#untitled redacted retirement fic project

[baiyunli]

can you post a tidbit of nicojack first getting together in the retirement fic? not the spicy parts but just how they were both feeling finally getting together

for sure! i haven't written it in full so just some fleshed-out notes below the cut, but hope you like it <3 i'm NOT in charge of the ages or times so if anything doesn't make sense just close your eyes and ignore it for my sake

this is probably around the 70%-ish mark of the fic, after jack's decided to retire but hasn't given any signs of being ready to move out from this place he's lived with nico for the past month. i think at this point nico's kind of given up on getting anything out of jack or understanding why he's still here - and jack himself doesn't exactly know why, either. he just knows that one day, several years ago, he got the call from his agent that he was going to vancouver, and then he got the text from nico and he thought - i can't be what he needs, i can't hurt him like that. so he packed up his bags and he left, and now he's back here and tired of playing a sport that's slipping further and further out of his grasp every day, still as in love with nico as he's ever been.

to some extent jack is trying to prove to nico that he’s grown up, and he’s mad that nico seems to still see him as if he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, as if he’s in his twenties and foolish, rookie-level reckless all over again, but he doesn’t realize that it’s partly self-preservation on nico’s end and partly because he never let nico know what he was like past those years.

they make the best of it, still. nico's never been immune to jack, and jack just doesn't want to fight - it's a tenuous kind of good, just holding on and hoping they don't slip. but nico gets back one night from a long roadie, his keys jingling in the lock, and jack's sitting on the sofa, blue light reflecting where his eyes have glazed over. nico's bags land on the floor, harsher and louder than they need to be. jack's turning his head to look back at him when nico says "what are you still doing here, jack?"

jack just blinks a few times. he means to reply but nico beats him to it, says that he doesn't care if jack still doesn't know, that's not the problem, but if he hasn't got an idea yet then he might as well just leave now, rather than spending the first year of his retirement tiptoeing around someone who's been in love with him since the age of twenty-one: a special kind of cruel that nico didn't think jack capable of, even after everything that had happened between them. nico doesn't sound much like he wants an explanation from jack, just that he wishes jack would get out of his apartment and leave him alone for once, instead of hanging around just because no one else really wants him there and practically daring nico to fall back in love with him. as if he'd ever fallen out of it in the first place.

so jack stands up too fast, gets a little dizzy and stumbles on the coffee table, but then he's walking to the guest room and starting to pull together all the shit he'd scattered over the room ever since he showed up at nico's door unannounced. it takes forever, but he knows nico wants him out as fast as possible, and he can probably crash at mercer's until he manages to get a flight out to vancouver - or back to michigan. he misses his family so much his teeth almost ache with it, but more than that is the sting behind his eyes as he stuffs piles of clothing back into his suitcase, knowing nico's just waiting for him to be gone.

and then he's standing in the kitchen with all his bags, about to say goodbye, and nico's still in his suit from the game, arms folded over his chest like he's protecting himself, and it's too much. jack knows he needs to say something, so he says - i loved you so much i thought it was going to kill me, sometimes. - all in a rush, and watches nico's hands still. the slow, cat-like blink of his eyes, brows drawn dark over them. watches nico's mouth form the shape of a question. his hand coming to touch jack's arm, lightly, to ask what he means.

and jack has to confess it all right there and then: how he was too young and stupid to understand the weight of his own desire, how he thought it would crush him - knowing he would always want nico more than nico wanted him. and he says it's okay if nico doesn't believe him, because jack wouldn't either, but he needs nico to know that jack's never been surer of anything, that at this point in his life he's done with pretending he'll get over it, any illusions of wanting something else. someone else. he's done with trying to be someone he isn't.

jack's never not gotten what he wanted, if not slightly different from the way he wanted it. two stanley cup rings and two cup final game 7s where he didn't log a single point. a new stick after quinn had already broken it in. wanting nico, like this, having done all these things to try and convince nico it's real. knowing nico will never believe him anyway, and it's fine if nico doesn't believe him. jack will get back on that flight and never talk to him again if that's what nico wants, but it's one last hail mary, throwing caution to the wind, in case this time he'll finally manage to say what he's kept buried all these years. in case this time he'll get it right.

nico cups jack's cheek in one hand. his bags are at his feet and the kitchen light flickers, but nico presses a thumb to the swell of jack's lower lip, leans in to brush his mouth across his, and says: i could be persuaded.

[kritischetheologie]

Which fic was the hardest to write? Which was the easiest? Do you have a retired driver you wish you could see back in F1?

The hardest is, without a doubt, the Untitled Redacted Brocedes Project I've been working on for months now and starting to worry I might abandon. So much historical background research + a really tough topic ´= basically impossible.

Of fics I have published, I think I challenged myself most with like a story told, because Charles is such a hard voice to write and I was trying to work within the world of the original fic while still writing something that sounded like me, so that was a tricky balancing act.

I honestly think the easiest was Everybody Wants to Rule the World my beloved. I mean this is a lie because it took me three weeks and I had a whole spreadsheet of the race results etc but in terms of like, difficulty per word times amount of joy I had writing, it wins. How did I write 23k in 3 weeks idk but somehow I did.

God what I wouldn't give for Nico to un-retire just to fuck with everybody's (Lewis's) head.

[baiyunli]

29 and 21 for the fic asks !!

writer asks

21: Have you ever deleted an entire scene after spending hours laboring over it? If so, why?

i delete a lot of scenes (killing your darlings etc etc) - i'm fairly organized with my workflow, so I separate my scenes with dropdowns and if i feel that it isn't adding to the plot, i'll mark it as archived and paste it into an 'extras' document for scenes i cut from that fic. it's a pretty natural part of my writing pace, i think, and i'm working on writing less filler, so it works for me.

29: Share a bit from a fic you’ll never post OR from a scene that was cut from an already posted fic.

oh gosh, i think the only bit i have is from a future fic where jack gets traded to the canucks and doesn't speak to nico for years. i got about 12k in before i tapped out, but i do have the first scene to offer (~3.5k under the cut):

At thirty-seven years old, Nico Hischier thinks that maybe, probably, he’s thoroughly sick of eating vegetable stir-fry. 

He’s been eating it since he can remember, since he moved to the States and had to start fending for himself, none of his older teammates or hotel buffets to mooch off when he was living alone. And twenty years in, the prospect of another stir-fry is about as exciting as a bag skate. It mostly surprises him that it took so long to sink in.

