The Best Friends You'll Ever Have | 17: Double Date

[luxken27]

Chapter Title: 17 | Double Date
Prompt: #093 - Idea
Universe: Post-canon
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Rating: T
Warning: Language
Word Count: 4,829
Summary: Charlie + Janine + Sam + Stacey = a heaping helping of awkwardness, with a delicate side order of surprising confession.

Links: FF.net | DW | LJ | AO3

Written for desertvixen, for the 2014 fandom_stocking holiday exchange. Her prompt was "Charlie Thomas/Janine Kishi (an awkward double date with Stacey/Sam would be wonderful!)" and quite frankly, I can't think of anything more awkward than that situation in and of itself, LOL.

Sometimes prompts are good things, in that they get us out of our comfort zones. Quite frankly, this is not a story I would've written on my own, without the prompt, because I just cannot see Charlie & Janine and Sam & Stacey ever going on a double date. Charlie and Sam are close, but I don't think they're that close, LOL.

What does these characters even have in common? There is actually an answer to that question: math. Well, for 3/4s of them, at least: Sam and Stacey are both math whizzes, and Janine is a Certified Genius which means of course she's good at math. She tutors Claudia, and seems to quite enjoy the inherent logic of the subject. People are usually either really good at math or really good at languages, and all signs definitely point towards math for Janine in canon.

On the other hand, I think it's quite often forgotten that Sam is a math nerd; he's most often portrayed as the goofball brother who loves to play pranks, including crank calling the BSC meetings. But this hidden talent for math is one of the reasons I love pairing him with Stacey - it gives them something in common, something that runs deeper than mere physical attraction. I can totally see them sitting around making math jokes to each other - flirtatious and intellectually stimulating!

Realizing that it was their shared love of the subject that might possibly break the ice between Sam and Stacey and Janine, my original idea was to cram every math joke into the story (especially the scene at Pizza Express) that I could. Unfortunately, I suck at math, so any sort of cleverness based in math is mostly over my head. Plus I didn't want to bog the story down in such details. For me, this was more about the awkward fit between the two couples, how Janine reacts not only to being on a date, but how she compares herself and Charlie to the far more natural chemistry and familiarity Sam and Stacey share. So I went on to Plan B - finding a way to fit math into the story, so they could share that camaraderie, but on a level that wouldn't bore my readers to tears.

Music is my strong suit, so when I learned that the mathematical analysis of music is a thing that exists, I knew I had a germ of an idea to work with. Picking the song wasn't difficult - Monkey Business was in heavy rotation while I was working on my fandom_stocking gifts - and "My Humps" is actually a good song to look at when analyzing layers of music and how they all fit together. will.i.am is pretty notorious for using samples from obscure pieces of music, and he has a knack for writing infectious hooks. You can hear the foundation of "My Humps" from the song he stole sampled it from, and the part that was added was actually the lyric line, which is rather unusual. BEP are no strangers to controversy with their sampling, and this song is one of many that they ended up having to pay royalties to the original songwriter.

And, of course, there are the provocative lyrics. It's been called "the worst song of all time" (which I think is a stretch) and lambasted for its lyrical content, which is basically all about how women use their sex appeal to bilk men out of their hard-earned money. While I agree that the actual words themselves are incredibly asinine, it is an interesting commentary on the culture at the time of its release (2005). There's this entire cold, materialistic side to sexual relationships that seems to tip power in women's collective favor, but actually subverts it instead. For such a stupid song, it's surprisingly thought-provoking.

Which is precisely what I think Janine would get out of it, and why she understands Sam's choice of songs for his analysis project. What started as a joke morphed into an actual, interesting project, one that everyone else dismisses out of hand because he chose one of the most overplayed, overhyped songs of the decade - and one which a lot of people absolutely loathed, on principle.

I think Janine's mind just works that way - she tends to operate on a higher plane of thought, which isolates her from her social peers. She understands why the song is considered insipid, but sees the inherent worth of the analysis anyway, because even stupid things are worth examining every once in awhile :) But being that smart - a Real Life Genius - does have its consequences, in that she is naive about other facets of life.

I tried to write the actual relationship part of the story to make it very obvious that Charlie is pursuing her, but in a subtle enough way that she would misinterpret it because of her lack of experience with guys and dating. Charlie is very sweet, and tries to take things slow, but in his earnestness, he underestimates her. After all, Janine did have a boyfriend in the canon, one that she broke up with, no less. But she conducted her romance so privately that very few people knew any details of it. When Janine and Jerry broke up, most everyone assumed that he was the one doing the dumping, just because of her nerdy and aloof reputation.

And, in contrast to Charlie and Janine's bumblings, there is Sam and Stacey, who've been dating on and off since Stacey was in eighth grade. They know each other and are very comfortable and familiar with each other. They have the sort of easy chemistry that others are envious of, including Janine. She feels so awkward around Charlie, in part because the idea of him having romantic feelings for her is so totally not what she expected, even after the kiss at the end of Chance Encounter. After all, it's better to have no expectation at all than to make assumptions and ultimately be hurt by them. Being out with the lovey-dovey Sam and Stacey only compounds her frustration at trying to navigate this encounter, because suddenly she's facing more expectations than just her own. And, of course, she over-analyzes it - are Sam and Stacey some sort of example of the sort of relationship Charlie is looking for? - instead of realizing that Charlie is drawing from his own experience of group dates being an easier way to ease into something romantic.

I've been told that I write really good kisses, and there's certainly a barrage of them at the end of the fic. That was me sliding into my comfort zone again, getting my pairing one-on-one for a confessional conversation, and the characters finally coming together on the same page.

In the end, it was actually a lot of fun to write this, though I was quite nervous about how desertvixen would react to it. After all, I am not the strongest comedic writer on the planet, and my idea of awkward might not match hers, but it seems she enjoyed it, so yay =)

These are my two very favorite ships in this fandom, but I don't think I'll be writing any more double dates for them!!