#I was wondering why the fic I'm working with is the longest I've written so far

[prommethium]

Voy a sufrir tanto traduciendo. Estúpido Inglés, si me vieran... les juro que escribo re-bonito en Esp, y no es arrogancia. ¡¡¡JODER QUE HE LEÍDO TANTO Y SE NOTA!!!

Voy a llorar.

Sólo espero que algún día mi estilo en Ing sea aceptable; no leíble, no historia barata de Wxxxxx no la historia pendeja que recomiendan celebridades que "leen," QUIERO QUE SE NOTE QUE HAY QUIENES PODEMOS ESCRIBIR BIEN PARA FANDOMS.

[httpsserene]

𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐞'𝐬 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐤 𝐲𝐨𝐮'𝐬 (𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐟𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐟-𝐬𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐞 𝐠𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐰𝐫𝐨𝐧𝐠!) - 𝐚 𝐦𝐚𝐱𝐢𝐞𝐥 𝐟𝐢𝐜.

𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘆: maybe this time, the natural distance between them concerning their now different job requirements would help max get over his small, miniscule, tiny, fractional, microscopic, miniature, little, itty-bitty crush on daniel. it didn’t work the first time, when younger-max had avoided his ex-teammate like the plague after his move to a different team—if anything that absence made his heart ache for daniel more, even though he tried his hardest to hate him. so now, maybe that max isn’t the one causing the growing gap between him and daniel, this space might dissolve max’s fondness. 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴: 18+ only. idiots in love. mild angst. fluff. happy ending. attempt at humor. plot with a side of porn. the timeline is mostly accurate. max verstappen is an oblivious idiot. daniel ricciardo is an obvious idiot. 5+1 things (in a way). the three musketeers: charles, pierre, and lando. light praise kink. light dom/sub undertones. mild orgasm delay/denial. 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗱 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁: 9.5k 𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴: max verstappen x daniel ricciardo

𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗳𝗮𝗰𝗲: so....how's life been treating y'all while i disappeared for two months :) ? no, um, sorry for ghosting you guys; i know, i'm surprised that i didn't forget my login info. life started being life for a good amount of time and i got really sucked into school and work. aside from the boring everyday stuff, i've got an internship this summer (yay!), i'm pretty sure i have a bit of a mutual-crush with this boy in my morning lecture, and i've started playing final fantasy sixteen.

anyways, this is my longest work ever! and i'm dedicating it to one of my sweetest betas, bianca. you requested this long before my disappearing act in december, and i told you i was nearly finished with a 6k-word fic for your request. to make up for my unexplained absence, i rewrote the entire thing into a near ten-thousand word feel-good masterpiece.

i hope this fic is of good enough quality for all of you wonderful f1-stans to forgive me because, i'm back, and hopefuily here to stay lol. enjoy reading, loves < 3.

requested & written by/for @biancathecool

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milton keynes, red bull racing headquarters, pre-season 2023

daniel looks happy. max doesn’t know why that surprises him—maybe he’s projecting his emotions (his therapist says he does that quite often) onto the man. the surprise makes sense though, max thinks, as he watches the australian chatter away with the engineers, the largest toothy smile spread across his face like he never left red bull behind in 2018. if it were max who had gone through the mclaren bullshit along with not having a guaranteed seat for the upcoming 2023 season, and he had to settle for a third driver position: he would scourge the world with his fury.

but: it’s not max, it’s daniel. it’s daniel, who was warmly welcomed back into navy blue (papaya did not suit him), it’s daniel, who doesn’t snap at the marketing team when they ask how he’s “coping” with not being on the grid. it’s daniel, who becomes friends with checo easily. it’s daniel, who’s scheduled to fulfill the pr activities that the two red bull drivers refuse to complete. it’s daniel, who has clocked in insane hours in the sim and factory while max has been enjoying his off-season. 

it’s daniel, who hasn’t shown any signs of disappointment about not having a seat this year.

if he won’t show or admit it, max will. having a race weekend without daniel doesn’t feel right. max knows this, even though the season hasn’t started yet: he’s going to be miserable. it’s like when daniel left him the team. of course, max had pushed daniel away after he signed with renault. what was he supposed to do? react calmly with the emotional intelligence he didn’t have? max thought the man hated him when he didn’t tell him that he was leaving before the news was released. 

regardless, instead of the australian leaving, this time around he’s coming back, which max had originally believed was the best thing to ever happen. he’s not so sure of that anymore. daniel belongs in the car chasing him with the smell of burning rubber and petrol surrounding them. max doesn’t appreciate how the smell of race tracks has already disappeared from him. he could tell it was missing when daniel made a show of giving max the biggest hug as soon as he stepped foot in the factory.

maybe this time, the natural distance between them concerning their now different job requirements would help max get over his small, miniscule, tiny, fractional, microscopic, miniature, little, itty-bitty crush on daniel. it didn’t work the first time, when younger-max had avoided his ex-teammate like the plague after his move to a different team—if anything that absence made his heart ache for daniel more, even though he tried his hardest to hate him. so now, maybe that max isn’t the one causing the growing gap between him and daniel, this space might dissolve max’s fondness.

“max, kid,” christian waves a hand in front of max’s face with an unimpressed look, “did you hear a single thing i said or were you too distracted by the sight of daniel in red bull gear again?”

the tips of max’s ears redden, and he snaps his head away from where it was turned to watch daniel’s constant smile, to face his team principal. max doesn’t know what he was thinking; his crush is going nowhere.

𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐨𝐧 𝐀𝐎𝟑.

taglist: @saintslewis @cherry2stems @lorarri @inloveallthetime @mindless-rock @biancathecool @barnestatic @my-ylenia @katekipshidze @darleneslane @lovingaphroditesworld @smoothopz @vetteltea @tallrock35

© httpsserene 2023

[sandinthemachine]

Mortal Remains

König x f!reader

written for the request: "You know, if you wanted my attention, you didn't have to go to such extremes." With Either ghost or König? There's not enough fluff for my men.

I don't even know where to begin with this one. It's massive, the longest one I've ever written. I love it, and I hate it. It made me cry. I'm excited and terrified to see what everyone else thinks. I hope someone reading this feels at least one of those emotions while doing so (preferably not hate)

before I begin, thank you to @sprout-fics and @zwienzixes for being lovely beta readers, and a MASSIVE thank you to @itsagrimm for beta-reading, helping me work through ideas, giving me proper German translations, and all around being an amazing and supportive person. I would have given up on this without all the help.

Translations for the German will be at the bottom

Words: 12,450 (yeah...it's big just like him)

Warnings/tags: König is soft and pretends not to be, reader is afab but no pronouns used, canon-typical violence, piv sex, oral f!receiving, self-deprecation, lots of raw emotions, mental health is hard, fluffy ending

---

It started easy enough, as so many things do.

A week-long joint training exercise. Mixed teams, both 141 and KorTac. Something something bonding before the real mission. You hadn’t been listening.

You remember being excited to be teamed with Soap. At least you could get along with someone, you mused. You barely noticed the hooded figure, tall and sticking to the corners, merging with the lengthening shadows. What’s another ghost haunting your footsteps? Nothing special, that’s for sure.

The first four days fly by. Early morning patrols, always in pairs, tracking for signs of the other team. Finding nothing, you move to a different shelter, secure the area, sleep. Rinse, repeat.

The fifth day is different. There are ragged clouds cloaking the sun while the rest of the sky is completely clear. You’re not sure why you noticed that, but you did.

It was an early morning patrol, as usual, you and your partner sweeping around a centerpoint like you were analyzing a single massive clock. Northeast quadrant clear. Southeast clear. Southwest…a scuff in the dirt. You lean down, fingers tracing the air just above it, a black fleck catching your eye. You grasp it, finding it much larger than you originally expected and partially buried. You pull at the rubbery texture, curious. Distracted.

The ambush comes quietly. Perfectly so. The weight lands on your back with an abruptness that flattens your lungs, dropping you directly onto your hands. You might have twisted your wrist, but the pain of that is overshadowed by the thought of the immense beratement you’ll get from your NCO for failing so fast.

Yet the weight from your back is lifted as quietly as it arrived. You turn, rolling to your feet to find that it had been Gaz on top of you only a second ago. Now he dangles like a ragdoll in the air. The shadow holding him draws a knife, taps it against his throat. You're out.

Gaz sighs as he’s set on the ground, giving you a nod before marching off. You don’t return it, too busy staring at the man next to him.

You’d never noticed his eyes before. You’re used to Ghost’s eyes, dark and unyielding, cavernous black holes reaching into a skull long dead. Like he was born to wear the mask.

This man’s eyes couldn’t be more different. They’re pale, washed out, windows into a sky perpetually on the verge of snowfall, slumbering clouds cold and waiting.

They curve down at the corners, lending an air of melancholy to the only part of his face you can see. You wonder how he really feels behind that gaze.

You’re staring.

You clear your throat awkwardly, aiming to thank him before pausing. “I…I’m sorry, I never caught your callsign?”

The head dips down, draped fabric falling down his chest slightly. A nod. “We need to keep moving.”

And he’s walking past you.

-

Two days later, the training exercise finally comes to a head in a fierce brawl over the fake weapons cache. Knives and fists only.

The fight takes only a few minutes. Ghost on the opposite team notices your attempted ambush immediately, throwing his men after you. Your team is outnumbered, stuck in a hallway. But it doesn’t matter.

Ghost and the hooded man roll on the ground, tousling like a pair of tomcats, Ghost landing on top for just a second, raising his knife-

You’re there. Arm wrapped around his shoulders. Blade tapping against his throat. You’re out.

With that, the fight is over. Ghost moves with a grumble at the man under him. It might have been a threat. But the man doesn’t hear it. He’s too busy staring at you with grey-sky eyes wide. A child dressed as a dirty sheet-ghost. “I…I don’t know your-”

You thrust your hand out, yanking him to his feet. “We’d better head back.”

-

You feel him at your back throughout the debriefing. Rolling thunder clouds looming over your head, ready to burst at any second. Your tongue is between your teeth, lungs heaving. Soap whispers a joke in your ear, something about Ghost getting chewed out by the NCO. You can barely muster a smile.

You stay still as the meeting finally ends, waiting for everyone to filter out before you finally turn around.

As you turn, your shoulder knocks into hard muscle and you look up, craning your neck to take in the hooded face and the way his pupils are blown wide into dark pits. A gale you should take shelter from lest you be blown away. But for a moment all you do is stand there, watching your own pupils expand in the turbulent reflection.

Your teeth are carving marks into your tongue by now, and it takes you far too long to draw in a shaky breath and push past him. You have more training tomorrow. It’s sleep your body needs. Not…whatever this is.

He doesn’t say a word as you depart, but his eyes track your every move before the door shuts behind you.

-

Of course this is a night where you can’t sleep. Of course. You flip and roll, hearing your bed frame smack against the wall every time you shift until you get so annoyed you shove it further into your room and flop down on it again. It doesn’t do anything, of course. Just makes your insomnia a little quieter.

It’s nearly midnight by the time you throw your legs over the side in frustration, shivering at the frigid air before throwing on enough clothes to look decent and marching down towards the shared kitchen.

He’s there. Your luck is just perfect tonight. You take a step backwards, planning to flee back to the darkness of the hallway, but he’s already turning his head, shoulders jumping just slightly as you enter his view.

You crumple a little as he notices you, but it’s too late to do anything about it now. “Can’t sleep either, huh?” Your voice is rough as you walk over to the counter next to him, yanking an expired box of cereal from the back of it. Your arm brushes his as you pull it out.

You spare him a glance as you pry the old box open, snorting at his narrowed eyelids. You bet he’s scrunching his nose through that silly hood, too. You reach in, hearing a series of crunches as you rifle around. “Ah, there it is.” You pull out the clear bottle, shaking it triumphantly in his face. “This’ll knock you right out. 50/50 chance you get back up tomorrow.” You trail off, eyes traveling up and down him. “Well, maybe a bit better odds for you.” You chuckle half-heartedly, but it dies a second later.

You puff your lips out in a shaky breath, running your tongue along your teeth before giving him an awkward smile and raising the bottle to him. With that you leave.

-

As soon as you take a sip you spit it right back out with a blech. You’d forgotten how nasty the stuff is. You toss it into the trash can and flop back down with an irritated groan. How hard is it to fall asleep? It’s literally laying there doing no-

Your thoughts are interrupted by a knock at the door, and upon swinging it open you find him, his looming shadow nearly blotting out the light from the hallway behind. It’s easy to forget how big he is when he’s not around. How strong he is. How…deadly.

But right now he’s leaning against your doorframe, hands tapping along his legs. “Have enough for two?”

You smirk a little at that, but as you step closer you feel the heat radiating from him, your shoulder blades clenching together as your mind begins to process something.

You’d sleep better for it. Perform better the next day. It would be good for you.

Your smirk deepens. “I have a better idea.”

As your hand tangles in his shirt you feel a tremble along his skin, but he doesn’t respond when you pull on him. “You’ve been drinking.”

“I haven’t had a drop. Shit’s disgusting.”

“Show me the bottle.”

Despite yourself, a smile tugs at the corner of your lips as you fish the full monstrosity out of the bin to show him. He nods but still doesn’t move, and you find yourself rushing to assure him as heat rushes up your neck. “If you actually just want to drink, we can. We don’t have to do anything-”

“No. That’s not it.” Finally he steps fully into the room, letting the door swing shut behind him before he stalks to you. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” you hiss, moving to hold onto him again, your mind swirling with exhaustion and old memories that you just need out, right now, and he’s right there and he needs it too, you just know it as he swoops down to grab you and toss you on the bed, both of you a mess to rip your clothes off now that the facade has finally fallen.

-

After the fog clears you find yourself panting on your stomach with him above you, caging you in with his forearms. Each of his stuttering inhales brings his burning chest and stomach against your back. Before the heat can become unbearable he pulls away, breaths still heaving as he tucks himself back into his pants.

Your eyes widen in surprise when he makes his way to your bathroom and comes back, washcloth in hand, to softly clean you up. As he finishes he pauses, thumb brushing the edge of an old knife scar running up your hip. “My callsign,” he murmurs, fingers tracing its length. “It’s König.”

And with that, he leaves.

-

You were content for that to be the end of it. You’d each gotten what you needed, after all. And as you stretch languidly across your mattress the following morning, an unfamiliar relaxation settles along your tense muscles. Yes, you would be more than happy to leave it at this.

But as the next training drill ends you find yourself faced with your cold barrack and the prospect of another sleepless night. Before you even realize what you’re doing your legs are moving, ready to go to the kitchen and-

He’s right there, startling as you nearly open your door into his face. He takes a step back, but you’re already holding your hand out and his eyes are burning into you as he takes it and lets you pull him in, lets you shut the door behind you before he’s lifting you with laughable ease and carrying you to bed.

-

You’re already burrowing your face into your pillow by the time he comes back to clean you up. This time his palm runs over a puckered mass on your thigh, a nasty burn scar from failing to dive for cover fast enough. It still hurts sometimes, but the pain is good. Reminds you not to be so careless again.

