#excerpt from my WIP

[gryfferin-gaybies]

Drarry Drabble

100 words from one of my many WIPs

Draco’s voice is small when he says, “I have to tell you something that might make you hate me.”

“I could—“ never, Harry wants to tell his husband, but he can’t. It would be a lie and they both know it.

Draco looks at Harry then. His eyes are filled with so much agony and self loathing that Harry aches for him. He can tell that Draco knows exactly how that sentence was going to end, and why it didn’t.

He rushes to fix it. “I’ll forgive you. I’ll always forgive you.” It’s true. For them, there was nothing truer.

[adhd-merlin]

my lying blorbo 💕

[dss1101]

"Jason is smart, okay? Though that may not exactly be the first word that comes to mind when most people think of the Red Hood. Words like brute, violent, and crazy, sure, those are words he expects. It’s not like they’re untrue, and he worked hard to cultivate that image of himself, thank you very much. But being Robin’s a tough gig, you don’t survive being Robin if you aren’t smart. 

Huh, maybe he’s not as smart as he thinks."

I love writing Jason because he's an overflowing container of a backstory worthy of dark humor. Ugh he's the best

[badassindistress]

✨~Happy 2025~✨

In 2024 I finished 17 sewing projects, these are my favourites!

[thecomfywriter]

“Draw between the lines… Don’t go out of the lines, Khos ja… What if I don’t want to!” he ranted one day as he sat in Noctem’s lap. They were studying in the library, or at least, Noctem was. A thick book on construction and the incantations associated with various Abilities crafts mulled over the thick pages that Noctem reviewed. He tabbed certain areas, ignored others, with no sense or pattern. At least, none that made sense to Evan. All he knew was the dreadful book was stealing his manny’s attention from him. Hence his position in Noctem’s lap, staring straight up his nostrils and wringing around until Noctem gave up and closed the book at last. “Kiddo, you’ve been on this for twenty minutes now. If you don’t wanna be an artist, that’s fine, but you still gotta respect your teachers.” “No.”

@bunnymermaidwrites @paeliae-occasionally just for you two <3

[dear--void]

Do I wish I’d said hello?

I was in a hurry, rummaging through my stuff,

With the bag slipping off my shoulder and eyes carrying chaos,

Trying to finish off a call;

Picture a hurricane, if you will.

That changed though– around the corner,

Out of reflex I looked up,

Just as quickly, back down,

That fleeting moment was enough–

I knew it was you.

I was done with that call,

Shoved my phone in the back pocket,

Adjusted the bag on my shoulder,

And turned back at you for a second;

A full second–

Can hold a lot, I realised that day,

You can actually feel the earth shifting degrees,

Notice the twitch on someone’s face,

The curl of their raven hair,

Their mouth almost opening,

Their eyes silently greeting you.

I took it all in,

And turned to the lift,

Shoved in the earphones, almost dug a hole to another dimension searching for those earlier.

Pressed play— Cigarettes After Sex’s “K.” continued,

Ignored all that a second gave me;

This was not our first time seeing each other,

I’ll see you again,

I’ll greet you then,

When a second will be exactly a second,

Nothing special.

– Rune

[finickyfelix]

Time for a trial run of my brand new and shiny writing excerpt tag list. I recently got back to writing Foxglove Dust, and I like this description of Tievis, so here you go.

The first thing he noticed, in the flickering lamplight of the cramped room, was that there was a mirror, and the man staring back at him from the mirror startled him so much he froze, forgetting that he was supposed to be hurrying. Now he knew why everyone in town looked at him as though they were certain he was either diseased or a crazed felon on the run. He was gaunt, aged beyond his years, paper-pale skin stretched tight over visible bones, and the deep bruises at his throat stood out stark against that skin. A little blood was still dried in the creases of his throat. His hair had grown out; he'd been entirely neglecting his appearance for… weeks, he supposed. It fell in unkept clumps about his neck, longer than it'd been in years, and the roots showed the dark hair of his father that he'd spent so long desperately bleaching it to avoid. He tore his eyes away. He hardly recognized his own reflection– or rather, he recognized it too well. The man staring back at him from the mirror had his father's face, if his father had been a haggard madman instead of a sickeningly respectable village leader. There wasn't time for this. He needed to get moving.

