Luck (Team Angst)
Title: A reason for stress
Author: Keenir.
Pairing/Characters: Amita Ramanujan, Larry; Amita/Charlie angst.
Rating/Category: PG-13 K+ / Gen
Spoilers: just for ‘Magic Show’ {5.06}
Summary: Amita’s musings during one far-too-sunny day in the wake of the magic ep.
Notes/Warnings: None of these characters are mine! I am making no money with them.
This fic was written for the Angst vs Schmoop Challenge at numb3rswriteoff. After you’ve read the fic, please rate it by voting in the poll located here. (Your vote will be anonymous.) Rate the fic on a scale of 1 - 10 (10 being the best) using the following criteria: how well the fic fit the prompt, how angsty the fic was, and how well you enjoyed the fic. When you’re done, please check out the other challenge fic at numb3rswriteoff. Thank you!
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There are things Amita doesn’t tell Charlie.
Not just a few little details here and there, oh no. Though, she’d rather prefer that be the case.
Big things, actually. Honking huge, she imagined Colby might phrase it.
It’s not past dates either of them have gone on with other people, and it isn’t jealousy of academic success. Again, Amita might’ve liked to have one of - any of - that instead of what she has now.
It isn’t even religion (thank God), however little he thinks of it when he thinks of it. Charlie made me a card for this past Diwali.
Just as bad as religion are the things Amita keeps quiet with around her boyfriend. It was a mistake, she knows, to have said anything when Charlie’d started his verbal assault on magic - but, there, I said it. Later, after the case, she’d tried to show him what she saw. But all he’d seen had been the delight on her face - completely missing her point. It was flattering, but so completely not what she’d meant.
Sitting on the steps, Amita let loose a frustrated growl. There was no risk of a student overhearing as he or she rushed along this sidewalk from one campus building to another - everyone was in class. It was far too sunny out, not a cloud in the sky, not a tremble in the earth. Everyone was in class. Everyone except her.
“If I may interject a thought.” And Larry.
“Please do,” Amita said. These were wide steps: she didn’t have to slide over to one side, but she did anyway. Habit, manners, call it what you will; it still got done.
“Thank you,” Larry said, sitting. “If I may hazard a guess, you’re thinking of Charles.” An observation, not a question. Very Larry.
‘Is it that obvious?’ was more the sort of thing her students would say. “I am,” Amita said. When I’m off by myself, Charlie does tend to be the reason, I admit.
“As I suspected. Is he being overly-focused, or neutral?” Larry asked. Someone less kind could easily have put it ‘obsessive and oblivious, or coldly indifferent?’
“It’s nothing,” Amita said. “Nothing he’s done.” Don and Colby would’ve asked ‘what did Charlie forget this time?’
But not Larry. Larry just sat there, his presence comfort enough.
Larry’d understand. Larry believed in luck.
And therein lay the problem: Charlie didn’t. Believe in luck, that is.
Charlie wouldn’t see how to ‘make luck’ as that’d be a violation of physical laws - in other words, a mathematical impossibility. You can’t make luck, can’t use luck, etc.
Larry would point to work in the field of quantum physics, a science full of things coming from nothing and things going from something to nothing. In his worldview, things can and do come out of nowhere, making us richer or poorer for them.
I know what I’d do if this were a movie, Amita thought to herself. I’d lean over and kiss him, a tentative touch that turns into a full-blown snog session, our bodies covered in sweat as we roll above and below the covers - I never really understood that part in the badly-edited movies…is some of the sweat supposed to be from running from the campus to either of our residences? That would make sense, wouldn’t it?
But that would ruin things and solve nothing. All it would accomplish would be to alienate everyone from me: Charlie and Larry, particularly. She’s not good friends with Megan, and I couldn’t do that to her. Amita sighed. And with how 9/10ths of my friends are either people I know through Charlie or are people who like me and Charlie together, I’d find myself alone and fast. Very fast.
And Amita never liked being alone. The friendless alone, that is - sitting by oneself in the corner had two very different feelings, depending upon if one chose to go there versus if one was shunned everywhere else.
And, just as much as she hated being friendlessly alone, Amita also hated the times when she couldn’t convey a thought to the people she cared the most about - to the person she cared the most for. I might as well be speaking Tamil for all that Charlie understood me about how I feel about magic. Maybe I was and I didn’t know it. “Was I speaking Tamil the other day?” she asked Larry.
“Not to the best of my knowledge.”
“Did I ever switch languages?” That happens to people, she knew. Not to anybody in my family, but there’s always a first time.
“In this past week?”
Why? Did I start speaking in tongues at some point before the start of the week? She thought and dismissed the idea as unlikely. “Yeah.”
“No, it was all English. Of course, I wasn’t with you and Charles all the time, so perhaps…” and he rambles on. Amita lets him, focused as she is with her own thoughts. What happened? she asks herself.
It would be easy - simplicity itself - to say that she got involved with Charlie and only realized the shortcomings too late. But that’d be dishonest. I knew what I was getting into, Amita knows, when I started out. Back when me and Alan knew how I felt about Charlie…when Charlie was still ‘buying a clue’ as Don and Colby might say (not about Charlie, but they might use that phrase.)
In anyone else, it would be a perfectly valid reason to stress out, or at least to have some stress. Except I can’t stress over something which I have no control. Something which I was well aware of the whole time.
Amita let out a sigh, frustrated. And, for the first time in years, she started to pray to God for advice - Ganesh, YHWH, Jesus, she wasn’t picky, she just hoped one of them would help her.
