#we call this 'collaboration' -- it started from the same prompt!

[inhuman-obey-me]

Collab pair piece for Barbatos’s birthday 2023!

Art by Mod Cosmos

Writing by Mod Chaos

Arrhythmia

Can also be read on ao3 here Word count: 10.7k Description: Time, with all its endless possibilities and unknowable branches, is infinite. Yet, certain patterns exist. Some things are fated. And for Barbatos, master of time and space, the heartbeat of fate underlying each strand of time is the constant. This is what time is. This is what time means. Infinite timelines, branching and collapsing, splitting and merging, to the end of time. Until you. You were not part of fate -- not that familiar pulse of passing time he knew so well. You weren't, until suddenly, you were.

Prologue

"I desperately needed to obtain your power to control time, Barbatos..." "I was surprised you'd come to me with such a foolish request, considering you are known as 'Solomon the Wise.'" "But that was before I had my over-the-top nickname, wasn't it? No one called me that yet..." "Indeed. But I knew that people would start calling you that in the near future, you see. Just like I knew that the two of us would eventually forge a pact."

Barbatos has never felt uncertain before.

A demon who has existed since the dawn of time, who controls the very fabric of time, he has seen all of the universe that there was to see.

You see, time, with all its endless possibilities and unknowable branches, is infinite. It is, truly. Yet, certain patterns exist. Some things are fated -- Lucifer's rebellion, the brothers' fall, King Solomon the Wise. These are destiny; these are inevitable.

And for Barbatos, master of time and space, the heartbeat of fate underlying each strand of time is the constant. This is what time is. This is what time means. Infinite timelines, branching and collapsing, splitting and merging, to the end of the universe. A heartbeat, steady and reliable, ever marching on, constant as his own.

Until you.

You were not part of fate -- not that familiar pulse of passing time he knew so well. He knew there were timelines where you would meet, yes. "Your" timeline, of course -- the one you know so well. Others as well. In some, "you" were a witch already; you weren't quite so powerless upon your arrival in the Devildom. In others, you came later, not in the first year of RAD's exchange program but further along, when relations between the realms had progressed more already. In others still, it was never you at all, but some other descendant of Lilith who had landed at Lucifer's feet that fateful day, when the second human exchange student was chosen.

These were the universes he knew existed. Infinite, innumerable -- and, ultimately, irrelevant. The future would march on, with or without you, and he would continue going about his life with Lord Diavolo. Fate would be fate, and those were the things that mattered.

Until you.

Knowing you would meet was different from actually meeting you. And meeting you, changed everything.

Meeting You

The first time he sees you, it barely even registers. He is present, of course, as his liege welcomes you and explains the exchange program to you. He oversees the brothers' introductions, notes the alarm on your face as you come to understand what your life is going to be for the next year. It's rather delicious actually, for the more primal of his demonic instincts, seeing the confusion and mild fear in your expression.

But a certain sorcerer has also just arrived in the Devildom, and Barbatos is a bit preoccupied with trying to determine just how much of a problem Solomon is going to be in this timeline.

The Witty Sorcerer is a constant. The immortal human king with whom Barbatos shares a pact is always a thread woven into his fate. He always decides to become a protector of humanity, and always comes to the conclusion that he must forge pacts with as many demons as he can, in order to gain enough power to hold his ground against the greater powers of the Devildom and the Celestial Realm. The exact demons and particulars of the pacts vary; some always fall for his tricks, while others cross his path by happenstance. Barbatos, for one, is never tricked into a pact but always simply accepts that he is meant to have one, for he has foreseen it countless times. Solomon almost always lands at 72 by this point, however -- that part is not quite exact from timeline to timeline, but also too close to be coincidence.

You catch the butler's attention just once that day, as Lucifer explains the struggle of humans' souls and demons' temptations -- it is then that Barbatos notices how your soul, hardly polished at all yet, nonetheless has a sparkle unlike any he's seen in a very long time. One he hasn't encountered, in fact, since he first met Solomon.

How fascinating.

That same sorcerer in question, however, leaves him little time to ponder the matter further, as his attention is quickly forced to the first of many troublesome texts he will receive from the inhabitants of Purgatory Hall this year.

"Hello, Barbatos. apppologies for the mail, buT I'M NOT VEry familiaR wit h Dev ldom cuisine  yet.. Is the kitcHEn meant To Flood with pu ripple bubbles when 1 cooks here? SIGNED, SIMEON"

At that, he makes a motion towards Lord Diavolo to be excused and quickly takes his leave to handle the situation.

And he takes no further notice of you for a while, nor you of him.

--

The next time Barbatos sees you, it's only a few short weeks later, and yet already, you've been quickly gaining quite the reputation.

He can soon see why, too.

You just had to cause chaos in the Demon Lord's Castle, didn't you? You couldn't just quietly complete your field trip with everyone, no. You just had to get yourself dragged into the depths of the castle's underground labyrinth -- and not just once, but twice.

Some version of you, cleverer, more cautious, never falls down there the second time. Other versions never make it out. Sometimes, the others notice your absence quickly enough for Barbatos to open a portal and retrieve you in time. Not always. And Asmodeus is fickle with his attentions -- as is Solomon, even if he pretends not to be. It's by lucky chance in this time that you see how to wield Asmodeus's powers that day, and luckier still that Solomon happens to lend you his magic that night.

"Just interested to see what they'll do with it," the sorcerer smiles, with that annoyingly blithe false innocuousness, when his pact-mate comes to inquire. "Aren't you interested, Barbatos?"

"No, I am not," he answers flatly. "My interest is only for all members chosen for Lord Diavolo's exchange program to have a successful and productive year here in the Devildom."

Solomon's pleasant expression drops just slightly; he gives the demon a very directed look. "Chosen by whom, Barbatos? I don't believe they were given a choice to come here like I was. I'm just...evening the playing field a little for the night. Surely it shouldn't hurt any chances of cooperation between the realms for a defenseless, magicless human to have a little bit of power for one evening?"

A tense smile, oh so familiar to the sorcerer, settles upon the demon's lips. "Of course not."

Barbatos leaves it at that, satisfied in any case that he sees you alive the next morning. A mild curiosity is piqued when he hears Asmodeus gushing about the fascinating, incredible power he felt from you the night before -- greater even than that of the famed sorcerer in their midst? That's odd, normally such strength would be more significant across timelines.

But he dismisses it quickly. Odd as it may be, in the vast breadth of the possibilities of time, if it's not significant, then that's that. It won't ultimately matter. In the endlessness of time, very little ultimately matters. The things that do pulse on as familiarly to him as his own heartbeat.

So he moves on.

"...Okay then, look into that for me, Barbatos."

"Yes, My Lord."

"Depending on how things turn out, it's possible we'll have the answers to all of our questions soon enough."

"Well, it would seem they've arrived."

"Yes, and even earlier than we thought."

The group of brothers, along with the human staying in their home, crowds into the room, Lucifer at their helm. "Diavolo, I want to talk to you."

The prince is unfazed; he and Barbatos had of course expected this when they'd taken Belphegor away. "Well hello, Lucifer. And yes, I assumed as much when I saw you at the door."

"What do we have here? Has the entire family come along today? So, you've all come along as a moving show of support and brotherly love, then?" the butler quips, before his gaze lands harshly on you. "Hmm...but it would appear that one among your number neither qualifies as a relative nor a demon."

Beelzebub stands protectively beside you. "That's right, they aren't a demon, nor are we related...but that doesn't mean we can't be on the same side. Isn't that right?"

You nod determinedly beside him. "You bet it is!"

Lord Diavolo examines you for a moment as the Avatar of Gluttony beams at your answer. "I see. Well, you may be a human, but it would seem you've found a home for yourself here in the Devildom. I have to say, I find that comforting."

The demon prince turns his attention back to the eldest of the brothers. "Now then, Lucifer, how about we hear what you have to say."

Barbatos's gaze lingers on you, however, remaining silent through the back and forth unfolding between the others. You aren't paying attention to him, of course, focused on the discussion over getting the family their seventh back. But he's spoken already with Lord Diavolo about this whole matter, and knows already what his master's decision is going to be. What you are going to do, on the other hand...

"Okay. I'll go alone."

There's that sparkle again. Just like Solomon's soul used to have.

Fated or not, there is something fascinating about you.

Even if this is just one thread of time, just one way for this all to play out, it is unusual. There's no such thing as an aberration in time, only variations that ultimately end up in the same inevitable places. The butterfly effect only flutters so far. Always.

And yet, something about you throws him off, just a bit.

You follow him out of the room, oblivious. It's your first conversation with him alone, even if it's not his first time seeing a conversation with you. "Did you know all of this was going to happen?"

He chuckles at the question. "Imagine for a moment what it would be like to know everything that will happen from now until the end of time."

Yes, imagine knowing everything -- as he does. Barbatos, demon with power over time. Barbatos, who can see anything, any timeline, past, present, and future.

"Why, nothing could possibly be more boring, wouldn't you agree?"

Barbatos, who has seen everything.

Barbatos, who has stopped looking. Barbatos, who uses his powers only for Lord Diavolo now.

"Which is precisely why I find it so very interesting and refreshing to have the chance to take a human like you into my room."

His pulse ticks just a little bit faster as he turns around to face you, opening the door behind him to usher you inside.

Why?

"All right, we've arrived. Please, come in."

He doesn't understand it yet, but there's just...something. Something about you. Something that makes the steady expectation of what comes next feel just a bit off-kilter around you.

Like you're inevitable. Even though he knows you aren't.

He knows this. He knows everything. He has seen everything.

Hasn't he?

He explains the rules and workings of time travel to you, emphasizing to you the consequences of breaking these rules -- "You run the risk of warping history."

You nod back to him, and he wishes you safe travels as he escorts you through the correct door.

And as you walk through, he feels it again. It's not just the sparkle of your soul. It's something more. Something else.

Something uncertain.

--

Something strange is happening in his room, Barbatos notes as he works, pulling various threads of time to his will.

He bends the timelines together, wrapping them into a single line.

You exist there, and there. This he knew. And yet, without his even touching them yet, there too does he find you. And there, and there.

He opens door after door, searching for each time you inhabit -- and in all doors, there you are.

Where have the others gone?

They existed once. There were other strands, other doors, other yous which were not you at all.

And yet, despite knowing this, despite knowing they should exist -- door after door, there you are.

You are only a human. You have no powers of your own. He has confirmed this -- you may have the blood of Lilith in you, but the power was never yours. And even Lilith could not exert her will over time.

That is his domain, and his alone.

So this shouldn't be. There's no reason for it. You shouldn't be everywhere.

And yet, there you are.

Everywhere. Always.

--

The brothers are all crowded over you, fighting over who gets to sit next to you. But there's a worry on your face, an insistent concern resting unsteadily on your lower lip.

"Is something the matter?" Barbatos inquires, though he has a sense already of what's on your mind. It has, after all, been on his too.

"Do you think I've warped history?"

Though all eyes are on you, yours are focused solely back upon the butler.

A nagging alarm tugs at the back of his mind with the same question -- have you warped history? Or more to the point, have you warped time?

But he knows that isn't what you're asking about. Not the same way.

"Ah...I take it you're worried about the other 'you' disappearing earlier?" He smiles lightly, explanation readied. "I know I told you that I have the power to see both the past and the future, but the truth is that there's one more secret -- something I still haven't mentioned."

Everyone's gaze shifts to him, their worlds decidedly rocked enough for a single day. None of the brothers are sure what new revelation he's about to unveil, and they're all on edge for it.

Still, his attention remains locked on you as he explains.

"You see, I have the power to select from any number of different potential realities and make any of them into the sole reality. With the various potential realities, there are an infinite number of 'you'..." He pauses, scanning your face for a reaction, but your expression is just as clouded and blank as it had been. He continues, "In the sole reality I chose, the one and only 'you' is the one right here. That's why the previous one disappeared while you remained."

Infinite realities. A "sole" reality.

It's a power he hasn't used in a very, very long time. One he doesn't especially care for, at his disposal though it may be -- what use is it to select these events that don't ultimately matter?

Fate is fate. Time is time. The inevitable is inevitable, and infinity continues moving. Some things simply are fated.

And now, so are you.

He searches your face for recognition. Do you even understand what he's just said?

But there is none. Of course not. No one here does, except him. He is the only one who knows what was fated. Naturally, then, he is the only one who understands what was not. And, with that, the only one who realizes the consequences of what this implies.

Still, the rest of the room stares on in silence, stunned at his nonchalant explanation.

Asmodeus is the first to pipe up. "You know, I notice how you sort of smiled as you said all that, but...um..."

"As far as abilities go, that's a pretty powerful one to have, don't you think?" Satan finishes.

"The Legend of Barbatos: Most Powerful of All Beings..." Levi chimes in, staring with awe.

Though Barbatos's smile remains steady on his face, something murmuring in his chest disagrees. He doesn't feel like the most powerful.

He feels off-balance. And now he knows why.

"Did you know all of this was going to happen?"

No. No, he did not.

An Ambiguous Fate

A great rumbling shakes the ground, the very earth moving erratically beneath them.

Barbatos leaps to attention, ready in an instant and immediately at Lord Diavolo's side. The prince nods at him, worry written all over his face in the form of a single, solemn acknowledgement. There is no time to lose.

It takes a short while to locate the epicenter of the quake, but once they do, they are at the mausoleum within moments, with the aid of a quick portal.

The damage is apparent immediately. Stone shards of fallen statues and broken coffins litter the ground, while gravestones and placards all across the cemetery floor have been flung askew from the force. And worst of all, the Demon Kings' Tomb rests deep at the bottom of a great crater, collapsed.

Barbatos inhales sharply, as the prince resolutely inspects the scene.

Between the two of them, easily two of the most powerful demons in the realm, they are of course capable of repairing the damage. But the greater issue here is the cause -- or more to the point, their lack of information thereof.

Earthquakes like this may simply occur in the human realm due to nature, but they're quite a bit different in the Devildom. They don't just happen, not to this scale. And they generally tend to be a bit more magical in nature.

But magic alone isn't enough to explain something this big. Magic is steeped into all the land of the Devildom, of course, but not to this extent. Even amongst demons, very few have this kind of raw power. And no such demon in existence would dare inflict such force upon the resting place of the realm's former kings.

"Let us record as much of the damage as we can, Barbatos," Lord Diavolo instructs seriously, and his butler nods, getting straight to work.

They comb across the space together, noting down every bit of destruction they encounter. It's soon apparent that most of it is aftereffects and collateral damage; the real impact was to the Demon Kings' Tomb, right at the center. And that too shows certain strange signs of what exactly had happened.

Though they initially treated it as a strangely powerful earthquake, it becomes quickly clear that's not the case at all. No, the ground did not simply shake, nor did it rend apart beneath the tomb -- it's as though the earth below had disappeared altogether. There are no signs of the ground shifting around the tomb at all, in fact, only the smattering of dirt laying atop its crumbled ceiling, loosed from the walls of the surrounding pit by the structure's fall. Nor were the walls toppled as one might have expected from shaking of the ground; instead, they appeared cracked from the bottoms upward, as though they had dropped straight down so that the impact had spiderwebbed up from their bases.

It's unlike anything Barbatos has ever seen -- in the past or future. And he has a suspicion as to why. A very unsettling suspicion.

His chest tightens, disquiet at the thought. He'd expected some changes to the future, yes; that was a given, after what he'd encountered in his room those few months ago. But something this powerful? This destructive?

"Well. That's rather troubling, wouldn't you agree, Barbatos?" Lord Diavolo murmurs, drawing his attention back to the situation at hand. "I suppose there's nothing more we can do for now but repair it, however. Shall we?"

"I suppose we shall," Barbatos nods at him, face set in a grimace.

Together, they combine their magic to restore the monument to its former condition, along with the rest of the graveyard -- the butler rewinding the state of things to a prior time, the prince lending his power to solidify that state back into the present.

They make sure to jot down any final observations before they leave, then return to the castle.

Lord Diavolo is about to leave when Barbatos stops him, "Young Master, before you return to your office, may I have a word?"

There's an uncharacteristic reticence in his voice, a hesitation the prince doesn't typically hear from his butler. He's always encouraged the other to voice his thoughts and opinions freely, regardless of their roles as master and servant. "Of course, Barbatos. What is it?"

"I believe I have an idea as to what was behind this. Though I can't quite yet explain why."

The crown prince's brows knit as the butler explains his theory, as well as the earlier abnormality. "And you're certain about that, Barbatos?"

"I am not. But I had never seen anything like it before. And what happened today was...unexpected. I can only assume that they may be connected."

"I see. Then, let me know if you determine anything more, please."

But without proof or explanation, there's nothing to do about it. For now, at least.

--

It's a bleak omen indeed when even the most powerful sorcerer ever to exist looks troubled by the problem he's been presented with.

"This is bad...really bad. It took something major to make the entire side of the cliff collapse like this," Solomon frowns, eyebrows knit as he appraises the damage. "I can't see the bottom from here..."

"This is the primeval forest," Barbatos explains. "As the name suggests, it's said that this forest has been here since the time of the Devildom's birth."

"It's hard to believe that such an enormous landslide could happen here in this forest. It truly is unheard of," Lord Diavolo agrees.

"First there was the incident at the Demon King's tomb a few days ago, and now this landslide...it would seem the effect is getting worse," Barbatos murmurs.

"Yes...which is worrisome."

Barbatos doesn't need to be told to worry.

Another unexpected blast of magic, another rippling burst of destruction in its wake. Another key Devildom location, suddenly in ruins. His chest feels tight more often than not lately, seeing your cheerful grin at play rehearsals juxtaposed with these grim, shocking scenes.

It's almost definitely because of you. And all the while, you have no idea. You're just going about your life, the same as ever.

"I hate to say it, but this isn't something I can handle on my own. Actually it's not just that I can't handle it. I doubt the Devildom itself can handle this on its own," Solomon says.

The Witty Sorcerer, living up to his name, had pieced it together almost as quickly as Barbatos himself had. But unlike the butler, his primary concern was not fate, or time, or what destined events had now been thrown asunder.

The immortal sorcerer was, almost touchingly, most concerned about you.

Well, that's not exactly correct. Of course, he's concerned first and foremost about humanity. But as a human, well, humanity includes you, and as the likely cause behind these recent events, he has been threateningly insistent that neither side make any moves to harm you.

Not that the Devildom's prince would, anyway; though his top priority is naturally on keeping the Devildom safe and stable, harming the human he'd brought for his exchange program would be very much against his ideals.

But still, this destruction is, as Solomon said, worrisome. They cannot simply ignore it.

The demon prince and former human king discuss, going back and forth about involving Simeon and the Celestial Realm. There seems little choice, begrudging and frustrated as Lord Diavolo may feel about it -- and for good reason, considering how their last interaction went.

"Young Master, what do you suggest we do about Lucifer and his brothers?" Barbatos inquires, piping up once the matter has been settled.

The prince grimaces. "That's the big question, yes...I'd like to avoid straining my relationship with Lucifer any more than I already have."

The other two nod seriously. Lucifer had been infamously loyal to him after the fall, and they'd become very close friends over the centuries as well, but the events of the previous year, between his fallout with Belphegor and the resulting months of lying right to Lord Diavolo's face, had been stressful for them both. And although the matter had since been resolved, they hadn't yet quite found their way back to that old amicability.

Lucifer had never kept secrets from him before. And now, Lord Diavolo was finding himself doing the same. He didn't like it.

"But even so..." He takes a long pause, eyes looking almost pleadingly towards Barbatos, as if begging him for answers. But the butler can only return his gaze, equally unsure of the right thing to do now. "...I think we should keep this from him just a little longer."

Solomon inhales sharply, then releases it in a deep breath, considering. "Are you sure that's the right thing to do?"

"No, it's a very bad thing to do...and I'm well aware of that," the prince sighs. "But...until we have proof that they are the original source of all this...I don't want him knowing about it."

Proof, yes -- something solid, something beyond the gnawing, restless noise of Barbatos's heart. Evidence to confirm his worst anxieties, beyond simply knowing that what he once knew to be true no longer is. He needs to calm down. It isn't the end of the world not to know what's coming next.

Is it?

Barbatos nods obediently, forcing his own reservations away. He will put his trust in Lord Diavolo. He wouldn't have chosen to serve him if his judgments weren't sound. He has faith in his prince -- he must.

"As you wish, Young Master."

Solomon looks wordlessly between them, letting his troubled silence hang in the air.

This is a mistake, and he knows it. And he knows Barbatos knows it too. But the butler avoids meeting his gaze.

Lord Diavolo, kind and judicious ruler as he is, is the one Barbatos has chosen to devote his life to, is the closest friend Barbatos has ever had. But it is the eyes of King Solomon the Wise who can see through him.

And he does not wish to be seen through. Not now, with all these anxieties weighing so heavily on him. The weight of all that he knows -- and all that he doesn't, for once.

--

"You said you would always be on his side. I'm asking whether you're really prepared to keep that promise."

"Of course," comes the answer, unquestioningly firm and so unperturbed that he doesn't even glance up from his work.

 "I wonder..."

Barbatos fixes a sharp stare upon the eldest of the demon brothers, who finally sets his pen down and narrows his eyes. "What is it you're getting at?"

Barbatos's expression remains unchanged as he thinks on how to formulate his words. If Lucifer could only convince him of his conviction of loyalty to the prince, perhaps these worries in his mind could be laid to rest. But whether the former angel realizes it himself or not, he has been changing. If Barbatos's suspicions are correct, Lord Diavolo will need the Lucifer's aid very soon. And unfortunately, he's no longer certain that such aid will be so easily given.

Unfortunately, he's no longer certain of a lot of things recently.

"If taking the Young Master's side meant hurting those closest to you, would you still do it?" the butler asks more pointedly. When Lucifer doesn't respond immediately, he continues, "If it really came down to that, I wonder if you could bring yourself to take his side...I imagine the old you really would be on his side always, just as you said. But is the new you capable of something like that? You're more gentle now than you used to be. You even exude a certain kindness...and love."

Lucifer only glares back suspiciously, anxious but unsure what exactly Barbatos is trying to say. Even after all these centuries working together, Diavolo's exceedingly loyal steward has never been an easy one to read.

"There was a time when you were known as 'the morning star,' and admired by all. People claimed that just a glimpse of your bright white wings and ruby red eyes could take one's breath away...now you've begun to slowly revert back to the way you were then. You've changed," Barbatos continues, a hint of something almost like an accusation in his voice. "And it started when the human first arrived."

He sees Lucifer's breath catch for a second at the mention of you, just a tiny pause, imperceptible to anyone else. The Devildom prince's right-hand man isn't known for giving away his weaknesses so easily. But then, Barbatos would not be the same prince's ever-present steward if he were not also sharp enough to notice.

He's seen how the former angel looks at you, and how he rushes home from their often late-running work more frequently these days, muttering excuses of needing to get back for dinner with his family. He's always loved his family, of course; Barbatos knows that. But this new affection, how he's been with you, it's...different. More unpredictable. More volatile.

His pulse quickens, voice steady despite his anxiety as he reaches his point. "But for the Young Master, and for the Devildom...is that really for the better?"

If Lucifer would only deny it. If he would only argue that any changes in this past year have been minor, that he's as loyal to Lord Diavolo as ever. For Barbatos, ever smiling, ever calm, full of steady reassurances that they are on the right path -- well, the demon with control over time itself could really use some reassurance himself right now. He would really like for Lucifer to tell him that he's wrong. For him to say that Barbatos is overreacting, or has misread things, or that everything is fine.

But he doesn't. He doesn't even try to. Instead, he's quiet, struggling with what the butler has just suggested. "Are you saying that there will come a day when I have to choose between them and my brothers on one side, and Diavolo on the other?"

"I wouldn't go so far as to say that's definitely going to happen, but..." Barbatos trails off, his chest feeling tight. It's not quite fear, or so he tells himself.

But if the strength of your sway has been powerful enough to throw the future into this degree of disarray...if your presence, your influence, has been so strong even to pull Lucifer from fate...

Barbatos forces the rising dread away, out of his voice, out of his mind. "The possibility exists that you really will be forced to make a choice like that someday. I thought perhaps it was in your best interest to be prepared for such an event...that's all I'm trying to say."

Now that he's said this much, however, Lucifer begins to rise from his chair with alarm. "So, does that mean that--"

"I'm afraid I've said a bit more than I should," Barbatos interrupts, before the other demon can finish the question. "I apologize for disturbing you...I know you're busy. Have a pleasant evening, Lucifer."

With that, he hurries out of the room without a single glance back to the former morning star, who is left to settle uneasily back into his seat.

