#this is actually a good chunk of chapter three

[momosandlemonsoda]

For the WIP game, @mekare-art asked for "DMBJ CM: Xiaoge is hurt Please!" This is part of my Club Moonlight 'verse A Tiger is a Tiger not a Lamb, where Liu Sang and Wang Can are twins in a band together, and they are hooking up with Wu Xie and Xiaoge. Here you go!

*

Liu Sang was grateful that the servant who answered the door at Wushanju the next morning was familiar to him. It was the first thing that had gone right that morning.

“Uh, good morning, Miss— Uh, Mr— Uh, I mean, Liu-ye,” the boy stuttered, taking in Liu Sang in one of his more demure qipaos, long sleeved, tea length, a pretty dark green color, and Wang Can in his best trousers and a button-down shirt. The sleeves were rolled up, of course, and he’d refused to wear a tie or jacket, but Liu Sang hadn’t had the will to keep fighting. “Um. Laoban is, um, not taking visitors today.”

“Oh,” Liu Sang said, and then stepped on his brother’s foot when he heard him growl. He made his eyes big, and blinked them vacuously. “Oh, really, Kan Jian?” The boy blushed. Good. “It’s just that we heard that Xiaoge wasn’t well. We really wanted to give him our good wishes ourselves.” Wang Can shook the basket of fruit they’d picked out in a threatening manner. Liu Sang forbore from rolling his eyes, and instead looked hopefully at Kan Jian.

“Uh,” Kan Jian said. “I mean, um.” He looked behind him. “Um. It’s just. Uh—” 

Liu Sang smiled sweetly. “Do you think maybe you could check, Kan Jian? I don’t want to bother Wu Xie, but,” He bit his lip. “We really are worried.”

Kan Jian wrung his hands miserably. “I want to help, Liu-ye, but—”

“Maybe,” Liu Sang said, delicately reaching out and patting Kan Jian’s hand, “You could ask someone else?” He gave Kan Jian’s hand a little squeeze. “Please?”

Kan Jian broke. “Okay. Liu-ye, um. Mr. Wang. Come in and I’ll get Pang-ye.” He let them into the first courtyard and barred the door again, turning to hurry down the corridor. 

Wang Can started after him, and Liu Sang grabbed his arm. “Didi.” They had a silent fight. Liu Sang won, but he knew he wasn’t going to be able to hold his brother back for long. Now that they were inside, Wang Can wasn’t going to be denied the chance to check on Xiaoge. Neither was he, of course, but he was still trying to play this carefully. 

***

Kan Jian came back with Wang Pangzi, and Liu Sang could hear his brother sigh in relief. Wang Can liked the man. Apparently he’d joined Wu Xie, Xiaoge, and Wang Can for a bar fight a couple of times though Liu Sang understood he’d demurred on the post-fight… entertainments. He’s a good fighter, Wang Can had said. High praise indeed from his brother.

“What’s this, Kan Jian?” Pangzi asked, after taking them in. Liu Sang had straightened when he heard Kan Jian returning, but Wang Can was still leaning insouciantly against the wall, cradling the basket of fruit. Pangzi snorted, turning to the man. “Do you really think that Wu Xie doesn’t want to see them? After all,” and here he grinned, slipping into what Liu Sang suspected was habitual innuendo, “They’re Wu Xie and Xiaoge’s intimate friends.” the man winked at Liu Sang, “I think we can trust them.”

“But Pang-ye—” Kan Jian protested, and Pangzi shook his head. 

“I’ll talk to Tianzhen, Kan Jian. Don’t worry.” Pangzi patted the young man on the shoulder while waving Liu Sang and Wang Can back. “Look, they even brought fruit. Not a lot of people bring fruit and then try to kill the recipient.”

Wang Can grinned at that. “Well, this pineapple—

Liu Sang cut in quickly. “No bloodshed over the fruit basket, I promise.” 

“See,” Pangzi said, giving Kan Jian a push. “This Pang-ye will make sure they don’t yell too loud.” He offered his arm to Liu Sang, who accepted quickly— he wasn’t going to refuse a potential ally— and the three of them headed down familiar hallways.

Before they arrived at Wu Xie’s bedroom, however, Pangzi turned them aside, into an open, airy room, light streaming in from the courtyard beyond. Liu Sang had wandered through the house a bit, and he knew his brother had as well— once a house-breaker, always a house-breaker— but he’d never been in this room. The walls were lined with shelves of books and scrolls and there were gorgeous calligraphy hangings. The enormous desk in the corner gave its purpose away. Wu Xie’s study, he guessed, and, ah, there was the man himself.

As Wu Xie rose from his desk, Liu Sang noted that his dark curls were longer than usual, and tousled so badly that he’d probably been dragging his hands through them for hours. His skin was sallow and the circles under his eyes looked almost bruised. His clothes were a mess— gone was the dandy who gladhanded his way through the club and flirted as easy as breathing, and in his place…

“You look like shit,” his brother said, haphazardly dropping the fruit basket onto a convenient sofa and walking closer. 

Wu Xie blinked owlishly. “Xiao Can,” he said slowly, “what are you doing here?” 

“Carrying fruit,” Wang Can told him, pointing with his thumb. Wu Xie’s brow wrinkled.

“Fruit?” He caught sight of the basket, then his gaze darted back to Wang Can, then over to Liu Sang and Pangzi. “What… why did you bring fruit?”

“I hear that it’s a good gift.” Wang Can shrugged, then took another step forward. Wu Xie tensed, and his brother stopped, posture loose, lightly balanced on his feet. 

As Wang Can spoke, he kept his hands slightly away from his sides, shoulders relaxed, voice calm, and it took Liu Sang a moment to realize that he was acting to put Wu Xie at ease, to make himself less of a threat, while at the same time drawing Wu Xie’s attention to make himself rather than Liu Sang a target. Liu Sang’s hackles rose, and he looked closer to see what his didi was picking up. One of Wu Xie’s hands was clenched, and his posture radiated a warning, as if he could spring into violence at the least provocation. Liu Sang was reminded, suddenly, that Wu Xie was heir to what the Wu family politely called a business, and that that business often required violence to keep order. 

“Xie Yuchen told us that Xiaoge was injured and we wanted to pay a call. See if there is anything we can do to help.” 

As soon as Wang Can said Xiaoge, Wu Xie tensed further, and Liu Sang watched him grope a hand back on the desk and close around a metal letter opener. If he noticed it, then his didi certainly had, but Wang Can kept his posture open and relaxed. Liu Sang, on the other hand, could feel the situation start spiraling out of control. 

Suddenly, Pangzi boomed,“Tianzhen, sit down before you fall down. I bet you haven’t slept all night, have you?” He strode over to Wu Xie, who looked up at him, confused. 

“Pangzi?” he asked, and his voice sounded plaintive.

“Tianzhen,” Pangzi sighed, “you’re a mess. Your friends came to pay a visit and here you are, practically still in your pajamas. Not,” he apparently couldn’t resist adding, “that they haven’t seen you in those before.”

[queenerdloser]

me, rereading several of my half-finished oneshots and drafts: huh i love this. damn i'm a good writer. man, i want to read more of this.

me, remembering i have to sit down to write to finish these fics: ah

[tomriddlehyperfixataion]

The Diary of Tom Riddle- Tom Riddle x Reader - "Good" Ending.

pairing: Tom riddle x Fem reader

warnings: Horcruxes, Manipulation, Tom being Tom, side effects of being possessed, bleeding, self-harm, vomiting, (y/n) is going THROUGH it. horror elements. Tom Riddle.

summary: 16-year-old (y/n) finds a mysterious black book on the floor of after it slips out of Ginny Weasleys caldron, curious, she picks it up and keeps it-which leads to one thing after another and discovers the book is far more than it seems.

-Part 1- -Part 2- -Part 3- -Part 4- -Part 5- -Part 6- -Part 7- -Bad ending- -CC ending-

=

(y/n)’s hands shook as she entered the restricted section for the third night in a row. She couldn’t believe she’d been getting away with this every night, far after curfew had ended. But finally-the book Tom had needed her to get was in sight and she snatched it from the shelf, casting a quick ‘Silencio’ before undoing the chains around it and opening it.

“Possessions and reanimations” she muttered under her breath, looking for those two particular chapters Tom had told her to find. He’d told her one of the only, safe, ways to get whatever was trying to possess her out was to force it into a new host-that way it would leave more…willingly and not try to cling to her soul that it was trying to take over.

Research in the other books Tom had told her to read only confirmed that theory. An exorcism would leave her drained and vulnerable for the spirit/demon/being to reattach to, and it took a good chunk of magic/demonic magic knowledge that she did not have.

With a quick glance at the pages, she cast a copy spell to the diary and shoved the book back into the shelf after re-chaining it. Filch now a days patrolled the hallway where Mrs. Norris had been petrified so she didn’t have to worry about him.

Hopefully.

She carefully snuck back out of the restricted section, avoiding the patrolling prefects on the way back to her dorm. She let out a harsh breath as she reached her dorm room-her roommates/friends already asleep.

She crept to her bed and closed the curtains, casting the muffling spell and opening the diary that she’d been clutching in her hand. The two chapters were inked into the pages now, Tom making notes before her very eyes.

Her eyes drew to the scribble of notes at the bottom page.

‘Need healing potion. Special potion required to work. Must be done on a full moon. Blood sample needed. Large cauldron needed. Spell circle needed.’

She watched him scribble more and more notes with interest, feeling very touched he was so determined to help her get the attached spirit off her and into a body of its own so she could be free of it and, maybe, kill it so it couldn’t wreak havoc on Hogwarts.

The page flipped on its own and she watched as he drew out several spell circles, attempting to find the right one that she would need to draw out in blood before starting the potion that would build the body for the spirit that had latched onto her.

Finally, Tom landed on the perfect spell circle, two actually, it was all nonsense to her since it was very old magic, but Tom wrote notes at the bottom for her, detailing the properties of the spell circles and the runes within them.

‘The first circle is a sealing spell so it can't go anywhere. The second is a protection circle for you so it can't latch back onto you.’

(y/n) nodded to herself at the notes, watching the page flip again as Tom wrote down more notes and potion ingredients for the potion she’d create.

Three days of this, of watching Tom go nuts with his writing, watching firsthand of his magical knowledge-at only 16, Tom had been insanely knowledgeable and a magical genius, to the point where his personality enchantment was too. It was comforting, knowing he was so proactive in making sure she was going to be okay, that he wanted to help her.

It made warm fluffy feelings grow in her chest and tummy.

It made her think, while Tom continued to write notes, that she had wished-more than once now-that Tom was real, well-alive….alive and her age. He most likely was still alive, probably in his 60s now, but she wished the Tom she’d gotten to know was alive, real, not just words on a page or a ghost-like thing or just a spell.

She wanted him to be real, touchable, breathing…warm.

She sighed, it would never happen-Tom was only a personality enchantment, the most he would be ever able to do was to materialize outside the diary for a limited time or pull her into his memories/the subspace of his spell-based mind.

More recently, especially since telling her he believed she was being possessed, he’d been materializing outside the diary every night, watching over her as she slept and comforting her when she had nightmares about that strange room. It was nice, really nice, a comfort she hadn’t had since before the school year started remerging with Tom being around every night.

Those nights, when he stuck around, his hand a feather-light weight on her shoulder or in her hair, it was easy to sleep.

Her eyes drew back down to the diary-where Tom’s words stared back at her.

‘When is the next full moon (y/n)?’

(y/n) furrowed her brows and grabbed her astrology homework, flipping through the notes she’d taken. It seemed the next full moon was this upcoming Saturday, and it was Thursday night/very early Friday now. She told as such to Tom, and he quickly wrote back to her.

‘Very good, the quicker this is done the better. Now. I need you to get these potion ingredients and bring them to the 2nd floor girls’ lavatory, the haunted one you’ve mentioned.’

(y/n) furrowed her brows, why that bathroom in particular?

“why that room in particular?”

‘It’s not that room exactly, but what it leads to. For this spell to work, you need to be where the spirit is strongest, or where it’s been residing, so it’s more willing to leave your body, and since it’s the heir of Slytherin attempting to possess you-you need to go into the chamber of secrets.’

(y/n)’s eyes widened, and her jaw dropped open. “What?” she whispered under her breath, her quill shaking in her grip. She had to go into the chamber of secrets??? But how?! And how did Tom know how to get to it?? Was the entrance in the bathroom the whole damn time????

“how do you know where the entrance is?!”

‘I found it 50 years ago, during the attacks in 1942-3, while I was trying to hunt down the heir to stop the attacks. I couldn’t afford for Hogwarts to close, I didn’t have a home to go to, so I did what I had to do, and I found it. I couldn’t seal it off however, but maybe you can, or at least seal off most of the underground terrain.’

‘But I believe the heir died in the chamber attempting to find it, and 50 years ago attempted to do the same as they’re doing now-possessing someone to do the dirty work for them.’

(y/n) stared in horror at the page, her hand shaking. Dirty work for them…the heir of Slytherin had been possessing them and opening the chamber to attack muggleborns, so while she-technically-wasn’t responsible for all the attacks, she was being used as a host to open the chamber.

(y/n) took a deep breath, closing her eyes and strengthening her resolve.

“okay. What do I need to do?”

-

She spent the next whole day stealing potion ingredients from Snape’s potions cabinet, only getting a little at a time when he was off in classes, undoing the detection charm each time and then recasting it after relocking the door-Snape was none the wiser.

Tom really was a magical genius.

the day passed slowly, (y/n) watching the sky and clock anxiously as she waited for curfew to start and the full moon to be in the sky. Her friends noticed her anxiety, but she told them she was just stressed for exams since the distractions from the chamber hadn’t allowed much studying for everyone.

They understood and left her be after that.

After classes ended for the day, she rushed up to her dorm room, stowing away all the potion ingredients into the cauldron she’d hidden under her bed. She pushed the caldron back under the bedframe and hopped onto her bed, laying down.

She took a long deep breath, her eyes feeling heavy and her chest tight. She wanted to sleep, but was scared again-now knowing that when she did sleep-the heir could possess her with terrifying ease.

However Tom told her she should sleep a bit before going to the chamber, so she was fully rested and the strongest she could be before performing the spell.

So, she napped, and thankfully-when she woke up, she was still in her bed and her roommates were in the room, all chatting quietly in respect for her sleep. “Well good evening sleeping beauty,” her friend teased as she noticed (y/n) sitting up. “Have a good nap?”

(y/n) nodded, rubbing her eyes and then fixing her hair as she slid out of bed. It was about 6:30 now, time for dinner. Everyone crowded in the common room, waiting for Snape to arrive to take them to the Great Hall.

Dinner was a bit quiet, but (y/n) was nearly trembling with nerves, tonight would be the end of it. Tonight, the threat of the chamber of secrets would be defeated and things would finally go back to normal.

She eats her food faster than usual but tries to slow down so she didn’t look odd, and then as soon as she’s back in her dorm, she changes out of her robes and into some casual clothes, drawing the curtains around her bed and grabbing Tom’s diary from under her pillow.

“everything’s ready.”

The ink disappeared into the page and Tom’s elegant scrawl replaced it.

‘Very good. Well done (y/n),’

“thanks, im terrified.”

‘you’re being brave, and I commend you for that, what time is it now?’

(y/n) flushed at his compliment and looked at her watch. It was just about 7:15 now, the sun starting to set.

“7:15, its still a good while till the moon will be out.”

‘Very well,’

(y/n) talked to Tom a bit longer to ease her nerves, and soon enough her roommates were asleep, and it was way past curfew, the full moon visible through the windows that peered into the black lake.

She slowly slipped out of bed, slipping on her shoes and carefully taking the cauldron from below her bed, holding it carefully as she snuck out of her room, Tom’s diary and her wand tight in her other hand.

She crept out of the common room, swallowing harshly. She was all the way down in the dungeons and she had to get all the way up to the 2nd floor girls’ bathroom-where the ghost of Myrtle was-the girl who had died to the heir of Slytherin 50 years ago.

She could only imagine what could’ve happened if Tom hadn’t helped her discover the possession on her, maybe more deaths, maybe she would’ve been fully possessed and lost within her own body.

She swallowed down her fear and quietly walked through the torch-lit halls, slowly heading up each staircase-hiding every time she heard another footstep or the light of a patrolling professor or prefect.

She held her breath for a moment as she hid behind a pillar, her hand clutching her chest as she heard Professor Snape pass down the hallway behind her-exactly the hallway she had to go into.

She waited for a few long moments, waiting until the light from his wand was completely gone before she went for it, making it to the hall of moving staircases, which were hardly patrolled due to the complexity of it all.

She quickly made her way up the floors, pausing every time the staircase under her feet moved-waiting for it to move back to where she needed to go. Eventually, she got to the 2nd floor, sneaking down the hall, the caldron knocking against her legs every few seconds as she had to hold back from running to the bathroom.

Filch was asleep, snoring loudly, which covered up her footsteps and the creak of the door as she snuck into the bathroom. She let out a slow breath, casting a quick silencing charm to make sure no one heard her.

She turned to the sinks, her eyes drawing to the singular rusted sink, right in front of her. She set the cauldron down, walking towards the sink and attempted to turn the rusted sink on, but it didn’t. She gazed at the side of the nozzle, her fingers grazing the snake that was embedded into the metal.

This really was it, just like Tom said, this was the entrance to the chamber of secrets.

She swallowed harshly, taking a step back, looking at the sink structure as a whole. She took a deep breath, remembering the hissing language from her dreams, licking her lips.

“O-open,” She spoke in parseltongue, clumsy and she hoped she said the right thing, but it seems she had-the top part of the sink lifted into the air, her eyes going wide at the sight, next the sinks all slowly shifted apart to show a large opening-the sink with the snake embedding sinking into the floor-a grate sliding over it, allowing direct passage into the dark tunnel that went straight down.

The chamber of secrets had been beneath the castle all this time, which made her wonder-when plumbing had been implemented into the castle, how had it not been found? Surely it had a different entrance back then???

She shook her head, sighing, that was a thought for later. She picked up the cauldron, stepping closer to the tunnel edge. She looked over the edge, pursing her lips at the pitch black that enveloped the tunnel.

She clutched the caldron, casting a quick charm so nothing fell out, and jumped down.

Wind rushed past her ears and her hair flew up. She let out a scream as she descended into the tunnels below the castle, tumbling out of the pipe and onto a harsh pile of…she looked down and then instantly stood up, clutching the cauldron.

Bones.

Animal bones thankfully, but still bones. She took a shuddering breath and looked away, taking her wand out of her jumper pocket and holding it up. “Lumos,” she murmured, her wand illuminating her way as she delved deeper into the caverns beneath Hogwarts.

All around her she could hear the echo of dripping water, the sound of her feet hitting the ground, and her own breathing.

She covered her mouth and slammed into a stalagmite, a short scream escaping her as she looked upon the humongous snakeskin in front of her. It had to be at least 70 feet long, maybe more. What the fuck? Was this the skin of the monster of Slytherin?

Something clicked in her head-the monster was a basilisk. It only made sense. She shook her head, taking a deep breath and continuing, carefully maneuvering around the basilisk skin. The tunnel went deeper and deeper-curving further and further below Hogwarts, until finally she reached a wall guarded by two snakes, their eyes replaced with glittering emeralds.

They seemed to stare back at her, waiting for her to do something. She swallowed harshly and clumsily spoke parseltongue again. “Open,” she let out a breath as the snakes unraveled from each other, a slit in the wall appearing and the snakes now acting as hinges as the wall opened like a set of double doors.

She remembered seeing this in her nightmares.

She took a shuddering breath stepping into the chamber of secrets. Instantly she felt a chill go up her spine, looking into the long dark hallway that led deeper into the chamber of secrets. The stone path was wet-the sound of water dripping echoing through the massive space. On either side of her were rows and rows of serpent statues that curled up into the very very tall ceiling.

She swallowed down her nerves-clutching the cauldron handle in her fist. This was it, this was it. She was going to expel the heir of Slytherin from her soul and trap it in a body to seal it away so it couldn’t open the chamber of secrets or possess anyone ever again.

She nearly sped walked to the front of the chamber, looking up at the gigantic stature of Salazar Slytherin, that seemed to sneer down at her-as if it knew she was a muggleborn tramping upon his sacred space. She frowned, casting a drying charm on the floor beneath her and undoing the sticking charm on the cauldron, taking out everything she needed.

First things first, the spell circles. She took her wand, closing her eyes and turning her head away, slicing into her wrist to draw blood. She instantly felt queasy-even though usually blood didn’t make her queasy-but the reasoning for this time did.

She took a deep shaky breath and waved her wand over her wound, beginning to make the two spell circles Tom had drawn out in the diary for her, the diary open in front of her for reference. Soon they were drawn, and the runes glowed lightly, shimmering in the eerie green gloom of the chamber.

Next, she set up the cauldron. “Incendio,” she murmured, starting a fire and then setting the cauldron atop it after filling it with water. She flipped to the diary page where Tom had written down the potion ingredients.

She held her arm over the water-that was just starting to simmer-letting her blood drip down into the water. After that she healed her arm with a quick charm and covered it back up with her jumper sleeve, grabbing the other potion ingredients that were all set up in front of her crossed legs.

Crushed unicorn horn, boomslang skin, knot grass, crushed bone, and finally-she shuddered, looking down at her thumb and bringing it up to her mouth-biting off some of the skin that poked out near the nail, putting it in the potion. Flesh.

The potion boiled and bubbled a sickly peachy color, and she swallowed, she wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen now. Suddenly her vision went fuzzy, and she felt warmth drip from her nose-fuck fuck fuck-she dabbed her nose and saw the black inky blood from the week before. She swallowed hard-and then suddenly her hand was moving on its own, like a puppet on a string.

Her fingers closed around Tom’s diary, and she breathed hard-her eyes going wide as she picked up Tom’s diary and held it over the cauldron. “Wait-no-“ She whispered-not wanting to lose Tom-was the heir trying to get rid of the only thing capable of helping her?!

The diary dropped into the cauldron and (y/n) lurched forward, feeling a hot wet heat bubble out of her eyes and mouth, black ink like blood dripping down her skin-staining it. Her vision blurred in and out of focus as she watched the potion bubble and condense, the ink dripping from her eyes and mouth moving on its own towards the cauldron.

She tried to move back but the spell circle below her prevented her from moving too far-the magic pressed against her back as the 2nd spell circle drew the condensing potion and the ink blood towards it, the two combining and growing into a humanoid form.

She tried to wipe the ink-blood from her face, only smearing it and staining her hands, she gasped helplessly, feeling very lost now-Tom was supposed to help her-he was supposed to tell her what to do next after the heir was sealed.

She felt a hand curl under her chin and her eyes snapped up-her heart stopped.

“…T…Tom?” she asked, quietly…horrified. There he was, in flesh and blood and color. He smirked, looking down at the cauldron separating them and kicking it aside, the now empty cauldron clanging loudly on the chamber floor, rolling away and into the water that lined the hallway path.

(y/n) watched it roll into the water before a smooth, charming, soft and calculating voice interrupted her thoughts. “You played your part perfectly, my dear,” Tom’s voice cooed, his fingers tugging at her chin again to make her look back up at him-her breathing getting faster by the second.

“You-you-“ (y/n) stuttered, unable to make her thoughts coherent. What was going on? Why had Tom emerged from the potion? Where was the heir of Slytherin who’d been possessing her?

