Archive of Our Own

The first time, Ben was at SFO, sprawled on an unreasonably comfortable couch at the Amex lounge. He hadn’t even wanted to go into the lounge—he didn’t have a fancy card of his own, and they charged for guests now—but Sam refused to wait at the gate like a normal person, and if Sam wanted to pay for him to get lukewarm snacks and a Coke, Ben was fine with it.

It was actually kind of enjoyable. He drank soda until he felt like his bladder was about to explode, took a piss in a restroom with marble counters, and played Hollow Knight until he got the low battery notification. His Switch charger was buried too deep in his backpack and he couldn’t be arsed to take it out, so he turned it off and scrolled through Twitter for a bit. Annoying the fans—he felt awfully weird calling them that—with shitty hints was a good enough distraction from the wait.

He also got two texts: one from his mother asking about the delay, which he hadn’t known about until Sam told him more than he’d ever wanted to know about volcanic ash, and one from his cousin, who’d sent a link with no attached description.

Archive of Our Own. Right. Ben knew this site, because he’d browsed the internet for longer than a week, and he’d had a fanfiction phase before, though he’d spent most of that on SpaceBattles. The specific link sent him to a page that said Jet Lag: The Game (Web Series) in very large letters. Ben immediately knew what was going on here. He giggled loud enough to get a curious glance from Sam, but he wasn’t telling Sam about this even under the threat of torture.

He knew there was fanfiction about himself, but only in a vague, weird way: someone had sent him a screenshot on Twitter once, and Brian had actually read the whole thing and texted him a million times after that. This was different, though; this time, he was looking at it with his own two eyes, which made it a lot more real.

Most of the works weren’t explicit. He didn’t know how to feel about that. He kind of wanted people to be horny about him, in a weird, conceited way. On the other hand, he didn’t know if his girlfriend would be okay with people actively conceptualising his dick on the internet. Maybe it'd come with time. If this season was successful enough, he’d get stuff where he had chiselled abs? He didn’t understand the output-to-fanfiction curve yet.

how did you find this lol, he replied. He was never into looking up his own name, but these were very clearly about Ben Doyle. He’d have to do a more thorough search. If Sam got rid of him and this came up when his next employer typed his name into Google—no, he didn’t want to think about that.

I have friends who know stuff, said his cousin. Anyway you have to read these!!!

Fair enough. Ben tapped the first work he saw with an adult content warning and straightened his spine. He wanted to read this properly, with more effort than he’d ever put into any of the assigned readings back in uni. There was a singular beauty to picturing himself with his tongue down Adam’s throat, like an anthropologist finding ancient artefacts.

It was a joke, obviously. Easy entertainment while he waited for the air around Japan to be plane-friendly, or whatever Sam had ranted about. He wasn’t going to become a fanfiction addict—he was a grown man with a job, and he knew how to separate things. It was fine to indulge his curiosity just this once.

He became a fanfic addict of sorts. Most of the stories were fun, and they were all unrealistic enough that he didn’t mind reading them—it was like watching someone play with Barbie dolls, except they definitely weren’t flat below the belt and all of them had his coworkers’ names.

Adam hated it. He’d threatened to report Ben to HR if he didn’t stop sending excerpts from a particularly explicit sex scene between them, which was fair enough. Their HR was Sam, though, and Sam stayed out of New York business unless it was to watch races with Amy. Ben doubted he even knew what fanfic was; Sam was kind of strangely online and offline at the same time, floating in the bizarre zone between knowing his fanbase was largely comprised of gay young adults and never having played a single Pokémon game.

Weird was the right word: Sam was weird. Weirder still was the fanfiction about the two of them. He’d expected his friendship with Adam to become a thing once the show took off and turned into a real fandom, but Sam was a pleasant surprise.

People thought he could seduce his boss. That was nice to know, a funny little tidbit he almost wanted to include in his CV. It’d probably make a good article, too. What magazines would accept a submission about his odd fascination with this world where everyone was gay and he made out with his friends? He added that to his list of things he’d never finish.

“I’m staging an intervention,” Adam announced. He almost slipped on the edge of the carpet on his way to the sofa, which was almost as funny as his completely serious expression.

Ben clicked his tongue and broke the last cookie on the plate. He kept one half and gave the other to Maeve, because he knew Adam was about to be absurdly annoying. “What are you intervening in, American government?”

