Meme-fic! Thirteen Ways to Say "I Love You" (PG-13) Anakin/OC.
I discovered this meme on ansketil_rose's LJ, where she was doing it for Anakin/Palpatine. I immediately realized that it was going to be a dangerous meme for me, because there were too many pairings I could choose and too many pieces of fic it could generate (I don't think it was actually supposed to be a fic meme, but the plot bunnies got loose in it, and well, you know how they are…). Then I ignored my better judgment and plunged in anyway. This is the result, for Anakin/Ryn, ahem!reboot. (They'll get other versions for other 'verses.) Up next (I think) … Anakin/Padmé! (Should I do Ryn/Orn Free Taa? Hilarity could ensue…)
Anyways. I guess the most important thing for you to know is that I DO NOT OWN STAR WARS, and memes are awesome. This one will produce more, I have foreseen it.
1. who is the big spoon/little spoon
Anakin. He curls around her in the middle of the night and buries his face in her hair. She smells like sweat and the forest and nothing at all like the flowers he remembers on Naboo, but after a while she starts to smell like home, and he can't remember when they crossed that line, when "someday" became "never" and he stopped wanting to leave.
It's one of the little, startling ironies of life that his greatest adventure began just when he thought he'd settled down, but Jinn and Obi and finding his mom again - those are worth all the stories he'll never live to tell.
2. what is their favorite non-sexual activity
Bio-sustainable engineering.
They started out to save the galaxy together, and along the way they've saved each other. It took them a while, but they managed to save her planet, too - Loreth becomes, under their combined efforts, the galaxy's top producer of high-end biospherially-responsible engineering. What this means in practice is that they get to travel around the galaxy, studying biospheres and designing the eco-management systems that will allow sentient beings to use technology in harmony with their environments, rather than in defiance of them. It's a delicate balance and a tough job and it means they're not home a lot and they have to deal with some truly despicable beings … but at the end of the day, it's smart and it's rewarding and it's a way to take back the galaxy from the depredations of the last war, so in their own way they love it, too.
The kids are prone to picking up foreign critters of various kinds and trying to sneak them on board the ship, which is a perpetual source of conflict because Ryn is very strict about not taking animals out of their habitats and Anakin always thinks they need a pet.
3. who uses all the hot water in the morning
They shower together every chance they get. The kids caught them once, which was embarrassing but maybe not so bad after all. They had "The Talk" and they all got through it, and Jinn and Obi (Shmi was too little to understand) were sufficiently grossed out to swear off sex for the next decade, at least.
4. what they order from take out
They almost never order in, largely because Shmi (the baby of the family) is allergic to an alarming number of things, having inherited her mother's weak stomach and then improved on it in new and continually startling ways. But when they do, Anakin always suggests Corellian food, and Ryn always answers by asking, "Are you trying poison me?" This has a tendency to lead to tickle-fights and occasionally missing dinner altogether.
The kids don't get it, but they know Obi-Wan would.
5. what is the most trivial thing they fight over
Work. There's too much of it, always, and Anakin loves it sometimes a little too much. It's not that he doesn't love his family, too - he does, and Ryn knows it, and she knows the kids know it - but sometimes there's an engineering problem that he just knows he can solve, if he keeps at it long enough, and he loses track of time and then suddenly there's his wife, saying, "I thought you'd forgot about me," and he has to stare at her for a minute before he realizes what she's talking about.
It's not even fighting, not really - Ryn almost never gets mad about it - but he hates knowing that he's disappointed her again, that's she's lonely and tired of waiting for him to come home.
He disappointed her so often in the early years.
He tries to make it up to her, but he's never really sure he succeeds.
He's just incredibly grateful that she loves him anyway.