He seemed to hear her jumble of thoughts, and he chuckled, kneeling before her and taking her face-cupping it in his palm, his thumb rubbing across the ink/blood that stained her cheeks and lips. “So oblivious my dear, can you not see the obvious before you?” Tom cooed, squishing her cheeks and making her sit up on her knees to bring her closer to him, his breath ghosting over her face-warm and real.

She shook in his grip, her brows furrowed as she breathed heavily and quickly. Tom chuckled, deep and…dark, the smirk on his lips growing to a grin, he leaned closer to her, his nose brushing against hers-his skin pale in the eerie green gloom of the chamber.

“I am the heir of Slytherin, you were simply a pawn in my game.” He whispered, his thumb brushing against her cheek-almost lovingly. (y/n)’s eyes widened further somehow, and she let out a short gasp and Tom chuckled again, standing up, still holding her chin-not allowing her to back away from him.

“You-you…lied to me,” she whispered, tears, stained dark like ink, bubbling down her face. Tom gave her a slight pout, squishing her cheeks and shaking her head gently.

“I never lied, I simply…omitted some truths. Though I did not lie when I said I grew fond of you,” Tom cooed, forcing her to her feet and pulling her into his arms, his grip like an inescapable vice. “My plans for you changed long ago, and now-I’ll be keeping you, my dear.” Tom hummed, his hand tangling into her hair and tugging it to yank her head back.

“W-what?” (y/n) whispered, breathing heavily as she stared at Tom in horror. “You-you tricked me!” She nearly yelled, finding her voice and Tom only smirked, his arm around her waist impossibly tight.

“I did.” He hummed, gazing at her with dark hooded eyes, the brown of his eyes still so clearly visible even in the dark of the chamber of secrets. “And you were too easy to fool my dear-well have to work on that-but lucky for you, you’re entertaining.”

(y/n) swallowed harshly, opening her mouth to curse him out but he yanked her hair again and nearly squished her face into his, his eyes boring into hers. “You’re mine, (y/n),” he said, and she hated how good it sounded when Tom said her name. “And now we are bound by magic itself, your blood runs through my veins, your flesh is my own, your soul intertwined with mine,” A near psychotic grin grew on his lips, his eyes glinting with madness. “you’re. Mine.”

(y/n) shook in his grip, pushing at his chest but his forehead pushed against hers, their hair blending together. He smelled like metal and cologne. “Mine.” Tom whispered one last time, pressing his lips to hers.

-“Good” ending-

welp...there it issss~! hope you guys liked thaatttt, i had so much fun writing itttttt CC ending coming soon! since that was the 2nd most voted on for the poll, bad ending will be posted last :3

taglist!

@dracosslxt4eva @dream-your-own-way @slaggylemon

@slytherinbackintomyroom @starryhiraeth @larallott

@kayytt-2 @chimchoom @joyfulnightmare-hq

@theicypiscean @discofairysworld @simpforlh44

[autumnhortsnort]

Hello coauthor! A Residuum reader here. One thing I really like about your comic is how the consequences of the characters' actions feel so plausible, but what stands out to me the most is the pacing in how they're presented throughout the story. Do you have any tips for structuring a plot? Every time I try to outline mine, it feels a bit incoherent, and the scenes don’t seem to flow well together. I’d appreciate any advice 🐢

best advice? Write the whole outline down as much and as far as you can, doesn't matter if it makes sense, that's for editing you to figure out. Then edit the ever-loving daylights out of it, add in connecting actions, and take out things that don't work. Residuum has had Five different drafts, with major tweaking as we go. The outline is not set in stone.

Also don’t share it outside of friends, that can make you feel pressured to stick to (the previous plot) even when it doesn’t work for how your story has progressed. There’s a reason we didn’t share any of the potential endings when we were still trying to figure out where the story was going. When the first arc was being posted we had an idea of the plot til about halfway through arc 4, but we didn’t actually have a concrete ending.

how we structure a plot (and do pacing)

Write out your main plot points and then write what the characters need to do to make that event happen. We basically do the plot mountain structure, but for each arc (there are 4 of them) we tend to make the climax of each arc into turning points or decisions that the main characters have to make that they cannot undo. here's a good article to read about structuring plots. (Note! This is for the broad spanning major plot beats, each update actually gets written as needed, they aren't written into the outline.)

When it comes to character decisions it’s more about, “what would make the character do this?” rather than, “would the character do this?” You can make characters do things they normally wouldn’t if you give them the right incentive.

For the pacing with residuum, because it’s serialized, we try to have something progress with each update. Either you learn something new, the plot has progressed (aka the status quo has changed), or there's set up/foreshadowing for later, most updates actually have all three. When writing in a serialized format (each chapter getting its own release) it’s a good idea to treat each update as a complete chunk. Try asking yourself: what is the goal for this part? are you using this update for anything actually important? are you conveying anything new and/or important to the plot? Is this something you want to focus on? Are you writing this to meet audience expectations or because you want to? There are parts where residuum gets almost no interaction but, importantly, those parts still meet our individual update rules. If you're writing for audience engagement you are going to get discouraged from writing long spanning plots very quickly. The audience doesn’t know whats coming, so they won’t interact with anything that doesn’t have their current blorbo™, even if it’s plot important.

for how we make the consequences make sense

Make things make logical sense? honestly i don't what to tell you.

We read. a. lot. I used to read 400 books over a school year, beaze has read about 13.6K fanfics on Ao3 over the course of 4 years. plus a ton of manhwa and manga, and that doesn’t include nonfiction, stuff from sites outside of Ao3, course assigned books, reddit fiction, royal road. Most of how we understand and structure plots is instinctual because we fire hosed our brains with them for years.

I'd recommend watching watching Overly Sarcastic Production’s Trope Talks, and reading stuff that's not rise related, as well as researching nonfiction stuff that's relevant to what you want to write we are at a place where we aren’t writing the outline anymore, just editing it if needed. We use the outline structure to make each update because it gives us a objective for the update, and gives us a road map for when to place the set up for future updates. But if you struggle to use outlines you can just… not use them. Garden writing is a valid writing strategy, I use it for one shot AU’s of residuum.

For long spanning stories written garden style the first draft can be your outline. Just edit and flesh it out once you’ve written it.

[scary-grace]

Opposites Attract (Chapter 3) - a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

Your quirk lets you capture almost anyone with ease, and you can't believe you let Shigaraki Tomura escape. Shigaraki can't believe it, either, and according to the League, there's only one possible explanation -- you let him go because you've fallen in love with him. He decides to find out if it's true. You decide you won't fail to capture him again. You both get a lot more than you bargained for. (cross-posted to Ao3)

Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Chapter 3

You don’t notice the envelope that’s been shoved under your front door until you trip on it, and even once you pick it up, you’re not sure it’s for you. The name scrawled on the front of it is almost illegible, but after studying it for a few seconds you’re able to determine that it does in fact say Skynet. Maybe it’s hate mail. Even if your public profile’s improved significantly since the incident with the train, someone could have mailed this last week and you’re just finding it now.

You were in the hospital for three days. Getting dragged by a train isn’t the kind of thing you can just walk off. If you’d had the boots from your costume, you would have been able to anchor yourself, and with your feet planted and a good grip on a magnetic field nearby, you’d have avoided getting pulled off your feet. But you didn’t have your boots, because Yue made you wear heels, and you fractured your femur when one of them got caught in the rails. You also dislocated your shoulder, bit a chunk out of the inside of your cheek, and picked up the road rash from hell on the entire anterior of your body. It’s the worst set of injuries you’ve gotten in your career, and there wasn’t a single villain involved.

It got you off the public’s shit list, though, and it taught you something important about your quirk. If a metal has a distinct profile, different from what’s around it, you can latch onto just that metal and avoid drawing in anything else. Bullet-train steel is a beast of its own, unlike everything else in the area, which allowed you to focus all your power on it without ripping downtown Tokyo apart. So you can use Magnetism on a larger scale, as long as you know exactly what you’re aiming for. Most of the time, you don’t, and most of the time, there are too many metals with similar properties for you to yank one towards you without pulling up everything else. But it’s good to know that there are some cases where it’s safe to let loose.

You employ your metal sense on the envelope you’re holding and find only inert compounds, no moving parts. Nothing dangerous in here. You open it, fumbling slightly, and pull out a 500-yen coin. There’s a note wrapped around it. The handwriting on the note is just as bad as the handwriting on the envelope. Worse, maybe, because so much of it is crossed out, but in between all the cross-outs you’re able to make out a pair of sentences. Nice job with the train. Buy yourself a flower or something.

Huh. Whoever sent it didn’t leave a name, or a return address, and the note is sort of abrupt – but it’s still a nice note. And a nice thing to do. Maybe you will buy yourself a flower or something. Or maybe you’ll save the coin, so there’s evidence of the first time somebody thanked you personally for something heroic you did. Or evidence of the first truly heroic thing you’ve done in your career. One of the two.

You had some time to think in the hospital, and you thought a lot of things over. Some thoughts are ones you’ve had for a while, like the thought that stopping petty criminals isn’t actually that heroic, especially when they’re stealing things like food, warm clothes in the winter, or water bottles in the summer. Some are thoughts that make you wonder if you got a concussion during the train incident – like the idea that the existence of hero as a profession creates a demand for villains, and an incentive to expand the definition of villain as much as possible. The people you’re expected to arrest for stealing food from a convenience store aren’t in the same category as one of the various yakuza groups. They’re not even close to the League of Villains.

Those are the kind of thoughts you should keep to yourself if you want to have friends. You sit down on your couch and log into the hero network, seeing that you’ve got a pileup of messages. A lot of them are from heroes congratulating you on the train rescue. When you look closer at them, about a third of them were pretty clearly prompted by their agencies, as evidenced by the request to stop by their offices “at your earliest convenience” to “discuss your future”. After the way everyone’s been treating you, it rings pretty hollow.

Some of the messages are about team-ups, or requests to join missions. Those are usually about taking down actual criminals, which you’re still interested in, and most of them are yellow-flagged – important, but not urgent. You wouldn’t be able to respond to urgent ones. Even though UA’s Recovery Girl made a special trip out to Tokyo to heal your leg, you’re still supposed to rest for at least three more days.

Social media next. You took it off private while you were in the hospital, then forgot about it, and now you’re looking at an influx of followers and a ton of private messages. You get into the messages and start deleting anything that looks like a pickup line, which clears things out a bit. There are sponsorship offers, too, although why anybody wants to sponsor a hero whose twin claims to fame are letting the League of Villains slip through her fingers and getting dragged by a train is absolutely beyond you. You leave the offers alone for now. Time to look at the actual people who messaged you.

One in particular catches your eye. The profile picture is a cloudburst and most of the page is aesthetic photos – usually of clouds, with a secondary theme of purple things. The message doesn’t match the content of the page at all. Which iron supplements would you recommend for someone with iron-deficiency anemia?

You message back. Hi. I’m not a doctor. It would probably be best to ask a doctor about this.

Medical care is not universally accessible. What is the best supplement to use?

That was a fast response, but they’re right, whoever they are – Japan might have universal healthcare, but there are still a lot of reasons why somebody might not feel comfortable going to a doctor. And you do have some familiarity with this stuff. Of the supplements, sublingual is best. The capsules or the pills can do stuff to your digestive system. You want something that dissolves.

In what dosage?

It depends on your height, weight, and the severity of your anemia, you answer, only to remember that this person probably isn’t running off to the lab for a blood panel. Just go by what’s on the bottle. But honestly, the best way to improve your iron is to eat more iron-rich foods. That’s how your body really wants to absorb it.

Which foods?

Whoever this is could just look it up, but you’re feeling benevolent right now. Shellfish, legumes, fish, quinoa, spinach, red meat, dark chocolate, tofu, broccoli, pumpkin seeds. Organ meat is good for that, too.

He is not going to eat any of that.

If you have the right recipe, basically all of it tastes good, you reply. You’re about to send this person a link to your favorite recipe site, but then something clicks in your head – something about who’d ask you these questions, who wouldn’t be able to go to a doctor and get bloodwork done, or iron infusions prescribed. He wouldn’t refer to himself in the third person, which means the person messaging you right now can only be – Kurogiri?

Thank you for your assistance, Kurogiri says, and blocks you. All you can do is stare down at your phone in horror.

Shigaraki still has his anemia, it sounds like. Kurogiri is trying to help him treat it, but it must not be going well. You know next to nothing about Shigaraki, but it’s hard to imagine him popping an iron supplement or sitting down to a healthy meal. You weren’t on any of the teams during the first Kamino incident, but you heard things about what Shigaraki’s room was like when they searched it, and it sounds like he eats – or ate – a lot of processed food. He’s probably deficient in everything else along with the iron. If you end up being the one who finally apprehends him, you’ll probably swing by an urgent care on the way to the nearest police station so you can quantify just how not-okay he is.

You’re not sure why it bothers you. Except that Shigaraki’s supposed to be All For One’s heir, and All For One was funding the League, and apparently still had enough money left over to put himself in a tailored, custom-made suit for his showdown with All Might. All For One was loaded. If he had all that money, why didn’t he spend some of it on taking care of his successor? It’s not really a question you’re equipped to answer. You’re not a supervillain or a criminal mastermind. You’re not even investigating the League yourself. You’re just some hero who was there when they attacked. You don’t need to think about him any more than that.

It. You don’t need to think about it. The League, the fight at Kamino, anything. Sure, asking Shigaraki about his symptoms broke his focus so badly that you’d have had him dead to rights if Kurogiri hadn’t shown up, and sure, Kurogiri was messaging you on Instagram thirty seconds ago, but this has nothing to do with you.

You set your phone aside and roll the 500-yen coin between your fingers, first palm-side, then knuckle-side, then alternating, in an exercise you’ve been practicing since you were little to improve your control over your quirk. Maybe you’ll keep the coin. You can afford to buy your own flowers, but this is something you want to hang onto.

Life goes back to normal at shocking speed as soon as you’ve recovered from your injuries. Saving approximately three hundred people and getting dragged behind a train in the process is apparently enough to cancel out letting the League of Villains escape, and you’re back to being an approximate zero in the public consciousness. Which is how you like it. Even when you were at UA, you were never very interested in the spotlight – not because you don’t need the money you’d get from sponsorships, endorsements, and high-profile missions, but because your quirk was too much to handle, and the bigger the spotlight was, the more likely it was to catch you in a fatal mistake.

You’re out of the spotlight, but you’re a little busier than usual. When you went to work with Eraserhead’s class again, they had questions about how you stopped the train, and the girl with the Creation quirk suggested memorizing the profile of specific alloys, the ones commonly used in cars, buses, and building supports. That way you could focus your power on only objects with the specific profile rather than exerting a general pull and destroying whole city blocks. You decided it couldn’t hurt to give it a shot, and after a few days of memorizing the metallic profiles of the twenty most common car makes and models in Japan, you averted a car accident by magnetizing one of the two out-of-control vehicles and hoisting it – it, and only it – out of the way.

You can’t memorize every alloy on the planet, some of the alloys show up in almost everything, and the risk of tipping too many gravitational fields and causing a chain reaction is just as present as ever. But you’re a little more useful now. A little better at saving people. You’ve been wondering lately if it might not be a good idea to pivot to rescue heroics. Rescue heroics don’t have the same kind of ethical issues as combat heroics do.

But you can’t step out of combat heroics entirely. You’ve had a watch on a Shie Hassaikai safehouse in your city for a while, and you got a ping from the Nighteye agency summoning you to a strategy meeting about it sometime next week. In the meantime, you’re still getting into it with muggers, carjackers, and assorted creeps on a nightly basis. You’re busy. Tired when you wake up, tired when you get home. Most nights you’re too tired to cook.

Not tonight, though. Tonight you’re not allowed to fall asleep on the couch. You bought groceries on your day off last week in a fit of truly absurd optimism, and if you don’t use them tonight, they’ll go bad. You get home from patrol, shower off cold to wake yourself up, and get into the kitchen. Your rice cooker is waiting for you. You thank your lucky stars that you remembered to wash it out after your last kitchen escapade and get it started again.

You aren’t a good cook, but you aren’t a bad one, either. Maybe it’s more accurate to say that you’re not a pretty cook. Most meals you make are a bunch of different components piled up on a bowl or rice or noodles or dumped into a broth – not visually appealing, but still pretty tasty. Back when you were rooming with Yue and Kagura and Mayuko, Yue used to put a blindfold on so she wouldn’t see what the food you made looked like. Then again, she only ever ate seconds when it was your turn to cook.

That’s the other problem with your cooking – there are always seconds, and thirds, and sometimes fourths, because you always buy more than you can eat in one sitting, and you get bored with leftovers really fast. The scope of the problem begins to occur to you as you dice garlic and ginger and scrape them into a saucepan filled with sizzling cooking oil. You’ll eat this tonight, sure. Definitely tomorrow, but by the next day, you’ll be so sick of beef and assorted vegetables over rice that you’d almost rather run into the League of Villains a second time than have to eat it again. At least if you have to go into hiding from a vengeful public, no one will question why you didn’t eat your leftovers.

Once the aromatics start to brown and the smell infuses your apartment, the mass quantities of food you’re pawing through start to look a little less intimidating. You put on some music – quietly, since it’s past midnight and you’ve got neighbors, humming along to some English-language pop song from a decade and a half ago. The girl who babysat you back home always played it, the lyrics so simple that even four-year-old you could follow along. I really, really, really, really, really, really like you! And I want you – do you want me – do you want me too?

Between the sizzling of the flank steak and vegetables you’re currently sauteing, the sound of the music, and the rush of the wind whipping through the alley outside, you could almost write off the sound on the fire escape. It could be squirrels, or raccoons, or even a particularly chunky pigeon. It could just be the wind. But you reach for your metal-sense to check, just in case, and what you find sends a chill straight down your spine. You know that iron concentration. You couldn’t forget it if you tried.

This time, you react the right way. The fire escape is perfect for it. You bend the rails apart with a flick of your fingers, then wrap them tightly around the figure perched on the landing, pulling him down to seated. One around his waist, two immobilizing each arm, three spreading and pinning his fingers apart, so there’s no chance of all five making contact with anything at once. And one more railing around his throat, just to be extra safe.

You don’t step away from the stove until you know he’s secure. Your heart is racing as you turn off the music and make your way through your apartment to the window. You need four fingers on your right hand to manage the restraints, and you flip the latch on the window with your thumb and use your quirk to lever it open. This isn’t like last time. You’ve got the undisputed upper hand. So why do you feel so tense?

The tension comes through in your voice when you speak. “What are you doing here?”

Shigaraki Tomura looks up at you from where he’s ensnared by the railings you bent to your will. He’s not at ease like this. You can feel him straining to bring his fingers together, to break out of your grip, but he still manages the ghost of a cocky smirk. “Skynet,” he says. “Did you miss me?”

Shigaraki was expecting you to be surprised to see him, but he wasn’t expecting you to react quite this fast. Or to immobilize him this quickly. He squirms slightly, testing the restraints, only for two more to come up, wrapping around his thighs and welding him to the platform. You got him from inside your apartment, before he even realized you knew he was there. You’re good. Shigaraki hardens his resolve. If you’re this good, he absolutely needs you for the League.

“Did I miss you?” you repeat, incredulous. “Answer my question, Shigaraki. What are you doing here?”

Before Shigaraki can answer, you ask another question. “How do you know where I live?”

“I was in the neighborhood,” Shigaraki says. “I came to see if you bought yourself a flower like I said to.”

Your jaw drops. “That was you?”

“Who else?” Shigaraki can’t figure out why you looked so shocked. You’re in love with him. You should have guessed it was him, wanted it to be him. Is there somebody else you wanted it to be from? “Who did you think it was?”

“You can’t be here,” you say instead of answering. “You need to leave.”

“Do you want me to leave?” Shigaraki challenges. “You’re the one who won’t let me go.”

Your grip on him doesn’t loosen, and he still can’t bring his fingers together. Shigaraki’s stuck. If you call the cops to come get him, he can’t get away. Would you really call the cops on him? There’s no way. You love him. Right?

You still aren’t saying anything, but you also aren’t letting him go. Shigaraki tries to bring the subject back around to you liking him. “Did you buy a flower or not?”

“Why did you leave me that note?”

“I asked first.”

“Sure, I bought a flower.” You roll your eyes, which pisses Shigaraki off. He gave you something when he didn’t have to. What happened to gratitude? “Why did you leave me that note? Were you messing with me or something?”

“Messing with you?” Is that what you thought? Shigaraki wouldn’t be grateful, either. “I wasn’t messing with you. I saw the train thing, so I’m interested. I was just letting you know.”

He was expecting the news that he’s interested in you to land a little better. Then again, everything that’s happened today has proved that he’s a shitty judge of character, so maybe he’s wrong. He’s wrong, and the rest of the League was fucking with him, and because Shigaraki was stupid enough to believe them he’s now landed squarely in the hands of a hero who has every reason to think that turning him in will redeem her. He practically gift-wrapped himself.

Shigaraki’s throat tightens with rage, or something else. His skin crawls and his eyes burn. He can’t rub or scratch it away, because you’ve got him completely pinned. This is awful. It’s –

A timer goes off somewhere in your apartment, and you look away. Shigaraki seizes the opportunity to try to struggle free, but you’re already shaking your head. “Did you forget I’m the Capture Hero?” you ask. “If I can’t hang onto you and take a pan off the stove at the same time, I should hand in my license right now.”

You’re cooking something. The smell of it is drifting through the open window, and Shigaraki’s stupid mouth starts to water. He swallows. “You’re making dinner at midnight?”

You shrug. “That’s when I got home.”

“Kurogiri’s been cooking.” Trying to cook, and it’s weird that he’s trying. He used to leave Shigaraki alone about what he ate, but lately he’s been making Shigaraki eat things that have iron on them, or take iron pills, or dissolve iron tablets under his tongue. It’s a pain in the ass. “The stuff he makes doesn’t smell like that.”

You raise your eyebrows. “Like that?”

Maybe once you’re in the League, you can give Kurogiri lessons. Shigaraki had better start hinting about that now. “Good.”

You don’t say anything. Shigaraki’s stomach growls, so loudly that people on the moon can probably hear it, and his face heats up with embarrassment. But your expression is shifting, almost the same way it shifted in the square at Kamino. Seeing it gives Shigaraki a weird sense of relief. He wasn’t imagining it. The League wasn’t screwing with him. You do care. He can’t figure out why it took his stomach making stupid sounds to get it out of you.

“Are you hungry?” you ask.

Your voice sounds the same as it did when you asked if he was okay. This time Shigaraki tells the truth. “Yes.”

You glance back into your apartment, then look at him – then back to your apartment, then to him. “I must be out of my mind,” you mumble, and then you square your shoulders and make eye contact. “You’re hungry, and I made too much food. If you want, you can come inside.”

“What?” Shigaraki manages. You can’t be serious – but the metal railings are unwrapping from around his throat, his waist, his arms, until he’s anchored at the thighs and wrists and nowhere else. “You’re going to let me leave if I say no?”

“No one knows you’re here except me,” you say. “If you leave now, it’ll be like it never happened.”

