#not to mention I’m in the middle of a wip rn

[adrift-in-thyme]

Sometimes I’m super tempted to delete my ao3 account and just start all over again

[ioannemos]

tagged by @dangerously-human a week ago... thank you 🧡

Rules: Make a new post with the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! Then tag as many people as you have WIPs (or, you know, as many as you feel like, but keep in mind Tumblr only lets tags stick anymore for the first five people mentioned in a post).

i have sooooooo many wips. so many. here are the ten most recent

(i'm adding the first line(s) of each (ignoring the numerous epigraphs) for reasons)

01. the buzz of a saw

> csi au, the setting for which that only my sister would understand without extensive explanation (sandstorm, babey)

Time falls in yellow-white sparks, reopening potholes as they skitter across the streets, turning trees back into saplings, and reversing the years on roofs.

02. Victors

> prospect

Banging against the ladder. Rhythmic, insistent. Maybe trying to get her attention.

03. certain kinds of deaths

> ...the bear au. no i have never watched the show

It’s around midnight in the middle of the week when the guy shows up.

04. so tell me you're still here

> national treasure

He’s opened the phone and put it to his ear before his eyes are even open.

05. Manifest

> is this an au of an au? is this basically original fiction with names that belong to an au of a video game i've never played? all i know is it's 8k words of weird post-apocalypse world building and making a guy Come to Terms with Being Perceived

I swore in surprise and dismay as I pulled Trooper to an abrupt halt at the top of the hill; he sidled and snorted, picking up on my unease.

06. Interlinked

> blade runner 2049

The thin layer of white compacts under his boots.

07. those who keep silent

> pacific rim au

They say you stumbled out of the surf, bleeding and whispering your brother’s name.

08. monster

> grimm au

You learn fast. You have to, when they could be around every corner.

09. silence like darkness

> stargate: atlantis

“Keep- k-keep-”

Words fly overhead before being diced to pieces by radio interference, the tread of boots, the smack of leaves, the calls of birds; pressure and heat and friction scrape over his skin like shark teeth, and flickering light bears down on his closed eyes like a heavy weight.

10. Naissance

> detroit: become human

“I’m sorry,” the woman says. “They- It sounds so- is racist the proper word? -but honestly, they do all look alike.”

tagging uhhh anyone who's been writing who wants to talk about their wips... idk who's writing rn. @morfinwen ? @sunheart ? i'm so tired and my brain is fried

[theunboundwriter]

Characters Out of Context Tag

Rules:

Include one character quote — of your choosing ⁠— from each chapter of your WIP (or as many chapters as you'd like)

Give absolutely no context, save for what's between two parts of an interrupted sentence, should that occur. You may mention who said it.

Have fun, no pressure!

Tagging (with no pressure): @airic-fenn , @eriquin , @acatwrites , @awordchemist , @creatrackers , @clairelsonao3 , @madnessfromthemountains , @werehamburglar , @calicoy , @a-fox-who-writes , @theflyingchair-mjh

I'm on a roll with The Sea is in Her Blood rn so here we go!

Chapter One:

“She’s no good to me dead,” the captain continued, fiddling with one of his rings now. “And believe me, if she were worthless, I would have gotten rid of her a long time ago.”

Chapter Two:

“Drink this and don’t argue with me.”

Chapter Three:

“No offense, but you look like death warmed over.”

Chapter Four:

“Humor me, then. If you could wish for anything at all, no limits, what would you wish for?”

Chapter Five:

“Being incredibly handsome and good looking, just an overall sexy bastard, brigandage, pilfering, and general lawlessness?”

Chapter Six:

“I like your socks.”

Chapter Seven:

“I always look troubled; this is nothing new.”

Chapter Eight:

“Pity.” June responded dryly, brushing past Pierson, and pushing through the thick leaves and vines that blocked their entrance. “We would have had more fun alone.”

Chapter Nine:

“I know a thing or two about fathers with god complexes,” Bates said. “Nothing you do will ever be enough for them.”

Chapter Ten:

“You know. Are you only keeping him alive because he’s useful to you?”

Chapter Eleven:

“I’m cashing in that favor you owe me.” 

Chapter Twelve:

“This mess needs to be cleaned up come morning,” the captain had said. “I don’t care who does it, as long as it gets done. Wait until after he’s dead. I want him to suffer a miserable and slow death for the trouble he’s caused.”

Chapter Thirteen:

“She killed her boyfriend for it.”

Chapter Fourteen:

“Yeah, we. When we first met you were bleeding out in a tender in the middle of the ocean. Forget about June’s survival instincts, you need to worry about your own because I suspect you don’t have any.”

Chapter Fifteen:

“Listen lady, you can stop with your whole tragic backstory monologue,” Jesse interrupted. “I stopped listening roughly half an hour ago.”

[navysealt4t]

18, 26 & 29 for writing ask game (it's albatross btw)

:DD yooo hihi!!!

hmmm. usually i find a post on tumblr and go “:00 omg that’s amazing i love that i need to write that” LMAO. or like for riptide specifically if just be listening to an episode and go “yknow what this scene could make? an AMAZING fanfic idea :)” also of course reading other fanfiction

usually when i don’t have any inspiration for anything, i go searching through old ideas/wips or i try writing some stuff in my journal!! for some reason when i write on paper it gets my brain flowing faster :) i’ll write like a full page on paper then move to google docs lol

oooo this is a good one…. music is usually my first choice lol. like i’m writing in gillions pov rn so before i start writing, i listen to a few songs on my playlist for him. always gets the angst going 💪

other times, i’ll read some fanfic in their pov or i’ll just listen to a riptide episode lol. ALSO WRITING GILLION IS SO HARD WHYYY I CAN NEVER GET HIS VOICE DOWN….

ough. man this….. 2 different snips came to me but ima do my fav >:) it’s from my fnc cuddle fic lol

Chip had the slightest guess that Gillion would tear the Undersea and Oversea apart to save him. That is, only if he were stupid enough to land himself in more trouble than he could handle. And yeah, Chip will give him that, he is a bastard.

On bad days, it scared Chip, how devoted Gill was. But on days like these where he couldn't tear his eyes away from Gillion nor imagine a life without him, he wouldn’t hesitate to do the exact same thing. He'd do it a thousand times over.

like MAN. ok.

so this was my first time EVER writing chip and gillion (i was on like… episode 40 or something LMAO) and mann i just loved them <333 i don’t really know how to describe this snip lmao

i wanted to like. highlight that chip & gillion have bad days where things seem like too much. their so young and in love and that is NOT always a good mix. gillion has a strong loyalty to those he cares about and would do just about anything to protect them. also um. i did not know about what the prophecy said at this time so the line “tear the Oversea and Undersea apart” was a little on the nose huh??

but. idk what i’m saying really i wanted to show that their still in that young live phase where they bounce between “everything is beautiful i love you” and “this is too much what are we even doing”

not to mention chip DEFINITELY has quite a few self worth issues so. gill’s loyalty to him scares him because he believes he doesn’t deserve it :( just man. they are such a pair i love them <3333

also sorry this took so long to answer i had to take a test in the middle of writing this LMAO

[jrueships]

I HAVE BEEN NEGLECTING TO MENTION A KEY PIECE OF INFO AND IM SORRY! Sorry for yelling but I’m literally sobbing. In my rough draft/outline/key points bullet points word doc for a fic I wanna write, I have “court fight hahah, the aftermath in the locker room is Rough, cue Dad LeBron and Older Brother Russ who will Continue the fight outside later” and it’s happening in like the middle of winter so NOT THE ALL STAR GAME. And there’s more points like that later on but I hadnt fully hashed those out yet. I had lebron and Russ being teammates in my notes for MONTHS. SINCE LIKE LAST NOVEMBER! DID I ACCIDENTALLY MANIFEST THE LAKERS TRADE? As a Wizards fan, I am DISTRAUGHT.

The four (and a half) other wizard fans beating you up rn :

how DARE you !!?!??!??!??!?!

I'm kidding of course tho LMAO it's COOL don't worry 😭 it was probably bound to be .... u were just better aware of THE HORRIBLE FUTURE!!!!! We can't stop time from killing us... 😭

BUT THE STORY SOUNDS INTERESTING!!! i LOVE reading tense fight/argument scenes in fics 👁👁 ALSO dad bron and older brother (rodrick) russ????? im LISTENING!! if u have wip pics 😳 im l o o k i n g bruh

[dulciedeleche]

Hi hello yes remember that AU I mentioned about Vaati, Octavo and Astor being a dysfunctional set of triplets? I'm making it a thing

It's still a total WIP. All I've got rn is that they're morally ambiguous 19 year olds in a modern Hyrule

Each of them by themselves under the cut

Vaati. 4′11 in height and the youngest by a few minutes. Yes, he is constantly teased for his height by his own brothers

Octavo. 5′6 and the middle brother. As you might think, he’s into music. He’s also the cleanest boy and is often cleaning up after his own brothers. Just know that if Vaati and Astor’s hair looks nice and brushed, Octavo did it

Astor. 5′5 and the oldest. He is the least worked on atm ‘cause I’m still learning about his OG self and how to work with him. This Astor, like the original, appears to not sleep very much. He takes better care of himself, however. At least he’s also loved by his family, and while he doesn’t say it very often, he loves them too

[gloomybabygirl]

{finally} Poe Dameron x Reader

A/N: hi writers block how are ya??? okay so i have several fics that are WIP rn and I keep starting them and not being able to finish because they need to be mini series!! so today i told myself i needed to get something complete out or i’d burst and here it is lol. also I use a random name in here, i’m so sorry if it’s your name!!

A/N again: tag list is open!! message me if you want to be on my little drabble tag list :)

Warnings: language, alcohol, pining, some angst, friends to lovers trope that I can’t get away from, mentions of sex, THIS WON’T BE EDITED TILL TOMORROW MORNING

World Count: 2600 oops

Summary: You get drunk and Poe takes care of you

The music was blaring through the speakers at the local Cantina, the lights somehow blinding you with their flashing but not bright enough for you to see who you were grinding on. 

Hey, it was okay to let loose sometimes, right? Being at war is stressful and occasionally you would allow yourself one or two drinks at the Cantina with your friends. But your friends left you hours ago. And you had way more than 2 drinks. You were now on the dance floor with another drink and no shoes on, dancing with someone who’s face you couldn’t properly make out. Was it because of the light or the alcohol? Probably both. 

You finally sat back down at the table when the alien you were dancing with got mad because you spilled your drink on him. But you weren’t about to let that kill your buzz. How did you get up on the table? Doesn’t matter, you were here now. Arms snaking above your head and hips moving in what you imagined was a provocative way. You felt a tap on your bare foot and looked down to see an angry looking security guard. 

“Miss, we need you to get down off the table now.” He held out his hand to help you down. 

You slumped down in your booth. “You guys ruin all the fun.” 

“We’re closing here in about 10 minutes. Are you going to be able to get back home safely?” He asked.

Shit. You had only been on this planet a few days as the base had recently moved there. This was everyone’s first night at the Cantina and you were too many drinks in to know how to get back to base on your own. 

You must have looked confused because the security guard offered you an old communicator. “You have someone who can come pick you up?”

You bit your lip. You knew Jess or Kare could pick you up but they wouldn’t be happy about it. You slowly dialed the only person who wouldn’t be mad, taking your time to make sure you entered the right ID.

“Poe?” You asked into the phone when it stopped ringing.

“Yeah baby? Where are you?” You felt your heart leap out of your chest. You loved it when he called you baby. Even if you two weren’t exactly official. And you were pretty positive he had brought another girl home that night. Things were... complicated. You wanted so badly to tell Poe how much you cared about him and how you wanted to be his, but you were certain that wasn’t what he wanted. So, you took what you could get. Occasional sex in a storage closet accompanied by his friendship sprinkled with holding hard in secret and stolen forehead and nose kisses.  

“I’m still at the Cantina and I don’t remember how to get back to base. Can you come get me?” You really hoped he wasn’t with another girl. 

You heard laughing on the other end. 