Hello, brand new writing excerpt tag list: @leahnardo-da-veggie, @diabolical-blue, and @saturnine-saturneight

(Please let me know if you would like to be added or removed from my writing excerpt tag list.)

[akindofmagictoo]

DRAGONSONG: draft 2/3 update: 15/03

current word count is hovering around 136.9k I believe.

still mostly doing editing, and it's slow. but i'm adding some new material in places, and these two sections are very fun!

snippet 1, chapter 14: (important context, in case it hasn't come up much: 'Coast Folk' is the term for Isi and Sierra's people)

Though she could not make out any words from the group’s conversation, one voice seemed familiar. She looked a little closer. She knew that knight. Tor John was Coast Folk, though he wore no beads or ribbons in his braids. He and his partner had been the ones to help Sierra off the cliff all those years ago. When Isi had decided she wanted to be a knight, he had taken her with him back to the citadel. Over the years as she trained, she had exchanged only a few words with him, but he had complimented her sword work and told her she would make a good knight one day. She had wanted to be a good knight, a knight like him. Now she was hiding from him. Being a good knight would have meant killing Enya, and who knew what else? Could she have been a good knight and a good person? Or would she have been inevitably forced to choose? Worse, would she have come to choose by inaction? What would Tor John think of her now?

snippet 2, chapter 30: (this bit's unfinished)

Her blade locked against another, and a voice said, “Isi?” She blinked. Once, forever ago, she had wondered what Tor John might think of her now. She was about to find out. He pulled his sword back; she matched the motion, shifting her weight so she didn’t fall, and brought her weapon back to ready. Tor John nodded approval, holding his own ready position. Isi watched and waited. Would he attack? Perhaps he had another weapon concealed in his other hand. She should have been thinking of him as one of her own. Instead, all she could see was his white surcoat, spattered red with blood. Finally, Tor John said, “You were once so excited to become a knight.” “Nothing has changed,” said Isi. Her ready stance was beginning to falter, and inside she felt similarly off-kilter. She recognised Tor John, and yet she hardly knew him. “You are killing your own,” he snapped. “What happened to keeping the peace?” Tears welled in her eyes. She took a shaky breath. “I don’t want peace drenched in someone else’s blood.” “And yet, here you are.” Disappointment flickered in his eyes. It felt like a blow to the chest.

yeah uh... he's drunk the Kool-Aid, as it were.

TAGLIST

@isherwoodj @metanoiamorii @lilmissravingwriter @weekofwednesdays @the-unwrittenwriter

@talesofsorrowandofruin @little-boats-on-a-lake @teriwrites @magicalwriting @magic-is-something-we-create

@writingbyjillian @waysofink @perditism @thehellinsideyourhead @calicowrites

@vellichor-virgo @google-plexed @therecouldbecolorsandlove @the-orangeauthor @ellatholmes

@happyorogeny @ladywithalamp @ashen-crest @authortango @strangerays

@moononherwings @nikkywrites @ambersky0319 @ambsthom @talesfromgringolandia

@wickerring @wizardfromthesea @diphthongsfordays @e-lisard @enchanted-lightning-aes

@emscribblings @teardropsandtherain @lowslore @fablewritten @copper-dragon-in-disguise

@reneesbooks @dirtybarkshark

[therealsophiependragon]

“Well, I’m not the strategist,” Zuko pointed out - a bit crabbily, by Azula's judgement.

“Nah, you’re just the sole ruler of the Fire Nation,” Toph returned dryly. “No overlap there.”

[fadedsweater]

WIP Word Game

Rules: Share one sentence/excerpt from your wip(s) that starts with each letter of the given word.

