#because I want to tell the story without spending a week on just one page

[artofalassa]

The Lightning

Wolfwood lives. I said so. Here's part one of the AU.

Part TWO

#trigun #vashwood #nicholas d. wolfwood #vash the stampede #trigun maximum #wolfwood lives au #las!art #hi i'm las and i'm drawing a doujin i guess #this time we're grayscale mostly #because I want to tell the story without spending a week on just one page #gonna be hard because i love colours #but i hope it won't disappoint you ;; #i just want to see the bois happy together okay #trimax setting with some aspects of tristamp

[coolshadowtwins]

SVSSS YQY Fan Fic Round up!

Ok, I finally have them all together! Please enjoy these fanfics, and if you have any to recomend that's not on here, feel free to say! I'll add it later!

First off, The YQY Weekend 2023 AO3 collection and The QiJiu Week 2023 I'm going to recommend as the entire pages! Great places to go find a fanfic to enjoy! Some might be double recomanded, but some should be unique!

Mouse On The Thorn by Lbhs_left_tiddie

On a mission, Yue Qingyuan comes across an omega child, who shares a name and a startling resemblance with his favourite shidi. Shen Qingqiu, however, denies knowing such a child, and make it very clear he wants nothing to do with him.

Without any family or home, Yue Qingyuan instead offers to take care of the child.

Palimpsest by Azzandra

Yue Qingyuan has one giant blindspot as a sect leader, and that's Shen Qingqiu.

But now a curse has made him forget Shen Qingqiu, and that changes some things.

gather jewels from graveyards by formerlyknives 

When strange rumours reach Cang Qiong, Shen Yuan is a little slow to investigate.

He lives to regret it.

The number children by Angry_gremlin_commando

Ten-year-old Mobei Wu, fifth son of the current Mobei-Jun, gets stranded in the human realm after one of his uncle's murder attempts. There he meets fifteen-year-old Yue Qi, fresh out of Lingxi caves and on the way to rescue Shen Jiu.

It turns out even ice demons aren't immune to Yue Qi's Big Brother energy. (This author has a good number of stories to check out! Go look at them!!)

A smile for the master, a snarl for the wolves by Angry_gremlin_commando

Shen Qingqiu and his young disciple Luo Binghe qi-deviate at the same time and swap bodies. It makes them understand some things about each other.

To Plant a Garden by SweetTiramisu

Yue Qingyuan spends so long beneath the earth that he becomes a part of it. Perhaps Shen Qingqiu will plant a garden in him.

Written for Qijiu Week Day 2: Touch Starvation.

bite your way to safety by AMereDream

The Geese come at a time that neither Shen Jiu nor Yue Qi considers ideal. They make it work. (This author has so many good fics! Go read them! This is just the one I chose to put on this list!)

You Were You, And I Was I by MissMegh

Shen Qingqiu and Yue Qingyuan qi deviate and turn into their teenaged selves. They don't know who they become. They don't remember the worst moments of their lives. They only know they're together again.

Pretty soon everyone on Cang Qiong Mountain knows they are, too.

Our Sect Leader Is A Baby! by dryingmangoes

Yue Qingyuan gets deaged. Somehow this changes everything.

for day 2 of qijiu week blessing/curse

Treading Well-Worn Paths by mofumofu

After Shen Qingqiu married Luo Binghe, Yue Qingyuan thought his role in the man’s life was over.

However, as he carried the child-sized lord of Qing Jing Peak in his arms, he was grateful for this unexpected opportunity to bond with the person he cherished most.

Shen Yuan, meanwhile, wondered desperately where the hell he was.

hey, share the weight a little by Tossawary

Shang Qinghua is miserable as an outer disciple of Cang Qiong Mountain Sect, doubtful that the plot will ever begin, when he finally runs into his first character. Yue Qingyuan is only a boy in desperate need of a helpful friend. Well, why shouldn't Shang Qinghua be that friend? A little investment now when they're young and Shang Qinghua might just be able to survive this world with the support of a sect leader.

It's definitely not because he's also in desperate need of a friend.

(He's definitely not expecting love.)

you're my number one by pennydaniels

Yue Qingyuan is granted a chance to have his heart's deepest desire made real by a mysterious goddess living in a small sect's private temple.

The Evening by kat8cha

Yue Qingyuan wakes up, he gets dressed, he goes to work, he goes to the gym, he goes to a party.

He pays people to tell him what to wear, people to tell him where to be, people to tell him what to do, and pays for someone else's engagement party.

A broken mirror restored by bunnyfication

Yue Qingyuan is hit over the head with the realization that he could ask Shen Qingqiu to marry him, Shen Qingqiu's suspicious mind cannot make sense of the sequence of events. Yue Qingyuan would never, would he? What is this, mind control??? (it's happiness, but neither of them has ever felt it before).

nobody, nobody told me by AMereDream

“Qingqiu-shidi,” he started. “Are you al—”

Xiao Jiu tugged, surprisingly strong for someone who had collapsed out of nowhere less than an hour before. Yue Qingyuan followed, partly out of surprise and partly because it was Xiao Jiu; of course he’d go wherever Xiao Jiu wanted him to be.

He found himself being dragged onto the bed, only the thin sheets separating him from Xiao Jiu's body. His breath caught in his chest, and he clenched his eyes shut.

Xiao Jiu's bony elbows dug into his chest, his thin — too thin, having skipped too many meals even for someone who didn’t need to eat — shoulders curved to meet Yue Qingyuan’s body.

His long hair tickled Yue Qingyuan’s face. He smelled like the honeyed soap he washed his hair with. Yue Qingyuan inhaled covertly, deep and greedy.

 

One morning, Shen Qingqiu woke up a changed man. Yue Qingyuan is left trying to figure out what happened to make him so relaxed and affectionate.

#svsss #svsss au #svsss fanfiction #yue qingyuan #shen jiu #shen qingqiu #qijiu #79 #yueshang #shang qinghua

[cassimothwin]

So you're looking for a system other than D&D...

Have you tried solo RPGs? Because it's not just "how can I play D&D alone" there's a whole world of cool stuff out there….And I want to tell you about it.

(I'm quite sick today so please forgive any incoherence or typos.)

First off, it's totally fine if you're more of a party person over a solo person. I just know a lot of people aren't aware of solo games, how they work, or the breadth of diversity you find among them.

If you ask about solo games, the first one mentioned is almost always Ironsworn. It's freeeee and comes with a lot of resources. The PDF is over 200 pages, so I understand if you don't want to dive in with Ironsworn quite yet.

Ironsworn has a large community, including support for Foundry and Roll20, along with many derivative works. It offers a gritty default fantasy setting, but encourages you to ignore that if you prefer another world… maybe one from another RPG you enjoy the lore from…?

BUT maybe you want something that isn't as much of a commitment (and maybe a little sad)?

Many Wretched and Alone games use a tumbling block tower to simulate a random ticking clock. It might represent your failing mental health, the barricade crumbling, the ship sinking…

One of the creators of the system has a great thread highlighting their favorite games. Just search Wretched an Alone on Itch.io to find even more.

And if you don't want to go buy a Jenga tower, there are some great random simulators out there. I've been able to play W&A games on road trips, using a deck simulator, a dice simulator, and a tumbling tower simulator. Here's tower replacement I like. It replicates the odds of a tumbling tower falling without being too complicated.

Carta is another cool system where you use a standard deck of playing cards to create a map that you explore. As you explore, you usually have to manage resourses to avoid something bad, but not always.

Here's a collection of several games made using Carta.

Dead Belt takes this concept and RUNS with it. You have a few things to track as you explore abandoned randomized ship decks, searching for a good payload. Upgrade your gear and do it again.

Does the thought of managing your character sound exciting? Do you enjoy soulslike games, like Elden Ring and Bloodborne?

Rune is a fresh release with a lot of third-party support already. It's pretty easy to pick up and play too.

Apothecaria and Apawthecaria have you making potions for the local village. Go out exploring, collect ingredients, and see if you can solve the greater mysteries of the land.

Interested in horror, but want a more narrative-driven experience? In Dwelling, you'll spend the night sleepless and alone in a haunted house. This is a very neat game.

Songs of the City is a delightful tarot game that you play once a day for a week. It's another narrative-driven game where you draw cards and cast magic to see small neat changes in the city you reside in.

Anamnesis, Anamnesis, Anamnesis. I talk about this game a lot because it's magical in its simplicity. There's nothing to track and it's an incredible way to generate character ideas or tell a story.

And now there are more Anamnesis games coming out (including mine) You don't need the original games to play any of the games you see here.

There are so many more games I want to talk about, but alas, this cold is making me stop there.

If you've written a solo game, streamed one, reviewed one, or have one you really like, I invite you to share it!

#solo rpg #solo journaling game #solo tabletop roleplaying games #writing #writing community #ttrpg #I hate being sick #dnd

[whataperfectwasteoftime]

Love Bites

Pairing: Marcus Pike x f!Reader (feat. Max Phillips!)

Rating: M (adult content, non-explicit smut, 18+)

Word Count: 9.7k

Warnings: Vampires! Blood drinking, talk of hunger (for blooooood) and killing (for bloooooood!). An art crime which is never actually solved, Soft Marcus, sarcastic asshole with a heart of gold Max. IDK if this is a threesome but it’s definitely threesome-adjacent, idiots in love, vampire venom causes euphoria and spontaneous orgasms because I said so, kissing, men kissing men, vampire bites, feeding, sharing blood through kissing, 

Summary: You and your partner, Marcus Pike make a house call to the home of a wealthy art collector who just reported the theft of a two-million dollar glass, er, “sculpture.” At first, you can’t stand the smarmy Max Phillips, but when you find Marcus unconscious in the man’s living room, you find you have bigger problems than Max’s gross overuse of vampire puns…

A/N: I hallucinated this entire thing one night a few weeks ago instead of sleeping. Many, many thanks to @littlebirdsbookshelf for enduring and encouraging an endless line of screenshots of this fic and for helping with the moodboard!

Masterlist

As you read your newest assigned case file, your eyebrows feel as though they’re skyrocketing up into your hairline. You look up, shooting your partner a skeptical, unamused stare.

“Someone’s pulling your leg, Pike.”

Your partner playfully rolls his pretty brown eyes and flashes you that boyish smile that you lov–that you think is really nice, that’s all. 

“You don’t think I had the presence of mind to fact check and verify this guy’s story? You wound me.”

“Who the hell spends that kind of money on this?”

Marcus shrugs. “It’s not uncommon for affluent art collectors to buy million-dollar pieces for their collections.”

“Yeah, but this?”

“Don’t tell me that you, of all people, are going to give me that old, tired dismissal of modern art simply because you don’t understand it.”

“This is a dildo,” you deadpan.

Marcus presses his lips together, nodding slowly. “...Some people have more money than sense.”

“Apparently.”

Your partner crosses over and picks up the file you’d dropped on your desk. “I spoke to the collector on the phone earlier,” he says as he scans the page. “Has a penthouse up in West End, told him we’d be up to do forensics this afternoon.”

“Yipee.”

“This is serious. It’s not every day that… ‘Arthur Feathermoore’s… Animals of Pleasure’… goes missing,” Marcus says, squinting down at the file as he reads the name of the sculpture.

You can’t help but snort at the title, and it causes your partner’s serious facade to dissolve into laughter himself, and the two of you giggling like rookies for a few moments before your eyes meet. Marcus’s face is the very picture of warmth, and as you often do, you feel as though you’re falling into his dark brown pools. The mirth is suddenly replaced by an uncomfortable silence that he breaks first, coughing awkwardly and looking back down at the case file in his hand.

“So anyways,” Marcus says brightly, “how about a little field trip up to West End?”

“You got it. I need to meet the idiot who spent a million dollars on a glass dildo.”

“Feathermoore’s Animals of Pleasure,” your partner corrects with a teasing smile.

“Quite the place,” Marcus comments as the two of you enter the ornate lobby of Maplebrook Heights, the building of luxury condominiums where your art collector lives on the top floor penthouse.

“I think it’s shit,” you say, eyeing the crystal chandelier hanging near the elevators. Something about the place makes you want to leave greasy handprints all over the spotless mirrors and stainless steel elevator doors.

You flash your badges to the lobby attendant, who picks up a phone receiver, listens for a couple minutes, nods, and sets it back down again.

“Mr. Phillips has been expecting you,” they say, leading you over to the elevators and pressing the top button without saying anything more.

When the doors open again, they reveal a man in a well-tailored suit with an overly-starched shirt and even starchier expression. The overall effect evokes a sort of statuesque rigidity–a man made out of stone. Suddenly, though, as if just noticing your appearance in the elevator, the man’s lips curl up into a smarmy, affectatious smile. 

“You must be the feds,” he says in a buttery-smooth tone that you aren’t sure is real or as artificial as the rest of him seems to be. 

“That’s us,” Marcus replies cheerfully, stepping forward and offering his hand. The man seems to pause, looking your partner up and down with his head cocked to the side before taking it and shaking it firmly. 

Trying to be professional, you extend yours as well. Rather than give you the same firm handshake he offered Marcus, the man gently grasps your fingers and ducks his head as though he were about to kiss the back of your hand. Feeling off-balance, you give his hand an awkward squeeze and shake before stepping back quickly.

“It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Phillips,” Marcus says, expertly disguising your discomfort, much to your relief.

“Max, please,” the man replies with an amused pout. “Come this way, I’m sure you’re both dying to see the scene of the crime.”

You shoot Marcus a look behind Max’s back, raising one eyebrow at his odd phrasing. Your partner shrugs gamefully before following the suited man through the double-doors to his penthouse.

As soon as you’re inside, your eyes widen at the décor. Every available inch of wall is covered in artwork from the Renaissance to the Modern, and you suppress the urge to gasp in amazement.

“Quite the collection,” Marcus comments.

“Mm, yes. You could say that I've spent generations acquiring it.”

“So art collecting runs in the family?”

“Of course.”

“This piece, er–Animals of Pleasure–was that an inherited piece, or…?”

Max grins widely, showing a row of alarmingly white teeth. “That one was a personal favorite–the sculptor is an acquaintance of mine.” He walks through the living room to an empty display case and regards it with a little frown. “Look at that. Like a wooden stake to the heart.”

“Apparently it was the personal favorite of someone else, too,” Marcus remarks.

“You’re a funny one, I like that,” Max drawls. 

“In your report, you said you noticed it was gone on the morning of Sunday the 25th,” you interject. “What were the circumstances leading up to that discovery?”

“I had a… rather sizable party here the night before,” Max answers with a crooked smile. “I assume the culprit was one of my esteemed guests.”

“Got a guest list?” Marcus asks.

“Of course I do.” Max produces a paper from a nearby desk with an exaggerated flourish. 

“Anyone on this list that might have shown particular interest in the piece?”

“They’re all a bunch of vampires,” Max scoffs dismissively, waving his hand. “I’m sure there are more than a few of them who’d love to sink their… teeth… into my collection.”

“Are you suggesting this theft was out of revenge?” you ask with a confused frown. “Did any guests have a personal vendetta against you?”

“Now, now, I’m practically the life of the party,” Max chuckles. “Most of the attendees and I go way back. There’s no bad blood between us; if anything, I’d say this is simply a distasteful prank.”

“You called the FBI for a prank?” you can’t help but ask.

“I like it,” Max says, putting on what’s clearly his best ‘sad puppy dog’ face with exaggeratedly upturned eyebrows and pouted lips. “It’s the crown jewel of my collection, and I want it back.”

“Of course,” Marcus reassures the other man. “We in the Art Crimes division treat art theft with the utmost importance it deserves.”

“Ah, yes, the FBI, always as serious as the grave.” Max says teasingly, giving Marcus a simpering smile. You don’t like the way he’s looking at your partner–sizing him up in the same way one would a conquest… or a meal. 

“We’ve got what we need, Mr. Phillips,” you say brusquely, snapping your notebook shut a little more forcefully than necessary.

“Of course, of course,” the other man says dismissively, as if he couldn’t care less about the whole affair.

“We’ll keep you informed of any progress,” Marcus adds, smiling amicably. He always did do a better job than you of hiding his distaste for unpleasant characters.

“You should go use the little girl’s room before you leave,” Max suggests, again flashing you a row of perfectly white, straight teeth. “Long drive back to HQ.”

You’re just about to tell him where to shove that condescending suggestion, when you suddenly realize it’s a great idea. It is a long drive back, and you don’t remember needing to before, but for some reason as soon as the suggestion leaves his lips, you find yourself needing to find a bathroom sooner rather than later. You nod and excuse yourself, turning your back on the odd twinkle in Max’s eyes.

What a weirdo. You’ve worked with some characters before–and sometimes it seems the richer they are, the more eccentric and out of touch–but Max Phillips really takes the cake. The uncanny smile, the stupid puns, the uncomfortable innuendo that you never could figure out were intended for you or for Marcus… 

You hope the case wraps up quickly, is the point. You finish washing your hands on a towel that feels as though it has a higher thread count than any set of sheets you’ve ever owned and hurry back to the sitting room where the two men are waiting for you. 

When you get there, Marcus is lying on the floor, unmoving. 

“Marcus!” you exclaim in alarm, pushing past Max–who is standing calmly as though nothing unusual has happened–and drop to your knees beside him. “What the hell happened?” you demand, staring up at the other man.

“Dunno. He just collapsed.” 

You want to scream at him. How can you be so indifferent? A man just collapsed in your home. Before you can say anything, though, Marcus coughs.

You whirl back around, cataloging Marcus’s face frantically as he opens his eyes and blinks dazedly. 

“What–Why am I on the floor?” he asks, staring up at you in utter confusion.

“You tell me,” you murmur, placing your hand on his clammy forehead. “I came back and you were on the ground. Mr. Phillips says you collapsed.”

Marcus sits up blearily. You watch as he frowns and shakily brings one hand to his neck, feeling it gingerly as though he’d been injured, although you don’t see anything to indicate it. 

“Yeah,” he agrees breathlessly. “Yeah, just… collapsed. Uh–” He looks around the room with wary eyes.

“Can you get up?” you ask, standing yourself and extending your hand. 

Marcus nods and allows you to pull him to his feet. Once standing, he sways and blinks rapidly, as if he were dizzy. When you place your hands on his shoulders to steady him, he giggles, like he suddenly finds the entire situation hilarious.

You don’t share his humor.

“C’mon,” you say, grabbing his wrist and trying to lead him away. You can’t explain why, but something in your lizard brain is telling you to get out of there as quickly as possible. 

