#and regularly reread

[rocketonthemoon]

12, 19, 22 :)

What is the first book you remember reading or being read to you: Being read to me was Fox and Socks or maybe Moo Baa LaLaLa. I used to make my dad read both over and over and over and over to the point where they're still kinda up there somewhere in my head (Luke luck likes lakes Luke Luck Licks Lakes Luke likes lake licks you get the idea) and I'm pretty sure I could front to back recite Moo Baa LaLaLa. First I have memory of reading myself is tricky. I remember reading a bunch as a kid and I remember the feeling of holding books. But at the risk of being TOO on brand I think the first one I really remember reading myself was a Pokemon Chapter book

Top five favorite books: oh jail. Jail for this question. Ok ok ok.

Number One All Time is The Princess Bride by William Goldman. Never has a book so concretely shaped my reading style, sense of humor, and made me want to write something like that book has.

The other four are less and more just general books that hold the dearest place in my heart:

Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carey The Priory of the Orange Tree by Sammantha Shannon The House on the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

What book never should've been a movie: Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. Awful movie. Awful awful movies

[aterfish]

Another "Guess that Artist" game in Haunting Heroes discord server. This time drawing fanarts for fics with less than 10k hits on ao3.

I chose amazing IRIS Log #1548 by @deadchannelradio!

Love this fic. "As buddies" got me. Hilarious and absolutely worth reading and then rereading twice. Or trice.

@arzuera thanks or hosting the game! @serxeri thanks for tormenting me! i won tho.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

Lackadaisy Enrichment

[bumfuzzled-bee]

Frens !!

[auspicious-goblin]

yoshida akimi really knew what the girls wanted in the 80s & 90s huh

[casualavocados]

You think things have to be possible? Things have to be true!

Amir Wilson as WILL PARRY HIS DARK MATERIALS 2.07 | Æsahættr —The Subtle Knife: Chapter 15

[themandylion]

surprise self-rec time! pick 3 of your favorite things you’ve written and share them here, then put this in the inbox (anonymously or not) of your fellow writers to spread the positivity and help celebrate already written fics 🖤

This is lovely. Thank you for thinking of me!

The Conspiracies of Princes - JayTim. Jason just wants to get his cargo to Kandor, he doesn't have time to deal with this kid he found hiding in the wall of his ship. A SPACE/royalty AU with a lot of marriage, for some reason. This is the first JayTim fic I wrote and I'm still really proud of the worldbuilding, plotting, and pacing!

Rituals of Sacrifice - Jason&Tim (please make sure to read the tags!!). All Tim's friends are dead. That's okay—he is too. A super-fun boy detective story where Tim gets to team up with Robin to solve his own murder! Lately I've been writing a lot for the final installment of the series spun off of this fic and it keeps reminding me how much fun it was to write.

Pathfinding - JayTim. When Tim is ten, he gets saddled with a life-debt after a dragon saves him from certain death. Almost 20 years later, the dragon turns up on his doorstep with a proposition: Be his plus-one to a family reunion and he'll forgive the debt. Eeeey, it's a fake dating AU with a magical twist, what's not to love? Everyone loves a fake dating AU, which is definitely all this is. Definitely.

[loganlermanstanaccount]

I have opened tumblr for the first time in like 3 months and I just want to say thank you for all the asks and lovely messages whilst I've been MIA!!! I'm always overwhelmed by the love and support for my fics but idk this time it hit like crack. love you all and now my exams are coming to a close I hope to be writing soon. gonna answer some asks in the meantime whilst I have the energy. cute little life updates in the tags 🫶🏾

[isbergillustration]

cyberpunk 2077 fanart???? 👁️👄👁️

Yeah like this kinda stuff

[kriskukko]

Hello hello!