Thank you @queenaeducan for the tag! 💛

I was given the word PANIC:

P - "Papae," Adhlea said. Solas knew this tone well, and knew then that he had already lost. "Can you put ribbons in my hair?"

A - At night sometimes he could not sleep and it felt then as if she pressed upon his chest with all the weight of fallen Elvhenan. 

N - No mortal, not even a mage, could possess his magic and live. It would consume their very spirit. It would render them worse than dead. It would destroy them. 

I - In the deepest fog of the deepest forest so very long ago, there was a tower swathed in bramble and thorn, and every kingdom in all the land knew to never dare draw close, for an ancient power slumbered there. 

C - Curled beside him in her bedroll, she listened to the low whisper of his voice as he told her a story.

--

I'll tag @broodwoof, @luzial, @darethshirl, @dragon--sage, and @mel-hath-no-fury. No pressure as always, and you don't have to use dragon age fic! 💛 Your word is SLANT

[gryfferin-gaybies]

"Just give me a chance, Draco. We can start over like I'm someone you've just met. It'll be like—"

"But you're not!" Draco interrupted him. His voice was louder than what would've been considered appropriate for his work place and laced with urgency; he was practically begging Harry to understand. "You're not someone I just met! You're someone I know inside and out and yet still not at all. Looking at you still gives me that same I-can-do-absolutely-anything feeling like no time has passed whatsoever. You have no idea what just being around you does to me!" He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. When he spoke again, his tone was lower and lacked the borderline hysteria he was feeling. "I don't want to take the time to relearn you, Potter, because it would be too easy and I couldn't handle having to try to forget you again."

[allianettemie5]

Tay: Ever since they made up, they've become unbearable. I really hope they don't start fucking around from now on.

Skadj: Ew, Tay! Now I can't get the picture out of my head!

Cheesy: Oh my god, my dads are fucking each other, Kara, you've been replaced.

Kara: Shut up, Cheesy, your father and I are in a healthy relationship.

Jeremy: I'm wondering who's the top in their relationship...

*Chilled and Ze enter the room.*

[dss1101]

"Duke was taking to it about as well as any of them ever took to getting benched, which was to say, terribly."

This family is a mess of self-sacrificing idiots. Take a rest, you'll be okay I promise. There are about a billion other vigilantes to protect Gotham while you're gone

[bbcphile]

WIP Wednesday (MLC longfic again!)

Now that my amnesia fic is posted, it's time for more of my MLC longfic! At long last, LLH is awake again . . . and not doing that well.

(You can find earlier excerpts here.)

CW/TW: Panic attack, bicha flare, suicidal ideation

Something was different. The pain was there as always, waiting to devour him whole once he acknowledged it, but there was something else, something blanketing it, muting it somehow.

Li Lianhua stretched out his senses like a limb and tried to make sense of it.

Ah. Warmth. That was the strange sensation. Warmth–heat, even–all around him–his back, his chest, his legs, even his fingers, which had been more like blocks of ice than flesh and blood these last few months.

He leaned back, pushing into the banked heat behind him. The solid core of warmth tucked against his front from navel to neck twitched, then pressed against him more securely, as though it could make a home for itself inside his sternum, ribs, and spine and heat him from within.

He felt warm everywhere.

Well, almost everywhere.

He rolled forward slightly, wiggled further down on the bed, and tugged the core of warmth up higher. He curled his arms and shoulders around it and nestled the bit in his hand between his face and the pillow until it cradled his cheek. 

Much better.

He smiled into his new, warmer pillow and let himself start to relax back into sleep.

“Xiangyi?”

The warmth against his face gradually took shape as his skin and mind began to wake. That was a finger–no, several fingers. A hand. A large hand. And those calluses–how could he not know them when they had clashed steel with him, choked him, clinked brimming cups of wedding wine with him, even been inside him, taking him apart with a gentleness he hadn’t known they could profess.

He let his awareness spread throughout his body, setting aside the pain, and yes, that was a-Fei’s chest he had pressed himself against, like Huli Jing requesting head scritches, and those were a-Fei’s legs, tangled with his, and that was a-Fei’s breath rustling his hair–less now than it had been a moment ago–and that was indeed a-Fei’s arm he was clutching like a child would a favorite toy. 

