#this is an excerpt of a wip of a fic

[nonstandardgalactictext]

"Hello, Riff! Say, you wouldn't happen to be busy with anything, would you?" Cygnet drawls, his breath curling soft and delicate and far too cold for anything human against the skin of Riff's neck, raising goosebumps.

"N- no, I'm.. I'm not busy. Just tinkering," He responds, failing to keep the tremble out of his voice, and Cygnet's giggle manages to both soothe and petrify him, with the knowledge of what comes next.

"Oh, good. I'm hungry, Riff," Cygnet drawls, as Riff manages to shrug off the straps of the harness that keeps his left arm in place. He pulls himself from Cygnet's grasp, turning around and setting the prosthetic limb on the workbench behind him.

"Can you help me with the right one?" He asks, and Cygnet smiles cordially, reaching up to slowly, delicately, tauntingly undo the right arm's harness, sliding it from Riff's shoulder and pressing his mouth softly against the light pink scars decorating the residual limb.

The contact makes Riff lock up, and Cygnet rolls his eyes, chin coming up to rest on his pale shoulder as he sets the arm beside it's twin.

"I'm just kissing, Riff, relax. You know I wouldn't go there." Riff can only nod, voice lost to deep, shaking breaths as he tries to settle himself. He always gets tense when someone touches the place where his arms used to be. It's been so many years, and he still feels the loss of his upper limbs like a shadow, following him incessantly. Sometimes he'll awaken in a half conscious frenzy, desperately trying to find his comm before realizing that it's entirely normal not to feel your arms when you don't have them.

It haunts him, some days, the days his shoulders and residual limbs ache, and he can do little more stare at his prosthetics, some odd grief tearing into him like a wound.

On the matter of wounds, Cygnet has clearly gotten impatient while Riff was lost in thought, because there's a hand on the back of his neck and an uncorked potion bottle being shoved against his lips.

He opens his mouth, an easy, routine motion, and lets Cygnet pour the acrid concoction down his throat, a hiss of radiation and magic searing his flesh as it goes. He tries not to taste much of it, instead basking in the way Cygnet smiles at him, warm and cheery and downright carnivorous.

"Good boy, Riff. You're so sweet to me," He croons, and something inside Riff caramelizes, his heart jelly-soft and his legs trembling to match. With his prosthetics off he can't very well balance himself, not with the drugs already sinking their claws into his senses, so he's grateful for the hand on his back, leading him to the center of the room.

Carefully, Riff levers himself to the floor, sitting with his legs crossed. It's always a little odd to try and balance without his arms, but he manages.

"Well. How do you want me, then?" He asks, a half-innuendo that makes Cygnet laugh, an odd, creaky noise like the last wails of a dying tree. It's a familiar noise, and little icicles of terror find themself at war with sweet warmth like burning honey in the space between Riff's throat and lungs.

It's nearly rabid the way Cygnet looks at him, one taloned finger tugging at the neck of his black tanktop, the other hand coming to rest on the fabric hiding the soft, lightly-toned meat of Riff's abdomen.

"I want your guts, pet," Cygnet purrs, and Riff shudders. He honestly can't tell what he's feeling now, past the buzzing of his head, the soft too-fast-too-slow thrum of his pulse in his ears blurring everything else together as the drugs turn his thoughts inside out before he has the chance to think them coherently. All Riff knows is that Cygnet is staring at him like he wants him, desires him, craves him, and he'd send the world to spores a thousand times over just for the way it makes warmth curl in his chest.

"O-okay. You can.. you can have me, anything- anything you want, Cygnet," he murmurs, nodding, and despite being so much smaller, the avian is able to quickly push Riff over to lie on his back. He goes easily- there's not much reason not to. Sharp talons rip through his black A-frame, nicking his skin on the way; Riff can feel himself pouting, just a bit.

"I liked that one," He grumbles, and Cygnet giggles airily at him, leaning down to press a kiss where his mustache meets his cheek.

"It's just the same as all your other ones, Riff."

"Yeah, I like those ones too."

[knightfire]

“What do I want?”

There was a pause: heavy, choking, strangling in its length and the power it held. Then came the answer.

“You.”

The way Husk’s gravelly voice pronounced the word was like a match kindling dangerous friction against Alastor’s soul, igniting a flickering flame of adoration that threatened to flash up the channels of his soul and burn away everything but Husker.

