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#one of these days i'll get around to posting these prompt things to my ao3
filthy-kaoss · 2 years
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Tony brings his baby kid, peter to the park for the first time and meets other moms or dads
Wow I've been sitting on this for *checks notes* a month and a half, whoops. Got around to finishing touches today and so here you are, finally!
It got long-ish [~2500 words] and you know meeee i had to add a twist c;
de-aging irondad spiderson fic, all fluff, just a lil pinch of angst like salt in a pastry, enjoy
thanks and much love to @shivanessa for looking it over and giving me some quality suggestions c;
They were fucking around with Pym particles when it happened. 
"Shit! Pete?" 
Tony pushed chunks of broken glass aside with one foot and stepped closer to the last known location of his teenaged lab partner as the vapor finally began to clear. Finally, Tony found him. 
"Uh oh." 
The top half of a literal baby, maybe one year old-ish, was poking out of the collar of the shirt Peter had previously been wearing. It looked at its own pudgy hands with an eerie amount of understanding for such a young face. Then it crossed its arms and glared up at Tony. 
"Ummmm, next particle shipment is in three days, right, FRIDAY?" 
"Affirmative, boss." 
The baby flung itself backward, smacking the ground with its arms up in exasperation and defeat. Which really looked weird for a baby to do. 
"Tell May I'm keeping Peter until Tuesday and to get him off school Monday. And put an order in for some baby food." 
The baby flicked him off and Tony finally lost it, laughing so hard he nearly keeled over. 
Peter wasn't used to being so tiny. Everything looked big. His body felt weird, uncoordinated. Like all of his muscle memory was off kilter. He found he couldn't talk, tongue too clumsy to form the words he knew.
Frustration reigned. He was going to be stuck like this for three days. And of course Tony was laughing hysterically about it. Peter knew he would probably find it funny, too, if he wasn't currently going through it. Right now, though, he was stripped of his speech, his agency and his weekend plans and he found no humor in it. Indignant at Tony, Peter wriggled out of his oversized t-shirt and made to crawl away, careless of the bits of broken glass all around him. 
Tony's laughter ended abruptly, "Kid, the glass!" 
Peter didn't care. His knees got cut up as he kept crawling away, anger muting the pain. He didn't have a plan yet. Maybe crawl all the way to his room, under his bed, curl up and throw himself a pity party. Alone. Yeah, that sounded pretty good. He made for the door of the lab- 
-and was scooped up by two big hands around his middle. Peter let out an indignant wail as his limbs lost contact with the floor, flailing uselessly. 
"Kid, calm down!" 
With some difficulty, Tony rearranged the squirming baby to face him, holding him up and away from himself as Peter kicked the air. 
"Hey! Stop that!" Tony shook him lightly, "Hold still and listen would you, Pete?" Peter went limp after one final kick and pouted valiantly.
“It’s only three days, so stop being a baby about it.” Peter glared at him. Tony tried really hard not to laugh, and mostly failed.
“Look, I’ve got you, okay, kid? It’s gonna be fine. Just work with me here. And please don’t go crawling through glass, for fuck’s sake.”
Tony walked them over to the first aid kit.
“Now, I’m patching you up. Are you gonna cooperate?” Peter rolled his eyes but nodded. He’d calmed a little, and his knees were starting to sting.
“DUM-E, blood on my floor, handle it. Glass, too.” He called absently. The bot chirped and wheeled over to comply.
Tony found some clean scrap fabric– spider suit fabric, coincidentally– to sit Peter on so he wouldn’t be directly on the cold metal workshop table. He picked a few tiny bits of glass out of the small cuts with sterile forceps from the kit. Fortunately, the wounds were shallow, only from scrapes against small sharp pieces. Still, Tony frowned. Sure, he’d seen the kid hurt worse before and come out okay– granted it still sucked every time– but to see him bleeding as a literal one-year-old baby was a new kind of disturbing. Peter was always getting hurt on his watch.
Soon the glass was all removed, the wounds cleaned and bandaged. Tony stood Peter up on the table.
“Sit tight. Do not fall, got it?” Tony narrowed his eyes at him, pointing, “just, don’t even move. Heaven knows this workshop isn’t baby proofed.” 
Peter rolled his eyes, then simply stared back with crossed arms.
Tony swiped the scrap of fabric and slowly stepped over to a different table, eyes still on Peter. He feinted looking away slowly only to snap back to Peter, as if the kid was going to move as soon as he took his eyes off him just to be contrary.
Tony grabbed a laser tool and with a few folds, trims and laser stitchings, fashioned some simple underwear.
“Underoos for Underoos!” He declared, holding them up with a grin.
Peter fought his smile but Tony saw it.
Once Peter was no longer in his birthday suit he thanked Tony with a simple gesture, fingers touching his own chin and then extending forward with the palm up. Tony had been the one to introduce him to some american sign language and he was glad he knew some basic expressions he could use in this situation. Tony mirrored the gesture in acknowledgement.
“So, you’re understanding everything, right? But you can’t talk?” Tony asked.
The kid nodded. For a moment he attempted to say something, but managed little more than humming and babbling. He shook his head and pointed toward a nearby monitor, made a grabbing gesture at it. Tony pulled it over for him.
Peter pulled up a keyboard interface and set to pointer-finger typing. Even this was tricky. Mentally he knew where the letters were but his fingers fumbled often, and being literally smaller than he was used to wasn’t helping either. Eventually his message was finished: remember everything but muscle memory reset
“Huh. Okay, we can work with that.”
Tony tapped his chin thoughtfully and meandered over toward the pile of Peter’s teen sized clothes. He picked them up, shook the glass from them in DUM-E’s general direction and laid them on one of the tables to deal with later. He grabbed Peter’s nanoparticle housing unit which he usually wore at his belt.
Tony sat in the office chair by some of his programming consoles, placing the housing unit into a receptacle at the workstation.
“FRI, get with Karen and desync abooouuut 10 moles worth of nanites from the Iron Spider, then copy over the wrist holo display and UI to the new sub-unit. And pull up a copy of the mother code for me. Relabel it…” Tony spun in the chair to look at the baby sitting on a table as he casually swung his legs, looking at something in his little hands, “Spider-baby protocol.”
Peter took the screwdriver he’d been fidgeting with and threw it in Tony’s general direction.
It sailed across the room much faster than Peter had intended, Tony ducking away from it as it flew past his head and impaled itself into one of his glass displays, which promptly flickered out. Tony hadn’t quite been directly in the line of fire, but if he had…
Tony turned his shocked gaze away from the cracked display back to the kid, who’s wide eyes and hand over his open mouth screamed ‘oh shit.’
“Jesus Christ, kid. Can we not, with the attempted murder?”
Peter signed ‘sorry,’ rubbing his heart three times clockwise with a closed fist, gaze serious and somber.
“Apology accepted.”
Then Peter realized what had happened, and what it meant, eyes widening again. His eyes flicked to his own designated work table, where one of his web-shooters was half disassembled, but the other was still untouched. He glanced back at Tony, calculating.
Tony recognized the mischievous gleam in his eye.
“No. No! Don’t even think about it– Peter!”
Peter had slipped off the table and dropped to land on his feet– wow, he was small now. He took half a second to refamiliarize with his balance before padding over to his work table.
“Do not-”
Tony was halfway to him when Peter hopped to reach over the edge of the table and grab the web-shooter. He quickly flicked it against his wrist where it automatically attached itself.
“Your skull is not hard enough right now to be swinging around!”
Tony was reaching out to grab for him just as Peter shot a web at the ceiling and yanked himself airborne with a gleeful shriek. He stuck to the ceiling for a moment, looking back at Tony all the way down on the floor.
“Get down here!”
Peter didn’t. Instead he scuttled around the ceiling and swung from the rafters, cackling all the while.
Tony tapped his arc reactor twice.
⎊⎊⎊
“Stop squirming!”
“What’s going on here?”
Peter and Tony froze, turning to see Pepper had just stepped into the workshop, a folder in her hand.
Tony, wearing one nanotech gauntlet and both boots, was hovering near the ceiling.  Peter dangled upside down from his leg currently clutched in Tony’s gauntlet, the web-shooter confiscated in Tony’s other hand.
“Um. This still isn’t the worst thing you’ve caught me doing.”
“Is that a baby?”
⎊⎊⎊
After they’d spent some time figuring things out, Tony took Peter to the park.
It was a sunny afternoon. The kid was nestled into one of Morgan’s older strollers and Tony was dressed discreetly: hoodie, hat and a pair of less flashy (but no less teched out) sunglasses. Peter was holding an Iron Man plush (Tony had offered him a Spider-man one and Peter had pointed at this one instead. Tony had had to hide his face for a minute after that.) and wiggling his feet as Tony rolled him along.
Peter plucked a flower from a bush as they passed. He held it close to his face to examine it. It was still strange being so small again. His own fingers were tiny, the petals looked huge cupped in his hand. Suddenly a bee perched on his flower. He watched it work through the pollen, fascinated, until it flew off again. He watched it go.
“Mind if we stop a bit?” Tony rolled Peter up to a bench in front of a fountain. Peter poked at the band on his wrist. The word ‘okay’ appeared on the display of Tony’s sunglasses, so he took a seat on the bench.
There were ducks floating in the fountain, pigeons on the paths, little sparrows, too. People passed by walking, jogging, biking. There were dogs of all shapes and sizes.
A droplet symbol appeared on Tony’s glasses and he immediately grabbed the cup from the holder in the stroller handle and placed it in the holder next to Peter. The kid signed his thanks and grabbed the cup to drink.
“Oh, what an angel!”
Tony glanced toward the woman who was settling on the other end of the bench, a stroller and (sleeping) baby of her own parked beside her.
“He sure is.” Tony said with a bit of a smirk. Peter was a good kid, but he was also a little gremlin who’d given him the runaround for the better part of the morning. The woman gleaned none of his tone.
“How old is he?”
“Oh, 15,” Tony met Peter’s eyes, “months.” The kid’s eye twitched. He poked at his wristband. ‘16*’ appeared on Tony’s glasses. Tony grinned.
The woman cooed. “This one here is almost two years. Is he your first?”
“Second. I have a little girl, too.” Tony said warmly.
The woman’s gushy answer was interrupted by her baby waking up and fussing. Attention immediately drawn, she fawned over them and set them up with a bottle of formula. In the meantime, Peter asked for a snack via his bracelet, a fish symbol appearing on Tony’s glasses. Tony pulled out a container, unscrewed the lid and set it in front of the kid, who happily munched on the goldfish crackers with his few teeth.
Once her baby settled, the woman glanced back over. She'd been about to speak but stopped as she did a double take at Peter. The baby was easily popping crackers into his mouth, distinctly making no mess while her own baby– ‘older’ than him– was already drooling milk on themself.
Peter returned the woman’s stare, making eye contact for several seconds. Without looking away he pushed the empty container toward Tony. As Tony took it back, Peter turned to sign his thanks, and Tony mirrored it with a soft smile. The woman gaped.
Peter sent a pedestrian walking symbol to Tony’s glasses.
Tony smiled casually at the woman’s flabbergasted expression, “Yeah, my little genius, this one. Well, time for us to get going.”
The woman watched them go. She saw them pause for a moment in front of a busker playing violin. She watched as the child dropped a flower into the violin case and the father chuckled and tossed in a few bills.
She shook her head, bafflement giving way to a small smile as she dabbed at her own little angel’s chin.
⎊⎊⎊
Peter crashed hard after their outing, accelerated metabolism and tiny body catching up to him. Minutes after Tony got some more substantial, but very mushy, food into him he all but passed out.
Tony brought him to his room in the tower and settled him carefully into his bed. He spent a good twenty minutes rigging a railing system that would activate if Peter got close to the edge of the relatively huge bed, and set FRIDAY to monitoring.
With one last fond look at his tiny spiderling, sleeping soundly, Tony gently shut the door.
⎊⎊⎊
When Peter wakes up he doesn't know where he is. Dark and unfamiliar shapes, covered in inky blackness, loom over him. His body feels strange. His heart feels like it's hammering faster than it should be, even stressed, and with his heightened hearing it's the loudest thing in the room.
He knows he should be somewhere in the tower, that's what would make sense, and so he calls for FRIDAY. Except his mouth doesn't move right, tongue twisting and lips lagging, so the sound he produces is more a mangled groan than a word. It's wrong. He must have been drugged. He must be having a stroke.
He cries out, and the fact that the sound he emits is that of a crying baby only adds to his upset.
Suddenly, warm light pours over him as a door opens. He recognizes Tony as soon as he enters, his bare footsteps urgent but soft on the carpet. The mere sight of him is a relief to Peter, though remnants of his distress still linger.
Tony picks him right up and pulls him against his chest where Peter immediately clings to his black tank top. A kiss is pressed to the top of Peter's head and everything about the man's presence is a comfort. Tony's arms, strong, huge, wrap gently and completely around him, all-encompassing. He's warm and he smells familiar. Ear to Tony's chest, Peter hears his voice hum soothing all around him, his heart beating calm and steady.
Peter is so relaxed he barely notices when Tony shifts to sit and then to lie down in Peter's bed, the kid still glued to his chest. Tony's hand cradles the boy's head, running through the feather soft hair there as they both drift to sleep.
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justporo · 4 months
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Lost between the covers
When outside a blizzard is raging, there is nothing better than cuddling up with your vampire for a little reading date, right? Well, if you can pick a book to agree on...
MASTERLIST | AO3
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Author's Note: Written for the "Getting cozy" prompt of the BG3 Winter Holiday challenge. Shortly ago I wrote a little thing about Astarion and books - and then immediately knew I had to write more about it for the fluff challenge. The bad erotica short stories thing was inspired by another post (I'll link if I can find it, if someone has it, please halp, I can't find anything on this hellsite) and also ofc there have been several posts going around on how Astarion is a Drizzt fan.
Pairing: Astarion/GN!Tav (You) Warnings: none Wordcount: 1,4k ~~~
The burning logs crackled in the fireplace while the flames licked on them and flickering warm light filled your living room. Outside a snow storm had been raging the whole day and hadn't stopped even when night had fallen. Wind was howling around the house, and little specks of ice were thrown so hard by the gusts, they made clattering noises against the big living room window.
It didn't bother you at all. You didn’t even spare it any attention at all anymore. The rising and ebbing of the howling wind and the crackling of the fire had become nothing but pleasant background noise.
You were all cosily snuggled up on Astarion's lap, legs swung over his, head on the vampire's shoulder, a blanket wrapped thoroughly around you. The pale elf’s feet were comfortably crossed over each other at the ankles on the floor. His head slightly rested on the crown of yours and he had put his arms lightly around your frame while holding a small leatherbound book he was reading to you from.
The whole scene was just complete and utter bliss - you didn’t remember the last time you had felt such serene peace. Perhaps you never had.
And if you would have asked him, Astarion would have told you very much the same. The vampire might never get used to the feeling of having you close, feeling the warmth of your body slowly seeping into his own as you relaxed into him, fully trusting him. He’d never known or shared this kind of closeness with anyone before.
And he wouldn’t give it up anymore for anything in the world - not even for being able to walk in the sun again.
At first Astarion had made a fuss when you had started to climb on his lap like a cat. But you'd been feeling rather sick for a while now and felt you were entitled to some pampering from your partner. And of course Astarion actually loved that he was that to you: the person you came to because he was your safe haven - not to mention the love of your life. 
But the vampire still had wrestled you off his lap once more while you had pouted.
“Ah ah, patience, my darling. I'm only setting us up so we can stay all neatly cuddled up for the rest of the night,” he'd lectured you and had inclined his head towards you while doing a little bow.
“I don't know, Astarion, you being the one talking about having patience somehow feels cynic to me,” you'd replied and wrapped your arms around you to stay warm.
Astarion's eyes had narrowed dangerously at you, tongue in cheek, before he had turned on his heel and left without another word. You probably had only made him take his sweet time now. With a sigh you had sunk back onto the piece of furniture
He had returned some time later with a stack of different books under his arm, a cup of hot tea for you and some mulled wine for himself.
Astarion had scoffed at first at the premise of drinking “fine wine ruined with spices and fruit, my love - why not immediately make me drink juice with seasoning, ugh.” But then he had started to enjoy it quite quickly.
You scurried to make place for your vampire on the sofa. Then putting the mugs down on the small table beside the couch, the vampire sat down beside you again, balancing books of different size and condition on his legs.
“So, tell me my love, what shall we read?”, he asked cheerfully while you just eyed the stack of books on his lap - they were in your spot.
Astarion looked at you cockily, eyebrows raised, waiting for you to give a response. You just slowly blinked at him. Your brain was mushy and foggy from being sick - you weren't up to make important choices, but you tried to pull yourself together. Astarion was awful at downplaying how excited he seemed to just snuggle up with you on the couch with a book and you surely wanted to indulge him.
“Well, what's on offer?”, you finally asked in response.
Astarion jumped right back into action with a pleased grin: “I'm so glad you asked, my love.”
He lifted up the first one of the books: small, blue, golden lettering on the front and spine. “We have a nice small volume of poetry - the writing is a bit too sappy for my liking, personally, but this poet's been all the rave lately, so I had to form an opinion on that of course.”
“Of course,” you chimed in with a knowing little smile. It was insanely cute to you how much enthusiasm the vampire had for literature.
You had drawn your legs up to sit on them and were now leaning your elbow on your knees, chin in your hand, looking at Astarion who lifted up the next book - a huge, very old looking, leather-bound tome.
“We have one of the most holistic and elaborate accounts of history of our wondrous city of Baldur’s Gate”, the vampire went on, putting on some scholarly demeanour. Gods, he almost reminded you of Gale for a second. You blinked a few times to get that out of your head.
Then you eyed the dusty and crumbly book with a scrunched up nose: “You don’t really want to read that, do you?”
