#i wanted to be able to say “yeah i wrote something that was 100k words”

[velveteenoutlaw]

[cirrus-grey]

20 questions for fic writers

Tagged by @magnetarmadda; thank you!

1. How many works do you have on Ao3?

252, of which a full 227 are TMA

2. What’s your total Ao3 word count?

905,246

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Recently? TMA/TMagP, Discworld, and Good Omens. I'll jump into anything that gives me plot bunnies though, and there's been quite a few different ones over the years!

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Yesterday is Here

Déjà Vu

Misfiled and Misinformed

Humanity

Against All Probability

5. Do you respond to comments?

Always! I try to clear my inbox weekly and/or before I post a new fic, though I'm falling a bit behind right now with JonMartinWeek.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Hmm, probably Wedding Blues - it's a bad-ending Lonely!Martin fic

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

So, I write a lot of happy endings and I'm not sure how to rank them. Probably either Yesterday is Here again, or the Castaways series.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I think I've only ever gotten one hate comment? So no, not really.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I... try? I'm not very good at it and it takes absolute ages. It's been described as "very polite" smut, though I'm attempting to get a little raunchier with it as I get more practice.

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Yeah, I've written a couple! The craziest is probably the first one I did, a Good Omens/Skulduggery Pleasant crossover that I'm still quite fond of.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of!

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yep, Unsent and Courage in the Dark have both been translated into Russian!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Nope.

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

I don't know if I can give just one, honestly. For different reasons, both JonMartin (TMA) and Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens, primarily book not show).

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

This is a throwback but I still have notes for an epic, multi-part, 100k Gracious/Donegan origin story fic from back in my Skulduggery Pleasant days. I wasn't a good enough writer back then to finish something that ambitious and I doubt I'll ever get invested enough in the fandom again to go back to it... but it still lives on in my daydreams.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Hmm... I'm good at conveying character emotions in a scene, and with pacing a story to make sure each new development or twist lands the way I want it to. I like to think I've got a knack for making dialogue sound in-character as well, even if I've put the characters in a situation that their canon selves would never be in.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Action scenes. Balancing conversations between more than two people without having some of them drop off or dominate the scene. Keeping track of large casts of characters in general - I've written so many 2-person romances, I just don't have practice with larger groups.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I love it when other people do, but it's not something I've attempted myself. I'm only fluent in English and I'd worry that I'd written something completely inaccurate if I had to rely on google translate or similar.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Good Omens! (Book)

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

Oh, do not ask me that, I beg of you. There are about a hundred fics I've written that could all qualify, depending on the day and what mood I'm in.

...I'll say Vous, et nul autre, for now, because I'm really proud of how that one turned out and the fact that I finished it at all - it's one of those that I had the idea for years before I was good enough to write it, and I really like being able to look at it now and see how far I've come.

Tagging... @my-lonely-angel, @fridayyy-13th, @grahamfolgersdeliciousnotebooks - only if y'all want to!

[12romy]

Thanks @sebchal for tagging me!

1. How many works do you have on AO3?

Oof. 57, damn that's a lot, what am I doing with my life?? 53 of them in F1 (I know it says 52 but one of them is on anon lmao)

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

GUYS I JUST COUNTED AND APPARENTLY I'VE PUBLISHED AROUND 477K FOR THE F1 FANDOM??!!??! SEND HELP (there's another 100k in my wips rn)

3. What fandoms do you write for?

F1rpf, although I have a fic for The Sandman and one for Our Flag Means Death (let's forget about my works for spn lol)

4. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

So the first one is Odd ducks, the fic I wrote for The Sandman, which is pretty normal since the fandom is bigger. After that, only F1, with Let's try something else (sewis fake dating feat Seb and gay panic), A Change of Habits (my lonnnnnnng chewis fic following the 2022 season), Your Crush is Showing (Brocedes, the first long fic I completed. Lots of smut.) and finally, Remember to forget (me), brocedes lewis!amnesia fic. I am very proud of the last one, mostly because it's super angsty and I torture Nico so much in it lmao

5. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I do, actually, but usually I procrastinate on it, and I took ages. It's just, like, I feel it important to thank everyone for the comments, but it can feel a little repetitive and so I just tend to... Push it back to the next day, again and again. When it's on a multi-chapter fic, I reply before publishing the new chapter usually, but if it's a one-shot or the last chapter... Well. You'll get an answer but god knows when ahah

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Oof, that's between Losing it all, a really dark fic about Nico, and Too Late, a bad ending 3344 fic based on Monza 2021 :)

(be careful about the tags if you go and read them btw)

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Damn, that's a difficult question, I love writting sappy endings... But actually I think it's the ending of Welcome in the family!

It's a cute fic about Kimi/Tonio/Minttu, and the ending is definitely what I consider one of the happiest, mostly because of a little time-jump that allows to see the future ^^

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I did once, actually, on the 3344 fic I mentionned earlier. I think the person was just a max fan and didn't appreciate the way I make him suffer... I had put the write tags and all, so idk why they clicked on it. Anyway, it was scary and upsetting and I'm glad it only happened once ^^"

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Hell yeah. Go have a look, honestly, there's no way I can summarise it. I write way too much of it, I think (and most of it hasn't been published yet I think)

10. Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written?

Nope, but I should, it could be fun! Actually, I'd like to write a Lewis/Lil Nas X one day, so who knows. That's not at the top of my list, though.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I... Don't know, actually? How do you even check that? I hope not ahah ^^"

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes! Someone offered to translate one of my fic in Chinese!

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

I DID, The Prince and the Knight, with my wonderful @feuerspirit !!!!!! And I don't want to spoil, but me and @metheevilgenius miiiiight publish a little os at some point ;)

14. What’s your all time favourite ship?

Oh, such a hard question... I'll go with brocedes, but it's really mean to make me chose only one. They're just.... *siiiigh*

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

Definitely this BDSM seb/charles/mick and lewis/pierre I have started. I didn't publish it and it's like 20k long but I'm completely stuck and haven't worked on it in a long time. Not totally happy with it either ^^"

16. What are your writing strengths?

Uh, good question? I don't know, I get compliments about the characterisation... But other than that, I like to think I have a pretty good sense of humour and I'm able to make people laugh (or like, I hope. I make myself laugh, which is a good begining)

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

The fucking dialogues.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I like to use petnames in other languages cause petnames always feel more personnal when you use it in your own language. So with the F1 drivers, it's nice cause not all of them are english! I tend to put some German or some French sometimes in my fics for full sentences, but I try not to do it too much. If you don't understand the language, it can be very frustrating.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Time to dig up my old ff.net account lmao

Nah, actually, I remember very well of my first fic. I was 15, it was two pages long, I was feeling bad about writing a fic in the first place although it didn't involve any romance. I deleted it a few hours after posting it, ahah. It was for the fandom of a french youtube show called Aventures. It's like, people playing a dnd style game, it's pretty cool and I was really into it for a long time.

20. Favourite fic you’ve written?

The fic I love the most of is definitely Up or Down. It's one of my favourite fic I've wrote. It's one of my early work, so it's a little clumsy and far from perfect, but I have good memories of myself writing it. I was in vacation in Rome at the time, alone, and I spent my time wandering in the city and thinking about my fic, it was amazing. And well, the content of the fic is also nice I guess XDDD

-

noooo idea who did this thing, and who didn't, so ignore if you've already done it or don't want to! I tag @feuerspirit @n-ico-ando @sunshinesebby @sionisjaune

[glorious-spoon]

Fic author interview! I was tagged by @what-alchemy - thank you! No-pressure tagging @phdmama, @incognitajones, @alessandriana, @lynne-monstr, and anyone else who wants to play.

How many works do you have on AO3?

349 publically, maybe a dozen more in anon collections, and two or three that I've orphaned for various reasons.

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

1,349,113, ye gods.

3. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Calamity's Child (Stranger Things) - 7249 kudos

Body of Memory (Shadowhunters) - 5029 kudos

Star of the Masquerade (Stranger Things) - 4923 kudos

lost souls and reverie (The Witcher - TV) - 3118 kudos

So Newly Charming (Stranger Things) - 2274 kudos

4. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I used to, but I've been really bad about it in the past year or so. I do read and cherish every comment I get, though.

5. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Hard to say! There are a couple of Supernatural ficlets from ~13 years ago with fairly fucked up endings. Of my somewhat recent fic, probably either Empty or Bonny Mad Boys (both for Shadowhunters), with a special mention for my zombie apocalypse Buddie fic, where the dead men lost their bones, although that does at least allow for the possibility of a happy(ish) ending.

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

Honestly, the vast majority of my fic has happy endings, even when I put them through the wringer first.

7. Do you write crossovers?

I've written a few, mostly for various fic challenges. It's not something I do all that often though.

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Oh, yeah. Death threats, even! Shadowhunters fandom was weirdly unhinged about this.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Um, yes. XD

I used to write smut very rarely, and feel extremely awkward about it, and then I decided to write 100k words worth of fills for the Clowntown kinkmeme, and that pretty much cured me of that.

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not as far as I know?

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes, several, into a handful of different languages. Always very exciting! I link back if I know about them.

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Not one that ever actually got posted.

13. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

I have been in fandom wayyyy too long to answer this, lol.

14. What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

I have a really angsty Reddie cheating fic that I wrote like 20k words of and then abandoned. I sometimes think about returning to it, but honestly I probably won't.

15. What are your writing strengths?

I think I write pretty good dialogue - it's definitely one of the things I enjoy the most. Also action and smut, which IMO are pretty similar from a logistical standpoint.

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

I am so bad at anything resembling plotting. SO bad. And frankly I always feel like my fluff is stilted and saccharine; I do much better with angst, generally speaking.

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I've done it before, but I probably wouldn't now, not the least because I'm really not fluent enough in any other language to be worth it.

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

That I actually posted? LOTR RPF. Thankfully, that's been lost to the defunct forums of 2002. I've been writing fic just for my own entertainment pretty much as long as I've been able to read, though.

19. What’s a fandom/ship you haven’t written for yet but want to?

Good Omens! I've read a fair amount of fic, but I didn't really get immersed in the fandom until after season 2. I have a couple of ideas that I'm playing around with, but I don't completely feel like I've got the character voices down yet.

20. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written

This changes OFTEN. I think right now, So Newly Charming is the fic I've written most recently that actually came out exactly how I wanted it to. I can reread it without cringing, which is a rarity for me.

[virvio]

I have some questions.

1. Does Rayne have a elemental power? What element do they have? And If they don't have any elemental power do they have any other non-elemental power?

2. If Rayne does have a elemental power how was it discovered/made?

3. Did the Fsm have it/Lloyd has it?

4. Did Rayne train Lloyd with the Ninja?

5. How powerful is Rayne in terms of the other Ninja? (-Lloyd)

6. How powerful is Rayne in terms of Garmadon and Wu?

7. How powerful is Rayne in terms of the Fsm and Lloyd?

8. What is relationship with the Ninja?

9. When did the Ninja meet Rayne?

10. What is Rayne's relationships with the Ninja?

Another anon ask! Tysm, I genuinely smile so much while answering these! I love knowing people are invested with my OC and fanfic.

1. Yes, Rayne does have a power! She is referrred throughout the story as the 'Master of Magic' and 'Master of Sorcery'. Without saying too much, this power may or may not be elemental.

2. She discovered her powers when she was around the ages of 6-8, I believe. What I wrote down was the shattered a lightbulb at some point, and then it's all downhill from there!

3. I think I mentioned how Lloyd has a hard time training with and using Rayne’s power, and that does get explained later on! Just… over 100k words later. I have nothing to say for myself. As for the FSM... that's spoiler territory, my friend.

4. Yes, she did! I always wanted her to be able to spend time with him despite the two siblings being separated for most of their childhood.

5. Oof. What I will say she is very powerful. I would say (as a tier-list thing) at least tied with Lloyd, if not more powerful. And yes, you get to see why.

6. Since we never really see Wu’s elemental power, I don’t really have anything to compare to there, but Garmadon… Rayne is her fathers daughter. Remember the daggers Garmadon can make with his power? Yeah, she figures out how to do that. (Her exact powers are a bit of a spoiler, so if anyone wants a more in depth explanation in terms of the FSM, please tell me! It will spoil a pretty big chunk of the story though.)

7. Her powers are absolutely insane in themselves, but I think what makes Rayne so powerful is her ability to fight dirty, keep going and her drive. I would say (?) she is more powerful than Lloyd, but the FSM? He created the realm and many others. I’d say she would hold her own in a fight.

8. Although she did originally try to attack the Ninja, they bonded pretty quick. Zane’s immediate internal reaction was “Oh a funky lost child. Adopted.” Jay was terrified, Kai was sceptical but kinda adopted her as his little sister, and Cole was like yippee! They’re all a big dysfunctional found family and I love that for them.