As you drift off completely to the feel of his warm hand taking in the old wound, you fail to notice the way his head has turned up, eyes running over your face. He contemplates brushing a finger over your hairline, tucking the wild flyaways behind your ear. But no. That would be too…friendly. That’s not what this is.

So instead he spreads your blankets over your now sleeping form, and with one last lingering gaze, leaves you to sleep peacefully.

-

You’re not surprised when you wake up to the empty room. It was what you wanted, after all. You had gotten another restful night out of it, and he got what he wanted. It was a fair trade. A great trade, even.

And as the training drills continue and you feel how naturally your body flows, how efficiently it executes your will when you’re actually well-rested, you find yourself seeking his company out more and more. Soon the pair of you have built your own kind of routine, him coming to you the evening after each debriefing when the leftover sparks of adrenaline are refusing to die out in you both.

He always lays you down on your stomach, opening you up with his fingers as he patiently works you through your first orgasm before letting himself take you. He’s always slow at first, but he finds you restless and impatient, urging him to go faster and harder, to knock you out for the night, to knock everything out of your mind that you never want to think about again.

You try to look back once only for your face to meet his hand. With gentle but firm fingers, he turns your head away.

Afterwards he’s even more delicate, wordlessly cleaning you up with a touch light enough to leave a butterfly unharmed. Although he rarely meets your eyes, his gaze and fingers take in your body, each time finding a new scar for his fingers to brush over like a chaste kiss.

You’re asleep by the time he leaves, and you like it that way. The two of you can crash against each other like blizzards raging and howling until you finally break into clear skies. And afterwards, you’re soldiers again. Well-rested, sure. But soldiers all the same. No hard feelings, either. You know he understands.

Soon you two find yourselves assigned to the same training team more and more. It’s natural, an unspoken communication flowing between you, and your superiors see it in the skyrocketing success rates. They pointedly ignore the way your stares burn holes into each other, keeping their eyes fixed on powerpoints and mission statistics. Not their business, they tell themselves. What matters is that you two do your jobs.

-

And then finally it’s time for the mission, a deployment in the middle of a remote and mountainous forest with terrible radio signal.

Like your first training, it starts easy enough. You’re divided into two teams on two separate mountains, and it’s just your luck that they put you on the team with no one you’re close to. Not even König. Maybe the higher-ups were finally sick of you two.

But you’re an adult. You handle it. You swallow the unease that comes with the teams not being able to contact each other. It’s simply too risky, and the signals are shoddy at best anyway. Base will come in for extraction if the other team succeeds.

With practiced ease you push yourself through two weeks of empty trails and summer-camp camaraderie as the talkative ones share jokes around the empty fireplace and the quiet ones listen from the shadows and chuckle their approval.

Week 3, everything goes to shit.

You should’ve known. You really should’ve known. The weather out here can change in an instant, clouds materializing from a clear sky’s empty expanse like an angry god throwing his rage down from above. You should’ve known the people here would be the same.

Before any of you knew the safehouse was surrounded, they were already through the doors.

You remember waking up to the creak of the old door with a groan, not ready to start your watch yet. The man on watch had been short and wiry, and you marveled at how shadows warp themselves against the light, twisting and turning to make one man look like another, tall and burly and carrying a-

CRASH!

The windows burst inwards in a crescendo of sparks and you’re scrambling backwards, reaching for your

BANG!

Dust from the roof is falling on your head, in your eyes and you’re blinking at the haze, the sting, your hands feeling the solid weight of your weapon and yanking it against you, and you’re stumbling backwards towards the

BANG!

and you’re stumbling forwards towards the

BANG!

And you’re on your knees crawling crawling

BANG! BANG BANG BANG!

crawling away from everything and your eardrums are hot iron seething in your skull and your eyes are being scratched by cats and there’s something warm on your face now and there’s something heavy thunking to the floor just next to you and everything is all dark, all the shadows are choking you and-

-grey. Not black. Not the black of the inside. Grey. A doorway. A hole in the wall. You’re on your knees, your hands are on the wall, you’re pushing yourself up, you’re running, and there are patters behind you and gurgling sounds and the volleys of automatic weaponry but your vision is finally starting to clear, you can see the treeline and all you need is to get there.

A roar surges behind you, and you spin into the sun. Heat slams into your body and you’re flung, a leaf in the wind, hard onto your back as yellows and reds surge in front of you or maybe it was behind you and now you’re a deer, eyeballs bulging out of your head and rolling in your skull as you run from a forest fire, angry and starving, only this fire has legs and they’re longer than yours and it’s following you, you just know it, you can’t hear it but you know.

You’re not a human anymore, you’re barely even an animal, you’re not thinking, you’re a scramble of limbs and an impulse. Run.

You try. You try so hard but there’s nothing carrying you, your legs don’t feel connected to each other anymore and they’re not even your legs you look down and they’re still there but you can’t…feel them?

Tilting. Tilting. Tilting.

Light. Burning light.

Fade to black.

No, wait. Not you. You’re still here. Your legs are wavy and jelly but still there.

You fling an arm out and feel something solid. Cold. Rough. Bark.

You made it to the trees.

There’s no time to celebrate. Behind you lights are still flaring, and with each passing second more bodies are falling to the ground, leaking out into the snow. You have to move.

-

The second safehouse is to the north. It’s your only way out, you know that. The rest of your team would be there.

Should be there.

Better be there.

Don’t think about it, don’t think. Just move.

-

The battle is fading behind you now and your blood is beginning to cool, settling heavy in your veins like the thick jam your mother used to make on warm summer mornings just as the sun’s rays flowed through your windows.

It would be nice to be there right now. Warm. Content. Full. Your stomach growls in agreement at the thought. You have some ration bars in your pocket, but you know it hasn’t been long enough to have one. You need to spread them out, make sure they can last.

Your stomach groans again, and you shake your head. To divert your attention, you take stock of the rest of your body.

You’re scraped and bruised, your head vibrating like…oh, what is it like? Like…your phone after you get added to a group chat you wanted nothing to do with. Hehe. You can barely remember the days when your problems were as simple as that.

You're letting yourself get too distracted. Anyways, as you were saying. You’re a bit battered and scraped up, alright. But no broken bones. No visible deadly wounds. And you still have your gun clamped to your chest with shaky arms. That’s all you need, really. Making it to the safehouse will be a breeze.

-

You’re halfway down the mountain as twilight begins to lighten to dawn, and there’s still no sign of anyone chasing you. It’s a bit warmer down here, and as you flex your fingers and toes you feel the sharp pins and needles radiate through them and force a smile. It’s good, you tell yourself. Means they’re all still there. You might just be in the clear now.

Then the sky darkens again, and it begins to rain.

Within a few minutes you can’t see your hand in front of your face in the downpour and you're forced to hide out. You find a fallen evergreen and burrow through its thick boughs, needles pricking your face and poking in your mouth with a sharp scent that settles behind your eyeballs as you force your way through, certain it will block out the worst of the rain. It doesn’t.

-

It’s past noon by the time the deluge finally lets up, and as you step out, cursing your shelter for all its faults, the slick earth shifts abruptly under you. With a cry, you are yanked off of your feet into a roll down the slope. You fling out your arms, grasping for anything solid, but the world is a mass of dirt and grey-brown snow-slush and you can’t stop yourself until your hip jams into a tree-stump. Hard.

You hiss, twisting your face upwards off the ground. Bad idea. The mud-slush runs down into your nose and you splutter, spasming and hacking up half the mountain. You move to wipe your eyes on your arm but only rub more dirt in them, gritting your teeth and hissing through them at the sting.

You push yourself onto your hands and knees with a whimper, gingerly feeling around your hip. Not broken. Just another bruise. What’s one more bruise? It’ll be fine.

You’ll be fine.

-

Your ankle is twisted. You’ve wrapped it as best as you can, but every time you put weight on it, you imagine a great big serpent with needles for scales is slithering under your skin, wrapping itself tight around the bones and squeezing.

Even worse, it's getting dark again. Fucking FUCK.

You should get yourself a thesaurus for Christmas. Fuck really doesn’t have much weight to it when you say it every other sentence.

Whatever. You’re fucking screwed.

Your clothes are soaked, you’re painted in dirt and runny snow and as soon as it gets dark temperatures are going to drop fast enough to freeze you right in place like a stupid fucking statue. Fuck this, fuck this so hard what do I do what do I do.

You bury your face into your hands, heels pressing hard into your eyes. It doesn’t matter that your hands have mud mittens anymore because your face is solid mud and you’ve had dark spots in your eyesight for hours and maybe if you rub them really hard this will all be a shitty dream your shitty brain made up and then you can wake up in your shitty cot with your blanket that’s too thin and it will be so fucking lumpy and uncomfortable and perfect. It would be perfect. Maybe König would be there.

What?

You’re breaking down and going to die in a few hours and you’re thinking of him? Some dude you fuck? What the hell is wrong with you?

He was really warm, though. And he was always so gentle afterwards. For hands that kill with such brutal precision, his fingers felt too delicate to be his when they ran along your body, mapping every scar and dimple like he was trying to memorize you. Like he was terrified that tomorrow he might wake up blind and never be able to see you again, so he needed to be able to recognize you by touch alone.

You didn’t even know what his face looked like, but you could get lost in those eyes, you think. You've learned that the skin above them stretches when he’s surprised, and the skin under them scrunches up when he laughs, so you think it must scrunch like that when he smiles, too. You’ve even seen the way his lids drift down to hide the way his eyes roll back when he’s bored.

What do they look like when he’s excited? When he’s angry? Sad?

You wonder what it would be like to look him in the eyes while you both fell apart. Would he look away and screw them shut? Would they water a little, as yours so often did?

Would he stay the night if you asked? Would he hold you? Would he…

No. This isn’t happening. No way in hell. You are not dying thinking of a random man you’ve barely spoken two words to. It’s ridiculous. It’s pathetic. You’re better than this.

You will not go out like this.

You yank yourself to a tree whose limbs burst forth in sprays of dark needles, your shoulders screaming at you as you pull yourself up on the branches, feeling like a toddler learning to walk for the first time. It’s pitiful. You swing your good leg up, grinding your teeth so hard your jaw pops as you pull yourself up to a thick fork and begin pulling down limbs above you, cutting through the ones around you, tying and weaving and undoing and redoing.

It is dark by the time you’ve finished, a thick nest of evergreen boughs settled under you and woven walls crushing you in. You have to curl into a tight ball to fit into it, but you can no longer feel the breezes from outside. You’ve stripped your clothes off and spread them along the walls as best you can, hoping they can dry just a little.

You thank the mud for clogging your nose. You don’t even want to imagine what you and your clothes must smell like by now.

Maybe by the time you meet up with the others you’ll smell so bad you’ll make one of the rookies vomit. Ghost did that last mission, and you and Soap nearly burst a lung as the poor guy emptied his guts over and over again.

You chuckle at that and try your best to fall asleep.

-

By the time you make it down the mountain the next day, your knees are knocking against each other with every step and your weapon is plastered with muddy slush that has frozen and melted and frozen all over again. The valley is even worse than the slope, with runoff from the rain congregating in a swampy mess that has you sinking up to your calves in some places. Lifting a leg in this feels like pulling yourself out of concrete, so you get really good at sliding each foot forward without raising it upwards at all.

You think the pressure from the mud is helping with the pain. You barely feel it when you move now.

Your jaw is clenched so hard you chip one of your molars.

-

You’re halfway through the valley when one of them finds you.

It’s funny how it happens. How you both stand in the mud staring at each other. How you both instinctively know who the other is through the curtain of earth camouflaging you both, yet each stand stock-still as statues anyway.

A second passes.

Two.

Three.

In an instant your guns are to your shoulders, fingers rushing to crush the-

Nothing happens. You squeeze. Squeeze again. The man shakes his gun and yells in frustration, the mud and ice having rendered your weapons unfireable.

But not unusable. The man’s head whips back to you with a growl and he lunges forward, his foot sinking into a deep patch and jerking him down face first. He throws himself up again, splatting forward another pace.

You slide backward, forcing yourself to slow down, to keep your feet under you as you move gut-wrenchingly slowly, searching for solid ground. He’s flailing and flinging himself towards you but the mud is slowing him down, and there’s a rocky patch right behind you. You’re going to make it.

He reaches you before you reach the edge, raising his gun and throwing his body behind a downwards blow. Yours is already coming up to deflect, but the blow sends you backwards, landing on your back with a splash. He’s on top of you, a hand shoving your face down as mud flows around it.

You thrash and wiggle, a scream cut off as your mouth fills with liquid dirt. Your hand is whirling all around and it catches something and you yank.

He howls as you pull his ear, sending him off-balance just enough to raise your head for a choking gasp before your palm is on his face, shoving him sideways. He rolls away from you, struggling to his feet as you’re on your hands and knees and your gun is in the mud but so is his. He tries to reach for it but he’s stuck, and in that precious heartbeat of time your legs are back under you, feet planted deep and wide.

He whirls towards you as you stand, throwing a punch at your torso that you know you can’t dodge, you can’t even move, so you throw your fist sideways, twisting, forcing all your strength into shoving from your rear leg so that when you catch his knuckles on your forearm they are savagely wrenched sideways with your momentum. His pinkie pops outwards with a crunch, and he falls back with a choked sob.

You grab your gun off the ground, throwing your whole body into a swing at his head, shattering through his palm as he tries to block it. You both fall sideways with the momentum but you find your feet faster, gripping the weapon through the slime coating it as you bring the stock straight down into his skull.

Once.

Twice.

Thrice.

Your grip slides, dirt scraping more of your skin off with each blow, but he’s not moving. You stumble backwards drunkenly, falling onto your forearms again and army-crawling, gun held tightly in each hand, all the way to the edge. You flop on your back then, one eye on the body, and heave great breaths, coughing again and again until your body has enough and you curl inwards, choking out mud and throwing up even more. You try to even your breathing, try to filter the adrenaline out of your system so you don’t crash. In, out. In, out. In out in out inoutinoutinoutinoutin-FUCCCCCKK. You shake your head violently, over and over.

You take one last look at the body, only seeing it because you know where to look. A mud-covered shoulder pokes out of the ground, the rest already lost.

You can’t balance on your feet anymore, so you crawl away.

You don’t even bother to make a shelter that night. You crawl under a rotting log, ripping your last ration bar from your pocket and devouring it, licking the crumbs from your stained and tainted fingers. You curl up and fall asleep just like that, bones chattering and muscles spasming.

-

Helicopter blades wake you up in the morning. You’re on your feet, falling and jumping and running and falling, flailing your arms because you know those blades, that’s your team and they’re here for you and you’re finally free, you did it you did it you’re so proud of yourself you can’t wait to have a warm bath and then maybe even afterwards you can see-

The helicopter passes over you and disappears around the mountain.

You stare at it, deathly still. It’s just sweeping the area, making sure it’s safe to land.

But the wingbeats have already faded into the distance, replaced by a vast and engulfing silence. Time stretches out before you, and you’re still staring at the mountain.

Your stomach breaks the silence with a gurgle.

You flop down, shoving your face into the ground, and scream.

