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tripleglitchwriting · 10 months ago

Note

You mentioned Ultra Magnus trying to cope with the world of One Piece and the Strawhat Pirates and I. Am. Here. For. It.

UM is a very ernest stressed out lawful good character. and the Strawhats are a chaotic good force. More Chaos than all the Wreckers and the Lost Light put together.

So in honor of that post If you don't mind me asking for two requests in one request box open run I'd like to request a One Piece/Lost Lighters crossover.

The Strawhats are helping The Lost Light crew because Luffy and Rodimus vibe. Roddy has a grand fleet flag and Luffy has a Rodimus star.

Either, Ultra Magnus/Minimus Ambus in a lull in the action asks Robin why she's a Strawhat Pirate. She's the only sane one here.

Or, if your in the mood for something lighter, Franky and Brainstorm Share The Brain-cell^TM while Usop and Perceptor attempt damage control.

YOU UNDERSTAND. YOU GET IT. I will be happy to write this!! I’m sorry it took me so long, I’ve been going through a rough patch when it comes to motivation.

The lost light characters may be a bit ooc because I’ve been having a hard time gauging their personalities. A lot of what I have for them in my head is from other fanfictions.

Also, this is just the start of the story, it’s just how they meet. I’ve yet to write specific interactions between characters, but I wholeheartedly plan to write more!

A little side note for clarification on One Piece in case anyone needs it:

- This takes place sometime after Jinbei gets on the ship

- I watch the dub so I’m going to use all of the names and such they use there (ex. Black foot Sanji -> Black leg Sanji)

- Sanji and Brook will be normal to women. I just don’t want to write them being weird.

Without further ado, I present…

Ten Idiots Meet A Ship Full Of Other Significantly Bigger Idiots

Synopsis:

After an experiment gone bad on the Lost Light (again), a portal is temporarily opened up to another dimension. Before it could be closed, however, a group of strange individuals manage to slip through.

After a long day at sea, The Strawhats always look forward to a first-class home cooked meal by Sanji himself. It was a beautiful evening- the crew opted to stay out on the deck of the Sunny to watch the sunset.

“SANJI! I’M HUNGRY! FOOD! NOW!” Not that much peace could be had with a captain like Luffy.

“I’m coming! Not every cook can whip up something like this every night you know. I swear, you guys eat more than a whole island every day.”

“Hey, that’s just Luffy. Don’t include the rest of us in this!” Nami shouted from the stairs leading to where the rest of the crew sat.

“I’M YOUR CAPTAIN AND I SAY FEED ME! MEAT! MEAT! MEAT!” Luffy pumped his arms as he chanted, sticking his tongue out as he watched Sanji cart out a giant platter of cartoonishly large meat.

“Smells as delicious as ever, Sanji.” Brook commented.

“Thank you, Brook. At least someone appreciates my food around here.” He glared at his captain, who was completely oblivious to everything else around him and solely focused on his food. Everyone else chatted away. Laughing, eating, looking up at the beautiful swirling vortex that had just appeared in the sky.

Wait.

Luffy had to stretch his arms up as his food began to be sucked into the portal above them, but it was in vain as he began to float too. The Sunny creaked as gravity shifted around them, everything but the ship itself beginning a startling ascent upwards.

“MY MEAT! NAMI, WHAT IS HAPPENING?”

“How should I know?!” She clung to an uprooting tangerine tree, “This is NOT normal! I haven’t read anything about whatever this is!”

“Everybody hang on to something!” Jinbei ordered, staring to float himself. Brook didn’t seem to get the message, as he was the first to loose his grip.

“SOMEBODYHELPMEIMBEINGPULLEDIN—”vwoop! And then he was gone.

“BROOK!” Luffy, having already eaten everything on his plate, launched himself into the portal.

“Damnit Luffy!” Zoro did the same soon after.

“What? Are we seriously going in that thing?” Chopper squealed, Usopp and Nami seemed to agree.

“Maybe we’ll all be immediately killed once we enter. It would be a painless death at least.” Robin said calmly, affixing herself to the ground with her devil fruit powers.

“YOU ARE NOT HELPING!” Usopp, Nami, and Chopper all screamed in unison.

“I suppose this is our next adventure!” Jinbei leapt through the portal. Sanji sighed and followed after him.

“Well, Sunny’s too big to go through that thing, so I guess we’re goin’ in without her.” Franky detached himself from the mast.

“Okay everyone, come on.” Robin peeled Usopp, Nami, and Chopper from their death grips on the ship and took all of them with her as she joined the rest of the crew.

“ROBIN WHY-“ Vwoop! And just like that, the Thousand Sunny was left empty.

————————————

Brainstorm was in big trouble. And possibly the entire Lost Light. And maybe the universe. The good news is his portal machine worked! The bad news is it was now pulling in random things from a random space in the multiverse. This would be a great opportunity to study it, unfortunately the stability of the thing was questionable. That is to say the portal was currently beginning to implode.

“Brainstorm, what are you doing!?” Preceptor skidded into the room right as he heard the snapping and crackling of something that probably shouldn’t be making that sound.

“Oh, nothing. It’s fine! It’s fine. I just need to- oh that’s not good. Actually do you mind helping me shut this down before it destroys the entire ship?”

“You’re going to be the death of all of us-” right as he began to walk toward the vortex, a screaming clatter of something came speeding out of it. On closer inspection, it seemed to be the corpse of a human.

“Oh, well, that’s new.” Brainstorm oh so helpfully commented. Just after another being came from the portal, also screaming but not quite as dead. Another followed, this one with a complete and utter look of annoyance on his face.

“What in the- Brainstorm, what did you do?” Ratchet entered, as did Ultra Magnus.

Soon there was an array of things entering the room. Aside from the array of random objects, there was a large blue organic followed by an another human wearing a black suit, then large possibly techno organic. Four other small people shot out shortly after.

“CLOSE IT! CLOSE IT NOW!” Ratchet ordered.

“Oh why didn’t I think of that- oh wait, I did, and I COULD USE SOME HELP!” Together they pulled on a comically large mad scientist like lever affixed to the portals control panel. As quick as it had arrived the portal was gone, though what- or who- it had just pulled in were gaining their bearings.

“Hahahaha! That was fun!” One of the humans, one wearing a yellow hat with a red line across it, put his hand on his head and looked around. It took him a second to notice, but when he finally realized where he was the man yelled, “WOAH! Cool! This place is huge!”

“It seems to be some sort of… metal building. A giant workstation perhaps.” The blue man said thoughtfully.

“Well I say we get out of here! I don’t want to be around when we find out why this place needs to be so big!” A long-nosed human whisper shouted.

“What, like those freaky statues?” The very annoyed man gestured at Brainstorm, Ultra Magnus, Ratchet, and Preceptor, who were all standing completely still. That is, until Rodimus showed up.

“Brainstorm, I heard yelling, is there a fight? Without me?” He strolled in casually, not looking at the floor, and instead focusing on his crew who were all staring at him. “What? What did I do?”

“That. Is. AWESOME!” Something from the floor shot up at Rodimus’s face. “Are you a robot? Can you shoot lasers? Do you eat metal?!” Somehow, someway, there was an ecstatic human right in front of his optics.

“Luffy! Get down from there!”

“Woah. So, care to explain? Anyone?”

“We are not robots, we are Cybertronian.” Ultra Magnus automatically stated.

“Cool!” ‘Luffy’, as his friend called him, somehow managed to launch himself on top of Rodimus’s helm. “Is there any food here?”

“Luffy! Damnit-” Another of the humans, the one in the suit, jumped. Accept when one would normally begin to succumb to gravity and fall back down, he took another step in the air and kept going. “You are so reckless!” The man tackled Luffy off Rodimus and they both began to plummet down to the ground- a height deadly to something so small.

“Sanji, let me down! I want to talk to the robot!”

“How about you shut up and come up with a plan before you get us all killed!” The moment they jumped off, Ratchet was already in motion. He was able to dive behind Rodimus to catch the two, but as he slid on the ground to save them ‘Sanji’ jumped off the air again and landed perfectly safe.

“I… I can’t even begin to explain this.” He admitted in a completely defeated tone, now chassis down on the floor.

“Do they all move?” A small voice whispered from the group still standing where the portal once was.

“I hope not.” Another replied.

“Wow. I wasn’t expecting that.” Brainstorm said calmly.

“I don’t think anyone could have predicted this.” Ultra Magnus put his servo on his helm. The two that had just survived a deadly landing like it was nothing walked back to their group- one much more unhappy than the other.

“Sorry about him. He does this a lot.” The annoyed green haired man glared at both of them.

“Oh, like you’re any better moss head.”

“Oh yeah? At least I didn’t jump in the face of a giant robot!”

“Yeah, cause you’d get lost on the way there!”

“You take that back-“

“STOP IT!” Half of the new arrivals shouted at the same time. One orange haired girl stepped up to comfort the bickering duo.

“This is not the time to argue! We’re kind of… we- look!” She gestured at, well, everything. Everyone else seemed to silently agree.

“Greetings visitors from another world! Welcome aboard the Lost Light!” Brainstorm announced with a flashy arm movement.

“Hey, I’m the captain, I get to welcome people into the ship!”

“You’re a captain?! Is this a pirate ship? Are you giant robot pirates?!” Luffy shouted in awe, though still in the arms of Sanji, who promptly dropped him.

“He said he was ‘Cybertronian’ bro. Not a robot.” The probably techno organic chastised.

“Psh, whatever.” Luffy got himself to his feet.

“We are not pirates.” Ultra Magnus said very sternly. “We are on a perfectly legal exploratory expedition.”

“Oh, bummer.” He glanced around once again. Apparently deciding now was a good time, he introduced himself. “My name is Monkey D. Luffy and I’m gonna be King of the Pirates!” Luffy smiled brightly and giggled, either ignoring or disregarding his friends facepalms.

“Well, I’d say this was a great success!” Brainstorm cheered to himself. “Who knew that was possible! I really am a genius.”

“And who are you?” ‘Moss head’ sneered at him. “Who are any of you? This is weird.”

“Well, if I’m allowed to introduce my own ship this time, my name is Rodimus Prime, captain of the Lost Light!”

“Hang on, this is your ship? How did you build something like this, it looks like it’s straight outta Vegapunk’s lab! What part of the world are we in anyway?” The blue hair techno organic asked, putting his oversized hand on his strangely shaped chin.

“Space, my friend. We’re in space. Honestly, I wasn’t sure if anything living would make it through that portal. Looks like it’s got about a 9 out of 10 survival rate which is better than most multidimensional portals I’ve seen. That is to say I’ve never seen one before, because I built the first one. Just now. No need to congratulate me.” Ignoring Brainstorm’s blatant narcissism, the of new arrivals looked absolutely flabbergasted by this information.

“We’re in space? Like, space space? Outer space?” Luffy asked with eyes wider than any moon, a big bright burning ball of excitement building in his chest.

