luxken27 | Baby-sitters Club | Count Me In: A Million to One

Title: A Million to One
Genre: Romance
Rating: T
Word Count: 2,666
Summary: “Don’t look now,” her teammate murmured, elbowing Janine in the ribs, “but I think that guy is staring at you.”

Links: DW | AO3

Maybe I should acknowledge my writing blocks more often, if it means I'm suddenly able to break through and produce some fic. Or maybe I need to read a string of truly terrible 80s-era romance novels that make me mad enough to want to do better. Either way, here we are (at long last) with the continuation of Cavorting with the Enemy, part of my Count Me In post-canon Charlie/Janine continuum.

I've known how the wager was going to be settled pretty much since the moment I originally wrote it three years ago, and even how I was going to settle it. The final pieces didn't fall into place until I decided how I was going to proceed from there. Once I realized that the next part would be from Charlie's POV, I knew that this one had to be from Janine's POV. Not only for story balance, but to help set up the next installment properly.

So the Vex U tournament is moving forward as originally laid out, based on the 2015 version of the competition. I did simply the rules a bit for story flow, but I wanted to stick with that year's theme because it provided the perfect reason why a college athlete with little other obvious connection to the robotics team would be considered such an integral member. What better ace in the hole than to base their robot's ability to perform a human task on an actual human performing that task? Charlie's not just a pretty face, in spite of a good portion of opponent teams ogling him as such :)

I think both Charlie and Janine are highly competitive people, but they also have a strong sense of fairness, so they wouldn't stoop to trying to undermine each other in order to win their bet. Being drawn on opposite sides of the bracket mean that they can compare notes on the other teams without hurting each other. While Janine is fine with their bet standing as it was originally made, Charlie wants to alter the terms so that there can still be a winner even if their teams don't make it to the final, where they'd face each other head-to-head. He has plenty of time to bring Janine over to his side, as they spend increasing amounts of time together between the rounds of the tournament. She agrees, with some reluctance, as she feels like their relationship is moving forward a bit too fast for her. She's not necessarily fearful of him or whatever may happen between them, but it would be a huge leap into an emotional unknown for her. She is very cognizant of the fact that they spend more time apart than together, and that's weighing on her mind as well.

So, all of this is swirling around in her head and her heart, and her teammate scoping Charlie out during a crucial crunch time isn't helping at all. The contrast between Janine and Marie-Thérèse didn't really become clear to me until I started working on this scene, and even then it took on a couple of different iterations before I settled on this one. Not only are their priorities here different, but so are their approaches to life - plus I kinda wanted to blow the stereotype of socially helpless nerds out of the water :) [<-- I think this actually is a reaction to one of those 80s-era romance novels, LOL.] This will become clearer in the next installment of this series.

So their wager is settled at the end of this installment. Here's hoping it won't take another 3 years to complete the follow-ups, because I think they will be fun. It will be interesting to dig into Janine's canon romance with the odious Jerry Michaels and see what's worth mining from it.