A quick search of his fridge yields nothing. He’s only been back in New Jersey for two weeks, so the shelves are sparse enough anyway, but ruling out anything that tends to constitute a stir-fry in his arsenal leaves a jar of pasta sauce and a carton of eggs. Before he can dig through his entire pantry, the doorbell rings.

Nonsensically, he thinks it must be the takeout he hasn’t even ordered yet. When he starts thinking properly, he figures maybe some of the guys are back in Jersey and want to hang out, or a rookie is coming over to eat the kind of real dinner they can’t make themselves. If it’s the latter, Nico will break the news to them that he can’t even find where he put his phone, let alone make dinner, and then they’ll sit on the couch and eat takeout while Nico tries not to feel like his bones are crumbling to dust.

When he gets to the door, though, ‘long time no see’ on the tip of his tongue, it’s not Mercer, or Clarkey, or anyone Nico was ready to see. It’s Jack Hughes.

Nico blinks.

“Hi,” says Jack, somewhere between a statement and a question. “Good to see you.”

Nico stares at him for a second. Swallows hard, and shuts his eyes before counting to ten. He opens them: Jack is still there. “Hi.”

Jack’s smile wavers. It reaches his eyes, but not his heart. “I was just in the area,” he says, fingers curling around the handle of the suitcase hidden behind him. “And I wanted to say hi. Before—you know. Before the season starts.”

There’s no reason why Jack would be in the area, thinks Nico dimly, now that Luke is lighting it up in Detroit and Jack—

“How are you?” asks Jack, lingering in the threshold, like he’s not sure what Nico’s going to say. Nico isn’t sure, either, so perhaps it balances out.

Nico opens the door a little wider, extends a hand for Jack’s suitcase. Steps back: an invitation for Jack to come in and take his shoes off that Jack hesitates at. “Not bad. You…do you want to come in?”

“Yes,” Jack answers. “Thank you.”

“No problem.”

Jack sits down at the kitchen counter. “Renovations?” he asks, looking at the kitchen backsplash, the new tiling on the floor and the cabinet repainting. Jack hasn’t been here in—five years. More than. The fact that he remembers what the kitchen looks like catches Nico off-guard.

“Just the kitchen,” he says. “My sister picked it out.”

Jack nods. “Nice.”

“Are you—how are you?”

“Pretty good,” he says, cupping his chin in his hands as Nico leans against the pantry door. Standing too close to Jack feels like it could be a mistake, and Nico’s made enough of those. “Quinn and I were gonna go back to Vancouver together, but it was driving us crazy living together the whole summer. And I don’t have to be there for another few weeks.”

“Okay.” Nico makes an aborted motion with his hands. His heart pulses out of his chest, messy, erratic. “I, uh. I’m going to grab my phone and I’ll be back. There’s some food in the fridge if you want to eat, I—” he breaks off and tries for a laugh, a little helplessly. It doesn’t come out as one. “I was going to just order in tonight, though. So we can do that too.”

“Sure,” Jack agrees politely. Nico’s never known him not to voice an opinion about what he wants, so he waits a few seconds for Jack to say something else. He doesn’t. 

Nico heads down the hallway. His phone isn’t in the gym; he finds it next to the sink in the bathroom. “Here we go,” he says. “Any food requests?”

Jack shakes his head. Bites his lip. The beginnings of a mustache are scattered across his top lip. He still can’t grow facial hair, but Nico respects the effort. “Get whatever you’d usually get,” he says. “I don’t mind.”

Give me something to work with, thinks Nico. He tries to recall what it’s usually like when old teammates come to visit, but no other old teammates had been radio silent for years the way Jack was. No one else came without notice, no one else was the first person he turned to when they won the Stanley Cup. No one else was ever Jack Hughes. “Sushi, then,” he decides.

He pockets his phone and starts looking through his fridge. It’s easier to ignore the reality of Jack Hughes sitting in his kitchen when he has somewhere else to look, something else to focus on. “Planning to go back to Vancouver soon?” he asks, staring at the fridge shelves, which look the same as they did less than an hour ago.

“Not really. Quinn’s pretty fed up with me, right now. Guess I’ve been hanging around too much this summer. You know how it is.”

Nico nods, even though he doesn’t know. He and Luca never had problems living together, but Jack and his brothers have always surprised him.

“I figured I’d lie low until I really have to go and train,” Jack says. “I can live without Quinn for a few weeks.”

Nico runs his tongue over his teeth, shuts the fridge. He can’t tell what Jack’s angling for. “I have a guest room,” he says, hating himself for hesitating, hating himself for offering it at all. “As long as you need. If you want.”

“Yeah, that’d be—” Jack grins, wide and real, for maybe the first time since he’s arrived. Nico’s bones sing at the sight of his smile. Everything else inside him aches. “That would be good. Thanks.”

“It’s not a problem.” He swallows. It might be a problem. It might not. Jack always makes him feel this way: like even what he doesn’t say is a mistake. Like a form of self-flagellation, like something he’ll never get right. “You want tea, coffee, anything?”

Shaking his head, Jack taps his fingers on the counter. “I’m good. I ate on the plane.”

“Okay,” says Nico, cautious. “Well. I smell pretty bad right now, so I’m going to hop in the shower. Feel free to turn the TV on or get unpacked. The guest room’s down the hall, third on the left.” He wouldn’t normally leave a guest to amuse themselves in his apartment, but he keeps pushing at Jack and failing, and giving him space feels wiser than trying again. He hasn’t felt so wrong-footed in years.

Jack gives him a thumbs-up. “Got it.”

Under the spray of the shower, Nico tilts his head up and lets the water wash over his face, cheeks hot. He blinks away the shampoo in his eyes, rinses off the sweat and combs his hair out with his fingers. 

When he’s done, the bathroom thick with steam, he texts Dawson: hey did you know Jack was in NJ? because if Jack gave anyone advance warning it would have been Dawson, and Nico is long past shouldering the hurt of not being Jack’s first choice.

Dawson texts back no?? as Nico’s stepping into a pair of sweatpants. haven’t heard from him in months, I thought he dropped off the grid

He came to say hi, replies Nico. No idea why he’s here, though.

shit, Dawson says. tell him we should meet up before he goes back to van

Nico cuts his phone off. Jack’s in the living room, curled up in the armchair and flipping through channels on the TV mindlessly. His hair’s longer than it was the last time Nico saw it, in his exit interview: curls brushing past the nape of his neck and down to the jut of his spine.

