Author's notes: Hello again old friends. As of writing this (21.02.2021) it has been 10 years since I published my fanfic 'Virtual Interuptions'. I accidentally marked the fanfic in progress instead of complete, so I thought I'd maybe milk a few more chapters out of it before I got bored. Then I posted the second chapter and got an excited review from a girl my age, Ally, asking me to keep writing it. I wrote 9 more chapters after that. Simp behaviour, honestly. 10 years later and she's one of the most important people in my life, my oldest closest friend, and soon to be maid of honour at my wedding. So to mark 10 years of our friendship, I'm putting a modern twist on it. I can't promise it'll be good, I still write like we did when we were 13. Love you bestie x
"Things in the apartment I third wheel in that Just Make Sense." Jess narrated as she panned her phone camera around her flat.
"Cringey his and hers mugs" She spoke as she filmed herself opening the cupboard.
"Passive aggressive post it notes" She pulled the square of yellow paper off the fridge to get a shot of the hand written note: 'Connor stop putting the empty milk back in the fridge'.
"The prehistoric lizard they rescued from the past." She briefly zoomed in on Rex before catching Abby glaring at her from the other side of the living room. "Oh and the one roommate that exclusively walks around in her underwear." She teased as she mocked filming Abby.
"You know you can't post that." Abby sighed, catching the hint and throwing some jeans on.
Jess lowered her phone and gave Abby a blank stare. "Obviously I wasn't going to post your secret dinosaur on the internet." Abby cocked her eyebrow at the brunette. "Or you in your underwear!" She conceded, "Although I think I'd finally start getting more than 50 likes max per video."
Jess felt the cushion hit the back of her head and just chuckled as Abby walked away. On evenings like this, she couldn't keep herself off TikTok for more than a few minutes. It was a shame most of her work was also staring at a screen, it can't be good for her. Although, being the first documented case of square eyes would definitely go viral. She clicked discard on the video she'd been making and scrolled through her for you page for a few minutes. She sighed to herself as she watched yet another couples challenge video; this one was a video of the two revealing themed gifts that they'd bought each other. The video ended with the girl jumping on the guy and smothering him with kisses.
"Ew, get a fucking room." Jess muttered to herself, before liking the video and clicking on the profile. The jealousy radiated through her body as she continued to torture herself by watching more of their videos. Videos of them doing popular dances, videos of them pranking each other, video's containing their 'glow ups' together.
She continued down her for you page until a certain trend she hadn't seen yet caught her eye. 'What's the point of being rich when you wake up alone…' the voice sang, as the man in the video filmed himself with his head laying back casually in-between his girl's thighs. She clicked on the sound and it was filled with the same format. She copied the link and typed out a quick message to Abby "I have the thighs for this, now I just need the man lmao! I know someone at the ARC who could be a good candidate for it ;)" She looked through her previous messages to Abby, a string of copied and pasted TikTok links. She selected her typed out message and copied it before backspacing the whole thing, resigning to send it when it looked a little less sad to do so. She dragged herself off the sofa, moving towards her bedroom. Flopping down onto her bed with a huff, she reached out to feel the vacant space around her. The song from the trend lingered in her head. "If I do have to keep waking up alone," She said to the empty room, "Can I at least be rich?"
'Buss it, buss it, buss it, buss it…' Becker stopped dead in his tracks and turned to the source of the noise.
"I really hope thats the clean version, Connor." He said to the other man, not daring to look at the phone in his hand.
There was a flash of shock in Connors eyes for a moment, and he had to compose himself before he replied. "Didn't think you'd recognise the sound it to be honest." He flipped his phone round to show Becker the screen, "And yes, it's not the… twitter version." He laughed.
"Just because I don't use TikTok, doesn't mean I don't know what it is Connor; I'm younger than you, you know." Becker replied.
"But not cooler." Connor retorted back. Becker could only shake his head as he carried on through the break room. He took a seat at one of the metal tables and took a few sips of his coffee.
