Chapter Text
punchesstars: so remember how my moms used to bug me about a gf
notanandroid: Yes.
punchesstars: and remember how they stopped
notanandroid: Yes.
punchesstars: so i might have told them i have one
notanandroid: One what?
punchesstars: a gf
notanandroid: Oh.
notanandroid: That sounds reasonable.
punchesstars: yeah but they want my gf to come over
punchesstars: for the holidays or something
notanandroid: But you do not have a girlfriend.
punchesstars: yeah
punchesstars: i know
punchesstars: u wanna be my gf?
punchesstars: for fake
punchesstars: so my moms don’t bug me again
punchesstars: viv? u there?
notanandroid: Yes.
notanandroid: I apologize.
notanandroid: I was busy.
punchesstars: u can say no
punchesstars: ur better than marvel tho
punchesstars: at the faking bit
notanandroid: Can you not tell them your girlfriend is busy?
punchesstars: i tried
punchesstars: they said my gf could pick the date
punchesstars: they r very insistent
notanandroid: It is the holidays. Is that not a good enough excuse?
punchesstars: no
punchesstars: uv never met my moms
notanandroid: Let me sleep on it.
punchesstars: u sleep????
Viv shuts her phone off, tucks it beneath her pillow, and leans flat on her back to stare up at the ceiling. Technically speaking, she doesn’t need a cell phone; she’s set up to connect to both incoming calls and texts. But there’s something familiar about having a separate phone and a separate phone number from the one implanted in her skull. She likes having the texts on an external visual plane, and she likes not having every word on a call thrumming through her mind, and she especially likes not having unread texts sitting in the back of her mind like trash she’s forgotten to take out. Her father doesn’t approve, but then he doesn’t text – and he was created in a time before cellular phones even existed, so what does he know?
Not that any of this particularly matters, in the grand scheme of things. Her internal processors still record her every moment, including the calls she gets from an external phone, including her visuals of any texts she receives or sends out. In some ways, this is good; it means her memory is much more concrete than that of any of her friends. In others, it isn’t; it means that in particularly troubling situations, she has absolutely no privacy. She can keep nothing hidden from anyone who might have reason to demand access to her memories.
She doesn’t think it records her thoughts, though, which is the really important thing right now.
It isn’t that Viv hadn’t been paying attention to America’s texts. She had. But they hadn’t been at the forefront of her mind the way her homework was (and unfortunately for that homework, her mind is now so full of other things that there’s no way she could really focus on any of it. Except the math, which requires absolutely no thought and which she could do in her sleep...and which she will probably do to cool off later). And, well.
She hadn’t expected u wanna be my gf? out of nowhere.
Of course, America clarified all of that, and if Viv had been paying attention to the greater context of the conversation, maybe her heart wouldn’t have frozen in her chest the way it had, maybe her breath wouldn’t have caught in the heartbeat between that text and the one after, but….
She doesn’t even like America like that. She doesn’t like anyone like that! They’re just friends! Very, very good friends!
Viv groans, grabs her pillow, covers her head with it, and lets out a much, much louder groan, stifling it as much as she can.
Even still, a few minutes later, her father knocks at her door. He will ask if something is wrong. He will try to open the door.
“Do not worry!” Viv calls out, moving the pillow just enough to shout through the door. “I am only frustrated with my homework!”
“Would you like my help?” her father asks through the door.
“No, I believe that would interfere with what I am intended to learn from this experience.” It is a lie. It is all a lie. Viv is having no trouble with her homework at all and was actually nearly done with the whole thing before that singular text broke through her focus. Which it shouldn’t have. Still, she does not like lying to her father, not after the time she’d spent being so mad at her mother.
She doesn’t like to think about her mother.
With her father satisfied and away, Viv is left to her own thoughts. None of which she likes. She’s not sure why America believed she would be better at faking all of this than Kamala is when she’s no great liar, but perhaps it is simply that she is better at not speaking at all. Perhaps America is afraid that with Kamala’s talkative nature, something might slip out that she doesn’t want her moms to hear.
—that, too, is an issue.
The “moms” in question are the two women who took America into their home when Strange did not, who for all intents and purposes adopted her into their family. Agatha Harkness, the first and oldest witch, Viv has heard of in passing – both from America and, oddly, from her father – but never had the occasion to meet, despite the intrigue that surrounded her. Wanda Maximoff, on the other hand, America is quite wrong to say that Viv has never met.
(To think of that means to think of her mother’s death, and Viv likes to think of that even less than she likes to think of her mother.)
There’s no way that America would ever have known that, however. Viv would hope Wanda has no reason to bring it up, and she has not and had no intention to do so. She likes speaking of her mother nearly as much as she likes thinking about her mother. In fact, she isn’t even sure America knows what has happened to her, only that she is dead, which is more than fine with Viv. She just has no way of knowing if that will come up if she agrees.
Viv isn’t sure she can successfully fake being anyone’s girlfriend, let alone America’s.
With a sigh, Viv shoves her homework under her bed. She shuts down with the intent to finish everything in the morning, hoping that her rest cycle will help her see things with different eyes in the morning.
Well.
Not different eyes, since she has no intention of changing hers out any time soon.
But close enough.
Viv reconsiders in the morning as she finishes her math homework. It’s good busywork that doesn’t require much thought, which lets her mind wander elsewhere. Every now and again, she picks up her phone to see if she’s gotten any texts from America. Nothing. Which is for the best, honestly.
Finally, with a deep breath, she picks her phone up and sends the text.
notanandroid: I will be your fake girlfriend.
notanandroid: But we will need to discuss everything first.
notanandroid: I may change my mind.
It’s a full four hours later before America texts her back.
punchesstars: u wanna meet up l8r
notanandroid: Send me a time and a place.