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inthedayswhenlandswerefew · 1 year

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Comet Donati [Chapter 7: Heart Attack]

A/N: Hello all! Only 3 chapters left!!! 🥰 Thank you so much for loving this fic and giving all my eccentric AU ideas a chance. I’m currently in Washington DC visiting one of my best friends, so if I’m a little bit tardy replying to your comments/messages then that’s why. Don’t fear!! I will check in as soon as I can, and I am still amazed by and will forever cherish your support. 💜

Series Summary: Sex, drugs, boy bands. You are a kinda-therapist recruited (via nepotism) to help Comet Donati through a recent crisis. Things are casual with Aegon, very not-casual with Aemond. Loosely inspired by One Direction.

Chapter Warnings: Language, references to sexual content (+18), drugs, alcohol, smoking, Shelby being a bigger plague than the locusts of Egypt, mental health struggles, references to violence and abuse, New Jersey, pregnancy, mini golf, lots of content for the Cregan girlies.

Selected Chapter Quote: “We’re meant to be together. We have so much history.”

Word count: 6.2k.

Link to chapter list (and all my writing): HERE.

Taglist: @doingfondue @catalina-howard @randomdragonfires @myspotofcraziness @arcielee @fan-goddess @talesofoldandnew @marvelescvpe @tinykryptonitewerewolf @mariahossain @chainsawsangel @darkenchantress @not-a-glad-gladiator @gemini-mama @trifoliumviridi @herfantasyworldd @babyblue711 @namelesslosers @thelittleswanao3 @daenysx @moonlightfoxx @libroparaiso @burningcoffeetimetravel-fics @mizfortuna @florent1s @heimtathurs @bhanclegane @poohxlove @narwhal-swimmingintheocean @heavenly1927 @mariahossain @echos-muses @padfooteyes @minttea07 @queenofshinigamis @juliavilu1 @amiraisgoingthruit @lauraneedstochill @wintrr13 @r0segard3n @seabasscevans @tsujifreya

Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist! 💜

You type into Google as you hide in the public bathroom stall, pink tile walls and mint green porcelain, very 1950s, phantom drips of water and humming florescent lights: Can Plan B make your period late?

You scroll through the results, clutching your iPhone with both hands. Faintly, you can hear the rest of the band outside, chattering, laughing, slurping on Slush Puppies, smacking trees and rocks with their golf clubs. Yes, the consensus seems to be; Plan B can delay your period. Incidentally, so can pregnancy.

“Fuck,” you whimper. You peer down at your panties, as if you can force bloodstains to appear: sparce rosy threads of warning, dark red splotches like rust, you aren’t particular. You’ll take anything. “Fuck,” you say again, defeated. You get dressed, wash your hands, and head back out into the cloudless afternoon sunshine.

“Stargirl, it’s your turn!” Aegon shouts as you trot over to them: tenth hole, shaped like an L, featuring an intimidating loop de loop. The course is dinosaur themed; Rhaena picked it. Aegon points to Jace. “This deformed bastard wanted to skip you.”

“I told you,” Jace moans. His speech is garbled and lisping, his face comically swollen, bruised yellow-emerald-indigo and drooling blood, stitches above his left eyebrow. He just had his dental implants placed yesterday; the four teeth that he lost at Club Camelot could not be readily located for reattachment. “I can’t keep track of who’s next. I’m on like four different opiates.”

Baela frets over him. “Shh, shh, baby. Try not to talk.” There’s something about watching someone get almost-murdered that makes you want to forgive them, you suppose.

You grab your club and golf ball, dark blue, from where you left them by a tree. Rhaena gives you a covert little thumbs up and raised eyebrows. Everything good? You smile—too widely, insincere, a liar—and nod. Technically, you have yet to obtain concrete evidence to the contrary.

You take your turn, somewhat awkwardly due to the splint that still encumbers your dominant hand. You are thinking about anything but mini golf. Your ball goes halfway through the loop de loop and then comes rolling back. How many strokes? Four, five, you lose count, it doesn’t matter. Aegon is snickering, though not in a mean way, never in a mean way. Aemond is watching you. He does this constantly; you can feel his eyes—river water, otherworldly atmosphere—on you all the time, you can see him on the periphery of your vision. But when you glance at Aemond, he looks away. You’re wearing flip flops, a black NSYNC t-shirt, and bright pink shorts that Baela insists are of the very short variety. Aemond is staring a little extra hard today. Shelby alternates between glaring at him and at you.

Jace putts next. He misses the ball twice. On the third try, he hits it into a nearby pond. Golden koi fish scatter beneath the rippling sheen of the water.

“Loser,” Aegon declares mildly. “Criston, why the fuck are we in New Jersey?”

“Because you’re playing three shows at the MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford,” Criston says as he putts; his green golf ball sails through the loop de loop, bounces off a wall, and then rolls straight into the cup, a hole in one. “One Direction did it, Taylor Swift did it, and now you’re going to do it too. And if you don’t make it too unbearable for me, I’ll even take you to the beach while we’re here. Okay?”

“Okay,” Aegon agrees. He slurps on his Slush Puppie. “Oh, Aemond, I need the Netflix password.”

“You forgot it again?!” Daeron says. Jace, groaning softly, lies down on the ground in a patch of shade. Baela gets a bottle of Orajel rinse out of her purse and starts pouring it into his mouth.

“Get your own account,” Aemond snaps at Aegon. “I think you can afford it.”

“Bruh, that’s not the point! I don’t know where I left off in Grey’s Anatomy!”

They keep bickering. You stop listening. You can only hear the sounds of rustling leaves, squawking seagulls, the whistling of the warm August wind. You can only feel the weight of Aemond’s half-fascinated, half-resentful gaze on you. He wouldn’t believe me, you think. If I really am pregnant, he would never believe that it was an accident. He would never believe that I was that guilelessly, unambitiously stupid. Hell, I did it and I barely believe it.

You steal a glimpse of Aemond—black shirt and black sunglasses, white shorts, Adidas sneakers—and he turns away, pretending to pick dirt off his golf ball. Interestingly, he will talk to you about things not related to that night in Tokyo; perhaps it would be too suspicious not to, a neon sign for the rest of the band to read. But he never allows himself to be alone with you. And he never touches you, not even a grazing of hands or an absentminded bump as he passes you in aisles or hallways.

Bump, you think miserably. An inauspicious choice of words.

“We should watch Se7en,” Aegon is saying now. “Comet fam movie night.”

You mutter: “We’re not watching Se7en.”

“What’s Se7en about?” Rhaena asks.

“You wouldn’t like it.”

“What’s in the box?!” Aegon shouts dramatically—quoting the beautiful yet doomed David Mills, a name he once borrowed to schedule a Zoom meeting with you—and then cackles. It’s his turn. He clobbers his golf ball and sends it flying through the loop de loop; it pops over the barrier and disappears into a bush. Startled squirrels dart out of the leaves.

“Loser!” Jace slurs as he lies sprawled across the ground, vindicated.

“Stop spitting blood everywhere,” Aemond says. He putts next, and badly: poor depth perception. “You’re getting it on my sneakers.”

“Watch it, cyclops.” Jace points to his own stitches, bruises, surgically replaced teeth. “I let you have this one. Now we’re even. But next time I won’t be so charitable.”

“You’re not even,” Aegon tells Jace, abruptly severe. He whips off his aviator sunglasses, crouches over Jace, glaring and thunderous like a storm. Baela observes this warily. “Not even close.”

Jace is intrigued. “No?”

“No. Your face will heal.” Then Aegon pokes him in the jaw and Jace screams, tears slithering down his puffy, mottled cheeks. Cregan yanks Aegon away before Baela can scratch his eyes out. Criston repossesses Aegon’s blue raspberry Slush Puppie as punishment. Luke wins the game, five under par.

Comet’s first shows in the United States this tour start just like the last few in Asia: Jace is iced, painted with concealer, thoroughly medicated, numbed into semi-consciousness. He does lines of coke in the bathroom under Cregan’s supervision. He can’t perform without it. Criston tried to negotiate a month off for Jace, but the label’s message was clear: get him on stage, we don’t care how you do it, we don’t want to know about it, here’s a blank check, figure it out or we’ll find another manager who can. Now Criston watches Jace with his arms crossed over his chest, his dark eyes wounded and anxious, his shoulders slumped beneath the weight of what he believes is failure.

The story released to the press is that Jace fell down a flight of stairs but is recovering smoothly. He can barely sing; his mic is turned up, and during Jace’s verses Cregan or Luke layer their voice with his. He wobbles and flubs his way through Night 1 in East Rutherford. You spend the show staring up at the stage without seeing it. Baela and Rhaena are with you, but you aren’t really with them; you feel like if they reached out to touch you, their hands would find only translucent emptiness like a mirage. Shelby is flocked by fellow influencers that she’s invited in from New York City. Aemond is somewhere, somewhere: lurking in shadows, brooding, avoiding, musing, suffering, jotting down starlight-colored judgments in his black-paged notebook.

Per tradition, the band and their entourage coalesce in Jace’s suite after the show. Jace himself, the gracious host, promptly collapses on a couch and lies there senseless as the party spins around him like the planets of a solar system. Baela is perched dutifully beside him, holding ice packs to his jaw, wiping away drool the color of one of Aemond’s Brambles. A tattoo artist is inking a goldfinch, New Jersey’s state bird, to the top of Jace’s right foot. Criston is across the room and speaking—rather tensely, it seems—with cigar-smoking label executives. Shelby is snapping photos with her friends; they take turns posing each other out on the balcony, adjusting elbows and wrists and knees, swiping away stray flecks of mascara, rearranging hair, recommending plastic surgeons. Aegon is typing WhatsApp messages—mostly emojis, from what you can see—to Miley Cyrus. At Luke’s prompting, Aemond begins sharing his comments to the presently sentient members of Comet. He puffs on one of his Benson & Hedges cigarettes as he reads aloud. He kindly skips over any criticisms of Jace’s performance.

You can’t stand hearing Aemond’s voice; not because there’s anything wrong with it, but because there isn’t, because you can’t stop remembering what he said to you in that florescent-white bathroom at Club Camelot in Tokyo, because he uses his words on so many people who aren’t you, because sooner or later your time with Comet will be over and you’ll only ever hear him again through Spotify songs and YouTube clips from before the accident, because he will one day be a ghost who haunts you, rattling doorknobs and chilling pockets of air but never speaking. You escape to ask the bartender: “Can I get a Coke?”

“A rum and Coke?”

“No.”

“Like…white powder coke?”

“No, a Coca-Cola. With nothing else in it.”

“Okay, whatever,” the bartender says, perplexed. He fills a glass with ice and dark liquid that pops and fizzes with carbonation, then slides it across the counter to you. You meander out into the hallway where you can be alone, where you don’t have to pretend to be okay.

The carpet is gold but frayed, the walls adorned with faux marble columns and scuffs from recklessly handled suitcases. Even the hotels are worse in New Jersey. You sip your soda—nonalcoholic, huh? you think, then push it aside—and roam past suite doors and vending machines until you reach the cove of elevators. There’s a full-length mirror hanging on the wall there, gilded, gaudy. You frown at yourself, a reflection that suddenly looks a bit like a stranger. You’re wearing a short seafoam green dress, gold earrings and sandals, and an eerily vacuous expression. You turn and move your hair aside so you can peer over your shoulder at what’s been indelibly penned there since Rome: the tiny comet, the lyrics that encircle it.

I wanted to remember this band forever. To remember Aemond. You can feel your stomach drop as it grows heavy with dread. The pulsing music from Jace’s suite has followed you down the hall, Sugar by Robin Schulz and Francesco Yates. I think I might just have more than a tattoo to remember him by after all.

One of the elevators dings and opens. A man lumbers out, towering, broad, monstrous. You gape up at him: brown threadbare coat, heavy boots, unruly dark beard, grey eyes like a bleak winter sky. There is a miasma that colors the air around him with smoke and alcohol, sweat and earth.

“Hello there,” he says, politely enough. His voice is such a baritone rumble that it’s difficult to understand. He has a British accent, but not like Aegon’s, not like Aemond’s. He reminds you of someone you can’t quite place. “I’m looking for a certain young gentleman. I’m hoping you can point me in his direction.”

“Sure,” you reply, trying to disguise your shock so you don’t offend him. He could be someone important. He could be an eccentric producer or a consultant. Or a drug dealer. “Who…uh…who was it you were hoping to speak with…?”

He smiles: sharp canine teeth yellowed by nicotine, glinting eyes like silver coins. “Cregan Stark.”

“Okay,” you stammer. Drug dealer?? “Okay, okay, I’ll…uh…I’ll go get him.”

You hurry down the hall and into Jace’s crowded, smokey suite, clinking glasses and flirtatious titters in dim lighting like late twilight. You return your empty drink to the bartender, then tap Cregan on the shoulder and inform him that someone out in the hallway is asking for him. He doesn’t seem surprised to hear this. Drug dealer, you think confidently. Cregan gulps his vodka shot and follows you out of the suite. He steps through the doorway. He turns towards the stranger. And then he stops dead. His eyes go wide. The blood drains from his face. And Cregan—immovable, inscrutable, unflappable Cregan—shrinks until he is a child again.

Immediately, you know you’ve made a mistake. You reach for him. “Cregan, wait—”

“My son,” the monstrous man sighs. And of course now you’ve realized exactly who the mirrorlike grey of his eyes reminded you of. “My son.”

You can’t stop him. How could you stop him? Faster than you can think, he has crossed the space between you and entombed Cregan in a stifling embrace. Cregan stands paralyzed, his eyes shifting, searching for escape. Tentatively, appeasingly, his hands slowly rise to hug the man in return.

“Criston?!” you shout. But within the suite, he cannot hear you over the music and the berating of smoke-veiled, bejeweled label executives.

“Did you forget about me, huh?” the man asks Cregan gruffly. And as he steps back he grips one of Cregan’s shoulders: not like Criston would, not like a father, like a vice, like a bear trap. He shakes Cregan once, not too hard. “You can fly your private jet all over the world but you can’t call your own father back? Huh? Huh?!” He shakes Cregan again, harder.

