#but the outline still needs finishing

[goldeneyedgirl]

12 kisses: march: scars, anathema.

Wow, it's been a hot minute since I posted anything. I'm kind of back? I've finished a semester successfully, just waiting for grades and information on next semester (I'm lowkey excited about my ofic that I'm writing for school), and just dealing with more health stuff plus I live surrounded by varying levels of Other People's Nonsense that I am involved in dealing with for an unknown reason.

But I'm back to writing fic, and thought I'd upload some stuff that's been marinating since February. First up, catching up on the 12kisses meme with something from Anathema. This looked different in my head but it's cute and it's building up Jasper's Anathema backstory, so I'm happy.

Asks will be answered, chapters will be finished,but today I'm just doing warmups and fic housekeeping.

12 kisses: march: scars, anathema

[ scars ] a gentle kiss on the partner’s scars

I’m frozen solid by the time we make it home, shivering under three layers of soaked clothing - I’m not entirely sure my puffer jacket is ever going to recover from this. It’s less ‘puff’ and more ‘soggy’ now.

“We need to get you warm and dry,” Jasper said, sounding stressed, as I fumbled with the house keys, my fingers numb. He’d been worried since he bundled me into the car; he was so protective of me. I might have been miserably cold, but there was no way I’d get sick from twenty minutes cold. But Jasper preferred to err on the side of caution - my human half - rather than risk me getting so much as a paper cut.

It was pretty cute, honestly.

“First stop, the shower.” I flipped on the lights as we went in; the entire house was dark. Freddie and Dulcie were at the conference in Seattle all weekend, and it had taken a lot of effort to convince them to let me stay home alone rather than going with them, or staying with the Clearwaters (not that I was on entirely good terms with the Clearwater since Jasper showed up. Sue was positively distant with me lately.) But I definitely needed to convince Dulcie or Freddie to let me get a cat - especially for nights when I was on my own. Not that it happened all that often. Hell, Dulcie had even offered to let me stay at her place, but I was happier here - especially since Jasper had upgraded my laptop and fixed the wifi.

Half-tripping up the stairs - my toes were numb in my boots with cold, I found the apartment was slightly more welcoming since I’d accidentally left the living room lamp on. My clothes were leaving a trail of water behind me, and my hands were shaking as I pulled out dry clothes and a towel, leaving a set for Jasper to dry off.

“Shower, Alice,” Jasper said firmly. “You’re freezing.”

“At least dry off your clothes,” I said, clenching my teeth to stop them chattering. “Use the dryer.” I could see him on the fence about that idea. “I can’t warm up and them get cold again from your wet clothing.”

“Go shower,” he said, and I knew I’d won as he gently pushed me towards the bathroom.

Twenty minutes later, I was toasty warm in a giant sweater, leggings, and the socks that Dulcie had knitted me for Christmas. My hair was ridiculously frizzy and I had tried to pin it down the best I could, but it still looked childish.

I dumped my clothes in the hamper to be dealt with in the morning before I wandered back through the apartment and out onto the landing where Jasper was drying his clothing. Our ‘laundry’ was in a closet on the landing because we had nowhere else to put it until someone (most likely Dulcie) cleared out the second floor so we could use it again.

Jasper was standing there in his jeans, checking his phone as his sweatshirt dried, and I was fully intending on just enjoying the view - he was staunchly old-fashioned towards me, but I had quickly worked out it was a defence mechanism. It was easier for him to fall back into the vague social expectations of his human life right now because everything was overwhelming. I’d cheerfully bullied him into doing things like holding my hand, and curling up on my bed with me to watch a movie, but both of those things were done fully clothed and there was still a very respectful distance between us.

That is to say, I had never seen him shirtless. And I had wanted to mentally imprint the imagine on my brain for the foreseeable future (I was very doubtful that being defiled on a gurney downstairs was going to be come to pass before I turned thirty), except…

The scars.

I knew he hand them; there were some on his arms and hands that I’d see, a couple of shallow ones on his face. He’d told me about life in the south and everything that happened with Maria and Peter, but I’d always felt that he was holding something back.

Now I had proof. The scars on his back overlapped; they looked like claws had dug into his shoulder blade and travelled down to his opposite hip. There were nicks in the skin and bite marks and smaller scratches.

And when he put his phone back in his pocket, all the muscles and skin pulled tightly against the scar tissue; I inhaled sharply. I know bodies. I know how they fit together, how they move. Human bodies aren’t even the same as vampire bodies; I know that. The venom does horrific things to the tissue and the muscle and the ligaments and the joints… But all I could think of was how every time Jasper moved, the scar tissue would try to stop him.

Jasper turned around when he heard me, his eyes wide. And I got even more of an eyeful. The damage on his chest and stomach were… different to his back. Not better or worse, just different. At one point, it look like he had been torn open from clavicle down to his stomach. Scratches, gouges, bites littered his body and all I could do was stare.

