Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Fandoms: Gods of the Gates – E. Wade, Gods of the Gates(TV)
Relationships: Aeneas/Lavinia, Aeneas/Dido, Lavinia & Dido
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe – Modern, Alternate Universe High School, Competition, Fluff, Emotional Sublimation through Trivia Domination, Jealousy, The Author Doesn’t Actually Know a Lot of Trivia, She Probably Should Have Chosen Another Premise, Whatever, Too Late Now
Collections: Aeneas and Lavinia Week
Stats: Words: 1754 Chapters: 1/1 Comments: 34 Kudos: 115
Bookmarks: 8
Trivial Concerns
Unapologetic Lavinia Stan
Summary:
Dido and Lavinia don’t like one another. More specifically, Dido hates Lavinia for dating Dido’s ex, and Lavinia does her best to avoid Dido. But when trivia competitions call, a woman must answer.
Notes:
A response to the prompt: a showdown between Aeneas’s two lady loves. Thank you to Book!AeneasWouldNever, as always, for your insightful, patient, supportive beta services.
* * *
. . . next round, their score now tied.
A new question appeared on the screen. This movie won James Cameron a golden statuette for Best Director in 1998.
Well, that was obvious enough. Lavinia managed to ring in first. “Titanic.”
“Ah, yes.” Dido straightened into her Class President stance, eyes narrowed. “The story of how true love never dies, even after a lengthy separation.”
Lavinia rolled her eyes. “Rose eventually had kids with another dude, Dido. She got over it.”
The unspoken message: Maybe you should too.
“She waited eighty-four years to say goodbye to Jack. Eighty. Four. Years,” Dido retorted, hands on her hips.
Lavinia threw her own hands in the air. “Instead of waiting eighty-four years, maybe she should have moved her butt a bit to the side and shared the damn board with him in the first place!”
“Ladies—” the teacher in charge began.
“If he’d let her, she would have!” Dido yelled. “But he just turned into a Popsicle without warning her!”
They weren’t talking about Rose and Jack anymore, if they ever had been, and Lavinia took a deep breath.
Aeneas was her boyfriend. She loved him. But the way he’d ghosted Dido right before junior prom, at his parents’ demand, was cruel, and she wouldn’t make excuses for him. She and Dido might never be close, but she knew the other girl had hurt then, and was still hurting now. Truly.
“You’re right.” She met Dido’s tear-bright eyes. “But then he was gone, and he wasn’t coming back, and she deserved to be happy again without him. I know he would want that, because he truly cared about her.”
Dido nodded, a jerk of her trembling chin.
“Maybe we can move on?” the teacher prodded.
Lavinia eyed Dido questioningly. The other girl nodded again, and even tried to smile at Lavinia. It was shaky, but genuine.
“I think we can,” Dido said.
The next day, when Aeneas saw the two girls huddled around the same cafeteria table at lunch, laughing together and sharing secrets, he turned on his heel and ran.
19
AFTER APRIL RETREATED TO HER TINY OFFICE-SLASH-guest-room with her coworker Mel, the women chatting about seam allowances and detachable panels and other topics that totally baffled Marcus, Alex turned toward him on the overstuffed couch.
“So you just followed your girlfriend home like a stray kitten and refused to leave her lap afterward?” Alex raised one dark brow, clearly amused. “Good move. Pathetic, of course, but effective.”
Well, he wasn’t wrong, necessarily. Irritating, yes. Incorrect, no.
As Alex knew all too well, after that first night with April, Marcus just . . . never left San Francisco. Not for longer than a weekend, anyway. Not for the past month.
He’d kept a nearby hotel room reserved in his name, paid for with his credit card, but he hadn’t spent much time in the suite. If at all possible, he never intended to. Its availability was more a statement to April. A declaration that he wouldn’t assume his welcome in her apartment, even though they were together now. Reassurance that if she tired of him, she could send him packing, and he’d have someplace to stay, even in the dark of night.
So far, though, she hadn’t seemed to mind his near-constant presence in her life and home. So far, he hadn’t experienced a single moment of regret for the choice to stay there.
Nothing was keeping him in Los Angeles, not until he picked another role, and he hadn’t done that yet, despite the ever-more-anxious emails sent by his faithful agent. April’s apartment was more comfortable than his house, if significantly smaller and less expensively furnished, and his filming schedule had kept him away from LA for months at a time before. The extended absence didn’t bother him. The Bay Area, despite its painful associations for him, had always felt more like home than Southern California anyway.
