FRIENDZONED AT BRONYCON
“We’re here! I can’t believe we’re actually at Bronycon! I’m gonna buy a sketch, and meet the voice actors, and everyone from the forums and... and... Aaron, do you think one weekend will be enough? We have to do everything!”
I just smile. You’ve been talking about this for the entire train ride down, planning and replanning which talks, panels, and other events you absolutely have to attend. You’ve narrowed it down to a schedule that I’m not sure you realize calls for you to be in three places at the same time on Saturday afternoon. Now that we’ve actually arrived and checked into the hotel room we’ll be splitting you’ve gotten a second wind as you called the bed over by the window and dropped your bags down onto it. “Don’t worry, Justine. It’s gonna be a great weekend.” I don’t even care what we do. The weekend's main attraction for me is across the room, rambling on about plushies.
I only even started watching the damn show so I’d have an excuse to get closer to you, although I’ll admit that it grew on me once I gave it a chance. So now we’re away from work, friends and family for a weekend, sharing a hotel room. You’re giddy with excitement, and this is probably the best opportunity I’ll have all year to tell you that I’m madly in love with you.
And the fear is still holding me back.
“I wish it weren’t so hot, though. Baltimore in August, blech. I’m disgusting.” You’re radiant. You’re the most phenomenally beautiful creature on the planet. I have to tell you that. I cannot let this weekend go by without letting you know, or I think I might die. You grin. “I’d say it needs to be about twenty per-”
“Justine, I am going to hear that about a million times, or variations of it. It wasn’t that funny the first time."
You stick out your tongue. “Spoilsport. Where’s your Element of Laughter? Give me one second to throw on a pony T-shirt and we’ll go down and pick up our badges.” You pull a Doctor Whooves shirt out of your luggage and turn around and holy crap you’re taking off your top. I can see the straps of your bra and the line on the back of your neck where your skin changes from burned red to the cafe au lait color that haunts my dreams every night and tell you tell you now I’m going to tell you I love you and I need you and you’ll kiss me and we’ll never even make it down to the convention there’s so much more I want to explore about you and your body and I want to make you laugh and moan and-
“Yeah, I guess we should head down,” is what I say instead once your shirt is back on. You’re looking at me and I can tell that you can’t tell. You’re completely oblivious. How did I get so good at hiding this from you, and why couldn’t I be a little bit worse at it?
“Yep! Come on, the line looked like it was already getting long so we should grab a spot.” You impatiently push past me to get to the door, your body pressing against mine for just an instant before the fleeting contact is gone. You stop at the door and smile at me. “Hey, if you hit it off with some cute little pegasister, hang a sock on the doorknob or something. Although judging by what I saw of the crowd down there I think my odds are better than yours.” I don’t want ‘some pegasister,’ and the one I do want is impossibly close and impossibly far away at the same time.
Rather than saying so, I step into the hallway and follow you towards the front desk, and anywhere else you ask me to go. Maybe something will change over this weekend. There’ll be one perfect moment and the heavens will part and you’ll realize that I’ve loved you all this time.
Or more likely, we’ll come back from this convention with exactly the relationship we arrived with because I’m a coward.
Sadness I feel now, bad Eakin.
*Grins* Seconded. Speaking as one who's often been the Justine, you're never as obvious as you think you are. just say it. If they care they're not going to be mean, and if they are you know they're not worth your time
mfw when I started reading
mfw at the end
I think there's a couple extra "tell you"s
good advice I should think
sucks to be Aaron.
I'm going to stop being the Aaron tomorrow. Her name's Sophie, and she's amazing.
Eakin, I shall report back with results when I get back from the party we're going to XD
2897475
Do it! Whatever she says, you win at life just for making the attempt.
2897492 why thankyou XD
I'm hoping it goes well, but we're mates enough that even if it goes badly we're still gonna be cool :D
My life, why must you write it so accurately?
2897549 How did it go?
You shouldn't say that. You wouldn't be any happier if it was twenty percent cooler. Baltimore in August is no hotter than 106°F, and 20% cooler is...
((((106-32)*5/9)+273.15)*.8)-273.15)*9/5+32
...about -7°F. At most. Chilly!
3271802
except absolute zero is almost certainly the wrong reference point... nobody uses Kelvin in daily life.
if we work with the celsius zero point, then we're talking 106 - ((106-32)*.20) = 91.2. That's not too bad.
if we use Fahrenheit's zero, then 106 - (106*.20) = 84.8, which is even better.
unless you're a polar bear.
(JICAC, Fahrenheit was a resident of a port city. His zero point is where the ocean starts to freeze. That's a pretty important temperature.)
protip: don't confess your feelings to someone when you share a room. You need to give that other person an out when you tell them something like that, give them space to process. I don't handle people confessing their feelings to me well at all and I would be super awkward if it happened and then I had to sleep near that person. In fact, I would be legit creeped. Wait I have had this happen to me before and it WAS legit creepy.
Also, and it bugs me just a bit, it's hard to empathize with our love struck POV character when all he talks about are his feelings, and the girl's physical attractiveness. Outside of being pretty and liking ponies, we know nothing about her, which is odd because his entire narration is about her. It makes him feel a bit shallow and her like an object, because the majority of her defining traits are being attractive and being desired. Maybe that is intentional. I've had guys "fall in love with me" for simply being reasonably good looking, female and into video games (and I don't even like GOOD video games tbh). Those are actually pretty shallow and purely self-interested reasons to develop strong feelings over someone, and it always put me off. (The trick is to then be 100 percent unfiltered you and see if they still like you after learning you may have conflicting interests or opinions. They are convinced I'm awful and no one's feelings get hurt).
Then again, it could be that I just tend to emphasize with the position of being someone who "friend-zones" (I actually very much despise that term) rather than someone who has been friend-zoned. I'm asexual, though. That is pretty much always going to be the case. Any bronies out there who are sad that someone doesn't like them back should always keep things like that in mind. There are so many reasons not to love or be attracted to someone than there are reasons for them to be. It's the odds. :( People are often more acutely aware of what they don't want rather than what they do.
Never had that feeling
Aromanticism ftw
the title made me think of a scene in an online comic "el goonish shive" (by dan shive) where someone said she wanted to "just friend" her boyfriend and wanted advice on a polite way to do it.