-

You press the button on your radio, cracking the caked mud. It clicks, and you hear nothing. Not even static. You click it again. And again, this time just to hear the sound. Rapidly you click it again and again and again.

You start laughing, your abs clenching and strangling your organs as you guffaw, thrashing around like a headless chicken, and thinking about yourself as a headless chicken makes you laugh even louder. Everything is just so funny, none of this is real, you’re on the Truman Show, you’re the biggest comedy in the world. It’s even funny that your laughter only comes out in squeaky wheezes. It’s all just a big joke. Haha. You can’t wait to tell someone.

You fall asleep just like that, grinning up at the sky with dirt in your teeth.

-

You wake up, stare into the sun, and go back to sleep.

-

You feel lighter.

Is this what it feels like to leave your body?

It’s not as bad as you thought.

-

You wonder if König will remember you.

-

The ground beneath you is moving, sliding under you and scraping along you.

There's no ground underneath you at all now, and something is pressing, and you feel your legs dangling and swinging all around you, the world spinning a jig and you the unwilling passenger. You think you might tell it to stop, but it doesn't listen to you.

You're yanked back into consciousness by a thundering vibration setting every bone against itself. You jolt upwards, feeling heavy pressure on your shoulders as your eyes roll back into your head. The world is black. Black and blue and blurred. Through the haze you begin to make out a white visage and two black voids that pierce through you.

This must be hell. You don’t want to be awake for your judgement.

Your consciousness drifts away again, blocking out the rumbling flight of the helicopter, completely oblivious to the warm bodies pressed in around you, speaking rapidly through their headsets.

Any more? Sweep around again.

There's nothing else here.

Ok. Let's bring these ones back, then.

-

You are still asleep as your body is carried into a hospital room, completely unresponsive as the nurses strip and bathe you with clinical precision. You don’t wake until hours later, seeing only a single nurse checking your vitals and bandages. Each hand and foot has been carefully wrapped, the angry red battlefield of blisters and exposed flesh meticulously covered in pristine, unblemished white. The nurse offers a smile as you fight through the haze, imagining you are underwater and slowly floating to the surface, watching the sun jiggle and warp through the abyss above you. Just bad blisters, the nurse is telling you. Very lucky. Very lucky. You think you might nod back. She’s right, of course. You’re alive, aren’t you?

-

Ghost comes by as you’re released the next day. They’ve rewrapped your hands in a bandage that gives you a little more flexibility, and he finds you sitting on the edge of the bed, staring into the white fabric.

The mattress shifts as he settles beside you. He doesn’t say a word, but his eyes are trained on you. Black voids in a mask of white.

“You left me,” you finally whisper, eyes still on your hands.

“What?”

You look at him, trying to see something in the face to get mad at, but his eyes are just a little wider than before. Confused, maybe.

“The helicopter…” you begin, voice scratchy, and clear your throat. “The helicopter flew right over me.”

“That wasn’t our helicopter.”

“It was heading back from the safehouse.”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“Oh,” you huff, sinking into yourself. “I…”

You stop as he clears his throat, shoulders expanding in a loud breath. “It’s alright. You were knocked out pretty good by the time our boys found you. Happens to the best of us.”

You nod, swallowing again, and wish someone else was here to comfort you, literally anyone but Ghost. “Is…uh…is…umm…is Soap ok?”

Ghost grunts. “Johnny took one to the arm, but he’ll pull through. I was just going to visit him now.”

You push yourself to your feet, proud that you only sway a bit. “Can I-”

“No,” Ghost cuts you off. “You’ll have time to visit him later. For now you need to go and rest. That’s an order,” he cuts you off as you open your mouth to protest. Your jaw shuts. Call it obedience, call it cowardice, but you find you just don’t have it in you to argue the point. You promise yourself you’ll see Soap in the morning. Well, later in the morning, seeing as it’s somehow 0100 hours already.

When Ghost leaves you slump, any need for straight posture gone with the departure of your superior officer. Trying to keep your breathing even, you will your legs to carry your body down the medical corridor. Just a little longer, you promise them, then you’ll get the break you deserve. But your body has had enough of your unfulfilled promises, and you find yourself forced to sink onto one of the shitty metal chairs littering the hallway. Just a little rest, and then I’ll go back to my quarters.

You wake to the familiar sounds of agony. Before your body has the chance to disagree, instinct has you on your feet again, hands grabbing at the thin air where your sidearm should be. My holster, my holster, where the hell is-

Your eyes land on the white-washed walls. Too clean. Too smooth. And your hands aren’t moving like they should, strangled by white fabric. It finally sinks in that you’re far from the battlefield, far from any fight.

The sounds continue, drawing your eye to one of the many nondescript doors lining the corridor. Someone having a nightmare, probably. Or reacting badly to a procedure, maybe. Either way, a problem best left for the nurses with their iron wills and their tranquilizers. You have enough bruises already. Best not add a black eye to the list.

A pitiful whimper sounds through the door, one that has your heart twisting like a towel being wrung out, sending all the blood to your throat and stomach.

Fuck it. What’s one more bruise?

Your fingers curl the handle down, and you shrink in on yourself as the door swings open on its own with a creak. You catch it and hastily shut it behind you, trying not to make any more noise.

The room is small enough that even the military-issue cot feels too big for it. The room is made even smaller by the man lying in the cot, arms dangling off the sides as he thrashes, his feet hanging off the end. You can see the crumpled blanket on the floor and automatically avert your eyes. The hood is still on, but below it he’s wearing an undershirt and boxers, and you realize this is the most of him you’ve ever seen.

You press yourself to the wall as he spasms again, a leg kicking out and narrowly missing you, causing you to notice the thick white bandage wrapped around his thigh, and the dark line slowly being painted along it.

Hesitantly you flick the lights on, wincing at the burn that rushes through your eyeballs, but he doesn’t even react to it. You have no idea how to wake him up without breaking a bone, so you press your back to the wall, slowly skirting along the edge of the room and staying as far out of his reach as you can, praying to whatever old ghosts are listening that he doesn’t wake up and go straight into murder mode. Or, you know, default alert soldier setting. This is a stupid idea.

As you approach his head you lean over as far as you can, stretching one arm out until the socket pops in protest. You poke his shoulder and leap back.

Nothing.

You take a step closer and lean in again.

You’re immediately interrupted by the door swinging open with a much-louder creak. You and the nurse both pause and stare at each other for a moment, startled, and you sheepishly move to straighten and pull your arm back.

With viper-like speed an arm shoots out to grab your wrist, capturing it in a deadly grip and you yelp, whirling back to the man in the bed and raising your opposite arm.

You freeze when you see his eyes, so wide they’re more white than color. He’s stock-still, fixated on you like a mouse caught in a cat’s gaze. Paralyzed by fear, praying. Shaking.

His hand is…shaking. “Hey, hey,” you coax, hesitantly pulling your arm back in so you can place it over his fingers. “It’s just me, big guy. You’re safe.”

His chest heaves outwards, and you feel his hand relax a little before his head snaps towards the nurse as she takes a step closer, cradling something small and cylindrical in her hands. “It’s alright,” she speaks directly to you. “I can take it from here.”

König releases the breath he’s held, shoving himself backwards on the bed with a shake of his head, prompting the nurse to click her tongue at him before raising the needle. You realize it’s a lot bigger than you first thought. “You’ll be fine,” she’s assuring him. “It will hurt a lot less once it’s done.”

König’s head turns very slowly, back up to you, and for a second you’re confused at his gaze, wondering why he thinks you have enough knowledge to give him any medical advice. Then you notice the way his eyes seem just a little too shiny in the light, the way his other hand is clenching and unclenching around the bedsheet.

You’ve always known him as the perfect soldier, quick and to the point, pin-prick precise, a dancing whirlwind of death. More monster than man. You know him as the one who laughs with every good kill, mocking the reaper of death with a smile. Look at how slow you are. I got here first. He’s the one who dances on the precipice of fate and spits over the edge.

Even sprawled out like this, sweaty and trembling, you are well aware of every flex of his muscles, of the strength he holds back in his grip. Yet as you look into the eyes of the storm you find that for the first time you see no hint of the giddy killing machine looking back at you. The eyes staring back at you from this big soldier’s body are those of a fragile little kid. And he’s terrified.

You gulp, your tongue catching on the back of your throat. “Yeah…yeah, it’ll be ok. I’ll be right here.”

Finally he relaxes, slumping back into the bed, and the nurse takes the opportunity to give him the shot. You feel his flinch in a wave of pressure radiating up your wrist and forearm, but his gaze doesn’t move. He keeps looking into your eyes until his own begin to droop and he sinks even further into the mattress.

Before his hand drops from your wrist you catch it, the skin under your bandages protesting at the sudden flexion. You choose to ignore it, settling down on the floor next to his bed as your own eyes begin to follow his. Even as your head falls into your knees and your body finally gives itself completely over to darkness, you refuse to let go.

-

You’re woken by something warm trailing along your hairline. You jerk, smacking the back of your head into the wall with an irritated grunt. König’s arm hovers in the air just in front of your face, and you turn to see him pressed to the edge of the bed, looking a little guilty. “Sorry,” he murmurs.

You should be, startling me like that, you want to say. But when you open your mouth, what comes out instead is “No, it’s ok, I just…I wasn’t expecting it.”

König gulps audibly, and the cot creaks as he pulls his hand back, shifting his body even closer. “You stayed.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

“Never,” he hisses, and you find yourself staring into his eyes again, only this time they’ve taken on their old torrential intensity.

Now it’s yours that are as wide as a child’s. You gulp, feeling the muscles of your jaw flex and unflex. “Ok,” you finally murmur. “I’ll stay.”

-

And you do. For two more nights König stays in the infirmary, weathering the steady rounds of nurses and bandage changes with a steely resolve even as his fists flex and twist into the sheets. You stay with him all the while, but he doesn’t reach for your hand again, not after noticing your own bandages.

The second night you sleep in the cot next to him at his insistence. You’re hurt too, he reasons. You need a real bed to rest in. He scoots himself to the back edge to give you room, and when you wake up he hasn’t moved.

After the third night you wake to his hand resting on your arm. It’s a small gesture. Innocent even. Yet still you find yourself contemplating it, barely saying a word as the nurses come to remove his bandages. You grind your jaw as you take in the puckered line of stitches running from his knee up to the edge of his boxers, looking away politely as the nurses help him into a pair of sweatpants.

You don’t even say anything when you let him lean on your shoulders, using your own aching body as a sacrificial lamb to transport him back to his barrack. Once you get him into bed you hover in the doorway, taking in the shadows of the walls, twisting your wrists back and forth, a habit you picked up to alleviate the pain from flexing your fingers. They’re in even thinner bandages now, but you’d rather be safe than sorry.

Maybe there’s nothing to say. You found him in a vulnerable situation where he needed a lifeline. It could have been anyone, he was barely lucid. Now he surely wanted to forget all of that vulnerability and go back to a time where he hadn’t needed help from anyone. Not even you. Especially not you. He was a soldier, after all. Fondness wasn’t in the job description.

Best not to say anything then. Just…leave and get this over with. Just like that. Yeah…easy. Really easy.

Your move to shut the door behind you is halted by him calling your name. Your real name. You didn’t even know he knew your name.

He calls it again, quieter this time, and you lean back in the door, eyes drifting across his room to him. He’s still sitting on the bed where you left him, only now he’s hunched over to rest a forearm on his good thigh. “Come back here,” he breathes, voice cracking, and it hits you right in your stomach, settling there like a wounded bird, flapping and screeching at you to stay away, you’re already in too deep, you don’t know how this will end.

But it’s too late. You’re walking forward, the door swinging shut behind you. Locked. You’re already reaching out for the hand he offers, only for him to reach past the bandages and grab your wrist. You pause at that, staring into the hazy depths of his eyes, pupils bursting for you again. Slowly, inch by excruciating inch, he straightens again, face coming closer to yours as another hand snakes around your neck to help guide you down to straddle his good thigh, moving your forearms to rest on each of his shoulders.

The bird in your stomach has moved to your chest, and you’re positive he can feel your heavy breathing even through his mask with how close you are. His eyes look down to your lips, and you wonder if he is going to lift his hood up and kiss you, your cheeks flushing in anticipation as he leans forward.

Only instead he rests his forehead against yours, eyes drifting closed. You feel your arms drift upwards with his inhale. “Stay with me,” he exhales. “One more night.”

You nod against his forehead, wrapping your arms around his neck and finally letting your own eyes close. Your breathing is slowed down now, and you find yourself enjoying the warmth you feel radiating from everywhere you touch him. One of his hands has spread against your thigh, while the other still rests along your neck, thumb tracing up and down your jaw. You know you could fall asleep just like this.

König, however, has other ideas. As you slump even further to him, both of his hands drift to your hips. You notice the movement, sighing at the pleasant sensation of his hands running over your body. You don’t notice the intention until he takes a deep breath, and in one smooth motion he has stood and twisted to lay you down on the bed, climbing on top of you. You gasp, feeling your heart stutter all over again, blood rushing to your core as you feel the fabric of his hood rub up your neck. His nose, you think.

Fuck, you want him. You want him just like this and any other way he’s willing to give, but you can’t, you shouldn’t, and you know you have to at least try to protest. You bite back a whimper as a hand drags up your inner thigh. “König, your leg.”

“I don’t care,” he growls. “Say my name again.”

You groan in protest and he pulls back, tilting your face up to his. “Is this not what you want?” He feels the way your jaw flexes and pulls away.

“Wait. No. I want this. You. I want you. Just…please be careful.”

He hears the last part, but he’s past giving a damn about his own body now. His hand is already undoing your belt and he’s leaning back to ease your pants and underwear off your legs, lazily tossing them to the side.

A harsh word escapes his throat as he looks down at you, but you don’t catch it through the blood rushing in your ears. “Close your eyes,” he orders, and unthinkingly you do, another growling swear reaching your ears. “So obedient for me.”

You hear the shuffling of fabric and feel a hand wrap around one of your knees, lifting it up for a warm tongue to swirl along the inside of it, for wet lips to place a sloppy kiss just above where his tongue had just been. His lips slide up again, and this time he sucks on the skin just slightly, and you feel your leg tremble as a tiny moan escapes you, but he’s already moving further up and this time sucking harder, and then further and harder and further and harder until he’s against your inner thigh and his teeth are sinking into you and you yelp his name, whining in frustration as he pulls back.

“No,” you pant, “don’t stop. Please.”

You feel a chuckle rumble in his throat and his nose presses into the bottom of your slit. You jolt, squeezing your eyes tighter as it slides up through you before pressing into your sensitive spot, and he inhales.

“Fuck,” you cry, tangling your hands in the sheets only to choke on a sound of pain.

König pulls back immediately and you shake your head at him, a sob on the edge of your quivering lips.

“Easy. Watch your hands.”

You grit your teeth and nod, relaxing your fingers and turning your palms up.

“Good,” he purrs as his hands hook under the backs of your knees, easily throwing your legs over his shoulders. As he settles back down you feel the muscles in his back flexing against your calves and moan before his mouth is even on you.

