#alex does a write

[thatonebirdwrites]

When the news came, Lena was in a meeting with Sam and the L-Corp's board. She'd long ago set all alerts for Supergirl to come through to her phone, but ones where Supergirl was injured had been set to ignore all other settings.

The ring caused Sam to jump, but Lena kept her cool. She glanced down at her phone, and felt her veins turn to ice. A brief message that Supergirl had fallen from the sky.

Shit.

Lena grabbed her phone and bag. "I regret that I must take this call. An emergency has come up."

Sam looked at her, her brow furrowed in worry. "I can handle this, Lena. Go."

With a tight smile to her friend and CFO, Lena hurried from the room. She swapped out her shoes, and took off in a sprint. The alert had given her an intersection, but she needed to know if Alex knew about this yet.

Lena: Alex, I'm incoming.

Alex: wait, what?

Lena: Kara, she's fallen.

Alex: The hell? She's supposed to be eating lunch! Was in a meeting. Where?

Lena forwarded the alert's text, baffled that Alex had no idea.

Alex: How close are you? It's gonna take me fifteen minutes. J'onn unavailable.

Lena: Be there in five.

The doors of the elevator opened. Why drive when she could take the helicopter? When her pilot reached the intersection, Lena stared in horror. Someone had what looked like a missile launcher over their shoulder, and Kara laid in a cracked hole in the street in front of Noonan's. So Alex had been correct, Kara had been getting lunch, as drinks and food was spilled across the curb. People clustered in the doorways of the cafe and storefronts, and Kara's supersuit had a burn mark across its front.

Fuck.

"Hold us steady," Lena ordered the pilot. She grabbed a bag from behind her seat. In case of an attack -- considering she had quarterly assassination attempts all the time -- she had some specific weapons in here. One of them was a shotgun with some unusual shells. She flicked through her supplies and decided on a particularly useful set. She popped in the shells, cocked the gun, and threw open the door. The person started to look up, but Lena wasn't giving them a chance to react. She fired. The shots slammed into the person's back and immediately ice formed. She fired again. This time the person fell to the ground as a block of ice. Cryo shells had their use. She reloaded and gestured to her pilot.

He brought the helicopter closer to the ground. "Watch my back," she said, mostly out of habit, though she doubted the pilot could do anything. "And stay in the air. We'll need a quick exit." "Right, Ms. Luthor." He kept his gaze on the controls, his voice coming through her headset.

She jumped to the ground, her shotgun cocked. As she scanned the area, she realized, to her dismay, that another person stood in the shadows of the storefront across from Noonan's, armed with some sort of long rifle. Why the person hadn't fired yet confused her.

Lena aimed but didn't fire yet. She didn't have confidence that her shot would hit before the other took her out. "Step away from Supergirl."

The person wasn't that much taller than herself. Curly blonde hair leaked out of the black beanie, and blue eyes regarded her from under a black mask, their clothes definitely assassin-like. "Stay out of this, Luthor." A high-pitched voice. Possibly a woman?

"This is my business." Lena stalked closer. "Don't think I won't take you out like your friend there." She nodded at the other person dressed in black with a black mask over their face, their eyes closed. Ice was still encased around their lower body.

Lena wished she'd seen the person earlier. Otherwise she'd have fired on them too. Now they were in a stand-off exactly when Kara needed her the most.

"I don't want to do this," the woman in black said. "You're not on our list."

"Then step away now. Don't think I won't fire."

The woman stared at her for a long moment as if sizing her up. Her voice timbre changed to a hint of coy and frustrated. "Why do you care, Lena Luthor? Doesn't your family hate Kryptonians?"

Lena rolled her eyes. "I'm not them." She needed to distract her somehow. At least until Alex got here or Lena could fire the shot without getting hit in turn. "Now, how about you put down your weapon, I'll put down mine, and we'll talk like civilized people?"

The woman hesitated, her rifle moved just an inch down.

That was when the shot came from above. The bullet hit the woman's shoulder, she staggered backward, and Lena took the shot. Two blasts later, the woman was encased in ice like her friend.

Lena slung the shotgun over her shoulder and raced to Kara's side. "Supergirl!" She dropped next to her and felt for Kara's pulse. It was faint, far too faint. "Dammit." She didn't have time to check for injuries. Kara needed extracted immediately. "Riordan, drop the stretcher," she said into her headset.