“I assume you’ve never been off your planet before?” Perceptor asked. Luffy didn’t respond this time. He looked like he was about to burst with excitement, though his crew mates didn’t seem to pay much mind. One or two of them shook their heads in response to the question. “Well, Brainstorm, care to explain what you’ve done here?”

“What I’ve done- well, if you have the mental capacity to understand- I can give you a basic rundown. I’ve designed this portal to reach into alternate dimensions, which have hardly been confirmed to exist other than the dead universe. I’ve been worked steadily on it for a while now, and today I tested it out. It brought these ten organics here as well as some other junk.”

“Brainstorm.”

“Yes?”

“You mean to tell me, you turned on an untested and extremely dangerous machine that could obliterate our entire existence within nanokliks for no reason other than bragging rights? And when it miraculously did work, you pulled in ten random people from an unknown possibly incredibly dangerous world that could have also imploded our entire existence?”

“Yes that about sums it up.” Perceptor’s optic twitched, but as it seemed time was moving a bit too fast for him to start lecturing. The corpse on the floor began to move, slowly at first, and then in a sharp practiced motion it popped up on its feet.

“Yohohoho! I think I passed out for a second there!” The skeleton looked around. “Oh. I definitely passed out. No bones about it!” The apparently not corse laughed to himself.

“Cool! I didn’t think those human stories about corpses coming back to life were real!” Rodimus said with a childlike playfulness.

“They’re not.” Ultra Magnus argued bluntly.

“Oh, I am a skeleton. It’s a long story. Say, Luffy, what is going on?”

“We got sucked through a portal and now we’re talking to giant robot guys.”

“Oh okay.” The skeleton nodded, and then quickly scurried to where three of the other humans (and animal thing?) were huddled.

“Well, remind me to change that to a 10 out of 10 survival rate!”

“I feel like introductions are in order here…” Perceptor stated, “I’ll go first. My name is Perceptor. I’m a scientist. Now, you.” He gestured at Brainstorm.

“Well, if you insist. I am Brainstrom. Genius inventor of the machine that brought you all here.”

“I am the duly enfor- ah, I mean Ultra Magnus. I try to keep the peace around here.”

“You know me, I’m Rodimus.” He nudged Ratchet. “It’s your turn, doc.”

“Fine. I’m Ratchet. Retired head medical officer.“

“Cool names!” Luffy, having sprung back up, was jumping up and down. “This is my crew, the Strawhat Pirates!”

“Roronoa Zoro. Soon to be greatest swordsman and second hand man.” ‘Moss head’ introduced himself. The orange hair girl stepped out of the group.

“I’m Nami, the navigator.” The long nose man shakily emerged after her.

“I am commander Usopp! Best sniper in the world! I’m also the leader of one thousa-“

“Don’t even start.” The suit wearing man stepped up. “Sanji. I’m the crew’s chef.” The animal like thing approached from behind another crew member.

“Um, my name’s Chopper. I’m the doctor.” He tapped his hooves together nervously. A woman, one who hasn’t said much until now, patted the hat on his head in a compassionate manner.

“I’m Nico Robin, an archeologist.” She smiled sweetly and quickly got out of the way of the blue haired inhuman human man rushing to the front.

“Name’s Franky!” He struck a strange pose. “A SUPER good shipwright!” The skeleton stepped up beside him and did a short bow.

“My name is Brook. I am lucky to be the musician of this crew. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” When he stood up the large blue man stood beside him.

“I am Jinbe, the helmsman. It is a pleasure to meet you as well.” He bowed deeply.

“Now that we did that, do you guys have any food?” Luffy asked immediately and without hesitation.

The fifteen of them stood in Brainstorm’s mildly disfigured lab space, each with very different thoughts running through their heads. A new world, a new people, things most on the Lost Light never even imagined possible. From then on, the world got a little more chaotic.

#transformers #transformers g/t #transformers au #tripleglitchwrites #crossovers #one piece #one piece crossover #one piece x transformers #this caters to such a niche audience but I am happy to supply content #one piece au #ultra Magnus has a bad day #Rodimus has a great day

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sweetpandorabox · 2 years ago

Text

My Goodbyes - Cedric Diggory x Female Reader (One Shot)

⋆ ˚｡ ⋆୨sweetpandorabox୧⋆ ˚｡ ⋆

⋘ 𝑙𝑜𝑎𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑑𝑎𝑡𝑎…⋙

Synopsis: You and your ex-boyfriend Cedric Diggory have been separated for a little over 3 months, it was a mutual and heartbreaking decision with him being in his last and final year of Hogwarts while you have about 2 years left to go before graduation, but not only that time seems to disagree and is not sticking side by the two of you in any way shape or form. Despite still loving each other tremendously there's nothing else you and Cedric can do to fix it, only time shall decide if the two are meant for each other leaving the feelings of ache and misery when you pass by each other pretending not to care...if only it isn't a right person, wrong time situation.

Pairing: Cedric Diggory x Female Reader

Story Settings: This fanfiction is set in your 5th of Hogwarts, the Order of the Phoenix time (You're in Harry's year group for this one, and also Cedric survives through the Triwizard tournament and is tied with Harry). Anything bolded and in italic is a flashback scene.

Terms 📖:

Y/N : Your name

Y/L/N : Your last name

Y/E/C : Your eye color

Y/H/C : Your hair color

Y/H : Your house

Warnings⚠️: Angst, Fighting, and Right Person Wrong Time

Word Count : 3,310

The Hogwarts greenhouse was still, no wind seemed to be breezing its way in letting you focus on your note-taking session while the class stayed awfully silent making the sounds of quills being dragged across a piece of parchment audibly loud. Your mind was well occupied and it isn't inhabited by what you wanted it to be, your mind isn't thinking about the magical plant you're studying today which is gillyweed or how gillyweed affects human beings when eaten. Your mind was well occupied by Cedric Diggory your ex-boyfriend of 2 years, it has been about 3 months since the last time you both spoke to each other. It was rough, a breakup full of tears, sleepless nights, and sorrows despite it being a mutual decision between the two of you due to all the changes that were happening and the timing greatly affecting the almost perfect relationship you both had, you effectively thought you've healed and moved on but you've lied to yourself.

Bumping into him on your way to Herbology today has floated back all the happy memories of you and the lovable Hufflepuff back to the forefront of your brain, suddenly the heartache has presented itself back. You still loved him, tremendously and the truth is you're heartbroken and in no way shape or form have healed over the breakup. "Y/N… I'm really sorry I wasn't looking at where I was going", Cedric apologized looking down at your smaller figure and giving you an equally apologetic smile as you look up at him dumbfounded for a second. He crouches down to pick up the books you've dropped during the collision, your eyes watch as he got back up handing in your now neatly stacked books, "T-Thanks Cedric", you smile weakly making sure to linger your eyes elsewhere than his pair of molten silver like eyes.

He paused at your response not knowing what to say before noticing a strand of Y/H/C loose hair covering your left eye, without thinking he tucked it behind your ear, making you flinch at his once tender touch that now seems to torch you alive. "You look beautiful today" he complimented with a hurt look displaying on his face over your flinch, tears welled up in your eyes before you're able to say "Excuse me, Cedric, I'm sorry I can't do this I have to go" you farewell leaving him behind all alone. "Miss Y/L/N…Miss Y/L/N" Professor Sprout shouted catching your attention after a second shout, your head shot up like dear in headlights "Y-yes Professor" you finally respond, as professor sprout shook her head in disappointment as all the other students in your class looked at you with a sheer of confusion. "Miss Y/L/N you really need to pay more attention, I was asking you what attributes gillyweed gives to a human who's eaten it?"

You swallow your overwhelming thought of Cedric away before answering not knowing that your two best friends who happen to be a couple at the same time, Neville and Hannah, were watching you over their seats with concern, not knowing the previous event that led up to your distorted mood and energy. "Well done Miss Y/L/N, please just pay more attention and be aware next time alright? 10 pints to Y/H", Sprout suggested and rewarded before you give her a firm and understanding nod as a response. "Alright, class, please open up your Magical Water Plants of the Highland Lochs book tonight and read page 112 all the way to page 115, oh and jot down any useful information about Gillyweed that you may find…alright class dismissed" Professor Sprout announce as every other student rushes out the greenhouse as it was the last class of the day, you start packing up your things slowly with no emotions displaying on your face.

"Hey, are you alright?" Hannah asked laying a gentle yet reassuring hand on your shoulder as she stand close to Neville, with one of his arms warping around her waist. You turned yourself over after packing up your things facing your 2 childhood best friends with a sad look, "Uhm, to be honest, no, I bumped into Cedric on my way to Herbology today and my emotions are clearly showing me that I haven't made any progress what's so ever in moving on from him… I still love him and it isn't fair that time is not on our side nor all the new things that are happing to him as he'll eventually graduate…it's been 3 months I shouldn't feel this way anymore" you confessed looking down at your shoes due to disappointments and embarrassment swarming over you. Hannah and Neville looked at each other with concern over your well-being unsure of what to do.

After a minute of silence went by Neville looked over at you and place a hand on your head, "Y/N, I think it's time that you take those steps and move on… you need some sort of closure with him so that the both of you are able to be free from these restraining feelings, how about writing him a farewell letter and maybe giving back some of his stuff you've been keeping and haven't returned?" Neville suggested with a hopeful and sympathetic look glimmering in his emerald-like eyes sending some of that energy back to your hurt-looking pair of Y/E/C eyes. Hannah gave him a proud and soft smile rubbing his back, "Nev is right Y/N, I know it may seem unbelievable but I overheard Cedric and Ernie having a conversation, and it was about you, Cedric confessed to Ernie that he still loves you and he finds it tough to see you around with other people especially since he's going to leave Hogwarts quite soon" Hannah added firming your mind up into a decision.

It's been about a week since you've had that conversation with your best friends, you thanked them both greatly pulling them into a group hug as you cried in their arms for about an hour. You're sitting all alone inside your shared dorm room, this time it isn't so still, the wind has managed to breeze up inside the dorm room through an open window one of your roommates has left open, but you've decided to keep it open as it felt freeing and comforting almost as if the wind was a presence itself. With a quill dipped in ink on hand and a piece of blank parchment lying still on your desk, your mind starts to float away as you let all the memories go through your mind so you're able to put some sort of writing into the letter. The afternoon sun shines through the sky giving a slight warmth, letting the tree that you and your boyfriend Cedric are laying under as a sort of shade cooling the both of you as it provides a light breeze through its branches.

"Guess what?" Cedric mentioned, stroking your head gently as you lay your head against his muscular chest listening to his beating heart, a smile make its appearance on your lips at his words, "What?" you respond curiously, "The Ballycastle Bats professional Quidditch teams have signed me as one of their future seekers as soon as I graduated Hogwarts" he mentioned excitedly, however, despite your boyfriends excitement the smile you've had on your lips disappears. "Wow that's amazing love but…isn't the Ballycastle Bats based in Northern Ireland?" you asked with suspense, Cedric grew quiet and cleared his throat before answering. "Y-yeah they are" he hesitated, "Well you see we start trials during this winter break before I come back over here, and they shortlist you from there" he explains trying to ease the fact that he's going to be far away from you since Hogwarts is in Scotland and his team is based in Ireland and that if he really was signed by the team there will be no time made for you do to extensive training, games, and press conferences before the national British and Irish Regional competitions.