Shigaraki should take you up on it, five seconds ago. You could change your mind at any moment, and now he knows he has to be a lot more careful the next time he tries to recruit you – keep a greater distance, stay disguised at first, not get complacent listening to you sing some song in English about how you really, really, really, really, really, really like someone. This was today’s second colossal fuckup, and unlike the first one, it’s recoverable. Shigaraki needs to leave. Now.

Instead – “I could eat,” he says, and you let him go.

Or you sort of let him go. He’s not attached to the fire escape anymore, but there are thin metal bands around his wrists and ankles. He shakes one of them at you. “What’s this?”

“Insurance policy,” you say. Huh. Shigaraki decides it’s fair, and probably a good sign as far as your usefulness to the League. After what happened today, it’s pretty clear that the League could use some members who are a little less trusting. You step back from the window, leaving space for Shigaraki to step through. “Get in here before someone sees you.”

Shigaraki smacks his head on the window frame, and it’s your fault. Your fault, because you’re holding out your hand for him to take, so you can help him through, and it’s such a weird thing to do that he can’t focus. You know how his quirk works. Why would you give him a chance to touch you? He avoids your outstretched hand, loses his balance, smacks his head on the other side of the window this time, and you catch his elbow to steady him. You’re touching him. Nobody touches Shigaraki on purpose. Nobody who’s not trying to hurt him.

You act like it’s nothing, and you let him go, shutting the window behind him with a wave of your hand. Then you turn away. “Find somewhere to sit. The food’s almost done.”

It smells even better inside your apartment than it did on the fire escape. Shigaraki wants to pay attention to that, but you just turned your back on him. “You sure you trust me this much?”

“I don’t need to look at you to know what you’re doing. My metal sense takes care of that.” You’re stirring something in a pan on the stove now. “I wouldn’t say I love my odds, but I’m okay with them. Do you want water to drink or something?”

“Uh, okay.” Shigaraki watches as you leave whatever’s on the stove to open a cabinet and retrieve a glass, which you fill from a pitcher in the fridge. You hand it to him and go back to the stove, and Shigaraki stares at it stupidly. Better that he stares at it than at you.

You aren’t doing what he expected you to do. Now that Shigaraki thinks about it, he’s got no idea what he was expecting you to do. Scream? Faint? Be ecstatic to see him? Drag him into your apartment and offer yourself to him – not just your allegiance to the League, but all of you, all for him? Shigaraki’s face heats up at the thought. You wouldn’t do that. You don’t even post thirst-traps on Instagram. There’s no way you’d get physical with him on your second meeting. Which is good. Because Shigaraki’s not exactly experienced in that department, and it’s possible that he’s never been less in the mood.

Shigaraki is used to having shitty days. He’s had a lot of shitty days in the last year. He’s gotten shot, stabbed, punched, punched but with explosions added in, and fucked things up so badly that Sensei had to get involved, only for Sensei get captured by the heroes. But today is abnormally, astronomically shitty – shitty enough to top all the others combined. This is the first shitty day in Shigaraki’s adult life where someone he cares about has died. And the first time it’s been his fault.

Maybe not totally his fault. There’s blame to go around. But Shigaraki’s the leader, so it’s on him. He should have been more suspicious of Overhaul from the start, regardless of what Twice said. He should have ended the meeting immediately when he realized Overhaul’s true intentions, and he should have had Kurogiri on standby, so the League could leave if Overhaul refused to. Failing all that, he should have found a way to stop Magne and Compress from engaging Overhaul – something he could have planned for, if he’d been smart enough to be suspicious. Instead he was stupid, and now Magne’s dead.

And Shigaraki couldn’t even take revenge on Overhaul. Assessing the scene, realizing they were outmatched, and calling a pause was probably the smartest thing Shigaraki did all day.

They couldn’t keep using that hideout. No one wanted to stay after what happened, and there was a chance Overhaul had tipped off the police to where they were. Shigaraki ordered the League to scatter for twenty-four hours and reunite at a new hideout, which Kurogiri is responsible for finding. Shigaraki doesn’t know where everyone else went. But he didn’t think twice before coming here, to your city. To your neighborhood. To you.

“Shigaraki.” You say his name as you’re setting two rice bowls in front of two chairs at a tiny kitchen table. “Do you want to sit down?”

Right. He’s standing here, staring at a glass of water, like an idiot. Shigaraki sits down in front of one bowl and you sit at the other. “What’s in here?”

“Flank steak, spinach, broccoli, mushrooms, carrots, garlic, ginger, green onions –” You trail off to eat some of it. “And rice underneath. I’m guessing Kurogiri forgot some of that stuff.”

“The last three things.” Shigaraki picks up his chopsticks, lifts out a piece of broccoli, and inspects it. It doesn’t look quite as disgusting as whatever Kurogiri made. He sticks it in his mouth, burns his tongue, realizes that it doesn’t actually taste bad, and starts talking in a hurry. “You can’t tell anyone about this. If they find out –”

“That you ate a vegetable?” You look skeptical. Maybe because Shigaraki’s talking with his mouth full. “There are lots of reasons I can’t tell anybody about this. I might as well add that to the list.”

Shigaraki makes sure to finish chewing before he tries to say anything else, then decides against saying anything at all in favor of trying to figure out which of the vegetables tastes the worst. You don’t ask him any questions. You’re just eating dinner, like it’s a normal night, like it doesn’t matter that Shigaraki’s here at all.

Maybe you’re playing it cool. “So,” Shigaraki starts, after a sip of water to wash the taste of carrots out of his mouth, “you must not think much of the League of Villains, if you used more of your quirk on a train than on us.”

You used more of your quirk pinning Shigaraki to the fire escape than you did during the second Kamino incident, but Shigaraki decides not to point that out. You’re making a face. “They were totally different situations. If I’d used that kind of power in our fight, I’d have taken down all the buildings your boss and All Might didn’t get to during the first battle.”

“So what? Capturing us wasn’t worth it?” Shigaraki can tell by your expression that this is the wrong way to go. He stuffs a wad of spinach into his mouth to give himself some time to think, then drinks some water to give a little more. “You said it was different with the train. Why?”

“It was on an elevated track.”

“Huh?”

“The train was on an elevated track.” You’re picking at your food. “The problem with my quirk isn’t whether I can grab something and pull it towards me, the problem is what happens to everything in between. If the train had been street level or underground, the magnetic field I was altering would have torn up everything with a similar metallic signature to the train. But the train was on an elevated track. There was nothing around it with a matching signature, so I could let loose.”

It sounds like there’s not a limit to your quirk. You held back at Kamino because you didn’t want to make a mess. “How hard was it to stop the train?”

“Harder once I fell over.”

You’re avoiding Shigaraki’s eyes, and Shigaraki adjusts your answer to reflect reality. “It wasn’t hard at all,” he says. You keep averting your eyes. There’s color coming up in your face. “Damn.”

You eat a few more bites, and so does Shigaraki. The food is good, or at least good enough to highlight how bad Kurogiri’s cooking is. If Shigaraki wasn’t already sure he needed you for the League, he’d be convinced now – between your quirk and the fact that you can make the vegetables he’s supposed to eat taste like anything other than garbage, he’s pretty sure you’ll be essential. “Is that why you came here?” you ask, and Shigaraki looks up. “To talk about my quirk?”

“What else is there to talk about?” What do people talk about on dinner dates, anyway? “How our days were? Like I’d tell you that.”

“You could,” you say. “There’s nobody I could tell about it.”

“Bullshit. You’re a hero –”

“And if I went to the cops and spilled all your secrets, their next question would be where I got the information,” you say. “I can’t exactly say ‘I got it from Shigaraki Tomura, when he came over for dinner last night.’ So if you want to talk about how your day went, you can.”

Shigaraki’s chest goes tight. Maybe he swallowed something wrong. “You first,” he says. “What did you do today? Let me guess – dispensing peace and justice with government-sponsored violence.”

You laugh. “Today I fixed some girl’s bike so she could get to work on time. Then I got called out to a primary school to help some kid who got his head stuck in the rails on a staircase. After that I caught some guy spray-painting ‘bitch’ on his ex-wife’s car. That would have been a nuisance crime, except he’d been stalking her, too.”

Shigaraki knew you were small-time, but this is ridiculous. “Don’t you get bored?”

“There was a car accident, too,” you say. “The fire department was late, so I helped pry open the car so the passengers could get out. And then I helped clear wreckage from somebody else’s villain fight downtown until my shift ended.”

Five incidents, one actual interaction with a criminal. “That’s not going to get you back in the headlines.”

“Believe me, I’d love to stay out of them,” you say. Shigaraki remembers what Spinner said about how you’re a hero Stain would approve of. It sounds like he’s right. “Today was a decent day. How was yours?”

Shigaraki’s throat closes. He’s still hungry – really hungry – but if he tried to swallow something right now, he’s pretty sure he’d choke on it. The anger builds inside him, seeking any target, and you’re the closest. “Don’t ask me that. You don’t give a shit about me.”

“Hey –”

“You call someone a villain and you can write them off for good. It doesn’t matter what happens to villains. Villains aren’t people to you.” Shigaraki can’t believe you’re trying to argue with him. “Sure, I could tell you how my day was. If I wanted to watch you pretend to care that one of my friends died.”

Your eyes widen. “Someone died?”

Shigaraki wasn’t going to tell you anything, and then he told you, right in the middle of telling you all the reasons why he wasn’t going to tell you. This is a fucking nightmare. “Save it for someone who believes your stupid act. I’m out of here.”

“My stupid act, huh?” Your voice is sharp. “Let me tell you something about what happened at Kamino, Shigaraki. I should have captured you then. I had everything I needed to take you down. And then I got so distracted when I realized you were sick that I let all four of you escape. I screwed myself pretty solidly for somebody who doesn’t care, don’t you think?”

You did, sort of. Shigaraki knows that if you hadn’t stopped the train, the public would still hate you. A society as corrupt as this one doesn’t forgive mistakes like the one you made. Like the one you’re making right now, if anybody ever finds out you let him in. “You’re still sick,” you continue. “I can feel it. And it doesn’t take a genius to see that something bad happened. I don’t know what’s going on in your head, but I don’t think you came here just to see if I bought a flower.”

You don’t say why you think Shigaraki came here. With Shigaraki’s luck, you’d guess right, and the sheer humiliation of being called out on it would probably kill him. “You said you bought one. Where is it?”

“Right there.”

Right there, as in dead center on the table, right in the middle of Shigaraki’s eyeline. And here he was thinking it couldn’t get worse. “I think you probably meant a cut flower, but I wanted this one,” you say. “It’s alive, so it should keep blooming as long as I don’t kill it through benign neglect.”

Shigaraki’s throat won’t relax. He coughs, trying to clear it. “Kill a lot of plants, do you?”

“Only by accident,” you say. “It probably doesn’t make a difference to the plant, but under human law, intention matters.”

“What?”

“Crime is bad,” you say. No shit. Shigaraki snorts. “But the degree of badness depends on the intention. If I lost control of my quirk and hurt someone, I’d be in trouble. But I’d be in a lot more trouble if I hurt them deliberately.”

Shigaraki’s stomach ties itself in a knot. “For serious crimes, the reason why a person did something matters, too,” you continue. “If I was a civilian and someone attacked me, I might hurt them with my quirk to protect myself. But if I hurt that person the same way in an argument, that would be different. And sometimes premeditation can be a mitigating factor – like, a person being stalked and threatened might feel so backed into a corner that killing the stalker feels like the only option. They’d have to plan that ahead of time, probably. But it’s not something they’d have done if they hadn’t been pushed to the limit first.”

The knot in Shigaraki’s stomach is pulling his entire body with it – intestines, heart, lungs. He stands up so fast he knocks his chair over. “Bathroom.”

“Down the hall. Door on the right,” you say. “Are you –”

Shigaraki’s in the bathroom with the door locked before you can finish asking the question. He hunches over the sink, struggling to breathe without gagging. Why did you tell him that? All that stuff about intention and premeditation and the reasons mattering – why would you think he needed to hear it? Shigaraki’s pretty sure you don’t monologue about the legal system to your hero friends, but you weren’t trying to convince him that the system’s good, or right. You were just telling him. Almost like you know.

Like you know what? That question gives Shigaraki pause, and in the pause, he forces himself to straighten up and take a look around. Your bathroom is small, like everything else in y our apartment. There’s not a lot of stuff lying around on the counter. Or a lot of stuff under the sink, when he looks down there. The cabinet behind the mirror has more in it, but Shigaraki’s not sure what to make of what he’s looking at. Girl stuff, probably. Does sunscreen count as girl stuff? There’s makeup, or what Shigaraki thinks is makeup, but not much of it has been used. Most of it is still in its packaging. There’s also a pile of narrow elastic bands – black, made of fabric, not rubber. Hair ties. Shigaraki picks one up and slides it down over his wrist.

He’s not sure why he did that, but he feels a little better, and he takes a few more deep breaths. You weren’t trying to do something to him. You were just talking, because people talk when they go out to dinner together. There’s nothing weird happening. You don’t know anything. You’re in love with him. It’s fine.

Shigaraki leaves the bathroom and makes his way down the hall, stopping in a few places to look at the pictures you have hanging up. There’s one where you’re hugging a big golden dog, looking stupid-happy and a lot younger than you are now. Another one from when you were a student at UA, in a school uniform, standing with three other girls. And then there’s one that makes Shigaraki feel sick and angry all over again – you and some guy. He’s got his arm around your shoulders.

“That’s my brother.”

Shigaraki jumps, swears. You snuck up on him. “He doesn’t live in Japan,” you continue. “So if you were planning to use him to get back at me, find something else.”

“I’ll get back at you when you do something to me,” Shigaraki says. “Not before.”

You study him, head tilted to one side. “Are you okay?” you ask. “You looked like you were going to be sick.”

“I want to finish the food,” Shigaraki says. He has a bad feeling about his ability to lie to you right now. Lying is a bad policy with somebody he’s trying to recruit. The fucking recruitment thing. How did he forget about that? “Did you get rid of it?”

“No,” you say, puzzled. “It’s probably gotten cold, though. I’ll heat it up again.”

Shigaraki leans against the kitchen counter while you mess with the microwave, and decides to test your supposed metal sense while he’s waiting. He reaches out, like he’s going to grab your shoulder, and his arm stalls in midair, held back by the metal shackle around his wrist. Pulling back doesn’t make a difference, and it fits too closely to pull his hand free. Shigaraki tries to bring up his other hand and Decay the shackle, but that hand freezes in place, too. You didn’t even turn around. “Can I help you?”

“Just testing you,” Shigaraki says. “You really are good. Want to let me go?”

You shrug. “You might not believe me, but I’m sorry about your friend,” you say. “Whichever of your friends it was. I wish it hadn’t happened. To them or to you.”

Shigaraki doesn’t sleep much. He’s pretty sure what happened to Magne and Compress will be making an appearance in his nightmares. It’ll fit in nicely with the nightmares he already has, which also include a lot of blood and dismembered bodies. “Heroes like it when villains kill villains, right? Like taking out the trash.”

“You must spend a lot of time arguing with the imaginary hero in your head.” The microwave beeps, and you lift the bowls out without touching them. “You’re talking to me. Listen to what I’m saying.”

“What are you saying, then?”

“I’m saying I’m sorry about your friend.” You turn to face Shigaraki, arms crossed over your chest, while the bowls drift back to the table and settle on opposite sides. “I wish it hadn’t happened. Is there anything I can do?”

“Let me out.” Shigaraki pulls at the shackles again, and you release your hold on them. “And if you get a chance, put Overhaul in the fucking ground.”

“Overhaul,” you repeat. “Like, Hassaikai Overhaul? He did it?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“You need to stay away from him,” you say flatly. “From all of them. It’s not safe.”

“I know it’s not fucking safe. They just killed my friend. Do you think I’m going to –” Shigaraki breaks off as a thought crosses his mind. “What do you mean, it’s not safe?”

“It’s not safe,” you say again. You step around Shigaraki, and he follows you to the table. “I can’t tell you why. But it’s not a good idea to be anywhere near Overhaul or his organization right now.”

“Why?”

“I can’t tell you,” you say. You pick up your chopsticks. “Are you going to eat?”

The food smells good heated up again. Shigaraki takes a few bites and thinks over what you said. You know something about the Shie Hassaikai, and whatever it is, it’s enough to make you warn Shigaraki away from them. You love him, so some of it is probably that you don’t want him going back near somebody who killed his friend. But it sounds like more than that. You can’t tell him why. What’s something a hero can’t tell a villain?

What the other heroes are up to. Shigaraki feels a grin spreading across his face. “The heroes are going after the Hassaikai.” Across the table, you cringe. “I’m right, aren’t I?”

“No!”

You’re not a good liar, at least not to Shigaraki. Good to know. Shigaraki eats fast, his mind working faster. Overhaul thinks he’s smarter than everyone else, heroes and villains both. Which will be more humiliating – getting his shit rocked by another villain, or being crushed by a gang of heroes? It’s the last one for sure. Shigaraki doesn’t have to do the heavy lifting of destroying Overhaul. All he has to do is pretend to help, stay out of the way, and yank the illusion of his support when Overhaul needs it most. To betray Overhaul’s trust. Just like Overhaul did to him.

Easy enough. And Shigaraki wouldn’t have known about it if you hadn’t told him.

Shigaraki has a hard time believing that he ever felt weird about you being in love with him. You didn’t hand him over to the cops. You let him in. You made food for him and tried to make him feel better and actually succeeded, at least a little, when you gave him a clue about how to crush Overhaul. As far as Shigaraki can see, there’s not a single downside to having a hero as a girlfriend.

<- Chapter 2 Chapter 4 ->

[seraphinitegames]

The Wayhaven Chronicles—Update 03/April/2024

Do you ever have a week where there’s so much going on, but it feels really good to tick so many tasks off your list?

Well, I had one of those weeks, hehe! :D

First up was finishing up all the edits to the demo section, which went super smoothly, and it was great fun reading the comments from them. I always appreciate how they take the extra time to write what they’re enjoying, or their fun reactions to things that happen as they edit!

Then it was onto social media days! The sporadic internet has still been a major obstacle, but I actually managed to get on long enough to get some asks done! That was great fun getting to do those and indulge in getting to talk about Wayhaven even more with you guys, hehe!

With the Patreon content, I worked on the sketch for Adam/Ava’s masquerade mask for the upcoming ball in Book Four, which was both awesome because I loved the ideas and inspiration I had for it, but also was nice to get some drawing in! That’ll be going up on Patreon later this month!

And then I even managed to get a massive amount done on Chapter Two! Way more than I expected yet again, so this chapter is seriously moving on at a pace! I was actually starting to think I’d get it finished next week…but then I decide to move a big chunk from the start of Chapter Three to the end of Chapter Two, lol.

The flow will be much better. Where it ended before would have been a great cliffhanger at the end of Chapter Two but it just…it didn’t feel like where it should have ended. So, moving that section now makes it feel more like the chapter I wanted.

This new ending section does contain more variation to account for love interests, etc, so will take a bit longer, but at least that means it will also make the second demo section that much more chunkier! :D

But the first demo section is now with my final set of readers, so hopefully not long until I get to share that with you all!

I hope you all have the most amazing weekend! We'll be offline as usual, so I'll update you all again next week! <3

[chrysanthemumgames]

DEMO SPOILERS:

jess! just finished the demo and need to thank you for several things ASAP!!

1. thank you for every hades crumb ever. thank you ESPECIALLY for giving us the option to thirst over him shirtless, albeit tastefully 🤭 had my ass gigglin' & twirling my hair over here

2. i cannot believe the first game came out so recently and yet i missed all these characters so much already!!! i really love getting to read this wonderful, comforting world you have made and will be a forever fan :)

3. chapter 2 is so beautiful and made me tear up but in a really good way. i am very excited to follow that particular plot line about the MC's past and am so excited for further updates as we receive them

and lastly, congrats on the demo launch love you mwah 🫶 

Thank you, anon!

The thirsting part was actually completely accidental; I didn't even have the options for it, at first. Then a couple days later, it belatedly hit my brain that, y'know, people might do that, so I went back and added them haha.

I'm really pleased to have been able to make a decent amount of progress on BotL while FoA was in the publishing queue. At first I figured I might go three chapters before releasing the demo, but the amount of stuff in the first two felt like enough for a first go, I thought.

I am also very excited for further developments in the big chapter two reveal plot; it's a large chunk of what chapter three will be about, as well!

[hellfirenacht]

Wing Man Part 7

Fic Summary: Steve 'the Hair' Harrington is your best friend, and is constantly striking out. Sick of this, you two make a deal; you'll wing man for each other. Hooking Steve up with dates is easy, but he finds himself struggling to find you a date. At least, until Dustin starts talking about his new cool friend Eddie.

Series Master List

Chapter Summary: Dustin spills the beans, and Wayne gives some advice.

5k words

Chapter Summary: Dustin spills the beans, and Wayne gives some advice.

A/N: Happy New Year! I ran out of steam there for a while but I am bursting with new inspiration and have a billion ideas for new and old fics! Thank you for your patience and support 💜

The next night after dropping you off at home, there was a storm the likes of which Hawkins had never seen. Lightning lit up the sky through the night like a shitty rave, knocking out the power for Forest Hills Trailer Park for the better part of two days. It wasn’t until Saturday, when Eddie attempted to check in on Ronnie again, that he realized that their worn out phone had been completely fried. Shit.

Getting a new one was easier said than done, Eddie and Wayne had to pinch pennies this week after his uncle had been out of work a few days because of a cold, and having to replace a good chunk of groceries that had gone bad sitting in the dead fridge.

Sure, Bev had been nice enough to give Eddie a few extra shifts at the Hideout to help cover but that was a paycheck that wasn’t going to be in for another week. There was always his dealings, but he’d been keeping his head down after nearly having his stash blown by an over enthusiastic K-9 unit that, thankfully, was more interested in the jerky that Eddie had in his jacket.

For a week, he’d been without a phone now. Normally it wasn’t a huge loss, not many people actually bothered trying to call him anyway, and Wayne didn’t really socialize much working the night shift. But he missed Ronnie, and he really was stressing each day that went by that he didn’t call you. Eddie knew that whatever this was, he was probably already blowing it.

Tuesday rolled around again, and he hoped that you’d show back up to the Hideout. Jeff had even agreed to give most of the band a ride if Eddie agreed to haul their equipment and do all of the breakdown in case you needed another ride home. No such luck though, unbeknownst to him Keith had come down with the same cold that his Uncle Wayne had the week before, meaning you had to work a double.

It was now Friday, over a week since you’d written your name in the most stubborn permanent marker he’d ever come across. Your name still stained his skin in a faint and ugly shade of pea green. Eddie could now say your number by memory, despite never having punched in the digits once. If anyone at school had noticed that Eddie ‘the Freak’ Munson had a girl's name on his arm, they didn’t say anything.

“Whose number is that?” Mike asked in the middle of a time out while Zach and Gareth were pouring over the rule book over the legality of a move that Eddie was sure was bullshit. So much for that.

Eddie’s head snapped over to the freshman while those in Corroded Coffin snickered and suddenly lost interest in the rules for the moment. With the candles and stage lights on, it was always warm in the Hellfire room, and Eddie had stripped his jacket giving his arms a chance to breathe while he guided the party on their next adventure.

It had also meant that the faded remains of your number was still visible, which he hadn’t thought much of until Mike had pointed it out.