This is absolutely a no-pressure ask, but I was wondering if you had thoughts of making your 1816 story available for purchase whenever it is finished? I love the story so much and would be happy to purchase it if that became possible!

no pressure taken! honestly, i have not thought about this much (despite the question surfacing every once in a while), as none of the pages have been drawn or formatted in a way that took into account any sort of publishing, beyond the malleable internet pages where they live rn. perhaps one day we'll figure something out!

in the meanwhile, i dont know if collecting them to pdfs is anything? i have been entertaining that as a patreon reward, but i have not the foggiest whether that would actually be valuable to anyone (as they already exist, largely, for free on the website). i am painfully aware that would hardly satisfy the ardent wish to own beloved things in physical format, which i share in believe u me.

this probably isnt a very good answer at all, but it is all i got right now haha! to these humming and hawwing and fumbling tidings i leave thee now. oh and this frame from the upcoming comic update, because it is coming alright!

and have a great day 💖

[lazyveran]

Could I get a uhhh… *squints at the menu* Jinx burying or cremating Silco’s body?

you have chosen 'veran's interpretation of what a jinx mental breakdown would feel like, featuring dead dad number 3.' this was interesting as hell to write and genuinely challenged me thank u anon!!!

Dead bodies were waste. Big, bloated flesh things. Ugly, useless, so so useless. They took up too much space. In her eyes, in the street, in the inside too, deep in the dark thing that writhed around in untouchable—

Nothing ever stayed dead. Did it?

Living things were a waste too. More than dead things, sometimes. Dead things whispered, living things were big and loud and angry. Living things hit and hurt.

Jinx knows that. Has been that. Is that. The dead has no place. Useless. Like trash. The living always became dead. And lived again, as dead.

Nothing ever stayed dead.

An idiot’s prayer

Her first body was hot and fresh. A mothers face. Father’s disappeared. Gone. Bridge eaten. Her third down the end of a stinking lane, a rotting, a misface. Then her own. Then others. More— forgotten, as if she would—

Corpses weren’t scary. Never. It was normal. She knows what people do with them.

Jinx doesn’t know what to do with Silco’s father’s body. The last body had—burned? Burnt. Shimmer mangled and dead dead dead – her fault, always.

He was in his chair. She’d made it pretty for him, drawings like he liked. The ones she made for him. His paint blood was splashed with it, now. It was prettier. Worse. Neither. She can’t look. Looks anyway.

He was cold, now.

Jinx knows that bodies rot. Flies, maggots, the stench of decay. Seen them in the streets. Made them, dozens. Proud of that, when flesh was warm. Now, now, she—

Fishbones is heavy on her shoulder. It digs into her skin, cold metal. Cold like him. The eyes dead without the crystal. Silco father didn’t have his crystal anymore. Cold, dead, soft— not metal. Maybe—

She picks his body up. It weighs as much as Fishbones. Maybe Fishbones should have been red, like him.

She asks Fishbones. He answers.

At least someone stayed. Mylo hisses in her ears. A bullet shuts him up.

Jinx takes the body from the chair.

There should be a monument. There should be people in witness. No one should see her, her Jinx, no one should know but him, Silco, bigger and better and Zaun—

Vander had one, him in metal spikes, father’s face rendered and big hands around big pipes and what would Silco have when—

Sevika. She would know.

Jinx takes Silco father to the shore.

In the lanes, you burnt your dead. It was space efficient. The first father, the only mother, they were not burnt. Piltover took their corpses from their bridge to be buried in a shallow hole. Vander—she doesn’t—

Silco should be burnt. A true Zaunite.

Jinx Powder doesn’t know how to burn a body.

Useless.

Useless

His body floats on the waves, Jinx walks out with it. Where Powder died, here, in the waters. Where Silco had died. Where father will rest.

It was wrong. Right? What would Violet think of her, hugging a corpse, soaked in his ocean, shimmer mixing with the pollution in an agony wracking her body.

She doesn’t want to let go. Pain was evidence. Pain was a cleanser. How much did it do to her? All the purple purple pain and stupid grinning faces and that fucking woman—

Was she perfect? No, no, or else—

Silco can join his first death. Live and die and live again. Like Jinx joined Powder’s death. Wasn’t that what he wanted?