It wasn’t like anything I had ever faced downstairs. Even the bear attacks or falls weren’t like this. Because no human had to go on living with the remains of those fates. Jasper did.

“Alice, I…” he began and I shook my head, already moving.

“Oh Jasper,” I managed, before I flung my arms around him. His skin was cold against my face, but it was reassuring - I had become used to the fact that he was always going to be cold, or room-temperature at best. It was comforting and familiar now.

He stood rigidly in my grasp for a moment, before I felt his hand rest gently on my shoulder.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t intend for you to see this,” he said so kindly I wanted to cry. “I just wanted to dry my clothing before you came out, I’m sorry.”

I frowned at him. There was a horrific scar where his neck joined his shoulder, and I could see the teeth marks at the edges. “Why are you sorry?”

“It’s not an easy sight,” Jasper said, and he looked away from me. “It wasn’t something I wanted you to ever have to deal with.”

Well. Apparently I grossly overestimated gurney-defilement at age thirty; Jasper had planned on it being never.

A million things raced through my head when he said that. Jokes about wedding nights, frustration that he thought I was too delicate to deal with reality, the insistence that it didn’t matter because it did, to him. He was apart of a family without blemish - some shadows from the scars that changed them but nothing even remotely close to what Jasper bore. Maybe it had been the Cullens that had taught Jasper to hide them, to cover them up, and I felt frustration rise up in me.

“I cannot stand the idea of you hurting,” I blurted out, my fingers twisting through the belt loops in his jeans. “Do they hurt now?”

He watched me, frowning, for a second. “No, they haven’t hurt in a very long time,” he said, and I felt the ghost of confusion drift over my skin. “They’re just there, they won’t ever fade.”

“But your back, I could see the muscles pulling,” I said. The idea that Carlisle, a surgeon, hadn’t done anything about Jasper’s scarring was stressing me out. I’d cut more than one scar through on the bodies downstairs, so that they could lay flat and look comfortable.

“I can feel some of them, but they don’t hurt or restrict me. Vampire skin doesn’t work that way,” Jasper said soothingly. “It simply moves with me. If there was resistance, they’d tear.”

A shudder that ran through me as I curled closer to him. “I don’t like that,” I said honestly. I’d see torn, cracked vampire flesh once, a couple of years ago when a nomad needed to be disposed of. It didn’t look real.

“We treated our wounds to make sure we didn’t lose movement, Alice.” His voice is kind and patient, and I hate that he’s comforting me. “It would be a death sentence otherwise.”

“How did they happen?” I asked, absently tracing one on his arm. “What animal did these?”

Jasper sighed; it was the kind of sigh that came from so much time and misery. “Newborns. Maria. Battles. No animals, just monsters,” he sounded tired. “I’m sorry Alice, I didn’t want you to have to see this side of us. Of me.”

I shook my head. “Sit. I want to know,” I said. Sinking to the floor, I immediately sat in his lap, curled against him. “You should have told me before.”

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” Jasper replies smartly, grabbing my hand and stretching out my arm, to push up my sweater sleeve. Three scars along the arm that I never really thought about; they were smooth against the rest of my skin.

“That’s easy,” I said. “That one, when I broke my arm as a kid - bone tore straight through the skin, I screamed like I was on fire. Jeanie nearly had a heart attack when she found me. I only needed three weeks in a cast.

“That one was a dog bite. Mrs O’Brian, who owned the camping store before the Newtons moved to town, had this retriever. I’d never met a retriever that wasn’t super friendly. He just sunk his teeth into me and shook. I thought Freddie was going to kill the dog and Mrs O’Brian.” I shrugged. “And the last one - was getting ready to work on a body downstairs, and I had a vision when I picked up the scalpel. I fainted and stabbed myself pretty badly. Sue had to give me a bunch of stitches.”

Jasper’s fingers were cool against my arm as he traced the marks. “Any others?”

“I mean, there’s a burn scar on my stomach from when I leaned over my hair straightener,” I said. “A couple of shaving cuts around my ankles. One on my thigh from when I tripped in the forest. These are just living scars, Jas. Not like yours.”

Jasper nodded but was still focusing on the marks on my arm.

“It.. it wasn’t something we worried about,” he says, quietly. “Newborns were cannon fodder, it didn’t matter what happened to them. If they were too far gone, we’d just destroy them - we didn’t want to waste the resources to heal them up again.

“But I had to be on the frontline for us to win, to stay in control,” he continued. “I was a target; everyone knew that without me, Maria couldn’t control an army that size or hold her territory.