“I’ll see you in ten minutes drunkie.” You heard the line click and felt a smile creep up on your face as you handed the communicator back to the security guard. At least he wasn’t mad. You felt yourself sway in your seat to the next song that came on and got up to dance. 

Ten minutes later, you felt someone grab your hips and start dancing with you. 

“How many drinks have you had baby? I’ve never seen you dance like this.” You heard Poe’s voice in your ear and his breath on your shoulder sent shivers down your spine. 

“Not sure at this point. Want to see how I was dancing before you came?” You spun around and started walking towards your table, climbing onto it again. 

As soon as you started dancing again your felt Poe reach up to grab your hand. You looked down at his beautiful worried face. 

“Hey, hey get down from there, you’re gonna hurt yourself.” He pulled you down towards him and you leaned in to kiss him, hard. 

“Fine, but only because you’re a good kisser.” You laughed as he helped you down. 

“Um, where are your shoes?” Poe asked, looking down at your bare feet, sore from dancing. 

“I- uh... Don’t remember? I may have given them to some creep for 20 credits.”

“Maker, you’re wasted. Okay, let’s go back to base.” He reached around your legs and lifted you up into his arms, your arms automatically going around his neck as he walked out of the Cantina into the cold air. 

You nuzzled in closer to his neck, deeply breathing in his scent, not at all concerned that you were definitely being a creep. 

“You smell good,” you said into his neck, making him laugh at you.

“You’re funny when your drunk.” 

Suddenly you didn’t feel like laughing anymore. “Poe?” you asked, looking at him now.

“Yeah baby?” He cocked an eyebrow at you, already smiling, more than ready to hear what drunk you had to say next. 

“Where you with another girl tonight? I saw you flirting with that new recruit all night.” 

He didn’t drop his smile, but his eyes softened at your question. Of course he hadn’t slept with another girl tonight. He hadn’t slept with another girl in months. Not since he realized he was in love with his best friend. And for Poe, being in love in the middle of a war was less than ideal. Meaningless sex was one thing. Having someone he loved waiting for him to come home when he might not make it? That was another thing entirely. He was already mad enough at himself for getting so close to you and Finn in the first place. Although, he wasn’t in love with Finn. 

“No baby, I went back to my quarters alone.” 

“Oh. I thought you would have banged her. She’s prettier than some of the other girls you bring home.” 

Ouch. Is that what she thinks? I just sleep with everyone? My own damn fault for giving her that impression. 

“Not as pretty as you though,” he glanced at you to see your reaction, which was to bury your face in the crook of his neck. He could say that because you wouldn’t remember in the morning, right? 

He finally made it to the hallway leading to his quarters. 

“In fact, to prove it, want to have a sleepover tonight? Don’t worry, I’m not taking advantage of your drunkenness. No sex, I promise.” He was dumb to have started having sex with you in the first place. He couldn’t help it though, his feelings for you were so strong he needed to express them somehow. 

“Sleepover!” You giggled, making his heart swell. 

You loved when Poe asked you to sleep in his room or vise versa. Usually it meant sex which was always incredible, followed by sleeping in his arms. That was the best part about the arrangement. He let you stay in his arms all night, stroking his fingers through your hair and using his other hand to keep you securely pressed to him. 

He opened the door to his quarters and laid you down on the bed before going to grab you a shirt to sleep in. He tossed it at your face when he found it. 

He fucking loved seeing you in his shirts. Especially when you had just woken up in his arms, hair messy, eyes bleary with sleep. He’d give you every shirt he owned if it didn’t mean facing the General half naked. He watched, not so bashfully (or discreetly), as you stripped down and slipped on his shirt. 

“Are you gonna stand there staring all night or are you coming to bed?” You asked, knowing damn well what stripping in front of him was accomplishing. 

“Uh, yeah baby just give me one second.” He said rushing into the refresher to splash cold water on his face. Not sleeping with you was going to be harder than he had anticipated. 

You laid in Poe’s bed, waiting for him to come back and started looking around his room for a little orange droid, who was charging for the night. While you were sweeping your eyes over the room, you noticed a small slip of paper on Poe’s nightstand. Drunk and shamelessly curious, you let it fall open in your hand.

ID: RS- 4589 v. 909

Camryn <3

You felt your stomach drop. Camryn was the new recruit. So he hadn’t brought her back to his quarters, but he had gotten her Communicator ID. So much for being prettier than her. In your drunken state, you began to cry over that stupid pilot with his stupid beautiful face. Damn him. 

Of course he came back before you could wipe your tears away. 

“Woah, baby what’s wrong? What happened?” He came to sit next to you on the bed, but you moved away, pushing him off before he could sit down. Hearing him call you ‘baby’ made everything sting so much more. Why did he have to call you pet names and be so sweet? Did he want to make you want him? Was this all just some stupid game? Did he even care about you at all? 

That’s when it hit you. He didn’t care about you. How could he? If he cared about you, he wouldn’t just fuck you when it was convenient for him and then act like best buddies in the mess hall the next day. He wouldn’t call you ‘baby’ knowing it makes you think there could be something more, when there would never be. He wouldn’t keep you on the line by holding your hand under the table and kissing you on the forehead and letting you sleep in his room. He only did all of that so you’d keep being an easy go-to fuck buddy. You felt a fresh wave of tears falling hard from your eyes and you got up to leave. 

Poe was not about to let that happen. He grabbed your wrist, pulling you to him even though you were struggling to get away from him as much as possible. 

“Baby, please stay. Let’s talk, what happened, what did I do?” He put every ounce of worry he had in his voice to make you listen and see that he was genuinely concerned. 

It worked. You made you way back to his bed and stood in front of it. Bu you didn’t want him to win this game he was playing. You just stood in front of his bed as a new wave of tears hit you. You crumpled to the floor, sobs wracking through your body. 

“Oh, baby no, don’t cry. I hate it when you cry. Please, tell me what’s hurting you so I can fix it.” He crouched down and sat in front of you on the floor, holding both your hands in his warm large ones. He waited patiently for your breath to even out until the sobs left you shivering on the floor. He fucking hated seeing you hurting like this. He wanted nothing more than to reach out and collect you in his arms and pull you onto his lap, holding you until you were ready to talk. 

You stilled, no fresh tears coming out. 

“Why are you crying baby?” He softly whispered. 

“Because no one cares about me.” You said it as if it was the most obvious thing in the world, not meeting his eyes.

Had Poe heard you right? How could you think no one cared about you? He cared about you more than anything in the world. He wanted now more than ever to convey that to you. He stood up, waking away from you a few feet. He couldn’t bare to see you this upset when he could fix it. And couldn’t. 

“Poe?” You sweet voice made him turn around, still angry with himself for falling in love with you in the first damn place. 

Kriff, you thought he was mad at you. He could tell by the look he had caused on your beautiful face.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make you mad. I just... I saw that Camryn gave you her ID. And... I don’t know I guess I got jealous.” You finished, looking down at your feet. 

Oh. Oh. “Kriff. Kriff, kriff, kriff. I’m so stupid.” Poe was tugging at his thick curls and walking around the room in frustration. It hit him that you thought he didn’t care about you because he had spent all this time making sure he didn’t let his feelings show too much. Turns out all he did was lead you on. 

“Poe? Why are you mad?” You asked timidly. 

He spun on his heel to look at you, “Because I care about you!” he yelled, “So damn much it hurts! And now I’ve hurt you because I was trying to protect you. I never let myself show you how much I care about you because I never wanted it to turn into anything serious. But I did. I really, really did. But I couldn’t let you get too close to me because I can’t stand the thought of someone I love waiting for me to come home from a mission I may not come back from.” 

His voice was weak by the end of his explanation. When you started crying again, he crossed the room in two long strides and pulled you onto his lap, cradling your head to his chest and kissing the top of your hair. 

“I’m sorry I led you on sweetheart. I didn’t realize how much I was hurting you by trying to protect you. And now I’ve hurt you anyway. I just... I would hate for you to be here waiting for me to come home when I could be captured by the First Order or in a ditch somewhere in the Outer Rim. I could never leave someone I love behind like that.” 

You moved to wrap your arms around his neck and look up at him. That was the second time he said ‘love’. 

He looked at you with those sweet brown eyes, so full of love and sadness. “But here I am, in love with you and running that risk anyway.” He looked down, not wanting to meet you eyes after confessing his love for you multiple times. 

“Poe.” He didn’t look up. “Poe, baby.” You tilted his chin up gently to meet your eyes. 

“I don’t care about all that. I deal with the worry of you not making it home already. It’s terrifying, yes. But whatever time we have together, I’d rather spend it loving you properly and worrying if you’ll get home rather than holding back my love for you. And still worrying if you’ll get home. It’s worth it if we can be together, really together, for whatever amount of time we have.” 

He looked at you for a second more before dipping his head down to kiss you softly on the lips. He tried to convey every single ounce of love he had for you into the kiss, and you could feel it all the way in your toes. 

“So can we be together? Properly now?” you asked, still nervous he would say no. 

“Absolutely baby.” He stood up, carrying you with him to bed. He laid you down gently and slid into bed next to you, wrapping his arms around you as tightly as possible. 

“I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you,” he whispered, kissing your forehead, nose, and both eyes with every declaration of love. 

“I love you too, Poe Dameron,” you whispered against his lips, kissing him once more before nuzzling into the crook of his neck and breathing in deeply. His scent got you more drunk than all the alcohol you had that night. 

He kissed the crown of your head and whispered, “Finally.” Bringing you impossibly closer to him as you drifted off to the steady beating of his heart. 

[bellesque]

idk if your requests are open still but royal loki concept with a midgardian reader— yeah? maybe? take it wherever you want from there and be creative because your other fics are and just amAZING! i might be late but anywayy— happy birthday, even though it was yesterday!

Midnight’s Mischief (Loki x Reader)

Read on my AO3.

Summary:

You only wanted to feel like a princess for a night.

You didn’t expect to meet an actual prince.

Rating: T

Word Count: 2.7K

Warnings/Tags: Fluff, Dancing, Royal Loki, some Cinderella Elements

A/N: Listen you can’t give me so much freedom like this because I feel in my bones this is going to turn into a multichaptered fic and I have a million other wips side-eyeing me rn

Tag List: @shiningloki @imnotrevealingmyname @wolfsmom1 @hanyasnape @lukeyirwy @toozmanykids @rorybutnotgilmore @myraiswack @green-valkyrie (Tag List is currently open! If you’d like to be a part of it, let me know!)

BEING IN A whimsical, fairytale ball has always been high on your list of escapism fantasies.

You wondered if princess parties (like the ones in movies) were actually real when royalty was still a thing. If they got to attend extravagant, lavish balls in venues that seemed to reach the high heavens, with castle corridors illuminated by candlelight and crystal chandeliers. Whether fact or fiction, you’ve never been more excited for a night than you are now.

Just for tonight, you allow the indulgence of looking—and feeling—like royalty.

Your heels clack against the marbled tiles of the venue as you and your friend Leigh navigate your way to the Regency Ballroom. Careful not to trip over your ball gown, you glance at Leigh. Beside you she shimmies, adjusting the top of her gown to fit her boobs better.

“I feel twelve,” she mutters, brazenly cupping her breasts.

“Oh, please. As if you’ve never wanted to be a princess for a night.”

“I mean, yeah, when I was twelve. And I’m saying this with love, but the fact that you’ve got on a fucking crown isn’t exactly helping me feel like an adult here.”

Your cheeks grow warm. “I’m sure I’m not the only one,” you say, a little defensive. “And by the way, it’s a tiara.”

Leigh smirks at you, perfectly painted lips curling at the edges. “Twenty bucks?”

“Fifteen.”

“Bo-ring.”

“Fine.”

She claps her hands, looping her arm with yours. The Regency Ballroom is right ahead. “I hope you know that I agreed to this because you said there’d be some yummy men. Potential knights in shining armor, all that jazz.”

“And I value your honesty,” you say, nodding a thank you to the servers who open the large doors as you approach. “But, for the record—”

“Whoa, the organizers of this thing were not playing.”