“Feel better soon,” Max offers lightly, smiling that unsettling smile again. “Drink plenty of fluids.”

You don’t bother answering.

Marcus continues to be unsteady on his feet, and you end up having to help him down the front steps of the building and into the passenger seat of the car.

“Hi!” he slurs enthusiastically when you enter and sit down in the driver’s seat. “Wow, I feel really funny.” You watch with growing concern as he holds up his hands and examines them as though he’d never seen them before. 

You don’t know how to respond, so you busy yourself with adjusting the seat to your height, since Marcus had driven you there. Pressing and holding the button, the electric motor whines as you slowly slide upward, then a good deal forward. 

Marcus giggles again. “You have short legs.”

“Astute observation,” you grumble as you turn the key into the ignition. 

“Legs,” he repeats, and laughs again. 

“Jesus,” you mutter. “Marcus… were you drugged? Did Max Phillips drug you?”

“No!” he protests. “I… I don’t think so?” he adds, sounding less sure. 

“What happened when I was gone?” you asked. “Before you collapsed.”

Marcus shrugs exaggeratedly and makes a nonchalant ‘nnNNnn’ sound.

“You don’t remember?’

“Nuh-uh,” he shakes his head. “Wait… he said… the–the guy?”

“Max?”

“Max! Yeah. He said uh…” Marcus giggles again. “He said… I was pretty? That’s weird. Is that weird?” he looks over at you, looking so concerned and worried that you almost laugh in spite of yourself.

“Little weird,” you agree. 

“He said that I was pretty… and that it would be a shame to let that go to waste,” he adds, frowning down at his hands as he remembers.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“I guess it means I’m pretty,” Marcus says matter-of-factly, sitting back in his seat and grinning for a few moments before suddenly sobering again. “I think he was… gonna hug me?”

“Hug you?” you ask, looking at your partner in confusion.

“Yeah, he… he was really close, and–” Marcus’s hand absentmindedly touches his neck again. “Nah. Never mind. I don’t think that’s right.”

“I think he gave you something,” you tell him, starting to feel more and more worried by the minute. “You aren’t acting like yourself.”

“Hey! You know what sounds really good?” Marcus suddenly asks, sounding excited. “Tomato juice. Except… not tomato juice. Something like tomato juice, but… different.”

“Like a bloody mary?” you ask skeptically, humoring him.

He purses his lips, as though thinking deeply about something. 

“Yep,” he finally agrees. “That’s it. Bloody mary.”

“Great,” you say as you pull in front of Marcus’s building. “Tell you what, you go to bed and sleep off whatever the fuck this is, and I’ll buy you all the bloody marys you can drink.”

You help Marcus up the stairs (nearly an impossible task, because he keeps stopping and looking around him as though he’s never seen a stairwell with chipped paint and cracks in the walls before) and when you finally reach his apartment, you unceremoniously deposit him onto his bed.

He’s asleep the second his head hits the pillow. 

You watch him snore for a couple of minutes, completely at a loss for what to do now. All you know is that you can’t leave him–not when you don’t know what’s wrong with him. And something is wrong. Every nerve in your body is in agreement there: Marcus is not okay. 

You resist the urge to press your palm to his cheek and gently trace the line of his cheekbone. He’s asleep. He wouldn’t know. 

No. Even now, you can’t bring yourself to give into that temptation. Even with as worried about him as you are, physical affection is still way off limits. You’d be showing too much of yourself.

Shaking the thought, you turn and walk from the room, quietly latching the door on your way out. 

And you wait.

And wait.

And wait.

By the time Marcus’s bedroom door opens again, you’re nearly frantic with worry. Just the soft sound of the doorknob turning has you jumping to your feet and muting his TV. You watch as he stumbles out, one hand pressed to his forehead and the other steadying himself against the wall. 

“How… How long did I sleep?” he asks, face a maelstrom of confusion. 

You glance quickly at the clock. “Twenty-five hours.” And seventeen minutes. Not that you were counting.

“What? Jesus…” he mutters.

“How are you feeling?”

“Starving. Like I haven’t had a proper meal in years,” Marcus answers, moving past you into the kitchen, where he starts opening cabinet doors at random, pulling out food items, examining them with a frown, and discarding them on the counter. 

“I could, uh, order something?” you suggest warily, watching him go about his task in a whirlwind of movement. 

“That’s not necessary,” he answers absentmindedly, staring blankly at a can of pinto beans before putting it on the counter next to a jar of artichoke hearts.

“Well, I’m hungry,” you say, grabbing a takeout menu at random off of Marcus’s fridge with a little more irritation than is warranted. “Shit.” You hiss, jerking your hand back and watching as a sliver of red appears on your thumb, a little bead of blood welling up and threatening to spill out of the newly-created crack. 

Before you can blink; before you can even react, before your brain even registers the movement, Marcus is there. With a low, desperate, almost animal sound, he grabs your injured hand and brings it to his mouth.

The taste of you seems to make him moan louder; he greedily licks and sucks at the wound as though he were parched and this small papercut his only oasis. 

At the touch of his tongue, or maybe the feel of his saliva, a sudden, inexplicable wave of euphoria washes over you. You gasp softly, watching with open-mouthed shock as he licks and licks and licks until there’s nothing left. 

Eventually, Marcus slowly–almost reluctantly–releases your hand and blinks rapidly as though he were waking from a deep sleep all over again. 

Whatever spell that seemed to be holding you in place breaks; you jerk your hand back and stare at him in horrified confusion.

“Marcus… what the hell?!” 

“S-Sorry,” he offers weakly. 

“Have you lost your mind?” You can’t tell if your question is intended rhetorically or not.

“I… I don’t know,” he answers softly. “I don’t know.” 

“That’s not a comforting answer,” you say dryly.

“I can’t stop thinking about it,” Marcus murmurs, quietly enough that you aren’t sure if he intended to speak the words out loud.

“Thinking about what?”

“How I want to– I want–” he begins, but whatever it is he wants, he never manages to say. Rather than finishing the sentence, his hand slowly comes up to–alarmingly–wrap around your neck, his thumb pressing directly on your pulse point. He’s too close; you can feel his rapid, heavy breathing against your face and all you can do is stare up at him, the silent question of what the fuck written in your eyes.

Suddenly, you’re being released and Marcus pushes you away, stepping back from you with an expression of abject horror all over his face.

“Leave,” he commands raggedly. “Please, you have to.”

You shake your head in protest, frowning. “Marcus, you’re not well–”

“LEAVE!” he roars, and you flinch as though he’d slapped you. In all your years as his partner, you’d never heard him yell. You take one more look at him–really looking, taking in his clenched fists, his heaving chest, and the odd, almost inhuman look in his eyes–and obey. Backing away slowly at first, and then increasingly quickly, you flee the kitchen. 

Your hand is on his front door when you suddenly come to a halt. No. You can’t. You can’t leave him. You cast your eyes around until they fall on the door to the nearby guest bathroom. With a hissed curse under your breath, you open that door instead, slipping inside and locking it behind you. 

For a few moments, all you can hear is the sound of your shaky breathing. Then, footsteps as Marcus approaches. They pause, as though he’s working out what happened. You jump, suppressing a shriek, when a loud thump resonates in the small room before you hear the unmistakable sound of someone sliding down the wall and onto the floor.

The heavy, defeated sigh is audible through the bathroom door. 

“I told you to leave,” Marcus remarks sullenly. 

“I left the kitchen,” you point out.

The answering silence lets you know what your partner thinks of that response.

“I’m scared,” he admits quietly. “Something’s… not right.”

“I’m here,” you tell him. “I’m not going anywhere. We’ll figure it out, okay?”

Marcus is quiet for so long, you almost begin to wonder if he’d fallen back asleep. 

“I can feel you,” he suddenly whispers. “There’s a door between us, but I can feel your pulse like it’s still under my thumb.”

“Wh-what?”

“I can sense it all. Your heartbeat. The blood rushing in your veins. It’s unbearable,” he chokes out, voice breaking on the last word as though he were at the end of his wits. 

“I don’t understand what that means,” you admit. “And I’m not gonna lie, that’s freaking me out more than a little bit, but I meant what I said. I’m right here and I’m going to help you, okay?”

“Okay,” Marcus whispers shakily. “I… I appreciate that. You–it–means the world to me. You being here, I mean.”

“Marcus,” you say, your heart pounding even more than it had been, “I–”

Whatever you had planned on saying is interrupted by Marcus’s cell phone. 

“It’s Max Phillips,” your partner announces, somehow, after everything, jumping into work mode. “I’ll put it on speaker. This is Pike,” he answers.

“Hey, buddy!” Max’s voice is so cheerful compared to the tense situation you find yourselves in that it feels jarring and almost makes you physically recoil. “How ya feeling?”

“You,” Marcus hisses accusingly. “You did something to me.” 

“Oh, that,” Max says dismissively. “I couldn’t help it.”

“Help what,” your partner growls. 

“You haven’t figured it out yet?” Max laughs. 

“Stop playing stupid and help us!” you shriek through the bathroom door, completely out of patience and good manners.

You’re greeted by crackling silence on the other end of the call. Then… “She’s… she’s still with you?” For the first time, the careless demeanor seems to have dropped. Max sounds… concerned.

“Not that it’s any of your goddamn business,” you snap, unable to stop the flood of anger now that you’ve released it, “but I was fucking worried about my partner after he left your house acting drugged–” 

“Where are you?” Max interrupts. “I’ll come to you. Bring supplies. But she needs to leave. Now.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” you shoot back belligerently. 

“Your funeral,” Max says, adopting the aloof nonchalance once more. To Marcus, he says, “Text me your address.” Then the line goes dead.

“Are you going to tell him where you live?” you ask skeptically. 

“I don’t think I have a choice,” Marcus says quietly. “I don’t know what’s going on with me, but it’s clear that Max does. And if he knows, then maybe he can… stop it, somehow.”

“What did he mean, ‘bring supplies’?” you ask. 

“Dunno,” Marcus sighs. “Guess we’re gonna find out.”

You’re forced to listen to Max’s arrival through the safety of the bathroom door. 

No sooner than he walks into the apartment, you hear him stop and–is he sniffing the air?

“She’s still here,” he accuses. 

“‘She’ can hear you,” you snap. 

“She’s in there?” Max asks, sounding indignant. “Behind that flimsy-ass door?”

“It’s not that flimsy…” Marcus begins, but Max cuts him off.

“Pal, I’ve seen newly-turned vampires claw through cinder block walls with their bare hands to get at a food source. You could have ripped that door from its hinges, but here you are–”

“I didn’t want to hurt her,” Marcus interrupts. “I couldn’t fathom it, I– Hang on, did you say ‘vampires’?”

“Yup. Like, y’know, Dracula and all that. Undead. Drinks blood. Vampire.”

“This was a mistake,” Marcus mutters. “You’re clearly insane, and I don’t have time to listen to the bullshit ramblings of a sociopath.”

“Oh, it’s bullshit now, is it?” Max says airily. “You’re going to sit there and tell me you haven’t been sitting there desperately trying to stop yourself from ripping your pretty partner’s delicate little throat wide open and gorging yourself until she’s a withered corpse?”

You can hear Marcus sputtering angrily… but he doesn’t deny Max’s accusation. 

“Great. Now, we can continue arguing over semantics and nomenclature while you just get more and more hungry, or you can accept the truth and drink this.”

A zipper–on a backpack, you assume–unzips, and the faint sound of crinkling plastic reaches your ears.

“What the hell is that?” Marcus asks, voicing your question for you.

“B positive. I won’t lie to you, O-neg is where it’s at in terms of flavor and mouthfeel, but beggars can’t be choosers, pretty boy.”

“Are you giving him blood?” you shriek through the door, but no one answers you. Irate, you bang on the wood. “Hello!?” 

“He’ll be right with you,” Max says in a sing-song voice. “He’s busy at the moment.” 

“Marcus,” you say lowly, “please tell me you are not drinking blood right now.”

“Mmph–so good,” your partner groans through mouthfuls of… something. 

“I’m coming out there,” you announce, jumping to your feet. 

“Wait,” Max commands, an odd timbre to his voice, and you stop immediately, your hand hovering six inches from the doorknob. “Not until pretty boy here has another pint.”

“Marcus,” you say warily, pressing your palm against the door as if you could somehow feel him through it. 

“I’m okay.” And strangely, Marcus’s voice is calmer, more… human… than it’s been since the moment he woke up from his day-long nap. You still don’t trust Max. But Marcus has been your partner for years. You’d trust him with your life–and you find yourself believing him when he says it’s okay.

“One more,” Max says. “O-positive from 2020. Practically a vintage at this point.”

You shudder, imagining your partner with red tinged lips, a trickle of blood running down his chin as he– 

“How are you feeling now?” Max asks. 

“Better,” Marcus answers. “Can… Can she come out? Is it safe? I won’t… I won’t hurt her?” 

“Depends on the vamp,” Max says. “Most newborns I wouldn’t trust within fifty feet of a pulse, but you? You’re an odd one.”

“I’d never hurt her,” Marcus says again. “I’d rather die.”

Max lets out a loud, barking laugh, as if Marcus had just told the funniest joke he’d ever heard. “That might be easier said than done,” he chuckles. “But I get the sentiment. Come on out, doll.”

In any other situation, you might have scolded Max for even daring to call you ‘doll,’ but your body is thrumming with anticipation–and a little fear–to see Marcus again. 

Carefully, slowly, you unlock the bathroom door and swing it open. 

Your gaze–as it usually does–finds Marcus before anything else. He’s sitting on the floor opposite the bathroom, his long legs awkwardly bent in the narrow hallway, with two crumpled blood donation bags laying beside him. He’s staring back, his eyes swimming with apprehension and worry. The strange, animalistic glint you’d seen earlier is completely absent.

Still, you find yourself moving cautiously and deliberately, as though a sudden movement might break this tenuous moment of peace. You carefully sink to your knees, at his level, and extend your hand. 

Marcus swallows thickly, watching you. For a few tense moments, he doesn’t move. Then, he shifts–and oh, how you hate yourself for flinching. You try to hide it, but you can tell by the hurt in his eyes that he definitely noticed. Never once taking his eyes off yours, he slowly reaches back until his fingertips are just barely brushing against yours. 

You don’t miss how Marcus’s breath catches at your touch. His eyes slip closed for just a moment, and he lets out a shaky exhale.

“Hi,” you say quietly. 

“Hey,” he whispers back. 

“You scared me.”

“I know. I scared me, too.”

“Is this real?” you whisper, hardly daring to voice the question. “You’re really–?”

“I think I might be,” Marcus says softly. “It’s… it’s the only thing that makes any of this make sense.” He gestures at the two empty blood bags he’d been given by Max.

Max.

In a fury, you round on the other man, grabbing the collar of his stupid-expensive shirt and slamming him against the wall. 

“What the shit–” Max exclaims in surprise.

“You did this,” you hiss, pressing against his throat. “You… you made him into this.”

“I couldn’t help it,” Max wheedles, putting his hands up in supplication. “I thought he’d make a really sexy vamp.”

“I’m gonna kill you,” you growl.

“I’d love to see you try,” the man drawls with a lazy smile.

“Hey.” Marcus says softly, putting a hand on your forearm and encouraging you to release Max. “What’s done is done. This isn’t going to help anyone.”

“It’ll help me,” you say dryly, still glaring at Max.

“I can see why you like her,” Max grins.

You shove harder, your other hand coming up to join the first as you take out your anger on the man’s dress shirt. “Here’s an idea. Stop talking about ‘her’ while she’s still in the room.”

Max suddenly sobers, sniffing the air again. “You were bleeding,” he says accusingly. “When?”

“What? No I wasn’t,” you protest. “Well, okay, I got a papercut, but it stopped bleeding ages ago, after–” 

“After what,” Max prompts. 

“He–” you begin weakly, your eyes flitting quickly to Marcus and then back to Max again. 

Max moves you away from him as if you weighed nothing at all, before turning to Marcus with a look of utter disbelief. “You fed from her?”

“Uh… yeah, I guess I did,” Marcus answers slowly. “I… I didn’t really realize what I was doing, I–”

“Did you puncture her skin at all?” Max interrupts. “This is important.”

“No,” you answer for him. “He just… licked it clean, I guess?”

Max stares at Marcus skeptically, then turns to you. “He just licked it,” he repeats. 

“And… sorta… sucked?” you add weakly. 

“What’s the problem?” Marcus interjects.

“Newly-turned vampires aren’t exactly in control of their bodily functions,” Max explains. “A puncture might mean inadvertently injecting venom into your bloodstream.”

“Which means…?”

“Which means this would have turned into a two-for-one vamp special.”

“He can make me a vampire?”

“How do you think he became one in the first place?” 

“I wouldn’t remind me of your role in this too much, if I were you,” you growl at Max.

“...Venom?” Marcus asks, interrupting your standoff.

“It’s got some interesting properties,” Max says with a grin. “Injecting it in its pure form will a vamp create, but the trace amounts in your saliva is what makes feeding fun.”

“Do you ever actually explain yourself?” you ask irritably.

“Let me put it this way. When pretty boy here licked that little papercut of yours, what did you feel?”

You think back to the moment–through the fear, through the unease, back to the sensation of Marcus’s lips and tongue on your skin. Finally. 

“It felt… good,” you admit quietly. 

“Just good?” Max asks, pouting his lip teasingly.

“Better than good,” you whisper. “It felt like… joy. Like everything was right with the world.”

You risk a glance at Marcus, who is staring at you open-mouthed with an inscrutable expression. 

“That’s the venom,” Max says with a shrug. “Creates a feeling of euphoria in small doses. Can also cause spontaneous orgasm.”

Marcus makes a pained choking sound, and Max slaps him on the back. “That’s the fun part.”

“How the hell do you… feed… from someone without accidentally killing them?” Marcus asks.

“Carefully.”

“No shit.”

“I can show you if you want,” Max says lecherously, making a show of sweeping his gaze up and down your body in the most exaggerated way possible.

“I think the fuck not.”

Max guffaws loudly, slapping his knee. “I knew you'd be a good time.”

“He is not your good time,” you interject. 

“At least let him speak for himself, princess! Nah, as… interesting… as that could be, I can tell when a guy's unavailable.”

“Oh,” you laugh awkwardly, shaking your head. “He's not–I mean, we're not–”

“We're partners,” Marcus adds helpfully.

