#My style has definitely changed | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

zmediaoutlet · 2 years ago

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One line any fic! Rules: pick ten of your fics, scroll to somewhere midpoint, pick a line chunk and share it, and then tag ten (-ish) people.

Got tagged, am bored, should remember how I used to write, let's try it, why not -- picking 10 somewhat at random from each page on ao3:

the apprentice year (sam/dean, 3k, rated m)

Are you dead. The sentence forms under Sam's tongue and he swallows it. If Dean doesn't know then asking won't help, and if he is then Sam's sunk the same way he's been for the last month. Are you real is the next question, but then if he's not real then that means Sam's crazy, and Sam knows from crazy and, really, if he is, this is the best crazy he could hope for.

Dean's looking at him, not smiling at all, now. I miss you, Dean says, unexpectedly. He flickers—like he did before, a projection cutting out—but he's shaking his head hard when he resolidifies. Shit. I don't—I don't know what that is. I don't get it. You're right here and I'm missing you. How does that work?

2. buccaneer (dean/crowley, 3k, rated e)

Deanna wakes up slowly, in the early evening. Crowley's sitting at the side of the bed, waiting for her. "Mm," is the noise she makes, and he raises his eyebrows, indulgent and curious. "We should have fun, tonight."

"What sort of fun?" he says. He slips his hand over her belly, where it's slightly soft. Too many years of burgers.

"I want—" she starts, and hums, thinking. "Music. Beer."

"Done," he says, and she grins at him, and then snakes a dangerously strong hand around his wrist, squeezes. He looks down at that, and back up at her face, and says, dry, "Unless you'd like something else, first."

3. have a cigar (sam/dean, 5k, rated e)

Dean rubs a hand up his stomach, smearing his own jizz over his belly and undershirt. His amulet's swung around on his neck, laying against the pillow. "Dude, that was sick," he says, but in a way that's weirdly admiring. Sam licks his lips, the remaining afterglow twisting in his belly. Dean lets his heels slip down the bed, his legs splayed around Sam, and he's red-faced still, but maybe that's just because they're both so—out there. Exposed. Even so, Dean touches his knee against Sam's hip, the corner of his mouth turned up. "Seriously. You're like a freight train when you get going, you know that?"

4. Campaign Events (jared/jensen, 8k, rated e)

Takes a minute for him to realize that as he's watching, he's being watched. He blinks, resurfaces, and Jensen's just—there. Right there, fully present inside the car, with his eyes on Jared's in the half-dark. His lips part, like he's going to say something, but he doesn't. The backseat isn't huge; Jared can feel the heat of him, an inch of space between their knees, both of them spreading out. Jensen's hand lifts off his thigh—white flash of it in the dark—and it hangs for a moment that has Jared's lungs frozen before it curls into a fist, and then Jensen lifts it to his own face, drags over his eyes, scrubs his cheek where the stubble's started to grow in, thick with the end of the day. Jared turns his head, stares sightless at the blurred hills, the tree-shapes and fences picked darker out of the dark, presses his fingertips to his mouth. What is he doing.

5. a long hard day, a long hard night (sam/dean, 38k, rated e)

"You know," Sam says, and clears his throat. He slides the beer aside and takes the mug. Sharp boozy smell—this isn't fine spirits. Just as well, not like he'd be able to taste it. He runs his thumb around the lipstick-red pattern on the rim. "I used to think we'd end up doing something normal? I wasn't even thinking about school, or—or marriage, or anything like that. Like somehow we could… step back, a little. Get a house, maybe straight jobs. Still go hunting, when someone needed us. Just, maybe one day we wouldn't have to deal with all the crazy." He shakes his head. Dean's watching him over the rim of his mug, his eyes steady. "Somehow something always comes along."

He takes a swallow. No flavor, of course not, but the heat of it's still sharp, alcohol flowing straight down to his gut. He licks his lips and it stings, just a little, where he's been chewing them.

"Well, we got a house," Dean says. He looks around at the kitchen, bright and familiar, and then slides his eyes back to Sam's. "And I can deal with crazy."

6. incursion (abaddon/dean, 3k, rated e)

The daze of inquisition rings hollow through his soul and he isn't fighting, isn't clawing back, but there's—something. Knowledge, somewhere deep. He thinks she's not going to win. She cocks their head, shuffles back to sit on the bed, the iron springs creaking under his weight, and pushes their fingers back into mess where the tattoo was, digging in harder to the slippery wet between skin and muscle. It makes the body quiver, trying frantically to get away from itself, and she holds it trammeled in place and curves all of it into him and sinks down and sees, now: the frantic pulsing scramble to save Sam, it didn't matter how—and before, grey woods full of fear and the joy of hunting through them, of winning, cleaving through like a knife—and before, Lucifer smiling with Sam's face like every nightmare he's ever had and swallowing, pushing down the revulsion and saying, Sammy—and before, and before, and she sinks down and down and down through this life, searching, spreading him apart on the rack of himself, until she finds it.

