(My first story to cross posted to Ao3, here we go.)

Discovering That Meta

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The slamming of the door echoed through the room, as Chase flopped face first onto his bed. It had been a bad day.

Another day Simon didn't turn up for rehearsal. Another argument with Uncle Dale and Aunt Beth about getting a real job and earning money. Another disagreement with Deacon about how to do the books and which ones to do.

Chase was sick of trying to keep the balance.

He just wanted to get the narratonin and get his wish.

But that meant dealing with Buddy.

A sigh. At least Chase knows where he stands with Buddy.

Chase is the Heroine and Buddy is the Villianess.

Simple. They are sworn enemies.

Chase, the cute female lead to save the day, and Buddy, the sexy, witty, rival.

If only, they didn't have to be rivals.

Another sigh. Chase could see himself getting along with Buddy, that is, if Buddy wasn't always directing his snarky comments at Chase.

Ugh wallowing wasn't doing Chase any good. He rolled over to his back and grabbed his phone, maybe someone online had an answer for him.

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Chase clicked through another blog. He had found one answer.

The denizens of the internet share the hope that common enemies can find common interests and thus become friends.

"Frenemies: Enemies Who Act Like Friends" Chase read the title of the next blog out loud and clicked, 'cause why not.

Except, unlike the other blog articles he had clicked into, this one had a lot of tags at the top, and a summary, and an author's note.

"At least this blogger knows to put the TL:dr at the beginning of the blog." Chase looked over the summary, "'Katie and Gina once again face off, but this time it's in the jungle world, and not the girl world. Can they put their pettiness for one another aside, or will they find more than meets the eye in each other's company.'" Chase let out a laugh. "It sounds more like a story than a blog, oh a fan made work, I guess it is a story."

He read through the tags to try to understand them. It mostly listed a bunch of names with an x separating them, then as he got to the bottom of the tags, two of them stood out to him.

"'Enemies to friends and enemies to lovers.' color me intrigued." Chase briefly skimmed through the author's note part of it, the most notable part to check the end for more notes.

As Chase kept reading, he found himself enjoying the story, even if he did miss some of the context.

Soon he was at the end of the story, and he found himself rereading the last line aloud. "'Katie and Gina embraced tenderly, knowing they could face their troubles together.' Aww, I want that." Chase suddenly looked around, "Oh, right, Silver is with Bronze and Dorkin."

Chase sighed, he did not want to deal with Dorkin right now, especially about going into a book.

"CHASE!" Chase jumped and dropped his phone, on his face. "CHASE, come down for dinner!"

He sighed again, today really was the worst, he couldn't even avoid his cousin in peace. He fumbled with his phone, and saw that he had accidentally brought up another tab.

Ugh, can't even fumble his phone without messing something up, at least when he clicked the other tab it just looked like the home screen of the site he was on.

He left it up, after all he would take the keys through his room to the attic after dinner.

Maybe Silver would be up for a quick trip into the story he just read.

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"You read a story on your phone?" Silver asked, her eyes lit up. They were back in Chase's room sitting on his bed.

Chase smiled his award winning grin, or it would be if he ever got discovered, "I actually read the whole story too, not just skimming it like normal." He told her proudly.

She clapped, "May I see it, I want to go into it too."

Chase nodded, pulling up the story on his phone and scrolling to the top. "Yeah, here we are. It didn't take me super long to read and it says it's only one chapter." He said, showing Silver his phone screen. "Are you ready to go into it now?" Chase asked.

A small flash of light was his answer, as Silver turned into her key form. Chase laughed as he caught her, "I will take that as a yes."

He held the key to his phone.

And nothing.

Silver didn't merge like she did with books.

He tried a different angle on his phone.

He tried the sides.

He tried the top, he tried the bottom, even the charging port.

In frustration, he tossed Silver's key at his pillows. "Arggg, it's not working." He dropped back onto the mattress dramatically.

A flash of light, "Oh, I'm so sorry Chase." As Silver's voice came to him, he felt the telltale pitpat of her trying to soothe him. "I didn't know if it would work, since it was on your phone, but surely there are similar stories that we can try."

Chase released his breath in a huff. "Yeah, you're probably right, Silver, there probably are similar stories." He sat up and turned to her, determined. "If the internet helped me get this far, it can help me figure out where they are. Especially now that I know what words to use for a better search."

His triumphant smile turned into a yawn. "I can look more into it tomorrow." Chase held a hand out to Silver, allowing her to step into it. "Do you want to go upstairs to Bronze or stay down here tonight?"

"Bronze has plans for some crafts that I wouldn't mind helping with tonight yet." Chase nodded, before heading up the ladder. (Yes, he left it down after dinner when Deacon opened it before he went to bed. No, he didn't ask Deacon to open it.)

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It went like this, Chase woke up, and started his daily routine. Make breakfast, send the demon brat home, eat breakfast, send the demon brat home, help grandpa with some project or another, send the demon brat home, then free time.

He could already tell today was going to be better than yesterday was. He was going to continue his research in the whole enemies to friends thing, and find some books that could help with that.

The first thing to look up was the source material for the fan made work Chase had read.

After reading the summary, Chase figured it was decidedly not what he was looking for, since the story in the fan made work had strayed so far from the original. Chase didn't give up hope, after all despite having to get rid of most of his social media, he still knows how to navigate a blog.

Chase went back to the story and read some of the author's notes, which led him to a different author, one that wrote fan made work and had some published works. So he started to look into those stories, jackpot.

The author had published a bunch of stories mainly with enemies to friends, and some enemies to lovers, so Chase was hopeful in his quest. Going through the summaries he found were pretty helpful in identifying if there would be a Heroine role and a Villainess role, most of them seemed to focus on the male leads.

Finally, Chase found a summary that focused on the female leads. The basic summary was enough to get Chase to make the purchase.

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(I hope you enjoyed. I have 3 parts to this officially planned, and I will be posting to Ao3 and here under the same names when I update. Much luv, cassy)