If Husker’s presence was the only latticework holding Alastor’s soul together then that was all it would need, forever, the Radio Demon thought with a dizzied inhale. He’d forgotten about needing to breathe for a moment too long, and the sudden rush of oxygen felt like it was making every piece of him spark dangerously all at once.

Did he need to breathe? Was that only a requirement for the living? The rushing euphoria arcing through him had thrown his brain all out of sorts and everything that he’d had tucked away neatly and categorized in his head was now dumped on his mental floor in a pile, abandoned as unimportant now that Husker had said that single word.

It was the trembling voice of a fragile, mortal man that answered this thunderous demand, peering out of the internal conflagration consuming his damned being in earnest shock.

“Me..?”

[amidnightjen]

The backpack lands at his feet with a solid thunk and then Max is shoving past him, scrambling into the backseat of the beemer with a snapped, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

Steve raises his eyebrows at Eddie but Eddie just shrugs at him and picks up Max’s backpack to toss it into the backseat, (seemingly) uncaring of whether or not it hits her.

Her snarl is a little more vicious than either were expecting and they exchange wary looks before they decide to just get in the car and deal with whatever this is at home.

Steve contemplates the wisdom of stopping for ice cream but he’s not sure Max is fit for public consumption and it seems safer to dig a pint out of the freezer than subject the unsuspecting employees of the Scoops knockoff to Max.

(Steve still has vivid memories of those days.)

When they get home, Max doesn’t say a word, just heads straight for her room. Slams the door hard.

“What the fuck?” Steve wonders. “Did something happen at school?”

Eddie can only shrug, which Steve interprets as Max continuing to avoid Eddie at school because he was in weird pseudo dad/brother territory and she was still struggling to deal with that development.

“Should we check on her?”

For a long moment they both stared at Max’s closed bedroom door.

“I know nothing about teenage girls.”

Steve glares at Eddie. “And I do?”

The look Eddie gives Steve then is amused. He points to Steve. “Very popular, many girls wanted you.” He points to himself. “Gay metalhead freak.”

Unamused, Steve points the Max’s bedroom door. “Teenage girl we both loved enough to kind of adopt.”

They both contemplate that for a moment.

“Should we call Mrs Byers?” Eddie suggests.

Steve is debating the wisdom of seeking help when Max’s door bangs open and she glares at them both.

“You’re both idiots.” It’s said with enough affection that Steve is sure she doesn’t mean it. Mostly.

“Want to talk about it?”

“Boys are dumb.”

“Sure,” Steve agrees because he is one and can confirm that yes they are dumb sometimes.

“Should I kill off Lucas?” Eddie asks.

The idea delights Max if the dark smile she offers them is any indication.

“Okay, retribution for dumbassery coming his way,” Eddie offers cheerfully.

Max smiles genuinely then and Steve sighs in relief. He’s still getting used to being the one caring for Max - legally at any rate - and he’s not sure they should be offering to kill off Lucas’ character as retribution but as long as Max was happy and they weren’t killing anyone in real life, he’d take the smile as a win and maybe have a word with Lucas later.

A threatening word maybe.

[azaisya]

"Monsters, no matter what form they took, could be distinguished from ordinary animals by a few features: the faint iridescence of their physicality, the way their bodies disintegrated when killed, and their immediate and ferocious instinct for violence. The unicorn had been no different."

featuring my oc finnelyn roselorre and the unicorn he miraculously convinced not to kill him

[bbcphile]

WIP Wednesday

Happy Wednesday! This week, LLH and DFS finally fight--with words, not swords, of course, but it's no less vicious. Here's the opening of that argument.

(You can find earlier excerpts here.)

Di Feisheng flung more qi at the acupoint to reinforce the barrier, forced himself not to wince at the spike of pain it triggered, and took a slow, deliberate breath, forcing his lungs steady. “I’ve told you: It’s not a problem Yangzhouman can fix,” he gritted out. “You have your answer. Now drop it.” 

Li Lianhua stared at him a minute more, his eyes narrowed, then he nodded to himself, the corner of his lips curling up in a faint, pained smile. He looked down at his thumb, stroking the fur on his cloak. “No,” he said at last. “I won’t. I refuse to cause you any more pain.”

Di Feisheng froze, the words a slap in the face. A whooshing noise filled his ears and his vision went gray around the edges. “You don’t want to hurt me? Then don’t die.” 

Li Lianhua closed his eyes and bowed his head. “A-Fei–”

“–Is that too unclear? Then hear this: your death would hurt me more than any headache, sword, or torture ever could.”

