lovely things (but you're the loveliest)

Summary:

Snapshots of Mel, Stella, falling in love, and sharing gestures of affection. Or: the Aveyond 3 attraction points rewritten to be for Mel/Stella.

Notes:

I headcanon Mel as nonbinary and using multiple sets of pronouns, so this fic will alternate between them! Since I'm not sure how familiar a lot of the fandom is with that, I'm going to keep it consistent between each separate chapter for clarity's sake.

Title is from Prettiest Thing by Oh Darling.

Full Notes

If I may be fully honest, this is the most conflicted I've ever felt about a fanfic. I've considered orphaning it on AO3 and not including it on my website, but ultimately I decided having a tucked away personal webpage where I got to briefly talk about my feelings on it and put them out there was probably the best course of action. If reading about conflicted or negative feelings about it will hinder your enjoyment of the fluffy nonbinary sapphic fanfiction then please feel free to close this.

I wrote this at a time when I was trying to interpret my identity as anything grayer than strictly aro, and trying to enjoy romance in fiction. I wanted to be able to write shipping fic because there were ships I liked and I wanted them to have more fanfiction. I feel weird about it now, because it's not just something I wouldn't write now - it's something I only wrote the first time around because I was trying to be someone different than I am.

Working on this was a fucking rollercoaster. I had a bunch of orientation and gender thoughts because of it and comments my partner made to me while I was working on it, and a lot of those have evolved further since. It's an interesting snapshot for sure, but it's a snapshot. That's compounded by the number of people who helped me write this that are no longer in my life. It's not a huge number, but, still, if I had a nickel, and all that.

I'm grateful for what this fic taught me about myself and for the people who encouraged me on it. It's largely because of that that I don't want to pack it up and tuck it away. Well, that and the fact that I still want there to be more Mel/Stella fanfiction, even if I no longer want to be the one to write it. If you're with me on that front, I hope you enjoy it!