9. I think the episode-wise time was the at the beginning of Can of Worms. (1.05) She had tracked them down after the Lloyd’s Treehouse incident. She thought they were holding him hostage or something.

10. She absolutely loves them. She would 100% do anything for them, and that is proven many times throughout the story. As I've said, one big found family <3 They've been through the highs and lows together, and they all love each other immensely.

I hope I answered these well! I hope you know how much I appreciate the ask and the fact someone is taking an interest in my ideas <3 I'll get to answering the other one soon.

[hismercytomyjustice]

Jesus Christ writing dance scenes is fucking HARD. I’m pretty happy with how they’re turning out but SWEET WOUNDED JESUS I am not a dancer and I know fuck all about it.

…god the amount of fucking research I have yet again done for a crack fic…

I say this like I should even be remotely surprised at this point. That train left the fucking station so fast it’s like it was never even in it.

Fucking hours and hours and hours of research.

And the worst part? I HAVE LOVED EVERY SINGLE SECOND OF IT.

One of the things I love most about researching (aside from having an excuse to seek out and hoard absolutely fucking pointless information) is that it always gives me so many fucking ideas that I then get to try to weave in.

I will be SO SAD when the research for this fic comes to an end. It has been SUCH A JOY.

That is until I fucking start on the even crack-ier part three.

Because I’ve already decided I’m writing more shit that is WILDLY self-indulgent and ~nobody~ can fucking stop me!!!! Write the stupid crack you wanna see in the world amirite?

Fuck I have the absolute STUPIDEST idea for a plot and scene for part three and that alone is driving me to keep going. I just need to finish part two so I can be FREE. I am SO CLOSE to being finished. I really hope I finally finish it tomorrow.

Honestly idk what people are gonna think of it. It’s my first attempt at writing from Alastor’s POV and I’m also doing some shit I’ve never done before that idk how people will respond to it. BUT NOTHING VENTURED NOTHING GAINED. And I’m so proud of it and tbh that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?

…I still also gotta finish writing my BG3 fic to…BUT I have a few weeks of buffer on that so…. I’m feeling the urge to throw some more words down on it too, so hopefully I’ll be able to wrap it up soon. It is so fucking close to being done. Maybe another 15k-20k words. I can knock that out pretty quick if I get in the zone. And I already have it planned out. Jesus Christ is it gonna wind up being 100k??? SOMEONE SAVE ME FROM MYSELF.

Fucking hell it has hit 90 subs tho and that is such a wild fucking number and it just blows me the fuck away. Like 90 people like this fic enough to want updates as it comes out?! FUCKING FOR REAL?! There are N I N E T Y people out there who were like “ooh yeah I wanna keep reading this” and it’s something I wrote (?!) and if I think about it too much I get a little panicky but I am also so fucking grateful and humbled that my silly story has pulled in so many people and I feel so fucking #blessed about it all.

(ಥ﹏ಥ) I keep half expecting to check my stats and see everyone has come to their senses and unsubscribed, but it hasn’t happened yet and the number keeps going up and omg omg omg!!! It is UNREAL and SO FUCKING AMAZING!

God I still cannot believe how much fucking fun I’m having writing again after becoming pretty much convinced I might never be able to feel that way again. I was so scared that spark in me had finally fucking died or something and I was so depressed about it. BUT IT DIDN’T! It feels like a fucking dream. I love it so much. I have wanted to feel this way again about writing for so fucking long and it’s finally back and I’m terrified I’ll lose the excitement again but I’m really hoping I can stave off my OCD and keep going. I really don’t want to lose it again. I just want to keep writing and enjoying it whether it’s fanfic or original stuff or otherwise.

GOD I FUCKING MISSED WRITING SO FUCKING MUCH.

I know I am being WILDLY fucking obnoxious and annoying about it and my OCD keeps telling me to SHUT THE FUCK UP about it because I am probably driving people nuts, making everyone on the face of the planet hate me, etc etc etc. But that’s why I gush so much on here about it because I figure no one has to fucking read this shit unless they for some unknown reason actually would want to and people can mute and unfollow and block me if they are at their wits end but I hope putting most of my unhinged ramblings under cuts makes it so I’m only like 50% ridiculously obnoxious instead of 100% but who fucking knows. I would not blame a soul for getting sick of seeing my username popping up on their dash when I am in a hardcore rambling or reblogging mood.

I am just so fucking incandescently happy about it all and I am trying SO HARD not to drive the people in my life insane by talking about how excited I am to be writing again nonstop so I’m just talking to myself nonstop on here instead and just letting myself fucking enjoy the process and the excitement I have around it all. And god I KNOW I AM BEING SO FUCKING OBNOXIOUS despite everything but my therapist has also been encouraging me to just feel my feelings without judgment so… FEELINGS. They are being felt! Hopefully only 50% obnoxiously for any innocent bystanders.

Idk why it is so much easier to journal regularly on tumblr than on Penzu or elsewhere but it is and it’s working for me and if it makes everyone on the face of the planet block my annoying ass, so be it. I already spend too much of my fucking life second guessing every single thing I say or do and I’m gonna take my cringe wins where I fucking can. And I feel less self-conscious and annoying yelling into the void of tumblr, SO HERE WE ARE.

Fffffuck you OCD! (ง •̀_•́)ง I will also take my little mental illness wins where I fucking can, goddammit!!! And idk why venting about it on tumblr helps so much but it fucking does so. VENT I SHALL.

[mserm]

It's been bothering me that I have so many WIPs that I'll never finish, so I thought I'll just post them to tumblr so at least they exist in the world. These are rough, like just a quick read through rough.

This one's labeled 'eg fixit with holograms', in my google drive if that helps. 17k. It's Steve/Tony, obvs. Post Endgame, with divorce, MCD (they come back and it's comic book-y), and a dead kid (that you don't know). It was going to be a happy ending. I gave up when I realized it was going to be 100k and I didn't have it in me.

I also wrote it in 2020 so if canon's weird, then it's weird.

September 2nd, 2028

A flash of light built from a darkness so deep, he was sure it was impossible. The word impossible stuck in his mind as it enveloped him, took hold of him like it wasn’t light at all, but tendrils of heat and warmth and being he couldn’t possibly understand. 

But he wanted to. He needed to. 

The light became colors, and the colors became space, and the warmth became the same as the air on his naked body. Something was hard against his back and something was pushing him down. Gravity, he thought, that’s a thing. He patted the floor he was laying on and felt lacquered wood. He smelled dust. He heard voices.

Tony opened his eyes. 

Bruce, green, big, wonderful Bruce was grinning at him.

“It appears to have worked,” a voice said. No, not a voice. The magician. Doctor Strange. Tony’s thoughts were coalescing in disconcerting ways. He wanted to stand up and look around and use his senses until they didn’t feel so foreign to him. Where had he been before this?

A battlefield, Thanos, Pepper’s beautiful face…

“What happened?” he asked, and his voice sounded like he remembered it, if he could remember it. It sounded unchanged; he did not feel unchanged. “Did we win?”

“Yeah,” Bruce said and he was concealing none of the awe in his voice. “We won. Because of you.”

“You died,” Strange interjected as he knelt beside where Tony lay and began to poke and prod at his body, checking for something. “That was five years ago.”

“Huh?” Tony looked to Strange only to notice he had moved on to examining Tony’s right arm and that Tony felt none of it. 

Bruce repeated, “You died,” and he joined Strange at examining Tony. 

Fire. An army beyond measure. Rhodey. Steve. Thor. The gauntlet. Pain searing through his body. Pain worse than anything.

“I did what now?” Tony asked, but at this point it was only to buy himself a couple more seconds to let it sink in. It wasn’t right to say the memories were coming back to him--they were always there--just that now they began to make sense. 

Strange gave up checking him for injuries. “Five years ago, you defeated Thanos and it killed you.”

Tony’s head swiveled between Strange and Bruce. “Five years ago?” He tried to stand up by pushing himself off the ground, but moving his right arm didn’t end up working how he wanted it to. 

Actually, it didn’t work at all.

His heartbeat sped up, and for the first time since he woke up, he thought something was really wrong. “Can someone please explain what the hell is going on?”

Bruce wrapped his arm across Tony’s back and helped him stand up and walk to Strange’s moth-eaten velvet couch. “You used the Infinity Stones to defeat Thanos and his army, but the power was too much for your body.”

The smell of ash. Peter sobbing. 

The glow of victory underneath it all. 

“Yes, that part I remember.”

“Well…” Strange closed his eyes and trailed off, clearly exhausted-in-advance for whatever he was going to have to explain. “You died using the stones, and the reason you did it saved people. So through a combination of magical energies that I have no desire to elaborate on, I was able to bring you back.”

“I helped,” Bruce added.

“The two of you are linked through your use of the gauntlet. And since Bruce’s undid five years of damage, we are stuck on a five-year cycle to manipulate the connection.” Strange paced the room, back and forth, nervous energy dripping from him. “It’s risky magic, but I knew it was possible.” It didn’t sound like he had believed it would work at all, but Tony knew he wouldn’t ever say it. 

Tony let it settle in. The whole being alive thing wasn’t very weird, the last thing he remembered was being alive. But five years? “So it’s--”

“2028,” Bruce finished for him. 

“That means…”

Bruce patted him on the shoulder. “Morgan is 9 years old.”

That didn’t make much sense, but then again, he had just woken up naked on Strange’s dusty floor. There were so many questions. “Who knows about this?”

“Just us,” Strange answered. “And Wong, who couldn’t be here but sends his well wishes.” Tony nodded in thanks. “Given the delicacy of the plan, it was agreed that secrecy was best.”

Then no one knows, Tony thought. Pepper and Morgan and Rhodey and Steve, none of them knew. He needed to remedy that immediately. He stood up, still very uneven on his feet. “And my arm?” he asked when it continued to hang uselessly at his side.

Bruce frowned and guestered to his own arm. Scars covered his hand and reached up above the collar of his shirt. “The gauntlet probably damaged it permanently. We tried to bring you back as well as we can…”

“It’s cool,” Tony quickly said. Maybe later it would bother him more. “That’s not my problem right now. My problem now is that I need some clothes because I have places to go, people to see, et cetera, et cetera.”

Strange was grinning and before, Tony would have taken the time to point out the wild personality inconsistency. Today, he didn’t care.

“***************

“Should we tell him?” Bruce muttered under his breath to Strange. He was driving one of the compound’s cars.

Strange turned around and affixed Tony with one of those deeply inquiring stares that Tony just hated and nodded in agreement. 

“Tell me what?” Tony asked when neither of them volunteered to tell him what exactly had them in a tizzy. 

“So, you know how we used to speculate what’d it be like to return if you’d been snapped away?” Bruce began and there was something too soft in his voice.

Tony looked from Strange to Bruce, not really sure where any of this was going. “Yeah?” He did remember--they had speculated about food shortages and rebuilding governments--so he looked out the car window and tried to see signs of that sort of stress in the businesses as they drove by. Everything looked fine, though. Cars were newer and Tony saw more solar panels than he could remember, but it was still very much the same.

Bruce was clearly waiting for Strange to step in, but when Strange didn’t, he continued, “A lot of people came back to find that their husbands and wives and boyfriends and girlfriends and all that were now with new people. It was really common, understandably. People ‘Moved On’.” He didn’t use actual finger quotes, but Tony heard them anyway. “It was crazy. Diviorce lawyers made a killing. It’s inspired the plot of so...many...tv shows and a remarkable amount of romantic comedies.”  

Strange remained pointedly silent.

“Oh,” Tony said, the sound punched right out of his gut. He’d been alive for no more than two hours--just enough time to take an awkward one handed shower and drink an entire glass of water before getting into the car with Strange and Bruce. There hadn’t really been time to think about anything besides the absurdity of coming back to life and the bubbling joy of getting another chance to see those he loved. He hadn’t thought about the logistics about any of it, though. 

Five years was a very long time to be dead.

“Yeah, oh,” Strange added, finally finding it’s important enough to grace them with his thoughts. 

Tony’s last memory was Pepper holding back tears. She loved him, she couldn’t, he thought, quickly, before all the other thoughts could coalesce into something else. “Why?” he asked, even though he wasn’t sure what he was asking about. He just needed to do something with his mouth.

Strange and Bruce gratefully understood that and stayed silent until they drove in front of a very familiar skyscraper. 

Tony looked all the way up to the penthouse and the giant Stark Industries logo just outside it. “Is this where…” he began, but he knew the answer. Bruce had said they were on their way to see Pepper. This was where his little girl lived.

Bruce drove them into the tower’s garage. “They’re expecting me,” he said and flashed Tony a giant, conspiratorial smile. The thrill jolted down Tony’s spine. The idea that he was going to surprise them was too juicy to be overshadowed by the fear of what he was going to encounter. 