“Yeah, Eddie, whose number is it?” Jeff snickered, which earned a hard look from Eddie that under any other circumstances would have shut Jeff up but in this case only made him laugh harder.

For a moment he debated internally about putting his jacket on, and telling them all to shove it. It was tempting, very tempting, but Eddie wasn’t a teen anymore. Hell, he had a good two to three years on most of the members in this club. Why should he be embarrassed because a cute girl had some sort of interest in him?

Because you’re blowing it by not being able to call her. He told himself.

Eddie then told the table about how you’d given him your number right before he dropped you off. How you’d been a perfect gentleman and hadn’t taken advantage of him or made any untowards moves to him. (Even if he had thought you almost did, but he kept that part to himself).

To his surprise, the ribbing was kept to a minimal. Without Eddie fighting against it, the group became less interested. Eddie’s love life was only of interest when it meant that the sheep could finally have some fun with the shepard.

That was going to be the end of it. Jeff had conceded that the rule they were looking up had been an old house rule from his middle school group that he had never questioned as not actually being accurate, and they were ready to move on. Eddie opened his mouth to guide the party to the next encounter-

“I thought you said you weren’t interested in her.” Dustin suddenly said. Eddie had thought that the shrimp had been suspiciously quiet for the past few minutes.

“If that was him not interested then I’m quitting Hellfire to be a cheerleader.” laughed Gareth.

“No one wants to see you in a miniskirt, man.” said Mike.

“They have guy cheerleaders!” protested Gareth. “I’d wear the pants.”

“That’d be a first.” ribbed Zack.

“Don’t you have to be crazy strong to be a cheerleader? Gareth, your strength stat sucks.”

“I haul my own drumset every week!”

“Can we get back to the game?”

“Eddie,” Dustin spoke up again. His brows were furrowed and he was messing with his pencil, the same way he did when someone in the party was about to do something that didn’t make any sense. “You did say you weren’t interested.”

So much for Eddie’s love life being of no interest, he now had a herd of sheep looking at him expectantly, no longer talking about Gareth possibly changing after school activities. He should ignore it, get everyone back on track, and lead them back into the Forbidden Caves where he was not tempted to throw a mimic in for messing with the flow of the game.

He should... but Dustin’s comment bugged him for some reason.

“I never said that.” Eddie said, looking at the kid.

“What? Yeah you did!” Dustin looked as shocked as Eddie felt. When had he ever said he wasn’t interested in you?

“Oh yeah, when?” Eddie crossed his arms and leaned back in his throne, his eyes narrowing.

“At the arcade!” Dustin sounded frustrated. “You told me that you didn’t want me introducing you to anyone when we were doing Hellfire related shit, and that you weren’t interested anyway.”

The warmth from the candles and stage lights were nothing compared to the heat of everyone’s eyes on him. What the fuck was Henderson even talking about?

Oh. Oh what the fuck?!

“Excuse me?” Eddie said slowly as that thirty second conversation started to play in his mind.

“Yeah, I remember that.” Mike added, in an attempt to back up his friend. “We just assumed she wasn’t your type.”

Eddie hadn’t been looking to be anyone’s boyfriend. He was never looking to be dating anyone, the few times he’d found himself in the good graces of a girl who’d shown interest in him it had always blown up in his face.

That had never stopped him from trying though.

“Are- wait. Back up.” Eddie stood up and made his way over to the opposite end of the table where the freshmen were suddenly looking very nervous. He grabbed them by the shoulders, as he’d done so many times in the past and hauled them up while the rest of the table watched on in amusement. Normally, Eddie would never pause the game but, fuck it. This kid had something to do with you, and he was going to figure out what.

“Jesus, Eddie-” Mike said, wincing at the grip. “I don’t have anything to do with this, it was all Dustin and Steve!”

This was getting more and more confusing by the moment. Eddie shoved the two boys to face them, leaning over them. Even with Mike’s growth spurt over the past few months, somehow Eddie still seemed to tower over them.

“Steve?” Eddie’s voice was slow, trying to understand why that name was even being spoken in the private sanctuary away from jocks.

“Yes, Steve! They’re like, best friends or something! Ask Dustin!” Mike said, throwing his friend under the bus.

“What’s the big deal?!” Dustin asked, looking between Mike and Eddie with a look of bewilderment.

“Henderson, you have thirty seconds to explain what the actual Hell is going on before your character becomes Quasit food.” Eddie said, releasing his grip on both of the freshmen.

“Okay, okay!” Dustin held his hand up in surrender, looking nervous as everyone watched the scene unfold. “So, you know how her and Steve work together? Well, they had a deal going on where they’d help get each other dates.”

Eddie’s head tilted down slightly, but his eyes stayed firmly focused on Dustin. This was making less and less sense by the minute. Steve needed help getting dates? King Steve of Hawkins High who had the pick of any girl in school before he graduated? That Steve Harrington couldn’t get a date and so had recruited you into helping him?

And you, you with the everything about you couldn’t get a date either? Hadn’t you mentioned something about that before, at the Hideout?

“I help him and he uh... he helps me get out of the house.”

You’d said that, and he hadn’t thought much of it until now. All this time, Eddie had thought the arcade incident had been Dustin trying to have his two older male friends meet and be friends, but it had been you that he was supposed to meet?

“So you’re telling me that you, Dustin Henderson and Steve Harrington were trying to set me up on a date?” Eddie looked over at the rest of the table that looked just as bewildered as he did. This was a prank, right? He’d been tossed into some sort of alternate dimension where a freshman and a jock had any sort of interest in his love life, in any part of his life. He’d sooner believe that he’d run a drug deal with Chrissy Cunningham than this.

“Well, technically we were trying to set her up on a date and you seemed like a good fit?” Dustin’s answer came out as more of a question, leaving Eddie’s mind reeling. Behind him, he could hear the growing snickers of the party.

Eddie was ready for this to start making sense any time now.

“So she was helping Steve get dates and he wanted to set her up with me?” Nope, even after thinking it a half dozen times it still wasn’t clicking.

“That part was my idea actually!” Dustin said, showing off a smile filled with metal. “She’s pretty weird and Steve said she was picky-”

“Can’t be that picky if she was interested in Eddie.” muttered Gareth, earning another round of laughter at the table.

Eddie didn’t even have it in him to shoot another look at the table as he continued to try and piece together what was going on.

You and Steve had a deal to try and get each other dates. You were picky and so Dustin suggested Eddie. Steve then brought you to the arcade to force a meeting and-

“Wait, did she know that she was supposed to meet me?” Eddie asked suddenly.

“Oh yeah, she knew the whole time in the arcade.” Dustin nodded, hoping that Eddie wasn’t about to blow a fuse over this. “Well, she figured it out at least. See she was just supposed to be tagging along with Steve to find guys to flirt with but then uh... she realized she was supposed to meet you.”

“And she didn’t know who I was?” Eddie clarified, thinking back to the way you’d tried to talk to him about Hellfire, Chris Morrison, anything to try and start a conversation. How the hell was it that he could remember every time you two met so clearly, but you didn’t know who he actually was?

Because it wasn’t about you, Eddie. He had to remind himself.

Dustin shrugged. “I guess not? She’s never mentioned you before that night.”

Guess not everyone paid attention to the Freak. He hated that it bugged him that you didn’t remember him but could he blame you? He probably wouldn’t remember him either, just a Munson fuck up who everyone was waiting to end up dead in a ditch somewhere.

Eddie pushed Dustin back down into his seat, done interrogating the poor freshman. Everyone watched as he made his way back to his side of the table, behind the DM screen. He had a lot to think about, but he wasn’t about to start processing that in front of the rest of Hellfire.

“You all wander deeper into the cave, the only light coming from the torch carried by-”

“I have dark vision!”

Broke and bored, Eddie haunted the trailer for the rest of the weekend. He did have practice with Corroded Coffin for a generous two hours on Saturday, and then a long shift that night at the Hideout where one old drunk had slipped him a $10 tip for making sure he always had a cold beer in hand. But those few hours were just a minor reprieve from the information that Dustin had given him the previous day.

When he wasn’t distracted by work or practice he was practicing guitar, working on lyrics, prepping for the next Hellfire session.

He tried to think about you, but ended up feeling confused. When he was trying to think about anything else, all he could see was the way you had flirted with him at the Hideout.

Despite popular opinion, Eddie wasn’t stupid when it came to girls. He could tell when a girl was interested in him, and you had made it clear that you had at least some interest in him. You had told him point blank that you were not with Harrington, and had no interest as well. He’d seen the way you looked at him while watching them play, that excitement in your eyes. Your head had bobbed to the rhythm of their songs watching them with as much enthusiasm as if you’d been a fan for years.

Paige had watched with similar eyes, right? She’d seen something in them that no one else had before-

No. Not them. Not Corroded Coffin. Just Eddie.

It felt pathetic that he kept comparing you to Paige. He didn’t want to, he really didn’t want to. It wasn’t like he was still hung up on Paige, not really. She’d just been a turning point in who he was as a person. She’d been the first (and last) girl to really look at him as a person. If his dating prospects had been small before, they had completely dried up over the past two years.

Date the freak? Yeah, right. There had been the odd girl who’d hit on him as if daring themselves to get with him but he was done with that. A few mediocre dates that he’d agreed to out of boredom or loneliness had only added to the idea in Hawkins High that he was undesirable. Adding to that, the older he got, the younger his underclassmen became and the idea of dating someone younger was... well he didn’t need to add ‘creep’ to the long list of rumors about him. It didn’t matter to him most of the time, instead focusing on his friends, his band, his club, his business, himself. God knows he’d never be able to hold down a relationship unless he got his shit together and earned everyone’s trust again.

“Graduate and get laid, Munson.” Ronnie’s voice echoed in the back of his mind and he groaned as his face warmed. It was the middle of the week, just over two weeks since the night at the Hideout. Eddie was laying on the old couch face down, his homework on the counter half finished and the blue glow of the tv doing little to distract him.

The sound of the door opening didn’t even phase him enough to look up, even as Wayne grunted out a hello before setting something down on the counter next to his forgotten schoolbooks.

“Did you eat?” Wayne asked, which earned a shrug from Eddie. How could he think about eating when he was stuck thinking about everything else?

“Are you gonna tell me why you’ve been moping around for the past few weeks?” Wayne tried again in an attempt to be a good guardian. When that didn’t work either he sighed and said “Might as well step outside with me and have a smoke.”

It was better than doing whatever the hell else Eddie was doing now, and so he rolled off the couch less than gracefully and followed his uncle out onto the porch to sit on the outdoor couch. Wayne offered him the smoke and for a moment it was peaceful. Wayne wasn’t one to push Eddie to talk about anything, but he did have a way to make him think even if it did piss him off occasionally.

Eddie took a long drag of the cigarette and released it slowly as he stared up at the sky. It was a dark night, a million tiny dots illuminating the trailer park, even if the moon wasn’t out. He scanned the stars, looking for the three that he knew were Orion’s belt. That’s about where his astrology knowledge began and ended, but it was something to look for at least.

“I think a girl likes me.” He finally said as he spotted what he assumed was the constellation he was looking for.

“Yeah?” Wayne asked, his own eyes gazing upwards as well, giving Eddie the space to talk more.

“Yeah.”

It was silent again for a few minutes as they smoked, the only other sound for a while was that of Wayne cracking open a beer. That’s what Eddie appreciated about Wayne, he didn’t need to fill the silence like his dad did, and Eddie didn’t need to either. He could just... exist.

“I don’t know what to do about it.” Eddie finally said a while later. “She only has an interest because her and some jock are trying to get each other dates.”

“Is that right?” Coming from anyone else that question would have been dismissive, a filler phrase to show that they were paying minimal attention. Eddie knew better though, which caused a knot of frustration in his gut.

“I guess.” he shrugged.

“How many dates has she gone on?” Wayne passed the beer to Eddie, who took a grateful sip.

“Don’t know. It didn’t sound like she’d been on many. Henderson said she’s picky.”

“But she likes you.”

“Yeah.”

Another long stretch of silence as Eddie stewed over the question. He hated how Wayne could break down his problems into simple questions.

“Don’t see why you’re moping around if she likes you.” Wayne glanced over at Eddie. “Are you sweet on her?”

Eddie snorted at the term, taking another drag from the cigarette and flicking the ashes off the porch. “She’s cute.” he said, thinking about how you’d looked the last few times he’d seen you. He might have been distracted that first night at the arcade, but not so distracted that he didn’t notice that at least. “Smart too. She got the guys to listen to her last time we hung out.”

Wayne raised an eyebrow. “She got Gareth to pay attention? That’s a damn miracle.”

“They liked her too.”

“More than the California girl?”

The question caught Eddie off guard and he looked up at Wayne who was still looking off in the distance. Eddie had never explained exactly to Wayne what had happened that first senior year, most of the details going to what happened with Al when Officer Morris was shot. They never talked about how Eddie was so damn close to packing everything up and running away to California.

Thinking about everything that happened that year still stung. Eddie had tried hard not to think about what could have been if CJ and Toby had just shown up one or two days later. Would Eddie have made it to the audition? Would they have really liked him? Maybe in another life he’d be signed and he’d be working on an album or on tour and him and Paige...

It didn’t matter, that ship had long since sailed. Eddie was no rock hero, and never would be. He tried to tell himself it was better this way, if anything it meant that his relationship with Al was over and done with which was a hollow victory if he was being honest.

“Definitely more than her.” Eddie finally agreed. You weren’t asking him to ditch the band and run away with you, so that had to give you some points for them, and for him. Dustin vouched for you, and even Mike, but he wasn’t sure how much that counted for yet. After all Dustin still seemed to worship Steve, and you were friends with Steve-

But did that actually matter? If you and Steve were close enough friends to help each other like this, and Steve was willing to vouch for Eddie, despite never having any real conversation just because Dustin said something-

“She gonna ask you to run away?” Wayne was now looking at Eddie again.

Sometimes he wondered if his uncle could secretly read minds.

“Doubt it.” Eddie said, “She works at the video store. I don’t know much about her, honestly.”

“So ask her on a date.”

“What?”

“She likes you, you want to get to know her. Ask her on a date. It’s not that complicated, Eddie.” Wayne dropped the cigarette on the porch and crushed it under his boot. “You always did think too much, always sucked up in your own world. You’ll be happier in the long run if you open up a bit.”

Easier said than done for a 20 year old still in high school that the whole town considered a satanic cult leader. Then again, when was the last time he’d really opened up to anyone other than Ronnie or Wayne? Right, his dad in the weeks before the heist.

“I think I fucked this up before I could even start.” Eddie sighed, snuffing out his own half finished cigarette. “She gave me her number and I never called.”

“Could’a grabbed a quarter from the change jar and used a pay phone.”

Eddie pressed his hands against his face and dragged them down slowly. Why did good advice always come too late for him?

“Well, I guess it’s a good thing I brought back a new phone for the kitchen today.”

Eddie’s head snapped up so fast he should have snapped something, his eyes widening.

“Don’t get too excited. It’s a new used phone. Guy down the line from me offered it up and it’s better than nothing.”

Eddie didn’t care if it was a rotary phone, he’d take anything at this point if it meant that he could try to call you.

He wanted to call you.

He wanted to call you. Eddie didn’t care if you remembered that first time you met, did it even really matter? You had an interest in him, Eddie Munson, now.

“Thanks, Wayne.” Eddie stood up and hurried inside, seeing the new old phone that was sitting on the counter. It took a few minutes of making sure it wouldn’t fall off the wall before he plugged it in and heard that sweet dial tone sound.

Eddie grabbed his copy of Lord of the Rings from his bedside table and pulled out the paper flower, looking at the number scribbled in his own chicken scratch. He didn’t trust himself to punch in the number without checking, no matter how many times he read the ten digits over the past two weeks.

It rang once.

Twice.

Six times.

No response.

“It’s late, she might be asleep.” Wayne said, grabbing a box of pasta from the cabinet.

It wasn’t that late, not even 8:30 yet. Eddie sighed and hung up the phone, crossing his arms as he thought about his next move. He’d always had tunnel vision when he got an idea into his head, from Corroded Coffin, to his campaigns, to a book that he wanted to read, it was hard to shake the urge when he got one.

Grabbing the keys from the counter he called over to Wayne “I’ll be back later.” which was responded to with a confirmation that he’d save some pasta for Eddie in the fridge.

There weren’t many places he could think of where you could be tonight. You hadn’t shown back up at the Hideout, and the arcade was closed this late on a weeknight. You could be at home, but Eddie didn’t remember where you lived and showing up to your place after two weeks of radio silence would definitely get him in trouble.

So he drove to Family Video.

If you were there he’d do.. something. If you weren’t he’d call you after school tomorrow. Eddie winced internally at the thought. He’d been trudging through school and dragging his feet for the past six years to graduate, and now was the time he felt childish about it. You could legally buy him a beer, and he could illegally sneak you a drink in the Hideout.

At a stoplight he swapped out the Black Sabbath tape for W.A.S.P., remembering that you had mentioned liking them. How did he continue to remember these small details about you?

Because she’s treated you like a human each time you’ve talked. It was startling how something so basic was such a big deal to him.

The lights were still on at Family Video, and the open sign was still lit up. He could see movement inside the store, and he caught sight of someone wearing the signature green vest that the employees wore.

He’d walk in, and if you were there he’d- fuck what the hell was he supposed to do? Eddie stared at the door from inside his van for a few minutes. It was past nine now, and he could have sworn that they should be closed now but that stupid sign was still on. That had to be a good sign right? Eddie wasn’t one to believe in stuff like that but maybe he’d be stupid to ignore a literal neon sign hanging in the door.

Okay, now or never. Eddie had never really been one to hesitate before and he wasn’t about to start now.

He made his way to the entrance and opened the door before he could think about what he was actually wanting to do. Eddie could improvise, it was one of the more useful skills that came from years of running Hellfire.

“Who didn’t lock the door?!” Your voice was a welcome sound, sealing the determination inside of him. No going back now.

“It was Steve’s job to-” your co-worker said. She looked familiar, but he couldn’t place a name to the face.

“Oh, shit. Hi.” Steve was the first to actually notice Eddie as he walked in, looking as if he was expecting literally anyone else.

Turning on the Freak, Eddie smirked at Steve. “Cursing in front of customers, Harrington? Now that’s not very professional of you.”

“Well, we’re closed. You can’t be a customer if you can’t pay.” Steve said, putting his hands on his hips in a way that reminded Eddie of a mother hen. Steve did have a point, and so he decided to cut through any bullshit and looked over at you. You looked like you’d had a long shift, but the way you were looking at him... there was still the same shock that was on Steve’s face, but while his shock was laced with confusion yours was excited. As if you couldn’t believe that The Freak was here and that was a good thing.

“Do you want to get out of here?” Eddie blurted out the request before he could think. He had no idea where you two would go or what you would do but he had to do something.

Your coworker nudged you in the ribs, and your expression changed to a more professional one.

“I- uh. I have to finish closing.” you said, looking at Steve for a split second.

“Steve and I can handle the rest of closing!” Eddie made a mental note to learn this girls name and send her a fucking gift basket one day.

“Guys, I’m literally in charge of you both. I can’t leave before you.” You said, reaching down to grab something from below the counter- your bag. Eddie felt himself growing more excited, his heart pounding as you tossed your work vest and keys over to them. They were basically shoving you out the door to spend time with him.

“We can handle it!” Steve said.

“And I can handle Steve!” Robin added. “We close without you and Keith all the time, remember?”

You stepped out from behind the counter, looking up at him. The color of your eyes under the fluorescent lights reminded him of the stars he had been looking at earlier this evening. Eddie found himself smiling at you as you opened the door for him.

Someone was quick to lock the door and turn the OPEN sign off.

Eddie opens his van door for you, trying his best to make a good impression for whatever was about to happen. You hopped into the passenger seat and he thought that he might enjoy seeing you sitting next to him like this in his van more often.

---

Next Chapter

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[eleanor-bradstreet]

Let Me Be Your Anchor

Chapter 24: Betrothal

Benedict Bridgerton x Sophie Beckett An Offer from a Gentleman reimagined Chapter rating: 18+ - explicit sexual content Word count: 5.5k

Masterpost Previous chapter

Author's note: A portion of this chapter may be familiar to you if you've read my story Fever. Dream. Before I decided to share this story with the world, I shamelessly lifted chunks of it to write that shorter fic. This has also been a work in progress for so long, it actually contains the first steamy scene I ever, ever wrote.

Love to Gumball, who inspired some of the dialogue. Such pure words from the heart had to find their way to Benedict's lips 💙

Sophie was grateful that it was the dinner hour and that they encountered no one closely in the distance between Bridgerton House and Benedict’s apartments. She couldn’t imagine the gossip that would erupt the next day from anyone who had seen them: Benedict Bridgerton, one of London’s most eligible bachelors, wild-eyed and bleeding, dragging a maid by the hand through the streets. 

Once safely behind closed doors, Benedict led her into a small parlour, leaving her in the doorway while he proceeded to stomp about from one corner to the other. The footman that had opened the door followed them warily and scurried off when Sophie quietly asked him to bring a basin of water and cloth.

She paused to take in her surroundings. If Benedict’s room in Aubrey Hall could be considered something of a gallery, this room was a full-fledged studio. Devoid of most of the furniture one would expect to find in a parlour, this one held only a few cabinets of supplies, a large, paint-splattered table strewn with brushes, cups, palettes and papers, and a lone sofa. The floor was hidden entirely by dropcloths and three easels stood near the windows. As at Aubrey Hall, the walls were dotted with pinned sketches and hung paintings, mostly large landscape canvases. It was so precisely him - wild and disorganized but colorful and moving, with bursts of breathtaking beauty.

His wildness was on full display as he stalked the length of the room, kicking the cloths and crumpling papers, raking his hands through his hair.

Sophie stood in place by the doorway. “Benedict, you must tell me what is wrong.”

He glanced at her almost as if he had forgotten she was there. “Nothing is wrong,” he grumbled.

“You’re bleeding!”

He either didn’t hear her or chose to ignore her. He continued to pace, seething. “Bloody whelp…if he ever…”

Sophie stepped into the room, raising her voice. “If who ever?”

“Cavender!”

She froze. That was certainly not a name she had expected to hear tonight. “Cavender? What happened?”

Again he was either ignoring her or so lost in his anger that he had grown deaf. He continued muttering to himself. “Bloody…menace…ought to be shot…”

“Benedict Bridgerton!” She shouted with her full voice. It worked and he snapped to face her. “Come here and sit down,” she ordered. The poor confused footman had entered and placed the basin on the table before bowing out awkwardly. 

With a look of apology, Benedict staggered to sit on the sofa while Sophie wet a cloth and came to stand before him. 

His eyes were huge, unfathomable as he looked up at her. “Sophie…”

“Shut up,” she snapped. “Sit still.” 

He stopped fidgeting and she held his chin, dabbing the cloth at the corner of his lips, the fabric staining pink. Even under these circumstances it felt so good to touch his skin again, she wanted to shiver. She continued to wipe away the blood, trying to focus only on her task, but her eyes inevitably wandered to meet his gaze. The blue-grey beacons pierced right through her. Something in them was longing. She couldn’t help herself from running her thumb gently under the one that was so frightfully damaged and bright red with blood.

“Did you get into a row with him?” she asked softly.

“Yes. I don’t think he’ll ever care to be in my company again.”

