#whms au

[fragilecapric0rnn]

Anyway, It's About Old Friends || steddie future fic

(the When Harry Met Sally Steddie fic)

In 1987, Steve Harrington ends up going on a cross-country trek with Eddie Munson and it ends as well as one might think.

Read Here

It's finally here, the fic I've been wanting to write since August, the fic that has been haunting my brain, my blog, and my dreams since August! The first chapter is finally here!!!!

Huge huge HUGE shout out to my own squad of cheerleaders, my big boys, my wonderfully talented friends @gothbat99 @figthefruitfaeth @judasofsuburbia @fastcardotmp3 and everyone else that has listened and participated in a spiel or two about this fic 💖

Another huge shout out to @cheatghost and @kkpwnall for beta reading and seeing the vision and handling this fic I love so dearly with a lot of TLC and for helping me brainstorm my way out of a few ruts 💓

Love you lots my dear friends💗✨💗✨

[t4tstarvingdog]

WHMS AU PLEASE TELL ME ABOUT IT PLEASE

OKAYYYY so. it is abut my silly guys buck and eddie and i haven't really planned out all that much?? it's all bullet points rn and these are a few of them w explanations

sally crying scene (why didn’t he want to marry ME) -> buck (so this part would be about abby (<- FORGOT HOW TO SPELL HER NAME??) getting married or some such thing, and buck finally having it hit him that he wasnt the one she wanted it with, eddie probably comes over etc etc you know how the scene goes)

museum scene silly voices w/ christopher (chris is eddie's son, and buck is really involved in their lives. so this scene would be all of them being silly together, not sure how the date question would go with chris present)

buck doesn’t like eddie (self explanatory: they meet and buck hates eddie at first)

buck doing the intense planning

okay now here's the thing, they both have aspects of themselves that fit with either harry or sally, so i'm hesitant to make one of them a Specific Person w no wiggle room. but the general premise is that buck is going to la to have something happen to him and eddie is going there probably to meet up with shannon (<- ex-wife) to be with chris?? not sure exact details on that. i'm also still deciding on if they're gonna be firefighters, or if they're gonna be something different and don't work together. but the whole point of it is old friends. best friends.

[tarotoro0]

For @VoidlivionBV and @YMizuhiki, thank you!

[i-write-shakespeare-not-disney]

A diamond, a prince, and feisty best friend

[otakuneikho]

・「 Hero! Dynamight and Barbarian! Bakugou 」・

After almost 33 hours of work, here is finally my official return to the MHA fandom! Little pride in this drawing 🧡🧡🧡

❌ Do not repost/use/edit my art!❌ 🌈 Shares, Comments, and Likes are very appreciated!🌈

[shuuzaar]

WHM Glasses // quick sketch from last weekend

[aura-whispers]

new white mage glam 🌸

[disgruntledkittenface]

snippet

thank you @louisandtheaquarian for tagging me forever ago and @allwaswell16 for tagging me lately to post a snippet! I was blocked for awhile on my When Harry Met Sally AU, but I finally figured out the section that was giving me trouble and I feel like I have momentum again. This is from the chapter that I just finished:

“Do you want me to get you a drink, lover?” Liam asks, brushing a lock of hair from Zayn’s face. “I can see what kind of wine they have.” “I’ll go with you,” Zayn replies, wrapping her arm around Liam’s waist. “I think tonight might be a tequila night. Come on, lover.” Louis watches as they head off to the bar, so close to each other they’re practically intertwined. “God, they’re disgusting,” Louis says, turning to Harry. “You’d think they’ve been together for a year, not just a few weeks.” “That’s the way that we live,” Harry says, laughing. “Besides, the more I think about it, the more I’m like ‘how did we not see this coming?’” “Really? Why?” “Well, Liam is so earnest,” Harry says, pulling out a chair at the high-top table they’ve been standing next to. “And I can see Zayn being really attracted to that after dealing with her ex. And she seems so cool and aloof, but secretly, she’s the biggest dork.” “Which makes her perfect for Liam,” Louis says, picking up a ping-pong paddle and turning it over in her hands.  “Right. And I looked it up online, Virgos and Capricorns are a good match.” “Okay, Ms. Aquarius,” Louis says. “Do you want to get some practice in now? I really want to make someone lose so badly tonight that they cry.” “Oh, good,” Harry says mildly as she stands up. “Me, too.”