“Dawson says hi,” Nico tells him. “He wants to hang out with you.”

Jack looks up. “Oh. You told him I was here?”

“You didn’t want me to?”

“No, it’s okay,” he says. “It was kind of, uh. Not planned, though. I haven’t gotten around to messaging him yet.” He rubs the back of his neck. “It was a weird summer.”

“I can imagine.” The Devils didn’t have a great season, but it was nothing like the Canucks’, which crashed and burned long before the All-Star break. Fifteen-game landslide and too many bad losses to count. Nico didn’t pay that much attention, but hearing about it was inevitable.

“Had to recharge my batteries, y’know,” Jack says, waving a hand in the air. “Fix some of the shit that went wrong last season.”

“Makes sense.”

When the takeout arrives, Nico gets the plates out and Jack sets the table, as if there’s something more to this dinner than takeout sushi and tap water in the nice glasses.

“I don’t have much to drink,” he says. “I can try and find beer, but I’m not sure if I still have any.”

“It’s fine,” says Jack. He plucks the takeout boxes off the counter and takes them to the table. “I’m okay without a drink. Probably shouldn’t, anyway.”

They eat mostly in silence. Jack shakes his leg under the table, gets up to refill his glass three times, and Nico doesn’t stop him.

“Quinn’s doing well?” asks Nico, finally, picking up a piece of sushi and dipping it in soy sauce.

“Pretty well,” Jack replies. “His last season, probably. He, uh—he was engaged two years ago, but they called it off. I don’t think I told you. He’s spent some time getting over that, getting his shit together. We actually weren’t living together when I first got to Vancouver, but after the breakup he was at my place most of the time anyway, so.”

“Sorry to hear that,” he says. “I hope he’s doing better.” He wants to ask so many things: why didn’t you talk to me after the trade, why are you here, why are you sitting at my dinner table and eating my takeout and pretending we’ve spoken in years? 

As if Nico would know the particulars of Quinn’s relationships—or Jack’s, for that matter. Somewhere along the road, Jack Hughes and the Instagram algorithm decided Nico wasn’t all that important in his life.

“Oh, he’s doing fine now,” Jack answers. “He’s old, but he’s still going strong. He’ll set a new points record this season, just wait.”

Nico doesn’t doubt it. Jack says a lot of things, and most of them come true. “Good for him.”

“And you?” Jack prompts. He picks up a dollop of wasabi and spreads it over the roll on his plate. “Anything new?”

“Not much,” he says. His throat tastes sour. “Off-season conditioning, mostly. Trying to show the new guys around, help them get settled. I went to Switzerland in June.”

“Family’s okay?”

He sets his chopsticks down. It’s a different kind of hunger that gnaws at his stomach. “Yeah. Coming to visit next summer, probably."

“Nice,” Jack says. Then, after a moment: “So you’re not—you’re not seeing anyone, or anything?”

Nico does not let himself feel anything about the question. He cannot put all of his bad decisions up for Jack’s scrutiny, air out the reckless hookups and lack of commitment that’s plagued his thirties, talk through everything he’s ever done wrong for Jack to judge, because he’s old enough to stop caring about what Jack thinks, and his heart should really get the memo. “No,” he says shortly. “No partner. Just me.”

Jack’s throat bobs. “Got it,” he says, a little scratchy. “Me neither,” he adds, like Nico had asked, even though he had forced himself not to. “Just me.”

Nico’s breath stutters. He inhales, exhales. Picks up his water and downs it in one gulp. “I gathered.”

The silence stretches out between them. Jack twists his fingers together in his lap. “Nico—”

“I’m going to clean up,” says Nico abruptly. It comes out harsher than he means it to. “You can leave your plate on the counter.”

Jack picks his plate and glass up. He helps Nico load the dishwasher, wipes down the table and puts the takeout boxes in the compost. 

Afterwards, he hovers by the fridge, like he’s waiting for Nico to tell him what he can and can’t do. 

It would be easier for Nico to ignore him if he wasn’t being helpful. Nico had expected him to be unhelpful—deliberately so, even. But then again, he’d expected the Jack Hughes who was barely thirty and acted far younger, the Jack Hughes who was a New Jersey Devil and had only ever been a New Jersey Devil. His expectations haven’t exactly panned out for him, so far.

“You can head to bed,” Nico offers. “I’m sure you’re tired.” He dries his hands and leads Jack to the guest bedroom, picking up his suitcase from where it’s parked by the sofa and rolling it into the room. “The bathroom’s attached,” he says. “If there are any problems, just call for me.”

“Okay,” Jack says, going easily. He takes his suitcase from Nico, says, “Thanks for giving me a place to stay. I really appreciate it.” He laughs, a little reedy. “Didn’t really want to go back to Vancouver already. I wasn’t looking forward to being recognized.” 

He doesn’t offer an apology, because Jack Hughes does not apologize for things he doesn’t feel sorry for, and Nico can barely muster up any feelings about it. “It’s fine.” He still has no excuses for himself, no explanation for why he said yes even though he knew it would only hurt him. Self-preservation has never been his strong suit. Not with Jack. “Sleep well.”

“You too.”

Nico shuts the door as quietly as he can. Then he roots through the junk drawer in the kitchen until he finds a notepad, writes down everything he has to do tomorrow, and sticks it to the fridge. There. One thing under control.

Heard that Jack’s back in town, says Clarkey. Nico suppresses a long sigh. 

Did Mercer tell you already?

Take a guess, the reply comes. So he’s staying with you?

For now, yeah.

And he’s the same Jack we knew? Nico has no idea why Clarkey is even asking, seeing as one of them makes a point of getting food with Jack after both of the two games each season that they play the Canucks, and it’s not Nico. 

Yes? he says.

Tell him I said hi, Clarkey types. Kinda pissed that he hasn’t texted in a few months.

Nico pauses. He doesn’t say try a few years, but it’s a close thing. 

He is not going to cry. He will not cry, not when Jack is in his apartment, not when five years have passed and whatever wounds Jack left in his wake are mostly gone. The space behind his nose still prickles. Tell him that yourself.

I would if he replied to my texts, buddy, says Clarkey. Had no idea where he was this summer.

Neither did I, Nico answers. It seems to be a running pattern. He puts his phone face-down on the counter and starts making tea, all the lights in the apartment off. It’s still too early for sleep. Nico’s eyes feel grainy, his hands unsteady, but he refuses to go to bed until he thinks that Jack has. 

