Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Have you ever been in love?”(1)

Agnes is a good friend. Honestly, my only friend since I decided to banish myself to the west coast, which now makes her my best friend. She’s a classmate turned failed hook-up turned friend and personal bully. The ‘Failed hook-up’ stage consisted of maybe a few make-outs, a handjob, and probably the worst blowjob she’s ever received in her life.(2) All because I have too much baggage, and she’s too smart to allow herself to get sucked into the black-hole sized mess known as my love life, even with the little information I’ve offered her on the subject. We enjoyed each other’s banter too much to fully tell the other to ‘fuck off’ after that final night of being physically intimate with one another. Fast forward to now: A barely sipped IPA sits at my knuckles, and she’s working on her second, grilling me with questions on said black-hole.

“Have you?” I throw back at her with a laugh instead of answering. You’re deflecting.

“I asked you first!” Deflection blocked.

“Okay. Then… Yes.”

I’d say I don’t know why I’m doing this now, telling Agnes about stuff she’s been trying to get out of me for months, but I know the answer to that.

I think about my last therapy session where Dr. Ventura suggested, once again, the ‘ground-breaking’ concept of opening up to new people about old pains. I liked the way he phrased it, specifically emphasizing “new people” because opening up to anyone from my past on the east coast, including Laurel, is a rocky terrain I’m not yet adjusted for—even four years after everything.

“How many times?”

“Once.”

Agnes thinks on my answer for a moment. I already know she has more to ask, so I pick up my lukewarm slop of a drink while she cues up her next inquiry into my somehow ‘fascinating’ love life. She's become determined to pick it apart until she understands all of the pieces and how they function and no doubt finally answer the question of: “Why did Conrad Fisher cry a minute into giving me terrible head?”(3) It’s a trait that will suit her well in the research side of medicine she’ll be stepping into sooner than our entire class, no doubt. When I’ve voiced that little tid-bit out-loud before, like a good and humble friend she has responded with, “With you trailing only moments behind me, of course.” I laugh silently to myself, distracted in my memories, only for her to pull me back in with her next question finally queued before the beer even touched my lips.

“Like how in love? On a scale from one to ten?”

“You can’t put being in love on a scale! You either are or you aren’t.”

“Okay, but if you had to!”

She doesn’t even bother to entertain my deflections anymore. Most people seem to pick up when I’m trying to avoid a sensitive topic and will drop whatever it is they’re asking of me to spill. Even Dr. Ventura will steer away from certain discussions if I build up my walls high enough. Agnes, however, is the personification of a wrecking ball on said walls. Either she can’t read the room I’ve built from the foundation up or has decided she could care less about appeasing me and my construction. Most likely a bit of both.

I take a sip of my hoppy drink, swallow, and give an honest answer because anything less than that Agnes would snuff out as a lie: “Ten.”

Agnes raises her brows and nods, drumming her free hand on the counter, “Impressive.”

I add a “thanks” in response to fill the awkward silence. Well, it’s awkward for me. I’m sure Agnes feels perfectly at home in this bar. I, personally, can feel her veering dangerously close to some perfectly normal questions that would lead to some terribly risque answers.

“So, how did you meet?”

Here we go.

“Uhm,” I clutch my beer in my lap and think of the best way to approach this without fully unlocking Pandora’s box.

“We never really met. I just… always knew her.”

The idea of meeting Belly is something that’s never occurred to me and would have never occurred to me if not for Agnes’ never-ending questions she’s throwing to her less-than-willing test subject. It's almost funny to think about: meeting Belly.

That answer seems to have been the right—or better put most interesting—one to say because now Agnes has fully abandoned her beer. She’s turned towards me, and has a puzzled expression on her face.

“So, when did you know it was love then?”