His current location also offered a certain amount of extra protection from paparazzi, who would travel north from LA for exclusive pics of a television star with his new girlfriend, but only grudgingly and for short periods of time.
Most importantly, staying in the area meant he now knew April hit snooze two times every morning. He’d memorized how her hazy brown eyes finally, reluctantly, blinked open in the warm glow of dawn as she stretched in bed, her hair tousled and her soft body shifting against his. He understood how the scent of her changed after one of her infrequent days on a job site, from roses in the morning to sweat and earth in the evening. He’d tasted her skin after one of those site visits, and after a lazy, shared weekend shower, and after she’d cried while reading a particularly bittersweet fic and he’d erased her tears with his mouth.
Staying meant he could spend his weekday mornings reading scripts and writing fics to post under a new name, before shopping for food and working out at the hotel gym in the afternoon. Staying meant making her dinner in the evenings. Making her laugh. Making her come.
Any mockery he might receive he considered well worth the reward.
“Can’t say I blame you for settling in,” Alex added. “Looks like a very comfortable lap.”
At that, Marcus narrowed his eyes at his friend. He hadn’t missed the swift but appreciative glance Alex had given April upon meeting her earlier that afternoon, or the way she’d blushed and almost giggled upon shaking Alex’s hand.
She hadn’t blushed and giggled when she’d met Marcus, he knew that for a fact.
Clearly he needed to find a less handsome best friend. That was the only sensible solution. Especially since said best friend was staying overnight in April’s apartment as their first joint guest, which now seemed an unwise decision.
Alex’s grin had only grown more obnoxious, and he held up his hands in feigned surrender. “No need to scowl at me like that, dude. I was stating an objective fact, not indicating any desire to climb into your lap of choice.” He snorted. “Besides, when it comes to female company, there’s no room at the inn. I’m full up.”
Excellent. “Lauren?”
As if Marcus didn’t know. Alex had been bitching nonstop about his assigned minder for weeks via text and email and occasional phone calls. At some point, Marcus expected a carrier pigeon to arrive at April’s apartment with a note strapped to its ankle reading goddammit lauren is such a fucking dour millstone. Or maybe a telegram instead: lauren says two drinks max stop which is unfair because she’s so short i could just rest my beer on her head stop.
“Who else? I’m surprised she let me visit you this weekend without requiring hourly reports as to my good behavior.” Alex flopped back against the sofa and glared in the direction of the front door. “R.J. and Ron directed her to keep watch over me anytime I’m outside my home, and the stupid woman is too stubborn to acknowledge she’s being exploited.”
That was a new line of argument. “How so?”
“Today is her first day off in weeks. And you know I don’t sleep well, so I tend to leave the house at odd hours, and I’m required to let her know when I do, which means she doesn’t sleep well, and . . .” Alex had crossed one ankle over his opposite knee, and his foot was jiggling, jiggling, jiggling. Not surprising, given his ADHD and accompanying tendency to fidget, but the movement seemed especially agitated today. “She looks tired.”
Marcus raised his eyebrows. “Does she?”
“She considers you a good influence, apparently. At least in the company of your girlfriend. That’s why she finally took time off.” More glaring into space. “She’d better be sleeping today.”
How to say this? “Um, Alex, have you considered that, uh, maybe your feeli—”
“Enough about the stubby but persistent thorn in my side,” his friend interrupted, willfully ignoring Marcus’s interjection. “Did you see the email and group chat earlier today?”
Yes. Unfortunately, yes, Marcus had seen both the email from their showrunners and the messages flying back and forth among their Gates colleagues.
Carah: yet ANOTHER fucking email about our goddamn nondisclosure agreements and warnings not to share or malign the scripts or face GRAVE REPERCUSSIONS
Carah: is it one of you bitches leaking scripts and blabbing about how this season sucks like a Hoover that gets off on dust, or
Ian: I think the finale’s great
Alex: of course you do, your character arc didn’t get brutally slaughtered
Alex: unlike the tuna population in your vicinity
Carah: hahahahaha
Summer: Con of the Gates is coming up, and the thought of answering questions about this season and what happens to Lavinia and Aeneas just
Summer: gaaaaaaaah
Peter: I heard Ron and R.J. intend to back out of their panels at the last minute, citing “prior commitments”
Carah: prior commitment to not getting their asses reamed by fans who saw those leaked scripts, maybe
Maria: but no one realizes the leaked bits are real yet
Maria: all TOO real