“Oh yeah,” Max agrees condescendingly. “For sure. Just partners. Well anyway, apropos of nothing in particular, I wouldn't recommend feeding from anyone you particularly care about for quite some time. Not until you can control yourself.”

“Speaking of,” Marcus says, clearing his throat, “got any more of these?” He holds up one of the empty blood bags.

“No,” Max says indignantly. “I have got some backup supplies, but I wasn't exactly prepared for this situation.”

“What are you talking about? You turned him yourself.”

“No, this situation. The situation where you're here, with your pulse and rushing blood and warm flesh. Your presence would be fucking kryptonite for any new vamp,” Max hisses. “You're a neon sign of temptation. A little hen in a henhouse with a very hard-to-control fox. Had you not been here, two bags would have lasted until pretty boy here could arrange his own supply, but you complicate things.”

“Well, excuse me for making sure he was all right,” you say, placing your hand on Marcus’s arm in a way you hope is comforting.

Marcus murmurs your name softly, but urgently. “Can... Can you… back up? Just a little,” he asks, looking pained. 

Eyes widening, you take several hasty steps backward. 

“How long will it take you to get more?” you ask, not taking your eyes off of Marcus. 

“Any amount of time is too long when you insist on staying here,” Max says. 

“It worked out fine the last time,” you point out. “I'll just go back into the bathroom and lock the door again.”

Marcus shakes his head warily. “I–I don't know… Maybe you should leave.”

“Not a chance.”

“I don't want to hurt you,” Marcus says softly. “I don't even want the idea of it. Please. You don't know what you–”

“What I… what?”

“What you mean to me,” he confesses, and you could swear time stops. “I could never risk it. I can't… I can't bear the idea of losing you.”

“You won't,” you promise. 

“I didn't want this,” he says bitterly, casting an agonized glance at Max, who, for once, has the decency to look regretful. “All I ever wanted was you.”

You feel as though you’d just had the wind knocked out of you, the words affect you so deeply. Resisting the urge to steady yourself on the wall, you fix Marcus with a stare that you hope conveys every single emotion you’ve ever felt for him.

“I'm staying here,” you say. “And that's final.”

Both men shake their heads at the same time.

“What if... what if he uses me?” you ask Max, ignoring Marcus's protest. “You said it's normal to uh… feed off of live humans.”

“I believe I also said it's something he shouldn't even begin to consider until he's out of the newborn phase,” Max says.

“What if he's careful?” you ask. “What if you help him?”

Marcus softly says your name in warning, but you don't back down. 

“Whatever I mean to you,” you tell him earnestly, “you mean the same to me. The same and more, Marcus.”

Time seems to come to a standstill as his eyes widen with realization. 

“You… You feel the same?” he asks breathlessly.

“For a long time now,” you find yourself admitting.

You watch as a slough of emotions flicker across Marcus’s face–yearning, longing, affection, and regret.

“I… I wish I had known,” he murmurs sorrowfully. “Before now. I’d… God, I’ve imagined this moment so many times, and in none of those times did I ever tell you to back away because I’m worried I’d just as soon kill you as kiss you.”

“I guess you owe me,” you tell him with a little chuckle. “When this is over. When you aren’t hungry anymore. You can drink from me without hurting me, I know it. And Max is here to stop you if you–”

“This is all very cute,” Max drawls, interrupting you, “but okay. Let's say he's careful. Let's say I stick around to help and intervene if he loses control. I want to make sure you understand that this is… intimate, you understand? Like, I'm all for a sexy romp, myself, but I don't know if I stressed the effects of the venom enough before.”

“You mean the uh–”

“Spontaneous orgasms,” Max finishes for you. “Yeah. Wasn't kidding about that.”

“So, what you're saying is–”

“Is that I'm usually all-in for a feeding orgy, but you two have something else going on entirely, and call me a romantic, but I'd rather not get between you.”

“So you do have a conscience,” Marcus deadpans. 

“If you tell anyone, I'll deny it.”

Marcus takes a deep breath, and suddenly shudders. “Shit,” he mumbles to himself. “Shit, I feel–”

“Like you’ve been wandering a desert for days on end with no water? Yeah,” Max shrugs. “That wears off, or gets easier to manage, I dunno. But after a while it’ll start to feel more like normal hunger and less like a–” he trails off, waving his hands back and forth.

“Like an all-consuming fire threatening to stamp out every last shred of my humanity?” Marcus fills in wryly.

“Yup,” Max answers. “Something like that.”

“Does it hurt?” you ask softly, reaching out to touch him again.

This time, it’s Marcus’s turn to flinch. He pulls back, eyes widening in alarm and leaving you to wonder whether you really should be this close. But no, your desire to comfort the man you’ve been secretly harboring feelings for for years overrides your sense of personal safety.

Or any kind of sense, whatsoever.

So you persist, running your hand up and down his arm soothingly and watching his eyes flutter shut at the feel of your skin. The expression on his face–agony, yearning, desperation–causes an ache to sink like a stone in your chest. 

“Yeah,” he answers with a rough, strained note to his voice. “Yeah, it hurts.”

You look to Max with pleading eyes. “Help him,” you demand. “Help us. It was you who got us into this situation, so if you have any sense of morality left in there, make it stop hurting.”

Max’s eyes flicker dangerously. “As long as you acknowledge what that entails,” he says quietly. 

“Blood,” you deadpan (Marcus shudders pitifully again), “I assume.”

The other vampire rolls his eyes. “Sure, right. Fine,” he mutters, scooting closer to you and Marcus. “First lesson. You don’t bite here–” he carefully taps his index finger on your neck. “That’s either gonna get you another vampire, or a corpse. The, uh, thighs–” he clears his throat awkwardly– “are good places to feed, but you’ve gotta be careful about the femoral artery.”

Marcus lets out a pained sound and presses the heels of his palms into his eyes with gritted teeth, rocking slightly back and forth.

“Alright, that’s enough lessons,” Max says brightly. “Good place to start for a newbie is the wrist. So, uh, you’re just going to want to puncture the skin a teeny tiny bit, and drink from that. Less is more, waste not, et cetera, et cetera.”

No sooner than the words leave the other man’s lips, Marcus’s fingers curl around your wrist like a vice grip, and you gasp.

“Jesus, hang on a minute,” Max sighs. “New vamps, always so lacking in table manners. Listen to me–you’re gonna probably lose control and try to take more than what she can give, and I’m going to do everything in my power to restrain you and get her away. Up to and including violence.”

Just as Max’s words leave you wondering whether this is actually a terrible idea and you should have done what Marcus had asked in the beginning and simply left, Marcus’s eyes meet yours again, his expression surprisingly clear-headed.

“I won’t,” he says softly. “I said I’d never hurt you. That’s a promise.”

Solemnly, you nod. “I know,” you tell him. “It’s okay. I trust you.”

You slowly reach toward Marcus with your palm facing upward like an offering. You’re suddenly hyper aware of your heartbeat racing, thrumming loudly and quickly in your chest, and you somehow have the wherewithal to wonder whether Marcus will get more of you as a result. 

Marcus cradles your forearm as though it were a precious gift. You can feel the trembling in his hands, see the quiver in his lower lip as he tries to keep all his emotions–the hunger, the fear, the worry–in check.

“Tiny bite,” Max reminds him in a low voice. “Just the tip.”

You shoot him a disparaging look, but when you see the ghost of a smile on Marcus’s face, you realize he successfully broke the tension.

Hesitantly, he lowers his mouth to the delicate skin of your wrist, and just as you’re wondering where the hell the vampire teeth are supposed to be, his face… changes. You do your best to hold in the gasp that threatens to escape; you don’t want to startle the man and risk him accidentally tearing your flesh. He’d put a stake through his heart himself, you muse. Wait–is that a superstition or a fact? You make it a point to ask Max later as you watch Marcus with curiosity. His face, it’s not ugly, exactly, but certainly monstrous. It’s grotesque in the same way the circus can be grotesque–in a way that fascinates you, thrills you, draws you in…

Your mouth falls open in a silent gasp as you feel his teeth sink into you.

The split-second of pain melts immediately to a wave of pleasure like nothing you’d ever experienced before. Every nerve ending seems to tingle, sending a frisson of electricity up and down your spine–again, and again, with every lick of Marcus’s tongue. It’s every good sensation you’ve ever felt condensed into one moment, and somewhere in the back of your mind you wonder if any human has ever become addicted to being vampire food. You wouldn’t blame them. 

Soon, though, the fact that a vampire is drinking your blood completely fades, because all you feel is unadulterated euphoria. Euphoria… and Marcus. Now you’re consumed with one thought and one thought only: get closer to Marcus. You scramble into his lap without a second’s hesitation, not hearing the sudden sound of surprise that comes from Max.

Marcus, who had been single-mindedly consumed in his task, looks up in apparent awe as you straddle him. The hand not gently holding your wrist immediately winds around your waist and pulls you even closer. Now that your eyes are locked, you can’t look away. Those beautiful brown eyes that you know so well are flecked with an animalistic yellow-amber, his brow sharper and more pronounced in his monstrous form but still very much Marcus. He holds your gaze as he lathes his tongue across your skin over and over, each lick causing flames of ecstasy to course within you. You can’t look away–not even when he swallows gratefully with red-tinged lips and dives back in for more. You start to squirm in his lap, each little wave of euphoria–a side effect of his venom, you know, but it feels so real–causing warmth to build in your core. Marcus moans around your wrist when he feels you grind against his leg, and you start to whimper every time your clothed center meets the delicious resistance of his thigh muscle. 

As your movements become more and more frenzied, so do Marcus’s; he licks and sucks at the little twin puncture wounds with a fervor that could only be described as carnal. Everything starts to pull up tight deep inside you, and you know, you know what’s about to happen–but suddenly, another arm is there pulling you back, away from Marcus, away from this beautiful pleasure unlike anything you’ve felt before and how dare they, you’re so close, you’re so close, soclosesoclosesoclose–

“That’s enough. Enough,” someone is saying behind you. “It’s time to stop.”

Marcus lifts his head, his lips still smeared with your blood and his eyes dazed and glassy. His face, although still contorted into this macabre new form, is open and unguarded as he tries to comprehend the source of the interruption. As Max pulls you away more forcefully, however, Marcus bares his teeth and hisses at the other man in what’s clearly a show of territoriality. 

In a split-second, before you can even begin to worry about being in the middle of a fight between two vampires, Marcus regains his wide-eyed, earnest expression, and his exaggerated features seem to melt, giving way to the face you know so well. 

“I’m fine,” he promises, chest heaving. “I’m okay. I’m done, I’ve stopped. Please, can–” he swallows, looking up at you with pleading eyes. “Can you come back? I just–I need–”

Before he can finish his sentence, you’re scrambling back into Marcus’s arms to kiss him with everything you’ve got. He opens to you immediately, his tongue darting out to explore your mouth, and you shudder when you taste the tang of iron. It should disturb you, you think to yourself. The blood, the fangs, the fact that he could kill you at any second. You should find his distorted face horrifying, but you can’t help but be mesmerized by his features in any form.

Marcus’s hands are everywhere–rubbing up and down your spine, gently palming your face, reverently stroking the skin of your wrist as if to apologize for taking what he so desperately needed from you. You sigh contentedly into his mouth as your hands explore him in kind–carding through the hair at the nape of his neck, pressing against the soft muscle of his chest, tenderly tracing the little crease in his brow in an unspoken promise of forgiveness.

You’ve imagined kissing this man so many times, and yet you now know you’ve never once come close to the reality of how it feels to have his lips against yours. It might be cliché, you might be projecting your own desires here, but everything about Marcus’s mouth simply fits, like a puzzle piece. Like recovering a long-lost part of you. Kissing him is coming home.

When Marcus pulls back, you follow him, causing a joyful smile to spread across his face as he whispers, “Are you okay?”

You smile back as you nod. 

“Here.” Something orange is thrusted into your field of vision, and you look up to see Max standing awkwardly next to the two of you, still entwined on the floor against the wall of Marcus’s apartment. 

You accept the fruit–because it is fruit–and start to messily peel it before popping a slice into your mouth. 

“Do you feel dizzy at all? Lightheaded?” Max asks as he watches you chew. 

You shake your head. “Nope. Nothing like that. Just… kinda tingly,” you giggle, glancing back at Marcus. “Not in a blood loss way, more like in a um, well. You know.”

Marcus grins and pulls you back down for another soft, chaste kiss. 

Pulling back, you give Max a smug look. “Told you he wouldn’t hurt me.”

“I won’t lie, I’m pretty surprised,” the other man replies, frowning slightly. “You don’t have any frame of reference for this, so you’ll just have to take my word for it that this is not normal. New vampires cannot control themselves and kill any living thing they try to feed from. Every time.”

“How many of those new vampires were deeply in love with the person they tried it with?” Marcus asks, meeting your eyes with an ardent gaze.

“Of all the times I’ve dreamed of hearing that from you, I never imagined it would come out quite like that,” you say with a wry smile. 

Max makes something like a strained choking noise in his throat, grimacing uncomfortably. “Well kids, this has been fun, but I’m gonna get out of here.”

He sticks out his hand and you accept it, letting him pull you up to standing. Once on your feet, all the blood seems to rush away from your head, and you sway slightly. 

“She should lie down,” Max comments, watching you. 

Marcus nods in agreement and wordlessly (and effortlessly) lifts you into his arms and moves in the direction of his bedroom.

“Does ‘she’ get a say in this?” you protest, although this time it’s somewhat more good-natured than before. 

Your answer is another kiss from Marcus before he gently sets you down on the comforter. 

Sitting here, on Marcus’s bed, with him hovering over you, opens up an entirely new set of opportunities. The look in Marcus’s eyes lets you know his thoughts are along the same lines, and when he inhales, his breath catches in his chest.

“I’d caution you against that,” Max says in his characteristic deadpan tone from the doorway. “Really easy to lose control in the heat of the moment, and he’s still hungry.”

“Are you?” you ask Marcus hesitantly, who shrugs and drops his gaze.

“Was trying to be polite about it.”

“I didn’t let him take much,” Max explains. “Far easier to rectify taking too little than too much.”

“Does that mean he could do it again?” you ask, the breathlessness in your voice giving you away immediately. 

Marcus is, predictably, the one who quickly tries to shut that idea down, murmuring your name and shaking his head in concern.

“You don’t know how it felt,” you whisper. “I think I’d do it every day if I could.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Marcus answers for what feels like the hundredth time.

“You won’t,” you promise. “And besides, Max will be here just in case.”

The two of you turn to the other vampire, who’s leaning against the doorway with an exaggerated sulk. “Oh sure, let’s ask Max. I’m sure he won’t mind watching you feed in the throes of ecstasy… again. Max has no opinion, Max can manage his own hunger, it’s fine.”

“Done pouting?” Marcus asks pointedly. “I think I’m justified in saying that you fucking owe me one.”

Max glowers, but offers no further protest.

“Is this wrist sore?” Marcus asks you, running one fingertip across your skin. “Should I do the other one?”

You shake your head slowly. “I had somewhere else in mind.” Capturing Marcus’s hand, you guide it downward until it rests on your inner thigh. “Here,” you whisper.

Max makes another garbled noise, which Marcus deliberately ignores. Keeping his eyes fixed on your face, he carefully sinks down onto his knees before you. Carefully, so carefully he unbuttons your pants and draws them down your legs, leaving you in your underwear. 

“Fuck, I can’t–” comes the sudden exclamation from the bedroom doorway. “If this is retribution, I guess I deserve it, but still.”

You turn your head to look at Max, who appears to be doubled over in pain, and something pangs in your chest. Marcus, who is still fixated on the crux of your thighs, ignores the interruption.

“Marcus,” you whisper, getting his attention.

“He’s fine,” the man murmurs, clearly distracted.

“He’s hungry,” Max groans pitifully. “I might not be a newborn anymore, but I have feelings.”

“He can wait,” Marcus growls. The words sound slightly slurred, and when you look down again, you can see his fangs already protruding.

Max makes another pathetic whimper as Marcus runs his nose along your upper thigh and inhales greedily. You stop him with a gentle hand carding through his hair.

“Maybe we are being cruel,” you say softly. “He’s been trying to help.”

“He’s not feeding from you,” Marcus insists darkly. The possessiveness seems to make his face transform even more–his brow thickening and his eyes flickering with an eerie yellow glint.

“She’s–she’s yours,” Max agrees weakly. “I know. Just—shit.”

Marcus pauses, his tongue darting out to touch the tip of one elongated canine as though testing their unfamiliar shape.

“Come here,” he commands.

Max frowns, hesitating.

“Before I change my mind.” Turning to you again, Marcus strokes the sensitive skin just below the seam of your underwear. “May I?”

“You might be the politest vampire I’ve ever known,” Max muses to himself as he walks toward the bed with cautious steps.

“Please,” you whisper. 

Marcus runs his nose against your thigh again before he lowers his mouth. You feel the sharp sting of his fangs for only a second before a sudden wave of pleasure overtakes you.

Perhaps it’s the change in location–from your wrist to somewhere much more… intimate, but this time the sensation of his venom feels even stronger. So much so, in fact, that everything pulls up tight without warning and you come undone while Marcus’s fangs are still buried within you. 

You shriek in surprise, bucking your hips instinctively, but Marcus follows, sealing his lips around your thigh and sucking. Each aftershock makes the wound feel like it’s pulsing, but all you can do is writhe on the bed and whimper as the vampire–the man you love–takes from you. 

Suddenly, though, Marcus pulls back, pressing his hand against the twin puncture wounds, which are still bleeding openly. With his mouth clearly full, he fists Max’s shirt collar, pulling him in for a rough kiss. Max makes a shocked noise–you think you do, too–but quickly groans in pleasure as Marcus gives him your blood from his own mouth. 

Over and over he repeats the action: gently licking and sucking your thigh as you gasp and squirm under the euphoric influence of his venom, then pulling back to give some to Max before swallowing it himself. 

The constant waves of pleasure reach a peak several more times, although you can hardly keep track. The combination of the venom and the blood loss, perhaps, is making you woozy, and you’re already drifting in and out when Max gently tugs Marcus’s hair and draws him back. You hear him say, “That’s probably enough,” before you lose consciousness entirely.

Everything is peaceful. You don’t think you’ve ever slept this deeply or felt relaxation this profound. When your eyes open again some untold amount of time later, you do so with a lazy, serene smile. 