Sophie nodded and continued tending to his cut. She had a passing memory of Benedict’s promise so long ago at the inn; that he would beat Cavender when next he saw him. At the time it had made her smile. But now, Benedict acting as her champion brought out far more complicated feelings. Should she thank him? Had he revealed to Cavender where she was? 

“What was said?” she asked.

“Nothing important. He doesn’t know you’re here.” He always had a way of speaking to her as if reading her mind. “He’s a loathsome cad and now everyone knows it.”

Sophie nodded again, feeling a bit relieved. She had done as much as she could with the cloth and brought it back to the table. She turned to Benedict, her voice wary. 

“Why did you bring me here? Is this all you wanted to tell me?”

Benedict unclenched his jaw but didn’t answer. He seemed to be searching for words.

Sophie continued. “If you seek an apology, I must demand some of my own, and it wouldn’t be worth the breath we will waste because I am leaving. Tonight.”

He stood from the sofa and she instinctively backed toward the door. She didn’t have the energy to fight or bargain with him any longer. This would be the last time she would see him, bloodied and confused though he was. A final bout of sorrow began to choke her.

“I can’t do this anymore, Benedict,” she whispered, shaking her head. “Everything hurts too much. I can’t…”

“I love you.” 

His words were loud and clear. A proclamation that made her heart stop. She stared at him, stunned. Was she going mad? Hearing things? Was he just toying with her?

Again, as if hearing her thoughts, he continued. “And I’m not just saying that to keep you here.”

He turned and walked to one of the cabinets against the wall, retrieving a small key from some hidden corner and unlocking a drawer. From within he lifted a stack of papers, varying in size and texture. He held them gingerly in both hands like priceless artifacts. Sophie moved trepidatiously to stand by the sofa, wondering what on earth he was doing.

Benedict turned and looked her in the eyes, an unreadable expression on his face, something like reluctance and yearning simultaneously. He walked closer and slowly started to spread the pages out before her, separating them to lay across the sofa and the floor so she could see each one. 

She gasped. 

It was her. 

They were all pictures of her. 

Dozens of them. Charcoal sketches of a faceless woman in a cascading ball gown. Renderings of a face hidden by a mask with dark lips and starry earrings. A study of gloved hands, another of the curls of her coiffure. Oil paintings of a woman facing away in a dark garden and watercolors of swirling blues and silver, some painted by his own fingers, abstract and without imagery, but she knew what they signified. She sank to the sofa and touched them in awe, her hands shaking. Eyes welled with tears, she looked up at him, speechless.

“I have thought of nothing but you for two years,” his voice was unsteady with emotion. “I couldn’t let myself forget you, even though I didn’t know your face. You are all I can see. You are in every line I draw, every sky I paint. You are all that inspires and delights me. The only moments when you’re not on my mind are in the dreams where you elude me.” He moved to stand before her. “I have loved you even before I truly knew you, and since fate reunited us I have scarcely been able to breathe in your presence.”

Sophie was finding it impossible to breathe in this moment. All she could do was gaze up at him and let the tears roll down her face.

“In my life I have endeavored to be guided by one thing,” he paused, swallowing. “My heart. And it is telling me that finding you again is not a coincidence. It is crying out for you.”

Sophie didn’t know whether she was about to sprout wings and fly into the air, or shatter like a pane of glass. 

Then Benedict knelt on one knee, taking her hands in his. He looked up at her, a plea in his eyes. 

“I know the circumstances are not perfect. I know our union would not be traditional,” he nearly spat the word. “But I have never put much stock in tradition or society. I must do what my heart bids me to, above all else.”

One hand rummaged in his waistcoat pocket, then he held out a glinting ring of silver and sapphire, a crooked grin teasing the corners of his mouth. 

“Marry me, Sophie.” 

All the air left her lungs, the room began to spin. 

“Let me show you the love and comfort that you deserve. We can live quietly somewhere away from any judgment. Please, Sophie. We can find a way. Please do not condemn me to live the rest of my life as a broken man.”

It was as if the whole world went silent and all Sophie could hear were both of their bated breaths. Everything grew shrouded in her vision except him, kneeling on the paint splattered cloth, a question in his bloodied eyes. Seeing his outstretched hand, it was only now that she realized his knuckles were cut and bleeding too. It was not how she had ever envisioned the moment whenever she had dared to dream of his proposal. But it was perfect.

“This is real…” she whispered, more to assure herself than to ask him.

He replied nonetheless. “It is real. I love you, Sophie. I want to marry you.” He gripped her hand tighter. “Will you marry me?”

The warmth from his fingers spread up through her arm and across her whole body. It made her feel alive, illuminated, weightless with the happiness of a dream come true.

“Yes,” she whispered, a beaming smile breaking through her tears. “Yes, of course, yes!” 

They surged forward to hold each other, colliding in a desperate kiss. Sophie wept and laughed simultaneously, absolutely breathless with emotion. 

Grinning ear to ear, Benedict slid the ring onto her left hand. Sophie could barely register its beauty. All she saw was a glimmering braid of silver, pearl and blue through her tears, perfectly matching the spread of artwork beneath her on the floor. She gazed at it lovingly before pulling Benedict into another kiss. They grasped each other, sighing and giggling and kissing every inch of skin - lips and faces and hands - releasing the nervous energy that was coursing through them both.

When they had overcome their giddiness and could breathe again, they sat together on the sofa, hands entwined.

“I’m sorry,” Sophie said suddenly. It was all she could think to say.

“No, I’m sorry,” Benedict replied. “I shouldn’t have asked you to be my mistress. It wasn’t right of me.”

“Benedict,” she said softly, “what else would you have done? This isn’t a perfect world. Men like you don’t marry…”

“Fine. I wasn’t wrong to ask then.” He tried to smile. It came out lopsided. “I would have been a fool not to ask. I wanted you so badly, and I think I already loved you, and…”

“Benedict, you don’t have to…”

“Explain? Yes I do. I should never have pressed the issue. It was unfair of me to ask you to stop working and be a kept woman, especially when we both knew that I would eventually be expected to marry. I would die before sharing you.” He ran his fingers along her cheek. “How could I ask you to do the same?” 

She reached out and brushed something under his eye. Jesus, was he crying? He couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried. When his father had died, perhaps?

“There are so many reasons I love you,” he said, each word emerging with careful precision. He knew that he had won her. She wasn’t going to run away; she would be his wife. But he still wanted this to be perfect. A man only got one shot at declaring himself to his true love; he didn’t want to muck it up completely.

“But one of the things I love best,” he continued, “is the fact that you know yourself. You know who you are, and what you value. You have principles, Sophie, and you stick by them.” He took her hand and brought it to his lips. “That is so rare.”

Her eyes were filling with tears again, and all he wanted to do was hold her, but he knew he had to finish. So many words had been welling up inside of him, and they all had to be said.

“And,” he said, his voice dropping in volume, “you took the time to see me. To know me. Benedict. Not Mr. Bridgerton, not ‘Number Two.’ Benedict.”

She touched his cheek. “You’re the finest person I know. I adore your family, but I love you.”

He crushed her to him. He couldn’t help it. He had to feel her in his arms, to reassure himself that she was there and that she would always be there. With him, by his side, until death did they part. It was strange, but he was driven by the oddest compulsion to hold her…just hold her.

He was, he realized, comforted by her presence. They didn’t need to talk. They didn’t even need to touch (although he wasn’t about to let go just then). Simply put, he was a happier man - and quite possibly a better man when she was near.

He buried his face in her hair, inhaling her scent. Somehow, she smelled of vanilla. Vanilla and amber, a sweetness so rare.

Sophie held him against her, trailing her fingers across the nape of his neck, saying at last the words she had hidden for so long. “I love you,” she whispered. “I have always loved you. I think I loved you before I knew you too.”

He pulled back and looked at her inquisitively. 

“At the masquerade,” she said, her voice uncharacteristically shaky, “even before I saw you, I felt you. Anticipation. Magic. There was something in the air. And when I turned, and you were there, it was as if you’d been waiting for me, and I knew that you were the reason I’d stolen into the ball.”

He opened his mouth, and for a moment, she was certain he would say something, but the only sound that emerged was a rough, halting noise, and she realized that he was overcome, that he could not speak.

She was undone.

Benedict kissed her again, trying to show in deeds what he could not say in words. He hadn’t thought he could love her any more than he did just five seconds earlier, but when she’d said…when she’d told him…

His heart had grown, and he’d thought it might burst.

He loved her. Suddenly the world was a very simple place. He loved her, and that was all that mattered. 

Sophie kissed him back, feeling like jagged parts of her soul were at last being stitched, tied together to his. Their secrets were finally falling away. Each whispered promise and revelation made her feel lighter and lighter within his arms. There was only one more.

She held his neck and pulled away, looking earnestly into his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said again.

“What for?”

“For not telling you who I was. It was wrong of me.” She bit her lip. “I can’t explain exactly why I did what I did, but it just…” She sighed. “I didn’t tell you right away because it didn’t seem to make any sense to do so. I was so sure we’d part ways at the inn. But then you were ill, and I had to care for you, and you didn’t recognize me, and…”

He brought a finger under her chin. “It doesn’t matter.”

Her brows rose. “It seemed to matter a great deal last night.”

He ran his thumb across her lips. “I know who you are.”

She gave him a small smile.

“And do you want to hear the funniest part?” he continued. “Do you know one of the reasons I was so hesitant to give my heart completely to you? I’d been saving a piece of it for the lady from the masquerade, always hoping one day I’d find her.”

“Oh, Benedict,” she sighed, thrilled by his words, and at the same time miserable that she had hurt him so.

“Deciding to marry you meant I had to abandon my dream of marrying her,” he said quietly. “Ironic, isn’t it?”

“I’m sorry I hurt you by not revealing my identity,” she said, looking down. “How can I ever make it up to you?”

He lifted her face to meet his gaze again. His lopsided grin made his eyes sparkle. “Love me for the rest of your life.”

Sophie smiled. She knew that she would, and it would be rather like breathing. She wouldn’t have much choice in the matter.

___

The remaining hours of the evening whirled by. Benedict and Sophie stayed where they were, basking in the giddy reality that they were now betrothed. They did not discuss or fret over any details, knowing how delicate and complex those would be. They simply wanted to enjoy the happiness they felt in that moment and extend it throughout the night. The one arrangement they agreed upon was that they could not remain in England. It was too dangerous for Sophie to risk contact with the Cowpers or Cavenders, and Benedict refused to allow anyone even the chance to reproach his wife. They talked of Paris and Rome and Prussia - places Sophie could never have imagined seeing in her wildest dreams - and Benedict promised to take her there.

They sighed and laughed, wrapped in their dreams on the sofa until the footman returned and hesitantly reminded them that dinner was available. Benedict had the meal brought to his bedroom, unable to contain himself for a formal dinner table and unable to stop kissing and stroking his fiancee. Maybe they ate, he couldn’t remember, and maybe the footmen stared at Sophie, wondering why Benedict was being so flagrantly flirtatious with a maid, but he didn’t care. 

Eventually Sophie stripped him of his torn clothing, kissing the spots on his shoulders and chest that he realized were tender from his fight. He pulled off her dress and they held each other, wearing only their undergarments, soaking in the heat of each others’ skin. He wanted her, of course. He always wanted her. But more than that, he wanted to hold her. To smell her, to feel her. He sat as she washed the dried blood from his knuckles, kissing each in turn. Then he laid back on the bed and she kissed his jaw, his bloodied lip, and the lid of his scarlet eye. 

They lost themselves in a gauzy warmth, trailing their hands along each other’s bodies with no sense of urgency. They entwined their fingers, they whispered promises, they simply stared at each other, reveling in love. Benedict rolled onto his stomach and drank in the sight of her. He was contented just to lie there and watch her breathe, the soft movements of her chemise betraying the curves of her body. He studied her face, dappled by candlelight, the arch of her brows, the pointed bow of her lips, the line of her neck. He committed them to memory and endeavored to paint this image, the image of the woman he loved most in the world on the night they agreed to wed.

Sophie stared back at him, her fiance. The most beautiful man she had ever seen. Almost too beautiful to be real. She couldn’t help but reach out and touch his cheek to confirm that he was flesh and blood and not just a dream. His gaze held her so softly, so full of tenderness, then she broke into a smile. In turn he cracked a grin, that damn, cheeky, crooked grin that made her heart nearly leap out of her body. They lay there, grinning at each other like lovesick fools, holding the most precious secret between them: that they were in love, true and honest love with one another and soon would be man and wife.

The joy caused them both to chuckle and breathe heavier with sheer delight and the sound of their breaths, the rustling of the sheets between them, quickly elevated that joy to something else…an invitation. Their smiles faded and eyes locked, darkening with mutual need. Her hands wound into his hair, his hands found her face, and the space between them closed instantaneously. They kissed. A single, long, passionate kiss, intense but tender. They had kissed so many times before now, why did this feel like the first time? That kiss fractured into dozens more, faster, messier. Their tongues danced. He wanted to taste every sweet inch of her. She planted kisses across his jaw, down his neck. His fabulous, muscled neck. Benedict moved to lay atop her, gaining greater access to the entirety of her face, her collarbone, her pale shoulders. 

“Ben,” she held his face in her hands, eyes glazed. “Show me how much you love me.” 

His brow knitted with concern, “Do you not believe my words?” 

She leaned up to kiss him, “No, no, of course I believe them.” Another kiss, then her eyes leveled on his. “But I want to feel them.” 

Something twisted in his stomach, blood rushed downward in his body, arousal stiffened between his legs. This woman, he thought, how can her words always do this to me? 

In a flurry he was pulling down the sleeves of her chemise as she wriggled to free herself of it. He wrestled with his own pants and kicked them aside. They were naked, exposed to each other and to all the opportunities that presented. It was the way he most enjoyed to be with her. He moved back to slide his tongue into her mouth, probing, caressing. His hands traced the shape of her curves. He cupped and kneaded her breasts, full and luscious. She leaned her head back and moaned as he moved lower, sucking at her nipples, grazing them with his teeth. She was a banquet and he was going to enjoy each course. 

He snaked a hand between her legs and found her already slick. He groaned into the soft flesh of her stomach. How he wanted to dive into that river with every part of himself. His fingers pressed to enter her but she stopped him with a firm hand around his wrist. He looked up, curious, as she tugged to bring him back on top of her as before. As soon as it was within reach, her other hand gripped his cock, causing him to inhale sharply. She stared up at him, eyes burning as her hand started to move, up and down across his velvet length. 

“I need to feel them now.” She tried to issue the words as a command, though she was sure her voice was mewling with desire. 

His eyes were searing into her, mouth gaping, his breaths coming shorter. While she continued to stroke him slowly, with her free hand she reached up and gripped a fistful of his thick, black, unruly hair. She tugged gently, willing him to say something. 

His eyes closed and he exhaled with a hiss, “Christ.” 

She smirked. He understood her now and was eager to fulfill her wishes. She dropped her hand to his cheek and traced his bottom lip with her thumb. He opened his mouth and sucked her finger into it, swirling his tongue before biting and releasing it. He lowered himself into position and she wrapped both arms around his back. He kissed her, she kissed him, and they moaned into each other’s mouths as he slid into her. 

Sophie felt whole. With Benedict in her body, in her mouth, in her heart, everywhere. He banished pain she did not know she had, or had forced herself to forget. It was as if she had spent her life before him as a broken half of a locket, thinking she could shine on her own, but not realizing how everything would feel corrected once she was rehinged with her other half.

Benedict’s hips moved with a practiced pace, thrusting slowly in and out of the woman he loved. It was luxurious, exquisite. She was here and she was his, body and mind and soul. She shifted beautifully beneath him as he rode, taking the length of him, breathing in time with his movements, her lips upturned in a smile of bliss. How many times in his life would he get to do this? To fill her and love her and watch her love him back? If it happened every day for the rest of his life, it wouldn’t be enough to satisfy the yearning in his heart. He quickened his pace and leaned down to inhale the sweet scent of her neck. 

Sophie was moaning and sighing with pleasure. She leaned up and bit his earlobe then purred, “I want to feel you finish inside me.” 

He groaned with a shudder and slowed to a halt, stopping himself from coming right then. He realized that his anxiety over such an act was no longer warranted. She was his fiancee, soon to be his wife. There were no longer any boundaries if they did not want them. And clearly, Sophie did not want them. He was only too happy to oblige.

A grin spread across his face, that damned crooked grin again. “I won’t finish before you do.” 

He leaned back, never pulling out of her as he moved to kneel between her legs. He pulled her hips upward to meet him as her feet planted into the mattress, her thighs framing his hips. Her eyes were wide, eager to watch what he would do next. He began to move again, dipping into her slowly, one hand gripping her waist. He held her gaze as he raised his free hand and took two fingers into his mouth. They emerged glistening and he brought them down upon her crest, pressing, circling, teasing the center of her pleasure. 

Sophie was certain this must be what it felt like to go mad. She had no words, no thoughts, she barely had sight. All she could feel, her every sense, was concentrated on the movements and heat and pressure orchestrated by the man between her legs. The gorgeous aching spread through her whole body like ripples in a pond. She was moaning, loudly, repeatedly, but didn’t care. All she could do was give in, hand him the reins to her body and its sensations. She gasped into the pillows and tried to hold on to something solid before she slid off the edge of the earth. One hand clung to his wrist at her hip, the other braced against the headboard which was thumping rhythmically against the wall. 

Benedict’s eyes swept over her, moving from the work of his fingers to the delicious bounce of her breasts, to her flushed face, eyes clamped shut as she hummed and cried out. He was certain he could do this for hours. She was so wet he likely didn’t need to lick his fingers to touch her, but it was his way of kissing her there in her most precious spot while he was simultaneously inside her. He matched the circling of his fingers to the thrusting of his hips, rhythmic and not too fast, focusing solely on her. 

Under his ministrations she began to grow rigid, her thighs shook and clenched him in place, her hips bucked upward to meet his hand. She began to pant, “Oh god, Ben, oh god…” He circled his fingers faster, pressed harder, coaxing her. Lord, how he wanted to feel her explode.

Sophie reached her precipice, mouth held open in a silent scream as electric white waves of release washed over her. She shuddered, reveled, lost herself to the feeling. Benedict choked out a gasp as she came, her body squeezing his cock of its own accord. He thrust into her faster, riding her spasms with blinding ecstasy. He nearly collapsed from the feeling but caught himself and was back lying atop her again. He gazed at Sophie, face sheened with sweat, cheeks high with color, eyes full of love and satiety, the most beautiful woman in the most beautiful moment. 

“I love you,” he breathed. 

Saying these words, the realization sunk deeper and deeper into his soul that this was forever. She was his present, she was his future. Wherever they found themselves, in city or country, in whatever corner of the world, accepted by society or not, this was the woman he had always hoped to find and she was better than any fantasy he had conjured. Sophie and the lady in silver, one in the same and entirely his own. She would be his wife, in his home, in his bed, in his thoughts and in his heart every day that they walked the earth together, and that was the only way he could endure the many days that stretched before him. This knowledge gleamed within his chest, flooding him with renewed energy. 

Sophie was pulled from her reverie by Benedict’s soft oath. Even in the height of their passion he was proclaiming his love for her. She had known it was true when he confessed it the first time, but to see it in practice brought her a comfort that she had never felt in her life. The way he imbued his every move and glance with love. She looked at him with wonderment. How could she have ever dreamed to call this man her husband? This kind, handsome, cheeky, passionate man with that hair and those eyes, that devil’s smile, the slender fingers always covered in charcoal, the muscles of his shoulders and rippling down his back, and the way he could make her melt with his words, his hands, his mouth…

Benedict was rock solid to the point of pain. Helpless, he moved within Sophie once again. “I love you,” he kissed her collarbone, her cheek. “I love you, I love you.” The words spilled out of him like a holy chant, like a prayer. Her arms were bent on either side of her head and he caressed the length of one until their hands met. Sophie entwined her fingers with his and held tightly, her ring glinting in the candlelight. 

“I love you too,” she breathed. He was suddenly struck with the memory of their first time and how he had held her hand in the same way. He had been trying to show her that she could trust him, could feel secure and supported by him. Now, the proof of that security and her belief in it was visible on her finger. The sweet intimacy of it made his heart flutter, feeling as if their palms were already wed though their persons might not be yet.

His hips increased their fervor and he closed his eyes, brow beaded with sweat. He pushed into her tight warmth deeper and faster, more desperately. Sophie responded in kind, grinding her hips with his, raking her free hand everywhere, through his hair, down his back, across his rump. 

“Sophie…” he pleaded, pushing harder than ever. He had a fleeting concern that the violent knocking of the headboard would alert the whole house to their activities and most certainly leave a dent, but he really could not care less. He wasn’t sure where he felt more pressure, in his heart or in his cock, but one or both of them were going to burst in a moment. “Sophie…” his voice caught in his throat. 

“Yes, my love,” she urged. “Inside of me.” She only had to say the words to conjure them into being. He peaked, a rapid pulsing as he throbbed within her, fusing them as tightly as two people could ever be. His moan was guttural, stuttering. It was an ecstasy he had never experienced, releasing himself inside a woman, and his heart swelled knowing that it was only Sophie that he shared it with. 

Sophie’s mouth hung open in awe as she felt him throb inside of her for the first time. It was fascinating to feel the intense cadence of his release and she delighted in it, the hot rush of his seed filling her so much that she began to leak. She swayed her hips back and forth, sighing with deep contentment.

Panting and utterly spent, Benedict lowered to lay on top of her, sealing the moment with a deep and tender kiss before resting his head in the crook of her neck. She wrapped an arm around him and ran a hand through his hair, holding him close. She could feel his heartbeat hammering against her own chest, wild from his exertions, and she stroked the muscles of his back, calming him after mind numbing pleasure. She turned her face to his hair and inhaled that scent she knew so well: clean parchment, sandalwood and a pommade reminiscent somehow of a green forest, but all overlaid with the musk of their sex.  He was still tight inside her, their limbs an indecipherable tangle, their breaths rising and falling together. So this is lovemaking, Benedict thought. Though they had done the act before, this was more than physical. More than just their bodies joining, this was their souls joining, entwining, laid bare for each other to explore and pleasure and revere. There was nothing but honesty between them now. Honest love, honest desire, honest commitment. They were loosed from the bonds of their assumptions, their secrets, their fears. They were free, together.

Tagging: @angels17324 @broooookiecrisp @secretagentbucky @eg-dr3amer3 @time-to-hit-the-clouds @lyta2323 @autumn-grace @sadprose-auroras @the-other-art-blog @goldrambutan @colettebronte @heeyyyou @musicismyoxygen84 @ambitionspassionscoffee @starchaser325 @malna4903 @sincere-sarcasm @kmc1989 @makaylan @queen-of-the-misfit-toys @alexandrainlove @chase-your-dreams-away @benophievisuals

[suzukiblu]

I just discovered your writing recently and it has been glorious! Thank you so much! I'm particularly a fan of your Billy raising Kon, and Billy/Damian soulmates works. I'm agog at your writing output and wanted to ask, how/when do you write so much? And secondarily, do you track your word count? How much do you actually write per week/month/year/arbitrary unit of time?

Thank you, glad to hear you're enjoying it! The Billy works do tend to come out pretty well for me, hah, just somethin' about the lil' dude I guess. 😆

also uh

also imma just put this ridiculously long response to those questions behind a cut, hahaha, save everyone some scrolling as needed.