“Criston!” you scream. “Security! Somebody!”

Nobody can hear me. Nobody is coming.

You sprint into Jace’s suite, seize Criston by one hand, drag him out into the hall. On the blurry periphery of your vision, you can see Aemond getting up off the couch to follow you. The second he spots the monstrous man, Criston is roaring. “No no no, get away from him!” He pushes between Cregan and the giant, terrifying, wrathful. The man dwarfs him. Criston doesn’t seem to know it. “You can’t be here. We’ve been over this, you’re not allowed to be here—”

The man tries to reach around him to clutch at Cregan’s shirt. Aemond pulls you away from the scuffle. Criston hits the man in the solar plexus; he is momentarily stunned, wheezing. By the time he straightens up, Criston—louder than you, bellowing and fierce—has summoned security. They are swarming the man and escorting him back down the hallway towards the elevators. Aemond goes to Cregan. Criston looks at you. You’re quivering, penitent.

“I had no idea…he asked for Cregan…I would never have…I thought maybe he was a friend of the band…”

“He’s on our no fly list,” Criston says. His voice is tired yet patient. “But you wouldn’t know that.”

You try to apologize to Cregan, but he isn’t listening to you. He’s listening to Aemond. Aemond is speaking to him, low and calm, too quietly for you to hear. “I’m okay,” Cregan says unsteadily. “I’m fine.”

“It’s alright if you’re not,” Aemond tells him.

And you know that right now you are unnecessary, intrusive. Criston goes downstairs to figure out how Comet’s security guards in the lobby didn’t catch this and—presumably—to ensure that the invader is properly dealt with. Aemond slings an arm across Cregan’s shoulders and leads him back to the party where he is cared for, welcome, valued, safe. You hide in your own suite and try not to think about the dates on the calendar—missing blood, summer days ticking down towards zero—as you steep in a hot bath and attempt to scrub everything you’ve done wrong, today, yesterday, ever, off your skin. Then you change into an oversized Backstreet Boys t-shirt and your favorite Cookie Monster pajama pants.

You try to sleep but of course you can’t, surrounded by a silence that only gets louder. When you hear the swipe of a keycard and the creaking of your door, you don’t know who to expect: Cregan, Criston, Rhaena, Luke, Baela, Jace, Daeron, Shelby, Aemond, ghosts. The clopping of his Crocs gives him away, neon pink to match his tank top. “I’m really not in the mood for anything resembling sex.”

Aegon replies as he kicks off his Crocs: “Did I ask, succubus?” He crawls into the bed, throws an arm casually across your waist, rests his head on your belly as your fingers thread through his chaotic blond hair, fond and tender. He burrows into you, into your softness and your warmth and your truth and your mysteries. Sometimes you feel like you’ll give until he falls into you like a trapdoor, the bones of his hands tangling around your spine, his blood vessels spilling into all of your rage-scarlet cavities, hollows of the flesh, hollows of the soul. “You’re sad.”

You stare up at the ceiling. “I have a lot on my mind.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know what. That’s the strange thing. Usually I can tell.”

“You’ve been gone.”

He looks up at you, confused. “I’ve been right here.”

“You know what I meant.”