He hums contentedly at the sound, running his tongue along the length of you before swirling it around your clit. His lips pucker against it and he sucks, pulling away with a soft pop that has you clenching your legs around him. He moves in again, lazily altering between sucking and tracing his tongue just around your bud, feeling the way you flex against him, hearing the way you react to each movement, and committing all of it to memory before shifting his head so he can dip his tongue inside you. He groans at the taste, the vibration of it radiating up under your ribs and down through your legs. You’re quiet now, feeling how close you are settling heavy over you, drowning you in deliciously sweet honey.

He feels the shaking of your legs around him and returns to your clit as he slowly works a finger into you, curling it upwards to stroke at the spongy part inside of you.

You break quietly, choking on his name as the pleasure strangles your muscles and sets them briefly aflame, fresh sensations flowing through you as he continues to touch you just so, only pulling away when you sink into the mattress and your legs slip from his shoulders.

You hear the bed frame creak as he pulls back, running a hand up your thigh before the shifting sound of fabric hits your ears, and you feel the mattress sink down in different places as he shifts.

“Open your eyes.”

You do as he says, your disappointment at seeing the sniper’s hood obscuring his face immediately squashed by the realization that the rest of him is completely naked.

You’re seeing him for the first time.

Fucking hell, what a sight.

Your eyes rest on the delicious curve of his cock first, marveling at the pink tip and the thick veins running along it. You had felt his size on plenty of occasions, but seeing it for the first time is a new beast entirely, one that has you biting your lip and wiggling your hips like a teenager all over again.

But soon your eyes are taken in by the strong curves of muscle outlining his hips, and your eyes are traveling upwards to the delicious bulges of his chest, your own heaving at the sight. You find yourself wanting to trace the outline of each hill and valley of muscle that flows along his shoulders, down his arms, to the hands, wanting to run your tongue along the veins like raised rivers spreading down his forearm and across the back of each hand.

You wonder what his back looks like. You wonder how the muscles of his neck shift as he moves, what the outline of his jaw is shaped like. You are greedy and want to take everything he has, and at the same time you are desperate for anything he can give you. You’re a peasant kneeling at the feet of your king, ready to lick the crumbs he throws you off the floor.

His head tilts playfully, breaking you out of your reverie. “You like what you see?”

Your chuckle catches in your chest, only a tiny puff of air leaving your mouth. “Yes.”

His eyes scrunch a little, and you imagine he is grinning as he leans over, balancing himself above you. He moves back a bit, hand adjusting your hips as he positions himself. He looks back up at you, and you nod eagerly, your hands reaching up to grab his shoulders. He clicks his tongue, glancing at them, and with a groan you put your hands above your head. He moves one of his own to grasp your wrists, keeping them pinned as he sinks onto his forearms.

You feel the head of his cock running up and down your folds, and instinctively bend your back to give him a better angle, earning an approving hum that makes you even wetter. But as he braces himself and begins to drive into you, a strangled sound smashes through his gritted teeth.

Oh no. “Hey, hey, what’s wrong?”

He doesn’t answer, only pressing his face into your neck, inhaling heavily as you feel his entire body stiffening against you. “It’s…it’s fine,” he hisses, his hand strangling your wrists. “Just …” he heaves another breath. “Ah... Ich… I…need a…moment.”

You sigh, wiggling a hand out of his grip to push his chin up. He lets you move his face back, and even in the dim light you can see the way the skin around his eyes has gone even paler than normal. “Get off,” you murmur.

He slumps, twisting his face out of your grip and keeping his eyes on the wall. He stays like that for a second before giving a swift nod and pulling out, maneuvering backwards on the bed and moving to get off.

“Wait!” you burst out, and he freezes. “That’s not what I meant.”

After another moment he looks at you in bewilderment, so you sit up and shift to the side, patting the bed next to you. Awkwardly, he crawls to it, nearly dragging his bad leg, stiffening again when you place your wrists on his shoulders. “Let me?”

After a second of staring into your eyes, he nods again, allowing you to push on him, laying him on his back before you straddle him and finally take your shirt off. You see his chest rise with a shuddering breath and before you really think about it you’re leaning down to lick a stripe up his sternum. Seeing his pecs jerk upwards on either side of your tongue emboldens you and you shift your head, running your tongue back down to circle over one of his nipples before you suck.

Immediately the muscles flex again and he pushes up into you. “Like that,” he snarls, loud and vibrating through your skull. You’re aching down there again, but you’re not done yet. You release him with a squelch, watching the patch of saliva glisten before moving to give the other nipple the same treatment, your heart leaping at the sounds falling from his mouth as he quivers under you.

“König,” you croon. “Touch me.”

He whimpers as you flick your tongue over the sensitive bud. “Where?”

“Anywhere. Grab my hair, squeeze my tits, just put your hands on me.”

You groan as he obeys, long fingers tangling tightly in your hair as his other hand spreads along your ribcage, thumb sliding over your breast. You sigh, leaning down to bite into his pec, moaning as his grip on you tightens. You kiss the mark left by your teeth before leaning back. His hands move to cup both of your breasts as you raise yourself up and sink down onto his cock. You’re too excited and you go too fast, and a sharp pinch of pain seizes at your entrance. You gasp, instinctively leaning forward to brace yourself on your palms, but his hands move to your waist, catching you before you hurt them any further.

“I have you,” he whispers, voice scratchy, and despite the pain you clench at the sound of what you do to him. He chokes on his next words, a groan coming out instead. “Do you need to get off?”

“No!” You whisper-yell back so quickly that he laughs, and despite everything you laugh with him. He runs his hands up and down your sides, feeling you start to relax a little, but not enough yet. “Tell me what you need,” he murmurs.

“It’s fine.” You close your eyes and try to focus on your breathing. “Just need…a moment.”

“Hypocrite.”

You shoot your eyes open to glare at him, only to see his chest shake with another chuckle at your scrunched-up angry face. “Your leg is sliced open, it’s not the same,” you scoff.

His eyes glimmer with the start of a witty retort before one of his hands freezes over your bottom rib, drawing his lovely gaze away from yours. His thumb is circling around a tiny hairline of a scar, bone-white and soft. You’ve already forgotten how you got it.

“This one,” he murmurs. “It is new.”

“How…how did you notice?”

“It wasn’t there last time.” His tone was quiet and matter-of-fact, like the answer was obvious, and it takes you back to every time his hands ran over you as you drifted into sleep. How long did he stay there after you fell asleep? How long did it take him to commit you to memory so well that a patch of skin even you had forgotten was instantly recognized as something new?

Your body has always been a means to an end, a vehicle carrying you rather than a full part of you. Batter it, toss it around, whatever you need to do to get the job done. And when your body protests, you treat it like any other tool you can beat into submission. Like your first battered old car that revved to life with a well-placed kick.

But now all you can think of is his hands running over you with thorough determination, acknowledging each new mark with a gentle reverence that was more than you deserved. Getting to know you in the only way he knew how.

For the first time in a long time, you’re reminded to see this body as something more than a bruised vessel you’re obligated to carry around. He reminds you to see it as something more.

Fuck, you think you might love him.

“König?”

“Hmm?”

“Thank you.”

His head tilts a little, his hand still running along your rib, and your cheeks flush.

Before he can reply, you gulp a little. “I…I think I’m ready.”

He hums again, his hands moving back to rest on your hips. You stay still for another moment, looking into his eyes. You don’t think you can memorize his body, not like he has yours. But you have memorized his eyes, have burned them into your mind so clearly you saw them even as you were trapped on that damned mountain. Thinking about him.

And now you think he might've been thinking about you, too.

You feel him twitch inside of you, pulling you out of your thoughts. Taking a deep breath, you raise yourself up slowly, feeling his hands tighten and take some of your weight, following your lead as you sink into him again, this time with a sigh that echoes his own. Slowly, hesitantly, you raise yourself up and down, feeling how easily he stretches you, how easily he could break you.

But he never has. The only pain you’ve gotten from him was caused by your own impatience. As you keep going, finding an angle that has him dragging across your most sensitive parts and making you even wetter, you become confident that there’s no chance of pain, allowing yourself to speed up.

His hands are steady as ever, guiding you up and down, but beneath you his shoulders and chest begin to squirm and heave. His eyes wander all around, and his breaths are scattered and staccato.

And his sounds. You’d never known a man to be so loud, and now you know you’ve been missing out all these years. Every grunt, every groan, every moan and whimper goes straight through your core, winding you up faster and faster. As you get closer his sounds shift, and you realize he’s started to stutter out words.

His eyes are hazy and unfocused but you can still tell they’re trained on you, and you urge your body to calm down for just a minute longer, just long enough to hear what he’s saying.

You can’t make out any of the words, but his hands are even tighter on you now and the way his voice shifts from growling to whimpering settles into a melodic language that has you crying out for him anyway.

Beneath your trembling body, he keeps going. “Never..told you …du bist wie ein Traum,” another whimper leaves his lips. “Ich kann nicht glauben, dass du wirklich hier bist.” He gasps as you clench tighter around him. “Du bist…du…Du bist viel zu gut für mich…Dein Lächeln und …und…” His eyes are watering and you slow down only for his hands to dig into you, urging you to speed up again. “Ich weiß nicht wie ich dich loslassen soll aber du verdienst so viel mehr als …”

His mind is lapsing again, his determined confession faltering into a fervent prayer sent to the only god he’s ever believed in, to you - moving over him and taking everything he is giving you, making him wish he had more, so much more than the desert-dry heart of a killer whose hands can only ever pull things apart. His thumb is over the scar on your rib again and his blurry vision is taking in the white of the bandage wrapped around your hands and it has him wishing his own hands could build something instead of destroy it just so he could put you back together again. You’re coming apart around him, crying his name, and he’s thinking of flinging his body in front of you, taking every bullet and blade meant for you, because his body is all he has to give and he knows how to sacrifice it, he knows he’ll gladly lay it at your altar, bloody and broken, if it could only mean making sure he’d never be surprised by a new scar again. Maybe you’d even remember him a little when he was gone.

He’s trying to tell you all of that, the messy syllables punching through his throat. “Niemals, niemals, nie,…” but before he can finish he’s failing already, falling apart under you and screaming your name and emptying everything he has into you.

It’s not enough.

You’re laying on top of him now and he tries his best to be gentle but his entire body is shaking as he rolls you off and staggers to his bathroom, slamming the door behind him and sinking against it.

He shatters in a whole-body-wracking sob.

You’re never going to look at him again.

He tucks his legs in, squeezing his knees into his chest, squeezing even harder as a burn radiates out from the stitches, trying to rein in his ragged breathing in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, he can save this and cover up the fact that he’s crying.

It was just meant to be casual sex. He wasn’t supposed to start caring. That’s not what you wanted. It’s not fair to you. It’s not your fault he let himself get emotional. And now he’s ruined the only thing you two did have, he wanted to make you feel better and now he’s made you so uncomfortable and…and…

He slams his forehead into his knees and sobs again.

He’s pathetic. Pathetic to think this could be something more. Pathetic to think he could have something more.

Everything hurts.

That’s what he signed up for, isn’t it?

That’s what he deserves.

A knock on the door has his head jerking back up, hands clutching his knees hard enough the knuckles just might pop through the skin. “Go away!”

“No.” Your tone is flat as he hears a thunk against the other side of the door, imagining you leaning against it and sliding down, mirroring him perfectly. “Not until you talk to me.”

“No.”

You sigh. “That's how it’s gonna be? Well, in that case, to quote a man I…admire very much, I can make you talk.” You drop your voice, trying and failing to mimic his battle growl.

He snorts despite himself.

You take that as a cue to continue. “For one, I’m not leaving until you do. You’ll be stuck with my annoying-ass voice forever.”

“I like your voice.”

“Oh…umm…thank you. In that case I’ll…I’ll steal all your knives and I’ll draw a kangaroo on your door and-”

“You wouldn’t dare,” he growls.

“Guess you’ll never know if you keep that door closed. And that’s not all, I’ll…I’ll steal those cheap chocolates we get every supply drop. Don’t deny it, I know everyone joked it was Ghost but I saw you take them all. You love those.” You smile, laughing a little. “On the other hand, I’ll fly to Austria right now if that’s what it takes to get some chocolate you’d really like. I’d even get you some of those waffle things you were telling Soap about that one time I caught you both raiding the snack cabinets. Well, I’d probably eat some of those. But I promise to save most of them for you. Just…please talk to me. I’ll…I’ll…” you’re cut off by your own squeak as the door opens and you fall backwards.

His hands are already there to catch you, and once you sit back up he stays there, half-crouched and awkward, eyes anywhere but your own.

Slowly, you open your arms, watching his head turn back to you.

In an instant he’s lunged into you, burrowing his face into your neck with an awkward grunt as he stretches his bad leg out to the side. You try to change to a comfier position for him but the man is like a brick wall.

It’s nice.

So you let yourself stay there, wrapping around him as he wraps around you on the hard floor. It’s a softness unknown to you both, two soldiers carved razor-sharp from solid steel. But as you let yourself sink into him, you find yourself liking the strange tranquility of this moment, the way two bodies made for war can still drape over each other and feel peace instead. Against all better judgement, against any scrap of common sense you have left, you find yourself yearning for a few less battles if it can mean more of this. You let your eyes close, imagining it for just a little while.

After a while, he pulls back, moving to lean against the wall and pulling you so you can balance on his uninjured thigh. You let your head loll onto his shoulder, face turned into the hood. His chin rests on your temple.

“Are you cold?”

He grunts noncommittally, eyes half-closed. “Are you?”

“Nooo,” you mumble, burrowing into his neck. He shifts, maneuvering you off his lap, only to grunt when he tries to push on his leg.

“I got it.” You push yourself up, moving to the bed to retrieve one of the blankets there, carefully wrapping it around both of your torsos when you settle back onto his lap. Your legs stick out, but you don’t really care.

After a while you feel his heartbeat begin to pick up again and adjust yourself to look up at him. His eyes drift to you before he sighs. “Do you…still want me to talk?”

You nod.

“Alright then. I will talk. I do not think it is what you want to hear.”

You bite your lip and try to keep your breathing steady as he continues.

“Back in the med bay. No. Before that.” He shakes his head emphatically. “When we were assigned to two different groups…No…Scheiße, I…”

You run a shaky hand up and down his chest. “It’s okay. Take your time. I’m not going anywhere.”

His fingers dig into you for a fraction of a second, so quick you think you might have imagined it before his entire body is deflating, his head settling back against the wall. “They ambushed us. You weren’t there but…they hit us on patrol, hit us and ran before we could counter. I did not even see who hit me, I just look up one moment and down the next and the snow is all red and…” His voice drops to barely a whisper “Das war meines.” He trails off completely, a finger tracing circles on your shoulder. “I've been wounded before. I've accepted death before. This time...before I...while I was…” he exhales another irritated sigh. “I was on the ground and…wie sag ich das…ich hab versucht etwas zu tun, mich zu bewegen aber alles was ich tun konnte...I was thinking of you.”

He freezes, turning his head away and dropping his hands from you. But instead of moving away, you kiss a patch of skin just outside the hood, watching the muscle under it jump. “Is that all you want to tell me?”

He shakes his head.