"You're still not getting it Em, you don't need to have kid's to have MILF energy." He heard Jess's voice from the hallway, getting louder as she entered the breakroom. She was being followed by a concerned looking Emily.
"Hey" Emily spoke softly to him and Connor, almost interrupted by Jess's cheerful 'hey guys!' greeting. "Okay so, MILF energy is a good thing." She carried on, her eyes watching Jess intensely while the other girl hurriedly made 3 cups of tea.
"Yes, yes! Definitely a good thing." Jess confirmed, stirring quickly. She handed Emily two of the mugs, and grabbed her own. She turned to the two men as she was making her way out the room, "If you wanna grab a cuppa and join us, we're meeting Abby in the menagerie."
"No thanks," Connor spoke for the both of them, "You can't have an open topped drink while she hoses that mammoth down: too much splash back."
Jess just shrugged as she turned to leave again, pausing when she heard Becker's voice. "Actually before you go Jess, could you send me the new comms frequency code again."
She rolled her eyes as she pulled her phone out, but couldn't hide the small smile and blush that crept up her cheeks as she did so. Becker watched as she navigated quickly through the phone, despite still holding her cup of tea with one hand.
Jess didn't even need to log onto the server to find them, she got asked for them often enough by certain forgetful members of staff at the ARC, she kept them all written down. Double tap home button, find notes app, open codes folder, select frequency code, navigate to WhatsApp, find Becker's contact, paste, and send. All in a matter of seconds. Becker felt his phone vibrate in his pocket and gave Jess a quick thumbs up as made her way to catch up with Emily.
He pulled up the message on his phone, when the confusion set in. The message read "I have the thighs for this, now I just need the man lmao! I know someone at the ARC who could be a good candidate for it ;)" with a TikTok link attached. His blood pressure rose significantly when he opened the link to see the context. He didn't have time to hide the message either, Connor's eyes lit up as soon as the familiar sound hit his ears, and he was at the other man's side immediately.
"Look at you, Mr 'I'm-Too-Good-For-That-TikTok-Nonsense'," Connor mocked, "I know that sound."
"Jess sent it to me." Becker explained quickly. "W-why did Jess send that to me?" He shook his head and placed his phone onto the table, pushing it towards Connor. Connor's eyes widened as he read the message and rewatched the video.
"Oh she is going to be so embarrassed, there's no way she meant to send that to you." Connor laughed, passing the phone back to Becker.
"Oh." Becker replied, he felt a sense of relief at the awkwardness of receiving the unexpected message being over, he wasn't good at social interactions like these, especially over text. The relief was replaced quickly by disappointment. "This doesn't mean anything then, she doesn't…" he trailed off before gesturing to his phone, "…I'm not who she's talking about then."
Connor let out a short sharp laugh, "No I mean she definitely means you, but I don't think she'd tell you like this, not really her st-"
"Wait what." Becker interrupted, "She likes me." He sat there dumbfounded as Connor began to chuckle.
Abby could hear Jess's heals clicking even over the sound of all the animals. The brunette shot her a beaming smile as soon as she came into view, increasing her pace and making that clicking sound louder. She plonked herself on the edge of the picnic blanket they'd spread out over the concrete floor, almost spilling her tea as she did so. "Hey hey hey!" She said excitedly and a little out of breath.
"You alright Jess?" Abby asked casually, taking a sip out of her own mug of tea. The other woman seemed too out of breath of respond, just nodding, "Emily was just telling me about your conversation."
Jess took a sharp intake of breath excitedly, "Omg I'm totally right though, she has MILF energy."
"So is it like a nurturing thing?" Emily asked the two other women.
"No no- it's sexier than that." Jess answered, leaning in towards her and winking. "It's like if-" Jess was cut of by the spray of tea that shot out of Abby's mouth. She looked over at the other woman to see the shock on her face, some tea still dripping out the corner of her mouth.