“You’ve been here for two days,” Adam said, “and you haven’t put your phone down once. And every time I look at you, you’re reading—you’re reading that stuff, okay, and that’s enough. It’s gone too far, we have to stop it, you’re losing it.”

At least Ben still had a pack of gummies. The sudden preaching exhausted him. He pulled the colourful bag open and pulled out the pinkest piece of candy he’d ever seen. It tasted like someone had put Barbie in a blender.

“It’s not weird,” he said, frowning. He wasn’t just trying to be a little shit: he genuinely believed it was normal to want to know what his followers thought about him, especially when they assumed he wasn’t watching. “It’s normal. I’m normal. You’re making it weird.”

Adam groaned and rubbed his eyes with both hands. “Of course it’s weird,” he mumbled. “Of course it’s weird. You just don’t realise how weird it is because it’s us and you think it’s funny when people—”

Fortunately, there was a very easy way to solve this. “Then ask a third party,” Ben said. He turned to Maeve with a smug grin. “Do you think reading fanfiction is weird?”

“She doesn’t count!” Adam yelled. His neighbours were going to hate him for that one, Ben thought. “Oh my God, this is, like, a conspiracy. You’re driving me insane.” He ran a hand down his cheek and said something incomprehensible through gritted teeth.

After a brief pause, Ben suggested, “What about Sam? He’s unbiased. He’s probably neutral on this. I don’t think he even knows it exists. He’s gonna be right about it.” He popped a gummy into his mouth and chewed as obnoxiously as possible.

“Sure,” Adam said, making a face that Ben knew meant he wasn’t happy with this at all. He sat on the floor next to Ben and grimaced when he caught a glimpse of his phone screen. “Call him, whatever. I don’t even care anymore.”

That was code for I care very much, which Ben had learned about a month into their friendship. He closed Safari halfway through a very compelling handjob and dialled Sam’s number. He wasn’t any good at mental maths, but he hoped it was a reasonable time in Colorado.

Luckily for their stupid argument, Sam picked up almost instantly. “Hello?” He sounded a bit winded, like he’d just climbed a huge flight of stairs, though Ben was pretty sure nobody else found that as exhausting as he did.

“Hi, Sam,” Ben said gleefully. “You’re on speaker. We’re here—I’m at Adam’s right now. We’re calling because we have a very important question.” He hoped it sounded dramatic enough to pique Sam’s interest.

There was a rustling noise from the other side. “I don’t know if you’ve ever said that about anything actually important,” Sam said. “But sure, what do you need?”

“Do you think, if I were reading fanfiction, like stories about us and stuff like that, is that weird?” Ben asked slowly, enunciating everything like a game show host. “To repeat that, do you think if I were reading—”

“I’m quitting if you say yes,” Adam said. He sounded extremely serious about it, too, like he had a job offer lined up in case Sam disagreed with him. Knowing Adam, he probably did.

Sam hummed thoughtfully. “I think it’s… I don’t know, I guess it’s a little weird, but not in a bad way,” he said. “I would probably read it if I knew about it, just out of curiosity? It’s not real, right, so it’s just… it’s kind of like, a multiverse. Does that even make sense? Anyway, I think it’s fine. There’s no company policy on it or anything.”

Ben turned to Adam and spread his arms as if to say, see? He wanted to relish every second of this—victory always made him smug, but never quite this much. It felt good to mess with Adam. “Okay, yes, thank you so much,” he said, tapping the big red button to hang up.

Frustration made Adam look hilarious. He didn’t even look Ben in the eye; he got up and went to the kitchen to make an assortment of weird angry noises, all of which reminded Ben of a hoarse dinosaur, then came back with a glass of water. At least he was a lot better at coping now.

“Fine,” Adam said eventually, staring at Ben like he’d killed his cat. “Fine. You read your fanfiction, Ben. Go have fun reading your fanfiction.” He sulked on one corner of the couch, apparently vexed that Maeve hadn’t backed him up either.

“Oh, I will,” Ben said. “For sure, yeah.” He couldn’t help smiling at that—he refused to give up something this fun. He’d keep reading until his damn eyes fell off, and he’d tell the whole world about it as soon as he got the chance.