Future, Anew

"They will need to sever the pacts. It's that, or the Ring of Light may be able to contain it...but it's been lost to history, as you know, so it's not really an option," Solomon explains. "It's going to be tough on the brothers, and...I'm sure they'll be upset as well. But it's the only way."

The sorcerer's expression is solemn, but there's a relief in his face. He has never liked showing weakness around his demonic companions, but for the past few weeks, his stress has been clear to everyone. Now it's finally been lifted.

There is a way. A way to fix things. A way that won't involve you getting hurt.

In an odd sense, Barbatos is relieved too. Severing the pacts -- as Solomon said, it's going to be hard on you and the brothers. But it's a way to end this. A way to stop the power you have, a way to undo all of the damage.

If that's the case, perhaps this has all been something like a bad dream. All of these recent events, twisting time into new shapes and leaving the future unknown to him -- perhaps they would simply stop. The power you have over it could simply be released. You would leave the Devildom, your connections broken, and he'll never have to worry about you again.

Then, fate could be set right again. Fate could be fate again. Familiar, comforting, consistent.

That's what he wants...he thinks.

He thinks so.

And yet...

There's something about the way you smiled so cheerfully after your exams. How brightly your face lifted after the stress, the relief and delight reaching to the very corners of your eyes as you heard the results. Something so honest and innocent -- while he can hardly remember ever being either of those things. It sticks to him, burbling its way to the front of his mind just once in a while, a couple times a day.

He'll never see that on you again after this. He'll never see you again after this.

But it's for the best. Everything can be set right again. Fate can resume its course at last.

Yes, that's what matters -- fate. The security of it, the preservation of it. Everything else...doesn't matter. It's all inconsequential, in the end. You weren't meant to matter, and after this, you wouldn't again. And that is fine. It is how it is meant to be.

Barbatos tells himself this, as a deep sorrow presses heavily upon his chest.

--

He feels it before he hears about it -- balances shifting, the future in flux.

You'd had the dagger in hand. Things had almost turned out tragically. But Barbatos can tell the instant it all comes crashing to a stop.

It's a good thing, the ideal outcome -- Lucifer alive, his memories restored, you unharmed, your pacts intact, and your power under control so that the realms are now safe. And in some way, without even looking, Barbatos can feel that things have settled. A change in fate -- but it is stable again.

So why does his heart still speed up every time he looks at you?

The question plagues him as he moves about the party, irresistibly drawn towards watching you drift from demon to demon, all of them clamoring for your attention. Even Lord Diavolo seems thoroughly enamored with you recently.

Is that what he is, too? Enamored? Is that why?

You catch him watching you once, mid-spin as you're dancing with Leviathan -- deep orbs of chartreuse that seem to drink in the light around them without reflecting any back. For that split second, you feel like there's something almost hypnotic about them, like you could slip right into that darkness and never find your way out. You're not even sure you'd want to.

For that one tiny moment, he can feel it in his chest -- he wouldn't want you to either.

But then, before you know it, the third brother whirls you back around, and you're laughing, and dancing, and having a good time in the present again. Not only the brothers in fact, but even Solomon and the angels too, are passing you back and forth amongst themselves, asking for dance after dance, and it's as though the bright candle lights all over the room wash the darkness right out as you twirl in their warm glow.

As he resumes his hosting duties, Barbatos considers trying to step in too, perhaps get a longer moment together. Might it be worth trying? Would he even know what to say, if he got his chance?

He's not sure. You've been only a crisis, an unpredictable catastrophe, until now. Amidst all the swirling of time around you, your mysterious power to pull everyone's fates into your own, you nearly brought about a collapse of all three worlds -- in every timeline.

So he's never really had a chance to just...talk to you.

Maybe it's time he did.

The next time your eyes meet, he finds himself making his way over before he has a chance to decide. His heart is ringing in his head as he taps you on the shoulder and extends a hand.

"Excuse me...might I have this next dance?"

A Dream of You

Your first date with Barbatos is sweet, if simple -- and if you even call it a date. He does, at least.

He dithers about asking you for longer than he'd like to admit. His duties keep him busy, and after all, you have enough suitors around you without him stepping in. Knowing that, it may actually be more considerate to you not to ask, he thinks.

He owes it to Lord Diavolo that it happens at all.

The prince, for his part, is more observant than most give him credit for. He has had Barbatos at his side for most of his life now -- and though it's still only a relatively short life so far, by demonic standards, it's certainly been more than long enough to notice how his butler changes just a little bit whenever you're around.

He rather likes that shift in Barbatos. His steward is too serious, and he works too hard. It's a perfect excuse to push him into a little break.

So, he invites you to the castle to join him for tea, to chat about how things are going with your exchange program experience. It's been almost two full years already -- have you gotten to travel much? He's delighted to see how hard you've been working on your studies at RAD, but the Devildom is so much more vast than just this city, you know. He'd love for you to see more of the realm, if you ever get the chance. There's this one wonderful little town in particular, a ways out of the city. There are such beautiful roses that bloom there at just this exact time of year, dotting the whole place with red and pink, and blanketing the whole town with the gentlest sweet aroma. And they make the most wonderful tea out of those flowers! One of his favorites, in fact. Why, speaking of it, would Barbatos mind putting on a pot of it now? -- knowing, of course, that they had run out just days ago for a recent garden party for the nobles.

"I'm terribly sorry, My Lord. I'll need to purchase fresh supplies soon. I know of one shop where it can be purchased, but it's a little far..." Barbatos notes the mischievous triumph in his master's face when your own lights up with envy at the mention. Of course he knew the butler wouldn't be able to ignore it when you're looking at him so imploringly. "If you're interested, would you like to accompany me?"

"Yes, please!" you answer immediately, eyes glittering almost as much as your soul.

"That sounds lovely," the prince agrees, and that settles it.

You meet Barbatos at the train station three days later, early if not so bright in this ever dark realm, and he leads you to your seats with a chuckle. Despite having been in the Devildom so long already, you're pretty clearly excited about the trip, looking this way and that as you board.

"Ah, I imagine you haven't had many opportunities to ride the Devildom railway before? It will take a few hours to reach our destination, so let's enjoy the scenery in the meantime," he says.

You nod eagerly and settle into a quiet peace together, looking outwards. Actually, it's almost a wonder your human eyes can see much through the dark sky beyond the windows at all, though the blazing lights shining off the train certainly help. Barbatos glances at you every once in a while as you ride, smiling softly to himself each time you gasp at a new sight passing by. But he can't blame you -- Lord Diavolo was correct, it's beautiful the whole way there.

The view of the city gives way soon enough to fields of tall red grass, crimson as blood, yet glistening gently with dew. Once in a while, trees dot the horizon, tight clusters of red and orange against the deep darkness of the sky, broken up from time to time by stops at progressively smaller towns. Then, after several hours, the scarlet plains surrender instead to wide swaths of flower fields, full of blushing red and pink dots as far as the eye can see. Another short while after that, a tiny hamlet comes into view, just as speckled in roses.

You practically bolt off the train when it arrives at your stop, before realizing that you don't actually know where you're going. Still, the scent of hellfire roses reaches you from the moment you step out, and you follow your nose out to find some of the flowers themselves. Barbatos chuckles quietly again, catching up with you soon enough. He'd normally be more bothered about someone rushing off and not thinking things through -- but from you, somehow, he finds it sort of charming.

For someone who has caused so much turmoil to the universe, it's...sweet, in a way. Unaware of your own pull, blissfully oblivious to the extent of your own power. Solomon may have told you that your powers are on par with his own now, but watching you, Barbatos gets the feeling that nothing has changed at all. Maybe it almost hasn't. Or at least, he'd have liked to believe that, if he didn't absolutely know otherwise.

"Shall we?" he says, holding out a gracious hand, and his pulse speeds up so fast when you take it that it's almost dizzying -- though he doesn't show it, of course.

He leads you through the streets and into a small but impressive shop, packed with interesting things inside -- not the least of which is a whole wall of rare teas at the far end of the place, all loose-leaf in massive canisters with a slender clear window to offer a peek of their contents. In front of it, employees carefully weigh and hand-pack each order for the handful of other customers inside.

On the opposite side of the store, colorful boxes line the shelves, each brightly announcing various local specialties in perfect souvenir packaging. Pink and red ribbons decorate each one, with a few even folded into delicate rosettes.

Meanwhile, glass cases fill the center with rows and rows of sweets in all shapes and sizes, each with a shiny placard detailing the name of the chef who created them, their ingredient sources, and their recommended tea pairings.

It's no wonder Barbatos likes this place, far from the city though it may be.

Amused at your wide-eyed excitement at everything, he leaves you to wander the store as he heads straight for the tea wall. It ends up taking two employees and the owner to gather and weigh everything he requests, and when you join back up with him, he makes sure to order a bit extra of that Hellfire Rose blend so you can have some too.

"Won't that be a little pricey?" you ask curiously, nervously catching a glance at the posted price.

"The value far outweighs the price," he simply smiles back. "You can share it with the other members of the House of Lamentation. I'm sure Lucifer and Satan would appreciate this wonderful blend with you."

Just as he's about to finish up with his order, another blend catches his eye, one he's never seen here before -- Vortex Paradox.

"Ah, is this a new blend?" he inquires, pointing it out.

The owner perks up upon seeing the blend in question. "Yes! You truly do have a fine eye, sir. Oh, it's a lovely blend. We fused different white and green teas, you see, which turned out with quite the surprisingly deep flavor, like a black tea, and yet it's also still light and sweet. It can be confusing for tea connoisseurs, but it kept drawing me back in -- just like tea leaves swirling to the center of a cup. Hence the name, you see."

Barbatos glances surreptitiously at you -- just as disorienting, yet you too seem to always draw him back in. He keeps catching himself thinking about you lately, even now that all the crises have been resolved. "Perhaps I'll buy this for my own enjoyment," he muses with a wry smile, heart skipping a beat as he takes the bag.

Thanking the staff, he pays for the collection of teas, and surprises you by paying for the things you picked up as well: two boxes of souvenir snacks for Beel, beautiful rosette cakes for Asmo, a baggie of cat-shaped cookies for Satan, and a box of rose-flavored chocolates for yourself. Then, you go to dinner together afterwards, and after that, it's back towards home -- with one quick stop for a photo, at the demon's request.

"I don't have many opportunities to spend time with you. After all, you're usually surrounded by those lively brothers. In other words, today has been a rather special day for me," he explains. "It's a pity that such an enjoyable time must come to an end, but we have people waiting for us back home..."

He's a bit surprised himself, to find that for the first time, he's not quite wanting to return to the castle and its prince just yet, despite what he'd just said. Just like that day at the party, there's an odd impulse in him to wrap you up in his arms and not let go.

But you do indeed have people waiting for you, and he as well.

So he doesn't. He settles for a photo, then leads you back to the train station, watching over you as you fall asleep on the way back, exhausted from the excitement of the day. With the various souvenir gifts you'd gotten the brothers, your pile of purchases is almost as tall as his own stack of supplies for the castle, he notes to his amusement, and he carries both collections off the train when it pulls back into the city, regardless of any protests from you.

"Thank you for today," you smile brightly at him when he hands your things back at last, before you split off from each other to head home. "Even if uh, heh, I guess I was only accompanying you for an errand, huh? But I really enjoyed myself, so thanks for letting me come along!"

"Not at all. The pleasure was mine for your company."

As you wave goodbye and turn to leave, there's that strange tightness in his chest again.

--

"Asmo, wait--"

You reach for his arm to try to stop the Avatar of Lust from running off, but he's zipped away in search of moisturizer already, leaving you with Barbatos, who is presently dressed as a teal bat.

Honestly, he can't understand Asmodeus at times like this -- it will take longer for him to go and come back than it would to simply check for the others and return inside.

But then, he's also not complaining about a little alone time with you...

Though you had taken that trip together to buy tea, a few months have already passed, and between magic training under Solomon and now these sorcerer trials, you've been so busy that the butler hasn't really had much chance to even see you. And even when he has, it's not as though he could easily ask you on another date when the brothers are so often hanging around.

Sighing after Asmodeus's turned back, you direct your attention back to the remaining demon and give him a slightly awkward smile, trying to make conversation. "So...nice weather, huh?"

Ah. Of course. He supposes you haven't actually really talked with each other much still, despite his growing infatuation with you. And although he's had his eye on you for a while now -- how could he not have, after all that's happened? -- as a butler often stepping away into the background, it's to be expected that he might not have caught yours in return. Without the excitement of new sights all around to keep your attention, perhaps it's natural you wouldn't know what to say to him.

He gives you a small, reassuring smile. "Do you find it awkward being alone with me? You shouldn't feel obligated to come up with something to talk about. Nor is there any need to feel uneasy around me." After all, he's happy just to be beside you here.

You don't look convinced, though, or perhaps you just aren't able to enjoy the silence with him. In any case, you peer at him, looking like you'd still like to say something.

Or, if he dares hope -- maybe you'd also like to get to know him better?

"What do you think of Lucifer and his brothers?" you blurt out finally.

Not a question he'd been expecting. Still, he obliges without missing a beat. "As long as you're just watching them, they're an enjoyable group, and never boring. But they can sometimes cause trouble, and can be a nuisance. I suppose that's a fair way of putting it. To be completely honest, I wish they would refrain from involving the Young Master every time they get into some sort of trouble."

You give him an understanding nod in the silence that ensues, though you look like you aren't exactly sure how to respond. You're much closer with the brothers than he is -- probably why you'd asked the question. So, maybe you just aren't comfortable expressing that affection for them around him?

Trying to lighten your mood a little, he adds, "For his part, the Young Master seems to like being involved, which is the source of many headaches for me."

That earns him a small smile from you, just short of a laugh, and to his relief, you seem to relax a little bit. "Then...what do you think of Diavolo?"

"He is my master, and I devote myself fully to his service, as is my duty. The Young Master is the very reason for my existence now. Does that answer your question?"

You can't help but giggle this time, thrown off by his unexpectedly serious answer. "Yeah, I guess it does."

Both of you fall silent again after that. It's clear on your face that you have another question on your mind, as your gaze focuses intensely on him, and his pulse quickens at what it might be. But despite your earlier attempts at conversation, for some reason, you don't ask this one. You look almost too nervous to ask.

He's curious what's on your mind. But Asmodeus will be returning any moment now, and if you aren't comfortable saying it, then he supposes he ought to leave it alone. Carefully, he suggests, "Perhaps I could ask you some questions this time?"

"Oh! Of course," you agree immediately, the apprehension dropping from your face in an instant. How strange, to relax more when handing the reins to a demon. "What do you want to know?"

How you, a random human with no magical powers of their own, pulled fate to you.

How you pull everyone around you into your orbit, like gravity pulling planets to the sun.

How you seem to pull him to you, too.

How you're so oblivious to that pull you have over him.

But, of course, he doesn't ask any of those things.

Instead, he opts for simpler questions, more along the lines of what you'd asked him -- how do you feel about the brothers, about the angels? You answer simply, and he nods along as you speak. You're fond of them; you're fond of everyone. Of course you are. He did ask, but it wasn't as though he didn't know that already.

Unsure what else to say from there, he begins to turn his gaze back towards the manor to check for Asmodeus's return, when you blurt out, "You're not going to ask me how I feel about you?"

That catches him off-guard.

"Well, outside of the Young Master, I've never been interested in others' opinions of me, you see," he responds, then pauses. That might have been true before, and it might have been the truth for millenia. But as you stand directly before him, looking him in the eyes, can he honestly say that he doesn't care what you think of him? "But as long as we're on the subject, would you mind if I inquire? What do you think of me?"

You don't hesitate. "I like you."

His heart skips another beat.

"...My goodness. I must say, I'm honored."

Your eyes are locked on each other as you both let that blunt confession hang in the air for another moment, before he opens his mouth to speak.

"Guys, heeeeeelp!" comes the cry from Asmodeus instead.

--

"Hey Barbatos, I just passed this really interesting antique store while I was in town, full of skulls, and taxidermy, and all kinds of stuff. And, I was wondering...would you maybe like to check it out with me tomorrow? As a date?"

It is, perhaps, a bit ironic to suggest visiting an antiques and oddities shop to a demon almost as old as the universe itself -- and even more so, one in the human realm, where the wares are generally only a couple centuries at most, or assorted "demonic" paraphernalia with no actual connections to the Devildom at all. But when he receives the call from you, he doesn't question it at all.

Three weeks have passed already since you told him, point-blank, that you like him, yet neither of you has had a chance to speak about it again since. So if you're inviting him on a date now?

Well, he's certainly not going to say no.

He waits for you at a nearby cafe the next day -- his choice of meeting spot -- and he's there with two paper to-go cups of freshly brewed tea when you arrive.

"The owner here is a recent friend of mine," he explains, holding one of the cups out to you, "and we thought it'd be interesting to exchange blends sometime. As it happens, I realized it was quite close to the shop you mentioned, so I thought I'd come by today. Now, you've arrived just in time for this one to have cooled to the perfect temperature, so please enjoy it."

"Wow, thank you!" you exclaim, taking a sip. He's right -- it's just cool enough not to scald your tongue, with the perfect amount of lingering heat to lift the fragrant notes of persimmon and pomegranate to your nostrils. The warm sweetness lingers on your palate, echoing the gentle warmth of his fingers as he takes your hand to walk.

As the two of you approach the antiques store, he can see right away why you thought to invite him in particular. The entire shopfront, from the trim of the windows and door to the severe brick exterior, is pure black, standing at a stark contrast from the rest of the street. A soft, eerie teal light glows entrancingly from a crystal ball in the window, resting upon a backdrop of carefully draped black velvet, beckoning passersby to come stare into its depths.

Above the door, the deep toll of a bell rings out in welcome as you walk in, accompanied by the distant echoing of children laughing further inside. He chuckles; it's clearly meant to be creepy, but as a demon, he finds it so terribly curious what humans consider to be unsettling. He might have expected the joy of the young to be more enjoyable to human ears.

The interior of the shop, it turns out, is fairly massive, consisting of several additional rooms with more varied theming beyond the all-black furniture and all-black walls at the entrance. One room mimics the feeling of an old laboratory littered with skeletons and various scientific implements, while another has dried flowers and taxidermy butterflies scattered all around a garden-like space. Another still is laden with colorful crystals and rocks gleaming alongside elaborate displays of antique jewelry.

He looks around with mild curiosity as you browse. Most of the occult merchandise is kitschy if not outright fake, but he keeps an eye out nevertheless for things he thinks you might like. As you wander the rooms, you call his attention over to a few things as well -- old timepieces, vintage cooking utensils, the occasional demonic-looking cryptid skull which he invariably assures you is certainly not from any actual creature of the Devildom.

"Ah, but this one here..." A small block of amber catches his eye, containing what appears to be a preserved moth with an extra pair of wings. "I believe this little one may actually be a moirae moth. How interesting to see one that's made its way to the human world...old Devildom mythology suggests that these creatures once produced the threads of silk that three fairy sisters weaved into the kismet tapestry. Moirae moths can be identified by their six wings, as you can see here -- one for each hand of fate."

Barbatos passes the fossil over to you, and you tilt your head at it slightly as if puzzling over something, then look back up at him. "Shouldn't you of all demons know if that myth is true or not?"

"Oh? What do you mean?"

"Well...you can see the past, present, and future, right, Barbatos? And you said there are infinite timelines...so wouldn't that mean there's no such thing as fate?"

He blinks in surprise.

"Yes, there are indeed infinite timelines. But...perhaps it may be more apt to compare fate to a braid, rather than a tapestry. There are places, certain events, where the timelines converge and meet before splitting off again. For example, I knew even before I met him that I would make a pact with Solomon, as it is true in every timeline. Though, to a human such as yourself, those events would normally be so far apart that they may never touch your life at all."

"Oh. Hmm...like what? What was the last one?"

Another blink, and he can't help but chuckle a bit in response this time. You really never cease to surprise him. With how much that very fate had changed since you'd first arrived in the Devildom, the question is a startling reminder that you don't in fact have any idea how much impact you've really had on time and the universe.

"You."

"Me?" You're the surprised one this time, mouth agape with disbelief. "How -- I -- wasn't I just some human you guys dragged into the exchange program?"

"You were," he agrees. "And then you weren't."

You look even more confused now, for good reason. "Because you picked the 'true' timeline?"

"No, it was not my doing. I merely combined the timelines where you existed in the Devildom. However, something shifted such that you started appearing even in timelines that were originally not your own, and thus, you created a new event of fate. Though, even I do not know exactly how," he admits.

You place the fossil back onto the table, looking deep in thought, and Barbatos immediately regrets telling you all that.

"Ah, I'm afraid I must apologize. This was supposed to be a pleasant, casual day out together, and I've given you such a heavy topic to dwell on. Shall we look in that room next?" he asks, trying to direct your attention back to lighter matters.

From there, you resume your browsing together, looking at the various oddities and each picking up a couple small trinkets, but he can tell you're distinctly distracted now.

Just as the two of you are about to leave, suddenly you stop and turn around. "Wait here, actually. There's one more thing I want to run back and get."

You dash back inside before he can respond, leaving him flustered at the entrance, and return back after a moment, your spirits looking higher again.

"Were you able to find what you went back for?" he inquires, looking at you curiously, but you're already stuffing whatever it was into your pocket, out of sight.

"Yep! Sorry about that!" you answer brightly, seemingly happy to keep it a secret. Instead, you grab his hand and almost drag him along with you, heading back down the way you'd first come. "You said you're friends with the owner of that cafe earlier, right? Come on, I'm feeling kind of hungry, so let's get a snack or something."

Surrendering, he decides not to pry any further, settling for sipping on another cup of tea and sharing a slice of chocolate pear cake at your behest. Once in a while, he notices you fidgeting with it again in your jacket pocket. Still, it remains just out of his view.

Perhaps it's a gift for one of the others, something that you thought that one of the brothers might like. There were several items inside that seemed right up Satan's alley. In any case, he supposes that as long as you're no longer looking weighed down by the earlier conversation, it's for the better -- even if there's an unmistakable twinge of jealousy in his chest at the thought.

So, it's to Barbatos's surprise when, as you say your goodbyes for the day afterwards, you pull the object back out of your pocket and slip it into his hand. The moirae moth from earlier stares emptily up at him from inside of its amber encasing, its translucent wings gleaming in the sunshine now that you're out of the shop's dim lighting.

"Actually," you smile sheepishly, "I went back to get this for you. I, um, was thinking about what you said. About me creating a new fate. I thought you should have something that creates fates too. Well, I guess you're almost like the most powerful demon ever though, so you don't really need some moth to--"

In that moment, you're sparkling again, and he's tempted for so much more than just your soul.

He pulls you into a kiss. No pause to question it, no holding back out of politeness -- though he is relieved when you kiss him back.

You taste like chocolate cake and persimmon tea, and you send his heart racing.

And this time, that's a good thing.

(A/N: This is the "happy ending" point. If you want this story to end sweetly and happily, just leave here!! This is a perfectly good place to stop! Because the next chapter is the final chapter and it is not a happy, neat, fluffy, sweet kind of ending. You've been warned!)

Certainty

Barbatos had thought that things were fine now. That, full of surprises as you were, things were stable now. You hadn't been fated, and then you were -- and then you were, together.

And that was the end of it, he thought.

It wasn't. And now, here he stands, opening a portal for his pact-mate to follow you to who-knows-when in time.

There's a dread pounding in his chest, an odd powerlessness he's rarely ever felt.

Solomon nods at him before stepping through, and then he's gone.

Barbatos can't follow.

Control over time, all this immense power -- hadn't Leviathan called him the Most Powerful of All Beings? Hadn't you, too? And yet, he can't follow. It's too close to another, past version of him. He is powerful. That's exactly what makes it too dangerous for two of him to exist in the same time and space.

So he can't follow. But that doesn't make him want to any less.

He sits down, feeling as though the air has been squeezed out of his chest, drowning in anxieties of possibilities and impossibilities.

Someone who has the power to change fate, suddenly flung far into the past -- and here he is, left behind, unable to do anything about it.

This is what you've always been -- unpredictable, uncontainable.

He shakes his head, trying to clear the helpless thoughts from his mind. If there is one thing he knows now, one unshakeable, undeniable fact, it's that you are even more powerful than fate.

Your connection transcends time.

You will find your way back to each other.