“It- It wasn’t one moment… It was…”

My mind drifts off to the 4th of July on the beach after the events at the motel. Breathing becomes a less simple task to do suddenly and so I redirect. I, instead, picture us dancing at the beach house when Belly still had braces and you’d never see her without a french braid swinging across her back. She stepped on my feet a minimum of eight times, and stumbled through each of the steps as some corny show-tunes-esque music played on in the background, but we couldn’t stop the laughter from spreading over our faces. I then think of the time when I, at 10 years old, thought I had lost an 8 year old Belly at the board-walk. Jere, Steven, and I went to play on the machines at the arcade, and I had no clue where she chose to spend her hour instead. When I finally found her nearly an hour after our designated meet-up time I had raised my voice at her, so worried about what could have happened to her and then freaked out when she started to cry. I quickly apologized, hugged her softly, then held her hand firmly the whole walk home for both of our benefits.

“You know when you’re still half asleep and you don’t even realize that you’re awake until there’s one moment where you just are.”

A full-blown smirk has overtaken Agnes’ face when she says, “Mhm.”

“It’s like that. Like one day I just…”

“Woke up,” Agnes fills in for me with a nod before adding at the end, “Gotcha.”

She looks away from me, and picks back up her beer. I think: finally, an answer that will end this absolutely lovely discussion that definitely would not have triggered a panic attack not even a year ago. A small smirk is back on the red-head’s face before I can even finish my thought and she turns her follow-up questions back on me just as I pick up my drink again.

“So, what was her name?”

I shake my head. Deflect.

“What, you can’t even say it?!”

I just hum back a barely audible ‘no.’

“Come on.”

There’s that wrecking ball again. Fuck it.

I set down the beer I’ve been using as a fidget toy for what feels like a year throughout this entire conversation, and say the name that sounds like a confession when it comes from me: “Belly.”

“Wait, like your brother’s girlfriend?”

Of course, Agnes would remember that small little detail. I try not to bring up Jeremiah and Belly’s relationship at all, and have probably mentioned it less times than I can count on one hand the four years I’ve been in California. Her memory is like an elephant’s, and now she’s asking me to address the elephant in the bar.

“Have you just been, like, pining after her this whole time?”

“She was my girlfriend first!” I defend myself, not because I think I hold some sort of douchey claim over Belly, but because Dr. Ventura has been trying to get me to take steps like this. Where I don’t just allow myself to lay my neck down on the chopping block immediately to everything swung my way.

“Wait, she dumped you for him?! Bitch. What?!”

I laugh only at the jump in mood this new found information brings to Agnes, who yelled that loud enough for the entire bar to hear. I appreciate that Agnes is just being a friend, and having a response like that is what good friends do, but I also can’t ever turn off the part of myself that jumps to defend Belly. Even after years apart, it’s a natural reflex, and in this moment a deserved one.

“No, no, no. I was a shitty boyfriend. We…broke up at prom,” I trail off at the end.

“Wait. You broke up with her prom?!”

“Well, technically she broke up with me, but…uhm. Yeah, I basically teed it up for her.”

It’s not fair to hold that break up against Belly. My behavior was less than acceptable. This is a subject my therapist and I disagree on. He thinks that I should be kinder to myself considering my mother died from cancer only a few weeks later, and you could see it in her—the weeks she had left. He says it was neither of our fault, just a natural reaction to our situations. But he didn’t see the way Belly looked at me when I forgot the corsage. When I couldn’t budge from the safety of the table like the other dates around had. When I lasted on the dance floor for barely two songs. When she followed me out into the rain and took off her infinity necklace I had gifted to her that previous summer, her tears mixing with the April showers. ‘Teed up’ is an understatement.

“Seriously? Oh, my god, you did that thing that guys do when they’re too chickenshit to break up with a girl, so they, like, act like a dick until she does it for him?”

I have no words to say in response to that fair and thorough read of me so instead I just motion up to myself and smile to serve as a ‘yep, that’s me!’

“Ugh, no! God.”

