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arch_calzenFandom: Cabin Pressure
Character(s), Pairing(s): Martin, minor OMC
Rating: K, K+ max
Genre: Humour
Word count: 1,356
Summary: Martin discovers CP fanfiction... and likes it. A truly microscopic TW for mentions of mentions of mentions of injury, death, rape etc. You know, fandom.
Martin blinked several times, as if expecting the vision to dissolve into thin air. But his hope was forfeit: the website wasn’t going anywhere, as real as anything on the Internet could be.
He’s been in the cybercafé for the past forty minutes or so, and still had about fifteen before his time ran out. Having done the research he’d originally come here for, Martin quickly became bored.
Everyone must have done it at least once in their lives when bored out of their mind: opening the nearest searching system and typing in one’s name. Martin was no exception to the tendency.
Humming softly, he’d looked through first several pages (resolutely skipping links to Facebook accounts with hundreds of friends each), a college link, and about thirty links to random Martins and Crieffs he’d never seen in his life.
And then this website caught his eye.
And there he was now.
Martin blinked again, coming back to present, and scrolled up and down the page aimlessly. He’d never seen anything like this before, and it was kind of unnerving.
Martin concentrated, remembering suddenly a talk he unintentionally eavesdropped on a month earlier. It was at their house, in the kitchen, when he was drinking tea and one of the female students was explaining the ‘fandom’ term to the other one. Oh yes, now he could recall the rather one-sided conversation, especially the part about fanfiction. Particularly, the anonymous websites where anyone could request anything, and maybe another someone would fill the request. The conversation had made no sense to him back then, but now the bits were falling into place as he looked through the website.
What confused him was that he logically assumed that this ‘fandom’ thing could be applied mainly to popular books or movies. What he couldn’t imagine, until now, was the fact that there could be… ‘fanfics’… about real people. The thought was a bit disturbing. Moreover, he would never even think that there would be such things… regarding MJN.
Okay, now he admitted what his eyes saw. This was a website dedicated to MJN, but not in the way one would expect. There were these anonymous requests, featuring members of the crew.
Martin felt a strange mixture of disgust, uneasiness, astonishment and, unexpectedly, thrill. So, all those people – whoever they were – knew about them and put time and effort into writing about them. Martin looked over his shoulder, suddenly afraid of finding out that someone was watching him.
Were they clients? Expressing their gratitude… in this bizarre way? Martin opened profile page of the first logged-in member he stumbled upon. It was a young girl, and she wasn’t even twenty. Martin frowned in confusion and closed her profile, returning to the website.
He glanced through the page, for the first time making himself actually read the prompts. ‘Arthur and magic porridge pot’, ‘Miserable passenger’, a ‘Vampire!Douglas’ AU (he actually paused to giggle at that one), ‘A flight before Christmas’, a ‘Doctor Who’ crossover, and the list went ever on as Martin’s eyes were becoming wider and rounder with barely contained hysterics.
There were also more… strange prompts, revolving around sexual relationships in and outside the crew. Martin read a couple of prompts, shook his head and went on; he just couldn’t bring himself to imagining any of this, too… weird.
To the right, Martin noticed a tag-list, spotting his own name almost immediately, and plunged into the slough bravely.
He was silent for the next couple of minutes, going through the pages. There were two conclusions to be drawn: firstly, most of these people were really keen on pairing him up with Douglas, which was a bit disturbing, granted, but the second conclusion was even more of that, because it contained the fact that they also really liked to make his imaginary doubles suffer.
Martin scrolled through another page, spotting many different prompts of the sort. Poor Martins were injured, hurt, beaten up, raped, betrayed, killed, they committed suicides and died from cancer, they were despised by their families and humiliated by the crew… The variants to make Martin suffer seemed endless. And most of the prompts were filled. To be honest, there were relatively happy prompts about self-sufficient, loved and successful Martins, but they were few and far between.
Martin slowly poised the cursor over one of the fills, unable to believe that he was really about to read that – purely out of curiosity, he assured himself – when the computer shut down suddenly. His time was out.
Fate decrees otherwise, then. In fact, it’d be safer if he didn’t read any of this, so all the better. Martin got up, collected his belongings and left the café to go home.
* * *
Martin closed the book he was reading and sighed. No matter how hard he tried to concentrate, his mind always wandered back to that website he saw several hours ago. His curiosity was increasing every minute, but it was already too late to go back to the café, and he doubted he could wait any longer.
The pilot sat up on his sofa, placed the book aside and moved to the trapdoor.