You blink lazily, trying to gather your senses and focus on the scene in front of you. You can feel the rise and fall of a strong chest beneath you, comforting arms surrounding you as you lay on Marcus’s bed. You know without looking that it’s him that’s holding you, keeping you safe and protected with his body. 

To your surprise, Max–you figured he’d be long gone by now–sits at the bedside, watching you with an unreadable expression.

“She’s awake,” he says to Marcus, who immediately loosens his hold and gently tilts your head back onto his shoulder to look at you.

“Hey,” he says softly, brushing his thumb across your cheekbone. “You scared me a little, there.”

“Told him it was normal,” Max says, with the air of someone who’s said the exact same sentence fifty times already, “and that she wasn’t in any danger.”

“Still,” Marcus fusses gently, scanning your face with a slightly furrowed brow. 

“Here,” Max interjects, handing you a small bottle of gatorade and making sure your hands are wrapped around it before pulling back. “Drink this, and once you can sit up, you need to eat a little something.”

You accept the drink gratefully and take greedy sips until the bottle is empty. When it is, Max sets it back on the nightstand and hands you a couple of oreos pilfered from Marcus’s cabinets, and the rest of the orange from before. 

“How are you feeling?” Marcus asks–still with a hint of concern in his voice–as you eat.

“Really good, actually,” you answer with a sigh. “That was–listen, not to be weird or anything, but that was… amazing.”

Marcus chuckles low in his chest as Max smirks next to you. 

“Can’t say I minded that particular method of feeding,” the other vampire comments wryly. “Might almost be better than from the source.”

Marcus clears his throat awkwardly, and when you glance up at him again, his ears are tinged pink. 

“I didn’t know that about you,” you say softly.

Marcus tries to shrug noncommittally, blushing deeper as he does. “I like to keep my private life private.”

“Fair enough.”

“Don’t mind sharing with the people I care about, though,” he adds.

“Awww, he cares about me!” Max simpers with a teasing pout.

“I hate you,” Marcus counters with no conviction or malice behind the words whatsoever.

“No you don’t.” 

“I was talking about her, though.”

“And me!”

“Children,” you sigh, shaking your head in exasperation. “I hate to interrupt, but can I trouble one of you bloodsuckers for some juice or something?”

Marcus raises one eyebrow at Max, who salutes sarcastically and marches out of the room. 

“I can’t tell if I like him or if I can’t stand him,” you murmur to Marcus when the two of you are alone. 

“Makes two of us,” your partner hums, ducking down to kiss your temple.

“Really?” you ask incredulously. “Didn’t look like you minded so much before.”

Marcus huffs quietly. “It was the solution that came to me at the time.”

“Is that all it was?”

He lets out a slow, even breath as he tightens his hold on you. “No.”

“Wanna talk about it?” you ask, as Max comes back with a glass of juice and another handful of oreos.

“Maybe later,” Marcus answers, sounding a bit bashful.

“Vampires have super-hearing, you know that–right?” Max comments as he moves back toward the bed.

“Wh–what?” the other man chokes out nervously. “Really?”

“...No.” Max hands you the glass of juice with a deadpan stare.

You try and fail to contain your laughter, snorting as you cover your hand with your mouth to disguise the smile.

“But now I know you were talking about me,” Max purrs, leaning toward the two of you. 

“No,” Marcus lies–unconvincingly.

“Pretty boy,” Max chastises with that same childish, teasing pout he’s done before. “I thought so highly of you–don’t tell me you’re in the middle of some silly gay panic right now.”

Marcus snorts. “We’re too old for that, don’t you think?”

“You tell me.” Max’s expression is guarded, but you can tell he’s very invested in the other man’s answer.

“Truth is, I’ve harbored feelings for this one for a long time,” Marcus says affectionately, looking down and brushing his hand up your forehead and over the top of your head. “A long time. And it feels disingenuous to even consider the idea of treading on that, somehow.”

“Right,” Max says, standing up stiffly and quickly. “I’m gonna–”

“Wait.” 

The vampire pauses, eyeing the two of you warily.

“In a way, it was you who… brought us together, in a way,” Marcus continues. “In a weird fucking way, I’ll add, but I can’t deny that this day has been… beyond my wildest dreams. And–” he swallows thickly, licking his lips before continuing, “–you were a part of that, for better or for worse.”

You carefully sit up, extricating yourself from Marcus’s arms to lean up and kiss him on the cheek.

“I’m not used to this much attention,” he adds, laughing self-deprecatingly as he shakes his head in apparent bewilderment. “And now I’ve got the two of you looking at me like that, and I’m not sure what to do with myself.”

“Enjoy it,” you tell him with a soft smile. “I love you. Max likes you. Maybe that’s all we need to know right now.”

“He can speak for himself,” Max teases, parroting your earlier words.

You look at him. “Did you really turn him because you thought he was pretty?”

“Can you blame me?”

*

#marcus pike #marcus pike x reader #marcus pike x f!reader #marcus pike x reader x max phillips #max phillips #the mentalist #bloodsucking bastards #pedro pascal

[trans-axolotl]

Image description: [Screenshots of pages from Brilliant Imperfection by Eli Clare. Text reads:

Your Suicide Haunts me.

Bear, it’s been over a decade since you killed yourself, and still I want to howl. I feel anguish and rage rattling down at the bottom of my lungs, pressing against my rib cage. If ever my howling erupts, I will take it to schoolyards and churches, classrooms and prisons, homes where physical and sexual violence lurk as common as mealtime. I know many of us need to wail. Together we could shatter windows, bring bullies and perpetrators to their knees, stop shame in its tracks.

Once a week, maybe once a month, I learn of another suicide. They’re friends of friends, writers and dancers who have bolstered me, activists I’ve sat in meetings with, kids from the high school down the road, coworkers and acquaintances, news stories and Facebook posts. They’re queer, trans, disabled, chronically ill, youth, people of color, poor, survivors of abuse and violence, homeless. They’re too many to count.

Bear, will you call their names with me? It’s become a queer ritual, this calling of the names—all those dead of AIDS and breast cancer, car accidents and suicide, hate violence and shame, overdoses and hearts that just stop beating. The names always begin wave upon wave, names filling conference halls, church basements, city parks. Voices call one after another, overlapping, clustering, then coming apart, a great flock of songbirds, gathering to fly south, wheeling and diving—this cloud of remembrance. Then quiet. I think we’re done, only to have another voice call, then two, then twenty. We fill the air for thirty minutes, an hour, a great flock of names. Tonight, will you sit with me? Because, Bear, I can’t sleep.

I remember your smile, your kindness, your compassionate and fierce politics. I remember our long e-mail conversations about being disabled and trans. I remember a brilliant speech you gave at True Spirit, a trans gathering in Washington, DC. I remember you telling me about how you’d disappear for months at a time when your life became grim, how you’d do anything not to go to a psych hospital again. I remember your handsome Black queer trans disabled working-class self. And then, you were gone.

The details of your death haunt me. You had checked yourself in. You were on suicide watch. I imagine your desperation and suffering. I know racism, transphobia, classism colluded. The nurses and aides didn’t follow their own protocols, not bothering to check on you every fifteen minutes. You were alive and sleeping at 5:00 a.m. and dead at 7:00 a.m.; at least that’s what their records say. Did despair clog your throat, panic coil in your intestines? In those last moments, what lingered on your tongue? I know about your death as fleetingly as your life.

Bear, I’d do almost anything to have you alive here and now, anything to stave off your death. But what did you need then? Drugs that worked? A shrink who listened and was willing to negotiate the terms of your confinement with you? A stronger support system? An end to shame and secrecy? As suffering and injustice twisted together through your body-mind, what did you need?

I could almost embrace cure without ambivalence if it would have sustained your life. But what do I know? Maybe your demons, the roller coaster of your emotional and spiritual self, were so much part of you that cure would have made no sense. You wrote not long before your death, “In a world that separates gender, I have found the ability to balance the blending of supposed opposites. In a world that demonizes non-conformity, I have found the purest spiritual expression in celebrating my otherness.”

Yes, Bear. I know that truth. Your otherness was a beautiful braid— your hard-earned trans manhood looping into your Black self, wrapped in working-class smarts and resilience, woven into disability, threaded with queerness. I saw you last in an elevator at True Spirit. You told me that you were spending the weekend hanging out with trans men of color. I can still see your gleeful smile, sparkling eyes.

Friend, what would have made your life possible with all its aches and sorrows? I ask as someone who has gripped the sheer cliff face of suicide more than once. Calling the names exhausts me. Your death exhausts me. The threat, reality, fact of suicide exhausts me. Its arrival on the back of shame and isolation exhausts me. Bear, will you come sit beside me tonight? I’m too exhausted to sleep.]

From Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure by Eli Clare, pages 63-64.

This passage has stuck with me since I first read it and I find myself returning over and over, especially in the times I want to be gentle to my grief.

Thought I'd share it with you all right now <3

#personal #suicide tw #psych wards tw #grief #disability justice #psych abolition #mad liberation #mad pride #antipsych #recommend this book so so so much. dm me if you want a pdf #poetry #trans

[elenyafinwe]

AI bullshit stay the fuck out of ao3

We reached a point, where people unironically post AI genereated fanfics on ao3. ChatGBT was and is trained by exploiting the works of writers like us. It scrapes pages like ao3 for literary work to learn from it without the consent of the authors. (That’s why I locked all my works an ao3 to only logged in users.)

Fandom these days is not a friendly place anymore, where people come together and celebrate their favourite stories and characters by being creative. I wish it were and in the small circles I move it is. But here it is: Those are only small corners of a technically much wider community. But to be seen in this community, you need to churn out content and more content and more content. Especially us writers have it very hard in this enviornment. We can’t easily share vips like an artist can, writing is mostly done in solidarity. I can’t stream my progress on Twitch or any other platform. How boring would it be to watch me typing words into Word without saying a word, because I have to concentrate on what I’m writing? It often takes me day, weeks, months or even YEARS to complete even one single work and most people are even too lazy to click one button for a kudo.

Fanfics are one of the backbones of fandom and we writers are so utterly poorly treated. Artists beg for years now that you share their content, and they are absolutely right to do so! But when I post updates on my writing here, I don’t even get likes. Likes do nothing to bring my content to a wider audience.

Fanwork is done out of a passion, and shared because we want to share this passion with someone else. Is has no value, if no one interacts with it. Write for yourself is bullshit. Yes, I do create the content I myself want to see. But if that would be my only motivation there is no need to share it online, to go over it dozens of times to polish it to the best of my abilities and spend dozens if not hundrets of hours upon it, to create it out of nothing.

Fanfics have it much harder than fanart due to the nature of the craft. It takes only moments to look upon a fanart, but hours, even days to read a fanfic. Not everyone is willig to invest so much time into something. So I understand, where it comes from, than fanfics don’t get that much interaction than fanart. Doesn’t say I appreciate it. But a total lack of interaction is utterly discouraging.

To stay on top of a timeline, you need to put out content regularly. For some reason I was obsessed enough to be able to post rather regularly over the past two, almost three years. But even one chapter per week or one every two weeks apparently is not fast enough for some, despite this being an utterly crazy schedule.

Because those now go to chatgpt and tell this monstrous thing “hey, write my fanfic. I just click a few buttons and then c&p that shit into ao3 and call it a day.”

Writing is about creativity, about sharing a passion, about telling a story. Art is inherently a human trait. What value has it, if some machine does it for us and apparently is very bad at it? You stole our works and now you even steal our passion just for some fast clicks on tiktok or whatever.

Honestly, the only time where I think a mean comment ist justified on ao3 is when you encounter any AI written bullshit. Roast them, roast them to hell. May you stup your toe every morning and may your sleeves slip down every time you wash your hands, you soggy toasts.

AI bullshit is utterly missing the whole point of fanfic and it steals from us writers in every possible way. It steals our works, it steals our place in fandom, it steals our audience.

AI kills creativity. Stop stealing from us.

#fanfiction #fanfic #fanfic writing #writing #ai #chatgbt #fandom #fandom meta #ao3 #archive of our own #this whole development has honestly killed my motivation for writing #even working on uts is not so much fun anymore #i have literally two people who still interact with the story #(gives hand in marriage to those two) #you know who you are <3 #but I still see the clicks going up #and since the story is locked those clicks are all humans #the numbers are good #lots of clicks and bookmarks and even more subscriptions #but no one cares about even leaving a kudo #don't look at the numbers bla bla #no I don't but I look at the interactions and those are almost 100% missing #why am I doing this anyway if I just could tell some stupid ai to tell my story for me? #ugh #i'm utterly frustrated by this and how poorly fandom treats writers #we keep fandom alive and that's how you thank us? #wow #thankos for nothing #fuck ai #now you even steal from us and happily contribute to our exploitation

[starreadssstuff]

bonds - Nanami Kento

warnings- fluff because I promised it after that heart breaking angst fic I wrote 😭. nothing, ummm... physical contact? its hugging so idk. As always LMK!

authors note- Heyyy that angst fic I wrote was so sad and I promised that id make a fluffy one for you all so I got some confessions in this and I really like it! enjoy the story dudes! love, star 💜

It was a sunny afternoon, and the Tokyo Metropolitan Jujutsu Technical High School was abuzz with activity. Students were chatting and laughter filled the air as they enjoyed their break time. Amidst the lively atmosphere, Kento Nanami found himself searching for a quiet spot to gather his thoughts.

As he walked down the corridor, he caught sight of you sitting on a bench, engrossed in a book. The sight of your serene expression and gentle smile caught his attention, and he couldn't help but be drawn to you. With a small smile on his face, he decided to approach.

"Mind if I join you?" Kento asked, his voice calm and soothing as always.

You looked up from your book, surprise lighting up your eyes before a warm smile graced your lips. "Not at all, Kento. Please, have a seat."

He sat down beside you, and a comfortable silence enveloped you both. The soft rustling of pages turning and the occasional breeze were the only sounds that filled the air. Kento glanced at your book, curiosity evident in his eyes.

"What are you reading?" he inquired gently.

You held up the book for him to see, and it was a novel he recognized. "It's one of my favorites. Would you like to borrow it?"

Kento's lips curled into a grateful smile. "I would be honored to read something you enjoy."

From that moment, your breaks became a routine of sharing quiet moments together. Sometimes you would bring books to exchange and discuss their stories, while other times you would simply enjoy each other's presence, finding comfort in the silence. Over time, those breaks evolved into stolen glances and gentle touches that spoke volumes without the need for words.

One day, as you were sitting together beneath the shade of a tree, Kento took a deep breath and gathered his courage. He turned towards you, his eyes filled with a mixture of vulnerability and adoration.

"(Y/N), I wanted to tell you something," he began, his voice barely above a whisper. "Spending time with you has made my days brighter, and being around you feels like finding a missing piece of myself. I... I care deeply for you."

Your heart fluttered at his confession, and a radiant smile bloomed on your face. "Kento, I feel the same way about you. You bring so much warmth and happiness into my life."

A wave of relief washed over him, and he reached out to hold your hand, his touch sending a jolt of electricity through your body. The connection between you two felt effortless, like two puzzle pieces fitting perfectly together.

As the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months, your relationship grew stronger. Kento became not only your partner in exorcisms but also your confidant, your rock, and your best friend. The two of you navigated the challenges of the jujutsu world side by side, finding solace in each other's arms during the tough times and celebrating the victories together.

And so, beneath the cherry blossom trees in full bloom, Kento pulled you into a warm embrace. The petals gently fluttered around you, creating a picturesque scene that mirrored the love blooming between you.

"I'm grateful to have you in my life," Kento whispered, his voice filled with sincerity. "With you by my side, I feel like I can conquer anything."

You rested your head against his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart. "And I'm grateful for you, Kento. Together, we'll face whatever comes our way."

In that moment, surrounded by the beauty of nature and the warmth of each other's love, you knew that your journey with Kento was just beginning. And as you shared countless more quiet moments and cherished memories, your love for each other grew deeper, creating a bond that would withstand the tests of time.

#nanami #nanami x reader #jujutsu nanami #nanami jjk #nanami kento #jjk x reader #i love jjk #jjk fanfic #jjk #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen fic #jujutsu sorcerer #jujustsu kaisen x reader

[plentyoffandoms]

My Beloved Solider (WW2 AU)

Main Masterlist ♡ Adam Page Masterlist ♡ Alternate Universe Masterlist

Just like all my other stories, this has not been proofread, but please enjoy.

Warnings: nothing.

Gifs & Photos do not belong to me.

WC:799

Stephen- Adam Page

My darling Treasure,

I am on leave in Paris, and I can finally write to you without being bombarded by my men interrupting me or bullets flying at us.

It has been so long since I have seen you. I miss the sound of your voice, the smell of your perfume, but I really miss our conversations. I even think back about the first conversation we ever had when I had a moment to think.

I was tasked with bringing you your mail, but you were busy talking with a nurse. The moment I heard the sound of your voice, I was smitten.

At first, I thought it was because it was so long since I laid my eyes on an attractive woman, but the moment I looked into your eyes, I knew I was done for.

I made sure that any time something had to be personally delivered to you, I was the one who volunteered. My friends, Matt and Nick, quickly realised what was going on.

Then, that night happened. My weekend pass wasn't revoked, and I was able to go out, and there you were.

I bought you a drink. Do you remember that? But you turned down the drink, so I asked you to dance instead. We spent the night dancing, laughing, and getting to know one another.

That night, I kissed you for the first time, and I felt like I was walking on air, but then the next time I saw you, you hardly paid any attention to me.

Then, the next weekend, we were both free, and I just had to talk to you, even though you kept walking away. I still remember what you said to me. "Stephen, you will go off, and I will never see you again. You may die, and my heart will go along with you."

That was our first and only night together. I promised you between kisses that I would come back to you, and I have done everything I can to make sure I come back to you.

Forever your Solider,

Stephen.

My Stephen,

I have read your letter over and over again, as I do for each letter I get from you. I do remember that night clearly, and I think about each and every single moment I had with you.

I spend my days training women and watching men come and go.

I will not lie to you. Many of the men have hit on me when they are on their weekend passes, but no one compares to you, my love.

I tell them that I am taken and that I am waiting for you to come home. One arrogant man thought I was lying, and when I mentioned your name, he backed off.

You have made a name for yourself. Many stories here are about you and your men, and oh Stephen, I am so proud of you.

This letter is short, as there is a Sargent meeting, but I wanted to get a letter out to you today.

I love you, my Stephen.

Faithfully yours,

YN.