"Wow…guess so many new things are finally happening, you're going to be quite far away from me next year, and being an athlete has its downside, you'll be extremely busy" you mentioned in an almost sad-sounding tone. Cedric paused at your sad-sounding answer, not really being able to say something to ease you, but after what felt like years he let out a deep sigh before saying, "I know you may be worried or sad, but I've made a promise to you when I ask you to be mine didn't I? I told you that no matter how far, how messy, how angry, how hurt I am, I'll always love you and that I'll always cherish you for simply existing. Didn't I?" he recited just like his 15-year-old self did 2 years ago, watching as the 13-year-old you, blushed furiously and stumble over your response to his confession.

The rest of that day was hazy but you remembered the kiss he pulled on you all too well, a kiss to ensure you that he's yours and that no matter what he becomes whether it'll be a star quidditch player or not, he'll always have time for you and will try to make it work, but then another memory start playing in your mind vividly as you barely start to write the first paragraph of the letter. "Y/N would you please just listen to me" Cedric shouted in a frustrated tone over you shouting him out, "No Ced this is the 5th time you've ditched me on a date that you so wonderfully planned… When are you going to show up and keep your promise" Your voice starts breaking, with tears leaving you with a blurred vision. Cedric lets out a big breath and lowers his tone, "Look babe I'm so sorry that I kept messing up okay, I kept forgetting how busy school is getting and how much I needed to train in order to get this Quidditch contract" he reasoned with you his face displaying the look of hurt to see you cry.

You wipe the frustration tears away before reasoning, "Love I understand that you're busy with school, and Quidditch training but why keep disappointing me with these empty promises of yours? We don't ever see each other anymore. I'm lucky if I can even sit next to you during dinner or lunch for 10 minutes before you have to get up and do all these things…the thing is love you have your priority sorted and our dreams, our ages are just too different, I mean hell time can't even seem to stick by us for just a moment" you explained with tears fully streaming down your face drenching your face wet, leaving Cedric in distress. "I'm so sorry Ced b-but in order for you to grow and to live your life I have to let you go. I can't have you hurt me nor I hurt you it's too much for me, I love you too much to see you be tied down by me" You broke down not being able to speak anymore watching as Cedric started tearing up himself just going in for a tight hug inside your empty shared dorm room.

That was the memory that broke you, you knew you had to do it for him, and he understood your reasoning behind the split but the both of you can't help but miss each other entirely each and every day. You miss the way he hugs you from behind, kisses your head, or offers his arms as he walks you over to classes while he missed the way your lips feel against his, he missed the way you took care of him and the way you did his tie for him, the desire to get back to each other was strong and true but trouble seems to tie the both of you down, holding the both of you hostage. A stream of salty tears starts drowning your face, a small number of tears managed to drip down on the piece of parchment you've stopped filling with writings a while ago, taken aback by how much you're actually hurting after all this time trying to convince yourself that you've healed, but after a bit of crying you wipe your tears and start writing the letter in comfortable silence glad to be alone in such state just hoping your roommate would stay out all day long so you're able to isolate.

"I heard you uh… got accepted to that Quidditch contract over the winter break, You're finally going to play for the Ballycastle Bats over in Ireland next year, thank goodness they found a great seeker" you mentioned hiding the painful tone in your voice away for Cedric. He smiles excitedly at your supportive-sounding cheer, "I-I uh did, yeah I'm very proud of myself for it. I worked myself to the bone before trials and I can't believe I just did it" he confessed letting out a proud and tiresome chuckle before silence swarmed the both of you again, as the atmosphere made it quite clear that the both of you were still hurting over the break up 3 months ago. The memory of finding out that Cedric has made it played in your mind over and over again, it has been a good couple of months since you wrote your goodbye letter, along with that you packed up all the things that belonged to Cedric that you have not returned, like his quidditch hoodie, his socks, his books, and all the letters he's written you for Valentine's day, Anniversary milestones and for days where you weren't feeling like yourself, it hurts but you knew you couldn't keep them you needed to set yourself free. now the hard part is giving it all back and saying goodbye.

The day you dread the most has finally come, O.W.L's exams are finished, students everywhere in the castle are enjoying themselves, their trunks all packed up temporarily as some are coming back for another year after summer break including yourself while some like Cedric are packing their trunk and leaving Hogwarts for good as it was his last year here before his graduation ceremony. Everyone else seems to be enjoying their last-day feast while you head for the stairs area to drop off your luggage ready for Hagrid and Flitch to load them over to the Hogwarts Express train so it's all ready to depart tonight, along with a small box of Cedric stuff nervous to give them back and terrified of how the interaction between the both of you will go, but you incidentally come across a tall and dark-haired figured in his Hufflepuff Hogwarts uniform, right off the bat you could tell who it was as he struggled to keep his broom standing right up, the scent of his cologne seems to verify him more as you tried you best to keep it together.

You drag your trunk over to the nearest pile not making that much noise still holding the box containing Cedric's belongings including a letter you manage to pour out your heart into, waiting for him to turn and notice you. After a few minutes, he finally got his stuff all ready, satisfied, he dusted his hands clean and turned around only to find a shorter figure, with luscious Y/H/C hair being pulled back into a messy bun and a Y/H uniform she so proudly wears. He blinked his eyes over your beauty not remembering the last time you pulled your hair back and presented your face so openly to him, "Uhm hi Ced" you greet him trying your best to keep eye contact with his air of molten sliver-like eyes, he gulped and greet you back "Y/N h-hi are you alright?" he asks kindly with a slight worry trailing behind his voice, you nodded before clearing your throat, "So I uhm, I have a couple of things that belonged to you that I haven't actually returned, and I thought that today would be the best day to give it so here you go" you hand him the box.

He took it slowly, making slight contact with your hands as it sent electrical charges throughout the both of you, unsure when the last time a spark like that happened. "Thank you Y/N, but what is this," he asks touching a letter you purposefully left out without putting it inside the box, "Oh uhm that's a letter I wrote for you, you know to say goodbye and wish you the best for next year… since this will be the last time I'm ever going to see you again" you explained voice breaking, as tears start glimmering in your pair of now delicate Y/E/C eyes, Cedric frowns at your answer but none of the less nodded firmly, as silence fell between you once again. You sigh the sadness away while also composing yourself before saying "Alright well I should probably get going, I-I uh will see you at the feast yeah? Make sure you eat loads to have a good sleep tonight" you remind him still trying to hold on to all the broken pieces of yourself together before it all come crashing down.

Cedric hesitated not knowing what to do nor what to say, so he chose to look down at his feet trying to figure out what to do with himself before setting the box aside as he watched you walk up the stairs slowly, but suddenly, "Y/N please wait" Cedric begs his voice breaking as if he lost the most valuable thing he had in his life. You stop dead in your tracks with all the tears just freely streaming down hearing Cedric run up the stairs and throw himself to hug you from behind like he always did before, gently turning you around to face him and there he was, face was broken and tears streaming freely just like yours, you couldn't do anything but caressed his cheek as you tippy-toed to reach, using your thumb to rub his tears away, he sniffled in pain, not because he was injured but because of how much he desperately needed you here with him. "Ced, my love I know this is tough, it is for me too but please know that in another life, or in another universe your soul and mine are bound to find each other once more, and then we can finally be happy together...please don't cry" you explained trying not to choke and stumble over your words still crying in agony in these empty halls and stairways.

All Cedric could master at this point was a nod before you pulled him into a kiss, a kiss so different from what it was before, all the happiness and joy disappearing along with the feeling of comfort and secureness with each other, It was all out the window, instead being replaced by the feeling of insecurity, sadness, and desperation but not shy of love. The kiss went on for a while, You couldn't remember the last time you and Cedric kissed, but you ultimately ended it, putting your forehead against his before saying "This is my goodbye, love, I have to go...you should too" you suggested watching as his face breaks some more, trying to form some sort of plead, but before you could collapse into a million pieces you ran out of there as fast as you can possibly go, and made straight for one of the girl's lavatories where you cried there all night hurting, not knowing what else to do with yourself as the one you love has to walk away from you, leaving you empty and numb.

#cedric diggory #hufflepuff #hogwarts #wizarding world #one shot #female reader #imagine #hp fanfcition #hp fanfic #hp fandom #harry potter series #harry potter angst #harry potter imagine #cedric x y/n #cedric x reader #cedric x you #harry potter fandom #right person wrong time #imagines

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alsoeatingroses · 1 month ago

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Hey I’m Noel! He/they, 27, trans masc, autistic

My last blog, @eatingrosescollab, was deleted for trans reasons I’m assuming (as well as my Elias Bouchard RP blog and forcemasc ones 😭 I’ve had trouble getting the energy to come back)

Most of my brain has been eaten by TMA fanfiction. You can find my AO3 here: EatingRoses (The majority of it is 18+ please be careful with yourselves).

So this blog will also be mostly TMA. Heavy TMA spoilers. I will tag Magnus Protocol stuff! And anything unrelated to TMA or fanfiction will be tagged #not tma.

I will NOT tag activism posts #not tma. I stand for free Palestine, queer and BIPOC rights, etc, and I am not ashamed of those.

If you are a Zionist, you are not welcome on my page.

Please feel free to reach out with any questions or concerns! And bear with me while I rebuild my tumblr empire (legit so sad I’m starting from the bottom omg).

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novastardoughnut · 2 years ago

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head cannons for Limited Life timers

so people within the community drawing fanart and writing fanfiction have been giving each member of limited life clocks or timers customised for each player. and i want to share what i have in my brain for each members clocks and timers

Team Ties: most TIES members are redstoners and Technical Players thus in my head their watches represent that. Etho has an old fashioned clockwork stopwatch, Impulse has an LED Display wrist watch, Tango has a Nixietube watch and Skizzleman has a rather smart digital wrist watch. most of these watches are more advanced or technical matching their more technical play style

The Clockers: the clockers all have pocket watches. cleo has an old style victorian watch that goes at half speed (thus it reaches 12 at the end of the game. and 6 at half way through the game), BDubs has his typical minecraft style clock (ending when the clock turns full night) and Scar has a pocket watch with the cover and back showing an image of Jelly engraved.