It’s true: the place is more than what you imagined from the email invite you received prior. Aside from the grandeur of the venue itself, the entire ambience transports you into what feels like another world entirely. Soft, regal music swells from the mini orchestra that plays on the raised platform, and everyone’s dressed in gowns of all colors and periods and styles.

It makes you a little giddy to see everyone commit to the event to such an extent. You wish this becomes a regular occasion.

“You don’t mind if I ditch you, right? If I, hypothetically, find someone cute?” Leigh grabs a glass of wine from a passing waiter. “Because I saw this guy in a tailcoat on the way inside, and he was kinda giving me looks already, so…”

Leigh is neither best friend nor fair weather friend. She’s in town for a few days, and having been partners in a high school class once, she somehow felt the need to ring you up, pleading for you to take her anywhere because she was dying of boredom.

You mentioned that you had an extra ticket, and she said yes before you could even finish your sentence and tell her it was to a costume ball.

“Hey, no worries,” you beam, plucking the wine glass from her fingers and taking a dainty sip, “by all means, mingle! Meet someone! Get swept off your feet! It’s a party. It’s what I was going to do whether or not you came anyway, so don’t be too guilty.”

“Okay, great!” She kisses you on the cheek. “Because he’s kind of already waiting.” Leigh jerks her head to the buffet table across the room, where a broad-shouldered man stands tentatively, shifting his weight from one foot to another. He’s clearly waiting for someone—that someone specifically being Leigh, if the not so surreptitious glances your way are any indication.

Before she can leave, a lady with a hoop skirt that’s draped more than the large windows of the ballroom comes into your peripheral, something glittering atop her bouffant hair.

You lift your chin at Leigh triumphantly. “Pay up first, baby, you saw that tiara.”

“Fifteen.”

“You said twenty!”

“I changed my mind!” she calls as she lifts the hem of her gown off the floor, retreating. Laughing, Leigh waves and you bring up a hand as the man places a meaty hand on her shoulder blade.

Well. You knew you’d lose her for the night. Just not this quickly.

Still, what you said is true. Leigh’s absence doesn’t dampen your mood. You’re happy standing by the tables at the side, observing people and their different gowns, with a glass of rosé in hand. Couples trickle into and out of the ballroom dance floor; others mingle by the tables like you, occasionally nibbling on the fanciest finger food you could ever imagine. The light reflecting from the gorgeous, majestic chandelier dances over the partygoers, and you revel in the moment, wanting to commit this to memory. Simply existing in it. The minuet transitions into a waltz, and more people and their partners taking to the dance floor with excited grins on their faces.

You would like to take your dress out for a twirl at some point before the night ends. If only a gentleman were to ask.

“That’s a lovely color on you, my lady.”

Speak of the—you turn around, glad you didn’t startle so much to the point of spilling perfectly good wine, to face whoever spoke to you. A subtle smirk plays on the face of a lithe man dressed in what looks to be costume straight out of a period film. Or fantasy period film. It doesn’t really make sense, but somehow he makes it work.

You glance down at your gown: a rich forest green with silver detailing cinched around your waist. “Oh, uh… thanks.” You smile politely.

Only it falters after a couple seconds, because he pins you with an expectant look. “My… lord…?” you try, uncertain.

Satisfaction spreads across his face, confusing you mildly. Did he really wait to be addressed…?

“Would you care to dance?” he asks, taking a step towards you and bending forward. A bow, you realize, as he holds the posture while awaiting your answer.

“O-okay, sure.”

You slip your hand in his outstretched one, his slender fingers clasping around you and leading you gently to the middle of the dance floor. His back is as straight as a board as he guides you towards him, and when you’re a pace away he pulls you closer. His hand settles on the small of your back, yours on his shoulder.

And then you’re waltzing; slowly, tentatively, shyly. Though he takes the lead you can’t follow as well as you should, your bafflement blocking you from waltzing like you do in your daydreams. And as weird as it sounds, he’s distracting you from dancing—even if you’re dancing with him.

He’s good-looking. Strong, cutting features with a regal gait. He stands much taller than you are, his head angled down towards you so his green eyes pierce you with the intensity of the sun at high noon.

He doesn’t break eye contact with you. As much as you try to look away, fixate your attention instead on the couples that sway around you, your gaze always finds his. And he probably hasn’t looked away from you once. There’s no malice in it though—he regards you with somewhat of a silent, amused curiosity.

If it’s awkward to be dancing with a good-looking stranger who seemingly can’t take his eyes off you, it doesn’t help that you’re both painfully silent. You expect him to make polite small talk as he guides your steps—only aside from the lovely orchestra playing and the faint chatter of the attendees around you, all that’s heard is the sound of your breathing.

The music winds down, violins sustaining their last note, and your expectations are shattered once again when instead of this mystery man guiding you into a twirling finish, he spins you into the next dance.

Another waltz.

“Do I scare you, princess?” he asks, raising his chin slightly.

You jump a little at his sudden question. “Um. Maybe a little?”

The man sighs, giving a short chuckle as he shakes his head minutely. The hand on your back releases you as you circle around him, one of your arms outstretched as gracefully as you can manage, before you come back in front of him and rest your hand back on his shoulder.

“Perhaps my reputation does precede me,” he mutters.

You blink, even more confused now. “Sorry?”

“Do you…” He narrows his eyes in near disbelief. “Do you not know who I am?”

“I think I’d remember if you told me your name,” you say with a sheepish laugh. Of course you’d remember. With a face like his and the rich voice to match, meeting him on a night like tonight? You’d remember it forever.

“Ah. Then—forgive me, my lady.” He pulls away from you to bow cordially. “Prince Loki, of Asgard.”

Stunned doesn’t seem to cover the emotion racing through you. No one else seems to mind that you’ve both stopped smack dab in the center for him to bow to you with a flourish of his cape. He looks up at you, expectant, yet again, and so you hastily curtsy and mumble your name.

He rises, taking you once again in his arms and picking up where you left off in perfect rhythm to the music. It’s a little disorienting. Your mind struggles to catch up: so far he’s bowed to you twice, is leading you through a perfect waltz, and is, apparently, a prince.

“And your kingdom, my lady?”

“What?”

“Am I to believe you’re a princess with no people to rule over?” he smirks.

And then somehow, realization dawns on you: he’s an actor. Trying to get you into some kind of fantasy, medieval, whatever character to really sell the idea to yourself that you have actually been whisked away, into a story akin to fiction.

“Okay,” you snort, “since we’re doing this whole made up thing, fine, I’ll humor you. Uh”—you rack your brains, glancing at the chandelier overhead—“Genovia.”

“Genovia,” Prince Loki repeats, as though testing the name on his tongue. It comes out melodic and velvety, making you shiver involuntarily. “Sounds… quaint. Not as dreadful or painfully dull as some of the other kingdoms I’ve heard of tonight. What in the Nine is New Jersey?”

You laugh this time, an actual belly laugh, your head tipping back in mirth at his delivery. You sober up sooner than you’d like when you see he’s still absolutely mystified.

“Well, that’s what it is,” you add helpfully. “Genovia… it… yeah.”

“What are your people famous for?”

Damn. He’s really making you think. “Gosh, um…” You blow out a raspberry. “Horses? Apples? Archery? Oh! Mattress surfing.”

Prince Loki hums thoughtfully. “I’ve never heard of it.”

Either he’s an exceptionally good actor, or he really hasn’t seen The Princess Diaries. Or, a part of you begins to argue, he could actually be who he says he is—

But that wouldn’t make sense.

Could it?

“Well, what about you?” you say quickly, seizing the opportunity to deflect. “What’s uh, what’s Asgard famous for?”

“The Realm Eternal,” Loki says, completely serious. “Warriors of strength, leaders of justice.” He pauses at your lost expression. “Have you not heard of it?”

You have a feeling he has more to say, so you shake your head. Prince Loki spins you around once, before continuing.

“Asgardians are the peacekeepers of the Nine Realms, endowed with strength of all facets to keep the realms from falling. Thwart the possible dangers it can be to itself before it starts, or finish disputes where they arise. We protect. Asgard plays a vital role, if not the most vital of all the realms.”

“And you’re their prince.”

The corners of Loki’s lips curl upwards. “One of them.”

“So you have a brother.”

You’re not sure why you’re still entertaining him at this point. The waltz’s cadence does nothing to separate you from each other, and neither does the lively first note of the polka. Instead Loki’s leading you into a quicker step, bouncing in the most poised manner you’ve ever seen a man dance in.

“Aye,” he says. “Most prefer him to myself.”

“I prefer you,” you blurt out mindlessly, immediately feeling regret in the form of heat crawling up your neck.

Prince Loki’s piercing green eyes light up in surprise. “Not many would,” he murmurs.

“Well, I mean—” you backpedal, “—I don’t—I haven’t met—”

The entrance to the ballroom rattles in its hinges, followed by a booming thud. Heads swivel to the source of the commotion and even the orchestra falters. You are no exception, craning your neck to look behind Loki and at the doors.

He is the only one who seems completely unfazed.

“Perhaps that is for the best. Ready for our big finish, princess?”

Bang! The doors swing open, and strange men in very detailed costumes—metal armor, odd-shaped helmets—charge in, long spears in hand. Your mouth falls open. You’ve never seen anything like them. The attendees gasp collectively, some dancers pulling away from their partners to retreat to the sides of the room.

But Loki places his hands on your hips, lifting you off your feet and into the air, and instructs, “Eyes on me, princess.”

“Wh—” He spins you around, the world around you blurring, and you fix your attention on him so as not to get dizzy. “Prince Loki, I think we should get ou—”

He sets your feet on the ground, a mad intensity in his eyes—and Loki wraps his arms around you and kisses you.

Well. You’ve had multiple daydreams about how tonight would go. This is definitely not one of them.

His arms tighten around your waist, and swarms of butterflies erupt in the pit of your stomach. Your feet are on the ground, but with your fingers and toes tingling with every soft movement of his lips against yours, it feels like you’re floating. He’s kissing you. You’re kissing him.

The clanging of armor jolts you apart, but Loki keeps you within arm’s reach. Your heart pounds against your sternum.

“I like it when you say my name,” he murmurs.

“Prince Loki!” one of the strange men shouts. The prince in front of you flinches slightly, and then huffs in amusement.

“Don’t like it when they do.”

“I—what?”

Loki sighs. “I’m afraid I have to bid you good night. And farewell.”

“Wait, who are they?” Question after question presents itself, your mind a jumbled mess and your knees still shaking from that damn kiss. “What do they want?”

“The Einherjar. Ah. Well.” He brushes a thumb over your cheekbone. “What’s life without a little mischief?”

“Your Highness!”

“Where is he?”

He pulls you by the elbows, pressing a chaste kiss to your cheek, and whispers in a voice that could melt butter, “Something to remember me by.”

And then he takes off, a cheeky grin splitting his face as he keeps his eyes trained on his pursuers, slinking through the crowd and towards a nondescript door. An exit.

The strange men sift through the partygoers. Some shake their heads in fear, cowering; others shrug. You simply hope they do not approach you. And by some mad stroke of luck, when they’re a few feet away from you—they ignore you entirely.

Loki catches your eye by the small archway, and with a mischievous wink and a heartstopping smile, he disappears with a flash of his green cape.

You exhale, a little shakily, as one armored man shouts instructions and points to the door. They bolt after him, each footfall thunderous. A few seconds tick past, and once the clatter disappears completely the orchestra warms up again.

Back to normal. Just a little. But you—you’re still reeling from what just happened.

Leigh sidles up to you, poking your side.

“So,” she says, “who was the knight in shining armor, and what’d they want with him?”

His kiss, the feel of his mouth against yours, still tingles at your lips, lingering like the warmth of a fire. You stare at the open door, still trying to make sense of what on Earth just happened.

“I… I think I just met a prince.”

[kybee1497]

Hey kiwi! 6 and 7 for the fic ask

Hey Gracie, thanks for the ask!

6: Of all the fics you have written so far, which one is your personal favorite?

My all time favorite is Dancing to the Rhythm of Your Heartbeat because it’s so stupidly fluffy and I’m really attached to it. It took about three weeks of working on it off and on and it’s the longest thing I’ve written so far. 