Aegon doesn’t argue with you, doesn’t try to defend himself, doesn’t make promises both of you know he could never keep. He only lays his head down on your belly again and pulls himself closer to you, closer, closer, melting into your melancholy, dissolving into dreams.

~~~~~~~~~~

“I was eleven when he broke my arm. Thirteen when he cracked my skull for the first time. Then I got big enough to hurt him back.” Cregan looks out over the waves: blue currents, white froth, sunbeams like glinting blades. As Criston promised, Comet is spending an afternoon in Seaside Heights. You and Cregan are sitting on the sand together twenty yards from the others. “I grew up in a two-bedroom cabin with no electricity or running water. We had a metal wash tub outside, ate deer and squirrels and rabbits, never had clothes that fit, never saw a doctor except when what was wrong might kill us. We had a woodstove and chopped down trees to burn in the winter. I had eight siblings, six of whom are still alive. Barnett overdosed. Courtland drove his friend’s Nissan into a brick wall. I’m not sure it was accidental.”

Your words are soft like a whisper, like gentle hands. “Cregan, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not…” His voice breaks. He stops for a while, composes himself, begins again. “It’s not something I talk about. Not because I’m trying to forget it. I can’t forget it, I’ll never be able to, I understand that, believe me. There’s just nothing to be gained from talking about it. I never feel better afterwards. I always feel worse.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to.”

“I know that. Don’t you think I know that?”

You wait, watching him. There’s something he needs to say. Down the beach a ways, Baela is doing yoga, her bare feet sure and agile in shifting sand. Rhaena, Luke, and Aemond are flying kites in the breeze: black dragons, green dragons. Shelby is, predictably, filming them from where she stands on Aemond’s good side. Aegon and Daeron are swimming so far out that you’re beginning to worry about sharks. Criston is parked under an umbrella with an unconscious Jace, reading Memoirs Of A Geisha and eating a sandwich full of something called pork roll.

“After Comet happened, I got all of them out,” Cregan continues. “My mum, my siblings. Good houses in safe neighborhoods. Security in case Dad makes an appearance. He does, every once in a while. He’s locked up, he’s free, he’s locked up again. He has nothing else to do but haunt us. I’ve been waiting for him to die since I was old enough to understand what a graveyard is.” Cregan looks at you. “Does that make me a bad person?”

“No,” you answer immediately.

“The thing is…” He holds out one large hand, palm down, like he’s resting it on a table. Then he shakes it. “Nothing ever feels stable. Nothing ever feels safe. No matter how much money I see stack up in accounts, I lie awake at night wondering what I’ll do if it disappears. So many people rely on me. I can’t stop worrying I’ll end up back in that cabin somehow. I can still hear drops of rainwater seeping in through the gaps in the roof. I can still smell burning wood.”

“The fact that you feel this way, given your history, is completely logical…even if the fear itself is not. Does that make sense?”

“Yeah,” Cregan says. “Yeah, I think so.”

“Do you think it would help if we sat down and looked at the numbers and did some math? Because I suspect that even with a hundred dependents, you’d easily be able to float them for the rest of your lifetime just using the money you already have. And there will be royalties from Comet’s songs forever. Maybe if we can show you exactly how improbable your worst case scenario is, that fear will begin to fade a bit. Not go away, not completely, maybe not ever…but I think you’ll be able to quiet it down.”

“I’ll give it a try. If you recommend it.” Cregan lights a cigarette and takes a drag. Criston glances over and then pretends he didn’t notice. “I have a daughter,” Cregan says; and you can’t stop the shock from hitting your face like a fist. He smiles faintly, wistfully. “I know. I’ve worked very hard to make sure she is kept away from…” He gestures broadly. “All of this.” Fame. Debauchery. Tabloids. Reddit threads. “I was way too young. And her mother and I…we were never really together. It was contentious for a while, but we’ve sorted through things. I support them financially, obviously. And when I’m not on tour or in the studio, I disappear up to Lancaster for a few weeks at a time and no one is the wiser.”

You study him as wind tears in off the Atlantic Ocean, as seagulls swoop and screech overhead. “I’m sure she’ll appreciate how you’ve protected her once she can understand.”

“I don’t know how to be a father. Not a good one. But I try. I don’t just show up for movie nights and birthdays. I take her shopping for school supplies. I put her back to bed when she has nightmares. I take her to the dentist, to the park, to the library. She really likes pigs, so I adopted a few from a farm animal rescue and we learned how to raise them together.”

“You caring about being a good parent puts you ahead of a lot of people already,” you say. “Nobody in Comet knows?”

“Just Aemond. Once, years ago, her mother needed something and I was out of the country. I had to let somebody in on the secret, somebody I could trust. I chose Aemond. I chose right.” Now Cregan is amused. “He’s the one who suggested the pigs.”

“Of course he did,” you say; and you can’t help but smile. “How old is she?”

“Six and a half. Do you want to see a picture her?”

“Absolutely. If it’s alright with you.”

Cregan pulls his iPhone from his pocket, swipes around for a while, and then turns the screen so you can see. She looks like him, a lot like him, but with round cheeks and long dark lashes. And Cregan is beaming as he says: “Her name is Iris.”

“So you didn’t have to do the Maury paternity test thing.”

He laughs, shaking his head. “No. I knew from the second I saw her she was mine.”

“She’s lucky to have you.”

Cregan shrugs, pensive, evasive. “I don’t know about that.”

“I do.” And he believes that you mean it; you can see it on his face. Aemond is watching you and Cregan, you notice now. He glances over, pretends he didn’t, glances again. You gesture to the crashing waves and say to Cregan: “If Aegon gets attacked by a shark, will you jump in and punch it or something please?”

Cregan chuckles. “Yeah. That’s my main job here, I think. Stopping people from dying.” And then, seriously: “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me. I haven’t done anything that warrants it.”

“No. Really.” Cregan reaches out, takes your uninjured hand, squeezes it briefly before releasing you. “Thank you, Stargirl.” Then he stands and walks to the water’s edge, letting the surf rush up over his ankles, for just a moment feeling nothing on his shoulders but the sunlight.

Aemond gives Shelby his kite and, as she glares bitterly, makes his way over to you. He takes off his sunglasses so he can see you better and hooks them on the waistband of his swim trunks: black, of course, his usual color. You’re actually wearing black today too, a flowing coverup over a pink swimsuit. You feel very much like hiding. When Aemond speaks, there is perhaps a hint of envy, green like leaves of poison, gleaming like snakeskin. “What were you and Cregan talking about?”

“Fatherhood.” And then you realize how it might sound.

There is a split second where Aemond looks startled; then he remembers Iris. “Right. Not so easy for people like us to navigate.”

People like us. Celebrities, boy band members, haunted men. You scramble for a nonchalant way to feel out the subject with him. “How does Louis Tomlinson handle it?”

“He’s a saint,” Aemond says. And you think: Patron saint of baby daddies? “Freddie was very, very unplanned. The mother was a nobody, a rebound. And a lot of people assumed she did it on purpose to try to keep Louis. Or to get eighteen years of a luxury lifestyle out of him. Or to just get fame in general. Personally, I believe it was all of the above.”

“Right,” you say, sweating heavily beneath your coverup.

“But none of that is the kid’s fault, and Louis is a good enough guy to realize it. So he plays nice with Freddie’s mother and they don’t go to war through tabloids anymore.”

“So, uh…” How can I put this? “You’re good with kids too. Cregan told me you had the pig idea.”

And the look that crosses Aemond’s face, the look: caustic, incredulous, night-dark, self-loathing. “Are you insane? Have you met me? I terrify kids. And I should, but not just because of the eye and the scar. What the hell do I know about being a decent father? What do I know about being a decent anything? I’d have no idea where to start. I’d fuck it up even if I tried desperately not to. I’d end up with kids like Aegon: addicts who hate themselves, people who are irrevocably lost.”

You say meekly: “I think Criston is something like a father to you. He could be a role model.”

“I’m not half as good a man as Criston is.”

Change the topic, change the topic, before Aemond gets suspicious. And there’s something else you’ve been meaning to ask him. “Aemond…after you almost murdered Jace…when we didn’t know if or how he was going to be able to perform until he healed…did anyone ask you to come back to Comet and fill in for him?”

“No,” Aemond says. And he’s thunderstruck by the thought, appalled, petrified.

“You don’t think that it might have been a good idea? That it might make sense?”

“No,” he says again instantly.

“But…in Tokyo…when Daeron made that speech at the last show…I think the crowd’s reaction was pretty powerful, don’t you? People still care about you. They love and respect you. And I think…maybe…it might help you with what you’ve experienced. To get back on stage—even just one last time—and prove to yourself that you still have what it takes. To know that if you do leave Comet, it’s your choice, not anyone else’s.”

“They love who I was,” Aemond says. “Not who I am now. And that’s easy to do. They don’t have to look at me.”

“Goddammit, there’s nothing wrong with how you look, Aemond!” you burst out. “You look fantastic. I never get tired of looking at you. I want to look at you all the fucking time. I’d hang life-sized portraits of you on every wall in my apartment in Kansas City. That’s how much I enjoy looking at you.”

He thinks you’re joking, he thinks you’re trying to make him feel better. You can’t stop him from thinking these things. And yet still, as he turns away, he is smiling: just a whisper of a curl at the corner of his lips, secretive, fragile.

As Comet is leaving the beach, you stop at a souvenir shop on the boardwalk to buy your keepsake for this tour destination. You settle on a pink frisbee that has I love the Jersey Shore! embossed on it in large, abrasive letters. You think your parents’ Australian cattle dogs will enjoy fetching it when you get home. Home feels so much closer—both literally and figuratively—than it did just a few weeks ago.

Criston is browsing through the t-shirts. “Hey, what size is your mom, Aegon? Medium?”

“How the hell would I know? Probably.” He holds up a pair of red, white, and blue bikini bottoms that say Firecracker across the ass. “You think my dad would mind if you sent her these?”

Criston is blushing. “Aegon, stop.”

“You could get her a bikini top too. Oh look, that one over there is red, it matches. And it says MILF across the tits. So that’s pertinent.”

“Stop!” Criston cries, distressed, and flees the store.

Halfway through the hour-long drive back to the hotel, Aegon insists that Criston stop the Escalades so he can get a hoagie from a Wawa. Aegon has never had a hoagie before. He says he cannot truly experience America without one.

At the ordering counter, Jace—slightly less bruised and swollen today, and thus in better spirits—taunts Aegon: “Are you sure you need all that bread? You’re going to be wearing a muumuu on stage by the time we get to the Midwest.”

“You know, just because you said that, now I’m going to get two hoagies…”

On the television mounted inside the Wawa, CNN is reporting on a group of tornadoes that just struck Wichita. And it occurs to you that tornadoes don’t have trajectories to calculate like hurricanes or airplanes or comets; they are climatological sharks. They strike quickly, indiscriminately, and then they’re gone again. They aren’t named. They aren’t enshrined. They don’t even have a belly to cut open and retrieve pieces of your loved ones from. If they take someone, they’re just gone.

While the rest of the band is in line to order their food, and Aemond is scrutinizing the dried fruit and nuts selection, you sneak through the other aisles.

It’s time. I have to find out eventually. I have to know.

You pluck a pregnancy test—cute, pink, nausea-inducing—off a rack, purchase it with truly impressive speed at the checkout counter, and race to the bathroom. It’s surprisingly difficult to piss on a tiny stick of doom, especially when your primary hand is in a splint and only partially useable. Eventually, you manage. You put the cap back on the pregnancy test, set it on top of the toilet paper dispenser, and stare at the metal door of the stall. The Wawa speakers are playing The Fray’s Over My Head.

It won’t be positive. It can’t be positive.

You think of pregnancy test commercials you’ve seen: happy couples rejoicing, happy single women getting negatives. How are you supposed to react to bad news? Nobody ever tells you. Do you scream, sob, beg for forgiveness, schedule an appointment at Planned Parenthood? Do you kick the bathroom stall door down in mindless feminine fury? Do you throw yourself off a balcony?

There’s no way it will be positive. It was one time. Just one goddamn time.

And who knows if that will ever happen again with Aemond. This does not improve your mood.

You pick up the pregnancy test. It is unequivocally positive.

You shove it into the small rectangular trashcan for pads and tampons, things you won’t be needing in the immediate future. You get dressed, leave the stall, go to the sink and wash your hands. Then you grip the cool, slick, white porcelain and gaze at yourself in the mirror under nowhere-to-hide florescent lights. What do you feel? Everything, nothing, things you can’t name yet. You’re a raw nerve, you’re completely numb.

The bathroom door swings open. Shelby enters. She squares up with great purpose. Your eyes roll to her, slowly, with no tolerance left, not a drop of it. “Stay away from Aemond,” she demands.

“Make me.”

She is in disbelief. “I’m sorry, what?”

You turn all the way towards her. “Fucking make me, Shelby.”

“I knew you wanted him,” she says, she seethes. “I saw you in those paparazzi photos from Reykjavik and I knew you were already twisting your claws into him.”

You hold up your hands to show her; your thoughts are fuzzy, dazed, without inhibition. “I have no claws whatsoever. If I did, you’d know about it. Believe me. You’d be able to look down and watch your heart beating through the gashes.”

“You don’t belong here. Some Midwestern farm girl running around in flip flops and Cookie Monster pajama pants? You’re trash. You’re a user. You’re a nobody. And if you’re trying to steal a taken man, then you’re a whore too.”

“I’ve been called worse things by better people.”

“I can make them hate you,” Shelby says indignantly. “Comet. The world.”

“Good luck with that, Malibu Barbie. Nobody even knows I exist.”

“Stay away from Aemond,” she says again, trembling with her futile bleach-blond rage. “We’re meant to be together. We have so much history.”

“And yet no future.” You smile sweetly, breeze past her, step on one of her perfectly pedicured feet with a thoroughly unpretentious flip flop. By the time you return to them, the band is almost ready to leave Wawa.

You’re not hungry, but Aegon coaxes you into taking a few bites from his hoagie. You’re not able to focus on what people are saying, but you hear Aemond mention that he wishes Comet had time to visit a planetarium in some nearby town called Toms River. You think about what it would be like to lie side by side with him under the stars, under the sky where comets appear again after vanishing for centuries. You wonder if there’s anyplace where you and Aemond could ever be truthful with each other.

At night you can’t sleep. There is no shortage of reasons why. You wander from your bed to the gold-carpet hallway to the vending machines, where you stare brainlessly at the options. Am I supposed to not be drinking caffein? Did I get any Vitamin D today? How much sugar is too much? You buy a bottle of apple juice—surely a safe bet—and head back to your suite.

As you walk by Aemond and Shelby’s door, your steps slow. Some nights you can hear them in there arguing: Shelby reiterating all the reasons why they’re perfect for each other, clearly a rebuttal to an accusation you weren’t privy to. Some nights you hear muffled casual conversation or episodes of Cosmos. Some nights you hear nothing at all. Some nights your imagination colors in the gaps before you can stop it: his hands on her, his mouth on her, things you know you have no right to dread and yet you do. But tonight, Shelby is momentarily removed from the scene. You can hear the distant pattering of the shower, and then Aemond alone in the living room gathering up plates and glasses. He’s singing something very quietly, so quietly it takes you a while to recognize it. It’s not even a Comet Donati song. It’s Through The Dark.

You sit down in the empty hallway, your back to his door. And you lean your head against it as you listen to Aemond singing softly to himself, doubt sinking into you the same way that trapped blood fills a bruise: Maybe it wasn’t as good for him as it was for me. Maybe he doesn’t talk to me because he doesn’t want to. Maybe I don’t belong here anymore. Maybe I’ve invented a history that we don’t really share. Maybe he didn’t mean it when he said he loves me.