This is the longest I’ve spoken about this topic to anyone. I don’t know how I’m feeling. I don’t get panic attacks as often anymore, and this topic didn’t trigger one, thankfully, but maybe I just feel so detached from that part of my life now that it almost feels like an entirely separate world I’m living in. When I banished myself to California to focus on my studies at Stanford, I left with my luggage and two vows made. The more recent one was that I would stop involving myself in anything to do with Belly beyond who she is to my brother, regardless of how every part of my body felt that to be wrong and still does. I had to make that vow because if I didn’t I wouldn’t be able to keep the first I made to my mom about Jere before she passed. “You always looked out for him, and you always will. Will you, Connie?” The promises you make on your mother’s deathbed are absolute. They’re titanium.(4)

“So what, is it like…Super awkward now or…” Agnes, the wrecking ball, has once again broken down a wall, but this time I’m relieved for the destruction. I laugh, and take in a deep breath, no longer feeling so claustrophobic.

“I…barely ever see them together. I mean, I see Jere-”

“Okay, but like, when you do?”

A sigh escapes from my throat, before I knock back the rest of my beer which has dwindled down considerably since the beginning of this conversation. The memory I had suppressed from earlier rises back up.

“I remember the first time that we were all together, they tried to downplay it for my sake,” the words leave my mouth as I picture Belly to my right. I barely looked at her that trip, but the glimpses I stole, against my better judgement, were like roundoff shots to my psyche. Jere has never been one to blush at public displays of affection coming from either himself or others. The only time he ever seemed bothered by them was when Belly and I were dating. His nostrils would flare, and he’d let whatever thoughts, regardless of how harsh they were, out on the two of us. He doesn’t hide his hurt the way I do, the way I was doing then on that beach. He ran to Belly’s side, kicking up some sand onto my leg in the process when he leaned in to press kisses on her cheek then her neck then her shoulder. I could see her lean away each time, and noticed the way her laughs came out unnaturally. Apparently only she and I were aware of how weird this situation was. Not Jere, not Steven, not even Taylor although even if she did she’d never voice it for my benefit. She’s always been one of my harsher critics. As weird as it was though, I could see she was happy. I was the one ruining things. I was the reason she leaned away from Jere, not because she didn’t want to revel in her boyfriend’s affection, but because Isabel Conklin has always been kind even if I didn’t deserve it.

“But I could just tell that they were so happy. And so, I had to be happy too.”

I sported a smile, let out a laugh here and there. I drank my fill of the beer we snagged from the convenience store on the way, and played my part to the best of my ability. There were moments where Steven would stare me down, like he had something to say, but then Taylor would run up to him from behind, and as quickly as the thought was there it was gone. The four of them were engaged in a rule-less game of football or tag, I still don’t quite know what they were doing. And I sat in my chair eating a watermelon, begging the day to end.

“From that moment, I-I… I knew that,” the words stumble from my mouth, no longer telling a story, but fully reliving that time on the beach. The air becomes thinner with each word, but, just like in Dr. Ventura’s office, instead of shutting down I power through each. Like a sinner in confession.

“I couldn’t be alone with her. I wouldn’t be able to…keep it in.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see Agnes closer than she was before. She’s leaning against her hand, elbow propped on the bar. Her eyes are firm as she studies me, understanding something in the jumble of words I just spilled out for her to sort through.

“Keep what in?”

“That I…”

Belly, in her white debutant dress, is staring back at me in my memory. The tender passion of first love is reflected on our faces. I want to reach out and hold her, escape to the memories where all that seemed to matter in the eye of the storm was the warmth in our chests and the affection at our fingertips.

I still love you.

Instead, I finish my words with, “loved her.”

“When we were together, I never said the words, and now…” At the end of my sentence sits a secret.