“Do you think you can keep going?”

His head turns back to you briefly before he tilts it up to stare at the ceiling. “When I was in the med bay. Well, I…it went like this. I wake up and you are there and I think, König this is it, now you are finally dead. And then I feel the pain and I see the nurse and you were moving away and I couldn't…du warst da und dann warst du fast nicht mehr da und ich konnte nicht atmen. Ich…” he shakes his head back and forth, back and forth. “Ich konnte nicht ohne dich. Ich…needed you to stay.” His head jerks down again, eyes boring into yours with all the intensity of a tornado, arms wrapping around you once again. “I need you to stay.”

You nod, holding him tight, the weight of the words unspoken tangling in your chest and constricting your tongue. Stay. With me. He won't ask for more than tonight, not when neither of you can even risk asking for a tomorrow. Stay with me. For as long as you have. A day, maybe. A month. Maybe you'll get out of this mess someday and get years.

Stay with me for a lifetime. Whatever lifetime we get.

You nod, whispering a promise into his skin. Always. Your fingers drift down along his leg, tracing just outside the stitches, your eyes following the line of gooseprickles that rise in their wake.

You feel more than you hear your name being whispered into your hair, and as you look up fingers wrap around your wrist, guiding it up over his hip, his ribs, his chest. Sliding around the edge of the hood, pushing it up, up, up. Until the fabric slides off. You gaze in awe, watching his jaw flex as his lips part to form a word whose sound hides in the back of his throat. Always. You look back into his eyes before surging forward, hugging him tight, tight enough to strangle, you think, but he’s already wrapping himself around you with equal fervor.

“You know,” you murmur, breath ruffling his hair, “if you wanted my attention you didn’t have to go to such extremes.”

He huffs a laugh, the air catching in his lungs with a choking sound. His grip tightens.

-

When you wake you find you’ve been moved to the bed, but his face is still buried in your neck, unmoving despite the soft light filtering in your window. You smile a little, watching the early-morning sky, perfectly clear and pale blue.

It matches his eyes.

---

German Translations

du bist wie ein Traum: You are like a dream

Ich kann nicht glauben, dass du wirklich hier bist: I can’t believe you are here

Du bist viel zu gut für mich: You are too good to me

Dein Lächeln und…: You smile and…

Ich weiß nicht wie ich dich loslassen soll aber du verdienst so viel mehr als: I don't know how I am supposed to let go of you (eventually) but you (clearly) deserve so much more than me

Niemals, niemals, nie: never again, never again, never

Scheiße: shit

Das war meines: it was mine

wie sag ich das: how do I say this

ich hab versucht etwas zu tun, mich zu bewegen aber alles was ich tun konnte: I tried doing something, moving, but all I could do

du warst da und dann warst du fast nicht mehr da und ich konnte nicht atmen. Ich…: you were there and then you nearly weren’t there and I could not breathe. I…

Ich konnte nicht ohne dich. Ich…: I couldn’t without you. I…

[katnissdoesnotfollowback]

kdnfb's Ten Years of Fanfiction Mania

Featuring: Unmasked

Summary: Written under an Anonymous pseudonym ~M~ to fill the following prompt ~ Historical Katniss and Peeta hate each other. They attend a masquerade ball and for some reason end up kissing each other. Sparks fly everywhere. Katniss tries to find the man behind the mask but Peeta knows it was Katniss though he doesnt say anything. They end up bethrothed even if they 'despise' each other. How they fall in love is up to u and how katniss figured out it was peeta is up to u

Rating: E for explicit sexual content, explicit language, implied/referenced rape/nonconsensual (not everlark), implied/referenced child abuse, implied/referenced suicide, implied/referenced miscarriage, discussions of illness, war, and injury in a historical setting, ptsd, minor character death. They worst of these tags happens offscreen and is merely discussed and dealt with rather than shown here.

A/N: ~Unmasked~ is my longest fic in terms of word count (around 234k), although Outside Chance and Spellbound are not too far behind and are both incomplete. Unmasked started as something meant to be fun and cathartic, then turned into a ridiculously long and self indulgent fic that I still, to this day, have no idea if the anonymous person who submitted the prompt to @everlarkficexchange even read, let alone whether or not they liked it. But I love what I produced for this fic.

Why write it anonymously and only reveal myself later? A couple reasons. 1) Historical is not my wheel house. At least not writing it. I am a shameless consumer of historical romances. I did some research for this fic but not nearly the level I would've liked to have done. Eventually, I said screw it, it's about the vibes not the accuracy. 2) I had a pile of unfinished wips when I started this, to include Outside Chance and Spellbound (both of which are still unfinished hmmmmm) and I really didn't want a lot of questions about when I was going to get back to those while I was working on this because 3) I'd just gone through a small slice of writerly hell to the point that I seriously considered deleting my entire tumblr and all of my fanfic. Details are not important right now, the result is. That's probably the closest I've ever come to calling myself done with fandom.

Then this prompt posted to EFE and wouldn't leave me alone. Eventually, I decided that if I was going to write it, I wanted to write it with as little pressure as possible. So I chose to write and post it as ~M~ until it was finished. Plus, I thought it might make it fun for people other than me if there was a bit of mystery behind it. And I don't regret doing that.

Writing behind a mask allowed me to be as long winded and self-indulgent as I wanted to without worrying about how tight the storyline was or how accurate the historical details were, or wondering if I'd be walking into my tumblr and a barrage of the kind of messages I'd come to dread receiving. The only thing I worried about, really was if the amount and kind of smut I included gave me away prematurely lmao.

While this was my first real foray into the realm of historical fics, I am hoping it's not the last. I've got too many ideas and half started pieces to back out of it now. But those, like this one, will probably remain untethered to a specific real place, and a specific time, mainly because I just don't have that kind of time for research if I'm not getting paid to do it lol. They will be works of love if not works of accuracy.

Unmasked on AO3

[rainbow-nerdss]

Fic Writing review 2023!

I was tagged by: @just-my-latest-hyperfixation @aidaronan @exhuastedpigeon @jamespearce9-1-1 @theotherbuckley @aspecbuddie @thewolvesof1998 @daffi-990 (And possibly others, i may have missed one or two, sorry if i did!)

I can't believe 2023 is over, honestly. This year has had some ups and downs for sure but overall I'm so proud of what I've achieved. I started the year mainly writing Stranger Things fics, and while I still love that fandom and all of the wonderful people I met there, my inspiration for writing it was beginning to fade.

And along came 9-1-1. I am so happy with where I've ended up, and for all the new friends I've made since I found this show back in April!

Here's an overview of my year in fic:

Words posted to ao3: 235,060

Words written: 250,465

Works posted: 38

Fandoms posted for: 3 (Stranger Things, 9-1-1, MCU/Captain America)

Specifics and tags are under the cut!

Longest fic:

Crawling on Back to You 109k words, 30 chapters Stranger Things, Steve/Eddie, Rated E

Shortest fic:

Keep on Walkin' and don't look back 521 words Stranger Things, Steve/Eddie, Rated T

Top 5 by kudos:

1. Right in front of your eyes

9-1-1, Buddie, 15k

He and Chris, and Buck. They work, they’re a unit. Why should it matter that he’s single? Buck is watching him, like he’s reading every thought on his face. “You’re already planning to lie about the date. Why don’t you just tell her you met someone yourself?” Eddie shrugs and tilts his head to the side, squinting in thought. “She won’t set me up on dates if she thinks I’ve got someone,” he muses. “But she’ll want to meet whoever it is.” “So... Introduce them?” Or: Buck offers to fake-date Eddie so Pepa will stop setting him up on dates.

2. Pinky Promise

9-1-1, Buddie, 1k

Christopher Diaz doesn't mind that his dad's dating someone new. He's not dumb, he knows there's someone. The way his dad has been smiling lately, the way Chris catches him staring at his coffee, daydreaming like he isn't a grown man. The sleepovers Chris is suddenly allowed to go to on almost a weekly basis. Chris is happy for him, really he is. He’s just not planning to let himself get attached to whoever it turns out to be, just in case. He doesn't need a step-parent, because he has Dad, and he has Buck, and that’s enough. Whoever his dad dates, well. They'll probably leave, eventually. Chris doesn’t need to worry about them. Or: Eddie and Buck come to Chris with some news, and he doesn't take it very well at all.

3. Peek-A-Boo

Stranger Things, Steddie, 1k

Eddie tried not to stare. He really tried. He didn't notice at first, too preoccupied with the tub of pringles he'd been making his way through while talking about Corroded Coffin's last gig. Sure, he'd noticed the shorts. The ridiculous amount of leg Steve was showing, the way they hugged his ass, but it wasn't until Steve moved, lifted one foot to rest on the cushion, knees spread, that Eddie noticed another feature of the shorts. Or: Steve puts on a bit of an accidental show.

4. Definition

9-1-1, Buddie, 2k

It keeps happening, time and time again. People get it wrong. Whatever people say, it feels wrong and they don't know how to set the record straight, until Chris takes it into his own hands. or: 5 times people get Buck's role in Chris's life wrong, and 1 time they set the record straight

5. take my hand (knot your fingers through mine)

9-1-1, Buddie, 4k, written with @pock-o-pea

At least Buck’s okay. He’s outside, safe, doing his job. Buck’s okay, which means no matter what happens inside this van, If the crushing weight of the fridge takes him before Buck can get to him, if the van pancakes or flips or any number of likely disasters occur, if Eddie dies in here, alone, and in pain, then… He thinks of Mallory, of Jo. How they’d called out for each other. His eyes shut briefly as Mallory’s words echo in his head. “She’s not my daughter. Jo’s mother was my best friend… she saved me so many times.” Or: what 6x18 could've been

2023 Events I've participated in: AUgust, Fandom Trumps Hate

Current works in progress:

The bodyguard fic (somebody to someone) -One chapter posted, 3 more written and (almost) ready to post!

Steve time travelling in the upside down (of moments and unmoments (of time lost)) -One posted, two more in the drafts 😁

The break-up fic (you were my town) - Two posted, the third almost ready to post

Season 7 fic: 10 chapters, currently being edited to post

and then a bunch of isolated oneshots I've yet to figure out an ending for: 5+1 times Eddie sees buck with kids that aren't his, friends with benefits, secret relationship, Teacher!Buck, Buckley siblings kiss of death, Buck in the stairs (just started this one last night!)

Goals for 2024:

I want to finish posting all of the WIPs which are already on ao3, post my s7 fic before March 14, keep working on all the WIPs I have in my docs and of course write more and keep sharing!

Most of all I want to keep participating in this wonderful fandom I've found on here, I have had *such* a good time over the past year in fandom 🥰🥰

No pressure tags (sorry if you've already done this and I missed it!)

@hellwrites @the-emdash @wildlife4life @disasterbuckdiaz @loserdiaz @jeeyuns @callmenewbie @911-on-abc @bittersweet-in-boston @kwills91 @trenchcoatsandtimetravel @spotsandsocks @devirnis @housewifebuck @lover-of-mine @gayhoediaz @mojowitchcraft @wikiangela @steadfastsaturnsrings @sunflowerdiaiz @cardamomsage @velvetjinx

Also tagging anyone else who might want to look back at the year and I've accidentally missed!

Rules: Feel free to show whatever stats you have. Only want to show Ao3 stats? Rock on. Want to include some quantitative info instead of stats? Please do this. Want to change how yours is presented? Absolutely do that. Would rather eat glass than do this? Please don’t eat glass but don’t feel like you have to do this either.

[bilbosmom-belladonna]

Clone Bang Promo Post: Team 35!

The members of @clonebang Team 35 are proud to announce our upcoming contributions to the Clone Bang! 🎉

I wrote Built on Bones and Middens, a 90K (!!!!) Commander Fox/Quinlan Vos mystery fic set late in the war on Coruscant. This Fox POV story follows our hard-knock, heavy-drinking commander as he (and a very irritating Jedi) dive deep into Coruscant's underworld to solve a mystery before Fox's brothers suffer the worst fate.

Action! Intrigue! Banter! A fatalistic view of Coruscant's inherent corruption!

Check out a snippet under the cut. Chapter 1 posts on January 6th, 2024!

The immensely talented @sankt-jesper contributed their artistic chops. Here is a might fine preview for you:

And the dulcet-toned @flowerparrish did a podfic for one of the chapters! For a scintillating preview, please enjoy a recording of the snippet below.

Friends, I'm so excited to share this work with you all. It is the longest thing I've ever written (by a lot) and it was so lovely to collaborate with others to create these works. This was my first Star Wars fandom event and I had a lot of fun. Enjoy!

🎉

“Are you sure?” Vos asked. “They make the best Ithorian food on the planet. Would you like to try it?”

“I would like,” Fox said, keeping his voice level, “to know what we’re doing here.”

Vos went still again, eyes locked on Fox’s face with the air of a predator preparing to pounce. Fox regarded him back evenly and tried very hard not to find it intimidating. 

Once again, Vos’ smile emerged after a moment. He relaxed back into his chair. “All business, I see. No worries, Fox, I won’t waste your time. We needed to be able to speak openly and that called for a change of scenery.” Vos spread out his arms, indicating the decor. “And also a change of wardrobe. I suppose you’re wondering where I left my robes.”

Fox took another sip of his whiskey. Damn, it was good. “I wasn’t going to comment on your fashion choices,” he said.

“Big of you,” Vos replied breezily. “Here at The Little Dipper I’m known as Garyth Lidon, a small-time gangster trying to break into the casino business. He has… a certain look I need to maintain.” Vos tugged a little at his voluminous trousers.

“And why,” Fox asked, “are we meeting at Garyth Lidon’s favorite restaurant to discuss this case instead of the secure GAR facility?”

Vos hummed. “Not so secure, though, is it?”

Fox looked down at his glass, swirled the whiskey around. He took a moment to control his expression. “You have a problem with my security?” he asked cooly.

“Oh, don’t be insulted, Fox!” Vos cried as he flopped back in his chair. “It’s nothing against you personally. I’m sure you run a very tight ship. But we can’t ignore the obvious here, can we? It was clones who attacked Obi-Wan and we don’t know why.” He spoke with his hands, rings catching the light as they moved. “Maybe they were just angry mutineers. Maybe they were brainwashed by a Sith. Maybe they swallowed one of those brain slugs from Geonosis!” Vos leaned forward, elbows on the table, and pointed at Fox. “Maybe it was the first attack of a massive coup and you brought two squads here to kill me when my back is turned.” 

Fox raised an eyebrow and used his glass to point at one of the windows. “My sniper is getting into position now, I’m just waiting for the signal.”

Vos snorted and sat back again. “I get it, I do, Fox. You have faith in your brothers, as you should. But we have no idea who we can trust here, even among friends. So we’re going to keep this investigation as far away from the GAR and the RCMO and that bantha-kriffer Tarkin as we can. And that starts with meeting at fine establishments like this one.”

“You don’t trust Tarkin either?” Fox asked.

Vos shrugged. “We don’t know how far up this goes. The attackers told Commander Cody they were acting under orders, but not who gave them. We can’t rule anyone out yet.”