A face drifting in the tide. What was peace when his face was always a painting of a single thrash of brother given agony. Betrayal. Ringing knoll bell of a new death—

Dead. He was gone. Her fault, always her fault.

Someone is screaming.

Her grip loosens. The tide grabs him with invisible fingers, pulls him away. He should have been in his coat. With a cigar. She should have fixed his hair, done his eye, like he was particular about.

Jinx watches as father’s body disappears into the tide. Not burnt. Not buried. Jinx can’t do anything right. Or— Powder—

Fishbones speaks. Jinx sees her own face disappear with father’s.

Above the dark wash water, Piltover burns.

[figothynewton]

WE’RE BACK FOR SEASON TWO YALL

[aubreysmaturin]

WILLIAM BUSH | I BET ON LOSING DOGS

The quality is so bad but I needed to get this out of my system because mitski 🤝 william bush

[sweetpea-sprite]

everyone should go read crownberry schnapps

[fishandshesmygills]

not even joking abt the cognitive decline anymore im actually scared. i saw the tv glow hit too hard for me everything has felt wrong and i don't even know since when, do i have long covid brain fog? residual damage from my concussion this past fall? what about my first concussion six years ago? i feel like there are pages missing. i feel the gaps in my knowledge and awareness and abilities. im scrambling around in the dark

[hold-him-down]

Not Ideal

TW: institutionalized slavery, the bladder control failure but it’s really not even like a MAIN part other than in concept, this is really rather wholesome if you ask me.

Notes: Takes place ~4 months in, so somewhere shortly after christmas. 

✥ ✥ ✥

Leo sits on the floor in the corner of his room. Was it a good day? His brow pulls tight and he tries to sort out where he stands with things. Luke smiled, a handful of times actually, and Leo takes a moment to both appreciate the objectivity of the observation and the ridiculousness of this more recently adopted coping mechanism. 

It was good. Nothing overtly bad had happened. He hadn’t had to grapple with the pangs of uncertainty that most of his days were dominated by. He jogged through the neighborhood (by himself), he sat at a park, he went to the library. He had found a sandwich shop and texted Luke to ask if he wanted to try it, and picked up their dinner.

By all metrics, it was a fine day. And still, long after the sun set and he excused himself to his room, he sits here, undeniably sad but unsure of its source.

Everything is in its place. He fights the urge to go check the kitchen, to make sure there isn’t anything missed. 

He doesn’t, though. Instead he changes into pajamas, crawls into his bed, and waits for unconsciousness to lay its claim on him. Sleep doesn’t come easily though. His mind races, cycling through the ways he can do better, be better, survive better. He doesn’t know how much time passes, but his thoughts shift, and memories flood his consciousness. Seattle, his mother, his brother, his sister. 

These thoughts rarely plague him, but when they do, their grip on him is unshakable. He isn’t aware of the exact moment that he falls asleep, only that he does, and when the nightmares hit him, they hit him harder than normal.

✥ ✥ ✥

Leo wakes sometime in the early morning hours to blackness, to a racing heart, to sweat covering every inch of him. For a moment, all he can do is gasp at breaths, remind himself where he is, who he is. 

Almost instantly, he’s aware that something isn’t right, but his heart still beats wildly and he convinces himself the soaked bed is nothing more than sweat, that it’s okay, that nothing bad has happened. Except something bad has happened, and telling himself otherwise serves no intrinsic purpose. 

He swallows, interrupting his inner thought work to grasp at the lion, to make sure it avoided direct damage. The bed, the blankets, his clothes, are soaked.

Leo presses his eyes shut, casting the lion aside, and a new kind of dread settles over him. 

This is okay. This is fine. He can fix this, and Luke doesn’t need to know.

He scrambles to pull the bedding off the bed, stone silent except for the ragged breaths his chest still produces, and he thinks something of a prayer, and he knows as he does it it’s futile, but still he thinks, over and over, please let this be okay.