#wow we actually got this done in time for the actual bday #the art makes more sense once you finish reading it lol #we call this 'collaboration' -- it started from the same prompt! #obey me barbatos #om! barbatos #om! barbatos x reader #obey me barbatos x mc #obey me barbatos x reader #obey me #obey me! #obey me swd #obey me shall we date #omswd #obey me nightbringer #omnb #obey me fic #obey me fanart #happy birthday barbatos #writings #mod cosmos doodles #mod chaos in the devildom

[likeadevils]

1989 Timeline

This is a very long post that puts all the songs on 1989 in order of Taylor creating them. I’ve also included a few other songs she worked on while writing 1989 and quotes from Taylor and her collaborators talking about her process

Of all the albums in Taylor's discography, I think this is the one that improves the most when you listen to it in order. All of those things Taylor was talking about in the promo for this album-- how this is an album of her coming into her own, figuring out her values, learning to stand on her own two feet-- it all clicks into place. Listening to it in order has made me cry on more than one occasion, and it's also the thing that made me start this whole crazy process of figuring out the dates she wrote each song.

If you don't want to read the whole post, check out this playlist of the album in order or this playlist of her entire discography.

I’ve also added this color coded scale of how sure I am of the date: 

Confirmed: There is some type of official source for the date

Inferring: Nobody has officially said “This is when we wrote it,” but all available evidence points to that date

Speculation: This date is based on guesswork and is highly likely to change, or, all that is known is the general season.

Unknown: All that is known is the year (from the US Copyright Offices)

Without further ado...

Oct 6, 2012: Taylor seems to have been in a studio in London (Note: I have no idea where this photo comes from and I can not find a place that specifies if this is a music studio or radio interview.)

This Love: Oct 17, 2012 (Confirmed)

October 19, 2012: Taylor mentions wanting to work with Imogen Heap, prompting Imogen to get in touch with Taylor

Time Interview: Who’d be your dream collaboration, especially now that you’re taking more musical risks? Let me think. Imogen Heap! She’s amazing. Taylor: Someone asked me in an interview "Who would you like to work with?" and I said Imogen Heap. I get an email to my management, sent like "Imogen just saw that Taylor just said an interview that she would like to work together" She said "Why don't you come out to my studio." Imogen: I got a phone call [in 2014] saying Taylor Swift was in London, she'd love to work with me and the only date she could do (between 4 sold out 02 arenas!) was the day after we got back, Sunday. It was both unexpected and not at the same time as I'd heard Taylor was a fan a while back via this Time magazine piece but somehow didn't think it would actually happen.

Fall 2012: Taylor possibly writes a song with Harry Styles and Jacknife Lee (her producer for The Last Time)

“It was out of my field of expertise and interest, but I was intrigued and my girls were thrilled. Taylor was nice and very professional. She knew what she wanted and there was no fucking about. She was seeing Harry Styles at the time, so he came to Topanga on her recommendation. She wrote a few songs with him, and it was the same thing – quick. But this time it was more directed by the management and label. They were after something specific. I wanted more acoustic and gentle, almost Americana, and they wanted bombast. They got what they wanted, and that was the extent of my foray into teen-pop territory. It was fun.”

All You Had to Do Was Stay: Jan 10, 2013 (Confirmed)

Taylor is photographed outside Conway, and then tweets "Back in the studio. Uh oh..." Later, Taylor confirmed that she was recording All You Had To Do Was Stay. Taylor: I had a dream that my ex showed up at my door, knocked at my door, and I opened it up, and I was about ready to launch into the perfect thing to say [...], Instead, all that would come out of my mouth was that high-pitched chorus of people singing, 'Stay!'...and then you go to say something else, and it's just like 'Stay! Stay! Stay!' And I woke up, I was like 'Oh, that was mortifying. But that's kind of a cool vocal part.'

January 11, 2013: Taylor is photographed outside Conway again

How You Get The Girl: Jan 15, 2013 (Confirmed)

Taylor posts a picture of her playing a guitar in the studio, captioned "Somewhere in LA..". Later, Taylor confirmed that she was recording How You Get The Girl. Given what was going on in her personal life, she likely wrote this sometime in the fall/winter of 2012, but all we know for sure is the date she recorded it.

February 9, 2013: Tweets "Grammy rehearsals last night, studio today, who knows what tonight holds! (I do. Laying around watching TV and eating candy.)"

March 6, 2013: Taylor is photographed outside a studio in LA

March 23, 2013: Posts a picture of her playing guitar captioned "Pre show. Columbia, South Carolina"

I Wish You Would: May 28, 2013 (Inferring)

Taylor is photographed out for lunch in Rhode Island with Lena Dunham (and likely Jack Antonoff, who was Lena's boyfriend but not as famous at the time) on May 27 before leaving for her show in Phoenix, Arizona the next day Jack:  "We were hanging out at her house in Rhode Island and we were talking about John Hughes movies, and a lot of the music that inspired [them], and just this general culture of sound in that time period that was really larger-than-life in an anthemic, positive way. These songs could be at the end of films that were really, really beautiful and said a lot. That actually ended up being a song called 'I Wish You Would' which is going to be on her album. We first worked on that song together and realised we kind of have a good thing. Taylor: “This is a song I did with Jack Antonoff, and Jack is one of my friends and so we were hanging out and he pulled out his phone and goes "I made this amazing track the other day. It's so cool, I love these guitar sounds." And he played it for me and immediately I could hear this finished song in my head, and I just said "Please, please let me have that. Let me play with it, like send it to me" And so he sent it to me and I was on tour and this was me playing the track on my laptop recording me singing the vocal into my phone and it ended up being a song called "I Wish You Would", because Jack wrote back and said "I love that".”

June 7, 2013: At the CMA fest, Taylor is asked if she's started writing for her next album yet

“It's starting, all the anxiety is starting and when the anxiety starts, then the writing happens right afterward, usually. Um, so, yeah, I basically... I like to, I like to write for about two years before I'm finished with an album because I... at this point I kind of know that whenever I write in the first year is going to get thrown away, because, I'm going to like it, but it's going to sound a little bit like the last project I had, and the second year usually ends up sounding like the next project. So I think at this point, at this point I feel like staying the same is the easy way to go but it's not the way that I want to go, creatively. I think you need to challenge yourself, I think you need to change up your influences, I think you need to be inspired by different things that you've been inspired by before, and, uh, y'know, It's harder to call people you don't know, and it's harder to think of topics you haven't covered and think of new ways to say old emotions that everyone feels, but, that's the goal at this point."

June 20-21, 2013: Taylor and Selena Gomez hang out, and Taylor potentially writes Wildest Dreams.

July 15, 2013: Taylor gives a brief interview to Rolling Stone

“The floodgates just opened the last couple weeks,” she says of the songwriting process. “I’m getting to that point where I’m irritating to be around because I’ll be with you for half the conversation and then the second half of the conversation I’m clearly editing the second verse of whatever I’m writing in my head.” “I really loved collaborating [on Red],” she says. “You work with a lot of different people and you find the people you have this dream connection with in the studio. I know those people and I know the ones I want to go back to. But I also have a really long list of the people I admire and I would really love to go and contact. So that’s kind of where that is.” “I think that the idea of having a different approach to every single one of my albums is so exciting to me. I never want to make the same record twice. Why do it? What’s the point? It’s so overwhelming that when you’re starting a project there are such endless possibilities if you’re willing to evolve and experiment. If you’re willing to become a different version of yourself, you can really go anywhere with it. And that’s kind of where I am. The kind of the laboratory experimental stage of really catching onto a new thing that I’m liking.”

July 18, 2013: Taylor unfollows the three backup dancers that left her tour for Katy's, meaning Bad Blood was likely written sometime between July and November 2013.

Sweeter Than Fiction: Summer 2013 (Speculation)

Taylor wrote this one over email, and then it was recorded in New York (partially in Jack's living room, partially in an actual studio)

August 25, 2013: Taylor and Selena Gomez hang out at the VMAs, and Taylor potentially writes Wildest Dreams.

August 25, 2013: Taylor gives a brief interview on the VMAs red carpet

"But I think [songwriting is] about to start to kick into full gear. I'm about to go into the studio. It's about to get really intense."

Out Of The Woods: September 14 2013 (Inferring)

On September 14, Fun cancelled their show. Taylor was likely either flying to or from Charlottesville, where she had a show for the Red Tour. Jack: "When I did the track for Out of the Woods, which is a Taylor song that I'm really proud of, there was some issue at a venue and our show was canceled that night and I didn't have my stuff, I had left it on the bus, so I only had these old samples on what was on my laptop, and caught up that 'oh oh'' thing, and I only had one drum kit on there, and these dumb little things [sometimes turn into a great song]" Jack: "So 'Out Of The Woods' was the third thing we worked on together, and probably the easiest. I sent her the track for it, and she sent back a voice note with the verse and chorus in what felt like five seconds. And it was just perfect. It's eerie how similar it is to what the final product is." Taylor: "This is a track that Jack Antonoff sent me, and I was actually on a plane, I got it and I got on a plane and I'm listening to it, and I'm just like listening to it and mumbling melodies cause the song came to me immediately like, in full [...] I think what I should start by playing you, is when I got the track, what I sent him like an hour later, and it is, me.. um, me singing what came to me, which ended up being the finished version of the song, or at least really close to it."

September 20, 2013: In a brief interview with USA Today, Taylor says she plans to work on her next album between the next few legs of the Red Tour

"I’ll be in the studio, figuring out what comes next. I really like to take two years to make a record, and I’ve been writing and doing stuff for the last year. This is kind of the year that it goes into overdrive, and it’s all I think about and I become obsessive over it and I’m hard to talk to"

September 22, 2013: Taylor gives an interview to New York Magazine where she talks about her plans for TS5

These days, Swift is thinking a lot about her next record. While on the Red tour, she’d been writing songs and stockpiling ideas: reams of lyrics, thousands of voice memos in her iPhone [...] she plans to spend much of 2014 writing and recording the new album, a prospect she finds exhilarating and terrifying. “I worry about everything. Some days I wake up in a mind-set of, like, ‘Okay, it’s been a good run.’ By afternoon, I could have a change of mood and feel like anything is possible and I can’t wait to make this kind of music I’ve never made before. And then by evening, I could be terrified of the whole thing again. And then at night, I’ll write a song before bed.” Swift hopes to collaborate with new songwriters and producers. But she planned to begin, she said, by heading back into the studio with Max Martin and Shellback. “I want to go in with Max and Johan first, just to figure out what the bone structure of this record is going to be. “I have a lot of things to draw from emotionally at the moment. But I have to draw from them with a different perspective than on Red. I can’t say the same things over and over, you know? I mean, I think it’s just all the more important that I don’t ever allow myself to coast. At the same time, there’s a mistake that I see artists make when they’re on their fourth or fifth record, and they think innovation is more important than solid songwriting. The most terrible letdown as a listener for me is when I’m listening to a song and I see what they were trying to do. Like, where there’s a dance break that doesn’t make any sense, there’s a rap that shouldn’t be there, there’s like a beat change that’s, like, the coolest, hippest thing this six months—but it has nothing to do with the feeling, it has nothing to do with the emotion, it has nothing to do with the lyric. I never want to put things in songs just because that might make them popular, like, on the more rhythmic stations or in dance clubs. I really don’t want a compilation of sounds. I just need them to be songs.”

September 28-October 5, 2013: Taylor and Selena Gomez are in the same city, and Taylor potentially writes Wildest Dreams.

October 12, 2013: Taylor gives an interview to the Associated Press

Swift: I think the goal for the next album is to continue to change, and never change in the same way twice [...] How do I write these figurative diary entries in ways that I’ve never written them before and to a sonic backdrop that I’ve never explored before? It’s my fifth album, which is crazy to think about, but I think what I’m noticing about it so far is it’s definitely taking a different turn than anything I’ve done before. AP: You said recently you’ve been working on songs for the new album for about six months. What can you tell us about what you have planned? Swift: It’s too early to tell who are going to be my predominant collaborators, but I do know that my absolute dream collaborators were Shellback and Max Martin on the last project. I’ve never been so challenged as a songwriter. I’ve never learned so much. I’ve never just been so excited to show up to the studio every day, just because you never know what we’re going to put together. I’ll bring in ideas and they’ll take such a different turn than where I thought they were going to go, and that level of unexpected spontaneity is something that really thrills me in the process of making music. ... What if we did this? What if we made it weirder? What if we took it darker? I love people who have endless strange and exciting ideas about where music can go."

October 14, 2013: At the NSAI, Taylor talks about reinventing herself for different albums

"I’m making my 5th record now, so I think you have to change things up, you have to explore different corners of music as much as you can. Cause I really, it’s been a big goal of mine to never make two albums that sounded the same. I really want my fans to be able to be like "Oh that song? Clearly that's from the Fearless album", "No that one, that one was from Red" and so I’m in the process of doing that thing all over again for my 5th album and it’s amazing to be in the studio and to be songwriting again, and be honored for songwriting tonight"

Blank Space: October 26, 2013 (Inferring)

It looks like she’s wearing the same outfit in this behind the scenes footage and these candids Taylor: "I was going into write with Max Martin and Shellback, who are two of the primary collaborators on 1989, and I... was preparing all these things, and I, I think Blank Space was like the third thing I played them, and they just stopped and they were like "NO, this is the first thing we're working on today." [...] I had the idea for the chorus and I had the hook, but a lot of the verse was gibberish." Taylor (On what song took her the least amount of time to write): "Blank space, cause I'd written a lot of the lines down already in the year preceding the session"

October 29, 2013: Tweets "Sitting in the studio writing the next album (!!!!) and wanted to thank you for the American Music Award nominations!"

November 1 : While promoting Keds, Taylor is asked about her next album

"What I go through is going to be the story that I tell. I think lyrically, I always try to tell my fans exactly what’s happened to me in the last two years, and that’s the thing they can expect. Everything else, they won’t be able to expect. Having been in the studio with this one, I’m just like… oh, this is going to be fun"

Bad Blood: Fall 2013 (Speculation)

The backup dancer drama seems to have kicked off in mid-July. Given that it's produced by Max Martin and Shellback, and Taylor was in the studio with them pretty much non-stop from October-November, we can assume that it was recorded sometime in the Fall of 2013

New Romantics: Fall 2013 (Speculation)

Unfortunately, Taylor doesn't really talk about this song. Given that it's produced by Max Martin and Shellback, and Taylor was in the studio with them pretty much non-stop from October-November, we can assume that it was recorded sometime in the Fall of 2013

Wildest Dreams: Fall 2013 (Speculation)

Selena reportedly told a fan she was there when Taylor wrote this, and I've noted above all the times Selena could have been with Taylor in 2013 (Here's my personal ranking of how likely each date is). Given that it's produced by Max Martin and Shellback, and Taylor was in the studio with them pretty much non-stop from October-November, we can assume that it was recorded sometime in the Fall of 2013.

Wonderland: Fall 2013 (Speculation)

Another one Taylor just doesn't talk about all that often. Given that it's produced by Max Martin and Shellback, and Taylor was in the studio with them pretty much non-stop from October-November, we can assume that it was recorded sometime in the Fall of 2013

Nov 20, 2013: Taylor posted "While in the studio, I came to the realization that my bangs are long enough to use as a sleep mask on long flights. Then I remembered I don't ever use sleep masks on flights. So really, I just need a haircut"

November 25, 2013: Taylor and Scott Borchetta have a meeting to talk about her plans for TS5 and are both asked about the next album at the AMAs

Taylor: “We got a lot already. There are probably seven or eight [songs] that I know I want on the record. It’s really ahead of schedule for me. I’m just stoked because it’s already evolved into a new sound, and that’s all I wanted. And I would have taken two years to make that happen, but it just kind of happened naturally, so that’s all I could really ask for.” Scott Borchetta: "Well earlier today we got together and she played me seven new songs, and she’s just on fire. The level of desire and passion that she has just to keep getting better, she’s an artist that just really never wants to just say ‘Well okay this is good enough’. It’s always gotta be better. She’s in amazing creative place right now." By the end of November, Taylor had likely recorded This Love, All You Had To Do Was Stay, How You Get The Girl, I Wish You Would, Out Of The Woods, Blank Space, Bad Blood, New Romantics, Wildest Dreams, and Wonderland. That’s 10 songs total, 5 of which were likely recorded in the past two months, and 7 that had been made since Taylor and Jack had their conversation about 80s music in May.

Dec 21, 2013: Taylor briefly talks to Billboard about TS5

"I’m really loving collaboration right now [...] I see it as a bit of an apprenticeship. I want to be around people who love writing songs and have done it for years. Every time I’m in a studio I’m learning, like how to build a drum track, and getting a new perspective on things. It’s so thrilling to keep learning on your fifth album. As soon as [an album] comes out I’m figuring out what the next one will be. It’s gotten to the point where each one is a reinvention, which is what I like best. I like it when it sounds new and people don’t know where you’re going to go next."

Say Don't Go: Jan 1, 2014 (Confirmed)

Diane Warren: Warren, who typically writes on her own, says the two of them “sat down and wrote the song […] from scratch” during the last few days of 2013. She remembers being impressed with how specific Swift was with her lyricism and how considerate she was about how her fans might receive it. “She was very particular about how she said certain things. It was a really interesting experience. She gets her audience [...] She’s deeply aware of how her fans want to hear something. I can’t explain it, but that’s probably why she’s the biggest fucking star in the world.” Several days after writing the song together, they got into Warren’s office to record a demo, where Swift played it on her acoustic guitar. “We demoed it on New Year’s Day. And I’m a workaholic, and that’s fine for me,” she says. “But I remember being impressed that she did, too. Everybody’s on vacation, but she showed up.”

You Are In Love: Jan 2014 (Inferring)

This song is copyrighted for 2014. Taylor has said a few times that Clean, Shake It Off, and Style were the last songs written for the album, meaning You Are In Love was likely completed in January or early February. Given Taylor's busy schedule in late January and early February, I'd guess this was written at some point in early January. Furthermore, I'd guess it was sometime after the 9th, when she returned from looking at house in New York.

I Know Places: Jan 22, 2014 (Confirmed)

Taylor: "I sent this voice memo to Ryan Tedder because I'd always wanted to work with him, and finally we scheduled some studio time. So I always wanna be prepared, I wanted to send him the idea that I was working on before we went into the studio just in case he wrote back and said "I can't stand that, I wanna work on something else, think of something else" So I just sat down with the piano, put my phone on top of the piano and just kind of explained to him where I wanted to go with the song, how I saw the melody sitting in and we ended up recording the song the next day and it ended up being on the record called "I Know Places" So this was the voice memo that I sent to him the night before we ended up finishing the song"

Welcome To New York: Jan 23, 2014 (Confirmed)

Ryan Tedder: "I thought we were going to walk in and start something from scratch because that's what I was used to. Then she calls me and says, 'Is it cool if I already have an idea?' I said, 'Sure.' She said, 'I have this song, I'm obsessed with New York and I just moved there, I want to write an ode to New York because no one's done it in a long time.' And then she sent me a voice memo. She's like, 'I want it to sound like 1980s.' So the next day I brought in a Juno-106, which is a very 1980s keyboard and I literally programmed that entire song right in front of her. It was very much on the fly, and that song was done in about three hours. And I did the rest of the production I think later that week. I was in Switzerland on a tour bus, and I did four versions of 'Welcome to New York,' one of which I liked personally more, but the thing about artists is they become very obsessed with the demo. She was in love with the demo so no matter how hard I fought, she brought it back to the demo, so really what you hear is what I did on the first day."

January 26 2014: Dianne Warren says that she recently wrote a song with Taylor

"I worked with Taylor Swift on a great song [...] I'm excited about the [song] that we did, it's pretty cool Dianne in 2016: “I know [Swift] likes it, so hopefully it will see the light of day. I know she really likes the song. She didn’t want me to give it away, so hopefully that means she wants it.”

January 26 2014: Taylor loses Album of the Year at the Grammy's to Daft Punk. She tells a few different stories about what the rest of the night looked like for her-- in some she goes home alone, in some she has some friends over-- but in all of them, this is the night where she decides that she's gonna name the album 1989, and she's not going to let her label tell her to put any country songs on it.

Clean: Feb 9, 2014 (Confirmed)

According to Imogen Heap's blog post, Taylor had the first verse and chorus by the time they got into the studio, and then wrote the second verse and bridge during the session. Taylor's part was wrapped up in 9 hours, ending at 8pm, while Imogen stayed up until 4am because she didn't want to stop working on it. Taylor: ""Shake It Off" and "Clean" were the last two things we wrote for the record, so it shows you where I ended up mentally. “Clean” I wrote as I was walking out of Liberty in London. Someone I used to date— it hit me that I’d been in the same city as him for two weeks and I hadn’t thought about it. When it did hit me, it was like, ‘Oh, I hope he’s doing well’. And nothing else. [...] The first thought that came to my mind was – I’m finally clean." Imogen Heap: I was really writing the tiniest amount just to help her do what she does. I put some noises to [“Clean”], played various instruments on it, including drums, and anytime she expressed she liked something I was doing, I did it more. It was a really fun day. She recorded all her vocals [for “Clean”] during that one session. She did two takes, and the second take was it. We always thought she would probably re-record it, because we thought it can’t possibly be that easy. But after we lived with it for a few months, we felt it was great.

February 15, 2014: Taylor posts "It was a studio Valentines Day with Max and Johan!"

Shake It Off: Feb 15, 2014 (Confirmed)

Lover Diaries (From Feb 22): "This week I’ve been in the studio with Max and Johan every day and it has been the most creatively successful and fulfilling time. The first day, Johan just made a really up tempo drum beat because we decided we needed something UP and light. We worked at it for a few hours before I just started singing “shake it off, shake it off.” And then the best way I know how to describe it is that the chorus just fell out of the sky. It ended up being this song about doing your own thing even though haters are gonna hate, and you just have to dance to your own beat. We all went home and I wrote the first and second verses and brought them in the next day. We wrote this chanty cheer leader bridge that I absolutely LOVE. We spent all day doing vocals and the next day recording background vocals. I think it’ll end up being the first single and Max said it’s his favorite song he’s ever been a part of." Taylor: "The problem was, I had all these lyrics, and I didnt have, like... writing session was coming up and I'm just like "I'm not getting a melody, I'm dead, I don't know what I'm gonna do." The thought terrified me, so I just sorta sulked into the studio and I was like "Guys, I have like an idea but its like, lyric, but I... and I know the vibe I want-- I want it to start off and the second the song starts, I want it to be the song where like, if it's played at a wedding, and there's this one girl who hasn't danced all night at the reception, all her friends come over to her and there like "You have to dance, come on, you have to dance on this one!". That's what I wanted. So I was like "Shellback, can you just go to the drum kit and try to play that?" Taylor: "There's one thing that I've always said to Max, is like "I don't like horns" I just always had a thing about it, I was always like weirdly scared of it, or intimidated by horns, I don't know what it was? It's a weird, like, nerdy studio fear of mine. I was like "No, no horns!" and I don't.. I don't even know, I don't have a reason for it, I love songs that have horns on them, I was just like "I don't think I can pull off horns." Strange. But, he goes over to the mellotron and he starts playing this horn sound. I'm like "What are you doing. Don't do that." and he's like, "No, I think this is cool" and I'm like "No it's not cool, and where are your chorus chords, because, that, you're just playing three chords over and over again and I can't make a chorus out of them, why don't you go to like a chorus chord that starts off the chorus, where is the one, like why don't you go--" and then there was this moment, where I thought of the whole chorus, and it's over the chords that I had just told him are not "chorus chords", which is a ridiculous thing to say."

February 18, 2014: Taylor is photographed entering Conway Studios

Style: Feb 19, 2014 (Confirmed)

Niklas Ljungfelt (guitarist): I played on “Style,” a song I started with Ali Payami for ourselves. He was playing it for Max Martin at his studio; Taylor overheard it and loved it. She and Max wrote new lyrics. But I recorded the guitar on it before it was a Taylor song. It was an instrumental. I didn’t have a clue that Taylor would sing on it. The inspiration came from Daft Punk and funky electronic music. Taylor: I'm pretty sure after we finished this one I knew the record was done. Shake It Off and Style were the last two songs to be written for 1989.

March 2014: Taylor's interview with Glamour is published (likely conducted two months beforehand)

TS: Working on this album has been unbelievable [...] I'm already in love with it. It's so different. CL: What's the new sound? TS: On Red I did three songs with Max Martin Shellback [...] I think we'll be doing a lot more than three songs together on the next album [Laughs].