The guest room shower shuts off. Nico blocks out the sound of running water and watches the kettle, waiting for it to boil.

The tea warms his hands, at least. He presses his palms against the mug and breathes in the minty scent of the tea leaves, like they might ease some of the tightness catching in his lungs. He rubs his temples, head throbbing.

“Nico?”

He turns around and sees Jack in a pair of sweatpants and an old Canucks shirt, still standing in the watery shadows of the hallway, like he doesn’t want to get closer. Nico exhales through his teeth. “What’s up?”

Jack doesn’t move. “Nothing,” he says, finally. Like this, Nico can’t make out enough from the vague shape of his face to know how he feels, and it’s disconcerting. Everything’s disconcerting right now, with Jack. There’s another long silence. “I’m not that tired.”

“Sure,” says Nico. “You want tea?”

Jack steps forward into the harsh cone of refrigerator light. His curls fall over his forehead. He hasn’t cut his hair in a while, and clearly the summer did wonders for him, skin dipped in sunlight and streaks of his hair dirty blond. “Yeah, that would be good.”

Busying himself with rummaging for another tea bag, Nico turns around in time to see Jack slip into a seat at the counter. “It helps with sleep,” he tells Jack. The mug he gives him has a pair of sunglasses and a beach towel on the side.

“I like the mug."

“Secret Santa gift,” he explains. “One of the rookies got it for me.”

Jack raises a brow. “My rookie got me addition flash cards,” he says, dry and a little put-out.

“Why?” asks Nico, pressing his lips together.

“Apparently I can’t count. But rookies are cruel, anyway.” He traces the pattern on the side of the mug. “One of the kids asked me how close my bones were to crumbling.” 

Nico shrugs. “I mean,” he starts. “We’re not—young. Anymore.”

“I am,” Jack says, and it hangs in the odd balance between too breezy and falling flat. “I’m not old, if that’s what you’re saying.”

“We’re pretty old,” Nico tells him. 

“Nah, I'm the youngest on the team,” Jack says. “Or at least, I feel like it.”

Nico’s throat itches. “I wouldn’t know,” he says, too raw, too much, all the wanting in his bones spilled out in a flood of breath. “I don’t exactly know anything about your life now. You didn’t tell me much.”

Jack looks at him across the kitchen island. His face is silhouetted in fluorescent white when he brushes his hair out of his face, glances down at the tea in his mug. “You—what?”

He blows out a breath. “It’s not important. I’m going to bed.” Being here is too much and not enough for him at the same time, and he can’t stick around long enough to learn what he might say. “Sleep well.”

“Wait,” Jack says when Nico’s halfway down the hall. “Nico.”

Nico stops. Doesn’t turn around. He waits.

The pause that follows lasts an eternity. Eventually, Jack makes a sound low in the back of his throat, tight and frustrated, and says, “Nothing. See you in the morning.”

“See you in the morning,” Nico echoes dully, and then he crawls into bed without brushing his teeth, curled up on top of the duvet and waiting for the sound of Jack’s feet padding to the guest room before he can fall asleep.

[baiyunli]

retirement fic tidbits please?

of course! not sure how much i have left or what i've already talked about, but i think this might be the last large scene i've written out fully and i'm like 80% sure i haven't posted it here yet. this is kind of the driving force for a lot of the conflict, about a week after jack first comes to visit nico.

An incoming call wakes Nico, first, then the whistle of the kettle going off in the kitchen forces his brain to get with the program. He fumbles around for his phone. “Hello?”

“Hey, cap,” says Dawson. “Just calling to see if you want to meet up for lunch tomorrow. I texted a few hours ago but you didn’t reply.”

Nico tries to comb out his hair with his fingers; sucks a breath in through his teeth when he sees that it’s past nine PM. “Yeah, sorry. I took a nap and slept way too long.”

“No worries,” Dawson replies easily. “Are you busy tomorrow? I was thinking we could get lunch—bring Jack along, introduce him to some of the younger kids. I know they’d love to meet him.”

“Sure,” he answers. “Jack might like that.” And Nico’s mad at him, sure—less mad than ‘what the fuck are we doing,’ really, but he doesn’t begrudge the kids a chance to meet their childhood idols.

Playing in the same league as his heroes was strange when Nico was young, but it’s stranger now, knowing that he’s the one his teammates watched growing up—or that if he wasn’t, somebody he knows was. 

Jack was the star of both their Cup runs, so Nico being asked to pass messages on to Jack or for a stick trade by proxy is inevitable. Nobody outside the Devils would know that Jack hadn’t replied to Nico’s texts for so long that Nico would wonder whether Jack had blocked his number if not for the texts still going through. 

Nico had to get his new number from Bratter because Jack couldn’t be bothered to send it to Nico himself. Nico added it to his contacts, texted it occasionally before it became clear that Jack wanted nothing to do with Nico and even less to do with what they had—or hadn’t—been.

It’s hard to believe the players who will be carrying the Devils on their backs grew up with Jack’s jerseys in their closet and posters on their walls, his Stanley Cup game-winner blown up and plastered on the ceiling. The Jack that Nico remembers best is twenty, twenty-five, twenty-eight: fresh-faced and bright-eyed and too young to know what kind of world was waiting for him. Not the one half the league had a childhood crush on. Not the one Nico couldn’t afford to lose until he did, the one who built an empire out of nothing: just a stick and a rink and the need to win. 

Everything from thirty onwards is a blank spot in Nico’s head. It was never of his own volition.

“How is he?” asks Dawson. “Did he tell you why he’s here?”

Nico says, sharp, “He won’t say. I’ve asked, but. Nothing.”

“I didn’t get much out of him either,” Dawson replies. “He’s good with the kids, though. Way more patient than he used to be.”

“That’s good.” Nico pushes down the ache in his chest. “I think I should be angry at him,” he says. “I wish I were.” He wishes that what he was feeling made any sense.

Dawson is silent. “Has he brought it up?”

“No,” Nico snaps. “He doesn’t. He won’t. He can’t, maybe. I just—” he presses his fingers into his eyes, rubbing away the sleep dust until sparks dance behind his eyelids. “I don’t know how he can just show up here and pretend we’re best friends,” he says thickly, through the choking feeling in his ribcage. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to act.”

Dawson makes a sound, pitying. “He’ll leave, if you ask him to.” His voice is so gentle it cuts to the rawest parts of Nico and stings every wound. “You know he will.”