Fox tried not to be too pleased at the idea that he might get a chance to arrest Tarkin, far-fetched though it may be.

“And the serene mystic act?” Fox asked.

“Ah!” Vos waggled his eyebrows. “That was my spot-on impression of Obi-Wan’s late master, Qui-Gon Jinn. He could stonewall politicians with all that Force babble for hours. When we have to be under close supervision I want to discourage anyone from asking too many questions. And no one wants to talk to the guy that makes you want to strangle him after two sentences.” 

“The thought did cross my mind.”

“Then I’m doing my job!”

Fox allowed himself to relax a little. Vos wasn’t what he had expected from this meeting and he certainly wasn’t like any of the other Jedi Fox had met. But he didn’t seem to care if Fox got a little sarcastic with him. Vos himself had insisted they forgo the formalities. Maybe he wouldn’t be too much of a hindrance during this investigation. Even if he was a little… cocky.

[yuebings]

fic writer meme

thank u @fruitdaze @uhuraisgay @cairoscene @englishsub for tagging me!

How many works do you have on Ao3?

44 currently! double 4s? during MY lunar new year? i gotta change that up quick

2. What's your total Ao3 word count?

315,042 words

3. What fandoms do you write for?

my most written-for fandom is mdzs, but i don't really write for it anymore...if you look at my ao3 profile u can kinda tell i'm a sporadic one-and-done type when it comes to fic hehe no one can predict where i'll go next. my latest fandom is jujutsu kaisen!

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

so you've been robbed by a musuem

the stone-filled sea

the family-dodging bathroom-dwellers association

and his wanting grows teeth

diving blind

it's like a wangxian sweep except for the last sambucky lol

5. Do you respond to comments?

i am trying to get better at that! sometimes i don't have the energy to go through and respond to every single one but trust me when i say that seeing the wonderful comments people leave truly makes my day

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

tbh i don't think i've ever written straight-up angsty endings (or at least the way i see straight up angst). every 'bad' ending has a ray of hope in it, or at least an acceptance that like...yes, this is the way it was meant to be, and to reject the outcome would be to reject everything that came before it. sometimes things were meant to go to shit. there was no other way to go. we were doomed but at least we loved each other. i will suffer but at least i can remember you. so on so forth.

with all that said, it's a toss up between the longest journey (di feijing & lei chun), or all things in pain (wen ning character study). 'angsty' endings, if only in the way i described above

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

a lot of my happy endings aren't super-sweet happy endings per se, but rather a promise or hope that things will get better. idk what that says about me lol like maybe i have more interest in the "how to become happy" part than the actual happiness itself...? but ANYWAY i'd say the sappiest ending is i have is uhhhh feel like a brand new person (msr take edibles together) because 1) their mutual attraction is finally acknowledged 2) they're making out 3) they're high as balls. what's better than this

8. Do you get hate on fics?

not any time recently! i've rarely had negative comments before and all of them have been of such a ridiculous nature that my only response was like "lmfao ok"

9. Do you write smut?

nope! not yet, at least. maybe some time in the future i'll feel like it

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you have written?

haven't written any, don't really read them either! i keep my blorbos locked up in their separate cages. siloed.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

yes! kind of. if this counts, a couple years ago someone on wattpad stole over 100 wangxian fics (including mine) from ao3 and reposted them onto their own account without credit. we got their account taken down tho so all is well...but this is why i say in my ao3 profile that i do not allow reposts. please tell me if u ever see my work reposted anywhere........

i've also come across a fic in a diff fandom that was VERY clearly "inspired" by one of mine (lifting certain scenes and lines beat for beat) and gave no credit. so there's that as well.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

yes! it's always an honor when someone wants to translate my work :)

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

nope! my creative process is so erratic that i feel like i'd be a nightmare to co-write with, so this is probably for the better

14. What's your all time favorite ship?

this is a hard question to answer. i don't have an ultimate favorite that always stays at the top of the pile, cuz my interests change all the time! right now i'm really enjoying platonic yuuji & megumi & nobara & gojo. in terms of what i go to most often when i want a comfort re-read...finnpoe.

15. What is a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

omg. you want a DEEP CUT? i have a wip for a rarepair in an already sparse fandom...yeongshin/seobi from kingdom on netflix (the historical korean zombie drama). i LOOOOVE that show i comfort re-watch it all the time. i love their bonded-thru-trauma-frenemies healer/warrior dynamic and i have this wip going for yeongshin getting bitten and seobi developing a zombification-reversal cure through sheer willpower and spite alone........there's maybe 2k written and i was relying on a season renewal announcement to motivate me enough to get the rest of it out but uh. fellow kingdom warriors if you're out there. i think we may be losing this battle............kingdom season 3 announcement save me..............

16. What are your writing strengths?

as a haver-of-siblings, i think i do general family dynamics pretty well! someone has told me in the past that i am good at packing meaning into very few words. i also think i'm good at angsty emotional beats (i sure like writing them, at least)

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

bro if there is any action scene in my work, writing it is like pulling teeth. what do you mean he's getting hit. what do you mean i have to think of an interesting way to describe punch #1 and punch #2 and punch #3. STOPPPPPPPP I CANT DO THIS.

in terms of technique i used to struggle with this thing where i NEED to perfect the writing i'm working on before i can move on. like i'd waste huge amounts of time rewriting a three sentence paragraph over and over and over again until it was perfect before i could move onto the next scene. i'm getting a lot better with that tho!

18. Thoughts of writing dialogue in another language in fics?

i've never done it myself, like, full on written-in-a-diff-lang dialogue, but i think it's cool as long as context clues/some form of translation is provided. and if proper research is done if the writer isn't a native speaker

19. First fandom you wrote for?

the man from uncle (2015). lol. napollya could have won in an alternate universe where armie h@mmer wasn't a piece of shit

20. Favorite fic you have written?

HOO. i gotta say it's my sambucky ghost fic the boy who cried ghost. it's by far my longest fic (even tho it isn't actually very long compared to others ive seen LOLLLL) and it took me AGES to write and ended up being quite personal!! part of the reason it took me so long to finish was bc i couldn't bear to write about sam struggling with grief/guilt when i was also going through something similar, so when i finally got around to writing the moment of catharsis i kinda felt like i was helping myself, too! which was a very interesting experience, and definitely served to lodge this fic in my heart forever and ever. it's not exactly popular but i'm proud of it :)

tagging @tantai-jin @bluecrystalrainingdaggers @vinelark and anyone else who wants to participate!

[snowcoffeee]

Thank you for the tag @rhodophoria!! :D This was fun!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

Just one (but there will be more soon ;))

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

127,025! I think Ashen Wishes is the longest story I've ever written (and it's still going, holy-)

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Mostly Undertale. In fact, I haven't written for anything else in years ^^' I need to have a lot of passion for a fandom to get myself to write. Unless the characters live 24/7 in my mind rent-free, no ideas will pop up.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Yes.

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Yeah, I love to! I really appreciate when someone takes their time to leave a nice message :] I always try to reply as soon as possible, or at least within a day.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I currently have a few one-shot ideas that have rather angsty endings, but I couldn't bear writing a whole longfic that ends on a sad note. ...I think.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Ashen Wishes will have a pretty happy, positive ending, so I suppose that counts (?)

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Thankfully, I never have :)

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Well... not really. I've given it a shot a few times and I have a couple ideas, but I don't think I can bring myself to post anything too explicit at the moment.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

I've never written one! I've always found them too difficult to execute well.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I don't think so...? Though I never looked for it.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope, but I wonder what that would look like! Although when it comes to writing fics, I'm much more comfortable writing in English than my native language.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Not yet, but it sounds fun. I have friends who help with brainstorming sometimes, if that counts :)

14. What’s your all time favourite ship?

I've never been into shipping characters that much. Sometimes I come across a ship and I genuinely like it, but then I move on. My reader-insert craze just never left me enough, I guess.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I strive to finish everything I start, even though it might, uh, take a little more time. I really hope I won't ever abandon my fics.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Dialogues? Maybe? Those are usually the first things that pop up in my head when I'm trying to figure out a scene, and I build everything else around them. But I'm also really obsessed with pacing and trying to find a healthy balance between the events in a story. I'm not saying it's necessarily working, I just tend to pay more attention to it.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I'm very, very slow. I can linger on a single sentence for ten minutes because I can't get over how awkward a sentence feels, so I just stare at the screen trying to figure out how to fix it. Also, describing environments. I can't make them sound fun for the life of me. I feel like they always end up being very dry and unimaginative :/

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I don't run into them often, but I think they can spice up a dialogue sometimes. I especially like special short phrases that give the conversation a deeper meaning.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Oof, uh, Hollow Knight, if I remember correctly. I don't plan to post any of my older works though ^^'

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

Ashen Wishes is probably the fic I've put the most effort in so far, and it's currently my favorite, too!

@imtrashraccoon if you'd like to join, but as always, no pressure! :D

[itwoodbeprefect]

fic writer 20 questions

i was tagged by @luredin! thank you! <3

i feel like i've done this one (or one very like it) at some point before, but i couldn't find it when i went searching, so maybe i just read through it and composed answers in my head? or my very confused tagging system is understandably failing me.

How many works do you have on AO3?

right now, 242!

What's your total AO3 word count?

587,542.

What fandoms do you write for?

several! these days mainly starsky & hutch, but h50 is still very present too, and i think both stargate atlantis and 911 may also be worth mentioning. beyond that there's a lot of other things for which i'm working on a single fic, or there's a document with multiple of them but i only open it once in a blue moon.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

well. four out of five of these are for a fandom i wouldn't write for anymore today for obvious reasons, and the other one (Tell me I'm perfect) is a Shadowhunters fic:

It's the truth

Tell me I'm perfect (but tell me the truth)

I dare you to dare me

Finders Keepers

That escalated quickly

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

i wish i did! i keep trying to get into a healthier habit on that front, because i love comments and i'd like to say thank you and engage with people more, but it's a complicated thing - not in real life, but in my head, unfortunately.

What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

not an easy question, and it's not because there's too many to pick from! i'll indulge in a little melancholy at times, and maybe even a somewhat things-aren't-perfect ending, but generally there's at the very least a solid spark of hope even if the rest of the fic was sad. i think maybe Sobering (a mash hawk/trap fic) could qualify for actual angst, but even that one i seem to have tagged as "angst? i think?" when i posted it.

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

now this, this is where we get tangled up in weighing a hundred fluffy fics against each other to decide happiness rankings! maybe something like Flowers for no reason but you missed me (starsky/hutch) or And I love every inch of you (And then some, and then some) (h50 steve/danny) because both of those are just pure giddy happiness start to finish, which means the happiness has been building for the longest by the time the ending rolls around.

Do you get hate on fics?

thankfully, not really! most of my stuff is deeply inoffensive. there's been a sporadic comment here or there over the years of someone randomly telling me they didn't agree with something i wrote (by which i don't mean people pointing out genuine mistakes - that's very different, and very helpful), but even then i wouldn't necessarily classify that as "hate", just as a very awkward way to respond to reading something that annoys you for whatever reason. what springs to mind is one that started with "i have not seen the episode" and then proceeded to interpret an in context line from a character as my personal beliefs on whether children are capable of evil, so. that kind of thing.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

not officially! but unofficially i've been told that it's fun and really really sweet, so no surprises there.

Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

not usually, which means that the craziest (and only) one on ao3 is probably the h50/s&h crossover (Said the apple to the orange), which is truly very uncrazy.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

i wonder about that sometimes (i feel like after many many years and with the recent bot stuff on top, the answer should maybe be "probably"), but not that i know of!

there was an instance once of someone copying a story title, but they did so in a way that didn't even work. i was writing in dutch at the time, but english titles were Very Cool, so my story was called "ladies, bugs and ladybugs", and the other person took that, translated it to dutch, and used that for their story, which. those words don't match up the same way in the slightest, so it's just a random sequence of things by that point.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

yes! actually, i was probably the first person to translate any of my fic - all of the very, very early stuff posted to ao3 was just an english copy of originally dutch stories - but these days there are also a lot of russian translations (russians seem to be very active in h50 fandom!), some mandarin, some french. one italian, i think. it's very cool!

also, shout out to people who do podfics, too. <3

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

a few attempts were made over the years, but most of that never went very far for one reason or another. none of it is on ao3.

What's your all-time favorite ship?

as of right now, probably starsky/hutch!

What's a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

oh, i'm afraid i could fill, well, lists. one that immediately comes to mind that's technically a little past this category because i know i'll never finish it is a very long h50 project in which i took up about a hundred different little threads from the series and tried to weave them together into a giant fix-it-ish getting together coming out case fic sort of thing, and i still think the plotting work for that one was sound, but i'm just never going to actually get 100k down for a fic like that at this point in my life. (note that this is not a fic that's already up on ao3 in part - i'll finish those, one way or another.)

and oh my, for maybe a better answer: the starsky-watches-cowboy-movies starsky/hutch fic. i want to write that one, i do! and i am, and i do have real hope that i may one day finish it, but it's a fairly ambitious project in multiple ways, so there are some serious obstacles i will need to find some way around.

What are your writing strengths?

i love the patter of writing dialogue! people tell me characters sound believable and like themselves, so that's nice. also, balancing ridiculously fluffy things in such a way that it doesn't tip over into saccharine, and i also think i manage good jokes sometimes. i've been working on descriptions and atmosphere, and that's been fun.

What are your writing weaknesses?

i've completely unlearned how to write long stories! and ironically, i do write a lot of overlong sentences. also, i'll turn to google for absolutely anything, but deep down i'm a pretty impatient writer when research is needed and it doesn't happen to be a subject i'm already interested in, which oftentimes means i'd rather handwave things or scrap the idea entirely, even though i think really well-researched fic is amazing. and on that note, no matter how much american media and internet content i consume, i'm not american and have never been to america, which can be a challenge when writing for almost exclusively american fandoms. (i think i understand beds now, but i'll have to google sinks one of these days.)

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

ha! this was a thing that was very, very common for a while in my dutch fic writing community, because more or less all of the fictional properties and/or real life celebrities people were writing about were british or american (maybe with tokio hotel as the one notable exception), so there was A Lot of fic written in dutch with stilted high school english dialogue thrown in. i was never very into that, but hey, if it makes you happy, definitely go for it, and that goes double if it's just a few sentences for flavor! compared to what i used to see, ao3 culture is extremely conservative with these sorts of things.

all of which i say while also still, in the back of my head, considering the possibility of writing a really obnoxious ted lasso fic with 90% dutch dialogue, so. i too might become guilty at some point in the future.

First fandom you wrote for?

twilight! it was nessie/jacob, with i think a love triangle with a vampire thrown in. we all have to start somewhere.

Favorite fic you've ever written?

i recently reread How To Build A Triangle (or accidentally fall headlong into one, or whatever the fuck) and i still think it's really good and fun, plus it's a minor miracle that i got it finished so easily! there's a decent chance i'd name a different fic if you asked me again tomorrow, though.