March 26, 2014: Taylor is photographed entering a music studio in New York

May 30, 2014: Taylor writes in her diary:

So a crazy story unfolded in the last 24 hours. Last night, I had this vivid dream where the photo I’d chosen for the album cover wasn’t good enough, intriguing enough, artful enough. It woke me up. I couldn’t shake it and it stayed with me all day. Because that nagging feeling I’d been pushing back for weeks was now confirmed in my gut … It wasn’t good enough. I went to the venue, mind racing, wondering if I’d have to do an entirely new photo shoot … I got to my dressing room with newer versions of the “cover.” I looked at it and felt nothing. The team pulled up this new scanned file of the Polaroids we had taken during the shoot. I saw within 10 seconds. The shot. The cover. It’s a Polaroid of me sitting against a beige wall with a blue seagull swear shirt on. You can see my red lips, but the photo cuts off my eyes. From some reason unknown to me, it’s the most intriguing photo I’ve seen. I think it’s the mystery of not seeing my eyes. Maybe it just looks effortlessly cool. The craziest moment came when something caught my eye. The cover photo is photo 13. I kid you not.

August 23, 2014: Taylor is photographed walking out of a studio in LA (Note: I can not find a place that specifies if this is a recording studio, dance, photography, radio, or television studio.)

Now That We Don't Talk: Summer 2014 (Speculation)

Seeing as Taylor said she didn't have time to figure out the production, I imagine this came fairly late in the process. Taylor has a habit of adding songs right up to the deadline-- with Folklore and Evermore, she added multiple songs a week before the album came out. The latest she added songs to albums while signed to Big Machine was September, though (both Forever & Always and So It Goes...), so I assume that's the absolute latest she could've added a song. Taylor: "Now That We Don’t Talk” is one of my favorite songs that was left behind, it was so hard to leave it behind, but I think we wrote it a little bit towards the end of the process and we couldn’t get the production right at the time. But we had tons of time to perfect the production this time and figure out what we wanted this song to sound like. I think it’s the shortest song I’ve ever had, but I think it packs a punch, I think it really goes in. For the short amount of time we have, I think it makes its point.

And that's all for this timeline! Check out my others:

TIMELINES: debut • fearless • speak now • red • 1989 • rep • lover • folklore • evermore • midnights PLAYLISTS: debut • fearless • speak now • red • 1989 • rep • lover • folklore • evermore • midnights • entire discography GENERAL: tag

#txt* #timeline* #taylor swift #OH MY GOD ITS OUT ITS OUT ITS OUT I'VE BEEN RESEARCHING THIS FOR THREE YEARS AND IT'S DONE #!!!!! #as always let me know if you want further sourcing on anything/if you spot a typo or something

[dronarryfest]

Dronarry Fest 2024 Rules and Guidelines

✨We are super excited that Dronarry Fest 2024 will be kicking off this weekend! ✨

Here are the rules and guidelines and (hopefully!) everything you need to know about taking part in the fest.

Dronarry Fest is a fic and art fest specifically dedicated to the characters of Draco Malfoy, Ron Weasley, and Harry Potter, either as a triad (Dronarry) or as pairs (Drarry, Dron, Ronarry). All works must feature all three characters in significant capacity either as romantic interests or in a platonic dynamic of some description. This year, we are going non-anon!

Timeline

Prompting Opens October 7th  Prompting Closes November 3rd  Claiming Starts November 4th  Claiming Close: February 3rd Submissions Due February 18th  Posting Begins March 9th

🐍 Prompting

Prompting Opens October 7th Prompting Closes November 3rd

You may submit as many prompts as you like, either using your name or anonymously.

You do not have to be creating in the fest to send in a prompt.

Please include any extra prompt details you would love to see incorporated (e.g. a favourite trope).

If you wish to, please include a maximum rating (e.g. Explicit) and any squicks or triggers (e.g. MCD). 

Please note that any prompt details, including wished-for tropes, ratings, and squicks, are for inspiration only, and creators are not obligated to fulfil all of your desired wishes.

Remember that this is a Dronarry fest, and all ship requests must include Dronarry, Dron, Drarry, and/or Ronarry. No other ships are permitted unless they are minor.

We allow self-prompting. You may submit your desired prompt and then take your chance claiming it (with the risk that someone else may snatch it up before you), or you can fill in the special box for self-prompts once claiming opens.

Prompts will be available for browsing once claiming opens.

👑 Claiming

Claiming Starts November 4th at 5pm GMT Claiming Close: February 3rd at 5pm GMT

Link to claiming form once open

This is an 18+ fest. Please do not sign up if you are under the age of 18 at the time of submission (February 18th 2023).

You may only claim one prompt at a time. If you finish your prompt, you may claim an additional prompt, but you must submit your first prompt as per submission guidelines first.

Claims will be awarded on a first come, first served basis.

You may claim for different fanwork types at the same time, either as an individual or as a collaboration (e.g. art + fic).

Collaborations are welcome! Please only submit one form per collaboration work and include details of all participants. Collabs can be illustrated fics, multi-author fics, multi-artists artworks, etc.

If you wish to create based on an existing fanwork, please submit as a self-prompt. You must ask for the original creator’s permission before submitting. We will trust you to honour this and only ask for proof in case issues arise. As proof we would expect written consent, or a blanket permission statement from the original creator either as a link or screencap.

You can browse blanket permission statements of creators here: https://www.fpslist.org/

⚡️ Creating

All creations must feature either: Dronarry (Draco/Ron/Harry), Drarry (Draco/Harry), Dron (Draco/Ron), or Ronarry (Ron/Harry), or a mixture of the listed ships. Any other ships must be minor.

All creations must feature Draco, Ron, and Harry as main characters.

Minimum of 1k for fics, with no maximum wordcount. For podfics, the recorded story should be a minimum of 1k words, no maximum.

All fics must be proofread by a beta. Podfics must be proofed before submission. If you do not have a beta, please contact the mods ([email protected]) or send us an ask and we can put a call out for a beta for you.

Please tag your works appropriately and sensitively. We want this to be a fest for everyone to feel safe and included and that means being mindful with your warning tags. If you’re not sure about how to tag something, please let the mods know and we can help. Please also note that we reserve the right to review your tags and add any additional tags to your works. We will always let you know what these tags are.

This year we're going non-anonymous, so feel free to share snippets of your work in the run up to posting!

Submissions must be complete works created for Dronarry Fest. Please do not submit incomplete works or works that are part of a series or a prequel/sequel to an existing work, unless it is a remix.

We encourage you to be inspired by prompts’ additional details, but it is not a requirement to incorporate them into your creation. You are not required to abide by any mentioned dislikes. However, if you plan to gift a creation to the prompter, we may disallow this if you ignore stated dislikes. Please tag your work appropriately.

🐍 Submitting

Submissions Due February 18th

All works must be submitted to the AO3 collection: Dronarry Fest 2024. If you do not have an AO3 account, please contact the mods.

You are required to add dronarryfest_mod as a co-creator when uploading your creation. This is so that we can change the posting date, check the submission, and add a tag for Dronarry Fest 2023. We will not make any other changes to your work, and we will remove the mod account immediately after the fest has ended. 

Please contact the mods if you have any issues submitting your work to AO3.

Following submission, please email [email protected] to confirm you have submitted your work with the completed submission header form below. You will receive a confirmation email from us.

Submission header:

Title: Creator(s): Type: (art, fic, podfic, craft) Wordcount/length: Art/Craft medium: Rating: Warnings: Prompt no. or self prompt: Pairing: Summary: Link to work: Link to original work (if applicable):

👑 Extensions/Dropping Out/Adjustments

Real life happens! If you need to drop out of the fest for any reason at all, please let the mods know ASAP via email. There will be no repercussions for future fests if you let us know before the submission date.

If you need an extension, please contact the mods ASAP with the estimated additional time you need. Please don’t hesitate to reach out as soon as you find yourself struggling with a due date.

If you signed up for a collaboration but things don’t work out for one or more participants, please let us know. We will confirm to all collab partners and treat the remaining participant/s as a single claim pending confirmation.

⚡️ Posting

Posting Begins March 9th

The mods will post your creation on the scheduled day. We do not release the posting schedule as this is subject to change.

--

From your Dronarry Fest '24 mods, @wolfpants @getawayfox @oknowkiss @sweet-s0rr0w

[ID: a graphic with a British seaside background, featuring Draco, Harry, and Ron on the promenade by @bluebutter-art]

Glorious art supplied, with thanks, by @bluebutter-art!

#dronarryfest #dronarry #dron #drarry #ronarry #ron weasley #draco malfoy #harry potter #hp fests #dronarry fest 24 #dronarryfest24

[drksanctuary]

Nicobaster: Soulmates/games

For day two I did a collaboration with @thomas-life and we did a combination of both prompts:

And a hastily written and edited little excerpt for ya:

Alabaster sifts through the last of what must've been 30 decks of Mythomagic cards.

"Ah! Found him.! Aevin Lackluster: Master Spellcaster. Edition 4. From the Medieyval Myth campaign. He was and perhaps still is my favorite from that series. A lot of the other editions didn't have actual characters...so it was exciting at the time." Alabaster shrugs non-chalantly but his eyes are practically beaming at the card. As if he's holding a literal piece of his childhood self. And Maybe he is.

Nico grins at him from his seat on the floor. He's hunched over his own mess of cards, looking much like a dragon guarding its hoard of treasure. Cards haphazardly spill out from under his legs emphasizing just how many he has... Alabaster briefly wonders where he had he been keeping them all.

"Not a bad card," Nico agrees, "but he's nothing compared to Myra Darkweave, Necromancer Queen, also from Edition 4." Nico holds up one of the cards, and turns it to face Alabaster. She holds a skull in one hand. Her crown is either silver or bone, and around her neck is a familiar green necklace.

Alabaster examines it. Myra’s picture is one that mostly displays Purple,red and black. But the small splash of green stands out.

“Huh, May I?” He reaches out to take the card.

Nico holds it out for Alabaster to take and feigns scandalized gasp, "You don't have her card? how can you call yourself a fan?"

Alabaster plucks the card from Nico's fingers, careful not to bend or rip it.

"She never came up in the packs I had." He says, shaking his head. "I could only get what I could steal"

Nico continues smirking at him.

Al rolls his eyes. "So annoying" he says. /but attractive/ he thinks.

Nico snorts and starts picking through his cards, organizing them by...color? Alabaster raises an eyebrow at the choice, but seeing as in order to play they'd have to shuffle them anyway he supposes its as good a way as any.

Nico speaks without looking at him, that insufferable smug look refusing to leave his face, "I got a lot of my cards in the Lotus hotel." The smirk drops a little but come back full force a moment later, "I won them by beating the older kids" he snickers, "they were so mad getting bean by a 10 year old...its one of my greatest accomplishments." He preens.

"So you've always been this maddening?" Alabaster quips, as he compares their favorite cards side by side. Imagining Nico as a 10 year old sends shivers down his spine...shivers of dread. They'd probably have hated eachother.

Or perhaps they'dve been friendly Rivals. Alabaster remembers himself at 12.../nah probably enemies actually/. He chuckles to himself and diverts his attention back to the cards and Myra’s green necklace. The pattern and design of it is unmistakable. He looks over to Aevin's card to see that he is wearing that same green necklace.

"D'you...." Alabaster considers. He doesn't remember the lore concerning that particular item. Which is maddening considering he usually knows these things offhand. Was it part of some group?

"Look at this" Al continues. "They both have the same necklace... I can't recall what it signifies... do you know what it's for?"

Nico pauses in his organizing to look at the cards, beautiful dark eyes focusing under thick eyelashes. Alabaster bites the inside of his lip to recenter himself, so he doesn't just start staring at Nico Di Angelo like a looney.

"I think I remember that it was some sort of gift?" Nico shrugs, "or a prize?" Or was it a prized-posession? Nico hates being dyslexic, but honestly he was also 10 when he tried to read it so his memory might be faulty.

Alabaster hums. "I see. Well!" He whips out his trusty enchanted glasses that help him read. "Maybe I can look it up."

He pulls out an mythomagic handbook that is so worn that Nico might've mistaken it for an ancient artifact.

He flips through tissue thin pages. "Ah, here we are" Aevin's necklace was made by him, he carved protection runes on the back of the pendant to keep the wearer safe. (Plus 5 defense and plus 2 evasion). So it's a protection necklace...but why is it..." Alabaster’s eyes travel to a small fact box on the side of the page. "When he got married he gifted it to his beloved wife...Myra Darkweave. Who gave him her bracelet in exchange. To solidify them as soulmates through the ages..."

Alabaster looks over to Nico. /what a coincidence/ he thinks. That those two are their favorites...

@them-awesome-rarepairs please accept our late submission 😅 thank you!!!

#it’s a little late but it’s done! #alabaster torrington #alabaster c torrington #pjo #percy jackson #nicobaster #heroes of olympus #son of magic #pjorarepairs2023 #nico di angelo #Shadowmagic #mythomagic #nicobaster household

[1dpridefest]

We want to extend a massive thank you to everyone who participated in the first ever edition of the 1D Pride Fest! Whether you submitted a prompt, wrote a fic, created some art, or reblogged everyone’s works, this fest would not have been the same without you, and we thank you all for helping us celebrate Pride Month together!

Links to all of the fics and artworks that were submitted as part of the fest can be found below. Don’t forget to show our authors and artists some love by leaving kudos, commenting, and reblogging their lovely contributions!

We hope you all had a happy Pride Month!

🏳️‍🌈✨🏳️‍⚧️

Artworks

🏳️‍🌈 Collaboration between @wendersfive & @broken-beak-flower-feast

🏳️‍⚧️ just get there your own way by @nouisforlife

🏳️‍🌈 Drawing by @harryshandbag

Fics

🏳️‍⚧️ Hold Me Tight (Or Don’t) by @hellolovers13

Falling in love with Louis is easy enough.

Separating Louis from the singer persona Harry has been a fan of for years, however, is not.

But she's not the only one making assumptions.

🏳️‍🌈 The Magnificent Ms. Malik: A Brand New Era Starts Here by @fifthnormani

In 2013, 1D records the Best Song Ever music video and Zayn feels different after he puts on his Veronica outfit. He doesn't know what to do with these feelings or what they mean; luckily Niall is there to help and gives Zayn a new word that opens up a world of previously unimagined possibilities.

Ten years later, in 2023, she calls Niall up again to tell him her new name.

🏳️‍⚧️ Ask Him by @fxckingprincesspark

When Lewis Capaldi gets pressed for information on who he's dating, he admits it... he's been seeing Niall Horan. The only problem? He jokes so much that no one believes him.

🏳️‍🌈 Inner Crisis by @neondiamond

Louis calls an LGBTQ+ crisis hotline after coming out as asexual to his friends and family doesn’t quite go as well as he’d hoped. Harry answers his call.

🏳️‍⚧️ you made my heart stop by @itsnothesameasitwas

Don’t you ever feel like your life has been perfectly composed until one day it wasn’t, that everything seemed more than fine but it was not, because sometimes as simple as it might sound or look, it could change your life?

OR a Heartstopper AU, but in HarryandLouis Universe.

🏳️‍🌈 somewhere in between and not at all by @greeneyesfriedrice with art by @alphalouis

He’s always known that he’s some sort of queer. There’s no doubt about it. When he was younger, he loved the feeling of his sister’s pantyhose on his legs, and loved to play dress up whenever he could. But it never went any further than that, and as he got older, he hid that part from himself. There were more homophobes than not in his school, and he couldn’t risk anything getting out.

While he was hoping that he would become more involved in the gay scene, he wasn’t expecting it to happen so immediately. He’s barely been in NYC for two days, and he’s now surrounded by all different types of men and…others? God, he isn’t even sure what to call them. He really doesn’t know much.

(or, Harry is new to NYC and discovers something about himself, and Louis is there for him. Always.)

🏳️‍⚧️ Paint A Rainbow Inside My Heart by @cyantific

A story about hiding in plain sight and the journey to revealing your truth, told in six acts.

Or, the five times Harry queer coded with actions, behaviors or clothing and the one time he was too proud to hide anymore.

A 5+1 fic.

1D Pride Fest Collection on AO3

#1d pride fest #final round-up #1d pride fest masterpost #pride fest fic and art masterpost #thank you to all the creators! #happy pride! 🏳️‍🌈

[zeroducks-2]

okay okay hi!!! decided to use your dark prompts list for this and please 7 + P for eoiris or eobariris, completely up to you <33

HI HELLO I LOVE THIS OK

7. Truth Serum + P. "Don't back off now" - Eobard Thawne/Iris West (with background Newsflash)

(TW: long post, captivity, non-graphic violence)

She’s been out of it for most of the time, consciousness slipping and then coming back as her own voice fills her ears with startled little cries, and half-hearted attempts at flailing while she’s moved around. Then she got strapped to a chair, a metallic thing which is so cold against her body that it brings her back some more, making her aware of the probes which are being attached to her wrists and temples. The people around her are dressed with some sort of medical gear. Alright, this isn’t the usual kidnapping. 

She tries to speak but her mouth is pasty, her tongue won’t move. And whoever these people are, they don’t seem to like it that she woke up, talking quietly among each other before pressing a plastic mask to her face, the gas canister it’s connected to making her eyes grow droopy. Iris hopes these fuckers can at least see her glare before she goes back under.

It’s this for a while, impossible to know how long since they keep her drugged. She’s asked questions when she’s awake - trivial things like her favorite color or the name of a childhood pet. Every time the answer pops in her mind she can hear mechanical beeps and whirrs, and she never speaks but the people around her do, always in hushed tones even if at times their voices sound more excited. The person who talks to her is always the same, a man in tactical gear. There are more of them; sometimes she glimpses them walking along a railing up ahead, but this one has to be a higher rank. Someone called him Colonel at some point. She’s pretty sure she wasn’t dreaming when she heard it. “Miss West”, he usually calls her before asking a question, and one of those times she mentally replies with an insult so colorful that someone from the lab-coats bunch snorts audibly. Which in turn gives her the confirmation that they’re doing something that allows them to peek into her head, somehow discerning her answers through whatever machine they’re using.

And so she starts trying not to give them any answer, but whatever they’re using to drug her has to function as some sort of truth serum, because it proves really hard to keep any information to herself. It surely is a muscle relaxant among other things, keeping her unable to try to pry her restraints open. It’s unlike her to rely on his intervention but she is indeed starting to wonder where Barry might be, and also to get worried because it has to be days since she was taken here. More than one, at least. It’s odd that he hasn’t found her yet. 

«Miss West.» The man in tactical gear greets after sitting next to her. Iris blinks at the unremarkable features of his face, her mind blank aside for the fact that she’s sore all over, and really tired of this. «You’ve proven to be a good test subject, and we thank you for all the help you’ve given us.» Alright, that doesn’t sound good. She can feel her chest swell, and the higher beeping of one of the machines must mean her heart is beating faster. No one seems to pay it any mind. «We do have a couple more questions for you, and then we can consider our collaboration complete.» He clears his throat. And then asks, «What’s the civilian identity of the Flash?»

Fuck you, Iris thinks, glaring at him from her spot. 

«What’s the civilian identity of the Flash, Miss West? His name.»

She thinks of the red of his suit, the blue of his eyes, the way they crinkle at the corners when he smiles a certain way. He’s always late. She loves him so much. She bites her tongue, and the surprise she feels at being able to snap her jaw hard enough to draw blood distracts her.

«You were correct, Colonel. It’s her.» Someone says, someone from the lab-coats bunch. «No name yet though, she’s guarding it well.»

«Of course it’s her, the info comes directly from the source.» The man in tactical gear replies, shifting on his spot on a way more comfortable-looking chair. «We need a name, Miss West. What is the name of the Flash?»

John Smith, Iris thinks, staring him directly in the eyes. He sighs and stands up. 

«She needs another dose.» He declares, but when he gets close enough with a full canister of drug, Iris tilts her chin up just that little bit she needs to spit on his face. It’s mostly blood and it hits him square on the cheek. «Fucking bitch.» The man hisses, smushing the plastic mask on her face forcefully enough to hurt. She holds her breath and keeps glaring. Might as well fight until the last second.

A light above them bursts, then another. The man straightens up and draws a gun from his belt, lightning cracks and some of the machines beep hard and then turn down. Barry…? She thinks as the canister drops, allowing her to take a mouthful of air.Someone screams from above, energy bursts go off. These people don’t have normal guns, it’s something clearly intended to hurt more than humans. Loud cracks like the ground was splitting apart force Iris to wince, more people scream and flashes of light brighten the black of her closed eyes. This is not Barry. The air crackles with static, and when she looks again there’s a spatter of blood over the buzzing machines right in front of her, and the Reverse Flash is looking in her direction, expression plain as he lets go of the limp body of one of the men in a lab-coat. They fall boneless with a dull thud, unlike a living person ever could.

The red forks of lightning settle to a more contained shimmer, and Iris just stares back for a beat, then another, then she realizes that the man in tactical gear is not near her anymore. 

Thawne’s eyes lose their inhuman quality for an instant, long enough for Iris to see him roll them up with a quiet huff. He’s smiling though. 

«Running, really…?» He shakes his hand and the blood on it splatters on the floor, leaving his yellow suit entirely clean. «Don’t back off now, I only just arrived…»

He’s not there a moment later. Then he’s back, holding the man by his neck just below the jaw, high enough his feet don’t touch the floor. He shoots but Thawne pushes his arm up and the charge lands on the ceiling, more sparks raining on them as another light bursts. 

«Don’t…» Iris tries to say but her speech is slurred, she hasn’t used her mouth for words in quite a while. Her tongue also hurts. «St-op, need… alive-»

«No we don’t.»

A scream fills the otherwise almost entirely quiet room, and Iris prefers not to look. She realizes they’ve all been killed, everyone else. The people in lab-coats, the ones who patrolled the high railing, likely also whoever was at the doors of this room. She keeps not looking when the man in yellow falls into a crouch just before her, and closes her eyes when a hand reaches out to her. «Hello, Iris.» Thawne says conversationally, like they just met by accident along the way to the grocery store. «I would hope you haven’t been harmed in ways I cannot see.»

The metallic band around her forehead comes off, and her head would drop but instead it lolls into a palm and is held up. The relief of not having anything tight on her temples is enough for her to lose it for a few moments, and when she’s blinking again she’s being pulled away from that chair, her breathing somehow shallow, all the bindings broken and the probes having come off. 

She knows she’s not going to be able to stand on her feet but it’s not necessary, she’s still held. Tight enough, not too much. Her head spins, it feels like it’s the first time in years that she leaves that metal chair and her body is allowed in a different position.

«You’re alright. You’re alright now.» She’s being shushed, and she realizes her eyes are swelling. How long has she been there? Had she stopped hoping to get out of this alive…? «I’ll get you to Barry, and then I’ll bring both of you out of here.»

So Barry is there, too. She thought he might have been because of something that man had said, about getting information from the source. She can’t fully remember now. She’s so tired and can’t still fully process that she isn’t tied to a chair anymore. «You… you killed that man.» She whispers, realizing Thawne pulled down his cowl. «He could… could’ve had…»

«Iris, I come from the future.» The man replies with a vaguely chiding tone. He props her up against his own chest and sighs, and Iris feels her own weight come down as Eobard’s chest deflates. «I already know everything which might be useful to us.» The touch on her cheek comes back and brings her to look up. She has no idea what Thawne is seeing on her face which makes his vague smile disappear, a somber look replacing it as his thumb traces the line of her cheekbone. «And he deserved to die anyway.» He adds in a low whisper, cupping the entire side of her face before leaning down to kiss her forehead. «I should have made it more painful.»

Then they stand up. She thinks they will start running any second now, and so reflexively holds onto him and tucks down against his chest. Lightning crackles around them and a palm comes up to the side of her head, shielding her and holding her close.

Here's the ask game! Feel free to prompt me again or to reblog it yourself :D

#Eo gets to be the hero can you believe it #long post #thank you so much Waffles I've had this AU in mind forever and really needed an excuse to start writing it! #Eoiris #dark prompt game #my asks #my fanfiction

[cts-games]

Game Rundown: Anima Prime

Not to be confused with Anima: Beyond Fantasy.

Anima: Prime is an indie game by Christian Griffen, released in 2011. It also has a free Creative Commons version.

Upfront, one of the things I really like about it is that it includes a section on player discomfort and how to deal with it, which is pretty considerable when this game predates the X-card by about 2 years, well before safety tools were considered the norm.

Overall Camlaign Structure

The game makes use of what it calls 'Seeds' which are short prompts designed to keep the gameplay focused. This is similar to "Story/Dungeon Starters" that have caught on in the PbtA scene, and are mostly a way to keep the campaign focused and interesting. Session Zero (not explicitly called that by the game, but clearly what it is) involves creating both a Setting Story Seed and a Group Story Seed.

The Setting Story Seed is essentially the major current event that is happening in the world, affecting everyone. Basically, "What has changed in the world recently?" The examples given are an invading force, water from the local river has started tasting metallic, or a massive skyscraper has appeared overnight in the middle of the city. The important thing is that this is something that doesn't ONLY affect the PCs.