The helicopter hovered closer, and a side door slid open. The stretcher shot out, swung, and slowed to a stop above her head. She reached up, snagged its side, and pulled on its rope until she had it next to Kara. It took two tries to lift the Kryptonian -- damn, Kara was heavy -- until she had Kara on and belted in securely. Flicking the switch on the bottom of the stretcher, a set of footrests dropped into place.

After she clamped her shoes onto the footrests, she noticed several people had started to come out of the stores with their phones in their hands, likely recording her rescue.

Whatever. All Lena cared about was Kara. "Go," she ordered her pilot, and held on tightly as the helicopter lifted toward the sky.

TO BE CONTiNUED...

[areyoudoingthis]

I am SO grateful that ed and stede exist as characters exactly as they are. I'm so grateful for these two men who are traumatized and messed up and struggle to even like themselves, who are terrible at communicating, who make enough mistakes between the two of them to fill an entire ocean. I am so grateful to watch them struggle and be seen and be loved and reach out for the things they want and are maybe starting to believe that they deserve. I'm so grateful that the show lets them fall in love and get together exactly as they are, that it doesn't say they need to wait until they've become some unattainably perfect version of themselves before they have permission to have that. i am so grateful for ofmd

[stanpineskisser]

I have a (possibly controversial?) Stan opinion that idk how to word it but I noticed something abt the way Alex Hirsch talks abt him vs how he is written in canon and I have Certain Things to Say but don’t know how to say them

[my-fall-from-grace]

galex be like was it casual when i asked if we could do the same this year when they posted about our wins from 2018? was it casual when we smiled at each other like no one else existed during an interview and then our teams posted about it? was it casual when we both did the turkish sharpshooters pose within days of each other? was it casual when you posted hearts in my comments section when i was upset after a race? was it casual when we spoke about the throat infection incident and sharing a bed on sky sports tv? was it casual when my family contacted you after complications with my appendix surgery in 2022? was it casual when we took a road trip just us after the italian gp 2023? was it casual when we were children and you were front row taking pictures of me every single time? was it casual when i gave an interview in f2 where i said you were basically living with my family and you spent more time with me than not?

and most importantly, is it casual when we gravitate to each other like magnets during every single drivers parade?

[toomuchracket]

constellations (literal d word (dad) matty x reader fluff)

you have an eight year old who loves space. let's redecorate her bedroom! promptober day 18. enjoy <3

you're applying your moisturiser when matty pads back into the bedroom; he drops a kiss to the top of your head, and you smile. “babies asleep?”

“yeah. alex took a while to get there… oi, stop that!” he grumbles when you stand, smearing the excess lotion from the back of your hand across his face.

“what? it's cold outside. it dries your skin out. you needed that,” you softly kiss his neck, wrapping your arms around his waist. “anyway, you were saying al took a while to fall asleep?”

“not ages. but we had to do two stories.”

you squint at your husband. “what was the first one?”

“llama llama red pyjama.”

“did you do the voices? and the noises?”

“obviously, babe.”

“matty,” you groan into his shoulder. “of course he took ages to fall asleep, you got him all hyped up.”

he sighs. “can't help it. i just love the sound of his laugh,” he hugs you tighter. “same as yours, you know.”

“thank god he got something from me.”

matty giggles, pulling back to kiss you quickly. “stop pouting,” he pulls his t-shirt over his head, and suddenly you're more than willing to listen to everything he says. “they both got your brains, darling. actually, lyla was just- oh,” he smirks when you remove your dressing gown, body bare aside from a black thong. “hi.”

rolling your eyes, you reach for the t-shirt he just discarded and pull it over your own head, before climbing into bed and burrowing under the covers; it doesn't stop him from giving you the eyes, though. but you won't be swayed. “you were saying?”

“hmmm? oh, yeah. our daughter,” matty kicks his sweatpants off - you glare at him as he does, and he rolls his eyes and neatly folds them - and climbs in beside you. almost instinctively, you move to lie on his chest, kissing his tattoo softly before turning your head to look up at your husband. he smiles adoringly down at you, gently stroking your hair. “she's so fucking smart. you know how they're learning about space at school?”

“mhmm.”

“she listed all the planets to me and all the moons of neptune. in descending order of how close they were to the planet,” matty shakes his head. “she's eight.”

you smile. “our genius girl.”

“she's gonna ask you about stars and constellations tomorrow, by the way.”

“me? why?”

“because she asked me and i said i didn't know anything, and then she did that thinking face where she really, really looks like you and said ‘i'll talk to mum about it. she'll know.’”