Tagging

I have no idea who has already done this or been tagged for it, so I'm just going to throw a few names out there (@redgoldblue @actingcamplibrarian @stephmcx @spurious @goneahead), and then give the usual disclaimer that obviously i'm tagging you all with no pressure, and that if anyone sees this and it seems like a fun list of questions, i'm tagging you too! ✨

[read-and-write-]

2023 Fic Wrapped

Thanks to @anincompletelist for tagging me! This is such a fun thing to do!

Rules: Feel free to show whatever stats you have. Only want to show Ao3 stats? Rock on. Want to include some quantitative info instead of stats? Please do this. Want to change how yours is presented? Absolutely do that. There are no rules!

Posted on Ao3: 34,145 (Across 14 fics)

Written total: 152,778 (yes, i do have a lot of docs created, a lot more than anyone wants to see)

3 published fandoms: Red, White and Royal Blue, All for the Game, The Shadowhunters Chronicles

Longest work: and every song reminds me of you (4,088 words)

Shortest work: yo te llevo dentro, hasta la raíz  (546 words)

very real wips, things I'm actively working on

Super Six and the Siren's Call (PJO AU- +100k) co-written with @inexplicablymine and @happiness-of-the-pursuit one of the most wonderful projects I've had the honour to be a part of and I'm so exicted for people to see it

Toe the Line (Figure Skating AU - 20k currently) my dearest child, 60 pages of outline, investigation, character sheets and visions i have at three am for a random scene 5 chapter away

Y recuerda siempre que tú eres la medicina (A bilingual June character study) A companion piece of sorts for a train of thought (of things not to forget), June's perspective through it all, both in Spanish and English like Alex's. and with Natalia Lafourcade lyrics as a title because that's June coded

carved within the beauty, the darkness in between and without (your) love, I am nothing two pieces about religion and firstprince from each of their povs, a question about loving yourself and about loving someone else against the things you've been taught and finding divinity within each other.

not so real wips with a little less real word counts but a lot of vibes

Spiderman AU, my entry for the New Years Resolutions event of @thebrownstone, which means it'll get here at some point

MasterChef AU, my way to put my professional knowledge to good use, it was a silly funny story and it grew a plot

Dancer AU, a drabble fail that was just a vision and then some people kind of made it get a full dual pov, double 5 + 1 plot

Numbers are not everything but I do like data and stats

Kudos: 3,969

Comment Threads: 187

Bookmarks: 946

Hits: 37,149

Numbers do not define an author's worth, but I also can see how far I've gotten with just one day deciding I wanted to write and post my fun little words again

top 3 sorted by kudos

las formas de llamarte amor (2.5k - 630 kudos)

my first fic in the rwrb fandom, it makes me so happy to see it being loved, it was the ultimate show of self indulgence

Henry has been a public figure for most of his life, the reason why he’s been given dozens of titles, some kinder than others, he’s been the gay prince, the spare, the prince of England's hearts, the activist, the author. All of the titles are inevitably a part of his history, but the way Alex calls him is the most important of all. Because to Alex, he is sweetheart, amor, and corazón; Alex calls him mi vida in between kisses and whispers hermoso, lindo, precioso with his wandering hands working through Henry’s body. His name sounds better when it comes out of Alex’s lips. or 5 times Alex calls Henry a pet name in Spanish and one time he calls him by his name or Henry learns Spanish one pet name at a time

to belong to a family (even beyond this world) (2.5k - 578 kudos)

this one, this one i wrote with my own soul, i used my tears as ink, wrote it for the Halloween Huh fest and it all the comments have made me so incredibly happy

“Talk to him. They listen, they always listen,” Ligia says and Henry nods, she squeezes his hand again before turning back and leaving him alone in front of the ofrenda. It's very rare that Henry has been at a loss for words when he tries to talk to his father. He has spent countless nights speaking to the stars, looking for Orion and hoping that —wherever his father is— he is looking for it too. “Hi dad,” Henry says softly, taking another look at the picture of his father, smiling at the camera. “I missed you.” or When Alex and Henry go to Mexico for Día de Muertos a familiar face appears on the Díaz ofrenda

you are an idiot (i missed you) (1.6k - 475 kudos)

wrote this on a whim, blacked out and pulled this out of nowhere, my first fic for aftg and really just an excuse to write Andreil being married for convenience™

The best, and arguably the only, good part of playing on opposing teams from your husband was getting to play a match against him. Therefore one could say that Neil was very excited about getting to play against Andrew tonight. Not only because for the first time since the season started they'd finally be in the same State and City (And later after the game, the same house) but also because Neil thought Andrew was 100% hotter when he was playing (Not that he would tell him out loud), and seeing him live was definitely better than seeing him on a screen. There was also the added bonus of the infamous Minyard - Josten Rivalry. Or Neil and Andrew are having too much fun with their rivalry until someone else takes it too seriously, and then they have a talk.

Being a not native english speaker means that fanfic does teach me a lot of stuff, namely vocabulary this year stars some bangers

Saccharine

Ubiquitous

Litany

Chagrin

Filibuster

I created a total of 19 docs, which doesn't mean there's 19 fics there, but it also doesn't not mean it

Alex's POV wins with total of seven fics

Six fics have the tag of Alex Claremont-Díaz Speaks Spanish

Three of my wips have an outline longer than 10 pages

there's a 30%? chance I will write smut at some point in the new year

my funniest doc title is "If you have religious trauma and you know it clap your hands"

This year has been crazy, for many reasons but I'm glad I found this space and I'm glad I'm back to writing, and on top of it all I'm glad of being able to meet so many because of it.

And the year is not over yet! There's still more to come!

I'm tagging a few people, don't feel pressured to do this but if there's anything you feel proud of I'd love to see it @inexplicablymine @happiness-of-the-pursuit @affectionatelyrs @littlemisskittentoes @ssmtskw @raysletters @14carrotghoul @heybuddy-drabbles @suseagull04 @everwitch-magiks @sherryvalli @rockyroadkylers

[applesandbannas747]

If you lost all of the stories you’ve ever published on ao3 and were only able to recover five, which stories would they be, and why? (Top five across the board, but top five fence fics would be cool too) 📚✨

I completely welcome you to write a novel length answer 📝✨

okay HOW did I never see this one? This is such a fun and mean question!!

In no particular order:

Fairy Bound - this is my only current Artemis Fowl fic, but it's one of my favorite things I've ever written because it's everything I want in a series that was long finished when I wrote it. It's the ending and conclusion I wish the characters got (and I'm disappointed severely with the new canon material). It's also just full of tropes I love and has moments that have a soft spot in my heart. I also know it's meant as much to a good number of people in the fandom as it has to me, so it would be missed if it were lost

Truths - this took the cake for longest work I'd written for a long time before being dethroned, and it was a really cool experience to write. I think the Truths series was the last I wrote as I posted, which was really fun because some comments helped shape it if I remember correctly. It's where I really fleshed out a lot of my ideas about Fence and the characters and was a huge milestone in my writing abilitiy--it really helped me to improve in a lot of ways, and I think it was a milestone in my Fence era as well. I connected with a lot of people during its run that I've longsince lost contact with but will always love, and it's another one that people tell me from time to time really means something to them, which makes me love it extra for that--I don’t know, connection? And of course I used a lot of tropes I love and built up a lot of headcanons and lore that I still carry to this day!

Trouble - man this is where Eugesse started, and I can't abandon it even if I'd change so much about it if I wrote it again. I love a lot of moments from this fic and I indulged so much in building the Labaos and learning how to code to make text messages--it was a fic filled with so many firsts! But I also assumed it would be a fic filled with a lot of lasts--I truly didn't intend to write Eugesse again until we had more content on him because this was back during The Great Hiatus (but boy am I glad I didn't stick to that 💀💀💀)... So the iea with Trouble was that it got to be paced weirdly because there were so many moments, beats, and tropes I wanted to hit with Eugesse and this was my only chance, so I needed to fit them all in. So while this is the only fic I debated over including on this list because I think it's the weakest one here in terms of writing, it will always hold a special place in my heart, and it means a lot to me.

Promised Things - how could I not include the Things to Hold Onto series? In a very literal way if my house were burning to the ground, the physical bookbound (!!!!!) versions a friend made and sent me would be top priority after living things. This is another fic that I really strove to improve my writing with, and it's significant as well because it was the fic I wrote after an autistic meltdown over the ARC of Striking Distance I read, after which, I felt sick and conflicted whenever I thought about writing for Fence because the thought of adjusting my characterizations to fit canon made sent me spiraling. So I took a break and wrote a couple novels, including one that took the plot of an au I'd been looking forward to writing (if you're wondering when this 'break' took place, it was March-July 2020; I had enough backlog that there was never a break in my posting schedule to reflect the break I took in writing). But do you know what I found? I was more miserable not writing for Fence than anything, and even while I was actively writing novels in NaNoWriMo challenges, I found myself sneaking in writing time for Fence anyway--for Promised Things, specifically. And I found my love of Fence again through it, which sounds like such a conceited thing to say lmfao but I love who I thought the characters were and writing this fic helped me start to accept that it was okay to still write them the way I saw them. So on a meta level, this one means a lot to me. And on a writing level, I'm proud of the detail I put into it and the planning it took. Pull up any chapter in this series and I could find the day of the week it took place on. I've not quite achieved this level of detail since. It also got a lot of editing to improve it as we went along, and I'm happy with how it turned out and proud of the work that went into it. And, yeah, I'm lizardbrained too and the fact that this one got WAY more love than I ever expected in any way does (positively) effect how I see it. So this one's getting saved lol

Breakable Things - to this day, this fic is one of the stories I am proudest of, and I think it's a strong piece of writing in terms of character development. It was a long redemption arc for Jesse and I worked really hard on making it a successful one--and it is the number one fic I've had people tell me I won them over with Jesse in, so I like to think that it was a successful arc XD I've always said that in this series, Seiji and Jesse both grew up in hell, but they both view Jesse and Jesse only as the monster--and in Promised Things, we get Seiji's point of view, and Nick's, who is seeing through the damage done to Seiji and seeing a monster in Jesse through it. Which made writing Breakable Things so fucking fun because Eugene's the only perspective that doesn't cast Jesse as the villain. And, yeah, Jesse sees himself as a victim and likes to throw himself pity parties, but under it all, it's not Seiji he blames for anything, it's not his dad, it's hardly even Nick. and we get to see that in this fic and see how the damage he caused is just as real as before, but that his pain isn't less than Seiji's. And more than any other character in the series, Jesse works to confront the truth of who he is and figure it out and improve, a lot of the time, alone. Seiji fell into a situation that naturally healed him. Jesse dove head first into one that was intended to break everyone--but he was also put on an edge that Seiji wasn't, and that made all the difference. Anyway, I have a lot of feelings about Jesse and I had a lot of fun trying to redeem him/show his side and contrast it with Seiji's without making it feel like I was trying to tragic-backstory his ass out of accountability for the shit he did. Also! I wrote bits of this fic in tandem with Promised Things--any major scene with Jesse, I either had notes for Jesse's side, wrote Jesse's side right after, or even wrote Jesse's POV of it first, which was an interesting way of writing a sequel that I've never done any other time.

[acacia-may]

4, 11, 52, and 65 for the 100 writer asks? 👉👈💖

Thank you so much for the ask, Erika! I'd be delighted to answer these questions for you! Cheers!! 💖

4. What is the plot bunny you’ve been carrying for the longest? optional bonus question: do you ever wonder why you haven’t written it yet and experience deep existential dread?

SO.MUCH.EXISTENTIAL.DREAD.

I answered this question here and talked about my Langris x Finesse Beauty and the Beast AU. Super fun stuff that I never got around to writing at all unfortunately. I have a lot of plot bunnies, but I think that's the oldest I'm still carrying around and have never made any concrete progress on.

11. What's something neat you’ve learned while doing research for something you were writing? also, how much do you worry about doing research in general?

...do you want to know how the human knee joint works in excruciating detail??? I now have my honorary PhD in Patellar Instability thanks to fanfiction.

Jokes aside...I think a lot of the things I've learned for fanfics are related to injuries. I know way more about corneal lacerations, punctured lungs, broken fibulas, amputation recovery, and direct blood transfusions in World War I than I ever expected to know (among a lot of other things).

I also try to research the personal experiences of people who have similar struggles to the characters I'm writing if I don't have a personal frame of reference. For instance, I think I've read at least 100 first-hand accounts from widows and widowers who eventually remarried detailing their specific struggles in processing their grief and opening themselves up to love again. (A special thanks to the Widowers Support Network. They were very informative.)

Sometimes I just disappear down the research rabbit hole. I once spent literally an hour and a half researching cantera fountains for one throwaway line in a one shot. If the story takes place in a historical setting, I'll spend a lot of time researching that or (more often than not) researching whether or not certain things existed yet.

Recently I have been learning a lot about bridges. (I have this OC who is super passionate about bridges, but I know absolutely nothing about them 🤦‍♀️ so it's been a struggle). Last weekend I watched a 45-minute documentary about cantilever bridges just so I'd know how they work--only to discover that the cantilever bridge in this city where the fic was taking place had been torn down at this time and a new cable-stayed bridge had been built. So then I had to watch a bunch of YouTube videos about how those work too.

Oh I also do a lot of canon research too (i.e. going back to reread or rewatch relevant moments from the story because I generally want my fics to be as close to canon as possible. There is nothing worse than catching continuity errors in my work. Yikes 🙈

So yeah...needless to say, I do a ton of research--probably WAY too much because it's most likely that nobody even notices these things but me. But it's still important to me to be accurate to the source material and as realistic as possible.

52. How many unfinished ideas/stories are you working on at the same time?

I try to only actively write one story at time, but I generally work on actively drafting and outlining up to and around 5 at once (by shuffling around the ideas in my head). I specify "actively" because I constantly juggle a lot of WIPs and story ideas, but I can only make concrete progress on a few of them at a time. That doesn't mean I've abandoned my wips, just that they don't have my attention and therefore, won't get concrete drafting, outlining, or writing progression.

Going back to question #4, this also fills me with existential dread.

65. What is your favourite title for a fic you’ve written? 

Probably "A Ceiling Made Of Stars" (which is DRV3 fic). In a once-in-a-lifetime event for me, I actually titled that fic before I wrote it. It just came to me when I had the initial idea for that story, and I think it's poetic, especially in context. I'm also very fond of "The Hero You Loved" (which is an OMORI fic) though I haven't written the 2nd chapter of that fic which would fully explain where the title comes from yet.

It's worth mentioning though that a lot of my fic titles are borrowed from/inspired by lines in music so I felt I should share my favorite titles in this category too (the fandom is in parentheses): "Tackle The Monsters" (DR UDG) "Hearts In Tune," (OMORI) and "Lights Will Guide You Home" (EOA)

My favorite cheeky title is probably "Everything I Need To Know About Love I Learned From Latin" (Horrible Histories; The Movie) though "How To Catch A Mermaid" (OMORI) is a close second. 😁 "It's a Future Problem" is another fun one especially given what that story is about (and that's actually a Black Clover fic unlike the rest of these😅).

To be honest, I think some of my unfinished wips actually have some of my favorite titles I've ever come up with so I'll mention them too: "Lightning In Their Eyes" (Fairy Tail; about how each of the members of the Thunder Legion first met Laxus) and "Dissonant Melodies" (YTTD; about the Yabusame Siblings' (who are both musicians) extremely strained relationship). But alas, these stories never got finished...maybe someday...