"Jess check you messages." She deadpanned, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
Jess held her phone up and looked at her lockscreen, "I don't have any notifications."
"Your sent messages, babe." Abby winced as the words came out, watching as the horror spread across Jess's face as soon as she opened her phone.
"Oh my god! Oh my god, I did not just send that!" Jess yelled, "That message was meant for you, I must've sent it instead of the frequency codes!" She jumped to her feet, knocking her mug over in the process.
"Jess wait, it's going to be okay." Abby started, nudging Emily a bit as she spoke, causing her to also nod and smile at the panicking Jess encouragingly.
"Oh it's so not going to be okay… I have to go!" She exclaimed, darting out the menagerie and out of view.
Emily leaned over and looked at Abby's phone, taking a glance at the message Connor had sent her. She didn't say anything for a moment, straightening herself up where she sat and taking a few gulps of tea as she thought. "You know Abby, I don't know much about this kind of thing," she spoke hesitantly, "But if i was her, I'd jump straight back through an anomaly that bought me here."
Jess had spent the rest of the day avoiding the team as much as possible, luckily there hadn't been any anomalies. Lester was out on business for the day, so she'd locked herself in his office and logged into the Anomaly Detection Device remotely from his computer. She stayed there until way after the day ended, just to be sure she didn't run into anyone who could've heard what she'd done.
Despite not wanting to see anyone right now, girl coded dictated that she was obligated to help her friend, so when the text came through, she gathered herself up and made her way sheepishly through the ARC.
Jess sent Abby another few question marks, also met with no response. She scrolled back to Abby's message, as if reading it again would help her figure out what was so urgent. "Girlmergency! Meet me in the armoury ASAP". She rounded the corner and swung the armoury door open to reveal Becker sitting on one of the benches.
"Oh - sorry, I'm supposed to be meeting Abby here." She explained quickly, trying to avoid making eye contact. She felt all the blood in her body rush to her face, turning her cheeks red and when she moved a hand to tuck a few wayward strands of hair behind her ear she could feel the heat coming off her face.
"That's okay, you mind if I wait with you until she gets here?" Becker asked, gesturing to the seat next to him. Jess didn't answer, just shuffled forward to take her seat next to him. She could feel herself starting to sweat, she was so preoccupied with her own embarrassment, that she didn't notice his phone proper up in front of them. He used this to his advantage, sneakily leaning forward and pressing record. Jess's ears perked up, recognising the song immediately.
'Baby, you're like lightning in a bottle,'
Her head snapped up to the source of the noise, finally noticing the phone.
'I can't let you go now that I got it,'
"What's going on?" She laughed nervously. Becker didn't answer, he just turned to face her.
'And all I need is to be struck…'
He leaned in closer to her
'…by…'
He placed a hand on her cheek.
'…your…'
They both closed their eyes.
The music crescendoed '… electric love!' His lips met hers, and she gasped in excitement when he pulled her in closer to him to deepen the kiss. Her heart beat to the tempo of the song, overwhelmed by the feeling of him kissing her. They both pulled away after a few seconds and he smirked at the look of bewilderment on her face.
"There's more trends we can try you know." He joked, breaking the silence.
She let her laughter come tumbling out, all the tension leaving her body, all the awkwardness and embarrassment finally gone. "I think I'd like that." She glanced over and picked up his phone, finalising the video and tapping her into the caption, before hitting post. She stood up, still holding onto his phone and extended her other hand towards him, encouraging him to follow her. She held the device out of his reach and leaned into him, whispering into his ear. "There's one I have in mind… how about we film it tomorrow morning." She finished with a wink.
Author's notes: Thank you for reading, especially since I'm sure most of you only read out of curiosity. If anyone who's reading does remember this from back in the day, please send me a message, I'd love to know where we all are now. And to Ally, happy friendiversary! Everyday I'm grateful this mess of a story brought us together x