Walking through the underground garage and past the car collection he had left in Happy’s care was..surreal. The Tower had been sold before Thanos and last Tony had heard, was without any tenants. “SI returned?” Tony asked as Bruce typed in a code in a keypad and patiently waited while a holographic scan moved across his eye. 

“Yup,” Strange replied.

Bruce was far more helpful. “The tower already had everything the company needed to work, so Pepper bought it back.”

A strong sense of deja vu came over Tony as he stepped inside the same elevator he had used thousands of times before. 

“Hey, FRIDAY, take me home,” he said on autopilot, just like he always had.

“Sure thing, boss,” she responded and Tony was pretty sure there was glee in her artificial voice. 

He bounced on the balls of his feet the entire four minutes it took for the elevator to reach the penthouse. He couldn’t decide if it was weird that FRIDAY hadn’t sounded the alarm on his return; she always did know more than she let on. “So they know nothing?” he asked the two men next to him. Strange was impassive, and Bruce was grinning like the big, green, madman he was.

The elevator chimed just before it came to a halt and the doors opened right into the penthouse’s main living space.

Tony didn’t even look at the decor. His eyes were looking for faces, and his lungs seized when he saw them.

“Tony?” Pepper squeaked. 

Morgan was looking from his face to Pepper’s to Bruce’s. Tony tried to remind himself that the two of them had no context for what they were seeing; they couldn’t possibly be emotionally prepared for this.

“It’s me,” he said, when the amount of time that had passed began to feel uncomfortably long. 

Pepper released a sob and began to run to him, but it was Morgan who got there first and wrapped her arms tight around his middle. Pepper took his face in her hands, like she was studying it, all the while tears pooled in her eyes.

“I came back,” Tony muttered. Somehow, through some magic of his one working arm and the sheer need to be close to them, he managed to hug them both.

“How?” Pepper sobbed into his shoulder. 

Tony nodded his head towards Strange. “The wizard and Bruce did something.”

“You’re really here?” Morgan asked, craning her head up to look at him. 

He wasn’t sure what to say to that. He’d been gone longer than he had known her. At least she remembered who he was. “I really am.” He tried to reach up his right arm to pull her even closer, but it wouldn’t move. 

He managed to avoid showing his annoyance, but Pepper was perceptive and noticed it anyway. “What’s wrong with your arm?”

“I don’t know,” Tony answered, truthfully enough. “It’s not worth worrying about right now.”

Pepper didn’t agree. She gave him a real, long look. “Are you ok? How do you feel?”

“I’m fine, trust me. It’s just an arm. We’ll get it figured out.” He meant it--he wasn’t worried. The arm was so far back in his mind, he couldn’t really grasp it was a problem at all. “Actually, a glass of water would be nice.” He didn’t really need it, but he did need a second to collect his thoughts. Pepper stepped away with a quick nod and Morgans slowly led him to the couch.

Finally Tony could take the time to notice what had changed around him. Pepper’s eye for design showed through the angular furniture that contrasted with the rich and plush looking fabrics. It looked like the lake house and the Malibu mansion had a strange throwback love child. 

“This looks nice,” he said, inanely and without much purpose. Morgan nodded. She had a wide-eyed shocked look to her, and every ten seconds she’d look up at him. Tony tried to catch her gaze a few times, but she was skilled at looking away just when he thought he had her.

Pepper walked into the room and handed him the glass. “Are you hungry?” she asked. “I could order a pizza, if you wanted.” Tony shook his head. Hunger was a feeling he couldn’t process yet.

She sat down next to the two of them. Tony felt watched while he downed the water in three large gulps. “I don’t know what to say,” he told them, completely bewildered. Having them close to him was overwhelming. It was like having every emotion he had ever experienced thrown at him at the same time. He was so glad. 

And so scared.

Pepper wrapped her arms around him. “You don’t have to say anything.” Tony melted into her embrace. He wished it was going to be this easy. 

It felt like it was only last night that Tony had called her and told her he loved her. They had been finishing up the final touches to the Gauntlet and he had wanted her to know that even though he had been busy trying to save the world, he was still thinking of her. Unfortunately last night was five years ago and it was five years ago that Pepper had told him she loved him back. 

“Look, Tony,” Pepper said. She pushed herself away and moved her hands to his shoulder.” I need to tell you something…” Relief shouldn’t have been the feeling that flooded Tony, but knowing it was going to be her and not him that brought this up made him feel better. “I love you, I’ve always loved you, and I know this is--”

“Bruce told me. And don’t worry about it.” He placed the empty glass on the table so he could use his good arm to wipe a tear that was running down her cheek. It was true, he didn’t want her to worry about anything right now, even though having to think about Pepper with someone else made his eyes sting. “Is he good to you and to Morgan?”

“Yes,” she answered. 

Tony needed so much more than that one word answer. He wanted to ask why she could move on and how long had it been, but he couldn’t, not with Morgan right behind him. He knew he should have said something comforting, like it’s ok and I understand. He didn’t, because it wasn’t ok and he didn’t understand it at all. All he said was, “then we’ll talk about it later.” 

*********

They did talk, after Bruce and Strange had left and Morgan went off to sleep. Tony kinda hated himself when he found out it was Happy that had replaced him; he should have saw that coming. Pepper made it sound like she was just as surprised as Tony was, but she sounded content when she spoke about him, too. 

She told him about Morgan’s life, and her school, and the vacations they had took. And then she talked about how Stark Industries had adapted to life after the Blip (they called it the fucking Blip, of all things) and how she had stepped up to lead the newly formed company. Tony didn’t have much to say in response since Pepper had five years of stories to share and Tony had run out of anything new to tell her once he explained what Bruce and Strange actually did. 

Some things made complete sense--The Avengers had played a key roll in shaping the post-Blip recovery. Pepper glossed over the key details, but she shared, with a smile, that Rhodey had been elected President of the United States four years before.

Sometimes he heard things like that, and it felt like everything came together better than he could have imagined, like what he sacrificed on that battlefield really mattered.

Then he thought of Nat. Scratch that, what they sacrificed really mattered.

“Who’s on the team now?” he asked. He knew Rhodey was a no, but he wasn’t sure who else would have joined Steve on the new roster.

Pepper’s lip pressed into a thin line. “How much did they tell you?

“About what?” Tony asked.

“About the current team?” She reached out her hand to cover his. She was trying to comfort him, but he wasn’t sure why. 

“They didn’t say any--”

Morgan stepped into the kitchen. She was dressed in her pajamas, and she was dragging her feet and scrunching her eyes like she had just woke up. He was used to seeing her like this when she was younger, seeing it now emphasized in his mind just how much time he had lost.

“What’s wrong?” Pepper asked.

“Couldn’t sleep,” she mumbled. “Can I have some water?”

Tony stood up without having to be asked. He was able to find the glasses in the first cabinet he checked due to Pepper’s dependable organizing schemes, filled it up, and handed Morgan the glass of water.

Her eyes widened when she took it, perhaps finally awake enough to register that it was her once dead father who was doing it. She shuffled forward and hugged Tony before stepping away back towards her bedroom. On habit, Tony followed her until he was standing in the entryway.

“I don’t need to be tucked in anymore, Dad,” she grumbled. Tony shook his head. Five years was a long, long time. He stepped back and out of her room, but Morgan spoke before he was out of the doorway. “Can I show you something?”

With relief, Tony stepped back in. “Of course.” He sat down on the bed while she pulled out a stapled packet of papers. 

“So, we had to write a paper about someone important in American History for school. Ms. Cerda said I couldn’t write about you, mom, or Uncle Rhodey, so I wrote this instead.” She handed it to him. It was only a few pages long, and each sheet was half pictures and half typed. The title was was Steve Rogers: Not Just Captain America, and in the right hand corner was the obligatory black-and-white picture of Steve before the serum during boot camp. “But when I showed it to Mom, she said I couldn’t hand it in because ‘sometimes lying is the right choice’.” Morgan did a surprisingly good imitation of her mom’s exasperated scolding. Tony looked to Pepper, who must have followed him and was now standing in the doorway watching them. She looked like she wanted to say something. “She said you would have been proud, though,” Morgan added, softly. That was clearly the part she was thinking about.

He bumped her with his shoulder. “I am. I promise you, I am.” 

Morgan smiled and it was the best part of his day so far.

Tony held up the paper and made it very clear he was reading it. He wasn’t very sure why Morgan thought he’d be so moved by a history paper on Steve, but it was obviously important to her. The first page focused on all the things Tony learned as a kid himself and then Steve’s beginning in the 21st century. There was a photo from after the Battle of New York next to a list of many of the things he hadn’t been alive for. 

He flipped to the second page, awkwardly, with his one working hand. Here Morgan had written about SHIELD and Ultron. Her paragraph on the Accords was surprisingly sympathetic. Without any heat, Tony asked, “Did Steve help you with this?”

Her brow furrowed, creating an adorable look of confusion. “Uncle Sam and Uncle Bucky did.”

Tony shook his head and he internally reminded himself to chide Steve for being too modest to help his daughter on her school project. Maybe this was why Pepper didn’t want her to hand this in to her class.

On the last page was a picture of Steve leading his support group and another that must have been from after the battle with Thanos outside the compound. That’s when Tony’s attention perked up; this was the part he had missed while he was dead. He quickly read through what was left, trying to gather any information on the last five years.

He read so quickly that when he finished, he was pretty sure he read it wrong.

“What?” he asked Pepper while trying to keep his voice under control. 

“I was just about to tell you--”

Morgan looked between the two of them. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” Tony replied on instinct. He reread the last sentence again, just to make sure he understood what he was reading. 

Two weeks after the Battle of ______, Steve Rogers volunteered to return the stones back to their own timelines. He returned, five minutes later, an old man and died two months after that on ___ ____ _____.

He stared at Pepper. “Is this true? He died of old age?” he asked because he couldn’t wrap his mind around it. Steve Rogers, a man Tony was certain would remain eternally thirty-five, died because he was old?

Pepper nodded her head, but it was Morgan who spoke. “Uncle Rhodey told everyone that he died because he got hurt, but this is what really happened.”

“That makes sense,” Tony said. He meant the part about keeping the cause of death secret, and not the actual death itself. Morgan was watching him, looking for something. Tony remembered what it was like to want your parents to love you as much as you loved them. “Hey, sweetheart, can I keep this?” He held up the paper. “I’d really love to read it again. You did a great job”

She beamed at him. “Of course! I could always print out another one, too.” She began to rummage under her bed again, clearly looking for something else. “Actually, there’s some other things I’d like to show--”

Pepper cut her off. “You can show him tomorrow. Right now it’s time for you to sleep.”

Morgan looked to Tony like he had the power to overrule Pepper. He didn’t, though. “Your mom’s right. About both things. It’s time for sleep now, and tomorrow, I’ll be here and you can show me anything you want.”

She crawled back under her blankets. “Mom’s always right,” she grumbled and didn’t sound very pleased about it. 

“That she is, that she is.” Tony kissed her on the forehead even though he wasn’t sure if that violated the ‘too old to be tucked in’ rule.  If he did, Morgan decided to save her displeasure for a later date. He looked at her one more time before closing the door and following Pepper into the hallways. Her eyes on him were wide and watching. Tony really hoped she could get some sleep tonight.

Pepper walked back into the kitchen and whispered, “I’m sorry you had to find out that way.”

“The way I found out was fine.” He just wished it wasn’t something he needed to know.  “So, it that really the full story? Cap went back to return the stones and decided to stick around for a little bit, and then what…? Did he marry Peggy, have kids, solve world peace?”

“None of us really know.” She slumped into the bar stool next to the counter. “He never talked about it.”

“Did anyone ever ask?” Tony’s voice was rising. He took a couple of deep breaths and tried to remember that he needed to keep his cool if he didn’t want Morgan to know how upset he was. “And what exactly kills Captain America?”

“Being ____ years old. Bruce thinks the serum faded over time. His timing was good at least, he died at the compound surrounded by the Avengers.” She motioned for Tony to sit down across from her. “Also, you should know right now someone else is Captain Ameri--”

Tony raised his hand to stop her from finishing. There was too much to absorb right now. He was going to need some time before he could imagine someone fitting Steve’s shoes. “And who exactly thought it was a good idea to let the guy with time displacement issues go back in time alone?”

Pepper shook her head. “How would I know? It wasn’t exactly something I was consulted about.” Tony could tell she was tired.

Tony reached out to put a hand on her shoulder and tried to give her his best it’s fine smile. “I’m sorry. I’m just….processing, that’s all.”

“I know, I know. I guess there’s a lot to process, today.” She stood up and wrapped Tony in a hug. “I think I need to go to bed. You’re welcome to stay in any of the guest rooms.”

Tony nodded in her arms, only now really grasping he wouldn’t be sleeping beside her anymore. “Sleep well.”