“What am I going to do?” you whisper, scalding tears brimming in your eyes, shivering hands settling on your belly. In a few months, you’ll be showing. “What the hell am I going to do?”

#aemond one eye #aemond targaryen #aemond x you #aemond targaryen x reader #aemond x y/n #aemond x reader #Aegon Targaryen #aegon targaryen ii #Aegon II Targaryen #Aegon Targaryen II x reader #aegon ii #aegon targaryen x reader #aegon x reader #Aegon x you #aegon x y/n

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gummydummy19 · 1 year

Text

month five (September): early bird

Summary: Sy comes home early from tour

Warnings: none really, some tension, Sy comes back home :))

A/N: Sorry this took a while, it's exam season (again, yes I know, life as a European college student is rough) I also had some friends visit me from abroad, and well time has just been flying the fuck by so...apologies BUT wait no more, here it is :))

(this is part five to my series: A year in apartment 6B)

'H-Hello?' you picked up the call, trying to calm down your racing heart.

'Hi there,'

'Sy?!'

'That's the one.'

For some reason, it felt like you'd been caught. You swallowed thickly, prepared to give some kind of explanation as to why on earth you were wearing his boxers. And why did they have a wet patch, growing undeniably larger around your crotch?

'You there, Sugar?'

His deep voice shook you out of your initial panic and shot straight to your core. You realized then how much you had missed his voice, and as you realized that, you realized something else.

'I thought you weren't allowed to call from base?'

'Well, I'm not on base.'

'Then where the hell are you?'

You couldn't help the worry lacing around your words.

'Alright, I'm gonna need you to calm down...'

Those words did not help you calm down. In fact, they did the exact opposite.

'There was a...an incident...and,'

'Logan Henry Syverson, where THE HELL are you?!'

'Reed Army Medical Centre, DC.'

Your stomach dropped.

'M-medical Centre? Wait, did you say DC? You're in America? You're in a Medical Centre in America?'

You didn't even know what you were saying at this point. The words just flowed out of your mouth as they settled into your brain.

Medical Centre. In DC. He got sent back. He got hurt.

'I just wanted to let you know I'll be coming home early.' he said casually

'What...what happened?'

'Like I said, there was an incident at the base.'

You knew he wasn't gonna give you more than that. Not that you needed to hear the details. Besides, you don't think you could handle hearing it and you're sure Sy didn't need a replay of the events either.

'How bad are you hurt?' you asked, that's all you needed to know.

'I've been better but I've been worse.' he stated, 'Don't worry your pretty little head about me, I'm fine.'

'So how long do you have to stay there? And how long have you been there? Have you called your parents yet? Do you need me to call them? Can you have visitors, because I can-'

'Woah there, sugar. Don't forget to breathe.' He interrupted your ramble

'Sorry...' you apologized a little embarrassed, earning a small chuckle from him.

'I got out of surgery a couple hours ago. I need to stay here for a couple weeks. I called my parents before I went into surgery and my mother left a little while ago with Aika. She's gonna take care of her until I get discharged here and then she's gonna drop us off home. Oh and please don't you dare come all the way out here to DC, okay? It's not worth it I'm telling ya, sugar, I'll be home before you know it.'

Surgery???

'You brought, Aika?' you asked, deciding once again not to push it

'My leg was hanging on by a thread but I refused to get on the plane without her.' he joked

His leg. That's what he had surgery on.

You stayed quiet as you looked around the apartment, already thinking of ways to make moving around the place easier for Sy. Maybe you could move the couch a bit? Would he have crutches? or a wheelchair?

'I can hear you thinking through the phone, princess'

'hmm' you tried to play it off casually

'I'll be back soon, okay? Is the place growing mold yet?'

'Yeah, a little but don't worry it matches the burn marks in the kitchen.'

For the first time, you heard him let out a laugh. An actual, honest laugh.

You immediately wanted to hear it again.

'Alright, trouble. I gotta go, doc just walked in for a checkup. I'll see ya soon, okay?'

'Okay, call me if you need anything...'

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

As the days flew by, the nervous feeling in your stomach only grew. September had rolled around and that meant it was your fifth month of living in the apartment. The weather was getting gloomier and the days were getting shorter, it felt like time was flying faster and faster each day.

It had been a week since Sy's call. Part of you was relieved to know he was safe now, but another part was concerned.

Even though you got a text from him every day, you were none the wiser about his situation. He kept his messages short and sweet, mostly asking about you and always saying he's fine or 'doc said I'm making progress.'

Almost two weeks after his first call he called you again to tell you he needed follow-up surgery. You tried your hardest not to worry too much. Some days you didn't know what scared you more, Sy's situation or how much you cared about Sy's situation.

'Are you okay?!' You immediately spoke when you picked up the phone. It had been a week since Sy's follow-up surgery and you hadn't heard a single thing from him

'Hello to you too.' he spoke

'Would it have killed you to text me after surgery? I've spent an entire week planning your fucking funeral you fucking morron!'

'I'm sorry sugar, I'm fine, I promise. Ma stopped by a couple times and I slept through half the week' He assured you, 'I got some good news...I'm coming home tomorrow'

'Tomorrow?!' You thought back about the mess you dared to call your apartment.

'Yeah...is that okay?'

'O-ofcourse! Yeah, totally!'

'I gotta keep my cast on for another five weeks but aside from that I'm good to go.'

While Sy continued with his small talk you silently grabbed your calendar from your desk, marking October 23rd, the date exactly 5 weeks from now...

After work, you raced home to clean everything for the 4th time in 6 days and rearranged the furniture just to put it back where it started (twice). Christ, it felt like you were preparing for the damn pope to visit.

You even stopped by the store to buy a toy for Aika, praying to god she'd like it.

By the end of the night, you were utterly exhausted, pouring yourself a generous glass of wine to ease the nerves as you crawled on the couch, barely staying awake long enough to figure out what movie you were watching...

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

'Sugar?'

'...hmm?' your brain slowly but surely stirred awake.

You barely got your eyes open before having to screw them shut again as a big wet nose nudged yours, warm tongue licking your cheek happily.

'Aika!' Sy growled out, trying to pull her back a little.

Sy. SY?!

Your eyes shot open again. There he was. Peering down at you. Maybe it was the sleepiness or the way he was standing there looking down at you, but fuck, he looked good. You'd think a near-death experience would take it out of you, huh?

'You're home!' you sat up quickly, the fluffy blanket dropping onto your lap.

'Morning, trouble. Why are you sleeping on the couch?' He asked 'Please don't tell me you have rats in your room or something...'

Your tired brain was starting to take in your surroundings. You felt like the human version of a Windows 8.

'I-I'm...uh...No, I was cleaning up last night and I guess I just...dozed off...' you explained 'I'm so sorry, Sy. I didn't know you'd be home this early, what time is it?'

Sy smiled down at you as Aika slowly sniffed your leg. 'Don't worry, Sugar. You didn't have to go through all that trouble, the place is damn spotless.' he complimented. 'And it's 8AM. I wasn't planning on coming this early but my Ma liked to go to the farmers market on Saturday morning, so I told her she could drop me off before she went.'

'Oh crap, your mom! She didn't see me drooling all over the couch did she?!'

And there it was again, his dashing smile.

'No don't worry, she dropped me off downstairs.'

You nodded at his words and a comfortable silence filled the room. Your eyes roamed his body again. He was wearing a shirt and some loose sweats. The pants covered his legs, but you could still tell there was a cast going from his left knee to his foot and you finally noticed he was holding a crutch.

Suddenly feeling incredibly rude and a tad embarrassed, you stood up.

'Oh shit, sorry! Sit down, please! Do you need anything?'

Sy had a stern look on his face, you thought you may have offended him in some way before you realized his gaze was aimed directly at your breasts, which you just noticed were only covered by a very thin tank top, leaving little to the imagination.

You felt your face getting red before Aika nudged her head against your hand, desperately begging for some much-needed attention.

'Hi there,' you smiled at her, petting her head 'So you're the famous Aika, huh?' you said, trying to ignore Sy's stare and the way it made you blush like a schoolgirl.

'Oh, I almost forgot! I got her something! Wait there...' you said as you quickly ran off to grab the toy you bought her from your room.

When you got back, Aika immediately took the toy from you, trotting around the couch with pride.

'Thanks, you really shouldn't have,' Sy said with a warm smile

You felt a sudden urge to wrap your arms around him. You wanted to hold him, tell him he was safe now, and say you'd care for him.

Part of you had hoped your slightly inappropriate thoughts about Sy would come to an end once he got home. But seeing him stand right in front of you had your mind clouding with snippets from your dreams all over again.

'I wanted to make her feel at home,' you said, 'Like you did when I first moved in.'

You kept your voice quiet, afraid he'd hear the tremble in it if you spoke any louder.

'Well, I hardly did anything special.' Sy stated, moving a bit closer to you 'And I definitely didn't buy you any toys...'

You snorted at that.

'Well, maybe that's something you should consider then.' you teased, taking couple steps back, 'I'm gonna go take a shower, I'll make some breakfast when I'm out, sound good?'

'Sounds perfect, Sugar.'

And just like that, Sy was home.

Taglist;

@metalbuckaroo

@princessayveke

@montsepliego

@scxrletrecsmarvel

@hopelesslyrogers

@eclecticpatrolroadlawyer

@tfandtws

@vicmc624

@ahahafudge

@enchantedbarnes

@wickedravyn

@pono-pura-vida

@amayaraestyles

@matchat3a

@fictional-hooman

@sebastianexplicit

@peaches1958

@avengersfan25

@jamneuromain

@tryingtoliveonmywishes

@mrsevans90

@daybreak96

@tiredqueen73

@fallingforunrealisticromance

@identity2212

@randomweirdoss

@ragamuffin285

@juliaorpll78

@geralts-yenn

@imjusthereforliam

@bangtanstoeart

@squeezyvalkyrie

A/N: OOoohhh I am so so so so soooo happy Sy is home I can't wait to show you guys what fun stuff I have planned for these roomies hehe. I hope you enjoyed, as always feedback is welcome and like/shares/comments are highly appreciated <3

#gummydummy19 #fanfiction #fluff #smut #a year in apartment 6b #smutty thoughts #captain syverson #henry cavill

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furbsindecay · 2 years

Text

~ furby beret - crochet pattern ~

I´m new to actually writing patterns up for others to use, so please tell me if there is anything that´s hard to understand or if you find any mistakes. Also, if you do make your furb a beret, please send me a pic or tag me in your post, I would love to see what you make!

ꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀ

Gauge: 10st X 5 rows -- 6,5 cm X 2,5 cm (I used a 3, 5 mm hook)

Finished size (fits a 1998 furby): total diameter - 11cm, head hole diameter - 9 cm

Abbreviations

sc - single crocet ss - slip stitch inc - increase (two into one) dc - invisible decrease (go through only the fron loops of two stitches, sc as one) [] - nuber of stitches in the row () - repeat sequence

ꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀ

Main hat - stripes not included, I changed color every 3 rows

R1 - chain 50, ss into first stitch [50]

R2, R3 - sc all aroud [50]

R4 - 10sc, (chain 9, ss into 10th stitch from hook), 14sc, (chain 9, ss into 10th stitch from hook), sc rest of the round [50]

R5 - sc all around [50]

R6 - (9sc, inc)x5 [55]

R7 - sc all around [55]

R8 - (7sc, dc)x6, sc [49]

R9 - (3sc, dc, 3sc)x6, sc [43]

R10 - (5sc, dc)x6, sc [37]

R11 - (2sc, dc, 2sc)x6, sc [31]

R12 - (3sc, dc)x6, sc [25]

R13 - (2sc, dc)x6, sc [19]

R14 - (sc, dc)x6, sc [13]

R15 - 6dc, sc [7], bind off and leave a longer tail

Take your taill and your needle and "pick up" the remaining 7 stitches (just whip stitch around), pull on the tail to close the hole

Weave in your tails

Pompom - please look up a separate pompom-making tutorial, i suck at making pompoms. After you make one, just use the same thread you used to tie the pompom together to sew in to the beret on top

The trim - entirely optional, I used a crochet thread and a 2mm hook

(ss, 5sc, ss) into each [50]

ꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀꕀ

Decorating ideas

different trims! just look up "crochet trims" and find one you like more stripes! crazier stripes! center-out stripes! replace the pompom with someting else - a flower, or a bow maybe? crochet emroidery add some lace or a ribbon

#my furbs #furby resources #furby 1998 #furby #furblr #furby fashion #furby community #crochet pattern #allfurby #safefurby

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cha-melodius · 1 year

Note

Hi friend! Congrats again on 100 works! Thank you for offering to write more for us! ❤️I'd like to request 1. firstprince and 2. Kensington as an AU, but only because you dared us to! Alternatively, if someone already requested that and you don't want to duplicate, I'd be interested in a hockey AU set inside the rink! Thank you again, I am so excited to see what you come up with and to read more of your words!

(Thank you so much for taking my bait lol, I've wanted to write this canon-divergence AU where they hook up in Kensington during the damage control trip for a while now. I hope you enjoy!)

Falling Down the Stairs of Your Smile

(firstprince, 4.1k, M; read it below or on AO3) read all the fandom fest fics

It wasn’t supposed to go like this. They were supposed to finish up at the hospital, and then Henry would go back to whatever the fuck he does while Alex went to the airstrip. He’d fly back to DC, so that maybe he’d be able to get some schoolwork done before Monday, and try to forget that this ridiculous weekend ever happened—barring the fact that he and Henry were still obligated to keep up the fake friendship for a few more months, that is.

Instead, Cash comes up to him as they stand outside of Kensington with a slightly grim look on his face and says, “Change of plans.”

“Huh?”

“They discovered an issue with the plane during the flight prep. It needs some part that they’re not going to be able to get until tomorrow morning. We’ll leave then.”

“What do you mean, they can’t get it? Why not?” Alex demands. Surely in a country with fucking royalty, nothing is out of grasp for said royals and their guests.

Cash shrugs. “Didn’t ask. The palace confirmed you can stay another night.”

Alex groans probably a little too dramatically. “What about my classes?”

“I am, in fact, very aware of your class schedule,” Cash says dryly. “You’ll be back in time.”

“I don’t have another change of clothes.”

“Pretty sure Kensington has laundry.”

“I’m really not getting out of this, am I?”

“Nope.”

Alex sighs and looks over to where Henry is standing with Shaan by the front gates. There’s a look of trepidation on his face, no doubt because he’s just been told that he’ll have to deal with Alex for another night. Of course, that’s not a given. Henry will probably disappear into his apartments and ignore him, which suits Alex fine. They may have reached a kind of détente today, but they’re not friends.

“Sorry to hear about your plane,” Henry says as they get back into the car that will drive them further into the palace.

Alex shrugs. “It’s fine. I guess I’ll have to survive the hardship of ten thousand thread count sheets another night.”

Henry huffs a little laugh and grins. It’s kind of amazing how different he looks when he smiles for real. “I know you’ve probably had your fill of me today, so feel free to say no, but…” He hesitates a moment, as if waiting for Alex to shut him down before he even makes his proposal. “I was thinking of ordering in curry for dinner tonight. There’s a place not far away that’s quite good. Maybe watch a film?”

It’s pretty much the last thing Alex expected him to say. He wonders if this is another olive branch, an acknowledgement that it’ll be easier to pretend they’re friends if they’re actually… kinda friends. Surprisingly, Alex doesn’t hate the idea.

“What movie?” he counters.

“Well, I would suggest one of the Star Wars films, but I’m not sure we could agree on one.”

“If we’re not going to watch the best one, aka Empire—”

“You mean Return of the Jedi,” Henry interjects.

“—I guess that leaves the next best.”

“So, Rogue One?”

Alex grins. “Ok, maybe we can be friends, after all.”

He’s absolutely not letting himself think about the warmth that grows in his chest when Henry laughs.

