luxken27 | Sweet Valley Sophomores | 1: Under My Umbrella

Title: Under My Umbrella
Fandom: Sweet Valley High
Universe: Pre-canon (sophomore year)
Genre: Friendship/Romance
Rating: T
Warnings: Language
Word Count: 2,598
Summary: That’s the way the whole thing started – silly, but it’s true…Thinking of a sweet romance, beginning in a queue…

Links: DW | FF.net | AO3 | LJ

Good grief but its been a long time since I've written one of these posts! (Since February, in fact... o.O) BUT, I am (hopefully) back in the writing game, so here goes.

My project for the Summer Mini Challenge this year was going to be a little collection of oneshots focused on pre-canon classic SVH - basically, sophomore year fic. I jumped into this project whole-heartedly as summer began, doing a giant reread, taking notes, formulating ideas etc, but then RL got in my way. I was determined, though - because apparently I am a masochist.

This story is actually the last idea I had for this little universe before becoming sidetracked, and it was totally inspired by

snarky_imp's take on the Lila/Ken relationship, as well as (of course) a song :D Lila/Ken is the endgame of Sweet Valley Confidential - but more importantly, it's also featured pretty heavily at the *beginning* of the classic SVH series. Ken is Lila's default-date, and there are various allusions to them having a previous fling.

snarky_imp made me curious, and has explored some great angles in the potential for this relationship (which she should totally post somewhere public, hint hint hint), so I decided to tackle it myself. This is not a favorite pairing of mine (I much prefer the friction of Lila/Bruce), but I'll admit, I find it very intriguing.

As is the idea of writing pre-canon fic, especially for a series with a canvas this big. I want to limit myself to the early high school years, especially considering the various spinoffs covered all the other territory. Its fun thinking about these characters and having them step back just a little bit in time. What made them who they are as juniors? What really happened in all those backstories that are merely alluded to, sometimes only once or twice? It seems like "the gang" didn't really coalesce until junior year, so its fun looking at how that came to be.

This story is pretty simple at its core: two people meet, and become intrigued with each other. The twist is that they've known (of) each other for years, they just never really moved in the same circles...until now.

The other major piece of inspiration for this story was this:

"" (Watch on YouTube)

The song, of course, but also the video - which gives a rather literal interpretation of the lyrics.

Of course, the major challenge to writing this scenario with these characters is that I had to find a way to get Lila Fowler at a bus stop in the first place. She has her own car (of course), and before that she has free reign over her father's car service, so she really has no business riding a public bus in the first place. That's an element I wanted to explore as well - riding the bus is something a lot of people take for granted, but if you've never had to do it, it can feel like a very foreign concept indeed.

Anyway - Lila is left at the mall when her ride, Jessica, runs off in pursuit of Bruce Patman; it starts to rain while Lila is wandering around the parking lot, forcing her under a weather guard at the bus stop. That's where Ken Matthews finds her - he offers to share his umbrella with her and to take her home, saving her from the indignity of having to mix with the common masses.

I'm not completely sure how much of Ken's transformation is

snarky_imp's head-canon, and how much of it comes from the canon. I believe in the Sweet Valley Twins series (chronicling the characters' middle school years), Ken is short, scrawny, and something of a nerd - a far cry from his varsity-football-star high school persona. I like

snarky_imp's take on his blossoming into his good looks and athletic ability between the second and third years of high school, so I went with it. Lila is seeing him here in the midst of it - not the quiet lanky guy she remembers, not quite yet the boy who will one day sweep both Wakefield twins off their feet - and she is intrigued.

It was fun to get inside Lila's head a little bit, to see her perspective on things: her friendship with Jessica; her relationship with her father; her observations of Bruce, Winston, and Elizabeth; her hesitation in interacting with Ken, who's trying to be nice to her. She's used to having every material good in the world at her disposal, but genuine, no-strings-attached friendship? Hmm, not so much.

I thew in a lot of little pieces of the early canon world - Valley Mall (with the construction workers building Lisette's, as introduced in Book #4, and a mention of the snooty Boston Shop, Bruce's clothing store du jour), the twins' Fiat Spider, an explanation for Lila's "lime-green" Triumph, the hills of Sweet Valley, Ken's old white Toyota, Jessica's 137s :P Ken is actually called "Kenny" in the first couple of books, hence the extensive use of that nickname in this fic. What he calls himself takes on new importance, too, as one of the steps of his transformation from nerd to athlete.

Though not a true songfic, I tried to mirror the lyrics in the story as much as I could. There is the obvious one ("Please share my umbrella" as Ken and Lila meet at the bus stop), but the second scene is meant to portray the line "All the people stared as if we were both quite insane." Lila and Ken do not cross paths at school; she is one of the most popular and well-known people at SVH, so an acknowledgement from her is a Big Freaking Deal, as is made obvious by Jessica's reaction to their thirty-second conversation. Ken managed to turn his favor to Lila into a favor for himself, in upping his profile slightly at school. And in high school, social status is everything.

I have a couple more ideas for this little series already mapped out, so I hope to have them up soon. I'm not promising this will be a quickly updated collection, or that it will have more than two or three entries - because goodness knows the last thing I need is yet another WIP on my plate, LOL. But its now officially Out There, so I guess I'll see where it takes me! =)