#fic: only the brave

[sunseekerstarchaser]

Top 5 Starchaser fanfics.

sunseekerchallenge

[kat-xox]

yeah

[kat-xox]

no cuz i saw this and just KNEW it was otb. so lovely:,)

They never had time in their favor, and Regulus knew that, so he tried to enjoy as much and as deeply as he could the very little universe they created.

James couldn't accept a world where they couldn't be together.

The saddest part is they both flew so high, the drop killed them.

I'm so much on my jegulus feels, I'm reading Only the brave by @solmussa, and I haven't cried this hard in a long, long time. (I love it so much).

My second comeback is violent, sorry 🫶

[ricochetyears]

love that hc where james doesn’t really like being called “jamie” but goes absolute stupid when regulus calls him that. i mean, in general, he’s all so grumpy and frustrated that no one bothers to just add a fucking s to “james”, but whenever reg says it so casually like “thank you for the tea, jamie” or “no, i’m not busy, jamie” or “that’s alright, jamie” his mind just goes lalala i’m so in love hihi

[curiouslymyown]

Action-man? Who the hell is- oh my god, no, it’s Gideon Prewett

[aka-notokay]

Rereading "Only the brave" from @solmussa got me crying in my bed at the break up i knew was coming since chapter 1.

I HATE IT THERE THIS IS MY FAVORITE FIC EVER.

[starchasersversion]

everyone talking about rare relationship but what about RARE FRIENDSHIPS? here's my favourite ones i have seen

reg and marlene

james and pandora

james and dorcas

sirius and barty

reg and mary

evan and remus

peter and reg

marlene evan and barty

lily and barty

sirius and pandora

and probs others that i have forgotten

[69slaysoulsister69]

I just got my first speeding ticket and what was I listening to when I got pulled over? A podfic of only the brave. I’m humbled on so many levels

[shushmal]

rating: G tags: getting together, fluff prompt: Love is what makes you brave. @steddielovemonth

Knowing Steve, Eddie's decided, has been one of the greatest things to ever happen to him. All the shit he put up with a kid growing up, all the stupid high school bullcrap, the hell dimension of government conspiracies laying dormant beneath his feet: all of that doesn't matter because now Eddie has Steve.

Well... Has Steve in his life. Has Steve's friendship. Has him in casual touches, in inside-jokes, in silly matching friendship bracelets that Robin made them.

Steve isn't Eddie's. Even though Eddie is Steve's. Because Steve does have him, in every possible way. And Eddie doesn't mind that it's unbalanced—he could be happy like that for the rest of his life. He would be best friends with Steve until they're old and sitting in the nursing home and playing with Steve's grandkids.

It doesn't stop Eddie from wanting though. From dreaming. From pretending about some unreachable future where he gets to wake up to Steve, gets to eat meals with Steve, gets to drive Steve around and complain about his music and eat all the food Steve cooks and tell him how handsome he is each time he smiles.

Eddie's not a kid anymore though. Dreams don't fuel him like they used to, don't drive him to reach for bigger and better things.

Instead, Eddie has something else that makes him braver.

"Hey," Eddie says, a little breathless, hands sweating around the horribly expensive roses he's got clutched to his chest.

"Hey!" Steve echoes, surprised and flustered and confused.

"Is this a bad time?" Eddie might be an idiot. Steve's in sweat pants and a lumpy sweater, a handmade thing that Eddie recognizes from one of El's hobby experiments. He looks so cozy, and Eddie would be happy being Steve's friend the rest of his life, but that doesn't stop Eddie from wanting.

"N-No, not at all," Steve says, and his eyes are caught up on the roses in Eddie's hands. "Wha— Is everything okay?"

Eddie might be an idiot, but he still knows Steve, knows all his tells: the way his ears are pink, his eyes wide and hopeful, his hands running though his hair nervously.

"Yeah," Eddie breathes, the tension releasing his spine, leaving him instead with a growing bubble of warmth in his chest. Eddie's only felt this brave a few times in his life. He grins, giddy, and asks, "Can I come in?"

Steve's answering smile is just more wind beneath Eddie's wings. "Of course," he says in a breathy whisper. "I always want you here, Ed."