7. a stranger (sam/dean, 2k, rated m)

Behind his eyes the woods are grey and dangerous, familiar, and he looks instead at the lush green outside the window. Humid, here. The sun’s bright. The truck’s cab is cool with the steady hiss of A/C, not the constant absence of any kind of real life. It’s eleven hours to where Benny said his bones are planted, assuming Dean can catch a ride relatively soon once he escapes from Donald. Assuming he doesn’t have to mug anyone, or hustle someone. He doesn’t know if he can, if it comes to it. He feels like he might bite a guy’s dick off, cut his throat, before he’d earn a ride, and then what.

8. to make the sun stand still (sam/dean, s/d/benny, 11k, rated e)

That first time. After Purgatory, Sam had programmed his own number into Benny's phone, had handed it back to him in full view of Dean, said call anytime. He owed Benny more than he could say, and he'd carried his soul in his own body, poured him free of Purgatory and brought him to life same as Dean had. Hadn't been too much longer before they got the call, Benny needing help—not blood, not a rescue from another hunter. Just—contact. Someone to talk to. They'd piled into the car and driven out into the deep hills of Kentucky, Sam trying to hide how he kept trembling and trying not to puke in the passenger seat, Dean trying to pretend like he didn't notice, and met him at the lone motel on the outskirts of Hazard. Sam had watched Dean and Benny hug, like the best of friends—but Dean immediately stepped back and put his shoulder right next to Sam's, helping to hold him upright so he could shake Benny's hand without keeling over. Benny's eyes had gone sharp, looking Sam over, and Sam remembers so clearly the concerned look that he shot to Dean—concern for him, for them both. The old useless jealousy slithered away, then. They got a motel, and while Benny was in the shower washing off the dirt of living on the road Sam pulled Dean close and kissed him, hard, hoping Dean couldn't taste the old blood at the back of his tongue—wondering if Benny could smell it—and when he'd released Dean, gasping, he'd said if you want—if you still— and Dean had blinked up at him in shock and denied it, but Sam knew his brother, knew when he was denying himself something to spare Sam feelings. He'd said it won't change anything, will it? and Dean had said no, Sammy, but—and Sam had shrugged, even if he was still uneasy, said, Zeppelin's all you need, but sometimes you want a little Styx too, right? and Dean had stood there with his mouth open, his throat and cheeks flushing dark, and finally he'd said I'm telling Benny you just compared him to Styx, but his hand was tight in Sam's, and that's how Sam knew it was okay.

9. event horizon (mary & her sons, 4k, gen)

She’s sitting at the war table. The map of the world is lit from within. There are so many places, she thinks. Places she’ll never go. John has been to a lot more, but he doesn’t like to talk about that. She doesn’t blame him. She doesn’t like to talk about the stink when a body gets burned, the way it makes her hungry and repulsed at the same time. She doesn’t talk about the way her dad’s mouth tasted. He thinks she’s overreacting whenever they get a rotten egg and she throws up in the sink. For a while, she could blame it on morning sickness.

10. In the Bleak Midwinter (sam&dean, 2k, rated t)

Sam's about to retort, but stops, lips barely parted over a shaky breath. Dean's eyes are glazed, but now they look wet, not just—

"So I'd be dead, I mean, that's okay," Dean continues, tongue still shaping the words slurry and stumbling, but he just keeps going. "And you'd—you'd go on, maybe living in the bunker, with—with Kevin, and Cas could've stayed, wouldn't have made him run away. You guys woulda been fine."

He finally stops, looks down at the bottle of rum. It's a few seconds of quiet, and Sam forces himself to look away, blinks hard at the snowed-out road outside. It's so Dean, so goddamn Dean all over, talking about him dying like it'd be easier, like everyone would be better off if he just weren't—and Sam would be pissed at the same old self-sacrificing bullshit, he'd be giving in to the very real desire he's currently feeling to punch him in his idiot face, but. He's too drunk to be trying manipulation. This is honesty. He closes his eyes and flashes right back to that warm hallway, that ridiculous house, Dean wanting him old and bald, smiling a little when he talks about a picture without him in it.

and just for fun bc this is a tumblr game without scorekeepers, going to do a #11 bc I've got 11 pages of fics and this is the first one I ever posted on AO3:

11. Indeterminacy (thor/loki, loki/various, 8k, rated m)

After the explosion comes a hail of tiny frozen shards, which when examined are revealed to be fragments of smooth, gray stone. The empty plinth at the top of the tower stands empty and though the Allfather turns his face away Thor waits atop it for a long, long time, because it was in this place that his brother never was, where Thor never looked in through the window, where he never saw his brother’s face bleed of all color until he was white and black and a faint rime of frost, and though Thor wanted to he never tried to get in, because he was assured that only a crack in the universe itself would break Loki from this prison. At last, one evening as he stands on the plinth it begins to snow, and he turns away, because if he knows anything about his little brother it is that a minor thing like altering the structure of the cosmos could never stop him.

Well that was kinda fun. Now I should tag people, so I'm tagging people, and in the way this was a blast from the past let's do that with the tagging too, why not -- @hellhoundsprey, @silver9mm, @themegalosaurus, @winchestersinthedrift, @whiskeycherrypie, @alulaspeaks, @stillwaterseas, @wetsammywinchester, @lizblogging

#writing meme #this is so long lol #but it was interesting to go back #11 years on ao3 #my style has definitely changed

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