“Maria or… Peter would be the one to put me back together. Peter would try not to make a big deal out of it. But Maria, she’d tell me how bad it was. That I needed to fight smarter, that it didn’t have to be this bad. That I was wasting blood and time.” He shivered and looked up at me. “‘It won’t be worth keeping you around much longer’. That’s what she said to me at the end. As if I wasn't still winning, as if she didn’t have her territory.”

Jasper shook his head. “So I get to walk around like this.” The bitterness and self loathing in his voice was evident, even without the emotions boiling around him. “The Cullens, they made sure I stayed covered up for the first couple of years. Esme and Rose, they have histories with violence, and they needed to feel I was safe…”

I squeeze my eyes shut, and try to wrestle down the flare of anger I feel at the idea Jasper was made to feel like a monster, a dirty secret, because he’d been raised in a war zone.

“You deserve so much better, Alice.” The tenderness in his voice was heartbreaking. “If things were different - if I was stronger - I never would have let myself get close to you. A better version of me, in a perfect world. Someone whole and normal who isn’t like this.”

He buried his face in my hair, his arms firm around me as if he was holding on for dear life. And I am stricken. I am not an idiot, I knew that Jasper struggled. That the human facade and living this way was like wearing ill-fitting clothes for him. That I terrified him in so many ways, but especially how easily I had accepted him and invited him closer.

And his second life had taught him one lesson over and over again; that in the end, he would be alone. Cast out, broken, used up. Nettie and Lucy, Maria, Peter… the lesson had stuck. And a few months together wasn’t enough to erase those decades of misery, of bone-deep fears.

My lips press against the snarl of the scar on his neck, and I felt him shiver underneath my touch. I knew I was turning red - there was something so intimate about the gesture, even though I didn’t intend anything salacious.

“I need you to know I love you as you are,” I said, his face still tucked in my hair. “That this you is my you, and there’s not a single thing I would change about you.”

“To me, you are perfect,” I heard him murmur into my hair. I didn’t know if he was reassuring himself with words I’d told him before or telling that to me, but I didn’t get a chance to clarify; he looked up and tilted my head back, his thumb absently stroking my cheek.

“I don’t deserve you,” he said, and there was something so sad yet so fierce in his gaze.

“And I’ve done nothing to deserve someone like you,” I replied. “We’re a perfect match. I adore you.”

Jasper chuckled, and there was a flicker in his eyes for moment as he seemed to lean closer… but whatever was going to be said or happen after that was lost as the dryer let out a thunk, a wheeze, and a chime to let us know that Jasper’s shirt was now dry.

“Time to go inside,” he said, the moment gone as he rose to his feet, helping me up before grabbing his sweatshirt from the dryer.

“I really was enjoying the show,” I said mournfully as he tugged his sweatshirt on. Jasper let out a surprised chuckle, and reached for me again.

“Time and patience, Alice,” he said in a funny way; all-knowing and reassuring but with a new warmth to his words. “All good things arrive eventually.”

I smiled up at him as he took my hand and lead me towards the apartment door.

For him, I would wait forever.

[dreamshaxd]

Sometimes it causes pain.

EDIT: 139NOTES??! YOU GUYS ARE CRAZY, OH MY-

EDIT 2: DUDEEE, IT'S NOT EVEN THAT GOOD,IM CRYING OVER ALL THIS HYPE

[lucky-fy]

For the Laicion nation (aka, me and three other people)

I had this illustration commissioned (a big thank you to @lunehowls) for my werewolf AU Laicion fic (still a WIP).

The general pitch is as follows :

AU in which Laios never got to meet his sister again, putting his life on a whole other path, a more desperate one. A military deserter with barely a coin to his name, Laios hitches a ride on a boat to one of the elven continents, where he learns about magical tattoos that binds one’s soul to a wolf’s, effectively making them artificial werewolves. Illegal magic be damned, this feels like the answer to… everything.

In the process, he learns about the existence of an illegal fighting ring in one of the elven cities, where beastmen gladiators gather. Freshly tattooed and without anywhere else to go to, Laios decides to head there, where he meets Lycion, an elf and artificial werewolf gladiator. If they first bond over a simple shared meal, by spending time together (sharing the same room in the barracks, maybe the same bed? gasp) they find that they have a lot in common, notably a shared distaste for the body they were born in, a dysphoria partially remedied by becoming a werewolf.

They bond :)

NB: I commissioned another piece, go take a look :D

[thegreatyin]

And thus, with the passing of 24 hours, Caeru's ambition truly comes to an end. Major Nemesis spoilers below the cut- we're talking endgame ambition business here. Mostly on a character RP front.

The Doomed Scientist made quite a few... choice decisions, in the end. Killing Cups once and for all, recording his story as one of grief-

And sparing what little remained of Mr Mirrors, leaving it free to roam Parabola as it sees fit.

Some of them, he can explain. Others, he's still left to feel... discontent.