6. who does most of the cleaning
Anakin. Ryn is decidedly inept at housework and always will be. When Anakin is working on a project, she tries - she really tries - but as Master Yoda used to be so fond of saying, "Do or do not; there is no try." And Ryn's try almost never turns out well. Anakin will probably never let her live down the time he came in from the shop and found her hanging upside down in the rafters of their temporary housing, because she apparently thought that upside down was a perfectly legitimate way to dust them. She also evidently believed that this activity should take precedence over sweeping the floor, on the strength of her assertion that there was no point in sweeping the floor before dusting the rafters because gravity would just cause the dust particles to fall onto the floor from the rafters, obviating the sweeping job just completed.
Anakin thought of several responses, discarded all of them because his two-year-old daughter was listening, and finally said, "Want to order Corellian?"
7. who controls what they watch on TV
Anakin. Ryn doesn't so much care - or, say, pay attention to what's on - but she likes resting with her head on his shoulder - with one of the kids on her lap usually, or alone if they've managed to get all three crumb-snatchers in bed before collapsing themselves … but in that case, the HoloNet doesn't hold anybody's attention for very long.
8. who's the one to always push to go out for a change
Evinne. She shows up every now and then, abducts three children and occasionally one mother(in-law), and announces peremptorily that she will see them in the morning.
This strategy has resulted in several lapses in judgment on everyone's part over the years - including a very odd haircut for Jinn - but it also resulted in baby Shmi, so they can't really complain.
9. who calls up the super/landlord when the heat’s not working
The nice thing about being married to Anakin is that he can fix damn near anything. Having spent the last several years helping him to engineer all sorts of technical apparatuses, there are quite a few things Ryn could actually fix herself - theoretically, anyway - but she really likes watching him do it instead. Competence is sexy, always.
That's how they get Obi.
10. who steals the blankets
Anakin. He gets cold easier than Ryn, who has a tendency to kick the covers off both of them in the middle of the night. This is a source of never-ending annoyance to her husband, but she certainly is inventive in expressing her contrition.
And that first winter on Loreth, she built up the fire in the grate and heated their blankets before bed, every single night, so at least he could go to bed warm, even if he had to wake up cold.
11. who leaves their stuff around
Anakin. It's tools, mostly - Ryn is more organized, or maybe just more disciplined; she puts everything up as soon as she's done using it. But Anakin is almost never sure he's done with anything, always open to the idea of a new inspiration striking out of nowhere, possibly in the middle of dinner. On the up side, he isn't actually all that bad about losing things, and their kids can recognize practically any tool almost before they can walk to pick them up.
Once they start picking things up, it all gets a little more complicated.
12. who remembers to buy the milk
Neither of them! Ryn never fully adjusts to the idea of buying your food instead of hunting for it, so unless she has a list, she tends to forget the mundane conveniences of grocery stores, and the specificities of what she's supposed to look for in them. Anakin has a lamentable tendency to simply buy whatever he's hungry for at the time.
When Jinn is about twelve, she takes over the list-making in exasperation at her parents' eccentricities, and by the time she's thirteen she does most of the shopping, too. Obi hates that she makes him carry, but it works out relatively well for everybody.
Especially Shmi.
13. who remembers anniversaries
Ryn. She's used to remembering the various significant days in Loreth's calendar year, and she has fitted the days of their personal significance into that network of time-marked meaning. Unfortunately, she never really grows comfortable with the Standard calendar, so sometimes their anniversaries don't happen when Anakin thinks they should, and they take him by surprise.
He'd like to remember them for her, to prove that he hasn't forgotten any of it, he loves her more all the time, but he is constantly getting the dates wrong: he remembers the day he married her on the Standard calendar, but Ryn wants to celebrate the day they came together in the Lorethan annum, and it seems to move around the Standard calendar a lot, the days slipping in and out of each other in a pattern he can't quite get a handle on, and so he misses it, year after year.
He insists that they celebrate their children's birthdays according to the Standard calendar, and even though Ryn doesn't like it and shows a suspicious tendency to give them presents at odd intervals that he can't explain any other way except by reference to a little secretive time-keeping, it's an argument she lets him win, to keep the peace.