~~~~~

Alex discovers that there’s a room in Kensington that’s pretty much as tricked out as you can get without being in a movie theater—“There’s an actual theater in Buckingham,” Henry tells him, “but Dad had this put in for family film nights”—with a massive screen and a killer sound system. They eat their curry out of take-out containers on a surprisingly comfortable, normal couch as the movie plays, keeping up a running commentary between them that ranges from Star Wars lore to the cast (“Come on, you can’t tell me you wouldn’t follow Diego Luna anywhere. Look at him!” Alex insists, which garners him a strange look from Henry) to random things entirely unconnected to the movie.

Turns out Henry is actually really funny, which is a fucking shock and kind of annoying except for how he leaves Alex in stitches several times. It’s absurdly easy between them in a way that it shouldn’t be, and Alex can’t remember the last time he had this much fun just hanging out with someone. And it’s Henry. What is his life, even.

“I can’t believe you like this one,” Alex says as they watch Jyn and Cassian embrace desperately on the beach. “It’s pretty much the opposite of a happy ending. For the main characters, at least.”

Henry hums, tipping his head slightly. “They give up everything in the service of a cause bigger than themselves, and they succeed. There’s something beautiful about that.”

“God, you are a sap,” Alex teases, bumping his shoulder up against Henry’s. Somehow they’ve managed to migrate closer on the couch over the course of the movie, until they’re practically touching.

“And why do you like it, then?” Henry counters. “The action and spies and intrigue?”

“Not only that,” Alex says. “But there’s a reason I’m a big Bond fan.”

A smile flickers across Henry’s face that’s a little melancholy but mostly contented. “I suppose that makes sense given what I know of your movie tastes now.”

“Also, your dad was a total babe.”

Henry’s eyes go wide as he chokes on a laugh. “I beg you to not.”

They lapse into silence as the final scenes as the credits start to roll. The movie is over and it’s getting late, but all Alex can think of is that he really doesn’t want the night to end yet. Which is crazy. Twenty-four hours ago Alex was actively cursing this man’s name, and now he seemingly can’t get enough of spending time with him. It doesn’t make any sense, but somehow it does; it’s the same feeling that he was chasing all those years ago in Rio, the one that pushed him to go up an introduce himself at exactly the wrong time, the one that made the hurt of that encounter linger for so long in his psyche.

“Hey, uh,” he says eventually, turning slightly to look at Henry, “thanks for suggesting this. It was fun.”

“I hope it made up for being stuck in London longer than you wanted,” Henry replies, his voice low and soft.

“Definitely.”

Henry smiles, a warm and pleased one that stretches his lips and crinkles the corners of his eyes, and Alex feels like he’s being pulled in by the magnetism of it. He wants to get closer, despite how close they’re already sitting. His fingers twitch with the urge to touch—the soft blond hair falling over Henry’s forehead, the sharp cut of his cheekbones, the fullness of his lips. He’s always known Henry was objectively good-looking, but Jesus, where does he get off being so pretty? It’s annoying, really.

Alex isn’t trying to make things weird, but he also can’t quite help the way his eyes are drawn inexorably down to those plush lips, still curved in a gentle smile. Who even has lips like that, does he get fillers or something, because they can’t be real, except they look very, very real, Alex hasn’t even ever kissed any girls with lips that nice, that look that soft—

Something short circuits in Alex’s brain and he just— has to know. How soft they really are. Before he even knows what he’s doing, he’s leaning in and pressing his lips to Henry’s, which are, as it turns out, extremely soft. It only lasts for a second before his brain comes back online and he realizes Henry’s frozen stiff, which is fair, because Alex has no fucking clue what he’s doing. He hasn’t kissed a boy since Liam and this was not the fucking boy to just kiss out of nowhere. He’s gonna get, like, locked in the Tower of London or something.

He wrenches away as quickly as he leaned in, meeting Henry’s wide, stunned eyes (—still so so blue, how can they be that blue—), his lips slightly parted and just a little damp from Alex’s.

“Shit,” Alex breathes in a rush. “Fucking shit— I don’t know why I did that, I’m so sorry, Henry, I didn’t mean anything by it—”

“Alex,” Henry murmurs, but Alex is too far gone in his spiral at this point.

“—I promise, it was just— I mean, I’m not even—”

“Alex.”

Alex stops in the middle of a word, his mouth hanging open. Henry’s got some kind of strange look on his face that he can’t parse at all.

“Did it really not mean anything?” he asks slowly.

The thing is, Alex has no idea what it means. Absolutely none. Something inside him—something he doesn’t really understand—wanted to do it, but like, just as an objective experiment. Except that part of him wants to do it again, even though he already got his answer. Really wants Henry to kiss him back. Which is making him feel a little insane.

Alex closes his mouth, licks his lips, and swallows hard.

“That depends,” he says cautiously, “on what you want it to mean.”

For some reason, that makes Henry growl in frustration and cast his eyes to the ceiling. Then he groans, “Christ, Alex, you’re so—”, grabs Alex’s face between both hands, and kisses him soundly.

Alex’s insides go positively molten. Henry’s hands are gripping his jaw, and in his hair, and Alex can’t help but press closer. His own hands find Henry’s narrow waist, reveling in the dip of it, the heat of his body scorching through the thin fabric of his shirt, and the only thing currently occupying Alex’s mind is a desperate urge to feel bare skin under his palms. That is, until Henry slides his tongue along Alex’s lower lip, sucks it into his mouth and tugs on it with his teeth, and Alex stops thinking altogether.

Their positions are a little awkward, twisted toward each other on the couch as they are, and Alex isn’t sure if he pulls or Henry pushes—or maybe both—but a moment later Henry is unfolding his long legs and shifting to straddle Alex’s lap, which is both incredible and incredibly overwhelming. Especially when Henry’s hips rock forward and Alex can feel his growing arousal pressing into the rapidly tightening region of Alex’s pants.

Jesus, this is— it’s— it’s a lot, but the very last thing Alex wants to happen is for it to stop.

He absolutely does not whimper when Henry pulls back, sending Alex unconsciously chasing after his lips. Fortunately, Henry doesn’t go far. He presses their foreheads together, breathing raggedly into the space between them as his thumb swipes across Alex’s cheek.

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that,” Henry breathes, and yeah, Alex had no fucking clue.

His mind is spinning at a thousand miles an hour, and he has no idea what to say to that besides: “Fuck.”

Henry chuckles softly, nudging their noses together. “Indeed.” He presses a soft kiss to Alex’s lips, then another to the corner of his mouth and one to the edge of his jaw. “Do you want to… go somewhere we won’t be interrupted?” he murmurs into Alex’s ear, and his warm breath combined with the words makes Alex tremble under him.

Alex swallows hard as his hands tighten on Henry’s hips, but he hesitates a moment too long because then Henry is actually pulling back, a concerned expression creasing his brow.

“Which is not to say— we don’t have to do anything more if you don’t want— I just thought—”

“I want to,” Alex blurts, surprising even himself. He’s not entirely sure what more means to Henry, but he knows he wants it. Jesus, does he want. “Yes. Fuck. Let’s do that.”

Henry grins, wide and nearly blinding in its brilliance, and Alex thinks he would do just about anything to see that smile on his face always.