I also had a lot of fun with The Screaming Adventures of Crop Top and Death Drop. I like the vibe it has. I wrote it in the middle of a stressful winter term and it has strong August vibes so it was fun. 

I was going to leave it with those two but I’ve never known how to stop talking about fic so I’m adding to it. 

I have a soft spot for Zipping up the Mess, which is my Carrie angst fic just because the poor baby has been through so much and she’s got so much healing to do. I keep coming back to her story and It’s going to be really long once it’s done. 

Also, I should mention I Wish I could Hold You Through It because it was really therapeutic to write and I cried writing it and I cry every time I read through it again. It was weird putting such a personal experience into a fic but it was helpful so it’s the one that has had the most emotional impact I guess. Idk if that makes sense. 

7: Post a random line from a WIP

This is from Zipping up the Mess once again bc I don’t have a lot of WIPs that I can share from rn. Also I keep forgetting which pieces I’ve already posted so rip. 

One little girl with braids who ran on soda and sarcasm, who could put together the perfect outfit in under a minute and who loved her friends with everything she had. One little blonde girl who was a little fragile and a little broken but she shined anyways. She was perfect just the way she was, even if she didn’t believe it, even if she couldn’t believe it.

[haikyuu-appreciation-club]

any new writings coming out soon from you or your friends that youre excited about?

bdkdbdndb omg omg let me tell you anon 😏😏

first off @al3x1ss is in the middle of the second part of her current smau which is just 💖💕💞💗💘💓and there’s also a new story in the works which i’m vv excited for hehe~

@babymattsun has a ongoing series called ‘in the ring’ that im super excited to follow along w/ bc lexy’s writing + iwaizumi = *chefs kiss* 😩😩

@sunakissses omg omg val has a valentine’s day event coming out that i’m so fucking hype for like skevenve plsss 🧎‍♀️

i believe @vhskenma has an ongoing 7 min. in heaven collab that sounds super super cute, not to mention i’m a sucker for stuff like 7 min. in heaven && also it’s sequoia’s writing sooo like 😁‼️

@hvnlydmn’s wips are looking vv nice rn so im so freaking excited for those bc ains’ writing is so fucking good omg

@kodzurin has such a cute smau called ‘game over try again’ that i’m also super super excited to follow along w/ beksbsndb :’)

@haikyuu-wh0r3 alsooo has something in the works too which i’m always so excited about bc i love diana’s writing [this acc is mainly nsfw sooo be cautious of that if you’re a minor]

&& all of my moots are always coming out w/ lovely writing so i’m so so so excited to see what everyone has in store :’)

as from me, i’m very very excited to introduce my atsumu smau on monday !! i might work on some text drabbles or oneshots inbetween buuut that’s the main thing that i’ve been focused on rn sooo im really eager to bring that to you all <33

[sirsparklepants]

I've been staring at my WIPs a lot recently, as you do, and I think it's time to release everything I've got of my favorite story I will never write. I kind of fell out of Overwatch before I had the spoons for longfic, and now there's so much lore to catch up on (this dates from before Doomfist was released) that I'm just not going to be able to incorporate, but it's still a really great idea that I really love, so I'm going to put my story notes and snippets out into the wild.

The Darkness In Our Hands

Jesse McCree wasn't expecting to get a message when the Recall went out. He'd been Blackwatch, after all - he'd written half their playbook. But he'd lived five years with the death and slander of Gabriel Reyes burning in his chest, not knowing who to blame, and this new Overwatch was the best way to find out who had killed him so he could kill them right back. But the deeper he looks, the more mysteries he finds - and he'll need some help if he's ever going to get his justice.

[[MORE]]

Crime and conspiracy fic

Opening: McCree, in the middle of nowhere, New Mexico - give insight into the state of the world and how territorial governments are, him thinking on Reyes and what he owes to him, the recall message, decides to respond but have his own agenda.

He travels thinking about how different from the rest of Overwatch Blackwatch was, and how he hopes at least one Blackwatch agent has made it back, thinking about past with Genji - flashbacks to unsavory missions maybe? Arrival - he sees new faces and is not particularly prepared because he didn't feel it was secure enough to ask on a comm line who was there. Not as familiar with this base, paranoia rising, but then a familiar face! Sort of. (when he arrives Reinhardt and Brigitte are fighting about Brigitte calling Torb on him, Reinhardt doesn't want to pull Torb away from his wife) ← might combine these two into one chapter?

Genji puts him off when he initially tries to talk though, and when McCree pulls him aside to speak about his own personal mission Genji talks first about Hanzo and Genji's changes, and McCree realizes that Genji is so utterly different as to be unrelatable, so he never does tell Genji the whole story of why he's there. Genji asks him to give Hanzo a chance instead of acting on his loyalties to Genji and providing retribution. End of section, Hanzo arrives

McCree and Hanzo spend some time scoping each other out but they can both tell they're very different from the people around them. A particular do-gooder incident happens and they bond over looking at each other like “r u srs rn”. Meanwhile, Winston is creating profiles for everyone and trying to find a fit for like… intelligence gathering, brute force, explosives, etc - team roles I guess? In the interests of that are exhaustive interviews and training. First kinky sex somewhere in here

McCree is getting antsy at this point and I need to move along from character development to actual plot, so time to send out trial field intel squad for a rootin tootin hopefully not shootin time! They go - somewhere with a large Asian population where someone McCree’s size won't stand out. Uh. This is a note to do more research into where Omniums are. Hong Kong maybe? Hong Kong is a good city for crime. Maybe Singapore if I want to make things difficult for them what with all the weapons laws. Anyway. Somewhere with an omnic population that's not great with outsiders but Genji knows enough about their culture to be respectful and he's metal enough he won't stand out. They're not actually researching Talon but McCree is! Hanzo catches him and then they're wary partners. The omnic culture thing is a breadcrumb, be sure to emphasize it.

They leave and Genji finds out Jesse and Hanzo are screwing and starts laughing and taunting them both and being a fucker, he gets slightly let in on the Reyes plot, Intel Squad tentatively a success, they've all bonded and everyone is confused about it

Meanwhile while they were gone a stomach bug swept the base and Mercy throws a fit about not being a GP. McCree shares a cigar with her to calm her down and starts making a plan to try and get information sneakily out of everyone by reminiscing - I think??? No one knows who Reaper actually is at this point??? Anyway everyone talks shit about the UN and there's more worldbuilding dumps because this feels like the right place to put it. McCree and Hanzo and Genji are kept basically quarantined until the base isn't contagious and in that time they devise A Plan. Also enter Zenyatta because Mercy really needs a backup doctor

Lúcio isn't vetted yet so McCree gets sent out alone to send him an offer, there's a Talon base in Brazil he investigates on the way maybe? I feel like this is enough outline to be getting on with atm tho. Yeah, talon base in Brazil where there's a mention of Talon trying to infiltrate Vishkar

Meanwhile, Ana and 76 have shown up at Gibraltar because they figured out someone was tracking their movements and wanted to go to ground in the general area but spotted the activity there and they're both not best pleased that Overwatch has started back up. When McCree comes back with Lúcio there's another fight he walks into - a running joke? Every time he returns to base there's someone yelling. Second kinky sex, very dominance and pain flavored because McCree needs to shut his brain up. Or maybe not, that’s a long time to go without porn??? Maybe they have coitus interruptus with Genji and that’s how he finds out

Ana and 76 hang around for a while but can't stomach the idea of being there too long because they have their own mission but they drop the bomb that Reaper is Reyes and he's Teh Evulz now because they know too much and i need to get rid of them so we don’t have experienced field operatives for mccree to work around. Also some Widowmaker info dump here. McCree pretends to be shocked but he has a different definition of evil than most people so he doubles down on his investigation and wants Hanzo to give up some contacts. Metal arm fisting here maybe???

what. the fuck. has reaper been doing all this time. has he just been swanning around in the background ruining investigations? maybe he’s laying low because the winston raid thing made him so visible? talon needs to work underground so yeah this sounds right. in the meantime VISKHAR because lucio is here now so we can talk more about the evils of corporations and have corporate espionage going on. Lucio says they should look more into vishkar and they make contact with symmetra who is a whistleblower, ideological clash because that’s what i’m about. lucio and symmetra are both trans with prosthetics btw, that’s happening now because i said so and because hormones are a horrible way to control someone and so it makes sense that vishkar controls sym’s access to them along with her arm. because they’re fuckers. A N Y W A Y vishkar knows things about the old omnica corporation.

sombra makes contact with them here because she’s been keeping an eye on the new overwatch and talon thinks that maybe mccree could be an ally, not that he knows that at the time but they test him out with a dead drop with omnic-related code shit on a TEAM MISSION which happens to, idk, build goodwill or something. winston got info from someone for something and i have to have at least one team mission happen in the foreground, it can’t be all background shit and Intel Group. the mission goes. okay-ish. someone gets fairly seriously injured? tracer, maybe, or reinhardt, either way i can write their significant others fussing over them. it’s a member of old overwatch so winston can be conflicted and take people off field missions for a bit so mccree can tinker around and end up having to ask zenyatta for help. a much longer sex scene than normal here somewhere? OHYES this is where i’m gonna stick the scene where Hanzo makes McCree take off his prosthetic legs and makes McCree leave on his prosthetic arm (because pain kink and metal arm kink and he has to have both arms to handle him) and basically makes McCree fuck him in exactly the way he likes, up to and including making McCree bounce him up and down on his lap. AND THEN ACTUAL AFTERCARE HAPPENS FOR ONCE, A TURNING POINT. perhaps there’s a scene where one of them lays their head on the other’s sweaty heaving chest and doesn’t even mind the sweat in fine romance novel tradition

something has to happen here for pacing reasons but i’m fucked if i know exactly what. uhhhh for Reasons they have to go to an omnic city? more omnic culture and worldbuilding dump here.

aaaaand then the Reveal Chapter: reyes knows something about this mystery mccree stumbled into when he was investigating the death, and he’s willing to talk. hanzo and mccree make plans to meet with him. and then we find out that the reason reyes blew switzerland was because he was working for talon ALL ALONG. the chapter ends with a ridiculous dramatic sequence where mccree puts together all the evidence and goes “so talon was created to fight the god programs”

okay this is the chapter when i get down to the nitty-gritty and break down the structure of talon and have like. a nice artsy chapter explaining how the omnics came to be and how the government created wars to be fucks and all that. i will get to the details of this LATER but the important part is that at the end of it hanzo and mccree are secret talon moles and they have actually pretty kink-free sex while staring into each other’s eyes and kind of freak each other out with how they like and trust each other and that doesn’t happen in their world but it’s overshadowed by the freakout of them agreeing to work for a shadow organization that wants to destabilize all the world’s governments, the fuck were we thinking??? the fuck was i thinking this isn’t even the proper climax, i die

okay for pacing reasons i have to have at least two chapters of them doing double agent things and getting more deeply involved in overwatch, fuck. some public missions should be mentioned where they like. intervene in humanitarian crisises and shit. crises. whatever. maybe hanzo and mccree have to split up and feel sad that they miss each other? one chapter for hanzo to make contact with his shady criminal underworld people to get verifiable info - maybe like. idk. plastic surgery clinic records - and mccree to re-emerge and rehabilitate his image?

and after that one chapter where like. winston gets suspicious about shit. and maybe??? they have to bring EVERYONE in on this huge conspiracy? they have enough evidence to convince other people? yeah i like this, i want to emphasize how ragtag and vigilante-like and underground the new overwatch is. probably an actual defining the relationship talk and possessive sex here.

story ends with like. a giant news story break i think. as i get closer to the end i’ll know more about what threads need resolving. BUT that is the end of my outline. I DID IT HOORAY

Notes

So McCree responds to the recall not because he believes in the cause like Winston does - he probably still sees most of Overwatch as outsiders, although he's at least surface friendly with most of them by the time he leaves based on in-game interactions - but because something in Overwatch killed Reyes, who he doesn't yet know is Reaper, and joining back up with Overwatch is his best chance to find out what it was and hit them back for killing someone who had his loyalty. He's friendly still because that's the best way to get what he wants, i.e. information and access to records, but this isn't like Blackwatch. He's not surrounded by people who came from the same type of lawless loyalty structure he did, who think the way he thinks - they all believe in restorative justice, and his whole life, justice has been nothing but punitive. The only person he was counting on to understand him, Genji, has changed, and it's probably better for him, but he's become different. He doesn't lash out the way he used to. He believes in second chances, where in the places they both came from, you paid for a second chance in blood. He's done with revenge. He's well and truly gotten out of the life, and McCree has never changed his mindset and never will, because it's kept him alive this long. But Genji has brought along someone he does understand - his brother. McCree gets Hanzo, he gets why he did what he did, even though he regrets it. McCree isn't happy about it, but when he was fifteen he came along to meet the cartels with Deadlock, and when he was sixteen he saw what they did to turncoats. You pay for treachery with blood in their world, and Genji betrayed the Shimadas by passing along information. Hanzo paid when he lost his place, and he made his clan pay for what they made him do. Him, McCree understands, and McCree starts testing him out, because he could use an ally in finding out what was under the surface of squeaky clean Overwatch.

