellow, blue, green, lavender, and chocolate. Some rainbow. "So what should we do?"

"I dunno. Do a series of coin flips and eenie-meenie-miney-mo?" Maya shrugged.

"Or we could make them all and leave a piece on every doorstep in Greenwich Village!" Riley grinned. "We could totally do that, I just thought of it! We'd be like the cake fairy!" Maya sighed, giving her that you're crazy and I'm going to very gently tell you why face.

"Honey? This is New York. If you leave things on people's doorsteps, they're going to think there's a bomb hiding in it and call the cops." Riley sighed. She knew this, she'd lived in New York her entire life, she was used to the paranoia and the bad reputation and everything. That didn't mean she had to like it, though.

"No cake fairy?" Maya patted her cheek.

"No cake fairy." Riley pouted for a moment, then shrugged, because who could stay disappointed when they were going to have cake? Luckily, it didn't take them long to pick the vanilla confetti mix. They'd frost it in rainbow and add extra sprinkles, because who cared about too much sugar when you were making a cake?

Maya was halfway through the mixing when she got that look in her eye. The same look she'd had during their stint as cafeteria workers, the one that led to what Riley would forever call "The A-puke-alypse."

"Maya, no."

"Not this cake! This is gonna be a rainbow, but what if we made the devil's food one, too? Except we added some...extras?"

They had a bag of chocolate chips in the cupboard, some miniature Hershey bars, half a package of Oreos, and chocolate syrup in the fridge. It didn't take a genius or a mind-reader to know what Maya was thinking.

"There's such a thing as too much chocolate, you know," she said.

"Lies." Maya poured the batter into the greased pan, which Riley slid into the oven. "I saw a recipe almost like this one on Tumblr, except it was just a lot of melted candy and crumbled shortbread. But ours won't have any shortbread so it'll be even better!"

"Maya, no." But even Riley wasn't convinced of her words, because honestly, Maya's idea sounded delicious. They were making a light and fluffy confetti cake, so why not a decadant chocolate bomb? Maya gave her the look again, and Riley immediately went for the cupboard.

"Just make sure not to add too much, otherwise it'll burn. Sugar burns easily," she said. Maya shrugged.

"If it catches fire, we've got the German chocolate to fall back on."

The chocolate bomb slid into the oven twenty minutes later. Then they had to wait for the confetti cloud to cool before they could frost it, leading Riley to eye the marble mix. They needed something to do, and if they turned on a Netflix stream they'd lose track of time and end up ignoring the oven timer.

(It could happen. It had happened once, and luckily they'd gotten the burnt toast smell out of the kitchen before Mom got back.)

"We could give one of the cakes to Mom and Daddy," Maya said. Riley grinned. Not only was it a good idea, but she loved when Maya called Uncle Shawn "Daddy."

"Your dad always did have a thing for cake," she said. "I bet he'd appreciate it!"


Two hours later, they had six cakes. A confetti cloud, a chocolate bomb, marble fudge, classic yellow, lemon, and white dyed with green food coloring.

They had six cakes, no one had a birthday coming up, and neither one knew how long a cake would last in the fridge or the freezer. Or even if cakes froze well. Maya surveyed the sink full of dirty mixing bowls, the pans, and their creations, and Riley shook her head. Deep down, you knew this was going to happen, and you let it.

"Cake fairy," she said. "It can still happen. After we give some to your parents and save some for mine and Auggie and his friends, we can still be the cake fairy."

"No, honey. There is no cake fairy in New York."

"But-"

"Besides, we don't know who's on a gluten-free diet or has diabetes or a chocolate allergy," Maya said, and Riley winced. This was true, and she hadn't thought about it.

"We could make people sick, and they could sue us. Or sue our parents, since they've got all the money," she muttered.

"And what if even your mom couldn't get us off the hook?" Maya added Riley pouted.

"Why can't the whole world be nice and healthy and like cake? We're never gonna get rid of all of this!" She glanced at Maya. "And don't even suggest selling it off at the bakery, either, Mom has a strict moral code about how everything has to be made on-site." Maya groaned.

"Well, so much for my idea."

Six cakes. Six cakes they'd spent hours making, and they had nothing to-

"CAKE!" Auggie's yell broke into her thoughts, followed by Mom and Dad trying to restrain him. And then Mom's heels clicking against the kitchen floor as she walked up behind them. Riley's stomach flip-flopped.

"It's a long story."

"I'm sure it is," Mom said. "But, it just so happens you've unknowingly solved a little problem for us!" She pointed to the calendar, and Riley realized that in her search for birthdays she'd missed something Dad had written down.

"Bake sale?"

"At Auggie's school. He's been begging us to make a giant cake for weeks now, and it keeps getting bigger every time he asks," Dad said. "But we can use these! I mean, obviously you girls can keep some and we've gotta give some to Shawn, but the rest?"

So they would get to be cake fairies. Sort of. Riley didn't even care that she and Maya wouldn't get any kickback from whatever got sold, it was a solution to their little adventure.

"Next time, though," she said as she and Maya made themselves comfortable at the bay window, Riley with a slice of chocolate bomb and Maya with a slice of rainbow cloud, "if we want cake, let's just go to Mom's." Maya twirled her finger in a patch of pink frosting, licked it, and grinned.

"Deal."

[queenkatyastar]

Title: Love At Last
Author: Katya Starling
Fandom: X-Men/Batman
Characters/Pairing: Cyclops/White Queen, Joker/Harley
Rating: PG-13/T
Word Count: 3,861 (linking because of how long it is)
Warnings: Future Fic, Sexual Abuse
Summary: Emma's abducted, but rescue is (finally) on the way. And it may go better than she ever would have truly dared to hope it would.



Love At Last