Li Lianhua buried his fingers in the fur collar. 

“The question, Li Xiangyi,” Di Feisheng growled, his qi howling through his meridians, his entire body vibrating with it, “is why do you keep insisting otherwise? Do you think I’m lying? Are you lying to yourself? Or do you just want me to beg you on my knees?” 

For several long seconds, Xiangyi was motionless, apart from the slight rise and fall of his chest with his breath. 

He slowly lifted his head, every cùn dripping with command, and pierced Di Feisheng with a glare every bit as sharp as Shaoshi had been. A look he’d hardly seen in the last decade. “That’s not my name,” he said, his voice colder than it had been since their battle on the sea. “Li Xiangyi is dead.”

[dss1101]

" “I was on a mission to take out the chandeliers in the foyer, but construction on the gym finished before I could get them all.” 

“There’s only one chandelier in the foyer.” 

“Exactly.” "

Dick Grayson the man that you are. Baby Dick Grayson was on a mission to cause as much destruction as possible and honestly I respect it.

[hardlyinteresting]

Aaron Hotchner x actress!reader coming soon

thank you to @hotchfiles for encouraging this concept!

[gaybroons]

Fic Excerpt :

Infiltrating Toronto’s castle wasn’t as difficult as navigating its rooms, the winding halls and complex corridors, the doors that lead to dead ends and the gardens that are ought to be described as a mazes. David hears the other bruins complain, the rookies who had never seen such architecture before must be overwhelmed; but he can’t find it in himself to care.

He knows what he wants. What he’s here for. His heart is clutching at one thing, claws digging into the memory of his lover. His dirty, bloodied boots are thumping against the perfect marbled ground but he can’t hear them over the pounding in his ears. He’s so close. So close. He can taste Willy’s lips against his own.

He runs like a man possessed, making his way blind, as if pulled by an invisible string. Somehow he’s sure that William is— that he—

When their eyes meet, it’s almost as if time itself had stopped.

The willypasta AU in which Willy is a spoiled prince, Pasta is a barbarian warrior, their countries are at war but that doesn’t stop them from being helplessly, hopelessly in love with each other :)

Another scrumptious piece of art from the most talented @adelphenium , aided by my co-commissioner and enabler @patrice-bergerons i love you two to pieces 💝💗💞💕💞💗💖💖💖💕💞💘💘💓💝💗 I’ve been screaming about this for HOURS 😩

[eqt-95]

wip what is a wednesday

thanks @sssammich and @sideguitars for the double-team.

here is an excerpt from chapter 2 of to want and to have and to hold *rereads to make sure it's in the right order* (why did i pick this as the title)

- - - -

“Ok this… should… do it,” Kara huffed from the other side of the ship’s wall. 

Then there was a creak. Then the entire wall shifted. Then Lena felt a shot of pain and registered that her hand was now the filling of a metal sandwich. Then Lena did the irrationally instinctive thing and yanked. Hard. 

“Shit,” Lena hissed once freed.

Then she did the logical thing of shaking her hand to futilely flick away the ‘ouch’ raging through her palm.

Kara was there in an instant. She arrived with a burst of wind and a blast of sand. “What? What happened?”

“Nothing,” Lena answered. The protective way she clutched her hand disagreed. <something something ‘object impermanence’>

“Was that-?” Kara rushed, hands hovering with the hesitation of a housefly. “Oh Roa, Lena did I-”

“No,” Lena interrupted. “I wasn’t thinking and-”

“You’re always thinking,” Kara mumbled. “I should’ve…” Her hesitation faded and two impossibly warm, impossibly strong, impossibly delicate hands traced over Lena’s hand and the harsh red and blooming purple spreading across her pale skin. 

“Kara, really it’s ok-”

“No it isn’t,” Kara replied, unable to tear her eyes away from the angry discoloration. “Here.”

Lena stared at the rag Kara picked up with worthy skepticism. ‘Skepticism’ became ‘dawning realization’ when Kara exhaled and the worn fabric glistened with icy crystals. Its normalcy looked so alien. 

Hand still clutched protectively in one hand, Kara wrapped the rag around Lena’s hand with a reverence that bordered on religious. The effect was instantaneous. Throbbing pain was muted by the coolness of quickly melting ice. 

It wasn’t the only thing melting.

Lena cleared her throat. Re-solidified.

