#one is them replying to every of my story post in spanish and then gets mad at me for not replyinf

[miutonium]

I already mentioned this on my twitter before but thought I just wanna add it here lol so if any of you guys followed my art ig, you might notice that I closed off all of my replies, comments and dms and that's because I keep getting unwarranted dms but more importantly there is this one person on insta that i think is a bit....odd.

So there's this person that keeps following and then unfollowing me either hours or days later. Normally I won't notice this because I don't check on people's profile but the reason I remember this is because this person tried reaching to me before. Basically they said they were glad they found someone that likes professor and starts dumping to me about how they likes him ever since they were a kid and then they're married to Utonium.

First of all, yes, I am totally fine with sharing. But you have to agree with me that saying "Oh you like the fictional character that I liked? Thats so cool omg btw we are married before you know him" as if you are claiming that character first is weird. And second, I barely talk about my selfship, I only post my art. At least if you want to talk to me, don't open with something like "I'm Utonium's wife." Like ???? That is weird are you trying to assert dominance on me???

Anyway I didn't bother to reply to them and for the next few weeks they reply to my stories occassionally just to try and see if I will reply but of course I didn't reply so their last reply were "Hello?" And I don't get any dms from them anymore.

After that I keep seeing their acc following and unfollowing me and usually I will block immediately because it's always safe than sorry but whenever I want to do so their acc just gone so I didn't manage to do that so now the only way for me to keep myself safe is to just shut down all means of communication.

Anyway I am still okay with sharing just that I wish people have manners and try to talk to me normally instead of immediately trying to assert your ship to me lol I swear I am fine and if I'm nice enough I will literally draw the shared f/o and you for free because I want to but like if you creep me out, chances are I wont talk to you and probably block you lol

[pinchofhoney]

Hi! Could I request a Ben Barnes x reader story where they have been secretly dating for a long time and their relationship only gets publically found out when Ben accidentally does an interview with a lipstick mark on his face/neck 💋

white lies

@/pinchofhoney, i'm the author of this poorly made edit (autocomplete interview with ben is something we all need)

i combined this request with another one, because they are meant to be together: (...) if you could write a one shot where Ben and the reader are in a really private relationship, and when I mean private like literally just them, like their close friends are the only one who knows they're together but one time they got spotted and it went trending and the reader thought they would receive backlash but turns out the people have always been rooting for them? (...)

ben barnes x fem!reader

word count: 2.9k

warning: nothing but fluff, everyone loves fluff<33

summary: The saying goes that a lie has no legs, and this rings especially true when it is caught on camera.

a/n: hello, and thank you for your request!!<33 i know how long you waited for me to write it, so i hope you will be satisfied with the result:(( let me know, please! thank you for your patience<3

every like and reblog is very much appreciated. don't let if flop!!

pages that may interest you: masterlist ♡ taglist ♡ who i write for

taglist: @wolfmoonmusic @myladydarkling @alexxavicry @danelhi @lonelywitchv2

“Hey there, I’m Ben Barnes and today I’m doing WIRED Autocomplete Interview,” Ben introduces himself with a bright smile on his lips and his eyes fixed directly on the camera, so everyone in front of the screen could feel as he was speaking specific to them.

When one of the people off-camera handed him the first question board, Ben quickly thanked them before taking a moment to look on the very well-known by internauts object. With a confident smile, he uncovered the first question and responded without hesitation. “Is Ben Barnes British? Yes, absolutely. I was born in London, England and I am 100% British, even though I spend a lot of time in the States,” he replied with a hint of amusement in his tone. “Although, I thought my accent would give it away,” he added with a chuckle before tearing off another piece of paper to reveal the next question.

“Is Ben Barnes an only child?” as he read question, he shook his hand in front of him to remove a piece of paper that had stuck to his fingers. The paper eventually fluttered to the ground, and Ben's attention returned to the camera with a grin on his face. “No, I actually have a younger brother named Jack,” he said, his eyes sparkling with joy as he recalled his sibling. “He's absolutely lovely, I miss him,” he added, nodding his head slightly.

Upon reading the next question, Ben furrowed his eyebrows, a hint of confusion flickering across his face. “Is Ben Barnes Spanish?” he raised his head to look at the camera and chuckled. “I don’t think we need to answer this question,” he said genuinely amused by the search. Without skipping a beat, he quickly moved on to the next question, and when he read it, his face lit up with a warm smile again. “Is Ben Barnes in the T-Mobile commercial? Yes!” he declared, his voice brimming with pride. He sent the camera a charming grin and added, “I, in fact, am this charming British actor,” winking at the camera and playfully imitating a line spoken in the commercial.

The quiet giggles of the women working in production behind the camera made you burst out laughing. Even though you couldn't see them, you could picture the adorable grins on their faces. Ben always knew how to work his charm, and sometimes you found yourself resenting him for it, especially when he used it against you. Both of you knew you couldn't resist his charismatic plays.

You sit on the couch, absorbed in the latest interview with Ben, which had just been posted online. You could be his girlfriend, his confidante, his partner in crime, but he never shared any behind-the-scenes secrets with you. He loved seeing your genuine reactions to his work, no matter what they were. It was just one of the many things that made him so endearing to you.

As the interview continued to play on your phone, you heard the familiar sound of Ben's footsteps entering the living room. You looked up to see him walking towards you, a mischievous glint in his eyes. He knew what you were watching and he couldn't resist the opportunity to tease you. He leaned over the back of the couch, his face hovering just inches from yours.

“What are you watching, love?” he asked, his voice full of amusement.

You rolled your eyes at his playful tone, but couldn't help the smile that tugged at the corners of your lips. “Just the latest interview with my favorite actor,” you replied, pretending to be unimpressed.

Ben grinned and leaned in closer, his breath tickling your cheek. “Oh, really? And who might that be?” he asked, his voice dripping with mock curiosity.

You shook your head, trying to hide your smile. “I don't know, some Benjamin? He reminds me of my favorite character from Disney animation,” you teased back.

Ben chuckled and pressed a quick kiss to your temple before settling onto the couch next to you. You leaned into him, enjoying his familiar scent and the feeling of his arm draped around your shoulder. The interview continued to play, but you found yourself more distracted by Ben's presence than the questions being asked. You couldn't help but steal glances at him, admiring the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled and the way his hair looked even messier than always. You could hardly believe that the charming and witty actor was your boyfriend.

“Wait,” he suddenly spoke up, snapping you out of your thoughts about him. He shifted his curious gaze to you after he stopped the video, his eyes a warm shade of brown that you could get lost in for hours. “Which character?” he asked, his voice filled with interest.

You furrowed your eyebrows completely off guard. It took you a moment to realize that he was referring to the words spoken as a joke. “Oh,” you said, your eyebrows raising slightly as your brain processed his question. “Eugene Fitzherbert.”

“Eugene?” Ben repeated, looking even more confused than you were a seconds earlier.

“Oh my goodness,” you muttered pretending to be annoyed. “Flynn Rider, does that tell you anything? Girl with magic hair? An evil stepmother keeping her in a tower?” you shifted away from him, settling into a cross-legged position as you faced him. “I've got a dream, I've got a dream. I just wanna see the floating lanterns gleam,” you sang, earning a chuckle from Ben.

“Okay, Rapunzel. Right,” he said, still laughing as he watched you. “I should have known. You’ve watched that movie, what, a hundred times?”

You rolled your eyes playfully, but couldn't help the fond smile that crept onto your face. "Only a hundred? I thought you knew me better than that," you teased, leaning back into his side.

Ben shook his head, still grinning from ear to ear at your playful banter. He reached for your phone and resumed the interview with a smile. You watched him intently as he answered all this questions, his passion for storytelling evident in every word he said. But suddenly your attention was diverted by something you hadn't noticed before – something that could potentially create a stir online.

Your hand flew to your mouth in surprise. “Oh no,” you gasped. “Is this what I'm thinking about?”

Without a second thought, you took the phone out of Ben's hands and held it up to your face, squinting to make sure you weren't mistaken.

Ben chuckled at your sudden change in behavior. “What are you looking at? I know I'm devilishly handsome, but you can look at me in person, you know?” he joked, but as he noticed your furrowed brow and lack of response, his expression turned serious.

“What is that?”

You turned your head, shifting your gaze to Ben, all the while holding your hand to your mouth with eyes wide open. “The reddish mark on your neck.”

Hearing your words, Ben's eyes widened and he almost snatched the phone from your hands to get a better look. At the same moment, a question about whether Ben had a partner appeared on the white board, to which he firmly denied and quickly moved on to the next topic. Hearing this coincidence, you burst out laughing uncontrollably, but Ben didn't find it as amusing since you had managed to keep your relationship a secret for over a year. Only your closest friends and family knew about it, and no one else. You had made the mutual decision to keep your relationship under wraps. It had started as a way to avoid unwanted attention and speculation from the media and fans, but as time went on, it had become a way to protect your relationship and keep it sacred. It had been a source of stress and anxiety at times, but it had also brought you closer together, sharing this special secret that only the two of you knew.

The situation was too ironic, and you couldn't stop laughing. The timing of the question about Ben's relationship status coming up at the same moment you noticed the mark on his neck was too much of a coincidence to ignore. Finally getting a hold of yourself, you asked, “What do we do now?” Noticing the look on Ben's face, you could tell he was worried.

He tried to reassure himself by saying, “This mark is barely noticeable. No one should be able to spot it, right?”

But you couldn't offer him any comfort, and you just helplessly shrugged your shoulders. You had to be honest with yourself, the idea of it being exposed was kind of terrifying. You knew that if you made it public, it would change everything. People would start scrutinizing every little detail of your lives, and the media could potentially spin it in a negative light. Being a regular person, you valued your privacy and didn't want to deal with the hassle of being in the public eye. Besides, what if his fans didn't like you? The thought of reading negative comments about yourself on all your social media profiles was daunting. You knew what kind of venom some users were capable of spewing, and you didn't want to expose yourself to that kind of negativity.

You quickly navigated to the comments section below the interview, frantically searching through the fan reactions, praying that no one had caught a glimpse of the conspicuous reddish mark on Ben's neck that you had left there before he went to work. Why the makeup artists had failed to conceal the mark before filming? They should have noticed it.

As you scrolled through the fan reactions in the comments section, you couldn't help but groan when you came across the first comment that mentioned the hint of your lipstick with an exact time reference. “03:31 BENJABIN THOMAS BARNES WHAT IS THAT MARK ON YOUR NECK?” you read aloud, and looked uncertainly at Ben, who was also staring at the phone screen. Your fears had come true.

As you continued to read, you noticed that there were other comments that also mentioned the mark. Ben pointed his finger at one of them too, confirming your suspicions. The situation was getting out of hand.

But amidst all the serious comments, there were a few that made you chuckle. “Someone wrote all men do is lie,” you laughed, trying to lighten the mood.

“I don’t lie,” he rolled his eyes, biting his lower lip to keep himself from laughing along with you.

“You do and this video is the proof of that,” when you said these words, you suddenly realized something. You straightened up, opening your mouth in surprise, and looked at Ben with feigned indignation. “Are you the one who ate the last cookies in the package? Don’t lie to me,” you said clearly, pointing an accusing finger at him with a serious face, wandering your eyes over his face.

“I-” Ben began in a defensive tone, and you watched the amusement that started painting on his face. “Okay, fine, it was me,” he admitted, laughing and defusing the tension. “But let’s not start a cookie war right now.”

As you both sat there in silence, you reached over to lock the screen of the phone, effectively ending the interview. With the device now resting on the table in front of you, the weight of what had just occurred began to sink in.

After a few moments, you tentatively broke the silence with a suggestion. “Why don't we just pretend that nothing happened?” you offered, hoping that Ben would agree. It was clear to both of you that publicly announcing your relationship was not an option, and this seemed like the best way to handle the situation.

Ben looked relieved at your suggestion and nodded in agreement. “Yeah, that's probably for the best,” he said, his voice sounding a little strained. You could tell that he was still processing everything that had just happened.

You sat in silence for a few more minutes, both lost in your thoughts. Finally, you decided to break the tension with a joke. “Well, at least now we know that your fans are Sherlock-level detectives,” you quipped, trying to lighten the mood.

Ben chuckled, a small smile playing on his lips. “Yeah, I guess I underestimated their sleuthing skills,” he replied, his voice sounding a little more relaxed now.

As the weeks passed after the incident during the interview, you and Ben did your best to keep your relationship under wraps. You avoided going out in public together, and when you did, you made sure to keep a low profile. But on this particular day, you decided to grab lunch at a small café near the neighborhood he lived in. You were enjoying your meal and chatting with Ben when a fan spotted him and shyly approached your table.

“Excuse me, are you Ben Barnes?” the fan asked excited, holding out their phone for a photo.

Ben smiled politely and put his coffee down on the table before agreeing to take a photo with her. She handed you her phone, her hands shaking with excitement, and asked if you could take the picture for her. You accepted with a soft smile and positioned yourself to take a few shots while Ben stood up to pose with the fan.

After the photos were taken, she couldn’t contain her happiness and gushed, “I’m such a big fan! I loved you in The Punisher.”

Ben chuckled and responded with a grateful tone, “Thank you! I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

The fan asked him a few more questions about his upcoming projects and music, and you observed with admiration as Ben responded with a smile and listened intently to her every word. He never gave the impression that he was bothered or uninterested, even if the topic wasn't something he was particularly fond of. You thought how much his fans meant to him and how he treated each of them with respect and kindness, making them feel important and appreciated.

As the fan walked away from your table, beaming with excitement, you couldn't help but feel a tinge of jealousy at her experience. It was amazing to see how Ben handled his fans with such kindness and charm, making each and every one of them feel special, and you were sure that the girl would cherish this encounter for a long time. Despite having witnessed this before, you were still impressed every time by his sincere connection with his fans.

When Ben sat back down, you could tell that he was still in a good mood. “She was sweet,” he said, taking a sip of his coffee. “It's always nice to meet fans, you know?”

You smiled at him, feeling warm in your heart. “You're amazing with your fans, Ben. I don't know how you do it.”

He shrugged, looking down at his coffee cup. “I don't know, I just try to make them feel appreciated. They're the reason I get to do what I love, after all.”

The two of you continued chatting for a while longer, discussing the least important things, enjoying each other's presence and having lunch together. But as you were about to leave the café, you noticed something strange happening on your phone.

“What's going on?” Ben asked, noticing the look of concern on your face.

You showed him your Twitter feed, where several notifications were popping up, all of them about the photo you had just taken of Ben with the fan, praising Ben's good looks and speculating about your identity. “Looks like we're trending on Twitter,” you said not sure how to react.

You glanced at your phone's screen once again and read the tweet that had caught your attention. “JUST SAW BEN BARNES OUT FOR LUNCH WITH HIS MYSTERY GIRLFRIEND! I have no idea who she is but THEY LOOK SO CUTE TOGETHER! Screaming crying throwing up #thatshouldbeme”.

Ben let out a small laugh as he read the tweet on his phone. "Well, I guess the cat's out of the bag," he said, glancing up at you.

The tweet had already been retweeted hundreds of times and you could feel your anxiety rising as you thought about what this might mean for you. For your relationship.

“What do we do now?” you asked him, your voice trembling slightly.

Ben took a moment to think before responding. “I think we should just embrace it,” he said, his voice calm and reassuring. “We can't change the fact that people know now, so there's no point in trying to hide it. And honestly, I’ve been thinking about it. I don't want to have to pretend that I'm not dating the most amazing person in the world,” he added, reaching across the table to take your hand and give it a reassuring squeeze.

Despite the less-than-ideal situation, his unwavering support and affection provided you with a sense of comfort, as though everything would be alright.

As you and Ben exited the café, you couldn't shake off the feeling of being watched, even though it seemed like everyone was just minding their own business. Some pedestrians recognized Ben and pointed discreetly, while others tried to catch a glimpse of you, the mysterious girlfriend. The paparazzi were nowhere in sight, but you knew it was only a matter of time before they caught on. You wondered how you would handle the inevitable intrusion into your private life, but for now, you were content to hold Ben's hand and enjoy the moment.

As you walked down the street, Ben leaned in close to whisper in your ear. “Don't worry, we'll figure this out together,” he said, his breath warm against your skin. You turned to him and smiled, feeling grateful to have him by your side.

[racinggirl]

my number one || carlos sainz 55

type: one shot pairing: carlos sainz x reader count: 1.7k summary: Carlos' first win! requested: no! Requests are OPEN!!! warnings: none notes: A quick extra story for our man. Dedicated to his first win this weekend in Silverstone. Smoooooth operator! Also, side note, I literally wrote this in less than an hour, so please bare with me if there are any mistakes. Not proofread! because I wanted to post it straight away!

my masterlist

Getting a podium in Formula One, one of the most amazing feelings in the world, standing on that elevation, looking over at the crowd in front of you. The trophy. The champaign. It was all quite familiar for the Spanish driver, Carlos Sainz junior. He knew how to pop the champaign, or how to lift that trophy up in the air. But he only knew how to do it on the lowest or middle elevation, since his first win still had to happen, somewhere.

‘’Buenos días, querida.’’ Carlos moved to tuck a loose strand of hair behind your ear, your eyes slowly opening, but closing immediately as a reaction of the bright sun invading the room, your shared room.

‘’Goodmorning, Carlos.’’ You replied, a smile on your lips as you felt his soft lips on yours. You kissed him back, something that had become a ritual every race morning. Your hand moved up, it finding its way into his soft, thick, hair, your fingers gliding through his fresh coupe easily.

‘’Are you ready to win your first Grand Prix?’’ You whispered in between the kisses, a smile appearing on your boyfriends face almost immediately. Yesterday he had managed to score his first ever pole position, an amazing result in the rain, and you were there to cheer him on.

