Hello, my alien lovers!
We completed the grind last week. We did the "challenging" path because we're warriors. I loved it, which officially makes me a VHG—a Vancouver Hiking Girlie. You know I had that overpriced lululemon on!
I listened to Doctor Who : Redacted while I gasped for air on the way up.
I want to explore more audio fiction and more stories with trans folks, and the podcast has both! It was created by a trans woman, Juno Dawson, and stars another trans woman, Charlie Craggs. Both women are interdisciplinary badass writers. It's a pleasure to enjoy my Whovian fandom with strong trans voices.
Juno Dawson also joined the writing team for the main show, making history as the first openly trans writer on the show. If you have Disney+, I recommend watching the new Doctor Who. Very camp, very fun!
Welcome to Chapter 26!
THEY KISSED! Now, what? More plot twist, more drama, and hopefully, another kiss soon...?
Stay tuned!
lunus 🩷
If you're new to the story, start with Chapter 1
If you missed the last chapter, Previously on Perilous Love Stars
The Defleuvier-Suarez Affair: Known Alien traffickers Maple Defleuvier & Salvatore Suarez caught kissing!
By Peyter Panffer
Not even a day after Soapy Forever broke the news of Defleuvier and Suarez trafficking alien teenagers, as well as exposed Defleuvier’s ongoing drug addiction and mental decline (which has seen #FireMaple trend nationally again after Defleuvier’s public meltdown on one of our journalists’ livestream), it seems things have taken a turn in the Defleuvier-Suarez affair.
Exclusive Forever Soapy pictures show the two alien traffickers sharing a passionate kiss in a sordid motel room. Their victims, innocent alien teenagers, are nowhere to be seen. Many are speculating that Maple might be using blackmail to seduce Salvatore, although nothing has been proven yet.
As fans around the world react to the shocking visuals, the news has reached the political sphere. Ricky Fox, MP from The Earthlings Party of Canada, called the snapshots “indecent” and an “attack on our shared human values.”
On our forum, TrudeuseDu54, who tells us she works “in politics in Ottawa,” comments, “Clearly this relationship is a ploy from anti-human activists to push their horrendous speciocide agenda right into viewers’ faces. It looks too calculated. Is Ermet even missing? Are the videos of the accidents on set just great AI renditions? And where are the alien teenagers? #WATAT?”
To all concerned fans out there, we at Forever Soapy want to assure you that we understand. We see growing concerns about the nefarious ideologies being conveyed by the new creatives in charge of Betteraves & Betrayals. Seeing our favourite show being used as a chest piece to further an insidious political agenda is shocking and dangerous. When will it stop? And who will step up to save our beloved show?
Article posted on Forever Soapy, June 20XX.
The diner was busier than Maple would have wanted.
The waitress, wearing a turquoise uniform and too much lipstick, set two menus in front of them. She glanced at Salvatore and ignored Maple. They were starving after a ferocious twenty-minutes make-out cession and the self-restraint they’d both exerted not to undress each other and fuck like raw dogs on the shitty motel mattress. Salvatore’s kisses had awakened something in Maple, a voracious appetite she’d spent years keeping at bay. Her libido had always been distracting. Now, it’d lead her to an impossible situation.
“What can I get you, honey?” the waitress asked Salvatore, leaning in, exposing her impressive bosom.
Maple wondered if they’d been recognized or if it was Salvatore’s natural charms that had their waitress acting desperate.
He didn’t look at her or the menu. A black cap was pulled low on his head. His eyes were set on Maple. “Coffee and a classic breakfast. Extra sausage, please.”
The waitress chewed on her lower lip, writing down his order on a stained notepad. “Mmmh, extra sausage coming right up.”
Salvatore’s hand slid across the table to hold Maple’s. The waitress glared at the gesture. Self-conscious, Maple took her hand away.
“I’ll just get the berry pancakes,” Maple said, even if she hadn’t been asked. “And lots of coffee. Black, please.”
She needed something strong, bitter, and probably disgusting by the look of the joint, to jolt her back to reality. Salvatore had been a gentleman, not saying anything, but they both knew the kiss had been a mistake. She didn’t regret it, though. Some mistakes needed to be made to move forward. Now that they’d gotten it out of the way, they could focus on more pressing matters.