Eddie leans in close, too close still for a darkened doorway in the middle of Hawkins, Indiana. But Eddie is Steve's and Eddie will always be caught in Steve's gravitation, will always want to be as close as Steve will let him.

And Steve rewards Eddie's bravery by leaning in just as close, meeting him halfway, so that Eddie can whisper in the shared air between them. "Good, because there's no where I want be, unless it's with you."

[callistoscope]

harvey’s one and only kink is being loved. Tenderly.

[hogwartsfirebolt]

telepathy

“You never suspected?” Harry whispers into the curve of my shoulder. His skin is warm against my side, our legs tangled together in the cocoon of his sheets.

I know he’s thinking of the appointment I had earlier, of the diagrams I showed him that the healer drew for me, explaining that her scans showed my magic reaching out, touching her mind gently.

“That I’m a telepath? No. Legilimency always came easy to me, but I never suspected actual telepathy.” I close my eyes, lean closer so that his hair tickles my nose and I can smell the coconut scent of his shampoo, fresh and lovely. “Although … sometimes I did feel like I knew what you wanted, what you were thinking. In bed, specially”

He huffs a laugh against my skin, brushes his lips over a freckle on my neck that I only know is there because he mentions it all the time. “That actually explains a lot.”

A proud thrill shoots through my belly and I feel a smile threatening to spill into my face. It’s not that I didn’t know he wants me — he makes it so clear each time — but knowing for sure that he does and that I give him what he wants in turn makes me feel powerful in a way I’ve never experienced before. I reach out then, the path to his thoughts feeling easy now I know I’ve been treading it for years.

He’s running his fingers along my hip, the inside of my thigh, and his thoughts are simple, surrounded by lust and warmth.

All this beautiful milky skin.

I feel a blush rise to my cheeks hotly, and clear my throat. I’m helpless to the admission I want to make, feel it drawn out of me by the sheer glow of being in his presence. I say, “But sometimes I felt it after, too, whenever we finished. I just never thought … to tell you the truth, I just thought that’s how it is when you’re in —”

The embarrassment of saying it out loud feels unmanageable, but I would’ve pushed through if it weren’t for his green eyes widening, for the alarms blaring through my awareness of his thoughts. His lips cover mine swiftly in a pressing, achingly lovely kiss and he rests his forehead against mine.

He breathes out, “Shh. Don’t say it. Now we know why you always knew what I wanted.”

It stings for all of a minute, that he won’t let me, but then I realize that I can’t feel disgust or rejection in his thoughts, only fear. Simple, tangible fear. I huff, raise a hand up the back of his neck, tangling through his soft, beautiful curls. He relaxes once again, and I feel the soundless sigh against my lips before he kisses me again, close-mouthed and sweet.

He’s everything, nudges the edges of my consciousness. Then again, a golden thread of a helpless thought, Everything.

“Alright,” I whisper against his lips, and I can tell he loves that, loves the feel of my lips moving against his as I speak. I can tell he feels it all. So I venture, “That doesn’t mean it’s not true, alright?”

His guard has come back down as he occupies himself tracing my bottom lip with his tongue, following his own body down the path that will lead to desire very soon. Distractedly, he asks, “It doesn’t mean what isn’t true?”

“That I’m in love with you.”

Everything freezes, his arm where it was moving to embrace me, his breath, his mind. And in the center, red-hot fear once again. He pulls back a little, enough to run a hand down his face, pinching the bridge of his nose.

He’s wondering, Why is he doing this?

He’s picturing me running, turning away from us in fear of what it can become. I pull him closer again, cup a hand around his jaw and I know he can see it in my eyes: the truth. His eyes fall shut, his body in a vulnerable curl around mine.

“Jesus, Draco. You don’t even like me.”

“Of course I don’t like you,” I can barely recognize my voice, it’s gentler than I even knew I had in me. “But I am in love with you.”

God, me too. Me too, me too.

Our bodies are so close I can feel his heart pounding.

“Uh. I’m not sure I —,” he’s starting to say, but his mind keeps beating a stream of Me too, me too.