“I couldn’t,” he says. He rubs a hand over his face. He’s about three days behind on shaving, and he can feel it, the softening of the stubble on his upper lip, brushing across the pads of his fingers. “I can’t do that to him.”

“I’m sorry,” says Dawson, soft. “Listen, cap—oh, shit. Hold on.” The microphone picks up the muffled sound of crying. “Ellie just woke up.”

“You should go,” Nico tells him. “This isn’t that important. I’ll call you back another time.”

“Are you sure?”

He laughs—unsteady, but still a laugh. “Yes, I’m sure your daughter is more important than my midlife crisis. I’ll call you back, promise.”

Dawson sighs. “Fine. See you tomorrow.”

Nico shoves his phone in his pocket. In the living room, Jack is curled up in the armchair with a cup of tea. “Slept well?” asks Jack.

“Fine,” says Nico. “Dawson was wondering if you want to get lunch with some of the younger guys tomorrow. Apparently they want to meet you.”

Jack grins. “Well, if they insist.” Then he looks at Nico and the smile slips. “And if you’re okay with it.”

Schooling his face back into neutrality, Nico leans against the kitchen counter. “Jack, I’m not—” he breathes out, long and slow. “I don’t. I don’t know why it suddenly matters, whether I’m okay with it. Because it didn’t exactly matter to you before. Not when it did to me.”

The smile drops off Jack’s face. “Guess I deserved that one,” he says, a little rueful. “Look, Nico, I don’t—I’m trying.” He stares at his hands. “I know that’s probably not what you want to hear.”

“Trying to do what?” Nico presses. “You won’t tell me what you’re trying to do and you won’t say enough for me to guess.” He fumbles around for a glass in the cabinet, fills it up with water. There hasn’t been a second since he opened the door to see Jack two days ago that he hasn’t felt like he’s in the middle of a game he never learned the rules to, like he’s missing half the pieces to a puzzle he never saw a picture of. “You don’t have to tell me, that’s fine, but I’m not—”

“You won’t want to hear it,” says Jack, barely audible. He twists his hands together. His knee is shaking, and he pushes the tea away, unfinished.

Nico doesn’t say we don’t always get what we want, but it’s a close thing. “I can decide that, thanks.” Then, when Jack doesn’t speak, he says, “I’m going to bed. Turn the lights off when you’re—”

“I think I love you,” says Jack, unflinching, then nods to himself, as if confirming the statement. “I, uh. Have for years, probably.” 

Nico swallows. Jack Hughes is in his apartment, sitting on his couch, drinking his tea like he didn’t just turn Nico’s life upside-down. Five years without contact could never be enough to prepare him for this. 

“What.”

“I love you. I'm in love with you,” Jack repeats, the set of his mouth flat and unhappy. He stares at the tiling on the floor. He has the bluest eyes Nico’s ever seen, and Nico can’t even bear to look into them. “I had to come and tell you. And you don’t—have to say anything. I just, uh. I needed to, I couldn’t—I couldn’t not.”

Dully, Nico wonders if there’s anything in the rulebook about this. Any guidelines at all. But he imagines that “ex-teammate who I was—am in love with—came back after five years and confessed his love to me, what do I do?” isn’t the most common question.

“Okay,” says Nico, for lack of anything better to say. His voice sounds like he’s underwater, like he’s seeing it all through the underside of a fishbowl. He sets the glass of water down. “Sure.”

Jack tugs at the sleeves of his hoodie. “So?”

“I don’t…” he trails off. “I don’t know.” 

Features carefully expressionless, Jack asks, “Don’t know if it’s true, or if you feel the same?”

Nico says, “The first one.” He’s thought too much about the second one not to have an answer. He just doesn’t want to confront the fact that it’s the same answer he would have had five years ago.

“You don’t think it’s true?”

“I don’t know what to think,” he answers, as truthfully as he can. “I don’t know if.” He pauses. “I believe that you think it’s true,” he says, deliberate. “I don’t know if it’s the truth.”

“You think I don’t know how I feel,” Jack echoes.

He shrugs. It says enough. 

“Fine,” says Jack. He doesn’t move to get up.

Nico frowns. “So…”

“I don’t get it,” Jack tells him, redness creeping up his cheeks. He’s talking faster, frustrated. “I mean, I’m not a fucking kid, I know what I feel and why, I came here just to tell you and you still don’t think I know what I’m talking about?”

Nico grits his teeth. He refuses to yell, or cry, both of which feel close to bubbling to the surface and both of which he cannot afford to do. “Jack,” he starts. “In case you forgot, I haven’t known who you are for years, and I’m still trying to figure it out, so maybe that’s why.” He squeezes his eyes shut, the pressure of Jack’s gaze on him too much to confront head-on.

Jack catches his lower lip in his teeth. “That’s not…” he waves his hands in the air, but he doesn’t finish the sentence. It slides away like water in his hands.

“Forget it,” says Nico, too much bitterness leaking out of his voice, slipping onto the kitchen tile and staining it red. “I’m not—” he scrubs a hand over his eyes. “I can’t talk about this. Not right now.”

Jack stays silent, watches Nico move around the kitchen. Nico rinses out his glass in the sink and puts it back, then he turns away from Jack, goes to his room, and waits until the light from the hallway flicks off and he hears Jack close the guest room door.

[baiyunli]

would u consider posting more snippets of the retirement fic. pretty please. its so good!

for sure!! most of the fully-written scenes don't make sense without context, but i have one near the beginning, when jack still hasn't told nico what he's looking for here and nico's just angry and still hurt from everything jack had done before. no idea why i picked the wings for luke lol but here:

There were moments, after Jack was traded and before Luke signed with Detroit, where Nico would look at Luke and all he saw was Jack. 

He never thought they looked similar: Luke was a head taller and not as talkative in the half-charming, half-flippant way that Jack was, but in certain lights, during warmups or after practice or in the middle of a goal celebration, Nico reached out and saw someone else.

He knew Jack was gone, but it didn’t stop Nico from seeing him everywhere. He’d rubbed off onto Luke, his mannerisms and locker room nicknames and pregame routine, and Nico was just tired of always looking for someone who was never his, tired of coming up empty.

The first year afterwards, Nico couldn’t even look at his old locker: as if he was the only one responsible for Jack’s leaving and the guilt was close to crushing him, one of those quiet, tragic hurts he never truly knew how to share. He’d look at Luke and see the same heartbreak on his face.