I'll tag you both back and add @crinkle-eyed-boo @kingsofeverything @louandhazaf @homosociallyyours @uhoh-but-yeah-alright @absoloutenonsense

[kroosluvr]

join my pirate crew

[draginhikari]

Kari Azuresol 100 Jobs Part 2: The Reserves Paladin Reaper Machinist White Mage Samurai

[fragilecapric0rnn]

“it’s okay, i couldn’t sleep anyway” for the prompt thing!! (-patheticgirlsteve)

OKAY SO this prompt is from a prompt list I rb'd in December (wowza!) and I found the writing for this prompt half finished in my WIPs folder today and decided to finish it!

This ficlet is also a look into the in-progress When Harry Met Sally-inspired AU/canon divergence fic. I've been sitting on both that fic and this snippet for far too long and have been itching to share something. So, here's the something!

(something set in the late summer of '98, in a city that doesn't bode well during heat waves)

It’s an unusually hot night in Steve’s apartment. 

It's going to be an unusually hot week in the city, actually.

Steve has gotten used to the temperate San Francisco weather in the 11 years he's been a resident. But after 11 years, he's still surprised at the random bursts of heat that creep in during these last few weeks of August. Just in time for him and his students to sit inside the toaster oven that is his classroom during the first week of school.

Thankfully, it's not a school night. The last week of his summer vacation, and he's spent most of the daylight hours dangling half of his body out of the screen-less street-facing window in his apartment, praying a breeze would whip past him. (It didn't).

After an hour of tossing and turning in bed, in nothing but a pair of boxers, the open window providing no relief, the air stale and hot and a bit sticky, he decided to move to the living room, where he will still be suffering, but at least there's a TV out there.

A movie he remembers seeing with Robin in the theater during their Oakland days is playing as soon as he flicks on the TV, reminding him of how long it's been since they've lived together, let alone in that first apartment in Oakland. Freshly 20 and 21, figuring out how to live on their own, thousands of miles from everyone and everything they knew. Figuring out how to deal with the calmness of it all.

Remembers talking about the movie again in '92, and being annoyed with all of his friends (Eddie and Nancy) who thought that Lloyd and Diane broke up in London. Wonders if they're still as cynical about love today as they were back then.

As he's counting the years back in his head, the phone rings, pulling him out of his thoughts.

“Hel-lo?” He answers, remembering that it is 2am in the middle of the word, dragging it into two syllables to make it seem like he's shocked that someone is calling him.

“What the hell are you doing awake at this hour?” Eddie quips, Steve reflexively rolls his eyes, at both the tone of his voice and the question itself.

“How do you know that you didn’t just interrupt my much needed beauty sleep?” He scoffs, flicking his head like he would if Eddie were sitting right here on the couch with him. Eddie must pick up on it, chuckling over the phone, a similar sound to the one he made when he was sitting on this couch hours ago, suffering with Steve in his apartment.

Now there's something twenty-one year old Steve would be shocked to learn. That him and Eddie became friends, at all.

“I can hear the TV.” Steve hums in response, turns the volume down a notch or two. “But, here’s a courtesy ‘I’m sorry’ for the late night call.”  

“It’s okay. I couldn’t sleep anyway.” Steve sighs as the slightest breeze rolls through the open window. He's a much better sleeper than twenty-one year old Steve, but due to recent life-changing events and this damn heat-wave, a late-night phone call with Eddie is almost routine at this point

“I miss Evie’s apartment. She had AC.” Eddie says, casually. Steve still doesn't get how he can talk about her so casually. How he can just bring her up like it's nothing. If he even thinks about -

“I still can’t believe you got your heartbroken by a trust fund baby.” He says, cutting off his own thought.

“I’m more heartbroken about that AC unit right now,” still casual, as if he is actually heartbroken about an AC and not a person.

“What’re you watching?” He asks.

“Say Anything.” 

“Channel?”

“12.” 

The scene where Lloyd is talking to Diane’s father on the prison yard. It makes him think of Eddie on the other line, sitting in his unintentional bachelor pad a few blocks away from his own. The thought must’ve made Eddie’s ears burn. 

“That’s not what visitation is actually like, ya know?” His voice is soft.

“Oh yeah?” Steve says, wanting to encourage but not pry.

“Yeah. It’s indoors, at tables, cold and gray. Feels dirty and sterile at the same time.” Eddie says.

“I always thought it happened between a plane of glass, with a telephone on either side of the glass.” Steve offers, giving him an out, a chance to change the subject if he wants to bow out.