As he pulls the sheets from their place, he recognizes with certainty that there’s no chance it didn’t leak through, and for a single, suspended moment, he allows himself to hate everything that he’s become. He drops on his knees to the floor, pressing his face into the mattress (the clean part), covering his head with his hands. He wants to scream, but even if muffled as it would be, he runs the risk of waking Luke. 

So instead, he takes a deep breath. He turns on his bedside lamp, the warm yellow glow stinging his eyes, and as he pulls the mattress pad from the mattress, he gauges the damage. It’s not that bad. He can deal with this. He’ll clean it up and Luke will never know.

“Okay.” His voice is soft, the mere possibility of waking Luke is a constant thrumming in the back of his mind, in direct conflict with his innate need to self-soothe. “This is okay.” 

He stands then, stripping off his soiled underwear and t-shirt and throws them into the pile of urine-soaked fabric. He pulls on the first clean pair he can find and then squeezes his eyes shut, laying out the individual steps to make this okay.

The laundry. He gathers up the laundry, distantly aware of his shaking hands, and pads silently down the hall. Luke’s bedroom door is closed, but Leo is careful not to make a sound.

He’s as silent as he can be as he loads the washer, reading the instructions on the too-expensive sheets at least three times to make sure that he doesn’t cause any additional damage. 

When he’s certain he’s gotten it right, he presses ‘start’ and straightens his back, bee-lining it for the pantry, where a wide array of cleaning supplies lives, untouched. 

He moves deftly through the familiar apartment back to his room and scrubs vigorously at the mattress, bouncing between berating himself and pleading to no-one that it’s going to be okay. He startles at the sound of knocking, his fingers freeze in place and he, against every instinct to sink into the floor and under the area rug for the rest of his life, raises his eyes.

“Luke–” It whooshes out of him like a breath, and he swallows, forcibly dragging his eyes to meet Luke’s.

Luke’s eyebrows raise as he takes in the scene, Leo in his underwear, Leo panicking, Leo holding cleaning supplies at three a.m. Leo knows, above all else, that there’s no explaining it, and he starts to draw the words that he knows he needs to find.

“I… should I ask?” Luke’s mouth forms a half smile and Leo swallows again. 

“I’m sorry,” comes Leo’s response. And then, because he can’t form any other words, he says, “I… I can fix this.”

“Leo…” Luke’s face is doing that thing it does, when he’s trying to pluck the perfect words out of the air, to quell Leo’s anxiety or to mitigate the risk of an absolute meltdown. “I’m certain, whatever it is, it is absolutely fixable.” There’s exhaustion in Luke’s voice and in his expression, and Leo, a deer in the headlights, shakes his head, sucks in a breath. 

“I–” He swallows, his fists clenching and unclenching almost painfully. Just say it. There’s no easy way, there’s no right way, and it’s best to just lay it out. He huffs out a sound that edges somewhere between a choked off laugh and a sob, his shoulders dropping along with his eyes. 

“Leo–”

“–I’m just. I’m just going to say it, okay?” Leo chances a glance at Luke, who regards him so carefully as he nods, encouraging. He feels… scared? In a way that is foreign to him. Not afraid of what Luke might do, but afraid instead of what Luke might think. Afraid that this is another piece of him, broken, that Luke will need to tiptoe around. Afraid, at his core, that this is another broken off chunk, and he’s closer still to being irreparable. 

With one more big breath, he whispers, “I had an accident– I–” His eyes squeeze shut, and he can feel the shame rising to his face, and he wants to explain that he used to be able to function, that he could do this and he was fine and he was happy and he was healthy and people made him this way but he isn’t fundamentally broken (at least he doesn’t think so) and he can be fixed (at least he thinks so) but all that comes out is a slightly louder, slightly more solid, “I had a nightmare.” His hands are shaking and he forcefully stills them. “I, uh, I didn’t expect it–”

And since Luke doesn’t immediately interrupt with how okay everything is, the words tumble from Leo’s mouth. “I promise, if I had any– any– indication that it was going to be a bad night, I wouldn’t have let myself sleep that deeply. I just…” He can feel a trembling in his voice, but he doesn’t hear it, and he doesn’t chance a glance at Luke as he continues, “I… I didn’t know… that it was going to be a hard night. I’m so sorry,” he says, over and over. 