“what gave her that idea?”

“dunno. maybe your tattoos,” he runs his arm over the three tiny constellations inked on your upper arm, representing his and both your babies’ star signs. “or maybe she just thinks i'm an idiot.”

you smirk. “probably that.”

“oh, shut up,” he goes to flick your nose, but you catch his index finger gently between your teeth before he can; because you can't help yourself, you wrap your lips around the digit, and matty’s pupils dilate. “don't start something you won't finish, princess.”

okay, maybe you will be swayed.

looking doe-eyed at your husband, you release his finger with an audible pop, shuffling to sit properly on his lap. “if you finish inside me, does it count?”

“fuck,” matty groans; suddenly, you're underneath him, your neck being attacked by kisses. “think you can keep quiet enough?”

“yes, daddy.”

“good girl.”

***

“well, that's not right.”

matty grits his teeth, holding onto the top of the ladder and looking down at his daughter, whose curly head is buried in an astronomy book from the local library that's almost as big as she is. “again?”

you peer over lyla's head, looking at the page and the bedroom ceiling and back to the page again. “not right at all.”

“fantastic,” he wipes the sweat from his forehead. “which star is the most wrong?”

lyla shoves her glasses up her nose and opens her mouth; matty cuts her off. “i don't know their official names, remember - is it the big one that's the issue, or the smaller ones?”

she tilts her head in a way so reminiscent of matty that you have to bite back a giggle. “that little one to your left, dad.”

“‘kay. and where should it be?”

“further left, and down. like, a little bit down. not too much.”

he nods, carefully peeling the adhesive stars from the ceiling and rearranging them as per lyla's instructions. “alex?”

your son looks up from his comic book. “yeah, dad?”

“go and look at your sister’s book and tell me if this looks right. i need an objective opinion.”

he obliges, carefully placing his book on the bed before wandering over. you roll your eyes. “really, matthew?”

“yes, really,” matty twists, face screwing into a grimace as he stretches the twinge-y muscle in his back. “you girls are perfectionists. al keeps it real,” at that, lyla scowls up at her dad, and he backtracks immediately, face softening. “and that's not a bad thing, munchkin, not at all. it's just… well, there are limits to how accurate we can get everything in here, yeah? sometimes we have to compromise our artistic vision. s'just a sad fact of life.”

you scoff. “and when have you ever compromised on your artistic vision?”

“when you've told me to.”

“alright, i'll give you that one,” you raise your eyebrows, nodding slowly. “so, al - has dad got this one right?”

“hmm,” alex frowns at the page, his brows creasing cutely just like his dad's, then scrutinises the ceiling; his face drops into placidity, and he nods. “i think so.”

“thanks, mate,” matty reaches down to ruffle your son's curly head (only wincing slightly on the way back up), before sighing and smiling sheepishly at your daughter. “lyla? what are your thoughts, darling?”

she readjusts her glasses, and the rest of you wait with baited breath; there's a collective exhale when she grins. “looks good, dad. thanks.”

he beams. “you're welcome, munchkin. now,” he steps a rung down the ladder. “lunchtime?”

you shake your head. “there's still one more, babe.”

“god, really?” matty sighs, pressing his head into the handle at the top of the ladder. “feels like we've been doing this for hours.”

“well, what's one more, then? come on,” you gently tap his denim-covered ass, at which the kids giggle. “you did agree to this, matty.”

“yeah, when i wasn't of sound mind.”

(read: the morning after your late-night lovemaking session a couple of nights ago, the ending of which left your husband extremely chipper and thus agreeable to your suggestion that he stick glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling of your space-daft daughter's room.)

you smirk. “some would argue that's the most sound a mind can be. a certain… clarity to it, no?”

matty shoots you a familiar look, a wordless warning that you're at risk of pushing it too far and getting into trouble if you don't stop now, and you can't deny that it's thrilling; not even a second later, he's switching back into dad mode, gentle and pragmatic with your babies in a way that's almost as sexy as the dominant look you just got. “alright. what is the final constellation, then?”

“s'my birthday one,” lyla beams, moving to snuggle into you. “me and mummy are gonna match!”

