#arghwrites

[softgrungeprophet]

realized i can post this for @ockissweek

If you want to read TJ and Lilith's first (and second) kisses—

—here's a little-to-no-context snippet:

Valentine's Day

2023

"So it is you…"

A familiar form, and a familiar face; narrow-bodied, blue-eyed, pale-skinned and slightly flushed from anger or maybe something else. A sharpness in her eyes.

"Oh, don't act like you knew this whole time!" Lilith glowered at him.

The hint of a grin tugged at TJ's mouth and he said, "You've been stalking me."

Lilith flushed a deeper red. "I—"

"You liiike me…" TJ let himself smile, a teasing lilt to his voice.

"Why would I like you?! You're—" Lilith fumed as she searched for the right words. "You're insufferable! And stupid! And I wasn't stalking you! I was just keeping an eye out! You know, covering all my bases—"

TJ kissed her.

She tensed at first, startled. Then softened, one gloved hand coming to rest on TJ's face.

Tensed again— shoved him away with a grunt.

Then she disappeared, vanishing into the air with a rustle, the only indication of her trajectory a loose stone that skittered away from an invisible foot.

For a moment, TJ just stared in that direction."…Shit."

***

Three months later

May 17th, 2023

12:45 am

TJ sighed as he turned out the lights [at work], making his final detour to change into a spare set of clothes in the bathroom.

Outside air— what a relief from the humid stuffiness of the dishwasher and sinks. No chemical smells, no mish-mash of wet food. Just the brisk night, clean and clear and…

TJ lit a cigarette with a snap of his fingers and a little spark of light, and took a long drag, glancing up at the under-lit clouds before letting the smoke drift from his mouth.

Of course, it mostly came out as breath, a thin mist. The weirder side of his powers, filtering and purifying the toxins he'd grown so accustomed to. As long as it didn't purify the important part (nicotine) he didn't really give a shit either way, but even after a year, that didn't make it any less strange to fill the negative space with… what? Warm, dry air? Vaguely, faintly acrid, but more like stale days-old smoke lingering in an enclosed space than anything freshly smoldering.

…He couldn't help feeling like he was being watched.

A familiar feeling at this point, and a familiar car parked in front of the restaurant…

An olive green Mercedes, a head of curly crimson hair, and a sharp stare tracking him as he sauntered over with his cigarette dangling between his lips.

Lilith rolled the window down and before TJ could say anything, snapped, "I've been sitting here for almost two hours. Get in."

TJ huffed. "You really are a stalker."

Her face pinched, but she didn't rise to the bait for once. Just said, "Let me give you a ride home."

"You literally parked next to my truck." Blued-out Datsun, directly beside her Mercedes.

But TJ paused, then said, "…Ah, fuck it."

He tossed his backpack into the footwell and slid into the passenger seat anyway, letting a cloud of smoke halo around his head and dissipate strangely as his lungs processed it and the gentle breeze thinned it away, half steam.

"Next time, maybe you should…" TJ twirled his cigarette between his fingers, reaching into its fibers to waterlog the embers until it fizzled out, and pocketed it as he shut the door.

"…I don't know… text me or something?"

Lilith grabbed him by the collar and tugged him close.

TJ's turn to be slightly surprised by a kiss, but he immediately relaxed into her touch with a soft, curious sound in the back of his throat, and reached up to tangle his fingers into her hair.

She didn't seem to mind.

Though she briefly parted from him to mutter, "You smell like dog food," before a sudden shift occurred in the interior of the car and his body— As if someone had just skimmed all the foulness from the air and fabric, trapping it in a filter to leave behind something much cleaner, albeit slightly empty and vaguely synthetic (illusory).

TJ laughed under his breath, and Lilith kissed him quiet.

[softgrungeprophet]

taking a break from my monstrously large AU to work on a very self-indulgent fairytale oneshot ft. Kaine as a Rapunzel-esque figure and Ben as his (platonic) rescuer, because I made an offhand comment about Kaine's hair while talking to someone and was seized by the concept 😂

i'll post a snippet:

—

That night, Ben slipped away during dinner—wolfed his food down and excused himself to explore as the sun set and purple marlins swarmed the sky…

…except for the airspace around that strange bronze tower.