“You, too,” she told him.  “I’m so happy you’re back.”

“I am, too.” He meant it.

And then she walked away towards the penthouse’s master bedroom leaving Tony looking down at the black-and-white picture of Steve.

February 15th, 2029

“Ha-ha!” Tony shouted and his voice boomed across the workshop, echoing against the cement walls, and all-in-all, sounding far more celebratory that it felt like he had any right to feel. Tony’s mouth clamped firmly shut in response. He had just invented _____, and right now, he was not impressed. It had originally started as a proof of concept, something to just mess around with when he was bored, and it had turned into the most satisfying discovery he had had this month. 

It turns out Tony was bored, a lot. 

Transitioning back to being alive was easy, as long as you only measured it from a physical perspective. Besides his arm, the rest of his body and mind were working as well as they did when he died. Maybe even better, if you took into account the stress he had been under as they prepared and executed the Time Heist. 

Transitioning back into society, five years later, well…that had been much harder than Tony had expected. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have a template to follow, either. A large chunk of society had experienced the exact same thing, and there were enough movies and books about it to keep Tony far busier than he was already. 

Everyone was so nice, too, so willing to accommodate his questions and confusions. Rhodey texted him everyday from a phone Tony was sure the Secret Service didn’t know about, but he was too busy--understandably--to see him more than a few times a month. Pepper, despite being happily remarried, had let him move in with her and Happy so he could be close to Morgan, and that it was kinda beautiful getting to find his new rhythm within their family. But when they laughed across the dinner table at an inside joke they couldn’t explain, Tony felt lost. 

And those were just his closest friends and family. Stark Industries’ new R&D department had reinvigorated with new blood following the Blip, as the company went from doing the crisis work of making sure there was enough energy to support everyone who had returned, to making sure the world they had returned to was healthier and cleaner. Of all the talented people who had made that happen, Riri Williams had led the pack, and now she was performing admirably as the organization’s Tony-replacement. Tony couldn’t even feel jealous, she was just that good.

The Avengers had moved on, too. The new lineup--Sam, Shang-Chi, Bucky, Kate, Jess, and Bruce--was good and they had saved the world a whopping three times while Tony had been dead. They were happy to have his expertise again, but Tony couldn’t bring himself to join them formally. Maybe he could have convinced himself in the couple of weeks after he returned when everything was so strange and foreign and the compound just wasn’t, but then he saw the footage of the ______, and realized he couldn’t let Morgan lose her father like she did before.

Tony stood up and walked around the workshop and tried not to look at the ________. Morgan was at school. He missed her so much. The moments he had with her were the closest thing he had to normalcy. Everything he missed didn’t seem to matter when he was with her the way it did when he wasn’t. When they were talking, he wasn’t thinking about all of the milestones he missed.

Being alive again was such a great gift and he felt he was wasting it, standing here. There was a word for this sort of ennui, Tony had reluctantly found in the post-Blip self help books--Blip Apathy. Somehow sharing the same experience with all the people he helped save didn’t do much to alleviate it.

A pleasant, melodic, hum filled the workshop. Tony looked at the ceiling in a silent assent to taking whoever call was coming in. 

“Tweety!” Tony boomed when Sam Wilson’s face came on the screen.

Sam rolled his eyes. “I’m not sure if I’m offended or not that you don’t call me Cap.”

Tony winced. He hadn’t adjusted to Sam’s new title. “I could ditch the bird-nicknames, if it’s a problem.”

“Naw, don’t worry about it,” Sam said with a shrug. “I like it. Takes me back. Just don’t do it in front of the troops.” Tony mimed a jaunty salute but made a mental note to switch to patriotic jokes when he dealt with Sam in the future. He didn’t like feeling so out of the loop. “I wanted to check in with you about what’s going on with the ________”

“Oh that,” Tony waved his hand in dismissal. “I finished that on Tuesday. I could stop by sometime tomorrow during the day to drop it off.”

Sam squinted his eyes and Tony could see him mentally visualizing his own calendar. “I’ll be back late tomorrow, I got a UN thing, but Bruce is normally around if you need to explain how everything works. If not, you can always just drop it off and leave some directions.”

“Bruce!” Tony exclaimed on reflex. “My favorite jolly green giant. That sounds like a plan, I’ll be there.” 

Sam nodded and then paused, leaving Tony the impulse to say something and fill-in the new silence.

He didn’t open his mouth fast enough.

Because Sam got there first. “I’ve been meaning to ask you--Tony, are you doing ok?” 

“I’m great,” Tony said before his mind had even processed the question. “I think I finally perfected the arm, too.” He raised the prosthesis that had replaced his charred arm. That nanotech he used to create it could replicate skin almost perfectly, but Tony preferred the red and gold of the Iron Man armor. “You know, way back when, Steve never asked how I was doing.”

“That wasn’t really Steve’s style. I don’t know if you heard, but we got a new Sheriff in town.” Sam pointed at himself. “And this sheriff checks in with their teammates every so often.”

Tony looked up at the ceiling, giving himself a minute or so to organize his thoughts. He was fine, really. He was just going through an adjustment period. It was nothing that half the universe’s population hadn't gone through. Which is exactly what he was going to say, except instead he said the opposite. “I miss him.”

“Huh?” 

“Steve.” Tony answered, not quite sure how to put the toothpaste back in the tube. It was probably the patriotic jokes that had his mind whirling in that direction. “Morgan will play a song that came out three years ago or Peter will reference a TV show from last season, and it’s all so new and weird and I keep thinking--Steve knew what this was like. He’d understand.”

Sam stayed quiet.

“And I know it doesn’t make sense because it’s not like you or Peter or everyone else doesn’t get it. But I just keep remembering when I first met him and he knew nothing, because that’s what it feels like.”

“That’s ok. It’s not like you returned with half the world. It’s a lonely experience…”

Lonely was a weird way to put it. Tony felt surrounded, practically crowded, with all the people in his life who were there for him. “Yeah, I guess.” Tony shrugged. “I’ll stop by the compound tomorrow. Maybe I’ll see you there.”

“I hope so.” Sam signed off, and his face disappeared from the screen. Tony felt uncomfortably relieved that their conversation was done. He liked Sam, he really did, and he was very glad Steve had been prescient enough to hand him the shield. That didn’t stop him from always anticipating Steve whenever he saw Sam. In their pre-Thanos relationship, Tony could count on one hand the number of times he saw Sam without Steve.

It wasn’t fair to Sam that he felt that way, and he knew that. He was just going to have to try harder to forget next time.

********************

“How’s the arm?” Bucky asked when Tony walked into the compound’s kitchen with Bruce. Him and other members of the new team were sitting around and having coffee.

“Fine. I’m playing around with a setting that will turn it into an extra large glowstick.” Tony leaned against the cabinet next to where he was pouring coffee. Bucky always asked him about the arm now. Tony supposed it was one of the easier things they had in common to talk about. “You know, for all those raves I’ve been going to.” It was both a joke and not a joke. Morgan really liked the silly things he could do with the Nanobots.

"Sounds really useful," Jess said, dry enough that Tony didn’t detect any sarcasm. He never knew with her.

"Says the woman who can make sparks with her fingers. " At least Bucky was standing up for him.

“Doesn’t your girlfriend glow?” Sam added.

Jess just shrugged. “Like I said, it’s useful.”

"Would you like some coffee?"  Kate asked. Tony was still getting used to seeing her around the compound. She was freakishly young. Younger than Peter was now and not much older than Wanda was when she joined. 

Sam walked in. "Yes, please stay a while." Without waiting for Tony's answer he grabbed a mug out of the cabinet and poured enough coffee that it dripped over the rim of the cup. Tony gingerly took a sip and even more gingerly sat down at the table next to Jess. 

Bruce handed him a paper towel to wipe off the coffee ring that had settled on the table and as Tony did so he turned the cup around to notice something familiar about it. It was one of those cheap ones that companies and other groups mass buy and slapped their logos on. This one said VFW Post 5195.

Where have you seen this before? Carol and Bucky weren't really the VFW type of veterans. Maybe Sam or Rhodey? Or…

"This is Steve's mug." Tony said much louder than he meant to.

The room grew still. No one answered him.

Tony held out the mug so he could see it even more clearly. "How did this get here? I thought none of our stuff survived Thanos. "  

Bruce spoke up first. "Nothing did.”

Tony looked as close as he could trying to find any sense of the mystery in front of him. It dawned on him that he didn't know where any of Steve's things, the ones that didn't go to a museum at least, had ended up. 

"When you say Steve, you mean the first Captain America, right?" Kate asked, a tiny bit of wonder in her voice. Half the room shot her a look on Sam's behalf.

Tony scoffed. "Aren't you still supposed to be in Middle School? Why are you even here?" it sounded mean, even if Tony knew she didn't deserve it. It just bugged him that she lived in a post-Steve Rogers world. 

If she thought it sounded like a diss against her, she didn't say it. Instead what she said was, "Well, my dad and I aren't really talking and I was sleeping on Teddy and Billy's couch, but they keep the weirdest hours, so, I asked around to see if there was anywhere where being a boss with a bow and arrow will get you free room and board. " 

"Also she led the team that saved the world from Kang, so it's the least we can do," Sam said, certainly less defensive then Tony would have been in that situation. 

Tony knew that. He knew all about the different new teams that had taken the place the old Avengers used to reside. Kate flashed finger guns and Tony laughed despite himself. He promised himself he would build her a whole new quiver of exploding arrows when he got home.

“You know, Tony, you’re always welcome to stay here, too. We have more than enough rooms.” Bruce’s suggestion was kind. Too kind. 

It put Tony back on edge. 

“Might make it easier,” Sam added. Tony knew that Sam wanted it to sound like he meant that it would be easier for Tony to act as the team’s equipment supplier. It sounded more to Tony like Sam thought he needed the change of scenery.

“Naw, I’m good. Definitely good.” The compound may have been a decently long drive out of the city, so yeah, it was inefficient to constantly be shuttling between the two. “Home is home, you know?”

Sam threw his hands in front of him to placate him. “It’s an open invitation, that’s all.”

“Thank you,” Tony mumbled into his coffee. “Anyway, I should get going. Gotta pick up Morgan from school.” The team nodded as he stood up from the table and took another long sip of coffee. At least Jess always made sure they had the good stuff. “I’ll probably drop by sometime next week.”

Sam and Bucky unnecessarily followed Tony out to his car. Their best buddies forever thing was kinda cute, if not disorienting. 

“I can find my way out,” Tony told him. “I do this all the time.”

“Sure. Are you bringing the mug with?” Bucky asked with a smirk. Tony glanced down to where he was holding Steve’s mug. It was still one-third full. Seeing it in his hand again initiated the same wave of surprise as the first time he saw it. The decision to bring it with him had been unconscious, never in the last ten minutes did he think he was going to take it. He should’ve given it back.

He was just about to hand it over to them when Sam said, “No, keep it. I think Steve would have wanted you to have it.” 

Tony almost laughed at the idea of Steve writing something like that into his will, and then realized there had been no reason for Steve to leave anything behind for a dead man.

“He would have been very happy you came back,” Sam told him. Maybe Sam sensed Tony’s train of thought. Maybe not. There was a strength behind Sam’s words that gave Tony the impression he had been meaning to say them for a while. 

“Yeah,” Bucky agreed. “He would have smiled and everything.” He quirked his lip just a little, possibly trying to imitate Steve’s ‘smile’.

“Naw, it would have been like this.” Sam shook his head and put his hand on his hips before attempting the ‘Steve smile’. His lips barely moved, though, at least, it reached his eyes.

Bucky stopped him and said, “No, no, no, you got it wrong,” before he looked out in the distance. He didn’t even move his mouth.

Tony huffed. He felt unnecessarily irked watching their camaraderie. “Steve used to smile,” he grumbled. He could see it clearly in his mind.

“Yeah, sure, he smiled around you, maybe.” Bucky matched his tone, but Tony bet he wasn’t nearly as annoyed as Tony was.

What does that mean--Tony means to ask, but the two of them have finally taken their cue to leave him alone and walk back to the compound, leaving Tony stuck leaning against his car to finish the coffee.

*********

April 29th, 2029

“Why are we even playing golf?” Rhodey asked as Tony teed up and tried to judge the distance and angle he needed to aim for in his swing. “You hate golf.”

“That I do, Honey Bear, that I do.” Tony took his shot and watched as the golf ball fell onto the grass somewhere in the vicinity of the green. Oh, he hated golf. “But I should probably make use of all those lessons Howard forced on me. Also, it’s hard enough to get you alone, and I hate hanging out in the Oval Office. It makes me think I should be participating in walk-and-talks while trying pass the most recent farm bill.” It made him feel useless.

Rhodey walked with him as he searched for his ball. Tony never used a golf cart; Howard had never believed in them. “I think you’re watching too much of The West Wing.” 

