shelby's fanfiction sideblog

i know i don’t post here super often, but i wanted to let anyone know who was interested that i will be moving my fics to ao3 very soon. i will still probably post here, but this is something i’ve been wanting to do for a while and everything that’s been going on recently finally gave me the push i needed! i will also add links to any fics i’ve already posted here once they are on ao3.

12 Days of Fanficmas ~ Day 2

“Lapis! You gotta come help me with the lights!”

Lapis Lazuli groaned from under her blanket. She’d known this drill before. Whenever Peridot got into something, she really got into it. Lapis had never heard of Christmas before, and to be completely honest, she didn’t really care all that much. She did enjoy watching Christmas movies with Peridot, who had gone and rented every single one she could find from the library with Steven’s library card, but the whole concept just seemed a bit… strange. An entire day dedicated to being nice to family members and giving gifts – shouldn’t you be nice to family every day? Family was at least a concept Lapis had grown accustomed to over her time on Earth. To her, family was Peridot, Pumpkin, and Steven. She didn’t really need anything else.

“Lapis, come on! These lights aren’t gonna hang themselves!”

The call came from downstairs. Lapis pushed the blanket off as she arose from the couch. She didn’t sleep very often, as gems didn’t need to, but she enjoyed the comfort of the heated blanket Steven had gifted to them once it started to snow. She made her way down from the loft to find Peridot standing on two chairs by the front door, straining to place a string of green lights on the wall. Pumpkin barked excitedly nearby.

Peridot turned, grinning. Lapis had to admit (internally, of course) that she looked kind of adorable in her red and white sweater, a Santa hat perched on the top of her head. “Lapis, great!” Peridot announced as she jumped down from the chair and reached the string of lights out to her. “I can’t get these hung up too well, but since you’re taller I was hoping you could get them.”

Lapis wasn’t entirely sure what just happened but now she had a string of electrical lights in her hand. “Um, alright,” she said and carefully stepped onto the chair. She held them up like she’d seen Peridot do. “Like this?”

“Yeah, yeah!” Peridot enthusiastically stated behind her. “Just hold that there and I’ll hand you the tape.”

“Alright,” Lapis responded, trying to keep the lights evenly in a line. They did look rather pretty. And even though she wasn’t sure if she could physically make herself as enthusiastic as Peridot was, she really did enjoy seeing the other gem happy.

This went on for a while, until Lapis and Peridot had collectively strung little green and red lights all around the barn. Pumpkin excitedly followed as they made their way around the room, barking all the while. Once the final light was strung, Peridot rushed over to the light switch and turned them all on. Pumpkin jumped around the room, barking first at the red lights and then at the green.

Once all was finished, Lapis stepped down from the chair and smiled, looking at the twinkling lights around the barn. “Would you like some hot chocolate?” she asked Peridot, who was still staring at the lights excitedly. “We still have that whole box that Steven brought us.”

“Ooh, yes!” Peridot clapped her hands together and grinned. “Extra peppermint in mine, please! It’s festive.”

Lapis smiled softly and headed back to the loft where the box was. “You can have all the peppermint. It’s a little too strong for me.”

When Lapis re-emerged with the hot chocolate, she saw the door half-open, but didn’t see Peridot or Pumpkin. “Peridot?” she called, and saw a green head pop in from the other side of the door.

“Lapis, come look at the moon!”

They’d done this before. Sometimes Lapis and Peridot would climb on to the roof and stare at the moon for hours. They didn’t so much focus on the stars; they didn’t want to think about which one was homeworld. But the moon was a safe medium. And as Peridot often said, it was quite beautiful.

Lapis made her way outside and saw Peridot sitting cross-legged on a bench outside, Pumpkin in her lap. Lapis handed her the cup of peppermint hot chocolate, keeping the caramel hot chocolate for herself. It was initially slightly too sweet for Lapis’s taste, but with a little salt it was perfect.

As they sipped their hot chocolate, Lapis and Peridot gazed out at the snow, admiring how the moon reflected off of it to give the area around the barn a bit of a magic glow. They didn’t say anything, and they didn’t have to, Lapis thought to herself. Just being here, having something, having a family, was more than either of them ever could have imagined.

“You know,” Peridot broke the silence, holding her mug close to her face. Lapis turned to her, but Peridot didn’t look her in the eyes. “I’m really glad I have you.”

Lapis was taken slightly off-guard, and quickly looked away from Peridot, staring into her mug of swirling hot chocolate. “I…” she said, trying to find the right words to express how she felt. Why didn’t words ever come out right when they needed to? “I am too.”

Peridot was the one to turn this time, eyes shining as she looked up at her. “Merry Christmas, Lapis.”