‘’I am, watch me be the smoothest operator and win this race.’’ His words sounded like music in your ears, the smile you had on your lips grew even bigger after you heard what he said. You loved his confidence, his happy moments, because it was contagious. Whenever he smiled on the camera, or even when it was just the two of you in the room, you couldn’t help but join him in his actions. And neither could the people around him.

He was probably the guy with the highest favor factor out there, people seeing him on podiums almost every race this season, but not once had he managed to squeeze a win out of those podiums. A second position wasn’t a surprise anymore, and he was on the hunt, on the hunt for that one win, the first one, and boy was he ready to fight for that, here, in Silverstone.

You got into the car after you had breakfast alongside Carlos and many other Ferrari workers, them joking around, being all calm and relaxed. You knew the drill though, they would be calm now, but stress would hit them up once they stepped foot into the garage, being full on focus mode, wanting everything to go smoothly and perfect. That’s one of the reasons Carlos loved racing at Ferrari, the goofiness and jokes off track, but the serious business on track.

His hand moved towards your knee, his other hand on the wheel, driving the two of you to the track in the Ferrari Carlos was able to drive here in England. You had gotten used to it by now, the fancy cars, the high speed cars, the paddock, it all was familiar to you. But that was different when you started dating the Spaniard 4 years ago.

‘’Te quiero, y/n.’’ Carlos’ hand squeezed your knee gently, his gaze shooting from the road in front of you, to you, and back to the road again. Your hand reached down to his, intertwining your fingers as you started to play with his, something you liked to do.

‘’I love you too, baby, I really do.’’ You whispered, pressing a kiss to the palm of his hand after you rose it up to your mouth. ‘’And I want you to know that I am proud of you, so proud, no matter the outcome of today.’’ You wanted to comfort him, because you needed him to know you were proud, no matter what.

-

The race restart, second start of today, since the race got red flagged after Guanyu Zhou’s horrifying crash, as well as Alexander Albon, who had hit the wall quite harshly as well. Thankfully, all drivers involved in the accident were okay, meaning the race was about to resume.

You were nervous, after seeing that accident, you just prayed everything would go well, and no more crashes or dangerous situations would have to happen. You were standing in the garage, the red and black headphones covering your ears so you wouldn’t get hearing issues since those cars were loud, really loud.

The start went good, after some defending on Carlos’ side, attacks on Max Verstappen’s side and incredible driving from Charles Leclerc, your boyfriend managed to hold onto that first position, and you were proud, so proud.

A few laps in, and Carlos made a mistake, causing him to go off track, and you felt your heartbeat quicken as you prayed he wouldn’t crash, and he didn’t, thankfully. He regained his position on track, safely, but Max overtook him with ease, something you knew Carlos wasn’t happy with.

It was hectic, but exciting. You felt the camera’s surrounding you multiple times, people wanting to see Carlos Sainz girlfriend, cheering for him in the bright red Ferrari garage. And they got what they wanted, because you were indeed cheering him on, clapping once he made a move on Lando Norris, gasping whenever he and Lewis Hamilton were a little too close for comfort.

Another yellow flag caused your heart to work overtime, the Alpine of Esteban Ocon being the reason for the bright coloured flag.

Box, box, we box box this lap.

2.6 seconds, a good stop, a perfect stop, because he was in front of Lewis Hamilton, on fresh tyres.

Your hand reached for Charlotte’s, squeezing it, causing the Monagasque woman to giggle. ‘’You don’t have to break my hand, you know?’’ She smiled at you, making you loosen the grip on her hand a little bit, not too much. ‘’Come on Carlos, vamos neno.’’ You whispered to yourself, picking up on some Spanish phrases Carlos blurted out whenever he was with you.

‘Wauw! Wauw wauw wauw wauw! Vamos! Good job!’

‘We did it. YES! We did it! YES!!! Vamos!’

‘Bravo Carlos. Bellisimo!’

‘Hamilton took the fastest lap, one thirty point five.’

‘Yeah, I don’t care, he can have that, I don’t care.’

You laughed, now being able to hear the team radio, after seeing your boyfriend take his first ever win, and god were you proud.

‘Recharge on please, recharge on.’

‘Copy.’

‘Well done Carlos, and thank you.’

‘No, thank you, thank you and the team of course. My first win in Formula One, here, in Silverstone, and with Ferrari, it is… it is amazing, thank you guys!’

You ran, and so did he. He had been in the team group hug already, his helmet removed from his head and the first thing he did after that was search for you in the crowd. Once he found you, he made his way towards you, your arms already spread to embrace your boyfriend in this well deserved hug.

‘’I am so fucking proud of you! You won!’’ You yelled in his ear, hoping he’d hear anything because of the crowd, the team and the music around you. But he heard, because he had the biggest smile on his face as he pulled away from the hug.

‘’Gracias querida.’’ He said, his hands cupping your cheeks as he pulled you closer to him, his lips smashing on yours, kissing you sweetly, because he was more than happy to have you here on his side, supporting him every second of every day.

After the podium ceremony, of which you took more pictures than your phone could bare, you made your way to the Ferrari motorhome and hospitality, walking from the pitlane to the paddock, waiting for your boyfriend in his room.

‘’Carlos!’’ You squealed, rushing towards your boyfriend once he opened the door, the bottle of water in his left hand, his cap on his head. You hugged him, even tighter than before, and pressed kisses to his cheek.

‘’You have no idea how proud I am of you right now.’’ You smiled through the tears, feeling Carlos move to the side a little so he could place the bottle on the table, his arms quickly finding its way back around your body.

‘’Thank you, baby, thank you so much for supporting me.’’ You cupped his cheeks after his words, rubbing them with your thumbs as you let out a emotional giggle. ‘’Of course, babe, you don’t need to thank me, you know that.’’ You whispered, receiving a low chuckle from the race winner, before feeling his soft lips against your own.

Your hands found their way up to his hair again, but a frown appeared on your face as you felt the fabric of the black number one hat instead. You grabbed the hat, removing it from his head, only to place it on your own once you separated from the kiss. Carlos smiled, biting his lip as he looked at you, that contagious smile making its way up on his face.

‘’You are my number one, baby.’’ You smiled, pointing towards the hat which was now on your head, Carlos laughing at your silly comment, your silly actions, which he loved more than ever. He grabbed the hat, turning it around and placing it backwards on your head again, pulling your body closer along the way as his lips met yours again.

‘’And you are mine…’’

[rcmclachlan]

20 questions for fic writers

Tagged by @microcomets. Thanks, friendo!

1. How many works do you have on Ao3?

71 currently. I've orphaned a bunch, though.

2. What's your total Ao3 word count?

526,242

3. What fandoms do you write for?

These days I write for whichever fandom strikes my fancy—it might be a new one, or it might be one that I fall back into every so often. My most recent fics have been a mix of new (Beyond Evil, Good Omens, Loki) and old (Cardcaptor Sakura).

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Long Live The King (DBZ, bulma/vegeta)

Stopgap (Good Omens, crowley/aziraphale)

100 Zeni (DBZ, trunks/goten, bulma/vegeta)

Named (Supernatural, dean/castiel)

Solve for X (MCU, tony/loki)

5. Do you respond to comments?

I've gotten better at this! I now make sure to reply to every comment on my newer works (sometimes it's a bit overwhelming, but I think the effort is worth it).

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

Probably Oneiori. Like, Cas gets a happy-ish ending, but it's not going to last. Womp womp.

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

These days, I try to end all my fics on a happy note! The happiest that comes to mind is Heritage Site.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I think I've gotten hate maybe twice since I started posting to AO3 in 2010? That's statistically negligible, which is kind of amazing!

9. Do you write smut?

Not often. I don't mind writing it, but it really needs to serve a purpose to the story for me to make the effort.

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

Nah, not really my thing.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of, but I've had a fic's summary stolen! That was a trip.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes! I'm floored people like my work enough to put that kind of time and effort into translating it!

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

Nope. I tried, but it ultimately didn't work out (mostly due to writer's block and scheduling issues).

14. What's your all time favorite ship?

This is like asking me which of my children I love more. It'd take me a month to answer this question and I'd need someone at CERN to check my work.

I will say Kakashi/Iruka is my most enduring fave; I started reading them in 2005 and fall back into them every 3 or so years. I'm currently in a kakairu cycle (as if y'all couldn't tell).

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

Speaking of Kakashi/Iruka.... Hadopelagia. It was just far too big in scope for me to even think about finishing. I think I frightened myself out of it! For the best, though. I re-read it the other night and it's a MESS. This is why betas are so important, kids.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I've gotten a lot of comments about how I use metaphor effectively, as well as comedy. I don't think I'm particularly funny compared to other writers, but it always fills me with joy when someone mentions my dumb sense of humor.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Definitely smut. There's nothing worse than trying to keep track of where everyone's legs are.

Me: "I used the word 'cock' fourteen times in this paragraph......... well, maybe no one will notice."

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

I've done it! Named had a whole scene written in Spanish (I tried my hand at it and then had a native speaker edit it). I think when done well, it adds something really meaningful to a story.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

The first fanfic I ever wrote was before I even knew what fanfiction was. It was an Animorphs self-insert fic and I wrote it on a legal pad at my grandparents' house in like 1997. The first fandom I officially posted fic for was Fruits Basket in 2003, followed by QAF in 2004.

20. Favorite fic you have written?

Probably A Twist of the Knife. I had an absolute blast writing Nie Huaisang, and I'm really proud of the story as a whole (which is rare for me).

Tagging: @sonatine, @lemonistas, @stitchyblogs, @dadvans, @ataraxetta, @nandalorian, and anyone else who wants to get in on the action. :-D

[myheartalivewrites]

20 questions for fic writers

Thanks for tagging me @bitbybitwrites @kiwiana-writes @cha-melodius I continue to be emotionally withholding from my WIPs so this was a fun little distraction.

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

15 and I realised tomorrow is the anniversary of the first fic I ever posted! Might do a little celebration post about it.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

259,263!

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Red, White & Royal Blue ❤️🤍💙

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Confirming the mad recency bias in RWRB fics, they are all my most recent fics, all published from August onwards with the exception of the last one, hospital cupboard hook-up fic my beloved:

Deep Blue

In His Wildest Dreams

Just Like That.

Oxford Days

Tumbled Down and Tangled Up

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

Yes! Comments are the best thing about ao3 and pretty much the only reason to post my stuff online! I feel boring sometimes, like I'm replying the same thing over and over, but it is SO true that every single comment means so much to me and I hope commenters know that

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

I don't do unhappy endings. The closest I've come to not a HEA is Don't Wanna Be A Fool For You which is still a happy ending lol, but I didn't go into the future and left them only JUST beginning to recover from all the angst

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

Oh, tricky to decide this. I'm gonna go with Down By The Water, simply because I go deep, DEEP into their happily ever after in the epilogue (it is 12k of a 63k fic which should give you an idea of just HOW deep), even though it’s still quite… yearn-y.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

No, though I did get some intense emotional responses to a few chapters of Deep Blue, which... well, they were supposed to hurt, but it was A LOT. Never have I used the 😬 emoji that much.

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

Hah, yes. A lot of it. All but one of my fics are E and even that one has got a smutty end scene I didn't publish and might post around the holidays. A Christmas treat for a Christmas fic! I'm not sure what 'what kind' is really supposed to mean here, so: very explicit but always emotionally relevant to the story, and particular in long fics I like to use the, ahem, smut progression to show how their feelings and the relationship is deepening.

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

No

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not as far as I know 😬 Only tumblr posts 🙄

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Oooh, someone asked me if they could translate Deep Blue to Spanish, so I'm excited to see that (but it is 76k so it might be a while)! That would be my first though.

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

No

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

Oh, firstprince, no doubt. Alex and Henry have my heart.

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

I absolutely REFUSE to say I won't finish something. I plan to finish all my WIPs.

16. What are your writing strengths?

This is hard to answer, but I think I'm good at building tension, both in the overall story developments, but also within paragraphs and scenes, playing with sentence length etc. At the very least I like how I do that!

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Yikes, pulling no punches. Sometimes I get bored of writing all the 'getting to know you' dialogue, and get fed up of writing banter. It’s the kind of thing that tends to get me blocked on a WIP. I find it quite hard, possibly because Alex and Henry banter so much it feels like it's all been done before. Oh, here’s Star Wars! Oh, your dog’s name is stupid! Etc etc.

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

Love it. I have one WIP currently which has some French dialogue, and my French is middling at best, so I'm going to have to ask for help with it, but I'm not there yet.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

RWRB ❤️

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

IMPOSSIBLE QUESTION. I reserve the right to change this answer, but right now it's Down By The Water, I literally fell asleep last night wishing I had time to go reread it.

Phew, that was a lot! No pressure tagging a few friends who might want to play: @indomitable-love @historicallysam @14carrotghoul @cultofsappho @celaestis1 @suseagull04 @heybuddy-drabbles but open tag if you too wan to join!

[two-hands-toward-the-sun]

20 Questions For Fic Writers!

Thank you so much for the tag, @honeyteacakes!! I loved reading your responses. This was so much fun to do.

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

35! Some of them are locked to attempt to minimise AI scraping.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

44,236 holy shit

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Currently, I’m pretty deeply embedded in the Sandman-verse. But I’ve also written an AC Odyssey fic recently.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

I’m skipping this one because I embedded so many links in this post and I don’t wanna do it anymore. 😂 And people can just filter by kudos on AO3 if they’re interested.

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

I respond EXTREMELY slowly, but I make every effort to reply to comments when I have the energy to spare. It means a lot to me when people take the time to tell me what they liked about my stories.

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

Oooh. Good question. It’s either “pour the dirt into our bed” (Ranger’s Apprentice, referencing homophobia faced in a queerplatonic relationship) or “if you want voices in the dark, listen to mine” (Good Omens, after a temptation gone wrong.)

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

I write a fair amount of tender stories, so there are a lot of possible answers to this one! Potentially it’s “our place in the sun” (Sandman, Lucienne/Calliope domestic fluff) which is all about coming to rest and settling into love. Another option is “throw down that spade and dig up the garden” (Good Omens, Ineffable Husbands) which is about…pretty much the same thing, now that I think about it. 😂

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Thankfully not. I genuinely can’t understand why people leave hate comments on fics. Sure, there’s a lot of things I take issue with in certain fandoms, but I bitch about that stuff strictly IN MY OWN SPACE, I absolutely do not barge into other people’s spaces to do it. I never will and you can hold me to that.

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

I WANT TO. I’m working on it!! I actually have a smut prompt ask game queued up for next year, when I’ll have fewer writing obligations. As for what kind, I want to write so much femslash smut. There is devastatingly little in the Sandman fandom.

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

OHOHOHO. I have written a Los Simuladores/Good Omens crossover and it is genuinely one of my favorite stories that I’ve ever written. “every morning the same big and little words all spelling out desire” is appropriately zany, hopefully sexy, and seasoned with a dash of angst to balance the flavors.

(Shout out to @jlemonster for writing such a glowing post about it, it makes me happy just remembering it.)

Another crossover I’m working on is Johanna Constantine/Mary Poppins. I PROMISE it will make sense when it’s written. …well, maybe. 😂

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Nope.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes!!! As part of Fandom Trumps Hate this year I had two fics of mine wonderfully translated into Spanish by @yourneighborhoodneighbor and it was an amazing experience.

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

Nope. I don’t know if that would work with my writing habits, tbh. Maybe someday though, if the right idea and right person come along!

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

Oh GOD. Complicated question!! There are ships I’m currently enamored of, obviously, but who knows if they’ll stand the test of time? I know that Kaz/Inej (Six of Crows) and Irina/Jack (Alias) did something to my adolescent brain that may never be undone, but that’s the closest I can get to an answer to this question.

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

I’ve got a Good Omens Ineffable Wives AU inspired by Anne of Green Gables that is very dear to me, and has many aspects I’m extremely proud of, but I don’t know if I’ll ever finish it. My interest in Good Omens has flagged of late and unfortunately I don’t know if I’ll complete many of my WIPs for that fandom!

16. What are your writing strengths?

I like to think I have a good grasp on characters’ voices! Also, I think I write tactile and descriptive details well.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

TRANSITIONS ARE THE BANE OF MY EXISTENCE

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

I have done it once!!! For the aforementioned Los Simus fic. It was so much fun, and a good challenge for me. The dialogue was in Spanish (with very valuable help from @thisisnotjuli) and I loved writing how the two characters spoke in somewhat differing dialects.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Oh, lord. Probably Harry Potter? By hand, in a notebook from the dollar store. I was probably about eight or nine.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

They’re my children. My babies. My beloved frogspawn. I can’t give a definite answer, but…two of the stories that I worried my lip over the most for dread of failing to do them justice, the ones I think I put the most heart and consideration and care into, are “it’s an old song (and we’re gonna sing it again)” (Sandman, Calliope & Dream + healing and rediscovery and intimacy and changed but no less important relationships) and “sister dear, bear me away” (Good Omens, a human AU about gender discovery).

No pressure tags: the usual suspects <3 @pyrocephalus-rubinus @fatcatgospel and Juli, as well as @zorawitch @azi-sings-calliope @cosmictapestry, and anyone else who reads this and wants to talk about their creations!!

[lollytea]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

Mar tagged me in this. Thank you Mar <333

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

22

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

358,837

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Owls....for now and the foreseeable future. Other things in the past but....owls. Owls and nothing else.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

There's Sunshine in Your Smile

Atlas and the Avid Reader

A Little Change

An Exercise in Understanding

Girl Talk

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

I don't, I'm sorry!! When I first started posting on ao3, I answered every comment I got, but as more came in, I realized I was running out of ways to respond and it felt like I was just copy and pasting "thank you so much omg!!!" again and again and it felt awkward and disingenuous. (I meant it tho!! I did!!)