Luke’s gone now, swept away in offseason free agency. Nico is happy that he’s playing well, at least. The Wings are good. Better than the Devils right now. And the Canucks, but that part speaks for itself.

“He had an awesome season,” says Nico. Second place in Norris voting. “Tell him I said congratulations.”

Jack grins. “Obviously. Thanks for taking care of him,” he says. “After I got traded. Like, I think it was the first time he actually had to learn how to cook, and shit. God knows I couldn’t have taught him myself.”

“I had to get him out of ordering takeout somehow. He was going to die otherwise.”

Late twenties and early thirties blend in Nico’s brain. Now, thirty years old is far enough in the rearview mirror that everything in the interim feels the same, a foggy lacuna from the first time they qualified for the playoffs to their first Cup win. The years when they thought nothing could hurt them, that the worst had passed long ago, young and stupid and too reckless to care about the idea that the future might not swing in their favour. And even off the ice: nighttime drives on the turnpike, the closest they could get to the end of the world. The hum of tires along the rumble strip, watching the light hug the soft planes of Jack’s face. Nico had tried so hard to stay away from Jack, those years.

“It wasn’t that bad,” Jack says in self-defense. He raises his hands. “We cooked sometimes.”

“For loose definitions of ‘cooked.’ And ‘sometimes.’”

Jack makes a face. “You make it sound a lot worse than it was. I got it together eventually. When it stopped being—okay, I guess. That I didn’t know how to be an adult. And I couldn’t get away with it anymore.” He worries at his lower lip with his teeth, folds his hands in his lap. “I wanted to—” his voice stumbles, stops. “Never mind.”

There’s a curl of hair falling into his eyes that Nico wants to brush away. Nico wants too much: he wants to ask Jack to finish the sentence, wants to say why didn’t you talk to me for five fucking years, wants to know why Jack came to his apartment if not to apologize for the last five years of silence. 

He wants to put his fist through the wall, kick something, but he’s almost forty and should know better, so really he wants to go outside for a long walk until his throat no longer itches. He wants to crawl out of his skin until he’s so far away he can’t see Jack. He wants Jack to leave and he wants to stop him from ever leaving again. He just wants to hear him say sorry.

“Sure,” says Nico, curt. “Good for you.”

Jack wavers. “What?”

He rubs his forehead. “Jack, I just. I’m glad you’re doing better, but I still don’t know how long you’re planning to be here.”

Nico hears Jack’s breath hitch. “Not that long,” he answers, and then he flashes his brightest smile, all-American and pearly white, to make up for the pause before his reply. “I’m—sorting some stuff out, that’s all. Told Quinn it was unfinished business. But I can go. If you don’t, uh. If you don’t want me.”

“It’s—no,” Nico responds. He runs a hand through his hair and does not admit that Jack Hughes is all he’s ever wanted. “You can stay.” 

Jack looks down at the table. “I’ll get it together,” he says, quieter, and it strikes Nico, for a second, the reality of it. “I promise. I’ll get my shit together soon.”

During Jack's whole first season with the Canucks, Nico dreamed about having him back in New Jersey, eating dinner with him and falling asleep on the couch before Jack could make it back to his own apartment. And now Jack’s here, eating his food, staying in his apartment, and Nico thinks that his most self-pitying dreams didn’t do shit to prepare him for it. “I didn’t. I’m not asking you to fulfill any promises,” he tells Jack. “Do whatever you have to. But the season starts soon.”

“Soon,” echoes Jack, his face shuttering. “You’re right.” He pokes at the rest of his dinner. He plays with a noodle, twirls it around his fork and drops it back in the takeout box.

“Jack,” Nico says. “Are you—is there something wrong?”

“No,” Jack says, too fast, brittle. “Not something wrong, I just, uh. I have to make some decisions. Tired of trying to be an adult, I guess.” He holds up the leftover takeout. “You want me to pop this in the fridge, or do you have a container I can put it in?”

[baiyunli]

Thinking about your retirement fic today 🤍

aww thank you anon! i wish i had more scenes to share, but i think i've posted most/all of what i have written for retirement au, so all i can offer is my gratitude.

[baiyunli]

Wait so! Jack confesses he loves Nico and Nico is like “hmm I’m not sure” and then after the season starts and Jack is officially retired Nico comes home one day and Jack is still there and Nico confronts him about it and Jack has to make sure Nico knows one more time he loves him. Is it possible to get Nico’s pov please?!

finally getting around to answering this ask, my bad anon!!

ref - there is like, a ton of drawn-out tension and exposition and whatever the fuck (i say this bc i'm reading back my notes and i don't even know what i was talking about) that happens between jack confessing and nico finally confronting him about it for good, particularly re: jack recognizing that it's time for him to bow out of hockey, as sort of a stepping stone in actually understanding why nico is mad at him and what he's done wrong.

i don't know how productive it would be to outright repeat the scene beat-for-beat in nico's POV but the bare bones, absolutely!

i think that leading up to this scene, there's probably a lot of things that just haven't gotten right for nico - it's been more than a week on the road and he's exhausted and hungry and he knows he'll have to get home and make small talk with jack, because that's what they always do. because it's been just small talk for however many months since jack first arrived and he won't stop shying away any time nico tries to dig a little deeper and figure out what's going on.

jack sitting on his couch is like looking at a memory from a past nico thought he had moved on from but that refuses to let him go, so really it's not his fault when he drops his bags too loud and asks if jack's going to leave anytime soon - maybe not in those exact words, but close enough.

and nico has to watch all of this as jack stumbles around the apartment in the eerie blue light of the tv, and he could turn on the kitchen light but he doesn't, because if he did it would just make this all more real. he wishes he hadn't hurt jack but it's easy to feel distant from it when jack won't even look at him and nico's leaning against the kitchen counter, all of jack's shit tossed everywhere that he hadn't even noticed before. nico doesn't think he's a bad person but he's tired and petty and vengeful and he just wants this all to go away, make it a little easier for him to exist in his own space, by himself.

then when jack finally says it; tells him how long he's loved nico for, how every time when he ducked out of the visitor's locker room so nico couldn't catch him or avoided answering questions about facing his old team or ignored nico's texts, he was just trying not to spend the rest of his lifetime loving nico more than nico loved him back.

and nico just - maybe everything breaks wide open then and there, jack's face somewhere between heartbreak and resignment in the light of the tv. nico's hand on his arm. the tight, unhappy downturn of his mouth and the steely look in his eye, because no matter how many times he'd told nico he loved him in the past few months he had never really tried to convince nico (or himself) that he truly did understand and knew what it meant, to grow up and grow out and offer himself up to someone else like this.

maybe it's the lack of desperation that gets nico, this time. the fact that jack looks like he's never believed more in what he's saying, but he's also ready to take no for an answer. the fact that nothing and no one has ever made nico give in as easily as jack hughes does, every single day, and nico is tired of holding so much resentment in his heart. that he's forgiven so many people, so many times, and just once more can't hurt.