“I’m watching too much of everything. Been keeping busy, you know?” Tony said as he walked through the high grass looking for a flash of white. 

Rhodey hummed in response as he held up Tony’s golf ball. “What’re you doing with yourself?” he asked, and then added, “besides rereuns.”

“Not a lot of anything. Currently updating the Compound’s security system, helping Riri whip all the new kids in R & D into shape, sometimes charming investors Pepper doesn’t want to deal with.” He took his shot and grimaced when he just barely reached the green. Tony hated golf. “I’m spending a lot of time with Morgan, though.” That made Tony smile. That was his favorite part.

“Wow, Tony, that’s a lot,” Rhodey said with genuine awe in his voice.

Tony shrugged; it really wasn’t. That board feeling hadn’t gone away. “As I said, keeping busy.”  He hadn’t minded taking on the extra tasks as they came up.

“When do you sleep?” Rhodey asked it in a way that was extra casual, like he was concerned.

“Every night,” Tony answered. “For an hour or two, at least.” 

He looked up from where he was lining up his putt to see Rhodey giving him a death-glare.

“What’s that for? I was dead for five years, I’ve had enough sleep.” He hit the ball and managed to make it only a little closer. Rhodey had already finished, so Tony tried again. He tightened his focus. Damn, so close, he thought before finally hitting the mark.

“You know who you sound like?”  Rhodey asked. 

Tony did know. He had known it as the words were coming out of his mouth. “Name starts with an S and rhymes with ‘pet peeve’?” he responded. He wasn’t being purposefully flippant, he just didn’t know what to say and that put him on edge.

Rhodey kept his silence until they reached the next hole. “So I was talking to Sam a couple of days ago…” he started to say. 

Tony’s eyebrows hit his hairline. He had a strong sense this was going to be about him. “Well, you’re the president, he’s Captain America...it’s to be expected. Do you have a special ‘Avengers’ phone in the Oval Office? I’m imagining something with a small--” He held out his thumb and forefinger close toogether “--Captain America shield you just press and then suddenly, ‘ta-da’ it plays the The Star-Spangled Man with a Plan, and--”

Rhodey cut him off. “It’s not quite that dramatic.”

“A pity,” Tony grumbled, hoping to delay whatever his friend had to say before deciding he should preempt it. “Let me guess: he’s worried about me.”

“That’s not exactly what I was going to say.” 

“But it’s not entirely wrong.” Tony was just about ready to swing, but he dropped his stance and stood waiting for Rhodey’s concern.

Rhodey nodded at the Secret Service agent who was standing two hundred or so feet away from him and the woman took that as a cue to walk further away. “It’s normal Tony. Blip-Apathy was really common. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

“I’m not ashamed,” Tony told him, and honestly, he wasn’t. He wasn’t entirely sure what he was feeling, but he had faced his share of shame throughout the years and knew he felt nothing like that. “I’m...processing. And it’s not as dark as you think.” It’s just not happening as fast as I wish it would, he thought. “Why the hell are you and Sam calling each other to talk about me?”

“He’s just trying to read the signs, being proactive. I think he feels a little guilty about what happened to Steve.” Rhodey’s tone held its own concern for Sam. It hadn’t stopped amazing Tony how the ties between each of the Avengers had shifted and grown while he was gone.

“Why the hell would he feel guilty? It’s not his fault that Steve did what he did. If it’s anyone’s fault, it’s--” Tony’s mouth clammed up, not entirely sure how to end the sentence. “It’s Steve's fault,” he settled on, suddenly. “I don’t even know why anybody is even thinking about it in that way. It’s a good thing. The best. I couldn’t have thought of a happier ending for him.” The word ‘ending’ stuck in his throat. It sounded off, wrong, foreign in relationship to Steve. He was the man who managed to defy a movie-worthy ending in 1945 to live a long and storied second-act. A man whose life was more complicated than route legend would lead many people to believe.

Tony didn’t even understand why it irked him so much. Tony did the same thing! He decamped from superhero life to live quietly with his wife and daughter. Maybe it was because he had thought his life in the lake house was going to be his ‘happily ever after’ until Steve showed up on his porch to convince him to blow that all to hell. Maybe it was because he was lonely, and he had taken Steve’s existence as a given since he had stumbled into his arms after landing the Benatar. 

Tony didn’t know. As he said, he still was processing.

“Of course,” Rhodey responded, pulling Tony away from his own thoughts. “It was definitely the best thing.”

June 20th, 2029

“What do you think of these?” Tony held up the glitter-bomb arrow for Morgan to inspect. They were hanging out in a large workshop space in Avengers Compound that Tony had begun to slowly take over.

She looked closely at it, inspecting every part of it, before handing it back to Tony. “It’s not the right purple,” she said with a nod.

He took it back from her. “What do you mean? It’s a pretty purple.”

“It needs to be lighter. It’s not Hawkeye purple.” She quickly typed something on her phone and turned to show him a picture of Kate Bishop in the costume she wore during the last Avengers’ mission. “Like this.”

“Ok, I think we can do that. FRIDAY, incorporate Morgan’s suggestion into the next prototype,” Tony said and Morgan smiled at him in response. “Do you want to try the arrows anyway? It’ll take FRIDAY a couple minutes to fix the color issue.” 

Morgan looked at him wide-eyed. She hadn’t been expecting him to let her play with real weapons. “Can I?” she asked.

“Definitely, just don’t tell Mom.” Tony gave her a conspiratorial wink. Clint had said this was a safe age to learn archery. Plus, the glitter-bomb arrows weren’t even arrows. They were more like long, blunt, and soft projectiles that would dissolve into bursts of glitter after a short time hurtling through the air. Tony had begun working on this as he had begun to update Kate’s arsenal. He had been looking into ways to very quickly and cheaply produce arrows that would also dissolve when needed so that adversaries couldn’t use them against her. 

However, the glitter component was more for Morgan than Kate. Morgan loved everything glitter and everything Hawkeye. Being able to share this with his daughter motivated him more to solve the problem of disappearing arrows than the actually engineering needed to make the project a reality. 

He handed her a small bow and had FRIDAY bring up a hologram target. She seemed to naturally know what to do with the bow and arrow; perhaps Kate or Clint or ____ had taught her. With grace, she pulled back the bowstring and launched the arrow in the general vicinity of the target. When it flew through the hologram it broke into a cloud of colorful glitter. Morgan looked between the falling glitter and Tony. “So cool!” she shouted before wrapping Tony in the tightest hug a nine year old could give. 

Nothing in Tony’s life was a problem for those twenty seconds, but she eventually let go to look up at Tony in awe. “You said ‘glitter’, but that was ‘GLITTER’.” She mimed an explosion with her hands as she said. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

“You’re very welcome.” He handed her a handful more arrows. “This is all I got for now, but FRIDAY’s working on the new ones and they’ll be ‘Hawkeye Purple’. I promise.” He paused. This particular project was finishing up, and he had been enjoying it immensely. There was a long backlog of things to work on. The Avengers never ran out of things to fix and improve and both Riri and Pepper had been keeping his inbox open with prototypes they’d like his opinion on. He didn’t need the work, but he asked, “If there anything else you’d like? Anything I can invent?”

Morgan squinted her eyes and looked off into the distance. Tony called this her Thinking Face. Questions deserving the Thinking Face were considered with great care and time. Tony waited patiently for her to think it through and tried to avoid the instinct to guess what she was considering. Finally, after great consideration, she said, “I want a time machine.”

“A time machine?” Tony wasn’t expecting that. “What do you want with a time machine?”

“Well, I have to do a project for school on a president. And the teacher won’t let me do it on Uncle Rhodey,” she explained. Tony nodded. Clearly it frustrated her that she couldn’t take advantage of all the famous people she already knew.

A time machine was probably not an easy way to avoid that problem, however. “So you want to go back in time to research who, exactly?”

“President Roosevelt,” she responded, succinctly.

Tony shook his head. “You’re going to have to be more specific, kiddo. Franklin or Teddy?”

“Franklin.”

“Good. You know who really loved FDR?” Tony wasn’t really asking her, but he paused after the question left his mouth. He didn’t want to say Steve’s name in the past tense, even if he had set himself up for it. “Steve Rogers,” he finally told her when it became clear he didn’t have a better answer. 

“Then let’s talk to him.” Morgan nodded, like she had solved the problem.

Tony’s heart hurt to have to say it. “We can’t, sweetie. He’s no longer with us” 

That didn’t deter her. “Because he went back in time.”

“Yes, exactly,” Tony agreed, glad he didn’t have to explain more.

“So let’s go back in time and talk to him.” She sounded so sure of herself. Tony was struck dumb by the simpleness of her logic.

“It doesn’t work like--” he began to explain to her, but then stopped as he thought through her suggestion more. “It’s complicated.”

“So?”

“So, we can’t just go back in time to ask some questions. We’d create a seperate timeline for something we don’t need to do.”

“Isn’t that how you saved everyone?’ she asked. “Why is this different?”

It wasn’t easy to answer. “Because that was a last ditch effort. We would have done anything we could to save the trillions of people that Thanos killed. This is just a conversation...it’d be a nice conversation, sure, but…” Tony paused and tried to think of a way to explain it. “We can’t just go into the past to deal with anything we want. There are people there, too, and they may be hurt by our decisions. For example, depending on when we went, it might be really confusing to Steve if I show up with my daughter. Do we go before he met me? Or before we fought Ultron? Or after Thanos?” Before or after the Accords? Tony didn’t say, because Morgan wouldn’t have understood. “We weren’t always close friends. He might not trust it’s me.”

“Then we’ll go back to when you were friends.”

Tony sighed. Morgan wasn’t going to let this go. “I understand what you’re saying, and that sounds very nice, but that Steve isn’t close to this me, if that makes sense.” Tony didn’t want to talk to the Steve he fought with in New York or Sarkovia. And he didn’t even want to think about how difficult it would be to talk to the Steve he fought against in Siberia. “My Steve is the one who convinced me to go back in time.” His Steve would always be standing on his porch, telling him this was their second chance. His Steve was marshalling the Avengers with a speech or calling himself Captain Stevens or standing alone against Thanos. Tony wouldn’t settle for a substitution.

“And that Steve went back in time!” she exclaimed, clearly frustrated that Tony wasn’t following her train of thought. “So we go back to where he is.”

It sounded absurd until it clicked in Tony’s brain. Then, it became impossible. “No, no, no, no. We can’t go to that timeline. We can only move within our own.” He stopped and quickly typed into his phone. A hologram of a Time GPS glowed before Morgan. “This is what we used to travel in time. It’s not enough to just ‘move’ through time, you have to move relative to where you are. Like when you look at a map--you can’t decide your route if you don’t know where you are starting from. This Time GPS told us where we were, so we could go where we needed to be.”

Morgan nodded. She was now wearing her Learning Face. Morgan was a smart cookie, but less like Tony than her mom. She looked so much like Pepper would when he would have to explain some invention to her, and then she would explain it back much better than Tony ever could. 

“When you use GPS for directions, the GPS tells you where you are. To do that, the GPS receiver measures how far it is away from satellites.” The hologram display changed to a simple dot. “Let’s say all I know is that I’m one foot away from this dot. That means I can be anywhere along this border.” A foot-wide buffer emitted from the dot. A second dot appeared on the hologram. “If I know I’m also two feet from this dot, also--” A larger buffer surrounded the second dot, overlapping with the buffer of the first. “--then I can be anywhere where these two buffers meet.” A third dot and a third buffer appeared. “Bit if I also know that I’m three feet from this third dot, then I have to be at the only place the three buffers overlap.” He pointed to that spot in the hologram, causing the hologram to glow red right at the convergence of the three buffers. “That’s how we can know exactly where we are. That’s what happening when you look at a map on your phone and a little blinking dot tells ‘you are here’. Does that make sense?”

Morgan nodded again. “So you used satellites to find yourselves in time.”

“In a way. Instead of satellites, I picked three points in time that were meaningful enough that I was confident I knew the exact time and place. The first was Thor’s birthday because there are thousands of poems about his birth. The second was Steve’s birth. Historians have managed to confirm every detail of where and when he was born, and that information is widely available.” Tony took a deep breath and reflexively smiled. “The third was the day you were born, because I’ll never forget it. And because I have video proof.”

Morgan smiled back. “You used the birthdays of Thor, Captain America, and...me?”

“Yep,” he answered her. “That’s right where you belong, kiddo.”

“Ok.” Her voice was awed. 

“Anyway, that’s why we can’t just go to the timeline Steve went to--we’re not sure you were born in that timeline.” He didn’t voice his frustration that he didn’t know anything about how Steve’s alternative life unfolded.

“That’s annoying.” Morgan sounded like it bothered her even more than it bothered Tony.