Also I never have any idea how to respond to long essay type comments that were picking the fic apart and highlighting everything they like about it. I ADORE those comments!!! They make me happier than anything else on earth but HOW can I respond to them?? A one liner thanks feels cheap and meaningless, but a long ramble about my own stuff feels arrogant.

So I just stopped replying to comments altogether. But listen please listen!!! I do read them!!! I read every single one of them and I love and appreciate them with all my heart!!! Thank you so so SO much to anybody who's ever left a comment on anything I've written!!!

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

I don't really write angsty endings. I guess atlas and pages both ended on a bit of a bittersweet note? Maybe.

That one ducktales fic Fearless left off on a kinda angsty cliffhanger, only because I never finished it. So it's technically an ending

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

Man I dunno most of them are kinda open ended (or unfinished) I suppose A Little Change ended on a sickeningly sweet note. Like disgustingly sweet (because I was 19 and stupid and had no concept of subtlety) Penniless Promises ended with a marriage proposal.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

No the only hate comment I've ever gotten is this one

It kinda annoys me. I consider your first hate comment to be a special milestone in your fanfic writing history. I've been waiting years for this. And then I FINALLY get it but I have no fucking idea what it means.

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

I've written bits and pieces over the years but I don't post any of it. I think the last "smut" I posted was weird werewolf knotting shit in like 2017

What kind? Fuckin uhhhhh. It's always very fluffy. Usually there's nothing weird going on. Sometimes there's monsters involved but the monsters are usually massive sweethearts who just want love.

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

No

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Yes. A few times. And it's always fucking wattpad. At one point, somebody put my fic through Google translate and reposted it in Spanish. I would have been completely unaware if somebody hadn't messaged me about it.

The process of getting them to take it down was a fucking circus. Their ability to use Google translate suddenly vanished the moment I contacted them.

I reported it and had to go back and forth with Wattpad support because the fic was IN SPANISH, so they just kinda glanced at it and were like "This is not the same thing that you wrote. These are different words. Spanish words." I was losing my MIND!!!!!!

They took it down eventually. Anyway...sorry I went on a tangent, I just think this is a funny story. Moral of the story is there are probably several stolen fics on wattpad and run through translators, and we have no idea. There might be more of mine on there but honestly I do not have the energy to be monitoring the stupid site. I hate wattpad so much its unreal.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

As we have just learned from the above story, yes :D!!

But also yeah, some people asked permission to translate my stuff and post it with credit. Sunshine has been translated into Spanish and Ukrainian!

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

No I can barely manage to write them myself

14. What’s your all-time favourite ship?

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

Undocumented Events of March 23rd. I might update it at some point in the next five years. But I had so many chapters planned that it will probably never reach the ending at the pace I'm going with it. But I love the jungle book husbands. I get back to them at some point in time

16. What are your writing strengths?

Word disease is the worst fucking thing ever but it CAN be a good thing in some circumstances. A huge meaty chunk of a fic. Something to dig into. Having a lot to say can lead to a lot to write. And the more you write, the more likely you'll get some quality stuff in there.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I repeat. Word disease is the worst fucking thing ever. And when it's coupled with a complexity addiction, UGGH!!! It's a blight on my life. I can't just write a simple straightforward fic, without getting carried away and the ideas just get bigger and bigger. Suddenly I'm implementing more elaborate concepts, scenes that need to be handled delicately. Everything takes absolutely all of my brainpower because I'm a neurotic overthinker who can never just RELAX and write something fun. And I WANT all of it. I want to execute all the plans that exist in my head but then I get overwhelmed by how big and complicated everything has gotten and I get burned out. Which is why things so rarely get done.

I'm a perfectionist. A horrible terrible one. I struggle to write ANYTHING without carefully constructing every individual line of it. Which makes progress so slow and tedious. I get scared to even START fics because I'm afraid I'll make myself feel awful again if they don't turn out good.

My grammar is very imperfect but I'm working on that.

I can be very unnecessarily wordy and take forever to get to the point. I've reread my own stuff and even I have difficulty following it because the sentences just have so many bells and whistles for no good reason. I completely forget a huge chunk of vocab and don't realize they are simpler way to phrase things.

My attempts at executing believable emotional scenes often fall kinda flat. Writing drama is hard but I'm amazed by some people's capability to master it so I'm chipping away at it, hoping to get better.

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

I don't really have any thoughts at all about them. Literally none.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

I'd like to say it was Trolls but it was actually Hetalia when I was like 14. But I do everything within my power to distance myself from Hetalia, so I like to say it doesn't count. But....need to be honest.

20. Favourite fic you’ve ever written?

Currently, at this point that I am at, the ones I used to be the most proud of now feel like they were a waste of time. I'm sure that will change again in a few months. How I feel about my own stuff is never consistent. The way that this question is phrased implies a forever favourite. Something I loved then, I love now and will love in future, and that is just never the case.

But also I don't wanna be an Eeyore about it, so I'll say a trance, a dance, a romance perchance?

I really do love my fairy Willow. She's so special to me :D!!

Tagging: after writing this whole post, I now feel very weird tagging people specifically and being like "HEY YOU! Look at this post I made <33" This is like a don't look at me post. BUT I do have lots of writer mutuals. And writer followers. If you're one of them and you see this....you!!!! Tag youre it!!!!

[writerkenna]

Author Tag

Thank you so much @sambambucky ! This is super fun!

How many works do you have on A03?

35

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

565,240

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Anything MCU, Community, and really whatever strikes my fancy

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Not Our Time

The Way of Things

we’ve always been impossible

This Time Around

Stumble and Fall Your Way to Each Other (I hate this stupid title but the fic is still good)

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

I almost always do! I love interacting with people reading my stuff and try to reply pretty promptly.

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

As much as I love angst, I always need a happy ending. I guess I’d say Project Genesis: Attempt Four (FAILED) bc that does end pretty sad but at least I know WBF comes after it.

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

I’d say why, why (did I ever let you go) bc every couple ends up together and they throw a big party, but that is just a part of mamma mia so don’t blame me!

8. Do you get hate on fics?

For writing mostly mpreg, I get surprisingly little hate for it! I guess I found a good community.

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

I do, but usually not smut on its own/pwp. I mostly just slip it in to bigger stories as a nice little treat.

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

If you count movie AU rewrites then yes!

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Luckily no

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

No

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

No but I’d love to!!

14. What's your all time favorite ship?

Sambucky baby!

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

I hope to finish all my fics, but, I admit, I’m worried about returning to my marvel mia 2 au. That one might have to wait a while, at the very least 😬

In terms of WIPs I never published, I reaaaaaaallly want to get back to working on my Bucky is a witch/Strange Powers fic.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I think my dialogue and internal monologues are pretty good.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I’m not very good at setting or world building, and also I’m terrible at sticking to a writing/posting schedule.

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

I’ve done this a few times. I use deepl and my own personal knowledge with the language, and then also have someone check it for me. Thank you @iamgalicia for being my Spanish checker!!!

19. First fandom you wrote for?

When I was 12/13 I wrote for The Sisters Grimm book series and Glee lol

20. Favorite fic you've written?

Ooooo tough one! I love them all for many diff reasons but I think my best written is Parts of a Whole

Tagging @livingincolorsagain !!

[celestemagnoliathewriter]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

Thanks for the tag @merlins-sequined-hotpants!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

108

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

2,129,527

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Harry Potter. I have a couple neglected Pride & Prejudice fanfics that may never be posted, but we'll see.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

The Nymph of House Black. 819 kudos.

The Wizard, the Wolf, and the Son. 579 kudos.

The Nymph of House Tonks. 571 kudos.

Cariad. 513 kudos.

Moonlit Marriage. 300 kudos.

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

I try to whenever I can. Every so often I get a commenter on every chapter with emojis, or just a word or two, so I will thank them every few comments.

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

Probably Father and Son. Teddy Lupin has his own son and still can't understand why his parents left him for the Battle of Hogwarts.

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

Other than fluffy one-shots, I think Real, Real Love.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Sometimes. Negative reviews happen more often on FFN. The other day I got a comment on AO3 from an anon/guest that just read "Why would you write this?" on an angst fic. I replied "Because I wanted to" and left it at that.

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

YES. I've really only written M/F. I've thought of dabbling in F/F, as M/M doesn't seem to interest me much. Either way, I generally like writing steamy scenes that are romantic and loving.

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

No, and I don't think I ever will. Though maybe this Furby fic counts as a crossover. IDK.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Stolen? Ehhh I've seen a translation of one of my fics on Wattpad, but I don't really care about that.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

The Nymph of House Black has an ongoing Spanish translation, La ninfa de la Casa Black, though I don't think it will be finished. I'm not the translator, though I could be.

13. Have you ever cowritten a fic before?

Not yet.

14. What's your all-time favorite ship?

Remadora!!! 💖🐺

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

Probably one of my Pride and Prejudice ones. Or, one of my completely self-indulgent, unhinged self insert Harry Potter fics.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I want to say plot and conveying a wide range of emotions. I can bring readers to tears of joy or pain, to heartaches and fuzzy feelings, and to awkwardness and comfort, and that's something I'm proud of.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I used to call it poetic prose, or 'pretty' prose, but I think what I'm weak at is what I'd now call 'atmospheric writing'. I don't tend to set a mood with the prose itself, or the description of a location.

Also, my writing schedule has gone to pieces. I severely overestimate my abilities and time.

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

Depends on the language! I'm fluent in Spanish, but unluckily for me there are no Spanish speakers in the Harry Potter series, at least not explicitly canon ones. I'm reasonably proficient in French, so I feel okay with that, but it's not something I do on the regular. I'm comfortable with Latin.

19. First Fandom you wrote for?

Harry Potter, intentionally. Twilight, unintentionally.

20. Favorite fic you've ever written?

It's hard to pick a favorite! Even though it's nowhere near my best work, Collide. It's what kicked off my fanfic. I legit thought that was the *only* story I'd ever write. How naive of me.

Tagging @puppyduckster @thecasualauthor18 @pixiedustandpetrichor @midnightstargazer @leogichidaa and anyone else who wants to join!

[thetauruspixie]

20 Questions For Fic Writers

Originally started by @izanae. Thanks for the tag @lycorogue

The original Fic Writers Ask thread was super long, so like LycoRogue, I decided to create my own post for it, but please do check out the original thread.

1. How many works do you have on ao3?

I currently have 18, though I have more on FFN. 8 for Miraculous Ladybug, 5 for W.I.T.C.H, 4 for Hellsing, and 1 for Black Butler/Kuroshitsuji

2. What’s your ao3 word count?

As of this post, I have a total of 619,000 words. Wowzers...

3. What fandoms do you write for?

At the moment, I mainly write for Hellsing and Black Butler. But I have also written for Miraculous Ladybug, W.I.T.C.H, and Sonic the Hedgehog.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

1. Madness Within (Miraculous Ladybug) 2. Double Trouble (Hellsing) 3. Experimental Kiss (Miraculous Ladybug) 4. Destiny's Dance (Miraculous Ladybug) 5. Go and Conquer (Hellsing)

5. Do you reply to comments?

Sometimes. I always appreciate every single comment, but sometimes I don't always know how to reply without just giving a generic 'thank you' again, and again, and again. But I do read them all, I promise.

6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Tough one. I think if I had to pick though, it would probably be Project Darkness, an old Sonic the Hedgehog fic of mine.

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

I don't think I've ever done a fic with a 100% cheesy happy ending, but the happiest and closest to that would probably be Twelve Days of Chatmas (Miraculous Ladybug).

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Not usually, but I have gotten hate on Madness Within (Miraculous Ladybug), which I guess was always an increased possibility due to the amount of views that story has. However, that hate has only ever been on FFN. It was mainly people bullying me over long periods between updates.

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

Not usually, but you're more likely to see me write smut for Hellsing and Black Butler. There are some sexual scenes planned for the future in some of those fics for those fandoms. I can't see me ever doing a 'porn with no plot' fic, but it would be more like 'sexposition' and will make sense with the plot (e.g. advancing character relationships etc).

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

No, but I have thought about it on the odd occasion.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Oh yes, and it is so annoying! My work is usually stolen by people on Wattpad, and the most recent stolen work of mine was Destiny's Dance (Miraculous Ladybug).

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yeah, which is awesome! Amicus (Hellsing) has been translated into Spanish by ayelenrock, who is also planning on translating my other Hellsing fics into Spanish. I've had a few offers for my fics to be translated into French and Russian, however, those have yet to be published as far as I'm aware.

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

Yeah, I co-wrote a few Sonic the Hedgehog fics with @free-in-the-wind and @jowyavilon at one point in the past. However, we didn't get very far with them and they ended up abandoned. Our lives were just too busy.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

Alucard/Seras from Hellsing.

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

Probably Immortal Bonds (Miraculous Ladybug). I just seem to have lost all motivation for it, like with quite a few Miraculous fics of mine. It's a shame because I HATE leaving stories unfinished.

16. What are your writing strengths?

People tell me I'm good at writing realistic emotions, so I guess that would be one? A lot of people have complimented me on my accurate representation of mental illnesses. Also, apparently I'm also really good at writing realistic child characters, and they seem to always be a favourite of my readers.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Names. I'm terrible at them, and it takes me ages to settle on something. Also fight and action scenes can be quite difficult to write sometimes.

18. Thoughts on dialogue in another language for a fic?

A rule I tend to use is try to imagine like it's real life. You'd probably understand, or at least discern, certain words in another language, so I tend to write those in. For example 'bonjour', or even simple sentences. However, if a character starts speaking full, long sentences in a foreign language, then I do not write this in, as it would probably just sound like gibberish from the point of view of the character I'm currently writing for. I simply point out that the other character is speaking in said language. I hope that made sense?

19. What’s the first fandom you wrote for?

W.I.T.C.H when I was, like, 10 years old or something? Back then, I didn't even know what fanfiction was, I just knew that I enjoyed writing my own stories based on the characters.

20. Favorite fic you’ve ever written?

I think I definitely have a soft spot for Double Trouble (Hellsing). I love Lily and Luna so much and they're so much fun to write!

I now no pressure tag: @pinkfluffacttuff @free-in-the-wind @inkyrable and of course anyone else who wants to take part!

[naranjapetrificada]

20, 56, and 71? (I'm very curious about that last with your current project)

Thank you! I can always rely on you to indulge me when I want to play an ask game 🥰

It got a little long so I'm gonna put in a break to not ruin people's feeds.

Before the break though, if you want to play "get to know your fic writer" just pick your question(s) from this list!

20. Have you noticed any patterns in your fics? Words/expressions that appear a lot, themes, common settings, etc?

There are a lot of possible answers to this one, but a few off the top of my head:

I can never resist a little alliteration.

It's something I always have to rein in a bit, but if I want to emphasize something I will regularly repeat myself. Not word for word, but restating it. I think this might be related to the way I speak IRL and the ADHD need to over-clarify. But it's a thing I've seen other writers do also!

I love an image, and literally require them to write the way the human brain requires oxygen. Every shorter piece I've posted was directly inspired by/is heavily dominated by a single image, to the point that I sometimes feel like it's the poetry part of my brain that writes anything under 2000 words.

56. What’s something about your writing that you pride yourself on?

The nouns. People, places, and things, as in introducing a character, evoking a place and describing a thing. Until fairly recently, those were my writing raisons d'être tbh. An image would lead me to one or more of them, and I'd get lost in them, but my motivation would always peter out around the time I needed stuff to like, happen. Plot was always, always an afterthought (which is a big reason for the poetry part of my brain I mentioned in the previous answer).

71. When it comes to more complicated narratives, how do you keep track of outlines, characters, development, timeline, ect.?

Hoo boy. What a question. I've never committed to a longfic the way I have with FtF so I'm still figuring it out. When I was still figuring out which tropey longfic I wanted to work on in this fandom I actually started with a different one (a "Stede gets captured by Blackbeard before he has the chance to get gut-stabbed by the Spanish" thing), which is why you'll confusingly see FtF posts tagged with #baby's second longfic. But one thing working on that first one helped me with was figuring out I need to stay on top of it all.

The short version is "a doc for everything and everything in a doc."

I have like, a "beat sheet" for the big story beats and a big messy "brain dump" sort of document, so that I can note new things down without getting distracted by where they're supposed to go. The latter is also where the earliest writing takes place, and how I learn what shape something could take.

When things start to coalesce a bit, there's a new file for every chapter that I can see on the horizon (like for FtF I've gone as far as Chapter 6). Doing it any other way would be literally unworkable for me. Besides just like, limiting the scale of whatever I'm looking at at a given moment, it's also handy to be able to cut and paste things around when I need to change where something falls in the timeline. And because this fic is The Way That It Is, I also have separate documents for things like flashbacks and the academic blurbs, although I will copy the latter to their requisite chapter doc when I figure out where I want them.

While writing this reply, it's occurred to me that it might be a good idea to have a document just for things that have been set in stone, like dates and ages and locations etc. Just to keep my facts straight. That's kind of a big reason I've been posting chapters as soon as they're written instead of waiting till I had a backlog - I needed to get some things set in stone so I wouldn't be tempted/able to keep changing everything. The more concrete details I nail down the faster (read: not fast) this thing gets written.

This has been so much fun and super educational to think about all this stuff so thank you so, so much for asking ❤️❤️❤️

[ellegreenawayslover]

20 Author Questions

I was tagged by @blackbird-brewster and @tedwinisconfused :) (This took me too long haha)

1. How many words do you have on AO3?

I have 12 works, two are not finished, and the rest are mostly one-shots. I also have like 4 or 5 other works in my docs that I really need to finish.