The Nosey Neigbours: the nosey Neigbours watches are more interpretational using the conventional hand format but not denoting an exact time. BigB has a watch with every 2 hours denoted by the percentage of a cookie eaten ending at where 12 would be where there is no cookie and all that remains is crumbs. Pearl has a clock with each 2 hours is portrayed by phases of the moon, ending upon a full moon with the half way point being a new moon

The Bad Boys: the bad boys clocks are far more wacky and rebellious in that bad boys kinda way. Jimmy has an old fashioned alarmclock that clips to his belt (this harkens to miners who would use windup alarm clocks to tell them the time), when his time runs out the alarm rings out for all to hear, joel has an old Shrek themed wrist watch and grian has a somewhat magical, watcher amulet that tells the time among a shifting, swirling purple void.

the mean gills: both martyn and scott have sand timers. both very appropriate for their sandy beach/island appearance

#limited life #traffic life series #trafficblr #traffic series #traffic smp #limlsmp #life series

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runawaysiren940 · 3 months ago

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Do you know of any literature or essays regarding or pertaining to recovery from porn addiction in women, or just porn and women? I was molested as a child and never told a soul, my way of dealing with it was religiously reading r*pe porn from like 11 onward, I only stopped recently in part due to radfem content but mostly because it was too horny, and that’s definitely not what I wanted out of it. It brings me shame and I don’t want to fall down the rabbit hole or feel like that again. I'm not in a position to seek professional help, but I can hardly control the urge to binge read after a month and a half. I feel like my addiction has eaten a hole in my life. While I know that there is light at the end of the tunnel it seems impossible to reach right now. Will the advice given to men work on me? Even if there’s not feminist literature about it just a book depicting SA tastefully for me to chew on and relate to “safely”. (I’m trying to gently wean myself off of it and then stop all together.) I'm not well read on feminist literature at all and my only other social is youtube. I know that this is heavy but really anything is appreciated. Thanks just for reading this.

I do not have anything in mind specifically for female porn addiction, but I empathize with the compulsion to see out eroticized SA; a lot of female survivors do, hence the 'BDSM is so healing' argument. I would recommend this book.

I think reading is a bit less impactful than watching- but I would suggest branching out to other genres of reading. You didn't say, but if it's fanfiction you're reading- block AO3. Pick up physical books only. Try to get in touch with your body via physical activities and sports.

You will have to rewire your brain to no longer connect SA to your own sexual responses or compulsions. Joining an online peer group might also be helpful (and often they don't require payment).

#radfem #radical feminism #radblr #runawaysiren

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ellieellieoxenfree · 9 months ago

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🍄 ❄️ 🧩

🍄 ⇢ share a head canon for one of your favourite ships or pairings

hghhhhhhh i should save all my juicy chenai ones for fics. but since most of them involve pre-canon timelines, i'll go with one of my old standbys for my favorite ships: food. i think ai di developed a really fucked-up relationship with food in prison -- not only a bland, tasteless utility rather than something eaten for pleasure, but also something he associates with danger due to the communal nature of mealtime. i think he spent all that time eating just enough to be able to stay alert, but forcing himself to get through it as quickly as possible so he could fully focus on protecting zong yi and watching for threats. and conversely, i think chen yi picked up a lot of cooking skills while ai di was inside, and he goes out of his way, especially in the early days, to make ai di's favorite dishes and try to help him work through all of the issues he clearly has but isn't talking about. as much as he would fight it, ai di wants to be cared for (on an extremely repressed level), and i'm a huge proponent of food as an act of love.

❄️ ⇢ what's your dream theme/plot for a fic, and who would write it best?

this is mean and you know it. :( i so so so so SO desperately crave that thematically rich, narratively probing character work for my kiseki boys. there's so much to pick apart and so many approaches you could take -- so many pieces of their pasts to fill in; so many missing scenes or scenes that would benefit from extra depth -- and i don't want to write it myself because i'm slow, my brain is bad, and also, i know exactly what i would write and so the element of surprise isn't there. unfortunately, i'm an exacting and demanding bitch so even if someone did write this dream fic, i would probably still find a reason to kvetch. i am permanently trapped in the 'i don't want to write it but no one is going to write exactly the fic i want to see unless i write it myself' hell and it is 100% a self-created problem. every day i'm self-owning.

🧩 ⇢ what will make you click away from a fanfiction immediately?

i'm VERY picky about authorial voice, and that goes for fic and published work alike. i have been known to drop books within a few paragraphs if the voice grates on me. (this is @ tim o'brien when i made it four paragraphs into america fantastica this morning and deleted it.) i see very stilted writing in fandom spaces that speaks to a certain level of insecurity and lack of practice, and i just can't do it. writing doesn't necessarily need to flow in a mellow fashion -- a choppy, staccato rhythm can be brutally effective -- but you can absolutely tell when someone has an underdeveloped authorial voice or is trying too hard to cultivate one they're not entirely comfortable with.

(in terms of developed authorial voice that i just cannot do, the two that immediately spring to mind are very smug, self-satisfied cleverness (people who grew up as teeaboos or who are constantly mimicking pterry or douglas adams) and extremely flowery language. get to the fucking point already!!)

i also will immediately tune out of something with bad grammar, especially inconsistent tense changes or dialogue that isn't punctuated correctly, OOC behavior (extremely vague umbrella term here, let's be real, but much like pornography, i'll know it when i see it), and repetitive word choice. i have closed out of fics for using 'the other man' or 'the blond' or 'murmured' so many times within a chapter that if i took up a drinking game while reading, i'd be dead of liver failure within 500 words.

i'm a huge snob and i never read anything, basically ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

#not that i am in any way shape or form killing the writing game and i know this #i am a lazy hack so when i am judging others please know i am also judging myself just as hard #asks

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amywritesthings · 3 months ago

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Hello Hello Hello-ween! 👻

This is Episode 1 (...dunno whether there will be more...) of

Oddly Specific Asks🗿✨️

where you will get oddly specific questions and choices that will tingle your pringle. Let's go!

1) Favorite line in Avatar: The Last Airbender?

2) Best Justin Bieber Song?

3) QUICK ROUND! Pumpkin Spice or Matcha Latte?

4) Favorite way to cut a sandwich?

5) Most annoying Anime character?

6) QUICK ROUND! Mint chocolate on pizza or cheesy pineapple on ice cream?

7) Rate yourself: How well would you perform with ODM gear? On a scale from Sasha's potato to Levi VS Beast Titan.

8) In a fight between a peanut, a pistachio and a macadamia nut - who would win and why?

9) QUICK ROUND! Never read FanFic again or never write FanFic again?

10) GET CREATIVE! Write a short dialogue between any AoT character and a mindless titan about the lastest hairstyles in Mitras. Add details of the titan's reaction as well as at least two rhymes.

Thanks for playing! If you enjoyed this stupid game my silly little brain has come up with, let me know in your answer and I will give you another round. I hope this made you smile at least a little!

Best,

a very weird German <3

hallo-sleepover '24! / accepting.

When I tell you that I just finished eaten a chicken pesto sandwich and opened my inbox and went my god. I am so game.

1) Technically, I have two because I'm a LoK truther as much as ATLA. Unironically, they're both Uncle Iroh. "Perfection and power are overrated. I think you are very wise to choose happiness and love instead." (ATLA) + "If you look for the light, you will often find it; but if you look for the dark, that is all you will ever see." (LOK)

2) I don't know many Justin Beiber songs, but one of my cardio classes once used "Friends" and it's such a good song.

3) Pumpkin Spice, I'll never choose anything different.

4) In half because I am lazy.

5) Bestie you're going to get me in trouble 😭 my heart says Eren from AOT (I'm sorry please don't add me to the weird yeagerist hit list) but I feel like the diplomatic answer is Mineta from MHA. I want that diaper grape eviscerated.

6) Mint chocolate on pizza. Something about a cheesy pineapple makes my texture sensitivity want to fly into the sun.

7) Without a threat? I'd be able to use ODM gear at like a confident 4 because I train with weights 6x a week, but the second you put a titan in front of me? -10. We're getting eaten, my friends. I am so bad with scary things.

8) I'm going to be so honest -- I have never eaten any of these LMAO so I'm going by name, and 'Amy Macadamia' sounds very Myspace to me, so I'm going to sit myself in the mac nut corner.

9) Never read fic again. I've been writing my own self-indulgent fanfiction since I was ten years old on every surface I could pen or type. There is no way I am giving up the ability to hide in my own little escapism world.

10) You're fucking crazy SKDJFKSDF ALRIGHT I DID MY BEST

Chewing on one-half of his slightly stale sandwich, Connie squints at the titan strapped down by Hange's latest invention. Surveillance shifts sucked, but not even the brainless could convince the boy not to talk.

"So... you got a whole head of hair. Wild. Kinda flowy, and stuff -- to be put it mild." He chomps down on another edge, speaking with his mouth full. "How'd you grow that out?"

The titan blinks right through Connie's sandwich, its tongue hanging out the side of his mouth.

"Or were you... uh, titan-born that way?"

Another blink.

Yeah. this conversation was going a whopping fuckin' nowhere.

"Thought about growing out my own situation." Connie holds up his free hand to pet it through his own buzzcut. "I'm not bald, for your information."

It didn't ask. Then again, Connie didn't ask to get put on this damn detail, so he keeps going. He puffs out his chest and considers.

"I know Jean's already growing out his mullet, but would that be copying if I did it, too? I mean Mitras has, like -- what, three good hairstyles right now?" He lists on his sandwich-slicked fingers. "Mullet, braid -- ew -- and the undercut thing. I'm not getting flack for copying Captain Levi, though. No, siree."

The titan gurgles, and Connie can't help but feel like it was big guy code for indifference to his plight.

"...damn, you're really no help."

#hallosleepover 24 #anon response #if you told me i would be writing connie fic in 2024 #i'd say you're a fucking liar #but here we are LSDJFKSDF kudos

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sarandipitywrites · 4 months ago

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Writeblr Interview Tag

@cowboybrunch tagged me for this - thank you! Go read her responses here

Tagging @breath-of-eternity, @darkangel319, @kingragnarok-writes, @ryns-ramblings, @wildswrites, and an open tag for anyone who wants to answer! Copy/pasteable template's under the cut.

Short stories, novels, or poems?

Novels, both to read and write. I just don't tend to seek out short stories or poetry to read, for whatever reason (legitimately don't know why - I enjoy it when I do read it?), and whenever I try to write something a bit shorter, it quickly becomes... not shorter.

What genre do you prefer reading?

I'll read most genres, but it seems like I usually end up reading speculative fiction/sci fi/fantasy.

Are you a planner or a write as I go kind of person?

Planner - I usually want at least a rough outline of a scene before I start writing. I find that breaking the writing up into two steps takes the pressure off of the actual 'writing' part and lets me focus more on prose/characterization/the fun shit because Past Saran already did the hard part :P

What music do you listen to while writing?

Ambient music/sounds that 'fit' what I'm writing, lately with binauaral beats layered under it. Nothing with words. Words going in ears = no words coming out of fingers

Favorite books/movies?

Books? LOTS. No Gods, No Monsters; Frankenstein; The Heart Principle; Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe; On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous; No Longer Human; etc etc etc Movies? Spirited Away.

Any current WIPs?

