authorblather: Johnny/Nate
Okay, that's enough serious-type authorblather out of me. Let's all snicker about that pernicious Johnny/Nate subtext that first crops up in With A Bullet and refuses to leave, shall we?
Is Johnny/Nate canonical? Nope, not in a million years. Is the message-laden subtext purposeful? Hell, yes. See, what you need to understand here is that I'm my own worst fangirl--or, to put it another way, I've been of two minds over this project from the beginning. There's me in front, the actual author trying to write her some books, and there's me in back, the squeeing fangirl turning over every stone looking for exploitable content.
The subtext was added purposefully, largely to satisfy said squeeing fangirl. I've spent many happy evenings looking for subtext just like that to exploit and pervert to my own ends, and now here I was, with a project of my own, where my every word was (more or less) law, and why the hell shouldn't I step right up and add exactly what I was usually looking for in the works of others? What an opportunity! I'd kick myself forever if I missed it!
Canonically--canonically--Johnny and Nate have something of an overprotective big brother/hapless little brother relationship, born, as it were, in fire, during the latter days of the Farraday debacle. Canonically Johnny is the straightest thing on two legs, Nate has almost no sexuality at all, and they're both pretty horribly aware of how easy it would be to destroy the team dynamics via ill-considered flings, having both lived through the aftermath of Simon's thing with Sandra.
Once I get into fanon, though (may I just pause for a second to note that oh, God, I make my own fanon, I'm either a horrible person or just really efficient) I realize that Nate's latent sexuality is actually awfully unformed and impressionable, and Johnny is just inscrutable enough that he could be thinking anything behind that half-asleep face of his (and just self-confident enough to pull damn near anything off), and that's really all I needed to set off the ticking fangirl.
Let's look at the end of With A Bullet, shall we? Simon and Jeremy are off in Simon's apartment and out of the picture. Sandra has her own room, being the team chick. Mike was technically sharing a room with Diana Fontaine, which left Johnny and Nate to share the third and final room. Now, once the book explodes to its close, what happens? Nate, still shaken from the attack on his house, asks Mike to take him back to the hotel--after all, his things are there, and the hotel feels anonymous and safe whereas his house does not. Two or three hours later the remnants of Simon's team finish up at the dockside warehouse; one way or another Dave is taken back to headquarters and gotten rid of, and then everybody else also heads back to the hotel, not only because their stuff is there, but because Johnny is silently concerned about Nate. Mike promptly moves his shit into Sandra's room and then... probably just falls asleep on her, since it's been a long day, and thanks to the lack of Diana Fontaine there's an empty room between Sandra's and Nate's... and Johnny's going to let himself into this dark hotel room where Nate has been trying and failing to sleep for a couple of hours and is kind of desperately in need of company and reassurance and by this point my inner fangirl is cackling and rubbing her hands together, which leaves me grinning haplessly at my monitor and getting absolutely nothing done.
Canonically, it never happened--but I can picture it so damn clearly in my head anyway. Man, damn that fangirl.
Is Johnny/Nate canonical? Nope, not in a million years. Is the message-laden subtext purposeful? Hell, yes. See, what you need to understand here is that I'm my own worst fangirl--or, to put it another way, I've been of two minds over this project from the beginning. There's me in front, the actual author trying to write her some books, and there's me in back, the squeeing fangirl turning over every stone looking for exploitable content.
The subtext was added purposefully, largely to satisfy said squeeing fangirl. I've spent many happy evenings looking for subtext just like that to exploit and pervert to my own ends, and now here I was, with a project of my own, where my every word was (more or less) law, and why the hell shouldn't I step right up and add exactly what I was usually looking for in the works of others? What an opportunity! I'd kick myself forever if I missed it!
Canonically--canonically--Johnny and Nate have something of an overprotective big brother/hapless little brother relationship, born, as it were, in fire, during the latter days of the Farraday debacle. Canonically Johnny is the straightest thing on two legs, Nate has almost no sexuality at all, and they're both pretty horribly aware of how easy it would be to destroy the team dynamics via ill-considered flings, having both lived through the aftermath of Simon's thing with Sandra.
Once I get into fanon, though (may I just pause for a second to note that oh, God, I make my own fanon, I'm either a horrible person or just really efficient) I realize that Nate's latent sexuality is actually awfully unformed and impressionable, and Johnny is just inscrutable enough that he could be thinking anything behind that half-asleep face of his (and just self-confident enough to pull damn near anything off), and that's really all I needed to set off the ticking fangirl.
Let's look at the end of With A Bullet, shall we? Simon and Jeremy are off in Simon's apartment and out of the picture. Sandra has her own room, being the team chick. Mike was technically sharing a room with Diana Fontaine, which left Johnny and Nate to share the third and final room. Now, once the book explodes to its close, what happens? Nate, still shaken from the attack on his house, asks Mike to take him back to the hotel--after all, his things are there, and the hotel feels anonymous and safe whereas his house does not. Two or three hours later the remnants of Simon's team finish up at the dockside warehouse; one way or another Dave is taken back to headquarters and gotten rid of, and then everybody else also heads back to the hotel, not only because their stuff is there, but because Johnny is silently concerned about Nate. Mike promptly moves his shit into Sandra's room and then... probably just falls asleep on her, since it's been a long day, and thanks to the lack of Diana Fontaine there's an empty room between Sandra's and Nate's... and Johnny's going to let himself into this dark hotel room where Nate has been trying and failing to sleep for a couple of hours and is kind of desperately in need of company and reassurance and by this point my inner fangirl is cackling and rubbing her hands together, which leaves me grinning haplessly at my monitor and getting absolutely nothing done.
Canonically, it never happened--but I can picture it so damn clearly in my head anyway. Man, damn that fangirl.