Disclaimer one: I did NOT mean to write this much but sometimes I just get INTO answering a question, haha, sooooo either I'm sorry or you're welcome, depending on how much information you actually wanted here? And I just didn't wanna downplay or over-simplify my response and potentially make anyone reading it feel bad about not being as stupid-productive at their thing-of-choice as I am at mine, because I am this stupid-productive at my thing-of-choice for SEVERAL reasons and most of them are deliberately-cultivated or deliberately worked-with ones that I like, put a LOT of work into long-term, and the rest are just dumb luck/chance. Like man, I am pushing forty and have literally been very dedicatedly both coming up with and telling stories for longer than I could actually READ, much less write; I have had a LOT of time to learn how to do this shit and I have very autistically DEDICATED a lot of time to learning how to do this shit, hahaha.

Disclaimer two: a SIGNIFICANT chunk of the reason I write so much is a) a convenient dovetail of hyperfocus and hyperfixation, b) I have literally been writing for twenty-five years, give or take some phases of writer's block of varying lengths, c) I'm on my meds and take them religiously, and d) my actual collect-a-paycheck job is only part-time and also lets me write on the clock because there's usually a ton of downtime there. On top of that it's our off-season so we're on reduced hours right now anyway, so I frequently only work two or three days a week and almost always have time to write for at least a couple hours at my desk, and more often have basically my entire SHIFT to write, and frankly I'm probably more productive in the office than I am at home, barring the occasional REAL busy day. Generally when I'm actually locked-in on something I'm working on, an hour of writing time is gonna end up being around 1k in word count for me, and I actually get interrupted less often in the office than I do at home.

Also and VITALLY, I am very much a writer who THRIVES on feedback/communication/other people's interest and I have spent a pretty significant amount of consistent time and effort on doing my best to encourage people on here to talk to me and tell me what they're into and ask me for things on WIP Wednesdays and the writing memes that I do, and the combination of all of that interaction and the AO3 comments I get REALLY fuels me. Like I cannot TELL you how much those things fuel me, hah. Apparently I'm like . . . a decently popular writer, go figure, and I realize this is gonna sound like fake-humble shit but that is genuinely never something I really realize/remember as being a thing until someone gives me a pitying look about how oblivious I am, at which point I realize that no, yeah, most people have way more trouble getting someone to answer their random weird questions about random weird shit at random weird times and most people do NOT get triple-digit comments per chapter on multiple ongoing fics or triple-digit responses on their WIP Wednesdays no matter HOW good the narrative dick is, either metaphorically OR literally.

So like, as stated, I am very appreciation/feedback-oriented as a writer and I get a LOT of appreciation and feedback; I have been very lucky to get a responsive and chatty audience for a lot of my writing, and therefore I write a lot, lot, LOT more than I would otherwise. Legit, I would have gotten bored of/frustrated with SO many of these fics if other people weren't reminding me what I liked about them to begin with and thereby renewing my motivation for and interest in 'em. Like I know EVERYONE has said to death that fandom is a collaborative effort and you don't get fic/art unless you tell writers/artists that you LIKE their fic/art, but if you have ANY doubt of that actually being a thing, I am one of the purest examples of that particular feedback loop that I am aware of, because I write a lot because people engage a lot with my stuff, and people engage a lot with my stuff because I write a lot, so I write MORE, so they ENGAGE more, so it just goes around and around and ends up in insanely prolific amounts of word count and me saying things like "geez did I only write 50k this month, how did I even write THAT little" and genuinely MEANING it.

And like, that's an environment that I have specifically tried to cultivate on this blog, ngl, because I know it's the environment I'll write the best/most in and one that a lot of readers will find rewarding/engaging to participate in and/or follow along with, but obviously it only works because people are willing to do that engaging with me to begin with and thereby are keeping a lot of ideas and WIPs all active in my brain. I have written thousands upon thousands upon THOUSANDS of words because of, like, ONE kind comment or one or two especially invested/appreciative readers peekin' in on the regular or just legit a single friend who likes to cheerlead or that one guy in the back who always perks up when a specific WIP comes up, so like, yeah, very much I am a feedback-loop writer, and very much does the feedback-loop work for my writing process.

Also, I've actively considered myself a writer since I was like fourteen and even before that was already drawing comics/storyboards/sequential art basically from the day I STARTED drawing, and I was ALL the way a "play through storytelling" VORACIOUS reader of a kid, I KILLED every reading challenge I ever did in school/at the library and like, there were literal NARRATIVES to my playtimes, my playtimes were actually straight-up EPISODIC, haha. I legitimately read so much that strangers at the library would low-key try to shade my mom for letting me check out the multiple literal stacks of books that they thought I wasn't gonna get through by their due dates, and meanwhile we'd taken out at LEAST as many the week before and I'd already been bored for two days before we came back for this week's batch. So I am very well-read and very narrative-oriented and really, REALLY experienced at both constructing a narrative and just the actual act of writing, so at this point I intuitively/instinctively know what works to tell a story and have a pretty strong grasp of grammar and spelling, and I know what ( usually ) works to make me write.

I've also done a TON of text-based roleplay/co-writing with people in the past, which definitely has made me a faster and more responsive writer and also taught me a lot about dialogue/exchange and how to avoid weighing a narrative too heavily around one person/point of view even when they're my special fave, hah, and about the concept of unreliable narrators and also, like, just finding somebody to match your freak being WAY more engaging than writing stories that are watered-down one-size-fits-all and therefore not particularly memorable. I also had a "very into poetry" phase during a lot of my more formative years right when I first started writing prose, which I realize SEEMS off-topic, but the poetry phase definitely helped a lot, because, like, it gave me a much better sense of . . . rhythm, let's say? Pacing? So I kind of have a baked-in "beat" in my head to follow when I write, typically, and that helps me write both smoother and faster and just more effectively in general, and also makes it easier for me to get across the mood/emotion/feeling I'm going for.

I also don't edit my stuff all that much most of the time; I'm usually just checking for continuity errors and typos and occasionally adjusting the rhythm/flow of paragraph breaks or swapping out over-used words. Otherwise, though, a LOT of my fic just goes up with zero changes from the first draft, or maybe just a few added sentences to clarify some details and corrected typos. So like, that also means that I spend a whole lot less time on rewriting and editing than a lot of other writers do, which therefore means I have more time to pour into More Words. And I have ascended beyond being over-precious about my writing, FINALLY, and therefore am fine with writing things I think are junk just to get them out of my system and/or make progress in a story and then can revisit them a few days later and be like "actually this is pretty damn good, wtf were you so annoyed by, self, did you just need a snack or something, whatever, WELP we're puttin' this one up!!"

Also: ADHD and autism. It is amazing what ADHD and autism can get out of a guy, for real. Like god DAMN does the ADHD and autism one-two combo really bring it home for me personally, because I am juuuuust autistic enough to not need or want a lot of social out-of-house time and to have incredibly dedicated life-long hyperfixations and I am also so ADHD that my diagnostic paperwork specifically says I have more ADHD than a whole-ass ninety-five percent of the ADHD population and my new psych literally did not believe that anyone would prescribe me as much Adderall as makes me temporarily ALMOST "normal" until we worked our way up to it, and WOW does correctly-channeled hyperfocus really, REALLY pay off in the art of getting real good at doing something and real good at doing that something a LOT.

And eight million words of answer later, yup, I do track my word count! My memory is all over the place ( that being one of the LESS useful aspects of my personal flavor of ADHD/autism, hah ) but I like to have a rough idea of how productive I've been so I don't wither up and die of imposter syndrome. I actually keep a whole-ass yearly spreadsheet with a page dedicated to each month that I update daily with how many words I wrote in which stories, and then I add 'em all up at the end of each week and add 'em up again at the end of the month just to give myself a rough idea of how I'm doing in general.

Which, speaking of, I'm actually WILDLY underproducing this week, seriously, it's already Thursday and I've only written like 6.7k. Which, for reference, I have not written less than 22k a week in the past THREE weeks, and on average I'm usually up in the 16-18k area. Like, if I only write 10k in a week or write less than 2k in a day, that seems like not all that much to me, and I write EVERY day. Like. Every day. Literally every day. Every day EVER, or I get the friggin' itch about it and get cranky; it is legit a compulsion for me at this point in my life. I wrote when I had fucking COVID last month and only missed any days that month at all because I had to drive four hours out of town immediately after recovering from said COVID, and that was the first time I'd missed even a SINGLE day in I'm pretty sure LITERAL months, and I STILL topped out above the high end of my usual monthly word count, which is on average about 70-75k. And last year I only tracked my word count from mid-June to December, I actually wasn't keeping track at all before that, but I wrote 410k in those six-ish months.

So like . . . I did mention the ADHD and autism, yes? I mentioned those things as being things?

No reason. Just wondering.

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 12/24/2024

pair of portentous tuesdayposts: this one is christmas eve and the next one is new year's eve

trying something new with the reading section, where i list off a bunch of books i bounced off and briefly explain why. let me know if this is interesting, or if it's more interesting when i finish a book i sort of enjoyed and really dissect what didn't work for me like with that annoying evil wizard book a couple weeks ago.

listening

the true champ of the past few weeks has been friends at the table's (an actual play podcast about critical worldbuilding, smart characterization, and fun interaction between good friends) horror/weird west season Sangfielle, and i know i have listened to about sixty hours of it bc i have played about sixty hours of stardew valley. i am currently on ep 49, one before the last finale episode, and it feels like it is wrapping up in a very rushed and weird way? maybe i will feel differently after listening to the six coda episodes wrapping up everyones' characters?

the song of the week is fleet foxes’ white winter hymnal, which is morbidly festive without being strictly christmas-y and is not salting the open emotional wound within my chest that is The Holiday Season. album released 2008. christ im old

-

reading

the concept of this gag award is EXTREMELY funny to me. i wish the EFF sent them a little physical trophy. perhaps a challenge coin.

bounced off a lot of stuff. the six larger books and the far top right are all from my absolute favorite thrift store with the worst vibes, who regularly has a 8/$1 media sale bc they actually want to be more of a kitchen goods and home decor thrift store and don't really want to constantly be overflowing with records no one buys. yet here they are.

i really do need to find a good indie used bookstore around here that will take books and give me back slightly more in store credit than in cash. bc i would like to fill some missing chunks of trilogies/fill out the star wars shelves a little more. but every time i have gone to half price books i have had an unpleasant time.

lumberjanes/bravest warrior/adventure time were not making me feel nostalgic and in fact made me quite sad instead (more in a memento mori way than in subject matter) so they're going to a friend's kid

glad i looked up Heartthrob (despite the really good premise of woman haunted by her heart donor) on my library's comic app bc the third one seems to mostly take place in a mental hospital which is really never a vibe i want

GRIFTER has art i don't love and a bland storyline about an ex-marine who is the saddest boy in the world and can also detect literal space aliens living among us. no thank you

tangle's game has a close-call near-sexual assault in the first chapter. no thank you! cool dystopic social credit score premise but no thanks!

gil's all fright diner is about the king of vampires and the duke of werewolves but they're hicks. the narrator hates that they're dumb hicks. did not jive with the authorial voice on this one

i bought Two Tickets to Tangiers in high school bc it looked cool and have only cracked it open now, almost fifteen years later. fifteen year old kay did not yet have the context clues from the cover that it would be a very racist travelogue

i need to stop trying agatha christie. i am never going to like agatha christie

-

watching

somehow i have seen the first tinker bell fairies movie three times this week bc that's all my bestie's toddlers want to watch. a really stupidly stacked cast??? how did all these people have free time in 2008???

-

playing

finished the community center in summer 2 of stardew valley (wildly popular and very intense farming sim) and would have finished it in winter 1 if not for the FUCKING pufferfish. i hate fishing minigames and i especially hate the fishing minigame in stardew so i am excited to leave it the fuck alone for a while.

my cauliflower got stupid mchugelarge?? i do not know why they did that. also a meteor fell on my farm and gave me a bunch of really valuable ore, just like real life meteors.

i do kind of regret picking the beach farm bc so much of my day is spent watering, but i am trying to lean harder into animal products and being more of a fun silly flower farm instead of the intense agriculture i find myself doing. i have the greenhouse, i have a small patch of sprinklerable land, i will simply make sure to buy some of every seed each season and if i really need something i will toss it in the greenhouse.

-

making

people are being very gracious about their mediocre colored pencil portraits. most of my gift budget this year was two flat rate boxes to my siblings. silly little pet portraits are very cost effective if you already have art supplies, nice paper, gumption, and very cheap small frames.

[wutheringmights]

A humble request for chapter commentary. At your leisure. Because wow. That was a chapter.

One of these days, I will realize that I should write the commentary as I write the chapter so that it does not take me so much time/effort to make it. Alas, I am convinced that one day people will not want to read my ramblings, and I refuse to do any work that is not absolutely necessary. 

As always, massive spoilers for the newest chapter below. Read at your own risk. 

So this chapter took a massive chunk of time to write, which was not my plan. Last chapter, I was all gung ho about cutting down on my production time and going back to as close to a monthly schedule as possible. That was November. It’s February now.

I really underestimated how busy the holiday season was going to make me. From Halloween up until post-New Years, I think I had two weekends where I didn’t need to shuttle off somewhere or someone wasn’t shuttling up to me. Not a lot of writing time. 

This could have been avoided if I didn’t stop writing mid-week. I’ve complained about this before, but in 2024 I stopped writing during the weekdays. I told myself that it was because I have zero time, but the real problem is that somewhere along the line, I told myself that if I didn’t have two hours to write, I couldn’t write at all. 

Well, I’m over that. I’m squeezing in at least 20 minutes a night as much as possible. I will not let myself make excuses anymore, especially because my mood drops when I’m not able to write for a while. 

I was also experiencing that classic “oh god why is my writing suddenly terrible?” panic, which I solved by forcing myself to slow down and stop trying to just the chapter. I wanted to actually take the time to make what I was writing good. Did this make the chapter take even longer? Yup, but I can’t regret it. 

So here we are. No promises this time as to when the next chapter will come out, but I’m still aiming for a near-monthly pace. Sadly, this might mean that I won’t have the time to write an extra side story this year for the CTB birthday in April (yeah, I gotta really plan this out in advance). I guess we’ll see how I’m feeling in a few more weeks. 

Now that’s out of the way, let’s talk this chapter. 

You can tell that I was having fun trying to figure out what it would be like to have someone else’s emotions messing around with your head. As Jakucho suggested, Link is already so bad at handling himself that having to put in the work for two is a lot for him.

The way breath is used to cope with Proxi’s emotions is inspired by the way breath is used in, like, every yoga video I use. 

I really hope that I’m properly portraying Link as “idiot white dude who is doing his best to be respectful of a culture he’s kinda fascinated by” and that it’s not the prose itself that is ostracizing the real world cultural practices that I’m putting under the Sheikah umbrella. Maybe the fact that I’m using a mismatch of things is already a bad sign. 

The same can be said of my vague descriptions of Kabuki theater. 

The play Link and Proxi see is inspired by two Shakespearen plays: A Merchant of Venice and The Twelfth Night. Merchant has a plotline where three suitors have to undergo a trial to prove their worth to a wealthy heiress, while Twelfth Night has the misadventures of the servants and the skeevy servant rising above his station to marry his mistress.

That later is meant to be a little world building nod to how deeply entrenched the class system is in Hyrule where the idea of a peasant trying to enter the upper classes is discouraged to outright mocked in classical art. If this play was real, the skeevy servant would be one of those comically disgusting characters the audience is meant to laugh at, like Malvolio from The Twelfth Night. 

And of course, the foreign prince would traditionally be a Ganondorf caricature built on harmful Gerudo prejudice-- something akin to Shylock, to keep the Merchant of Venice allusion going. 

Mostly, I imagine that the princess, hero, and Gerudo king are a set of narrative archetypes that appear over and over again in Hylian storytelling, for better or for worse. 

This was a very long worldbuilding exploration for what essentially was an excuse to talk a bit about how the line of succession works in Hyrule, because I realized when I was writing about the role of women that I never actually explained this.

Side note: I have been so fascinated lately by the ways stories establish the presence of a patriarchy in their worlds. Legend of the Galactic Heroes has one of my favorites: using the way characters talk about Annerose as a litmus test. I will now refrain from elaborating on that because we are not here to talk about animes from the 1980s I am obsessed with. 

The secret Sheikah techniques being Judo is 100% because I do Judo and I need to justify spending so much time at practice somehow.

The throw Ayane does is meant to be o-goshi-- one of the beginner throws that is excellent for a short person like Ayane to use on a bigger opponent. Because her hips would be lower than his, he would be pretty easy to tip over them. 

Because o-goshi involves being flipped over your head, it’s kinda a scary way to be thrown in the beginning. Genuinely, poor Link for being thrown like that when he had just learned how to fall (here’s a demonstration of the side fall he would have learned, though he would have started from a squat as opposed to standing at full height).

All that’s to say that: do not throw someone who is not ready to be thrown.

Arlo, a character you may remember from that time everyone ran across a battlefield, was almost included among the gaggle of soldiers trying to navigate across Kakariko. The reason why has everything to do with Icarius. 

For the sake of Icarius development, he assumed a role on the narrative of an unnamed, unremarkable soldier Link was going to have a short rendez-vous with. While that unnamed soldier was never going to be Arlo, I had toyed around with having Arlo be present as the soldier’s disgruntled roommate who got kicked out of the hotel room for the sake of the tryst. 

It’s not plot-vital for Arlo to have met Link earlier in the story; in fact it would be kinda silly if Link kept on running into the same few people over and over again. But I have an impulse to try to use every character, even the more minor and impulsive creations, to the max.

I imagine the Teachings of Din as a cross between a socratic dialogue and the Art of War (though I’ve never read the latter), which is why it’s framed as a conversation between a knight and Din. 

I also remember someone once telling me that old military strategy books like the Art of War has a lot of text dedicated to telling the upper class dudes reading it to treat their peasant armies fairly. I have no idea how true that is, but that factoid always stuck in my brain. I guess I’ll just hope that it’s true. 

I like the idea that if you were to look just at the book, it would seem like Link’s past actions would have been completely rejected by the military as being too horrific. But in practice, despite everyone above him having read the book, no one thought what he did was out of pocket. 

Link and Proxi’s conversation at the table was first referenced during the Fever Dreams in chapter 18. In that version of the scene, Link immediately confesses to Proxi what he did. Back in (checks date) 2022, that was my vision for their relationship. Finally writing it now, it was obvious Link was not ready so I pushed it off for him. That means that I retroactively made that moment in the Fever Dreams go from being a real memory to an idealized version of his past. I think it works, since one of his biggest regrets is his inability to truly confront his past quick enough.

There is also an early reference all the way back in chapter 9, when the Chain first passes through the refugee camp, that Link had helped built some of the homes there. 

Link is someone who doesn’t quite understand who he is and what he wants from life, primarily because he has spent his whole life up until this point trying to be what others wanted. The way he clings to construction work has less to do with his actual enjoyment of it and more with him actually being given a choice in what he does with himself. If he didn’t have an ongoing identity crisis, I don’t think he would gravitate to it at all. After a few months, he would be sick of it and move on to something else, just like a child cycles through different after school sports and activities until they find their passions. It’s a part of growing up he’s never had access to before. 

In a weird way, post-engineer Link’s story is some sort of coming of age story, which makes it a bit less compelling for me to write than literally anything that happened before it. But it’s important. I knew when I started this story that this latter part of the story was going to have a heavier emphasis on growth and healing; still, I really do miss getting to write Link being a horrible person and emotionally spiraling

If I really wanted to go for the dramatics, I would have Link turn the corner on his growth by having him argue with Proxi, or just be dragged into being a better person kicking and screaming. But that wouldn’t feel as sincere as him deciding for himself to be better.

And that’s the tragedy of it, isn’t it? Link decided to be a better person early on, but that desire didn’t get him far enough. Being better than he was isn’t the same as being the best version of himself. Who gets to decide when he’s fully improved anyway?

Ending with Link marching up the next half of the hill was a very heavy handed visual, as well as the reference to spring arriving soon. Connecting winter to depression and spring to happiness is so, so trite and I kinda stumbled into it by accident. But as cliche as it is, I love doing it. There really is something satisfying using old tropes and discovering why they became cliches in the first place. 

Onto the present--

Fun fucking fact: I thought this chapter was going to be super short. Why? All my outline said was that I needed to a) do the Knights of Hyrule shit and, b) Kill Lincoln. I usually have to juggle twenty different plot points. I only had two, and it still spiraled out of my control!

Part of that is just that there were things I forgot would take time to explore, like how Warriors would win the Triforce back (which I will get to later), and the other times there just was a lot of plot machinations I needed to do to get to the important stuff. 

And that’s been a theme with this last third of the story. Chapters 28, 29, 30, and 31 were all supposed to be a single chapter. Warriors and Spirit were going to have their Hot Mess, and the next chapter Lincoln was going to be dead in Castle Town. I just completely, severely underestimated how much plot machinations would be needed to get from A to B.

The Hot Mess all the way to now is about a year of my life. It took be a fucking year to cover one whole point on my story outline. Do you understand why I have been so frustrated about how long this story is taking me? Why I have been pulling my hair out? Does that put any of my feelings into perspective for you?

There was a lot of hubris involved. I think I have everything paced much more reasonably now that I shouldn’t need to add more than one or two, if any at all, extra chapters. 

In massive hindsight, I should have realized that the plot to take control of Castle Town would be more than just a chapter. But I also think I was in denial about how much longer this story was going to be. 

Ugh. 

Anyway, the actual chapter. I should talk about that. 

I am very amused by the idea that Endicott, for all of his faults, is the first person in the Royal Guard to truly take Warriors seriously. Warriors tells him about the black blood, and he not only believes him but is actually helpful. Kudos to you, Endicott. You’re not such a bad guy after all. 

Endicott also had the lovely function of being a good tool for reminding the readers of some lore that they might have forgotten in the long stretch of story since we last dealt with the black blood stuff. I always prefer to have diegetic exposition over textbook narration. 

Which then carried over to Warriors’s briefing while everyone else armored-up. Whenever I have Warriors make a grand plan like that, I always worry that there’s a glaring plot hole that I don’t see myself but a smarter reader would be frustrated by.

There is an extremely stupid bit in this chapter where Spirit puts his foot on the chaise in order to intimidate Warriors into agreeing with him, which Sky sees and copies because, hey, if it worked for Spirit it might work for him. Which Linkle mimics when she tries to convince Warriors to take her side. I tried to have Warriors snap at everyone to stop putting their feet on his chair, but I couldn’t make it work with the pacing. 

Also, shout out to Icarius who has decided that Linkle is his enemy for shooting him in the leg and tries to hurt her with his words. Aka, the dictionary he uses to communicate. 

I also enjoy that despite seeming like it would be the reverse, Warriors has turned into the doting older brother for Linkle while Spirit is the one who calls her a little shit. I wanted to subvert the expectations readers would have for their dynamic when first learning about how Linkle views both of them as her brothers.

I almost cut Time and Lincoln’s truce because I thought I was painting too big of a target on Lincoln’s back. But I kept it so that Time could have a moment of growth, and because I already shouted that Lincoln was on the chopping block by him making plans with Warriors for the future at the end of the last chapter. 

