Kids Inc | Kiss Me: Prompt #6 - Sunset

[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.

This was most definitely the hardest prompt to write for of the set. I finished the first five within the first day of serious work on this series, but this prompt brought me up short, for a number of reasons.

For one, it's definitely the "heaviest" of all of them - not necessarily in terms of angst or drama or even fluffy satisfaction, but in the actual weight of the storyline. Of all those first rites-of-passage in teenage relationships, the question of intimacy is probably the most tricky to deal with, especially when there's an age gap between the pairing, and when expectations are flowing hard and fast on all sides.

I probably had to start this piece five or six times, even though I knew how I wanted it to proceed. Part of it was some indecisiveness on character interaction, how I wanted Stacy to respond to and even express the intense pressure she feels, being caught up in this relationship that, in some ways, is moving faster than she's comfortable with, but is also heading for an inevitability she's in no way prepared for.

The other part - the arguably larger part - was all me, as the author, being willing to step out of my comfort zone with these two. Ryan/Stacy was my original OTP, a pairing I shipped before I even knew what shipping was, so its been much harder for me to sexualize them, especially considering how wide-eyed and innocent the canon is. Even after writing nearly 80K words into my epic fic, and hinting at the growing intimacy there (as well as some of the oneshots I've posted), this was a big step for me.

It was definitely worth it :)

For this piece, I really wanted to highlight the pressure Stacy, as the girl and especially as the younger half of the relationship, would feel. She's still pretty young here, at sixteen, but more importantly, she's been in this fairly high-profile relationship with a senior for much of the school year, and with that status comes certain expectations. I think all of her concerns are very real, especially considering Ryan has graduated from high school and is moving on to college, while she's being left behind. It's a time of uncertainty, even without this extra layer of unresolved sexual tension, and people tend to do reckless things when they think they have no other choice.

I'm always a bit unsure of how well/realistically I write guys in this situation, considering I've never been a teenage boy, and I'm not sure how hard it would be to stop :P so blame it on another age-old romance trope if you must. I think its important, though, that no matter how awkward or uncomfortable or panicky she feels, she has this conversation with him. It's just as much about breaking up unrealistic expectations as it is about being reassured of his feelings for her.

There are a couple of references in the fic that tie it back to canon (considering this is way farther than canon ever got with these two, LOL). The Kids go to the boardwalk at the (fictional) Diamond Park beach in the fifth season episode "Kahuna Kids":

"" (Watch on YouTube)

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(Coincidentally, this is also where DJ Barney from the third chapter came from, LOL.)

And I also used one of the sentences from my writing exercise as a starting off point:

#50 – Breathe
“Breathe,” he whispered against the shell of her ear, his arms closing around her waist, his hands gliding up the bare planes of her back, “just breathe.”

It set the tone of intimacy I wanted, for sure.

The twist of the kiss, I think, is obvious, though here it's more an exploration of the physical pleasure derived from kissing, instead of the emotional connection that's made, and what the consequences are of such magnetic attraction.