The beach wasn’t the last time Belly and I saw each other. Less than a year ago, just the day after Christmas is where we both found ourselves at the beach house. She opened the door with a poker from the fireplace in hand, and if not for the complete shock of seeing her I would have laughed at the absurdity of it all. She had chocolate in the corner of her mouth, her hair was disheveled, and she was in her pajamas, but I wanted nothing more than to pull her close to me. Next thing I know she’s hugging me first, tucking herself into my arms, granting me the wish my entire body had been screaming for. The only thing taking me out of the moment was the threat of the poker she was still holding stabbing me.

“Why are you holding a poker?”

“Oh, uhm. I thought you were a burglar.”

“Of course you did.”

After some explanations for why we both were at the beach house when we had both assumed the other was preoccupied with other plans—and other people—she situated herself on the couch, popping more chocolate into her mouth. I laughed.

“You have chocolate all over your face.”

“No I don’t!” She quickly brought her hand up to cover it even after the firm denial of there being anything there.

“What did you do? You just stick your whole head in to save time?”

The tease left my mouth instinctively, already getting a rush from being around Belly and getting to act like this because it was just the two of us.

“Shut it!”

She shivered, and I immediately rushed to find a solution to Belly’s problem, as I always have.

“You cold? I can start a fire.”

Just as I had turned around, I remembered the last time Belly and I were alone together in the house during the winter. The last time I had started a fire for just us. When I laid her down on the ground, our clothes abandoned around us, and we made love to each other for the first time.

Belly’s expression when I turned away from the fireplace reflected my own.

“Actually I think it’s a little late for a fire. I think I’m just gonna crash,” I was about to leave the room when I had decided to add, “Merry Christmas, Belly. It’s really good to see you.”

I take myself out of the memory, not allowing it to be finished. To think about the little betrayal to the promise I made to my mom. To think about how the next day I didn’t leave. How we both stayed in the house, existing comfortably in each other’s space. We never even touched each other after that first hug, but everything about it felt both so right and so wrong. It was a now impossible domestic bliss that I craved to have with her for the rest of my life. This is what happens when we’re alone with each other. When I let myself think of Belly as anyone, but who my brother is in love with.

“I don’t know.”

I check my watch, “Uhm. I got to go.”

“Okay,” Agnes responds. When I reach for my wallet, Agnes stops me, “I got it, I got it.”

“You sure?”

“Mhm.”

I get up from the bar stool, and smile at Agnes before saying goodbye with, “Get home safe.”

“Yeah, you too,” she tells me, and as I leave the bar I already know what I have to do.

Once outside, I pull out my phone and make a call to Jere. He doesn’t answer, but I leave a voice mail: “Hey, Jere! Uh, look, I am not gonna be able to make the dedication. I got this job, and it starts real soon, and it’s a pretty big deal. So, uh, I’m really sorry, but if you need help with the speech or anything, you let me know, I’m here. But I know you’ll do great, so… Yeah. Alright, bye.”

I can play pretend for the sake of Belly and Jere and my mom when I’m far away across the country. I can be the failure brother that bails on moments like this, abandoning my brother to handle the dedication for our mom, all so I don’t risk fucking up where it truly matters. I’ll be a ghost in their lives, a passing thought when they see my room in Cousins filled with my stamp collection, sailing awards, and worn Tolkien novels. A memory of a young love that burned fast and died faster. But the one thing that never changes, regardless of how much work and time I spend trying, is that I love Isabel Conklin.(5)

Chapter Text

1. Parrish, Juli J. 2013. "Metaphors We Read By: People, Process, and Fan Fiction." Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 14. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2013.0486.

Parrish writes in section 5.8-5.10 of “Metaphors We Read By: People, Process, and Fan Fiction”:

“[5.8] The second of these two metaphors comes from Jane Mortimer, whose essay on "Fan Fiction as an Art Form" (n.d.) was archived on the Pure Mutant X fan site in 2004. Mortimer describes the texts of television and fan fiction as a river:

[5.9] “In the center we have the river of canon, aka "the show," a broad Mississippi rolling inexorably onward, pushed by money and Hollywood expertise. Off of it, we have a thousand tributaries, a thousand "what ifs," many of them branching off into yet further refinements of alternate reality as each writer examines what's gone before and spins off it…all these possibilities are true.”