Astarion looked at you in confusion: “Why wouldn’t I?”
“Nerd”, you simply said. “Next!”
The vampire’s red gaze narrowed at you in distaste. He still held up the huge leatherbound chronicles in his hands.
“One comment about how I grew up on the streets and am uncultured, Astarion, and I will bite you!”, you threatened and stuck a finger in his face.
Immediately the pale elf put on a smug grin. “Would be a nice change for once, don’t you think?”, he muttered in a sultry tone while you just rolled your eyes and groaned. “But alright, I understand that the audience may be a little… overwhelmed with this suggestion”, he continued in one of his insufferable ways and went to carefully place down the huge tome on the wooden floor.
You still felt like you had been made fun of but you let it slide for now.
“Alright, next up we have this titillating collection of obnoxiously bad erotica short stories,” Astarion continued and lifted up a much smaller book again - this one bound in linen in a deep red colour. The vampire was back at grinning lewdly at you, one eyebrow lifted high.
“Is this where you got all your lines from?”, you asked dryly.
Astarion’s expression immediately turned sour. “Alright, we’re not reading this one”, he said in a flat tone, glowering angrily at you. He threw the book over his shoulder and heard how it clattered to the ground - always so dramatic.
Meanwhile you had started cackling so much you had to bury your face in your hand for a moment. Under his breath you heard Astarion mutter something about why he hadn’t “just chosen about anyone else to manipulate and end up with”.
Quickly, you went to lean forward and grab his face to cherish it with a kiss. Despite his still disgusted face the pale elf welcomed the loving attention. When you pulled away you kept holding his face in your hands: “You’re stuck with me, love.”
“Good thing, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else then”, Astarion replied and leaned in again for another kiss.
Afterwards,sitting up straight again, Astarion sighed dreamily while his eyes lingered on you.
“What’s the last one?”, you asked after a while of the vampire seemingly just getting lost in your eyes.
“Hm?” he made, raising his eyebrows. Then he shook his head softly to focus again while you grinned to yourself knowingly.
Astarion lifted up the last pick in his stack of books he’d brought: “Well, the last one is another adventurous tale of Drizzt Do’Urden.”
Your head perked up when you heard that.
Astarion had introduced you to the legendary tales of Drizzt a while ago now and despite brushing it off at first you had gotten seriously into the stories. And another one of those stories sounded just about right for a stormy winter night and for cuddling up for the rest of the night.
Eagerly, you climbed on Astarion’s lap without any other responses. The vampire just laughed while he allowed you to cosy up to him and finally sealed the deal by putting an arm around you, with his other hand opening up the book already.
“Alright, looks like we have a winner”, he mused playfully and dragged you in a little closer on his lap so he could press another kiss to the top of your head.
Tag list: @spacebarbarianweird @sunfire-ancunin @tragedybunny @dependsonthedream @tallymonster @magazzne @micropoe10 @aoirohi @my-bunny-prince @lumienyx @fayeriess @darlingxdragon
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raccoonfallsharder · 8 months
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fanfiction masterlist i guess ♡
*this masterlist is OLD! find the new masterlist here
here's what you need to know about what is behind this cut: lots of smut, always with feelings and fluff, praise kinks, dirty talk, maybe some light d/s, enthusiastic consent. a few clean headcanons/minifics & fan art of your amazing OCs
(it's all rocket raccoon, all the time) also, please let me love your OCs (doodle requests temporarily paused)
If you would like to be added to the fanfiction update taglist (or removed), please let me know via comment, message, or ask! ♡
recently updated
headcanon 8 - rocket, lylla, & drax [NEW posted 9/17] headcanon 9 - dad glasses [NEW posted 9/21]
Reconnaissance for Beginners: An Instruction Manual (Fourteenth Visit) [ONESHOT. added 9/18] Part Three of Domestic Scenes in Space Travel
Chapter 1/6 Year Zero: Seed [NEW posted 9/24] florescence ❀ (a meetgroot)
Chapter XIV. Exactly Like a Flower. in which comfort is shared. [WIP 9/27] Chapter XV. Galaxy-Breaking Shit. in which more comfort is shared, and life is good. Briefly. [WIP 10/5] Window Across the Galaxy
I can't keep up with updating my kinktober prompts on a daily basis (I'm honestly amazed I've managed to keep up with the writing as well as I have and I've only been doing this for a few days) So for now, please find them with the tag #rfh kinktober and when the month is over I'll make a masterlist. [NEW all month] based on @flightlessangelwings’ Kinktober 2023 Prompt List
[complete works behind the cut ♡]
spoilers: I have a preferred trope/formula that I lean into quite hard (girl falls first; raccoon falls harder) and while I do really love tragic fanfic, I firmly believe rocket's suffered enough of that so it's only happy endings here (even if it takes a minute to get there). Well, more or less, anyway.
Domestic Scenes in Space Travel
reader x rocket fluff, medium-burn?? (at least for Part One), smut. comics-based but you don't need any comics background knowledge to read this - you just need to enjoy fluff + smut + rocket (and be 18 i guess). multiple parts. see notes for summary + warnings.
The Very Boring Adventures of Space Pilot & Sweatshirt Girl Part One of Domestic Scenes in Space Travel [COMPLETE 5/5 chapters] Summary: In Rocket Raccoon: Grounded (2016) / Issue #3, Rocket asks a stranger on the ferry to "make sure nobody does anything weird" to him while he naps, and the stranger just, like, abandons him while he's sleeping?? get in loser we're gonna fix it Chapter One (The First Visit) Chapter Two (The Second Visit) Chapter Three (The Third Visit) Chapter Four (The Fourth Visit) Chapter Five (The Fifth Visit) complete post - The Very Boring Adventures of Space Pilot & Sweatshirt Girl
Outer Space Safety & Spaceship Maintenance Training (Ninth Visit) Part Two of Domestic Scenes in Space Travel [Oneshot. COMPLETE 8/21] Sequel to The Very Boring Adventures of Space Pilot & Sweatshirt Girl [domestic fluff, dirty talk, oral sex - mind the ao3 tags.] Summary: Study Night. or - why study when you can seduce your hot local Space Pilot into oral? When you were a kid, you imagined yourself growing up, working a cool job, living in a cute house, getting a big dog, marrying, and having kids of your own. You've currently got none of those things, but you are getting regularly railed by a raccoon-shaped cosmic adventurer, and he's currently showing you around his spaceship. Which is kinda better than anything you could have dreamed up for yourself. [comics-inspired, though i'm fucking around with timelines/continuity and you really don't need any comics-context to ride this ride] complete post - Outer Space Safety & Spaceship Maintenance Training
Reconnaissance for Beginners: An Instruction Manual (Fourteenth Visit) Part Three of Domestic Scenes in Space Travel [Oneshot. COMPLETE 9/18] [domestic fluff, dirty talk, orgasm delay, bf/gf silliness. - mind the ao3 tags.] Summary: Date Night. in a gesture of true romance, rocket takes you to a dive bar. of all the stories he's shared with you, his favorites are the ones where he gets saved by the space princess. not that he'd tell you that. ˖⁺。˚⋆˙✧⋆。°✩☼⋆。°✩☽︎ loosely based on Rocket (2017): The Blue River Score. domestic bf/gf silliness & fluff. extensive smut. comics-knowledge isn't needed but HIGHLY recommend starting at the beginning of this collection for context (The Very Boring Adventures of Space Pilot & Sweatshirt Girl).
florescence ❀ (a meetgroot)
[WIP: Year 0/5] [mcu-based, slight au, medium-burn, eventual smut circa chapter four. tentative allies to friends to lovers. the middle is angsty but there are only happy endings here. no use of y/n.] Summary: “The only chance we got is to get to the other side of the universe as fast as we can and maybe, just maybe, we'll be able to live full lives before that whack-job ever gets there.” Rocket & Groot leave their friends behind on Knowhere, despite the latter’s protests, and end up hiding out on a nothing-planet (with a non-extradition policy) at the edge of the Shi’ar Galaxy. It was the flowers that drew you in.
Chapter 1/6 Year Zero: Seed [NEW posted 9/24]
Blackmail Material
[WIP: Chapter 2/4] reader x rocket pwp with feelings; smut & fluff & love confessions. MCU-based, post-Endgame, friends-to-lovers. Summary: a classic tale of "this fuckin raccoon found your sex-toy." as per usual: girl falls first; raccoon falls harder. see notes for summary + warnings.
Chapter One: Blackmail Material Chapter Two: Self-Sufficience [NEW posted 8/29] Chapter Three: Firearms over Flowers ???
Window Across the Galaxy
[WIP: Chapter 15/25+] [NEW chapter posted 10/5] rocket x oc angst/hurt/comfort; slow burn + eventual smut with feelings. MCU-based. slight AU starting pre-GOTG volume 1. enemies to friends to lovers but only one of these idiots thinks they're enemies. see notes for summary + warnings. could become 1 part of a 2-part series, if I have the energy/inspiration. Summary: Rocket is captured by a Ravager crew hoping to get rich off the excessively large bounty on his head. Throwing a wrench in everyone’s plans is the Terran girl they hired to do some freelance assessing on a recent haul of goods they’ve seized from a Xandaran luxury liner. Oops.
Chapter I. A Delicacy. in which our reluctant heroes meet atop a crate of Sovereign porn in the bowels of a Ravager ship. Chapter II. Monster For A Pet. in which one hero wrestles with his inner Groot, and the other is quite possibly a moron. Chapter III. A Kindness.in which Rocket gets in his own damn way: not for the first time, and certainly not for the last. Chapter IV. Got There First. in which our heroes obtain an arsenal and street food. Chapter V. Things No-One Has Said Before. in which one hero refuses to babysit and the other refuses to leave. Chapter VI. Two and a Half Billion Units. in which we lean into the “they were roommates” trope. Jolie has misgivings, while Rocket has fantasies - about getting rich, of course. Chapter VII. I'm Here.in which we visit Knowhere. Chapter VIII. The Care & Feeding of Human Pets.in which our heroes practice breathing and we lean into a new trope: “there was (technically) one bed.” Chapter IX. Scrapmetal and a Dream. in which we redefine homemaking. Chapter X. Thin Fucking Ice. in which our heroes get fucked. Not in the good way. Chapter XI. Let It Be. in which Xandar is saved and good lives are lost. Chapter XII. So Much It Hurts. in which we try not to fuck up the vibes. Chapter XIII. Don’t Wait. in which a lost sister is found and Drax grapples with the concept of sarcasm. Chapter XIV. Exactly Like a Flower. in which comfort is shared. Chapter XV. Galaxy-Breaking Shit. in which more comfort is shared, and life is good. Briefly. [WIP 10/5]
Autopilot Systems Check [Oneshot. COMPLETE 9/3/2023] Est Word Count: 1409 reader x rocket soft fluff & domestica. MCU-based, post-Endgame i guess. Summary: reader wakes up in the middle of the night and rocket is nowhere to be found. drabble based on this post/inadvertent prompt.[complete post - Autopilot Systems Check]
Kinktober 2023
based on day 8 of @flightlessangelwings’ Kinktober 2023 Prompt List Kinktober Day 8: Turbulence. rocket needs you to hold. flarkin. still. [NEW 10/8]
Other Duties As Assigned
[WIP: ???] rocket x oc email romance/LDR (lol); slow burn + probable smut with feelings. Begins five months after The Snap. I don't have an intended outcome for this fic yet (just kind of rambling around) so this has the most uncertain publishing date. Summary: Natasha Romanoff is an administrative nightmare - a fact that does not go unnoticed by the (interim) captain of the Milano. First she demands that the remaining two Guardians of the Galaxy be reachable via a primitive Terran messaging system, and then she can't be bothered to read the frickin' emails. Thank fuck she's hired a new assistant.
Headcannons & Drabbles headcanon 1 - rocket & sex work headcanon 2 - rocket & occassional post-sex feelings headcanon 3 - quill & innocence/optimism headcanon 4 (minific/drabble) - rocket & nebula (2014) in endgame/post time-heist headcanon 5 (minific/drabble) - rocket & quill were scooped at the same time headcanon 6 - cinnamon roll peter quill continued headcanon 7 - rocket & nova corps headcanon 8 - rocket, lylla, & drax [NEW posted 9/17] headcanon 9 - dad glasses [NEW posted 9/21]
Fan Art of Your Amazing OCs (and maybe sometimes mine)
Rose (@love-for-faeries-go-burrrr ) & Moon (@glow-autumz) Thank you for letting me draw these two lovelies. You know I headcanon them as interdimensional besties ♡
Brita (@pretty-chips) is such a pure, delightfully fun character with record-store-clerk vibes. Thank you for letting me draw her. She is a glowing sunbeam-soul. ♡ another Brita wearing a terran t-shirt gifted to her by my oc, Jolie Spinner
Moon (@glow-autumz) Thank you again for letting me illustrate some of Moon's rad powers. i am OBSESSED. I appreciate so much you bringing her to life!
Chérie (Cherry) (@aliasrocket) I have a crush. 10/10 would attempt to flirt with (badly). Thank you so much for creating her and letting me doodle her!
Jolie (Window Across the Galaxy) - my gremlin child. just some scritchy-scratchy character concepts. feel free not to look if you want to imagine Jo in your own way. ♡ the "real" Jolie doodle - refined, finished, && in color
Fleuret (I think?) (@elegant-fleuret) is my personal caffeine deity. i now pray to her for the ability to scrap myself out of bed and deliverance from coffee crashes. she is also the dj of knowhere which is possibly the coolest fucking job in the universe and i would like to be her friend.
Star (@cleo-is-babygirl) is a pure fluffy little sundrop and a brilliant self-taught medic/surgeon. she is also the first tanuki/anthropomorphic animal i have drawn other than rocket so i was very nervous but i did my best. thank you for letting me try something new and expand my experience, friend!
Juno (@lazarel-3000) is one of my favorite OCs ever. she is everything. i want to be her && i want to date her (unfortunately she only has eyes for rocket).
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rhoorl · 4 months
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Week in Review | Dec. 10
Hi! How are you? I can't believe we're nearing the midway point of December! I am happy to get back to my typical Week in Review style after an abbreviated version last week!
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Same shit different week for me when it comes to my TBR, I add more than I can read. But alas, here's what I got to:
Fics I read this week:
Frankie Morales
I Like the Way You (Frankie) by @undercoverpena - I've kept this series in my Current Compulsory Series section for weeks, but I'm pulling it up to the top this week because we got the final part this week! It's always a bit bittersweet to me when I get to the end of a series, especially one I'm following in real-time. I loved following along each week and immersing myself in this story and I’m sad it's done (but hey, great news, I can now reread it from the beginning and binge!). Great job Jo! 💕
While I'm talking about Jo, here's this saucy one-shot Coming Under the Christmas Tree
Joel Miller
Footprints by @sin-djarin - This brought back some Christmas morning nostalgia for me! Joel as a dad and the love he has for Sarah makes me melt. And we have an Uncle Tommy appearance too!
Mr. Ben
SOS by brnn on AO3 - I’m not sure if this creator is on Tumblr, but if they are let me know! I had several chapters of this story built up that I hadn’t caught up on and when the final chapter dropped I binged what I had left! Mr. Ben and OFC Clare are adorable. 
Din Djarin
Safe to The Touch by @linzels-blog A touch-starved Din gets some lovin’. 💕
A Baker’s Dozen by @avastrasposts Part 2 in Mel's series saw Din come into the bakery. This was so sweet (no pun intended!).
Other Characters
Good Things Take Time by @oonajaeadira -  This series is so good! I've had it recommended to me several times and I've been slowly working my way through it, savoring it because I don't want it to end! I read Parts 2 and 3 this week along with the various drabbles in between. The chemistry these two have is *chef's kiss*
Current Compulsory Series:
These are the series I am keeping up with at the moment.
Holiday Prompts (Various) by @trulybetty - A healthy serving of delicious stories this week. I officially want to move to Maplewood, well, maybe visit. I'll be honest, I'm not made for the cold anymore. 😆 Also, Tim and Cagney continue to be a favorite as are Frankie and Mav! And Dieter made me google Christmas hippo socks which somehow I already did not own! 🦛
Delta Palms Tropical Resort (Frankie) by @linzels-blog The rollercoaster I felt with this latest chapter … I have to know what happens next!!
Destiny & Deliverance (Dieter) by @mysterious-moonstruck-musings This latest chapter had me all up in my feels. These two are 🥹💕
Paranoid Heat (Javi P) by @goodwithcheese I think I've finally managed to pick my jaw up off the floor from the spicy scene in the latest chapter.
Undercover (Tim Rockford) by @secretelephanttattoo Another great chapter update this week, El!! Grumpy Tim and his pet fish are living rent free in my head.
It’s Never Too Late (Javi P) by @javierpena-inatacvest - There is some dad Javi content I need to catch up on!!
Posts from the week:
The moodboards @wildemaven puts out are always gold, but this Frankie holiday-themed board just made me swoon 
@laurfilijames made me think about which holiday movies the TF boys would be into. I also hastily made a graphic lol. Speaking of asks @maggiemayhemnj gave me an almost impossible this or that choice. My friend @laughing-in-th3-purple-rain offered up these choices.
If you need a badge for any Pedro boy, @morallyinept has you covered
We got our first look at Pedro in Freaky Tales and oh goodness … the scar. Seriously help us all whenever the Gladiator photos leak. 
In case you missed it, the fun writing challenge that’s going around here's another plug. I finally have an idea … now I just need to write it. I think I’m going to end up throwing it back to my college days and cramming this in at the last minute….
Feral corner:
There was simply too much to keep track of this week. I was overwhelmed by thots. I think this post sums things up well.
This photo altered my brain chemistry. This photo of Pedro as Dieter and THEN this video… oh hey Working Title Dieter. 😏 Frankie tummy always gets me. Javi P in this jacket. Talk about gifs you can hear. This outfit - he knew what he was doing when we wore this right?