The Group Story Seed is entirely player chosen, without the GM, and I'd basically a way for the PCs to say 'this is what we want out of the campaign'. It's the reason their group has come together, their motivation as a group. It helps ensure all the PCs have teamwork in mind to at least SOME degree, and are on the same page, as well as giving the GM a carrot to dangle in front of the players when needed.

Character Creation

After going through the usual parts of character creation, like name and core concept, the first mechanical step of character creation is selecting a Passion. There are 9 Passions, each of which has a different mechanical trigger that allows you to Charge your dice (see below), and your Passion can be changed once per session.

Players also create 3 Traits that describe their character, which can be marked off during character scenes where that trait came into play, and then unmarked in order to reroll dice in combat.

From there, players pick 3 Skills from a list of 20 (the list presented in the game is geared for the default setting, Ghostfield, but groups are encouraged to collaborate during session 0 to create their own, more flavorful list of skills to use). These three skills are given a value of 4, 3, and 2. While a higher number is better, having low skills is also quite valuable in the system, as they can combo with other players better.

Next, players select 9 powers they meet the prerequisites for, which is, quite frankly, far too large a number of powers to start with IMO. On my experience this is the part of character creation that overwhelms people the fastest. The game does its best to alleviate this by offering sets of 'Packages' that can be mixed and matched together. 9 'Basic' packages that cover 3 powers needed to be a vague archetype, and 12 'Specialized' packages that each have 6 thematically linked powers. Personally I think the game would have had a stronger presentation by leading with the packages, and introducing classless character building as an advanced option.

After that, players create Backgrounds and Links, which is a subsystem I find quite delightful. These are pretty standard fare, and are just a list of important things from your characters backstory. The only difference between the two, are who that piece of backstory is for. By declaring something a part of their background, it becomes something players can draw on for roleplay inspiration. Things like "Oh, my long-lost brother taught me this trick, before he vanished without a trace." These are just things to flesh out your character, but not concepts you want to fully explore. Links on the other hand are fun bits of backstory for the GM to make use of to make stakes personal for your character. If that long lost brother was a Link instead of a Background, the GM might dangle a clue about his wereabouts in front of you to keep you pushing forward.

Finally, there are Character Story Seeds. These are your characters personal goal, the thing they are trying to achieve outside of the Group Story Seed, that the GM can use to draw you forward through the campaign.

Core Gameplay

The actual gameplay of Anima: Prime is split into two types of scenes: Character Scenes, and Conflict.

Character Scenes are fairly straightforward, with the game mostly disengaged. Players roleplay out their interactions with each other and the world, and once the scene ends, players gain a single benefit from a list of options. This can be healing for yourself or a summon, refilling your Action Pool, or marking one of your traits to give you rerolls next combat.

Some powers can give additional options in character scenes, but for the most part that's as much as the game engages with out of combat scenes.

Conflict

'Tacticle Gameplay' is a bit of a buzzword in the TTRPG industry. In general, its usage is just to indicate 'This game handles combat by using minis on a map'. Anima: Prime does not handle combat by using minis on a map. I would have a very VERY hard time keeping a straight face while telling someone that conflicts in Anima: Prime are not tactical.

Enemies come in 3 flavors, Individuals, Squads, and Swarms. Some powers affect them differently (AoE abilities will typically get a bonus against Swarms, for example), but this distinction mostly matters for Manuevers.

Each player gets one action per turn, typically one of the following: a manuever, a strike, an achievement, or activating an action power.

Manuevers are how you build up resources. They allow you to roll dice in your Action Pool, turning them into Charge and Strike dice, but they don't deal lasting damage. Narratively they can be used to hit members of a Squad, or take our multiple members of a Swarm, but not enough to cause lasting damage to the whole unit.

Stikes are the main way you spend those resources. These are attacks that can leave lasting Wounds on enemies, spending the dice in your Strike pool to do so. These strikes can be further modified by spending dice from the Charge pool as well, activating additional effects based on the powers you have selected.

Achievements also use Strike dice. Each conflict will typically have multiple Goals to go alongside it, which can have lasting effects on the battle. These can be things like "Damage the mechs armor plating to lower its Defense" or "Remove the soldiers gas mask to remove their Immunity from Poison"

And activating powers is just that. You typically use Charge Dice to activate your powers, and they can have a variety effects based on how you build your character.

Manuevers

Manuevers are performed by rolling your skills. You start with a number of free dice equal to your Skill level, and then 1-3 dice from your Action Pool based on the effort your character is putting in.

Dice that come up 3, 4, or 5 are added to your Strike Pool, dice that come up 6 are added to your Charge Pool, and dice that come up 1 or 2 are lost. A trait that was marked during a character scene can be unmarked to reroll all the 1's and 2's for a chance to keep them. If ALL of your dice roll 1's and 2's, you keep them in your Action Pool, unspent.

Each time you make a Manuever, you also check off the skill being used for it. If all of your skills are checked, you gain 2 bonus dice, which are sent to your Charge or Strike pools, encouraging players to make use of all of their skills instead of just whichever has the highest value.

Players can also spend their action to do a Combined Manuever, allowing them to give 1 die to another players Manuever but still checking off a skill for it, which can be a quick way to mark off a characters lower rated skills.

Strikes

Strikes are preformed by spending dice from a characters Strike pool, up to a maximum of 6. Any dice with a result of 3 or over counts as a success, and if they player rolls more successes than their target has Defense, that target takes a wound. This is multiplicative, so if an opponent has 2 Defense and you roll 4 successes, that deals 2 wounds. If you fail, the strike dice are refunded back to you. Otherwise, they all get discarded after the attack. Players can strike together, but ONLY if they have a power that let's them do so.

Achievements

Achievements and Goals are, in my opinion, the aspects of this game that really make it shine, and the entire reason I'm making this post. Mechanically, they work like a mix of a Strike and a Manuever. Players target a Goal, and grab up to 6 Strike dice, and pick a skill and get a number of bonus dice equal to its rating. Other people spend an action and mark off their skills to assist, just like with a combined manuever.

Once you roll, everything 3 or over is a success, and you compare it to the goals difficulty. If you didn't get enough successes to beat the difficulty, you refund the dice. If you did beat the difficulty, the dice are spent and the goal is completed, triggering additional effects. These can be anything from buffing or debuffing allies or opponents, to inflicting status conditions the players don't normally don't have, to entirely alternate win conditions for the Conflict.

Both players and enemies can attempt Achievements. Some Goals may be considered Player Only, some may be Enemey Only, and some may be contested between the two. In this way, Goals can VASTLY expand the utility of Conflict to be much more than just combat. A Race could be resolved by having two parallel 'chains' of Goals, one for players and one for their opponents, each trying to get to the end before the other. A tense conversation with weapons drawn, but has not escalated into full blown combat can be resolved with players trying to hit Goals to keep the other side from attacking and/or sway them over. At any time, either side can escalate the situation to combat by simply spending their dice on a Strike instead of an Achievement.

In this way, Achievments/Goals feel so much better than any other system I have seen when it comes to this type of mechanic. I've seen many games ATTEMPT to do the 'social interactions work just like combat!' thing, but Anima: Prime is the first time I've seen a game succeed at it this well, or something akin to what the Skill Challenges in DnD4e were attempting.

All of this circles back around to Manuevers. In the vast majority of games out there, the most basic action your character can take is some form of attack, with most of the game branching off of and expanding the uses for that action or how it can be applied in different ways.

Anima: Prime does not follow that standard. In Anima: Prime, your most basic fundamental action is the Manuever. The 'I do some cool anime shit while building up resources to meaningfully impact the narrative' action. From there, it branches off in two separate directions, Attacks and Achievements.

By using Manuevers as it's basic mechanic to generate resources, and having Achievements and Strikes be things you can spend those resources on, the game accomplishes a significant amount with relatively little compared to other games, and gives a lot of tactical depth to your choices for relatively low complexity.

This is why, even without miniatures and a map, I struggle to call Anima: Prime anything other than one of the most tactical games I've ever run.

#ttrpg #game rundown #devlog #Anima: Prime #im counting this as this weeks devlog #for reasons that will become obvious next week

[evilwriter37]

Warning, you reblogged an ask game, and I’m about to go ham.

1, 4, 8, 13, 21, 22, 24, 26, 31, 32, 35, 48, 50, and 71

Do you prefer writing one-shots or multichapter fics?

That's a hard one, because I've written quite a lot of both. One-shots do make up the majority of my fic library though, so I'll go with one-shots.

4. Where do you find inspiration for new ideas?

Anywhere and everywhere. @ashleybenlove is also super great for inspiration! Prompts are good, rewatching episodes, listening to music, pulling from a personal experience... It's like I never run out!

8. Do you prefer the beginning, middle, or end of a story?

Hm, usually I want to say the beginning. I'm very good at beginnings and first lines. Middles are fun, but can drag sometimes in the process, and endings are difficult to get just right.

13. What's a common writing tip that you almost always follow?

Change your font when editing. It makes your brain look at the story differently and pick up on mistakes you probably wouldn't have seen with the original font you wrote in.

21. Would you ever collaborate with another writer for a story?

I think so. I've done sort-of-collabs with @mdoodlerfandomart and those were always incredibly fun! But those were the kind where one person writes one half of the story and the other writes the second half. I wonder if I'd be able to collaborate with another writer where we could write on the same document at the same time. Maybe I can do one with you, @lifblogs? Like on a Good Omens one?

22. Are there certain types of writing you won't do? (style, pov, genre, tropes, etc.)

Mm, there is a lot I will write. It's probably longer than the list of things I won't write. I'll write from virtually anyone's perspective. I don't really write poetry, though I could see how it could be fun in fanfic form! I explore all sorts of genres in fanfic and write things I probably wouldn't write in original fic. Like, when it comes to realistic fiction in original work? Ew, no! Realistic fiction like modern AUs and such in fanfic? That works just fine for me.

24. Worst writing advice anyone ever gave you?

"Cut out sex scenes and filler. They're not necessary to the story or character development."

Okay, sure. Fuck off.

26. Which of your fics would you call your wildest ride?

Infernal Fascination for sure. 3 years, lots of harassment, but also lots of praise and fun. Yeah, that was wild for sure.

31. Do you start with the characters or the plot when writing?

Hm, I think plot maybe? I develop a plot based around the characters though, so maybe both.

32. Name three of your favorite fanfic writers.

@howtowhumpyourhiccup @fictionalnormalcy @lilliths-httyd-blog @ashleybenlove @thedragon-and-hisboy (No, I could not keep it to just 3).

35. What is one essential thing to remember when writing a villain?

That villains are human too. You can portray them as a monster, but the monstrous is human. Villains will be much easier to write and more fun and fleshed out when you treat them like human beings. (Unless of course, your villain is an eldritch horror of some kind.)

48. What do you look for in a beta?

I don't use a beta, but I think I would look for someone who is understanding of my writing style and sensitive about my RSD.

50. How long is your longest fic?

Infernal Fascination: 470k words.

71. When it comes to more complicated narratives, how do you keep track of outlines, characters, development, timeline, etc.?

I make an outline with notes at the top of the page about times, dates, characters, etc. My outlines are usually just bulleted list of the events that will happen within the story. I try to keep my outlines and notes in one document so that I don't have too many documents and confuse myself.

Get to Know Your Fic Writer

#asks #lifblogs #fanfic asks

[beardedmrbean]

US retail giant Target saw sales fall in-store and online for the first time in years after a backlash over its Pride Month offering.

Sales dropped 5% in the April to June period compared with the same time last year - its first fall in six years.

The decline followed controversy over some of the firm's LGBTQ Pride merchandise.

It later removed items from some stores over concerns about staff safety.

Target's chief executive Brian Cornell said the decline in sales also reflected the fact shoppers budgets' are being squeezed as the cost of living remains high.

The firm said the impact of those forces was difficult to separate from other issues, such as the calls for a boycott over its Pride month range.

It saw damage to in-store displays and the clothing merchandise, which included a wide selection of items, including t-shirts decorated with rainbows, "gender fluid" mugs and children's books titled "Pride 1,2,3" and "I'm not a girl".

It ultimately removed certain items from the 2,000-piece collection. A number were from a collaboration with transgender designer Erik Carnell's Abprallen label, which faced criticism for items, sold elsewhere, featuring images of pentagrams and horned skulls.

The firm's decision to remove the items, which it made citing employee safety, prompted further outcry from Target customers who celebrate Pride.

Speaking as the firm provided investors with a quarterly update, Mr Cornell said the firm planned to approach future partnerships with caution, while still celebrating "heritage moments".

"As we navigate an ever-changing operating and social environment, we are applying what we learned," Mr Cornell said.

Mr Cornell said Target had seen sales start to pick up again in July, after the sharp drop in June.

But executives forecast weaker performance than previously anticipated for the rest of the year, in part because of concerns about the impact on buyers as a pandemic-era halt to student loan payments finally expires.

Target is the latest US company to face costs as LGBTQ issues increasingly become a political flashpoint. Disney and Bud Light are among the other brands who have faced similar customer boycotts and backlash.

Its report also offered a somewhat gloomy perspective on the health of the American consumer, whose robust spending until now has been credited with helping the world's largest economy defy predictions of a downturn.

Target said buyers were cutting back on items such as clothing and home decor, as rising prices force people to direct more of their monthly budgets to staples such as groceries.

The report's weaker than expected sales contrasted with other recent indicators which showed resilient consumer spending.

A day earlier, the Commerce Department reported that retail sales rose 0.7% from June to July, greater than expected.

Those figures were boosted by a jump in online sales, which coincided with Amazon's annual Prime Day sales event.

Despite the sales fall, Target shares rose more than 6% in early trade, reflecting stronger profits than investors had expected.

#nunyas news

[banannabethchase]

Title prompt: even bad wolves can be good (hard mode: any codyship)

Even Bad Wolves Can Be Good - also on AO3

~

Claudio comes to Cody with important knowledge related to the Bloodline's collapse. And Cody can't fight the call.

~

For the record, I did not plan to write this sequel.

~

“Give me a few minutes and I’ll be out of here,” Cody says, not even looking up as the light from the hallway pours over him.

“Cody.”

He hasn’t heard that voice in ages, and has to check, lifting his head. And knows immediately something is very wrong. Feigning composure, Cody sets his phone down on the table, frowning. “Claudio,” he says, hesitantly. “What are you doing here?”

Claudio stands casually in Cody’s office, as if he belongs in this place, like they aren’t rivals. “Charmed to see you,” he says. He wears a suit as well as Cody remembers.

“The same to you,” Cody says. He’ll be cautious around Claudio Castagnoli his whole life, the same way he is around other sons of alphas. He underestimated Roman Reigns once. He will not do it with another. “Again, what are you doing here?”

“I have intelligence,” Claudio says. “And, while I know the two of us have never collaborated on less than fraught terms, I wanted to extend my hand.”

Cody raises an eyebrow. “Intelligence.”

Claudio nods. “Moxley has maintained some connections with Seth.”

Cody sits up. “Did Roman go after him again?”

“God, no,” Claudio says. “Breathe, Cody. We’ve protected him before Roman could retaliate.”

“Protected him?”

Claudio nods once. "We knew of violence on Roman’s part, from others. I knew Seth would be an easy target.”

Cody studies Claudio. “You put your ass on the line for Seth?”

“Not for Seth,” Claudio clarifies. “At least, I didn’t do so for Seth.”

Cody raises an eyebrow and waits for the clarification. Castagnoli could never tolerate silence.

“Moxley made a request.”

“A request.” Cody stares. “A request regarding Seth. A human.”

For the first time Cody’s seen it, Claudio’s face goes pink. “I am more understanding of the connection between a human and a wolf,” Claudio says, carefully.

“I knew it!” Cody stands and walks to Claudio, clapping him on the shoulder. “What’s her name?”

“His name is Wheeler Yuta,” Claudio says. Cody’s surprise must show on his face, because Claudio rolls his eyes. “Look less shocked, Rhodes. Roman is the one who started the trend.”

“Rhodes is my father,” Cody says. “And I know.” He sighs. “How is Seth?”

“Seth is well looked after,” Claudio assures. “Mox and Renee have taken him in.”

“Renee?” Cody asks. “The manager?”

“Mox is incapable of keeping it in his pants.” Claudio shakes his head. “It looks like, between Seth and Renee, he’s satiated.”

Cody blinks. “Two humans.”

“Seth has plenty of experience with wolfkind,” Claudio says. “And Renee has a leash on both of them.”

“I hope not literally,” Cody scoffs. “Though, knowing Jon…”

“Please, don’t finish that thought.” Claudio holds up a hand. “I’m here on more sensitive business.”

“I guessed,” Cody says. He sits on his desk, hands folded in his lap. “What do you need from me?”

“It’s not what I need,” Claudio assures. “I’m sure you’ve heard about the collapse of the Bloodline.”

“Collapse is putting it lightly,” Cody says. He doesn’t mention that he’s absorbed most of their assets, that he bought out a shocking number of stock out from under Claudio’s nose. His connections on the inside fed him all the corporate details he’d needed. He still needs to send Randy that gift basket. But he’ll request extra melon – it seems he missed critical details that, somehow, Claudio is willing to offer.

“He put the blame on one of his family,” Claudio says, and his eyes burn. “On one of his pack.”

Cody’s spine stiffen. “Not –”

“He was half beaten to death, Cody,” Claudio says quietly. “He’s in the hospital, right now.”

Cody pushes to standing, ready to run toward the door. Claudio catches him, though, and the five inches of height is enough leverage to slow him.

“Let me go,” Cody growls, flashing fangs.

Claudio’s eyes flash. “He is in the hospital with our people,” he assures. “Don’t think me a fool.”

Cody relaxes, but only a little. “I want to see him.”

Claudio raises an eyebrow. “You do, now.”

“You know I do,” Cody snarls. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.” It’s the most admission to what’s been brewing beneath his skin for years than he’s made even to himself.

Claudio is too calm, too collected. Cody wants to rip the sensibility off his face. “I’ll take you there,” Claudio assures him. “But I needed you to know, I don’t see him requesting your services. A beta is not inherently in need of an alpha.”

“Who the fuck do you think I am?” Cody asks, still seeing red. “I’m a better man than that. I care for him, not for his submission.” He’ll regret the words later, when they don’t matter so much.

“I know that,” Claudio says, a hand on Cody’s shoulder. “But you and I both know that sometimes the pull is strong enough to tempt us to forget logic.”

“You’re speaking for yourself here, Claudio.” Cody steps back. “I’m not one to break that trust.”

Claudio stumbles, and Cody regrets his words. “I’ve atoned for my sins,” he says quietly. “And I assure you, I have never felt tempted to do so again.” His eyes go soft. There is a wolf behind them, but it is a shamed puppy. Cody softens.

“I know,” Cody says. “I know. Now take me to the hospital. Even if he doesn’t want to see me, I need to know he’s okay.” He adjusts the cuffs of his suit coat. “Of all days to take the driver to work.”

Claudio drives like a madman, and Cody appreciates it. There’s no one in this world who knows the draw Cody’s felt to Jey since the first days of the Blackpool, Nightmare, and Bloodline collaborations, no one but Claudio. He was close enough to smell Cody’s reaction to Jey laughing at that ethics conference.

The conference was years ago, and, still, Cody can’t get Jey off of his mind.

They pull into Elite Medical Hospital at speeds unacceptable this side of a highway, and Cody practically throws himself to the asphalt in his eagerness.

“Calm yourself,” Claudio demands. Cody hasn’t felt the pull of an alpha warring with his own in years, and he knows Claudio means well. That doesn’t make it okay.

“Stop it,” Cody snaps. “You aren’t in charge of me, Claudio. Remember, I am just as much an alpha as you are.”

Infuriatingly, Claudio rolls his eyes. “I forgot how miserable life is around other alphas. I’m calling Wheeler when you get in there.”

“Who?”

“My – boyfriend,” Claudio says, and that smile is stupidly charming. No wonder he’s got so many people in his pack. “The human.”

Cody raises an eyebrow. “You really have changed your tune.”

“I beg you to stop before you start.” But there’s a light behind Claudio’s eyes that Cody has never seen before. Not even when they were fighting for valedictorian in college, when late night competitive study sessions turned into something a little less proper. “Please. Go see him. Moxley will be standing guard.”

“A guard,” Cody says, stepping out of the car. “You really aren’t playing.”

“I’m not,” Claudio says, eyes firm. “You of all people know what Roman is capable of. Retaliation is not out of the question. Especially if he knows that you and I have gotten involved.”

“Let him retaliate,” Cody says, allowing his eyes to flash. “I dare him.”

Claudio’s smile is just the slightest bit too toothy. “I appreciate your allegiance.”

Cody nods and closes the car door, stepping to the hospital. The receptionist, a tall man with an impressively long beard for such a formal hospital, kindly directs him to the right room. Cody knows the owners of this place – has for years – and is thankful for not only the discretion but also the expertise.

He catches sight of Moxley, fidgety as always, outside of Jey’s room. His eyes brighten when he sees Cody.

“Hey, man!” he says. He reaches out and they clap hands before Cody eschews decorum and pulls Moxley in for a hug. “Long time no see.”

“A failed merger will do that,” Cody chuckles. “You look well.”

Moxley shrugs, but he’s got a similar glow to Claudio’s. “Yeah, well, Renee and Seth keep my shit honest, you know?”

“Seth doing okay?” Cody knows asking is a risk, but he has to take it.

“He’s good,” Moxley says, tone soft. “Pissed to hear how Roman reacted. You know.”

Cody does know. He wasn’t involved back in the day– barely heard about it – but Roman’s “no romance rule” was notorious. He can’t imagine the guilt Moxley must have felt at getting Seth in the middle of a werewolf business turf war. At the very least, unlike Cody, Moxley seems to have repaired what was broken. Claudio’s pack suits him. “I do,” he says quietly. “Is he awake?”

“He is,” Mox says. “Looks worse than you might think, though.”

“Full moon will heal him,” Cody says, but the reassurance is flat. “Only a few days away.”

Mox shrugs. “I think he could use a laugh or two. But I don’t quite know his sense of humor.”

Cody lets a smile play on his lips, remembering the quickly berated snickers on the other end of a conference table from time the time. “I do.”

He knocks gently. “I hear you’re looking for an alpha,” Cody says, leaning against the doorway of the hospital room.

Jey turns, though it must be painful judging by the bandages. He refuses to meet Cody’s eyes. He’s good at this. “Fuck I’m not.”

“I figured being on your own wouldn’t be your interest.” He stares at Jey until he raises his eyes, burning into Cody’s. “You’d do well with a leader who had your best interest in mind.”

Jey presses his lips together. “I’m doing fine.”

“You are,” Cody assures him. “But the bandages suggest better is in your future, no?”

Jey stares at the wall. “It’ll heal.”

“It will,” Cody says. He comes into the room and pulls the door shut.

“You here to grill me for info on Roman?” Jey asks. “Because he hasn’t told me shit for months. It’s why the Bloodline collapsed.”

“Nothing about Roman,” Cody says. “Claudio told me all I needed to know to understand I had to be here.”

Jey finally looks at him. It’s been over a year since Roman had opened his company doors to any dealings or collaboration. Over a year since Cody saw that stunning face in person. “Claudio,” he says. “I thought you two hated each other.”

“It’s business,” Cody says, waving it off. He makes his way to the big chair in the room. A safe distance away, if that’s what Jey wants. But close enough that he could lean in. “He told me you were hurt.”

Jey presses his lips together. Cody wonders what he’s preventing himself from letting slip.

“Are you feeling better?” Cody asks. He wishes it didn’t feel so awkward.

Jey shrugs. “Waiting game until the full moon.” He frowns. “Though I’m not sure where that’s gonna be.”

“You’re welcome at mine,” Cody says before he can stop himself. “I’m pretty docile at this point when I change.”

“You aren’t kidding,” Jey says, tilting his head.

“Nope,” Cody says, and he can’t resist popping the last sound. “Come on. Claudio’s got his handful with his pack of misfits. Mine is just me, my brother, Sami, and Kevin, but they all have their own places. I got a strong alliance with the Elite. Come on.” He leans in. “You don’t have to commit. I don’t expect you to be my beta, Jey. But I’m offering you space.” He doesn’t allow himself to think beyond it. “For as long as you’d like.”

Jey stares at Cody. He knows he’s waiting for Cody to break, for the other shoe to drop, for the catch.

Cody thinks the catch is having to put up with him during nonworking hours. But he doesn’t say it.