2. What's your total AO3 word count?

74,082!!

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Mostly criminal minds.

I do have a few fics from other shows, but that is just because every time two women look at each other for a couple of seconds, I like to write them being in love. I haven't necessarily watched the show they are from. And most of them are just sitting in my docs and will probably will stay there forever.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Happy birthday!

Bedtime stories

Home

Paris is lonely in the mornings

Hope (is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have)

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

YES!! Every. Single. One.

My heart melts every time I see that someone commented on one of my fics. I would love to hug every person who takes the time to comment on one of my fics and give them a little kiss on their forehead, but I can't. The only thing I can do is reply to those comments and let them know how much it meant to me! :)

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

I haven't written much angst that I like enough to post. And I usually write more hurt/comfort than angst, but I have a few of them.

The angstiest I have written so far is Paris is lonely in the mornings or (and if I didn't know better) I'd think you were still around. But I think once I finish the jemily fic I'm writing based on Is it over now? they won't be the angstiest anymore :).

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

Like I said, I usually write hurt/comfort or just fluff, so I don't which one has the happiest ending, but here are the softest fics I have written: Personal prayer, Home, Happy birthday! and When Elle falls in love.

Not the happiest ending as such because it isn't finished yet, but my Elle fic Hope (is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have) is on its happy Elle face, and it will have a happy ending.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I haven't (and I'm really grateful because I wouldn't know how to react, to be honest).

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

I have written a few fics with smut, but I haven't written enough to know what I like to write if that makes sense.

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

I have. But in the sense of taking a character from another show/movie and making them appear in a fic of another one. Most of the time, I make them into a sort of original character and keep their name.

11. Have you ever had a fiction stolen?

Nope.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope.

(Unless you count me translating them into Spanish and keep that somewhere in my docs and forgetting they exist until months later and then delete them. I don't know why I do this because even though Spanish is my first language, I haven't really written in Spanish for years.)

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

Nope. I don't think I'd be able to because I write the ideas that have been stuck in my mind, but I can't explain them until they are finished (I don't know if it makes sense).

14. What's your all-time favorite ship?

Jemily!! I love them so much!

I also love Elle with any other female character, and lately, I've been writing more of Elle/JJ and Elle/Emily.

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

I have too many WIPs in my docs, and I hope to finish all of them, but I don't know if I will or when I will.

One I don't know if I will finish, and it breaks my heart because I really loved it at first, is one about Emily in Paris when she is "dead," and although I wanted it to have a happy ending, it is pretty angsty, and I don't have the energy to go back to it.

16. What are your writing strengths?

If I am writing a fic about a little idea I had, I have all the details of what I want to write in my head and in a little notebook I take everywhere. I think I'm pretty good at describing the emotions the characters are feeling. So that, I guess.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

It usually takes me so long to write, but in the I can write 70% of something in 4/5 hours but spend twice the time for the other 30% way. I always have too many things in my brain, so focusing on just one to write is the most difficult thing sometimes, and my dyslexia won't let me write the things I want to write in a way that makes sense.

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

I love it, but when it is a language I don't know, I'm too scared to do it haha.

I do love to write some parts in Spanish in my fics.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

It was for a Spanish show about doctors that my best friend and I were obsessed with back when I was 11/12. After that, I would say a few other Spanish shows.

Criminal Minds was the first fandom I wrote that wasn't just for my best friend and me

20. Favorite fic you've ever written?

I have an immense amount of love for Hope (is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have). That fic is my baby.

I also have a special love for The first step toward healing and Happy birthday! They are the first fics I wrote that I let other people read, and they are so special to me.

Tagging: @introverted-author @scorpsik @prentiss-theorem @5ivebyfive @alexblakeisgay (no pressure though)

[fanishjuli]

20 questions for fic writers

Thank you babe for the tag <3

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

I have 62 works posted on ao3 (although some are anonymous and some are not fics but original stuff).

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

131,372 words.

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Many, lol. The fandom I have the most fics posted is Sherlock (BBC). The second is Good Omens (and also the fandom I have the most WIPs for). I have also posted fics for the MCU, Star Trek (TOS, AOS, TNG, DSC), the TAZ podcast, DC/Batman, OFMD and, most recently, X-Men.

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

#1 in all statistics, by a wide margin of difference, is Gotham Online, my DC/Batman social media AU fic, with 3,033 kudos. Second, with 479 kudos is Epiphanies at dawn, my OFMD Izzy/Stede Steddyhands fic; I'm relaly proud of this one actually. Then there's Surprising and unexpected (Star Trek), then There's No Truth Like Home (Sherlock) and fifth is Seeking Knowledge (Good Omens).

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

Yes! I like replying to comments.

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

Um, none? I don't write much angst, and when I do it always has a happy ending. Probably the angstiest fic I wrote is In your precense I trust, my last Good Omens fic where Crowley has a shit day and seeks out Aziraphale for some comfort. But it doesn't have an angsty ending at all.

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

Literally all of them? Most of them have very soft endings because that's what I love.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Nope. I think I got some weird comments a couple of times? But no. And if I did I deleted them and forgot about them lol.

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

I haven't posted any smut, yet. I have two (...three? Can't recall) smut WIPs, one OFMD that's almost finished and needs editing (although I haven't touched it in months lol) and one Good Omens one as well that is significantly more incomplete.

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

I don't? I have had a few ideas for crossovers, and I even started writing a couple, but none I've worked on in a while. The craziest one is a Good Omens/Los Simuladores (Argentina) crossover; I had the idead with @two-hands-toward-the-sun and they actually wrote a fic about it, every morning the same big and little words all spelling out desire. It's very good and you should read it.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Nope. Not to my knowledge at least, I hope not.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yeah! I translated a few of my own fics (from english to spanish and spanish to english) and I had several of my Sherlock fics translated to russian.

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

Yup, Obsession is a Sherlock fic I co-wrote with @0therainbowmind0 during late 2019/early 2020.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

Something you need to know about me: I am terribly indecisive. I don't have favourite anythings because I can never choose and my asnwers change constantly. So, at the moment and for the past couple years my favourite ship, or at elast the one I keep returning to, has been Good Omens' Aziraphale/Crowley. Although, at this very moment, as in, the day I'm writing this and for the past week or so, I have also been very much into X-Men's Charles/Erik.

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

Hard question! I don't like posting WIPs, so I almost always wait until I have completed a story before posting it. The only exception is Gotham Online. I would like to finish that fic sometime, although there's not much plotline, I would simply like to continue it because I have many ideas. One other fic I would like to finish but I am not certain I will is my "Heaven's Prayers Department" Good Omens WIP, where some angels in heaven hear Crowley's prayers through the millenia.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I think probably writing dialogue is what I'm best at. I'm good at it, even though sometimes I may struggle to properly get a character's voice.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Descriptions, I really struggle with them in general. I'm bad at describing places, clothes, everything. Ambientation is not my thing.

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

It's fine? I don't know; I don't do it. The only time I did was in my Good Omens' spanish pet names fic, which to be fair, I wrote originally in spanish (Los nombres del amor) and later translated to english (The names of love). In the translation I kept the pet names untranslated, as they were the entire point of the fic.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

I don't remember if I ever actually wrote or just daydreamed and maybe, at most, wrote down a handful of ideas as a bulletpoint list, but if we count that then it was, embarrassingly enough, for the Spanish gamer youtubers fandom circa ~2016. But the first fandom I actually wrote for was Sherlock. Or maybe MCU? I don't remember which one I wrote for first but the first fic I ever posted was a Sherlock one.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

Oh fuck. This is literally so hard to choose. I think my favourite Good Omens fic is the previously named In your precense I trust or Lavender Suits You, which I wrote for the Ineffable Butch Wives Week last year. Other favourites I really loved writing and also enjoy rereading are: Crush, a TAZ fic written for the Blupjeans Week 2021; Joanna McCoy's Week In Space, written for the Spones Reverse Big Bang 2020-21; my previously mentioned OFMD fic, Epiphanies at dawn; and my most recent fic, age with all its ailing brings blessings, I believe, which is an X-Men fic and the first part of the old men cherik series. The second part of the series is finish and already half edited, and I started writing the third (and probably final) part.

Honestly if anyone wants to do this, consider yourself tagged. It was very fun XD

[nekoannie-chan]

Unexpected love part II

Pairing: James Buchanan “Bucky” Barnes X Reader

Word count: 404 words.

Summary: Your family had hired Bucky as your bodyguard, what will happen when you realize he regrets all his past crimes?

Warnings: Mention of injuries.

A/N: This is a request by @greenv​​, HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! Sorry for taking me so long, I hope you like it.

Thanks to my beta reader @saiyanprincessswanie​, I love you, Missy.

My native language is Spanish so I wanna improve my writing skills in English if you notice any mistakes, please let me know and I will correct them.

I don’t give any kind of permission that my fics be posted in other platforms or languages (I translate myself my work) or the use of my graphics (my dividers are included in this), I did them exclusively for my fics, please respect my work and don't steal it. There are some people here who make dividers that anyone can use, mine is not this type, please look for the other's people. The only exception is the ones I gifted 'cuz now belong to someone else. If you find any of my works on a different platform and are not one of my accounts, please let me know. Reblogs and comments are always welcome.

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Marvel's characters (unfortunately), except for the original characters and the story.

My other media where I publish: Wattpad, Ao3, ffnet.

If you like it, please vote, comment, and give me feedback to improve my skills and reblog.

Tags: @sinceimetyou​ @unnuevosoltransformalarealidad​  @navybrat817​ @angrythingstarlight​  @shield-agent78​ @charmed-asylum​  @pandaxnienke​ @smokeandnailz​ @white-wolf1940​  @tenaciousperfectionunknown​ @xoxonotme​ @bluemusickid​ @leyannrae​  @harrysthiccthighss​  @marvelatthisone @hallecarey1​ @caplanbuckybarnes​  @tylard-blog1​

Part I

You and Bucky were in a relationship for six months in secret. No one knew, not your best friend or Steve.

“We could run away and start a new life, just you and me,” you proposed.

What Bucky didn't know was that you already had a plan. Every word you said that day you meant. The thought about your plans for the future and the life you could live with Bucky made your heart soar. There was nothing more in this world that you wanted. One day you approached  Natasha about what you wanted to do. She helped prepare everything including the documents with a new identity for both of you. Between the both of you, everything was arranged so that you and Bucky could disappear and live a quiet life.

Even though plans were coming together somehow things started to get stressful with Bucky. When you both worked missions together Bucky was overprotective and made sure that you were out of the way of danger. He would even go to the extreme of putting his life on the line just to make sure you were safe. On the last mission, Bucky had just made it to you before a Hydra operative shot you. The memory alone had terrified him at the thought of losing you. One night Bucky snuck out of your bedroom window as he sometimes did and explained his fears to you. As you reassured him, he suddenly remembered what you told him a few weeks before.

“When you proposed that we run away, did you mean it?” Bucky questioned.

“I already told you that I wasn't kidding. I would leave tomorrow with you if you asked me to,” you replied.

Bucky stared at you, trying to gauge if you were telling the truth. “You would drop everything, the life we have with the team just to be with me?”

You put your hands on his face and smiled. “Of course, you shouldn’t worry about anything. I have already planned out everything for us. I already have the destination where we will go and start a new life. I can assure you that we will be very happy there.”

You kissed him passionately to reassure him of any doubts. Gently pulling away from the kiss, you both started to pack a bag so you could leave that night. Together they would write a new story in their life, together forever.

[milenadaniels]

Actually, Truly, 14k - Buck/Eddie, Helena POV, post-s4 (AO3)

Isabel calls to tell them Eddie's been shot on a Thursday afternoon and by lunch on Friday Helena and Ramon are landing at LAX. When they land, they learn Eddie's already home recovering and has been for two weeks.

----

Or, Helena (and Ramon) tries to find a way back into Eddie's life and doesn't know what to make of finding Buck around every corner she turns.

Isabel calls on a Thursday afternoon and by lunch on Friday Helena and Ramon are landing at LAX. Their son’s been shot, again, in the line of duty. But this time, instead of being thousands of miles away and out of reach, he’s just a short plane ride away.

Isabel insists they come to her house before going to the hospital but she doesn’t blame COVID protocols for keeping them away from the hospital, so they spend the car ride over imagining the worst.

A complication with surgery.

Permanent damage.

A coma.

The news they receive is that Eddie’s fine, and he’s been home and recuperating for two weeks already.

Helena retreats to the living room while Ramon and his mother fight in the kitchen. They’re yelling in Spanish and for once she wishes she’d never learned.

“Escúchame, Ramon,” Isabel tries to interrupt. Listen to me.

The yelling continues because Ramon doesn’t listen. It’s not his strong suit. Nor is it Helena’s.

Helena paces the length of the living room and holds her phone in her hands, thumb over Eddie’s name in FaceTime, not pressing down.

Eddie’s been home for two weeks.

Isabel hadn’t told them for two weeks.

But Eddie hadn’t either.

They hadn’t seen him in person in nearly two years, and he hadn’t called them since their last fight over a month ago.

Still, Eddie was shot in the streets by a sniper and he didn’t call them.

Mom, listen...

The last time they spoke, it was a phone call, not a video chat, maybe because at that point just the sight of each others’ faces was enough to set them all off. In that phone call, Eddie spoke of a friend whose family was somehow worse off than their own, but who, miraculously, were finally making the effort to fix the broken ties between them in therapy.

“Mom, listen… I spent a long time being angry with Shannon instead of trying to reach out to her and now Christopher is never going to have her in his life again. I don’t want that with you,” Eddie said, his voice brusque but calm, measured. “I don’t want to grin and bear it when you call or when we visit. I want to be glad to pick up the phone, I want to be excited to see you all at Christmas, I want you to be part of our lives. But I can’t do that without you meeting me halfway.” He was resolute, but he was pleading too. “I don’t want to spend the next ten years of our lives like this.”

But the idea of therapy was anathema to the Diaz family and it took only Ramon’s dismissive scoff to reinforce her own distaste of the idea. They called Eddie back to say they had no intention of paying a stranger to tell them everything was their fault and he was blameless.

They didn’t get another call after that.

“— my son!” Ramon yells at Isabel in the kitchen.

“Because, mijo, when you come here, you don’t see your son! You don’t see him living here, growing, Christopher thriving! You don’t see how when you come up here you bring sadness and misery when you should bring joy and comfort.” The words are too close to what Eddie said for them not to have spoken about it together. “By the time I knew he was hurt, he was already out of surgery and doing well. If he wasn’t, I would have called immediately.”

“Oh bueno, so you’ll tell me my son is dying but not that he’s okay?”

“Ramon! Escúchame.” It’s not often that Helena gets to bear witness to the steel in Isabel’s voice, the one she passed down to both her kids. It’s in fine form today. “He was doing well, and had all the help he needed. As soon as things stabilized, I called you. Keep acting like a fool and see if I call you at all next time.”

“If you call? Are you —”

Mom, listen…

“Ramon!” Helena snaps, surprising them all.

“Ramon,” she repeats, more calmly this time. “Listen to her.”

The shock on Isabel’s face almost makes her smile, but her heart is too heavy to commit to it.

“Helena, two weeks she —”

“Our son was shot, and he didn’t tell us.” Helena says, her voice trembling. “Our son was shot, he could have died, and the last thing we would have told him is we weren’t willing to fight for him and Christopher. Weren’t willing to — what? — put our egos aside? Our pride? For one fucking minute to listen to him. To listen to what he needed.”

Ramon’s eyes widen and he hangs his head with a sigh.

Helena faces Isabel, her phone tucked in her palm against her stomach.

“What can we do? We’re listening.”

——————-

Ramon walks it off and Helena helps Isabel in the kitchen in exchange for a promise they’ll go over to Eddie’s for supper. She’s been making care packages for Eddie and Christopher since the shooting, and she’s working on a pasta sauce while Helena starts on her famous banana brown sugar bread — Eddie’s favourite.

“How is he, really?” she asks once her dish is tucked into the oven.

“As well as can be expected,” Isabel replies, throwing spices into the pot with an ease Helena never grew into. “He was tired for the first few days, but now it’s like a broken arm. Uncomfortable but not so painful.”

“How long is it supposed to take to heal?”

Isabel casts a suspicious eye her way as if she can anticipate the date of Helena’s return flight adjusting already, but answers, “they say 6 to 8 weeks. It’s for the bone to heal, mostly, in his back. The rest should be sooner.”

Helena broke her wrist years ago, when the kids were nearly teenagers, and it was three months of hell trying to manage a household one handed while Ramon spent most of that time travelling across Texas.

Who’s helping him? Is Carla back in the picture? Is she working overtime? How can he afford that on sick leave? Is Pepa or one of the cousins going over? Is his girlfriend there? Who’s helping with Christopher? How is he managing?

The questions — all genuine and well-meaning, all a shade too accusatory — are on her tongue, pressed to the back of her teeth to keep from escaping. She’s entitled to answers, even if she doesn’t like them. She knows she has the right to at least know how her son is caring for himself and her grandson while he’s injured. If he’d told them when it happened Helena could have been here in a heartbeat to help, but no, Eddie’s just as stubborn as they are, just as prideful. He’d rather suffer alone than accept their help. Fine. But she’s still his mother, and Christopher’s grandmother. She raised them both. She has a right to—

Mom, listen…

Helena takes a deep breath in, anchors herself in the mixed scents of the rich sauce and the sweet bread cooking, and breathes out. Isabel sends her another look but says nothing.