My sweet YN,

I sadly will not be coming home as a whole man. I have lost my left arm. I understand if you do not want to wait for me anymore, as I can not do what a whole man can do.

Our future plans of the two of us running my family's ranch are no longer on the horizon. I will sell it once I get back.

I will always love you.

Stephen

I didn't hear from her. Not even when I came home. I came to my family ranch and could see that I could not run this with one arm.

I had some help from neighbours, but they have their own places to run. I was alone one day, and I heard a knock on the door.

I told them to go away, but they didn't. I swung up the door, ready to tell them off, when I saw her standing there.

"YN? What are you doing here?"

She didn't answer. She crashed her lips against mine, wrapping her arms around me, and I did with my one arm. We finally broke apart, breathing heavy.

"I love you, Stephen. You are a whole man, no matter what you think. You are man enough for me."

"YN." I tried to say.

"I want to marry you, Stephen, and only you."

◆

We had a small wedding, two weeks later. She never left my side as we grew old together. We had five children together. Four boys and one girl.

I thought I was going to grow up alone, but she never once gave up on me. Loving me for who I am, and I loved her until the day I will die.

Tag list: @lghockey @nicoleveno14 @legit9thlunaticwarrior @hooks-martin @wwenhlimagines @melissahausen @faerieofthenightcourt @tahiri-veyla @midwestmade29

#aew #all elite wrestling #reader imagine #female reader #reader insert #ww2 au #wrestler au #adam page imagine #adam page fic #adam page fanfic #adam page #hangman adam page

[quaranmine]

The Incandescence of a Dying Light (Chapter One)

It's 1988. Grian and Mumbo are roommates living in the US. Mumbo leaves on a solo camping trip at Grian's suggestion to get away from his job for a while. But when he fails to check in at the end of his trip, Grian is forced to report him as a missing person. And now the clock is ticking.

It's 1989. Grian takes a job in Shoshone National Forest as a fire lookout, prepared to spend the summer alone in the wilderness. But his primary goal isn't finding forest fires: it's finding Mumbo, who went missing in this location a year ago, alive and well. He expects to be alone. What Grian doesn't expect is having the company of the other nearby lookout, a man named Scar. Their relationship grows through their conversations held via two-way radio, as Grian finally begins to let Scar into the truth about why he's really here and mystery he's unraveling.

A Hermitcraft Firewatch AU.

Chapter One: 7,162 words

Masterpost | Chapter Two >>

Welcome to the Firewatch AU! It's okay if you've never played the game, since the plot of this story is different than in the game. If you have played the game, you'll notice some similarities, especially in the setting. If you plan to play the game, this fic will not spoil it. I just really really like fire lookouts :]

Content warnings will be added per chapter as needed. I've done a lot of research on this topic so some there will also be some notes on a reblog. This fic will be Grian and Scar centric, but it's also very much about Mumbo as well. There will also be the inclusion of art with the chapters.

May 31, 1988

Grian remembers it because it’s 7:30 PM on a Tuesday evening, and he’s sitting at his desk in front of the window trying to catch the early evening slanted sunbeams on his sketchbook. The light is golden on the page and his hand casts a shadow on his work. 

That’s when Mumbo crashes through the front door–quite literally, too. The door swings shut with a bang. It’s a heavy door prone to closing on its own.

Without looking up, Grian calls out, “Remember not to slam it! Mrs. Grant complained last week, you know.”

“Right! Right, sorry!”

“Bad commute?” Grian asks. 

He hears Mumbo drop his bag in the corner with a sigh, and the sound of him flopping down on the couch. Grian turns around to look at him sympathetically. Mumbo has dramatically put his palms over his eyes, slowly dragging them down his face.

“Ugh,” he groans. “It was the worst. Someone wrecked on 25.”

“That sucks.”

“Oh, shut up,” Mumbo says. “How long have you been sitting here? All day?”

“Nuh-uh, I had a meeting today with Mr. Perry.”

“Did that go well?”

“Yeah,” Grian says, lying through his teeth. But only just a little. 

Mumbo hops up off the couch and walks over to Grian’s desk. “Is that what you’re drawing now?” he asks. He picks up the sketchbook. 

“Yes,” Grian says sagely. “I have many ideas.”

Mumbo squints at the page. “You’ve only got a tree, Grian.”

“Hey!” Grian says, snatching his sketchbook back. “Look around! There’s plenty of trees out here! Well, maybe not on this street specifically, but give me like 20 minutes and I’ll drive you to a big forest.”

“Oof. Make it an hour. The traffic’s awful today, I told you.”

Grian and Mumbo stare at the tree drawing for a few seconds. “Is it at least a nice tree?” Grian asks. 

“You’re supposed to be drawing houses, mate,” Mumbo says, amused. “Your meeting went terribly, didn’t it?”

“I have absolutely nothing,” Grian says. “Zilch! Zip! Nada! Empty brain. I can tell you there will be at least one tree next to his house, though.”

“Imagine that,” Mumbo says. “Million dollar house on a mountainside. One tree guaranteed.”

It’s Grian’s turn to use the shut up line. “Shut up,” he says. 

There’s something ticking in Mumbo’s brain, and Grian can tell. He looks past Grian through the window with the streaming gold light, out at the mountains in the not-so-far distance. And Grian remembers it, even when he doesn’t want to.

“We should go camping,” Mumbo says. “Get out of the city for a few days. See some trees with no houses next to them. Get away from all that highway traffic.”

“Yeah, that sounds nice,” Grian says. “This weekend? Do you want me to call and see if I can reserve a spot in the national park? Or a little more west and hit a national forest?”

Mumbo screws up his face a little at that. “Let’s go a bit further this time,” he suggests. “Do several days instead of just a weekend. We could even leave the state. Go someplace we haven’t already been a million times. Maybe even a little more remote.”

“When?” Grian asks. 

“Is next week too soon? I could just take off midweek and we could go drive somewhere. Please? Think of all those early summer wildflowers up in the mountains.”

“Dude, I can’t take off mid-week,” Grian says sharply, suddenly feeling very frustrated. “You know that. I need to be finishing these designs! You gotta give me more notice than this, Mumbo.”

“Right,” is all Mumbo says, and he looks so tragic that Grian already feels bad for snapping at him. 

“Is it that bad at work?” he asks. 

Mumbo looks away, past Grian back back out into the mountains in the distance. “I just don’t know if I can take another week,” he admits. “I need to take some time off. And hey, maybe he’ll even fire me this time for giving him only a week’s notice that I’m taking vacation time!”

“You need that job for your visa,” Grian points out softly. 

Mumbo rolls his eyes. “Fine, I’ll try to keep my job I guess. No trying to get fired. I’m still taking that time off though.”

“He wouldn’t fire you anyway,” Grian says. “You’re much too useful.”

That causes Mumbo to crack a little, and he starts to smile again. “Yeah, mate, that place’ll burn down without me. If I leave for a week they’ll be begging me to come back and fix everything that went wrong.”

“If anything, that’ll just ensure your job security!” Grian says. “Hey, maybe you could just go without me. I’d love to go, I really would, but I can’t lose this deal with Mr. Perry. I’m the project leader this time and he’ll likely drop the whole project if I don't so much as answer the phone on the first ring…”

“Rich people,” Mumbo says with a nod.

“Ugh, yes, rich people,” Grian says, and throws his head down on his desk for dramatic measure.

“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” Mumbo says. He thinks for a moment. Grian lifts his head and watches the way contemplation flashes across Mumbo’s face. 

“Dude, just go by yourself,” Grian urges. “I can’t stand to watch you drive yourself insane another week. You’ve done it before, right? And why don’t you bring the bike? That way you can do all those difficult trails you’re always trying to drag me down without worrying about me wrecking it.”

“Should I?”

“Yeah,” Grian says, and he remembers this too, for as long as he lives, “I bet it’ll be fun."

»»———-　　———-««

June 16, 1988

Grian is bouncing his leg, trying to bleed off nervous energy with every shake. He’s bouncing his leg because at least his leg is hidden under the table he’s sitting at, whereas the pen he’d been tapping earlier was about to have resulted in an annoyed client and lost job. 

The table is large, and oval. He’s in some weird conference room-home office place in Mr. Perry’s gigantic house, discussing the floor plan for yet another gigantic house Mr. Perry wants to build. Mr. Perry, of course, hates half of the floor plan Grian has proposed. 

Grian hasn’t quite figured out why Mr. Perry needs two gigantic houses, but it really isn’t his business considering he’s being paid. And he’s being paid very well for this. It’s probably the best job he’s landed since he started and he’s grateful his boss let him take this client, annoying as he is. This newest house would be within walking distance of a ski lift though, and this house isn’t, so Grian can at least see the value there.

He bounces his leg. He tries to count how many times he bounces it in a minute, only to find that he can’t really keep up with the passage of time, number of bounces, and the bouncing itself all at the same time. He loses track instantly. But if he can just get through this meeting, then he can make an excuse to go home. Only 4,000 leg bounces until he’s passed enough time to leave. He’ll be out of this stuffy room like a bullet. 

He’s thinking so hard about leaving this meeting and going home that he forgets that he has to actually be in the meeting first. 

“Excuse me?” Mr. Perry says sharply. “Did you hear any of what I just said to you?”

“Hm?” Grian says back, before suddenly being slammed back into reality. “Oh, apologies sir. Can you repeat that, please? I must have been a little distracted.” He gives a wan smile. 

Mr. Perry gives him a long look. “I was saying that I don’t think I like the placement of this room.” He jabs a finger at the blueprints. “I mean, who needs a parlor these days, let alone a second parlor? I want to change it.”

Grian squints at the room in question. “I think we could open it up to the kitchen and living room,” he offers. “Open concept and all that. There’s a lovely view to be had that’s being blocked by the walls right now.”

“Let’s make it a pool room,” Mr. Perry says. 

“Uh, a pool room sir? On the second floor?”

“Not an entire pool, that’s nonsense,” he says. “Just a large indoor hot tub. It’ll be cold out when I’m visiting this house.”

“I…I think I can do something like that, sir,” Grian responds. “We’ll just ensure that the engineers clear it for the amount of water weight it would put on the floor and add extra support if needed.”

“Can there be some windows or screens in the room?”

“You mean on the inside wall?”

“Yeah. So I could see the hot tub from the living room if I wanted.”

“Um, sure. We can do that.”

He sneaks a glance at his watch. Only 35 minutes to go now. 

He just…doesn’t want to think about it. He just needs to leave. He’ll get home, make the phone call, and it will be okay and he’ll feel silly. But every second he’s stuck in this godforsaken massive house is just another second he has to spend knowing that he’s delaying something very, very important. 

If he thinks about it, he’s going to spiral, so instead he keeps trying to channel every bit of the nervous energy into his right foot. 

“Grian,” Mr. Perry says, and Grian snaps his head back up from the blueprints, a little surprised that the man has used his first name. 

“Yes?”

“Would you like to leave early?” Mr. Perry asks. “Since you clearly have somewhere else you want to be.”

Grian freezes. “My apologies sir, I’m not trying to make you feel rushed in this process. It’s very important to me that you feel like everything in your future home is exactly how you want it, no matter how many tries it takes for us to get to the perfect result.”

“I don’t appreciate it when my employees lie to me, you know,” Mr. Perry says. “Save the corporate spiel for later. You’re making me exhausted just looking at you. I think if you bounce that leg any faster it’ll fly off.”

“Oh,” Grian says with a hint of a nervous chuckle. “Suppose that’s true.”

“You can go home now,” Mr. Perry says. “You’re not paying attention anyway. Just get me some new ideas for that hot tub room and we’ll reconvene on Monday.”

“Yes sir, thank you so much,” Grian blurts, and grabs his papers off the desk, and tries to walk out of the door at a normal speed instead of sprinting.

»»———-　　———-««

He arrives home a little after 3:30 pm, tossing his bag and papers haphazardly on the couch as soon as he runs in. The door accidentally slams again, but he doesn’t really care what Mrs. Grant thinks today. His goal is the phone on the table by the kitchen; even all the way across the room he can see the message light blinking on the answering machine next to it. 

He pulls the phone off its rack and presses to listen to the message on the tape. It plays, and…he sets the receiver back down. 

It’s just his landlord, calling to say that he won’t be around to fix the door for another few days. 

Grian paces once around the living room, then twice. 

He pauses in front of the window. It’s clear and sunny out, with very little smog on the horizon. The mountains are in clear view. 

Grian returns to the phone, and dials 411. Directory assistance. He’s not quite sure the number he needs to call for this, and his local phone books are of no use for out of state numbers. An operator picks up. 

“Hello? Yes, I’d like to place a call to the Shoshone National Forest Ranger Station. Location? Uh, I think it’s in Cody, Wyoming. Yes, thank you.”

A minute or two later with the correct number for the office scribbled on a notepad, Grian is patched through. A young woman answers the phone. 

“Good afternoon, how may I help you?” she asks. 

“Erm, hi,” Grian says. “I’m calling because I’m worried about my friend. He was in the National Forest and he’s missed his check-in.”

“How long has it been since he missed his check-in window?”

“Several hours at least,” Grian answers. “He told me it might be late, or really really early, so I was expecting a call last night or this morning. But I didn’t receive one. I left for work early, thought maybe he’d taken a bit more time than he told me, but it just nagged at me. It was supposed to be hours ago. When I came home just now there’s no message on the answering machine.”

“I’m very sorry to hear that, darling,” the ranger says. “Can you please give me some information about him? Full name, age, appearance, vehicle, license plate if you know it, and the trails or locations he told you he would be hiking in? We can pass that information on and begin a search.”

A knot in Grian’s throat forms at the word search. “Of course,” he replies. 

He rattles off the information as she asks for it, from Mumbo’s somewhat rickety AWD sedan that he was always convinced he could drag down any road he wanted, to his dark hair and mustache. He gives her Mumbo’s full real name, and feels a little silly when he includes the nickname right along with it, but he figures Mumbo might appreciate it. He tells her the trails Mumbo had mentioned doing, and how many days he planned to spend hiking. 

“He brought his mountain bike too,” he says. “I don’t know if he took it with him on any overnight hikes but he had a setup for that, where he could strap his pack to the bike.”

“Thank you,” the ranger says. “Being on a bike could extend the range he could be in, but it could also limit which trails he could be on due to terrain. Here, I’m going to patch you into the local Sheriff’s office to make a report too, is that okay? I’ll call some of the field offices and get some rangers on this. We’ll start by checking for his car at the trailheads.”

“Thank you,” Grian says.

He calls the Sheriff’s office and makes a report. He tells them much of the same information he told the ranger, and the second time repeating it only makes it seem more macabre. He answers all the questions to the best of his ability. Yes, Mumbo was an experienced hiker. No, he was not having a personal crisis, just wanted a few days off work to unwind. 

And then he sits and waits. The whole process had only taken a little over an hour. 

He paces some more for a while. He goes to the kitchen to get some water, drinks that, and finds it only killed a couple minutes, so he goes and paces some more. He stares out the window for a while again. Then, he organizes some of the papers he hastily threw down when he got home, because it’s still probably not a good idea to risk losing or bending any of Mr. Perry’s documents. 

He gets another call around 8 pm. 

“We found his car,” the ranger says. “It's still at the trailhead.”

“So he never made it back to his car last night.” So he’s not just a spoon who forgot to find a payphone and give his friend a call. 

“I’m afraid not.”

“So…so what now?” Grian asks. 

“We’ll start sending some rangers and volunteers down the trail to look for him, in case he’s hung up somewhere and needs a little help. His bike wasn’t in his vehicle, so he must have had that with him.”

“Thank you,” he says. “Please keep me updated.”

That night, Grian doesn’t sleep, and the next morning Grian doesn’t go into work. He’s already driving northwest. 

»»———-　　———-««

May 1989

11 Months Later

He’s grateful when he finally rolls up to the trailhead after being jerked around on the rocky, uneven road for the last 19 miles. He’s the only one in the small lot, which is less of a parking area and more of a clearing at the terminal point of the road. 

He lays his head back on the headrest for a moment just to rest, eyes closed, and sighs. The sun through the windshield is warm on his forehead, but the day outside is pleasantly cool with the bite of winter still on the wind. There’ll still be snow on the mountaintops for a while yet. 

It’s noon. He spent the night in Cody, in an old motel but different room and left in the morning with his whole life packed in a bag. He has a long hike ahead of him this afternoon, and he won’t get there tonight. But he might as well start. 

Grian gets out of the car and inspects it. It’s a 1978 Chevy Blazer he picked up two weeks ago when he realized he was going to need a 4x4 to even make it to the trailhead and traded in his old sedan. Its red and white paint is covered completely in a coat of dust and topped off with several mud splashes from snow meltwater on the road.

Fortunately, nothing rattled off the vehicle during its inaugural off-road journey, so Grian is just left to hope it still has air in its tires the next time he hikes back out. And that might not be for a while, so he’s stocked it with a spare and patch kit. He has an elementary knowledge of how to fix a tire but he figures the motivation of being stranded 19 miles back on this empty road will breed enough desperate ingenuity to fix any problems he encounters. 

Grian grabs his pack from the backseat, and starts down the trail. 

Grian loses himself for a while during the hike. It’s easy to do that–to just walk and turn your brain off completely. One foot in front of the other over and over. The motions over and over tune the rest of Grian’s brain into a nice numbness. He listens to his boots crunch gravel and dry leaves. He looks at how the sun dapples the trail. 

He hikes onward.

The forest is loud in a way the city isn’t. It’s not the type of loudness that announces itself, but the longer Grian hikes onward and alone the more its presence makes itself known. It’s like Grian’s brain is getting rid of the noise that’s filled it for so long and allowing him to really listen to the sounds of life. 

The wind whistles through the trees, shaking the pine needles. It doesn’t blow on Grian; the taller trees around him shield him from the gusts. He hears the light gurgle of a creek well before he comes down a hill to cross it, and when he approaches it a frog leaps away from the bank. 

At one point, Grian’s dragged out of his silent contemplation by the commotion of rattling leaves in the undergrowth next to him. It spikes his heart rate and he freezes in place, until a medium sized brown spotted bird explodes out of a bush at the side of the trail and flies away, low to the ground. 

He smiles a little to himself. Just a bird, startled by a person. He is trespassing, in a way, it seems, to intrude his presence upon such a wild area. This is the bird’s home, not his. He’s just being offered a place in it to protect it. 

He hikes onward as the sun dips lower in the sky.

