Kids Inc | Kiss Me: Prompt #5 - Argument

[luxken27]

Title: Kiss Me
Fandom: Kids Incorporated
Universe: Canon (Season 3+)
Genre: Friendship/Romance
Rating: T
Summary: Sometimes a kiss is just a kiss…and sometimes it means so much more. Seven pivotal moments that defined Stacy’s life and shaped her perceptions of love. A Valentine’s Day ficlet serial.

Links: FF.net | DW | AO3

7snogs prompt table here.

The 7snogs challenge is this: you can interpret the prompts however you wish, but the story must contain a kiss in some way, shape, or form. My twist on this is that my main character - Stacy - would *not* be on the giving or receiving end for each of these kisses.

It's been a lot of fun writing for these prompts, exploring the different stages of a relationship - the crush, the first kiss, and now the honeymoon period of an 'established' relationship. There's a new and different challenge, no matter how far you've progressed into the potential ship, and this was a warm, old, familiar cliche, hehe =)

The inspiration for this ficlet was another one of those sentences for that writing exercise:

#35 – Fever
“You aren’t allowed to get sick,” she chided gently, sitting next to him on his sickbed and brushing a cool hand across his fevered brow, “after all – what would we do without you?”

Half the ship falling ill seems to be a popular trope in romantic fic - I'd even had such a request in a review of Stacy in Bloom - so I was happy to oblige here, which it might actually fit :P And, what better illness to use, than the one called the "kissing disease" in the US? (How's that for the twist of mentioning a kiss, LOL?)

Mononucleosis, at least the kind that referred to by this rather misleading nickname, is the infectious form of the Epstein-Barr virus. It's called the "kissing disease" because it is spread via saliva, and symptoms usually shows up in adolescence - right as, conveniently, kids are starting to experiment with dating and sexuality.

It's an interesting illness, as far as viruses go - there is a three week symptomatic period, and then a much longer recovery period, where the infected person is fighting off near-constant fatigue and immune weakness. Once infected with the virus, the person will always have it, and there's always the chance to spread it, even after symptoms come and go. Scary stuff when you think about it o.O but it gets the job done here ~ and the repercussions of the illness will be felt in the next installment of this series.

Unfortunately, when discussing parents that aren't named, of characters who aren't given last names, things get pretty tricky pretty quickly. I fell back on a very old literary mask to get around this, which you may or may not have noticed:

“Hi, Mrs. L— !” Stacy chirped in greeting, smiling happily as she lifted the pot.

It's my way of keeping the boundary between the characters and the actors who portrayed them. Ryan the character =/= Ryan Lambert, and I wanted to make that distinction clear. (I'm pretty skeezy of the idea of writing anything approaching RPF, so this is my compromise.) This is one of those times when I really wish my characters had canonical last names, LOL.

The prompt is represented by the argument the two have near the end of the story. It's not knock-down drag-out, but it *is* an important step in the continuation of this still fairly new relationship. Eventually this intimacy will be called into question, and the characters will have to deal with their actions - including this potentially dangerous one. But, what are teenagers, if not reckless and invincible, at least in their own eyes? :)

It's a joy to write strength and boldness into both of my leads - Stacy may not be totally confident in her words or actions or feelings, but at least she goes after what she wants, even if she isn't quite sure what the best way of attaining it might be.