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The End
Author: Keenir.
Pairing/Characters: Amita Ramanujan, Larry; Amita/Charlie angst.
Rating/Category: PG-13 K+ / Gen
Spoilers: just for ‘Magic Show’ {5.06}
Summary: Amita’s musings during one far-too-sunny day in the wake of the magic ep.
Notes/Warnings: None of these characters are mine! I am making no money with them.
This fic was written for the Angst vs Schmoop Challenge at numb3rswriteoff. After you’ve read the fic, please rate it by voting in the poll located here. (Your vote will be anonymous.) Rate the fic on a scale of 1 - 10 (10 being the best) using the following criteria: how well the fic fit the prompt, how angsty the fic was, and how well you enjoyed the fic. When you’re done, please check out the other challenge fic at numb3rswriteoff. Thank you!
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There are things Amita doesn’t tell Charlie.
Not just a few little details here and there, oh no. Though, she’d rather prefer that be the case.
Big things, actually. Honking huge, she imagined Colby might phrase it.
It’s not past dates either of them have gone on with other people, and it isn’t jealousy of academic success. Again, Amita might’ve liked to have one of - any of - that instead of what she has now.
It isn’t even religion (thank God), however little he thinks of it when he thinks of it. Charlie made me a card for this past Diwali.
Just as bad as religion are the things Amita keeps quiet with around her boyfriend. It was a mistake, she knows, to have said anything when Charlie’d started his verbal assault on magic - but, there, I said it. Later, after the case, she’d tried to show him what she saw. But all he’d seen had been the delight on her face - completely missing her point. It was flattering, but so completely not what she’d meant.
Sitting on the steps, Amita let loose a frustrated growl. There was no risk of a student overhearing as he or she rushed along this sidewalk from one campus building to another - everyone was in class. It was far too sunny out, not a cloud in the sky, not a tremble in the earth. Everyone was in class. Everyone except her.
“If I may interject a thought.” And Larry.
“Please do,” Amita said. These were wide steps: she didn’t have to slide over to one side, but she did anyway. Habit, manners, call it what you will; it still got done.
“Thank you,” Larry said, sitting. “If I may hazard a guess, you’re thinking of Charles.” An observation, not a question. Very Larry.
‘Is it that obvious?’ was more the sort of thing her students would say. “I am,” Amita said. When I’m off by myself, Charlie does tend to be the reason, I admit.
“As I suspected. Is he being overly-focused, or neutral?” Larry asked. Someone less kind could easily have put it ‘obsessive and oblivious, or coldly indifferent?’
“It’s nothing,” Amita said. “Nothing he’s done.” Don and Colby would’ve asked ‘what did Charlie forget this time?’
But not Larry. Larry just sat there, his presence comfort enough.
Larry’d understand. Larry believed in luck.
And therein lay the problem: Charlie didn’t. Believe in luck, that is.
Charlie wouldn’t see how to ‘make luck’ as that’d be a violation of physical laws - in other words, a mathematical impossibility. You can’t make luck, can’t use luck, etc.
Larry would point to work in the field of quantum physics, a science full of things coming from nothing and things going from something to nothing. In his worldview, things can and do come out of nowhere, making us richer or poorer for them.
I know what I’d do if this were a movie, Amita thought to herself. I’d lean over and kiss him, a tentative touch that turns into a full-blown snog session, our bodies covered in sweat as we roll above and below the covers - I never really understood that part in the badly-edited movies…is some of the sweat supposed to be from running from the campus to either of our residences? That would make sense, wouldn’t it?
But that would ruin things and solve nothing. All it would accomplish would be to alienate everyone from me: Charlie and Larry, particularly. She’s not good friends with Megan, and I couldn’t do that to her. Amita sighed. And with how 9/10ths of my friends are either people I know through Charlie or are people who like me and Charlie together, I’d find myself alone and fast. Very fast.
And Amita never liked being alone. The friendless alone, that is - sitting by oneself in the corner had two very different feelings, depending upon if one chose to go there versus if one was shunned everywhere else.
And, just as much as she hated being friendlessly alone, Amita also hated the times when she couldn’t convey a thought to the people she cared the most about - to the person she cared the most for. I might as well be speaking Tamil for all that Charlie understood me about how I feel about magic. Maybe I was and I didn’t know it. “Was I speaking Tamil the other day?” she asked Larry.
“Not to the best of my knowledge.”
“Did I ever switch languages?” That happens to people, she knew. Not to anybody in my family, but there’s always a first time.
“In this past week?”
Why? Did I start speaking in tongues at some point before the start of the week? She thought and dismissed the idea as unlikely. “Yeah.”
“No, it was all English. Of course, I wasn’t with you and Charles all the time, so perhaps…” and he rambles on. Amita lets him, focused as she is with her own thoughts. What happened? she asks herself.
It would be easy - simplicity itself - to say that she got involved with Charlie and only realized the shortcomings too late. But that’d be dishonest. I knew what I was getting into, Amita knows, when I started out. Back when me and Alan knew how I felt about Charlie…when Charlie was still ‘buying a clue’ as Don and Colby might say (not about Charlie, but they might use that phrase.)
In anyone else, it would be a perfectly valid reason to stress out, or at least to have some stress. Except I can’t stress over something which I have no control. Something which I was well aware of the whole time.
Amita let out a sigh, frustrated. And, for the first time in years, she started to pray to God for advice - Ganesh, YHWH, Jesus, she wasn’t picky, she just hoped one of them would help her.
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The End