The Best Friends You'll Ever Have | 21: Ante Up

[luxken27]

Chapter Title: 21 | Ante Up
Prompt: #085 – Move
Universe: Post-canon
Genre: Comedy
Rating: T
Word Count: 700
Summary: Sam challenges his siblings – and Stacey – to a friendly game of cards.

Links: FF.net | DW | LJ | AO3

Written for ozqueen, for the 2015 fandom_stocking holiday exchange.

This fic happened quite quickly, but it had been simmering for awhile - ever since Yuletide letters went up, actually. Even though I didn't participate in Yuletide, I knew that BSC had been a fairly popular Yuletide fandom, so I took a gander at the requests. I was surprised and pleased to see that one of ozqueen's requests was for Sam/Stacey fic - IDK why, but I just get the sense that Sam/Stacey fic is not exactly clamored for in fandom - maybe because it happened in canon? IDK.

ozqueen's prompt was this: "Sam and Stacey trying to outdo one another when it comes to brainy/clever things (even if this is as simple as the Sunday crossword) and being giant nerds, becoming infuriated/amused with one another as things escalate."

Hmm. I definitely love the idea of them nerding out together over math things, but I am terrible at math so it would be an uphill battle to come up with something interesting on that score. But the idea of them being competitive? Now *that* I could work with.

At the same time, I had been lurking in the fandom_stocking threads on failfandom_anon and thought it interesting that everyone talked about expecting to get shortfic for fandom_stocking, and how they didn't pressure themselves to write more than a couple hundred words of fic. Well, you know me - brevity is not my strong suit - so I decided to try and challenge myself to write something short, sweet, and to the point.

It's difficult for me, especially since I write in tiny, obscure fandoms, to not find some way to info-dump in order to attract readers. I feel like I always need to set up the entire situation and give pertinent background to characters, etc, so it was challenging for me to try NOT to do that: to not explain my characters or their relationships or even why they were doing what they were doing - to just describe it, and let that stand on its own.

I had plenty of inspiration, not the least of which was a 500-word challenge that ozqueen had done to help fulfill her babysitters100 table. I wanted to tackle the idea of Sam/Stacey in that same fashion - just describe a moment in time of their relationship, and hopefully fulfill her prompt about them being mathy and nerdy and cutely competitive at the same time.

It took awhile to decide on what they were doing, but it didn't take long once I started trawling for math games. The only way to be good at a gambling game like poker is to be good at math, specifically probabilities. Sam and Stacey are both math whizzes, so they could totally be card sharks if they really put their minds to it.

And thus, a scene was born =)

Once I decided what they were doing (and once I figured out the correct terminology and the color scheme of the chips), I actually didn't spend a lot of time writing this story. What you see is more or less the first draft of it. This is a rarity for me, especially when I'm trying to write something funny, but I just liked the way it turned out on the first pass =) Sam is a goofy character, and I can totally see him being silly in his competitive spirit, and of course he and Stacey would be flirting outrageously, because that's just what they do. Even after they broke up in the canon, Sam told Stacey he wanted to continue flirting with her "for practice" (ha!).

And, of course, half the fun of the Sam/Stacey ship is Kristy's reaction to her brother dating one of her friends. It's a bit OTT, but not really - she truly is mystified and a bit disgusted by the idea. Her reaction to their first meeting in Book #1 still stands out to me to this day because it is so hilarious. She has no idea what they see in each other and, IDK, I just think that's really funny.

Charlie is their fourth, because I needed a fourth player and because he wormed his way into most of my fandom_stocking fic this year :P

To my great relief, ozqueen really enjoyed this, so yay! I am always a bit doubtful that my sense of humor translates well into the page. I was also a bit nervous about just putting a shortfic out there and letting it flail on its own merits. (700 words may not be "short," per se, but compared to my usual fare it certainly is!) I will definitely try this again as I continue on with my babysitters100 table. There are some prompts I'm still staring at six years later with no idea how I'm going to fulfill them...