And Hanzo understands him. Hanzo is here because he owes a debt to his brother, still, and because he wants to understand Genji. But everyone in Overwatch is alien to him. They take him working for them as a given, as if of course he would want to make up for what he's done. But there's a difference between owing a debt and regretting his whole life. Hanzo was an assassin after he left the Shimadas, and he feels no need to atone for that. It was what he was skilled in, and he also became skilled in finding things out his clients did not wish him to, because being manipulated by his clan taught him to be canny, to find out people's real motivations. So he knows McCree wants his skills for something, but he's willing to make an alliance for the sake of mutual understanding.

So they ally together, with the understanding that any betrayal will be paid in blood, that they both know different tricks of the trade. McCree wants information on Overwatch, and Hanzo wants protection and information on Genji. McCree works on the old guard to find things out, and Hanzo gets in touch with his criminal contacts in every place he's deployed on a mission. And they start to find things out about Talon...

I don't actually know what the resolution to that story would be. The talon-is-hydra-overwatch-is-shield thing has been done. Maybe I'd go a route of "talon was actually founded by Reaper to fight corruption in the UN and that's how he has all those Blackwatch members" and there would be a worldwide conspiracy where the God programs and therefore the omnic crisis were created by top tiers of government and weapons corporations to create a threat that would keep governments separate, give them more power, and give the companies more profit.

...y'know what I actually really like that idea. The world was getting closer and closer to more human rights and one large global government, and corporations and world powers really didn't like that. So what's the best way for humans to give power to government? When they want to be protected from a threat, of course. And they won't be thinking rationally. They'll want to stay apart, because of course the whole thing is *insert other country*'s fault. So Hanzo and McCree run into Reaper and discover this conspiracy and are from then on Reaper's agents inside Overwatch, both to get information and to get enough media exposure they're familiar faces and trusted by the public. So when they blow this thing wide open, it can't be swept under the rug.

Bonus things in this story:

-they have to bring Genji in because he has the most connections to the omnic community through Zenyatta and Omnics have some key evidence to the conspiracy

-bastion provides an essential clue.

-omnic culture and worldbuilding

-underground cities

-Sombra is key, both as a contact that knows what's going on in Mexico (where Important Things should happen just because I mentioned the cartels so they should play at leat a minor part) and in helping them to get into Blackwatch data undetected

-symmetra helps them spy on Vishkar, which was one of the corporations to profit the most from the crisis because they got the most contracts for rebuilding

-Hanzo, McCree, and Genji sit around and exchange stories about things they had to do for deadlock/the Shimadas; it's all horrifically violent and gory but they all three get drunk and laugh about it because it's their life and they won't let it break them and it kept them alive

-it ends with Genji being happy that he's not forced to do lots of violence any more and McCree and Hanzo being perfectly happy with their very violent lives

So Talon has a ruling council which both Reaper and Doomfist are a part of and factions are #confirmed (ty for info people who are up on overwatch lore I Cannot watch a video rn), and Talon is all involved in a global conspiracy. That's canon. So what if Talon is several disparate movements that allied themselves? They need to fight this war on all the fronts they can, given the potential power of their opponents.

Irl, the UN is not a super powerful body - people put much more faith in individual governments of countries. So what makes the UN able to create a peacekeeping force? Well, what if before the crisis, some large thing happened that made the world move towards one earth government and the UN being powerful is remnants of that?

Kind of tempted to channel my frustration with the world falling apart and all the political conflicts into saying that in like... 2022 or sth, something bad enough happened that humanity decided that the only solution was to come together - perhaps we came close to nuclear annihilation? Just writing about it as a small bit of backstory and making the Scary Potential a side note in history seems like it could be really reassuring. Thoughts? (2020 note: I wrote this in 2017 and all I have to say today is OOF)

With this cooperation between nations, corporations couldn't take advantage of cheap labor in developing countries any more, and there was more of a focus on education. That could account for the leaps and bounds in science in sixty years. But that lack of cheap labor meant that robotics was developed more and more, until automation became artificial intelligences. Omnics.

The game takes place in 2076 and the Crisis took place anywhere from 20 to 30 years before that. I'll say it didn't officially start until 2050, but for several years there were developing tensions and small-scale attacks. Historians disagree about the exact cause of the crisis.

It was in the best interest of the Omnica Corporation to not let on how intelligent and sentient Omnics were - with the new focus on human rights, it was only a matter of time before an omnic rights movement erupted.

But the information started to leak. Sometime in the late 2040s, people who worked closely with Omnics started to talk to other people, tell them about how they really were intelligent and person like. And if it came out that the corporation had been deliberately hiding that, things would be bad.

So they had to do damage control.

Meanwhile, the governments of nations that used to be world powers, that used to do as they pleased, aren't that pleased with the fact that they have a lot of eyes on them and they can't meddle the way they used to in the world.

So they get together, and they throw money at the problem, and they come up the the God Programs.

Scientists worked in cells, and when they were done, they often disappeared. There could be no evidence.

And then it didn't matter how intelligent Omnics were. They were the enemy, and everyone hated them. The top executives of the Omnica corporation knew they would be hated, so they had a backup plan. They disappeared. They had surgeries. Their money went somewhere else under a different name. And they resurfaced in areas very far from any of the fighting.

Here is the secret that the Omnics and Sombra help uncover: Omnics were not meant to evolve, to change, beyond basic learning. Originally, they couldn't modify themselves. They had to come to a licensed technician, who was human. Quality control. Planned obsolescence. What the God programs did was take that cap off, distribute a patch that meant that Omnics could fix themselves - but there was a worm in the code that allowed them to be taken over. And the information that would allow that to happen? Before the crisis, it was proprietary corporate information. That shit had the highest security levels in the modern world. Corporations are very protective of their secrets. So either they were infiltrated or the crisis was an inside job. Either way, it was orchestrated by humans.

There's an implication that no humans worked in the Omniums at all, that they were completely automated, and I'm just... Gonna ignore that because it boggles the mind. The people who worked there did have to wear constant radiation shielding because apparently if Omniums are destroyed they leak radiation (or is it that the Australian one was destroyed with a nuclear device? Can anyone help me find a straight answer on this because it makes no sense) but they did work there because automation and seeing things indirectly through cameras and things means the Omniums were networked, and if they were networked they were less secure. So people worked there.

The plan to make the god programs was started off by the fraud accusations and was what caused the executives to bail the fuck out. Several plastic surgery clinics got entirely new wings just before the omnic crisis and I think this should be a weird clue that someone - probably Sombra through her hacking or Symmetra through her knowledge of corporate ins and outs - digs up.

The God programs and the militarized omnics that were pumped out allowed omnics to modify themselves and to develop things like their own independent communication methods and languages. Omnic language is a combination of binary and different computer code languages. There are different regional "dialects" depending what code language was easiest for the omnics in the area to learn and adapt to when modifying their own programming. It's also most often encrypted with... Probably some method I'll have to do research on.

Oops well I think I just ran myself into a big fuckin' wall here, and that wall is Widowmaker. She is canonically brainwashed by Talon into an assassin, and I don't want to make her husband Awful Abusive Forever and erase what was done to her.

Maybe Widowmaker is the face of Talon's moral ambiguity - she was created by a now-defunct Mad Science branch because while her husband wasn't awful for her, he was in a key position, and killing him would destabilize the power structure, and because Talon as a group's motto is probably "the end justifies the means", they still use her. This is probably a major sticking point for any omnics that want to join Talon's cause, and I could use that to highlight how desperate people can get when they're facing someone who has massive power over them.

Actually, have a couple of crime and conspiracy fic tidbits related to that: when he first went on the run, Hanzo got a nasty infection because he was so used to biotics that he didn't glove up or properly sterilize his tools before treating his own wounds. After a ten day course of penicillin derivative and a bad stomach reaction to them, he learned. Conversely, Deadlock probably had one or two fairly low-power biotic emitters, probably military surplus, and use of them was a privilege if you were high-ranking or a reward if you'd done particularly well but got kind of fucked up in the meantime. McCree has one or two big scars on his torso, and they're pretty visible because he got them young, but they don't inhibit his movements because he got treatment for them during his Blackwatch days. Hanzo, on the other hand, has a nasty hypertrophic scar on his upper thigh from the infection he got, and it occasionally restricts his movements.

Snippets

The stomach virus one

They hadn't been directed to medbay after the debriefing. This new Overwatch hadn't exactly established much standard operating procedure - hard to when you were a bunch of vigilantes and more or less all wanted under international law - but it still struck Jesse wrong, whatever Winston said. He'd known Angela longer than he'd known anyone here but Genji. They didn't run in the same circles, but they'd both been recruited before they were really supposed to be, and that gave them a bit of camaraderie Jesse wasn't afraid to lean on. He left the Shimadas to their not quite good-natured bickering and headed for the office just off the infirmary.

Angela's face, when he opened the door, made him glad he'd stopped by. Even her legendary (and probably nanite-enhanced, given the direction of her research) youthful looks were flagging under some kind of strain. Her undereyes were dark and her mouth was drawn, which in a trauma surgeon used to work in the field meant she'd been working for days on four hours or less. Jesse didn't have to do much beyond waving the nice cigars he'd picked up in (location) at her before she was out of her chair and headed towards the nearest balcony with him, monitor clipped to the lapel of her white coat. They hadn't smoked together since the recall, but the old tradition they shared seemed to be as clear in her mind as it was in his.

He was quiet for a few moments, just passing her the lighter, until they'd both blown out slow mouthfuls of fragrant smoke. Then Angela sighed, and some of the tension slipped away from her shoulders as she stared off at the waves. "You probably shouldn't be even this close to me, Jesse."

Jesse laughed at her, a low quiet chuckle. Anything truly serious and Athena wouldn't have let him anywhere near medical. "And why's that?" he asked her, slowly pulling in the rich smoke and rolling it around his mouth.

"The whole base has come down with a nasty stomach virus," she told him. "I have most of them in cots, hooked up to IVs. It's horrible! A certain amount of bodily fluids is to be expected in this job, of course, but the cleaning drones simply can't keep up. It's as much as I can do to keep everyone hydrated and mostly clean. Comfortable is out of the question. It's very contagious, and I haven't done work like this since my residency! I'm not a generalist. I don't prescribe birth control or deal with routine ailments!" Her accent grew sharper as she spoke, and when she'd finished, she took a deep breath before taking her own smooth pull of cigar smoke.

Jesse winced. He was glad any lingering sour smell was covered up by their cigars. He'd take blood and guts over vomit any day. "The whole base?" he asked. No wonder the corridors had been so quiet.

Angela nodded emphatically. "Everyone present, except for Winston, of course. I'm simply thankful it isn't zoonotic."

Jesse whistled. The infirmary had to be filled to capacity. "And nothing you've given 'em makes the nausea any better? That does sound nasty."

Angela froze with her cigar halfway to her mouth, and then began to curse emphatically. (German curses here.) She pulled her bangs with her free hand. "I can't believe I've been so stupid! I never give patients an antiemetic, it's dangerous when they could have been drinking poisoned water, but that doesn't apply here! (More German curses.)" Eventually, she subsided and took a particularly vicious pull off of her cigar.