Hello everyone! As I’d mentioned before, I made a little challenge for myself in trying this thing called the 12 days of fanficmas, where I post a one shot every day leading up until Christmas. This is day one! I am going to be having surgery next week so I’ll try to queue some stuff up for when I’m not online, but I may end up not having something for every single day. Anyway, here’s day one!

Creepy as he felt, Odd found himself glued to the spot. He heard the quiet whir of the vending machines behind him, feeling the slight warmth on the back of his neck from the vents. Before him he watched the snow fall, like little white bugs dancing in the wind. It wasn’t a very romantic thought, but Odd had never been the best at romance. He was good at the game that middle and high schoolers liked to play, but that wasn’t too useful to him now.

His eyes were on the bench, just on the other side of the field, and the two people sitting on it. They faced away from Odd, unaware of his presence, both laughing at whatever joke she was making. For a brief moment, Aelita covered her face with her pink mittens. Jeremie put his arm around her. She leaned into him, and Odd’s gaze shifted to the snowflakes again. They rested on the ends of her hair like sugar on strawberries. Jeremie whispered something in Aelita’s ear, and she smiled at him. God, that smile.

Now Odd definitely felt like a creep, watching two of his best friends have a moment – whatever that moment was, he wasn’t sure. His hands shuffled nervously behind his back, fingers playing with the ribbon wrapped around the small box he was holding. He shouldn’t have even bought the present in the first place, but it wasn’t the gift that was the problem. It was the note he’d written to accompany it that was eating away at him inside.

She’d probably appreciate the earrings. They were small pink gems of some sort that she had pointed out to Yumi excitedly on the day that the girls dragged Odd to the mall with them; Jeremie was busy with homework and Ulrich had martial arts practice. It took all the self-control in the world to not spill the real reason why he had asked Yumi to drive him back to the mall the next weekend. Odd was pretty sure she’d picked up on the reason anyway, though.

For weeks the earrings sat in a small box under Odd’s bed. Ulrich never bothered to snoop around Odd’s side of the room, even when he went on one of his sprees where he would clean everything in the room and then leave it alone for a couple of months before it happened again. Ulrich had found one too many year-old half-eaten bags of chips or slobbery Kiwi toys in the years they lived together so now he left Odd’s bed alone.

It wasn’t that Odd didn’t want anyone to know, like it was some atrocious secret that could get him kicked out of the friend group; he just didn’t want to cause unnecessary drama. After all, Jeremie and Aelita were two of his best friends, and he made her so happy. Hell, Jeremie was the reason Aelita was even here in the first place. Odd didn’t want to cause any rifts. And of course, all of that sounded completely logical in his head, until she came into view. He wasn’t sure if it was something that had grown in the past three years since she stepped foot on this earth, or something that emerged when he’d realized they only had a year and a half of school left before they all went their separate ways.

But now, he couldn’t stop paying attention. The way her nose crinkled when she laughed, or stuck her tongue out ever so slightly when doing physics homework, or the intense look of concentration she got when it came to music. That was probably when he liked to be around her most. He loved when she laughed at his jokes or when they’d just sit outside of English class and make up stories about the random upperclassmen walking by. However, Aelita was the most, well, her, when she was with her music. She wouldn’t even remember Odd was in the room sometimes, mixing the same few seconds of a song, looking for the perfect combination of sound. Odd could watch her for hours. And he would, until she’d look up with an apologetic look and asked why he didn’t say something about the time passing. He’d respond that he didn’t notice it either. If he’d felt this way about any other girl (well, except maybe Yumi), this wouldn’t be an issue. But of course, it had to be her.

None of that had been stupid. He could avoid being impulsive in-person. What had been stupid was when he wrote down what he felt on a piece of paper the size of a post-it note. He hadn’t spilled his heart, of course. Odd had never been exactly good with words, even less so than romance. But still, he’d written that note, the pencil trembling, and then stuffed it into the box with the earrings before he could talk himself out of it.

 Aelita,

I have to say this because it’s literally eating me alive, but I think I like you. Ok no, I know I like you, but I know I shouldn’t. I’m not trying to do anything to sabotage your relationship. That’s the last thing I want. I just feel like you deserve to know.

Odd

 He had to ask Ulrich how to spell sabotage.

As if waking up from his thoughts by unexpected movement, Odd’s attention went back to the bench. He saw Jeremie lean in to whisper something in Aelita’s ear again. She nodded, and then the blonde stood up and stuffed his hands in his pockets as he walked away, hunched against the cold.

Odd took a step forward onto the snow, hands still behind his back. He squinted against the wind, and saw that Aelita hadn’t moved from her spot on the bench, and she still hadn’t seen him. He could walk away like nothing had happened, unwrap the present, take the note out, rewrap it, and make things far less complicated for both of them.