“oh,” matty's eyes and voice are as tender as you've ever known them to be - the sweet smile he follows with is even more so. “m'sorry for complaining, darlings, this is very important. alex, would you pass me the… yes, thank you, munchkin,” the final set of stars in hand, he beams at you again. “i reckon i can do this one without guidance, i think. can i try?”

you nod, smiling just as tenderly as your husband. “of course.”

and he does, perfectly placing the stars on the ceiling in the pattern he's known by heart for the past seven years, the pattern he watched you get permanently etched onto your arm while he held the tiny baby girl it was dedicated to. unlike last time, she's awake and alert enough to watch the pattern form, looking up at the ceiling and her father with a beaming smile on her adorable face and her arm around her little brother; something about it all has tears pricking at the corners of your eyes, total love for your family and gratitude for how wonderful your life is both threatening to overwhelm you. 

matty seems to notice - when he's finished the constellations, and safely on solid ground again, one of his arms finds its way around your waist and his lips meet your temple. “love you, darling,” he murmurs, as you watch your kids look awestruck at the stars above them. “thank you.”

“for what?”

he nods towards lyla and alex. “them. convincing me to do this. our life, really,” he squeezes your waist. “s'perfect.”

you sniffle. “so are the constellations. really, matty,” you kiss his shoulder. “they're amazing, baby. i love them. and you, of course!”

matty giggles. “kids?” he calls; two little curly heads bounce over to you in response. “what do we think of the stars, then?”

alex is enthusiastic, hair all but flipping as he nods. “they're so cool!” 

lyla's a bit more measured in her response, but her excitement shines through in the way she throws herself at matty to hug him. “i love them, dad. thank you,” she giggles when he kisses her cheek, reaching for you so she can coordinate a group hug. “we match now, mum.”

“we do, darling, you're right,” you hug your kids in tighter. “i love you, my babies. you too, matty.”

“i love you, too,” he laughs. “can we genuinely get lunch now, though? m'starving. that was hard work, that.”

you laugh softly. “yeah. go on, babies, go and get a fruit shoot,” they oblige, and once they're safely out of earshot you wrap your arms around matty's shoulders. “for all the effort you put in today… you can eat me before we go to sleep tonight, if you want.”

he hums happily, leaning down to kiss you until you're dizzy. “never wanted anything more.”

[saintbleeding]

[ID: Digital art of Lady Mowbray from The Magnus Protocol. She is a tall older white woman with grey hair, wearing an old-fashioned hunting suit with jodhpurs and tall boots, and wielding a double-barrelled rifle. She is shown from an extreme low angle, smirking with satisfaction, one boot on the side of her human victim. They are shown from the back, a wound in their head and bruises visible on the skin of their lower back. Behind Lady Mowbray is visible a red and yellow sunset above a clearing in a greenish-black wood. End ID.]

ohhhhh she’s despicable i love her

[uhbasicallyjustmilex]

writing at literally anytime during the day:

writing after 11:30pm:

[creetchure]

one thing i really dislike about "claudia was fridged" is the fundamental lack of understanding of what fridging even means. ignoring entirely why iwtv was written.

fridging is a very specific thing, that denotes a lack of agency in the death (and in general). that death is wholly about someone else (a man), and not something she could have done anything about. It comes from a green lantern, where kyle rayner heads back to his place and finds his girlfriend murdered for the sole purpose of hurting him. It' also often offscreen and irrelevant to the narrative in an of itself, apart from "i need to find my wife's killer".

claudia's death isn't that. if there is one thing to remember about her, one trait about her character, is that she has a will to move, a will to do things, that drags louis forward. Her agency is the main driving force for leaving lestat, her wanting to be able to make her choices for herself. she's the one who makes them go to paris, she's the one who wants to join the coven, she's the one who wants to turn madeleine. claudia's death is something that she's earned, brought upon by enemies she has made. lestat goes along because she's the reason louis left him. the coven goes along and cheers because she's a cog in the machine, someone who wont let them turn her into something she's not. she won't settle for anything less than absolute freedom as a vampire, and that is the reason she dies. it's also an incredibly graphic scene. there is nothing forgettable about her death, about the very image of it. claudia goes out in a blaze of rage and fire.

to call it fridging is removing her agency, and her very active role as a driving force in the story. claudia's death cannot be fridging, because she's never been passive a day in her life, from the very moment we see her on screen to the very last. she's earned her death as a character, rather than as a woman

[faketrex]

a police station in a foreign country for the setting prompts if you're still taking them <3

Thank you, grace! 💝 For prompt number 13, "a police station in a foreign country."

RWRB, firstprince, featuring Henry throwing a punch, Alex scheming, and a fair amount of silliness. Post-canon, pre-bonus chapter.

...