* * *
Luckily, Chris was exactly where Martin expected him to be: sitting at the table in the common kitchen, ears-deep in the books. Chris owned a laptop, and Martin had already successfully asked him several times in the past to lend him the thing, so he decided to ask once again.
“Err, Chris,” he waited until the student let out a grunt of distracted acknowledgement. “I was wondering if you- if I could have your laptop- If you don’t need it- of course, of course you need it, because it’s yours, but, but now that you are studying, could I- could you? Ugh,” he finished helplessly. The website’s impression wasn’t adding up to his conversational skills. Rather the opposite.
Chris frowned slightly, as if trying to snap out of the pre-exam studying haze and comprehend the rather incoherent tirade. Martin waited.
“Er. Yeah,” the student finally managed, not raising his head from the book he was reading. “Bring it here, would you? ‘ts in the living-room.”
Martin picked the laptop and returned to the kitchen. Chris extended an arm to blindly type in the password. “There you go.”
“Thanks. I- I won’t be long, I promise. I can, I could chip in for the Internet?” Martin suggested. Chris finally tore his a bit glassy gaze away from the book and looked up at Martin.
“Man, seriously. I have an exam tomorrow, do you really think I’ll be needing the blasted thing until after it? Besides, the Wi-fi is stolen. So suit yourself.”
Martin nodded wordlessly and fled upstairs.
* * *
The pilot sat down at his desk and opened the browser. Unfortunately, he didn’t memorize the link, so it took him several minutes to find the website.
And then, hours passed as he was engrossed in reading. Strangely, the fanfics were making him feel better, somehow. Maybe because sometimes his doubles suffered much more than he could ever imagine, and it felt nice to know that he’d never been in such situation, that there were people who fared worse than himself – even if they were imaginary.
Some works described situations similar to ones he had found himself in in the past, and he marveled at the elegant solutions of ones and the hilarious outcomes of the others.
But mainly, he enjoyed the reading because in majority of the fanfics, Martins were comforted. Yes, they fared really awful for the duration of a fic, but in most cases it was all made better in the end, and Martin could not help but smile softly, happy for the characters.
And yet, there was something nagging at his mind. He’s read an enormous amount of fanfics by now, but none of them described the situation he felt so uneasy about. Yes, many of them hit close to home, but never enough, never nailing the problem exactly. What if..?
Martin paused for a second to formulate the request, then hit the ‘Comment’ button and started typing.
Character(s), Pairing(s): Martin, minor OMC
Rating: K, K+ max
Genre: Humour
Word count: 1,356
Summary: Martin discovers CP fanfiction... and likes it. A truly microscopic TW for mentions of mentions of mentions of injury, death, rape etc. You know, fandom.
Martin blinked several times, as if expecting the vision to dissolve into thin air. But his hope was forfeit: the website wasn’t going anywhere, as real as anything on the Internet could be.
He’s been in the cybercafé for the past forty minutes or so, and still had about fifteen before his time ran out. Having done the research he’d originally come here for, Martin quickly became bored.
Everyone must have done it at least once in their lives when bored out of their mind: opening the nearest searching system and typing in one’s name. Martin was no exception to the tendency.
Humming softly, he’d looked through first several pages (resolutely skipping links to Facebook accounts with hundreds of friends each), a college link, and about thirty links to random Martins and Crieffs he’d never seen in his life.
And then this website caught his eye.
And there he was now.
Martin blinked again, coming back to present, and scrolled up and down the page aimlessly. He’d never seen anything like this before, and it was kind of unnerving.
Martin concentrated, remembering suddenly a talk he unintentionally eavesdropped on a month earlier. It was at their house, in the kitchen, when he was drinking tea and one of the female students was explaining the ‘fandom’ term to the other one. Oh yes, now he could recall the rather one-sided conversation, especially the part about fanfiction. Particularly, the anonymous websites where anyone could request anything, and maybe another someone would fill the request. The conversation had made no sense to him back then, but now the bits were falling into place as he looked through the website.
What confused him was that he logically assumed that this ‘fandom’ thing could be applied mainly to popular books or movies. What he couldn’t imagine, until now, was the fact that there could be… ‘fanfics’… about real people. The thought was a bit disturbing. Moreover, he would never even think that there would be such things… regarding MJN.
Okay, now he admitted what his eyes saw. This was a website dedicated to MJN, but not in the way one would expect. There were these anonymous requests, featuring members of the crew.
Martin felt a strange mixture of disgust, uneasiness, astonishment and, unexpectedly, thrill. So, all those people – whoever they were – knew about them and put time and effort into writing about them. Martin looked over his shoulder, suddenly afraid of finding out that someone was watching him.