@foralonglongtime - no pressure but I’m very excited about the prospect of this…
This scene from TLOU forever changed me. 
Garrett Hedlund: This man was utterly too much this week. Exhibit A, Exhibit B, Exhibit C, and finally, the post that started my spiral.
Things I watched:
I didn't make it to the movies this week, Mr. Rhoorl went and saw Godzilla Minus One and loved it. He's a huge Godzilla fan so he was pretty excited to see it. I’m off fo work tomorrow so I’m planning on seeing Wish.
Something that is releasing soon that I'm excited to see is Rebel Moon with Charlie Hunnam on Netflix. It looks like it will be available for my UK fans this week, but we in the US have to wait until the 21st.
Personal Stuff
Busy week. Both Mr Rhoorl and I had PTO on different days this week and we both had our plans thwarted by a sick baby. She's ok now, all good! Otherwise, we've been mostly laying low. I have managed to get most of my holiday shopping done and our Christmas cards arrived so that's exciting! We've also been checking out the various theme parks - I love the way they decorate this time of year! We did a holiday cookie stroll at Epcot last night and it was yummy
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Fic updates:
I had Benny Miller brain rot again (when don't I at this point?). Anyway, the result was a third part of what I guess is now the unofficial "Are You on Mute" series. I do have plans for wrapping those one-shots up into something bigger. I just frankly keep having thots I have to get out and it's distracting me😆
I did manage to get a good amount of writing done for the next chapter of Delta Landscaping. Hoping to get the new episode out early this week. Whenever I get down on myself that I'm not updating that series fast enough I remind myself it's essentially like 6 different series in one so therein lies the delays 🫣
This can be such a stressful part of the year, so I hope you are able to take some time for yourself! Have a great week and thanks for reading if you made it this far!
Masterlist
Working Title (Dieter, series, ongoing) | AO3 
Delta Landscaping (Triple Frontier, series, ongoing) | AO3
Turbulence (Frankie, one-shot) | AO3
Are You on Mute? (Benny Miller, one-shot) | AO3
Are You on Mute? Part Two
Are You Alone 
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television-overload · 9 months
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'sh-boom' (an X-Files fanfic)
Like usual, I caved and instead of leaving my "someone should write this" post be, I wrote it myself. I'll tag some people that expressed interest in this prompt below the fic! Shout out to @baronessblixen who already wrote the perfect Scully-accidentally-kisses-Mulder fic. You can read that here!
Now, for Mulder accidentally kissing Scully cause he dreams about her all the time.... takes place February 1998, mid-Season 5.
Read on Ao3
There’s a trick to fighting insomnia, Mulder had discovered. Not a cure, by any means, but an improvement, nonetheless. All you need is a super off-limits best friend you’ve fallen stupidly in love with, spend practically every waking hour of the day with her, and then spend the rest of your time thinking about her until your exhausted and delusional mind has mercy on you and blesses you with her presence in your unconscious state.
A foolproof plan, really. Scully had even noticed he seemed more well-rested and happier in the last few weeks, so something had to be working.
Although, there were—he had to admit—a few rather notable side effects.
Despite what others might tell you, Fox Mulder was not one to have trouble distinguishing between fiction and reality. Usually. But in his defense, his dreams were very, very vivid, and there had been a time or two that he’d referred to something Scully had said, only to realize at her blank stare that it was the figment of her in his imagination who’d said it.
“Must have been someone else I was talking to,” he’d awkwardly say, thankful that she kept her mouth shut about the fact that there was no one else he’d have such conversations with, and they both knew it.
He’d also been on the receiving end of more than a few raised eyebrows and patented “what is wrong with you?” looks, which were well-deserved for catching him staring even more than typical. Sure, he was sleeping better at night, but his brain was now trained to find restfulness when thinking about Scully, which was pretty much an all-day thing too. Sitting across from her in their isolated little office for extended periods of time made his eyes glaze over and eyelids droop halfway shut. Oh, the horror… he probably looked like a drunk idiot. He hoped he at least looked somewhat normal, not like a drooling dope with a dumb smile on his face who was clearly not having a productive day at work.
What would old doctor Pavlov have to say about this sorry scenario?
His consolation was that Scully already knew he was weird, and stuck around anyway, so he had no qualms against going home night after night and picking up where he’d left off in Scullyland the night before. Let’s see, he was just about to their son’s first little league baseball game, of which Mulder was the coach, of course. “Scully, don’t forget, we signed up to bring snacks for the team after the game.”
Behind closed eyes he saw her raise her arm to show him the already packed bag she was holding, an exasperated but loving look in her eye. “Always one step ahead of me,” he said fondly. With practiced ease, they danced around each other in the kitchen of a fairly unremarkable house, grabbing sunscreen, sunglasses, water bottles, keys… “Alright, sport, get in the car! Bus is leaving!” he called out, smiling as the sounds of little footfalls preceded the sight of his freckle-faced son, clad in shiny new baseball cleats.
“Got your glove?”
“Yep.”
“Your bat?”
“Yep.”
“Spitting tobacco?”
“Daaaad…”
“Mulder!”
“I’m just kidding, get in the car, will you? Coach Fox can’t be late, it’s unprofessional.”
“Wait I forgot my seeds!”
A minivan. Perfectly unremarkable. Admittedly, very comfortable, and spacious.
“Fox…” Scully mused with a shake of her head as she buckled her seatbelt.
“What? All the great baseball legends have weird nicknames. I just happen to have been born with mine.”
“The Great Bambino!” a little voice piped up from the back, glancing out the window as they ventured forth into the miles and miles of farmland.
“That’s my boy. ‘Oil Can’ Boyd. ‘Cool Papa’ James Bell. ‘Shoeless’ Joe Jackson. Did you know Lou Gehrig’s teammates called him ‘Biscuit Pants?’”
A giggle from the back seat.
“Alright you’ve made your point.” He loved it when she used that voice, the one that meant she was tired of his antics, but not really. Of course she loved his senseless rambling. She did it too sometimes, albeit with a few more hyper-specific medical terms thrown in there, leaving him unable to do anything other than smile and nod.
When they arrived, they piled out of the van, the messy brown hair of his son—already sweaty somehow, by the way—disappearing into the dugout with a gaggle of other overexcited little boys. “Good luck,” Scully spoke as she planted a kiss on Mulder’s cheek and made her way to the stands, setting up a cushion and portable fan that were sure to be the envy of all the other parents.
The field smelled like grass and dirt and the leather of brand-new baseball gloves just waiting to be broken in. It was a smell straight out of his childhood, of those summer nights on the Vineyard getting eaten up by bugs under the bright lights of the baseball fields. The crack of a ball against a wooden bat. Coming home covered in sweat and dirt and with a kid sister in tow who insisted on playing with the boys.
It was in this dream state where he found peace. Not in the past, but in some amorphous future. A future where he had a family again, a loving home. Where he wasn’t a coward and had a beautiful wife and partner who somehow made everything work. They fought monsters. They went grocery shopping. They filed paperwork with Skinner. He coached little league. They drove to work together. They picked up their son from school.
Baseballs went flying. Teams celebrated their first win. Little boys were tucked into bed, and he kissed his wife goodnight. That’s just how it was.
It was freedom. A freedom he didn’t think he’d felt since his life changed with a flash of light.
In the morning, he’d wake in a haze. With his brain on autopilot, he’d amble about his apartment, brushing his teeth, making coffee, tying on a tie… Caught somewhere in between these worlds of make-believe and reality. It was a benefit of his eidetic memory, he supposed, to be able to remember his dreams and stay in them even after coming to consciousness. Didn’t work out so great when he had constant nightmares, but hey, now that’s been solved too.
Somewhere along his drive to work was usually when reality really set in. He tried to not let it bring him down too much—it was his own fault, after all, that his life bore little resemblance to that which revealed itself in dreams. But he couldn’t help the slight pangs of disappointment he felt when he thought of the lonely couch he slept on every night and the sad state of his fridge.
“Good morning, Mulder,” Scully called out her usual greeting as she breezed into the office.
Mulder’s head lifted off the desk where it had been laying. “Mm—morning.”
Scully chuckled, setting down her bag in her chair and working to remove her heavy coat which she hung on the coat rack. His dream may have taken place in the heat of summer, but it was unmistakably the dead of winter in Washington, D.C.
“Not get enough sleep?” she asked, her amused tone not entirely disguising the genuine concern she felt for him underneath.
“I slept fine,” Mulder answered, “just… still waking up.”
Scully shook her head and let out another low chuckle, taking her seat across from him. She pulled out a file from her bag and began scanning through it, the lamp next to her providing most of the light, as the cloud-covered sky through the skylight threatened to dump a heap of snow on the city.
The day went on like that. Mulder managed to actually get some work done, finalizing some paperwork he’d been putting off (to Scully’s exaggerated shock and disbelief). She, on the other hand, was working on going over some medical reports a field office had sent over for her expert opinion, something that flattered her and made Mulder bloom with pride.
He didn’t even mind that much that they didn’t have a case to work on at the moment. That was another thing that had changed since he’d started indulging in these dreams: he could sit still for five minutes without vibrating out of his skin.
Of course, he’d never stop yearning for the truth, wondering what was out there waiting for him to discover it. But lately, he also found he enjoyed these quiet days where barely a word was spoken between them. It was comfortable. Everything unspoken didn’t need to be said aloud because it was a given—they both knew without saying everything that could possibly be said.
Lunch?
Yes.
Can you hand me a pen?
Sure.
The winter sun set early, and night was well on its way by the time Mulder looked up from his work to check the clock. Sure enough: quitting time. He stood from his desk just as Scully did, making his way over to the coat rack to grab both his and Scully’s coats. She snapped her bag shut with a click as he handed it to her before slipping his arms into his own coat sleeves.
Scully fluffed her hair out from under the collar of her coat. Mulder flicked off the lamp. She draped her bag over her shoulder. He grabbed his own briefcase and circled around his desk toward the door.
“Night, Scully,” he spoke like he did every evening, dipping down to place a quick kiss goodbye on her lips.
He froze.
Lips still touching, he swore he felt his heart stop and his fingers go numb. Somehow amid all the blaring alarm bells and internal screaming, his brain was able to send the signal back away, you idiot! to the rest of his body, and he obeyed, straightening up to look at her with what he knew she recognized as his ‘panic face.’
The only light now was coming from the streetlamps in the parking lot and the gentle snowfall reflecting it down into the office, the dim yellowish light making it difficult to tell what she was thinking. A wiser man would say something, apologize, explain it away, even leave, dang it! Get out of there! But Mulder was frozen. And apparently mute. Just perfect.
The seconds ticked by. Was that clock always so loud? That was it, he’d really gone and done it now, hadn’t he?
A smile formed across Scully’s lips, barely visible in the darkness. She blinked up at him with an oddly relaxed look in her eyes, sparkling in the faint light.
“Night, Mulder,” she replied before patting him twice on the chest above his heart and turning to leave.
It must have been a combination of her words and her touch that eventually broke him from his stupor, because he finally blinked and managed to stumble back to his office chair only to collapse into it, covering his face with his hands and letting out a muffled scream.
What an idiot. What. An. Idiot.
This was the price he had to pay for his risky little endeavor to sleep through the night. Dreaming of Scully had a cost, he should have known it was only a matter of time. He was messing with the delicate balance of things. Mulder and insomnia, insomnia and Mulder. They went hand-in-hand. Trading it in for the much more pleasant musings he had for his partner was too good to be true.
He sat there in horrified, humiliated silence for what felt like hours before finally heading home to what would inevitably be an appallingly horrible night’s sleep.
-.-.-
Mulder hadn’t slept. At all.
He laid awake most of the night staring at the ceiling and mentally berating himself over and over for blurring the lines so much that he’d briefly forgotten he and Scully weren’t actually together. He had every intent to call out of work the next day, and maybe the day after that, every day until he could come up with something to say to make things less awkward between them the next time they’d see each other, but then Skinner called.
His stomach dropped to the floor when the words “I need to ask you something,” crackled through the phone, the gruff voice of his boss sending a chill down his spine. It turned out all Skinner wanted was for Mulder and Scully to check out some reported aquatic dinosaur sightings in a lake in central Kansas, but Mulder still felt dizzy from the adrenaline the initial words had sent coursing through his system.
Against his wishes, he was dressed and in a taxi to the airport before noon, realizing too late that he hadn’t eaten anything either.
As he entered the bustling terminal, he saw Scully standing near the check-in point, dressed in her sensible heels and no-nonsense suit, her suitcase resting on the ground near her tapping foot. She checked her watch and glanced up to the departures sign before scanning the crowd. He winced as her sight settled on him, and picked up the pace.
“Jeez, Mulder, you look awful,” she said by way of greeting.
“Sorry I’m late,” he spoke, hoping to divert any conversation away from what had happened the night prior.
She wasn’t so easily dissuaded, however. “What happened to you? Are you sick?”
It seemed he would have to say something after all. He settled for, “Haven’t had anything to eat.” There. That would throw her off his scent.
Scully’s eyebrows furrowed and she grabbed the handle of her suitcase, beginning to pull it in the direction of their gate. “Well, you can have the other half of my muffin, it’s in my purse.”
He said nothing after that, choosing to follow after her like a lost puppy. They made their way through the metal detectors and had just enough time to get to their gate before they were boarding.
True to her word, just as soon as they’d reached cruising altitude, Scully extracted half a blueberry muffin from her purse and placed it on the tray table in front of Mulder, who was leaning heavily on the wall of the plane, staring blankly out the window. He mumbled his thanks and ate it in 3 clean bites, feeling only slightly guilty for inhaling his food like that in front of her.
Sensing that he wasn’t in a talkative mood, Scully posed a one-word question. “Insomnia?”
Mulder leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. “Yeah.”
“I thought it was getting better?”
“It was,” he answered, hoping she wouldn’t read into it.
Mulder sat up again, reaching for a book in his bag, but Scully’s hand on his shoulder stopped him. Gently, she pushed him back until he was resting again, forcing his head to the head rest with the soft touch of her hand over his brow.
“Sleep,” she said, pressing a kiss to his cheek.
-.-.-
After the rocky start to the day and the awkwardness on his end throughout the flight, Mulder came to the conclusion that Scully was acting perfectly normal, so he might as well do the same. Well, she had kissed him on the cheek, but that wasn’t unheard of, was it? They’d done that before. Sure, it was rare, but she was worried about him. Aside from that, it was as if nothing had even happened, and if Mulder had been just a little more crazy, he might have believed it had all been a dream after all. It wasn’t though, and the touch of her lips on his still burned when he thought about it.
Against his better judgement, on the first night in the motel in central Kansas, he decided to employ his, now patently risky, sleep technique. It didn’t help that his subconscious supplied him with dreams of a family road trip and motels just like the one he was staying in. It took everything in his power not to say, “Wake up, buddy, time to hit the road,” to an invisible—and sadly, impossible—son in the morning. Even harder was it to suppress the words “Morning, beautiful,” from escaping his lips when he first ran into Scully in the lobby.
She seemed appeased that he had actually gotten some rest, at least, when she saw him at breakfast. The day went on without issue. Things between them were… normal. Conditions: good. Weather: frigid. Why they were investigating a potentially cold-blooded creature in the middle of February was beyond him.
He suspected this case would turn out to be yet another wild goose chase. Nothing was living in that water except maybe a very cold and very large escaped alligator from a nearby run-down zoo. Unfortunately, his recent contentment with boring, unexciting cases didn’t seem to apply here. Or at least right now.
To his relief, the local law enforcement decided to handle it themselves and even had the presence of mind to sheepishly apologize for having them come all the way out there. Flights were booked for the next day, following an almost four-hour drive back to Kansas City.
When they arrived back at the motel, Mulder fished out his room key from his pocket and inserted it into the door to unlock it. At the next door over, Scully set her briefcase on the ground before crossing the distance to him right as he turned the handle, stalling him briefly in the doorway. She stood there just long enough to reach up for a quick peck on the lips, the kiss as brief as he had done two nights before.
“Wha—” he mouthed silently, interrupted by Scully’s easy, “Goodnight, Mulder,” leaving him gaping at her in the doorway, his hand still on the doorknob, as she went off to bed.
-.-.-
It was getting harder to tell fiction from reality, and that was tough for Mulder to admit. Scully smiled at him in the morning when she climbed in the passenger seat of their rental car, and for a moment Mulder felt the gnawing feeling that they’d forgotten to put their son in the backseat despite knowing he wasn’t real. He shook his head to clear his thoughts, but that could only help so much.
Her humming half the ride home was straight out of his dreams too, a happy sound that he hadn’t heard much in the months since Christmas and Emily. She even held his hand during takeoff on the plane, not that that was uncommon, but still.
When they finally touched down in the snow blanketed capitol city, she offered to drive him home rather than have him wait for a taxi out in the cold. He gratefully accepted, unable to come up with a valid excuse not to. That was when it happened again.
Once was a mistake. Twice was a fluke. Three times on the lips, and Mulder had some questions. Namely, was he going completely crazy, or did he miss something?
As she pulled up to his building, she put the car in park and stretched across the center console to give him yet another kiss, finishing it with a smile and a, “See you tomorrow, Mulder.”
Unable to tear his eyes away from her lest she fade away like his dreams, Mulder fumbled for the door handle and pushed open the car door, stumbling his way to his feet.
“See you tomorrow,” he managed to respond, in a voice that he felt wasn’t his own.
He started his way toward the entrance to his building in a daze, screeching to a halt when he heard her call out, “Mulder!” through the opened passenger window.
He turned back, croaking out a very eloquent, “Huh?” as he searched for her face in the dark car interior.
“You forgot your bags.”
Oh.