“You can't punch him, you're a prince of fucking England,” Alex hisses.

It pains him to say it, obviously. The asshole standing in front of them has a punchable face–and extremely punch-worthy homophobic, xenophobic, racist opinions. It's not the first time they've had to just stand and listen to this kind of crap, but it never gets any easier.

Hell, Alex might take a swing himself if he didn't know for a fact that it would get him ushered out of England kicking and screaming, cursed to a life of long-distance love, groveling to his mom, and praying that one day, someday, Henry might escape the clutches of the monarchy and join him in the U.S. and–

“A prince,” Henry says mildly, in a tone that Alex has only heard once before, “me? You must be mistaken.”

And he hauls back his fist.

“Fucking–Henry!”

It's a solid punch.

☆☆☆

The less said about the next few hours, the better.

It doesn't really matter that Henry's a prince and Alex is the First Son of the United States. Or, well, it does, but only in the sense that when they're sitting in the police station, butts going numb in uncomfortable plastic chairs, they've got a whole entourage with them. There are three PPOs and two Secret Service officers, and the way Zahra keeps blowing up Alex's phone, she probably counts as present, too.

The chair he's sitting in squeaks obnoxiously when Alex leans over to whisper to Henry. “You know, if we had one more person on our side, we'd be a baseball team.”

“More's the pity that we're in England, not America, I suppose.”

“I don't know. If you were dead set on punching a fuckhead in the face, I think it's good you did it in England. I mean, your family must own all the dungeons here, right? When they lock you away, it'll be like home sweet home.”

Henry lets out a huff. “You realize we're not actually living in the Middle Ages, don't you?”

“Fuck that. If cops today could still use the rack, they would, in a heartbeat. And you can quote me on–”

Two chairs down, Amy clears her throat loudly.

“I mean,” Alex backpedals, “I mean. I sure do love sitting here quietly in a foreign police station and not stirring up shit.”

“Don't we all,” Henry sighs, rubbing at his bruised knuckles.

☆☆☆

The asshole guy–the punchee–says he won't press charges, to which the royal family replies that it will graciously agree to the same. It's a weird response that Alex isn't thinking too hard about tonight. Yeah, the guy had been a shithead, but Henry had been the one to throw hands. Technically, Henry's at fault here, unless–

“Are you like a swan?”

Henry has a cold, wet washcloth covering his face, but his confusion is audible through the fabric. “Pardon?”

“Like, if someone touches the Queen's swans, they're guilty, probably even if the swans were trying to fucking beak them or whatever. So I thought–”

“Alex–”

“Is it the same with you?” Alex twists sideways on the couch, watching as Henry peels the washcloth off his face. “Do you have honorary swan status?”

“I know how you feel about large birds, Alex.”

“This isn't about that!”

“No, I do not have ‘honorary swan status,’” Henry says. “I'm just one of the latest in a long line of unnecessary archaic figureheads who can behave badly and, it seems, get away with it.”

“That dick fucking deserved it.”

“Nevertheless.”

“Where'd you learn to punch like that? Dueling classes at Eton?”

“Boxing club at Oxford, actually.”

“No way. Seriously?”

“I had a crush on an instructor.” Even though he looks exhausted, one corner of Henry's mouth lifts upward. “If I recall correctly, I trained for three or four months before dropping it as a lost cause.”

“Punching people wasn't your cup of tea, huh?”

“Despite appearances otherwise today, no. And anyway, the instructor was hopelessly straight.”

“Lucky for you, I'm not,” Alex says, leaning in to kiss him.

When they break apart, Henry seems sheepish. “I still shouldn't have done it.”

“We can't change that now, but here's the game plan. The next time someone spews toxic, hateful abuse at us, we'll have two options.”

“Option one?”

Alex holds up one finger. “Option one: we leave. Doesn't matter where we are or who we're supposed to be impressing or whatever. If it sucks, hit the bricks, as the internet says.”

“And option two?”

Alex uses the finger he's already holding up to point at his own face. “Option two: I kiss you. It's a classic distraction move. Option two is also valid no matter where we are or who we're supposed to be impressing. Both options mean we won't have to listen to the bullshit.”

“I'm afraid the Queen would hate either. In fact, I'm not sure which would rile her more: our kissing in public or simply… walking away, refusing to be subject to the invective.”

“Exactly. It's a win-win for us on multiple levels.”

The expression on Henry's face is brighter than it has been all day. That, too, is a major win for Alex. “You're truly a force to be reckoned with, love, do you know that?”