They clamber off the couch, adjusting themselves with shared, knowing giggles, then Henry grabs his hand and tugs Alex through formal, stuffy corridors lined with portraits and antiques, which just adds a certain something to the absurdity of the whole situation. Somehow it’s not a surprise that Henry’s apartments are just as impersonal and opulent as the rest of the palace, full of hideous floral wallpaper and baroque furniture. Before, he’d have put that on Henry himself, but now it feels wrong despite the fact that Alex still barely knows him. It feels like he knows enough. Henry eats curry on the couch and cracks crude jokes and sniffles at the tragic endings of Star Wars movies (yes, Alex noticed). Henry is warm and soft and feels like he belongs in cozy, simple rooms full of old books and tea and cardigans.

Alex’s musings are cut off when Henry pulls him close again at the foot of the hideous gilt monstrosity that is his bed, wrapping his arms around Alex’s waist and tugging him into a lingering kiss. It’s softer than before, delicate and sweet, exactly like Alex would imagine Prince Charming would kiss. From this angle Alex has to tip his head up to kiss him, which is definitely not something he ever thought would do it for him, and yet. Henry’s evening stubble scratches against his chin, and broad hands grip onto his hips and pull him against the hard, flat planes of Henry’s chest, all of it constantly reminding him of the unmistakable masculinity of the person he’s currently making out with.

Alex thinks, distantly, that he should probably be freaking out about this a bit more, but it’s too easy to give himself over it in the moment. He can freak out about what whatever the fuck it means later.

Henry’s hands move to the front of Alex’s shirt, and his nimble fingers make short work of the buttons before pushing it backwards off Alex’s shoulders. His fingers leave trails of fire where they linger against Alex’s bare skin, and even just this has Alex moaning into the kiss, desperate for more. He tugs at Henry’s shirt, yanking the tails out of his pants and nearly tearing the buttons open in his haste, which makes Henry laugh at him, the bastard.

“Eager, are we?” Henry teases, and Alex bites the grin right off his face.

“Shut all the way up,” he huffs before sinking his teeth into the absolutely irresistible collarbone he’s just uncovered.

Henry sucks in a gratifying breath at that, his hands tightening on Alex’s waist, and then he’s manhandling Alex back onto the mattress, which has no business being as hot as it is. Alex kicks off his shoes before scrabbling backwards so that he’s lying against the pillows, his heart racing as Henry crawls up over him with a nearly predatory grin on his face. The way his body fully blankets Alex’s is overwhelming in the best way, making every part of Alex ache with the need to somehow be closer, even as Henry presses the their bodies together from knee to chest and captures Alex’s lips in another deep, probing kiss.

They kiss and kiss until Alex’s lips are almost numb from it, their hands roving over heated skin and through thoroughly mussed hair. Henry’s hips roll slowly against him, almost a question, and Alex groans when he feels the hardness of Henry’s cock pushing against his hip. His own is straining against the front of his trousers, and his breath shudders in his chest when he imagines what it would feel like to have Henry’s hands wrapped around him.

But—

“Hey, uh,” he breathes as Henry’s mouth moves to his neck, and he’s nearly driven to distraction by the feeling of Henry’s teeth scraping lightly over his pulse point, but he wants to get this out, “I’ve never actually—” His voice fails, and Henry pulls back just enough to look him in the eye. Alex swallows. “Done this. With a guy. I mean, kinda, but not really—” He lets out a frustrated huff. “It’s a long story.”

Henry stares at him so intensely and earnestly that Alex feels flayed open by it, like Henry can see all the parts of him that Alex himself didn’t know were there. “We can just do this,” he says as he pushes a curl back from Alex’s forehead. “The last thing I want is to push you into something you’re not comfortable with.”

It’s completely reasonable not to rush things, but Alex thinks if he leaves London without seeing Henry naked he might fucking expire.

“Did I not already fucking say I wanted it?” he retorts, a little testily. Better that than admitting how desperate he really is.

“Well, to be fair, we didn’t exactly specify—”

“I want you naked,” Alex breathes in a rush. “I want your hands on me. Your mouth, if— if that’s something you want.”

Henry’s gaze goes dark and hot, and he actually licks his lips. Alex’s dick twitches in his pants. Jesus Christ.

Henry dips back down to kiss his neck, but a moment later he answers. “That,” he says, pressing it into Alex’s skin as he kisses a path down his chest, “is something I very much want.”

Then Henry’s hands are at his waistband, making short work of his belt and peeling off his underwear and pants in one go, and everything goes very, very hazy after that in the absolute best possible way.

~~~~~

The room is quiet after they subside, after every ounce of pleasure has been wrung from their bodies, after shouted names ease into murmured endearments.

“I should go,” Alex eventually whispers into the stillness, because he should. It would be better if he spent the night in his own rooms. Safer.

He doesn’t want to, though. He doesn’t want to be alone with his thoughts right now, doesn’t want to give his brain the space to run wild with this. That’s what will happen if he goes. He’ll fall into a research spiral on google, and text Nora even though it’s too late, and quietly freak out about everything that’s happened tonight. Here, though, Henry’s got an arm thrown over his waist, and it’s not much, but the weight of it soothes something within him. Keeps him grounded.

Maybe it’s just Henry that settles him. He doesn’t want to think too hard about that.

“You could stay,” Henry murmurs back. He leans in, presses a kiss to the outside of Alex’s shoulder. “No one will notice. Tomorrow’s Sunday. The staff come in late.”

This is a terrible idea. This can’t be… anything, really, given who they are. Alex doesn’t even know what he wants it to be, but he knows that.

“You sure?” Alex asks anyway.

“Stay,” Henry repeats.

So Alex stays.

~~~~~

The bed Alex wakes up in is unfamiliar, which is hardly surprising given his travel schedule lately. What is unexpected is that he’s naked, and there’s a warm, naked body pressed against his back, and abruptly all of what he got up to the previous night comes slamming back into vivid clarity.

He slept with the fucking prince. Henry. His nemesis, except not actually, apparently, and oh yes, definitely also a dude. Alex sucked his dick and most definitely enjoyed the experience, so that’s a whole new thing. The freakout about his sexuality that he shoved to the back of his mind last night rockets to the forefront now, and he can feel his breath stutter in his chest.

Except then Henry’s arm tightens around him and he presses a sleepy kiss to the back of Alex’s shoulder, and the tightness in his chest unclenches somewhat. Not all the way, but enough.

He fumbles for his watch, then jolts up to sitting with a new fear once he sees the time. Jesus Christ, Cash or Amy is going to show up at his bedroom any minute now to pick him up so they can leave, and Alex isn’t fucking there. This is a disaster.

Henry grumbles at being disrupted, sleepily rubbing at his eyes in a way that’s definitely not adorable at all. “Time is it?” he mumbles through a yawn.

“Late,” Alex huffs, briefly getting tangled in the sheets and nearly falling out of the bed in his haste to find his clothing.

He’s halfway into his pants when there’s a knock at Henry’s bedroom door, and he almost falls on his face again. That seems to wake Henry up a bit more, and he finally sits up, his hair standing up in all directions and his eyes gone wide.

“Yes?” Henry calls out.

“The Secret Service seem to have misplaced their charge,” comes Shaan’s voice through the door, and Alex would very much like to die right now. Henry stumbles out of bed, throwing on a robe, then opens the door just enough so that Alex isn’t visible. “I told them I would inquire with you to see if you had any idea of Mr. Claremont-Diaz’s whereabouts.”

There’s something very knowing in Shaan’s tone, like he’s perfectly aware of where Alex spent the night and furthermore none of this is exactly a surprise to him, and Alex only barely manages to hold back the extensive collection of curses crowding at the tip of his tongue. What the actual fuck.

“Ah,” Henry says. His cheeks are bright pink. “Just a moment, I’m sure I can help you locate him.”

“I’m not sure I’ve properly conveyed how agitated they are, sir.”

“Tell them I’m ok,” Alex sighs begrudgingly, stepping into view now that his shirt and pants are on. It’s not like he’s kidding anyone; he’s still barefoot in Henry’s bedroom and the bed that two people clearly slept in is fully visible from where Shaan is standing. “I just—”

Shaan holds up a hand. “Believe me when I say that you do not need to finish that sentence. I will deliver the message, but”—he pauses, glancing between them—“you probably shouldn’t linger.”

He pulls the door closed behind him as he goes and, despite the warning, Alex stands there for a minute, rooted in place and staring at the floor. Maybe Shaan doesn’t want an explanation, but the Secret Service certainly will. Fuck.

“I’m sorry, Alex,” Henry says quietly, suddenly close beside him. Alex hadn’t heard him approach. He still looks so soft and sleep-rumpled, and something tugs at Alex’s chest that absolutely should not be tugging. “I shouldn’t have talked you into staying here.”

Alex huffs a laugh, shaking his head. “I didn’t take much convincing,” he says. “I shoulda just set a fucking alarm.”

“Probably,” Henry agrees, his lips tipping into a wry smile that fades into a look of concern. “Are you… ok?”

“Yeah, of course, why wouldn’t I be?” he answers, probably a little too quickly. Henry just stares at him in that way that makes Alex feel entirely too seen. “Probably gonna get chewed out for disappearing, but it wouldn’t be the first time.”

“That’s not exactly what I was talking about.”

Alex swallows. “I’m fine.” He offers Henry a little smile. “This was fun.”

“It certainly was,” Henry agrees carefully.

“Where’s your phone? I’ll give you my number, it’ll be easier to plan joint appearances or whatever,” Alex says in a blatant attempt to divert from a discussion about what happened or what this makes them. He’s got to figure his own shit out first. He doesn’t need Henry to know that he’s already wondering when he can arrange his schedule to see him again.

Henry gives him a look, but he fetches his phone and hands it over to Alex with a blank contact page open. Alex types in his number and hands it back.

“I’ll be disappointed if you only use that for booty calls,” he jokes.

Henry sputters out a laugh. “Noted.”

He’s endearingly pink-cheeked and smiling, and Alex doesn’t think before he takes the last step that puts him in Henry’s personal space, grabs the fronts of Henry’s robe, and pulls him into a kiss.

If he’d had any lingering doubts about the previous night, about whether what he’d felt was real or not, this thoroughly dispels them. The press of Henry’s lips to his, the way their mouths slot together as easily as if they’ve been doing this for years, the zip of electricity that fizzles under his skin and spreads out to tingle in the tips of his fingers and toes… Alex has never been kissed like this, has never felt like this being kissed, and it’s exhilarating and terrifying all at once.

Like he’s falling.

Oh. Fuck.

#rwrb #red white and royal blue #firstprince #alex claremont diaz #henry fox mountchristen windsor #rwrb fic #rwrb fanfic #firstprince fic #firstprince fanfic #my fics #chamel's fandom fest

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victorsandvanquishers · 28 days

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The Kiss of Life and Death

Fandom: DC Comics

Ships: Bart Allen/Kon El

Ratings: M

Warnings: Foreplay gone wrong; The Flash: The Fastest Man Alive & Bendisboot compliant

Summary: With their love blossoming every day, Bart considers all the little things that led him back to his best friend. After all, love between besties isn’t that uncommon. What is, however, is one man’s mission to reunite with someone who was never his to begin with. And yet, Bart Allen and Kon El are in love, and like the romantics before them, there are ups, downs, flying cows, and the powers of the White Flash making themselves known at the worst possible moment in time.