Scully chuckled and popped the trunk for him. He rubbed his hand awkwardly over the back of his neck and trudged his way back to the car to retrieve his possessions, slamming the trunk shut when he was finished. Scully gave a wave out the window and took off into the night, and for a second night in a row, all he could do was stand there and blink in the direction she had disappeared.
-.-.-
Calling out of work would be useless, it wouldn’t help the issue at all. He was more confused than ever, but Scully seemed to be perfectly fine, so it must be his own problem. What if he’d somehow manifested his dream life into his waking one, that by some mystical force, certain elements of it were slipping through into reality? He could open an X-File. Test out his powers of manifestation—if he didn’t completely lose his grip on reality in the process.
In his dream last night, they’d celebrated her birthday, and now he couldn’t remember if they’d already done so, or if he ought to get started on planning something in real life. What day is it again? It was driving him crazy. Crazier than usual.
He would just have to talk to her. Ask her what was up with all the kissing, not that he minded. But was that actually happening? Was he imagining things? If he brought it up, would they go back to what it was like before? Would it get worse? What if he kissed her again? This time on purpose?
Every time he went to say something, his mouth opened and no sound came out. He was sure she’d notice at some point. How embarrassing. Hours ticked by, and before he knew it, it was the end of the day. An epic fail, as far as his attempt to talk to her went.
He stood from his desk with a sigh, resigned to another day of confusion tomorrow, and started toward the door with his bag and coat in tow.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” her voice called from behind him, and there she was, standing by his desk, arms crossed expectantly over her chest. That eyebrow. That darn eyebrow was doing its thing too, what does she mean by that?
“Scully?” he asked, brain tired and worn out from a tumultuous week.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” she asked again, uncrossing her arms and shifting in that way that exposed her well-masked nervousness. It was the first sign he’d seen that he wasn’t losing his mind, this really was unusual. And she knew it too.
Eyebrows furrowed, he walked toward her until he was standing right in front of her, desperately trying to read her expression as he looked down at her. Her eyes met his with determination, deliberately holding eye contact when every cell in his body screamed Danger! Run away! There was hope there, too, but Mulder didn’t want to guess what that hope might be for. This was not the moment for guessing.
She was still looking at him expectantly, though, and he couldn’t think of anything else.
Slowly, giving her plenty of time to move away or shoot him if he’d read the situation wrong, he bent toward her, placing one hand over her elbow and the other brushing lightly over the hair covering her ear. Her eyes fluttered shut and her breathing hitched, and there! She was leaning forward too! Not quite standing on tiptoes, but stretching to meet him, nonetheless.
Taking this as a good sign, he closed the rest of the distance between them and pressed his lips to hers, holding them there for one, two, three, four, five seconds before pulling back and letting his arms drop to his sides. His eyes remained tightly shut, afraid to open them and see the disgust or annoyance that would surely greet him.
He swallowed past a lump in his throat, his face pinched in concern, but he dared not move. After a moment, he felt two hands cup his cheeks on either side, the thumbs brushing out the lines of tension around his eyes. Something about the motion coaxed his eyes open, and what he saw wasn’t disgust or annoyance, but a content and relieved smile on the face of his partner.
He was entranced.
“Goodnight, Mulder,” she spoke softly, the same words from the other nights, but with a considerable amount of weight that hadn’t been there before. After a moment more, she began to pull away, and Mulder felt his heart stutter. Without thinking, he stopped her, grabbing her by the upper arms and pulling her to him. His eyes fell shut again as he dove toward her lips, stopping short by a few inches and pressing his forehead to hers instead.
“What is this?” he whispered, desperate to know, needing to put a name to it.
She let out a breathless laugh. “I was hoping you’d tell me.”
“Am I dreaming?”
She laughed again, and man, what he would do to hear that sound every day for the rest of his life.
“I just thought you’d decided to institute a new goodbye ritual, and went with it.”
It was Mulder’s turn to smile in amusement. He hummed.
“No, I’ve dreamt of this,” he murmured, nuzzling her forehead with his. “I thought I was going crazy.”
“If you are, then what does that make me?”
“I don’t know. If not crazy, then what other option is there?”
Reaching to cup the back of his neck, she pulled him ever closer, her next words brushing against his cheek. “I can think of something.”
His eyes opened to see her staring back at him, a flood of emotions he wasn’t sure he could name dancing there, reflecting identical ones in his own. Uncertainty gave way to resolve, and he hoped she would lend him some of hers, because he would surely need it.
He knew it was coming, and still it blew him away.
This time, her kiss was slow… purposeful. He melted into her, pulling her closer with an arm clutching to her waist and the other hand splayed across her shoulder blade.
The fog in his brain prevented him from determining how much time passed, but eventually they had to come up for air, identical smiles gracing their faces.
“I think I know what this is, Mulder, and I think you feel the same way. But if I’m wrong, this is going to be really awkward.” Her words were spoken with laughter, but there was an underlying sense of doubt. Doubt that by no means had any place there.
“No, I think you’re right,” he answered, cupping her cheek with his hand. “I think you’ve got it figured out.”
Her eyebrow went up again and a teasing smile played on her lips. “Can I get that in writing, or…”
He grinned and pulled her to him once more. “Oh, shut up.” And he kissed her.
---
Tagging @agent-troi @welsharcher @hippocampouts @invidiosa @whovianelle @captainsolocide @randomfoggytiger @today-in-fic
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animusicnerd · 1 year
Text
Attention Please!
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☾ Genre: Fluff
☾ Warnings: mention of death (It's fluff, I swear)
☾ Parings: Riddle Rosehearts x GN! Reader
☾ Notes: I just wanted to do something fluffy (for once) for Valentine's Day and found a dialogue prompt ("Hold my hand or I'll die") that I thought was funny. Cross-posted on AO3.
☾ Twisted Wonderland and it’s characters do not belong to me ☽
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It’s no secret that Riddle worked a lot. His time management skills were near perfect in order to do the workload that was demanded of him. He is a dorm leader and one of the top students in NRC. It’s no easy task to do either of those things, and you know this.
But a few things that you’ve noticed about Riddle since you met him was that when he is focused on something, he will complete his task and then some. As such, he tends to tune out the world around him, especially if he’s alone. You’ve learned that a few taps on his shoulder would get his attention, maybe accompanied by a few calls of his name. Usually, he would stop for a moment, ask what you need and then wrap up whatever he’s doing if your matter was urgent. 
However, you heard nothing from him all day.
Usually, Riddle would answer his phone right away, if not a few minutes afterwards. He would also inform you whenever he was busy to avoid blowing up said device, but he also didn’t do that today. Maybe he forgot and put his phone on silent to avoid his ears from being blasted off in case somebody called while he listened to music, or maybe he saw it while he was busy and just forgot to text you that he was doing something. You don’t know.
What you do know is that you did not see nor hear from Riddle all day, and the first thought on your mind was to rush over to Heartslabyul to check up on him. Luckily, you were greeted by Trey at the door who informed you that Riddle has been in his office most of the day and hasn’t budged an inch since lunch. It was almost tea time. 
You stared at the scene in front of you. Your boyfriend was hunched over his desk in his office, eyes roaming over a report. He was dressed in his dorm uniform though the crown was placed near the edge of his desk, most likely put away after using it for so long. Your eyes zeroed in on his phone face-down on his desk and the earbuds plugged in. So his phone was on silent.
“He’s been like this for a while,” Trey whispered. He had led you towards Riddle’s office knowing that Heartslabyul’s maze of a dorm was hard to navigate. The two of you were standing at the threshold of his office, quietly waiting for the dorm leader to notice you but he didn’t. His eyes were still on the paper in front of him, occasionally marking it. “I’m a bit worried since he hasn’t eaten since lunch.”
You sighed. “It’s fine, just leave it to me.” You looked at the small stack of papers to his right and the larger one to his left. “He’s almost done, so it’s best to wait it out and let him finish whatever he’s doing. I’ll bring him down in time for tea.”
Trey nodded and left the room. You sat on one of the chairs in front of Riddle’s desk and pulled out your phone to check the time.
Four o’clock PM, an hour until tea time. 
You looked at Riddle again but his gaze was still zeroed in on his paper. You glanced at your phone again and groaned. An hour was going to be a long time.
About fifteen minutes in, Riddle had neatly placed the paper on the left pile. You may or may not have spooked him a bit when you waved at him as he was putting the paper down but all he did was give you a gentle smile and nod before grabbing the next paper from the right stack. 
By the thirty minute mark, you were getting tired of waiting for him. Aside from Riddle acknowledging you earlier, his eyes had stayed glued to the paper. The soft scratching of pen against paper was the only thing that broke the silence. Your boyfriend at least had some music but you didn’t, and after worrying about him all day, you had no more patience to wait for his attention. 
Leaning over, you rapidly tapped Riddle’s desk until he looked up. He tilted his head in confusion when you held out your hand.
“Hold my hand or I’ll die,” you bluntly stated.
Pulling out one earbud, Riddle blinked. “What?”
You raised your hand higher. “Hold my hand or I perish.”
His eyebrows furrowed at your antics as he said, “I need my hands to work.”
“You only need one hand to write.” You shook your hand, practically shoving it in his face now. “And I only need one of your hands to hold mine, so hold my hand or I die.”
“You won’t die, if I don’t—”
“I will.” 
Riddle blankly stared at your hand then at you as if reconsidering if this relationship was worth your silly distraction (it was) before sighing. A satisfied smile stretched across your face as you moved your chair closer to the desk to avoid hunching over it. You laid your head on his desk using your other arm as a pillow, careful not to touch any of his work, as you watched him go back to work. Content to just watch him until Trey inevitably called the two of you down for tea.
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cerealmonster15 · 2 months
Note
For the date ideas post, may I slip a note under your door that says Idikei? K bye! 🏃‍♀️
HELLO. this ended up being way longer than i planned initially JFKDLSJKLF sorry it took forever but also THANK YOU for the suggestion i LOVE IDIKEI i'm so glad i had reason to make myself sit and write for them!
This was written as a prompt from this post! I asked for someone to suggest a ship, and I would randomly draw numbers for the rest of the categories. I pulled:
Date type: Wedding date
Date idea: Getting ice cream[x] and strolling through a park
How the date is going: Super romantic
I may have taken some liberties with the prompts LOL but the overall vibe is there.
[Ao3 Link]
Title: Blue Raspberry Mango
Word Count: 5,224
Rating: G
Summary: Idia absolutely cannot show up to Azul's wedding while he's still single. Can you IMAGINE the obnoxious gloating he'd have to endure? Good thing his best buddy Cater Diamond is willing to help him avoid such a perilous fate!
“Oh my god, Trey,” Cater sighed between bites of risotto, “No one does it like you! I miss your cooking SO much!”
“Cater, don’t talk with your mouth full,” Riddle chided from across the table, but smiled nonetheless. “I suppose that means you’ll just have to come visit us more often, doesn’t it?”
“You know our door is always open for you,” Trey agreed.
“Provided you call first,” Riddle added. “It’s good manners.”
Cater laughed. He was glad his job in photography allowed him to travel around and ultimately landed him in the Queendom of Roses for most of his work. He’d never expected that he’d see so much of his old friends after graduation  and yet… Here he was, years later, sitting at the dinner table with two of his best friends in the entire world.
“Ooh, speaking of getting together for some mingle time,” Cater said, a grin spreading wide across his face as he spoke. “Did you guys get the invite to Jamil and Azul’s wedding!?”
“We did.” Trey stood for a moment to step into the living room, returning shortly with a familiar card that he placed on the table. “Riddle already sent our RSVP, of course. You’re going too, I assume?”
“So punctual!” Cater winked at Riddle, then nodded. “And OBVI. Cay-Cay’s not about to miss a once in a lifetime event like this! Idia says Azul’s inviting practically everyone from our NRC days. Something about wanting to ‘flaunt his happy marriage to everyone that doubted him,’ or something like that. You know how Azul loves his theatrics.”
“Ugh, yes,” Riddle scrunched up his nose, “I’m sure Azul will love reminding me - again - how he and Jamil managed to schedule a wedding before Trey and I have.”
Trey chuckled, pressing a kiss to the top of Riddle’s head on his way back into the kitchen to retrieve dessert. “You know it’s not a competition.”
“It is to Azul, and he certainly believes he’s winning,” Riddle sighed, but then turned his focus back to Cater. “And how is Idia doing? I imagine you’re one of the few that he willingly keeps in contact with from NRC these days, yes?”
Cater nodded, a sense of pride filling in his chest at the acknowledgement that Cater was, in fact, one of the rare people Idia spent time talking with. On PURPOSE, even! “I sure am! He’s chill doin’ his thing over at S.T.Y.X. with Ortho. He still games with Lils on the ‘reg, and I think he and Azul do these, like, speedy flash matches on Chess.com? I don’t know if they even talk to each other. I think they just like the thrill of trying to digitally kill each other or whatever.”
Still, gaming and asserting dominance over virtual board games was practically the social pinnacle when it came to Idia Shroud.
Riddle raised a curious eyebrow. “Chess… Dot com…?”
Cater already had his phone out. “I’ll send you the link, and I'll get Idia and Azul’s usernames for you. I bet they’ll be thrilled to have a fresh opponent.” 
He pulled his phone out, despite Riddle’s unspoken no texting at the dinner table rule, and sent a quick text to Idia.
Cater: heyyy whats ur chess.com username or w/e + also azuls
To which Idia replied almost instantly, as he tended to do with Cater whenever he wasn’t physically too busy to multitask.
Idia: no way ur actually signing up for chess.com unprompted. whats it for
Idia: also ew why azul lol
Cater huffed a small laugh through his nose at the incoming messages while he sent the website link to Riddle, and then swapped back to Idia’s messages.
Cater: lol u know me so well bestie ~ it’s for riddle!
Cater: cmooooon u know u and azul would have fun doin one of those speedster rounds with him lol
Idia: they’re called bullet rounds 😑 w/e ya i’ll txt u the info
Idia: or yknow. he could wait to get it at the wedding. 👀👀👀
Cater gasped out loud, followed by a squeak of delight, causing both Trey and Riddle to look at him curiously.
“Whatever’s happening on your phone must be very interesting,” Trey said, “because you haven’t even glanced at the plate in front of you.”
There was, in fact, a new plate in front of Cater. A plate with a beautifully sliced, dark chocolate tart, topped with fresh strawberries and raspberries. A compromise, of course, as Trey trained himself in the art of locating more semisweet desserts back at NRC, so Cater wouldn’t feel completely shut out when it was time to bring dessert to the table. 
A subtle reminder to Cater that he was very loved by his dear friend.
“Aw, sorry Trey!” Cater set his phone down and took a bite of the tart. Perfectly balanced flavors, as always. “I just got excited! Sounds like Idia’s able to make it to Azul’s wedding after all. We weren’t sure ‘cause of his schedule, but I guess he managed to clear things up in time!”
“That’s good,” Riddle said, a light smirk forming across his face, “because I think we all know Azul would never let Idia hear the end of it if he failed to show.”
Cater’s phone lit up again, another text from Idia displayed for all to see.
Idia: ummmm ahem nows the part where u ask me if i cleared my schedule so i could go ( which ya i did) so that i can smoothly lead in2 asking u for a favor
Idia: cmon cay stay on the ball 🙄 
Riddle sighed. “Why don’t you just call him? There’s no use pretending you aren’t distracted by his texts going off every few seconds. It’s faster.”
Cater COULD argue that he and Idia weren’t exactly ‘callers’ so much as ‘texters’ or ‘video chatting in the privacy of their own homes while multitasking on six other activities’, but… He figured it was best not to start a disagreement with Riddle of all people.
After about three rings, Idia answered. “I-it’s not such a big favor that you needed to call me…” he sheepishly mumbled into the receiver.
Cater smiled. Idia was always so shy in the first few seconds of a call, planned or not. “Yeah, yeah, but I don’t wanna bug Riddle and Trey with my constant text notifs-”
“You know how to put your phone on silent.”
“Idiaaa…” Cater pouted, and though Idia couldn’t see his face, he could definitely hear it in Cater’s tone. “Just tell me what’s up?”
Idia exhaled a long, drawn out, dramatic sigh, before responding. “‘Kay, fine, whatever. Basically, I need you to LARP as my player 2 at Azul’s wedding. Y’know, secret stealth mission style.”
A long pause.
“...Huh?” Cater eloquently replied. “Um, what?”
“Uuughhh, this is why I didn't wanna have to explain out looouuud,” Idia groaned. “Listen. You know Azul. I know Azul. The dude invented the concept of being an insufferable, smug little bitch.”
That last comment pulled a full laugh out of Cater. “OMG, Idia, if that’s the kind of stuff you say about your besties, I’d hate to hear you tell me about your enemies!”
As if Cater hadn’t heard endless gamer rants time and time again about randos online that Idia felt personally wronged and slighted by. He knew exactly how cutting and fired up Idia could get, so by comparison, Idia was being gentle with Azul.
“LOL, Azul’s no bestie - but N-E-Way, circling back to the prime objective… Um…” Idia’s voice grew quieter as he cleared his throat. “What I’m saying is… There’s a 100% chance Azul’s gonna rub his stupid new marriage in my face, like, ‘Ohh, Idia, still single, are you? Wow, what’s that like? Can’t relate, Jamil and I are sooo happy in our stupid normie marriage, here come look at my ring did you see my ring-’ like, DUH I saw the stupid ring! He only emailed me a billion pictures of it!”
EMAIL?! Cater bit back a laugh. That was so on-brand for Azul.
“So, uh, anyway…” Idia resumed his mumbly, more reminiscent of NRC days tone of voice. “I wanna… Lie. W-With you.”
WHA-
“N-N-Not like, physically!” Idia quickly followed up before Cater could interject. “I mean, like, deceit! Lies and slander but without the slander! I want you to pretend to be my wedding date!”