But a-Fei had been holding him first.

Why was a-Fei holding him? It was one thing to wake up in each others’ arms in the newly wed room, after their  . . . exertions. Before a-Fei knew that any real dream of a future was doomed to fail.

But to hold him now? After he’d given away the wangchuan flower and left a-Fei behind, left their promise behind? To hold him like he still mattered. Like he wasn’t a curse who killed everyone he’d ever cared about. Like he was some sort of treasure . . .

Treasure . . . 

Cabinets stained in blood, Xiaobao’s blood–

“Xiaobao,” he gasped, flinging himself free and to his feet. Where was Xiaobao? He had to find him, had to heal him, before it was too late–

“Xiangyi! Sit down!” A-Fei caught him as his legs buckled and lowered him back onto the bed. 

Why wasn’t Xiaobao here? Had he killed him, too, just like he killed everyone he cared about? 

“Duobing,” a-Fei roared. “Get in here. Now!” Callused fingers cupped both sides of his face, turning it gently but firmly toward him. “Xiangyi, look at me. He’s alright. He’s on his way.” 

“How could he be alright?” Li Lianhua gasped, clutching at his shoulders, the already blurry world turning more hazy. “I saw the blood!”

“I healed him. He’s safe,” a-Fei said, cradling his head as though he could hold the shattering pieces of his mind together. “Now breathe.” 

Li Lianhua choked on an inhale, his lungs spasming, only managing to draw in a desperate wheeze.

A-Fei cursed and dropped to his knees by the bed, pressing one hand to Li Lianhua’s back and the other to his chest, filling both with a familiar warmth that began to break apart the iron bands strangling his throat and lungs. “Try again. Feel my hands. Press against them when you inhale.”

The next breath shook and spluttered like a dying candle but some air squeaked through nonetheless.

“Good.” A-Fei gave his back a short supportive pat. “Again.”

Lotus Tower shook as footsteps pounded toward the bed. “What’s wrong?” panted a beautifully familiar, impossible voice. “Xiaohua’er?”

“Bicha,” a-Fei growled, rising from the floor to kneel on the bed at his side, his hands still bracketing him on either side. “He thinks you’re dead. Show him the scab.”

“Shit,” the Xiaobao-shaped hallucination cursed. It seemed especially cruel of hallucinations to now match the blurriness of their surroundings. It made them seem far too real.

The hallucination knelt at his feet and took his hands. “It’s me, Xiaohua’er,” it said, tears in its eyes and voice. “I’m alright. A-Fei healed me. See?” It brought his hand up to a spot on the back of his skull and pressed his fingers to a crusted, raised line on its scalp. “I’m right here and I’m alright. Do you believe me?”

He could feel it. Why could he feel it? His fingers had always passed through hallucinations before. And even when he’d dreamt of Xiaobao, or of a-Fei, of holding them again, it hadn’t felt as real as this. His fingers traced the ridges of the scab–a perfectly neat seam–then the silk curtain of hair that covered it. 

This was Xiaobao’s hair. The texture, the thickness, what he could see of the color–no hallucination could do justice to this. 

This was his Xiaobao.

He was alive.

“Xiaobao,” he cried, turning his head this way and that to make sure it was the only injury. “You’re alright!”

Xiaobao’s bright smile shone through despite the haze his eyes imposed on everything. “Told you. No harm done. So focus on taking care of yourself, ok, lao huli?”

Li Lianhua huffed out a wet attempt at a scoff and bopped the side of his head. “No harm? What do you call this?”

Xiaobao captured his hands with his and brought them down from his head to rest between them. “Less serious than a Bicha attack. How are you feeling?”

Li Lianhua blinked. A Bicha attack? He turned his attention inward to his qi, and–

Ah. There was a-Fei’s Beifeng Baiyang, somehow wrapped around his Yangzhouman and pushing the last of the poison back into the recesses where it would lie in wait, coiled and ready for the next attack. The black tinge was almost gone from his veins.

