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fandomweekly2025-09-01 10:04 am
quicksilverfox3) wrote in fandomweekly2025-09-01 10:04 am
Entry tags:
[#271] last possible moment (Date Everything)
Theme Prompt: 271 - In the Nick of Time
Title: last possible moment
Fandom: Date Everything (video game)
Rating/Warnings: None
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 961
Summary: A package arrives for you and something vital slips your mind.
The doorbell rings and you're halfway towards it before realisation dawns.
You hadn't ordered anything.
A few steps backwards in your hallway — Freddie reclined against the countertops and Mitchell leafing through the selection on offer — and it couldn't be food you'd placed an order for in a half-awake haze; a preorder, maybe?
"Mac? Monique?" You call, pitching your voice louder than you would have if the delivery courier had been human, but through the hastily patched front door, you can see the whirring rotors of a Valvidian delivery drone.
"Nothing unexpected on the budget here," Monique answers, her shadow barely visible from the top of the stairs.
"No orders shipped in the last few weeks." Mac pauses in the doorway to the study, prodding a few keys as rainbow light catches on the angles of their face. "What's it doing here?"
You worry at your lip before you answer, grinning with a confidence you don't feel, "What are you worried about? It's me."
There's a low muttering, not just the commonplace settling of the house as the heater kicks on and water rushes through the pipes, but the concerned mumbles of people you know as friends and lovers over the past few weeks. You don't want to lose them; not when everything is starting to settle into a new normal.
Phonecia flicks through her messaging apps at your glance as you square your shoulders and head towards the door. Your hallway isn't long but those few steps are enough for her to scroll through your scant work and personal chats.
"Sam mentioned a package," she recounts, one hand layered over her hip as her streams refresh, chime, snippets of advertising jingles layered over each other. "Said to keep an eye out for it, oh, girl has got a creative streak! I like it."
Hero-hime was always more Sam's favourite than yours. You remember stumbling into each other as you walked to school, Sam's hands a volley in the air as she recounted the morning's episode to her exacting satisfaction, then swapping theories amongst other whispers, heads bent together in the desk you shared for three classes out of the five. It's little wonder that once the surprise and medical concern of a friend claiming their furniture could become interactive that her thoughts would turn towards that childhood (and teenager and young adult and adult) obsession.
Dorian's waiting for you, shoulders square and hands clasped in front of his stomach in the visage of your front door. "Ready, love?"
You nod, reaching out to undo the latch and begin to swing the door open. Such a simple act never used to fill you with dread, barely thought about section of your morning or afternoon, whenever you had to leave to pick something up or reluctantly trudge around for the sake of doing something with your day. You can't remember when you stopped leaving the house, long before the Dateviators ever fell into your lap— shit.
You're still wearing them.
You don't even think not to anymore, easy in a way most things weren't before, but the drone is Valvidian tech.
It will scan you. It will know.
And you'll lose everything. More than everything.
Dorian realises at the same moment you do, a three-quarters formed plan already condensing in his throat, but there's no time. He's already opening, a victim of momentum, physics made immaculate.
You grab for the Dateviators with your left hand and rip them from your face.
The world doesn't change; it's always been less and now you can see it once more.
Sweat beads at your hairline, a patch at your upper lip, beneath your arms as you reach, one handed, for the package. The Dateviators bite into your fingers as you waver, duck down to place the package at your feet, keeping your left hand firmly behind the door. You can't see Dorian like this, can't see any of them, incorporeal, but you imagine his hand around your wrist. His grip would be solid, a comfort you desperately need, and it is that memory alone that keeps you upright.
Seconds slip by like honey against your skin, sticking and leaving a residue that would crystallise by morning. It's not just the mandatory verification of your identity; it's the scan that lingers over the bridge of your nose, the red beam blurring the world around it like something out of an old horror film, it's the knowing that the drone is recording the hallway behind you and the scattering of art you've tacked onto the walls. And you hold what it's searching for mere inches from discovery, carefully clutched in numb fingers.
The drone beeps once, a robust string of legal allowances at double speed ejected from it's speakers, and you nod once. It turns and flies away, rising up over the houses until it is little more than a speck on the horizon. You close the door, pressing your back against it as you sink to the floor, breathing heavily.
That was close.
Too close.
You look at your house, familiar objects and things, and you let yourself breathe. You're safe, they're safe.
Putting the Dateviators back on is a riot of noise and colour, faces crowding in front of you and hands outstretched, not just Dorian kneeling next to you but Skylar on your other side, Mateo in the sitting room with Koa towering over him, Freddie and Mitchell peering out from the kitchen, Avel and Dascha from the study, Hector barely visible in the vent with a hand outstretched all the same.