“Your… Your wedding date?” Cater repeated, earning a couple of curious glances from Trey and Riddle. “Wait, what? You want me to pretend to be your date just so Azul doesn’t think you’re single?”
Trey raised an eyebrow. Riddle furrowed his brows together with a frown.
Cater pretended not to see.
“Exactly!” Idia responded with a sigh of relief that Cater was still following. “If he thinks I have a new b-boyfriend, he’ll have slightly less reason to be annoying towards me specifically! And it has to be believable anyway, right? You’re one of the few people I still talk to post-grad, so…”
It also didn’t hurt that Cater would be high up in Idia’s top 10 list of prettiest guys to ever graduate from NRC. And NO, it didn’t matter who the other nine on that list were, thank you very much.
“Well, for one, I’m totes flattered,” Cater said. “But, d’you think we’d be able to pull something like that off?”
“Cater!” Riddle interrupted. “You cannot seriously be considering-!”
“Shh,” Trey softly interrupted Riddle’s interruption. “Let’s see where they go with it, first.”
Riddle relented with a pout, leaning into Trey’s shoulder and watching Cater closely.
Idia huffed into the receiver. “What, because the Riddle Police is gonna expose us before we even try?”
“Aw, nooo, Riddle can keep a secret! Right, Riddle?” Cater covered the phone with his hand and offered Riddle and Trey his best, sweetest, pleading smile - complete with as much eyelash fluttering he could muster on the spot. A classic Cater Diamond move.
Riddle and Trey both sighed at the all-too familiar sight. 
“Cater,” Trey said, “You can’t weasel your way out of every situation with a cute face.”
“Ooh, is that a challenge?” Cater winked, then dissolved into giggles as Riddle crossed his arms and continued to pout at him.
“I don’t exactly feel right about you two lying for such frivolous reasons, but… I can’t say I don’t fully… Understand.” After all, having graduated alongside Azul, Riddle just might understand better than anyone why they might feel tempted to go about such a way to avoid Azul’s smug tendencies. “Just don’t expect Trey or me to carry any outlandish stories for either of you!”
“Yay!” Cater cheered, uncovering the receiver and speaking back into the phone. “No biggie, Idia. We’re all good over here!”
“Wait, so you’re in, then!?” Idia asked. He hadn’t really expected this to go so well, but he figured if anyone would be willing to hear him out, it would be Cater. He was always down for a fun shenanigan, after all, but still… “I kinda thought I’d have to do a little more convincing, TBH. I even wrote a speech-”
“Lemme hear it anyway!”
“No!” Idia shouted. “You already agreed, so no take-backs!”
Cater giggled. “Hehe, alright, alright! Let’s do a vid call when I get home later, and we can start planning our coordinated outfits!”
The wedding itself was beautiful, obviously. Cater and Idia wondered just how much bickering likely went on behind the scenes for Jamil and Azul to find a compromise between Azul’s need for an extravagant, flashy-yet-tasteful, show-off wedding, and Jamil perhaps wanting something more lowkey and humble.
Or, perhaps they truly both wanted to show off to their former classmates, as the wedding ultimately ended up very ‘cammable, as Cater made sure to tell Idia every five minutes. 
“God, did you see these centerpiece flowers?” Cater giggled between sips of champagne as he clutched Idia’s arm and tugged him over to a nearby table. He nearly spilled the glass on his shirt trying to pull his phone out of his pocket, and was saved only by Idia reaching over to pluck the champagne flute from his hand and finish drinking it himself. 
“Heh, failed your dex saving throw,” Idia grinned. “And yeah, I saw those same flowers when you pointed them out ten minutes ago.”
“Uh, ‘scuse me for getting excited about all the photo ops, babe.”
Idia rolled his eyes at the obvious teasing, but a few giggles spilled from his mouth all the same. Surely it was due to the champagne that he felt so lighthearted and giddy, despite being trapped at such a bustling social event.
“Well, well…” The familiar voice of Azul Ashengrotto called out from behind the pair as he and Jamil - arm in arm, much like Idia and Cater - approached. “It would seem that your message wasn’t full of baseless fabrications just to try and distract me from our active chess match after all, hmm?”
Cater couldn’t hold back from openly, loudly laughing. “Wait- Idia, did you for realsies RSVP to their wedding over Chess.com?!”
“Yes, he did,” Jamil sighed. 
“Oh, don’t act like it didn’t make you laugh too, my dear.” Azul patted Jamil on the arm, to which Jamil responded with a snort and roll of his eyes. 
“That being said,'' Azul continued, “I really couldn’t believe it until I saw it for myself in person. You two really did end up together after all, then?'' His piercing gaze shifted from Idia to Cater, and then back to Idia with a growing, devilish grin. “Your cute little high school crush never faded after all these years?”
Idia gasped. Oh, he should've known this was the route Azul would take the second he didn’t have a chance to gloat about Idia being single. Of course Azul wouldn’t forget about the forbidden knowledge he collected back in the olden days of NRC. An elephant - or in this case, an octopus - never forgets! And this particular octopus still had that stupid, smug grin on his face that Idia was so hoping to avoid.
But, there truly was no avoiding smugness when Azul Ashengrotto was involved; both Idia and Cater were fools if they thought they could prove otherwise.
And speaking of Cater, his gasp was even louder than Idia’s. “OMG. A crush!? You had a crush on me when we were in school?”
Idia instinctively reached for the hood that he was not wearing. Curse these fancy wedding clothes and their stupid, hoodless collars… “U-um! So what if I did?!”
“You never told me!” Cater huffed with the PUFFIEST cheeks he could muster. Trey and Riddle could say what they want, but his cute pouts were his most powerful weapon! … After his unique magic, probably.
“The poor thing thought you were dating Trey for the longest time,” Azul interjected, clearly pleased with the direction this conversation had gone. Idia’s flustered look of betrayal was more than satisfying.
“Wh-!? I literally TOLD YOU when Trey started dating Riddle!” 
“Okay, well, I thought you three had some sort of secret polycule hidden route thing going on in your IRL VN of a life!” Idia huffed, crossing his arms in what was probably a more adorably huffy look than he intended. 
“Oh? What’s the matter?” Azul asked, his smarmy grin not faltering in the slightest. “You’re together now, are you not? No need to be so embarrassed… Right?”
Oh. So that’s how it was. Azul was a doubter and a HATER, huh?
“Ugh,” Idia grumbled. “Anyone would get embarrassed when you go aggro-mode like that with forbidden lore of the past!” He reached for Cater’s hand as he spoke, and gripped it firmly in defiance of Azul’s stupid smug face. 
“Um, yeah, totes!” Cater returned his friendly, dazzling smile to his face. “Besides, I think it’s cute. Look how far we’ve come!”
“Maybe your wedding will be next, then.” Jamil said, a tiny smirk tugging on his lips as Idia once again failed to hide his jittery reaction. 
“Oh, please,” Cater laughed. “I think Riddle might actually kill me if we cut ahead of him and Trey.”
“Oh, yes, of course,” Azul chuckled. “And how long have those two been engaged, again?”
“UUGGHHH,” Cater groaned with every ounce of drama he could muster. “Don’t rush them! You KNOW Riddle isn’t gonna cut a single corner when it comes to having the perfect wedding!”
“Well, I’d say we managed to do so quite efficiently,” Azul said, not even pretending to be humble. “I couldn’t afford to waste time, after all. I wanted to marry the love of my life as soon as possi-”
“God, you’re so cringe, Azul,” Idia interrupted, crinkling his nose at Azul’s shameless, sappy proclamations of love for his partner while he and Cater were still standing RIGHT THERE! 
Cater decided that perhaps this was his and Idia’s cue to escape the conversation. “Um! Y’know what, Idia?” He said, starting to tug Idia in the opposite direction. “I totally feel inspired by their lovey-dovey vibes. Let’s go dance!”
“Wh-!” Idia’s protests dissolved in his throat as Cater swiftly pulled him through the crowd and back to the dance floor. Idia, of course, complained, but when Cater asked him if he’d rather dance together or go back and continue talking to Azul, the protests quickly stopped.
And so they danced - Cater led Idia through a range of more traditional dances that Riddle taught him over the years, and plenty of modern dance trends that Cater practiced through watching hours of viral Magicam videos. Idia, though nervous at first, soon forgot his fear of prying eyes as he and Cater got lost in the moment together. Cater wasn’t the only one with dances to teach, after all! Idia made sure to show Cater just how much he learned through all his hours of watching idol group music videos.
Perhaps their dancing strayed a bit from the theme of the actual music playing, but that didn’t matter to them. Idia and Cater had fun off to the side in their little pocket of the dance floor together, occasionally joined by a former classmate now and then, or pausing to make conversation. It really WAS  an NRC reunion, intentional or not.
And it was exciting! Exciting… And really, really draining.
“...Idi-BB,” Cater sighed, draping an arm around Idia’s shoulders and leaning against him with a few exhausted pants. “I’m, like, so spent from all our hardcore grooving. Y’’wanna go outside for some fresh air and a sensory break?”
“Yes,” Idia wheezed, nodding with equally exhausted enthusiasm. 
The two promptly fled the scene, getting themselves out of the crowded venue and across the street to a quiet little park that was decorated with seasonal lights and flowers.
“Azul and Jamil really know how to pick a location,” Cater murmured as he and Idia walked under an arch of twinkling lights and found their way to a bench. “Even the nearby lots are top-tier photogenic. It looks like there’s even some kind of night market going on at this park.”
“Just what we need,” Idia complained, “MORE activities.”
“Hey, c’mon, at least over here we don’t have the obligation to talk to anyone. No familiar faces at a random market! And besides…” Cater pointed towards one of the trucks with pretty lights and colorful signage. “That one looks like it’s selling ice cream!”
“You don’t even like ice cream!”
“But you do…” Cater mumbled, and then grinned. “Plus, ice cream from vendors always looks super pretty. So, like, you get a sweet treat, and I get sweet pics! It’s a win-win, really.” 
“Do you ever take a day off your photographer brain?”
“Absolutely not. The ‘cam life was simply my calling, as my professional website can show you. I still can’t believe Azul didn’t even ask to hire me for wedding photos, TBH.”
“You wouldn’t’ve wanted to,” Idia said, slowly standing up and inching over to the ice cream truck-slash-booth. “Azul would have crazy annoying standards and requests, and would no doubt try and squeeze out a ‘friends and family’ discount from you.”
“Ugh, totes,” Cater shook his head, walking alongside Idia towards the truck “I’d rather take it easy and enjoy the event as a guest, anyway. Much more fun!”
He paused for a moment, peering at the menu. “Looks like they've got some flavors based on the Great Seven - Ooh, OMG, you should get that one!” 
Idia looked at the menu item Cater pointed at and read it aloud. “...King of the Underworld Cone: Mango and Habanero Sorbet, topped with blue raspberry syrup and chili-lime flakes, and served in a blue raspberry cone.”
“I love a good mango-chili combo! And the colors are perfectly coordinated to match our hair. You’ve gotta get it so we can take a cute selfie under the lights!”
Idia sighed, but pulled out his wallet as Cater ordered it for him. It DID sound pretty good, so he wasn’t going to fight it. He allowed Cater to hold the cone and pull him back over to the bench, pull him in close, and finally snap the photo before he finally got to try the ice cream.
“Jeeze, you seriously haven’t let up on the selfie-taking all evening,” Idia said between licks. “It really is like we’re back at school.” He held the cone out to Cater, tilting his head and silently offering him a taste.
“Aw, c’mon!” Cater paused, eyeing the ice cream suspiciously for a movement before lowering his head and giving it a tiny, curious lick. “...Ooo, spicy! That’s not bad.” He smiled, then turned back to his phone to text Idia the photo. “And anyway, I’ve def let up on the selfies these days, especially since I take pics for a living now.” Cater supplemented his statement with yet another pout. “Besides, today was a special occasion! Like, hello? It’s a WEDDING, and there were a ton of people I haven’t seen in years!”
Cater reached over to boop Idia on the tip of his nose. “Like you, mister! You live so far away and with such a complex job, I haven’t seen you in, like, LITERALLY forever…” He sighed, dropping his head onto Idia’s shoulder.
It was a warm and familiar sensation to the both of them. Near the end of their time at NRC, the two spent many a late night in Idia’s room binge watching anime or pop idol music videos together, which almost always ended with Cater laying half asleep propped against Idia’s side. The first three dozen times it happened, it would send Idia into a silent, internal freak out spiral, but through the exposure therapy of Cater’s consistent sleepiness, he eventually not only grew used to the feeling, but started to yearn for it on nights he watched shows alone.
“...Tell Riddle and Trey to hurry up on their wedding planning, then,” Idia mumbled into his ice cream. “If I know about it early enough, it’d be easier to fit into my busy boss-lord schedule.”
Cater’s ears perked up. “Oh? Would you really go to their wedding?! I know you weren’t as close to Riddle and Trey as you are with Azul … But then again, I guess you have been playing those online chess matches with Riddle ever since we signed him up.”
“Never doubt a warrior’s bond over a chess board,” Idia snickered. “A-And, uh, yeah. I’d go, but… Only ‘cause I know we’d get to see each other again, or whatever… O-Ortho would probably want to go, anyway, so… Might as well.”
“Aww!” Cater picked his head up to beam at Idia, eyes shining with delight. “You better promise! ‘Cause I WILL be there, and I’ll be on official photographer duty, so you should start planning your perfect outfit now. There’s no hiding from this professional shutterbug!”
“Wha-?” Idia scrunched his eyebrows together in confusion. “Weren’t you just saying you were glad you didn’t have to put up with Azul’s picky perfectionism and just wanted to enjoy being a guest? You don’t seriously think Riddle Rosehearts would be any less difficult a client than Azul, do you?”
Cater laughed. “Oh, don’t worry, Idia. you’re forgetting one very crucial detail!”
“...What’s that?”
“Riddle is my bestie, and I love him.”
Idia burst out laughing, quickly covering his mouth to avoid spewing blue and orange droplets everywhere. “The power of friendship is gonna save you from Teapot Tyrant meltdowns?”
“Hey!” Cater protested. “I’ll have you know that Riddle is MUCH more mellow these days-”
“Heh. You should see the chat logs from our last chess match.”
“Oh my god,” Cater rolled his eyes. “ANYWAY, I’ll have you know I’m the perfect person for the role. Trey and I stood by Riddle’s side for two years running Heartslabyul and herding underclassmen around. Riddle trusted my aesthetic eye when it came to setting up tea parties, and I earned that role, thank you very much! I’m a trained professional in both photography AND Riddle de-escalation tactics.”
Idia laughed again as Cater dropped his head back down onto his shoulder. Really, he couldn’t argue with that logic. After Trey, Cater really was the only other person from their school days that knew how to handle the ins and outs of a Riddle Rosehearts tantrum.
Still, a lot had changed over the years…
“...Did you really have a crush on me when we were in school?”
Idia nearly choked on the half-crunched cone that he just shoved into his mouth. “WH- GHK- CATER!” 
Cater quickly sat up again and started patting Idia on the back while he coughed up blue chunks. “OMG- Don’t you dare die on me before giving me an answer!”
A few more coughs and wheezes, a rough swallow of ice cream remains, and then Idia finally spoke again. “...Ugh... Hey, what’s with the sneak attack!? Don’t you think I took enough psychic damage when Azul brought that up earlier?!”
“No!” Cater huffed. “Because you never even told me! Why’d I have to find out from AZUL?”
“B-B-Because…” Idia stammered, “Why would- I told you I thought you were dating Trey and kind of also Riddle back then! And there was also that one time you came over to hang out after you’d been to a party in Pomefiore, and you told me you kissed Rook Hunt!”
Cater gasped. “OMG, I can’t believe you remember that. I almost don’t remember that!”
“Of course I remember!” Idia took his turn to pout, now that the ice cream cone was finally finished and no longer a hazard to his theatrics. “I had a huge crush on you! OBVIOUSLY I’m gonna sit and agonize endlessly over every little detail you told me about your love life - and also my own headcanons to your love life, apparently. You were my super hot best friend and I was the school shut-in!”
Cater gasped. “You thought I was hot?”
“I still think  you’re hot!” Idia shouted, and then slammed his hands over his mouth as his eyes blew wide open and the tips of his hair flushed into a bright shade of pink, flaming wisps dancing wildly around his face.
Cater stared silently back at Idia with equally wide eyes as silence filled the air between them.
Idia promptly spent the next ten seconds planning out how he could escape and have Ortho help him fake his own death, only to be interrupted by Cater speaking again.
“...It’s kinda like the universe is playing a trick on us, don’tcha think?” 
When Idia’s only response was more panicked stares, Cater continued. “Um, like… Neither of us was really ever the type to seriously ask someone out, y’know? So we were both just… Sitting on our feelings.”
Idia finally managed to find his voice again as he squeaked out a reply. “Wh-?! Both? ‘O-our’ feelings?! You never-!”
“Ugh, Idia, please,” Cater grabbed Idia by the shoulders and turned him so they were facing each other. “I fell asleep on your shoulder WAY more times than I’ve ever gotten sleepy hanging out with Trey, and he and I were roomies for two years straight!”
“...How many times did you fall asleep on Tr-”
“NOT important! Just- Listen…” Cater closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. He slid his hands down from Idia’s shoulders to his hands, then opened his eyes and looked at Idia very seriously. “...I… Also still think you’re hot.”
“Wh- Don’t make fun of me!” Idia shrieked, his face now matching the color of the tips of his hair as he attempted - unsuccessfully - to wiggle his way out of Cater’s grasp.
“Sorry, sorry, I couldn’t help it!” Cater giggled, tugging Idia closer. “But I'm not making fun, I swear! You really are still a Grade-A hottie after all these years!”
Idia paused his squirming to glance sideways at Cater. “..Enough to kiss me instead of Rook at a party?”
Cater gasped in shock, and it was Idia’s turn to laugh. 