“Y-you have freeze breath.” It was said matter-of-factly. Rhetorically. With a crack in her hushed voice.

“Oh, uh, yea,” Kara remarked with a tinge of red to her cheeks. She didn’t hear the ‘rhetorical’. 

“No, I mean, I know that,” Lena clarified. “I-I know you have freeze breath.”

“Right, right-”

“You know you have freeze breath.”

“Uh… yes?”

“You’ve had it the whole time.”

And then it clicked for Kara. Kara, superhero and possessor of extra-human strength and magical qualities like freeze breath, had gone weeks in the desert without water or air-conditioning. “Oh. Oh. I-I didn’t mean to-”

“And we forgot,” Lena observed. The trace of a smirk appeared. It was a silly thing.

“W-we-?”

“Does that happen a lot? In the field?” Lena asked, interrupting Kara’s confused stammering.

Kara’s jaw bobbed open and closed with the grace of a fish. “Kinda?”

Lena nodded. An opening. A hand still linking them.

“It’s just that…” Kara began then paused. Her gaze remained fixed on Lena’s hand. Her fingers fidgeted with the now-damp rag. Her lips let honesty tumble out. “Sometimes there are all of these things happening, a-and sometimes it’s overwhelming to like, think about who’s in danger, how many bad guys there are, what’s the context that I-I don’t really have time to pick the best thing?”

Lena leaned against the wall of the ship, pondering for a moment. “That makes sense.”

“Really?” Owlish eyes blinked up from Lena’s hand to meet hers.

“Sure,” Lena answered. She shrugged. Kara stared. “Decision paralysis. You’ve got inputs and parameters changing in real time and every choice can impact life or death. It makes sense.”

“I-uh-”

“Can I get another blast of ice? This is going to swell.”

- - - -

i would LOVE to see wip bits and bobs from everyone, but I'm gonna tag a couple I haven't seen bits and bobs from in a while: @ekingston, @lovepotionnumber5, @vox-ex, @fabulousglitch, and @inkedroplets. as always, tagged respectfully and without pressure but i'll geek if y'all come out and play.

[satancopilotsmytardis]

"You do love bad ideas." Jin tells him and Dabi kicks him in the shin before hopping off the table, making the other man yelp.  "Way to call me a slut without saying it."  "If I wanted to call you a slut, I would just call you a slut! And you are, by the way. I'm just saying that you also like bad ideas. You're the one who tried unlogged fruit because the scanners said it was only mildly poisonous."  "And I only got mildly sick and learned that it wasn't poisonous after being fermented for a week and we had non-regulation hooch for the rest of the trip!" 

[possamble]

Taking a page out of Ryoko Kui's book to give a minor side character a full personality instead of just making some stereotypical temptress trying to climb up Falin and...

Falin about to give some poor girl that almost-universal dyke experience of chatting up a girl only to be like "oh oof okay well best of luck to you...?" by the end

[calmlb]

WIP Wednesday

babyzai 3 angsttttt </333

[quotidian-oblivion]

Want to share an excerpt from one of my wips for no reason Pt 3:

"I thought of you as a friend. Trusted you more than I have anyone else in my life!"  His vision blurred with tears and Arthur hurried to rub his eyes to get rid of them.  "It is only those years that are holding me back from killing you right this instant. I'm risking everything, everything my father built, everything my kingdom stands on, all the laws, all the people, just for you."  He swiped at his eyes again.  "So take it. Take the chance and go. Leave. Stay in Ealdor, I won't send anyone after you. Don't come back."  Merlin was shaking now, his eyes shining before they released more tears.  "I can't," he said again. His voice was quiet, but fearful determination was infused in every word. "I can't leave you."

[ksbbb]

WIP STUFF

“We could use Liam as bait?” Stiles offers, earning a frown from Scott.

“Me? Why me?” Liam complains, not too happy with the way his name was so easily thrown out into the mix.

“Well if Theo is unhinged it’s more likely he won’t kill you as opposed to the rest of us. “ Stiles points out, nodding his head in agreement at his own statement.

“He’s not wrong.” Corey says, humming softly in thought.

“Corey.” Mason frowns, apologetically smiling at Liam.

Apparently what Liam has learned from all of this is that everyone else seems to be sure that the only thing that they can rely on is Theo’s care for Liam to help them buy some time.

How fortunate for Liam.

“Thanks. I guess I’m just going to approach a coyote in the middle of the woods like some lunatic and hope that you’re all right about this.” Liam sighs, bitterly biting back a smart response to Stiles previous statement.