[post-Absolute Power; direct sequel to 'Best Regards to the Planning Committee'; written for 2024 BartKon Week (Heart & Bones Edition), Day 2 - Sex Accidents]

~~~

Into the BartKoniverse we go! Yeah, it's a sequel to the first story. I like Connecting Threads, I can't help it.

Thank you for reading, and don't forget to leave a review! (*￣3￣)╭

#bartkon #konbart #kon el #bart allen #2024 bartkon week #dc fanfic #avafanfics

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earth-64 · 7 days

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My Journey in Understanding Comics - Part 2

Part 1 is not required reading. In fact, I will refrain from even linking it here. Every blog post is someone’s first.

It shouldn’t be embarrassing to admit that I needed to have “comic books” explained to me. Yet I feel ashamed that I allowed the entire medium to exist within a hair’s breadth of my cultural understanding for so long. I’ve already gone over my select few childhood run-ins with comics, as well as the false-start that nearly was my first paper-comic obsession* (*See “My Journey in Understanding Comics” #1! - Ed.), so my story this time will start in November of 2023.

I was working a mundane job at a manufacturing facility. Full-time hours of applying stickers to pieces of foam, or punching out holes in paper, or assembling little devices of god-knows-what, praying that for every life-saving defibrillator adhesive pad I quality-checked that the insulation padding I was shape-forming wasn’t destined for a war machine. It was a place of room-sized printing presses, massive machines that shaped and cut materials with the power of water-jets, and dark laboratory backrooms with more nausea-inducing chemicals filling the air than oxygen. While I didn’t end up falling into vats of any of the horrifically powerful bleaches we used to clean the printing screens (although I did retire home early on a number of occasions from dizziness caused by breathing in acetone), it was here that I had way too much time on my hands and binged podcasts.

I was devouring 10 hours of audio content a day, from audio dramas to history lessons to comedy sketches. The hardest part of the job became satiating my hunger for endless content. After exhausting “Midnight Burger” and Penumbra’s “Juno Steel”, I listened through all of Tim Roger’s “Action Button” reviews in audio-form. On recommendation from my girlfriend, that made a natural transition into gulping down hundreds of episodes of “Insert Credit”. Among other branching paths (I recommend “They Create Worlds” and “Video Game History Hour”), I was led through Alex Jaffe to “52 Pick Up”.

“52 Pick Up”, hosted by Alex Jaffe and Gita Jackson, discusses DC’s 2006-2007 weekly comic book “52” issue by issue. I dipped my toe into it with hardly any context: it had been many years since I read comics, very little of that had been DC. Certainly none from around the time “52” was published, and certainly not any that would provide any helpful context to “52”. I cannonballed into the the deep end, albeit without risk of drowning: if the podcast hosts helped me stick the landing then I would be opened to a whole new world of possibilities, if I was just utterly lost by the interwoven plot threads and greater context of the comic then I would just shrug it off and go back to the comforting familiarity of learning about unreleased Nintendo knitting machines* (* “VGHH” #117! - Frank ( - not Frank)). This isn’t the iTunes review section so I’ll spare you from me simply pasting in the glowing review I left for them, but rest assured that “52 Pick Up” does its job of introducing someone to the context of comic books tremendously well. I was hooked, and have not missed a bi-weekly wednesday since.

However, it wasn’t enough to break the floodwall I had erected after the comic-related disaster I had beared the full brunt of so many years ago. I followed “52” and kept saying to myself “I think I’ll subscribe to that DC mobile app, and read some of the surrounding context”, but I never pulled the trigger on that purchase. My interest was piqued, I was given the on-ramps, taught all the techniques from a master of comics knowledge, and yet I could not begin the simple act of reading.

I hold the act of consumption on a higher pedestal than it deserves. I regularly find myself hesitating to consume. Is this the right time? How will this work affect me? “Are you ready?” I ask myself, fighting back my natural instinct to presume anything unknown to me is not “for me”.

In February of 2024 I finally made a concession: I would start with something I felt I was closer to. Something that wouldn’t be “out of character” for me to consume. I had already been into “Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure” for some years, so I turned to manga, and read “Dragon Ball”. This isn’t the place for me to put all my thoughts on “Dragon Ball”. Know simply that it was a prime example of works of fiction finding me at exactly the right moment in my life, affecting me tremendously, with Toriyama’s passing happening right in the nearly exact middle of my readthrough. My dad had treated “Dragon Ball” with the same disdain as Wrestling or Football as I was growing up, something that wasn’t “for me”, something dumber, barbaric.

Comic books were his thing, and manga was not my thing. Before I moved out I had to find ways to justify things as being “my thing”. Webcomics were a natural extension of an interest in video games, manga was an eventual gap bridged by years of anime expos and the absurdity of “Jojo’s”, but “Dragon Ball”, among many other things, remained unreachable.

Now that I live on my own there are no gaps between works of fiction that need filling. My brain still often tricks me into thinking I cannot leap over the vast chasms that separate genres and mediums, but it is only the residual fear of being perceived as not being myself. There is no longer anyone in my daily life that has known me for a great amount of time, no one to police me to stay true to my platonic self. I have to remind myself that I can choose to wake up and be a whole new person if I so wish. Any day could be the day I decide to start being a person who reads comic books.

In late July 2024 I found the catalyst: a copy of Scott McCloud’s “Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art”. It was a book always on my radar as being something that I would get a kick out of, but I never wanted to just read a scan of it. I knew it deserved to be read physically, but I never had the drive to order a copy. In the end it needed to appear before me, on the shelf of the thrift store I regular, as a spur of the moment purchase. I’ll again spare you from a full overzealous review, but it was exactly what I needed. “This is what a comic book is. This is why it’s important. This is why it’s for everyone.” That’s what I needed to hear. I needed someone to lay it all out, label all the pieces, explain the history, and tell me that comics can be for me.

In August my friends decided to marathon some of the X-Men movies. All the stars aligned: I had the knowledge, the motivation, the relief from social permission. No, not a relief. A triumph. I had triumphed over a lifetime of social pressure, of expectations and preconceived notions. I didn’t need to hide my mood-swing dips into unfamiliar media. I didn’t need to be ashamed of stepping outside my comfort zone. The version of myself in others’ heads are their own flawed snapshots of pieces of my true self, not a script they write for me to follow and fear. I could be anything I wanted.

I could be someone subscribed to Marvel Unlimited.

The conclusion to our thrilling three-part epic is up next in our amazing tale of self-reflection and ceaseless inner-discovery awaits! You don’t wanna miss it true believers!

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thotpuppy · 11 months

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20 questions for fic writers!

this kind of stuff is super neat to read from others and share and talk about sooo thank u so much for the tag @sugareey-makes-stuff!!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

On its face, 40, but 5 are co-creator tags because i illustrated them, 3 of them are art for the steter bang independently posted separate from their fics, 1 was gift art for the steter vday exchange, and 1 is a 60k+ roleplay that i only wrote like half of haha. so its actually 30-31

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

365,587 but again, not all my words. Without the 8 fics mentioned up top, its at 250,197 total. the fic i co wrote is 69,599. Without any of that, my total is 180,598. if i only cut half out, its at 215,397 which is. still pretty good i guess???

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Published, I have fics for Voltron Legendary Defender, Teen Wolf, Danny Phantom, and Sk8 the Infinity. I pretty much only write for Teen Wolf right now. I have WIPs and ideas for DC, Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun, and of course Danny Phantom.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Grandma, What a Big Dick You Have! (the better to fuck you with my dear) (Sterek, WC 5,644, one shot, Rated E)

Churn My (Peanut) Butter (Steter, WC 3,074, one shot, Rated E)

A Collision of Interest is Inevitable (This is that role-play) (PompousPep, WC 69,599, part 1 of ?, Rated M)

Why (not) Me? (Sterek, WC 6,496, one shot, Rated M)

Now Hiring (Sterek, WC 5,724, part 1 of WIP series that's currently 4 parts. Rated E)

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

I do my very best to meet my commenters however they meet me. If they just drop some emojis, i drop some back. If they give me a long, thought out comment, I give them one back. Etc etc.

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

This question and 7 are both hard because I pretty much exclusively write happy endings. A Snap, a Shudder, and a Home probably has the least upward lifting ending? It's not sad or angsty, but it speaks to unresolved tensions. The problem isn't over, even if they have a taste of peace. (Sterek, WC 1,669, one shot, Rated T)

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

They all have happy endings! ARGH! The most outwardly enduringly positive fic I've written, however, is probably:

Daisies and Daffodils (You Make Me Smile) (Sterek, WC 3,864, one shot, Rated T) I was just in such a smiley, indulgent mood the entire time I wrote it, and it still makes me warm and smiley about it now.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Not technically, though I have gotten two particularly unpleasant comments. One was on a Sterek fanfic trope challenge fic, for the prompt "Forced Proximity". Stiles and Derek get put into a '7 minutes of heaven' sort of situation by Lydia and one commenter was SO MAD that I didn't tag the fic as RAPE/NONCON ????? They also lectured me about being sexist and having double standards because it wouldn't be okay if Sterek were Women, which was just all sorts of yikes. (WC 2,912, Rated M, link here.) The other time I got a negative comment was actually on my most recently posted WIP Under My Skin, which is a Stackson fic. The hatefulness wasn't directed at the fic itself, but it WAS targeted at one of the main protagonists of the fic, as if implying I would be "punishing" said character for his "crimes" which were Being Human and Struggling. It made me super, SUPER uncomfortable and I ended up leaving the thread on read because I just got so unhappy every time I read the comment that I decided it wasn't worth even trying to explain myself. (WC 55,613, chapter 18/?, Rated E, noncon warning)

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

Haha.... normally I would say that's literally most of what I write, but I have a surprising number of lengthier non-smutty fics than I realized. I also legitimately have a Just Porn fic series, though, and I've written some pretty horny stuff in general. (Sterek+ others, WC 23,152, Rated E, parts 4/?)

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

I haven't, but I'm not opposed to doing one? I tend to prefer crossovers that are more, characters from X in setting from Y than, like, main characters interacting? But I have read a good few crossovers lately that have made me much more open TO writing a crossover in the future.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Thankfully not, yikes

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Naw, but I'd be open to it! I have blanket permissions for a lot of stuff right on my ao3 profile. (:

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

Yeah :,^)

14. What’s your all time favourite ship?

If you'd asked me this like 5 years ago I would have said Drarry. I HAVE answered this question with Drarry many times. I think, at this point in time, however, it is shifting. It very well may be Sterek. Drarry has absolutely shaped a huge amount of how I create, how I write, what i read, etc. though so it would be inappropriate to say it held no influence over me.

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

I think it's entirely possible i will never finish the TBHK Wondering Prince fic I started. It's somewhere between traditional fairy tale, medieval fantasy, and the witcher, with a good bit of TBHK's whimsical supernaturality.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I tend to do well with dialogue IMO, as well as general world building, both fantastical and mundane lol

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

plot. The actual beats of the story. I have wonderful, grand ideas on what a story should be! I even have thoughts on the conflicts, major stepping points, etc, but MAN do i get tripped up on the actual getting from point a to point b thematicall.

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

*wiggly hand gesture* I think if it is a language you speak, and it is only occasional words or a line or two, it makes sense to use the other language, but in every spoken situation in visual media, you would get subtitles explaining what was being said if it went on longer than that. If the audience doesn't speak the language and they have to go to the end of the chapter/fic/etc to translate it, that can be enough for them to just gloss over and not even read it. Or, if you don't speak that language at all and you use google translate? you might have written something very different from your intent that people who DO speak it catch and get tripped up by. I think it's better to just, say that the character is speaking in another language and translate it in text for your readers.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

teeeeeeeeeechnically homestuck? for 'posted on ao3'?? But also, I've lowkey been writing fanfic adjacent works since i was like 6, but i don't rly wanna count that LOL

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

This bitch is my baaaaaaaaby. Stackson, WC 55,613, Chapters 18/?. https://archiveofourown.org/works/48834448 Currently a WIP but with a deadline, so it WILL be finished! This is probably the fic that got me REALLY into writing fic on my own though. https://archiveofourown.org/works/29829636 It really brought me back to my love of writing and was the first finished work in a long ass time. I also think it's really funny and a great example of what I can do when I apply myself. (PompousPep, WC 4,545, 2 chapters, Rated M.)

Tagging: @geekmom13 @always-mimits @sinnabon-cosplay @okdeannawrites @whimsicalmeerkat @clotpolesonly @hedwig221b @wolfspurr @lavender-lotion @adrianfridge

(Blank under the readmore)

20 questions for fic writers!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

3. What fandoms do you write for?

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

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

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

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

8. Do you get hate on fics?

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

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

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

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

14. What’s your all time favourite ship?

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

16. What are your writing strengths?

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

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

19. First fandom you wrote for?

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

#tag game #fic writing #writing game #my writing #fanfic writer #long post /

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sanguineterrain · 2 years

Note

Could I get a blurb about going to see a scary movie at a drive-in theater with Eddie? 🥰

eeeee this was fun to write aud, thank you <3 i sprinkled in a little angst but it's 99% fluff. p.s. i'm still accepting st requests!

****

"Now you're sure you wanna see The Shining? They're showing Ghostbusters in the other lot."

Eddie scoffs, shoving a handful of popcorn into his mouth.

"Have you seen me, baby? Lock up your daughter, lock up your wife! Lock up your back door and run for your life!"

You roll your eyes.

"You're just quoting AC/DC to me, Ed."

He finishes his mouthful and swallows.

"Bon Scott puts it better than I ever could, sweets."

"Right. It's just, I know you have trouble sleeping with this stuff. Remember when Wayne took you camping and told you those ghost stories?"

"I was a kid!" he cries.

"That was three years ago, Eddie."

"Honey, c'mon. I got attacked by killer bats last year. I think I can handle some corn syrup blood."

You frown. "What happened in the Upside Down doesn't mean you can't be afraid anymore."

"I know! I know. 'S just, y'know." He picks at a loose thread on his jeans. "We've seen the real thing. Movies can't hurt me. I know that."

You press your lips together. "If you're sure, Eds."

Eddie beams. "Positive."

You settle under the thick blankets contributed by both you and Eddie. He takes another scoop of popcorn. The film begins.

And it's fine. Eddie watches the arrival of the Torrances without issue. He leans over and comments on how Jack Nicholson looks absolutely unhinged from the start.

"Is he gonna lose his mind?" Eddie predicts. "I think he's gonna lose it."

As the ghosts arrive, however, Eddie starts to shift in his seat. It comes to a head when Jack Torrance truly does lose his mind. Eddie flinches at the axe splitting the door and shuts his eyes, turning away. You set your candy on the dashboard and scoot over, slowly sliding an arm around Eddie's shoulders.

"Hey," you say softly, turning down the radio. "Eds. We don't have to watch it if you don't want to."

Eddie looks at you. His cheeks are slightly red. You smile.

"'M such a scaredy cat," he mumbles.

"Eddie, it's okay if you don't like scary movies."

"Am I still the most metal guy you know?"

"Obviously," you grin.

"What if I said this was all a ploy to get you to snuggle me?"

"Now that I'd fully believe," you say. "But we didn't have to go see The Shining for that, honey."

Eddie pouts. You put down the visor so he doesn't have to keep watching.

"I used to be fearless, y'know," he says. "Sure, Wayne's ghost stories were always spooky as fuck. But I could handle it. And then after last year I just—"

He shakes his head. You nod.

"I know," you murmur. "Feels too real."

"Yeah," Eddie sighs. "Watching Nancy Wheeler saw off a shotgun really sucked the fun outta slashers."

"Well," you say. "I haven't seen Ghostbusters. And I've heard great things about that one."

Eddie smiles, a peek of fang showing.

"You're missing out, honeylove."

"Am I? Seems like we oughta get a move on then. We may just be able to find a good spot."

You peck his cheek. Eddie turns the ignition. He looks at you.

"Sure it's okay?" he checks, biting his lip.

You squeeze his shoulder, tilting your head fondly.

"Yeah, Eds. I'm sure. And if we don't get a good view, well..."

You lean over and kiss his jaw. His pulse quickens. You smirk.

"I'm sure we can think of something to pass the time."

#eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson x y/n #eddie munson x female reader #eddie munson fanfic #stranger things fanfiction #stranger things #fluff #halloween #ps ive never seen the shining or been to a drive in so if anything's inaccurate that's why #blurb

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multimusehq · 5 months

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Introductions

Hello, my name is Diane. I am a 32 year old female who uses the pronouns she/her. I've been on this hellsite we call Tumblr for over 10 years now. I've had many urls (and many different mun names) and now I've consolidated all of my muses (past and future) on discord. Here is what I am looking for.

The Basics

- I currently only write on Discord. - I will only write with muns over the age of 21, preferably 25+. - All writing will be on a private server between myself and my partner. I have a server set up with areas for OOC chat, plotting, muse info (yours and mine), inspiration, para threads, text threads, and random oneshots (just in case). - I prefer to write m/f but have written m/m in the past. - I have canon and original characters. - I love to world build. Modern. All Human. Fantasy. - I am also heavily smut motivated when it is incorporated into the plot. - I am also very angst motivated. If it hurts our muses, chances are I want to write it. - I've never really given much thought to FCs I want to use since I just make my characters for myself but I'll have a list soon. - Same with wanted opposites. I'll have a list soon. I'm really open to any FC that is a real person over the age of 21.

Old Accounts

artemisxargent - Allison Argent hydrasperfectweapon - Bucky Barnes noyoumove - Steve Rogers theagecfheroes - Clark Kent defenedarcher - Clint Barton bloodiedballerina - Natalia Romanova illegitimatestark - Jakz Stark (OC Daughter of Tony Stark) drunkhistorybuff - Alaric Saltsman stuckbeingavillain - Enzo St. Claire (TVD) thatdickyvampire - Damon Salvatore

Current Characters

HIGHLY ACTIVE

allison argent︰teen wolf︰FC︰crystal reed bucky barnes︰marvel︰FC︰sebastian stan

EXTREMELY SELECTIVE

frank castle︰marvel︰FC︰jon bernthal steve rogers︰marvel︰FC︰chris evans jaime mcneal︰OC︰FC︰jessica parker kennedy michael keller︰OC︰FC︰clive standen beau sutton︰OC︰FC︰ian bohen

REQUEST ONLY

peter hale︰teen wolf︰FC︰ian bohen lydia martin︰teen wolf︰FC︰holland roden derek hale︰teen wolf︰FC︰tyler hoechlin chris argent︰teen wolf︰FC︰jr bourne clark kent︰dc comics︰FC︰tyler hoechlin chloe sullivan︰smallville︰FC︰chelsea kane

Note: I am willing to create OCs as well, given the chance to world build and get inspiration for them. And that I have a FC we both want!

#discord 1x1 #discord rp #teen wolf rp

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dthroned-sameurl · 5 months

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“ nothing you can say will surprise me. ” ➾ 𝐜𝐡 . 𝐝𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐚 𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐞

thoughts are swirling around her head , she is sure that is Luciel had looked close enough he would be able to see every thought that swirled behind her icy gaze & that made her want to curl into herself and hide . but she trusted him , she trusted Luci more than she thought she ever would & while the vulnerability terrified her --- how she felt around him outweighed any ounce of discomfort that she may be feeling in this moment . she's focused on the ground , arms wrapped around herself in a stance where she is self soothing , rocking on her heels as she exhales deeply . nights were becoming more difficult , nightmares either keeping her up at night , or shaking her awake from a deep sleep , it was becoming more suffocating as the days pass without any sort of remedy .

' i've died a couple of times . ' her hands clasp a little tighter around her arms as she shakes her head , pushing hair from her face before fingers move to tuck hair behind her ear . ' the last time , well , it wasn't exactly the easiest experience & i think i may be broken ... well breaking more than I already am . ' the witch was a body with scattered fragments of who she once was , her experience with la gemme vitale had taken more from her than she could ever imagine , her soul having been completely shredded , leaving her to feel like she was a monster ready to pounce at any moment she lost control .

her hand moves to her forehead , fingers brushing over the skin where the mark was magically engraved , damned for the rest of eternity . ' i wasn't supposed to come back he last time i did , somehow I was brought back by this entity & it left pieces of me behind in a realm where my ancestors reside . I am worried about everyone around me ... how am I supposed to hide that I am losing my mind when we live in the spotlight ? '

@mrchare . prompt

#* ⁎ ♡ ⸺ ⁽ dc . threads ⁾#m . dc threads #m . answered asks #mrchare #asdkjhaskdjaskldhas getting a little dark and twisty here

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thecreaturecodex · 1 year

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Mater Cachinnarium

[People who have been following the Monster Girl Summer project may have noticed that there are a few plot threads being developed alongside the big Mormo vs. Lamashtu plot. This entry ties into the sample beldam NPC and Mad Maddy Maddison]

