#hopefully will start posting soon. rn im just jumping around writing different bits

[gingerwerk]

happy thursday/friday. heres (perhaps? the first bit i've ever posted on here?) an excerpt from my upcoming hbo war vietnam era/post vietnam au series

i literally laid down on my bed and whipped this up in less than an hour and i fuck with it and im in a giving mood so please enjoy :)

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Cradling the cool, hard plastic of the payphone in between his cheek and his shoulder, Eugene pulled a few loose coins from his pants pocket and slipped them into the lot on the machine. It was getting late here but over on the West coast it was just around dinner time and hopefully he could catch him at home. He easily recalled the number and after only two rings, the line clicked.

“Hello?” the familiar, soft voice came through the phone line. 

“Jay, it’s Eugene,” he said, as a faint smile naturally appeared on his face.

“Gene, hey!” Jay responded, voice sounding more excited now that he knew it wasn’t some prank call or a wrong number. “What’s going on?”

What was going on? Eugene couldn’t help but wonder as he glanced around at the brightly lit up truck stop, everything slightly out of focus due to the combination of wear and dirt on the phone booth glass. 

He glanced at the gas station parking lot and still saw Snafu’s rusting blue pickup with the giant chrome Airstream attached. He didn’t seriously think Snafu would leave him in the middle of nowhere but Eugene couldn’t help the small bout of anxiety he got when he went too long without seeing Snafu or his- their -temporary home. All of a sudden he felt like he might as well have been five instead of twenty-five and he just lost sight of his mother at the market in town.  

“So, funny story…” Eugene started slowly, still processing how he would explain the situation he had willingly walked himself into.

“An actually funny story or funny like you need bail money- I assume not for you though, because this call isn’t coming from a police station,” Jay asked easily, tone even like he really wouldn’t have minded either scenario.

“Funny like Snafu showed up at my door Wednesday night,” Eugene stated, deciding to simply bite the bullet. “And I am calling you from a payphone outside Dayton, Ohio because he asked me to go on a road trip to the Grand Canyon and for some crazy reason I said yes. And I figured someone besides Bill and Faye should know so, yeah. That’s what’s going on with me right now.” 

For a long moment all Eugene could hear was the slight crackle of Jay’s breath as he slowly processed the news. While he waited, Eugene glanced over his shoulder again; still no sign of Snafu but the truck was still there. 

“That is a pretty funny situation you’ve got yourself in,” Jay decided after a long moment. “Now, I know you said you agreed to go with him but did you? Is this a willing trip or are you actually kidnapped and you’re calling for help. Cough twice if you’re in danger.”

“Jay,” Eugene sighed exasperatedly. “I’m really okay. I promise.”

“You sure?” his friend asked, the dry, sarcastic tone from before gone now and in its place was something more genuine, more concerned. 

Eugene frowned as he fidgeted with the phone cord for a moment. He had wanted to call Jay for several reasons. Firstly, he and Jay regularly communicated, via letters and occasional phone calls, if they wanted to swing the long-distance fee for something that couldn’t be held up by the U.S. postal service, and Eugene didn’t want to be thought of as rude if a letter went unanswered for longer than usual. He also wanted to let Jay know that Snafu was not only alive but seemingly okay, as he was one of approximately four people who would like to know that information. Lastly, however, Eugene wanted to call Jay because he was the only person alive who knew what the fuck had actually gone on between the two of them while in Vietnam. Perhaps Eugene should have called him back when he was weighing the pros and cons of traveling across the country with the man and none of his friends seemed to understand why he was so hesitant to go along with the man who, to the rest of the world, was just one of his closest war buddies, but that ship had long since sailed. At the very least he could let someone know his situation in case things blew up later and he needed an ally to help pick up his pieces. 

“I’m sure,” Eugene said definitively. “I promise.”

As Eugene picked his head up, he watched as Snafu exited the gas station with a mildly irritated expression on his face and a paper bag in hand. He watched for a long moment as Snafu’s eyes scanned the parking lot before they finally landed on him in the booth. Ignoring how his stomach lurched in a not-totally-uncomfortable way as Snafu put him in his sights, Eugene simply raised his hand to let the man know he saw him before Eugene turned his back to him so he could finish his phone call.

“If you’re sure, Eugene,” Jay decided quietly. “You say you’re gonna see the Canyon?”

“Yeah, finally,” Eugene huffed with a small, sad smile.

“Well, make sure you take some good pictures to send to me,” Jay responded, the slightly stilted tone in his voice let Eugene know Jay remembered what the Grand Canyon really meant to him.

“I will. Faye let me borrow her camera.” 

Faye’s beloved Kodak was currently nestled away in a storage compartment in Snafu’s Airstream. Eugene didn’t want to risk damaging or even losing such a beloved possession on the trip but Faye would not hear of it. She not only wanted pictures of the Grand Canyon but also told Eugene to take as many pictures as he could to remember the trip. 