“Glad we had this conversation.” Stiles says, patting Liam’s shoulder.

Theo better be easy to find because what in the actual fuck.

[bbcphile]

WIP Wednesday

Happy Wednesday! Have some more of LLH's POV, specifically, some lighthearted banter covering up some secrets and a whole lot of angst.

(You can find earlier excerpts here.)

Li Lianhua opened his eyes, refusing to meet either of the sets fixed on him, and tried to scrape together whatever remained of his dignity. He scratched a spot by his nose and cleared his throat. “I know you and Xiaobao like to fight, but don’t you think using my qi to blast him across the room is a touch excessive?”

A-Fei scoffed, an eye roll made audible. “He was being annoying.”

Li Lianhua tsk’d at him. “You really must learn to control your temper, Di-mengzhu. What kind of example are you setting for him?” 

“Very funny,” Xiaobao said. Li Lianhua sneaked a look out of the corner of his eyes in time to watch that bright mock smile fade into an impressive pout. “As if we didn’t all know how impressive a-Fei’s rein on his temper is.”

Li Lianhua blinked at him. Xiaobao sounded almost offended on a-Fei’s behalf. What on Earth had happened while he’d been asleep that could have wrought a change like that? He risked a glance at a-Fei to see how he was taking it. It was hard to see with his vision this blurry, but a-Fei’s eyes looked slightly narrowed and from the set of his jaw, it looked like he was deliberately trying not to react. So either he was surprised, too, or he was looking for the catch.

“That is,” Xiaobao continued, a mischievous glint lighting up his face, “as long as it doesn’t involve doors.”

A-Fei rolled his eyes. “I didn’t have a key. And my arms were full.”

“That’s no reason to step on them! Twice! And right on the design!”

A-Fei shrugged. “It was in the way.”

“What doors? What design?” Li Lianhua asked, straining his eyes to try to bring any of the entrances to his home into focus. “My doors? But they don’t have locks!”

“They do now,” a-Fei muttered. 

“Xiaobao? Care to explain?”

“I just didn’t want anyone to break in! I didn’t realize he’d blast it off its hinges instead!”

“Your lack of imagination is not my fault.”

“Hey!”

Li Lianhua rubbed at the bridge of his nose as though to ward off a headache and tried not to smile. It was a relief to have these two bicker again. “Alright, alright,” he said, waving a hand to dismiss the argument and trying and failing to suppress another smile as they instantly stopped to listen to him. “Just fix it later, alright, a-Fei?”

The atmosphere instantly changed. A-Fei’s expression became a neutral mask and Xiaobao’s eyes darted anxiously between a-Fei and Li Lianhua.

“I can do it,” Xiaobao said, plastering on an incredibly unconvincing smile. “I had started it earlier anyway, so I don’t mind finishing.”

 Li Lianhua’s stomach sank. “And why exactly are you fixing it if Di-Mengzhu broke it? Shouldn’t he take responsibility?”

Xiaobao hesitated, glanced guiltily at a-Fei, then held his sword more tightly. “He was . . . busy. Keeping you warm while you both slept. So I volunteered.”

Li Lianhua’s heart began to race. Xiaobao had never taken on a-Fei’s chores before, not once in the months the three of them had lived together. If a-Fei had ever convinced Xiaobao to do so, he would have gloated about it. Insufferably. And for a-Fei to even consider sleeping while Xiaobao was still awake and moving about, something was very wrong. 

Something that would have affected a-Fei’s health to such an extent that he needed to sleep in front of others and was too weak to repair a door.

He pushed his rising panic down, along with images of the the spiritual cave snakes, shriveled and dead from his poisonous blood, of Li Xiong, groaning and twitching in pain as Bicha coursed through his veins from receiving Yangzhouman, and pasted on his own innocent smile. “Really? So very generous of you, Xiaobao!”

Xiaobao’s answering grin was a touch too bright to be believable. “That’s me! Always ready to help.”

“Naturally,” he agreed, nodding. He waited until they both relaxed, until some of the suspicion lurking in a-Fei’s posture had waned. “And why exactly does a-Fei need help?”

A-Fei froze.

[dss1101]

"Duke was taking to it about as well as any of them ever took to getting benched, which was to say, terribly."

This family is a mess of self-sacrificing idiots. Take a rest, you'll be okay I promise. There are about a billion other vigilantes to protect Gotham while you're gone