"Easy with that," Jesse told her. "That's the good stuff - don't waste it."

"Oh, I'm not wasting it, believe me," she told him. "It's keeping me from storming Winston's office and demanding he add a generalist to the staff. Doctors have specializations, and this one isn't mine!"

"I could talk to him, if you like," Jesse told her. His voice was even, though inside he was triumphant. He'd wanted a reason to bring Zenyatta on, and the universe had just dumped it in his lap. "Might even have someone in mind."

"Would you?" Angela asked him, staring wistfully at the half a cigar she had left. "It's only - I have to dose everyone now, and wait half an hour to see how they respond, and I haven't slept since - too long."

"Wouldn't mind a bit," Jesse told her. "You worry about clearing out the infirmary. I'll work on our fearless leader."

Angela looked, briefly, as if she was about to cry. Instead, she breathed in deeply and closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, her expression had settled. "Thank you, Jesse," she told him, and smiled. The expression was no less lovely for being surrounded by signs of her exhaustion. "These really are quite nice," she added, puffing again on her cigar.

Jesse laughed. "You come find me whenever you need another one," he told her. They smoked the rest of their cigars in silence.

The twelve o'clock high one

76 - Morrison - sighed. There came the sounds of him pacing around the room, his ridiculous boots heavy against the grating. "Winston," he said finally, "you like movies. You ever watch any old war movies - from the 20th century, I mean?"

"Well, no," Winston said, sounding honestly puzzled. "Most of them are well over a century old. I didn't think they'd have much cultural relevance."

Morrison snorted. "Not much cultural relevance," he repeated. "Maybe not out in the world, but here in Overwatch - in any place you've got to take command and order people into the line of fire - they still matter. Put one on your list. Twelve O'Clock High. The original, from 1949, not the remake they made right after the crisis." His gruff voice didn't make it a suggestion. Still used to ordering people around, McCree guessed.

"I will, but why would you pull me aside just to say that?" Winston sounded baffled and slightly irritated.

Morrison sighed again, a heavy put-upon sound. "This would be easier if you'd seen the damn thing. Used to have all the command track recruits watch it." The pacing sounds started up again for several moments.

"It's a movie about leadership," Morrison said finally. "And about what happens when you get too close to the people under your command. It's bad for you and it's bad for the mission, and it gets people killed. You can't be their commander and their friend at the same time."

"I fail to see how any of this is your business," Winston said, voice firm and starting to get frosty. You tell 'em, bud, McCree thought.

"I watched this organization fall once because of its commanders," Morrison said. "I can't watch you make the same mistakes. I bowed too far to the UN, but Reyes was too close to his men. Some of them came in young, but they'd done things that made sure they would never be kids again. Reyes couldn't see that. They were all loyal to him in their own way, as much as they could be, but he thought it meant he owed them some loyalty too, and he couldn't do that and send them into danger like we had back then for special ops. They got into his head, made him too much like them, and he snapped."

Winston was saying something else, and McCree forced himself to pay attention to that instead of the rush of blood in his ears, his clenched hands, his pounding heart.

"I believe that will be all, 76," Winston said. The frost in his tone had thickened up into a full ice sheet. McCree took that as his cue to slink out before the super soldier sniffed out his hiding spot - literally, maybe.

Morrison thought his loyalty put Reyes in a bad spot? It sure had - but it was his lingering loyalty to Jack Morrison that had gotten him killed, McCree was sure. Morrison really was blind if he thought Reyes had been doing anything in Zurich besides trying to pull Morrison's blond ass out of there before it blew.

what I have of chapter one

Jesse McCree had disappeared. Oh, he surfaced every now and then in some attention-grabbing way, but it wasn't healthy for a man with a bounty as high as his to go around under his own name. He'd taken a handful of false identities with him when he'd left Blackwatch, and he did enough flashy stunts with his familiar getup from the bounty posters to keep anyone from digging deeper and finding them. Most people figured he spent the rest of his time lurking around all the lonely, uncivilized places of the Southwest, like he had before he joined up - it was closer to the twenty-second century than the twenty-first, but urban sprawl hadn't conquered all the emptiness of his home state yet. So he was very surprised to receive any communication addressed to Jesse McCree at all, much less on the secure comm he carried more for sentiment than practicalities these days. And yet there was still a quiet, persistent chirp indicating a message for him.

Jesse wasn't stupid, of course. He didn't open the message that day. He'd spent too much time in a covert ops unit to trust anything that could send an active signal. He let it stay in the hard-sided guitar case that held his weapons and anything else he didn't want connected to the soft-spoken insurance adjuster who rented his Albuquerque apartment. Instead, he used his legitimate phone to reserve Chris Stevenson a campsite at a national park and rent a car for the weekend. No one had yet managed to bring enough signal towers out there that phones worked, and the campers liked it that way. Chris liked it too - it gave him a good excuse for not being available if his boss called with a last minute assignment, he told the park ranger.

Jesse, on the other hand, wasn't much for camping - he'd spent more than enough time out under the stars, first in Deadlock and then in Blackwatch, and his back wasn't as young as it used to be. But needs must - the signal could be a trap, or it could be someone from the old days needing his help. You could say a lot of bad things about Jesse McCree - most did, these days. But he knew what he owed Reyes and Blackwatch both, and he paid back his debts.

The canyon he'd chosen had several isolated hiking trails, and he set off for one just after dawn the day after he'd arrived. The other tents, few as they were, were quiet. He still waited until he'd reached the peak of his chosen trail, where he could see anyone coming, before he played the message.

Of all the faces he'd expected to project in front of him, Winston's wasn't among them. He was too recognizable, and Jesse stifled the urge to curse. The audio was routed through the wireless headset he'd brought, of course, but five years on, Winston's face still screamed Overwatch to anyone who cared to see. A talking gorilla was hard to forget. Still, Jesse let the message finish - it was very early - and dropped the comm into a pocket of the backpack he'd brought with him. Then he sat down right where he was.

Anyone passing by might have thought he'd be watching the sunrise, but he'd seen too many from the wrong end when he was with Deadlock to be stunned by nature's beauty any more. Chris was watching the sunrise, of course - a natural early riser, he saw sunrises from as many places as he could get away with. But Jesse McCree just happened to be staring at the horizon while he contemplated his options.

He didn't doubt the comm had sent some sort of locational ping out, so he'd need to burn Chris no matter what he decided. A pity - he'd liked being somewhere familiar, a place where he knew the lay of the land, how to find the best restaurant in a little highway town, which outcroppings kept you out of view of the satellites passing by, which streets nice people avoided at night. Couldn't be helped, though. Most of the Southwest was dangerous for him now. He couldn’t be sure someone hadn’t piggybacked whatever ping Winston’s call had sent out. He was inclined to curse his luck, hop a train, and move out - somewhere east, maybe - except. There was something he owed, and a debt to a ghost didn't make it any less real. He didn't have anything in common with the old Overwatch staff he guessed that idealistic message had been aimed at, but they had resources and records. Maybe he could use them to track down what really happened to Reyes.

Jesse’d been halfway to disappearing on a deep-cover mission - all they did in Blackwatch those days - when the news about Zurich broke. He could smell bullshit on a cover story from a mile away, and this one reeked. Reyes wasn’t jealous of Morrison - that asshole had to deal with the paperwork and politics while Reyes got to intervene in the real hot spots. If he’d been in Zurich, it was out of a sense of loyalty to his old army buddy. That loyalty had gotten him killed, and no one in Overwatch seemed interested in doing anything but slandering him after the fact.

Just because they didn't do much of an investigation didn't mean that they didn't still have records up in Gibraltar, though. The Watchpoints had all been networked at one point. Athena had had limits put on her when the Petras Act passed, but Winston had made her devious, under all the fussing. She had to be if she was going to fight Overwatch’s enemies. McCree's access had been stripped when the UN had recalled Blackwatch’s authorization, but that meant jack shit if Athena decided he needed to know something. And he knew how to ingratiate himself with her.

It’d mean the end of his relatively peaceful existence, but hell, he'd already known he'd have to get rid of Chris and go on the run. Might as well run a little farther than usual. He could check out the lay of the land, see who all was there and what they were up to. It wouldn't be fun - he was Reyes’ man to the bone, still, and none of the proper Overwatch agents would understand that - but this was the closest he'd come to being able to pay back the man who'd changed his life in years. He couldn't let it slip through his fingertips.

International travel was, according to those who could remember, a bit more difficult to manage now than it was before the Crisis. The United States especially had buckled down on the jingoism, blaming most of Europe for letting the Omnica Corporation run wild. It wasn't as bad as it has been in the 20s, of course, but if Overwatch hadn't provided the encryption on his passport themselves, McCree would have found himself paying a pretty penny for a good fake. As it was, he wasn't exactly flush with cash right now, so he was glad Chris’s papers were still good.

Chris Stevenson, despite his whitebread name, had family in Spain: a sister who'd recently taken ill. So he - and Jesse McCree, under his skin - was flying to Madrid. Teleporters were still new and expensive, and Chris couldn't afford one. The days of the ancient, cramped airliners were long over, though. Chris had a ticket on an overnight flight, with his own little cot and plastic privacy wall and two credits to use in the onboard cafeteria.

The flight attendant directed them all through the ship’s amenities, pointing out the cafeteria and the bathrooms as well as the small rec area, on the way to direct them all to their berths. They had to go through the first class lounge first thing, of course - probably to make them all regret they hadn’t coughed up enough to spend half the trip on leather furniture drinking premium cocktails. Jesse couldn’t care less about it. He planned to eat, sleep, and then eat on this trip; airline food wasn’t that great, but he’d eaten plenty of bad shit in his life, and he’d need the rest and the calories to find the best ways to ditch Chris’s identity and make his way across the border into Gibraltar.

The berths were more private than the ones on most of the Overwatch transports he’d been on in his time, but that wasn’t saying much; military didn’t think anything of communal bunkrooms for everyone but officers, and Overwatch had always been true to its military roots. The ship wasn’t ritzy enough to have sound cancelling tech in any cabin but first class, so he could hear the contained but emphatic ruckus happening two berths over. Politeness would have dictated Chris did his best to ignore it, but Jesse had always been an incurable snoop, and years of covert ops hadn’t exactly curbed that. He tucked his bags under the plastic frame of his ship’s cot and leaned against the thin barrier under the guise of working his boots off.

“I don’t see why we’re kept out of the lounge,” a voice Jesse pegged as belonging to someone around Reinhardt’s age said crossly. “We paid our fare just like everyone else!”

“I’m afraid the lounge is for first class passengers only,” said their flight attendant, in the calming tones universal to customer service employees who weren’t allowed to tell customers to fuck off but who really wished they could. “However, if you would like to upgrade -”

“Don’t you upgrade me!” the older voice said again. “I went on these transports when they were first made, twenty years ago, and they didn’t have any sort of restrictions! This is just - it’s a cash grab, is what it is, by unscrupulous -”

“Pop! He can’t do anything about that. I’m sure it’s corporate policy,” interrupted a younger voice, audibly embarrassed. “I’m so sorry about this.”

“It’s quite all right - I understand change is difficult. Can I offer you -”

“We’re not interested in little placating gifts, like drink tickets, you corporate shill!” the older voice yelled again.

Jesse felt a twinge of sympathy for the flight attendant having to deal with all that, but he felt it was safe to tune out at that point. His boots - sturdy hiking boots, not the attention-getting cowboy boots of his wanted poster getup, good for grip on all sorts of surfaces - were unlaced and under the bunk and they weren’t quite underway, so he decided he’d be hitting the cafeteria early. And maybe he’d shell out for a drink for the old man’s traveling companion, he thought, shuffling quietly past the squabble. He was sure the flight attendant couldn’t drink on duty, or else he’d send him one first.

It was a ten-hour flight, and mission discipline should have sent him right to sleep for seven of them after his mediocre cafeteria meal. But he hadn’t had anyone hanging over his shoulder to enforce that discipline in five years, and sleep didn’t come easy. After an hour of trying to force himself into something deeper than a doze, he gave up and summoned the flight attendant for a drink. Jesse would have preferred to work out his troubles in a gym or at the range, but the transport had neither, and this was a good enough substitute to quiet the buzzing of his brain enough for a few hours’ rest.