"Thank you," you murmur, sagging into Dorian's arms and closing your eyes to savour it. You aren't alone and, even if they leave, you won't be alone because they will still be there.
Title: last possible moment
Fandom: Date Everything (video game)
Rating/Warnings: None
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 961
Summary: A package arrives for you and something vital slips your mind.
The doorbell rings and you're halfway towards it before realisation dawns.
You hadn't ordered anything.
A few steps backwards in your hallway — Freddie reclined against the countertops and Mitchell leafing through the selection on offer — and it couldn't be food you'd placed an order for in a half-awake haze; a preorder, maybe?
"Mac? Monique?" You call, pitching your voice louder than you would have if the delivery courier had been human, but through the hastily patched front door, you can see the whirring rotors of a Valvidian delivery drone.
"Nothing unexpected on the budget here," Monique answers, her shadow barely visible from the top of the stairs.
"No orders shipped in the last few weeks." Mac pauses in the doorway to the study, prodding a few keys as rainbow light catches on the angles of their face. "What's it doing here?"
You worry at your lip before you answer, grinning with a confidence you don't feel, "What are you worried about? It's me."
There's a low muttering, not just the commonplace settling of the house as the heater kicks on and water rushes through the pipes, but the concerned mumbles of people you know as friends and lovers over the past few weeks. You don't want to lose them; not when everything is starting to settle into a new normal.
Phonecia flicks through her messaging apps at your glance as you square your shoulders and head towards the door. Your hallway isn't long but those few steps are enough for her to scroll through your scant work and personal chats.
"Sam mentioned a package," she recounts, one hand layered over her hip as her streams refresh, chime, snippets of advertising jingles layered over each other. "Said to keep an eye out for it, oh, girl has got a creative streak! I like it."
Hero-hime was always more Sam's favourite than yours. You remember stumbling into each other as you walked to school, Sam's hands a volley in the air as she recounted the morning's episode to her exacting satisfaction, then swapping theories amongst other whispers, heads bent together in the desk you shared for three classes out of the five. It's little wonder that once the surprise and medical concern of a friend claiming their furniture could become interactive that her thoughts would turn towards that childhood (and teenager and young adult and adult) obsession.
Dorian's waiting for you, shoulders square and hands clasped in front of his stomach in the visage of your front door. "Ready, love?"
You nod, reaching out to undo the latch and begin to swing the door open. Such a simple act never used to fill you with dread, barely thought about section of your morning or afternoon, whenever you had to leave to pick something up or reluctantly trudge around for the sake of doing something with your day. You can't remember when you stopped leaving the house, long before the Dateviators ever fell into your lap— shit.
You're still wearing them.
You don't even think not to anymore, easy in a way most things weren't before, but the drone is Valvidian tech.
It will scan you. It will know.
And you'll lose everything. More than everything.
Dorian realises at the same moment you do, a three-quarters formed plan already condensing in his throat, but there's no time. He's already opening, a victim of momentum, physics made immaculate.
You grab for the Dateviators with your left hand and rip them from your face.
The world doesn't change; it's always been less and now you can see it once more.
Sweat beads at your hairline, a patch at your upper lip, beneath your arms as you reach, one handed, for the package. The Dateviators bite into your fingers as you waver, duck down to place the package at your feet, keeping your left hand firmly behind the door. You can't see Dorian like this, can't see any of them, incorporeal, but you imagine his hand around your wrist. His grip would be solid, a comfort you desperately need, and it is that memory alone that keeps you upright.
Seconds slip by like honey against your skin, sticking and leaving a residue that would crystallise by morning. It's not just the mandatory verification of your identity; it's the scan that lingers over the bridge of your nose, the red beam blurring the world around it like something out of an old horror film, it's the knowing that the drone is recording the hallway behind you and the scattering of art you've tacked onto the walls. And you hold what it's searching for mere inches from discovery, carefully clutched in numb fingers.
The drone beeps once, a robust string of legal allowances at double speed ejected from it's speakers, and you nod once. It turns and flies away, rising up over the houses until it is little more than a speck on the horizon. You close the door, pressing your back against it as you sink to the floor, breathing heavily.
That was close.
Too close.
You look at your house, familiar objects and things, and you let yourself breathe. You're safe, they're safe.
Putting the Dateviators back on is a riot of noise and colour, faces crowding in front of you and hands outstretched, not just Dorian kneeling next to you but Skylar on your other side, Mateo in the sitting room with Koa towering over him, Freddie and Mitchell peering out from the kitchen, Avel and Dascha from the study, Hector barely visible in the vent with a hand outstretched all the same.
"Thank you," you murmur, sagging into Dorian's arms and closing your eyes to savour it. You aren't alone and, even if they leave, you won't be alone because they will still be there.
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