Spark Signature (high fantasy sci fi heist thriller; most current WIP; I am presently being very annoying about it) The Art of Empty Space (fantasy/paranormal mystery romance; WIP intro is no longer accurate; on hold because it has mutated beyond my control and I am slightly afraid of it) Dead Roots, Dark Water (dystopian fantasy adventure; Jak & Daxter fanfiction; currently on final draft and being updated weekly) Ambition is a Lonely Tower (paranormal mystery thriler; literally have not worked on this since I started posting writeblr stuff so it doesn't have a WIP intro but I am not giving up on this damn it)

Create a character description of yourself:

Constantly messing with something (hair, face, nails, the springy cat toy in the pocket of every single one of their jackets); gets anxious when they don't have earbuds or earplugs available; sits like a pretzel; forgets everything within 5 minutes if they don't write it down; avoids wearing "real people clothes" where possible; when forced to go outside, wears a t-shirt, baggy jeans, combat boots, and a jacket

Do you like incorporating actual people you know into your writing?

Technically no? I use pieces from actual people I know, for sure, but there's no one character who's 'basically x.' Now it sounds like I'm over here sewing together chimera characters from people I know, oof

Are you kill happy with your characters?

Depends on the story, I guess. Nobody's died (yet) in AES. Murder's kind of a whole Thing in Spark. And DRDW... uh. Let's not talk about that one (sorry, half of my OCs).

Coffee or Tea while writing?

Coffee in the morning, tea in the evening.

Slow or fast writer?

All or nothing! It really depends on: 1. whether or not I have an outline (scene-level outline = words go fast) 2. my headspace (Sludge Brain day = no words. Fuck your outline)

If you were in a fantasy world, what would you be?

I'd get eaten by a demonic chicken or some shit within like five minutes. Assuming I didn't have a horribly quick and embarrassing death, I'd like to be an alchemist or something like that. Give people those Good Plants

Most fav book cliche:

Enemies to lovers/friends, or friends to enemies, or really any big shift in relationship dynamic. Do that well and I love you and your characters forever

Least favorite cliche:

The 'if only they would talk to each other' thing - if one conversation that the characters are fully capable of having (but won't) is the only reason for the conflict, I'm out. Especially if there's no good reason for them to be avoiding the conversation. I'm not sure if this is even a cliche, but it's what I thought of :D

Favorite scene to write?

I love writing 'calm' scenes with tension just under the surface. And any scene that lets me fuck with perception/senses. Love it when a scene isn't straightforward

Reason for writing?

Lots of reasons! It's by far the thing I get the most satisfaction and enjoyment from; I get to write (and therefore read) the stories I want/need to read; free therapy supplement; I have lots of thoughts and ideas and little guys in my head and giving it all somewhere to go helps my brain be a lot quieter (it's still pretty noisy in there though, not gonna lie)

Short stories, novels, or poems?

What genre do you prefer reading?

Are you a planner or a write as I go kind of person?

What music do you listen to while writing?

Favorite books/movies?

Any current WIPs?

Create a character description of yourself:

Do you like incorporating actual people you know into your writing?

Are you kill happy with your characters?

Coffee or Tea while writing?

Slow or fast writer?

If you were in a fantasy world, what would you be?

Most fav book cliche:

Least favorite cliche:

Favorite scene to write?

Reason for writing?

#writeblr tag games #writeblr interview tag

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constellama · 2 years ago

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i think something’s happening now!! Uh oh !!!

Llama reads TRC: Chapters 22-25 of The Raven Boys

Chapter 22

Omg helicopter time

Loving the Helen and Gansey sibling banter

“That’s all.” WOOO GANSEY FINALLY RECOGNIZING HER VOICE

“Blue. Do you know Gansey?” OHOHO UH OH

This reoccurring triangle istg

Oh they’re ley lines. Why didn’t I realize that before.

“I’m always straight” “Oh, man, that’s the biggest lie you’ve ever told.” PFFFFT HAHHAAHA

oh my god A RAVEN !! I SURE HOPE THIS DOESNT MEAN ANYTHING !!! <- in fear

Chapter 23

I’m sorry the clocks are what.

Uh oh

“Noah?” WAIT. IS THIS. IS THIS WHERE WHELK DID THE RITUAL?? I COULD BE GETTING THIS COMPLETELY WRONG BUT !!! ITS MAKING ME THINK !!!

WHY ARE THE FISH RED WHATS HAPPENING

Do NOT stand in the tree cavity PLEASE

BLUE

Is she gonna get eaten by the tree

UHHH. WHAT

“Blue, kiss me” WHAT. WHAT WHAT WHAT WAIT WAIT HOLD ON

Adam :((( WHAT DID HE SEE

“I saw Glendower” everyone is having traumatic visions in the moldy tree meanwhile Gansey is living his Glendower kinnie fanfiction dream 😭

Chapter 24

What do you MEAN they were only there for 7 minutes WHAT

“Not that it’s not a cool name. Just that it’s…unusual.” Ok Richard Campbell Gansey III

Ronan chewing on his leather bracelets completely nonchalantly why is he like this /pos

“I’ve always liked the name Jane.” Gansey has too much audacity someone needs to humble him /lh /hj

“Although he couldn’t seem to stop teasing her.” Kanej thoughts are still plaguing my brain and this dynamic being in this book is Not helping /pos

Blue laughs for the first time at something Gansey said!!!

Chapter 25

Blue hanging out more with the Raven boys :D !!!

Adam describing the way Ronan swears at him in the most loving and affectionate way possible,,,

Blue Sargent 🤝 Zoya Nazyalensky Smelling like wildflowers and their love interests being obsessed with it

“He looked joyful and adoring, like a Labrador retriever.” NOAH IS A DOG BOY IM GONNA CRY

“This is precisely why I didn’t want to have a baby with you.” GANSEY?? COULD YOU NOT HAVE WORDED THIS ANY OTHER WAY???

Noah is such a creature I feel like if he was described to be hunched in a corner eating a live bird I wouldn’t question it. I love him sm

Noah Czerny 🤝 Inej Ghafa Appearing out of nowhere and scaring the crap out of their friends

Oooo creepy stone with writing on it

Uhh Ronan

“In case I didn’t recognize my own handwriting.” WHAT

Sorry for the long wait, finding time to read while also putting my thoughts down is hard BUT we’ve passed the halfway mark :))) I have a feeling something is about to go very very wrong and idk if I’m ready

#the raven cycle #the raven boys #blue sargent #richard gansey #adam parrish #ronan lynch #noah czerny #llama reads trc #constellama talks

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cartoonsaint · 1 year ago

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back in 2020 i wrote a werewolf!David fic for Camp Camp and then got through about a quarter of its sequel before getting distracted. at this point it's unlikely i'm ever going to finish it but it sounds like there's at least one person out there who wants to read it, which makes this a good advertisement for leaving comments on seemingly abandoned works, doesn't it? anyways this is 7.8k, probably rated T, and i do not have the wherewithal (werewithal? hohoha) to reread rn so i can't offer any content warnings or fix any weird grammar or anything, but. here's it.

my semi-jokey working title for it was THERE'S ONLY ONE BED AND ALSO ONE OF US IS A WEREWOLF

CHAPTER ONE

Gwen wakes up.

She’s not sure what does it, because usually it takes the blaring of her alarm — as well as a few judicious smacks to the snooze button — for her to admit that the day is starting whether she wants it to or not and she had better drag herself out of bed if she doesn’t want the camp to burn down around her ears.

She’s long since come to terms with the fact that while she can effortlessly stay up late into the night reading fanfiction or binging television, even with a full eight hours under her belt the first thing she’s gonna want to do in the mornings is take a nap. Gwen just really, really isn’t a morning person.

By the grey light filtering through the windows, Gwen bets the sun hasn’t even properly risen yet. She’s not due to muddle her way through her morning routine for at least another hour, and in fact it’s so early that David’s still probably asleep.

That catches at something in her sleep-foggy brain. Had she had another dream about him, maybe? Something about… monsters? Statistically, and given the subject, it was probably a sex dream, but what…?

On a whim she turns over, intending to send her sleeping coworker a baleful glare for daring to have a presence in the confusing subconscious arena of her dreams — it’s not the first time, sure, but she uhhh.

Wolf.

That, uh… wolf.

Gwen stares at the sleeping beast in the room with her, suddenly wide awake, and does her best to regulate her breathing as she simultaneously curses David to hell. This is somehow his fault, she just knows it — leave it to Mr. Nurse-Back-to-Health-the-Wolf-That-Tried-to-Kill-Me to bring a wild animal into the cabin without telling her. Now she’s probably going to get eaten and leave behind all her unedited work and become famous for her talent posthumously instead of midhumously, or whatever, which is how she’d really, really prefer it.

Can wolves smell fear? She’s pretty sure they can, so she thinks happy, not-scared thoughts, like how happy she’ll feel when she throttles David for this. The animal is huge, taking up a sizable portion of her co-counselor’s bed, even though it’s curled up sleeping at the moment. The bed’s wool blanket and sheet are half-covering it, almost like it tried to burrow itself underneath them, and it has David’s stupid plush log between its front paws. It breathes in and out with great, calm gusts of breath, and Gwen thinks about how often wolves need to eat, how fetid its breath probably is, and the fact that she has virtually nothing with which to defend herself besides some trashy magazine she could maybe roll up and use to bonk its nose, like a poorly behaved mutt.

I’m freaking out a little, Gwen realizes, watching the tendrils of first light reach across the room. Knowing her luck, they’ll wake it up. Oh well. I had a good run. Well, an alright run. Well, I definitely had a run, anyway.

She practically holds her breath as the sun creeps in through the windows, sure that any moment might wake the beast and spell her doom. Maybe she’ll be able to miraculously pull David’s guitar out of nowhere and defend herself — but no, too quickly, the barest hint of sunlight touches the thing’s paw, and it gives a great twitch that has Gwen flinching — and then the wolf changes.

She’s not sure what she’s seeing at first. Its muzzle wrinkles as though in a snarl but then shrinks. The pointed ears on its head flatten back and disappear into its dark red fur, which itself seems to be absorbed back into its skin, leaving pale, pinkish flesh behind. Its paws stretch and lengthen into long, calloused, human fingers, and the whimper that comes out of its throat morphs mid-syllable into a distinct, familiar, and absolutely absurd “ouchie.” The figure left half-blanketed on the bed opens ocean green eyes over an upturned pink nose and effortlessly smiles at the new day.

The figure looks an awful lot like David sporting a week’s worth of facial hair.

The figure is David.

“Holy fuckin’ shit,” Gwen croaks, and David blinks his big green eyes over at Gwen, looking faintly puzzled.

“Gwen? What are you doing awake?” he whispers (only sounding a little raspy, the bastard).

Gwen’s mind is racing, frantically calling up memories from the past two days, belatedly recalling that last night she’d learned without a shadow of a doubt that David — bouncy, clumsy, sunshine-y David, her coworker of too many years and the least brood-over-his-loss-of-humanity guy she’s ever known, that David — was a bonafide werewolf.

He’s still looking at her, apparently wide-awake and ready to be properly concerned about his “CBFL!” despite the fact that no sane person should be awake at this hour. She tries to say something, something intelligent, so that he knows she’s fine and can stop turning the force of his way-too-bright eyes on her.