————-

Helena cries when she sees Eddie, and cries a bit harder when she sees the apprehension in his eyes. Her baby boy looks a bit pale, but he’s standing on his own two feet and answering the door himself.

“Oh, sweetheart,” she murmurs, wrapping him gently into her arms, mindful not to press into the sling or his back.

“Hi, mom,” he says quietly, like he’s trying to gentle the stiffness in his voice.

She releases him, but not before pressing three kisses into his temple, always three. One for each of her kids.

Ramon steps into the space she leaves when she continues into the house and from the corner of her eye, she sees him cup the back of Eddie’s head and take a good look at him. For Ramon, it’s the equivalent of collapsing to the floor in tears.

Helena quickly toes off her boots and makes room at the entrance for the others behind her, which also puts her first in line to catch a sight that nearly knocks her down.

“Who is this young man I see?” she cries, throwing her hands wide to gesture at her grandson. “Last I saw you, you were just a little tyke. Now look at you, you must have grown three feet!”

Christopher giggles and Helena smiles in return as she folds him into her arms, but it’s forced. She’s not lying — he’s grown so much more than she expected. She hasn’t seen him in person since Eddie’s graduation and while video chats are priceless, they didn’t capture this growth spurt.

She can’t believe she let this happen. That she went from spending most of everyday with this little boy and now she’s missed out on two years of his life. Can’t believe Eddie kept him fro—

Mom, listen...

Supper goes well enough. Eddie never truly shakes loose the tension in his shoulders; he trades many looks with Isabel, seemingly spooked by his parents’ behaviour. He talks a lot more than he usually does, probably out of nervousness. But overall, they let Christopher take the reigns; they’re all more comfortable with that. It’s been too long since they’ve last spoken and Christopher is full of stories about his school and his friends.

“Buck says we can go to the Griffin soon. It was closed because of COVID. But before, I went with my class and they made a comet right in front of us!”

Buck. It’s the third time his name has been dropped at the table since they sat down.

She first met him, briefly, at Eddie’s graduation, but didn’t really register him as someone in her son’s life until Eddie and his crew stopped off in El Paso for dinner on their way home from fighting Texas wildfires. Buck had been cropping up in Christopher’s and Eddie’s stories for months by then and she was curious to properly meet him in person. He had seemed...young, she remembers.

“The Griffith Observatory,” Eddie corrects fondly. With Christopher, at least, it’s impossible for him not to soften.

Eddie’s only eaten half the pasta on his plate but Isabel seems satisfied. Helena bites down on the impulse to encourage him to eat more. To remind him he needs his strength to heal quickly for his little boy. She does lift the basket of garlic bread in his direction, because she can’t help herself. He eyes the basket warily as though he expects her to do more, but when she doesn’t, he shakes his head with a small smile of thanks.

“Yeah,” Christopher agrees, “it was cool but we didn’t get to stay long enough to see everything. And if we go later, Buck says we can see real meteors in the sky.”

Fourth mention.

“Christopher is on an astronomy kick,” Eddie adds redundantly.

“Wait, I gotta show you —” Christopher is sliding out of his seat before anyone can stop him and racing down the hall to his bedroom.

“Oh, honey —” Helena grips the arms of her chair out of reflex to jump up and help him — he doesn’t have his crutches, he’s only using the wall for support and he’s wearing socks — but Eddie looks over when her chair creaks.

He can’t really expect her to just sit here while Christopher—

Mom, listen…

They can hear Christopher make it to his bedroom without injury, so Helena slowly settles back in her chair and Ramon clears his throat. “He seems...okay. More okay than I would have expected.”

Eddie keeps his eyes on his father for a beat too long, assessing the comment for any hidden messages.

“He’s a resilient kid. Buck stayed here with him while I was in the hospital, so his routine wouldn’t get messed up. I think that helped a lot.”

Fifth ment— wait.

“Buck stayed with him?” The words — the tone — are out of her mouth before Helena can stop them.

On the shortlist of people she expected to hear stayed with her grandson to watch him and care for him, alone, while his father was in the hospital — Isabel, Pepa, Carla, or even Ana — Buck’s isn’t a name she expected to hear. A coworker — an unrelated man with no children of his own, over Christopher’s family? Over Christopher’s own aide? Over a schoolteacher?

Eddie’s jaw squares up and he sits up in his chair. Like light gray rain clouds suddenly turning dark, weighty with an incoming storm, a heavy tension builds in the air between them.

“Look!” Christopher exclaims as he rounds the corner, nearly throwing a thin, blue hardcover book on the table. Eddie catches it before it can slam into Christopher’s leftover pasta and sets it down on the table for him. “It shows all the things we can see in the sky over the whole year!”

Christopher climbs back into his chair and opens the book up to a random page, describing everything he seems to have nearly memorized already. By the time he reaches the upcoming meteor shower, the tension at the table has dissipated enough for Helena to excuse herself to the bathroom and not have it come off like a passive aggressive storm-off.

She washes her hands with soap pumped out of a fish-shaped dispenser that wasn’t here the last time she visited and trains her eyes on the basket of gauze, scissors and tape tucked away on the shelf above the toilet. That wasn’t there last time either.

Her baby boy was shot by a sniper. In LA.

A bullet tore through the body she created and almost took her son from her forever.

Mom, listen...

But only after she’d almost pushed him so far away he might never come back.

The tears well up again and she sniffs through them, blinking up at the ceiling until she’s back under control.

As she pivots to turn the light off, she spies a purple toothbrush resting on the ledge just above the sink. The other two toothbrushes are electric — one adult-, one child-sized — and stand on the counter.

—————-

Helena and Ramon meet the infamous Ana by accident.

When they leave Eddie’s house on Friday, Helena sends a text message to say what she couldn’t manage to say to his face — that they’re here for him, in whatever capacity he needs, that they’ll take their cues from him, even if that means giving him some space.

To that, she receives a, Thank you.

When she asks for the contact information of the therapist he had scoped out for them, she gets a phone call.

“Not to look a gift horse in the mouth,” her son says, “but are you just doing this because I got shot?”

“Honestly? Yeah,” she laughs mirthlessly. “I’m sorry to say it took our baby boy nearly dying to get our heads out of our ass.”

Eddie huffs a laugh on his end. “Well, I’ll take that silver lining.”

After that, Eddie invites them to a restaurant for brunch on Sunday, but when they reach his doorstep, they find it already occupied by a woman who’s just rung the doorbell, holding a casserole dish in her hands.

When the door opens, Eddie takes in the three of them, his eyes wide and apprehensive.

“Ana, I wasn’t expecting you,” he says, his eyes darting over her shoulder to his parents. He’s smiling, though there’s a clear strain in the corners of his eyes and mouth. They’ve been critical about Shannon for so long — and with good reason, nothing will change Helena’s mind on that — no doubt he’s expecting them to hate this new woman on sight.

“You’re Ana!” Helena exclaims with a wide smile, imbuing her voice with as much welcome as she’s capable. “Hi! It’s so good to finally meet you!”

When Eddie releases the breath he was holding, she knows she was on the mark. Ramon follows her lead and invites Ana to brunch with them on the spot and won’t hear her protests about intruding.

Eddie, of course, doesn’t protest at all but invites them in so Ana can store the casserole in the fridge — it takes both Ana and Helena’s organizational skills to find a spot for it among Isabel’s and Eddie’s tupperwares already invading all available space — and he can finish getting ready. He was already dressed in a nice polo and jeans but when he comes back from his bedroom it’s in a smart button-down he must have struggled with out of sheer stubbornness. Both his parents and his girlfriend are in the house and still he didn’t ask for help.

Eddie and Christopher decide to hop into Ana’s car and Helena asks loudly for directions to keep Ramon from insisting they should all ride together.

“So how long have you kids been seeing each other now?” Ramon asks when they’ve been seated at the restaurant.

“Nearly 7 months now, I think, isn’t it?” Ana replies, looking at Eddie with a dazzling smile — she truly is gorgeous. Eddie was still talking to them when he started dating her so they know she’s a schoolteacher turned vice principal but to meet her in person blows all their other expectations out of the water. She’s lively and sweet, patient and understanding, Latina — a big plus in Ramon’s books ironically. Eddie picked well this time.

Eddie hesitates a moment and nods. “Yeah, that sounds right.”

Every now and again, he squirms in his chair, like he can’t quite settle in and Helena wonders when his last painkiller was taken. But when he catches her face, she smoothes her worry out into a cheeky smile that says I like this one. He smiles back and there’s nothing she can pinpoint exactly but something about it makes her uneasy.

Eddie’s too quiet as they wait for their food, his face pinched, and just when Helena’s about to break, Ana does her the favour of asking gently, “Are you feeling okay? Do you need to take anything for your arm?”

But Eddie shrugs off her concern. “No, thank you. Next one isn’t until noon.” He taps his phone twice and she smiles.

“Sorry, I forgot. He’s got them all on timers with a special ringtone. He’s so organized,” she tells Helena and Ramon with a sunny smile, rubbing her hand down his good arm. “I have one multivitamin and I forget to take it half the time.”

“Buck set it up,” Eddie defers, and Helena schools her face not to react; even at brunch Buck is with them in spirit.

Ramon either takes no issue with the mention or doesn’t register it. He takes the opportunity to share how his new pharmacy pre-packages his heart and arthritis medications into AM and PM slots and Ana listens attentively. Eddie’s fingertip taps absently against the phone case until their food arrives.

Christopher ordered a waffle, and with Eddie indisposed, Helena is already moving to help him when Ana beats her to the punch again. Helena tucks a smile away as Ana leans over and starts cutting the waffle up into smaller pieces.

“He can do that,” Eddie says when he notices Christopher sitting back in his chair, realizing only when Ana startles that his tone is sharp. His voice is softer when he follows up with, “Right, buddy?”

“Yeah,” Chris agrees, picking up his own cutlery with enthusiasm despite his hands being nearly too small for them.

Eddie throws an apologetic grin Ana’s way and brunch continues peacefully, though the stiff line of Eddie’s shoulder never does quite soften.

Mom, listen…

————-

Their first therapy session takes place in Isabel’s kitchen at Eddie’s request. Isabel thinks it’s so he has the option of leaving when he needs to (in other words, when he gets fed up and runs) but Helena hasn’t missed how Eddie has been careful to keep them away from his home since the first day they saw him.

They’ve seen Eddie and Chris numerous times in the week and change they’ve been in LA — more than they’ve seen them since they left El Paso — but always outside of the house. Sometimes they pick Chris up from school, sometimes Eddie and Chris come to Isabel’s for supper, sometimes they go out to restaurants or other outings, but they haven’t been invited back to his home again. She wanted to believe it was because he was hiding the news that Ana had moved in but that’s been shot out of the water both by her ringing the doorbell and an errant comment at the end of brunch about how she hadn’t seen him since the welcome home party.

So it’s out of pettiness, then. Stubbornness. Out of pig-headed inability to accept that he needs help and willingness to believe that they’re making an effort to meet him on his own terms.

She tries not to let it rankle her, tries to find some of that resolute commitment to letting things be and not push. But the next thing she knows, she’s yelling about it to a stranger at Isabel’s island counter.

To be fair, the session with Dr. Jamieson wasn’t going great to begin with. It’s awkward as hell, the three of them balancing on stools, squished in next to each other to try to fit into the screen, but also trying to keep the laptop close enough to still hear her and not have to shout. It’s happening while Chris is at school so they don’t have to worry about keeping him distracted but they can’t exactly ask Isabel to go wait in the LA sun for an hour so she doesn’t overhear, so it’s basically a given that she’s the fourth person on this virtual couch from the next room over.

And beyond that, Helena has kept her mouth shut for over a week which is frankly more time than anyone would have bet on, including herself, and given the opportunity to express herself freely...well…

“You want space? We’ve given you nothing but space since we got here. How much more can we give you, Eddie? You’re hundreds of miles away from us already. Forgive us for feeling the need to check in on our only son who almost died last week,” she yells, her hand nearly colliding with her coffee mug as she gestures.

“Last week?” Ramon echoes with a bark of dark laughter.

“Oh, no, that’s right,” Helena picks up. “I’m sorry! Not a week ago! Nearly a month ago! Because apparently we don’t warrant even a text when our only son almost dies, but that’s not enough space?”

Eddie rakes his fingers aggressively through his hair, his lips pursed.

“We have to move to Mexico,” Ramon continues blithely. “Is that enough space? No, better yet! Sweden! Your family still lives out there, no? We can live on their farm. Completely different timezone, we won’t even be reachable.”

“Yeah,” Eddie bites back, a sour grin blooming on his face, “that’s what I want. I ask you to give me some breathing room — to respect me, my life — and you translate that into living in a fucking commune in Sweden. And you wonder why we’re in therapy. I can’t talk to you, you don’t listen!”

Mom, lis—

“Listen to what, Eddie?” Helena yells, getting out of her seat to pace. “Listen to the months of silence you’ve sent our way? Because we either get on board and blindly cheer on every mess you get yourself into or we don’t get to know you anymore? Don’t get to know our grandson?”

“I never kept him from you — you have our number, the phone didn’t ring. That’s not on me.”

“Because you would have picked up?” Ramon exclaims, pushing away from the island to better look back at their son. “Easy to claim when it’s after the fact in front of the doctor.”

“So now I’m a liar! You raised a liar?”

“I think we’ve gotten off-track,” Dr. Jamieson’s tinny voice interjects from the laptop.

In the bottom right hand corner of the screen, only Eddie remains in the frame.

————

Firehouse 118 was a lively crowd at Eddie’s graduation but it’s nothing compared to the party thrown at the Grant-Nash house in honour of a new probationary firefighter.

Dr. Jamieson pointed out the self-fulfilling prophecy that Eddie protecting himself from criticism and pressure by withholding details about his life in LA was leading to his parents’ growing insecurity over not knowing anything about their son and feeling the need to intervene more and more.

The solution? Let them in on his life and trust that they could hold themselves in check.

For that, even Ramon was in agreement that maybe therapy wasn’t a load of shit after all.

So here they find themselves welcomed into this beautiful and loud home nearly three weeks into their stay in LA. They were allowed to pick Eddie and Chris up so they arrive together but Christopher peels off immediately to find kids his own age.

It’s impossible not to feel the warmth of family radiating from every inch of the home so when Eddie’s shoulders seem to loosen a little as they walk in, Helena can’t find it in herself to begrudge him.

“Well aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” a woman around Helena’s age drawls, crowding into Eddie’s space for a delicate hug he doesn’t hesitate to return. “Though I could have done without seeing another one of these for a few hundred more years,” she says, gesturing to the sling. “How much longer?”

“Another month if everything checks out,” Eddie says, releasing a sigh.

“It better,” she warns with a twinkle in her eye that says if she learns he’s been aggravating his injury there will be hell to pay.

The woman, they find out, is Athena Grant-Nash, wife of the 118’s captain and consummate host. While Eddie splits off “for a minute”, she leads them to the main area for drinks and introductions before leaving them to mingle. Captain Nash — Bobby — meets them with appetizers and introduces them to the Lees, the de-facto parental figures of the young man who just joined the team.

From the spot she claims at the edge of the dining room, Helena keeps an eye trained on Eddie outside. She feels an itch under her skin knowing it’s been nearly twenty minutes and Eddie hasn’t checked on Christopher, but she knows she shouldn’t go herself. Eddie can do everything on his own, right? He can look after his own kid at a party.

She can, however, go to the washroom and take a peek at what Christopher’s up to while she’s wandering, and that’s exactly what she intends to do.

But for now, she watches as Eddie criss-crosses through the crowds of the patio, prompting a localized burst of cheers at each stop as he reunites himself with teammates he hasn’t seen since the shooting. She recognizes the woman who was on the trip to Texas but the rest conjure only the vaguest memories of Eddie’s graduation and the occasional picture on Instagram — before he stopped posting that is. Just one more way they’ve been iced out.

But he seems happy, almost carefree in a way she realizes she hasn’t seen with her own eyes in...longer than this trip, actually.

Probably years, if she’s honest.

And it occurs to her, slowly, creepingly, that her son is outside, smiling freely and easily, surrounded by people he’s made his new family, while Helena stands inside watching his life through a glass window in a stranger’s house.

Mom, listen…

She swallows past the lump in her throat and sighs. Ramon’s arm comes around her waist and without looking at him, she knows he’s had a similar revelation.

Their next therapy session is in a few days, and they’re not going to fuck it up again.

There’s a late arrival to the party, one of the only people in Eddie’s life she can recognize — Buck. He’s as tall as she remembered but he looks a shade less young now maybe. He greets everyone with a hug or kiss on the cheek as he moves through the party, and bestows a cheer and an enthusiastic hug on Albert, the guest of honour.

When he moves on to the patio and approaches Eddie’s circle, however, the cheerful, long-awaited reunion of best friends she expects doesn’t happen. They catch each other’s eyes for a few beats and share a welcoming smile, then the conversation resumes as if nothing of consequence has happened. Buck doesn’t even linger long, heading back into the house after a few minutes.

When the cake starts being doled out, Eddie returns to meet them at the table and accepts the plate Helena offers him. Helena is scouting the yard for a chair he can sit on to eat when Buck reappears.

“He couldn’t be pulled away?” Eddie asks in surprise.

“Nope,” Buck replies with a grin before turning to them. “Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Diaz. Good to see you again!” Before they can return more than a smile, Buck continues, “he’s cheating at Unicorn Temple with Harry. Not even cake can pull him away.”

Eddie rolls his eyes and smiles. “My son is not a cheater.” To them, he says, “Buck thinks that whenever he’s losing at a video game, it’s because his opponent is cheating.”