[kandisheek]

Hey friend!! I hope you’re doing well! I wanted to let you know how much I adore your works, and how your presence in fandom has always been a delight. I love your year in fan recs—it’s so wonderful to see so many names I haven’t heard of before, giving folks a chance to read something new and giving less well known authors a chance to shine!!

How about some fun asks now?

If you were suddenly a billionaire and could quit your job and fully engage with fandom for the rest of your life, would you?

What’s a fic you’ve been dying to write but just haven’t gotten to yet?

Why do you love Tony Stark?

Oh my god, you're the absolute sweetest, thank you so much <3 I can only return the sentiment, your fics are a constant source of joy for me <3 And I'm so happy that you found some new authors through my recs! As for your questions:

If I were suddenly a billionaire I'd probably try to take over the world Tony Stark style and (most likely fail to) fix all the agregious wrongs, so I might actually end up not having time for fandom stuff anymore whoops 😂 But in all seriousness, if I could live off fandom writing and arting, I absolutely would. Although I'm fortunate enough to love my real life job as well.

I've been planning to write this fic for ages, in which Tony is with Ty and due to their relationship troubles (which are solely Tony's fault, of course, at least according to Ty) Ty signs them up for a couples retreat. Turns out its a tantric fix-your-sex-life thing, which Ty knew but Tony didn't, so that's great. And guess who Tony runs into on the first day? His ex that got away, Steve Rogers, and his lovely fiance Sharon. Seems like Steve's gay crisis after his stint with Tony led him right back to the straight life, which is just the cherry on top of Tony's shitty sundae. However, it turns out that Steve and Sharon's relationship is far from perfect, just like Tony's. And Tony does remember how happy he used to be with Steve. He highly doubts that Steve thinks the same though. Right? -- I swear I will write this eventually, but the outline alone is like 4000 words long and I just know this fic will be the longest thing I've written yet, and I'm just... yeah. Eventually, I'll get there :)

And I love Tony Stark because to me, he's the human embodiment of mind over matter. Even when all odds are against him, he finds a way to come out on top, despite his multitude of issues. He always pushes for the perfect solution, reinventing himself time and time again. He has flaws, but he wears them like armor. He has trust issues but is fiercely loyal to his inner circle. He's charming and hilarious in the best possible way. And of course, it doesn't hurt that he's hot as hell.

So yeah, Tony is incredible, and I love him. And I love YOU for asking me these questions, thank you so much <3 I consider myself incredibly lucky to count you among my friends <3

[luninosity]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love! Tagged by @estrellami-1 - thank you, my dear! <3 Let's see, fanfic specifically, not original works, I imagine...well, I've got a lot! The question is, which... Okay, these are just my personal favs, not even necessarily the ones I think might be the best-written, and I'm also excluding co-authored fic because that would be a very different list! (For one thing, Amateur Cartography, with Reg....) 1. straight from your heart (Stucky) - lots of people seem to like this one (thank you!) and I do too - I love recovering!Bucky stories, I loved the premise (it was written for a fest prompt), and I love the idea of Steve and Bucky working out what they want to incorporate, and play with, and reclaim, as far as identities (and, okay, some kink; it's me!). 2. Like Sugar (Evanstan; series) - okay, this is probably cheating because it's a whole series, but I can't separate them! This might be the thing people know me for most, maybe, and it was at the time the longest and most detailed story I'd ever written, and one of those that was (mostly) easy to write - words and scenes just turned up and flowed. I sometimes go back and reread my writing and am honestly impressed by myself. I do love this whole giant thing. 3. tempt me, tease me (leave me breathless) & (baby won't you please) run your fingers through my hair (both Evanstan, both sort of gentle kink) - okay, this is also kind of cheating, because they're two separate stories - except they're sort of linked, in my head? They have vaguely similar premises, about Chris discovering some things about Seb's preferences, and love confessions, and kink, and comfort, and...I don't know, they just have a similar 'feel' to my writer-brain. They both have specific lines that I've put on "top ten favorite sentences I've written" lists before, and I love my writing at this point. 4. never mind the why and wherefore (Johnny Storm/TJ Hammond Fantastic Four/Political Animals no-powers AU crossover) - this is an odd random one but I genuinely love it! In the category of "stories I never expected to write"...and then friends made me think about it...and then suddenly it practically wrote itself and I had 45k of story. One of the best and most unexpected and consequently wonderful writing experiences I've ever had, plus of course TJ deserves all the happiness! 5. Know That It's True (Cherik, X-Men: First Class era) - pulling out a real old-school one: this was my first-ever X-Men fic! Well, to be fair, that depends on how you count - it's the first one I started writing, but then I stopped and wrote and finished something else short, and then went back to this one! These days my writing style has evolved a bit, and there're some things I'd do differently - but the sheer sense of fun to it, the absolute joy, the "oh gosh YES" rush of feels while writing, posting, being so nervous about it as a new(ish) writer...oh, I love it. And I tumbled into so many communities and friendships and fan events and fests and, oh, the shared love - really, without this, I don't know where I'd be. So that's always got to be on a list of favorites. *hugs you all* Tagging people, oh, let's see... @musette22 @significantowl @ninemoons42 @thebestpersonherelovesbucky @rozf and anyone else who wants to! love you!

[peachpety]

20 questions for fic writers

tagged 230943 years ago by @schmem14 [x] @vukovich [x] @mintawasalreadytaken [x]

check out fics from these lovely, brilliant, fantastic, stellar, amazing [*insert lady gaga meme here*] writers:

schmem14 [some truly wonderful & witty rarepair gems y'all] vukovich [off-the wall, peculiar delivered in amazing prose] mintaminta [insightful angst/dead dove & hot kinky smut]

tagging @mystickitten42 @citrusses @kittycargo @lumosatnight @xanthippe74 @rockingrobin69 @stavromulabetaaa @bubble-gumhead @porcelainheart3 @roseharpermaxwell @curlyy-hair-dont-care

me, myself & i

How many works do you have on AO3?

76 + 1 in anon, to be revealed soon!

What's your total AO3 wordcount?

149,896

What fandoms do you write for?

HP, with emphasis on Drarry.

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Come as You Are (3.8k) Sun Stroke (3.8k) Laundry Day (2.7k) 10 Easy Steps (1.8k) It's Called Fashion, Potter (2.1k)

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

listen. yes. i try. and i am so far behind atm. honestly, i get the most wonderful comments from lovely readers. and i want them to know how appreciative i am that they took time to read(!) and let me know their thoughts(!!). even if it's just an emoji(!!!). i don't care, i love it.

What is a fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

if you read me, you know...i do not write angst. i have one (1) fic where i stepped out of my lane and wrote angst-lite. it's not even really angst, but more moody atmospheric. and interestingly enough, the most purple i've prosed. my beta was like, peach, what? the weed which strings the hangman's bag

What is a fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

pfft, all my fics have the happiest endings.

Do you get hate on fics?

nope. i did get hate on a supportive/love comment i left on a friend's fic once. that's, like, 7th circle of hell troll behavior to be hating on a comment.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

i do write smut, yes. my smut has been described as [insert various descriptors like "inferno", "blazing", "scorching", and lots of🔥] hot paired with soft/romantic/sweet. i.e. fluffy smut. smuff.

Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

nope. the closest i've come is inserting HP characters into a magical version of The Breakfast Club.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

not that i'm aware of.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

not that i'm aware of, but i do have a blanket statement in my AO3 profile that allows it, so who knows?

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

nope.

What's your all-time favorite ship?

drarry, easily.

What's a WIP you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

i have a fic inspired by a movie and idk if i'll ever get it written. I COULD mention my xmas advent fic from 2020 but i'm determined to finish it this year. DETERMINED. 🦔

What are your writing strengths?

i'm good at characterizations & writing banter. and i'm good at writing lean.

What are your writing weaknesses?

recently, i've had the immense pleasure of listening to my fics read aloud in published podfics. and let me say, this is a brilliant way to spot weaknesses. and while my banter may be good, sometimes i maybe inject too much action into my conversations. it disrupts the flow. also, long, plotty fics ellude me. i'm a pantser/gardner style writer and plotting/outlining makes me hyperventilate.

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?

yes, if used sparingly, and in such a way that i (as an english only speaker) can intuit what is being said. and also if translations are provided as a footnote. i've got a french-speaking Draco in my Dron fics [1] [2], where he lapses in the heat of passion.

First fandom you wrote for?

drarry, baby.

Favorite fic you've written?

if i may, i have two: Deadheading the Odd Dahlia, inspired by the incredible art of @beyondtheclose Birds Behaving Badly (my longest drarry to date! 10k!)

[cynical-mystic]

Commentary prompt!

--

Not for the first time, Claude wonders just why Sylvain invited Felix to join their weekly tea and chess time, despite Sylvain’s explanation that he wants the two of them to get to know each other better. Instead of learning more about Felix, Claude’s guard has gone up tenfold, helped along by the fact that he soon realizes he can’t ever really know Felix, not like Sylvain does. The face of the one person he’d ever thought of as a friend as a child flashes behind his eyes and he has to focus on not breaking the teacup in his hands.

“That’s just because you don’t care about strategy,” Sylvain says, waving off Felix’s complaint as he studies the board. “You’re all go, go, go, you rarely stop and think.”

“Look who’s talking!” Felix snaps. “You’re the fool who’ll throw himself in front of anyone being attacked if there’s the slightest chance they might get hurt.”

Crack!

Umber and vermilion eyes turn to him, but Claude is already grabbing for a napkin to wipe up the small amount of tea that was left in the cup he just broke. Thankfully it was his turn to provide the tea set, so he doesn’t have to worry too much about replacing the damn thing. Sylvain leans over to take the pieces from Claude while Felix watches, eyebrow raised.

“You okay, Claude?” Sylvain asks.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he says, still not looking at him. “Just a stupid accident.”

Claude knows that the only reason why Sylvain accepts this as easily as he does is because Felix is there; otherwise, he’d press Claude for what actually happened.

Once everything is clean, he realizes his hands are shaking, so he clenches his fists.

“I think I’m going to have to bow out early,” Claude says, reaching out to knock over his king. “Sylvain, do you think you can take care of all of this?”

“Sure, but–”

Claude all but knocks his chair over getting up and walking away.

Jose, I love you, but did you really have to pick the one scene in that fic where I wrote it and was like "I'm not even quite sure why this is the way it is?" 😅😂🤣 Thanks for the submission! I love this fic so freaking much. I'm putting the rest under a cut because we get kind of long. Hope you enjoy!

This excerpt is from Chapter 9, "Proof of Pain," in Tangled Winds, the first entry in my Green Sarabhas series. I wrote this fic in a month and a half, and it's the longest thing I've ever written.

Not for the first time, Claude wonders just why Sylvain invited Felix to join their weekly tea and chess time, despite Sylvain’s explanation that he wants the two of them to get to know each other better. Instead of learning more about Felix, Claude’s guard has gone up tenfold, helped along by the fact that he soon realizes he can’t ever really know Felix, not like Sylvain does. The face of the one person he’d ever thought of as a friend as a child flashes behind his eyes and he has to focus on not breaking the teacup in his hands.

Okay, so you know that writing advice that says to write what you know? When I write, I put so much of myself into what I'm working on that sometimes I can go back and say "ah yes, I know exactly what I was trying to work through while I was writing this."

This is not one of those times!

In this fic, Claude is so insecure. There's this through line of this childhood friend that betrayed him and essentially ruined his ability to trust other people. For this scene specifically, Claude is struggling with the concept of letting Felix into his life. He's built a relationship with Sylvain to the point where he trusts him, but he knows next to nothing about Felix, and the one thing he does know is that Felix has been friends with Sylvain since they were children. Claude's assumption here is that, no matter how close he and Felix may wind up getting, Felix's first loyalty will always be to Sylvain.

For someone trying to build allies to help him when he takes the Almyran throne, that won't work.

For a scared, lonely boy who wants absolute assurance that he's the most important thing to the people he cares about, that won't work.

“That’s just because you don’t care about strategy,” Sylvain says, waving off Felix’s complaint as he studies the board. “You’re all go, go, go, you rarely stop and think.”

“Look who’s talking!” Felix snaps. “You’re the fool who’ll throw himself in front of anyone being attacked if there’s the slightest chance they might get hurt.”

Crack!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Claude hasn't seen Sylvain in real battle yet, and has no idea how much of a self-sacrificing idiot the boy he loves is. The fact that this revelation comes from Felix reinforces the idea that Claude will never be enough for Sylvain, and that he'll always need Felix too.

While emotionally healthy, well-adjusted adults know that you can be the most important person to someone while they still have other friends who fill niches you can't, Claude is none of those things here.

The reminder that Sylvain could die and therefore leave Claude by doing something Claude can't really fathom doing himself at this point certainly doesn't help.

Umber and vermilion eyes turn to him, but Claude is already grabbing for a napkin to wipe up the small amount of tea that was left in the cup he just broke. Thankfully it was his turn to provide the tea set, so he doesn’t have to worry too much about replacing the damn thing. Sylvain leans over to take the pieces from Claude while Felix watches, eyebrow raised.

Okay, I will claim this paragraph as me protecting and not just being possessed by these idiots like I was while I wrote this entire series.

When I'm panicking, I tend to focus on mundane details as well, and when I try to remember things later, sometimes I'll pick out those mundane things instead of the thing that made me panic. It's a comfort thing, something I can relatively control.

“You okay, Claude?” Sylvain asks.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he says, still not looking at him. “Just a stupid accident.”

Claude's thoughts here: Don't show weakness, don't show weakness, don't show- because in Claude's world, weakness is severely punished.

Claude knows that the only reason why Sylvain accepts this as easily as he does is because Felix is there; otherwise, he’d press Claude for what actually happened.

Anyone else use situations like this to their advantage? No, just me? 😅 Maybe there's more of myself in this scene than I thought.

Once everything is clean, he realizes his hands are shaking, so he clenches his fists.

“I think I’m going to have to bow out early,” Claude says, reaching out to knock over his king. “Sylvain, do you think you can take care of all of this?”

I'd like to focus on Claude's king for a moment. This fic was supposed to be "Sylvain and Claude get to know each other over chess after Claude harbors Sylvain for a night and gets curious," and while it spun widely out of my control, I went into this with no plan, so we're still clinging to the vestiges of that original idea here.

Also, I really don't think Claude would be able to stand leaving a game hanging like that.

Now that I think about it, it's also kind of symbolic of Claude's general submission in this situation. Instead of facing his fear and talking it out in the moment, he's leaving.

“Sure, but–”

Claude all but knocks his chair over getting up and walking away.

This is meant to portray the haste with which Claude gets up and flees. I'm not quite sure how exactly he would go about almost knocking his chair over while he stands, but that level of detail is typically irrelevant to me.

I love this ship, I love these three, and I love this entire series. Thanks again, @astaraxion, for the ask, and for being the best beta a person could ask for, and for being my friend. 🧡💜