“You’re forgetting that I can quite literally read your mind, Harry.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.” There’s a laugh building up in my chest and I let it escape, catching what he feels when he hears it, the way his thoughts soften, the way he sees me aglow like this, in his arms, because of him.

A warm hand comes up to my chest, resting over my sternum. Where, even though he can’t read my mind, he can find beating proof that I feel this.

“Then you already know what I’m going to say.”

I love you.

I nod, basking in the way my heart races, in the way I know that his heart is racing too. It all felt so impossible only this morning. Years of sneaking around, years of sleeping together and not talking, not daring to hope. And it had always been as easy as me reaching out, trying to connect, without ever knowing I could. But there’s something else, and the lingering dregs of doubt rise up in me when I realize this only speaks for now, for this moment in time.

“I can read your mind, but … I can’t see the future. I don’t know what this means for us, or where it takes us.”

He pauses, and I can tell he’s giving it serious thought. I can see futures he’s picturing, trying on as though trying on new clothes, playing out the idea of making me central to the path he sees for his own life. I can tell the thought feels new and exciting. His green eyes meet mine, and it seems it only took him these few minutes, because the fear is gone, replaced by burgeoning joy. He’s always been the braver one. I pull my awareness back, overwhelmed by the strength of his sudden conviction, and I’m once again just me inside my own mind, looking into his eyes, not knowing what’s behind them.

“To tell you the truth, I never expected we’d come this far,” he says. The back of his fingers is tracing my cheek, and there’s an edge to his voice, a soft kind of adoration that only really comes out when we’re like this, bare to each other. “I mean, maybe that was daft of me, seeing as it’s been four years of … this, but it seemed to me you never wanted to talk about it, and so I didn’t think to consider we could be anything more than what we’ve been already.”

And it’s true. I didn’t think we could ever have more that we already had, so I never gave myself the space to want it. Now, knowing what I know, I discover that the want was always there, that I unknowingly let it build up behind closed doors in my head, and that now that I’ve inched it open, it’s all come barrelling out, a flood tearing the dam to bits.

I nod. “I understand. But now my cards are on the table, and … I already know your answer too, so why don’t we stop fooling ourselves?”

“It’s not that, it’s just … we’ve spent our entire lives driving each other insane.” Not reading his mind anymore, I can still read him with the knowledge of a lifetime. I know him, can tell that he means it, that this is something that’s been bothering him. “Last week you almost throttled me when I suggested we saw that Divination expert before you went actually insane.”

It’s true that I had felt something off in my own head for months, that I wasn’t able to hide it from him because at times it felt like the whole world was pushing its way into my brain and I couldn’t channel it back out. The notion that I might be going insane was not infrequent, and he worriedly suggested alternatives before I finally decided to visit the healer today. But him suggesting divination could nearly have been the last nail in the coffin. I’ve never been a pseudo-science kind of man.

“Oh, you know damn well I’ve never believed in those things.”

Frustration tinges his gaze, turns the corners of his lips downwards. “Well, now it turns out you’re a damn telepath, Draco, so you better fucking start believing.”

I’m so scandalized I lose the ability to speak for a few seconds, and he can tell. Which makes him double down, “I — Merlin, do you see? I drive you insane without even trying. You’re driving me insane too.”

“Okay, okay,” I force out, fighting down the annoyance that he can bring up in me quicker than anybody else. My eyes fall shut and I take a breath, letting myself feel his touch on my skin, the length of his body against mine, the night breeze sharing our bed, around our bodies where the sheets have slipped off. I open my eyes, feel the proud bubble of elation that courses through my veins when he looks at me. “I know we always drive each other insane, but we always end up here, don’t we? Curled up in your bedroom.”

His eyes soften. “That’s true. And in the end I — I mean I do really —“

He still can’t say it. But I know it. I’ve seen it, his doubts, his love.

So it’s easy to be the one to voice it. “I love you too. And I’m also terrified at the notion of being apart, and I’m also sometimes horrified and disgusted to realize I feel this way, and I wonder how I even ended up here when I genuinely despised you back in school.”

“Went both ways,” he huffs. I can’t help but smile.

“I know.”