“Wurwuf,” her stupid mouth manages.

He looks confused, briefly, before a metaphorical lightbulb goes off so obviously that Gwen practically has to squint at its brightness. “Oh yeah! I change back when the sunlight hits me — it hurts, but I hope I wasn’t too loud. Did I wake you up?”

He looks so intensely unhappy at the possibility that Gwen finds herself shaking her head before she can properly process what he said, and he smiles warmly at her. Fortunately it’s not one of his overwhelming ones but instead the softer kind, the kind he wears when he’s had a long day or a camper pleasantly surprises him.

“I’m glad,” he says with one hundred percent honesty, and he sits straight up in bed like it’s easy to get his muscles to work in the morning. “I was a little worried! You should go back to sleep, Gwen. I know how hard you’ve been working, and I dumped a lot on you last night. I’ll take breakfast duty, okay?”

“Mm,” she says, and he gives her another smile — jesus it’s too fucking early for this — and daintily wraps a sheet around his body, heading to the bathroom. She watches him go, humming like it’s any other day, until he closes and latches the door behind him with a snk.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT, Gwen mentally screams, and bites her fist hard. David’s a werewolf. David is a werewolf. It’s a brand new day and her coworker (and, fine, friend) David is a WEREWOLF who literally transformed in front of her very eyes into a huge, potentially terrifying beast.

She’s going to have so much to write about.

Speaking of, she scrambles out of bed for her notebook and pen. She’d been limited by David’s inability to talk as a wolf, but through yes and no questions and some dubiously successful attempts at charades she’d ended up with a decent number of pages written out about his new condition. It’s a solid start on figuring out what they can expect and how this whole thing works.

Of course, like every normal person, Gwen herself went through a Weird Wolf Girl phase. Though it’s been considerably more than a decade since then, she’s sure she hasn’t forgotten that much about them — and besides, with all the supernatural shapeshifter romances she’s read in the years since then, she’s pretty confident she can fill in any gaps in her knowledge.

She starts drafting questions, both for David and the Quartermaster (who of course has a hook in this, that guy is so freaky). Like: David turns into a four-legged wolf every time moonlight touches him, but is there a way to control when the change happens? Could he stop the change partway through? Is his werewolfism unique, or is there a pack out there somewhere? And are there any single werewolves her age? If so, how would Gwen go about meeting them?

Quietly, Gwen lets out a high-pitched squeal — werewolves are real, and she knows one. It’s too bad it’s David, since that precludes any hot paranormal action on her end, and has precluded any action between them since their first week working together. But maybe he’ll meet some other, more masculine werewolves and he could introduce her?

“You’re getting ahead of yourself, Gwen,” she whispers. “Reel it in.”

She spends a brief moment in deep breathing, trying to meditate… and then shrugs it off to bounce excitedly on her bed. Even if this isn’t quite the way she’d imagined it, werewolves! This could be a major change in her life, the kind she’d hoped Graggle would be, the kind she’s been waiting for as long as she can remember.

And who knows — he might still be David, but being a werewolf might make him more interesting, too. She grabs her pillow and muffles a disbelieving, embarrassingly girly squee into it, grinning. She can’t wait to see how things change.

***

In retrospect, maybe Gwen should have expected to be disappointed.

The activity for that day is Rube Goldberg Machines (“Max really enjoyed this one last year, Gwen!!”) and even though, as always, Gwen had told him during last week’s activity-planning session that it was going to be a disaster (“David, it’s going to be a disaster.”), the day is just… regular.

Which isn’t to say it’s not a disaster, but it is a pretty regular one. Harrison and Preston team up against Erid and Nerris to create competing death machines, which results in David stepping into the middle of their feud and getting the crap beaten out of him by mechanically-operated cardboard. Max and his friends are suspiciously quiet in a way that Gwen would be more concerned about if she wasn’t so busy trying to prevent Nurf from incorporating Dolph and Space Kid as living pieces of his machine. Mr. Campbell shows up at some point with an intriguing but useless story about his time in a Russian ballet school and then disappears pretty much as soon as she asks him to help. The Quartermaster is there.

Gwen waits all day, anticipation thrumming through her veins, for David to do something different. Just… one thing that would indicate that he’s secretly a paranormal, shapeshifting, not-quite-human creature. Maybe some supernatural speed, or a snarl at being bashed over the head by their terrible campers. Hell, she’d accept a mysterious, darkly longing look towards the woods. Anything.

But David spends the whole day totally normal, with his usual mix of peppiness, anxiety, and the occasional oh-so-human shriek of pain.

It’s not like Gwen really believed (much less had her heart set on) all those books about the super capable, brooding werewolf leads, but… It’s not easy to reconcile the rugged, snarling, coverboy antiheroes with a twiggy, delicate David who’s too busy trying to put a positive spin on marble-powered rocket launchers to realize his bandana is on fire.

Needless to say, Gwen’s exhausted by the end of the day, and for all his talk David hurries the kids along to bed as well. She leans against a tree, watching him interact with the torturous little shits with near-endless patience even in the light of the rising moon. It’s impressive, given that David wears his heart on his sleeve (along with every other organ he has in his body), but right now his impression of not being twitchy as hell is nearly passable. Even if some of the kids notice, they won’t worry; besides the Problem Trio, none will suspect it’s anything to do with the supernatural.

Also, of course Max, Neil, and Nikki found out about it; Gwen is going to grill Max about that as soon as she gets the chance, and then she’s going to kill David for letting it slip so quickly.

...then again, it’s admittedly something of a miracle that the whole camp doesn’t already know; she might have to let this slide. You should still know better! she thinks loudly, glaring at the back of David’s head as he suffers Nikki using him as a climbing post. He glances back at the same moment, catches her look, and hurriedly starts trying to disentangle the wild kid from his hair.

Gwen winces, then sighs in frustration — she hadn’t actually meant for him to catch that. Great going, Gwen.

Despite the revelations of the past few days, David really does seem just the same: goofy muppet-long limbs, pointy elbows, big smiles papered over a mess of anxiety, enthusiasm, and bad ideas. He’s not even more muscular or anything — though to be fair, he’s always been stronger than he looks. With his wiry muscles, he’s capable of lifting way more than Gwen expects — but the fact remains that he’s always looked delicate.

He’s not, of course — though he cries more easily than most people, it’s usually an emotional rather than physical response. He bounces back from just about any injury, leaping into the next activity with all the grace of a newborn deer. Gwen can admit that it’s somewhat compelling; she can’t help admiring his determination to keep moving forward.

Finally disengaged from Nikki, David puts his hands on his hips, tilting them in the opposite direction of his head. The move puts him on an appealing slant that emphasizes how long and slim he is, the slope of his neck leading into the sharp cut of his shoulders, hidden slightly by his dumb bandana. He fiddles with it now, throwing an uncertain glance her way.

He’d said the freaky magic necklace wasn’t comfortable to wear, and she wonders exactly how: does it intensify things? Is it like holding in a sneeze? After working so closely with him for so long, she’s intimately familiar with his energy levels; it’s not been the kind of day that usually ends in mania or an anxiety attack, but he’s twitchier than usual anyway. Is that related?

Finally taking pity, Gwen steps in. She manages to convince Harrison that the woods aren’t going to come alive while he sleeps (a weird, newly emerged fear she’s keeping a close eye on) and bundles Space Kid in his favorite rocket blanket so that David can devote his attention to Nerris’s pleas to stay up later so they can fight the dark elves together (which honestly seems like the kind of bullshit she should read up on, because that doesn’t sound like the sort of thing an impressionable kid should be absorbing). Together, they get the kids down only twenty minutes past the scheduled time.

David is unmistakably anxious on the way to the Counselors Cabin. When he hesitantly asks, “Am I in trouble?” Gwen can’t help but sigh.

“No, David. I’m just thinking,” she admits. “We need to make sure none of the rest of the kids find out that you’re a werg— a, a werewolf.” She silently curses herself for stumbling over the word again. What’s wrong with her? “Why did you have to let Max know? You must have realized he’d find a way to take advantage of this.”

“We-e-ell…” David starts, avoiding eye contact in a way that compounds Gwen’s fatigue.

“David.”

“I didn’t mean to!! He was just there and the moon was out and he broke the necklace and obviously if I had known I wouldn’t have put him in that situation, but the Quartermaster was being very coy about my being a werewolf so I had no idea what was coming —“

“Wait wait wait,” Gwen interrupts; David shrinks guiltily. “You didn’t know? You mean Max was there the first time you —?” She cuts herself off, brain whirring through his behavior since he got back from his disastrous trip in the woods a few weeks ago. She doesn’t like the conclusion she comes to.

Dreading his answer, she asks, “When was this?”

“Um.” David counts briefly on his fingers, lips pursed in thought. “A-about a week ago?”

“A week?!”

“A, a little less, actually,” he admits, cringing.

Gwen stops walking. “It’s been less than a week.”

Cautiously, he nods, his red hair flopping, and Gwen stares at him. It occurs to her suddenly that David has, hilariously, really been thrown to the wolves here: he doesn’t actually know anything about being a werewolf. His life has just changed, majorly and possibly permanently, and his only guide is the laconic and decidedly unhelpful Quartermaster… and Gwen herself.

“Right,” Gwen manages, and starts walking again. David follows, chattering nervously, but she barely hears him, thinking about what he’d said to her yesterday morning (practically forever ago): that he hadn't wanted to be a burden, but he needed her help.

Where is she even supposed to start?

She watches him throw his arms up to emphasize a point she hasn’t heard and catches sight of how long and delicate his fingers are, even with his summer camp callouses. They’re the same as ever, but somehow that makes Gwen feel like he’s even more fragile than usual, like if she even touched his shoulder he might shatter or maybe even bolt. But if she wants to figure this out properly, she needs more information… so she’s extra careful when she puts forth her next question.

“So you gonna let me watch tonight?” she asks, and then bites her tongue hard because that did not come out like she wanted it to, Gwen what is wrong with you.

Fortunately, the look David sends her is one of innocent surprise, rather than one assuming that she just propositioned him.

“Um, sure!!” he says, voice edging just past bubbly and into manic; he tugs at his bandana, revealing a flash of silver chain. Then, to her horror, a very noticeable flush starts to crawl up the back of his neck — shit, does he think she just propositioned him? “I-it’s just… well, I can’t really afford to ruin any more camp uniforms, s-so, um, I’d have to be —“

“Spit it out, David,” she advises, not completely dickishly.

“—naked, I’d have to be naked,” he blurts out, and pulls his bandana up around his cheeks to hide his embarrassment.

Gwen has to blink at him for a few seconds. Is he seriously that embarrassed about her catching an eyeful when they’ve lived in close quarters this long? And when he’s going to turn into a giant, fuckoff werewolf??