Mater Cachinnarum CR 12 CE Outsider (native) This woman is lean and ashen-skinned, with clawed hands and jagged, saw-like teeth. Her face seems perpetually fixed in a cruel smirk.

Mater Cachinnarum is the Mother of Sneers, a notorious bogey of eastern Garund. Her wicked braying laughter is heard everywhere from bustling cities to isolated oases, and always shortly after a mutilated body or two turns up. Even more destructive than her serial killing is her delight in framing others for her crimes. She is adept at stoking paranoia and hatred, and those that escape her attacks may become scapegoats for the next murder she commits. Rumor has it that anyone executed for a crime she committed hears her laughter as they die.

The Mother of Sneers was not born a bogeyman, nor even properly born at all. She is the brainchild of a wizard named Valinus Trent. Trent was the sole survivor of an Aspis Consortium expedition into the heart of the Mwangi Expanse, and while attempting to find safety found themselves in the clutches of the beldam Mancinia Spurge. Spurge played the good host for a time before tormenting Trent and eventually trapping their soul in a black sapphire. Mater Cachinnarum is essentially a projection of the darkest parts of Trent’s psyche, their disdain for less intelligent people and fear of being bullied magnified into a shadowy murderer.

Mater Cachinnarum both resents and kowtows to Spurge, as if the gem is broken, the Mother of Sneers will immediately cease to exist. Thus, between her personal projects, Cachinnarum serves Spurge as an assassin and recruiter. Mater Cachinnarum desires an apprentice; her previous apprentice was the dark dancer Mad Maddy Maddison, who escaped her about a year ago. Mater Cachinnarum occasionally torments Maddy with nightmares, but doesn’t want to kill her—she has something much crueler planned. The Mother of Sneers is waiting a few years for Maddy to become established and develop friendships, only to murder everyone Maddy cares about and frame her for those crimes.

Mater Cachinnarum CR 12 XP 19,200 Bogeyman variant tulpa CE Medium outsider (augmented fey, native) Init +9; Senses low-light vision; Perception +23 Aura deepest fear (30 ft., DC 28)

Defense AC 28, touch 26, flat-footed 21 (+9 deflection, +6 Dex, +1 dodge, +2 armor) hp 127 (17d6+68); terrible rejuvenation 5 Fort +11, Ref +16, Will +13; +4 vs. mind influencing effects DR 15/cold iron; SR 21

Offense Speed 30 ft. Melee 2 +1 claws +15 (1d8+2/19–20) Psychic Magic CL 17th, concentration +26 20 PE—burst of adrenaline (1 PE), burst of insight (1 PE), create mindscape (5 PE), ego whip I (3 PE, DC 22), foster hatred (5 PE, DC 24), levitate (2 PE), mind probe (4 PE, DC 23), paranoia (3 PE, DC 22), possession (5 PE, DC 24) Special Attacks sneak attack +6d6, striking fear Spell-Like Abilities (CL 16th; concentration +25) Constant—detect thoughts, tongues At will—darkness, gaseous form, ghost sound (DC 19), invisibility, suggestion (DC 22) 3/day—crushing despair (DC 23), hold person (DC 22), quickened phantasmal killer (DC 23) 1/day—nightmare (DC 24)

Statistics Str 12, Dex 23, Con 18, Int 17, Wis 16, Cha 29 Base Atk +8; CMB +9; CMD 36 Feats Dodge, Great Fortitude, Improved Critical (claw), Improved Initiative, Magical Aptitude, Mobility, Quicken Spell-Like Ability (phantasmal killer), Spring Attack, Weapon Finesse Skills Acrobatics +16, Bluff +29, Diplomacy +22, Disable Device +16, Escape Artist +19, Intimidate +32, Knowledge (local) +17, Perception +23, Sense Motive +23, Spellcraft +17, Stealth +29, Use Magic Device +23; Racial Modifiers +4 Intimidate, +4 Stealth Languages Aklo, Common, Necril, Undercommon; tongues SQ creator link, sustained by thought, variant tulpa Gear dead man’s headband, bracers of armor +2, amulet of mighty fists +1, wand of acid arrow, 700 gp

Special Abilities Creator Link (Su): A tulpa has a special link with its creator or a creature that it treats as its creator. By concentrating for 1 minute, the tulpa can sense the direction and relative distance of its creator, as long as they are both on the same plane. Deepest Fear (Su) A bogeyman is cloaked in a 30-foot aura of fear. This aura manifests as a shifting haze of images that reflect the viewer's deepest fears. The first time it ends its turn within the aura, a creature must make a DC 28 Will save or become shaken for as long as it stays within the aura. If the creature succeeds at the saving throw, it cannot be affected again by the aura for another 24 hours. This is a fear effect. The DC is Charisma-based. Striking Fear (Su) If a bogeyman confirms a critical hit or a sneak attack with one of its claws on a target currently suffering a fear effect, that effect automatically becomes one step more severe (shaken creatures become frightened, frightened creatures become panicked, and panicked creatures cower in fear). A DC 28 Will save negates this increase. In addition, a critical hit from the bogeyman's claw forces any target that has successfully saved against the creature's fear aura to make another Will save against its effects, even if 24 hours have not yet passed. This is a fear effect. The DC is Charisma-based. Sustained by Thought (Su): Tulpas sustain themselves on and gain their power from the mental energy of living creatures concentrating on the tulpa itself. Tulpas do not heal or regain psychic energy naturally. Instead, whenever a living creature spends at least 10 minutes mentally picturing the tulpa, or interacting with it in some way, the tulpa heals 5 hit points and gains 1 point of psychic energy. A creature other than its creator can't provide more than 5 hit points and 1 PE to the tulpa per day with this activity, but its creator can feed its tulpa indefinitely, granting 5 hit points and 1 PE for every 10 minutes she spends in this way, up to the tulpa's maximum hit points and PE. A creature that regularly spends time mentally picturing or interacting with the tulpa may eventually forge a powerful link with the tulpa, and effectively be treated as though she is the tulpa's creator (though this does not supplant the original creator or other creatures treated as the creator by use of this ability). A creature other than the creator that focuses on the tulpa enough to provide it with psychic energy each day for 7 consecutive days must succeed at a DC 20 Will saving throw or forge such a link. Terrible Rejuvenation (Su) A bogeyman gains fast healing 5 while any creature within its deepest fear aura is suffering from a fear effect, including any fear effect created by the aura itself. Each round it gains this fast healing, it also recovers 1 PE. Variant Tulpa Mater Cachinnarum does not have a creator in the sense of a traditional tulpa. Her existence is tied to the gem in which Valinus Trent is trapped in. As long as this gem exists, she returns from death 1 month after slain, but if the gem is broken and Trent is freed, she is destroyed. Mater Cachinnarum does not gain the mental form special quality of a tulpa, and does not gain a racial bonus to skills. Her psychic magic can affect any creature, not just herself and a creator. Her terrible rejuvenation allows her to heal without being in the presence of a creator.

#mater cachinnarum #bogeyman #tulpa #monster girl summer #monster npc #pathfinder 1e #pathfinder rpg

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franklycharmed · 1 month

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TASK: WHAT DOES YOUR CHARACTER’S BEDROOM LOOK LIKE AT WOODROW HOUSE?

May 1992 | Woodrow House | Pinterest Board

It was a lazy senior year Thursday afternoon when Stephanie P. (the one Angus hadn't frenched) curled up primly in the beanbag in the corner of Frankie's bedroom and casually announced: "Did you hear Heather's going to hell?"

Frankie had a mirror hung over a dresser cluttered with an open caboodle, several mismatched socks, and a pair of pantyhose with a run. Stationed there, her reflection paused its lipgloss application. Lip Smackers in Kiss Me Clear made her open-mouthed shock especially glossy. "Heather Peters? Class President Heather? Harvard-bound Heather?"

The page of Seventeen draped across Stephanie's lap was flipped in time with a snap of her gum. "Now two months pregnant Heather. Or was two months pregnant, I guess."

Frankie turned, neatly arched eyebrows lifted. She and Stefanie M. (frenched) had gone to the mall just last weekend to get them threaded. "No way."

"Yep," Stephanie replied with a popped "p". "Way. Stefanie's mom was driving down I-75 and saw her leaving her appointment, and my sister says Sister Monica normally announces valedictorian speeches by now and obviously that should be Heather, but..." She tilted her head from side to side.

Frankie stared at the cramped shelves above her desk, where a statue of the Blessed Mother sat next to a Buddha with a stick-on earring decorating his third eye. The Catholic part of catholic school had always been sort of coincidental. Religion was sort of like a shirt, Frankie figured, you pulled on the one that fit you best.

The school-issued button down she was currently wearing suddenly felt too-small scratchy. She fumbled with the buttons. "Heather's really nice, you know. She let me copy her algebra homework once."

Heather snorted. "I bet Sean thinks she's really nice too."

"Is it Sean's?"

"Was it Sean's? I dunno. Probably. What do you think about piercing our belly buttons?"

They had been brainstorming ideas for their group of friends to mark the end of the school year and their impending graduation. Dye their hair. Drive over to New Jersey and get tattooed. A drunken party out at Teetotaler's Rock. Whatever would celebrate sprinting across the finish line of adolescence into adulthood, incidentally all things that would set their parents' teeth on edge.

There was stuff in the Bible about honoring your parents. You could say that dishonoring them would send you to hell too. But Frankie technically didn't have parents, no matter how often she called Richard "dad" in her head. Still, if her birth mom, whoever she was, had done what Heather had, Frankie might not exist. Right?

What Sister Monica said about God being their father and having created them for a purpose made Frankie feel good. Loved. She wasn't abandoned, she was meant to be here. The hazy memory of her early life was by design so that she might meet Celia and Vik and Reece and everyone else.

"Frankie?" Stephanie said, breaking through a daze of thought.

Frankie pulled the ragged edge of the pinky nail that had made its way to her mouth away and smiled, bright like the twinkle lights she had strung up around her bedroom window. It was her purpose to encourage others to do the same. "Ooo, yes! I love those little dangly charms."

May 1993 | Washington, DC

Rationally, Frankie knew that her romper had no magical influence over the results of a pregnancy test. Still, she would've felt less stupid standing virtually naked in a bathroom stall at National Airport if she had a proper shirt on.

There was pee on her hand and the dolphin dangle charm at her belly button was winking at her with its emerald eye in an "I told you so" way. She stuck her tongue out at it, even as she took an unsteady inhale and continued counting to one-eighty in her head.

There were pros. Cooper would make really beautiful babies. What she remembered from high school biology told her it would probably have his eyes. Or maybe not? Didn't you need to know your parents' eye color for that?

Okay, revision: their baby would have eyes. Probably.

Ninety seconds.

The cons were what made her breath stutter. No job. No degree. No father? Cooper was a dream, but was he parent material? Dads were supposed to have that degree and job thing figured out. They were serious, but not overly so. They did their taxes on time.

Shit, should she have filed her taxes?

Wait, she was meant to be counting. One-twenty-ish.

She hadn't told Cooper she was late. She had been late before. By the time she reached her third airport, that problem would have solved itself, she figured.

Obviously not. One-thirty.

She sat down on the toilet seat, knee jiggling, romper pooled around her ankles, the little plastic window into her uncertain future still stubbornly white. That was sort of funny, because white was like, pure, and she definitely wasn't. It reminded her of her graduation dress, all the St. Anthony girls marching down the aisle to receive their diploma.

Heather hadn't spoken at graduation. Frankie wondered where she was now, if she had gone to Harvard. If she had any regrets.

There was a control line developing. I want my dad. The thought cut through her, nearly slackening her grip on the test, and it made her feel twice as stupid because she knew she didn't have one, even if she forgot sometimes.

She couldn't do this, but she also couldn't do what she needed to do if she couldn't do this, and it wasn't because she was afraid of going to hell.

Maybe this was meant to be. Maybe this was why she hadn't been able to bring herself to go to college. Maybe this baby possibly without eyes would make her a serious person who loved writing term papers and remembered to file their taxes.

One-eighty.

No baby.

Her cell jumped into vibration in her romper pocket, rattling against the tile floor. Frankie started, sending the test into the toilet. She fished out her phone first, pinching it between her shoulder and ear before plunging a hand into the toilet to fish out the test. "Hey, you! No, I'm fine. Seriously, don't worry about me. I rode a camel, I know how to take the metro."

#about #wrhq.task

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veryace-ficrecs · 2 years

Text

Social Media Fic Recs

One of my guiltiest and pickiest pleasures in fic are twitter fics! This list is made up of some of my favorite in the category, including socials other then twitter.

This list will include all ratings and tags, so read at your own discretion! :)

The Martian:

The Mark Watney Report by AsperJasper - Rated G

Space Pirate-Ninja @MarkWatney nasa must agree with me if they only censored my f*uck a little bit last time i tried to swear at martinez they replaced it with an emoji

Space Pirate-Ninja @MarkWatney this is what power feels like: making some poor person at nasa decide which curse words are appropriate to be tweeted out over work wifi

You Know You Have a Permanent Piece of My Medium-Sized American Heart by tricatular - Rated T

“Hey Hermes!” The ambient suspicion level in the Rec ratcheted up significantly. Kapoor was disturbingly cheerful. “We’ve sent you some mission updates in the data dump, but Mitch and I wanted to personally let you know—” Mitch visibly rolled his eyes in the background. “—That thanks to some…strong suggestions from the White House, and on Annie and Director Sanders’ recommendation, we’ve started releasing Watney’s Mars logs to the public.”

Marvel:

Caption That by maddo - Rated T

Peter’s Instagram had been pretty popular since Instagram’s account noticed and reposted one of his photos, an impossible angle of the New York skyline (thank you Spider-Man) and was floating at around twenty thousand followers.

Then suddenly, @pparker was in the top 100 most followed Instagram accounts.

Just a bunch of little anecdotes regarding our favourite spider and his Instagram account, feat. a meme-tastic Tony Stark.

The Life of Spidey (As Seen Through A Spider-Man Fan Account) by hi_im_jared_19 - Rated T

Spidey-is-a-disaster @chaoticgoodboy

Disclaimer: I appreciate Spidey stepping up to help others. If more people acted like him, the world would be a better place. He is undeniably a good person. That being said, he is an entire human disaster, and I’m here to prove it.

Spider-Man's rise to popularity through the lens of a random twitter account dedicated to his dumbassery.

the conspiracy kids by tempestaurora - Rated T

Series: 3 Works

in which peter, harley and ned ask the all-important question: WHO IS SPIDER-MAN?

one mask at a time by natelette - Rated T

Spider-Man is unmasked, and the world reacts.

Or how Peter, the internet, and the entire world deal in the wake of Mysterio’s video. Spoilers for Far From Home.

DC:

The True Identity: Bruce Wayne by November_Clouds - Rated G

makayla | sc mkyla457 @mkyla456 lmao watch him go off [attached: Video of Bruce Wayne in business casual clothes screaming as he charges towards The Penguin brandishing a long black pipe. Behind him is the main center for the Martha Wayne Foundation, front windows shattered and reception desk on fire. The Penguin looks Scared.]

After a tweet goes viral, people think they've finally figured it out. The real identity of Bruce Wayne.

Red Hood.

(social media fic, based off that tumblr post)

Gotham Online by julidoesnotwrite (notjuli) - Rated T

The Waynes and the Bats as seen through social media.

gotham : a conspiracy thread by noahfense (orphan_account) - Rated T

ti(i wanna die)m @nightwingsass

the real reason Batman hasn’t responded to my conspiracy thread is because he’s jared,19,

in a world where Jason Todd didn't die and Tim Drake has parents that actually care about his wellbeing, Tim runs a popular batfam stan account and his followers convince him to start a YouTube channel.

Yuri on Ice:

Night is Young and the Music's High by opalish - Rated T

"Best press conference ever," the Japanese Nationals silver medalist says when asked. “Ten out of ten, would medal again.”

"I would die for Katsuki-kun," Minami declares, with terrifying sincerity.

On ICE!!! by Watermelonsmellinfellon - Rated M

The first time Katsuki Yuuri saw Victor Nikiforov perform, he realized he had a great desire to see figure skating in a video game. In fifteen years, his dream is realized. Little does he know that Victor's attention has been caught by the very game he unknowingly inspired. So ensues the cutest meeting ever and the relationship that follows.

Love Born in the Eye of the Storm by ScribblerQueen1 - Rated T

After a snowstorm cancels their return flight and all the hotels are overbooked, Yuuri decides to detour home to wait it out. He offers to let other stranded skaters stay at Yuu-topia, he just didn't know one of them was Victor Nikiforov.

(i'm) the boy you'd die for by jenmishe - Rated T

v-nikiforov ✓

[Video: A short clip where Victor is laying dramatically on the couch with miserable expression. “Heartbreaker” by Marina and the Diamonds is playing.]

13,481 likes

v-nikiforov✓ Am I the another one? (((

vitYASS victor,,,, honey,,,, i lvoe you so much,,,, but WHY are you like this.

red-blue-gay but??? does that mean that somebody has broken victor’s heart???? I DON'T UNDERSTAND

christophe-gc ✓ You’re ridiculous.

starsaregay But who recorded it?? Makkachin???

vityathebabe user @starsaregay asking the real question.

--- The adventures of Yuuri "Heartbreaker" Katsuki, or: how Yuuri became known as a cold player full of himself who doesn't care about anyone. (Hint: it's an anxiety and obliviousness.)

Haikyuu:

Framing by Fayah - Rated M

At age 22, Kozume Kenma had millions of subscribers on youtube, one blissfully fucked out Hinata Shouyou on his bed, and a plan.

conflict of interest by zukushou -Rated T

“If you are familiar with the world of D-1 volleyball, chances are you’ve heard the names Hinata Shouyou and Kageyama Tobio. Both twenty-four-year-old athletes are famous for their skill and athletic prowess, but they’ve recently become household names for their intense rivalry.

Early this year, Hinata Shouyou signed onto the MSBY Black Jackals as a wing spiker after a two-year stint in Brazil, playing beach volleyball. He was an unknown in the V-League, but he quickly proved himself with his defensive skill and incredible jumping height and speed.

It wasn’t until the fateful Schweiden Adlers vs. MSBY Black Jackals match just yesterday that viewers came to the realization that Hinata Shouyou was the long-awaited rival of Kageyama Tobio.”

Kageyama and Hinata are married. The press seem to think that they’re hostile rivals who despise each other.

On Great Rivalries and General Dumbassery by NocturnalNights - Rated G

It's not exactly that they were hiding the fact that they had been married for about 7 years now. It's that no one seemed to have caught on yet.

Or: Kageyama and Hinata may have forgotten to mention one very important part of their rivalry.

Good Omens:

it's a new craze by attheborder - Rated T

CROWLEY: I try not to make a habit of gratitude, but I must give our appreciation to everyone out there who’s been listening and subscribing to The Ineffable Plan. AZIRAPHALE: Ooh, yes, we’ve become quite popular, haven’t we? CROWLEY: Yeah, just hit number eight on the advice charts … No advertising at all. AZIRAPHALE: Mm. How … miraculous. CROWLEY: … Aziraphale. You did not.

***

Crowley and Aziraphale are very possibly the people least qualified, on the entire planet, to start up an advice podcast.

But what else is there to do when the world isn’t ending anytime soon, you’re technically on indefinite sabbatical from your lifelong careers, and you need a plausible excuse to spend more time with your best friend who you’re definitely not, absolutely not, maybe just a little, actually maybe overwhelmingly in love with?

hear that bell ringing (but won't get the door) by Rivran - Rated T

Social media: 1 Aziraphale and Crowley: 0.

These could all be read standalone, but it’s better if you read them in order. No, yeah, you should definitely read these in order. Each story features Aziraphale and Crowley, with a supporting cast of human characters for that sweet sweet outsider POV.

It (movies):

Retweet Verse by plinys - Rated T

Series: 12 works

A collection of post-It Ch2 fics that are a mix of domestic Richie/Eddie and social media interactions from all the Losers.

Buzzfeed Presents: 10 Times Richie and Eddie Tozier were Very, Very Married by kyaticlikestea - Rated T

Stanley Uris @surisaccounting I was going through my most recent photos and came across this nice one of @richietozier and @etozier at their wedding last week. Congratulations to the happy couple. They’ve never looked better. [attached image is a photo of two penguins arguing]

Richie ‘My Husband is Also A’ Tozier ✔ @richietozier replying to @surisaccounting Hey @surisaccounting take down that tweet or I’ll keep doing this [attached image is a photo of a Common Potoo, which has been incorrectly labelled ‘Crow’ in Comic Sans font]

Buzzfeed makes a list of all the times Richie and Eddie Tozier, beloved husbands of the Internet, were incredibly married. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it isn't a short list.

Nicest Celebrity You've Ever Met? by atomicteaparty - Rated G

Richie Tozier is a loudmouth guy who can’t be kept down by any woman at all! He’s a party animal who’s constantly meeting new people and living up the party lifestyle… or at least, that’s what his onstage persona is.

What if people who’ve met him realize he isn’t the same guy in real life?

Or: Some people talk about how Richie Tozier surprised them on reddit

14 Reasons Why Richie Tozier and His Husband Are #relationshipgoals by robin_hoods - Rated M

Get yourself a man who looks at you like Richie Tozier looks at Eddie.

areas of expertise by dudski - Rated T

The Exoneration of Richie Tozier by Blissymbolics - Rated T

COMEDIAN RICHIE TOZIER VOLUNTARILY CONFESSES TO STRIKING AND KILLING AN ESCAPED CONVICT IN WHAT MAINE AUTHORITIES ARE CALLING A JUSTIFIED HOMICIDE IN DEFENSE OF ANOTHER

Tozier reportedly struck the assailant on the back of the head with a blunt object in defense of his childhood friend, Michael Hanlon, a librarian who lives in Tozier's hometown of Derry, Maine.

I killed a clown. AMA! by liesmyth - Rated T

I (39M) got stabbed twice today and now I want a divorce. Help?

Or: the one where Eddie is on Reddit.

October 14, 2016.

@PuzzleStan is:

-A puzzle enthusiast named Stan (44%, 3553 votes) -An anonymous stan of puzzles (44%, 3602 votes) -A puzzle enthusiast named Stan who is leaning into the wordplay (12%, 969 votes)

Misc - For Fandoms with only one fic:

#thatjacksonkid by The_German_Grim_Reaper - Rated G

Fandom: Percy Jackson

Following an episode of Buzzfeed Unsolved, several twitter users do their best to uncover the truth about Percy Jackson. They get surprisingly far.

Mr LAFD Updates Man by hammersmiths - Rated T

Fandom: 9-1-1

Series: 2 works

Eddie mans the LAFD Twitter account. Buck tries to be supportive.

Audience: 822,000 and Homeland Security by WerewolvesAreReal - Rated G

Fandom: Leverage

Hardison starts a live-stream for Dragon Age to show off his new mods. And he kicks ass. But his viewers are actually a bit more concerned about the angry guy in the background of his videos, and the blond chick who keeps peering through his windows.

"Is this some kind of performance art," asks peskytroll341.

Actually Me - Eddie Munson by Savi_Yoi - Rated G

Fandom: Stranger Things

This idea was bouncing around my brain at 3am so I just had to write it down.

Eddie is a famous musician. Gaining fame through the 90s with Corroded Coffin. Him and Steve have been together since 1987, but they were always very private about their relationship. Steve is like a cryptid in the Corroded Coffin fandom, with very little information about him, and very few pictures. Eddie is promoting a solo album in 2021, and Steve is pulled on camera to do a silly interview with him. They're about 54/55 in this fic.

This is the transcript of that interview.

#veryace recs #fanfic recs #the martian #yuri!!! on ice #it 2017 #haikyuu!!#dc #batman #good omens #9-1-1 #leverage #stranger things #percy jackson

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