»»———-　　———-««

June 17, 1988

Grian arrives at the Forest Service office in Cody, Wyoming at half past ten in the morning. The sky is blazing blue and cloudless, but there’s haze on the horizon. 

He stumbles into the office, brushes a piece of greasy hair that’s fallen on his forehead back up, and tells a slightly-startled looking lady at the front desk: “I’m here to join a volunteer search. My friend’s missing.”

She looks him up and down with a critical, yet sympathetic eye. “What’s your name, sir?” she asks, in a way that suggests she might already know. 

“Grian.”

“Grian, where did you drive in from?”

Grian stares at her. “Denver. Why?”

“Denver’s eight hours away,” she says. “Isn’t it?”

“I don’t see why that’s relevant.”

She sighs, and gives him a look. A pitying one that he hates. “Darling, how much sleep did ya get? It’s not even noon yet.”

Grian huffs. “I don’t know. An hour or two. I’m fine!” He looks at her pleadingly. “Please, just let me know where I can go to help out.”

She just shakes her head, and picks up the phone on her desk. Grian watches her dial it, and hopes for a second she’s calling another ranger to come escort him or something, but that hope is crushed the moment she speaks again.

“Hello?” she asks on the line, and waits while the other person answers. “Yes, I was wondering if you had a room available. You do? Good. I’m going to send someone over your way. Yeah, I’m doing good, how are you? Glad to hear it. Thanks, darling. Yeah, he’ll be coming in a bit.”

She hangs up and scribbles something on a notebook, before tearing out the page and handing it to Grian. It’s got a short list of directions. Down the road two miles, turn right on the second road after the bridge.

“It’s a nice little motel not too far from here,” she says. “They’ll give you a room and you can get some rest.” 

Grian shoves the paper back across the desk at her. “No. Tell me what I can do to join the search for my friend, please.”

She smiles saccharine-sweet and hands the paper back to him again. “Take it. I don’t want to see you back here for at least another few hours. In fact, I won’t give you any information unless you come back in a few hours. Get some sleep, you stayed up all night and just drove eight hours straight. You’ll be much better equipped to help out if you aren’t too tired to hike.”

Grian feels frustration well up in his chest, consuming the ball of anxiety in his chest. It threatens to break him too, so he looks away from the ranger and at the floor instead, though. Finally he speaks again. “My friend,” he whispers. “Will he be okay?”

The woman answers, “All our rangers are trained in search and rescue. They’re professionals. This is what they do, Grian, and they’re good at it. They’ll do everything in their power to find him.”

Grian nods tightly. 

“Now get some sleep, darling.”

»»———-　　———-««

May 1989

It’s night when Grian arrives at the tower, on his second day of hiking. He’s been backpacking many times before, but the rough terrain on this hike was still a surprise. It’s difficult to scale rocky hills with a bulky pack, and his shoulders are sore and his walking is slower now–so it’s night by the time Grian arrives at the place that’s going to be his home through October. 

It’s a wooden tower built on a hill. A staircase winds itself around, leading to the top where there’s a single room surrounded by boarded up windows. Nearby on the ground is an outhouse, small storage shed, a generator, a water tap, and nothing else. 

Well, at least he’ll have electricity. He’ll have water too, but it seems like he’ll have to haul it. He knows from his lookout orientation a few days ago that there’s a water tank with rainwater catchment and filters, but there’s no way to pump it 30 feet to the top of the tower.  

Grian turns on the generator, and heads up the steps with the single-minded determination of an exhausted man who knows there’s a bed waiting for him. When he arrives at the top he throws on the lights, tosses his pack down, and surveys the place. 

He was expecting it to be pretty dusty and ill-maintained, but it seems pretty clean. There’s bedding folded up neatly on the mattress–Grian had been expecting to just use his sleeping bag. It looks like someone had been sent to the tower recently to clean and stock it in preparation for his arrival, which he appreciates. 

He’s not really sure the level of effort it takes to maintain this place out here in the wilderness, and his mind goes down a brief rabbit hole. How was all this wood hauled out here? What about the nails, the rivets, the glass, the tanks? Was it hauled up on the same trail he just spent a day and half walking down? They must have used horses to carry materials but someone still had to assemble all this. He has a lot of respect for that. 

Grian is just starting to lay out the bedding when something over on the table begins to crackle. He walks over to inspect it. It’s a small black handheld radio sitting on a charging stand. He was told he’d have one of these. 

It’s not set on the frequency he was told to keep it at, but before he's able to tune it to the correct one, it crackles to life anyway.

“Two Forks, Two Forks come in! This is KSNF, broadcasting to you live from Thorofare. Your host on this fine spring evening is-”

Grian picks up the radio. “Hello?”

“-none other than Scar.” 

Grian sighs. Of course, this is a two-way radio. He can’t respond until the other person on the line has stopped talking. He waits as the so-called Scar keeps going. It occurs to him that he might be trapped out here all summer with this guy.

“He’s brilliant, he’s handsome, and he’s calling you dear listeners, hoping to hear your thoughts. What ails you tonight? What are your hopes, dreams, loves, losses? Or perhaps, what is your name, Two Forks?”

Grian, sensing the pause, jumps in. “Um, hi,” he says. “This is Grian. The new lookout at Two Forks. And you must be…Scar, I presume?”

“Grian!” the radio chatters. “What an interesting name. Yes, I’m Scar. I’ll be your supervisor this summer, ‘cause I’m so good at this. I’m also practically your next door neighbor.”

Grian looks out the window, but it’s dark and the windows just reflect himself. He looks away. “Uh, yeah. How did you even know when I got here? Where are you?”

“I saw your lights flick on,” Scar replies. “Been keeping an eye out for when you’d arrive. Go outside, you’ll see my lookout to the north.”

Grian steps outside, feeling the chill in his bones again. Once he stopped hiking and rested for a few minutes, the warmth from the movement wore off and he’s reminded again how cold spring nights in the mountains are. Sure enough, out in the distance, snuggled amongst the dark peaks, is a tiny orange light. 

“Oh,” he says. “There you are. I see your light too.”

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Scar says. “We’re the only lights out here tonight. Nothing else for miles around. Not even a campfire–well, of course not, ‘cause those are banned right now. Please report any of those you see.”

“I’ll be sure to do that,” Grian says. “That is the job, is it not?”

“Oh, we've got a smart one,” Scar replies, and it’s a sentence that would probably sound acerbic in anyone else’s mouth, but Grian detects no sharpness in the words. Just friendliness. 

There’s an awkward few moments on the radio, before Grian speaks again. “Okay, erm, I’m gonna call it a night, then. See you in the morning.”

“Goodnight!” Scar calls, and then, “Wait, wait, don’t go yet. Your radio, um, write down the frequency band we’re on right now. Keep that.”

“Um, okay,” Grian says. “It’s different from the one I was told in orientation.”

“Yeah, we’ll use that one too. That’s the one you need to report on. This one’s just for us. You don’t want the whole Forest Service to hear us chatting all the time, do you?”

Great. This guy wants to chat with Grian.

“I guess not,” he says finally, not untruthfully. He doesn’t really want anyone to overhear him talking, because he doesn’t really feel like talking to anyone in the first place. Half the point of taking this job was the distinct lack of human contact in every possible aspect, after all. 

“Good! Anyway, talk to you tomorrow, um….Grian. Your name was Grian.”

“Yeah. It is.”

“Goodnight, sleep tight, don’t let the mosquitoes bite, Grian!”

He flicks the switch on the radio to the off position before Scar can say anything else, and runs a hand tiredly through his hair. This might be a long summer, and he cannot allow this guy to distract him from the other half of the reason he took this job:

He’s here to save Mumbo.

»»———-　　———-««

“Two Forks! Two Forks come in!”

Grian wakes up to the tinny sound of his radio across the room, and streaming golden sunlight over his face. But mostly the radio. 

“Oh wonderful lookout of the tower over yonder, wake up! It’s a beautiful afternoon today, the sun is shining, and I can let you sleep no longer! Alas, our duty calls. Two Forks, answer your radio.”

Grian rolls over and puts a pillow on his head. Scar continues. 

“Perhaps this is like a fairytale,” Scar muses. “Are you sleeping beauty, locked away in your tower, desperately waiting for true love’s kiss? Well, I can hardly speak for your true love, so you’ll have to settle and wake for me instead. Do you like Disney, Two Forks? What’s your favorite movie?”

Grian kicks his blanket onto the floor and slides unceremoniously out of bed. He sways for a moment. His legs aren’t really sure they’re ready to support him today, not after all the mountain climbing he did the other day. Then he strides resolutely to the other side of the room, picks up the radio, and turns the switch off. 

Ah, peace. 

Grian wanders over and sits on the bed for another few minutes, letting his mind spin out and gain traction again. He takes his glasses out of their case beside the bed and puts them on. The sun is bright and high in the sky, so it’s not early. It casts the room in a nice light, and Grian takes his first opportunity to look over his new home. It’s painted an old and slightly chipped white, with little posters and photos pinned to open spaces on the walls. The room is mostly filled by its spacious windows. They frame every side of every wall, almost as if Grian is living in a glass house. 

The view is, of course, spectacular. 

The mountains are both jagged in some places and rounded in others. He can see hills upon hills for miles, wrinkling out into the horizon like a piece of crumpled paper. There’s pockets of meadow and open woodland that contrast with thicker pine forests, creating a patchwork. The hillsides are painted in different greens–an aspen grove there, fir here, golden spring grass, or the bright spring flowers he can see coloring patches of the meadow. The sky is a blazing blue, and there is no haze on the horizon.

It would be spectacular, wouldn’t it? Something so beautiful would have to be so cruel. Grian is already familiar with these views in the way of someone scorned. He’s been here before, and this time he isn’t leaving without dragging the secrets from the darkest valleys. 

Grian stands up again, a little more clear headed, and heads to the stove. It’s propane powered, and he’s grateful it exists at all. He takes out a small metal pot and, upon finding it dusty, casts it aside and pulls his own camp pot from his pack. He’ll wash things later. He pours some water in it, sets it to boil, and tries to figure out where he’s set his tea. 

With a mug of tea in hand–tragically no milk and a supply of sugar he’s decided to use very, very sparingly–and the radio in his other hand, Grian steps out onto the wraparound walkway at the top of his tower. It makes for a nice deck. 

Lazily, he flips the radio back on. “This is Two Forks,” he says smoothly. “I’m awake now, what do you need?”

“G-man!” Scar nearly shouts on the other end. “It’s great to hear your voice this afternoon.”

“Ugh, afternoon,” Grian groans. He checks his watch. “It’s what, 12:30? Lunchtime? Already?”

“You’ll be okay,” Scar says. “You’re not really officially on duty until tomorrow anyway. I always like to check on the new lookouts on the first day anyway, though. You doing good?”

“Fine.”

There’s a pause, like Scar was clearly waiting for more than that. Grian is giving him nothing. After a moment he gets the memo and proceeds. 

“Good to know, good to know. So, G-man,” he starts. “You’re a lookout now. That means your only job, from now until October, is to keep an eye on this forest for any fires. If you see a fire, report it to me, or to the rangers on the official channel. I’m talking campfires, fireworks, lightning strikes, everything. You got that?”

“I believe I can handle it,” Grian says drily. “I’m pretty good at looking out windows.”

“Do you see the round thing on a table in the center of the room?” Scar asks. Grian does not, because Grian is outside on his deck, but he’s seen it before already and doesn’t feel like walking back inside to play along.. “That’s your Osborne Fire-Finder. I assume they taught you how to use that?”

“Yeah. Always keep it calibrated, locate the fire in the rotating sight, and use the tool’s measurements to determine its location and precise angle.”

“Wow, you’re going to put me out of a job!” Scar says, and somehow Grian just knows he’s genuinely beaming on the other end of the line. 

“I can’t be in two lookouts at once, now can I?” Grian says, words sharp. It doesn’t phase Scar.

He continues. “The only other real thing is that you need to report daily first thing in the morning with the weather conditions at your tower. This helps us keep track of what the fire danger is on any given day or week, so I expect you to take that seriously. Additionally, you’ll be expected to keep logs of conditions in your area. Anything else, well, I’ll just help you with it if it comes up!”

“Cool.”

“Any questions, G-man?” Scar asks. 

“Um, yeah,” Grian says. “Just one. Have you been calling me ‘G-man’?”

“Yep!”

“Alright, follow up question. Can you stop?”

“Nope!” Scar says brightly. “Every lookout needs a nickname, it’s only fun. I suppose if you had a nickname you’d rather be called though, I can consider it.”

“Uh, no,” Grian says. “I don’t have another nickname for you to use.”

“Aw, too bad. I guess it’ll just stay G-man, then.”

Grian is nearly overcome for a moment, and, despite the objectively peaceful surroundings, desires to tear his hair out. He does not. Instead he replies, in his most carefully snarky tone, “Fine. Is Scar your nickname, then? What’s your real name?”

“Grian!” Scar exclaims, in mock offense. “I’ll have you know that this is my legal name, thank you very much.”

“I have so many reasons to doubt that.”

“I would never lie to you, G-man.”

Grian rolls his eyes at that, but he can’t stop the corner of his mouth from turning up. He takes a sip of his tea. It’s nice in his hands, warm, and the smell alone is making him feel more at home. There’s silence on the radio for a long time, and Grian almost assumes that Scar has gone. He’s fine with that being the end of their discussion for the day. 

Scar isn’t gone, though, and after a while the radio crackles again. “Say, G-man,” he starts. “Now that you’ve asked me your questions, mind if I ask one of my own? A little equivalent exchange, you know.”

“Go ahead.” Grian sips his drink. 

“Where are you from?”

“Denver.” It’s not untrue. 

“Um, I don’t mean to be rude,” Scar says tentatively, “but…where are you from before that?”

Grian sighs. “England.”

“I knew it!” Scar cries. “Uh, sorry. Didn’t mean to shout, there, my bad! It’s just interesting to me, that’s all! You’ve got such a lovely accent.”

“I guess,” Grian says. “You never met a British person before?”

“Oh, sure,” Scar says. “I’ve met several tourists from the UK. But between you and me, most people flyin’ across the ocean for a vacation tend to just stop at Yellowstone or Grand Teton instead of here. And the ones that do don’t stray too deep into the Forest.”

“Yeah, well, s’bit far back here. Took me two days to hike in and then I slept until noon afterwards.”

“Yeah, that hike tends to beat people up,” Scar says. “So. What on earth brings someone from England to Colorado to Wyoming?”

“Maybe I just like the mountains.”

“You don’t have mountains in England?” Scar gasps in horror. “Oh my goodness, that’s a tragedy. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.”

“No, it’s like, well–we do have mountains in England. It’s just, well, they aren’t exactly like this are they? It’s a different sort of landscape. And besides, the place I grew up in just had hills.”

“Oh,” Scar said. “You know, I’ve never been to England. Never really left the western half of this country, actually. Is it pretty there?”

Grian thinks back, to cobblestone streets in town and misty mornings. He thinks of the way everything was just drenched in vibrant green in the summers. He thinks of old churches with ivy on the walls and fields of grass hemmed in by stone fences. 

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s pretty there.”

“Man,” Scar says. “I’ll have to go one of these days. I am wondering, though–it’s not, uh, very common to meet, um, someone from another country working this job. Since the Forest Service is a federal agency, you know.”

Grian scoffs. “Isn’t this line of question a little forward for a first introduction?” he asks. “Whatever. It’s not like they didn’t poke into my background enough during the hiring process. I have dual citizenship–free, clear, whatever you wanna call it, to work for the US government.”

“That’s so cool,” Scar says. “So does that mean you like, came here and applied for citizenship and got it or–or were you like born here, and then moved to England. Or, even, you got it through marriage? Are you married? Like how does this work?”

“I’m not going to tell you all the details of my life.”

“Oh. Sorry,” Scar says. 

“It’s fine.”

“Hm,” Scar says. “You know, it’s interesting that I met you, almost like a coincidence, right? I remember hearing about another British guy in the park last summer–a tragedy, I tell you. I heard the rangers still haven’t–”

Grian’s blood instantly runs cold at the mention, and the warm mug in his hands isn’t doing enough to pull the heat back into his body. For a moment he wants to dash the mug onto the ground dozens of feet below, and cut his hands on the ceramic when he goes to pick up the shattered remains–leave no trace–on the forest floor, dripping blood onto the leaves.

He doesn’t do that. Instead, he flicks the radio off with shaking hands, cutting Scar off mid-sentence, and stalks back into the cabin.

»»———-　　———-««

Grian’s sitting on a rock next to a lake. The sun is slanted now, casting golden orange rays across the water. The air is crisp and, although Grian hasn’t touched it, he knows the water is cold. It’s snowmelt-fed, afterall. 

He’d turned on his radio again an hour or two after he turned it off earlier, once he’d recovered enough to have a normal conversation. Scar had been worried, but he’d accepted Grian’s excuse that he’d left some water boiling on the stove and needed to attend to it immediately. He hadn’t known Grian long enough to see through his excuses yet, unlike Grian’s old supervisor. 

Scar had been quiet the rest of the afternoon, though, as soon as Grian told him that he was going out to explore. Grian appreciates the peace. 

He pulls a map out of his bag to study it. It’s not the map he was given of his lookout area when he started. No, this one is worn on the edges from countless foldings and unfoldings. It’s not so much a map as it is several maps–it’s several detailed topo maps taped together into a square. 

In one map, the Two Forks lookout is circled in red marker. Grian did that a few weeks ago, when he’d learned which lookout he was assigned to. It’s a beacon on the page, his new base of operations for the next few months. And it couldn’t be in a better location. 

The rest of the map is marked-up too. There’s highlighter along some trails, penciled in areas of interest, and shaded areas. They’re search areas. It’s not the first time Grian has been here. 

He examines the maps, cross referencing his with the topo map he was given as a lookout. The Two Forks domain covers much of the locations that Mumbo’s search did last year, but more. There's still a lot of blank space on the maps, especially in areas that were inaccessible by trail. Just because it was off-trail doesn’t mean Mumbo never went there for some reason. 

Grian takes a pencil out of his bag and begins to mark up the map once again. It’s something he’s done before, and there’s spots on the map where his eraser has rubbed off part of the ink. He pours over the contours, thinking, this valley has shelter from the wind, or there’s a source of water here.

When he’s finished he stares at the page for a long moment, and then back out at the lake in front of him. The shadows are even longer now. On the other side of the lake, the ground is cast in shadow already, with the sun disappearing early behind a mountain. 