“Yeah,” Alex agrees, “I'm a one-two punch. But, like, the metaphorical kind. Now come here so I can kiss you again.”

[moonshynecybin]

ohhh my god I love the rosquez kidnapping fic concept, if you end up writing it up for realsies I would read the shit out of it!! I don’t even really care about rosquez (<- lying), I’m just a sucker for kidnapping fics and I wanna see marc be miserable & then get nursed back to health

the REAL meat of the h/c of it all in an au like this is the healing. something marc is not very good at i’d say. so it’s. okay vale is there and that makes him happy so hes gonna latch onto him as comfort blanket, but vale is also CLEARLY uncomfy with being that for marc in certain lights due to their heinous and awful DIVORCE that is also one of the premiere formative tragedies of marc’s life. like. being abandoned by vale. so it’s this fraught little undercurrent of vale getting freaked by the emotional intimacy of all of this but also wanting to help marc because he [REDACTED FROM HIS OWN BRAIN] anddddd marc picking up on all of this while half expecting vale to fuck off at some point and re-assert the status quo. and dealing with injury that keeps him off the bike which makes him crazy. and dealing with extended PTSD symptoms from the trauma of the kidnapping itself. so all of this insane emotional context is happening on the inside genuinely TORMENTING THEM, but no one on the outside KNOWS that’s happening because rosquez LOVE to pretend their breakup doesn’t exist and marc is spending a lot of time lying on top of vale curled up on the couch in one of his hoodies with his nose in his neck trying to get a wrangle on his heart rate because the gardener suprised him earlier and he got scared (side note. marc marquez. not a man easily scared. like i don’t know if he knows how to deal with it. are his anxiety stratagems just ‘muscle through it’?). and on top of all this, the broader marquez family is there and they fuckin HATE vale

[actual-changeling]

He told me about white wings and halos, and I remembered your stars, all I can think about are your stars.

You told me the stars are waiting for us, they are still where you put them, carefully, reverently, and you asked me to come visit them with you.

I said yes— tell me you said no.

(I love you, I love you, loved you then, love you now.)

Yes to heaven.

No to us?

You're the one giving up, not me.

(No to heaven. Yes to you, believe me, believe me.)

It shouldn't matter now. It still matters.

I keep seeing your stars, your smile, lit up and shining brighter than your creations, we can be together among them again, angels. I don't care about white wings and halos but I care about you, and I can make them care about you; they should care about you like I do.

(I haven't seen you smile like that since.)

You can't leave.

(I never made you smile like that.)

We can make your stars last forever.

There's no we anymore.

(I'll look at your stars and pray you can sense me looking at you.

There's stardust in your eyes, on your skin, and it makes me taste the joy your stars gifted to you.

I don't want halos and white wings if it kills the night sky in your soul.)

I'll wait for you to come back.

[aritany]

welp. just finished the best book i've ever written.

[themetaphorgirl]

Whumptober #15: Patron Saint of Lost Causes

No. 15: CHILDHOOD TRAUMA

Prompted by @quiddoditto

Painful Hug | Moment of Clarity | "I did good, right?"

Spencer still doesn’t know that this time he doesn’t have to try to earn anyone’s love.

Mom didn’t like to be touched most of the time. She liked it when he read quietly, usually in his room. He made sure to read all the books she liked, she was happiest when he could talk to her about them. And as long as she was happy, he was happy. He didn’t mind that his clothes weren’t nice or clean, or that sometimes he went hungry, or that the house was filthy and cluttered with her collections. He kept to himself, and cleaned up after himself, and figured out how to keep himself fed.  It was like a little transaction database in his head. Reading quietly so Mom could work on her research, positive. Asking Mom to make dinner when she was busy, negative. Cleaning up her broken coffee cup after she threw it, positive. The most positive things he did, the happier Mom was. He could manage that.

Read here!