Cups needed to die. That much was certain from the start. It was a tyrant, as all Masters are, and complicit in the bargaining and eventual destruction of four (potentially five) cities, as all Masters are. It was an obstacle. A murderer. A petty monster that felt no remorse even on its deathbed, and it went out of its way to ruin multiple lives just because it felt owed its own sick and twisted idea of revenge.

It killed his first love. It looked him in the eyes and he knew what it had done and he knew from the start it was going to die.

Perhaps, in the end, it knew too. And yet it still pleaded, and wanted to live, and-

It made a bargain.

A bargain Caeru didn't take.

Not because he didn't want to. Gods, he wanted to. He wanted it. He wanted it more than anything else in the world. To have Greylu back, to give him the gift of life, of love, to show him the wonders of the Neath and the beauty of the correspondence and all of the people Caeru has met and loved and found home with along the way-

But. He couldn't.

Because Cups was a monster. And no matter what, it deserved to die. And he could not, in good conscience, allow it to live.

Even if sparing it meant everything he's ever wanted.

So he's left here, now. With a bloodied traveling coat, and a bloodsoaked knife, and a favor finally fulfilled.

And nothing to live for. No resurrected lover, no charming visits to Helicon, no slow dances in the living room, no memories to rebuild and lives to live and he won't live again-

Nothing. All he has is a coat born of obligation, not to his love, but to people he's never even met. To lives he's never even touched. To a paramour, still alive, with hair of rose-pink, who doesn't even remember her own brother's existence.

Cups didn't die for Caeru's sake. Cups died for the sake of all who wanted it dead. For the revenger's court, and the ghost screaming in his ear, and the reckoning that will not be postponed indefinitely.

And Caeru, who acted as a tool to carry out their wills? Who all but betrayed his own lover, just to satisfy a cause he never knew existed?

All Caeru is left with, is regret. Regret-

-And grief.

[andorerso]

another slightly nsfw snippet because they have no chill

The rational part of her sighs and throws her hands up in defeat. You’ve already made up your mind. Just do it. Jyn pulls out her phone and sends him a text. Pizza tonight? I’ll let you finish in my mouth this time.

[mywaywardcupcake]

Wishship Week Day 3/Feb. 21st: Twist of Fate

Day 3 for @wishshipweek. This day ended up being unfinished. It started as a fic which I quickly realized was becoming too big for me to finish for a prompt day so I switched to creating art for it instead and ended up sick and had to do more of a sketchy concept instead. My idea for the fic/art is the twist of fate that lead these two boys together. Jounouchi’s decision to leave the gang and not go with them to Rintama lead him to Domino. Yugi’s decision to continue the puzzle even though he’s struggled with it for 8 years (and deciding to bring it to school one day) that lead to him meeting Jounouchi. In the art piece they are both feeling good about their decisions, even though they have gone through so much darkness and hurt beforehand. Something inside them is tugging on them to continue this path, that this will be the year that things will be different. An invisible string of fate that lead them to each other.

[carcarrot]

google search how was i going to finish the sentence i started writing

[recallback-art]

I'm the protagonist, and reality is whatever I make of it! Put me in the spotlight, put me on the stage, because the freaks from all over love me!

(AKA. An exploration of how Lucero visualizes his friends.)

[comfortlesshurt]

OKAY, IT'S FINALLY HITTING

(will you guys hate me if I post this longfic a month later than planned?)

[sysig]

Challenge level: Impossible (Patreon)

[lotus-pear]

OMG LOTUS WRITER ERA I AM SEATED

i already know it’s gonna deliver, i will be your first kudos <333

ps: outlining can be so hard so if you’ve already got that mostly down you are on a roll !!

WAAAAAH TYSM😭😭 idk shit abt ao3 and i’ve never written a fic before so i hope this doesn’t flop

[thisisnotkitty]

wip wednesday

[alltimefail-sims]

If I don't post anything sims-related in a minute please know I'm not going anywhere and I will have original content soon, I'm just trying to fight my ADHD demons and all the distractions it loves (such as playing TS4 and mindless timeline scrolling) so I can make progress on the book I've been trying to write for a little over a year now <3 <3

[actualbird]

fic talk

heres a genfic i'd like to work on once im done with all my november prompt smutfics. idea born from me humoring the possibility of an extended nxx team with giann and neil part of it along with the others, and how thatd affect the team’s dynamics. and i zero’d in on marius and giann and thought “okay now how can i strain that link like, a LOT?”

-

[starrysharks]

muahaha..... after like 3 months of running in circles i finally have (probably) every chapter of reassass figured out with a good deal of them having outlined their own synopsis..... now to just fucking write them 😭😭😭😭😭

[moonsun2010]

conflicted over the composition for one of the animatic frames I'm working on sooo poll it is!