He had been so worried about Xiaobao that he hadn’t even realized.

A-Fei had probably saved his life. Again. 

He shouldn’t have bothered.

[aintgonnatakethis]

Last Line Tag/WIP Excerpt

Thank you to @wyked-ao3 for the tag! 😄

Am adding the excerpt tag in here because I feel like this needs to be read in one lump to do justice to itself. Content warning for trauma due to racism, homophobia, and child abuse. I love Telford but I am not kind to him.

"How long?!" Telford hisses. "How long have you been doing this to me?!" He sounds deranged, drops of spittle flying wildly from his mouth and landing on Everett's face, but it isn't anger driving him anymore. He can't put a name to the emotion, beyond comparing it to being a child and he had done something the details of he can't even recall now and bad things had happened and afterwards he remembers with startling clarity wishing he could go back to before he had misbehaved so he could make it work out differently because things were never going to be the same again because to a child every time something like that happens to you it's the end of the world all over again. "David…" Everett says, and they are no longer children, Telford knows, though it weighs on him like a heavy cloak he is carrying across his shoulders and he has been carrying it for so long he doesn't even try to escape its hold anymore. In this moment he is not First Lieutenant David Telford. He is five and he already knows why the white children treat him differently. He is eight and he shoots a gun for the first time and he feels it. He is twelve and terrified of this thing growing inside him. He is fourteen and standing humiliated and defiant as his mother finds his gay porn magazine and proudly presents it to his father. I always knew, she had said. There was always something wrong with him. With his type there always is. His father's reaction had been disinterest - as was his most common reaction to anything involving Telford - which had made it worse. If his father had been angry it would have meant he cared, if he had tried to dish out a beating Telford could have fought back; but what was he to do when his mother took a belt to him? It wasn't as if he could raise his hand to her. "David?" Everett's voice sounds very far away, even though Telford realises he is pressing his face into the man's shoulder. He is shaking. He is shaking because he is crying. He cannot remember the last time he cried. Everett's arms are around him and Telford wants to punch him. He can't let anyone see this in him. It's poison. If he lets it out it will consume until there's nothing left.

Tagging: @fortunatetragedy @the-golden-comet @lancedoncrimsonwings @finickyfelix @gioiaalbanoart + OPEN

[weremustelidae]

After what must have been hours of tossing and turning, Nyssa determined there was no way she was going to be able to sleep tonight. She got out of bed - careful not to make a sound - and crept to the entrance to the cave. As a young girl she had often found comfort in stargazing, and so that was the first thing she thought of to get her mind off The Doctor.

The temperature had gone down a lot in the night, and Nyssa was glad she’d taken the shaggy grey animal pelt she’d been using as a blanket. Wrapping the fur tighter around her shoulders, she sat down on the ground and looked up at the sky. There were only a few clouds, and the moon was nowhere to be seen.

Once, on one of their countless failed attempts to reach Heathrow, Tegan had sat Nyssa and Adric down on a clear night and showed them some of Earth’s constellations. She was no expert, of course, but she’d been able to point out a few of the easy ones like the Big Dipper and Orion’s Belt.

But that was 120,000 years in the future. The arrangement of the stars was so different that Nyssa might as well be on a different planet entirely. Not to mention that the night sky here was so much more cluttered than it had been (would be?) in the light-polluted 25th century.

As Nyssa gazed up at all the stars, she wondered which of them was Traken’s sun. It hadn’t been destroyed yet, this far in the past. She almost wanted to visit, but she knew it wouldn’t be the same. It wouldn’t be home.

Were Nyssa’s own primitive ancestors, all those light-years away, looking up and seeing Earth’s sun as just another star in their night sky? In fact, how many times had Nyssa herself done that very thing, never knowing one day she’d be looking from the opposite direction?

The thought caused Nyssa to be struck with a feeling of vertigo. She quickly averted her gaze down to the ground in front of her.