[firenati0n]

wip wednesday :) :) :)

i have 3 wip docs open (help) but today y'all get some more proposal au currently titled "the full spectrum of human emotion" <3 here is the snippet i posted on sunday as well :) i wrote this between the hours of 2 - 4am so forgive any errors xoxo

Alex rolls his eyes. “You're gonna have to get used to me touching you, Henry. We're engaged. Our immigration officer is operating under the assumption that I’m literally inside you on a regular basis—” “Excuse me?” “—which means you can't squirm or freeze every time I hold your fucking hand.”   Henry’s jaw ticks. “Can we...erm...can we establish some ground rules?” His face is mildly terrified and paler than usual. Good. He should be. “Ground rules? It's PDA, not the fucking Olympics.” Alex is feeling less optimistic by the second. They’re so fucked.  “Alex, please.” Henry looks pained, and Alex feels only a little bit of pity. It’s not just his job on the line, it’s Henry’s livelihood too. “Fine. Nothing below the belt, hands where everyone can see them, and no tongue.” For now, his brain adds, like the traitorous bitch it is. “But I’m not going to jail on a goddamn felony charge because you can’t handle being a little handsy. We clear?”    Henry nods, face resolute. “Also, why would they assume it’s you inside me, and not the other way around?” Alex stares at him, unflinching. “Do you really want me to answer that question, sweetheart?”

sorry if i missed any posts already due to timezone and dashboard fuckery! but no pressure tagging @ninzied @rmd-writes @inexplicablymine @anincompletelist @myheartalivewrites @suseagull04 @priincebutt @sparklepocalypse @kiwiana-writes @onward--upward @nocoastposts @user-anakin @wordsofhoneydew @littlemisskittentoes @happiness-of-the-pursuit @matherines @lizzie-bennetdarcy @celeritas2997 @dragonflylady77 @sherryvalli @gayrootvegetable @ssmtskw @affectionatelyrs @tinyarmedtrex and open tag to anyone else (i want to seeeeee) xoxoxo <3

[operationandre]

my favorite thing to compare between elephant and zero day are the boys’ final moments.

eric and andre were not innocent in any way, but they were still victims of their partners. their anger and frustration were utilized by alex and cal in order to perpetuate their plans and take their lives.

alex is thought of by almost everyone as completely cold and cut off from reality, but no one acknowledges that cal is the same exact way. there is almost no difference between alex shooting eric mid sentence and cal manipulating andre into shooting himself. they are just viewed differently because of who pulled the trigger.

alex took the physical side. he always has. he’s louder than cal; he’s more extroverted and forward. he even split up from eric during the massacre. cal took the psychological side. it’s typical for him. he’s more reserved and knows how to manipulate people. he sticks by andre’s side throughout the entirety of zero day, only furthering the narrative that andre believes: that he and cal are in this together.

alex and cal are different in how they view life, though. alex did not die with eric. he did not want to die in general. he went on to hurt more people even after eric had passed. i don’t doubt that he would continue this pattern after the shooting if he survived. this contrasts cal’s opinion. he believed that life is not worth living, that the massacre was just a means of taking as many people out with him as he could. death was certain in his mind from the very beginning. he wanted andre to die with him. he had placed andre on the same pedestal as him and believed they should welcome the same fate.

[gregorygerwitz]

Moustead + Hollywood AU

Jay Halstead had lost count of the number of dangerous stunts he'd done. He'd actually lost count of the number of movies he'd worked on to begin with, and then multiplied by the number of stunts he'd done for each one... well, he hadn't gotten into the business because he was good at math, that was for sure. He did it because he was good at it. He did it because he enjoyed it. He did it because the rush of adrenaline that came with it was almost as good as the connections he made doing it.

He'd been working with Thelma Gerwitz and her productions company for years without a single bump in the road. He was in every standard contract that Elliot Knox's agent drew up after the actor's big break - the fastest growing name in Hollywood had to have the best stuntman in the business for every role, of course. It meant Jay had steady work for as long as Elliot did, and as each contract was signed, he learned more and more about the production company that seemed to be bankrolling the star's entire rise to fame.

"Halstead! Get over here!" "Is there something you need from me, Thelma?" "Show Greg around the set, will you?" "Aren't there PAs for that? They get paid to deal with visitors." "Don't be ridiculous, Halstead. Greg isn't a visitor. My son will be working with the director this week as the liaison with your stunt coordinator. You aren't too busy to give him a tour, are you?" "No, ma'am."

One set tour and one week of his performance being run by another set of eyes for approval is all he'd signed up for. When that turned into three movies in a row, and then a brief stint on some show marketed to teenagers, and half a dozen more movies... Jay saw more of Greg than he even saw of Elliot. That might have had something to do with how much time they spent in Jay's trailer. Liaising. About stunts. And definitely not making out against every surface they could find.

He was just getting tired of that - sneaking around, hiding under the bed or in the cramped trailer closet when someone needed Greg's attention - when it all went wrong.