He feels Luke’s hands on his shoulders, he feels Luke’s fingers in his hair, he lets himself be pulled in for a hug and he lets himself stop speaking, at least long enough to choose the words that will convey to Luke, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that this will not happen again.

“If I told you it was okay, would that mean anything to you?” 

Leo nods, but he doesn’t know how much truth there is to it.

“Leo,” Luke says, in that tone that definitely means the big words are coming, and Leo needs to hear them. “This is so beyond ‘okay.’ This doesn’t even scratch the surface of a problem from my perspective, okay?” Luke pulls back enough to see his face, but Leo can’t make himself look. He nods.

“You put the sheets in the washer?” 

Nods again. 

“How can I help? Is there anything you need?”

Leo forces his eyes over the mattress, damp from, mostly, cleaning products. “I think it’s okay,” he says. “I think… it wasn’t a lot, that got through the mattress pad– I think it’s okay, but I–”

“Hey,” Luke interrupts him. “I’m certain that it’s fine.” 

“Okay,” Leo says, although he doesn’t sound convincing, even to himself. “I think I’ll… I’ll move the sheets to the dryer and take a quick shower, if that’s okay?”

Ultimately, Luke convinces him to allow him to finish the laundry, which makes Leo’s heart ache worse, but he thinks he sufficiently camouflages the hurt under the tsunami of other emotions he’s projecting, and he sulks off to the shower, where he can’t stop himself from crying, if only just a little bit.

By the time he’s pulled himself completely together, the water has run cold, the sheets are folded on his dresser as the mattress starts to dry, and Luke sits with a mug of tea and a copy of Animal Farm, which Leo had checked out from the library the day earlier. 

For a moment, Leo watches him, before taking a seat beside him, where there’s a second mug waiting for him.

Luke sets the book aside and regards him, expression maybe more guarded now, but also more alert. 

“How are you feeling?” he asks, which is Leo’s least favorite and hardest to answer question.

“I’m okay. It was just…” Leo grabs the mug to occupy his hands. “I didn’t expect to have a hard night,” he says, by way of explanation.

“Can I ask you something?” Luke says then, and Leo holds his breath. “If you had known, you wouldn’t have slept?”

“I just… I’d have set alarms, to keep myself from…” He realizes he’s in dangerous territory before Luke’s expression shifts, but it’s too late. A sort of tension takes hold of him, but he only nods. “It’s just a way to get sleep but not sleep hard enough to cause trouble.”

“Okay,” Luke eventually says, after too long a pause. “I’d… rather you didn’t do that, though.” Quickly, he adds, “From a medical perspective, that’s not… ideal.”

He knows his next suggestion will not be taken well, but there’s a part of him that just needs to put it out there, and so he says, “What about if…” 

Luke’s mouth is the flattest line, but still, Leo trudges on. “Maybe I could sleep on the floor? Just on the nights that I’m not sure?”

“Mm.” Luke says, taking a sip of his tea. He angles toward the window, his expression unreadable, and then says, “I– I don’t know what to do.” It’s the saddest he’s heard Luke’s voice in a long time.

Leo is preparing a big speech about how it’s easy, and the floor is comfortable, and he can bring blankets to the floor and he might even like it better there, and it’ll certainly help him sleep, knowing that he won’t destroy the mattress, and he could put a towel down too to help protect the wood if that would be better, and–

“I don’t think you should sleep on the floor, Leo.” Luke turns back to him, offering a half-hearted smile.  

Before he can speak again, Leo says, “What if it happens again?”