I also enjoy Lincoln’s chapter-long thread of being utterly terrified of the black blood and still deciding to get involved anyways. It’s a quiet demonstration of his courage, and a bit of tragic foreshadowing (more on that later). 

Spirit being snippy with Wild about sharing the horse is such a silly thing to use valuable page-space for, but I also knew that I could not state that they would share a horse without explaining how they got there.

Way later in the chapter, Lincoln asked Spirit why he never said anything about Rudeo not being under the black blood’s curse. But he did here before the scene with Remarque: “There’s a couple of dark spirits. Maybe three.” 

Was he being super clear? No. If Warriors was any less stressed, he might have picked out the discrepancy. But as is, Spirit technically did say something. 

One thing about this chapter is that we go in reverse of the Castle Town plot. We started at the Temple of Time with the wiseman Sevas, went to Colonel Remarque’s post at the wall, then ended in the castle with Endicott. And this chapter takes us in reverse. It looks like I did this on purpose, but as you can probably guess by the one year to cover one plot point debacle, I Did Not.

In the context of my long term plan for Spirit, giving him a moment to pure heroism now-- publicly renouncing his story to save Warriors --is just... he has a lot going on, and a lot of his previous moments of heroism haven’t been kind. This is truly his moment of selflessness, and it really is coming at the perfect time.

In terms of sillier moments in this chapter, I really like how much Warriors enjoyed making the soldiers squirm when they realized they were going to have to figure out how to handcuff a man with only one hand. 

In meeting up with the Knights of Hyrule for the first time in actual years, I really wished a gave all of them more to say and do before the fight. Gaudin and Shigeo had plenty to talk about, but Faiza and Rudeo were kinda pushed to the side.

That being said, I had a lot of fun giving Lincoln a chance to confront Gaudin; it’s been a while since we’ve seen him with peak “I am someone you should not mess with” energy, even if it didn’t lead him far 

In a political view, Lincoln is interesting in that he’s not particularly charismatic or likeable but he doesn’t need to be when his power is very secure; which is meant to contrast how Warriors has spent his entire career being likable in order to have a modicum of power

Sky was an interesting factor in this chapter in that he has this entirely separate grudge against the knights that is independent from what Lincoln and Warriors want; I had to make a decision as to how much closure if any I can give Sky

I landed on having Sky be at the head of the charge, particularly in terms of fighting Gaudin, but never giving him a real chance for revenge-- mostly because as angry as I think Sky is, his heroism streak is stronger than the average person. I don’t think he would allow himself the catharsis of revenge. He’s a master of repression, so give him a few years to realize he can’t ignore or repress his feelings about this.

I am really happy that I squeezed in a conversation with Shigeo, if only to better illustrate how much the black blood’s curse works with a person’s existing mind.

That being said, I think the effect would have been way stronger if I had featured Shigeo more prominently in the past like I had intended. Shigeo was meant to be the closest thing Warriors would have had to a friend or ally during his time in the war-- like an older brother figure. The relationship would have fallen apart when Warriors/Link started projecting his insecurities on Shigeo and perceiving anything he did to help as an underhanded attack. I cut this when I realized that Link’s downward spiral would be easier to sell if he was already extremely isolated emotionally without anyone but the engineer to rely on.

The protest outside the Temple of Time-- I had a good time writing that in that it was a little hard to nail. I wanted the protest to be motivated by anger, but I didn’t want to portray it as an act of violence in itself. I didn’t want the story to inadvertently paint protestors as aggressive, even if what they’re protesting is our hero. 

I actually waited until the last minute to figure out their chants since I wanted them to be an emotional punch in the gut to Warriors without being too mean? My problem is that when I wrote the Turncoat Revolt, I was a little peeved that a lot of readers viewed the turncoats as evil because they tried to kill Link, the engineer, and the child despite the fact that politically speaking, the turncoats were right. Yes, you can like these characters but they are on the side of the government that’s ruining people’s lives. 

Then I got over myself and remembered that I can’t really control what conclusions the reader draws from the story. So I kept the chants on the more viscous side.

This was a strangely hard battle to write. I usually can pop off a fight scene really quickly, but this one really gave me trouble. It took me way too long to string together what exactly I wanted each person in the fight to be doing and how to jump the narration from each pocket of the fight.

A lot of readers noted that it comes off much more like a in-game boss fight than any other fight scene in this story so far; I can’t say that was intentional, but it is convenient in emphasizing how out of a normal person’s wheelhouse the black blood is. 

My favorite moments include Spirit tossed Sky his sword; once more, Spirit prioritizing getting the job done right over any petty grievance. A true MVP of this goddamn chapter. 

Rudeo’s death... first, the Chekov’s gun of this story is establishing in Rudeo’s introduction scene that he will die if the sword in his neck is removed. Like, of course this guy is going to die by having the sword in his neck removed. 

As I explored in the narration, Rudeo was meant to be another reflection of Warriors in terms of his struggles to maintain a footing in an oppressive power structure leading him to make bad political decisions. I wanted the irony of Warriors being unable or unwilling to realize that there was someone else in the same position as him. I needed Rudeo to linger in the background for this to have the thematic effect I wanted.

Nonetheless, I really wish I did more with Rudeo before this moment. Yes, he needed to be in the peripheral of Warriors’s life, but couldn’t I have thrown in one conversation before this about what he was feeling?

I was expecting at least one person to realize that Rudeo couldn’t have been infected since he didn’t eat meat, but no one did. I didn’t have any characters bring it up in-story because I thought it was an obvious plot hole but I guess I should have gone ahead and added it in anyway.

Okay, let’s talk the Triforce scene. Ooooh boy. 

This was not in the original plan. I just wanted Warriors to get the Triforce of Courage back, and then move on with the story. But when I was writing that earlier scene where Lana talked to Shigeo, I suddenly remembered how significant the Triforce was and realized that I needed to make the moment Warriors got it back way, way bigger.

I fully believe that no matter how much or how little Legend of Zelda lore you know, there will always be one tidbit that is so bizarre that it boggles your mind whenever you remember it. Mine is the fact that the Triforce is sentient. 

I can’t get over it. The Triforce is sentient and it means absolutely nothing. It rarely comes up, even in regards to how the Triforce judges its holder’s character (not for goodness or what not, but whether you are wise/powerful/courageous enough). It’s so wacky. I hate it, but my god, it made the basis for a really cool scene. 

I love his conversation with the Triforce. I haven’t gotten to write a scene where reality is weird for a really long time. 

The way the green woman couldn’t be looked at, messed with his memories, and put palpable “walls” around his mind and emotions-- it reminded me a lot of eldritch horror, but in the sense of a being from the 3rd dimension being pushed into the 4th or 5th. I like the idea that the Triforce’s realm had to be simplified for him to comprehend it.

Warriors being Farore’s tool is my favorite idea from this scene. It not only adds context to some of Zelda’s struggle with Nayru, but it upsets Warriors’s worldview. He is special, but he’s not loved. This is a man who wants to be appreciated and loved deeply, but even with Farore, he’s been denied that. But at the same time, he should be thankful that he has the freedom that comes with only being the goddesses’ tool. 

Warriors’s declaration that he was going to become a better person no matter what put into words a theme I have been exploring throughout the story: what makes someone an idealized good person is not always realistic. And if it’s not realistic, how do we determine if someone is good or bad?

Plus, if heroes aren’t chosen because they’re morally good people, then what actually makes you a good hero? How do you define heroism when the gods themselves do not view it as a question of goodness?

In a related note, I also got a chance to acknowledge that Warriors being forcefully denied the “ability” to hurt someone isn’t character developement. It’s an excuse, and he still has to consciously decide to change his behavior. 

So after I went through the whole emotional process of realizing that I have to hype up the Triforce way more, I then realized that I had to make a decision about what to do with Dark Link (because the black blood in the original LU comic is obviously him and I will not pretend otherwise). 

My original policy was to not do anything with Dark Link. I wasn’t here to solve LU. I’m here to solve CTB. The black blood has been here as an excuse to propel the characters into the plot I actually want to solve. AKA: the war.

But I also realized that at this point, it would be weirder if I didn’t try to address what is going on with the black blood, especially if it’s been a subplot this entire story and is going to be the reason Lincoln dies. I could have left it alone. This is fanfiction, after all. You could go to the source material to find out about it. But... leaving it alone would have kept CTB very dependent on LU, which means that CTB will continue to fall apart as LU gets more specific with its lore. If I wanted CTB to stand on its own, I needed to provide my own explanation. 

So now I was on the hook to try to explain the black blood, which would mean I would have to provide a Dark Link backstory. 

He couldn’t be unrepentantly evil since that would go against the themes I’ve already established in CTB. But he still needed to have justification to, you know, possess people. And whatever backstory I come up with will have to be conveyed in the shortest amount of time and space possible.

I know I over thought this, and no one would actually care if I did this well or not. But now I cared, so I had to do this right. Luckily, Dark Link seems to care only about the heroes and not any other part of the lore, which provided a good set of parameters to work with

So I landed on him more or else being what remains of the First Hero after he’s reincarnated. Not only does this give him a very solid motivation to go against the heroes (just wants to have the other half of his soul back), but this explains an existing discrepancy in the lore: how could Time’s soul linger on as a living skeleton while the Hero’s Spirit was with Twilight. If the Hero’s Spirit was one half of a whole, where there would be something not reincarnated into the next hero, it could be possible.

I could also make Dark Link more morally gray by establishing that he was never just the dark parts of the First Hero’s spirit, but whatever parts of the hero Hylia didn’t like. 

Actually, this is a bit of storytelling I am very proud of. As we know, the official-to-fanon lore is that there was a romance between Hylia and the First Hero. In my version, whatever romance they had was bordering on the unrequited. Whatever feelings the First Hero had for Hylia could not triumph over the fact he was already married. Even if it wasn’t a love-match, he was so chivalric that he would not betray his legal wife. So when he was reincarnated, Hylia left that part of him behind. 

Side note: I have been listening to a lot of Noble Blood for months now, and I have a growing fascination with marriages based on politics that are affectionate, as opposed to love matches. I have been kicking around a lot of non-CTB story ideas that play around with marrying for any reason except romance, and it turning out perfectly.

I also just like how it’s a play on Arthurian legends, where chivalry, romance, and marriage seems at constant conflict with itself. This time, the knight chooses to remain loyal to his wife instead of the otherworldly beauty in pursuit of him.

And for the First Hero to have this torrid romantic affair while looking average at best? I love it. 

I had Warriors not believe Dark Link’s story because I wanted to leave the door open for a later reader to insert whatever LU’s actual answer for Dark Link is. Officially, Dark Link in CTB is lying if you want him to be.

And finally, beheading him was such a good place to circle back to the whole Orlanda thing. Her death was this surprising moment where I feel like a lot of readers realized things were not okay (somehow?), and so I have been looking for a way to use it as a bookend for Warriors’s growth.

Did I want to do so much with Dark Link? No, and please do not expect any of this to be super relevant for this last half of the story. Everything here was an obligation.

Unfortunately, I also think all of this was interesting as hell and doing a full backstory will be added to the list of CTB spin offs I do not have time to write. 

Also! One last note about the Dark Link scene I almost forgot about. There is an implication that Twilight's soul lingered behind like Time's did. That is because I headcanon Twilight being this ghost wolf that haunts the desert looking for shards of the Twilight Mirror (I think I wrote a drabble about it years ago). And that's how Wolfie managed to be in Breath of the Wild.

Now that all that’s out of the way, let’s get to the real meat of this chapter, which is killing off Lincoln. Yay.

Before I hop into what happens on page, there is a really fun bit of foreshadowing earlier in the story I want to point out. In chapter 19, the Chain minus Twilight, Legend, and Wind are at the Temple of Souls when Lincoln tells Lana about his plans to save the knights. And she provides this warning: 

“You’re just a mortal man,” she said at last. “Careful not to trifle with what you cannot understand, Master Knight.”

This is, coincidentally, the first chapter to contain a character death warning, albeit for Clementine. But yeah, I mostly just wanted to point that out because it’s the first in-story suggestion that this subplot is going to spell his doom. 

What kinda screwed Lincoln in the end was him jumping in to fight Gaudin and help Warriors when he knew he shouldn’t have. As Lana said, he trifled with what he did not understand. 

I didn’t invent Lincoln to die, but as I was first drafting the plot back in 2021, I knew that I should kill him off. As I always do, I explored what the story would look like if I kept him alive, and I actually came up with an alternate ending to CTB that I can’t discuss right now because it contains a spoiler to how I want CTB to end. 

So I knew from the beginning that he was meant to die, and I knew that I wanted to take the reader from hating him to liking him. This is why we meet him before chapter 5, which is the chapter that establishes how Link starts to fuck up the engineer. Link was a bit of an ass before that moment, but Lincoln’s dislike for him seems way more irrational. 

The dual-timeline structure also became really helpful here since Lincoln’s harshest moment with Link, when he was rescuing the engineer in chapter 22, comes afters Lincoln’s proved himself by rescuing Warriors and carrying him across Hyrule. The reader is primed to like him at the same time they’re prime to hate Warriors. 

To be fair, I think what made people like Lincoln the most was him being married to Ganondorf. If he had approval ratings, it would skyrocket. 

As much as I was bitching about taking four chapters to cover one plot point, it did come with time for me to push Lincoln and Warriors’s reconciliation, going from tentative allies to family. Which in turn, made his death all the rougher. 

Okay, back to the plot beats. 

As a lot of you guys pointed out, the first sign that something was wrong with Lincoln was that he let Linkle run off to fight the curse. The second sign, was him calling Warriors son. As mentioned in story, that is a verbal tic that has never applied to Warriors before. If Warriors ever thought something could be wrong with Lincoln, that could have cued him.

I had a lot of different ideas for how Spirit would be involved with Lincoln’s death.

One version of the reveal I really liked was Lincoln having gone off to scout the area, leaving Warriors behind. Spirit would sprint in, demanding where Lincoln was because his spirit had disappeared while a new dark spirit was walking around. In the middle of the conversation, without looking, Spirit would raise his gun and shoot something off to the side. Of course, this would be Lincoln who would have moved out of the way just in time to only be grazed.

Lincoln’s possession really revealed how little he trusted Spirit. If Lincoln had a better relationship with him, he probably would have less readily believed Spirit had betrayed him. 

Also, it is such a Spirit move to try to convince the curse to just leave Lincoln by promising to protect it from the others. As much as he wants to get the job done, the job went from “defeating the dark spirit” to “keeping Lincoln alive.” If he’s got to bend his morals a little to make that happen, then so be it. 

And there is something sad about how Spirit ultimately does like Lincoln enough to betray himself a little to save him, but Lincoln did not like Spirit enough to not be easily swayed into attacking him.

My original vision for the duel against Lincoln would have been Spirit and Warriors teaming up like they did on the battlefield in chapter 23-- Spirit with the sword and Warriors with the shield. The problem is that I gave Sky the Lokomo sword. 

I think Spirit is a great fighter, even if he had to be dragged into it kicking and screaming. I also think he relies heavily on being viscous over real technique. He could probably fight with an unfamiliar sword well enough normally, but he’s also really beaten up and weak at this point. There would be no way he could hold up against Lincoln no matter what I did.

So between that and the fact that Spirit and Warriors have already teamed up before, I decided to cut it. But now I’m starting to think I could have still included it but focused way more on Spirit getting his ass handed to him. 

It’s really hard to sell an original character as being better at something than the canonical characters to the reader, which has always made Lincoln’s skills as a duelist a little interesting to sell. It helps that he’s a guy since there’s way less of a knee jerk reaction to label him as a Mary Sue. Nonetheless, I really wish I did a bit more to show off that Lincoln is one of the best fighters in the story.

You know that line Lincoln dropped around Marigold? Don’t worry about it. We’ll get to that can of worms eventually haha

I could not stop crying when working on Lincoln’s death scene. From writing to editing, I could not stop crying. This is not an exaggeration. I have been pumped to kill this man off, and I still found it deeply trigger.

One reason is that a lot of this scene was based on the emotions I experienced when my mother died. That description of helplessly staring down the inevitability of death-- I know what that felt like, and I splattered that experience across the entire scene. 

I am also very close with dad, who is nowhere near young anymore (my parents had children later in life). Killing off Lincoln forced me to confront a lot of my fears about watching my dad die. When Warriors said that Lincoln couldn’t die because his mother was already dead-- the injustice that you will have to experience the grief and loneliness of losing your parents long before any of your friends ever will-- those are my feelings. 

I know I have cracked jokes about Lincoln dying, but this scene inevitably became something very personal for me. I wanted this to be devastating because the very thought of having to experience a parent’s death again is paralyzing for me. 

Every little moment of his death made me cry, but the biggest triggers were a) Hyrule saying “I’m sorry”, b) Linkle’s various pleading, c) Lincoln asking to wear his ring, and d) Lincoln admitting he’s scared.

The moment with the ring is my favorite. The small, quiet amazement when Lincoln realized that here, at the end of his life, he could wear his ring around his finger-- immediately crushing.

I was tempted to share the line “Can I Wear It” out of context as a “hahaha this is such a simple line but it’s gonna make you cry” post, but I decided to keep mum and not preemptively ruin my own moment.

I intended for one of Lincoln’s last lines to be an blunt realization on his part about where he went wrong as a father, but I cut it because even in death I don’t think Lincoln would be good at expressing himself. 

The line is kinda important for, you know, the themes and stuff (I am so sorry that I keep talking about themes), but I think I can squeeze it into the next chapter.

So Lincoln admitting he’s scared... okay, let me get on my soapbox for a moment. 

The older I get, the more I realize that everyone is terrified of dying. One day you are going to wake up and you are going to know someone who died very abruptly and far, far too soon. It will put a fear of death into you, and it will happen far sooner than you realize. 

By virtue of having older parents and straight up bad luck, I had already been to a lot of funerals before I hit my 20s. Whatever fear I had got worse not only after my mom’s death, but also the deaths of other people in my circle. I had a college professor who died of an aneurysm. She was only in her 30s.

Everyone I know is at least 2 handshakes away from someone who abruptly died. I have had lunch dates with friends where all we’ve done is exchanged stories of really sudden deaths we’ve heard about from other parts of our social circle.

And there’s this point where you this that surely you’re going to get used to this, and death will stop being terrifying once more. But because my parents were older when they had kids, all of the adults in my life are also much older than average. They’re in their late 60s and mid 70s now. You would think they would be more comfortable with death. 

But, no. They are also plainly scared of it. They have similar discussions around the dining room table about the people in their lives who have abruptly died, and the numbers rise every year. It scares them. 

I think we invented this trope of the wise mentor who embraces death as a way to cope. We want to believe that there will be a point where we too will be so intelligent and world-weary that we could accept death with open arms. I’m starting to realize that I am never going to be prepared for death. That is not a fault of my character. That is the natural response.

Nonetheless, it’s still distressing to look at your own father who is only getting older and realize that he’s distressed by the thought of dying. He wants to cling to the world, even when he says he doesn’t. You want him to face it with grace because it will make his eventual death easier on you. But death is never going to be easy. 

He’s not dead yet, but when he will, it’s going to hurt. And I just wanted to have a moment where Lincoln showed that fear of death because it felt real to life. Your loved ones will not go gently into the good night. They will rage, and it’s going to suck. 

One last note about Lincoln’s death-- this scene contains one of my favorite uses of the “he lied” tag:

Warriors swallowed. He took Lincoln’s hand. “It’s like going to sleep,” he lied.

I love experimenting with this tag and finding the most effective ways to use it. This one is my favorite. It says so much about how Warriors views his actions, and it refrains his lying as an act of kindness. I love it. 

Another really small moment I love is Lana kissing the back of Linkle’s head. I love that tiny moment of tenderness.

For killing off Lincoln, I knew it was going to be either Warriors, Spirit, or Linkle. 

For Warriors, it would be a monkey’s paw moment for the reader who probably wanted him to kick Lincoln’s ass back when we all agreed he was being a dick. 

For Spirit, it would have been another moment where he’s been forced to make another ugly, terrible choice because no one else will. Another moment of injustice. 

But Warriors and Spirit were beat out very early on in my plotting process by Linkle. 

I have tried writing my thoughts on Linkle multiple times, but I keep veering into a rant about the way people treat female characters that has absolutely nothing to do with Linkle. I’m going to try to stay on topic. 

Linkle’s thematic (so sorry to bring up themes again) purpose is to give Warriors an opportunity to break the cycle. This entire story is about how maybe that whole system where we allow children to save Hyrule and solve everyone’s problems was not a good idea, and maybe allowing that to happen has devastating consequences. Yes, there’s Warriors and his fucked up bullshit. But there’s also the lowering of the draft age, Kat’s underage prostitution, and so on. Maybe the whole system is broken.

So enter Linkle: she wants to be heroic and fight. She’s very upbeat about it, and there’s a comedic bent to how Lincoln can’t quite stop her from running off and doing whatever. 

My plan was for the reader to start out wanting to see Linkle be some kind of badass, only to slowly realize how badly that would go by virtue of learning more about Warriors’s past. 

I don’t think that was successful. I think the desire to see Linkle do cool things outweighed any other argument. I don’t know if that is my fault or not. 

On one hand, I think playing up Linkle’s desire to be heroic as comedic undermined the point I was trying to make. Plus, my desire to have Linkle involved in the plot meant that she had a lot of moments where she got to do very hero-esque things without consequence.

On the other hand... I don’t think I was subtle in establishing Linkle as both reckless and naive. Lincoln, Warriors, and the like all have moments where they outright explained to her (and the reader) why she needs to stay out of everything.

And most importantly, her pathologic need to be useful in order to earn love is a direct parallel to Time when he was a child. 

I thought I was being heavy handed, but I don’t know. I guess time will tell if I actually did any of this well or not. 

Warriors turned another really important corner in his growth in that he finally doesn’t fall back into his old patterns. Saving the kingdom, or even his political plans, are no longer worth the price of dragging another person into his mess like he did with the engineer and (to an extent) the Chain afterwards.

I almost named this part of the chapter “The Cycle Ends” because it’s such a significant moment for him. He’s clawing his way out, though it comes at the consequence of Linkle’s guilt. 

As explained in the narration, she doesn’t get the luxury of having a grand purpose. She did this and, unlike Warriors, she can’t explain it away. She’s kind of speedrunning Warriors’s arc of realizing that your actions are your own and no divine pact can excuse them away.

I feel like I should have more to say about this. Like a final parting note about this tragic turn in Linkle’s story. Maybe I will in a few days, but I have already been working on this commentary for a week now. I need to be done with this already. 

I don’t know. If you have any insight, let me know! You probably have more valuable to add to the conversation than the bozo who has been staring at these characters for too long. 

[charles-leclerizz]

TRAILER : THE BEGINING

🏁 Content warnings : Swearing.

🏁 Spoiler alert : Please read the masterlist, Character sketch and Team sketch to understand.

🏁 Genre : Drama, Action, Sports

🏁 Reading time : 15 minutes, 6 seconds

🏁 Word count : 3.0.k (3021 words)

🏁 Chapter summary : It all begins now.