“IDIA! You’re so much bolder these days, jeeze….” A sly grin spread across Cater’s face, and he leaned closer. “But, y’know… We ARE at a wedding party, and Rook is one of the guests.
Idia went quiet again, freezing in place as he watched Cater’s face move closer.
“Totes within kissable range if we went back, I guess… But I kinda don’t wanna get on Vil and Leona’s bad side, y’know?”
He leaned in closer, and hoped Idia couldn’t hear the anxious hammering of his heart against his chest.
“And… You’re a lot closer… And a lot cuter, TBH…”
Cater paused, averting his eyes to the side. Waiting. 
The offer was on the table, and it was up to Idia what happened next. The following five seconds stretched across what felt like eons to them both as Idia focused all his energy on trying not to literally pass out on the bench and take Cater down with him, or get overwhelmed by the possibility that if he DID kiss Cater, Cater might immediately throw up all over him and run away screaming. Really, it wasn’t that he didn’t WANT to kiss Cater, but what if he died? What if they both died!?
Well, they didn’t die. The agonizing seconds passed, but Idia decided that if he DID die, he’d rather go out knowing what Cater Diamond’s lips felt like against his, even if just one time. 
The kiss itself was quick, but had the weight of ten thousand hammers crashing into their walls of repressed feelings built up over several years.
Idia pulled back first, watching Cater cautiously for any signs of nausea.
But, Cater smiled at him, a nervous giggle bubbling from his lips. “That was-”
“BIG BROTHER? CATER DIAMOND? WHERE ARE YOU!?” Ortho Shroud’s shouted out in the distance from the direction of the wedding venue.
Oh, shit. How long had they been hiding out at that park, again?
“We… We should probably… Go back…” Idia mumbled.
“Y-yeah…” Cater slowly backed off of Idia, face flushed, but had not let go of his hands. “We… We should talk tonight, yeah?”
Idia wordlessly nodded, clutching Cater’s hands like his life depended on it.They headed back towards the wedding venue, hand-in-hand, both ignoring the internal dread from within at the growing realization that they both, somehow, had Azul Ashengrotto to thank for this.
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hairstevington · 10 months
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mysterious ways (Steddie Week 2023)
Eddie Munson x Steve Harrington
Hello all! I am participating in Steddie week this year, and I am doing a seven part series reflecting each of the seven prompts. Thank you @steddie-week for the challenge! I will only have this first part on Tumblr, but will post the next six chapters each day on Ao3, so follow along over there if you're into it! :)
Summary: Steve feels lonely after the earthquake. Somewhere deep in the Upside Down, new life is born. (Prompts: Hunger - Pining - Somebody to Love by Queen)
WC: 1.4K (each part is going to be pretty short I think)
Warnings: Kas!Eddie/Steve, canon universe post-season 4, pining, angst, a bit darker than my usual fare but not by much, PS this fic will have a happy ending because all my fics do lol
A/N: I wasn't planning on doing Steddie week because I'm going through a bit of a tough time right now but I randomly felt inspired today, so I'm giving it a go. Shout out to @skjachukson for requesting Kas Eddie, I have a feeling I'll be writing him more after this lmao
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Sometimes, when things are at their worst, Steve can shrug and say, “hey - it’s not the end of the world.” 
Of course, in Hawkins, it often is the end of the world. So now, Steve has no idea what to tell himself. 
His hometown, which - let’s be real - was never that glamorous, is now in shambles. After the “earthquake,” almost everyone fled, which was valid. The ones who stayed were mainly those who’d been directly involved, or those who have nowhere else to go. Many people lost everything, and Steve tries to give back where he can - they all do - but a lot of the time he’s just sad. 
His hometown was split in four, and all of his friends are in love. 
Steve feels so dumb for even caring, but he does. All he ever wanted was to be loved, really, and he’s gotten the short end of the stick the last few years. He used to feel on top of the world, and now he’s - well, he had been in the Upside Down, which was probably as close as he could get to the literal opposite of the top of the world. 
His friends found happiness where they could  - mostly through crushes and girlfriends and boyfriends. Steve doesn’t have any of that right now. He doesn’t even know where to look. Everything around him is sad. 
Robin and Vickie had bonded over peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, of all things. Since then, she’s been volunteering every chance she can with Vickie. Steve joins too, sometimes, but he feels very much like a third wheel. 
Some random dude with incredible hair and an even more incredible name (seriously, who names their kid Argyle?) showed up with Mike, Will, El, and Jonathan in a pizza van. A day later, the guy decided to drive back to Utah to visit his one true love or something. A woman with an equally badass name - Eden.
Steve wasn’t surprised when Dustin wanted to join, because apparently Eden lives with Suzie. Still, Steve was baffled by the whole thing. Usually, some sort of alarm would go off in his head about his surrogate little brother going on a road trip with a stoner, but Argyle seemed nice enough. 
Although, he did unironically use the word “brochacho,” and Steve didn’t really know how he felt about that. 
Steve knew Dustin was taking - uh, things - super hard, and so Steve encouraged any sort of break for the guy. Visiting Suzie seemed like the perfect way for Dustin to decompress, especially after what happened. 
So, Dustin took off. Robin’s busy. Steve is too mortified to even look at Nancy after he’d basically professed his love for her and she brutally rejected him and stayed with Jonathan. Lucas spends all of his time with Max. El and Mike are inseparable. 
That leaves Will. Steve doesn’t know Will that well, but he’s so lonely he doesn’t care if he comes off desperate or weird or whatever. 
Steve shows up at the Byers’ residence one Saturday morning, looking like a total dork. Hopper answers the door, even though Steve would have far preferred Joyce. She’s less, uhhh -
“Steve?” Hopper asks, gruffly. “What are you doing here?”
“I, um - I’m looking for -”
“Is that Steve?” a familiar voice calls from the living room. 
Ah, shit.
“Hey, uh, Nancy,” Steve says, giving a small wave. 
“Is something wrong?” she asks, joining Hopper at the door. 
“No, I -” Steve sighs. He’s mortified to even be in this situation. It was such a stupid plan in the first place. “I’m looking for Will. Is Will here?”
“Umm, yeah,” Nancy responds, retreating back into the house to presumably get her boyfriend’s little brother. 
“What do you need Will for?” Hopper asks, suspiciously. 
“Jeez, relax, Sheriff,” Steve replies. “I just wanted to talk to him. I’m the babysitter, remember?”
This explanation seems good enough for Hopper, even though Steve hasn’t really interacted with Will much prior to this. Not directly, anyway. He’d let the kids in to see movies for free back when he worked at Scoops, but that was it. 
After a full thirty seconds of awkward, painful silence, Will comes to the door. 
“Hey, kid,” Steve says. Hopper and the others had thankfully walked away to give them some privacy. “Do you - do you want to go to the music store with me?”
Will stares at him blankly for a moment, then shouts to the others behind him. 
“Mom! I’ll be back later!” 
Steve smiles, triumphantly. 
“Okay, have fun!” Joyce’s voice rings from somewhere in the house. “Be home by 5 for dinner!”
“You got it, Mrs. Byers!” Steve yells into the void. “Okay, let’s go.”
Will hurriedly walks out of the house and shuts the door behind him, then sighs in relief. 
“Thank god you’re here,” he says. “All the couples are driving me crazy.” Steve chuckles. 
“You and me both.”
-
Will turns out to be excellent company. He has good taste in music, and he’s funny. A little nerdy, like Dustin, but much quieter about it. They get along great, and end up spending a few hours together.
“My brother said he’d be there for me, and now he’s back to spending all his time with Nancy,” Will complains. 
“Yeah, well Nancy broke my heart into a million pieces, so,” Steve replies. 
Then, they riff on how annoying Jonathan and Nancy’s relationship is for a while. They aren’t saying anything out of genuine dislike for either party, but it’s still some much needed venting. Steve listens to Will talk about Mike and El, and that’s when he picks up on some things in between the lines. 
Maybe having a gay best friend makes him better at detecting that sort of thing. 
They pick out a bunch of music and listen to it as they drive around for a while. They both are big fans of Queen, so they blast that first. They get a little too into singing along to Somebody to Love, but neither of them poke fun at the other for it. As much as Steve and Dustin tease each other, and as much as he complains about being the babysitter, Steve loves these kids with all his heart. All of them, even the ones he doesn’t know as well, like Will. He would do anything to protect them. He’d done quite a bit already.
He drops Will off before dinner as promised, then heads home. It’s only after he passes by Forest Hills that he starts to think about Things again. The Things that he tries to suppress. The Things that bubble beneath the surface at any given moment. 
The Things that led up to the Earthquake. He isn’t ready to think about them. Not yet, maybe not ever. 
So yes, it’s far easier to reach out to other people who understand, and to cling to them as long as he can. And then he goes home, and instead of letting his mind drift to those dark places, he starts singing Queen under his breath. 
It’s stupid. It won't fix anything. But still, the need is there.
All he wants is somebody to love. 
-
Hawkins has begun to crack open, and soon what lay beneath will rise. 
It’s a dark place - somewhere that’s always on the verge of a storm. The energy in the air is thick with dread and impending doom. The creatures that live there are something that people may cast off as fictional, because their eyes aren’t open yet to how terrifying and big the world really is. 
Monsters, of all kinds. Some who had once been human, some who prey on humanity. Evil forces that keep kids awake at night. Forces that their parents insist are in their imagination. 
How foolish to think an imagination could be so vivid. Then again, perhaps imagination is what created this place to begin with. It could also be what sustains it.
A flash of lightning. Bats scattering. 
There’s a body somewhere in the fog, going through a transformation. Wings, teeth, and hunger. It takes several days for the body to resemble its altered form - one of strength, intimidation, and a deeply-rooted instinct for evil. 
Once complete, the body gasps in its new life. The soul of a tortured boy once occupied this space, but now there’s something else within him too - something ancient. 
Eddie Munson’s glowing eyes snap open.
He’s starving.
----------------------------
@paintballkid711 @abraca-fxckyou @allbimyself26 @jellybabiesforall @allbymyselfexceptformycactus @justaloadofgarbage-blog @alliemunsonsstuff @undreamingnscatworld @hobbitnarwhal @calivanus @wreckmyplans-thatsmyman @antheia @goodolefashionedloverboi @lillemilly @missmagillicuddy @steviesbicrisis @gamerdano @menamesniall eyeslikewildflowers111 @callmesirkay @stringischeese @eds-trashmouth @mnl-enuh @redfreckledwolf @itsanarrum @soulsofstarsliveinyourveins @gregre369 @stevesbipanic @momotonescreaming @aryakanojiaa @wrenisflying @comicmadlover @lilacrobin @itch-my-b0nez @anonymousbandgirl @disastardly @dangdirtydemons @daisyellsong @val-from-lawrence @starryeyedpoet17 @taikawaiteatea @clumsiluni @hollysimone @swimmingbirdrunningrock @witchofhawkins @steddiegarbage @suddenlyinlove @ricekristytreaty @eddielives1986
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deepspacedukat · 8 months
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Dripping With Affection
I mean...were you expecting me to leave my Romulan husband off of my SoC list? I'll take any excuse to write about Letant. Enjoy!
Day 26: Come Marking
SoC prompt list here. SoC Masterlist here. Cross-posted to AO3 here.
~*~
Letant (ST:DS9) x Reader
[A/N: This is smut, so 18+ ONLY, MINORS DNI!!!]
Warnings: Interspecies sex, Human/Romulan sex, established relationship, slight jealousy (kind of?), possessive language, possessive behavior, come marking, dom!Letant, sub!reader, risk of getting caught, quickie, sex on a desk.
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~*~
I could feel his glare from across the room. As palpable as the sun's rays, my husband's emotions were just as blatantly visible today as they were the day we met. I had to force myself to take a sip of my drink to hide my amused smile.
Letant had stepped away for barely a moment to speak with one of his colleagues about a private little war - political, of course - kissing my cheek and promising to return shortly. Almost as soon as he parted from me, a man's voice had sounded from beside me. Because of the high number of government officials present at this state gathering, there was plenty of security, so I wasn't exactly alarmed to find myself face-to-face with someone I didn't immediately recognize.
"My goodness, what is a lovely lady like yourself doing alone?" A rather short, plump Romulan man with cold, roving, steel-gray eyes offered what felt like a faux smile. "Perhaps I should keep you company. After all, it wouldn't do for your head to be turned by the wrong person."
I hadn't wanted to humor this stranger - in fact, I wanted to slap him for being so presumptuous - but for the sake of my husband's political career and reputation, I had to be as diplomatic as I could. Attempting to laugh off his comment in an airy, casual sort of manner, I stated that my husband hadn't left me without my own means of protection.
Though the man didn't disengage, he seemed a little more subdued, opting to make conversation rather than push his luck. He was well-behaved...for a little bit, at least. I glanced up at one of the many clocks around the room, which had been set up to keep the many officials there on schedule, and found that I'd been talking with him for twenty minutes.
How long could one man talk? I'd mostly tuned him out, nodding silently at his comments without really processing them, but something he said brought me back from my bored stupor.
"You know, if your husband doesn't come back soon, I may just have to take you off his hands. He doesn't deserve such a patient partner. How often does he leave you alone?"
My mouth dropped open, and I had no doubt that surprise was written all over my face - not at the man's second attempt at flirtation, but at his brazenness. To even imply that he'd try something like that with a Senator's wife was one thing, but to state it outright as he'd just done...oh, Letant would rip him apart.
Allowing a cold, disbelieving smirk to stretch my lips, I tilted my head slightly and addressed him.
"Are you actually foolish enough to believe that you'd survive that?"
"Survive what, my love?" Relief barrelled through me when Letant's arms encircled my waist from behind and drew me back against his torso. The man who'd been bothering me suddenly looked considerably paler than before, and his smile seemed quite brittle. "Have you been blustering again, Rakor? How sad. I thought you'd moved past your need to overcompensate for your stature."
A huff of laughter escaped me as Letant nuzzled the space behind my ear.
"If you'll excuse us, I need a word with my wife." The Senator didn't even pretend to wait for an answer, choosing instead to whisk me out the double doors, down the hall, and into a small, empty office in the span of what felt like barely a breath. Cupping my face gently, Letant gazed into my eyes. "You looked uncomfortable speaking with him. Tell me what happened."
What could I do but obey? As I spoke, I watched his expression harden into something dangerous.
"He's fortunate that I didn't snap his neck," he hissed lifting me into his arms. Letant carried me across the room and deposited me atop a desk. "I knew I should've done this before we came here tonight."
Before I could ask what he meant, his lips claimed mine, and I found myself melting beneath his touch. With practiced ease, the Senator tugged the hem of my dress up and brushed his fingertips over my lace-covered vulva. The intensity of his passion coupled with the movements of his skillful, dexterous fingers had me drenched and arching into his touch within mere moments.
I opened my mouth to beg, but before I could utter a syllable, voices sounded from just outside the door. We both froze until the noisy conversation had moved out of earshot, but he didn't move away. If anything, he seemed more determined.
"Anyone could walk in–"
"Yes, they could, but we both know you enjoy this kind of risk," he murmured grasping my jaw as the hand between my legs slipped beneath my panties. He wasted no time, slipping two fingers inside my embarrassingly slick entrance and curling them with precision.
My mate was always passionate, but as he moaned against my neck, I could tell that this desire ran deeper, delving into a much rarer, more primitive sort of hunger. He pulled my pleasure from me in record time, stealing away my screams with a well-timed kiss.
While I was still gasping from my climax, Letant tugged the crotch of my panties to the side, freed his length, and thrust his lok into me.
"So perfect for me, e'lev...such a good girl," he breathed threading his fingers into my hair as he set a fast, unrelenting pace. Smiling against his lips, I recalled how passionate he'd been last night. It wasn't as though there was a lack of opportunity for us to be intimate, yet every time we were drawn to near desperation in our pursuit of pleasure.
Pulling a second orgasm from me as easily as breathing, Letant tilted my head back and watched with relish as I fell apart on his lok. Trembling in his arms, I grasped at his tunic and bit my lip hard to keep myself quiet.
"Whose are you?" His gaze was so intense that it felt as though he was staring into my soul. The grip on the back of my head tightened just a fraction as his hips sped up, chasing his own end.
"Yours," I promised, and Letant muffled a shout against my neck as he reached his peak. The first warm spurt coated my inner walls, but he quickly pulled out and tugged my panties down just far enough to shoot the rest of his come on the inside of the fabric. I couldn't help but whimper when he slipped my underwear back in place. Swallowing the sound with his lips, he hummed contentedly against my mouth.
"There. That ought to remind any overly curious parties to whom you belong," he murmured as he tucked himself away and helped me fix my dress. I got shakily to my feet, and my husband caught my waist to steady me. His lips brushed over my cheek in a barely there kiss. "Careful, now. You're not allowed to collapse. At least, not before I can parade my freshly-scented wife through a ballroom full of dignitaries."
~*~*~
Taglist:
@akamitrani @android-boyfriends @attention-bajoranworkers @bigblissandlove1 @darkmattervibes @emilie786 @horta-in-charge @live-logs-and-proper @slutty-slutty-vulcans @starrynightgardens @toebeans-mcgee
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softevnstan · 1 year
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.+°🩰🍂👁️🫀🤎 Welcome, Enjoy Your Stay 🤎🫀👁️🍂🩰°+.
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Hello, my name is Silas and I use they/them pronouns. This is an 18+ blog. Minors DNI.