Instead, he found himself walking closer to the bench.

“Hey, Aelita,” he called from a couple of yards away.

Aelita turned around to face him, grinning. “Hey, Odd.”

Odd dropped one hand to his side, holding the other out to her. The small red box reflected sunlight in a way that made it seem like a gem itself. He hoped that, if she noticed his hands shaking, she’d think it was from the cold.

Hi friend! I’m sorry this is a couple days late; it’s getting to be around finals time. But I wrote this instead of my final paper ahaha. Hope you like it!

“The star goes on top.”

“No! The angel goes on top, you heathen.”

Odd laughed from his place on the ladder, tossing tinsel down at the pink-haired woman poking his elbow with the head of the angel in her hand. She crinkled her nose and brushed the silver and gold specks out of her hair. It was a little bit longer now, more like her mother’s in pictures that Odd had seen. The picture was one of the few artifacts that they’d nabbed from the Hermitage before high school graduation, before the gang went all their separate ways – everyone except Odd and Aelita, of course.

Accepting defeat (for now, at least), Aelita placed the angel on the last step of the ladder and went back to the box of decorations. It wasn’t too impressive, if she was being honest, half-filled with ornaments and tinsel from the discount bin at the local craft shop. She didn’t have much family to pass anything down from, and Odd’s parents had only given him a few sentimental items – his sisters had claimed the rest.

“What’s this one?”  

Odd looked down from his place on the ladder and saw Aelita pull out a small cardboard circle with a small yellow handprint on it. Under the handprint read “Odd Dellarobbia, age 3” in handwriting that was evidently from either a teacher or his mom. He blushed a little, stepping down from the ladder to get a closer look.

“Oh, I guess my mom stuck that in there when she sent the rest of the ornaments,” Odd said, reaching out for the ornament. Aelita smiled and pulled it away. “We don’t have to put it on the tree,” he continued.

“Of course we do!” Aelita announced, grinning. “It can go right next to my favorite,” she said, moving over to the tree and placing the handprint ornament next to one of an elf – the one that Odd had given her on their first date during their freshman year of college, when he took her to see the Christmas tree lighting in the town square.

“If I had known that one was going to be your favorite, I would have gotten a fancier one,” Odd said over his shoulder, moving towards the kitchen. “Of course it’s my favorite,” she called after him. “It’s from my favorite person, after all.”

Aelita continued rummaging around the box, placing red and gold sparkling things on the tree until Odd re-emerged a few minutes later with two mugs of hot chocolate. They both had a small mountain of whipped cream on them, sprinkled with chocolate shavings. She took a mug from him and they both sat down together, tired from working.

“You ought to be a barista,” Aelita mused, as she took a sip of the hot chocolate. The whipped cream and chocolate shavings made it taste so much better.

“Maybe I should,” he responded, setting his mug on the floor next to him. “My degree in Italian Studies isn’t probably going to do me any good. I’m definitely no audio engineer.”

Aelita elbowed Odd in the side playfully. “You’ll find something. We just graduated, after all.”

“Yeah,” Odd responded, sliding his socks against the hardwood floor. “Sometimes I just want to be a kid again, though. I mean, saving the world wasn’t easy, sure. But life just seemed much simpler then.” He took Aelita’s empty mug and stood up.

“Well, yeah,” Aelita said, standing up with him. “But back then there were no Christmas trees to decorate.” She grabbed a golden tinsel garland out of the box and tossed it over Odd’s head, so that it rested on his shoulders. “Or boyfriends.”

Odd smiled and rolled his eyes playfully. “You’re silly.”

“What else is new?” She challenged, eyes sparkling mischeviously. She tugged at the ends of the garland, pulling him in for a quick kiss. “Merry Christmas, Odd.”

i know it’s been a while (probably about 4 years since i’ve posted on this blog tbh), but i’ve caught the fanfic bug again and i’ll probably post a couple christmas-themed oneshots once the holidays get a little closer. i’d like to say i’ll do “12 days of oneshots” but tbh who knows how many i’ll actually get done.

on a sidenote, i know i’ve said before that i do oneshot requests, mostly cartoon-related. since i’m hoping to get this started again if there are any otps that you’d like something holiday-themed, let me know. i’ve already got something code lyoko and something phineas and ferb in the works.

(i'm aware that this chapter sucks a bit, but it will get better as the angst becomes more prevalent, i promise. also it's going to be called skylarks because that's their school mascot. pretty much all of the high school pnf stuff i write will be tagged as skylarks au. please enjoy.)

Prologue

It was raining that day outside of the gym. The windows looked almost green, he noticed, because the color of the awning over the school melded with the air outside the windows, almost too high for the short-statured boy to see them.

so should i make an intro post or...