“That’s what it’s like in county jail. Prison’s different.” Steve hums again, knows there’s no need to respond with anything else. Steve doesn’t need to ask him how he knows all of this. He knows that Eddie doesn’t expect him to ask. That’s the thing, about old friends, about them, about their whole gang. There are certain things they’ll always know about each other. 

His mind drifts to a little Eddie and a younger Wayne, walking into a room just like Eddie had described, going through the motions. It pulls at his chest a little. 

“Do you still think they broke up in London?” Steve tests.

“I don’t think they broke up in London?” Eddie says, a tad defensive. 

“Yes you do, or you did.” He remembers the conversation, he knows Eddie must remember the conversation.

“When did I say that?” 

“In San Diego, we had a whole thing about it, the five of us.” The drunk and loud debate was held stuffed into a diner booth in San Diego. Before you left.

Eddie pauses.

“I did say that, didn’t I?” 

“You sure did.” 

“Well, to answer your question, no. I don't think so. I think that they’re two weirdos who were meant for each other.” Eddie says, Steve sinks further into the couch, holds the phone up with his shoulder.

“That's exactly what I said then.” 

"Well, I think it now."

"Me too." It comes out softer than he expected. Suddenly thankful that this conversation is happening over the phone, so he can scrunch the feeling away from his face, take a deep breath and shake the feeling that just washed over his body.

“I know a thing or two about weirdos who’re meant for each other.” Eddie says playfully, that tone he uses when he's half-joking, but half-serious. Steve feels something bubble in the very depths of his stomach. 

“Oh yeah? Who?” 

“You and Robin.” Pop. He lets out a deep breath.

“Ha ha.” Steve says, toning up the sarcasm.

“Max and Lucas, Joyce and Jim, the entire gang who’s bonded by the terrors of the 80s and government NDA’s.” Steve’s laugh barks out of him, he can’t hide how surprised he is at these words coming out of Eddie’s mouth. 

“What? What’s so funny?” 

“Nothing, it’s just…” He trails off, trying to choose his next words carefully. “Not used to you talking about the past. Hasn’t really been your thing.” His mind drifts momentarily to San Diego again. Watching him hail that cab. Running away. 

“There's a lotta things that I used to do, or not do.” There’s a pause. Either of them could say something, there’s something dangling in the air between them, between their two phone lines, filling the space between their two apartments. Just as Steve opens his mouth to say something, cut the tension, snatch the feeling out of the air, Eddie beats him to it.

[frazzledhealer]

pure happiness 🐇🎀☁️

[sainsa-in-eorzea]

Just hit level 70 on WHM so ofc that means I gotta have a new glam!

[stormbabylore]

Low quality screenshot, high quality me being in awe of my own character.

Panned around on a whim while doing Coils - Turn 5 unsynced. I may need to repeat this as bard (her main). For reasons.

(✧_✧)

[keicordelle]

The Adventures of an Inconvenient Au Ra: Light Consumption

*CW: body horror

Pain wracked Keshet's entire body, fire searing up his nerves to char away his insides. No, actually, fire wouldn’t have hurt this much. It was more like the entirety of the foul light of the sun blazed beneath his ribs, burning away at his being while Azim watched on in amusement.

"I had such high hopes for you," the looming figure sneered, the scornful voice muffled through the haze of white that filled Keshet’s senses and burned away at his retinas. Something cracked in his chest, and Keshet screamed, spilling forth to his hands and knees to spew viscous white across the marble. The churning in his stomach slowed, and he was fairly certain that was only because his stomach had ceased to exist, his very organs turned to solid, unchanging stone within his gut. He heaved again, desperate to expel the light from his body, tears of crystal streaking down to mar his face as he scrabbled against the stone beneath him, a worm beneath the merciless sun. Light oozed from between his scales, the shining black plates cracking as the corruption consumed him, breaking his body to remould him in its image.

The fire and its wicked torpor spread, fetid tendrils snaking out from his stomach to seize his other organs, squeezing at his lungs and coiling about his heart. His bones shifted beneath his skin, each one shattered into dust, and yet somehow his arms still held him up, breath still rattled in his lungs, and sound still reached his ears, even if it was an indistinguishable drone.