“Not always! Just when they are,” he replies with exaggerated emphasis before scooping a piece of cake onto a plate. “I’m gonna go hide this in the fridge for him for later before it’s all gone.”

Eddie ducks his head and smiles down at his plate, and the questions are building up behind Helena’s teeth again.

Christopher’s been playing video games all this time? Is it an age-appropriate game? Why is Buck checking on your son? Why is Buck saving him cake when nobody asked him to? Why—

But Eddie looks up with an uncertain expression and says, “there’s a table out there if you guys want to join me.”

So Helena stows her questions and says, “that’d be great.”

They eat the overly-sweet cake in peaceful silence until Ramon casts an eye around and says, “you must be glad about the new firefighter. You won’t be the baby on the team anymore.”

Eddie snorts. “I’m 33 and my kid is nearly a teenager — and that’s totally not freaking me out at all,” he adds wryly. “Besides, I was never the baby of the team. Buck is younger than me and forever a kid at heart so I was never in any danger of it.”

“Oh god, don’t remind me that Christopher’s growing up,” Helena only half-jokes. “I can still barely believe he’s old enough to hold his own head up.”

Eddie huffs a laugh and Helena banks it as a win.

“Do any of your coworkers have teenagers?” Ramon asks. “Might have some words of wisdom to share.” Since you won’t ask us, is unspoken and politely ignored by all.

“Athena’s daughter May is just leaving the teen years now, but after her, Christopher’s the oldest. Harry, Athena’s son is 9 and Denny, Hen and Karen’s son just turned 8. It’s great for play dates but not for getting advice on what’s coming up unfortunately.”

“Karen,” Ramon echoes.

Eddie’s fork pauses on its way to scoop some excess icing off his cake and his back straightens.

“Hen’s wife,” he says curtly, daring.

Helena wants to roll her eyes at the posturing. It’s 2021, who cares who anybody loves. She knows Ramon doesn’t, not really, not anymore. It’s a 50-year-long reflex to make a comment, one they’ve been working, if only to have some semblance of a civil conversation with Sophia while she works through a degree in women and gender studies.

But she knows that excuse isn’t going to fly with Eddie.

It hasn’t flown since Eddie was 20 years old and realizing he’d lost a good friend to his father’s caustic words. And Helena can’t ever go back and examine the hurt in Eddie’s expression with fresh eyes. Shemanages to forget about it most of the time until something happens to dig it out of the cold, hard ground and shove it in her arms.

Mom, listen...

But she’s come to LA because she wants to be in her son’s life, in her grandson’s life and she can’t be a coward now.

“They’re a gorgeous couple,” she says, almost too loudly in her enthusiasm. “Are they thinking of having more kids?”

Eddie turns his assessing eyes to her and is mollified by her effort. “Yeah, they’re foster parents now. They’ve fostered three kids so far.”

“That’s great,” she says sincerely. Then, accidentally on purpose and only in part to bring Ramon back to a safe topic, she asks, “Does Ana want a large family?”

Eddie sees through her attempt, but nods. “Yeah, she loves kids.”

Helena doesn’t miss Ramon’s approving nod, or the dark look that passes over Eddie’s eyes when he catches it.

“Was Ana not able to come tonight?” Ramon asks.

“I didn’t ask her,” he answers, his voice a shade too casual. “This is more of a team thing.” As if they hadn’t just been discussing the other families all around them.

“That Ana—” Ramon begins but is interrupted by the arrival of Christopher with a hint of blue icing on his nose and Buck following behind him with two paper plates filled with cake.

Christopher sits backwards on the picnic table bench and uses his arms to lift his legs over while Eddie watches but doesn’t offer to help, and when Christopher is set, Buck places one of the plates in front of him with a plastic fork stuck in the top like a flag.

“Buck was finally able to pull you away, mijo?” Eddie asks as Christopher digs in.

“No, May took her room back so we can’t play on her tv anymore. Harry’s gonna ask his mom if we can play in her room.”

“Yeah...” Buck draws out, sharing a dubious expression with Eddie over Christopher’s head, “I wouldn’t hold out for that, bud.”

“Maybe you can teach the others how to play Scrabble!” Eddie suggests.

Christopher’s nose wrinkles, “Scrabble is boring.”

“Hey!” Buck protests and takes a forkful of Christopher’s cake in retaliation, which prompts Christopher to yell and attack Buck’s cake back, taking much more than a forkful.

The commotion draws attention to their table and Helena’s gearing up to tell Christopher to settle down when she catches Eddie’s eyes on her, waiting.

Helena looks back out to the backyard to say, People are staring.

Eddie looks back impassively as if to say, Let them.

Mom, listen...

Helena swallows her impatience, her anxiety, her embarrassment.

“Hey,” Buck calls, his mouth half full of icing, “did you take your 6?”

Eddie hesitates and that’s enough for Buck to swallow and look put out, already turning and lifting a leg out of the confines of the picnic table.

“Did you turn off your alarm again?”

“I didn’t turn it off the first time, I don’t know what happened.”

“What happened is it woke you up at 6am and you turned it off because sleepy Eddie makes bad life choices.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “You don’t have —”

“Right pocket?” Buck interjects, already walking away.

“Yeah,” Eddie sighs.

Christopher looks at him and shakes his head with exaggerated disappointment.

“Don’t you start,” Eddie warns, scooping a fingertip of icing and dabbing it on his son’s nose too quickly for him to duck.

Christopher shrieks and reaches for his cake fingers-first.

“Oh no, no,” Eddie laughs, catching Christopher’s fingers with one hand. “Truce, truce.”

Christopher doesn’t look interested in a truce and Eddie’s other arm is in a sling, so Ramon quickly pulls the cake out of Christopher’s reach, and then Buck’s abandoned piece and Helena does the same with Eddie’s.

“Not fair!” Christopher cries, still reaching.

“Your dad’s hurt, mijo, you can’t attack him with icing while he’s healing,” Ramon says reasonably. “Wait till he’s all better.”

“He’s fine!” Christopher declares with the confidence of a trauma surgeon as he tries to climb up on the bench.

Eddie’s not in a position to pull him back down and Helena doesn’t know how far they can take their non-interference but she’s not about to let her grandson hop over a table to fall into three plates of cake. She’s half-decided she’s going to pick up the cake and walk it back inside when Buck returns, depositing a glass of water on the table and a small white pill into Eddie’s palm before swooping in and tickling Christopher’s sides.

He shrieks loudly, gaining looks from all around the backyard, but it gets his butt back down on the bench and Buck sits back down next to him, boxing him in between himself and Eddie.

“What happened to our cake? How’d it get all the way over there?” The plates are very easily within Buck’s reach; it’s a question for Christopher’s benefit.

“Dad got me like you did!” Christopher cries indignantly, pointing to his nose. “I’m getting him back!”

“Oh man,” Buck nods seriously before his finger darts forward, swipes the icing from his nose and brings it to his mouth. “Mmm, this is better than the one I got you with. You sure you don’t just wanna eat it?”

Christopher looks unconvinced.

“How about this?” Buck ducks down to whisper loudly. “You call a truce with your dad, and then I’ll steal all his icing and we’ll eat it.”

The icing on Eddie’s cake is mostly piled in a corner of his paper plate. He’s never been able to stomach the pure sugary sweetness of store bought icing.

“Okay,” Christopher nods back, reaching out again for his plate but without making grabby hands.

Ramon assesses him for a moment before taking the chance to push the plates back within reach.

“Hey, Eddie,” Buck calls deliberately. “You should take your medication now.”

“Thanks, Buck,” Eddie replies with a smile that conveys an eyeroll. “I’ll do that now.”

While Eddie pops the pill and takes a very long drink of water, Buck “sneakily” pulls his plate towards them and scoops all the piled icing onto his own plate before pushing the cake back to Eddie’s side of the table.

Christopher laughs and pushes Eddie’s plate an extra few inches away out of spite.

Eddie plays the disappointed victim passably well with a half-hearted gasp and a shake of his head. “You little thieves.”

As promised, Buck doles out some of Eddie’s icing to Christopher who immediately protests at the amount left on Buck’s plate.

“Hey, when you’re a big guy like me, you get more icing. Keep eating your proteins and you’ll get there in no time.”

Christopher accepts that easily enough. “I’m gonna be tall like dad.”

Buck scoffs, “Aim higher, kid. Literally.”

“I am barely two inches shorter than you,” Eddie laments, not for the first time, it sounds like.

“It’s practically three. Are you really going to lie in front of your parents?”

Wouldn’t be the first time, is on Helena’s tongue because it’s been hours since she could speak her mind, but she holds it in.

“How was the trip from Texas?” Buck asks them suddenly, bringing them back into the fold of a scene they'd never left but somehow stopped being a part of. “Flights have new restrictions on them now, don’t they?”

Mom, listen...

When the party is winding down and they walk outside to the driveway, Eddie surprises them by offering them both a hug.

“Thank you for coming,” he says sincerely, though Helena hears the underlying “and behaving” and can’t help but bristle.

“Thank you for inviting us, mijo,” Ramon says; his turn to save Helena from herself.

And when Eddie lets them know he and Chris will be getting their ride back from Buck, Ramon takes Helena’s hand and they smile almost sincerely as they say their goodnights.

—————-

The next week happens to be Isabel’s 80th birthday and Helena and Ramon keep themselves busy by helping to throw a party that will reunite every vaccinated member of the family in the area (they’re not about to take a chance on Isabel’s health).

Things have been getting better with Eddie. They had a second therapy session, again at Isabel’s island counter, where they lasted a good 25 minutes before devolving into yelling. The next day, Eddie asked Ramon for a ride to physical therapy, and easily accepted his father’s offer of lunch after the appointment.

Then, when Helena asked if she could pick up some groceries for him and Christopher, she was refused — in no small part, she thinks, because he still won’t let them in his house — but instead of going off on him, she channeled that anger and resentment into nearly buying out Costco for Isabel’s party. It felt like progress Dr. Jamieson would be proud of.

That’s why, despite the party officially kicking off around 11am, they’re just past supper time and all tables and counters are still nearly buckling under the weight of the food. They’ll have to send everyone home with leftovers if the flow of people stops. Isabel’s front door has been a turnstile since this morning and Helena knows from experience it’ll likely stay that way until the late hours of the night. Most recently, Helena’s daughters made their appearance, and it’s not at all the reason Helena is back in the kitchen.

Despite coming from opposite ends with different travel distances, Adriana and Sophia arrived within a half hour of each other, a move Helena saw through instantly. The idea that her children coordinated to arrive together instead of risking the possibility of facing their parents alone sets a fire raging in her heart, and she realizes suddenly that she isn’t prepared to be hypervigilant of her every word with all three of her kids here now to push her buttons.

So, she retreats to the kitchen.

She doesn’t expect one of them to follow her in.

“I heard you guys were doing therapy,” Adriana volleys as she approaches.

Helena cracks open the tray of chocolate chip cookies and starts plating them, her face angled down so any kneejerk expression of distaste isn’t as visible. “Apparently, that’s what the cool kids do nowadays.”

“It is,” Adriana agrees, the bangles on her wrists clinking on the countertop as she reaches for the box of oatmeal cookies to plate. She’s a year into her Master’s in communication. What she intends to do with that is a mystery to them. So much of their kids’ lives are a mystery now. Helena closes the lid of the cookie tray hard and relishes in the snap of the plastic groove into the tongue.

“Paying a stranger to tell us when and how to talk to each other is cool,” she bites. It’s not posed as a question, just a bitter acknowledgement.

Adriana is quiet and Helena starts plating mini quiches onto the cookie platter just to stay occupied while her daughter walks away. Sophia is a yeller, she stands her ground and gives as good as she gets. Adriana, however, is a runner, just like Eddie.

But Adriana doesn’t leave in a huff. She turns to the counter and grabs a second platter, moving the mini quiches onto that one.

“It’s cool that you’re open to trying,” she says. “I think that, in any family where there’s love, there’s going to be hurt. And the longer we stay stuck in that hurt, the harder it becomes to talk about it without causing more. We get stuck in patterns that we can’t break out of, and people on the outside can be the best ones to point out those patterns and help you break out of them to get to what you actually, truly want to say.”

Helena knows what she actually, truly wants to say. That’s not the problem. The problem is that none of her kids want to hear it.

“I see a therapist,” Adriana continues. Helena stills and looks at her daughter, calmly arranging the mini quiches into concentric circles. “Since my last year of undergrad. When things got really hard and I couldn’t understand why. They helped me. A lot. Helped me figure out what was wrong and how to get myself through it.”

“You didn’t tell us,” Helena says, her voice thick.

“I know,” her daughter replies simply. “I didn’t know how. I’m telling you now because what I actually, truly want to say is that I’m proud of you and dad for doing this. And maybe if you don’t hate it...maybe we could try a session later too.”

There’s an offer in her daughter’s words, an open hand reaching out. But in that hand, Helena sees her failures as a parent, the judgement of the world for failing her kids, and she doesn’t want to reach her own hand out.

Mom, listen…

Helena looks at her eldest daughter, almost a stranger to her, with an entire life Helena is only starting to realize she has no part in. It hurts — it always hurts when the kids pull away but to realize she didn’t even know the extent of it...she wants to hurt back.

Mom, listen…

But she’s trying so hard to break those patterns Adriana speaks of. So instead, Helena thinks of the therapist’s advice leading them into a piece of Eddie’s life they wouldn’t have otherwise gotten to see and swallows past the indignation in her throat to reach down and find the words she actually, truly wants to say.

“You say when, and I’ll be there.”

———-

The sun is setting when Helena finally agrees to get off her feet and just enjoy the party outside while the cousins take over the serving and cleaning. There are four generations of Diazes gathered around but for the first time ever, most of the cousins are young adults, not teenagers, and it’s nice to be able to pass on the hosting responsibilities to them for a bit.

The sky is clear, the sunset resplendent from Isabel’s backyard, and the conversation is flowing easily. It’s a beautiful evening, warm with a gentle breeze cool enough to let her lean back against Ramon in his lounge chair, one of his arms wrapped loosely around her hip.

For the first time since getting Isabel’s text, Helena feels something like peace wash over her and she almost feels bad for the thrum of vindication in her stomach when she spots Eddie slumped comfortably in an armchair, his legs propped up on another chair.

He’s at home here.

Yes, he was at ease at his captain’s house but this is family, this is where he can really sink into the love and comfort and rest. With his aunts and uncles, cousins and sisters around to take care of him. And Christopher, who spent the afternoon running around and chomping down on all the sugar he could get his hands on, slumped against him, nearly asleep. This is family.

She knows he could find that peace back in El Paso, they both could. Eddie had friends there, and his parents, who knew his son better than he did for most of his life. And there are fires in El Paso same as there are in LA, but less smog, less general insanity.

But Eddie’s a lot like his parents, too much like them maybe, and once he’s decided on a course of action he can’t be swayed. So Helena has made peace with it. Rather, she’s made peace with pretending to be okay with it while she waits for him to come to the realization that he should move back.

And in the meantime, if they can mend this thorniness between them, then maybe she and Ramon can make more of these impromptu trips. Maybe even convince Eddie to come home for Christmas this year. At the very least, go back to regular video chats.

But all that ruminating feels far away right now. She’s moving gently with the rise and fall of Ramon’s chest, and she’s so close to slipping away to the feeling of contentment when a new arrival makes her open eyes she didn’t realize she’d closed.

“Feliz cumpleanos,” she hears someone say in half-decent Spanish from the front door on the other side of the side yard fence.

She doesn’t recognize the voice as yet another cousin or uncle, but Eddie shakes Christopher’s shoulder gently, and says, “hey, guess who’s here.”

It takes a moment, but the words penetrate Christopher’s sleepiness. His eyes pop open and he shimmies out of Eddie’s lap and into his crutches to power walk over to the gate just in time for it to open, admitting Isabel, holding a beautiful bouquet of flowers, and a sheepish looking Buck behind her.

“Buck!” Christopher yells.

Buck’s smile widens and he immediately opens his arms. “Hey, superman!”

Buck crouches down and Christopher throws his arms around his neck, crutches and all. When it’s time to break apart, Christopher’s still hanging on and Helena feels a stab of dark vindication at what’s about to happen, and the look Ramon sends her way tells her she’s not alone. Because Christopher is now officially in the double digits, and while he’s always been an independent kid, becoming 10 years old was a big deal for him and his perceived level of maturity, and apparently the year he decided no one was allowed to carry him anymore.

And now Christopher’s tired and in the grip of a powerful sugar crash. He’s not going to suffer any indignities, and Helena knows she should feel bad about not trying to stop Buck. About just watching this play out to see him be rejected. But she wasn’t expecting to see him here, in this safe haven of Isabel’s backyard, in this space for family and loved ones, and it rankles her. It feels like everywhere she turns in LA, she finds him there. And his being here is just another nail in the coffin of Eddie stubbornly refusing to let his parents back into his home. That he would call his friend to this party just to avoid letting them give him a ride…

So she’s a little bitter, a little resentful of the persistent, low-key rejection. Sue her. Eddie has made it clear he doesn’t want them interfering anyway so this is on him.

“Christopher,” Eddie calls, a warning to not make a scene.

Buck looks over Christopher’s shoulder and smiles. “He’s fine,” he says.

Then he’s heaving Christopher’s body up into his arms and onto his hip and Christopher…

...Christopher slumps down over Buck’s shoulder like a baby koala. No sound of protest leaves his lips. His face, if it shows any displeasure, is hidden behind Buck’s neck.

And when Eddie gets up, it’s not to intercede, it’s only to grab the errant crutches before they hit something, and to pull his own armless chair out for Buck to sit on because apparently Buck is staying, and apparently Christopher is staying with him.