Did Mumbo enjoy these views, too? Was he here?

Grian would ask him when he found him.

Masterpost | Chapter Two >>

#hermitcraft #grian #mumbo jumbo #goodtimeswithscar #gtwscar #hermitcraft fanfic #hc_firewatch_au #quara fanfic

[choicesficwriterscreations]

CFWC Writer of the Month: Jamespotterthefirst

Each month CFWC highlights one of our talented fanfic writers, and this month’s writer of the month is @jamespotterthefirst! We hope you will enjoy learning more about her and her work below! The writer is selected at random. More info can be found on the navigation page.

Quick Links:

Tumblr Blog: Jamespotterthefirst Blog Masterlist

1- When did you start playing Choices? What's the first book you played? 

I started playing back in 2018. I kept seeing this thing called “playchoices” trending as number 1 on Tumblr (lol remember those days?). This would happen, without fail, almost every week! When I clicked on it, the posts were all about the finale of a royal story (The Royal Romance!). People made the most hilarious posts, complete with memes. I had no idea what it was, but I gathered it was an app. I downloaded it, and the rest is history. 

The first book I played was Desire and Decorum. It was absolute torture because it wasn’t completed yet. So I binged the available chapters. Yes, I spent real money on keys and diamonds, telling myself at least I wasn't spending that money on drugs. It was so much fun waiting for a new chapter every week, even if I’m an impatient mess. 

2- When and why did you join Choices fandom?

I joined the fandom almost immediately after downloading the app. 

As I sat in my living room, tapping my foot and waiting for the new D&D chapter to drop, I went back into the playchoices tag for content. It felt good to find other people who loved the story as much as I did. There were other users out there who were also waiting impatiently for the new chapter, writing fics and discussing theories in the meantime. There were also some of the funniest memes I have ever seen in my life. At first, I would quietly read and reblog. Then, I slowly started posting my own thoughts and theories (which were not very good lol but hey, this is tumblr after all).

3- How did you pick your url name? 

My life is one hyperfixation after another… The one before Choices was Harry Potter. More specifically, the Marauders era. I used to write for the pairing called “Jily”, composed of Harry Potter’s (dead) parents. Kelsey (@takeharryandgo) is a witness of just how much I love James Potter, Harry’s (dead) dad. In fact, our shared love for the pairing and character is one of the things that brought us together. 

In short, this URL is a reference to James Potter the first, Harry’s (dead) dad. Not James Sirius Potter the second, Harry Potter’s (living?) son. 

I saved it as a sideblog, meant only for writing resources for me to use at a later time. One day, I decided I didn’t want the followers on my main page to see all the Choices spam I was posting, so I resurrected the JP blog. 

4- Go back to your archive and tell us about the first post on your Choices blog. 

My first Choices post was a shitty theory about Desire & Decorum: 

5- How long have you been writing fanfiction?

I’ve been writing fanfiction since I was a literal child. I used to write in a notebook and my friends would read during recess. It was awful but they were into it. One day, I used up the whole notebook and my friend was desperate for the next part of the story. I told her I needed to wait until my mom took me to the store (literal child) to get a new one. My friend got me a new one by the end of the day lol.

TL;DR that puts me at about 20+ years of writing. 

6- What is your favorite Choices book to write about?

Without a doubt, Open Heart! 

7- Share the first fanfic you wrote with us. Do you still like it or would you change anything about it?

Oh god, the first fanfic I wrote was Lily Evans and James Potter from the Harry Potter universe. I forgot the exact title, but it was named after an Avril Lavigne lyric. Again, I was a child, don’t judge me lol. It’s handwritten in a notebook I still have somewhere, but I will never open it again lest I die of cringe. 

My first Choices fic, on the other hand, was a Desire and Decorum fic called “A Wedding Gift” that only like 5 people read at the time. 

8- What is your favorite fic that you’ve written?

Oof. This answer changes depending on the day you ask me. I always overthink it and end up saying picking a favorite fic is like picking a favorite child. To avoid being here all day, however, I’m going to say: Fake Husband, She Walks in Beauty, and Lovely.

9- Do you have a fic that you didn’t expect to be well received, but it was? What about one you expected to be but could use a little more love?

Definitely, the fic I didn’t expect to do well at all if my first Open Heart fic: Lovely. 

I was so naive back then, knowing nothing about the Open Heart writing fandom. I had no idea what format or tags to use when posting. I was afraid there would be no readers out there who wanted to read a silly little story about my MC posting a thirst trap. All I knew was that the latest chapter of Open Heart Year 2 inspired an idea that wouldn’t leave me alone until I wrote it. 

I posted it and I was so incredibly lucky to receive so much support. Words cannot explain how special that was. To this day, I cannot verbalize how grateful I am for that. 

There isn’t really a fic I can think of that could use more love. It always amazes me that anyone gives my fics their time. So any feedback my fics get will always be valued and treasured by me. 

10- If you could write only angst, fluff, or smut for the rest of your writing life, which would it be and why? 

Oh no. 

If forced to choose, I’d say fluff. 

11- Do you ever recognize yourself in any of your MCs or in your writing?

Absolutely! While I try to make every MC different, I often pull from experience when I write. My Open Heart MC and I have a lot of things in common (heritage, hometown, astrological sign, etc.) But I also wanted her to be her own character with life choices that are different from mine. Since I'm very boring, it definitely makes for better fiction that way. 

12- What element of writing do you struggle with most?

It depends on the day. Some days I struggle the most with dialogue. Others, my biggest struggle is descriptions. It's rare when I feel confident in both when I write. 

13- Do you have any neglected work you really want to finish?

*laughs nervously in unfinished series*

There are a few series I have yet to finish. Once again, I apologize for leaving them untouched for so long! I plan to get my shit together soon! 

14- If someone you know in real life (who isn’t involved in fandoms) asked to read your work, would you let them? If yes, what would you recommend they read first? 

No! 

I don't think I could look anyone in the eye if they read some of the stuff I've written, especially for Choices. 

15 - Are there any writers (published authors and/or fanfic writers) who influenced your writing?

I strongly believe that one of the best ways to learn as a writer is reading. As such, I believe I've learned from most pieces I've read, particularly published rom com novels. In the fanfiction world, I admire my lovely friend @takeharryandgo. I've had the absolute joy of following her writing for over a decade. And with every work, I am still amazed by her masterful way with words! And her characterization is always spot-on. I simply love to read her spellbinding work and learn from the master! 

Other writers/creators I admire are:

@heauxplesslydevoted- one of the first OH writers I've ever read! Her smut is top-tier!

@jerzwriter - her stories, dialogue, and characterization are a delight to read. Her angst is painful. Her smut is sizzling hot! 

@liaromancewriter - a true master at romance! Her writing style is magical and synonymous with the best of rom-coms! 

@genevievemd - I bow down because the amount of love and care she puts into every piece truly makes her work special! 

 @lucy-268 - I have always respected the amount of research she puts into every piece. She pours so much care into it so that the narrative flows seamlessly! 

@a-crepusculo - her writing is so vivid and immersive. Reading her work is like listening to the most beautiful of symphonies!

@writer-ish - she is such a master at the craft! Her characterization is so vivid that the reader will fall in love no matter the format. Her text edits are legendary! 

@bex-la-get - such a talented and dedicated writer! She also pours hours of research into her work, ensuring every detail makes sense! 

@potionsprefect - she's such a creative and talented writer. She develops writing ideas like no one else I've ever seen! 

@headoverheelsforramsey- I love her storytelling and characterization! She's created a beautiful, inspiring, and intelligent MC for all of us to adore!

@gryffindordaughterofathena - her writing style is one of the most original I've ever seen. Reading her work feels like reading the loveliest of poetry! 

@coffeeheartaddict2- the dedication she puts into her work blows me away! She's daring when exploring themes in her writing, and she's not afraid to pull from personal experience. 

@lsvdw-blog - the person I'm sending my therapy bill to. Just kidding! Her writing is beautiful, even when it's the most painful angst. 

@trappedinfanfiction - she is such a lovely writer. The amount of detail she's given both of her MC's back stories has my absolute respect! 

@quixoticdreamer16 - I adore her MC and the wholesome, beautiful background she's given her! 

@mysticalgalaxysstuff - Another MC that has stolen my heart. I am so happy she started writing this past year because she's a real talent! 

@peonierose - love her beautiful MC and the beautiful love story she built for her with Bryce! 

@cariantha - a brilliant writer with talent for days! 

16- Which one of your stories would you most like to see as a movie/series? 

I would love to see She Walks in Beauty along with its series (1800s AU) in live action. Imagine Ana de Armas and David Gandy in period costumes? That alone would be worth it! 

17- Do you write original stories? 

I've crafted and outlined original stories before but I've never actually written them. One of my biggest goals for the new year is to finally start. Wish me luck! 

18 -  What other hobbies do you have?

I love reading, hiking, and dancing! 

Yes, I picked the most “impressive” of my hobbies to seem cool. On most days, you'll catch me cuddling with my dog or bf watching YouTube/TikTok/Hell's Kitchen reruns lol. 

19 - What’s your favorite emoji? 

I used the orange 🧡 and purple 💜 hearts a lot because they're my favorite colors!

20: BONUS - tell us anything you’d like (if you want to).

For the record, I am also contractually obligated to read anything Kelsey writes 😘 

Thank you so much to every single reader who has given my work a chance these past three years!

Thank you to the wonderful mods of CFWC for all you do to support writers in the Fandom! 

#choices fic writers creations #writer of the month #cfwc writer of the month #jamespotterthefirst #open heart choices #open heart

[natsbaby]

Kiss Me in the Rain

Pairing: Natasha Romanoff x Reader

Summary: with you becoming stressed for your most special day, only Nat could tame the bridezilla in you

Warning: nothing!

A/N: since it’s raining at where I am right now and I remembered the notebook, I thought this would be a cute short story so I hope you guys like this one!!

“Nat!! Where are you??”

Nothing could stop the sigh that escapes your fiancée (soon to be wife)’s lips as you storm into your shared bedroom a week before your wedding, expecting the 5th meltdown from you today. “What is it, sweetheart?”

“It’s gonna rain next week! All week long!” You whine, devastated at the forecast for next week as you plop down besides Nat on the bed while she continues to read her book without glancing up from her page.

Lately, wedding plans hasn’t really gone your way so stress doesn’t even begin to describe what you’re feeling. It started with the chef you wanted to book half a year ago where you wanted his catering services but he’s not available due to another wedding, then the florists telling you 2 months ago that the flowers you wanted to order had to get cancelled because of an unexpected infestation that ruined the batch reserved for you, and the weather forecast was just your breaking point with other things not going your way.

She chuckles softly as she turns another page. “Oh my sweet baby, it’s alright if it rains next week”

“It won’t be alright because no one likes rain on formal events, and they’d all just run away for shelter while we’re drenched to the bones! I look horrible with ruined makeup, Nat” you suddenly feel the unexpected tears well up on your waterline, threatening to fall as you sniff. This definitely caught Nat’s attention as she finally turns to look at you as you continue.

“Its true tho we don’t normally care but..” you mumble as you finally open up what’s been bothering you. “What if this is just the world telling us to not get married?”

Ah, so that’s why, she thought as she bookmarks her book, placing it on the bedside table and turns to look at you as she gently runs her fingers through your hair.

You being superstitious was something Nat thought to be adorable, since admittedly the superstition side of you only manifests in relationships than anything else. You even made her chase after you for months because you wanted to have that Serendipity moment by writing your number on a dollar and spending it, hoping that one day she’d get it. Boy did it take Nat soooo long to get that dollar back just to get on a date with you.

“A little rain couldn’t hurt anyone you know” Nat explains as she gently presses a kiss on your forehead, wiping your tears away. “Besides, what’s more important? You and me, getting tied together forever or people’s complaint on a little water on their dresses or tux?”

You chuckle softly at that as you nod in agreement. “Yea..”

“Have you heard of that saying where if it rains on your wedding, it signifies more than 50 years of a happy marriage?” Your eyes widen at that, shaking your head no as it was the first time hearing it before Nat continues her train of thought. “I think our wedding photos would look really cool, just like the Notebook”

You raise your eyebrow teasingly as Nat gives you a wide teasing grin at the thought. “Come on babe, our photos would look perfect and everything else would go perfectly, even if there’d be hiccups along the way”

You hum in thought as Nat lays down besides you, taking you in her arms as you lay on your side so you could look at each other. “Are you disappointed that our nice, fall wedding might become a cold and wet one?”

She laughs softly at that before shaking her head no. “No never, even if a bear suddenly comes out and say hi”

“Why?” You couldn’t help but ask, albeit smiling softly at the silliness of what Nat said prior.

“Because I’m marrying you, I could never be disappointed when I spent a lifetime waiting for you”

#natasha romanoff x you #natasha romanoff fluff #natasha romanoff x reader #natalia romanova x reader #natalia romanova #natasha romanoff imagines #natasha romanoff x y/n #natasha romanoff imagine

[kukuandkookie]

wip titles meme

RULES: post the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! and then tag as many people as you have WIPs.

Tagged by @crimsonrainseekingflower! 💕💕💕

Thank you for the welcome surprise—another one I finally discovered once I looked at my notifications and stuff! Fortunately this time I’m remembering to make my own post haha. 😆

I hope you don’t mind if I also divide by fandom, and these only vaguely include a couple art wips!:

SVSSS:

Grave Matters

Cinderella III: A Twist in Time AU!?

Just a Dream (is this unfortunately a lame-ass title 😔)

Haunting You

Singles’ Day

TLJ/ZZL/LBH/SXY ADDAMS FAMILY AU??????????

Bingqiu White Snake (animated movie) AU

Waiting for the Tree Branches to Bloom Again

Safe from the Storm

I See in Both Your Eyes (Something Indigo)

AU: The Lion King II??

Family Meal Goes “Wrong”

TLJ’s Lament

LBH²

狗哥狗哥，你真了不得 (Gou-ge, Gou-ge…)

Slavic Vampires…

CNY Dumplings Competition

Enchanted (because we’re doing this now, I guess)

Limb Regeneration What If?? 🤔

Of Costumes and Candies (Something Orange)

Something Old, Something New, and… (Something Blue)

SV OTGW AU

I Ship My Rival x Me AU

I Have to be a Great Villain AU

Happiness Just Out of Reach

Lost and Found

Words to Heart

Breathing Smoke Into the Lungs

HORRIBLE NEW IDEA: Maybe title: Just Enough. Just Enough for Me

Love Letters (that’s all I got so far *insert deepfried emote here*)

Daycare AU???

Hmmm. Prince x Princess AU?

Xi Yang Yang AU

Gongzhu

Followers Milestone Celebration

Teacup scene

I Think My Uncle Ships Us Help

Unattainable

I’d Like to Try Staying Awake (for You)

Breaking the System (aka Fuck the System? Literally or—jk jk lmfao)

Bonuses include the latest chapters for I’d Rather Spend My Whole Life Asleep (With You) and To Tame a Beast, except the former doesn’t have a wip title. The latter does in the sense that the chapter title is Pixiu!

Erha:

Putting the Musing in Amusement Park

This Venerable One Will Not Be Outdone

What You Left Behind/Do You Also Miss Me?

[The] Romance of Wolf/Husky and Haitang

Ghost Bride (Corpse Bride but Chinese?? And Reincarnation)

Reconciliation

Fifteen Growing Up Flirty

Out of the Closet (and Into Your Arms)?

The Prince and the Pauper (but based on The Princess and the Pauper because I’m a criminal who hasn’t read the original 😂)

Wo Jia Dashixiong Naozi You Keng but with an Erha Twist

TW WARNING FOR THIS ONE but Passive suicide ideation fic

IDK WHAT TO WRITE FOR CWN’S BDAY… GOD SOMEONE SEND HELP GFGKDFHGKSDFHG (this one has a more polished but still wip version titled CWN Birthday Fic: Past, Present, or Future, I Want to Celebrate With You 😆)

Jiaoren CWN

Priest CWN & demon MR…hehehe (now a Dianran AU?)

More Than Just Puppy Love

Flower Shop…Redemption…Thingy?

From Wanton Wants to Wonton Wonders

A Taste of What Could Have Been

Screwdriver

First Bow to Heaven and Earth

Hidden Love AU

Mo Ran pulls a Bing-ge

Mind(-Reading) Games

Stone Lion

Swallowed Flowers

Confessions (Role-Swap AU)

TXJ Week (help we’re way past that now 😔): De-Aged Fic

A Tear in My Heart aka Read You Like an Open Book aka To Leave a Piece/Page of Me in the Nooks and Crannies of You?

Shi Mei Jiaoren Fic: [I’m] Afraid to Live Without Breathing

I also have a lot of Erha and SVSSS fic ideas that are unfortunately just blurbs in my ideas document right now and not full-on wips so they don’t have any titles I can share. 😔

Misc:

First Times, Second Chances, and Third Time’s the Charm…s (?) (Link Click)

Missing a You of Another Time (Link Click)

Danmei, xianxia-esque story (Link Click)

Suriel/Sariel

Call of the Wolves (specifically chapter 78)

Chuju the Chou

Papillon and Akuma’s Story

Papillon and Akuma Role Reversal AU Story

Circinus and Pyxis

Smoke & Mirrors

Dimension Hoppers

Take Me Back to Hell (All Saints Street)

I’ll Love You Until All the Stars Fall from the Sky (The Legend of Luo Xiaohei?)

Fengxi like Shade in Firewing (The Legend of Luo Xiaohei)

Mafia AU Xuanli x Laojun (The Legend of Luo Xiaohei)

Continuation of Falling for You (White Cat Legend)

How Could I Ever Ask You to Love Me? (White Cat Legend)

My Shadow It Follows Me

The Us of the Present Could Perhaps Be Just as Tender as the Us of the Past (Scissor Seven)

A Conversation With a Dead Man (MDZS)

Magical Girl AU (MDZS)

Xue Yang’s Regrets (MDZS)

Ao Bing and Nezha in a shoujo high school AU… That’s it. That’s the whole idea (Nezha 2019)

Surprising the Un-Surprise-Able (I Have to be a Great Villain)

Xianxia AU (Kiss the Abyss)

Breathing New Life (Kiss the Abyss)

I Will Chase You to the Ends of Time and Space (Kiss the Abyss)

A Family Outing (Beryl and Sapphire)

Just Some Gay Little Dudes (Beryl and Sapphire)

Steven Universe AU (Beryl and Sapphire)

Something as Sweet as You (I Ship My Adversary x Me)

A Present to be Cherished (I Ship My Adversary x Me)

I Ship My Adversary x Me and 严禁造谣 Crossover? AU Swap?