There was a man outside, across the field, silhouetted in the darkness. Ben crept low to the ground and kept his distance, careful not to be seen as he followed the stranger up the hill toward the tower.

He'd left his chatelaine inside, of course (no need for sewing scissors out in the fields, anyway) but the good luck charm Peter had given him, he'd fastened to his boot, a comforting little weight.

Just in case.

Up the path, to the gate…

Ben hid out of sight and peeked around the brambles to watch as the man he'd trailed up to the tower shed his cloak and—suddenly—was no longer a man at all.

The glamor fell away to reveal some kind of ogre or fae monster, with wide bat-like ears and long limbs; taloned fingers and clawed feet, green skin in the falling dusk almost the same color as the pine needles in the trees, strangely waxy.

The monster called out: "Kaine!"

Ben's breath caught in his chest, eyes wide.

It couldn't possibly be…

The monster shifted, tilted its head, and Ben held himself as still as could be,

A moment passed.

The tension dropped, and again—

"Kaine! Let down thy hair so that I may climb up!"

Above—a backlit outline against the golden glow from inside the tower—a figure moved.

The long braid that fell down from the window caught the fading sunset, highlighted in a flash of copper and fastened with a hook. Its bearer was silent, and remained in shadow as the being who must have been the Jackal—a boogeyman from Ben's childhood—leapt up and grabbed hold, using the length of hair like a rope to scale the smooth side of the tower.

Kaine's braid was unhooked and drawn up, and they disappeared from view.

The Jackal spoke some words, quiet and unintelligible from this distance, and even lower received a response, equally undecipherable.

Ben could feel his heart hammering in his throat, and slipped away.

—

the dramatic reveal lol

heads up, gang! it's that time of the week again. EF is as proud as ever to present WIP Wednesday.

we encourage our community's writers to reblog this post and tell us about your latest idea, show us a snippet of an upcoming work, write in a vague prompt that's eating you alive... we wanna hear it all!

excelsior!

[softgrungeprophet]

windowverse kaine houston fic is such a mess idk if or when i'll ever finish it but it has a lot of scenes I like so:

here are a couple of brief Kaine and Aracely interactions set not long after leaving Houston in windowverse:

(contains brief reference to suicide and self-harm, but is otherwise free of both warnings and context. one scene is silly and the other is more serious)

***

[It's Kaine's birthday and they're on the road]

"Kaine! Kaine! Kaine!"

The bedsprings creaked with each bounce and Kaine groaned with his face hidden under the blanket. But he shifted, and Aracely continued bouncing and chanting, "Get up! Get up!"

His hand shot out, grabbed her ankle and knocked her off balance—she floated onto her back and smiled benignly, spinning herself upside down as he peered out from his nest of sheets.

"Happy birthday!"

Kaine sighed and pulled the blankets back over his head.

She landed on top of him, suddenly once more beholden to gravity, and he grunted.

"Get uuuuup!! I want to have a party!"

For what occasion? Two months of living in random hotel rooms?

"I hate parties." Kaine didn't bother moving. "Get off."

Aracely rolled off of him with a disappointed huff and when he looked back out at her, she sat floating in midair, hands wrapped around her crossed ankles and an earnest, pound puppy expression on her face.

"But it's your birthday."

Kaine finally sat up. "You're right. It is my birthday."

She perked up.

He continued, "It's also the sixth anniversary of a broken mirror."

Aracely's mouth twisted and her eyebrows drew into a knot but she didn't have anything to argue, here. She knew what he meant, even if the attempted suicide scar on his throat had been covered up by newer, gnarlier scars.

But Kaine sighed, pressing his face into his hands as he muttered, "One more year, maybe I'll have some good luck for once. We can have a party then."

Aracely pouted. "That's so long."

He nudged her out of his way, gently, and made his way to the bathroom without a word. But he lingered in the doorway and after a moment, not looking over his shoulder or anything like that, said simply, "See if they have any plain chocolate donuts."

"Yay!!!"