[5.10] Mortimer does not do away with writers, with fans, completely; they are here, doing the work. But the work itself is the focus: the river, the tributaries, the branching off of narrative possibilities and alternate realities. For Mortimer, as for Derecho, the question of what-if is the question that matters. What are the processes by which this branching off happens?” (Parrish 5.8-5.10)

In this fanfic all of the dialogue that you read is from the show in S3x01 and S3x02 (and a little from S3x05), word for word. I also did my best to emphasize the same way that it was spoken by the actors Christopher Briney (playing Conrad), Zoé De Grand Maison (playing Agnes), and Lola Tung (playing Belly). I really enjoy the metaphor of “river of canon” from Mortimer and how it is then employed by Parrish. As I wrote the fic I wanted the scenes to be familiar. Every reference made in the fic is from the actual scenes in the tv show The Summer I Turned Pretty. The only creative liberties I took were the discussions between Conrad and his therapist Dr. Ventura (fun fact: this is his actual name, see S1x01 and look at the Stanford name plate outside the door) and the type of physical intimacies that had canonically been alluded to between Agnes and Conrad. This is my river of canon that I have reconstructed to flow, and branch off in this specific way to suit the Conrad point-of-view (POV or centric) aspect of this fic. The show (and book series) is largely told from the perspective of Isabel ‘Belly’ Conklin, the show’s protagonist, with few exceptions. There are oftentimes voice-overs to highlight key moments of Belly’s internal monologue whether reliable or not. I am, as the writer of this fic, picturing how it would look/sound/be read had it been told from Conrad’s POV. There is one episode in season 3 that is from Conrad’s POV with voice-overs. I even make reference to it (see note 4). I, however, wanted to write the Conrad POV/centric fic starting from and focusing mostly on the discussion between Conrad and Agnes about Belly in S3x01, as I felt it held a lot of creative possibilities for my thematic objectives. This is why the metaphorical “river of canon” is incredibly appealing for a more canon adjacent and/or canon compliant fic as you can picture the natural stream of “canon” with the dialogue veering off into a new uncharted territory that I have created by hand with the internal monologue.

2. Duggan, Jennifer. 2023. "Trans Fans and Fan Fiction: A Literature Review." In "Trans Fandom," edited by Jennifer Duggan and Angie Fazekas, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 39. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2023.2309.

I made the decision to ever-so slightly diverge from canon by making Agnes transfemme in this fic when that is not known to be a canonical element to the show. There, however, is never a discussion of her assigned sex at birth or gender identity outside of fandom settings as she is Conrad’s first major on-screen friend and also is a “female” friend. I, as someone who considers myself to be on the genderfluid spectrum, wanted to purposefully have Conrad—a heterosexual cis-male character— be physically intimate with someone who is not a cisgendered woman, and it not be treated as a question of his sexuality in the slightest when it is made clear that Agnes does not have a vagina, but instead a penis. Then it begs the question of who received the before mentioned handjob that would have initially been presumed to be Conrad on the receiving end before reading the rest of the sentence. I actively made this decision as a point of my position as a queer person in a fandom space that is largely not queer despite its canonically queer characters in the show (Skye and Jeremiah). It is canonical that the two have explored physical intimacy (not romantic) together, the only aspect I have changed is by making Agnes trans. I emphasize Conrad’s heterosexuality in the tags because I know that this fandom space has not been kind to its canonical trans character (Skye). In Duggan’s article in section 5.1, she writes “Through transfic, then, "fans regularly create alternative, more diverse and multifaceted gender narratives by adding transgender characters to the storyworld or rewriting cisgender (main) characters as trans" (Rose 2018, 107). These stories have several aims: first, to repudiate some of the negative tropes in other gender-focused genres of fan fiction (Beazley 2014, 2016); second, to create "a pedagogical space that encourages positive and progressive depictions of uniquely transgender experiences" (Beazley 2014, 57); and finally, to depict and reflect realistic trans individuals (Rose 2018; 2020)” (Duggin 5.1). I was initially planning to make Conrad a trans butch lesbian in the first draft of this fic along with Agnes’ rewriting to be trans, but ultimately scrapped it (although I am very for doing this in the future).