He just couldn’t work it out, was the thing. Why had Winston called him, of all people, back? It didn’t fit with the do-gooder message he’d sent out. Jesse didn’t recall running with him much on the very few occasions he’d been sent to liaise with the main Overwatch forces, so it wasn’t out of some misplaced nostalgia. Winston’d been close with Tracer, though, and she’d seen him in action enough to know that he didn’t hold with tugging on heartstrings as a way to run things. None of Blackwatch had. Why did Winston bother sending the message out to them at all?

Jesse doubted many of the Blackwatch members - those still out of jail after the Petras Act stripped them of their pardons, anyway - would be at Gibraltar when he showed, with a message like that. Maybe Genji would. He’d been pretty tight with Reyes. Not as tight as Jesse, but the man needed some guidance on letting anger fuel you instead of rule you when he first joined up, and Reyes had that in spades. Jesse hoped he’d be there, or else he’d be running a covert mission in enemy territory solo, with no extraction plan and no end point. He could do it, but it’d be tricky. He hadn’t used anything more than basic infiltration skills in years, since his neighbors rarely required the effort. Overwatch was all trained operatives, though, and he’d be kept on his toes even with reliable backup.

Wasn’t worth borrowing trouble about, though. Jesse had more immediate concerns, like the best way to ditch Chris without raising too many suspicions, and how long he’d have to wait in Madrid before Peacekeeper made her own way across the Atlantic. And before all that, he needed to sleep. He knocked back the last swallow of his liquor and laid down, determined to get a little rest while he was secure.

It turned out that Peacekeeper wouldn’t be in Madrid after all. His smuggler contact had left him a coded message that told him to meet her for dinner in Malaga. Jesse’d had to hustle to get to the train, but he’d made it - and he was riding on the inside this time. Europe had more satellite cameras fixed on it than the deserts of the US did, and there was no reason to draw the attention of their flagging algorithms. Besides, the wireless connection inside the train was better.

One of Overwatch’s support staff had cooked up a program that disengaged an identity from public records gradually, in case anyone needed to use them again or the activity was being monitored. Jesse wasn’t supposed to have it still, but it’d been useful enough he transferred it from phone to phone. Over the next couple of weeks, Chris’s landlord and acquaintances would receive messages that his sister was sicker than he thought and he’d need to stay in Spain to manage her affairs. His bank account would make purchases to back that up. And with no close friends in the area, he’d quietly disappear unless Jesse needed him again. The program needed a stable connection to work, though, so it could learn from the communications he’d sent as Chris. The connection on the train was nicely anonymous, so it couldn’t be traced back to him.

Twenty minutes out from Malaga, Jesse took his bag into the bathroom. Instead of Chris’s baggy sweatshirt and wind pants, he put on tight jeans and a flannel button-up and pulled out a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. When he came out, he begged a hair tie off of a woman on the train, waggling his prosthetic fingers in explanation (they did get tangled in his hair if he wasn’t careful). When he was done, he looked like a tourist of a different type - a hipster American with a backpack and a guitar. The two days of stubble on his face made most natives peg him for an aging graduate student and give him a wide berth.

Carla, his contact, had left him a note at the Malaga information desk, and he followed her instructions to a worn-down bar that had probably been popular before the Crisis. It was looking a little worse for wear, though, and even before sundown had plenty of quiet, dark corners. Jesse spotted her iron-gray braid at a corner table and sat down, though not before getting a glass of wine at the bar.

“Auntie,” he said in Spanish as he settled in. He was sure Carla had heard his boots and spotted him well before he’d reached her table, but no use not being polite to someone who had your prize possession. “I hope you’ve been taking good care of my girl.”

Carla looked up at him and rolled her eyes. “Don’t I always?” she said in her crisp Iberian accent.

“You do, but the way you left Madrid, I’d almost think you wanted to keep her,” Jesse said, smiling in a way that didn’t hide the watchful glint in his eye.

Carla shook her head, but Jesse noticed she didn’t outright deny it. “Madrid gets so crowded this time of year,” she said. “It’s a little quieter here.”

“La Linea is even more peaceful, I hear,” Jesse said, leaning back as he sipped his wine. “That’s where I want to take her next.”

“Ah, going to take her to see the Rock?” Carla asked. “It’s quite the sight.”

“I am,” Jesse told her. “In fact, you could call it the reason we even came to Spain. There’s a little problem, though.”

“Oh?” Carla asked. “Nothing to spoil your holiday, I hope.”

Jesse put the fingers of his flesh hand to his mouth and then put it back on the table, like a man fighting the urge to bite his nails. “I hope not either. See, I want to cross the border, but I don’t have all her papers - her mother, you know how she is. But I really want her to be able to see the sights. Are the guards there understanding?” Meaning, of course, could they be bribed.

Carla shifted in her chair and leaned in on one elbow. “Most of them are family men and women, not career military the way it was a few years ago,” she said, meaning mob. “They should be able to work something out with you - they understand how it is for men in your position. After all, it’s not like there’s anything really dangerous she could get into these days.”

“That’s true,” Jesse agreed. “And I’ll keep a close eye on her, of course.” Meaning that he’d make sure Peacekeeper didn’t cause any trouble that brought too much attention to their operations.

Carla nodded. “I might just know a young man down there who could help you,” she said. “I’ll send him a message once I see you both get on the bus, and he’ll look out for you both.”

“I appreciate it,” Jesse told her, with an expression of relief. Carla’s reputation would make it a lot easier to get past the border guards while he was carrying. “How much did she cost you? I know how my girl can eat.”

“No, no,” Carla said, waving her hands in a way that was all show. “She was a pleasure. It wasn’t any trouble.”

“I insist,” Jesse said firmly. “Let me pay for the train tickets, at least. You couldn’t have been expecting Madrid to be so busy.”

“Well, that’s true,” Carla said. “But I’d watch your girl for you any time, you know that.”

“I do,” Jesse agreed. “Now, c’mon, tell me how much the tickets were, and I’ll pay you back.”

Carla named a sum with a show of reluctance, and Jesse added it to the already agreed-upon price before transferring it to her account. If she’d had to leave Madrid in such a hurry, it was probably because the law was getting too close for comfort, and Jesse was sure she’d had to bribe her way out. It was just good business to pay her back for that, and he’d been trusting Carla with Peacekeeper for a long time. His burner phone beeped, and after a moment, so did hers. She nodded, satisfied, and pushed away from the table.

“Come, let’s go get your girl,” she said. “I’m sure you missed her. She’s waiting at the bus station.”

Carla had been as good as her word. Even with Peacekeeper sewn into the lining of a laptop bag, Jesse hadn’t had any trouble getting past the border into Gibraltar, and even if she wasn’t at his hip, he felt better holding her steadying weight. He’d transferred all his belongings into a hiking backpack when he’d gotten there, and only as he started up the Rock did he send the signal from the communicator that would tell Athena and Winston he was on his way - and exactly how close he was. There were plenty of hidden protections that he was sure were still active on the base, and he’d need the signal to get in.

It only took a few moments to connect, and Winston’s voice was cautious as he answered. “McCree?”

“In the flesh,” Jesse answered. “Know I didn’t call ahead, but I was hopin’ my invitation still stood.”

[love-killed-the-superstar]

i havent been drawing or writing pokemon stuff for ages and im currently too busy to make something new in time for drew appreciation day so i thought id post some wip respectshipping stuff under the cut that i dont THINK ive posted before?? if i have im sorry, im a bit dry on drew content rn!!

for context the scenes are taken from a sequel to my respect oneshot, sparks, set during a pride festival!

Ash slipped his hand into Drew's, and Drew glanced at him rigidly.

“What are you doing?” he asked. He didn't need to look to know that May and Brock had noticed, and were giving each other knowing smiles.

“Holding your hand?” Ash said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

“I know that. Why?”

Ash furrowed his brow. “Why am I holding your hand? We're... well, together, Drew.” It felt weird to say it out loud, and his frown melted into an elated smile. “We're boyfriends. And this is a festival celebrating the kind of relationship we have. Isn't this the best time to do it?”

Drew's cheeks began to burn under the unspoken pressure. Of course, he liked to touch Ash in private, hold his hands and cup his cheeks and kiss him, but public displays of affection had never been his thing. Giving out roses was different, of course – it was part of the charming persona he put on. He wasn't ashamed of his sexuality, and he certainly wasn't ashamed of Ash; but there was a time and a place for physical affection, and in the middle of a crowded street wasn't what he considered an opportune moment.

“We... we don't do this out in the open, Ash,” he reasoned. Ash shrugged.

“If you're sure.”

Ash dropped his hand, and at first Drew felt relief. But just moments later, he realised how cold his hand suddenly felt without the familiar warmth of Ash's.

With a huff, he grabbed it back.

“Jerk.”

...

“I'll only enter this contest if you enter the battle tournament.”

“Like hell. I don't get my kicks from raw power battles, sorry.”

“And I don't get my kicks from showing off how pretty my pokemon can be, but I'm willing to compromise. This is like, a couple activity. You know, so we can bond.”

“You know contests are about so much more than beauty, Ash. For the record, they say it's healthy for couples to not do everything together.”

“And we don't! We hardly see each other when we're travelling, so this'll be a special occasion!”

Ash and Drew were bickering again, as usual, though Brock had to admit it was far more entertaining seeing them argue over trivial matters such as 'couple activities' than having to watch them stew in their own feelings for the past few years. Getting to see them comfortable around each other was refreshing.

“Look, battles aren't romantic – contests aren't romantic! It's about you and your pokemon, not about you and your pokemon and your annoying boyfriend and his pokemon.”

“But I already told my mom we'd be battling together! She's recording it!”

“Your mother needs a new hobby that doesn't involve snooping on our relationship at any given moment,” Drew quipped, but he seemed a little less defensive at that. “She's really gonna be watching us?”

Ash patted his shoulder. “I told you she's trying to be supportive. She was excited when I mentioned the festival to her, actually. She asked me to pick her up a souvenir, like a badge or a wristband or something? And she was all, 'tell Drew I said hi!' so... yeah, she said hi.”

“And you're only mentioning this now.” Drew threw up his hands in exasperation. “Didn't it cross your mind to tell me earlier?”

“That she said hi?” Ash quirked an eyebrow. “My bad? Look, she asked me to call her tonight. If you want, I'll let you listen in.”

Drew clasped his hands together. “Maybe I'll... say hi back,” he said, licking his lower lip nervously. Ash grinned.

“You know, I think she'd like that.”

“This is heart-warming and all,” Brock smirked, finishing the last of his coffee, “but if you guys don't hurry up and compromise, you'll run out of time to sign up.”

And with that, their bickering was back to square one.

...

Delia's face appeared on the screen and she smiled warmly.

“Well hello there, Ash! Are you enjoying the festival so far?”

“Oh yeah! It's amazing. I never knew how big Sinnoh's gay community was until now.”

“Well, I'm glad you're having a good time. You're participating in the tag team battle tournament tomorrow, right?”

Ash's face fell slightly.

“I don't know. I was meant to be taking part with Drew, but he isn't so big on battling, so we haven't signed up yet.”

“Well, I'm sure you'll work it out,” Delia said with a sympathetic smile. “And how is Drew doing? Did you tell him I said hello?”

Ash's eyes lit up.

“Yeah, he's doing great! Actually... he talked about saying hi back. If you wanted to speak to him.”

Delia blinked in surprise.

“Oh, he wanted to talk to me?”

Ash smiled consiprationally.

“He'll never admit it to me but he really wants to make a good impression on you, Mom.”

Her cheeks were pink with pride and she chuckled lightly.

“Very well, hand him over.”

Unsurprisingly, Drew stepped out from just beyond view of the camera – Delia realised he was listening in the entire time, but decided to keep this revelation to herself for the time being.

“Why hello there, Drew. I suppose this is the first time we've talked since you two made the announcement.”