“Yes, it really is.” Tony gestured with his hand and the holograms disappeared. 

“It’s be nice if we could just call him.” Her shoulders slumped and Tony felt uncomfortable responsible for making her feel that way.

“Like a phone call?

“Yeah. That way there’s no time travel needed.” She shrugged it off, clearly knowing that that Tony was just going to shoot her idea down.

He tried to imagine what that would look like; if it would even work within the framework they had used for the Time Heist. It sounded nice, but doing it...well, Tony was pretty sure it couldn’t work. He decided to not tell her that there was some ambiguity there. There wasn’t any reason to. Instead he said, “How about this? I’m sure Bucky will love to talk to you about what he remembers.”

Morgan frowned. “But I want to show Kate the glitter arrows.”

“Let’s get the homework out of the way now that we’re sure Bucky’s in the building, and then we can see if Kate’s around. Sound like a plan?” he asked.

“Yep!” Morgan said as she began to lead the way out of the workshop.

******************

“Is anyone sitting here?” Steve asks. Tony jumps in his chair, he hadn’t heard Steve walk into the kitchen. Tony looks up to see Steve patiently waiting for his answer, but Tony’s not sure what he’s asking. It’s two in the morning, and no one is awake in the compound instead of them. Which means there’s no one sitting in the chair Steve’s gesturing towards.

Tony smiles. Steve’s giving him an out if Tony isn’t interested in his company. “It’s your seat, now,” Tony tells him. Steve sweeps into the chair. His longer hair, normally slicked back, is falling in front of his face and there’s a lagging quality to his movements that gives Tony the impression that Steve just woke up. Tony notices that he finds Steve’s sleepy look attractive. The thought surprises him, and then the surprise surprises him, and then he’s caught in a confused loop that is probably exacerbated by the fact he hasn’t slept in thirty-six hours. 

“What’re you working on?” 

Steve’s question breaks Tony’s train of thought. “Just reviewing what we worked on today.” Tony turns his phone around so Steve can see the blueprints he’s reviewing. “We’ve been doing so much preparing for this Time Heist, and sometimes it helps to look back at the original plans to see if they still make sense. I’m just double-checking my work.”

Steve gives Tony’s phone a cursory glance. “Wow,” he mumbles and smiles at Tony. That smile melts Tony’s heart. The same sensation that’s been slamming into Tony at random intervals comes again--something like nostalgia but for the present moment. It reminds him that he’ll want this in the future, that he knows from experience now that he can miss what’s in front of him. Superheroing always felt different when Steve was around; Steve had a way of bringing you into a team that stuck with you even when the glow wore off. 

He doesn’t think the glow is going to wear off this time. They’re going to save people, and they're going to do it together--all of them, and the two of them.

“Why’re you awake?” Tony asks him.

“I had a dream,” Steve says with a shrug that’s trying too hard to be causal. 

Tony can’t help but spring on that remark. “Hmmm...are we talking about one of THOSE dreams?” He wags his eyebrows enough that Steve doesn’t miss that he’s trying to mess with him.

Steve’s face goes pink, though Tony only sorts of sees it in the dark kitchen. “No, no, no,” he mutters and runs a hand through his hair. More of it falls into his face. “I wish I was that lucky.” He shakes it off and leans over to pick up Tony’s water glass. “Can I get you more?” he asks, and Tony nods despite the fact that the glass is more than half full. Steve grabs a glass of his own from one of the cabinets and fills both of them from the tap. 

His back is still towards Tony when Tony asks, “So it’s a bad dream, I take it?” Steve turns around. For a few seconds it seems like Steve’s just going to keep Tony’s water hostage and stand there with his body curled defensively. That’s what Tony expects, but it’s not what Tony wants. He declines to push for a reaction, and instead waits for Steve to respond

Steve does, eventually. It sits back down on the chair opposite Tony and slides over the water. “Could be worse.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” Tony asks.

“Not really,” Steve responds. Maybe he hears his own brittle voice, either way, his tone is calmed when he continues to talk. “It’s just a combination of every other nightmare. The usual, you know? Cold water, falling, hunger, blood, and now dust. How all those things come together in a coherent dream, I don’t know.” Tony wants to dig more into that, it’s the closest look he’s ever gotten into Steve’s head. But he’s too busy thinking of what to say to keep the conversation going. Steve uses the opportunity to divert him and brings the topic around to Tony. “So why are you double-checking your work at two in the morning? Are you having trouble sleeping?”

“Are you having trouble sleeping?” Bruce asked. Tony blinked his eyes a few times while he realized he was in the compound’s kitchen in 2029 and not 2023. The layout was more open now than it was back then. The appliances were now all finished with brushed colorful chrome. Sitting here was so different than it was back then.

“I’m fine,” Tony responded. With much effort he shifted his focus from the compound’s ghosts to the tablet on the table. “Just getting some work done. Kate liked the glitter arrows I made for Morgan and she thinks it will be cool if they were rainbow for this weekend’s pride parade.”

“Can’t you do that tomorrow? Or have FRIDAY figure it out?”

Tony rolled his eyes. Great, he thought,  I’m going to have to have this conversation again. “What can I say? Sometimes it’s just fun to do things the old fashioned way.” He groaned. “It’s fun, ok? It’s glitter, it makes my daughter happy, and it’s far more interesting than anything SI is sending my way.”

Bruce plopped into the chair across from him and raised his hands in surrender.  “Woah, woah, woah, woah, woah. I was just asking.”

Tony looked down again at the tablet and then at the little icon on the corner that allowed him to toggle between different projects. With a frown and a sigh, he clicked it a couple of times before a series of rough blueprints appeared. He flipped the tablet around so that Bruce could see the other project he was thinking through. “Remember this?” he asked.

Bruce took the tablet from him and scrutinized the work Tony had done. “It certainly looks familiar. Didn’t we scrap this idea?” He handed back the tablet. “Are you making time travel plans?”

“No,” Tony responded. 

“Then why are you looking at a 'through' time communication system?” Bruce gave him a skeptical eye.

“What if, and don’t laugh--” Tony started, and took a breath when Bruce’s eyebrows raised. “--We could talk to Steve?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Bruce asked.

Tony started slowly. “Just hear me out. He’s still out there, with his Time GPS, and if we could--”

“He’s not ‘out’ there; he came back, Tony! This is crazy.” Bruce was wide-eyed.

“Why is it so crazy? Wherever he exists in time isn’t tied to anything here. He’s essentially--”

“Dead. He’s dead. That’s the word you’re looking for.”

Tony’s brain short-circeted. He kept his gaze on Bruce while he tried to find the right way to explain this.  “It’s only going to be the one time. And he can’t return my message.” 

Bruce’s gase softened with a long breath and for a moment Tony thought he had convinced him. Then Bruce spoke. “Have I introduced you to my cousin, Jen? I don’t know if it’s too soon after Pepper and all that, but I really think both of you would be great for each other. I could set something up if you want.”

Tony knew Bruce was trying to be kind, but it may have been the worst thing he could have told him. “I’m not lonely. I miss someone, it’s a completely different thing.” Venom laced his words and prompted only silence in response. The sounds of the compound settling around him echoed while he tried to catch his breath. Finally his heart slowed down and he knew he had to fix the situation. “I know you’re just trying to help, and thank you for the suggestion. I’m sure she’s great. But you’re right, it’s too soon. Maybe later?”

Bruce smiled and took Tony’s peace offering. “Listen,” he started. “Someone should have mentioned this sooner, but when we had that whole problem with Kang the Conquerer last year, Shuri noticed we’ve been seeing some very strange disturbances _______ frequencies. We’re not sure why, but there has been some speculation that it could be caused by time travel.”

“So you’re saying it’s dangerous?” Tony asked. It seemed like a weak connection.

“No one’s sure. But a group of us came to the agreement that we were going to only use time travel with the agreement between us.”

“Who’s ‘us’?” Tony put air quotes around the word. He was offended that this was the first time he was hearing about this. 

“Oh, you know, the usual suspects. Shuri & T’Challa, Stephen Strange, Dr. Richards and Dr. Bashear.” Bruce was looking somewhere beyond Tony’s left shoulder. He seemed pretty aware of how frustrated he was making Tony.

Tony looked back down at the tablet and all of the plans he’d be tinkering with since Morgan had planted the idea in his head. The fact that Bruce was straight-up telling him not to make it all the more intriguing. “So even a simple communication is off limits?”

“You’d have to swing that by the group,” Bruce told him. The implication of his words was clear: this wasn’t worth convincing some of the world’s greatest minds. 

Tony shook his head. He had hoped Bruce would be open to talk about it. It would have been nice to have someone to run the idea by.

Bruce reached out to him. “I understand, though, I really do. I thought about reaching out to Nat for a while, but...it was time to let go. Sometimes you don’t get closure. And that’s ok.”

The remainder of the way Nat died and how little time they had to mourn was a splash of cold water to his motivation. “Yeah, I guess you’re right.”

“Thank you, it’s nice to hear that. I hope you sleep well--eventually,” Bruce said as he stood up and began to walk away.

He wasn’t out the door before Tony opened his mouth. Bruce’s logic wasn’t connecting. “It’s not really the same thing, though.” Bruce turned around and raised an eyebrow. “You were comparing me and Steve to you and Natasha, and that’s not the same thing at all.”

Bruce shrugged. “If you say so, Tony.” And then he walked away.

August 11th, 2029

Tony poured himself another cup of coffee. It took a couple of seconds for his eyes to adjust to the lighting in this part of the workshop; he had been spending much of the night staring at bright holograms as he checked and double checked his calculations. Everything seemed dark over here and away from the frantically flowing lines of information. A feeling--one that was overwhelming but unnamable--settled in his chest.

He turned around to find the workshop wasn’t nearly as large and empty as his mind had been imagining it just a few seconds before. FRIDAY’s holograms were shifting dramatically as she tried one last time to poke holes in Tony’s plan to use the Time GPS as a communication device. 

She wouldn’t. Tony was sure about it. He’d been finding free hours in the middle of the night to run an almost infinite number of simulations on the subject, and the only thing he’d discovered was that his plan would work.

The holograms stopped swirling in front of him. They cast pink light on the concrete walls around him and Tony could see FRIDAY was in agreement with him. There wasn’t a real reason for him not to try leaving a message for Steve. Yes, Bruce wouldn’t like it, but that was why Tony was currently trying this at his workshop in the tower and not in the compound. Bruce’s warnings had seemed ominous, but Tony couldn’t find anything to back them up.

He wasn’t going to listen to the warnings of some mysterious ‘council’ that couldn’t even take the time to brief him on the state of time travel. He practically invented it!

Tony took a drink of coffee and sat down. An updated version of the Time GPS he created almost six years ago was surrounded by mechanical odds and ends on his desk. The design was sleeker, smoother, and Tony had chosen to color it Hawkeye Purple. He picked it up, inspected it, and gave himself one more opportunity to back out of this plan.

“Nah,” he said to himself, instead. He placed it back on the desk and set down the coffee mug beside it. His eyes lingered on the mugs blocky lettering: VFW Post #5195. With a push he slid the rolling chair back a couple of feet in order to provide the communication device to capture a fuller picture of his body.

“FRIDAY, are you ready?” he asked. He fiddled with the t-shirt he was wearing and considered finding something else to wear before deciding it wasn’t worth losing his momentum to find more presentable clothes. 

Plus, he’d never know if Steve would see it. There would be no way for Steve to return his communication.

“I’m ready when you are, boss.” FRIDAY’s voice bounced around the concrete walls. 

“Good.” Tony took a deep breath and reminded himself of the few ground rules he had set for himself. He was only going to do this once. He couldn’t mention anything specific about why he was back. And he couldn’t let Steve know about his future return to the timeline and impending death. “Ok, let’s do this. Lights, camera, action!”

The Time GPS began to glow blue.

September 14th, 1963

“You sure you don’t want the television?” Peggy asked. She was regarding the device like it was the first time she’d ever seen it, her hands on her hips, her brow furrowed, and her eyes far from Steve. 

“Naw,” he said and looked once more across the entire front room. He tried to memorize every detail of it. Just in case. “RCA has a new model coming out soon. Color and everything.” Steve had been waiting, saving what he could for the day color tv became affordable. He had been waiting for a long time

Peggy pursed her lips. “It’s just…” she began and regarded Steve like he was a code she could crack. “You’re not really bringing a lot with you.”

Steve hefted the heavy duffle sitting at his feet. It was packed to the brim with clothes and mementos. “Don’t really need much.” Steve felt somewhat spoiled with how much he was taking. Steve couldn’t remember the last time he’d been able to move so many of his own things. Maybe when they had transitioned from the tower to the compound, he supposed, although so little of what he had brought had ever felt like his. “Plus, the new place is furnished.”

“I suppose you don’t.” There was more she wanted to say on the subject, but she kept it to herself. 

