Chapter Text
Leo’s phone began to vibrate on the bedside table next to him. The opening notes of My Chemical Romance’s Look Alive, Sunshine , started playing, and his hand sleepily scrambled to turn it off. He unplugged the phone and checked the screen. A flurry of GMail notifications had appeared overnight, all with subject lines like “[AO3] You’ve got kudos!” or “[AO3] New comment on Drink Up The Loneliness!”. Weird. He hadn’t updated the fic in months. Maybe someone had come across it and started reading? He quickly tapped in his PIN and opened up the app.
The comments and kudos weren’t just from one person, though - multiple different users had been leaving them. They were all pretty nice comments, at least. Leo clicked the link to visit the fanfiction and see which chapters they were commenting on.
What? Leo squinted at the bright screen, his eyes still adjusting. Maybe it was the confusion of having just woken up, but he was pretty sure he hadn’t written this. He scrolled to the top of the page and started reading the chapter, with increasing disbelief. Yeah, this wasn’t his. Who the fuck had hacked into his AO3 account and posted a new chapter of a long-abandoned fic?
Even weirder, the chapter wasn’t any story he’d thought of or discussed with Shanks before. In fact, the story was fucking bizarre - Chase and Rebecca, through the usual Unexplained Magic, had been transported into the world of Oasis Pearl, the shitty self-insert Leo had written when he was 8 and unaware of the concept of being trans.
Leo turned his phone off and pulled himself out of bed to get ready for school. He’d tell Shanks about this on the train.
As the train pulled up to Simla Crescent station, Leo craned his neck and spotted a familiar blonde head of hair standing by the train station’s shelter. His shoulders relaxed as he realised he wouldn’t have to wait until Classics (where Mr Adams would undoubtedly scold them for talking) to tell her about this. He removed his earbuds, which were blasting He Is Legend, and put them back in their case as she approached.
“Hey,” Shanks said in a tired voice, sitting on the train seat next to him and tucking her backpack under the seat.
“Hey,” he said. “Guess what?” He tried not to let his voice betray how confused he was.
“What?” Shanks asked, adjusting her headphones. He could hear something loud blaring out of them.
“The Chase and Rebecca fanfic has been getting a bunch of comments and stuff,” he said.
“Oh, that’s cool,” she said, obviously not caring that much.
“Yeah, it’s kind of weird though,” Leo said. “There’s a new chapter-”
“You wrote a new chapter?” Shanks asked, now interested. Usually if Leo was writing a new chapter, he’d tell her all about it.
“No,” he said, earning a puzzled look from Shanks. “That’s what’s weird, because I didn’t write it. I didn’t upload it or anything, I just woke up and it was there.”
Shanks was silent for a moment, mouth slightly open as she thought about this. “So… what?”
Leo shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Have you read it yet?”
“No,” he said. “I was gonna wait to read it with you.”
“Yeah?” She gestured for him to show her. He pulled out his phone and opened up the new chapter.