Fan Service

by Rosie Danan

dirty looks were a lot easier to swallow than pity.

Devin didn’t actually know any lesbians, but Ellen DeGeneres seemed nice.

Apparently, user Nathaniel’sJuiceBox99 was writing a fic and wanted to feature something called “mpreg.” What the fuck was that?

You could take the nerd off the Internet but you couldn’t take the Internet out of the nerd.

“People don’t care if you’re falling apart. They care if you falling apart makes their lives harder.”

Devin never really thought about periods before, but dang, what a scam.

“It’s weird that you lie so much when you’re this bad at it.”

It was one of his skills, along with crying on demand and eating it from the back.

“All we need to do is put forth your greatest asset.” Alex frowned. “I’m not gonna take off my top.”

Oh no. Since when was he aroused by emotional intimacy?

Devin literally grew up with people taking money from him, but it turned out that giving it away felt different.

His insides went all warm and gooey, like a half-baked cookie.

She shouldn’t be so surprised that he was watching her while she watched him.

Locked safely behind the boundaries of her own mind, Alex lived out a thousand fantasies without ever risking her heart.

You could live out whole relationships like that, daydreams where you were always in control.

Fictional lovers couldn’t leave you.

It took a lot of gall to maintain a superiority complex when you’d accomplished nothing.

“You smell…” he began, then mumbled, “like you were made for me.”

“Uh. No. It’s not very gentlemanly.” “You’re not a gentleman.” It wasn’t an admonishment.

Things like this didn’t happen in real life. But then again, she supposed, neither did werewolves.

I’ve been fantasizing all week about doing stuff with you I can’t even spell.”

“I don’t pretend to understand the mating rituals of millennials.” “I’m actually Gen X.” Rowen stared at him blankly. “Never heard of it.”

“He looks like he was breastfed until he was five.”

This was the deepest kind of friendship, in her opinion. Sharing stuff you loved, the stuff you got weird over, with someone else. Hoping they might get weird over it too.

Just because she’d spread her thighs for him in the woods didn’t mean she couldn’t also bring him to his knees.

Alex made him want to be someone real. The kind of guy who drove her to work during storm season because her shitty little car couldn’t handle wet roads.

- Listen to her when she talks. - Ask her questions. - Let her pick the music in the car.

Devin Ashwood made her hot, not the monster inside him.

I think part of the reason our relationship works has always been that they’re far away.

It’s easier, in some ways, to lay your heart on the line when most of your communication comes through a screen. You can hide when you need to.”

She could feel the heartbreak waiting like the promise of a bruise under her skin.

I should want this, she thought at the same time she realized she didn’t.

He might be a pathetic try-hard, but he was her pathetic try-hard.

Fandom was everything when you were in it and embarrassing as hell when you weren’t.

She wanted him to be happy, even if it meant he’d never belong to her.

he might be a slightly delusional prima donna but he’s also our little meow meow.

real life fell short of her fictional standards.