Elliot was throwing one of his usual fits, something about Jay's jawline showing up too much in a shot and taking the attention away from him. He acted as if anyone even knew Jay was there, as if he didn't brag in every single interview about doing his own stunts. But that was just what the job was - doing the dangerous stuff that no one else wanted to do, and letting Elliot take the credit for it. That was what he expected to do on a daily basis. At least it was a good paycheck.

What he didn't expect was a miscalculation, a rig that wasn't checked thoroughly enough, a harness that wasn't quite up to holding his weight. He was supposed to be caught in the middle of the fall, stop in midair so that the footage could be cut in with a take of Elliot hitting an airbag and continuing with the scene. Instead, the rope just kept slipping through the rig, and it was Jay who was filmed at the end of the fall, but there was no bag to catch him. So, when he fell, he hit solid ground, and the crack that filled his ears at the impact was quickly replaced with the ringing coming from inside them.

A fall like that was more than enough to end any stuntman's career, no matter how much of a recovery he would make. That was a fact that Greg had known before he knew he wanted to work on movies at all. He followed his mother to sets through his childhood, watched movies get made, watched stunts performed by professionals to make for perfect shots. When he brought up the idea of directing a movie of his own, she encouraged that dream, with the stipulation that he learned the ins and outs of it all before he did it on his own.

Greg liked working with the stunt teams almost more than he liked working with the stars. He knew what to ask them to get just the right shot for the final product, knew how Erin, the stunt coordinator on most of his mother's films, liked to communicate with her team. He fit in better with the nobodies, as Elliot liked to call them, than the people who had cameras pointed at them beyond their ten hour filming days.

Specifically, he really liked Jay.

He really liked the privacy of trailers, and getting time alone with someone who didn't want his attention just to get on his mother's good side. He really liked talking about his work, and the directorial decisions he helped make on set every day, even if his name was what had gotten him in that position in the first place. He really liked kissing the man who cared about his input where they couldn't be interrupted or judged by anyone who wanted to insert themselves into his life.

Watching the fall that ended his boyf- best friend's career was a moment he would never forget. It had felt like slow motion, like a bad dream that he was going to wake up from at any moment. But he never did.

Instead, Greg pushed through the worst of his fears and anxiety and stopped by the hospital once a week. He never made it past the elevator, sometimes staring at the hallway that led to where he knew Jay was, but never stepping out of the protective cage. If he did, he might get the ground ripped out from under him, as if he was the one who had fallen, not wanting that feeling back of his stomach in his throat. Maybe he was. Maybe he had fallen even before the malfunctioning rig had taken so much from him.

He got glimpses of Will, the brother he'd seen pictures of but never met. He got quiet updates during lunch breaks on set from Erin. Jay was going to be fine. He was expected to make a full recovery, after more time than anyone would like him to spend in a hospital and a strict physical therapy schedule. But he had his family to get him through that, and Greg knew from the start that he'd never had a chance at being part of that inner circle.

He let himself be swayed by his mother, pushed his focus back to his career and the stunts that had to be filmed for each project. After two years, he could forget about Jay when he was awake, put all of his attention to what needed to be done in a work day, and those eyes would only haunt him in his dreams. It was good for him, or so his mother liked to tell him, not letting himself worry about something he couldn't change. He could gain his own reputation in the industry, start signing onto his own projects, and take on the task of directing a movie from the start of the process to the end.

It was long enough after the incident that he didn't think about it when he was planning a scene with Erin. He didn't even think about it when the new stunt guy on his set took a turn on the track too fast and ruined the shot by bumping into the camera. He didn't think about it while he marched across the set to give the apparent rookie a piece of his mind. He didn't think about it while the car's door was pushed off and landed on the ground - the model was completely totaled, so he was quietly glad that the rest of the run went flawlessly, even the way the vehicle flipped across the tarmac, and the VFX team could fix the botched angle.

He didn't think about it until the familiar body straightened up, and for the first time in years, he was looking at Jay Halstead again.

"I thought you always said you were going to leave it to Elliot to make the dramatic entrances." "This entrance wasn't dramatic." "You showed up on my set, Jay. Two years of radio silence and then you just showed up without so much as a hello before you busted a camera." "I told Erin that the track was-" "I don't care. Last I checked, you were out of the stunt game completely. Get off my set and leave it to my real crew." "Your real crew? Sorry, I was under the impression that you asked for me specifically." "After you never texted me back or returned my calls? Why would I ever want to see you again?"