[requests - open] | [ao3] [random prompt event] | [random prompt event masterlist] | [moodboards]
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· This is a side blog for writing (and whatever else I feel like posting). Any follows/likes/replies/comments/asks do not come from this account; They come from @ftandy. · This is mainly a blog for bucky barnes and matt murdock, but I'll also post other things. · Feel free to send me asks about anything. If you send in a request it may take some time before I get to it, but know most likely I still plan on writing it. For asks that aren't requests, I might not answer them immediately, but just be patient, please. thanks! · DNI if you're a racist, islamphobe, transphobe, homophobe, or just in general a dickhead. my blog is meant to be a safe place in that regard. · This is a zero-tolerance zone for drama. don't like my pairings? this blog isn't for you. don't like the subjects i write? this blog isn't for you. don't like my take on characters? this blog isn't for you. please just block me, i won't take it personal. · I'm not a consistent writer by any means and have no update schedule as i write as a personal hobby. thanks for hanging around :) · my timezone is AKDT. my posts are infrequent and i attend college in the day. my posts typically run on a queue.
BELOW THE CUT IS THE OFFICIAL MASTERLIST
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IMPORTANT: to see my posts, change your community labels.
Angst = ❤︎ | Fluff = ✿︎ | Smut = ⚠︎︎ (minors DNI please) | Dark themes = ☾ | Personal fave = ☆
✞ It Feels Like Home ❤︎✿︎☾⚠︎︎ ↳ Bucky comes into your office one day looking for a new therapist when Raynor isn't working out.
✞ Kiss Me ✿︎ ↳ Your childhood best friend, Steve, needs help learning how to kiss. You have experience.
✞ The Devil Wears A Suit And Tie ↳ They haven't seen each other since college, AND now Bucky and Matt are fighting for the opposing sides.
✞ Everything Can & Will Go Wrong ⚠︎︎❤︎✿︎ ↳ TJ is about to go into heat; Meanwhile, he's stuck in a hotel in San Francisco on a layover with his mother's handpicked chaperone - Andy Barber.
✞ Slice Of Heaven ⚠︎︎✿︎ ↳ After a date night out with Bucky as you explore your new relationship, you unintentionally wind up taking your makeout session a little too far. Quickly you learn it's been far too long since Bucky has had a partner.
✞ Sleep, I'll Protect You From The Nightmares ✿︎❤︎ ↳ You're awoken by a sinister nightmare that leaves you rattled; Matt is there to comfort you and remind you you'll never go through anything alone.
✞ Linen & Thongs ⚠︎︎☾ ↳ After doing Bucky's laundry for him as a means of thanks, you decide to take it back to his apartment for him. What you're not ready for is Bucky's early return, along with being subjected to some of his pent-up thoughts and feelings.
✞ Strawberry Cream ✿︎⚠︎︎ ↳ For valentine's day, Bucky brings you a bowl of whipped cream and strawberries. With a game proposition, you very quickly come to learn you're hungry for a different type of cream. May the best player win.
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slow-burn-sally · 4 months
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20 questions for fic writers
Thank you @totallysilvergirl for tagging me <3
1. How many works do you have on AO3?
171
2. What’s your total A03 word count?
2,559,305
3. What fandoms do you write for?
I live for the days when anyone asks me this question, because listing things I love is just so great. I don't actively write for all of these any longer, but I would go back to all of them if anyone threw me like, half a prompt.
BBC Sherlock
Good Omens
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
The Terror
Our Flag Means Death
What We Do In The Shadows
The Adventures of Tintin
The Hobbit
BBC and CBS Ghosts
Pacific Rim
Father Ted
Lord of The Rings
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
Death In Paradise
Dalgliesh
4. What are your top five fics by kudos?
1. Crowley's Game - Good Omens (Ineffable Husbands)
2. Return To Sender - Good Omens (Ineffable Husbands)
3. Silk All Around You - Our Flag Means Death (Ed/Stede)
4. Oh Good Lord - Good Omens (Ineffable Husbands)
5. Out Of Suffering Into Love - Good Omens (ineffable Husbands)
hmm. Guess GO fandom is where I've cashed in the biggest, kudos-wise *Raises a glass to Good Omens Fandom*
5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?
I try to respond to as many as I can, and I want to respond to all of them, but ADHD and work and life keep me from doing it right away, and then ADHD and being off work and life make me forget. I will sometimes loop back around to read a new comment, then see that I never replied to another, far older comment, then go about replying to several, two years after they were left. I hope people don't mind. I promise everyone who's ever left me a positive comment, that I eat them all up like chocolate bonbons and count myself blessed for each and every one.
6. What’s the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?
Probably that Childercelles fic where Henry dies in the end. I think maybe 10 people read it. If you're in JSAMN fandom, and you ship Childercelles, and you want a link, PM me, but I can't remember the name of the fic for the life of me. It was pretty angsty. Outside of that, I hate angsty endings. Everyone eats ice cream and cuddles at the end of my fics.
7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?
Gonna echo the wonderful @totallysilvergirl and say that I don't do unhappy endings. That Childercelles fic was the only one I think I ever wrote with an unhappy ending, and even that was more of a melancholy ending. Everything else is Häagen-Dazs and rainbows.
8. Do you get hate on fics?
I've gotten a few harsh criticisms, and a few snarky comments, but never actual hate.
9. Do you write smut?
I sure do! I've written a whole lot of smut, and I really love it. Regardless, it can be challenging sometimes. I have to be in the right place, and have the right focus to write smut, and lately, it's been feeling more labor intensive. I've been taking a step back from the explicit stuff lately, and playing around in M rather than E, and less sexual waters for a change. Sometimes a gal needs a break. I'll always happily write it for others, but don't feel inspired to write it for myself right now.
10. Do you write crossovers?
I really see my Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell/BBC Sherlock crossover as my first and only crossover. It involves main characters from both fandoms meeting one another, and John and Sherlock live in a world where England's history is the same as the history in JS&MN. It's been a very fun experience, but I'm really writing it for @keirgreeneyes 's birthday, because we share a lot of stuff between those two fandoms, not because I love crossovers. I don't feel drawn to them at all usually.
11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?
Nope. Someone came to me a couple of years ago, saying they were being bullied over accusations that they were plagiarizing my good omens fic. They even showed me the fic people talked about, and after scanning it for a bit, I didn't see anything that looked like plagiarism. I posted on tumblr saying I'd rather people plagiarize me than cause one moment of suffering due to bullying, and left it at that. I was really just jazzed to have people *want* to plagiarize me, honestly. It was flattering.
12. Have you ever had a fic translated?
Yes! In Korean I think.
13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?
No, and I'm not sure I could. I also don't like cooking with other people or showering with other people. I just like having the reins on writing and cooking and showering fronts I guess.
14. What’s your all-time favourite ship?
Oh god please don't make me choose. My children, my precious children. After careful consideration though, I'm gonna have to go with Crozier/Jopson - Jopzier from The Terror. I mean. Come on. It's me.
15. What’s the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?
I wrote many chapters of a really fun, but really complex and pain in the ass multi-chapter mystery fic for the rarest of rare pairs, Jack Mooney/Florence Cassell from Death In Paradise. So yeah, I would love to finish it, but I don't have the spoons, and it will have a readership of roughly four people.
16. What are your writing strengths?
I think I write good dialogue. I write good smut. I can make up stories at the drop of a hat, and then put them down very quickly, in large amounts of words. I'm a long distance runner when it comes to fic. I like my sense of humor in fics, and I'm always so happy when someone leaves me a comment telling me they laughed really hard at something I wrote. Ditto incoherent babbling about my fics making them horny. Those comments are so good.
17. What are your writing weaknesses?
Eh, my weakness is I'm just not an amazing writer? I do it because I love it, and it brings me so much joy, and people reading my fics brings me so much joy, and that's pretty much it. Also, I use a lot of run on sentences, and I have like six tropey things my characters always do, and I can't break out of it.
18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic?
I didn't understand this one. I would love to write dialogues in other languages if I spoke them fluently. Outside of speaking a bunch of Spanish, I'm not fluent in anything but English.
19. First fandom you wrote for?
eeeeeeeeee @keirgreeneyes @totallysilvergirl my first ever fanfiction was BBC Johnlock! I tried writing a fic, probably back in 2013 or something, and gave up after a handful of paragraphs. I just lacked the confidence. Then, it wasn't until 2019 when I went nuts for Good Omens and wrote a bunch of fic that I wanted to go back and write that one, first, Johnlock fic. And I did it! It's Homecoming. BBC Sherlock is my first fanfiction fandom, and my introduction to fanfiction.
20. Favourite fic you’ve ever written?
Oh wow. That's a tough one. I really loved my one Father Ted fic, A Sweet, Hot, Sticky Romp, because I loved emulating the comedy style of the show and thought I did a good job.
I loved Out Of Time, my Jopzier time travel wackadoo fic for The Terror.
I guess I'll stop at two. I've written 171. I should get at least two favorites.
I tag @fol-de-lol @ilthit @yeswevegotavideo @keirgreeneyes @holycatsandrabbits
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xseaweed-brain · 1 year
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I'll admit I was going to skip out on a Nico bday fic this year, but after seeing the read riordan website, I couldn't help using it as a prompt. Fic also posted to AO3.
In which it's Nico's birthday, and he ends up (accidentally) spending the day with his father, stepmother and boyfriend in the Underworld.
Of Birthdays and Baking.
Nico strolls in the direction of the infirmary after teaching his morning sword-fighting class.
Camp Half-Blood had promising new recruits this year. They're obedient, and when Nico speaks, they pay attention.
That's because they're all terrified of you, he can hear the teasing tone of a certain son of Apollo in the back of his mind as a smile, as warm and brief as a flicker of sunlight on a cold winter's day, flutters across his lips.
It amused him to think of the younger ones being afraid of him-- as if they didn't know that beneath his tough exterior, he was soft for them and would do anything to protect them.
He enters the main hall of the infirmary, then makes his way past the beds, straight to the small office. Nico had agreed to pick up an extra day shift to help his boyfriend out, so they could celebrate his birthday with a fancy night out. For the longest time, Will had been hinting that he wanted Nico to take him to Paris, and that's exactly what he intends to do tonight.
💀☀️
Instead of the usual mane of shaggy blonde hair bent over the desk, he's greeted by the sight of Austin Lake, his boyfriend's brother, filling out some discharge forms. Nico clears his throat, and Austin looks up at him.
"Hey, man," he nods, "Happy Birthday."
"How did you know?" Nico asks, "I haven't--"
"No, you haven't," Austin agrees, "But, Will's been driving himself crazy trying to think of the perfect gift. So now, the entire Apollo cabin knows."
Nico groans, shaking his head. He'd told Will not to get him anything, but his boyfriend was too kind for his own good.
"Do you know where he is?" Nico asks.
"No clue," Austin says, "He just asked me to cover this shift for him. This is for you, by the way."
It's a little "Happy Birthday" card. Nico flips it over to see what's written on the inside. There, in Will's surprisingly neat handwriting, is a small message:
"Wishing you the happiest of birthdays, babe! I can’t think of anyone else I would rather venture into Tartarus than you. Speaking of: is there any possibility that we can wait a few weeks (or months) before we go? At least let me take you to Disney World first. I know you’ve always wanted to go to the Haunted Mansion!”
Nico smiles fondly as he reads.
"Dang. I always forget how cute you two are," he hears Austin mutter.
"Shut up, Austin," Nico says without any bite, as he turns so Austin can't see the pink staining his cheeks.
Back to his cabin it is, then.
"Happy birthday, grandpa!" Austin calls behind him, his snickering echoing around the empty infirmary.
Nico flips him off this time.
💀☀️
He pauses at the door of his cabin, lifing off the little note stuck there.
In elegant cursive, it's written:
“Enjoy your birthday, son. Maybe, if you’re not otherwise occupied, you would like to venture down into the Underworld and spend some time with your father? Perhaps Persephone and I will even bake a cake for you. Perhaps.”
His eyes widen. His father never invited him down to the Underworld to spend his birthday. In fact, Nico isn't even sure if Hades and Persephone knew how to bake a cake.
But, he knows someone who does know how to bake a cake.
Swearing under his breath, he scoured his surroundings for the nearest shadows. Surely, his boyfriend wasn't actually in the Underworld, baking him a cake with his father and stepmother-- but he knows, deep down, it's exactly the thing Will Solace would do.
💀☀️
The skeletal guard at the door of the Palace of the Underworld looks right at him with twin black holes where his eyes used to be.
"Where is my father?" He asks.
The guard raises a finger in the direction of the kitchen.
"Alright," Nico mutters in amazement, "This is really happening."
He can hear a familiar voice with a light twang speak as he nears the large wooden double doors.
"Y'got it, Lord Hades."
"Oh, this looks beautiful," comes a lighter, feminine voice.
As he enters the kitchen, he sees his father, the almighty king of the Underworld, standing with an apron tied around his waist, a piping bag of icing in his hand. Lady Persephone stands next to him, pressing her fingers against the.... carnations (?) on the cake, changing their colours. Will stands on the other side, carefully supervising the two gods.
"Hi, babe," Nico says dryly, and like three guilty children, three pairs of eyes meet his.
"Nico," Hades says, face suspiciously blank, "I left the note, but I didn't think you would come."
"I wasn't going to," his lips twitch as he fights off a laugh, "But, I had the wildest theory as to where my significant annoyance had disappeared to, and I thought no. No way. I just had to see if it was true."
"Oh, I'll get you for that," Will mumbles, face flushing.
Hades clears his throat.
"Oh. Right. Father," Nico says, bowing slightly, "Lady Persephone. How exactly did Will manage to rope you into this?"
"Hey!" Will says, indignantly.
"It was all Lord Hades' idea," Persephone says, helpfully, "I figured you and I might as well bury the hatchet, as we'll both be in each other's lives forever."
"Right..." Nico trails off.
"We hope you like it," Hades calmly gestures at the cake, as though he was gesturing to send a ghost back to the fields of Asphodel.
It's nice-- cream icing with purple and red carnations at the top. Persephone tells him those are the flowers of January.
"All due respect, but can we eat this?" Nico asks, frowning lightly.
Persephone rolls her eyes, muttering a few choice words about her mother.
"The cake is entirely made of human materials," Hades answers.
Will produces some candles and Hades waves at it, lighting it. They sing Happy Birthday, and Persephone produces a large knife to share the cake.
His father approaches him, while Will and Persephone fuss over the leftovers. It's strange, watching the Queen of the Underworld chatter happily with his boyfriend.
"She has a soft spot for brave heroes," Hades says, adoringly.
"Will's braver than we'll ever know," Nico smiles, watching his boyfriend.
"The older you get," Hades says, and something in his voice makes Nico look over at him.
He has the most smug look on his face, and Nico can see that this is the same, exact look he gives Frank when he beats him at mythomagic.
"The more I realize how alike we are," Hades finishes, "Even in something as small as our choice in partners."
Realization hits him like a slap across the face. Fuck. His father is right. They are more alike than he cares to admit.
Nico looks over at his stepmother and boyfriend again. He knows that, as a goddess, Persephone could choose whichever form she wanted to appear in. Today, she has long blonde locks and blue eyes, eerily similar to Will's appearance. It doesn't help when Hades adds, "This is how she first appeared, you know. Before she came to the Underworld with me."
Persephone is the goddess of spring and Will is a son of Apollo-- meaning they both have similar, sunny dispositions. They are the exact opposite of Nico and Hades, but somehow manage to bring out the best in them both.
"Happy birthday, son," Hades repeats in that smug tone, clapping him on the shoulder.
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kay-elle-cee · 4 months
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happy birthday dear kelsey! from the prompt list - 31. "this is me swallowing my pride" or OOOOH "silence and patience, pining and anticipation"
Thank you, sweet Kat! I've gotten additional requests for BOTH of these prompts (you're very good at picking prompts, it seems), so here's 31, and I'll tag you for the other!
(I didn't expect this to come so easily to me, but the idea that there was never a mention of Harry's Godmother has been rattling around in my brain for aWHILE.)
Read here on ao3 or below the cut!
(and tagging @nena-96 since she requested this one as well!)
“I really can’t express enough how much I hate this idea.”
Lily’s answering sigh is exhausted. It’s not the first time they’ve had this argument over the past few days, and the combination of that and the ‘new-parent-lack-of-sleep’ situation they’ve found themselves in has resulted in a shorter-than-normal fuse.
“It’s just ceremony, James,” she snaps, before carefully lowering her voice to not wake Harry, who’s currently asleep in his father’s arms. “It’s not like he’d ever go to live with her if something happened to us, alright? I’m not that daft. It’s just…” she trails off, chewing on her bottom lip and blinking away tears that honestly have no business being in her eyes in the first place.
“You think this could help fix things,” James finishes softly, carefully watching her.
“Maybe,” she shrugs. “I mean, I feel like the ask means more to our world anyway, you know? Godmother. There's a foundation there, in the religion we were raised in. Not that our parents were particularly strict with it but I just think it would mean something to her—an olive branch. And she’s a mother now, too…I don’t think I’m crazy in believing things might be different now.”
Lily’s words settle in the silence, the dim lighting of their living room warm and cozy around them.
“And…what if she says no?”
James’ words aren’t barbed, but they pierce Lily to the core anyway. She knows without a doubt that it’s because the probability exists more than James’ bringing it up, but she hangs her head in her hands regardless, hears him shift to move next to her. His arm circles around her, lips pressing to the side of her temple as he carefully balances Harry.
“I’m sorry, Lil. I just want—”
“I know,” she whispers. “It’s something to consider. Something to brace for.” She turns to look at him—notices how his brows knit together with worry, how his jaw is set as if holding back his fully unfiltered thoughts about just what he thinks of Petunia (it’s nothing she hasn’t heard before, she’s sure).
“Even with all of that…I want to do this, James. I want to ask her, at least.” She leans into him, burying her forehead in the crook of his neck and squeezing her eyes shut. “Sirius is Harry’s Godfather. Sirius is our first choice. If Sirius is all he has, at the end of the day, I’m content with that. But I’d at least like to ask. She’s my sister. It would mean a lot if you could get onboard.”
She can feel the muscle in his neck tighten, his arm pulling her closer as his cheek rests upon her head. “Of course I can, Lily. We can go into town and post the letter tomorrow.”