“But then I’m just — God, Draco, if you’re reading my mind, then you know what I have in my drawer right now.”

Alarmed, I can’t help but let my magic reach out so hard I’m left reeling, and I get an image, front and center. His dresser, third drawer on the left, between a bottle of cologne and an inherited jacket: a black velvet box, no bigger than a snitch. I see him in his mind’s eye, stroking the box, thinking of me. Of us. I see him putting it back in. Taking it back out another time, another day, thinking of me. Months passing, him taking it out on sleepless nights after I slipped away following a tryst, see him stroking it, thinking of me. And I’m afraid. I am. But there’s a stronger, unnamable feeling overpowering the fear by the second, dusting it in a golden glow with the certainty and inevitability of a sunrise. I swallow.

“I do know. But I’m not sure I understand. Didn’t you just say you never expected we’d make it this far?”

“I think it’s more that I didn’t think you’d be willing to try. The thing is that … right here, together, when it’s just us? It just works, I feel like we get each other perfectly. I like that a lot. But none of our friends know we talk, much less that we see each other twice a week. When you see me in public you roll your eyes and look away, and Nev told me the other day that you told Pansy you still hate me.”

I’m still in his mind, and I feel how this hurts him. Has been hurting him. But it’s hypocritical as all hell, he’s never been the sole victim of this. Like everything else between us, it went both ways. My temper flares.

“Oh, don’t start. Nev always tells Pansy that you go on and on about how unbearable I am, and … and I saw you flirting with Hannah last week at The Brewery!”

“What?” His volume rises, and he startles himself. He shakes his head and takes a deep breath. “I — Okay. Didn’t you read my mind then? All I wanted was for you to look at me, even though I knew you wouldn’t, because our friends were around. I’m tired of this, Draco, I’m tired of your walls coming up with me outside them whenever we’re not in bed.”

He’s thinking of that night, of me looking away when he tried to catch my eye, of me leaving early so he wouldn’t have the chance to ask if I wanted to go home with him. It’s too real, too revealing, I don’t know if I want to face having been part — or most — of the reason we didn’t have this earlier.

“I didn’t know I could read your mind back then, it was only last week. How was I supposed to know you felt any kind of serious way about me when —“

“What’s in my drawer, Draco?”

My heart pounds. “I know what’s in your fucking drawer.”

“And what are you going to answer? I can’t read your mind.”

I had been so calm, placing the ball in his side of the court at the beginning of the conversation, but he’s hit it right back at me, hard, and my heart is climbing up my throat. He’s asking, knowing I know everything inside his head, he’s asking because he doesn’t know anything inside mine, and he needs it out loud, needs it spelled out. I have to give it to him. It’s only fair. I swallow, try to force my heart back down.

“What do you think I’m going to answer, Harry? Look at me. You’ve ruined me completely, I’m — ”

“Is that a — ?”

“Yes.”

“Yes?”

“Yes”

Read on AO3

[sunseekerstarchaser]

Sunseeker First Challenge

I am the dark and I am the light, I am the moon and I am the starless night sky. fall in love with all that I am or please, do not fall in love with me at all.- x

↳ Top 10 (Part 1)

The Cadence of Part-time Poets by @motswolo

just lovers (like we were supposed to be) by @mayzarbewithyou

Only the Brave by @solmussa

[maraudersarecanon]

I HAVE BEEN CONVERTED TO JEGULUSISM. THIS IS NOT A DRILL.

In case you’re wondering, the culprit is Only The Brave

[avesgraveyard]

my absolute favourite thing about violent fics is the long list of warnings at the beginning of the chapters (murder, torture, blood, injuries etc) and it'll be this like 15 thing long list and the author will just go

i think thats it?? not too many this time :)

as if its not the most horrific collection of words I've ever seen on one page in my entire lifetime

[ricochetyears]

really love the idea of regulus being oh so mean and cold and detached in his human form but a cutie patootie in his animagus form (little kitty). like he just curls on james’ lap and purrs and meows and licks his cheeks and bites him gently and nudges him with his rosy little nose and

[curiouslymyown]

Who would of thought that almost falling off a roof could be so sexy