“Okay,” Jey says. His voice has none of the confidence Cody’s used to. “Yeah, when – when I can.”

Cody leans into an impulse and rests his hand on Jey’s where it sits on his thigh. “Whenever,” Cody says. “Whenever you want.”

~

Jey opts to come to Cody’s house the next day, against the advice of Dr. Jackson. Or, as Cody’s known him since grade school, Matt.

“I just think it’s a bad idea,” Matt says, frowning as he looks at the chart. Cody marvels at how he’s managed to keep all that hair looking that good even through transformations. It must take ages. “You could injure yourself more if you’re not monitored during the full moon appropriately.”

“I’ll do it,” Cody offers, before he can stop himself.

Matt turns to him, eyebrow raised. “Did you forget that you’re also a werewolf?”

Cody rolls his eyes. “I have it under control.”

“I have it under control,” Matt mimics, and Cody may be forced to kill him one of these days. “Says the guy who almost got hit by a car when he climbed an eight foot fence.”

“That was fifteen years ago!” Cody says, and he only calms once he sees Jey snickering in the corner. “And we can blame that on stress. And Adam.”

“Leave my dumbass of a husband out of this,” Matt says, glaring.

Eventually, Drs. Jackson agree to let Jey go later that day with constant monitoring.

“That means you don’t sleep alone,” Matt says, staring at Cody. “We can’t risk the possibility of a bleed during the night that no one knows about.”

“That’s fine,” Cody says, automatically, maybe too quickly. “You’re staying with me, anyway.”

Jey’s expression goes unreadable for a moment, something Cody is desperate to better understand. “I am,” he says quietly.

Cody drives as carefully as he can to get back to the house. He can tell Jey’s wincing as they go over speed bumps. He’s never driven like this in his life.

Jey hobbles into the guest bedroom, with Cody attentively following as he bumped into walls in his own home.

“This will be your room,” Cody says. “And, uh. We have the safe room. For when we change Saturday night.”

Jey smiles at him, sweeter than Cody thinks he’ll ever deserve, and settles onto the bed.

“Thank you, Cody,” he says. “This means a lot.”

“It’s nothing,” Cody says.

But he’s lying. This is everything.

~

Jey sleeps two fitful nights and rests two calm days while Cody checks in on him every hour, but the true challenge will be the full moon.

“And this is where we’ll hang out during the moon,” Cody says. The room is comfortable, he thinks, but he’s rarely focused on comfort in here. The place is all able to be hosed down. He has the deer in the fridge, two of them, if their wolves have particular needs to tear.

Jey nods. “Those giant dog beds?”

“In a way,” Cody says. “Cheap mattresses, blankets. Ways to nest.”

Jey smiles. “Always liked to do that. Me and my brother would curl up next to each other like puppies, sometimes. Stopped when we got older.” He walks over to one of the mattresses and nudges at the blankets with his toes. “But this looks nice. Cozy.” He looks up. “You like blue?”

Cody shrugs. “I remembered you said blue’s your favorite color.”

Jey’s face goes unreadable again. “Thanks again,” he says. “For everything.”

~

Cody’s mind is less than focused when he’s the wolf. He knows his humanity is limited, knows his identity is shifted.

But he sees a new wolf in his room, one he’s met but doesn’t yet understand and walks over, curling around him. He noses off the bandages and licks the wounds until the skin is healed over, and curls around his new packmate until the fur grows in. He could be cold. Cody doesn’t want his new Jey to be cold.

Jey Wolf curls into Cody’s side, resting his head on Cody’s leg. He waits until Jey Wolf falls asleep, until his breathing is steady, until Cody can be sure he’s no longer in pain.

He uses his teeth to pull blankets more tightly around them, and allows himself rest.

~

He wakes up warm, wrapped around someone else for the first time ever after a moon. He panics, briefly. And then remembers.

“Jey,” he murmurs, a hand on Jey’s arm. “I’m sorry, man.”

Jey groans, stretching with his eyes closed, and Cody is a horrible man for watching the way all that muscle and skin moves. His eyes open and meet Cody’s with a knowing smile.

“Your wounds have healed,” Cody says, sitting back. He throws a blanket over his lap. “How is everything internally?”

“Pretty good,” Jey says, and he yawns and stretches again. “Really good. Might have been the most comfortable transformation I’ve had in years.” His smile is sheepish, maybe a little sad. “Most of the time would just take care of it in the basement rooms.”

Cody frowns. “Basement rooms?”

“We had these rooms in the basements of our houses, in the neighborhood. Pretty bare bones – safe, but not designed for comfort.” Jey frowns. “Roman didn’t see much use in making them anything more than a utility space.”

“You’re welcome to use this room at any transformation,” Cody says, before he can stop himself. “Even when you decide to leave.”

Cody needs to learn how to read what shows up behind Jey’s eyes, because he can’t find the source of whatever’s there. “Thanks.” Jey finally smiles, and Cody remembers, suddenly, that they are both stark naked.

“Of course,” Cody says. The only way to prevent things from becoming horribly awkward is to wrap one of the blankets around himself. “Whenever you’re ready, I’ll have breakfast ready.”

Jey nods. “You cool if I clean up in here?”

Cody frowns. “We generally have support staff for that.”

“Yeah, but I’m the one who asked for the deer and didn’t do anything with them.” Jey jumps to his feet, and Cody thinks he’s seeing a god unveiled. “Give me, like, ten and I’ll be out.”

Cody walks out of the room, wrapped in the blanket. He thinks he’ll be safe as long as he gets to his bedroom and into the shower, where he can take care of the post transformation boner that’s worse than usual. He realizes, halfway to his bedroom, that he could have just put on the suit from the night before instead of scrambling out of here wrapped in a blanket. He plans on dropping the blanket and sprinting to the mercifully empty bedroom.

Instead, Dustin is standing there in the hallway in front of him, frowning.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asks. He studies Cody. “Why do you look like you just got caught –” He wrinkles his nose. “Never mind. Don’t tell me anything.”

“What are you doing here?” Cody hisses.

“Wanted to check on you after the full moon,” Dustin says carefully. “You didn’t answer when I called.”

“I – oh.” Cody realizes he never plugged in his phone the night before. It must be dead in the pile of clothes in the corner of the transformation room. “No, we’re fine.”

“We,” Dustin says. “Do I want to know?”

“It’s not what you think,” Cody says, and he winces. “That – that also isn’t what you think. Stop looking at me like that.”

“Go put on some goddamned clothes and stop being weird,” Dustin demands. “I can’t believe I came all the way over here.”

“You didn’t have to.”

Dustin pulls his hat off of his head and whips Cody in the arm with it. Cody yelps. “Yeah, actually. I do. It’s the job of an older brother.”

There’s a strange thud behind him, and Cody turns to see Jey, now dressed in his clothes from the day before, picking up a picture frame that had fallen.

Cody turns to see Dustin, who has the worst poker face of anyone Cody’s ever known.

“Is that –”

“Dustin, go home,” Cody says, shoving at Dustin. “Go home.”

“I’m asking you about this later!” Dustin yells.

Cody turns to see Jey leaning against the wall. “Good to know Jimmy isn’t the only older brother who oversteps.”

Cody sighs.

“It’s nice to see you less than…” He trails off. “Less suits and cigars, you know?” He smiles, and it goes right to Cody’s heart. “I like it.”

Cody spends the rest of the week letting that comment tattoo itself into his DNA, and doesn’t know how to make it stop.

~

The mistake, Cody thinks, isn’t telling Jey he can use the gym. It’s forgetting to knock.

It’s been a week since Jey’s been staying with him, his late nights on the phone and early mornings waking Cody up for a run becoming commonplace.

It’s a later night at the office, stressful, and he changes into his gym clothes when he’s in the walkin of the gym. He forgoes the shirt. It’s not necessary.

He bounces a little, ready to go straight for the treadmill to run as hard as he can as long as he can. He shoves the door open, and he should have realized on touch that the door opened much too easily.

Jey is standing there, stretched out on the bench. He’s shirtless, shorts hiked high up on his thighs, as he works through the chest press.

Cody knew it was a good investment.

Jey doesn’t even see him at first, so focused on what looks like a pretty heavy set. Cody won’t interrupt. But he’s not a good enough man to avert his eyes.

Jey grunts through the last few reps, sweat dripping down his face and bare chest, and Cody is screwed.

He looks up and smiles. “Oh, hey,” he says, and Cody is not going to get through this as the same man. “Sorry, dude. Is it okay I’m here this late?”

Cody nods. He’s not used to being thrown off. He’s not used to be taken off guard. “Of course,” Cody says. His voice is half the force it usually is. “Anything in this house is yours to use.”

Jey’s expression changes, just enough for Cody to notice it. “Anything?” He’s got an unfairly sweet little smile on his lips, too sweet for a man pressing what appeared to be about Cody’s weight and a half.

Cody swallows. “Of course,” he says again. He can’t find any other words he wants to say. “What, uh. What are you doing?”

“Lifting,” Jey says. He studies Cody. “You good, man? You look sweaty and you haven’t even gotten started.”

Cody bites his tongue and walks toward Jey. “No,” he says, and this is a stupid move, “I haven’t.”

It’s been months since he’s allowed himself this fantasy, years since he’s considered it something he was even allowed to dream about. But he leans down and kisses Jey before he can stop himself. He doesn’t touch beyond lips. He wants to give Jey to chance to push him off.

He doesn’t.

Jey makes a desperate little sound that Cody lets linger on his tongue. And then his hands are on Cody’s waist, yanking him in. Cody swings a leg over the bench and presses his thighs up against the inside of Jey’s.

“Hey,” he murmurs, as Jey’s lips move down Cody’s neck. “Are you –”

“If you back out on me, I’m gonna lose my shit, man,” Jey laughs.

Cody pulls back far enough to really see Jey. To see blown pupils, a slight smile, Cody’s favorite face. “Back out?”

“I can feel you panic.”

“I am not panicking.”

“Yeah?” Jey asks, and his damned smile is too much for Cody to survive without being fundamentally changed. “Prove it.”

Cody doesn’t back down from a challenge. He leans down and kisses Jey the best he knows how to, gathering his legs up around his own hips, grinding down. Jey moans into his mouth, a sound he is already addicted to with one taste, and Cody digs his nails into bare thighs. Jey wraps a leg tightly around Cody’s waist to pull him in more and Cody is so, so glad he forwent the boxers in favor of freeballing it in the gym shorts. He can feel Jey’s cock press up against his through the flimsy fabric, already hard. He could quite possibly be dreaming. If so, he never wants to wake up.

“Cody,” Jey breathes against Cody’s lips. “Cody, I want you.”

Cody intentionally forces the wolf back. It’s the full moon wearing off. It has to be. Otherwise, Jey wouldn’t be saying this. “It’s the moon,” Cody says. He pulls back. “I’m sorry. I forgot how – how things can be, when you’re healing. When you’re around a new alpha.”

“Jesus, Cody, you’re so fucking dense.” But Jey smiles as he says it. “It’s been days, man. And I promise you. No alpha will ever make me do something I don’t want to do.” He licks his lips, eyes flicking down to Cody’s mouth. “Ever again.” He sits up and catches Cody’s lips.

The two of them are covered in sweat, and Cody should be mildly uncomfortable but it makes everything so much better. Jey grabs him by the shoulders and pushes him, and Cody stumbles until they’re falling on the floor. Jey straddles him, dicks so close it’s going to kill Cody, and he rocks down.

“Jey,” Cody says. “Jey, I want –”

“I’m yours,” Jey says, and he rocks again, and Cody loses his vision.

Cody rolls them, drunk on hands and skin, and grabs at the waistband of Jey’s shorts. Jey looks down at him with burning eyes, and Cody pulls.

Jey’s cock springs forth, hard and gorgeous. Cody is suddenly ravenous. He sinks his mouth down, letting every sense of Jey fill his body, his mind. Jey’s fingers slide into his mussed hair. Cody will never cut it again if he gets to feel this.

“Fuck,” Jey chokes. “Fuck, Cody –”

Cody pulls off, pressing a kiss to the head of Jey’s cock. “Yeah?”

“Just.” He’s fighting a smile. Cody can finally read that expression. “Your mouth’s good for more than just making deals, yeah?”

Cody rolls his eyes and sinks back down, pressing Jey’s hips to the gym mat so he can’t thrust up. Jey whimpers and moans, squirms, needy. Cody is only a man sometimes, and otherwise a wolf. It’s risky to allow himself access to something he could so easily devour.

The sounds falling from Jey’s lips are impossible to be without now that he’s heard them once.

Cody takes his time with Jey, eschewing any thought of propriety or risk or danger. For once, he allows himself to have what he wants. Jey, moaning his name, pushing at his hands, asking for more.

“Let – I want –” Jey shifts his hips, panting, muscle straining against Cody’s hands. “Cody, I want…” He trails off.

Cody can’t fight the wolf from behind his eyes as he says, “Anything you ever want,” he swears. “Forever.”

Jey swallows. “I want to come.”

Cody smiles and flashes his canines for just a second before turning back fully human. “Anything you ever want,” he repeats, and sinks back down.

His first impulse is to pull back and let Jey paint his face, but it’s more tempting to swallow him down, taste Jey’s release on his tongue and know he’s the one who gets to claim it. Jey’s mouth is filthy as he lets out a litany of curses and prayers, all of which wrapped up in Cody’s name. He shoves his hips up just once before falling back onto the mat, spent. Cody looks at his face, and Jey is smiling. Beaming, almost.

“Jesus,” Cody murmurs, pushing himself back up to sit on his heels. “You don’t have to look that good, too.”

“You’re not allowed to talk,” Jey mumbles. “Your eyes – looking up…” He locks eyes with Cody. He shifts his weight and throws Cody to the ground, then pulls Cody’s shorts down. His mouth is around Cody’s dick before Cody can even breathe.

“Fucking hell, Jey,” Cody says, head spinning. He’s sure he’s felt this way before, felt this kind of need and focus and curl in his gut. But he can’t find where it was hiding. It feels new to him, a blanket curled around a part of him new and fresh and blooming. He rolls his hips, gently, before he can stop himself, and Jey moans around it, pulling him further into his mouth. Cody’s mind has dissolved into want and need at this point. He’d be shocked if he knew any word other than Jey’s name at this point, and that’s all he’s able to say.

He slides his hand into Jey’s curls, wet with sweat, and Cody hears the wolf demand it all over him, demand to be the cause of it. He grins, remembering that, at least in part, he is responsible for some of the sweat.

He fights the urge to roll his hips into the warm velvet of Jey’s mouth, instead focusing on finding the words that match how he feels. But all he can say, still, is Jey’s name.

“I –” He wants to warn Jey. “Jey, I’m gonna – if you don’t –”

It seems Jey does, in fact, because he pulls Cody all the way to the back of his throat and swallows around Cody. It’s over, with a litany of curses Cody’s found the strength to speak. But it’s Jey’s name at the heart of it all, Jey’s name that strikes the chord in Cody. Jey’s name, that he hasn’t quite earned the right to say. He smooths Jey’s hair from where he’d ruined it, and Jey turns his head to rest his cheek on Cody’s thigh.

“That was the best cardio I’ve ever done,” Cody murmurs, dropping his head back and staring up at the ceiling.

“No kidding,” Jey laughs, and Cody can feel his breath on his skin. Jey sits up slowly, lifting himself so he can lean down and kiss Cody, body hovering inches above him.

Cody wraps his arms around Jey, and allows himself to forget, for right now, that he doesn’t deserve this. Right now, he can pretend to be good enough.

~

Cody left for the office before the sun came up, the night before echoing in his mind so loudly sleep was scared off. He can still feel Jey’s skin on his, feel the salt of his come on his tongue, fell the slight rasp in the back of his throat. He wants more of it, but it’s unfair to ask it of anyone. Let alone Jey.

Somehow, the memories are louder in the office, and he knows there is one solution to working through this. Unfortunately.

He stands and paces his office, organizing his thoughts before writing out the flow chart on the white board. He’s focused, almost too much so. He doesn’t hear his door open.

“That’s detailed as fuck.”

Cody jumps, wishing his wolf senses were a little stronger in human form. He’s ready to bark directions at the intruder, yell at them for coming in without permission.

But it’s Jey. Jey, in running clothes and one of Cody’s hoodies. His heart swells. “Jey.” He looks back at the flowchart and steps in front of it. “What are you doing here?”

“You weren’t in your room when I went to wake you up for our run,” Jey says. “Only other place you’d be is here.” His smile is gentle, and Cody suddenly realizes Jey sees him as the startled animal. “And I was right.” His eyes flicker behind Cody.

Cody swallows. “Don’t look at that.”

“It’s got my name on it about a hundred times,” Jey muses, stepping up to it. “You really think I’d be doing this all to be reporting back to Roman?”

“No, it’s coded in dark blue,” Cody says, scoffing. Jey stares at him. “Oh. Dark blue is for the impossibilities to near impossibilities.”

Jey’s face softens. “Cody,” he says, “what does green mean?”

Cody glances over to where he’d scribbled Jey chooses me and my pack in green. “That’s the best case scenario,” he near whispers.

Jey turns and walks toward him until Cody’s bumped into his desk. “Best case scenario,” Jey repeats. “This is the best case scenario?”

Cody can’t answer. He can only focus on how close Jey is, how much he feels drawn to him, how much the wolf is screaming that this is his.

Jey drops to his knees. “I want you to be my alpha,” he says, and he looks so goddamned pretty with his eyes so wide that Cody almost forgets this isn’t appropriate. “Among other things.”

“Jey,” he says, fighting the shake in his hands. “Jey, no you don’t.” The best case scenario is never what happens. Not to Cody.

“Says you,” Jey says, and the smile is alarmingly aware. “Maybe I just want to suck your dick in that fine ass suit of yours. Maybe I want to do it with you as my alpha. That’s up to me, isn’t it?”

Cody fights to keep his face steady. “You’re lonely,” Cody says. “And you’re a pack wolf. You’re – you’re sensing the possibility for a connection, that’s all.”

“Oh.” Jey stands up. “Now you’re telling me what I do and don’t feel? You know who that sounds like?”

“Don’t,” Cody growls, and he knows the wolf appears behind his eyes. “You know I am nothing like him.”

“I know.” Somehow, Jey is still smiling. He gets further in Cody’s space. “That’s why I’m here.”

Cody swallows. He’s not used to being challenged like this, especially not by a beta. “Tell me more about why you’re right here, Jey,” he says, and he keeps his hands gripped on the edges of his desk.

“Asking you to be my alpha, man,” Jey says. He rests his hands on Cody’s thighs. “After yesterday, I thought you’d know I want it.” He licks his lips. “Thought you’d know I want you.”

Cody swallows. “Jey.”

“Cody.”

Cody has to smile. “Jey.”

Jey’s kissing him before he even considers pulling away. It’s gentle, sweet, almost. It’s far different from the day before in the gym. He pulls back, realizing only now that his hands had settled on Jey’s hips. “Where is this coming from?” But he knows. He knows it’s for what happened last night.

“Come on, man, you can’t act like you didn’t feel it since back in the day.” His smile etches itself into Cody’s memory. “All those meetings where you and Roman pretended to make deals together just to intimidate each other?” He kneads Cody’s thighs. “You know it was my idea to put us across the table from each other, right? And now…” He presses in closer, and Cody spreads his legs to fit him in between a little better. “Well, now we don’t have to worry about that dick anymore, do we?”

“Not that dick, anyway.”

Jey’s grin grows brighter. “Knew we’ve always been on the same page.”

~

Mini Playlist: Wolves - One Direction Hungry Like the Wolf Animal - The Cab Animal - Neon Trees

#CodyJey #Oops all werewolves #wtf i like wrestling now??? #in which sara writes #sarahcakes613 #I really didn't plan on this one

[barbiewritesstuff]

Church Encounters: Chapter 11

-- This fic is written in collaboration with @lgg5989 who is posting this on her tumblr and her AO3, she has also made the wonderful moodboard below!

Comments and reblogs are appreciated!

Previous Part

Taglist: @acarboni21 @unsurebuttrying @dempy @peaches-1998 @bbooks-and-teas @Roosterscock --

“Are you okay? Are you hurt? Why are you calling?” was the first thing Gio said when he picked up the phone. No hello, no nothing. Jake understood why he was panicking, he never usually called, but the fear in his brother’s voice was making things so much worse. 

He had woken up from another nightmare. He’d been having them nightly since the mission. Before that, it was only once or twice a week with some variety, but for the past month it had been the same every night. One minute he’s flying, happy in the air, chatting over comms and the next he’s just another body bag, laying on the cold hard floor of the aircraft carrier’s refrigerated room. Then, there’s a flag and a funeral. The Admiral gives it to his mother, while you look on, tears streaming down your cheeks, a hand clasped to your mouth. That’s where it ends, most nights, sometimes Jake gets treated to seeing you stare at the label Jake made for your hat, the label you will never sew in, because he never got the chance to even ask. 

But whatever version of the nightmare he sees, the wake up is always the same. The pain in his chest, the cold sweat, the inability to breathe. At some point the panic attacks had become a friend, because it meant the night had ended and he would get to see you again. 

Jake unlocked his phone and called Coyote, like he did most nights. It rang, and it rang, and it rang, and no one picked up. He needed to talk to someone. Unfortunately that someone couldn’t be you, he didn’t want you to worry over him for something so stupid as whether or not he asked you to marry him yet.  

His phone buzzed with a message he had been ignoring for days now. Gio had been regularly updating the family on their brand new baby Bianca, and he hadn’t been responding. Three days ago, his brother had finally shot him an, “Are you okay,” text. Trying to control his breathing, and completely forgetting the time, Jake pushed the call button. 

“Jake? Are you okay? Do you need help?” Gio asked again, speaking slowly in the receiver.

“Fine, fine. Panic -- talk to me -- at me --” he managed to stutter out between hyperventilated breaths. John shuffled around on the other end of the call and Jake could imagine him turning around the nursery, trying to figure out what to do. Unable to think of something, John recited the Our Father until his brother’s breath calmed down.

“Sorry about that, I didn’t want to call but my usual guy is busy,” Jake said, trying to steady his voice.

“Your usual guy?” John asked, sounding concerned, “Jake, how often does this happen?”

Jake let out a sigh, “Often enough.” 

“Do you need to talk?” John asked tentatively. A baby cooed on his brother’s side of the call.

“No, not near a kid,” Jake said, John shuffled again and Jake heard a door shut.

“I’m alone now. You can talk,” his brother replied.

“It’s fine, I’m fine, don’t worry about me,” Jake started, “Actually… Maybe talking’s good. It’s -- I don’t know where to start.”

“Why did you have a panic attack? Maybe start there?” John asked, his voice sounding concerned. 

“Erm, I had a nightmare. We -- err -- we had a mission not too long ago. Y/n was a spare, I was leading, it was going okay until it wasn’t you know,” Jake said, trying to sound vague, “My plane was shot. Not too badly but I was down to one engine and I had no landing gear. It’s nothing they don’t prepare us for,” he added. 

“But…” John prompted.

Jake breathed a shaky breath, “But, I almost died. I could have died and it’s only the grace of the Lord that made it so that I didn’t. And if I had died, I would have left Y/n by herself, to deal with a grief she shouldn’t have to deal with, you know?” Jake had started sobbing, “She’d get nothing if I died, Gio. Nothing. Mom would get the flag and the stuff I have in my locker at work, and Y/n would get nothing. It’s not fucking fair. It’s not -- I don’t want to die like this. I have done a lot of things I regret in my life and I don’t want to add to that list by dying without proposing.” 

Gio stayed quiet for a moment, processing the words he had just said, “Are you going to die, Bambino?” he asked, speaking in a tearful voice that matched Jake’s.

“There’s always a possibility, yeah,” Jake breathed into the receiver.

There was a pause before he asked another question, “Is she going to die, Bambino?” 

Jake didn’t reply. He heard his brother release a sob on the other end, “I say you do it then, I say you propose. You love her, she loves you. Who gives a shit that it hasn’t been long? The Good Lord doesn’t, otherwise he would have given you both nice, safe jobs. Jacob, if the Lord wanted you to wait, he would have made you both accountants, but he didn’t. So I say go for it,” Gio said.

“Okay,” Jake whispered into the phone “Thank you.” 

“Jake, I’m sorry. I didn’t think -- I didn’t realise things were so dangerous,” Gio said, “Do you often get shot at?” 

“No, not too often,” Jake said, shrugging his shoulders, “Sometimes it happens.”

“Have you ever shot at a plane?” Gio asked.

Jake stayed quiet, because if he answered, he knew what the next question would be. Sadly for Jake, not answering didn’t seem to matter, because the next question came anyway.