[baiyunli]

hi. for your retirement fic, do you think jack ever actually says sorry to nico? like about ghosting him for 5 years?

hi!! i think yes, but i also think the actual apology maybe isn't the crux of it. it's partially because i'm not very good at writing apologies in fic but also because to me jack's growth in retirement fic means recognizing that just saying sorry isn't enough - that it's about growing and changing and becoming a better person, and those are the kind of differences and actions that you can feel, all the time. so he definitely does apologize at some point, but it's the kind where he was doing what he could to say sorry in his own way long before ever saying it out loud (if that makes sense)

[baiyunli]

That’s retired Jack accompanying Nico to his last NHL awards as a Selke nominee and they’re completely in love (unhinged)

OH NO YOU'RE SO RIGHT. GOD. bringing jack as his plus-one!! both of them knowing this is the last dance, the last season nico will still be playing before he retires and they get to spend the rest of their lives together... the proud, tight hug jack gives him broadcasted on tv when nico wins, and the soft kisses he presses to nico's mouth later, in private... anyway.

[baiyunli]

hi! hope you’re having a good day.

i was wondering if you’ve made progress on the retirement fic. the concept is so interesting to me and i’d love to read it!

hello! unfortunately i have not made much progress on retirement fic; at this point i'm not sure if it will be finished, but i also wouldn't discount randomly getting an impulse to keep writing it one day. which is to say that i'm not actively working on it, but i could be eventually. at the moment i'm chipping away at a baseball prompt meme fic, so my attention is slightly diverted, but if you have any questions about retirement fic then i am more than happy to answer them! also if you want to write something with a similar premise, then by all means go ahead (but i absolutely get that feeling of wanting to read it but not necessarily write it lol)

[baiyunli]

Oh Jack, leaving Nico to wake up alone, leaving him on read, that’s cold! And poor Nico, giving in to Jack, letting him into his space after all that time, he’s a better person than all of us.

I’m so intrigued to see how you get them back to a good place. I hope it includes a lot of groveling on Jack’s part.

Curious as to who caught feelings first?

i hadn't really considered the ending because i'm not really a planning kind of person, but yes! i had imagined the second chapter to be from jack's pov, where we find out why he had come to see nico in the first place - because he'd realized he was in love with him and panicked, so he had to go find nico to decide whether or not it was fake and he’d just loved the idea of being in love, as much as it horrified him.

i think less than apologizing, necessarily, the resolution is about growth and self-reflection and realizing the person you want may not have been the right person at the time, but they still can be now!! when jack first arrives, he spends all this time and energy trying to get his shit together and turn himself into the person he thinks nico needs him to be, rather than just recognizing all the things he's been trying to keep buried.

what i have written down for this is quite long and convoluted but tldr; jack tells nico he's retiring and so he's forced into this whole period of coming to understand himself by also finding out who he is outside of the sport he's played and loved all his life, and by then he's realized that he's never needed to be anyone but himself in order for nico to love him! and nico can see how much he's changed for the better, too - i think even though he's been hurt, nico's only ever been looking for a reason to forgive jack, so that definitely adds a little bit to the dynamic there.

re: the last part, i spent like five minutes thinking "oh god who DID catch feelings first?" before remembering that i wrote a vaguely tangential scene that mentioned it, so the answer is nico, but i also think realistically it was probably both of them, jack just couldn't put a name to it and that's why it took him like fifteen years to get it together. said tangential scene below:

Jack smiles at him, tentative. Nico takes too long to figure out if he should smile back, and by then Jack is slipping past him into the apartment. “Went to get breakfast,” he says. 

Nico nods, pushes the door closed. “I’m meeting some of the guys for lunch at one,” he tells Jack. “If you want to come.”

“Sure,” he says. “Why not?” Then he spots the ice-pack in Nico’s other hand and winces. “You okay?”

“Fine,” says Nico. “Just—” he lifts his hand to show the bruising across his fingers, and Jack sucks in a sharp breath.

“Looks bad. Here, let me—” Jack takes a step forward, without seeming to realize it, and reaches for Nico’s wrist. Nico is too surprised to jerk away, and Jack brings his wrist up, cradles Nico’s palm, fingers threading into Nico’s. He lifts it to his mouth and Nico has one moment of lucidity to think, what is he doing, before Jack presses his lips to Nico’s knuckle. 

His mouth is softer than Nico remembers. 

Jack’s lashes flutter as he looks up, lips brushing over the bruises painting Nico’s knuckles, and Nico feels like all the air has been belted out of his lungs. “There,” he says, raspy, eyes flicking up to Nico. “All better.”

Nico swallows, throat closing, wrecked and wet and desperate. “Jack,” he starts quietly, at a loss. Voice creaking around the shape of Jack’s name. 

The only thing he knows how to do right now is draw his hand away, so he does. Jack lets it go without a complaint, but the warmth lingers.

And suddenly Nico is twenty years old at training camp again, meeting Jack for the first time, silky hands and pink mouth, this boy who knew success like the easiest, most obvious guarantee of his life, lips splitting into a smile, more confident than Nico could have imagined being at his first camp. Suddenly he’s caught in the crossfire of every moment he ever spent with Jack and every moment he loved him, all the times Nico looked at him and wanted him so much he didn’t know what to do with the weight of his own desire. 

He takes a step back.

Jack snaps out of it, pasting a grin back on his face. He runs a hand through his hair. “Okay,” he says. “Uh—sorry. I’m just. I’m gonna go. Call me out when we’re going for lunch.” Before Nico begins to process what came out of Jack’s mouth, he’s gone, the guest room door clicking shut behind him.