He nodded sheepishly.

“Yeah. Um, Ash and I don't travel together often. We parted ways after the visit, so... yeah. You're looking well, ma'am.”

“Oh please, call me Delia,” she said with a dismissive wave, then smiled. “I'm so excited to see the two of you compete in the tag battle tournament tomorrow!”

If Drew had been on the fence about it prior, he certainly wasn't anymore.

“Yes! Uh, we're looking forward to it, aren't we, Ash?”

Ash, looking both flabbergasted at the turn of events and also ecstatic at the news, nodded hastily.

“Yep! That's right, and the day after we're entering the pride contest! Since we're trainer and coordinator, we thought we'd do both!”

Ash grinned at his mother (mouthing how did you do that?? towards her) and she gave him a knowing wink in return.

“How wonderful! I've heard your coordinator skills are marvellous, Drew! I'm looking forward to it. It's a shame I couldn't be there in person.”

“Not sure this is your kind of scene, Mom,” Ash said with a laugh. “But it's been great! I got you a wristband, it's rainbow like a pride flag!”

“How sweet! Did you pick one up for Mimey too?”

Ash beamed and fished a pair of wristbands from his pocket.

“You know I did! Nothing but the best for you guys!”

“Mimey's been so excited for you too, dear. We'll wear them with pride!” She giggled at her own joke, and then clasped her hands together.

“By the way, you two, I was wondering how you would feel about the three of us sitting down for a meal in Pallet Town after the festival.” Her gaze flickered between the two of them. “You know, so that Drew and I can get to know each other better.”

Ash found the scar on the end of his ring finger suddenly very interesting to stare at.

“I don't know, Mom. I mean... maybe the timing isn't-”

“Sure, Mrs – uh, Delia.”

Ash glanced up in surprise at Drew, whose facial expression didn't give away his nerves like his shaking hands did, carefully out of Delia's view.

“Drew, you mean it?”

“Of course.” He offered Ash a quick smile. “Delia, I look forward to visiting again.”

“Wonderful!” Delia clapped her hands together and beamed. “Well, boys, I have to be going, but I'll be taping the matches! Good luck, both of you!”

The moment the call ended, Drew trudged back up to the rooms and headed over to his bed, flopping down rather ungracefully face first. Ash perched on the end of his own bed.

“Your mom is nice,” Drew said after a while, face emerging from his pillow. Ash chewed his lower lip.

“She means well, she really does want you to know each other now we're dating, but... we don't have to do this dinner if you're not ready for it.”

Drew opened his eyes to peer at Ash incredulously.

“What? No. I didn't just agree to it because your mom was giving me the same look you give me when you want something. I'm ready for this, you know? I want your mother to like me. I want to know the person who helped make you who you are.”

He took a deep breath.

“May finding out about us... it opened my eyes. For years I worried about what people would think of me if they knew. Then I realised, the world isn't one big contest. When it comes to who you are, the only one whose judgement matters is you.”

“Drew...”

“You mean a lot to me, Ash. I want to be a part of your world, and I want to introduce you to mine.”

“You sap.” Ash moved over to Drew's bed and rested his head against Drew's shoulder. “I'd really like that, though. I know our journey has been pretty rocky, but I just love being around you. And now we can be open about it, I've gotten so excited.”

Drew pressed a kiss to his forehead, and grinned.

“Now who's the sap?”

[wing-shot-firstold]

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35

Already answered 1,2,4, and 5, but I'll answer the rest!

Putting a read more thing as this is long. Very long

3. What do you think makes your writing stand out from other works?

Hmm. I don't really know actually. I'd say the ideas. They're pretty original. I do get some from other people but I usually add a little twist to them and turn them into my own

30. Tooth-rotting fluff or merciless angst?

Depends. Rn I'm kinda in the middle but I'm working on a fic that's meant to be pretty sad and painful. Sorry Otto but not really <3

31. Do you have any OCs? Tell us about them!

Well, there Lulu, Jules, and Anna! Lulu, or Lucy, is the kid of Otto and Laura and the other two are Wing and Shelbys kids. I love those three a lot and I may make my own independent story that stems off from the sad pile of angst that Tamlin started. I was never interested in next gen until someone mentioned next gen and I helped develope these three. Anyways yea I'll probably make a lil thing with them. Probably nothing big just small lil stories.

32. Summarize a random fic of yours in 10 words or less.

This one is more of a wip rn bit

Wing dies, Otto can't remember it, mixed up memories.

Very vague but it'll make sense probably when I'm done

33. Is there anything you wish your audience knew about your writing or writing process?

Can't really think of anything

34. Copy and paste an excerpt you’re particularly fond of.

Oh boy.... I have so many I'm proud of. Lemme get one from a fic that isn't HIVE but Magisterium. Just two rivals dancing and ignoring their feelings for each other

After their laughter died down and their ribs ached, Jasper looked over at Call. Their eyes met for a second, and neither of them broke contact. He admired those beautiful, stormy gray eyes. Call smirked, "Whatcha starin' at?"

Look at these two idiots I love writing them.

35. Ramble about any fic-related thing you want!

Every fic I wrote about Shelby has been so easy!! Like,,,, she's so fun to write! Especially if I'm writing her and Wing being dorks in love. Idk what it is. Maybe it's because her personality is so carefree and goofy and just fun! Also Wingelby is one of the most fun ships to write. Maybe because there's so many tropes you can do with it. Lots of tropes have to do with someone who's crazy and loud and their calm and quiet s/o who's very worried about them. Anyways rambling done oop

[yuna-dan]

Oh yes. I can see that. So maybe, if you’re okay, can u write a fic about Kaidoh coming out as trans man?

I was going to say I haven’t written about Kaidoh in years and then remember i wrote to WIPs of him this weekend instead of studying (like rn) because i hate myself, apparently.

Also I wrote this in the middle of a class JAJA, it’ll be also on AO3

So much for the NoContentNovember, am i rite?

--

Warnings: Mentions of accidental misgender. Cursing. Stablished (?) MomoKai and Platonic InuKai

--

Kaidoh sighed as his senpai helped him stretch, feeling his heart pounding against his ribcage. 

“We’re doing great, Kaidoh.” Inui mumbled, standing up and picking up his notebook from when the grass he left it to continue training, “There’s a 95% of chances of Ryuzaki-sensei using us as Doubles 1, since you just play with Momoshiro…”

The memory of the semi-finals brought a small smile to his lips, and he had to bit them to refrain himself. He didn’t want his senpai to notice and get the wrong idea.

“If we continue like this, there’s a high chance we win.” He said, closing his notebook and looking at him, his glasses shining in that creepy Inui-way. They fell on a comfortable silence, the kind of silence Kaidoh don’t feel the need to fill. 

“You did great against Shitenohouji, Kaidoh.” Inui said, after a few moments, “I can’t say I’m surprised, since you and Momoshiro had been training, but Konjiki-san did have more data than I do, I guess I have to fill on later.”

Right

Often mistaken for a girl during kindergarten. He frowned, clenching his hand in a fist, suddenly feeling his chest too big.

“Are you still mad, Kaidoh?”

“Huh? No, not all.” He admitted. He hadn’t known that. “It’s just-It was annoying.”

Inui chuckled, “It is a very interesting school, aren’t they?”

“I guess.” He he stared at the small river in front of him.

Another fell upon them, and for some reason, this felt awkward. Often mistaken for a girl during kindergarten. Often mistaken for a girl during kindergarten. Often mistaken for a girl…Mistaken.

“Is everything okay, Kaidoh?” The voice of his senpai broke his chain of thoughts, and maybe he startled him a little. 

“Sorry, I zoned out.” Inui gave him another smile.

“You seemed very distracted lately,” he was still scribbling on his notebook.

“sorry.” Inui hummed, and once again he felt his heart against his ribcage. He cleared his throat, “Actually, senpai, I have something to tell you.”

“is this about your relationship with Momoshiro?”

How the fuck do you know about that? Was what he wanted to say, but could only stared in shock, inui was smirking and writing faster. “Huh, no- I mean there’s no…” he took a deep breath.

“You remember what Konjiki-san said?”

For a moment Inui stopped writing, and frown softly, losing the know-it-all smirk he had, “What exactly?”

“About, huh, me?” His hands were sweating, and he cleaned his palms against his shorts. Mistaken. “About how I was…huh, mistaken for a girl?”

Inui nodded. “Kaidoh, you don’t owe me, or anyone for that matter, any explanation. Kids can be very cruel bully someone and-”

“I am a man.” He said, and he hated the way his voice broke.

“I know that.”

“Fshuu.” He took a deep breath, “I wasn’t. I mean I am, I guess what I’m trying to say is...” His mouth tasted dry, and bitter, “I am, huh I’m trans.”

Kaidoh noticed that Inui wasn’t writing down, just looking at him. For a moment he wanted to be as good as his senpai to predict, he didn’t know if that was good or bad. He played with the edge of his jacket male tennis club. 

“Oh,” Inui said, Kaidoh looked up a little scared the possible reaction. He remembered how his mother was very opened to understand it, and even if now his dad was okay with it, he remembered it look a long way. “Thank you, for sharing with me. I value your trust, Kaidoh. As you double partner and friend.”

Kaidoh saw the way his senpai adjusted his glasses and gave the warmest smile he had ever seen “As I’ve told you don’t owe anyone any kind of explanation but thank you. I know this information is sensitive data, and I won’t be discussing it with anyone who don’t know.”

Kaidoh smiled, “You’re the only one who knows.” Inui’s eyes opened in shocked, or he guessed it since his eyebrows raised like so. “and well Momoshiro, for, huh, reasons.”

Inui’s know-it-all smirk returned, “right, reasons.” And he continued writing down.

And if Kaidoh was a different person he would’ve hugged his senpai, but he wasn’t like that, so he awkwardly smiled and raised his fist. Inui smiled back and hit his fist with his own.

Another comfortable silence surrounded them, as they continued their workout session.

“So…” Inui broke it, “Momoshiro.”

“No. Shut up.”

[aroacemisha]

8, 18, 17, and 37?

I already answered 8 here.

17. Do you write your story from start to finish, or do you write the scenes out of order?

Usually out of order. I just write whatever I have ideas for, and then fill the stuff in between.

I called one style “sandwich style” at some point dskjfdjh. It’s like when you write the beginning, then write the end, and then build to the middle from both sides until they connect.

In my newest wip, there’s a few separate scenes I’ve written, and now my job is to connect them. Though in one of the gay wips, it’s more from start to finish kind of writing style, except a bit of the beginning that I still need to write.

18. Do you use any tools, like worksheets or outlines?

Uhhh.. I’ll be honest, I’m not entirely sure what that means, but maybe I’m just dumb. Is it like, about Word documents or something?

37. Talk about your current wips.

One’s gonna be in three chapters, and I’m working on chapters one and two simultaneously, which is a bit weird, but helps me type the ideas in already, so I don’t forget them. And I randomly got an idea for chapter three, so there’s a tiny wip of that now as well.

Another wip is chapter two of “Barrier”, I shared a little bit of that earlier (and I shared a bit more on Discord too). And I’m trying to finish the first fic in the Beginnings series, one where Brett and Shauren find the mansion, they’re the first egos to move in.

And there’s a few more - some cute gay fluff, some slightly sadder gays, some interesting character interactions, including ones between characters who I usually don’t picture interacting, an introduction to Angel (a villain), another fic in the Beginnings series (this one’s about Sasha), etc.

And that’s not mentioning the older wips I had for a while and haven’t touched in like, a month or two.

I have a lot of wips is what I’m saying ksjfdjfj. But I only have four of them open rn, and I’m mostly focused on two - chapter one and two of the first wip I mentioned.

Thank you for the ask!❤

[duketectivecomics]

Hey, since you mentioned that you like to write will you be writing anything for Duke week?

Oh tempting anon ;-; it’s v tempting. But between making sure things go well and a 6-shot fic that I’m right in the middle of rn, idk if I’ll have the time!

Altho I do have one wip snippet that I might be able to expand for the batfam theme 🤔🤔 Maybe I can give a mouse a cookie this and trick my brain into writing actually ahhhh