“Bambino, have you ever killed someone?” John asked after a moment of silence.

“Yes,” Jake answered, his body shaking with silent sobs.

He could feel another panic attack coming on as silence reigned over the call. Jake’s breaths became faster, more laboured, the pain in his chest returned and his hands started shaking. He could feel it, in a minute, his brother would call him a murderer. Gio would tell him he didn’t love him anymore, that he was a monster and he was never --

“I’m sorry,” Gio said quietly, “I love you. I’m sorry you had to do that. You’re a good man, Jacob. I’m sure the Lord put you in this position for a reason, I can’t say I understand or that I ever will but I know He has a plan for you. I’m sorry you had to go through that all the same. I don’t know how I can help, but if you ever want to talk about it, I’ll be here.” 

Jake was struck speechless, his tears from earlier drying on his cheeks and he wiped them away, “Thanks John, I’ll call again if I need to, you…you don’t know what this means to me.” 

“I’ll always be there for you bambino,” he heard his brother’s deep voice say, “Now try to get some more sleep okay?”

“Okay,” Jake said, “Love you brother.” 

“I love you too little brother, talk soon,” Jake heard John say before he hung up the phone. 

Laying back in his bed, he tucked his hands behind his head, taking a few deep breaths. He felt lighter now that he had confessed what he had done to John, and he felt more confident in his idea to propose. With thoughts of you in a white dress flowing through his mind, Jake fell into a dreamless sleep. 

—

Sunday mass came up on you quickly, the week flying by in a blur of training hops and workouts. Jake had been acting strangely since he received news of his promotion, but you hadn’t wanted to push him about what had been bothering him. He picked you up for mass at his usual time, his eyes looking a bit bloodshot and tired. 

You had cupped his cheek, concern in your eye, and asked, “Are you doing alright?”

He replied with a small smile and a simple, “Yes, baby.” 

Leaving it at that, you let him start the truck and take you to church. This week, you were trying something new. Jake had a youth ministry meeting after mass and he had asked if you wanted to sit at the front with him today. Since he had been sitting in the back of the church with you for several months now, you agreed, there had to be some kind of balance every now and then. 

Positioned at the end of the pew, Jake held your hand for most of the mass, and still gave you a kiss on the cheek as he said, “Peace be with you.” 

Once mass was over, he split off from you to have his meeting. While you waited in the greeting hall of the church, you spotted a list of sign ups for people in the parish. On it were a few different activities coming up that needed volunteers, and one of them was the church’s annual fair. 

The proceeds from the fair went towards supporting the church’s food pantry and the activities they did for the community through the year. As you flipped through the pamphlet, you saw that they needed volunteers for the concession stand. There were two slots left on the last day, which was scheduled for next Saturday night. Pulling a pen out of your purse, you wrote in Jake’s name on one slot and yours on the other. On the contact line, you wrote both of your phone numbers. Hopefully Jake wouldn’t mind that you made the plans but you figured it was a good way to get involved in the community. 

Making your way out to his truck, you opened the tailgate, hopping up to sit on it before pulling the pins from your hair. You folded your chapel veil up carefully before tucking it into your purse. Pulling out the book that you were currently reading, Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, you settled into reading getting lost in the world of Nazi occupied Guernsey and Juliet’s letters. 

Too enthralled in your book, you hadn’t realised that Jake was out of his meeting until he was pressing up against your crossed legs, “Hey mia cara,” he said lowly, pressing a kiss to your head. 

You looked up at him, dog earring the page that you were on before slipping the book back into your puse, “Hey handsome, you ready for some breakfast?”

“Always, what are you making today?” he asked, as he helped you off the tailgate and slammed it shut. 

“It’s a surprise!” you said excitedly, as the two of you climbed into the truck. 

Jake let out a small laugh, “I can’t wait, I’m sure it’ll be delicious.” 

The ride home was pleasant, as was the breakfast you had prepared, a traditional quiche. It was while you were eating that you mentioned the fair to Jake, “Oh just so you know, I signed both of us up to volunteer at the fair. I’m sorry I didn’t ask earlier but we have been free the past couple of weekends and I thought it was a good way for your kiddos to see you involved in the church.”

“That sounds great baby,” Jake said smiling, “What did you sign us up for?”

“The concession stand, we get to man the popcorn and drinks stations,” you said with a smile. 

“Which one am I doing?” Jake asked, giving you a look. 

“Well drinks, but that’s only because you are so big and strong honey, I’m sure you can handle it,” you replied, your voice teasing. 

Jake hummed, “Well, when you put it like that..” he said smiling. 

You laughed at him, smacking his arm gently, “Like you need your ego inflated any more.” 

“I’m always happy to hear you add to it,” he said, pulling you down into his lap as you tried to take the dishes to the sink. Gently he guided your mouth to his, capturing your lips in a heated kiss. The skirt you had worn to church was a flowy chiffon and you could feel his strong thighs flexing beneath you. Raking your hands through his gelled hair, you pulled him even closer to you. Jake let out a groan as he broke the kiss, “Thank you for breakfast.” 

“Of course, anything for you,” you said, placing one last gentle peck on his lips before standing and taking the dishes to the sink. 

The rest of the day went how many Sundays did, you both changed into more comfortable clothes and sat down to bible study for an hour or so before turning on a movie or going on a walk. Today, you noticed that Jake seemed a bit agitated, he was bouncing his leg under the table and tapping his pen against his chin or the pages of the journal that you had gotten him, which he never did. 

You had been re-reading the same line in your bible for five minutes before you couldn’t take any more of his tapping, reaching out, you put your hand on top of his pen. Jake looked up at you confused, and you asked, “What’s wrong? Don’t hide from me.” 

“I…um…” he started, rubbing the back of his head with his hand, looking down at the table, “Well, I just, after what happened. On the last mission. I just…I can’t live without you,” he said. 

You looked at him confused, “Why would you have to live without me?” 

“It’s not that necessarily, I just keep thinking…what if something happened to me? What if those bullets had done more damage to my plane, or what if I hadn’t gotten out of the cockpit in time? I just, I can’t leave you here knowing that I didn’t do all that I could to make you mine,” he said quietly. 

Leaning towards him, you tried to meet his eyes, “What do you mean make me yours? I am yours, since day one of this I have been yours.” 

“But legally, you’re not,” Jake said, and realisation dawned on you then, “But I don’t want to pressure you into anything, you are your own person and you don’t belong to me or anything like that. It’s just that thought that if I die, we wouldn’t have our chance together, as man and wife, as a family, and that scares me more than the dying part.” 

“Jacob Seresin, is this seriously how you are asking me to marry you?” you asked him, trying to keep some sort of neutral expression over your face. The look on his face was priceless, you couldn’t remember a time that he had looked so scared in all your life. Before he could say anything, you continued, “I love you, but I am a good Catholic lady, and you have to ask me properly, on one knee and everything,” you finished, a teasing smile spread over your face. 

The colour returned to Jake’s face and he let out a laugh, “You had me worried there for a minute darlin’,” he said, pushing a deep breath out of his mouth. 

“I’ll say yes as long as you do it right,” you told him, placing a kiss on his cheek. 

Taking your hand into his, he asked, “Well what is the right way then?”

“You’ve got to ask permission, you need a ring, and I need you down on one knee. How else can you show your total love and devotion besides kneeling to the best WSO there ever was?” you asked him. 

Laughing, Jake brought your hand to his mouth, brushing a kiss across your knuckles, “Well then mia cara, your wish is my command.” 

You felt a blush spread across your cheeks as you looked at him, “Also, the wedding has to be Catholic, but I figured you knew that already.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything less,” Jake said, pulling you towards him and into a kiss. 

Now that he wasn’t vibrating with anxiety, you both returned to your studies, smiles on your faces. 

----

Jake loved you and the thought that he could have died without putting a ring on your finger and making you his, scared him more than the thought of dying did. While you had only been dating for nine months, he knew that you were the one he wanted to marry, and he hoped that you felt the same, because he couldn’t wait any longer to start making plans to propose. 

It had all become more evident to him over the past few weeks after he received his promotion. The two of you had been enjoying lazy weekends together filled with bible studies, cooking, Mass, and binge watching shitty TV on your couch. He loved every moment he spent with you the big ones, the bad ones, and the everyday ones. He wasn’t willing to risk missing any of them any longer. 

“Can I help you, Jake?” Cyclone asked as soon as he walked up to his office and spotted him waiting right next to the door. 

The lack of proper military title in the question hadn’t been lost on Jake, and neither was the absolutely exhausted look the Admiral was sporting. The week had been long and hard, a mission had failed on Tuesday and by Friday they were hauling body bags out of a carrier. A twenty man mission and four returned, three of them injured. 

Cyclone waved him into the office, he sat himself down at his desk and opened a drawer where he took out a fifth of bourbon and a glass. He poured the contents of the bottle into the glass, filling it about halfway up and brought it up to his lips.

“If you’re here about --” Cyclone started.

“I’m here to ask for Y/n’s hand in marriage, sir,” Jake said, not even giving the Admiral time to finish speaking.

“No. Nope, not happening. You aren’t doing this here, you aren’t doing this now. You are not making me cry in my office, at work,” Cyclone put the glass down and jumped up from his chair. He walked to the coat rack by the door on which he had hung his coat and fished his phone out of one of the pockets. He unlocked it and typed something on the screen before turning his attention back to Jake, “You can both come for dinner tonight, you can ask then.”

“Sir,” Jake confirmed with a nod. He turned to leave, before his hand reached the door handle, Cyclone stopped him.

“Did she tell you to ask me?” Cyclone asked, stopping Jake in the doorway.

“No, sir,” Jake replied, “But you’re supposed to ask the father.”

“I know,” Cyclone said, “I know. I just -- I didn’t think -- I didn’t think she was serious about calling me Dad,” he finished quietly. 

“Sir?” Jake asked. 

“I’ve always considered them my girls, Jake, but I didn’t think they actually considered me their father. I thought -- I thought maybe they were just trying this Dad thing out,” Admiral Simpson admitted before taking a swig of his bourbon, “In all honesty, I keep waking up scared that they’ll stop.”

“Having a dad ain’t something you can stop, sir. It’s like the Bible says, ‘He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers,’ their hearts have been turned to you and yours to them. Nothing’s breaking you apart now,” Jake said, his hand still on the handle.

“How is it you always know just what to say, Seresin?” the Admiral smiled, “I’m happy you’re my kids’ minister, they’re growing up to be wonderful people,” he said, Jake felt himself blush. Cyclone chuckled, “And how on earth do you know so much about dinosaurs? The girls always come home telling us something new about triceratopses, T-rexes or velociraptors…”

“Big Jurassic Park fan,” Jake admitted, a large smile etched upon his own face. 

Jake finally pushed the handle down and walked out of the office. He got out his phone and shot you a text, informing you of the dinner plans before his phone buzzed in his hands with a message from an unknown number, “Seven pm sharp. Don’t be late.”

----

Jake had been to the Admiral’s house once before and while he knew the way he was happy you were there to guide him. Cyclone had texted you telling you where to park twenty minutes before they let you go. You had both gone back to yours to shower and get ready, Jake had packed a neat button up shirt and a pair of slacks inside of his duffel bag, wrapped in a plastic bag to avoid them reeking of Naval training induced sweat. 

“Do I look okay?” he asked you, checking his shirt for creases and quickly redoing his hair in the mirror. 

You chuckled a little, “Baby, you look fine. I know you’re nervous, but this is just dinner, yeah? Nothing special. Everything will be fine,” you smiled at him. 

He let out a nervous laugh, “Yeah, you’re right. It’s just dinner.”

You opened the passenger door and slid out of Jake’s truck while he picked up the bag you had on the back seat. He handed you the bouquet you had bought for Elisabeth and you both walked up the steps. Jake rang the doorbell with a slightly shaky finger. The door swung open immediately to reveal Peter with a toothy grin.

“I hope you like barbecue,” he said, bowing low as he welcomed you and Jake inside the house, “Leave your shoes on, we’re eating outside,” he said, seeing you bend down to remove your heels. 

You entered the living room undisturbed but Jake was assaulted by grinning children almost as soon as he stepped over the doorway. The girls attacked his legs with hugs, almost hitting their head on the bag, while Matthew hugged Jake’s midriff so tightly you were sure it knocked the breath out of him. 

“Jake, can you play Mario Kart with us later?” Peter asked, prying his brother away from your boyfriend

“Sure, if you don’t mind losing. Again,” he winked. 

The church had recently purchased a TV for Sunday school to allow teachers and youth ministers to set up movies for the children to watch. It had been meant as an educational purpose or a way to let the children wait for their parents to pick them up without too much ruckus, but that had flown out of the window two days after its purchase when Bob hooked up a console to it. Since then, a cut throat Mario Kart competition had been taking place that Jake had yet to lose. 

“Now, now, let the poor guy in. Let him eat before you make him entertain you,” Elisabeth appeared from the kitchen carrying a bowl of salad. She deposited it onto the dining room table and turned towards Jake, with one clap of her hands, all three of the girls let go of his legs and Jake found himself to be a free man once again. 

“These are for you,” you said, handing Elisabeth the flowers.

She smiled warmly at you, “Darling, these are beautiful. Thank you so much,” she said, cupping your face with one hand and bringing you closer to kiss the top of your head.

Jake fished the bottle of red wine from the bag, “This is for you too,” Elisabeth put the flowers down on the table and smiled appreciatively. She grabbed the bottle and with her spare hand patted him on the arm. 

Jake’s blood ran cold. She knew. Cyclone had told her and she knew.

If he hadn’t been nervous before he certainly was now. He looked around at Peter and Matthew, trying to figure out if they knew too but the boys were too engrossed in an argument about who was the fastest reader that they weren’t paying any attention to anyone but themselves.

“Honey, are you okay?” you asked, Jake tried to swallow the ball of nerves that had firmly lodged itself inside of his throat.

Jake opened his mouth to speak, but Elisabeth saved him, “I bet you’re starving!” she said, clapping her hands together “You’ll have to forgive my stalling, Beau isn’t finished getting ready yet,” she added, Elisabeth turned to you, “He takes ever so much time in the bathroom, sometimes I wonder if he’s not doing it just to get a rise out of me.”

“I would never, Darling,” Admiral Simpson’s voice rang throughout the house as he descended the stairs. He had washed away the hair gel he sported on base and applied a fresh coat, styling it much more naturally like he did for church. He matched Jake in his neat white button-up, black slacks and nice shoes, the only differentiating item being the watch. Cyclone had received a rolex from Elisabeth three years ago and had not ceased wearing it outside of base since. 

He crossed the distance between you and him, hugging you tightly and kissing your forehead before moving over to Jake. Cyclone, much to Jake’s surprise, was a hugger. You could see the slight shock on your boyfriend’s face as the Admiral opened his arms and embraced him, patting him on the back, “You okay, kid, you seem tense?” he asked, and you swore you saw Beau wink.

“I don’t think Jake’s a hugger,” Elisabeth said, taking her husband’s hand and moving him away a little.

“You’re right. I’m sorry Jake, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” Cyclone said, a mischievous glint in his eyes. 

I see why Bob and him get along so well, Jake thought. Both men revelled in making other people miserable for their own amusement. Bob hadn’t eased up since their conversation in Texas, he had taken a sick sort of pleasure in making a ‘waiting for marriage’ joke whenever Jake refused anything. At least Bob had the decency to say it low enough no one would hear and never in front of you. 

“It’s all good. I’m not used to it, that’s all,” Jake replied. 

“Well, now that everyone is here, why don’t you get started on the grill,” Elisabeth said, ushering her husband outside with her eldest boy. 

Once the meat had been grilled and their plates crowded with as many sides as they possibly could, they sat down to eat on the patio. It was a beautiful night, the sun had gone down early, leaving them under the night’s sky, the dinner party only lit by fairy lights strung around the garden. 

“Y/n dear, could you help me put the girls to bed?” Elisabeth asked you right as you polished off what was left of your place, “We can have dessert after they fall asleep.” 

You nodded, standing up from your chair and following Elisabeth inside to herd the girls into their bedroom. 

“So,” Cyclone said, leaning back on his chair,“I believe you had a question.”

“Yes,” Jake replied, feeling his heart beat faster and a nervous blush creep up his neck. It suddenly felt very hot, “I wanted to ask for permission -- I wanted to know if -- I would like to ask for Y/n’s hand in marriage.”

Cyclone stayed quiet as Jake gathered his thoughts, “I had a speech prepared, just to try and convince you, but it just seems so fake now… Look, I’m here to ask for Y/n’s hand in marriage for no other reason than I love her. I am so in love with her and it feels a little weird telling you this, but it’s the truth. She’s an amazing woman, she is kind, she is caring, she’s so generous and wonderful, and she keeps me grounded. I never have to doubt if she loves me and I want to make sure she never doubts that I feel the same,”

“I don’t know what I have done to please the Lord enough that he decided to bestow Y/n upon me but I don’t want to lose any time with her. Our line of work isn’t always conducive towards long life expectancies and I don’t know how much time I have with your daughter so I want to make the best of it. I want to try, in the limited amount of time I have been given to walk upon this earth, to give her the life she deserves. I want to give her the big white church wedding, the kids and the nice house, but all that, I’m afraid, starts with your blessing,” Jake finished.

“And what if I refuse?” Cyclone asked

Jake hummed, “Well, if you refuse, I may have to let Y/n know you swerved to hit that puddle on purpose. She’s still furious about that, by the way. Apparently the stains won’t come out,” he replied, looking at his superior officer with a shit eating grin. 

On that day, before he jumped in front of you to try and protect you from the murky brown waters of the puddle, Jake had briefly made eye contact with Cyclone through the windshield. It hadn’t been long, but it had been enough to see the man turn the wheel to hit the water. Jake had kept that fact close to his heart, ready to use whenever it was needed. He’d grown up with John, Tony and Maria, blackmail was a skill necessary for his survival. 

Cyclone looked at him for a long while, mouth slightly ajar in surprise before his lips curled slightly upwards in a shocked smile. He let out a breathy laugh and nodded in defeat. Jake stood up and vanished inside for a minute before coming back with the shopping bag he had carried the bottle of wine in. He fished out a plastic bag, wrapped firmly around a set of books.

“I’m thinking of quitting the youth ministry,” Jake admitted, “Not immediately, just when we get married,” he added quickly when he saw Cyclone’s surprised face, “but I know your girls will need a daily supply of dinosaur facts to keep them happy. So, here are my favourite books. You’ll need to study up,” he continued, pushing the bag towards the Admiral. 

“You won’t be needing them?” Cyclone asked, with a smile.

“I know them by heart,” Jake replied, “They like the Brachiosaurus best. You’ll find them in chapter six of the biggest book.”

Cyclone fished the book out from the middle of the pile. As he cracked open the cover, Elisabeth walked out holding a large glass tray of tiramisu, you followed a minute behind, holding a bottle of wine and a bottle of soda. Peter and Matthew were called to the table as soon as dessert had been cut up and served and wine glasses had been refilled. 

The boys practically inhaled the dessert and soon demanded seconds, as much as Jake would have liked another slice, he was out to make a good impression especially since Cyclone had yet to answer. As soon as the tray had been polished clean Peter asked for the promised Mario Kart rematch he had apparently trained for and Jake followed him into the living room where they had already booted up the console. Jake took his sweet time getting comfortable on the sofa, he stretched his arms, cracked his knuckles and his neck to make the boys laugh. Finally, his pre-game prep completed, he gave the go ahead for the race. 

The four track tournament the boys had decided on started with Jake’s incontestable victory on Grumble Volcano . Matthew had started losing by the second race, but Peter had bravely held on til the last track. Once the game loaded up Rainbow Road, Jake’s favourite track, it had been the beginning of the end for the eldest Simpson child. They were nearing the last turn of the last lap when Cyclone had entered the living room and bent low on the back of the sofa.

“Just remember I am yet to give my blessing, Jacob,” he whispered into Jake’s ear, forgetting the blackmail material he had revealed earlier in the evening, Jake drove Mario straight off of the edge of the road. 

“Beau! You did not just do that?!” Elisabeth walked into the house with a stack of plates and the empty tiramisu tray, “Unbelievable!” she whispered, “Jacob, in the kitchen please, I’d like a word.”

Jacob rose from the couch, shooting a grinning Cyclone the most evil glare he could manage and followed Elisabeth into the home’s small kitchen. 

“Don’t pay him any mind, Jacob. He’s just toying with you,” She said, opening up the dishwasher. Jake grabbed the stack of plates and cutlery off of the counter and helped fill the machine. Once done and the door closed again, Elisabeth brought her hands to her hips and looked him in the eye, “So, have you already bought the ring?”

“No, I figured I should ask for permission first,” he replied. She gave him an approving nod, before dumping dish soap in the sink and filling it with water. Elisabeth handed him a tea towel as she dunked her hands in the searing water and began washing dishes. 

“You should call her sisters.They’ll know what she wants,” she said, handing him something to dry. 

“Right,” Jake said, “How do you know that?” he asked.

“Because that’s what Beau did,” she replied, shrugging.  

“You knew?” Cyclone asked, suddenly appearing behind the corner. 

Jake saw on his face that the man had clearly thought his sisters-in-law to be steel traps, incapable of betraying his secret. He wouldn’t be making this mistake, he had met Annie twice so far and she had already divulged half of the secrets she knew to him with nothing to help but a bottle of wine. He just hoped that when he asked, Jake would be able to stall her long enough to give himself time to propose. 

“Obviously. What, did you think I thought you bought me the exact ring I wanted in the right size without doing any snooping or questioning?” Elisabeth chuckled, seeing her husband’s shocked face, she pulled her hands out of the water and dried them on the towel Jake was holding. She walked up to the Admiral and cupped his face in her hands, gently pecking his lips, “Cassie told me three hours after you called,” she added, “Why don’t you help Jake with the washing up, I’ll entertain your sons with Y/N.”

Both men watched Elisabeth walk away, stopping by the radio and turning it on to the local station before joining you and the kids on the couch. Cyclone rolled up his sleeves and replaced his wife at the sink. 

“It’s a yes, obviously,” Cyclone eventually said as he washed up the last dish, Jake raised an eyebrow, “For the blessing. I’m happy you asked, but it was entirely unnecessary. It was always going to be a yes. I might have had to think about it if it was anyone else, but for you there’s no hesitation.”

“Thank you,” he replied.

“Jake, can I give you a tip? Stop selling yourself short,” Cyclone said, putting a damp hand on his shoulder, Jake opened his mouth to say something but Cyclone interrupted, “Stop. I know you’re going to deny it, but we both know that cocky exterior is a facade. Look, the truth is you’re a clever guy, a fantastic pilot, and an amazing youth minister and I know you’ll be an even better husband and father. Just relax, enjoy what you have. You deserve it.”

“Sir,” Jake replied, staring at the dishes in front of him, trying to hold in the tears bubbling up behind his eyes.

“And for the love of everything Holy, if we’re going to be family, stop calling me sir, or Admiral. It’s Beau,” Cyclone chuckled. 

The washing up done and tidied away, the two men walked out of the kitchen just as the last few bars of To The Guys Who Date My Girls by Thomas Rhett floated through the air. 

“And now for something a little faster. I hope you all enjoy this next song, it’s a personal favourite,” the local radio presenter announced. His voice died down and Hardwood Floors by Charles Wesley Godwin began. Cyclone turned the volume up a little. 

“Do you remember the last time we danced to that?” he asked Elisabeth.

She laughed, “Yes, Mr. Two Left Feet, I remember.” 

“Hey, give him a break, a two-step’s harder than it looks,” Jake said, “Y/N, shall we show them how it's done?”

“I..I can’t dance a two-step,” you said, looking at Jake like he was crazy. 

“No, but I can and I’m leading,” Jake said with a goofy smile on his face.

Taking your right hand in his left, you settled your left hand on his right shoulder, "Ready?" he asked you. 

"As I'll ever be," you replied with a smile. Then he started moving, two fast steps back and two slow steps forward, pushing you out he spun you before pulling you back to him, your front pressed against his as he continued the dance. 

Jake's deep voice singing the song to you as he continued dancing, "Let's warm up these hardwood floors, And tonight I'll see you spin around. Take my hand, honey, let's just dance, And pretend there ain't nobody else in town…"

Cyclone and Elizabeth tried for all their worth to follow Jake's movements but they couldn't keep up with the Texas native's Texan Two-Step moves. 

"Alright Jake, we get that you're a cowboy," Beau said, laughing as he pulled Elizabeth into a slow waltz to the music.

