But even they didn’t know everything about her. Specifically, that she spent most evenings and weekends immersed in the Gods of the Gates fandom: tweeting about her OTP, writing and betaing and reading fanfic, chatting on the Lavineas server, and employing her vast enthusiasm and infinitesimal costume-construction skill to cosplay Lavinia.
One stray pic at a con, one slip of the tongue, and her reputation might suffer. She could devolve from an experienced professional into a silly fangirl in less time than it took for her to log a soil sample.
So she hadn’t attended Gods of the Gates cons. She hadn’t told work friends about her fandom. Not even friends she liked as much as Bashir.
The state regulators at her new job, though . . .
Well, the difference in culture couldn’t have been clearer. The personal and the professional were inextricable there. Intertwined in the most joyful and hilarious ways.
When she arrived in less than two weeks, she’d become the fifth person on their team of geologists. The third woman. When she’d gone in to complete her I-9 last week, the other women, Heidi and Mel, had offered April a slice of the cake the team had brought to work in celebration of the women’s tenth anniversary as a couple.
Mel and the two guys on the team—Pablo and Kei—were in a freakin’ band together. A band. One that evidently performed for retirement parties and other gatherings in which their unique folk music talents couldn’t successfully be avoided.
They’re terrible, Heidi had whispered, her mouth half-hidden behind her water bottle, but they all enjoy it so much, we can’t say anything.
At that moment, in that dreary state-government-bureaucrat’s office suite, something taut to the point of snapping inside April had eased. Any remaining doubts had disappeared.
She’d made the right decision to change jobs, even with the pay cut. Even with the price of housing in the Bay Area. Even with the hassle of moving.
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.
For a ship whose essential heartbeat was all about love for goodness, sterling character, and intelligence over appearance, Lavineas fics included a surprising, disappointing amount of fat-shaming. Not BAWN’s, to his credit. But some of his favorite fics, the ones he’d bookmarked and recommended to her, did.
After a lifetime of struggle, April now loved her body. All of it. Red hair to freckled, chubby toes.
She hadn’t expected the same from others. Still didn’t. But she was tired of fucking hiding, and she was done with more than just contaminated mud on her jeans and colleagues she only allowed so close.
This year, she was attending her fandom’s biggest convention, Con of the Gates, which always took place—appropriately enough—within a sunny day’s view of the Golden Gate Bridge. Countless bloggers and reporters showed up to that con, and they took pictures, some of which always ended up going viral or printed in newspaper articles or splashed across the television screen.
She wouldn’t care. Not anymore. If her colleagues could openly discuss their terrible folk-music trio, she could certainly discuss her love for the most popular show on television.
And when she went to the con, she was finally going to meet her fandom friends there in person. She might even meet BAWN in person, despite his shyness. She would give all of them an opportunity to prove they’d truly understood the message of their OTP.
If they didn’t, it would hurt. She couldn’t lie to herself about that.
Especially if BAWN took one look at her and—
Well, no point in imagining rejection that didn’t yet exist.
Worst-case scenario, though, she’d find other friends. Other fandoms more accepting of who and what she was. Another beta reader for her fics whose DMs were beams of sunshine to start her morning and the warmth of a down comforter at night.
Another man she wanted in her face-to-face life and maybe even her bed.
So she had to do this tonight, before she lost her nerve. It wasn’t the final step, or even the hardest. But it was the first.
Without letting herself think too hard about it, she checked a thread on Twitter from that morning, still going strong. The Gods of the Gates official account had asked fans to post their best cosplay photos, and the responses now numbered in the hundreds. A few dozen featured people her size, and she very carefully didn’t read replies to those tweets.
On her phone, she had a selfie from her most recent Lavinia costume. The image was uncropped, her face and body both clearly visible. Her colleagues, present and future, would recognize her. Her friends and family too. Most nerve-racking of all: if she told him her Twitter handle, Book!AeneasWouldNever would finally see her for the first time.