Urianger. Urianger had had a plan. I trust him. He'll save me. He will. He will. The thought slipped like sand between the glass of Keshet's mind, and he fought to lift his head, peering beyond the searing light to see where the hazy shapes of his friends stood. He forced his eyes to focus, to look beyond the light that blinded him and stole away his sanity. The world wavered before him, and he sunk his teeth into his lip (he still had teeth?), the small pain lost amidst to torment that wracked him, but the world righted itself, if only for a moment, the wicked white haze clearing away just enough to let him see his companions.

Thank you, Nhaama, he thought, or maybe that was someone else's thought like driftwood through his brain. But it was not the Dusk Mother who wiped clear his eyes, but another foul trick of Azim's, revealing Urianger's tormented face, creased as though every crack of bone and lick of flame afflicted him instead.

Oh. There is no cure. I'm going to die here. An empty thought in an empty head.

No! Keshet drew together the shattered fragments of his being, forcing them into a coherent form long enough to struggle back against his imminent demise. I will not die here, on this shard so far from home. Not like this, writhing like a maggot in the dirt! This is not an end worthy of a Dotharl. I can't die like this, I can't, I can't, I-

He reached for the strength of the void and that depthless portal that filled him. He'd shove as much of the light into that abyss as he could manage, and let it become the problem of the voidsent.

He found nothing. Where darkness should dwell, there was nothing but the same sickening radiance, seizing even the heart of the void within him. Where power should lay, there was nothing. He tipped forward, the sound of his horn cracking against the stone almost unheard as the white swarmed his vision, stealing away his consciousness as it stole his life.

Nothing.

Nothing.

There was nothing.

... There was light.

-

The memory of pain lingered when he woke. The effects lingered too, light shining between the cracks in his scales and his stomach turned to stone in his gut. But his bones were all intact (had he imagined that?) and his body and mind were his own, more or less.

The ghost who shared the color of his soul told him what had happened in his absence. The light, halted but not cleansed. A temporary fix. A stopgap that kept him breathing a few days longer while the others searched desperately for a cure. That kept him from turning into... Into... He couldn't think about it.

He couldn't think about anything else. Stillness reigned where the swirling void of ever-changing darkness ought to lay within him, and when he tried to dredge up that abyssal power to summon flame to his hand, naught but light shone in its place. It left him sick to his non-existent stomach - which he was starting to believe really had turned to stone, given the way his body rejected the bite of jerky he tried to force into it. Light rose like bile to splatter on the tile, the utter absence of color almost entrancing. He shied away from it, as if to stare into it too long might mean his death. It was funny; most people feared staring into the void - Keshet feared staring into the light.

No matter. He picked himself off the floor, ignoring the worried chatter of the ghost that only he could see. He had an Ascian to fight. If his breaths were numbered, he would not waste them resting in bed in the vain hope he might recover. He trusted his friends to find a cure. He had trusted them... They would find something. Or else he would die, dramatically, and his mutilated corpse would rain terror upon the first. Which, by then, would hardly be his problem. He hoped it wouldn't come to that. It couldn't. It might.

Thoughts churning the way his stomach ought to, he set out to find his way to Emet-Selch's hidden abode, off to face his death - and knowing that this time, his death would be permanent.

-

Death was really a long time coming. He should have assumed he'd get no peace, even with the light ravaging his soul. He'd covered his scales as best he could, playing it off as a chill when people asked, which garnered him some sympathy - but not enough for the many well-meaning citizens of the Crystarium to leave him the hell alone. His ghost trailed after him, maintaining his chattering commentary and feeding him lines when he could not think past the weight of the light. When it was too much, he led Keshet away, up a hundred thousand stairs to the city’s edge.

"You did this," he said- No. No. He didn't say that. The voices inside Keshet's head and without were all too loud in the stillness of his body, and he couldn't distinguish one from the other except through their refrain. You did this, you did this, you did this.

Try again.

"I can imagine how torn you must feel, looking at that sky. Knowing what it means to everyone... And that you're responsible." You did this.

So maybe he did say that.

"That's what heroes do, isn't it?" Heroes. He was just a man. Well. He was just a man. Now...

"Well? Come on, then!" A hand extended. Villain to hero, man to man, ghost to monster. Keshet took it.

A flash, light so blinding it cut off his already clouded vision, and then... The pain lessened. Oh he was still broken, still cracked and bleeding, but he could breathe again (had he stopped?) and a trickle of thoughts passed through that stagnant brain. I will not let it end like this.