The waitress wrote down Maple's order, which was the only acknowledgement she received.
“Any cream or sugar in yours, honey?” she asked Salvatore with a charming grin. “You like them sweet, eh?”
“I’ll take my coffee black as well, thanks.”
The waitress took the request as it was intended and dismissed herself with one last murderous glare at Maple.
Maple wanted to scream that she, too, was confused by Salvatore’s actions. Why had he chosen her? She wasn’t a glamorous star like Marsha. She was a workaholic and a compulsive liar.
“We should talk about what happened,” Salvatore said, his fingers playing with a silver spoon.
She knew he meant the kiss. “About your disease, yes, we should.”
Her diversion didn’t please him. He frowned. “What else is there to talk about the disease?”
Maple remembered what Yellow had told her. Did Salvatore know he was dying? Was it her place to ask? If she didn’t, he’d want to rehash the kiss, and she really didn’t want to go down that path. She’d have to tell him it’d been the best kiss of her life, that she wanted to let him do everything he wanted to her, and that she’d almost contemplated quitting her showrunner position so that he could fuck her until she screamed for mercy.
The kiss, the attraction between them—it was all a distraction Maple couldn’t indulge in.
“You’re dying, aren’t you?” she asked.
He barely flinched as if he’d been waiting for the question. “Who told you this?”
“You’re not answering.”
He stopped fidgeting with the spoon and leaned in. “Did it feel like I was dying this morning when my lips were on yours?”
She pulled her own cap lower, trying to hide blushed cheeks. “You’re avoiding the question.”
His fingers found her chin. She let him cup her face. “Don’t hide. You’re so beautiful.”
She gently shook him away, retreating into the vinyl booth. “Flatteries won’t get you out of this, Salvatore. You promised no more lies.”
“Is it a lie if I don’t want to face the truth?”
His words settled between them. They made Maple uncomfortable, not because they were true for him, but because they might apply to her.
She looked away, trying to compose herself.
“Oh my god,” someone in the next booth gasped. For a terrible instant, Maple feared they’d been recognized. Then she saw the finger pointing at the TV. “I knew it!”
When Maple’s eyes found the screen, she pressed a hand to her mouth, muffling her shock. A snapshot of her passionate kiss with Salvatore was broadcast on regional news for everyone to see.
“Fuck,” she muttered, looking for her phone. She hadn’t turned it on for days, but kept it on her just in case.
The waitress increased the TV’s volume. “We are now joined by soap opera expert and editor in chief of Forever Soapy, an online magazine dedicated to soaps and their fans. Peyter Panffer, welcome.”
The TV trembled, emitting electric sparks before the screen went black. Everyone who’d been watching, which was everyone in the diner, loudly protested. Everyone except Maple.
“That was you?” she asked Salvatore, lowering her voice.
“I get grumpy before my morning coffee,” he said, a flicker of anger rushing through his gaze. “Someone is following us.”
Maple’s phone turned on, vibrating and chiming nonstop. The notifications kept coming in, she couldn’t keep up. The common theme, though, was clear. Their kiss wasn’t just local news. It had gone national.
“Not someone,” Maple said, catching a text from an unknown number. I told you not to mess with me, bitch. Xoxo PP. “Peyter fucking Panffer.”
She showed Salvatore an article from Forever Soapy that Loretta had sent her five times.
“The Defleuvier-Suarez Affair,” he read, his tone icier than Maple had ever heard it. “Alien traffickers? What is he writing about?”
“How is your phone not blowing up? I have a thousand missed calls!” She was too afraid to check how many of them were from HR.
“I don’t own a phone.”
“Why?”
“Maple, why do they have a picture of one of the teenagers? How many people do you think have seen this?” He asked, almost fearful.
She never got the chance to reply. The waitress screamed, the two cups of coffee she was carrying smashing on the ground. Dark brown liquid spilled all over the black and white tiles.
“It’s him!” She stared right at Salvatore as she repeated, “It’s him! It’s Salvatore Suarez!”
Maple was ready for a denial, followed by a prompt escape, when another patron pushed a phone in her face and exclaimed, “Smile for the cameras, alien traffickers!”
Everywhere she looked, phones and avid watchers surrounded them, ready to capture and broadcast every single one of their moves.
They were trapped.