It is perfectly true that he likes celebrating his kids' birthdays by the same calendar on which he'll never know his own. But his favorite tradition is a private one he began after Jinn was born: Every year, for each of their children's birthdays, he gives his wife a little gift. To commemorate the occasion, of course, but it's more than that; it's a way to say "thank you," for giving him a family when he'd thought he was saving her instead, and "I'm sorry" for taking so long to realize it, and "I love you," forever. It's a chance to prove that he never really forgot their anniversary at all.
He just likes to celebrate it a lot more often.
Anyways. I guess the most important thing for you to know is that I DO NOT OWN STAR WARS, and memes are awesome. This one will produce more, I have foreseen it.
1. who is the big spoon/little spoon
Anakin. He curls around her in the middle of the night and buries his face in her hair. She smells like sweat and the forest and nothing at all like the flowers he remembers on Naboo, but after a while she starts to smell like home, and he can't remember when they crossed that line, when "someday" became "never" and he stopped wanting to leave.
It's one of the little, startling ironies of life that his greatest adventure began just when he thought he'd settled down, but Jinn and Obi and finding his mom again - those are worth all the stories he'll never live to tell.
2. what is their favorite non-sexual activity
Bio-sustainable engineering.
They started out to save the galaxy together, and along the way they've saved each other. It took them a while, but they managed to save her planet, too - Loreth becomes, under their combined efforts, the galaxy's top producer of high-end biospherially-responsible engineering. What this means in practice is that they get to travel around the galaxy, studying biospheres and designing the eco-management systems that will allow sentient beings to use technology in harmony with their environments, rather than in defiance of them. It's a delicate balance and a tough job and it means they're not home a lot and they have to deal with some truly despicable beings … but at the end of the day, it's smart and it's rewarding and it's a way to take back the galaxy from the depredations of the last war, so in their own way they love it, too.
The kids are prone to picking up foreign critters of various kinds and trying to sneak them on board the ship, which is a perpetual source of conflict because Ryn is very strict about not taking animals out of their habitats and Anakin always thinks they need a pet.
3. who uses all the hot water in the morning
They shower together every chance they get. The kids caught them once, which was embarrassing but maybe not so bad after all. They had "The Talk" and they all got through it, and Jinn and Obi (Shmi was too little to understand) were sufficiently grossed out to swear off sex for the next decade, at least.
4. what they order from take out
They almost never order in, largely because Shmi (the baby of the family) is allergic to an alarming number of things, having inherited her mother's weak stomach and then improved on it in new and continually startling ways. But when they do, Anakin always suggests Corellian food, and Ryn always answers by asking, "Are you trying poison me?" This has a tendency to lead to tickle-fights and occasionally missing dinner altogether.
The kids don't get it, but they know Obi-Wan would.
5. what is the most trivial thing they fight over
Work. There's too much of it, always, and Anakin loves it sometimes a little too much. It's not that he doesn't love his family, too - he does, and Ryn knows it, and she knows the kids know it - but sometimes there's an engineering problem that he just knows he can solve, if he keeps at it long enough, and he loses track of time and then suddenly there's his wife, saying, "I thought you'd forgot about me," and he has to stare at her for a minute before he realizes what she's talking about.
It's not even fighting, not really - Ryn almost never gets mad about it - but he hates knowing that he's disappointed her again, that's she's lonely and tired of waiting for him to come home.
He disappointed her so often in the early years.
He tries to make it up to her, but he's never really sure he succeeds.
He's just incredibly grateful that she loves him anyway.
6. who does most of the cleaning
Anakin. Ryn is decidedly inept at housework and always will be. When Anakin is working on a project, she tries - she really tries - but as Master Yoda used to be so fond of saying, "Do or do not; there is no try." And Ryn's try almost never turns out well. Anakin will probably never let her live down the time he came in from the shop and found her hanging upside down in the rafters of their temporary housing, because she apparently thought that upside down was a perfectly legitimate way to dust them. She also evidently believed that this activity should take precedence over sweeping the floor, on the strength of her assertion that there was no point in sweeping the floor before dusting the rafters because gravity would just cause the dust particles to fall onto the floor from the rafters, obviating the sweeping job just completed.