3. Duggan, Jennifer. 2023. "Trans Fans and Fan Fiction: A Literature Review." In "Trans Fandom," edited by Jennifer Duggan and Angie Fazekas, special issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 39. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2023.2309.

Also see note 2. I use both the terms “blowjob” and “head” to describe physical oral intimacy. “Head” is a much more gender-neutral term and can be associated with either vaginal oral sex or phallic oral sex. This is why I first used “blowjob’ so there is no mistake in the decision I’m making, even if it is subtle and mentioned in passing. I also did not want to spend any further time on the description of Agnes’ anatomy or write a scene where Conrad experiences a sexuality crisis due to Agnes’ anatomy, as that would be transphobic, and not the point. It must also be noted that it is made clear from the beginning of the fic that the reason for the failure of/end of their hook-up stage has entirely to do with his feelings for Belly and his inability to move on. It has nothing to do with the fact that Agnes is trans.

4. Parrish, Juli J. 2013. "Metaphors We Read By: People, Process, and Fan Fiction." Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 14. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2013.0486.

Also see note 1. The sentences: ““You always looked out for him, and you always will. Will you, Connie?” The promises you make on your mother’s deathbed are absolute. They’re titanium” are lines from S3x05 in Conrad’s POV episode. The dialogue is canonical dialogue from Susannah to Conrad in S3x05, and the sentence following is from Conrad’s actual internal monologue depicted as a voice-over in his POV episode. This is an example of the redirecting of the “river of canon” by Mortimer where I have taken a moment that exists episodes away from the first within season 3 to fit my preferred timeline of events that are referred to by memory from Conrad’s perspective.

5. Massey, Erica Lyn. 2019. "Borderland Literature, Female Pleasure, and the Slash Fic Phenomenon." Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 30. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2019.1390.

The placement of this footnote could have been at the beginning or the end. I chose the end as it encapsulates why I wrote the entire fic from Conrad’s POV. In Massey’s “Borderland Literature, Female Please, and the Slash Fic Phenomenon” article she writes in 2.4: “The first is queer women who identify in some way with the visual or textual imagery of male pleasure. Here, women reconsider, and sometimes actively reconfigure, what masculinity and femininity mean to them outside the constraints of typical sexual gender composition” (Massey 2.4). It is important to note that Massey’s article is talking mostly about homosexual (specifically M/M) relationships, after this quote, but the focus is on female pleasure through slash fic. I use many labels depending on my audience and am fairly fluid with labels. For the sake of making my point I will narrow it to: Demiwoman or Genderfluid or queer woman. There is an element of queer euphoria writing a story from the perspective of a man (and more specifically a cis-het man) in a relationship with a woman as a queer woman. I feel comfortable writing from dual-perspectives especially if the object of romantic affection is a woman. It also gives me the agency to decide how the female characters are described, characterized, loved, etc.. By choosing to write from Conrad’s perspective I am aligning or identifying “in some way with the visual or textual imagery of male pleasure” (Massey). I do treat this as an act of pleasure (non-sexual sense of the word) as writing fan-fiction is a labor of love. Full disclosure (if you have made it this far) that this is an assignment for a 4000 level Fan Fiction class at my university, but I did have the opportunity to write an essay instead. So, the statement of this fic being a “labor of love” I believe still holds true. I could have written anything, but I chose my dear het-slop Bonrad <3