“Hey, so, I gotta run, Snafu’s looking at me all pissed from across the parking lot and I think he’s beginning to scare off the patrons of the gas station,” Eugene said as he looked over his shoulder and watched for a moment as Snafu lit himself a new cigarette before he began to shuffle back to his truck. 

“Thanks for calling and letting me know,” Jay said. “Feel free to call again when you can or if Snafu wants, you can give him my information. It’d be nice to hear from him.”

“Be careful, he might show up at your door next and ask to go on a trip to Canada.”

“Can’t say I’ve been up north before so I might go if he asked,” Jay said easily. “But I’ll let you go.”

“Bye, Jay.”

“Bye, Gene.”

Hanging the phone back on its cradle, Eugene pushed out of the slightly claustrophobic booth and quickly crossed the parking lot until he reached where Snafu was casually leaning against the side of his truck, his cigarette half smoked as it hung out of the corner of his mouth. Once Snafu’s pale eyes landed on him, he pushed off the side of the truck and climbed back into the cab of his truck.

“Who’d you call?” he grunted as Eugene climbed into the passengers side of the cab.

“Jay,” Eugene answered, deciding to go for the truth.

“De L’Eau?” Snafu asked, a hint of surprise in his voice as he started up the truck and slowly pulled out of the parking lot, the large airstream towed behind them making it a bigger production than usual..

“You know any other Jays?”

“Damn, there anybody from over there who you haven’t kept in touch with?” 

“Yeah, you,” Eugene responded shortly as he continued to stare straight ahead through the windshield. 

Instead responding, Snafu simply flipped on the car radio and let the twangy tones of Creedence Clearwater Revival fill up the space of the cab as they drove down the dark, semi-deserted road in search of somewhere out of the way to park the Airstream for the night.

[phloxmagpie]

7, 37, and 38 for the writing game please! hope you're having a lovely day!

7. Share a snippet from one of your favorite pieces of prose you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

37. Talk about your current wips.

well, delinquents is a lot of fun rn because originally i envisioned rio and beth at the homecoming after-party as really snarky and sniping at each other—arguing for most of the night until the tension breaks when beth's upset and finds him after a fight with dean and he slides into something softer and easier with her now that they're isolated and away from everyone else. however, chapter 9 ended with rio sliding into a different mood than i expected after discovering the truth about beth via elena, which means that he's going into the party in a much different mood. he's not itching for a fight or aiming to rile beth up. he's actually very much accepted his feelings, and while he still doesn't know for sure what he wants to do with them, it means that he's going to be much softer much earlier and beth isn't going to know what to do with that.

i'm also still working on i'll fall if you do and there's this tiny bit at the end that i'm so, so excited for people to discover. literally can't wait.

aaaaaaand i've been messing around with plotting collect/capture, actually, and think i have an okay thread to start from to actually do some real planning eventually? hopefully? we'll see!

and because i'm me and can't ever commit to anything, yesterday i started writing a smutty AU where beth meets rio on an app to hook up with strangers as a form of revenge against dean when he cheats.

38. Talk about a review that made your day.

i got this incredibly nice review a few months ago on delinquents far after i'd posted the last chapter where someone was voraciously diving into it after starting the show post-cancellation, and it was so wonderful:

THIS FIC IS PERFECT, I CANNOT WAIT TO SEE WHERE IT GOES, I'VE BEEN REREADING SNAPSHOTS AND MAKING MY WAY THROUGH EVERY CHAPTER OF DELINQUENTS BUT GOING THROUGH THE LAST FEW MORE SLOWLY SO AS TO SAVOR THEM TO THE BEST OF MY ABILITY AND… IT'S PERFECT. the worldbuilding (good lord, no other author has ever made me actually care about OCs as much as I care about Mar and Elena and Mr. Stewart and Ms. Patel and Vanessa and ???? MY GOD), the characterization, the meticulous thought/details you've put into absolutely everything -- Jesus Christ, I've been going through the delinquents tag on your Tumblr and salivating knowing that this story is so thoughtfully planned out and it's a journey I'll get to go on as a reader I'm--

I also recently just got into good girls and am so very sad about the cancellation, so part of why im commenting is also to say that -- there will ALWAYS be new people getting into shows that have been cancelled, and once all the episodes are done and watched (or rewatched ;) fic is really the best way for these wonderful characters to live on and I'm just-- so GRATEFUL the brio fandom has this, and has this story, and I'm... floored, tbh. absolutely fucking floored. more coherent comments to come very soon but just wanted to leave this here as I'm still actively fangirling, AHHHH

i'm always extremely tickled when someone loves my OCs, when they mention trying to savor the story, but also just falling deeply into it and going through the whole thing. it made me v giddy and i so appreciate it. it definitely jump started my motivation to return to the 'verse because it came at a time when i hadn't been able to carve out some writing time for a while.

40 questions for fic writers