“He’s a bit old to be carried around, no?” Ramon says with a bite, because he can’t help himself.

Eddie, who’s been watching his son fondly, barely bats an eye. “He gets cuddly when he’s tired, and Buck’s nearly the only one left who’s big enough to carry him.”

“Ah, that’s why you spend so much time developing these,” Pepa says with a sly smile as she pinches at Buck’s bicep. The same familiar pinch she gave her own grandkids’ cheeks.

“Gracias a Dios,” Isabel adds meaningfully.

“That was adrenaline,” Eddie dismisses with a teasing grin.

“That was 100 squats and 50 pushups a day,” Buck returns blithely. “...and maybe a little adrenaline.”

“What’s this?” Ramon asks before she can.

Instead of prompting more teasing, the mood falls slightly and everyone looks to each other.

Finally, Eddie sighs. “When I got shot, Buck army crawled under a ladder truck to get me out and lifted me into the truck to get to the hospital.”

It strikes Helena suddenly, shamefully, that in the shock of finding out they’d missed the event itself, the hospital stay, and two entire weeks of healing, that they’d never circled back around for details on what actually went down the day it happened.

She never thought to wonder how he got off that street. How he got to the hospital. Who might have saved his life.

And she wishes she were a better person then. Wishes that learning Buck saved her son’s life overpowered her irritation at having him sitting here in Isabel’s backyard like he belonged here when Helena herself barely felt like she did herself. It does help, though.

“They released the street footage of the shooting,” Pepa continues quietly. “It’s on YouTube. Before I even knew it happened, Marguerita from church just sent me a link saying ‘they said it’s a Diaz, do you know him?’ and I saw.”

The idea of her son’s shooting being passed around like a cat video makes Helena sick, but Pepa lamenting how she hadn’t known when she learned about it in a matter of hours and sat on it for weeks…

“I wouldn’t recommend it,” Pepa says decisively. “But they have an angle where you can see our Buck here go and get Eddie, pick him up like he doesn’t weigh a thing and get him into the truck to get to the hospital. Probably why he’s alive today. So gracias a Dios for those squats.”

Eddie and Buck are both looking away, both looking safely at Christopher while the table digests the news.

“If you were looking for a story of something really dumb, I can point you in the direction of another video of Buck,” Eddie says, his tone jovial but his eyes strained.

“You need to let that go,” Buck says in a definite whine.

“Do I?” Eddie asks. “Abuela did you see the video of the firefighter who went up the crane all alone?”

“Dios mío, Buck,” Pepa laments.

“Did you send it to me?” Abuela asks her, pulling out her phone and her glasses to check.

“No, mamá, it was an idiot firefighter but I didn’t realize it was the one we knew.”

“In the middle of an all-out declaration of war on firefighters,” Eddie begins, quietly for Christopher’s sake, but impassioned, sitting up in his chair, “this idiota and his squat count climbed up a crane ladder, completely exposed and defenseless—”

Buck looks pained. “I was wearing a bulletproof vest and a helmet. And that’s the job sometimes—”

“The paramedics’ job, actually, which you aren’t. So, no, that wasn’t the job.” Eddie’s tone edges into something darker without his meaning to. He takes a drink of his lemonade looking for all the world like he wished it was a beer. “And you know that or I wouldn’t have found out about it from Chim a month after the fact.”

Helena clenches her jaw tight and squeezes Ramon’s hand even tighter so neither of them can say, So you have a problem being left in the dark too?

“Buck,” Isabel sighs with disappointment.

Buck winces. “It was before— ” He cuts himself off, his wide eyes darting towards Helena and Ramon of all people.

“Hmm,” Isabel answers noncommittally, as if to end the conversation.

Just then, Sophia brings out a platter of bite-sized desserts, making the rounds of the whole circle for people to pick at before leaving it on the table. The opportunity to move on is there. That doesn’t mean they’re interested in taking it.

“Before what?” Ramon asks, his tone is forcibly casual.

The silence that greets Ramon’s question is heavy. Guilty. When Helena casts her eyes around, she’s greeted by stiff shoulders and a mix of apprehension shared between her son, her mother- and sister-in-law, and Buck.

Mom, listen...

“Before what?” Helena repeats, her voice uncompromising.

———-

The fight they have in Isabel’s guest bedroom is a Hall of Famer. It’s a screaming match, no doubt about it. The doors from the bedroom to the yard are all closed but there’s no question every member of the family — and Buck — can hear every word.

“Do you really hate us that much?” Helena demands. She’s crying but she doesn’t know if it’s heartbreak or fury, she just wishes it’d stop so she could lean into her anger. “Genuinely, honestly, Eddie.”

“I don’t hate you,” he protests, keeping his own voice down, making it seem like they’re irrational for their anger.

“Bullshit,” she spits.

“You must!” Ramon adds. “You hate us so much that you have to hate your sisters too? Your cousins? You would rather leave your only son to a stranger, some gringo coworker, than with family? That’s how much you hate us? Hate our name?”

“Our name?” Eddie shoots back incredulously. “What are you talking about, our name? We’re not royalty, papi, and Chris’ name would never change.”

“You would leave him to your coworker,” Helena stresses, disgust dripping from her tongue.

“To my best friend,” Eddie retorts, “who Christopher adores, if you haven’t noticed. And who adores Christopher right back.”

“That’s not normal, mijo,” Ramon warns.

“Jesus christ,” Eddie seethes. “Please do not star—”

“What kind of single adult man bonds with another man’s child like that?”

“You’re describing a tío, you understand that right? What, you think it’s weird that Pepa loves me like her own? You think Sophia should stay away from Chris too?”

“That’s family,” Helena argues.

“And they’re women!”

“Ramon, shut up,” Helena snaps.

“Buck is our family, and he’s a man, and he’s got the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever met. If anything happened to me, Christopher would be taken care of like if I was still here.”

“Buck, the one who nearly got him killed in the tsunami? That’s the same guy right?” Ramon throws out, his eyes a little wild as he paces.

“The one who saved his life in that tsunami, despite being injured and then some. And the one who’s saved my life more times than I can count, including from being gunned down on the street. We’d both probably be dead if not f— ”

“Isn’t he the one who’s family is worse off than ours?” Helena recalls. “So he has no family, no support, no girlfriend even! So a worse position than you’re in now. That’s what you want to leave him with.”

“He doesn’t need a girlfriend to raise Christopher right, I don’t! And he has a great sister, he has the 118, he has Carla, and he has our family. You think Abuela and Pepa would shut the door on him? He’d be here every Sunday, with Christopher, just like I am.”

“And what does your girlfriend think of this?” Ramon presses. “The vice principal, she thinks this is normal?”

“Ana doesn’t have anything to do with this,” Eddie says, frowning.

Helena balks. “You think the woman you’ve been seeing seriously for nearly a year has nothing to do with long-term decisions about your son? You think maybe she wouldn’t want the option of taking Christopher in if something happened to you?”

“That’s not happening, he’s going to Buck and that’s final.”

“What’s going on with you and this gringo?” Ramon asks suspiciously. “Are you even going out with Ana or was that another lie?”

“Ramon, don’t go there,” Helena sighs, her heart clenching. That’s all they need in this clusterfuck, that layer of pain.

“No, let’s go there because you know what?” Eddie asks darkly. “There is no one on this planet I trust with my son more than Buck and yeah, if we need to lay it all out there, that includes the two of you. I know you love Christopher, just like I know Shannon loved him, but that’s not always going to be enough. Buck isn’t going to fill my son’s head with ideas about the wrong kind of way to love someone. He’s not going to tell him he’s not good enough for his family to love him or support him. Buck’s going to make sure Christopher grows up to follow his heart and find whatever makes him happiest in the world, no matter what that looks like.”

“How could you think—”

“What if he grows up to be gay?” Eddie asks pointedly, staring his father down. “You’re telling me you’re going to be the one to help him pick out a suit to go to prom with his boyfriend?”

Ramon purses his lips but tries, “it’s a different world now,” as if he hadn’t just tried to make crass insinuations just to hurt his son.

“Okay,” Eddie says, not believing him for a moment, “what if he’s trans? Tells you at 15 that he’s a girl and he wants to transition. You’re going to get him on hormone therapy?”

“Eddie that’s not—”

“What if he’s 20 and he tells you he got a girl pregnant by accident and he doesn’t know her enough to love her, and he’s not ready to be a father let alone a husband?”

Helena tries to speak but her throat is suddenly too tight for words to get out.

“You gonna tell him he’s not a man if he doesn’t marry her anyway?”

Ramon says nothing.

“Christopher is going to Buck, and that’s final.”

——————-

Helena and Ramon don’t show up for the third therapy session.

Their plane tickets were only for three weeks, originally, and as the days run out, they don’t talk about extensions.

———-

Helena is sitting out in Isabel’s backyard, trying to conjure up that feeling of serenity she got to bask in for all of two minutes the night of the birthday party.

It’s not working.

They’re going back to El Paso tomorrow, leaving their relationship with Eddie in worse straits than when they arrived.

There’s always been a tension between them and Eddie, but there’s also always been love and respect, and that love and respect formed a polite barrier around the things they couldn’t talk about. It kept their relationship safe. Kept them from getting too close to real honesty where things hurt in ways that couldn’t be walked back.

It feels now like that barrier has fallen. That Eddie’s finally reached the limit of what he could hold back and now there’s nothing to help them pretend everything is okay. Nothing to help Helena believe this is all something that could blow over.

That’s to say nothing of Christopher, who’s never felt as far away as he does now, even while they linger in the same city, only a couple dozen blocks away.

Helena scrolls listlessly through her phone’s camera roll for the last few weeks. There are pictures of Christopher mostly, but Eddie and the rest of the family are there too. It hurts to notice how Eddie is markedly happier in the shots where he’s looking away from the camera. Away from her.

Mom, listen…

Helena opens up Instagram and lets herself forget for a moment that anything is wrong. On Instagram, there is only joy and fun. And Buck.

Eddie hasn’t posted anything to his account in months but starting from the end and working backwards, Buck features heavily. He’s in at least a third of the pictures, usually with Christopher. One of the posts includes a short video that she watches. It’s of the day they unveiled the adapted skateboard, and it nourishes her soul. There’s no sadness here, or tension, only pure radiating happiness and excitement. It’s magical.

And it’s meaningful.

Mom, listen…

Helena is out of her chair and pocketing Isabel’s car keys before she can talk herself out of it. The drive to Eddie’s house is made with a carefully blank mind. She knows if she lets herself think about what she’s going to say, she’s going to spiral and get to a place where all this fear and sadness turn dark and ugly, and she can’t afford to risk it.

Finally, she’s knocking gently on a front door she’s only seen three times in the weeks she’s been here.

Buck answers the door.

————-

The house is quiet when Helena steps in.

She doesn’t bother taking her shoes off this time, she’s not sure how long she’ll be allowed to stay. But she notices that the space where her shoes would have gone is taken up by a pair of large boots she imagines fit perfectly on Buck’s feet.

Buck disappears into the living room and she follows quietly after him. The lights are off but the muted tv glows brightly enough for her to see Eddie reclined on his back on the couch, sleeping, and Buck sitting down on the edge of the coffee table to shake his arm.

Eddie’s always been a light sleeper, especially after the army and Christopher. He doesn’t wake easily now.

He’s wearing the sling, but it’s the only indication that anything is amiss with him. There’s no sign of pain or worry on his face, no tension in his shoulders. He’s practically melted into the recesses of the couch. He’s a picture of comfort. And why shouldn’t he be? He’s in his home, away from family, from expectations, and judgements. Just him and Christopher. And Buck.

Eddie finally takes a deep breath that shows his body is coming around but his eyes stay closed. Buck is murmuring something but she only catches, “ — mom — here.”

Then, at last, Eddie’s eyelids part, and the deep laxness of his body disappears almost in the blink of an eye.

“What?” he croaks, already trying to sit up.

Buck’s hands are already moving to support his back.

“ — says she wants to apologize.”

Eddie scoffs and sits upright, feet firmly planted on the floor as he blinks himself awake.

“Mom?”

“I’m here,” she says, stepping closer into the light of the tv.

Buck catches Eddie’s eye and they have an entire conversation in five silent seconds that ends with Buck nodding and getting up from the table, watching Helena warily as she approaches further.

“Watch your eyes,” Buck says quietly to Eddie before flipping the wall switch and illuminating the room. He lingers for a moment, clearly undecided about leaving, before saying, “I’ll be in the kitchen.”

Finally, Helena is alone with her son in his home. The quiet is almost peaceful, she doesn’t want to break it. Eddie does instead.

“Buck said you wanted to apologize, so I’m assuming he misheard,” Eddie says wryly.

There are pillow creases on the side of his face and Helena can’t remember the last time she saw him look so disheveled, so at home. It makes her heart ache for the days when she’d have to force him out of bed at noon on weekends, drive him to wrestling practice early in the morning, watch over him as he slept sometimes, just to make sure he was okay.

“Shockingly, no,” she smiles sadly.

Eddie blinks up at her for a moment before shifting down on the couch, leaving her some room to sit. She takes the invitation, but once she’s sitting down with Eddie’s full attention on her, she realizes not preparing what she wanted to say might have been a mistake. She has no idea where to begin. What scab to pick at that won’t cause more bleeding.

Then she remembers Adriana’s words.

What is it, under all the posturing, all the hurt feelings, all the history and baggage...what is it she actually, truly wants to say?

“I’m sorry I missed therapy.”

Eddie huffs a surprised laugh. “Of all the things…”

“I know, I know,” she rolls her eyes. “But I am. I…” She forces herself to slow down and consider her words. “I realize that therapy was an olive branch for you. One we took way too late and I’m...I’m just so fucking grateful we were able to take it at all, in the end.”

The tears are coming and there’s nothing she can do to stop them. They gather in the corner of her eyes and she tries to blink them away but has to settle for wiping away the ones that fall anyway.

“You were right,” she says. “You said — and your sister said, and the therapist said — that there’s a lot of hurt, and it’s become too hard to...to connect with each other because of it. And therapy is probably the only bridge through that. So even though I was pissed at you, I should have showed up.”

She hazards a look up at Eddie to find his brown eyes wide and cautiously wondering.

“Therapy is what’s going to help us and the only way to fail at it is to not show up.” It’s what the therapist had said in their first session. It had sounded like an easy thing to do then. “And that’s not okay. I’m not going to do that again.”

Eddie nods and looks away. His fingernails are flicking nervously against each other — a habit he picked up from her. “Is dad on the same page as you?”

Helena takes a deep breath, and blows out, “No, your dad is looking for a match to light the page on fire.”

Eddie rolls his eyes but there’s heavy hurt behind the indifference.

“I hid all of them,” Helena offers, “and left Abuela with the fire extinguisher.”

That gets a small smile.

“I really expected you to be more pissed about it than him,” Eddie says, he reclines against the arm of the sofa but no part of him looks comfortable with this conversation.

“Oh, I am—” The rage swells up in her. The outrage and indignation. But again, Adriana’s voice comes to her. “I...am...really, truly hurt, Eddie. I feel...I feel like you told me I’m not good enough to love Christopher how he needs.”

Eddie’s face collapses with disbelief. “You mean the way you’ve been making me feel since he was born? Are you kidding me?”

“What?”

“Since the moment Shannon got pregnant, you’ve both been hammering it in on us that we’d never be enough, we’d never be good enough for him. Why do you think I joined the army? Why do you think Shannon ran?”

The accusation makes her breathless, it makes that familiar rage bubble up closer to the surface. “Shannon made her own choices, you’re not going to pin that on us. And so did you.”

“No, I can’t pin that on you. She did choose to leave,” he concedes, his voice hardening. “But you spent five years telling her over and over that nothing she ever did was good enough, and when I got back you did the same to me! ‘Don’t drag him down with you.’ Does that ring any bells?”

“I spent five years helping her, being a second parent to Christopher when she was in over her head. She needed help. She wasn’t cut out—”

“No, she wasn’t,” Eddie agrees. “Neither of us were. We were stupid fucking kids who barely knew each other. She was supposed to get back on a plane to California when the semester was done and instead we got married in the backyard because you told us that’s what we had to do.”

“Jesus Christ, Eddie. You want to blame me for Christopher being born? For raising him in a family with two parents?”

“You’re not listening,” Eddie spits.

“I’m listening to you say over and over how I ruined your life because I didn’t let Shannon get an abortion. And that’s somehow the reason to keep us out of Christopher’s life now?”

“No, you’re not—” Eddie closes his eyes and clenches his jaw. “I love Christopher with everything I am. If I had the chance to go back and do everything differently, I wouldn’t. I would never. Being his father is the most important thing I’ve ever done.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“I’m saying, I was a kid in over my head and my parents didn’t know what was best for me. Didn’t know how to help me. And I figured that out on my own, I grew up and became the man I am now on my own.” She wants to argue but he’s on a roll. “And that’s fine, no parent is perfect. I know I’m going to make mistakes and I hope to god Christopher can forgive me, so I need to forgive you yours. But I need you to see me, now. I need you to look at me and realize I’m not that kid you put in a suit in the backyard. I’m not the kid that signed up to get shot at instead of facing his life. I’m not that kid anymore, mom. I’m not.”

“I see that, Eddie.”

“No, you don’t. Because if you did, you wouldn’t constantly be telling me I need to move back to El Paso to take proper care of Christopher. You’d see that our lives are here now. I have a job I love and pays what we need. Christopher loves his school, his friends. He’s a popular, genius kid. He’s happy. I’m happy. And we’re doing good. But you don’t see that. You see that dumbass, scared kid making his next mistakes. And I’m sorry but I’m not going to let you drag me back into that spiral. If you need to be the parent to that kid, I can’t be the kid you’re parenting. I’ve grown up, mom.”