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virtie333 · 3 months
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Day 29 - Life Day Damerey Celebration
Prompt: Cozy
Summary: Poe looks good in anything, but especially soft sweaters
Notes: I'm writing this with the idea that Rey is an HSP (Highly Sensitive Person) like me.
On a separate note, I posted this last year on the day I lost my heart cat, Rodney. It was just another nail in the coffin of the year 2022. I still feel like I haven't processed his loss completely, I was so numb when it happened. Maybe I'll start going through his pictures someday soon.
AO3
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Rey didn’t know how he did it.
It didn’t matter what color he wore, what pattern, what kind of material, or what season of the year, Poe always made sweaters look cozy and comfy. Cardigans, turtle necks, v-necks, even ugly Christmas sweaters looked great on him.
Rey envied how comfortable he was in them, as she herself had such sensitive skin that all but the softest of sweaters made her skin itch. She didn’t like anything tight around her neck, either, so though she knew she looked cute in turtle necks, she always felt as if she was suffocating in them, and if they weren’t super soft, it was pure torture to wear one. Poe knew about her dilemma, though, and never bought her anything but the softest of cardigans. They were always in bright colors, with no patterns, and they were warm and easy to slip on and off in case they became too prickly feeling at any time.
When Rey and Poe first stated dating, Poe was never picky about what kind of sweater he wore, nor did he really care how he looked in them. Not that he had to worry, since he looked great in anything. However, after he and Rey had been together for a few months and he started to learn her little quirks, her likes and dislikes, and the reason behind them, he started paying attention to what he wore. Not for any aesthetic reasons, but for Rey’s comfort.
Suddenly, his t-shirts, dress shirts, and of course his sweaters, had to be super soft. He wanted Rey to be comfortable touching him, therefore she needed to be comfortable touching his clothing. Rey didn’t notice what he was doing at first. All she knew was that she was never physically irritated by anything while she was near Poe. Her brain slowly began to connect that fact that everything he wore on his torso was of fine material, oftentimes smooth, and always soft. The rough sweaters he used to wear were gone, as were the stiff, starchy shirts.
When she began to suspect he was doing it for her, she was too afraid to ask him outright. What if she was just imagining things? What if he was just realizing he was more comfortable in that kind of clothing? But one night, as he was dropping her off at her apartment after a movie, she decided she had to ask him.
His coat was open, so she ran her fingers gently down his chest, appreciating the downy feel of the sweater he was wearing underneath the coat.
“Is this for me?” she asked softly.
He tilted his head questioningly. “Is what for you?”
She felt her face heat, but she pushed forward. “The sweater,” she said. “Your other shirts these past few weeks. They’re softer than what you usually wear.”
He looked away, biting his lip, then he smiled and looked back at her. “I wasn’t sure you’d notice.”
“It is for me, isn’t it?” she nodded. “Because I’m too sensitive.”
“You’re not too sensitive,” he denied. “Sensitive is just what you are. It’s not a bad thing.”
“Isn’t it?” she asked. “If it’s making you change who you are?”
He laughed softly. “Rey, my choice in clothing isn’t who I am. My sense of style has no definition. Besides, I’m kind of getting overindulged by wearing all this soft stuff.”
Rey huffed a laugh. “More comfortable?”
He shook his head. “Nope. You touch me more often, now. It’s spoiling me.”
“What if?” Rey started to say.
“What if, what?”
“What if I wanted to touch you even more?” she said with a shy smile. “Without that soft stuff between us?”
He looked at her for a long moment, his eyes intense.
“Then you better invite me inside.”
Rey stepped aside and invited him inside.
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randomffiction · 10 months
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Story Snippets 🍃🔶 Earth and Wind
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A drabble for my favorite lovebirds, Zhongli and Venti. I love them so much I need to write more Zhongven tbh.
[Master Links]
Here's a chapter celebrating Venti's birthday!
Venti, an artist with well over a dozen albums under his belt. Alongside Zhongli, a well known leader of a historical society group in New York. The two of them are walking about the city when they notice a crowd forming near a billboard.
Curious over what have pique the crowds interest, he tugs on Zhongli's long sleeves. "Can we please check that out? It'll only be for awhile I promise!" There it is, the signature starry eyes Venti would give to his audience and making them squeal with happiness and awe.
Zhongli have been in this situation before, he likes to think he's immune to it but there's something in Venti's eyes that absolutely tug at his heartstring.
"I'm supposed to accompany you to rehearsal, not to join a crowd gathering over a billboard out of all things." He begin to scold the singer, but Venti being Venti cover his ears and blow a raspberry to him.
"Don't make me hold you by the collar in public, Bard. I don't want to gather a crowd around you too." There's the stern teacher voice Zhongli would use when he's off teaching other historians about a subject. But that voice only prompt the smaller figure to giggle.
"So jealous, I'll only go look for a moment! No one will notice I'm their favorite artist just wandering around New York." His tone filled with confidence and pride, very sure of himself he won't get a trail of paparazzi running after him like last time.
Zhongli look at Venti with concerned as he take a glance at his watch. He sigh before replying to him, "Okay but only for a moment and don't leave my side." He offer his hand to the singer, Venti of course immediately takes it and intertwined their fingers together.
"Got it captain!" "And watch your guitar please."
Venti readjust his guitar case straps as tight as he comfortably can before dragging Zhongli by the hand to the crowd watching a billboard. At first it was just an ad about a new restaurant that just opened next block, but then it happened.
The billboard shows a video of a compilation of Venti's singing with the text "Happy Birthday Venti". The crowd instantly cheers and start recording the billboard. It only just occurred to both Zhongli and Venti that the whole crowd are wearing the singer's merch and holding a massive banner with the same text as the billboard.
Venti instantly turn red, embarrassed that his fans would do such a thing. To even rent a billboard to dedicate a video just for his birthday, he's proud and want to die at the same time. He would have to take note of this event and post it on his social media.
"Venti.. I think they noticed you."
Zhongli said just above whisper to Venti. The two of them starting to notice that the crowd of people are starting to eye them, some blinking in disbelief.
"We should go quietly, while they're still unsure." Zhongli starts to tug on Venti's hand, but the other are still flustered by the gift from his fans. So he decide to do what he does best.
"Thank you everyone, why don't we take a picture together?"
That day is going to be remembered as the day Venti takes a group picture with the crowd while Zhongli is the one holding up the camera.
"Happy birthday Venti!"
If you enjoy that chapter please check the others in AO3. Thank you for reading!
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jancy-central · 4 months
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Welcome, everyone, to another Spotlight Saturday!
This week we are spotlighting writer @throttlegainwell so read their answers to our ‘Get To Know Your Fic Writer’ questions below the cut. And here is the ao3 link to check out all of their amazing fics:
Reminder: This month’s prompt is ‘soulmates’…
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…so please see our pinned post for more info. We have posted a lot of soulmate prompts for those needing some inspiration so check those out as well.
And as always, feel free to message us with any questions, whether you are a fic reader or a fic writer. Both of us write fanfic so we are open to helping however we can. Need a beta? Message us and we’ll either help you or put out a call for beta help! Hit writer’s block? Maybe we can help? Or maybe you just want to recommend a fic? SEND US AN ASK OR A DM!
Happy Saturday! ✍🏼 📖
Spotlight Saturday Questions:
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@throttlegainwell’s answers:
1. I guess I prefer one-shots generally, but it's much more satisfying to me to write (and finish!) multi-chaptered fics.
2. A mix of both? There's usually at least some degree of planning for each chapter, but sometimes I just see where it goes.
3. ... It depends on the story. Usually, I'm rushing to slap a bunch of ideas into a document as quickly as I can type (or writing notes on my phone). Lines of dialogue, character ideas, themes I want to address, bits of description or narrative or details to include, plot arcs, whole scenes sometimes... I get those into one doc (which I clean up as I go, if I'm copying them over from my phone), then I create a corresponding doc titled LINEAR that I typically view side-by-side with the fragments/notes doc. I move bits into the LINEAR doc as I work, once I know where they're going or have a place for them (like when I've built the connective tissue), until the first doc is empty; I finish writing in the LINEAR doc. There's usually a brief summary of the story, by that point, in the Synopsis window on the right (I work in Scrivener) so I don’t get too off-track, and I'll probably have some notes in the Notes window, as well as any warnings that will be necessary if I post it (so I don't forget later). But sometimes I just sit down and write, like, an entire story, without thinking about it, or I'll try something stream-of-consciousness or experimental. And sometimes I actually do outline (though sometimes that outline is just a bunch of things that I know need to happen, and I drag those around until the order of them feels like a satisfying arc--I wrote an entire 40k+ story that way).
4. Oh, everywhere, I guess. From the source material, definitely. From books I read, concepts I've studied, themes that just interest me so they tend to crop up in my work or maybe I want to try a different spin on them. Sometimes a story I've written/am writing sparks an idea, or I want to try a variation on it to see where it goes, so I branch off from that. Sometimes I just want something, out of the blue. Occasionally, I browse prompts.
5. Nah. I did the whole concrit thing back in my early fandom days. I'm here to have fun and I assume so is everyone else.
6. Nope! I used to do beta reading, a long time ago, and I've casually edited for fandom friends, but I've never used a beta reader. I don't really see myself starting now.
7. Whichever one is the most interesting for the story or whichever one best serves the story's goals, usually. Sometimes because I haven't tried a particular POV before and I just really want to give it a shot, or because I'm writing it with one voice and the voice of a different POV character just *feels* right or sounds really interesting. But I've been branching out a little! I'm usually very committed to 3rd person limited, but this past year, I've been trying switching POVs a bit, I'm writing one story simultaneously from two different POVs (beginning to end, for each) just because it's such a different story for each character, and I'm writing one from omniscient POV because it was really the only one that would do what I needed.
9. I usually try to! (Not always. But usually.) I don't read a lot of fanfic, due to what I imagine is the very common combination of lack of free time and quite severe concentration issues (though I've always been a big reader and I love it a lot, so this is, needless to say, a massive bummer). It's worse with fiction than non-fiction, so if I actually manage to read a fic, it's a safe bet that I probably took notes during and the author will hear *at length* about all the ways I enjoyed it and what I found really interesting or memorable.
10. I have many WIPs, but blinks only came up in a few. One is too explicit to share here, but here's one: He can’t tamp down a shiver at the thought; he blinks extra hard, resisting the urge to grasp the back of his neck protectively.
11. Ooh. Like I said, I don't read a lot of fic (and I haven't read that many for the ST fandom), but I very much love what maddie_grove is doing with Tonight, Tonight, The Highway's Bright. I wildly enjoyed where the hours bend, by fakelight. And this world is gonna pull through, by scoutshonour, hit just right.
12. I don't tend to expect much feedback. I post because otherwise I'll go back and tinker with fics, and I don't really have the time for that, plus at a certain point it's not fun anymore, but I'm still messing with it. So when it's done enough that I've accomplished what I set out to, I post to free up my brainpower to move on to other things. It doesn't necessarily discourage me to not receive it (usually), but it really does encourage and motivate me when I *do* receive it. If someone enjoys a story and wants to talk about it, I'm likely to write more works in that vein or explore those ideas/characters/fandom more. I’m more likely to go back to a WIP if people are excited about it with me. I've received some truly lovely, thoughtful, analytical, humbling, and memorable feedback, and I hugely appreciate and enjoy all of it.
13. Don’t delete/erase anything. Save it all.
14. I tend to get into a certain headspace to write, but I wouldn't say that I usually feel what the characters are feel. Sometimes, I probably do. (I'm one of those people who moves their lips when they read an emotional scene, so I guess I do get a bit into it while I'm writing! Embodied cognition, what a trip.) I do sometimes draw from personal experience, but typically only in very broad strokes.
15. Happily. :) I've written a LOT of sex scenes over the years, for a lot of different thematic, narrative, and character purposes (and sometimes just for rule of horny, rule of funny, or to explore a particular kink). I approach each one differently, based on the tone I'm trying to set, whether I want it to be particularly erotic or emotional or something else, the level of narrative distance I want the reader to feel, what the characters are like, what the overall genre is. Sometimes I get visual or detailed, depending on what I'm trying to do (and whether I feel those characters would do so or whether it would be a help or a distraction in that moment), but I tend to depict the internal processes more than the physical details. The sensory aspects. The observations, interpretations, and reactions. Connections between characters, if there's more than one. I personally tend toward realism in my sex scenes, but I'm not going to pretend that I don't skirt the edges sometimes or just say fuck it and throw realism out the window for a particular story. But I don't think realism is necessary in smut (or any fiction, when it comes down to it). It's a matter of preference.
16. Omg how many fic ideas am I NOT nurturing right now. Way, way too many. Here's a Jancy one that hasn't quite made it to the WIP stage (still in the synopsis-in-dedicated-doc stage): Jonathan and Nancy break up over the college thing. (It’s not really the college thing.) Years later, as they're both settled into their careers (Jonathan as a photographer, Nancy as a journalist, both constantly traveling for work and hard to reach), they end up sharing a room when they visit for Lucas and Max's wedding. Lots of angst, lots of pining, lots of denial, and ultimately an exes-getting-back together story. Sometimes you just want the cliche done your way.
17. I just don't write, tbh. I try to address whatever issue is preventing me from writing (if possible) or (if it's beyond my control) I just accept that it's not a writing period of my life. I'm happier when I'm writing regularly, and I do think it's good for me overall, but I'm not going to let hobby writing cause me genuine stress. (I've got non-hobby writing for that, ha.) I take it as a sign that something is wrong or that I'm just tired of writing and need to recharge (by engaging some other interest or hobby for a while).
18. Depends. Sometimes the title comes first, sometimes during, sometimes after. Sometimes I really do just fall in love with a title, though. I rarely struggle to title fics after the fact, but when I do, I'll just slap a quick and vague title on there and call it a day. Often it's a pun or something relevant, sometimes an important line from the story, sometimes lyrics. I have a series of art-related titles for some Will stories I want to do and some science ones I have saved for some Dustin stories. Some photography terms for Jonathan. Stuff like that.
19. Turns out it's hurt/comfort! This should surprise no one.
20. Oh, have I ever. Yeah, I've had people read enough of my work to point out themes that I tend to tackle a lot (I'm big on autonomy, resilience, and kindness--you'll see them repeated a LOT in my work, from different angles--and, yeah, I write about trauma a lot), and I definitely have some words/expressions that pop up a lot (and with each passing year, I try a little less to cull them). Also, you'd be hard-pressed to find a story of mine where someone isn't making, drinking, or talking/thinking about coffee. No reason. It just... seems to happen.
21. I had a shared 'verse with a friend, a long time ago. It was a huge amount of fun. We really gelled and produced just tons of material for it that had us in tears laughing and, you know, was also incredibly horny. That was a shared 'verse, rather than a collaboration for an entire story, but, yeah, I'd say that I'd be willing to collaborate. I don't consider myself terribly reliable or consistent, though, so I worry that a potential writing partner would find this frustrating.
22. I used to think so, but, honestly, I've been proved wrong many times, so I'd say no, not really. There's not a lot that I absolutely won't write. There are a few things that remain pretty serious squicks for me, but I'm sometimes able to write about things that I would find difficult to read. Some things also don't necessarily interest me or I would find it technically difficult to write them.
23. Don't worry about making it beautiful. Just get it all down. (You can’t sculpt what’s not there, you know?) And in that vein: write EVERYTHING down. Even if you’re not sure it works. Don’t assume you’ll remember or won’t need it. Just write everything.
24. Anything that's involved regimentation. That just doesn't work for me in every case. It's important to be flexible, both to discover what *does* work for you or to be able to move between different strategies for different stories or at different times in your life. Close second, though: that you should mine your pain to write because that's where true art comes from. That advice is shit. Sometimes art is aliens fucking in a time warp and also there's a ghost with daddy issues. Write whatever the hell you want. It does not have to be profound literature to be a good story.
25. For my ST fics? I think I've gotten a pretty decent response for most of what I've posted, considering it's all very niche and this is a massive fandom (and one to which I came extremely late and very recently). I guess a little more response for already wise, already worn might have been nice, just because it's a weird little experimental story that I think actually came out really neat, but it's *very* niche so I never expected much response. Or possibly Two Steps Forward, just because I think it's an interesting little ghost story that's different from everything else I have posted, and I really do have a soft spot for gen works.
26. For my ST fics, our future foe scenarios is a pretty odd one. We've got Nancy really feeling her big sister duties while also kind of worrying about Jonathan, making out with him, then convincing the Party to let her earnestly and VERY awkwardly talk to them about the importance of consent (and kind of roping Jonathan into helping her, which he's not happy about but dutifully does). It’s kind of clumsy, but she means well.
27. I love when the ideas slot into place, when I know where things are going, I see how it's moving, and I get all the pieces lined up so it's a straight shot to the end. Extremely satisfying. I dislike working out the kinds of technical details that I'd prefer to gloss over but that are sometimes story-significant, like ages and timelines. I'm increasingly just ignoring that shit.
28. Apparently I'm getting several thousand words done a day, on average, with as many as 6-7k some days. But I'm happy if I just do a couple hundred, or a line or two. This has just been an unusually productive year for me.
29. Ideally: I ignore it for a couple of weeks until I've forgotten the shape of it, then I read it over with fresh eyes. Increasingly: when it's written, I go over it for typos, overall continuity, basic coherence, and (if it covers sensitive themes) to make sure that I'm not inadvertently presenting something wildly hurtful or counter to my goals. And then I just call it done.
30. I'd say that I never really polish all that much to begin with, these days. I mostly post 1st drafts, even though there's typically stuff that I would pretty easily catch and adjust if I gave it a real once-over. I've just decided that I'm okay with not fussing with it very much. But I share WIPs these days, some of which are pretty rough. (I did not used to do this that much.)
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