The strange anticipation of a goodbye lingered in the air. At one point someone was going to have to say it and then Steve was going to have to walk out the door. “Are you still available for dinner on Thursday?” Steve asked instead, not quite ready to leave but also itching to get it over with. 

“Yes, of course.” She smiled, nothing big and bright, but she also wasn’t dreading the thought of dinner with Steve.

Steve looked out the window at the cab waiting for him. For the hundredth time since the two of them had decided to separate, Steve thought about calling it off. They had tried to make it work, and then tried, and tried, and tried even more after it became clear it wouldn’t. It wasn’t until Peggy had suggested they get some space that they could even talk again. So Steve was going to try this, too. He owed it to her. “Well, I guess I’ll see you then.” 

“You will,” Peggy said, and placed a comforting hand on his arm. “I hope everything goes well.”

“It will.” And despite how unsure he was of everything else, Steve really believed that.

******************

“The number to call is on the lease. Rent is due on the first of the month, and if I gotta wait three days, then I’ll be paying a visit,” a short, stout woman with a strong Russian accent explained to Steve as she handed an envelope filled with papers and a keyring with keys. 

“Don’t worry. I’ll pay on time,” Steve said, trying to reassure her that he didn’t need the tough guy routine, but she didn’t buy any of it. She looked like the type of person who had heard that before.

“Do you have any questions, Mr. Hale?”

Steve took in every detail of the small studio he was going to be renting. “Not that I can think of…” 

“Good,” was all she said, and she turned on her heel to leave Steve standing there, alone. 

Everything he owned was tucked into the corner, all-in-all the move was painless and unremarkable. Certainly the most normal move Steve had ever been a part of.

He stepped around the small studio and inspected everything he had already looked at last week when he’d been visiting apartments. None of the pipes were leaking and the crack in the shower tile had been caulked up, just like the landlord had promised. Steve even moved the table and two chairs to the side to see if the Murphy bed that took its spot still held his weight. 

All of that was over in ten minutes. Steve stood there and listened to the sounds of the Brooklyn outside the window and the voices of his downstairs’ neighbors. Under all of that was stillness, but a stillness very different from what surrounded him when he lived with Peggy. It was as if the frequency his body vibrated had changed when he had taken his new keys and only now he could sense it.

When he lived in the future, the moment, the everything is different now moment, used to be its own sort of background noise. The last fifteen years had been different, though. He hadn’t lived anywhere else since he showed up on Peggy’s doorstep. He hadn’t been in the same place that long since his Ma was alive. Picking up and starting his life somewhere new--that was something he’d forgotten how to do.

Steve took a deep breath. This was just another step on a long road. He had done this before, and he would do this again. 

One by one he transferred the contents of his bag to the plywood dresser that had been part of the apartment’s furnishings. Every article of clothing was folded precisely and placed orderly. All that was left at the bottom of the bag was his tooth brush and a smaller wooden box. He gently placed the box in the top drawer next to his matched socks. 

Steve had spent the last fifteen years putting things in the box instead of taking them out. Opening it was always an exercise in nostalgia. It was tiring; it sent him into a spiral of questions that he’d never be able to answer. Yet, on this day, he opened it anyway.

On the top were the couple of things he had quickly added before he left Peggy’s house. He placed those on the top of the dresser. Below them were the more sensitive things, nick-nacks from his old life, memorabilia that would ruin his disguise as Nathan Hale. He also placed them on the top of the dresser.

Slowly he put back each of the items. His dogtags went back into the box. Next was a color photo of Natasha, Thor, Bruce, Sam and Tony sitting across from each other. Steve’s not sure who took it, or what was even happening when it was taken, only that Fury had handed it to him at Tony’s funeral. Steve was careful as he held the glossy photo. The colors were sharp, almost too bright compared to what Steve was expecting. They were all so beautiful.

Carefully he placed it in the box, laying it flat so nothing would bend it. The edges were beginning to curl. The thought came to him that even if he couldn’t hang it up, he should still frame it. Or at least protect it somehow.

Steve put the rest away--a couple of doodles he had drawn a long time ago, a picture of his mother Peggy had found before he returned, his marriage license. Only the photo of Ian and the Time GPS remained. For more than a minute he looked between the two items. In the photo Ian’s sitting in a hospital bed. He’s skinny, too skinny, and just as small as Steve was at that age. He’s holding a cheap plastic replica of the Captain America shield. Steve sits next to him, and despite it only being a few years ago, Steve felt like he was looking at a completely different person. They’re both smiling because Ian refused to be cowed by his Illness. How naive Steve was back then.

Steve tenderly placed the photo back in the box and held up the Time GPS. It looked like something out of a science fiction movie. It was something out of a science fiction movie. If the man sitting next to Ian in the photo belonged in a different time, the man who wore the device in Steve’s hand was from a different galaxy. 

Steve was setting back to where it belonged in the box when he saw a small blinking dot of light on the hard plastic. “That’s odd,” he said to himself. He hadn’t seen the light before.

He turned it around in his hand, trying to find some sign that something was wrong. Had the light been on this whole time? Was it draining the power? Would it work in the future? Delicately, he traced the edges of the device. Nothing felt different. It had been over a decade since he had looked closely at it; he couldn’t tell if anything was off.

His finger grazed a part right near the light and the Time GPS vibrated in response. Steve dropped it onto the dresser and took a couple of steps away. Is this it?, he asked himself. What if I don’t get to say goodbye?

I thought I had more time--

Blue light shot past Steve’s shoulder. His gaze followed to where it coalesced as an impression of Tony. 

“Tony?” Steve asked in the softest of breathes. He looked so real.

“Ok, go time,” Tony started. He was looking just past Steve’s eyes. His brow furrowed as he paused for a second. He was deciding something. “I really hope this works. So, Steve, you might be thinking why the fuck is Tony talking to me right now. Because I am, you know, talking to you. It’s complicated. Let’s just say that.”

Steve gasped. This wasn’t happening, it couldn’t be happening. The Tony in front of him didn’t look much different than the Tony who found a way to speak at his own funeral. 

“Some crazy shit has gone down since you’ve been gone. Turns out there was a magic way to bring me back to life. Who knew?” Tony paused, and even though he was only a blue translucent hologram, Steve could see his face contort in an odd confusion as his mind tripped over that idea.

Steve’s own mind couldn’t get over the implication that he was ‘gone’ to Tony. That wasn’t how it was supposed to work.

“So anyway, I’ve been given a second chance and it’s been great to be with everyone. And I know how I died must have been traumatizing, based on the face Pepper makes every time I bring it up.” Tony grimaced. “That’s how I learned you’re not supposed to bring up your own death. People don’t like thinking about it. Even if you can’t stop thinking about it.” 

Steve knew what Tony was talking about.

Tony continued, “But it turns out we missed each other, like ships passing in the night, or whatever. That metaphor might be a little heavy handed.” He paused his rambling and bounced a little in his chair. He was uncomfortable. Steve didn’t know what that meant. “Which sucks, because it turns out there is a lot of stuff I would have wanted to say to you if I knew the whole dying thing was more imminent.”

Tony took a deep breath. He looked straight at the camera and almost straight at Steve. “It turns out that, well, what I wanted to say was…fuck… I should have wrote this down.” He took another breath. “This just feels really unfair, you know? I thought things were starting to really make sense between us and then poof, I have to go and die. Which is fine. I’d do it again, no question about that, but I have this compounding sense of loss every time I think about you and it’s confusing.

“Knowing you was very strange. You were intriguing and frustrating. You made me angrier than I’ve ever been. You’ve inspired to me to do greater things than I ever could have imagined. Sometimes it felt like I could never do anything right for you, and sometimes you believed in me so strongly it frightened me. In the beginning I just wanted to be friends with you, but in an easy way, like how it is to be friends with Rhodey or Thor. It never was like that with you.

“If anything, caring about you just created this rift that wouldn’t stop growing. It didn’t stop until you dropped a bomb right between us and I thought anything positive I ever thought about you wouldn’t matter, ever again.” Tony stopped talking for a second. “Goddamit, I didn’t even want to bring that up. I really didn’t, I promise. It’s just that...it did begin to matter again. What I thought about you. What you thought about me. And I really thought it was finally beginning to click into place near the end there. Everything was finally lining up for us.

“So you not being here kinda sucks but also seems like the most logical conclusion to our relationship. Probably couldn’t have gone any other way. I just wanted to tell you that you mattered to me. I don’t mean what you thought about me, but you as a person, you mattered to me. And I hope I mattered to you.

“That’s it. That’s all I have to say. This whole communication thing is a one-and-done sort of thing. Bruce made it very clear that I shouldn’t be doing this at all, but what am I’m going to do? Let him and his fancy friends boss me around? Hell no.” Steve laughed despite the tightness in his chest. “This is goodbye. It’s certainly been...an experience. I wish you nothing but the best of what life has to offer.”

The blue, translucent image of Tony faded away and Steve was left looking at the wallpaper behind him. What just happened? He thought. It didn’t make any sense. How was Tony communicating with him? He was dead! In his timeline at least. He hadn’t even been born in Steve’s. There was no Tony to talk to him, and there was no way he could if he magically came back to life. Steve didn’t really understand the physics behind it, but he had been in the room when Bruce, Tony, and Scott had declared there would be no way for them to communicate across timelines.

At least that’s how he remembered it. Steve tried to put himself back in the moment and listen to them argue about how __________. Did Scott say that it was impossible to communicate that way, or only that it would take too much time to figure out?

Steve picked up the Time GPS and looked at it closely. He thought of all the ways this couldn’t be true. And then he thought of all the ways it could be, and came to a decision. Tony was now alive and had found a way to communicate via timelines.

He stumbled backward until his thigh bumped into the cabinet. He clutched the Time GPS close to his chest. “You really did it,” he muttered, too overwhelmed to articulate anything more. He really did it.

It took a few moments for him to gather his thoughts. He wished he had a recording of Tony’s message. He could replay it in his head, but it wasn’t the same as seeing it. And he needed to see it again.

Steve looked again at the hard plastic wrist-band. You mattered to me. Those words bounced around his brain. I hope I mattered to you. 

“You did,” Steve said out loud. Sorting out the memories that Tony had just drudged up was like sorting through a shelf of things he hadn’t been looking at in a long time. After Natasha and Tony had died, and more so after he had settled down with Peggy, Steve had placed right next to the spot in his mind where he stored the presence of his mom. They were never gone, but never at the forefront of his thoughts. They couldn’t be. 

The problem with the dead is that there were two ways he could think of them--as they were in the past with shallow nostalgia, or in the future they would never see with regret. The former got exhausting quickly. The later was an exercise in self-flagilation. Nothing could fix the fact that his ma would never know about Captain America. Just like nothing could change how Natasha and Tony would never get to see the world remade because of their sacrifice.

Except...The Tony in the hologram said he was the same one Steve saw carried off the field of battle on that awful day. This Tony said he was alive; he said Steve was ‘gone’.

The Time GPS was such a silly thing. How could some hard plastic hold more power than Miljnor? This wrist band could save the world and it could bring Tony back into his life. Steve continued to trace the contours of the device. He wanted to hear Tony talk again, watch his hands move and his eyes light up. Steve didn’t care about the difficult things he had heard. The hurt they elicited was real--a knife through his soul--but the mental pain had nothing on the joy of knowing that Tony would be able to hold his Morgan and Pepper again. 

His inspection of the wristband grew more focused. There had to be a way to replay the message. It was important that he see it again. The first time he had no preparation for the shock of seeing Tony again; he had not taken the right amount of time to really appreciate it. If he could play it once, he had to be able to play it again. His fingers tried to find anything he could press or touch that would restart the message. 

He found it--there was a part right near the left side that that gave when he touched it. The light sprang forth again, and this time Steve knew he needed to aim it far enough away for the hologram to register. Points of light assembled into a 3-dimensional image of Tony.

Steve had expected this image of Tony to be the same as the one he had seen before, but it wasn’t. Or Steve didn’t think so. The t-shirts were different, Steve swore. The energy was different, too.

“So, remember when I said I was only going to communicate with you the one time?” Tony said as his smile grew larger than his face. “I lied.”

Tony certainly couldn't see it, but Steve smiled back.

********

September 19th, 1963

“Would either of you like dessert?” the waitress asked. 

Peggy locked eyes on Steve. “The pie here is really good. Blueberry or cherry?” she asked.

“Two slices of pie.” He smiled at Peggy. “One blueberry, one cherry.”

“Smart choice,” Peggy said and she gave him an appreciative look while the waitress walked away. “I forgot to ask: how did the move go?”

Steve was pretty sure it was a trick question. If he told her it went well she would think he was glad they were separating. If he said he hated it, she’d think he was begging her to have him back. The truth was that it had been easy because he hadn’t taken much, but that just sounded pathetic. “Nothing to report,” he decided to tell her. In the five days since he had left, he hadn’t felt much more than unsettled.