“David. I promise not to look at your dick,” she says, which to her amusement makes him squeak and turn as red as his hair. He flutters a nervous hand at her, glancing around like a camper could appear anywhere — which, to be fair, they could: Gwen has learned not to underestimate the little bastards.

She bumps her shoulder into his, because she’s too awkward to offer comfort in a normal way. “Are you seriously more freaked out about the naked thing than the werewolf thing?”

“It’s not… appropriate,” he hisses, still flushed and harried-looking. “You shouldn’t have to —“

“I don’t have to; I want to. To see you transform, I mean,” she corrects. “Into a wolf. Not to — yeah. But I do want to see the transforming shit again because it was seriously the coolest thing I have ever seen.”

As per usual, David opens the door to the Counselors Cabin and lets Gwen through first, which is why she sees the set-up, recognizes the intended purpose, and is already exhausted and dismayed by its outcome by the time David cheerfully flicks on the lightswitch.

“Oh,” he says, pleasantly surprised, as his action triggers the set of three marbles to start rolling down the halved cardboard tubes that have been taped together into an impressively complicated contraption. The blue marble hits and tips over a precariously balanced jug of water, the yellow one continues to pick up speed as its path steepens, and the mint-green one just barely nudges a piece of cheese into the grubby little hands-reach of a caged squirrel. “Wow,” David says, delighted, while Gwen traces the future paths of the machine and reaches the signs neatly taped to the wall above David’s bed.

“GWEN DON’T INTERFERE. I PROMISED I WOULDN’T SET A FIRE BUT NEIL DIDN’T. MAX.”

“Ooo, great use of weighted pullies,” David says appreciatively, while a baby headache is born right behind Gwen’s eyes.

Next to Max’s note is one with Neil’s precise handwriting. “Sorry for getting carried away but I needed to test my abilities. Neil.”

The squirrel has tugged up the string tied to the key to its cage and is furiously trying to unlock its prison; another domino falls just as the scale overbalances. Gwen’s headache has learned to walk and is joyfully crashing into the walls of her brain.

Nikki’s note (which, for some reason, is dripping with an unknown reddish liquid) says, “it seemed like the best use of our time. also the squirrel needed to know who was boss.”

“That’s such a creative use of a windchime!” David says, proud as anything, as Gwen recognizes an open container of lighter fluid, realizes that the last note is written in Campbell’s chunky scrawl, and her headache throws a screaming teenage tantrum about how unfair its life is.

“IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD CAMP ACTIVITY FOR THE CHILDREN! ALSO THEY BRIBED ME. SORRY! CAMERON C. CAMPBELL.”

“Gwen, look at how they combined their machines here! Oh, I’m so proud, this is such great teamwork,” David coos and then the lighter fluid tips over, the bedspread catches fire, the squirrel frees itself to launch its horrible little rodent body across the room, and Gwen’s headache graduates summa cum laude with a full degree in Fuck You Gwenology.

Even if she hasn’t been through this exact scenario before, Gwen knows how this goes. David’s mattress will be reduced to kindling (an inevitability each summer; honestly, she’s a little proud of how long it lasted this year), David will shriek as the squirrel makes claw-contact with his face, and Gwen will calmly murder every person responsible for ensuring she has more work to do before she can goddamn relax. She’s already heading towards the fire extinguisher when David surprises her.

Instead of getting a faceful of furious-slash-terrified squirrel and screeching his fool head off, David whips a hand out faster than Gwen can follow and snags the thing out of the air. She hardly notices, though, distracted as she is by the sudden, ferocious snarl that transforms David’s face, revealing a set of gleaming, razor-sharp fangs that make him look a whole lot more… monstrous.

Oh, fuck, Gwen thinks, frozen to the spot.

The squirrel squeals, panicked, and David’s growling cuts off abruptly with a sharp little gasp. He loosens his grip enough that the animal can scramble out of his hands and out the swinging screen door, not even bothering to scold them on the way out. David automatically tracks its movements, his green eyes flashing and shoulders tense.

Thwack, goes the cabin door. Gwen stares at David, who himself stares at where the squirrel had disappeared, before a full-body shudder goes through him and he wraps his arms around his middle.

“S-sorry,” he says, voice small. Gwen blinks at that, still a bit dazed, but he keeps his eyes down. “I didn’t mean — I mean, I just —“ He hunches into himself, making himself even smaller.

Realization sparks in Gwen — he feels shitty about this, I should do something — and then David takes a sudden, deep breath, filling his lungs and straightening to his full height. His shoulders are still tense but he’s forced them down, like he’s relaxed, and when he smiles at her it’s practically normal.

But Gwen knows David, and she knows his smiles, and this one is bad: her eyes rove over his face, cataloguing the tension in his brow, the slight tremble of his upper lip, how few teeth he’s actually showing. “David,” she starts, uncertain what she’s going to say.

“It’s okay!” he assures her, voice bright and tight, flapping an insistent hand in dismissal. “I was just — that, um, startled me, is all. I didn’t mean to — to… is something burning?”

Gwen turns so fast she gives herself whiplash. “Oh fuck, the bed!!”

“O-oh — !”

These days she’s old hat at putting out fires, but the lighter fluid and the relatively extended burn time mean that even after Gwen empties a full fire extinguisher, it’s quite clear that the mattress isn’t the only thing sacrificed to the blaze.

“My bed,” David says weakly. The headboard has collapsed into the slats of the bed frame, which are themselves burned through, and its legs are heavily charred; it looks like it might fall apart in a stiff breeze, leaving behind just a pile of ashes. “W-well, we could —“

“The extra camper cots won’t hold an adult’s weight,” Gwen points out numbly. Do they still have — ?

“And Mr. Campbell took the last bedframe from storage when he moved in,” David notes, and Gwen adds another thing to her mental “Reasons to Kill Cameron Campbell” list. “Good thing I —“

“No, Max traded your sleeping bag to the Wood Scouts to get them to take Jermy back,” Gwen reminds him, pinching the bridge of her nose. Quartermaster probably has more supplies, but he’s left for the night to do… Quartermaster things, and Gwen doesn’t actually know how to contact him until the morning.

“Right,” David sighs. “But the hammock — ?”

“Could you even use it when you’ve got —“ she claws at the air, giving him a faux snarl, which immediately makes her feel like a huge, stupid asshole, but she perseveres — “you know, four legs?”

With each back and forth, David sinks down a little more — but at that last one he perks up a bit. “Oh! Gwen, I’ll be a wolf. I don't need a bed, I’ll just sleep outside!”

“David,” Gwen begins, already prepared to try to make him see reason, but then she actually catches sight of his expression and pauses, considering.

Because David isn’t looking at her. His eyes dart from the remains of his bed to her desk to the bathroom door to the open window, whereupon he flinches and looks anywhere else til he’s inevitably drawn back to it. His hands are clasped in front of him like he’s pleased, but Gwen can see them trembling. “Plus, I feel like — I think there’s something different in the air, and I just want to check it out, make sure everything’s okay. And Harrison was so nervous at bedtime — I should probably check on him. And the Quartermaster probably needs help setting things up, so…”

He wants to get away, Gwen realizes. His reaction to the squirrel was different than he’s used to and it scared him. He needs to process it alone.

“Fine,” Gwen blurts out, and David shuts his mouth, eyebrows dipping in confusion.

“Huh?”

“Go. We don’t have to — You can show me the transformation another night. I’ll take care of the bed and any kids who come calling. If you need — some time, or some space, David, then go get it.” She has to mentally scream at herself to do it, but she raises a pretty convincingly casual hand to pat his shoulder. “I’ll take care of things here. You go do what you need, okay?”

He looks uncertain, but he does lean into her touch. Gwen fights to keep her face normal. “Gwen, are you sure? I don’t want to leave you alone with everything again…”

“It’s fine, David,” she says, and finds that she means it. He asked her for her help, and if this is what it takes, well. “Go. Run around, burn off some energy, do what you need. I’ll cover you.”

He bites his lip, incidentally flashing those sharp teeth. Gwen determinedly keeps her eyes on his. “If you’re sure it’s okay…”

“I am. Go do your thing, David.”

The tense worry on his face melts away, and when he smiles at her it’s easy. “Thanks, Gwen,” he says, and before she can react he wraps his arms around her in a firm hug.

Gwen tries not to freeze up or anything, but she’s so awkward — she ends up patting his shoulder again (like an idiot) until he finally loosens his warm grip and steps away to open the cabin door. He aims one last grateful smile at her; it practically lights up the whole room.

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning, Gwen. Thanks again.”

“Yee-up,” she says, and gives him a thumbs-up until the screendoor thwacks shut behind him.

She stands there for a long moment, listening to his footsteps fade away. Then, when she’s sure he’s gone, she numbly reaches for her pillow. She presses her face into it and takes a couple deep breaths.

Then she screams, because she has to clean up the remains of the burned bed and figure out how this werewolf thing works for David and make sure the camp keeps running and now she’s going to have to do all that with the awareness that David might be hot now.

He’s not allowed to be. Their whole thing works because he’s not her type. They have to work so closely together to make this damn place run, reading each others’ intentions and patching each other up and practically working on top of and underneath each other; Gwen can’t do that if she has to worry about her hormones acting up just because her stupid coworker actually has some monster-y traits to go with the fact that technically, now he’s a monster.“Fuck,” she says, and it scrapes at her throat but it feels good anyways, so she says it again as she tries not to think about sharp teeth in an innocent smile. “Fuck fuck fuck.”

CHAPTER TWO

Gwen wakes up.

She keeps her eyes shut for a few moments. Sleep waits for her, solemn and warm, but something in the outside world is just off enough that she doesn’t surrender to it quite yet. Sluggishly, consciousness comes online.

She has a body. Her body is wrapped in a warm blanket. She’s still cold. She scrunches her nose and pulls her limbs in tighter, which helps a little, but not as much as the sudden cut-off of cold air that accompanies the screendoor’s muffled thwack.

Is David seriously coming in and out of the cabin at this hour? That deserves a squinted glare at the very least. Gwen rolls over to offer the stink-eye to her erstwhile coworker for his early morning volume, only —

The windows show only dark grey outside. Rain splatters half-heartedly against the panes. The digital clock on David’s night table illuminates the digits 7:08, more than twenty minutes before her first phone alarm is due to go off. Though the light inside the cabin is limited, it’s enough for Gwen to make out the rough outline of an enormous animal standing just in the doorway. It looks directly at her; its reflective eyes are brilliant and strange.

Her heart skips a beat. Then its pace increases, along with her breathing, because what the fuck, it’s gonna eat her —

A quiet, pitiful whine escapes the beast. It sounds pathetically sad, like Missy when Gwen’s dad won’t share his hamburger, but besides that universal doggy plea, something else about it seems... familiar.

She switches on her lamp before she can doubt herself.

The scant golden light reveals an unnaturally large wolf, its four paws placed carefully on the doormat. It is covered in thick red fur, Gwen knows, but not one hair of that is visible beneath its coat of caked, dripping mud. Its big green eyes are pleading.