"No filling!"

She was already down the hallway.

***

[later on Aracely accidentally gets a brainful of Jackal flashbacks]

Kaine reached up to fit his hand to the overlapping scars on his face, though he didn't burn himself this time. Not for a while, now. He… hadn't felt the urge so sharply, since leaving New York a year ago.

A quiet noise caught his ear, and he frowned.

It sounded like…

"Shit."

It took him less than a second to tug on a bathrobe and open the bathroom door.

Aracely stood right there, with her face in her hands, trembling, tiny noises shaking her body.

"Aracely…" Kaine didn't know what to do, where to put his hands to comfort her. "I… thought you were asleep."

As if he weren't a radio tower broadcasting his trauma at all hours of the day, as if she somehow hadn't already felt all of the things he had felt and then simply hid it behind a smile.

She shook her head imperceptibly and sniffled, or whimpered, or both. The final grain of sand in the hourglass, the first flake of an avalanche.

Slowly, and stiffly, Kaine placed his hands on her shoulders, and she was so… small and fragile, even now, and his hands were so huge and rough. Killing hands trying to comfort. Aracely shuffled closer and Kaine let her push herself into his arms, a familiar and sometimes uncertain thing—hugs. Kaine found himself more concerned with her than with anything else. He wrapped his arms around her, and put his hand on the back of her head to hold it there against his half-bare chest, against his beating heart, as she squeezed her little arms around his waist.

[softgrungeprophet]

it's still only like 7 here but i am definitely ringing in the new year the way i intend to spend it: writing weird edgy fanfiction

[softgrungeprophet]

demeaning fictional characters by having people call kaine things like "the pink tarantula" instead of something cool like "egodeath"

[softgrungeprophet]

Who wants to know about how Kaine's spikes etc. work—

it's 20 pages 💀

was chatting, realized i don't think i've really gone into how kaine's spikes work in windowverse stuff aside from some lines in the warren notes fic (i mean, tbf, when would i have?)

still not going to go into it unless i feel like busting out some of my notes in a reblog at some point lol but tl;dr is the spikes are made of the same thing as ben's organic webbing, just doesn't work right, can be removed or reabsorbed back into the silk-producing organs in his forearms, and require hand flexion just like the organic and mechanical web-shooters, but a different hand shape.

when i say "flicked out at high speeds" i do mean like throwing knives lmfao

[softgrungeprophet]

hypothetically if a fictional character was held and used for illegal human experimentation by the us military and then escaped by destroying an entire facility and probably killing everyone inside, do you think he'd be considered a wanted criminal or would they be like, no this was justified in the face of cruel and unusual treatment--

what am I saying, the government would assassinate him

[softgrungeprophet]

writing something dumb i mean self-indulgent for the flashkaine sickos, i guess

[softgrungeprophet]

sometimes "the curtains are blue for a reason" means things like my deliberate decision to have dr. warren use latex surgical gloves vs donald using nitrile gloves

[softgrungeprophet]

i forgot about harry's mom........... he's supposed to be getting to know her in 2012.... oops

[softgrungeprophet]

the real challenge of writing is stuff like trying to figure out ways to make "protagonist in the hospital" not boring

[softgrungeprophet]

i forgot how much harder it is to write when i don't have adhd medication helping me think... ughh.... i hate plot.... idk what to do with harry or how to connect anything. built this up without knowing what i'm doing 😞

[softgrungeprophet]

progress since i last posted: 0 👍

[softgrungeprophet]

i should probably figure out how tj's mom died,

[softgrungeprophet]

TJ when trying to casually hook up:

TJ when emotionally invested:

[softgrungeprophet]

ngl, i do find myself almost wishing i could hand my notes on TJ's powers to like, a nuclear physicist to ask questions about neutrons and whether he ought to be putting off specific radiation bursts when he does certain things, how big of a blast makes sense for him if he is induced to explode, etc.

though at the same time of course it's not supposed to be like, totally realistic, since it's comic book science superpowers involving molecular and atomic transmutation/alchemy and not like, an actual nuclear science thing lol

i still sit here asking myself about neutrons though