Anakin thought of several responses, discarded all of them because his two-year-old daughter was listening, and finally said, "Want to order Corellian?"
7. who controls what they watch on TV
Anakin. Ryn doesn't so much care - or, say, pay attention to what's on - but she likes resting with her head on his shoulder - with one of the kids on her lap usually, or alone if they've managed to get all three crumb-snatchers in bed before collapsing themselves … but in that case, the HoloNet doesn't hold anybody's attention for very long.
8. who's the one to always push to go out for a change
Evinne. She shows up every now and then, abducts three children and occasionally one mother(in-law), and announces peremptorily that she will see them in the morning.
This strategy has resulted in several lapses in judgment on everyone's part over the years - including a very odd haircut for Jinn - but it also resulted in baby Shmi, so they can't really complain.
9. who calls up the super/landlord when the heat’s not working
The nice thing about being married to Anakin is that he can fix damn near anything. Having spent the last several years helping him to engineer all sorts of technical apparatuses, there are quite a few things Ryn could actually fix herself - theoretically, anyway - but she really likes watching him do it instead. Competence is sexy, always.
That's how they get Obi.
10. who steals the blankets
Anakin. He gets cold easier than Ryn, who has a tendency to kick the covers off both of them in the middle of the night. This is a source of never-ending annoyance to her husband, but she certainly is inventive in expressing her contrition.
And that first winter on Loreth, she built up the fire in the grate and heated their blankets before bed, every single night, so at least he could go to bed warm, even if he had to wake up cold.
11. who leaves their stuff around
Anakin. It's tools, mostly - Ryn is more organized, or maybe just more disciplined; she puts everything up as soon as she's done using it. But Anakin is almost never sure he's done with anything, always open to the idea of a new inspiration striking out of nowhere, possibly in the middle of dinner. On the up side, he isn't actually all that bad about losing things, and their kids can recognize practically any tool almost before they can walk to pick them up.
Once they start picking things up, it all gets a little more complicated.
12. who remembers to buy the milk
Neither of them! Ryn never fully adjusts to the idea of buying your food instead of hunting for it, so unless she has a list, she tends to forget the mundane conveniences of grocery stores, and the specificities of what she's supposed to look for in them. Anakin has a lamentable tendency to simply buy whatever he's hungry for at the time.
When Jinn is about twelve, she takes over the list-making in exasperation at her parents' eccentricities, and by the time she's thirteen she does most of the shopping, too. Obi hates that she makes him carry, but it works out relatively well for everybody.
Especially Shmi.
13. who remembers anniversaries
Ryn. She's used to remembering the various significant days in Loreth's calendar year, and she has fitted the days of their personal significance into that network of time-marked meaning. Unfortunately, she never really grows comfortable with the Standard calendar, so sometimes their anniversaries don't happen when Anakin thinks they should, and they take him by surprise.
He'd like to remember them for her, to prove that he hasn't forgotten any of it, he loves her more all the time, but he is constantly getting the dates wrong: he remembers the day he married her on the Standard calendar, but Ryn wants to celebrate the day they came together in the Lorethan annum, and it seems to move around the Standard calendar a lot, the days slipping in and out of each other in a pattern he can't quite get a handle on, and so he misses it, year after year.
He insists that they celebrate their children's birthdays according to the Standard calendar, and even though Ryn doesn't like it and shows a suspicious tendency to give them presents at odd intervals that he can't explain any other way except by reference to a little secretive time-keeping, it's an argument she lets him win, to keep the peace.
It is perfectly true that he likes celebrating his kids' birthdays by the same calendar on which he'll never know his own. But his favorite tradition is a private one he began after Jinn was born: Every year, for each of their children's birthdays, he gives his wife a little gift. To commemorate the occasion, of course, but it's more than that; it's a way to say "thank you," for giving him a family when he'd thought he was saving her instead, and "I'm sorry" for taking so long to realize it, and "I love you," forever. It's a chance to prove that he never really forgot their anniversary at all.
He just likes to celebrate it a lot more often.