“Christ, David,” she says hoarsely, and stumbles to her feet, already reaching for the box of garbage bags left out last night after she cleaned up the charred remains of his bed. She can cut one open and lay it down like a tarp; it’ll catch any mud he drips on the way to the bathroom so it won’t spread to the rest of the cabin. Where are her scissors?

She lurches about the cabin, trying to prep it for a muddy werewolf. Her brain is working, technically, running through where the spare towels are and what she’ll need, but it’s still too early for things to quite make sense. Werewolf? Sure, that’s logical, she can handle that. But shouldn't David have turned back by now?

“C’mon,” she says to him once she has a line of slit open trashbags laid out. David steps carefully along her path, his tail and ears down, and hops immediately into the tub without the need for her to explain. Pulling her hair back in a loose ponytail, Gwen locates an old, refillable slurpee cup, then squats on the bathmat and turns the water on.

It’s cold, as it always is first thing in the morning, but David doesn’t even react; his fur must be super thick. Still, she waits until it hits a reasonable temperature before plugging the bath and filling the mega slurpee cup. “Stay still, okay?” Placing a hand on his furry brow to prevent the water from getting in his eyes, she pours it over his head… which makes hardly any difference to the mud stuck fast to his fur.

Gwen rocks back onto her heels, frowning. “Think we’re gonna need more than water,” she tells David, who woofs so very softly in reply that even in her sleep-muzzy state she can’t help smirking a little. “Is that a yes?” His tail starts to wag, disturbing the already-clouded water filling the tub. “Yeah? You want some soap or shampoo or some shit, David?”

To her amusement, his tail wags even harder — he’s always so delighted by her solutions, even when they’re obvious, but somehow the tail-wagging hits different than his normal bouncy enthuthiasm. She idly wonders how far she can take this as she stands to examine their toiletries.

There’s not much left in his shampoo bottle, so Gwen grabs her body wash as well — it’s cheap and she has tons of it, so it’ll have to do. She kneels back down and softens her voice a little more, like she’s talking to a toddler or something, as she squeezes some shampoo into her palm. “You wanna get clean, David? Huh? Get all this crap off of you?”

He gives her a happy whine that is so very David, despite the species, that she can’t help the giggle that escapes her.

His tail stills for a moment and he stares at her, ears pricked high, the expression on his muzzle so close to human surprise that she starts to feel self conscious. Then he starts wagging his tail so furiously that Gwen has to quickly splat her shampooed hand on his head. “Shut up,” she tells him, and starts to rub it into a lather.

Gwen doesn’t really touch people. Growing up she’d been used to living in cramped spaces — Dad’s tour bus chief among them — which meant that being able to spread out was always such a luxury. She quit touring once she hit high school, but by that time the damage had already been done: after so many years of enforced closeness, Gwen never really figured out how to initiate physical contact when she wanted it, without a lack of room causing the press of bodies on all sides.

So she’s not good at touching people. David, on the other hand, is bad at not touching people. When Gwen awkwardly offered her hand to him during their first meeting, David went right in for an extended hug. He hasn’t gotten much better since; it’s taken years for her to train him to let go of her, dammit, and she’s given up on ever getting through a day without his hands fluttering around her shoulders, arms, back, casually and constantly touching her.

And though Gwen pretends not to notice or care, on the relatively rare occasions that she initiates contact, David always, always relaxes into her touch. It makes her feel… well, stupid, yes, but also warm and — damn him — kind of fond. Right now, it’s somehow even easier to slip into that feeling: he leans obviously into her hands as she works the shampoo and then body wash through his thick fur, the mud coming away under her fingers and slowly revealing more and more red fur.

It should be stranger, not least because he’s currently in the form of a predator that has terrified man for years. But Gwen keeps at it, soaping and scrubbing and rinsing, til her friend stands there on four paws, clean as can be.

...and, once she takes a step back to get a good view of him, looking a bit like an enormous drowned rat.

“Holy shit, you’re so skinny,” Gwen exclaims, leaning against the sink. She crosses her arms as she gets a good look at the wolf doing his best to pout in their tub. “All that fur almost made you look intimidating, but you’re all elbows, huh?”

David’s furry brow creases. He seems to think hard for a moment; feeling generous, Gwen waits him out. Finally, he sticks the very tip of his tongue out in an impressively snooty blep.

She snorts, snagging some ratty old towels, and drops back into the voice she uses for dogs and babies. “Well, does David wanna get dry now? Huh? Does Davey wanna let Gwen towel him off so he can be a big, scary fluffball again?”

When she turns back, his muzzle has contorted into one of offended realization. She can hear his voice so clearly in his scandalized expression: Wait, have you been making fun of me? That, plus the fact that his tongue is still out in a petite blep, has her pressing the towels to her face to muffle a laugh.

“David,” she starts, once she feels capable of facing him without making a fool of herself -- and then she startles at the spray of cool water against her skin, soaking into her pajamas, and the pafwappafwappafwap sound of a dog shaking itself dry. “David!” she snaps, horrified, and backs away, but the bathroom door is closed — she’s stuck — she holds up the towels, as if that will protect her. She’s going to kill him.

He woofs, sounding terribly pleased with himself, and Gwen blindly chucks the towels at him. By her ear, they splat against the tub -- she wipes at the water in her eyes, cursing. “I’m going to kill you,” she announces to the bathroom, fuming, and feels the rasp of something warm and wet on her free hand. She jerks away, blinking rapidly to clear her vision.

David stands beside her, fluffy and damp and way too smug, his green eyes sparkling in amusement. He’s big enough that his head hits her waist; if he stood on his back feet, he’d be tall enough to crowd her in, look down on her. As it is, he looks up at her, a distinctly… David look of affection on his face.

Gwen’s stomach swoops, but just a little, and that’s kind of embarrassing so she glowers at him. “Dick,” she mutters, yanking open the bathroom door and storming half-heartedly to her “dresser” (a shitty filing cabinet, because Campbell’s too cheap for real furniture). She can hear the click of his nails on the hardwood as she pulls out a camp shirt and a relatively clean sports bra. Her pajama shirt is soaked thanks to David’s sense of humor so she tugs it off and flings it into her laundry basket. “Shouldn’t you have changed back by now anyway?” she asks him. “It’s way past sun-up.”

She just buys whatever fits from the sales rack, so her sports bras are always wacky colors; this one is fuschia with vivid teal piping. She yanks it on over her head and makes sure her tits are facing the right way before realizing that David has gone totally silent.

She glances over her shoulder to find him staring at her with wide eyes, his tail frozen straight out in shock. When they make eye contact, his ears flatten against his skull and he seems at such a panicky loss for what to do that he actually yelps, which startles them both so much that they spend another precious second staring at each other in mutual what-the-fuck-do-we-do-ness before Gwem gets her shit together and throws her camp shirt at his face.

“I —! You were a dog! I forgot!” she snaps, face burning. Stupid. “Stay there!”

It takes Gwen seconds to get another shirt on, but her inner voice is shouting rapidly the whole time. He’s a wolf but he’s a werewolf so he’s a person so you can’t change in front of him dumbass! Unless you’re trying to get it on in which case why would you think unsexily shoving your boobs into a sports bra would be the way to do it?! Plus even if he is a werewolf he’s still David who isn’t supposed to be hot! ...But maybe he is now?? Even if that is the case you know you can’t handle a fling with a coworker so quit thinking about it, especially cuz right now he’s still in the form of a dog!!

In her mind, Gwen shouts inarticulately back at the voices and smashes their heads in with David’s guitar. In real life, she zips up her shorts and hesitantly lifts the spare shirt off David’s face. He keeps his eyes screwed shut, his ears back and head down, everything about his posture saying I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.

Gwen huffs out a breath — he gets so apologetic for the stupidest shit — and taps his forehead to get his attention. “David, it’s fine, it was my fault anyway. You can open your eyes.”

A fine tremble goes through him, but he peeks one eye open and, seeing that she’s telling the truth, opens both eyes to focus entirely on her. Gwen feels like squirming — even in this form, his focus makes her a little nervous. “Well?” she blurts out. “Why aren’t you human again?”

He flicks an ear in mild irritation (is he conscious of that, she wonders) and pads over to the cabin door, pointing his muzzle towards the outside. Gwen follows, looking out: the camp is muddy and full of puddles, rain drizzling down from pale grey clouds that take up the whole sky. Her stomach sinks.

“You need sunlight to change back?” she asks; he confirms with a prim little nod. Gwen tugs her phone over by its cord (it’ll probably break at some point, but what the fuck ever) and checks the weather app for the hourly forecast in Sleepy Peak. She can’t help hissing at what she sees.

“It’s supposed to be cloudy for the next twenty-four hours,” she says, feeling a little numb. David’s ears sink in clear dismay that matches her own. “What the fuck are we going to do?”

***

It turns out David doesn’t even need to speak for them to reach a decision.

He suggests (through a series of wolf-sounds and some poor pantomime) that he stay inside all day, but Gwen knows that he couldn’t even make it an hour being cooped up inside with no camp activities to run. So as long as he can avoid the mud, she’s sentencing him to spend the rest of the day outdoors on the off-chance that any sunlight makes it through the thick cloud cover.

Which means that she’s basically going to be running the camp alone today. Great.

Gwen rolls up a pair of his shorts and pins them onto a long-sleeve camp shirt so at least he’ll have clothing if he happens to change back. Obedient, David sits very still as she ties the bundle around his neck like a bandana. He looks up at her attentively when she smooths down the tree insignia so it lays flat against his red fur.

Despite the fact that he’s an enormous wolf, and despite the fact that he’s David, her brain says dog! and she has to resist the urge to pat his head. He almost looks cute.

“Okay,” she says, shrugging on her raincoat and opening the front door. “Quartermaster needs to get into storage to get you a new bed anyway, so I’ll do blanket forts for a bit and see how it goes. You — don’t get seen, don’t get too muddy, and come back as soon as you’re human again. Got it?”

David’s eyes turn determined. He lifts a paw to his nose in what Gwen assumes is his best “campe diem!!” and this time she really can’t help it — before she can stop herself, she’s running a hand down his fluffy head and scratching behind his ears. David leans into it, tail wagging, and by the time Gwen realizes what she’s done he’s already hopped out the door and trotted off into the woods.

Gwen is too awkward, too nervous, too weird — even after years of patching him up, she hardly ever touches David on purpose, but… that had been easy. His fur had been warm, his green eyes bright.

She stands there for a minute, blinking at her own hand, imagining she can still feel fur, dense and fine against her fingers. Then she shakes her head and gets going.

#camp camp #campcamp #writing this in 2020 was a weird period for me... but also like. aren't they all #what can i say. in times of trouble what i want most is to write about my favorite characters dealing w werewolf shenanigans >:3 #saint writes #just checked and my unpublished hlvrai werewolf fic is almost exactly as long as these drafts :o that one's more than halfway done tho #so hopefully i'll get to finish it and actually post it eventually #werewolves #oh we didn't even actually GET to the bed-sharing bit in this yet did we. lmao #cc

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