Were they clients? Expressing their gratitude… in this bizarre way? Martin opened profile page of the first logged-in member he stumbled upon. It was a young girl, and she wasn’t even twenty. Martin frowned in confusion and closed her profile, returning to the website.
He glanced through the page, for the first time making himself actually read the prompts. ‘Arthur and magic porridge pot’, ‘Miserable passenger’, a ‘Vampire!Douglas’ AU (he actually paused to giggle at that one), ‘A flight before Christmas’, a ‘Doctor Who’ crossover, and the list went ever on as Martin’s eyes were becoming wider and rounder with barely contained hysterics.
There were also more… strange prompts, revolving around sexual relationships in and outside the crew. Martin read a couple of prompts, shook his head and went on; he just couldn’t bring himself to imagining any of this, too… weird.
To the right, Martin noticed a tag-list, spotting his own name almost immediately, and plunged into the slough bravely.
He was silent for the next couple of minutes, going through the pages. There were two conclusions to be drawn: firstly, most of these people were really keen on pairing him up with Douglas, which was a bit disturbing, granted, but the second conclusion was even more of that, because it contained the fact that they also really liked to make his imaginary doubles suffer.
Martin scrolled through another page, spotting many different prompts of the sort. Poor Martins were injured, hurt, beaten up, raped, betrayed, killed, they committed suicides and died from cancer, they were despised by their families and humiliated by the crew… The variants to make Martin suffer seemed endless. And most of the prompts were filled. To be honest, there were relatively happy prompts about self-sufficient, loved and successful Martins, but they were few and far between.
Martin slowly poised the cursor over one of the fills, unable to believe that he was really about to read that – purely out of curiosity, he assured himself – when the computer shut down suddenly. His time was out.
Fate decrees otherwise, then. In fact, it’d be safer if he didn’t read any of this, so all the better. Martin got up, collected his belongings and left the café to go home.
* * *
Martin closed the book he was reading and sighed. No matter how hard he tried to concentrate, his mind always wandered back to that website he saw several hours ago. His curiosity was increasing every minute, but it was already too late to go back to the café, and he doubted he could wait any longer.
The pilot sat up on his sofa, placed the book aside and moved to the trapdoor.
* * *
Luckily, Chris was exactly where Martin expected him to be: sitting at the table in the common kitchen, ears-deep in the books. Chris owned a laptop, and Martin had already successfully asked him several times in the past to lend him the thing, so he decided to ask once again.
“Err, Chris,” he waited until the student let out a grunt of distracted acknowledgement. “I was wondering if you- if I could have your laptop- If you don’t need it- of course, of course you need it, because it’s yours, but, but now that you are studying, could I- could you? Ugh,” he finished helplessly. The website’s impression wasn’t adding up to his conversational skills. Rather the opposite.
Chris frowned slightly, as if trying to snap out of the pre-exam studying haze and comprehend the rather incoherent tirade. Martin waited.
“Er. Yeah,” the student finally managed, not raising his head from the book he was reading. “Bring it here, would you? ‘ts in the living-room.”
Martin picked the laptop and returned to the kitchen. Chris extended an arm to blindly type in the password. “There you go.”
“Thanks. I- I won’t be long, I promise. I can, I could chip in for the Internet?” Martin suggested. Chris finally tore his a bit glassy gaze away from the book and looked up at Martin.
“Man, seriously. I have an exam tomorrow, do you really think I’ll be needing the blasted thing until after it? Besides, the Wi-fi is stolen. So suit yourself.”
Martin nodded wordlessly and fled upstairs.
* * *
The pilot sat down at his desk and opened the browser. Unfortunately, he didn’t memorize the link, so it took him several minutes to find the website.
And then, hours passed as he was engrossed in reading. Strangely, the fanfics were making him feel better, somehow. Maybe because sometimes his doubles suffered much more than he could ever imagine, and it felt nice to know that he’d never been in such situation, that there were people who fared worse than himself – even if they were imaginary.
Some works described situations similar to ones he had found himself in in the past, and he marveled at the elegant solutions of ones and the hilarious outcomes of the others.
But mainly, he enjoyed the reading because in majority of the fanfics, Martins were comforted. Yes, they fared really awful for the duration of a fic, but in most cases it was all made better in the end, and Martin could not help but smile softly, happy for the characters.
And yet, there was something nagging at his mind. He’s read an enormous amount of fanfics by now, but none of them described the situation he felt so uneasy about. Yes, many of them hit close to home, but never enough, never nailing the problem exactly. What if..?
Martin paused for a second to formulate the request, then hit the ‘Comment’ button and started typing.