“Then it happens again. I–”

“What if I ruin the mattress?” 

Leo startles himself with the interruption, but Luke only says, “You won’t ruin the mattress.” 

“What if I do?” he presses. “I can’t… I can’t afford to get a new one, I’m not worth–”

“Stop,” Luke says then. “Please.” Leo freezes momentarily, before taking a sip of his tea. “If the mattress is ruined, we can get a new one. If the mattress isn’t ruined, then it’s a non-issue. Either way, it’s okay. I promise you, it’s okay.”

Leo nods. There’s no way Luke’s going to willingly allow him to sleep on the floor. So he says, “At the sites, the beds were covered in this plasticky material so they could clean them easily… Could we do that?”

“No,” comes Luke’s answer, easily now. It’s frustrating, having an actual argument with him. Luke seldom holds his ground, and Leo seldom pushes back, but he finds himself feeling… somehow different. It’s not entirely unpleasant, but it’s a feeling that he’s not accustomed to. He takes a breath, at the same time that Luke says, “Come here.” 

Leo knows that it isn’t an order, but rather a check in. That Luke will maybe do the hair/forehead thing, and even in the midst of a bona-fide disagreement, he feels a little lighter. “Are you okay?” Luke asks then.

Leo nods. “I’m okay. I just… I know I won’t sleep, with this… this might be a thing. I don’t want you to have to deal with another one of my things. I’ll– I can make sure to clean up after myself, but I just… I know it’s going to be hard… for me to sleep… now.”

“Does it happen a lot?” Luke asks. “This is the first time since you’ve been here, right?”

Leo shakes his head. “Right,” he says. “Once in training, a couple of times in my last contract. It’s never been for any reason other than pure negligence though. The conditions were different then.”

Leo can almost see the gears turning in Luke’s head, can almost feel the moment he decides to ask the question, “Different how?” 

And Leo, if prepared for nothing else, is always prepared to shake his head and say, “Just… different. I can’t really talk about it.”

“Right,” Luke whispers. “Can you…” Luke takes a breath, sips on his tea, then finishes. “Promise me, Leo, that instead of sleeping on the floor, instead of setting alarms to keep yourself awake… Can you just let me know? If you think you’re going to have a tough night? Even if there’s no reason for it, even if it’s just a feeling in your gut, just let me know you’re not comfortable falling asleep, and we can work through it together?”

Leo nods.

“What about the mattress?” he asks, sipping his own tea. 

“I’m not worried about the mattress,” Luke replies. “I’m worried about you. I’m worried about what you do to yourself, what lengths you’ll go to to prevent this from happening again.” He smiles, nudging Leo’s shoulder playfully. “But if you’d like, maybe you can go to the store and get a...” he gestures vaguely, stumbling over the suggestion. It’s endearing, Leo thinks. “A waterproof mattress pad. Would that be okay?”

Leo nods, eager for a change in subject, and Luke lets it go.

✥ ✥ ✥

Leo wasn’t sure which option was scarier– Using Luke’s money explicitly for his own benefit, or risking another accident. He spends the day wandering around the neighborhood, he walks into the stores and finds what he’s looking for each time, but then walks out empty handed. He is aware of how tired he is, but he pushes himself to walk further, to jog, to sit at the park and watch the birds, to read. If he wears himself out, maybe he will sleep.

When he returns home, Luke is in his office. The bed has been made, and Leo doesn’t allow himself to think about Luke doing that. There’s a note on his dresser that reads:

Leo,

I’ll be in a meeting in the office until 9- I picked up a mattr I ordered pizza, should be here around 8. If you’re still awake, I thought maybe we could watch a movie. I picked up I stopped by the store on the way home and picked up a mattress topper for you, I hope that’s okay. It is not plasticky, but if it Please, don’t think any further of this. Unless you want to, or need to, I’m… happy to discuss it further. Just, not on my behalf Whatever you need here,

Sleep well,

Luke

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