Everyone laughed at his comment, "I don't know about that, but I'll take it," Jake said, smiling down at you. You continued dancing and Jake asked, just for you to hear, “Am I a cowboy darlin’?”

“Best one I’ve ever seen,” you said, letting out a little laugh, you could feel his chest vibrate with his own. Jake pressed a kiss to your forehead just as the song ended. The two of you said your goodbyes and Jake took you home. 

He seemed excited about something, but you weren’t sure what it was. You laid down to sleep, content with how the night had gone, Cyclone seemed to be warming up to Jake and you couldn’t be happier. With thoughts of his hands dancing over your back as you danced, you fell into a deep sleep

#fanfic #top gun fanfiction #top gun x reader #top gun maverick #fanfiction #hangman x reader #jake hangman seresin #original fic #jake seresin #hangman top gun

[lunarfey]

@charlatann sent: 🚩mutuals who follow but don't reach out to u / prompt, accepting.

one of the most frustrating things to deal with as a roleplayer. i really do understand that it can be a bit ( or a lot ) scary to reach out to new ( or old ) mutuals, but this is supposed to be a collaborative hobby & that does mean we have to actually interact with the people that we follow. otherwise is there really any point in following them at all?

i don't expect new mutuals to immediately start interacting as soon as we become mutuals, but i do try my best to make it easier to do by posting inbox calls or plotting calls, reblogging a ton of memes etc, & i try to engage people on the dash as well. it's very disheartening to not get the same level of engagement in return from people i follow.

personally i'm a very slow writer, so i try to interact in other ways by reblogging promos, sending memes, commenting on ooc posts etc because interaction doesn't always have to just be ic writing! any kind of engagement with my blog lets me know that people are interested in writing with me eventually & that i'm not just another number.

#this became a novel #countercharmd #☾ ˙ ˖ ✧ answered ooc.

[astroboots]

Hiiiii I see that you and thirstworld collaborate a lot (and I love your work lmao 🤤). Can you explain how you two collaborate? Like, what your process is? Do you share a word doc, take turns writing chapters, something else? Thanks ❤️❤️

Hi nonny!!! Sorry it's taken a while to answer this. I wanted to take some proper time to answer this, since writing with @thirstworldproblemss is my favorite part of the writing process, and I was trying to pin down exactly how we make it work and the honest answer is:

utter chaos?

There is no real logic in all honesty, we do everything under the sun.

The collaboration comes in many forms.

Most of the time it's a side product of just how many hours, minutes and seconds of the day we spend talking to each other? This includes DM, Whatsapp, Discord, Tumblr messages (though that has taken the backburner since their messaging function is chaos and I rarely check it), sometimes we call each other when there's a long roadtrip. Sometimes we will be half awake insomniac and half conscious texting each other messages riddled with typos lyksalksdassisdis.

A lot of times before we write, be it a oneshot, a chapter or a headcanon that is never posted, it starts with one of us going:

"Hey you know what would be interesting? if ..." and off to the races we go. A lot of times one of us will throw a scenario of the character we're horny for at the hour, and throw a prompt at the other going: how do you think they'd react.

Our favourite thing is the 101 various AUs we have of every damn character. High School AU of Homecoming where the trio gets together (Frankie is an exchange student?) Royal Historical AU! where Santiago and Boa are betrothed and Frankie is a war captive? What about an angsty Frankie/Santi FWB in high school AU? etc etc etc

Sometimes one of us (most like TWP) will write a whole masterpiece of a fic from beginning to end in the DMs, and it's a matter of copying and pasting into the Gdocs. Sometimes one of us will start something and the other finish. Sometimes we play baton where one of us writes a paragraph then the other takes over.

For Red Flags. It was me holding TWP captive and hostage for over a year. (Much like what I'm doing with EYEM) talking her ear off, and both of us going over the chapter over and over planning in meticulous detail only to throw it out and write something completely different anyhow. (We must've rewritten chapter 6 four times from scratch until both of us were in absolute tears).

The main thing I'd say about our collaboration is that there is a lot of trust between us. Co-writing with someone requires a lot of vulnerability because writing can be something very personal, and if you do not feel close to the person it can throw up a lot of emotions you didn't expect.

We've also known each other for three years now, and talk a ridiculous amount. Often when we plan stories there will be at least a handful of times during the interaction of one night where we both suggest the exact same thing within seconds of each other and then we burst out laughing.

I trust TWP with everything I write, to the point where when she beta/edit, I do not review the changes, there's no tracked changes, because she has full editing permission on my stories, because I know she will be better at knowing what I wanted and intended to write better than I did.

I cannot stress this enough that while TWP might not be listed as a co-writer in everything I write (because she refuses to let me give her the credit she is due), she is an integral part of everything I write because I will consult her, brainstorm with her, she will suggest scenes, pacing, re-organise scenes that do not fit etc, before a story is posted. She is the unseen masterpupeteer of all my writing, and more importantly without her writing would not be as fun as it is for me, and I don't know if I would write as much or as often as I do without her.

Writing can sometimes be an incredibly lonely process and I have been lucky and fortunate enough to have a friend who never makes me feel lonely

I remember watching a John Mulaney and Bill Hader interview where they talked about stage fright and Bill Hader was talking about how to cope with anxiety, whenever he performed on SNL he only looked at John and was performing for John. if John laughed then he did his job. That's very much how I feel when I am writing and posting things here. When I write something TWP is my first and foremost audience I have in mind. So long as she laughs or is horny, then I know I've done my job.

#💌 ask

[dronarryfest]

Dronarry Fest 2023 Rules and Guidelines

✨We are super excited that Dronarry Fest 2023 will be kicking off in just a few short weeks! ✨

Here are the rules and guidelines and (hopefully!) everything you need to know about taking part in the fest.

Dronarry Fest is a fic and art fest specifically dedicated to the characters of Draco Malfoy, Ron Weasley, and Harry Potter, either as a triad (Dronarry) or as pairs (Drarry, Dron, Ronarry). All works must feature all three characters in significant capacity either as romantic interests or in a platonic dynamic of some description. 

Timeline Prompting Opens: October 6th (prompting post with form and prompt gallery here) Prompting Closes: November 5th  Claiming Starts: November 6th  Claiming Closes: February 5th  Submissions Due: February 19th  Posting Begins: March 15th, with reveals to follow

*subject to change

Prompting

Prompting Opens October 6th Prompting Closes November 5th

You may submit as many prompts as you like, either using your name or anonymously.

You do not have to be creating in the fest to send in a prompt.

Please include any extra prompt details you would love to see incorporated (e.g. a favourite trope).

If you wish to, please include a maximum rating (e.g. Explicit) and any squicks or triggers (e.g. MCD). 

Please note that any prompt details, including wished-for tropes, ratings, and squicks, are for inspiration only, and creators are not obligated to fulfil all of your desired wishes.

We allow self-prompting. You may submit your desired prompt and then take your chance claiming it (with the risk that someone else may snatch it up before you), or you can fill in the special box for self-prompts once claiming opens.

Prompts will be available for browsing once claiming opens.

Claiming

Claiming Starts November 6th at 5pm GMT Claiming Closes February 5th 

This is an 18+ fest. Please do not sign up if you are under the age of 18 at the time of submission (February 19th 2023).

You may only claim one prompt at a time. If you finish your prompt, you may claim an additional prompt, but you must submit your first prompt as per submission guidelines first.

Claims will be awarded on a first come, first served basis.

You may claim for different fanwork types at the same time, either as an individual or as a collaboration (e.g. art + fic).

Collaborations are welcome! Please only submit one form per collaboration work and include details of all participants. Collabs can be illustrated fics, multi-author fics, multi-artists artworks, etc.

If you wish to create based on an existing fanwork, please submit as a self-prompt. You must ask for the original creator’s permission before submitting. We will trust you to honour this and only ask for proof in case issues arise. As proof we would expect written consent, or a blanket permission statement from the original creator either as a link or screencap.

You can browse blanket permission statements of creators here: https://www.fpslist.org/

Creating

All creations must feature either: Dronarry (Draco/Ron/Harry), Drarry (Draco/Harry), Dron (Draco/Ron), or Ronarry (Ron/Harry), or a mixture of the listed ships.

All creations must feature Draco, Ron, and Harry as main characters.

Minimum of 1k for fics, with no maximum wordcount. For podfics, the recorded story should be a minimum of 1k words, no maximum.

All fics must be proofread by a beta. Podfics must be proofed before submission. If you do not have a beta, please contact the mods ([email protected]) or send us an ask and we can put a call out for a beta for you.

This is an anonymous fest. Please do not discuss your creations with anyone except for your beta readers and the fest mods until the reveals have been announced.

Submissions must be complete works created for Dronarry Fest. Please do not submit incomplete works or works that are part of a series or a prequel/sequel to an existing work, unless it is a remix.

We encourage you to be inspired by prompts’ additional details, but it is not a requirement to incorporate them into your creation. You are not required to abide by any mentioned dislikes. However, if you plan to gift a creation to the prompter, we may disallow this if you ignore stated dislikes. Please tag your work appropriately.

Submitting

Submissions Due February 19th

All works must be submitted to the AO3 collection: Dronarry Fest 2023. If you do not have an AO3 account, please contact the mods.

You are required to add dronarry_mods as a co-creator when uploading your creation. This is so that we can change the posting date, check the submission, and add a tag for Dronarry Fest 2023. We will not make any other changes to your work, and we will remove the mod account immediately after the fest has ended. 

Major archive warnings and other seriously triggering and harmful content must be tagged (racism and racially sensitive content, transphobia, homophobia, xenophobia, etc - here is a very helpful list of warning tags from the Trigger Warnings blog).

Upon submitting your content, you agree to the Rules and Guidelines of the fest.

Please contact the mods if you have any issues submitting your work to AO3.

Following submission, please email [email protected] to confirm you have submitted your work with the completed submission header form below. You will receive a confirmation email from us.

Submission header:

Title: Creator(s): Type: (art, fic, podfic, craft) Wordcount/length: Art/Craft medium: Warnings: Prompt no. or self prompt: Pairing: Summary: Link to work: Link to original work (if applicable):

Extensions/Dropping Out/Adjustments

Real life happens! If you need to drop out of the fest for any reason at all, please let the mods know ASAP via email. There will be no repercussions for future fests if you let us know before the submission date.

If you need an extension, please contact the mods ASAP with the estimated additional time you need. Please don’t hesitate to reach out as soon as you find yourself struggling with a due date.

If you signed up for a collaboration but things don’t work out for one or more participants, please let us know. We will confirm to all collab partners and treat the remaining participant/s as a single claim pending confirmation.

Posting

Posting Begins March 15th

The mods will post your creation on the scheduled day. We do not release the posting schedule as this is subject to change.

Reveals posting will be scheduled closer to the submission deadline. Watch this space!

FAQs

Are other ships allowed? Theoretically, yes, but they must be minor. Dronarry, Drarry, Dron and/or Ronarry must be the main pairing and focus of your work. You can pair Draco, Ron, and/or Harry with other characters, but these must be background relationships and the story must be centred around one or more of the ships listed above.

Is this an 18+ fest? Yes, this fest is only open to creators over the age of 18 at time of submission (February 19th 2023).

From your Dronarry Fest mods, @wolfpants @oknowkiss @getawayfox @sweet-s0rr0w @thebooktopus

[ID: a graphic with a blue celestial background, featuring Draco, Harry, and Ron floating above a country manor with art by @ihopeyoubothstaysafefromharm]

Art by @ihopeyoubothstaysafefromharm, banner created by @getawayfox

#dronarryfest23 #dronarryfest #dronarry #dron #drarry #ronarry #ron weasley #draco malfoy #harry potter #hp fests

[charmsandtealeaves]

@jilytoberfest | 31 prompts | Prompt 3

Prompt: Teaming up when they aren’t really friends

Read it on AO3

Summary: Flitwick sets randomly assigned partners for the first major charms N.E.W.T assignment of the year. Lily just had to be paired with her arch nemesis. 

Words: 1424

Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash

This Isn't Transfiguration

When Professor Flitwick had started the term by saying that as their first N.E.W.T year they’d be working on a project piece for the first term, Lily had been delighted. She had always excelled at charms with it being her favourite subject after potions, it was the one class she felt came to her with a sense of ease. However, her excitement turned to dread when he continued that it would be a joint assignment. Marlene and Dorcas always partnered together, and Mary had started dating Reg Cattermole over the summer break so she undoubtedly would partner up with him. That left her with few suitable replacement options. The stomach churning feeling turned into full on plummet when Flitwick then said they’d be working in randomly assigned pairs. He levitated a pointed wizards hat filled with names on pieces of parchment for each person to select their partner. As more and more of her potential good partners were snapped up she started to feel the anxiety build. The last thing she needed was to be stuck with one or the Slytherins, or worse a slacker who would leave her doing all of the work. 

When the hat finally reached her, she quickly dove in and snatched the first piece of parchment she could reach. Lily read the name quickly. James Potter. FUCK. 

“Professor, could I please redraw?” She asked politely.

“Miss Evans in the real world you will encounter many people you wouldn’t otherwise find yourself socialising and working with. This assignment is to help you prepare for that. You get who lady luck deals you I’m afraid.” Professor Flitwick returned her answer kindly. 

“Potter. I’m with you.” Lily called out to his row. 

Upon hearing his name James smiled and shifted from his seat to join her. He had the audacity to be happy about it. Double fuck. Fuck it, fuck him, fuck this. Wait no that was three… Triple fuck. Dorcas smiled apologetically as she got out of her seat to make room for James. If she didn’t kill him by the end of term it’d be a miracle. Lily chose to blatantly ignore James' ever fidgeting presence as Fliwick explained their assignment in more depth. 

“I was thinking we could add a changing element to ours… turn something from one thing to another.” James whispered, drawing his chair closer to her so their brainstorming couldn’t be overheard. 

“That’s transfiguration Potter. This is charms. A charm adds certain properties to an object or creature, whereas a transfiguring spell will change it into something utterly different. Standard book of spells… grade one” Lily responded sharply, her tone clearly annoyed. 

“I know that. I was just thinking we could add something. There is no harm in mixing both entities.” James replied defensively. 

He was good at transfiguration; it was his strongest subject, while Lily was best in charms. He thought it would be a good idea to collaborate with their strengths. Last thing he wanted to do was to step on Lily’s toes this early considering they’d be partnered together all term. How things had ended last year after their owl exams still played on his mind. James hadn’t meant for Snape to call her that word and end their friendship like that. Snape and Lily were from the same town he knew, which must have made her Summer very difficult. Perhaps that’s why she was now so bitter to be forced into partnership with him. 

Lily had begun rapidly scribbling away on a piece of parchment paper. Clearly she already had an idea of what she wanted to work on. James leaned over to be able to read as she wrote. 

Atmospheric charm???? Modify for indoor use. 

James slid the parchment towards himself and jotted a note in the corner

Avis- bird conjuring charm. Advanced spell - mixes elements of charms and transfiguration. Aren’t supposed to cover it til later in the year. Would impress. 

Lily looked at it briefly with a scowl and wrote back. 

Caterwauling Charm. Explain later. 

When class was over Lily  pulled James aside in the charms corridor. They both had a free period now in which they could discuss their project plan going forward. James seemed somewhat reluctant to spend his first free period of the year actually doing school work. But agreed to follow her to one of the private study cubbys in the library. Lily grabbed a few books off the shelves in the restricted section as they went. James recognised a few of the titles as ones he’d ‘borrowed’ previously under the cloak while working on the marauders map. Lily slammed the books onto a table in the cubby with a loud thunk, quickly flicking to pages she must have already been familiar with. 

“I helped Professor Sprout in greenhouse four last year. She cast an atmospheric charm to work indoors to water the plants… I’m thinking we could combine it with the caterwauling charm. Instead of setting off a screeching alarm it would trigger an atmospheric change. Seems like something up your alley considering the swamp you charmed in the girls' lavatories last year.”

“Seems a little basic. Not much of a challenge for you. This assignment is supposed to push us.” James commented. 

“Then what’s your bright spark idea then? I was trying to make things easy for you.” “Oh don’t make it easy for my sake Evans. I can pull my own weight.” James growled. “Personally I think combining advanced transfiguration and charm is the way to go. Flitwick is known for giving out house points for ingenuity. Maybe we could do our own take on something similar to the Avis charm. Not birds but something else more easily contained. A fish or something.” 

As much as she hated to admit it. Lily knew James was right. Combining two types of advanced magic was much more likely to earn them praise and a good passing grade from Flitwick. 

“Well I want to put a sense of style into it anyway. A magical signature.” Lily retorted. 

“Okay deal. What did you have in mind?” James agreed. 

“Petals?” She flustered on the spot. 

“Petals to fish is a good start. You’d need a containment charm, a hover charm or barrier charm of some sort. Your idea of switching up an alarm triggering charm could come into play here. Instead of an alarm it sets off a chain reaction of transfiguration magic.” James brainstormed. Flicking through to the appropriate text page. 

It took many long hours into the night, frustrated shouting matches, starting from scratch all over again, skipped meals, tears and countless cups of tea, but they finally had their project sorted just in time for the break. Nervously Lily gently placed the most complicated piece of magic she’d created to date onto Professor Flitwick's teaching podium. To the unknowing eye it looked like a flower petal hovering above a clear glass bowl of water. She turned and gave James a knowing thumbs up. Flitwick entered the classroom and breezed down the rows of students admiring each project in turn before he approached James and Lily. Flitwick’s eyebrows furrowed in concern as he saw their empty desk. He’d never in all his years of teaching not had a pair hand a project in. 

“Mr Potter, Miss Evans?” Flitwick asked quizzically. 

“You’ll find our work on your podium Sir.” James responded, he could feel his pulse in his throat as Flitwick turned away from them and walked back towards their work. 

Lily reached out under the desk and grasped James hand tightly and gave it a squeeze. This was going to work. They’d tested and tested and tested it. There was no way it could fail now. Flitwick reached the bowl and went to touch it which triggered their silent chain reaction. James squeezed Lily’s hand so hard it almost hurt, he’d wanted this to succeed just as much as she had. The petal spun briefly in circles before it fell beneath the water’s surface, turning from white and pink to orange and black, it shimmered momentarily before it transformed leaving a small goldfish swimming in its wake. Flitwick picked up the bowl and lifted to his face, watching intently as the small fish swam in delicate laps.

“Well I never…” Flitwick uttered. 

“I’d say that’s a definite O Evans.” said James smugly, releasing Lily’s hand. 

“I’d say so… I’d like to make another one though.” Lily agreed.

“Another one? What the bloody hell for” he asked.

“I feel Professor Slughorn would like one”

#Charms Library #jilytoberfest 2022

[eleanorfenyxwrites]

2023 AO3 Stats Breakdown

I did this last year and I thought it was interesting for me to see if nothing else, so I'm doing it again this year! I didn't get my main goal done (which was finishing all my outstanding WIPs....or any of my wips....) but let's see what I did do!

Total Wordcount (approximate*): 62,285 words across 7 fics in 1 fandom

Most popular (by hits): Soldier, Poet, King (5,435) [Although if we'd like to go based on fics that were actually finished in 2023, the winner would be Why Not Me?, which I finished posting on January 29th and currently has 3,885 hits)

Most popular (by kudos): Why Not Me? (486)

Least Popular (by hits): The Romance of Anonymity (615)

Least Popular (by kudos): The Romance of Anonymity (100)

Highest Wordcount: Soldier, Poet, King (101,359) (up 22,669 words from last year, which would still put it above anything else in the list)

Lowest Wordcount: Outta Time (4,737)

*This year my approximate wordcount is EXTREMELY off. Partially because I know how much of SPK I wrote this year but not how much of Why Not Me? technically fell in 2023 so that one's more than it should be. Also, though, because I have two fics that I've been working on that I have posted absolutely nothing of, one of which is collaborative. These two projects together are another 200k easily, and while I don't know exactly how much I've contributed numerically to the collaborative fic, I've probably done roughly half, probably a bit less. That's still another ~150k that y'all haven't seen yet, and that's partly why my numbers feel so much lower than what they've been in the past.

Fic Breakdown

I only wrote for the MDZS/CQL fandom this year, and with the exception of Why Not Me? everything that I've written for has been 3zun (and that actually includes my secret projects as well). I haven't had nearly as much time to write this year as I would've liked due to real life shit, so when I do have the opportunity to write I'm much more likely to write about 3zun than anyone else as they remain my favorite ship. If we don't include Soldier, Poet, King and Why Not Me? in this year's lists, as I started them both in 2022, then in 2023 I wrote a total of 5 fics.

These 5 fics account for 35,422 words out of my total (dubious) wordcount as calculated by AO3.

1/5 was a total standalone oneshot: Cut From The Same, which was inspired by art/posts from littlesmartart and guqinandflute here on tumblr, was written for Polyship Week 2023, days 4 & 8 "Soulmates/Free Day" (I wanted to do it for day 4 but ran out of time, so I posted it on day 8 instead).

2/5 are parts of a new series: Outta Time and Roses Are Falling are the first two installments in the Orville Peck Cinematic Universe series, sparked by conversations between myself and littlesmartart about my tentative ongoing Brokeback Mountain AU, Orville Peck's music, and the appeal of cowboy culture in general.

2/5 are additions to ongoing series from 2022: The Romance of Anonymity is an installment in my 90's Strip Mall AU series, Tales From Jianghu Shopping Center, and was written to fulfill Polyship Week 2023 prompts for days 1 and 3, "Roadtrip" and "Bed Sharing", respectively. You're Safe Here is an extra for my 1970's Wangxian AU, The Sculptor, and the series is now called Lavender and Free Love. I wrote it for Polyship Week 2023 day 2, "Missing Scene" (which I didn't realize at the time meant a missing scene from somewhere in canon not from one of my own fics, but oops oh well).

With all that said - what did I actually write?

I almost exclusively posted one-shots this year, with the exception being The Romance of Anonymity, which is two brief chapters written for two separate prompts. Like I said, it's been a busy year in a lot of very good ways, but they weren't very conducive to hammering out chaptered/massive fics very quickly. That being said, Secret Project 1 is currently at 12.5 chapters with 103,939 words written, and by the time I'm done it'll probably wind up somewhere around 15 chapters/~130k at my current trajectory. Secret Project 2, the collaborative one, is currently at (I believe) 14 chapters, with ~111k words written, pre-final editing and logistics. It'll also include at least 4 extras which are currently being written. I also currently have two more active WIPs for the OPCU: a prequel NieLan-centered fic centered on Mingjue acquiring the ranch, and a post-main-timeline SangCheng fic the summer after the original fic(s) (that will also become its own series/universe like the 3zun works).

So big things coming in 2024!! I've been writing a lot behind the scenes, even with things like my first public exhibition back in May, working 40+ hours a week while also visting family back home over the summer, and now (as of September) working through the final year of my undergrad degree while simultaneously continuing to make professional connections so I'll (hopefully) have jobs to fall back on once I graduate in June.

What did I enjoy writing the most this year?

The Orville Peck Cinematic Universe, hands down. I absolutely love this universe and the art that littlesmartart makes as the other half of it, I'm slightly feral for my 3zun modern-day cowboys in love. The same as with Tales From Jianghu Shopping Center last year, I love love love having a fun, relaxing, low-stakes universe to play around in and write fluffy things that make me happy to help me offset some of the stresses of life, and I really love flexing my AU muscles to make sure everyone still (hopefully 😅) feels very natural and right in a setting so far removed from canon.

I didn't accomplish my goal of finishing any of my longstanding WIPs this year, but I'm okay with that! I still don't consider any of them to be abandoned and I do genuinely want to see them all finished one day, but for now I've given myself permission to let them sit there languishing while I make things that give me that good brain juice while my life is going through a lot of transition stages that leave me very little energy to enjoy my hobbies.

Looking ahead, this year I'll be graduating from art college; attempting to find a 'real' job that will satisfy immigration laws so I can continue to stay where I am and begin working on becoming a naturalized citizen; making and selling my ceramics on the side to begin building a solid studio practice in my local community; exhibiting my more artistic work in exhibitions both local and foreign as well as submitting it for awards to begin building up a CV; and trying to start saving money in the hopes that I can buy my house in a few years' time. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I'm busy as all hell and that's not going to change anytime soon, but hopefully I'll have some good writing time in 2024 and continue to be active in this fandom/community that I love so much!

Y'all are really the best and thanks for another great year 🥰

#the untamed fanfic #2023 wrapup #3zun #no one asked for this but I wanted to do it anyway #I seriously can't wait to start posting the two secret projects y'all have no idea #They're so much fun in COMPLETELY different ways and they're such labors of love #I mean all my fic is a labor of love but yeah. these are gonna be fun I think