Help, that was what Ardbert offered. Help when he needed it most. "If you need a push, I'll be right there behind you; if you lose control, I'll do my best to stop you." A promise that eased the burden strapped to his aether. A contingency, as it were. A shard of his soul kept outside his body, to keep him from losing himself entirely. After all, he was no martyr, to suffer his pains alone. He was not smart enough or charismatic enough or kind enough to fix the world on his own. So he relied on others. He would rely on others.

So - let us be about it, hero.

-

He could not do it. With his connection to the void severed, he was powerless. The sickening radiance that filled its place was clumsy and stunted - enough, perhaps, to best the illusory beasts Emet-Selch had set upon them, but not to defeat an Ascian. Not even with the entire strength of the Scions at his back. Bones cracked, pain flaring in a now familiar agony that seared down his spine and dripped light like vomit from his lips. Blood and light both oozed from the cracks in his scales, the comforting black peeling away as he screamed. Please. Nhaama. Hydaelyn. Anyone. Just make it stop.

No darkness rose to soothe him as his soul shattered at the very bottom of the sea on another Shard. There was no softness in death, only pain and suffering, and eternity. Light swallowed his world as one by one his companions fell, their desperate attempts to save him for naught. None but he could stand before Emet-Selch and hope to survive. None but... None. At least they won't die by my hand.

"If you had the strength to take another step, could you do it? Could you save our worlds?"

A hand, extended. Ghost to monster, man to man. One hero to another.

The word would not come, could not pass the light that bubbled up from his lips, even as he put his whole being into that one word. Yes... yes... yes, yes, YES!!

It didn't matter; Ardbert heard the song that sang through his soul, and even through the blinding light that had stolen Keshet's vision, his smile was unmistakable. "Take it. We fight as one."

He took it.

Darkness flooded him, washing away the corrupting light and breathing life into his broken bones. Flayed flesh knitted together in the span of an instant, Keshet's soul stitched back together, his ghost filling in the cracks to contain the light. Not eradicate it (no, nothing short of his death would do that now) but with Ardbert's aether melding with his own, it was not so heavy a burden to bear.

It was enough.

Abyssal flame leapt to his call as he hauled himself to his feet, the memory of agony etched in every movement. But he could stand, and if he could stand, then he could fight. A true, proper fight, pitting his darkness against Emet-Selch's, and may the better monster be the victor.

(It would be him. It had to be him. He had something to fight for.)

"We stand together!" The Exarch - G'raha, battered and beaten, but willing to fight with all his strength.

"One of us will die here," Keshet snarled, loosing the reigns on the abyss in his soul. "But it will not be me!"

And so, with flame and ice and darkness, they fought.

-

In the end, the light won. Keshet flinched from its rising glow, until he realized it came not from within, but without. It caressed his scales in a comforting chill, like the kiss of a mother upon her babe’s brow, before pouring past him to envelope Hades and Urianger's white auracite. With a simple thought, he drew on that light - that gentle, healing light - and it coalesced in his hand into a most fitting tribute to the stitches on his soul.

Then, with a whispered wish to remember, it was over.

-

Though the light relinquished its claim on him, it did not leave him unscathed. Oh, externally he was fine - his scales shone only with mundane, lustrous black, his horns were whole and unbroken, and not so much as a single scar marred his skin to mark his time as the Light's thrall. To look at him, no one would ever guess the horrors he faced and just how near he had been to losing himself completely.

But internally... Though the void answered his call once more, that light was still there, simmering within him, like it was just biding its time to strike again. It jumped to his summons, leaping gladly from his fingertips to harm or to heal, searing through him like a fever with every spell. Like a sickness, coiled around his soul.

He hated it. Revulsion rose every time he dared to poke at that latent power, memories like a tidal wave to crash over him and steal away his breath, his heart pounding like gunfire in his chest.  He refused to touch it, refused to linger even a single moment longer than necessary swamped by its sickening radiance. Even if it made him stronger. Even if it finally granted him the power of life at his fingertips. Even if it might let it save his friends from so wretched a fate. Even...

Well. Maybe. Only in the direst of circumstances, if the lives of his loved ones were on the line. Then he'd risk letting that light infect him once more. But only then. For now, he'd take solace in the darkness, as he always had, and fight until not even his memories could trouble him any longer.

-

Read the rest of the series on Ao3!

Masterlist | Prev | Next

[chormaganorl]

WHM

"Sometimes, when the wind is right, the sand blows around my feet — And sometimes, when the soothing waters and the bright dance of spring water cascade onto my body... I feel peace beyond measure, inching to a home to share and mend with you."

((This is when I reached Level 90 on my WHM!))