[baiyunli]

NICO NOT BELIEVING JACK IS IN LOVE WITH HIM IS SO HEARTBREAKING AND PROBABLY NOT HOW JACK EXPECTED HIS REACTION TO BE

Like it’s so confusing because what do you mean you love me when you haven’t spoken to me in 5 years and made me feel like I wasn’t worthy of being in your life and yet here you are confessing the exact truth I’ve been feeling for years???

Yeah I’d call bs too.

Please don’t leave us hanging.

god i KNOW. but i also think because we're seeing this from nico's POV we miss out on a lot of the internal conflict and growth that jack goes through. i don't think he expects nico to like, reciprocate his feelings or anything, but his confession is really the culmination of years of growing and changing as a person, and therefore putting that time in his life - where he'd left nico and hadn't given any explanation - behind him. obviously it's unrealistic for him to expect that nico's also ready to put it behind him, but i feel like he's probably just short-sighted slash self-centered enough to think that would be the case. as in like, "i'm sorry i did this but i've also altered the way i think fundamentally about myself and my relationships and there's been a lot of unwelcome changes in my life recently and this is the only thing i'm certain of." it's kind of a lot!! and you really encapsulated nico's feelings on it perfectly.

i have written some notes on the story's resolution here for your perusal :)

[baiyunli]

can you give more background to the retirement fic. like were nicojack in a relationship or establish their feelings for one another or has it been pining and unrequited feelings from both sides. who’s clarkey? jack chose to leave when he hit free agency?

i totally forgot that there was zero context to either of the scenes i posted, so the answer is absolutely! quick disclaimer that i have not figured out much of this stuff either (which is probably why i didn't get too far with the fic) and a good portion of it is also credited to lil greenteam for making my ideas much more logical.

relationship-wise, my thought was that they'd never been in a relationship, but they hooked up the first time they won the stanley cup and like obviously it was great because it was each other, but nico didn't know if they were on the same page at all about where they were at or what they wanted, especially not after he woke up the next morning and jack was already gone. and then jack never mentioned it, so nico figured that it was a mistake, that's all - one he wouldn't make again.

and then a couple years later jack went to vancouver and stopped talking to nico, period. suddenly nico was texting him all the time and never getting a response, calling quinn to see if jack might have changed his number in case all his messages weren't going through, waiting outside the visitor's locker room the first time the canucks came to play and watching jack walk right past him.

jack pov of this is obviously much more complicated and includes this whole thing about feeling like he'd been dragging nico down and that he had to learn how to live without needing nico and wanting him in equal measure, etc etc rumination on growing up and not quite knowing how to!

re: clarkey, it's graeme clarke! i imagined the roster in that fic as mostly a grab bag of devs prospects and utica players at the moment, as well as a couple of younger rookies whose names i just made up, but yeah - mostly just to serve my own purposes because at nico's age, the majority if not all of the current nj roster would be retired or gone, especially those he's closest with.

re: jack leaving, i actually did not Really think through how he left the devils, which is odd because it's literally the whole driving force of the fic, but in my head he got traded bc they didn't have enough cap space - he wanted the organization to trade him instead of letting him walk the year after so they could at least get something in return for him. he had an ntc at that point so he got to be like "canucks or nothing" so he could play with quinn and obviously the canucks made it work!! (possibly the most unrealistic part. the canucks have never made it work. but ANYWAY)

i hope this answers some of your questions!! feel free to ask if you're still confused on anything or you're wondering about something else!

[baiyunli]

on my knees begging you to post more nicojack, your summer fic is one of my absolute faves and i would love to read more of your writing and your characterizations of them

the snippet of the retirement fic was so good

thank you!!! i would love to post more of them (and i definitely will be in the future) but to be candid, i think writing frequently is something that requires me assessing my relationship with what i write and how much enjoyment i get from it, which is to say i need to stop Thinking so much about it and just do it. i love that you love summer fic because it's probably one of my least favourite things i've written, but i need to understand that my feelings about it are not the same as other people's reactions to it! and that's okay.

i do have several in-progress fics languishing in my google drive right now if you want me to talk about any of them - my only real project at the moment is my mail-order bride au, but i also have uhh retirement fic, an actors au, ski instructor fic, and canon divergence where jack went to the rangers instead, as well as probably like 500 others i've mentioned in tags at various points that i'm just forgetting about right now LMAO feel free to ask me anytime and i'd be happy to provide, and thanks again!!

[baiyunli]

uh, i’m sorry but your retirement fic excerpt is actually so amazing ?!?!? god. your characterisation is *chef’s kiss*

oh thank you so much!! ref - it's one of those fics that will almost certainly never leave the google docs, but i love thinking about all the possibilities it presents anyway. i really wanted to explore what it would be like seeing jack grow up through nico's eyes, and sort of that dichotomy where jack seems to not Really get why nico's unhappy with him but also keeps trying to change all these things about himself because he thinks nico might give him a chance then (not knowing nico already loves him).

i started working on this in december/january-ish and just never picked it back up - i think the impetus to commit myself to what would be such a long, Wallowing fic didn't really stick around long enough for me to make it past that wall. my only regret is that i wish i would have had a chance to use this summary that i love:

"In this world it’s just you, your hockey skates from juniors hanging on the wall, and the boy you’ve loved since you were twenty—standing in your kitchen with his suitcase and old Cup rings, trying to say sorry."

thanks for the ask!!

[baiyunli]

what are some other wips you have or nicojack fic ideas?

great question! jack/nico wise: my current fixation is the oft-mentioned mail order farmwife au set in the 1880s, as well as a half-baked actors au riffing off this lovely fic. i've added the appropriate fic tags to this post for your perusal as well!!

throughout the past year i've cycled through a couple other ideas that have held my attention for various periods of time: retirement fic, ranger jack, a ski instructors fic that i started last year and haven't picked up since, and then a few random chatfics i've tossed back and forth with lil. i'm definitely missing Many of them but off the top of my head: tennis au, boy prince nico set in some nebulous medieval-esque universe, and like five hundred pwp fics that truly are just. not suited for human consumption.

i have wips for a few other pairings, but honestly i think the reason i haven't made much progress on them is bc i am physically incapable of finishing anything that isn't about jack and nico at this point, which is embarrassing LMFAO there's a leon/matthew fwb fic i meant to write for the short fic fest but didn't fully get around to, and an alex/quinton breakup-makeup that i've been talking about for months on end (i want to talk about it So badly and i have been keeping it inside for months!!!)

these are at extremely wide-ranging stages of completion, but i do have some kind of plot for most of them so i would be happy to elaborate on anything ^^