🏁 Author's note : So, this is it, welcome to the beginning of this wild ride. Just wanted to explain a few things [so skip this right now if you're not really interested, no hard feelings !] Now, this format is probably confusing, basically the first part of this is the trailer, how it would look on Netflix, the actual video/film. And the writing after the banner, Behind the Scenes, is literally behind the scenes, what isn't shown on camera. Second, this whole series is meant to be very dramatic, it's entertainment made by "Netflix" [not really, please don't sue me] for God sake. With all that said, Enjoy!

Masterlist · 🪷 Aisha · 🪷 Porsche F1 Team · 🪷

[Please play this song whilst reading the trailer & feel free to stop once we get behind the scenes with the drivers !]

The screen fades from black to show a Porsche F1 car skidding down the track, the sound of screeching rubber against the tarmac harmonises with the energetic music that pumps behind the video.

Circular shots of a driver climbing out of the car from different angles flash across, and just before they tug off their helmet the scene changes to the paddock, pit crew, mechanics and drivers rush past in a blur, their differently coloured uniforms merge together like lights in a city scape. Suddenly, everything stops and the music fades away momentarily.

“In the fast-paced world of formula 1,”

Scenes of driving legends hoisting up their trophies with happy grins and champagne soaked racing gear flash past. Ayrton Senna, Michael Schumacher, Kimi Räikkönen.

“Where every second counts and emotions run high.”

The grating sounds of cars speeding past bursts into the frame, Max Verstappen shaking his fists ambitiously as he wins, yet another grand prix, Charles Leclerc as he wins in Spa and Monza, Carlos sainz and Lando Norris partnering up in the Singapore 2023- “Yeah, it’s on purpose.” The Spaniard grits out just as the narrator begins to speak again.

“Our team is about to redefine the game,”

The narrator is revealed, a woman, tall and proud as she sits in front of a grey backdrop. Her blonde hair is cut to a sharp bob and her glasses, astute and black sit high on her nose as she laughs jauntily and arches a well-managed, bleached brow at one of the three camera’s recording her, “Is that good?” she huffs out, thick Manchester accent shining through her cheerful words.

Black takes over once again, and the Indian flag, flapping in the wind from a tall pole that reaches high into the sky is shown, the bright, proud colours shining against the pale, blue sky. The camera pans down to the bottom of the ground, where the same driver,who was emerging from the car in the begging is looking up, at their flag.

But instead of their helmet securely fastened around their face, it’s held between the crook of their elbow and waist. The white base is glossy as multiple sponsor logos are littered around the entire frame, along with the black, bold letters “PATEL” being showed off at the back, currently visible to the camera along with the behind of the driver’s racing suit.

The shot pans up, revealing long flowing hair, black thick strands a contrast to her off white racing suit. The same flag peeks out from between the chunks of her fluttering locks, large and proud on the expanse of her back. The driver begins to turn and just as her red painted lips come into view the scene changes and a different narrator begins to speak again.

“From the makers of 'Drive to Survive' comes a new Netflix Original Series that takes you behind the scenes of the most exhilarating sport on the planet.”

Scenes of the woman running across the paddock and into her garage, her teammate not far behind overlay the announcement.

Another moment is revealed, this time of her ducking into her car, glove covered hands braced on the halo as her face turns upwards towards a racing engineer who speaks to her. She nods before turning to look directly into the camera and lowering herself into the cockpit.

The woman begins to speak again, "Aisha is our trailblazer in Formula 1.”

The iconic lights of Formula one begins to count down as the mechanical ticking echo throughout the grand-stands and the camera goes to shoot the anticipatory lull in the air as spectators hold their breath whilst the engines start up and the last light dims.

“She’s smashing stereotypes and racing towards victory.” The team principal shakes her head, a soft, proud smile playing on her light pink lips.

The team car revs menacingly as the gaggle of drivers manoeuvre their way through turn one of Bahrain.

The Porsche chassis glows between the unmanageable scuffle of the other 18 cars on the track, as both team racers attempt to come out on top in the dangerous pile of engines, the expectant victor of the throng doesn’t appear, the deep blue red bull is yet to emerge. The crowd gasps and cheers as the true victor begins to approach the next turn, speeding down the straight.

The camera catches the proud logo on the side of the car, “Porsche” and on the back, as the DRS begins to activate, the opened flap reveals, “Patel”.

“I just hope people are ready to see her in action. Because she isn’t stopping anytime soon" She stares into the camera as her name appears on screen, a small box enveloping the words, “Katherine Anderson, Porsche team principal.”

Finally, the rumoured driver comes into the scene, walking up to the stool as the camera drags up her slack clad legs, the cream material swishes by her ankles along with the golden payaal that jingles with each step of her stiletto heels against the floor. Her torso is revealed slowly, a tight top hugs her bust whilst the printed Porsche logo morphs against the curves of her chest. The varied tennis barcelets and charmed jewellery around her wrist titillate together as she takes a seat on the chair, and her face is revealed.

She squints her eyes and brings a manicured hand up to push away the straightened hair from her lips, her mouth purses as the unintelligible voice of the producer talks to her, whilst her eyelashes flutter and she hums in agreement.

“So, I just talk?” She asks, pointing a finger at the camera that faces her before blotting the lipstick on her lips. She nods once as the cameraman confirms.

“My name,” She tilts her head as she smiles, perfect, white teeth shining underneath the light, “Is Aisha Patel, and I drive for Porsche F1 Team.”

The camera cuts again, showcasing Aisha on the podium, pushing a large trophy up into the air as her teammate, Pierre cheers and sprays champagne on her stomach from his place on the “2nd” platform. She shakes her head and laughs as her entire head becomes soaked with the bubbly, sweet drink. Multiple identical shots are placed one after the other, of her standing proud and sweaty on the 1st place podium.

“I’ve worked my ass off,” Aisha’s voice over-runs the music, “And I’ll be damned if anything stands in my way.”

She squares her shoulders as she unzips her racing suits and bunches it up at her waist as she stomps over to Max Verstappen, the Dutch man looking equally malicious as his blue eyes roll with annoyance and already red face puffs out intimidatingly.

She pokes a finger into his fire-proof covered chest as she begins to shout, ignoring the worried stares of the crew around her in the Red-Bull garage. Max spits out the long, twirling straw from between his lips and begins to argue back.

Her mouth moves angrily as she goes to snatch the can of branded drink from his tense hands, throwing the sugary drink in his face, thoroughly dousing the shouting man and reducing him to a spluttering mess as she stomps away, flipping off one of the camera’s that eagerly follows her.

The narrator returns, his deep timbre rumbling through the video, “But the road to victory is never easy, as Aisha navigates through rivalries, scandals, and the pressure to perform.”

The scene switches to Aisha rushing out of a hotel in England, the night before Silverstone and the odd, overwhelming flashes of hounding reporters seem to be tuned out of her gaze as Lando runs behind her, grabbing helplessly at her hand whilst tears stream down her flushed face.

Her hair is mused and makeup runs haphazardly across her tan skin, she wretches her wrist out of the man’s grip, shaking her head as her lip wobbles. She covers her eyes before dodging and weaving through the paparazzi, barely able to mumble polite, “excuse me’s” from between erratic sobs, as she unlocks her expensive car and slips into the driver’s seat.

The second shot is of her and Carlos, hand in hand as her shoulders begin to shiver in his hold whilst she adjusts the heavy cardigan that hangs limp from her shoulders. The Spaniard’s face is tough and rocky as his hands comes to embrace her upper arm, cradling her against his side whilst the rest of the drivers begin to flee the racetrack, already tired from the latest qualifying session.

Yet, the papparizzi continue to hound the pair mercilessly, Aisha hides her face as the man beside her stops his firm footsteps and turns to a reporter from a less respectable news channel, the sleezy jounarlist gulps but stands his ground as he pushes his microphone forward. Carlos glances down at the tech with disgust, and just before he opens his mouth, the scene ends, and we’re taken back to Aisha who sits contently in the interview.

“In this world, you must fight for every inch. And I'm ready to fight, no matter the cost.”  She smirks at another camera, her side profile showing off noticeable details over the expanse of her face like the sharp cut of her nose and the splattering of freckles across her cheekbones along with the odd beauty marks spotted above her lip and a few inches from her nose.

The final shot is off Aisha climbing out of the Porsche car, removing her helmet, allowing her hair to flow over her shoulder and down her back as she tilts her head at the camera and leans back against the pale white halo of her car.

She then crooks her finger at the viewers, gesturing for the cameraman to follow her hand as she holds up a singular finger, and points upwards towards the sky.

The shot is then of the of the expansive indiago above, and through the magic of editing, the Porsche logo takes up the screen.

“Get ready to experience the thrill, the passion, and the drama of Formula 1 like never before.” The narrator ends his sentence powerfully as the crescendo of the song reaches its peak.

“This is 'Formula for Love'.” Aisha ends the trailer, waving at the camera before the video is overtaken with black once again.

The title card appears, “Formula for love – A netflix original series”.

As the words disappear, a shot of Aisha’s car speeding off into the distance after which a mechanical, “Streaming soon, only on Netflix.” ends the trailer.

Aisha sighed, tapping her thighs as the filming concluded and many on-set employees rushed to her side, patting at her face along with offering her a can of thumbs up, the condensation runs down the metallic container and onto her fingers.

“Thank you, guys so much,” Aisha sipped at the straw protruding from the can in her hand before smiling at the people who merely stared at her, already putting away their various tools. A compact snapped shut, a damp towel thrown over a shoulder and a camera cover flipped closed.

Aisha sucked in a breath, flicking her eyes over the workers before looking over at Kate, who was signing a paper handed to her on a writing board.

She chuckled at Aisha’s worried expression and the silence that hung in the air, “It’s okay,” she assured the driver, who looked relieved as the people recovered and retreated away from the filming set, going back to their stations.

“They aren’t very used to people thanking them.” Kate shrugged, “They reacted like that to me as well,”

“Oh, thank God,” She patted her chest as she waved at the director, who smiled back and showed her a happy thumbs up, “This is all so new to me.” Aisha tugged at her hair as Kate pulled up her phone and scrolled through her calendar.

“Don’t worry too much about its Aisha, you’ll get there.” She rubbed the nervous driver’s arm and hissed when her phone vibrated, “I have to go, so much to get done before our first season,” Kate shook her head, wishing Aisha goodbye as she walked out of the trailer and out towards their still concealed garage.

Aisha hummed distractedly, before realising she had no idea what to do once Kate had walked away, “Wait!” But the team principal had already left, “Damn it,” She bit her nail once, handing off her empty can and plucking out her phone from her pocket.

“Oh, there you are.” A media manager bounded up to Aisha, surprising the woman as she jumped and whipped her head around to the approaching worker, “The driver’s briefing is about to begin,”

The man waved a hand at his face before pinching his Porsche x Adidas apparel between his fingers and forcing air between the material and his chest. He was likely middle aged, and sported dark brown hair with peppery roots and salted strands that peeked out from between the chocolatey curls.

He showed her his F1 team ID and stopped fanning himself to usher her with his hand.

“Shit- okay,” Aisha stuffed her phone away, following him out of Netflix filming trailer, out to the dark murky sky above the paddock, towards another building.

The office was tall and white, covered with floor to ceiling windows that were shielded with a layer of reflective film, “Oh God.” Aisha murmured beneath her breath as she took a few calming breaths, already forgetting to trail behind the man who was staring at her impatiently whilst holding the door open, watching as she stared at the building by straining her neck upwards.

She prepared herself, flapping her hands around slightly and jolting when the manager cleared his throat.

“Please hurry Miss. Patel. It won’t look good if you’re late.”

“I know, I know.” Aisha repeated, assuring the increasingly nervous man who walked up to her.

“It will be okay,” He laid a hesitant hand on her shoulder, taking an exemplary deep breath for her to copy. He continued when she did, “I’m Harry, sorry for not introducing myself, and I will be in charge of all media at Porsche.”

“Okay?” Aisha shook her head a few times to clear her mind, “Meaning?”

Harry chuckled and hung his head, “Meaning. That I’ll be with you in there. You won’t be alone.” He pointed a finger at himself, “See, you already have a familiar face to look for,” His slightly aged face wrinkled happily when Aisha smiled at him and relaxed visibly beneath his comforting hold.

“Thank you, Harry,” She huffed and stood straighter, “Let’s do this.”

Her heels clicked beneath her confident steps as she thanked the man who held the door open for her and Harry, who walked contently behind her.

Aisha craned her head around the bend, following the acrylic signs that read, “Driver briefing – Conference room 1.” She adjusted her shirt, feeling, for the first time in forever, conscience of her clothing and slipped a thumb beneath the waistband of her slacks to adjust them slightly.

“Let’s do this,” She pushed at the milky white door, steeling her face with a bored, neutral expression just as her name was called out, most likely for rollcall.

But, Aisha stopped in her tracks, the door barely nudged open when a flurry of deep chuckles and whispers erupted at the sound of her name.

“Seriously? Is this what fans are doing now?” The speaker rolled his “r’s” whilst shaking his head.

“How much do you think that cost them?” An oddly familiar British voice mumbled whilst crossing his arms and nudging the man next to him.

And one of them groaned and slapped his thigh once, complaining about “-needing better media stunts.”

Aisha scoffed quietly, so these were some of her heroes? Assuming that a woman could never possibly be selected to race, instead she was an obsessive fan who had shrines for each of the men stashed in her closet?

She pushed open the door, causing a few drivers to rustle and shift in their seats and turn minutely towards the sound of the door hinges, opening and closing.

Aisha walked forward and planted a hand on her hip, leaning onto one leg as each of the men looked towards her with annoyed expressions.

“I’m sorry, fans aren’t allowed here.” A French man, dressed in glaring red began to stand up, nodding discreetly at the security men flanked at either side of the doors- who glanced at each other hesitantly and barely moved at his guidance, obviously recognising her, “How did you even get in?”

“Ridiculous what they’ll do for an autograph,” Another one stood, and stared at her thunderously, his Dutch accent causing him to lisp his angry words, “All right, time to go.” He was the first to directly address the security, “Guys, get her out.”

Aisha held up her hand, between her fingers a prestigious card stood proud, the F1 logo bedazzled in gold foil, shimmered beneath the yellow lights, she glanced over her shoulder at the burly, guards who relaxed at her identification.

“Aisha Patel?” She looked to the FIA officer who stared at her, amused with her entrance before ticking off her name, “Porsche F1 driver.” She announced her title, smirking with slight arrogance at the gob-smacked expression on both the French and Dutch men, both of whom flushed an embarrassed red and muttered apologies whilst returning to their seats, next to both of their teammates.

“I’m here for the briefing?” Aisha prompted the officer, before smiling at the rest of her fellow drivers, most of them attempting to suppress their cackles at the other two’s mistake.

“Yes, of course Miss Patel,” The man greeted her, gesturing to an empty seat next to Pierre who smirked at Aisha.

She began to walk down the walkway between the sets of chairs filled by F1 team personnel and racers, waving at a few of the managers from other teams who knew of her position and staring darkly at some drivers who looked her up and down with curiosity.

“Sorry for being late, I was busy paying of my debt. Do you know how much it costs to get your name on the register?” She leaned forward on her crossed knees, looking down the row with a sarcastic expression. The ones who did dare to meet her eyes mumbled in agreement and slumped against their seats.

“Fuck-“The driver who made the comment doubled over, hiding his freckle covered face in his hands, causing his bright orange athleisure jacket to stretch prompting his teammate to chuckle whilst patting his back.

honourary tags [for special pookies] : @disneyprincemuke, @weekendlusting, @woozarts, @mellowarcadefun, @paintedbypoetry, @33-81, @kazuha-pista-badam

A/N : And that's that, the first ever episode [trailer really] of this series is done and dusted. As always please show some love to this tinker-bell minded writer and remember to comment and reblog <33

[stygiansauce]

Read Margin of Error

Fell in love with it

Head is now filled with scenarios

Now I need a jealous southern tango because my brain can’t shut up

(Feed us)

Possessive Tango certainly exsists. You'll actually get to see him a bit in chapter three (though its hidden under layers of plot). I think his idea of possession comes off much more like protection. He's a very caring and gentle lover. His anger doesn't fire up as much in this AU because, though his brain doesn't stop moving he lets his feelings wash through him. He acknowledges that he feels things, then moves on (except when he can't). He just cares so hard and gives so much of himself and protects with his whole being (not just Jimmy and thats what's so interesting about his character) that it doesn't even look like possession, but it is.

I'd like you to consider though (for reasons chapter three will explain. dear lord I promise it's almost done, we're almost out of the woods I can see the light), that Jimmy is the jealous and territorial one. Jimmy is the kind of character to over think. He'll roll thoughts around untill they don't make sense anymore. He tries to digest his feelings for Tango and because he can't he pushes the boundaries of thier relationship to find answers. ( "I don't see why we couldnt" he says while impulsivly touching his crush. GOD THEY'RE IDIOTS) He knows he has a crush on Tango. He knows he feels some kind of lust towards him. He has a very loose grasp on why Tango, though. I'm dropping so much Jimmy lore in chapter three. Like theres such a big chunk of his personality missing from the story right now that I needed to do a bit of character analysis before we go back to primarily Tango POV. I'm actually 90% sure that chapter four is all Tango.

Still, putting myself back on track. Tango's cannon character has that firecracker energy that we all know and love. In the life games it normally portrays itself as sharp anger, revenge, and quick-wit. MOE Tango will have his sharp anger moment, but untill then, a lot of his fire is put into flirting. He has very good self control ("Tango’s hands itch to reach out. He sets them on the table just behind him out of caution. He’s unsure. He’s almost never unsure, apprehensive, hesitant- any string of synonyms that will express how Jimmy is constantly tipping Tango over onto his head. The last time he had to physically stop himself like this was well before he left Texas."). But all resolve has to break somewhere :). Jimmy will push untill Tango is forced to shove and when it happens, it will be an explosion worth watching.

They're narrative foils your honor. They will always yin and yang eachother, its simply the law. (Probably one of my favorite possessive Tango scenes isn't untill much later at Jimmy's birthday party... I've said too much) Here are some tunes to add to the Possessive Tango fire. Not all of these are on the MOE playlist but are like unoffical anthems I regularly listen to when writing. Hope you understand - Del Water Gap Ode to a conversation stuck in your throat - Del Water Gap (Del Water Gap my beloved please stop making me feel things) Cry for me - HUNNY Hover like a GODESS - WILLOW

[lynxgriffin]

Have you had any recent suselle ideas? I can't get enough of the two and I really hope that we see their interactions and relationship continue to grow in chapters 3 and 4.

Oh man, let's see here...honestly, a thing I'd really like to see with them is Noelle encouraging Susie to make something of her own. There's kind of the bones of that with the thrash machine, where Susie seems to like the idea of making a thing, but then quickly passes the actual work on to Kris and Ralsei. She might shrug that off as being too lazy to do work, but I get the feeling that she's actually reluctant to put work into anything because no one's ever given her praise for the stuff she's made herself, so she feels like she's only good at breaking things or forcing other people to do what she wants.

So maybe in an effort to steer Susie away from her embarrassing fanfictions, Noelle asks to see something Susie has made...a song, a short story, a dumb 30-second film, whatever. And Susie doesn't really have anything to show for that, so Noelle keeps prodding her to try and make something of her own. Eventually Susie relents and steals borrows Kris's phone to make a video where she pops out to scare Snowy or such...gotta still prove how scary she is! And she's reluctant to share it, because man it's just so stupid, she doesn't even know why she bothered...

And of course Noelle goes off gushing about what a great little horror moment it is, how Susie has got such a great understanding of timing and angles and it made her jump, too!

And Susie's brain is just absolutely melted by Noelle genuinely, sincerely complimenting her creativity, because she's never gotten that before. She's immediately excited about making more of that to show Noelle, and ropes Kris into it.

I just really like scenarios where they open up to each other and become happier people through their relationship! I hope we get to see more development of it in the next chapters, too! I'm guessing we won't see much in chapter three, but maybe we'll get a good chunk of new stuff in chapter four!

[redux-iterum]

Sorry for all the questions from me recently,, but I've been planning to write a fanfic that takes place before pinestar exists in riverclan, blast to the past if you will! I just wanted to ask if you have any tips or advice because I really look up to your writing!

No worries about questions! I'm happy to answer if I can. I'll try to give some advice on writing in general, and hopefully it'll help you.

Figure out what pace will help you keep going on the project, fanfic or original, and work with that. If writing 200 words a day every day or 1k words every three days is your comfortable speed and keeps you from getting exhausted, then don't force yourself to Stephen King it and write an excess of 2k every single day. Your goal is to enjoy yourself here and keep going until it's completed. It won't be worth it if you suffer the whole time.

That being said, at times you may need to strap yourself down and just get through the part you don't want to write. This requires some discipline and self-training, but it is doable. The reward of getting to the part you're excited about is completely worth the work of writing when bored. I can very much promise you that. Every single thing I've ever worked on, I've had to force myself to keep writing/drawing at some point, and every time I've been happy that I worked until I got my reward of the part I was psyched to get to. Hell, I'm doing that right now with the next book in this series! And, fun fact, the more you do it, the easier it gets. Sort of like exercise!

If you need to plan ahead of time to finish a project like I do, then you might could borrow my method of planning: write down one or a couple sentences describing the overall, most basic idea of the plot (literally just something like "[Character] in RiverClan finds a secret plot by [other character] to overthrow the leader, stops them, and then discovers that they were right to be suspicious about the leader's secrets and helps oust the leader"); write down all the story beats and character moments you have in mind in no specific order; break down the plot into more chewable chunks using the aforementioned beats and moments to help you figure out the connecting veins to each chunk; and from there, go smaller and smaller as needed until you have enough to work with that you're comfortable writing. I personally like to write a summary of each chapter as well - all of them - before starting to actually write those chapters. It helps me keep track of everything and prevents me from fucking up the story I had in mind by being impulsive and forgetting the plan.

Even if you love a moment, character or line of dialog, if it isn't working with everything else and is disrupting the flow of the story, don't be afraid to throw it out. It's hard and I hate doing it myself, but sometimes it's just time to get rid of something you're attached to. "Kill your darlings" doesn't just mean killing a character you like, it means taking out things that you love no matter how much it feels like ripping out a tooth. You can always find a way to use whatever it is later in something else.

If you have a willing beta/editor, by GOD, ask for their help. A second set of eyes is crucial to ensuring the quality of your story. The thing is that you're too close to your creation to know for sure if it's good to everyone else - even if it genuinely is amazing, you have no idea because you made it. Having someone outside the circle of sentiment to read and say, "Hey, this dialog doesn't sound very realistic" or "Huh, I thought this piece was foreshadowing something else, maybe clear that up a little" is, while painful to your ego, more precious than a pot of gold. Appreciate the critique you get. It's awesome for your growth. Do know that not all critique is going to be helpful to your specific writing style, but a lot of it is very much worth paying attention to and taking a minute to mull over and decide whether to humor it or not. This, too, you will get better at differentiating over time.

All this said, remember that if you're not getting a paycheck, you're doing this for fun. You are under no obligation to finish a story that's making you miserable. You'll have to learn the difference between "fic I'm in a boring moment of" and "fic that's actively harming my mental wellbeing because I feel obligated to complete it", and sometimes you'll need a second person to voice your thoughts to in order to judge that. If it sucks, hit da bricks! Don't punish yourself for having to stop, or even just taking a break. A fanfic is not worth your sanity. Trust me on this.

That shit got long and I apologize. Hopefully this helped!