Additional misc wips I haven’t touched in forever are the latest chapters for The World Doesn’t Deserve You (MDZS) and Frostbite (All Saints Street). 😅

And as a bonus, these aren’t at all “official” yet but the more I read for some manhua the more I’m tempted to write fics for them… For example, a fic for Blemishing the Contaminated or My Lovely Troublemaker season 2 would be so cute, even if I don’t exactly have any clear or obvious ideas for them. 🥺

Phew, wow. I had way more wips than I expected AKFJSKFHSJS. Some are honestly just super half-baked documents tucked away in a folder with only a title and outline, but I hope something here was of interest to you guys. 😆💖

As for tagging…

I also don’t think I’m capable of tagging as many people as I have wips otl. So I hope you guys don’t mind if I tag just a few of you!

@ezrathesplit @levia-kun @yumichanhamano @softdekus @rongzhi @azunshi

(Of course, if you would rather not, feel free not to do this!)

#kuku rambles #kuku88 #fanfiction #fanfic #fic #svsss #erha #2ha #scum villain’s self-saving system #人渣反派自救系统 #the dumb husky and his white cat shizun #erha he ta de bai mao shizun #bingqiu #ranwan #and a bunch of other ships 😆 #beryl and sapphire #kiss the abyss #I ship my rival x me #I ship my adversary x me #我磕了对家x我的cp #I have to be a great villain #严禁造谣 #link click #shiguang daili ren #时光代理人

[desertfangs]

Love your love for post-canon Armand/Daniel, I’m the same 🫣 In part because I love reading different interpretations of what their relationship is like in the present, what has changed and what has remained the same over the years. It seems like people agree on most things but I love how certain things simply come down to personal interpretation. And look, I know that Anne should’ve included WAY more armandaniel content in the last trilogy but I appreciate the fact that she had a plan in mind for them, or at least a theme: them wanting to spend as much time alone together as possible post-reunion, which is a thing every time their names are mentioned together (them sneaking out in the rain, them wanting to go back to Trinity Gate). They’re in their “run away with me/anytime you want” era and I really love that for them 🫀

I’m so into post-canon Armand and Daniel and I'm so glad you are too! Anne didn’t need to tell me they’d get back together for me to believe they would—I firmly believe they always will, they’re soulmates and two sides of the same weird coin, plus Daniel is Armand’s only fledgling. They have a bond in love and bond in blood. And they’ve always been so absolutely feral for each other. I just can’t imagine them staying apart for long without extenuating circumstances. I believe they’re that couple who will have their periods of being apart (either because they’re doing different things or because they had a fight, lol) but they’ll always come back together. They’re magnetic and they love each other so much.

But I am glad Anne did give us little mentions that they were in fact doing things together and, correct me if I’m wrong, as far as we know Daniel and Armand are living together when the series ends. Which is good enough for me. Of course I would have loved Daniel to get more screen time. I mean aliens are involved! Let the guy talk about that! I want his perspective on that stuff! Or just to be included in the ending because he is such a vital character. He’s the reason the series exists! He’s the one who started it all. I mean, come on! ISTG Anne.

💖💖 THEIR RUN AWAY WITH ME ERA 💖💖 Listen anon, I love that so much I want it on a throw pillow or a t-shirt! 😭😭😭 I’m going to refer to it as that from now on, it’s perfect, no notes. 

I love that you’ve pointed out how they seem to want to be alone together when they are mentioned in the last trilogy. I hadn’t really thought of it that way and now that’s my happy thought. Because it does seem in line with my prevailing in-universe theory for why we don’t get more of them together and that’s because they want their privacy. 

We know Daniel never wanted fame. He published Interview with the Vampire under a pseudonym. I can imagine he was vaguely uncomfortable with his story being out in the world once he realized people he knew might find it. (Which is a funny thought given how eagerly he devoured Armand’s story in TVL but like.. I don’t blame him there.) 

But also Armand and Daniel have been through a lot. Armand tried to end his life and has had to spend time recovering and then got saddled with two kids because Marius thought it would tether him to the world. Daniel thought Armand had died and he’d lost him and went mad for a while. Like they’ve been through some shit. I can absolutely see them deciding that they want some space and for their story to be kept off the published pages of Lestat’s books as much as possible and Lestat acquiescing because he clearly does love Armand. 

If they want some peace and their time together left out of the books, if they want to disappear together or run off alone for long periods, or even just sneak off to Paris when they’re at Court, or hole up alone in Trinity Gate with a “No Vacancy” sign on the door, frankly that’s beautiful and they deserve it. I love that for them.

Thank you so much for the ask! 💖💖 I’ve had a horrible week and this has greatly improved my night. I hope I wasn’t too rambly, my brain is very fried. 

#their run away with me era #y'all i'm crying that is too good #i love this so much #answers in the desert #vc #vampire chronicles #daniel molloy #armand #armand/daniel #vc meta #vc headcanons #trinity gate #post-canon shenanigans #devil's minion #the devil's minion

[dunetevenn]

Hi everyone

A bit of a long-ish post today because I wanted to talk about my selfship/AU of the 2000 italian kid cartoon called «Monster Mash» (I already shared the sketch earlier on this blog but I finally finished it)

If you don't know the original movie (you can find it on youtube or on archives.org in better quality), here's the wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monster_Mash_(2000_film))

So it was one of my favorite childhood movie for years, and around halloween I got back to it, being focused on the movie for a few weeks (I still love it and watch it sometimes now). And it kinda revived my affection for one of the character (Drac), who was a huge crush of mine when I was a kid.

I created a quick self-insert for the original universe, but my mind quickly got interested in a few AUs. While I didn't do any art for the main universe or for my second AU, I was more invested into my Vampire Hunter storyline, which I'm about to tell you about in this post. If you just want the drawing it's okay, thanks for the attention

PS: pose base/inspiration by AdorkaStock "Frienemies" (https://www.deviantart.com/adorkastock/art/Frienemies-926193644)

So the context of this AU is the following:

There was always tension between monsters and humans, and one day a battle finally exploded, lasting for years. The monsters have been significantly numbered down by the humans, but they are still fighting. They're just staying hidden for the moment, plotting to get their revenge and imprisoned members free.

My character is named Swan (they/he). They're a monster hunter, recruted by the King (at least that's the version Swann is allowed to tell) to kill the last vampires in the kingdom. Amongst these vampires, their King, Drac, is the main target. Why vampires in particular? Well, strangely nobody really knows.

Swann is sent to track them down, which he does, and makes a first attempt to fight Drac. It failed, since the king of vampires was aware of a potential personal attack from the human king. But Swann doesn't give up. They're trying to get the closest possible to Drac, without his guards around. Once they manage to meet alone, Swann makes a suggestion to Drac: they cannot leave the vampires free here, but they can pretend to win the mission by helping them escape the kingdom and keeping the secret. Drac was surprised, but refused. He and the other monsters will stay and fight back. Swann tries to convince him, making it clear that they don't want to participate more in the massacre. Sadly, with the uncooperation of the vampire king, they have no other choice but keep fighting until one of them wins. However, this encounter changed something, making Drac more curious about this strange decision from someone sent to kill them, and already killed multiple monsters. They kept fighting, but it was less with the actual intention to end lives and more with a desperate attempt to make them go away. The big turn was when Swann saved Drac's life, from a guard of the human king trying to get recognition as a hero. Before the crucifix could hit his chest, Swann swooped in and attacked the guard. By seeing them, the guard was menacing to warn the king about the betrayal, but he was quickly shut down by the duo and sent to the other vampires.

Drac kept the incident secret from the other vampires, at Swann's demand. But this night, they actually became friends. And, this friendship evolved, hiding behind the fights, hiding from both humans and vampires, even from other monsters. Developping a secret romance, never claimed by words, but affirmated by the nights they starting spending intimately (ah yeah s3x plays a huge part in their love story).

And there you have it, a very quick explaination of what this Vampire Hunter story is. Hope it wasn't too badly written, because I know my writing sucks (that's why I never write fanfictions).

Anyway, if you read everything, I'm really happy that you took the time for it, and if you didn't, that's fine it's still nice that you stopped by even if it was just for the art.

#artists on tumblr #traditional art #drawing #art #self insert #self ship #monster mash 2000 #drac monster mash #au #self insert x canon #self ship community #self insert x fictional other #strike of dagger and fang

[trainerjames-reads]

Snowed in with Summer by @tianawarner

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Date Read: March 5, 2024 - March 8, 2024

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Snowed in with Summer is about Avery, the novel's protagonist, and her journey to rediscover the woman she used to be. She and her boyfriend were planning a trip to the Yukon to see the Northern Lights during the winter solstice, but her boyfriend got cold feet and dumped her instead. The trip was already paid for, though, so why waste it? Avery decides last minute to go and enjoy the week-long vacation by herself. However, when she arrives, there's someone there she wasn't expecting...

The someone is Summer, Avery's ex-girlfriend from seven years ago, hence the title: Snowed in with Summer. Look, I like the title. You wouldn't expect snow during the summer (unless you're Olaf), but in this case Summer is referring to Avery's ex. It's a cute title. I thought it was a really cute book, too.

At 216 pages, it's an easy read. It took me a few days to finish it, but only because I'm a slow reader. I really enjoyed this book a lot and I look forward to getting caught up on the author's other books that I've missed over the years. So, what did I like about the book specifically? I'll tell you (without spoilers)!

I found Avery to be a really pleasant protagonist. This story is told through the first-person point-of-view and it was fun being inside Avery's head. Tiana Warner writes her really well and you can feel when Avery is experiencing anger, joy, love, heartbreak, and passion.

Speaking of passion, author Tiana Warner knows how to write some spicy sex scenes. Her descriptions are on point and she paints the scenes vividly with her writing. By no means is this a bad thing, this book is a romance novel after all, and what's some adult romance without a little bit of sex? I will say that I was glad that I was home when I read these scenes, though.

I really enjoyed Avery and Summer melting the ice between each other and then getting to experience them being playful, flirty, and loving with one another. This is why I love romance. I just love reading about two people fall in love (re-fall in love?) with each other and Tiana Warner did a great job at showing the connection Avery and Summer used to have to one another and still have with each other.

Summer as a character is beautifully written with her own set of flaws. She's not one to stay in a single place for a long time; she enjoys traveling and seeing the world. However, as you read the novel you learn why she travels so much and you feel for her. You want to hug her and let her know that everything will be okay. As a person who grew up with divorced parents who absolutely hated each other, I get it, Summer. I get it.

Overall, I would recommend this book. It's a short, beautifully-written, lesbian romance with a protagonist with whom I really enjoyed spending time. Give this book a read!

OH! I gotta add, I really enjoyed the Epilogue. It was so incredibly sweet! :')

-My review score: 5/5 stars

#snowed in with summer #tiana warner #sapphic books #f/f #f/f romance #sapphic #lesbian books #lesbian romance #books #book review #book blog #romance books #books and reading #reading #goodreads

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Vaguely incoherent stuff about what might have become my favourite episode of the Robins/James radio show. Not for any one particular reason, it was just very funny. The whole post could basically be summarized in those few sentences.

Reached episode 220 of the Radio X shows, from May 2018, and I think it might be the funniest one I've heard so far.

Normally, to be honest, I like that this show is nice easy listening. I'm sorry that this is a massively backhanded compliment because I don't mean it that way and love the show, but I do like that it's something I can easily listen to on the commute to work or on a break at work or something, and it's not going to make me fall apart laughing in public. I mean, I always try to get a spot at the front of the train and facing the wall so I can laugh a bit without people seeing me. But I won't necessarily laugh out loud to the point of it being a problem.

For whatever reason, on this day in May 2018, they hit a stride to the point where I found it difficult to listen on a break at work because I didn't want my coworkers to hear laughter coming from the empty classroom in which I'd barricaded myself. They were both just on for the entire time. I should maybe say they were all on, because Vin was good too. It was so much fun to listen to.

They do repeatedly announce that they were both at a party last night and are both hungover, and John repeatedly announces that he's in a terrible mood for at least the first half of the episode, so we have further confirmation that alcohol always makes people better at their jobs and John Robins should never be allowed to be happy. Although he did mention on the next episode that he was almost a week into things with his new girlfriend, which I realized probably explained why there was the sort of manic giddiness alongside his irritability and hangover the previous week, which I think was the recipe for why everything he said was so funny. But that's not sustainable, you can't have John Robins acquire a girlfriend every week just because it might put him in a particularly excitable broadcasting mood. That's definitely not a good idea. When they announced that, I did have a brief reaction of "Oh my God, again? He's doing it again? Oh God, I forgot that that he's going to do it again. Isn't he tired? How does he have the energy to do this all over again? I barely have the energy to listen to him do it all over again." The radio episodes were quite a rollercoaster during his previous relationship, turning up every other week with anecdotes that made me wince and think this is a terrible idea, and then there was the breakup phase that was even more of a rollercoaster, and I was vaguely aware from having read his Wikipedia page that between the point I'm at (mid-2018) and present day he gets into an other relationship, gets engaged, and then it ends again. But I'd forgotten it was going to happen until they actually mentioned it. It was pretty similar to my reaction when any of my friends tell me they've got into a relationship, which is "Oh I'm going to have to spend so much time listening to stories about how your relationship is going that always make me think you should definitely not be in it anymore, and I'll have to stand there and not say that, and hanging out will get awkward because I have to pretend I think your relationship is a good idea, and then eventually there will be a breakup phase where you'll be very upset but I still won't really be allowed to tell you the whole thing's a terrible idea, until you're finally done and then the cycle will just repeat, and it's fine and I'll be supportive but don't you get tired?" (People reading this blog excepted, and I mean that genuinely, the couple of people I've met online in healthy relationships make me wonder if I just happen to have only ever met in person people who have terrible relationships.) Anyway, the commercial indie Radio X show is going to do another romance storyline, even though honestly, it's been in a pretty good place and I'm not sure they needed to throw in that kind of subplot.

(Disclaimer: Obviously alcohol is bad for you and quitting it is good and people should be happy and digital DJs should pursue both happiness and relationships at the rate that makes sense for their own lives and not according to what makes good radio. Although pursuing relationships and frequently discussing their ups and downs on air are two different things, and the latter maybe could be done according to a bit more of a "good radio" schedule, because I'm currently three episodes into the new relationship and there have already been multiple stories based on it that are slightly exhausting to listen to, we've got several years of this ahead. I don't genuinely wish unhappiness on people, I hope all my favourite tortured single comedians are secretly very happy and just doing a character, I would love it if it turned out Daniel Kitson's been happily married since 2007 and Michael Legge's been sober his whole life and it's all an elaborate ruse. I just don't need to hear the relationship updates in their work all the time.)

Anyway, this post wasn't meant to be about that at all. This post was about a radio episode where they started by both apologizing because they were hungover and not at their best, and then absolutely killed it for an hour and a half. So many parts that made me laugh too hard to be at work. I've said before that John Robins is quite quick normally and "Lee Mack quick" on a really good day, and this was the latter. Solid riffs. Classic arguments. A made-up game with regional accents and yelling at each other. What more could we want?

I said recently that the dynamic from the beginning of their radio show, John's the better comedian but Elis is more successful, is a gap that I think closes because John wins a massive award and gets some more work and Elis' major TV sitcoms end and I'm not sure how much else he gets. At this point, however, I'm less sure of that. John's had his award for some time and done a big tour off it but the gap does still seem to be there, as every single thing John Robins does gets plugged repeatedly on the radio show, while Elis clearly has enough on his plate so that every once in a while he'll just off-handedly mention some shit he's doing on Welsh TV that's common enough so he doesn't need to make a big deal of it every time. He's got a football podcast with some actual players that seems like a pretty big thing, though it's hard to tell how big because John yells at him for promoting the competition if he talks about it. Though John is about to host a (probably terrible, I'm guessing, though I've not seen it yet) TV panel show, which is definitely big. And I do think wherever they were in relation to each other in 2023, the Taskmaster bump is a big enough thing so that John's got to be pulling ahead now.

Anyway, that episode 220 has a bit that really calls attention to that, because they announce that they've both intentionally kept secret some recent part of their life to tell each other live on air, and John goes first and his story is that he got a speeding ticket and then did a remedial driving class, and Elis' story is that his football podcast has been nominated for an international award in New York. Which was a really funny contrast. And John took way too long to congratulate him, which is such a relatable flaw. In my thirties, I have to constantly remind myself that it isn't like when we were younger and our friends do successful things and we just immediately make fun of them for it, now we're older and their successes are genuinely important life things and we have to remember to sincerely say congratulations and not be a dick about it. A thing that I've had tested several times in the last few months specifically as my roommate keeps getting chosen for Team Canada coaching positions and I have been genuinely working hard to remember to say "Wow well done on the hard work" before I start saying "Oh cool you get to go work with that council of terrible people we've hated for 15 years" and then make jokes about how terrible the people are. Congratulations first, then jokes. And if they hadn't made such a thing about keeping it a secret until they were on air, I'd have assumed that John did the congratulations privately and is now just doing jokes on air, as is appropriate for a comedy show. But because it was his first time hearing it, the longer he went without saying "well done" the worse it sounded, and he went way too long. He said the words "This is like finding out your husband’s affair’s been nominated for best relationship" before he said "Well done." Then Producer Vin pointedly said "Well done Elis" like a parent saying "Thank you" to get a kid to realize they should also say that, and then he muttered "Well done" as well. It was a genuine moment of being a bad friend and it made me laugh so hard that I had to cover my mouth so my co-workers in the break room (because I work with people who can somehow get through a whole morning and still be up for socializing rather than barricading themselves in an empty room during the break) wouldn't hear me. It was so funny. Bitter snippy John Robins is really funny. Elis James deserves a Chortle Award for patience, but bitter snippy John Robins is really funny.

Oh, there were also several links worth of discussion about whether Jon Richardson is a dick and how annoying it is to have your ex-flatmates on panel shows where they get asked to tell embarassing stories about you, which was also very funny. Very good episode. They should broadcast hungover more often. Obviously not really, it's a very good thing that an alcoholic has quit drinking. I should say, I hope there are more episodes in the past where they're broadcasting hungover but also fairly giddy and in a basically bad but excitable mood. It's very funny.