“So,” Helena clears her throat, hoping the waver in it will clear too. “That’s what the guardianship is? We...lost sight of you growing up. We didn’t give you what you needed. So you’re punishing us?”

Eddie sighs as if she didn’t understand.

“No, you know what? No, I’m sorry,” she switches tracks, her voice hard, “how are we supposed to see this new person you’ve become, Eddie? You left El Paso, left us behind, you won’t come home for holidays, you even stopped posting on Instagram, and when we come here to see you’re alive you won’t even let us into your home. So how? How are we supposed to see this magical transformation when you won’t let us in?”

Eddie watches her for a moment, weighing his words. “You show up for therapy.”

And that takes the wind out of her sails.

That’s what she came here for.

To apologize.

Not keep yelling.

Mom, listen…

Helena takes two deep breaths and crooks a smile. “Yeah.”

“You yell a lot.”

Christopher’s voice startles them both, pulling a short grunt of pain from Eddie as his shoulder jerks back. Christopher is leaning against the wall into the living room, wearing the disgruntled pout of someone who was woken up for no good reason.

“Christopher…” Eddie begins, trying to leverage himself off the couch.

Helena pushes him back down, and turns to Christopher, opening her arms.

“I do,” Helena admits softly, as Christopher comes over and leans into her side. “I do yell a lot. I’m...trying to yell less.”

“Dad never yells.”

Eddie smiles tiredly.

“Hmm,” Helena agrees, “I think there’s a lot of things I need to learn from your daddy.”

Christopher nods, his eyes drooping. “He’s the best,” he says, snuggling into her shoulder. She’s getting on a plane tomorrow so she takes the opportunity to relish in this hug, and press a long kiss on his curls.

“Ah, I thought I heard an escape artist on the prowl,” Buck says as he turns the corner.

“We woke him up,” Eddie says redundantly. “We’ll keep it quiet now, buddy.”

“K,” Christopher mumbles.

“Okay, buddy, let’s get you back to bed” Buck says quietly as he leans over to carefully scoop him into his arms. Christopher’s arms loop around his neck like he’s done it a million times, and his head falls to Buck’s shoulder.

“Buck’s the best too,” Christopher mumbles.

Buck’s ducks his face away.

“That’s what I hear,” Helena allows in a tone she hopes is gracious.

As they leave, they can hear Christopher say, “they stole your bed.”

Buck responds but it’s too quiet for them to follow the rest of the conversation.

Eddie ducks his head and sighs.

“That’s why you were keeping us away?” Helena asks, her voice more gentle than she thought she could muster at this point. “Because Buck’s crashing on your couch?”

Now that she’s looking, she spots the folded duvet stacked on the chair in the corner, the pillows tucked neatly below. It only makes her more aware that she found Eddie sleeping soundly on the very same couch.

“I didn’t — I didn’t want questions. I didn’t want dad’s look, the same look he has every time Buck comes up. The same look—” Eddie sighs harshly. “I didn’t feel like fielding questions. He was here for Christopher when I was in the hospital and when I came home… He helps. A lot.”

Helena nods pensively, and surprises herself by finding a kernel of gratitude towards Buck burgeoning in her chest.

“So, speaking of fucking up as parents,” she begins with a crooked smile that fades by the end of the phrase. She doesn’t know how to finish that sentence so she starts a new one. “The...hurt that piles up, that makes it hard to talk through...does some of it come from Matty?”

She can see an instinct flare up in her son to shake his head and dismiss the topic, but he doesn’t let it take hold. It’s time to face this.

“It didn’t help,” he admits.

Eddie and Matty met in sixth grade and became best friends almost instantly. They spent weekends in sleepovers, fought off other classmates to be each others’ group project partners, and spent every summer going to the same camps. Matty was an honorary Diaz before they even hit their teens.

Five years later, Matty came out to his family, and then to theirs. His parents took it well, Eddie’s parents didn’t.

The sleepovers stopped, the summer camps stopped, and if Ramon could have sent Eddie to another class he would have.

The day he came out to them was the last day he stepped foot in the Diaz home, a natural consequence of Ramon having run him out with caustic, angry words.

“We…” Helena licks her lips and looks away to gather her thoughts. “There’s a lot of reasons we reacted the way we did. Ignorance, more than anything. It really was a different world back then. But...the world has kept turning, things have kept changing and we can’t pretend to be ignorant anymore.” She looks Eddie in the eye to say, “we were wrong. We were wrong to chase him away. And if the day comes that Christopher is gay or trans or any of the other words we haven’t learned yet, we’re going to love him just as much as we do now.”

Eddie keeps her gaze for a moment before nodding. “I’m glad to hear it.” The way his shoulders gather near his ears says he doesn’t believe her though he’s trying.

Because when Eddie and Matty stood shoulder to shoulder to tell Ramon and Helena the news, Matty wasn’t the only one crushed. And they know, somewhere deep down, that their reaction was as extreme as it was because they were never fully sure if the hurt in Eddie’s eyes was on behalf of his best friend, or if they exploded before more news could be told.

And it still scares Helena to this day, to this very moment sitting on her son’s couch. It’s why they welcomed Shannon at first, the first girl Eddie really brought home, even though they didn’t approve of her overall.

But she knows now that there’s nothing anymore, not her pride, not her ignorance, that will stop her from trying to bridge the gap between them. So she continues deliberately, “and if this new, grown up version of you comes with any of those words, we’re not going to love you any less either.”

His eyes widen and for a moment she’s looking at her 17 year old son in the living room, eyes wide as Matty runs out of the house. She wishes this moment could replace that one, stamp out that mistake forever. But it can’t, so she has to make this one count even more.

“I’ll still be here, and I’m listening. I...I see you,” she says. “You and Christopher. I see you settled in so well here, even now with your injury.”

Eddie remains quiet, but apprehension creeps across his face and his eyes dart behind her where Buck and Christopher disappeared.

“I see the boots at the entrance,” she continues, her voice pitched low, “the extra toothbrush you forgot to hide away. The tupperwares full of food Isabel and Ana didn’t make. But more than anything, I see Buck. Everywhere.” A smile creeps up her lips. “The only place I didn’t see him was at brunch with Ana and call me crazy but I feel like you would have preferred he was there too.”

Eddie’s lip is being chewed to within an inch of its life, and his eyes are trained on the couch cushion.

“Hey,” she taps his knee. “You...grew up to be a good man, and a good father.” The words are so many years too late but she’s grateful to see them land as Eddie’s eyes begin to shimmer. “And you deserve everything you want for Christopher. Happiness, whatever that looks like.”

Eddie swallows thickly and clears his throat. “And dad?”

“Dad...has his head too far up his own ass to see or hear anything,” Helena admits. “But he’s due for a colonoscopy soon so I’ll work on it.”

Eddie chokes on a laugh that catches him off-guard and suddenly they’re both laughing, quietly so they don’t wake Christopher up again.

When they recover, Eddie invites her to the kitchen for a drink, where Buck is packing Christopher’s lunch for school tomorrow.

When she leaves, her stomach is in knots she imagines won’t smooth out for a few weeks yet, but a weight’s been lifted off her chest and her heart is full in a way it hasn’t been in years.

When she lands in El Paso, her phone pings with a message from Eddie: Hope you had a good flight. Free Friday for a call?

———-

When Friday comes, after catching up with Christopher, Eddie tells them he broke it off with Ana.

Helena digs her nails into Ramon’s knee instinctively, but she prepared him well and despite his continued reservations, all he says is, “That’s too bad, mijo.”

———-

Two months of virtual therapy and video chats later, Eddie tells them he’s bisexual. They react the way they should have all those years ago, and Helena tries to be grateful they got to have this moment at all instead of mourn for the years Eddie lost because of them.

There’s no mention of Buck, but Eddie’s eyes flit fondly over the laptop screen every once in a while at Christopher and someone else off-screen.

The call takes place at 8am LA time, and the sling has been gone for nearly three weeks.

———

At Christmas, Eddie and Christopher are waiting for them with smiles on their faces at LAX’s baggage claim. When they get home, Buck is there opening the door and helping them with their luggage.

Isabel isn’t there to mediate but supper that evening goes smoothly. The tension that lurks is anticipatory on all sides, a feeling of this being too good to last. But by dessert, everyone is sitting back in their chairs and smiling. And when Buck rounds the table to start the clean up, he places a hand on Eddie’s shoulder, his thumb brushing the back of Eddie’s neck, and Helena watches as the last bit of strain melts out of his body.

The basket of gauze is nowhere to be found in the bathroom, nor is the purple toothbrush. Instead, there’s a third electric toothbrush standing in line with the rest.

Helena’s been keeping an eye out for opportunities to follow Adriana’s advice. To find the words she actually, truly means, and say them before she runs out of time. So before turning in, she takes Eddie aside and tells him, “I’m really happy you found your home here in LA. I’m really proud of the family you’ve made.”

And when she closes her arms around him, she can feel him fold into her like he used to as a kid, no polite distance or anxiety. Just comfort.

[wenellyb]

My journey in the MCU fandom on Tumblr: Sharing my thoughts on the Falcon and the Winter Soldier, racism in the MCU fandom and the best and the worse of the fandom

I wasn’t going to write this much but here I am… I don’t even know where I’m going with this but since The Falcon and the Winter Soldier just recently came out, I wanted to share some thoughts.

I joined Tumble because of a show I loved but most of you don’t know it “ Hit the Floor”

I stayed on Tumblr for two reasons only, Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan.

Before the Captain America:Civil War premiere, a friend sent me the link to the Sebastian and Anthony ET interview, and I was hooked. In just one interview. I discovered Anthony Mackie. The guy was hilarious!!! I just couldn’t get enough and I knew I had to know more about him. How could he improvise so many funny lines on the spot? He was just amazing.

I had pretty much watched all the avengers movie but that was it. I was not involved in the fandom. So I knew Sam Wilson’s face, but I couldn’t even remember his name if my life depended on it. That’s how much the MCU treated him as a side character.

I was like how the f*ck don’t I know this guy?

His talent reminded me of Eddie Murphy, Jim Carrey or Robin Williams, like yes they can make some emotional or serious movies, but when they want to make you laugh, you will laugh. Whether you want it or not.  I kept wondering how this guy wasn’t more famous.

And the banter with Sebastian Stan? Wow, you could tell their friendship was strong, the way Sebastian lighted up when Anthony was talking, and keep bouncing off his jokes. It was art. the way Sebastian said “ I love you” at the end of the interview. Pure gold.

I then started to watch some of the interviews and boy was that a mistake!!! I literally couldn’t get enough. So I watched all and I say all their interviews, it was the best. We got some gems:

“Why aren’t you looking at me as much”

“Which way is the beach Seabass”

*Them saying nonsense in Spanish and then Sebastian Saying Papi Chulo*

 ¨And so many more, ....

I watched other solo Anthony interviews and he was still HILARIOUS, but you could also tell he felt a little bit more at ease with Sebastian around. I won’t pretend I know him or his personality, but Sebastian seems like a little bit more of an introvert and looks like he doesn’t enjoy the interview experience unless Anthony id around him. Just my thoughts

I watched the interviews before I went to see the movie, I even cosplayed as the Winter Soldier to the movie premiere and I was IN!!! When I saw Captain America Civil War, I became a SamBucky shipper, these two were hilarious and I really so the potential for a great realtionship I love enemy to lovers stories.

I also shipped Stucky because, to me, the trope of the movie was Superhero gives up everything to protect his long term friend” Hollywood movies have some codes and if Bucky were a female character, there is no doubt in my mind that the movie would have been marketed as romance.

Stucky really was an easy ship! But then the MCU fandom of Tumblr fandom messed up everything for me. You see I really liked the CACW and I I liked Stucky, I liked Sambucky, and I loved the introduction of t’Challa’s character, but one of things that affected me the most in the movie was that it was the first blockbuster I watched with 3 black main characters, Rhodey, Sam and T’Challa. That, and the fact that they were planning to realease a Black Panther movie in two years, I was super excited, and that’s the main reason I got involved in the MCU fandom so much, when before, I was just a casual watcher.

If this seem weird to you, then you have no idea how we were only getting crumbs before. For me it was soo huge, I even told all my friends, and they were laughing at me. But usually blockbusters, especially superhero movies get one black character and that’s it, usually the best friend or something and never the leads. So, for me it really was a big deal. How sad is that by the way…

I became more involved in the fandom and, at first, I wasn’t focusing on anything special, Sambucky, Stucky, Stackie, the Black Panther, and even Zemo, whose character I really liked.

But soon I noticed that the CACW tags were always flooded, and I mean flooded with the same two white characters: Steve and Bucky. I told myself, ok that’s fine Steve is the lead after all, but it would be good to see the other characters too.

And then I noticed another interesting trend: Evanstan…. Wait what?

Chris Evans, and Sebastian Stan… did I miss something? Listen, obviously I’m sure they must be friends or something, but you’re going to tell me you watch all MCU the actors and you’re going to focus on Steve and Sebastian? I’m sorry what?

Sebastian and Anthony are right there… Or Chris and Anthony, they even have a secret handshake, only the 2 of them do… what more do you want?

Tell me one iconic Evanstan moment… go ahead tell me… See??? There isn’t.

Because of this and because of how badly some Stuckies were treating Sam and Anthony. I became less and less of a stucky shipper . I mainly focused on SamBucky, Stackie and the Black Panther,

And then the Sebastian Stan stans saw how popular Stackie, Sambucky, were becoming and I started to see some problematic stuff in our fandom too.

I don’t want to generalize, but when you go into the Stackie tag, and you see cropped pictures of Sebastian without Anthony, it’s easy to assume that a Sebastian fan did that. And we know damn well you cropped out Anthony because we watched all Stackie interviews and know exactly which interview your picture was taken from. We know that Anthony was sitting right next to Seb.

You post a picture of Sebastian laughing but you crop out the person who was making him laugh??

“but it has nothing to do with race” How do you know that?

“Sebastian had more screen time” More screen time than Anthony in CATWS or CACW? I don’t think so.

“I have been a fan of Sebastian for longer”, that’s fine but don’t go out cropping Anthony, just post gifs of Seb in his usual, sad, and Anthony-less interviews, not the ones where he’s smiling because his best friend is next to him.

Some of you really are the worst. And just so you know, your fave Sebastian is Anthony’s biggest fan, if he saw pictures where you cropped out Anthony, he would block you on the spot.

When I realized that Anthony Mackie would be the next Captain America I was screaming, no actually, I was crying, Sam Wilson will be Captain America, and Anthony would finally get the recognition he deserves.

You would think that the MCU fandom would focus on Captain America or at least one the two leads, instead of just Sebastian? Right? Right? WRONG.

Anthony is handsome, he’s funny, he’s a great actor, he went to freaking Julliard, he’s at the top, I don’t see what else the man can do??? He should already be a superstar, but no, you will side-line him even to he is the lead of the show.

Even when they are the actual leads, you guys would do anything to bring up the White characters even if it means ignoring the Black characters.

I remember I was having a conversation about Black Panther with my friends and I asked one of my white friends who was his favorite character in BP was and he told me Martin Freeman (don’t even remember his name in the movie) Martin Freaking Freeman, there are half a dozen of great characters and your fave is the only white man??? Ok, ok, that’s great.

Don’t give out automatic reply like “It has nothing to do with race, if you haven’t thought about it first”, because there’s a high probability that it is indeed about race. Stop saying it isn’t, sit down and ask yourself, “Am I biased?” “Why am I reblogging only stuff related to the white characters”.

One of these days you guys are going to make me hate Sebastian with the sh*t you are pulling.

I looove the Stackie friendship and the Sambucky dynamic but after seeing the way some of you treat Anthony and Sam’s character, it make me want to focus on Sam’s character and forget about the rest.

 I remember they were some posts about how Anthony was problematic, and I just lost it. Apparently, there was an old article that resurfaced were Anthony was making a joke about women making sandwiches or something.

If you were offended by the sandwich joke, that is totally ok, and I can understand that.

But if you were offended by the sandwich joke, and saying Anthony is problematic BUT you still stan Chris Evans, Jeremy Renner, ScarJo or even Sebastian Stan, just know that there is a high probability you’re racist.

They have all said or done problematic stuff, and people only seem to remember stuff related to Anthony, which was probably just a joke by the way.

Chris Evans and Jeremy called Black widow a wh*re, ScarJo took roles that she maybe shouldn’t have and I didn’t forget Sebastian shady Instagram post, when Kaepernick was kneeling. There are so many more things to be said about Jeremy Renner but google is your friend.

Anthony also got hate for hating on Tom Holland? Like what? Do you guys even hear yourselves? Don’t you have any friends you like to tease? If you hate someone, do you go around talking about him every chance you get? It was obviously friendly banter but some people wanted to turn it into something it was not. Sigh.

I really cannot with this fandom

 The stackie fandom was small at the beginning and the Sambucky fandom even smaller, but we were there and it was amazing. Sebastian and Anthony received the same amount of love from the fandom and I wish we could go back to those days.

Stop pretending the fandom isn’t racist. Stop saying “it isn’t about race” when you haven’t even thought about.

Saying “it has nothing to do with race” only shows that you haven’t thought about anything but don’t want to be called a racist.

There is racism in this fandom and it will always be there, but if you guys want to do anything about it, you have to acknowledge it first.

You can’t be pulling off stuff like “I don’t see colors”, “ it has nothing to do with race”. Stop, sit down, think about it and then we can have a conversation.

If you’ve made it till the end, I apologize for the typos and grammar mistakes, I wasn’t planning on writing this much.