“Probably better that way than the opposite,” she responded. 

Steve couldn’t tell what she meant by that, he had lost the ability to read her. He hadn’t even realized it.

Steve tried to think of something to say. She spoke before he could think of anything. “Do you like the apartment?” she asked.

It was another trap. Any response could be used to gauge how he was feeling and he wasn’t ready to share that. Or it wasn’t, and Peggy was trying to be warm and friendly. She was so brilliant, it would be strange if she didn’t notice the consequences of his words. 

The waitress saved him from having to answer right away by placing the two plates of pie between them. “Thank you,” Steve told her, and Peggy nodded as well while she reached with her fork for the pie. Steve watched her smile when she took a bite. He decided that he thought she was being kind. He used to know these things for sure, but he settled for thinking they could be. “It’s not much, but it’s close to the train and there is a pizza place down the block.”

“Good, that’s good.”

They ate the slices of pie in silence, each taking turns to reach out and eat another forkful. It was just as good as Steve remembered. He was sure it was one of the reasons Peggy had suggested this place. He also assumed she preferred to see him outside the house and didn’t want to drive all the way into the city. The diner inspired a feeling of easy comfort and Steve was taken back to the old days back when he and Peggy would stop for pie after finishing a mission.

“What’s it like living in your old neighborhood?” she asked. This had been a point of contention for her--she was worried that Steve could run into someone he knew--but Steve had managed to convince her it’d be safe. He’d still be Nathan Hale with his dyed dark hair, fake glasses, and beard. No one had yet connected Peggy’s beatnik husband to Captain America. There was no reason that anyone who hadn’t seen him since he was small would recognize him, too.

He gave up on trying to answer Peggy’s questions carefully. It made him feel gross to doubt her. “It’s nice. A lot of things are the same, but so many things have changed. There’s something new around every corner.” 

“Has so much really changed in twenty years?”

“Some in twenty, a lot in fifty,” he responded, because he hadn’t just been thinking about where he grew up--he had been thinking about where in lived in 2020, also.

Her mouth narrowed into a line. She did that every time he alluded to his past in the future. He wasn’t supposed to talk about it. For a couple of seconds Steve was sure they were going to have to argue about this, but she just sighed. “I’m glad you’re enjoying it. I really am.”

Steve had never actually said he was glad, but he got her message. She was glad he wasn’t around, and the situation wasn’t going to change any time soon.

*********

The wooden floor creaked under Steve’s feet as he stood up from the bed. He wasn’t sure the exact time, but the darkness outside his window was evidence that it was still too early to be awake. Steve hadn’t fallen asleep at all. His mind had been stewing over Peggy since he left the diner. Memories of their very pleasant--if awkward--meal morphed into vivid reenactments of their past disagreements. 

He poured himself a glass of water and sat back down on the bed. The springs squeaked under his weight. He thought of the pillow-y mattress he slept on in the compound and then he thought of all the times he fell asleep under the stars during the war. Both experiences put the Murphy bed to shame.

Thinking about the compound allowed other thoughts to enter his mind. He remembered how quickly the water heated up in the shower and how he never had to waste time planning a meal. It was nicer to remember the easy things about the future, just like it was nicer to remember his Ma’s embrace and not how she was always away working.

Steve stood up and took the Time GPS out of his top drawer. He had stuffed it in a sock to hide it a little more, but by now he had remembered just what sock it was. The light still blinked on the device, a sign that Steve took to mean that there were still messages from Tony left for him to see. He had been hoping he had the willpower to avoid seeing what the next hologram was going to say because he had no idea how many messages there were left for him to hear or if he could ever see them again. 

It took him more than a few seconds to find the hidden button which started the transmissions. This time he was ready for the bright blue light that shot out across the apartment and could aim it so that Tony’s image had some room to pace around.

“Is this thing on, FRIDAY?” holograph-Tony asked towards Steve’s ceiling.

“Yes, boss,” Steve heard FRIDAY answer. Her voice was more muted than Tony’s.

Tony’s eyes moved towards the camera. “Hey there, Cap! I’ve been up for the last fifty-two hours and I was thinking I could use a break. Also, a person to talk to. And I mean literally ‘talk to’, because you can’t respond and I don’t have to spend the entire conversation trying to think of witty jokes to pepper into the conversation. It’s nice especially because your brand of humor is so dry it takes double the effort.”

After a short pause, he continued, “Today was weird. Happy came over to the workshop to talk to me. I think his goal was to alleviate his own guilt or something. I kept trying to tell him, I’m fine, it’s ok, I’m glad you’re with Pepper--”

Pepper’s with Happy? When did that happen? Steve thought. 

“--and are there for Morgan. I told him I rather it be him with Pepper than some rando. But honestly? Between you and me?” Tony grimaced and looked a tad guilty. “It hurts that it’s him. It’s good that I can trust him, I know he treats them well, he didn’t have to prove that to me. But I keep thinking about if there was some budding romance between him and Pepper before that I never knew about or if she would have just been happier if she ended up with him instead of me in the first place. I see them together, the three of them, and I know Pepper doesn’t regret anything if only because she got Morgan out of the whole thing, but I feel like I don’t belong in their world. I feel like it would have just been easier for them if I never returned.”

Tony swallows around those words. He hasen’t said them out loud before, Steve can tell.

“Except Morgan,” Tony continues after a beat. “She’s really happy I’m back. It’s humbling. It’s just weird how much can change in five years. One day I’m fighting back to back with you and Thor and Bruce and Nat and Clint--the Original Six, as it was. And then a few days later it’s an entirely different team. Well, except Bruce. He’s still on the team.”

Steve sat a little straighter. He had been wondering who was on the current team and he had no idea if Tony was ever going to tell him.

“Oh, yeah, and we still have a Hawkeye and a Captain America. Oh wait, fuck, I’m not sure if I’m supposed to be telling you this.” Tony’s eyes grew big as he got uncharacteristically quiet. An internal argument raged within him, and Steve waited impatiently to see what side would win. “Actually, fuck it, I’m already trampled over your timeline and caused chaos, and it’s not like you’ll ever be able to tell me otherwise. Sam’s Captain America, it’s awesome, he leads the team and owns all the public relations stuff. Also he’s always coordinating stuff with Rhodey--I mean President Rhodes--and I realized you never did jack-shit with any politicians. Bucky says it’s probably because you would have said all of them were spineless, corporate sell-outs, which, wow, how the hell did you never bring this up to me? You realize how many senate campaigns I’ve bankrolled?” 

Tony’s face boke out in a shit-eating grin as he continued to ramble. “Oh, yeah, Bucky is on the team. He makes jokes! I didn’t realize he did that. That’s probably a me-thing, though. I promise we don’t fight, you’d be proud. And then there’s Shang-Chi, he could kill you with one hand tied behind his back. There’s Spiderwoman--Jess--and she’s got spider powers but like the inverse of Peter’s powers. The best I can tell, she belongs to Fury and is keeping an eye on us on behalf of him and Carol. Also, Carol is her girlfriend, maybe I should have led with that.

“Who’s left? Oh! Hawkeye, right. Kate’s the new Hawkeye. I can’t believe she’s old enough to drive, let alone avenge, but she got her spot on the roster fair-and-square by leading a bunch of other children in beating Kang the Conquerer. He’s a time travel person, very evil apparently, hopefully you’ll never have to meet him.”

And that's it. That's where I stopped.

[nagisasstunningpersonality]

TINSITOGS, a retrospective (happy birthday)

(yes I’m like two days too late I know I’m sorry) 

Why hello followers and ass class fandom, nice to see you there. I’m sure MOST people know about this, but in case you don’t, hi. On AO3 I’m better known as livixbobbiex, writer of maybe one of the most infamous Assassination Classroom fics. 

Which I mean like, if you haven’t read it yet you totally should it’s fanlore at this point I promise- 

Shameless plug that I don’t need aside, I felt that, on its first birthday since actual completion, I just wanted to share some things about it. Some tit bits about writing it, fun facts, maybe even some author advice TM. I appreciate that it’ll be super annoying if I do that in the tags, though, so that’ll all be under the cut. If you don’t want to read the whole post, then no matter what, thanks for the support in general! 

I also want to take the opportunity to announce that I’ve reopened my discord, so if you want to talk about my fics with me (and others), you’re more than welcome to join! (the link is here) 

The origin story 

I’ve stated this many times, I think, but TINSITOGS was never supposed to be a serious story. Taking you back, quite a long time, it actually started in a facebook DM with a friend. We used to come up with “head canons” with each other, which were basically just very condensed fanfiction plots over a multitude of text messages. I believe I was trying to cheer her up, and I tried to come up with some kind of plot line. 

At the time, I was fairly fresh to the Ass Class fandom, and I was joking about how there were no teen pregnancy melodrama fanfictions. It wasn’t that I wanted one, I just thought it was strange for a school centric anime with a bunch of ships to NOT have one. And, back then, I only really cared about karmagisa. So I just decided ‘right it’s happening’. The reason I decided to make it ABO was due to ‘it making sense’. Fun fact: it was almost written as AFAB trans Nagisa, but I decided against it as I didn’t rate my ability to handle it well back then. Looking back on it, I’m glad I made that decision. 

Over around two months, writing out the plot of this story took over my life a little bit. I had no idea where I was going with it, but I was having so much fun with the drama that I decided that Karma and Nagisa shouldn’t get together soon at all, and I had a lot of fun teasing my friend with the ‘will they won’t they’. It was only when I got bored that I invented this intense drama plotline to finish it all off. 

That period of time was a lot of fun. And whilst that friendship didn’t end well, I still have a lot to thank her for. She chose Daichi’s name because I had no idea, and she wanted to annoy me because I didn’t like Haikyuu. When I couldn’t decide on his hair colour, the purple was her suggestion because ‘why logic?’ Daichi speaking Korean was because of how much she liked Kpop. She even helped me choose the title of the actual fic, so there’s a lot you can thank her for, honestly. 

After I finished that story, though, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Whenever I daydreamed, I used to think about that damn Daichi Akabane, and how much I wanted to tell his story. I’d even come up with extra stuff to fill in a lot of the gaps, and developed his character in my mind. I decided that I was really desperate to write it down. Usually that worked when I had an idea I wanted to work through. 

I wrote the first chapter in late 2017, and then the next two as well. I just, kept going, and realised that I could go further still. TINSITOGS was never something that was supposed to be shared, but I decided I may as well. After all, that fated ‘teen pregnancy drama’ fic still didn’t exist, and I thought it would be funny to make it happen. 

Yes, as I’ve stated publicly a few times, TINSITOGS was a crack fic. If I wanted attention from it, it was infamy. We even joked about me cursing the fandom if it ever became the most popular fic (whoops?). What I wasn’t expecting was a bunch of people, in a fandom where at the time there were NO ongoing karmagisa fics and it was pretty dead, to really seem to enjoy it. It was enough to have me keep writing it, at least. I still don’t know at what point I actually started taking it seriously, but somehow I did, and the rest is history? 

The reception 

In my wildest dreams, I never thought that I would be the author of one of the most popular fics in the fandom. To this day, the amount of views TINSITOGS has is insanity to me. For the record, across all platforms it’s on today it has 238,000, which is literally a number I can’t even visualise anymore. Almost quarter of a MILLION. To this day on AO3, it’s the most viewed Ass Class fic that’s an ACTUAL ass class fic (the others are multi fandom compilations). So yeah, I achieved the original goal, I guess? 

Now you might be wondering, “omg the karmagisa fandom is fujoshi trash”. And, considering the origins, it is kind of funny. The thing is, though, TINSITOGS was written at incredibly good time. It was written when there were, essentially, very few long form Karma/Nagisa stories. If any other fics did get posted on occasion, they were usually just oneshots. I was also, at that point, writing very fast. A symptom of ADHD is becoming obsessively productive over certain things. Since I was able to get a 3k chapter out every few days/once a week, TINSITOGS was consistently bumped to the top of AO3′s default view. And some of those first few chapters were altered canon, and transcribing the canon dialogue didn’t take very long. The more views it got, the more people would read it out of sheer curiosity. 

I think it also helps that, at least after it started getting some positive feedback (which was honestly after the pre written chapters), I purposely tried to make it ‘not terrible’. I mean, I personally think the first chapter is pretty weak and if it wasn’t somewhat iconic to a lot of people I’d rewrite it. But in general, I purposely tried to make the world of ABO my own, to make it more accessible to those who don’t like that genre, and stay away from the inherently grosser stuff as much as possible. I genuinely do get comments about how I introduced people to the genre as a whole, still not sure if that’s a GOOD thing but hey, it happened. 

TINSITOGS turned into a lot more than just a joke. It turned into my favourite hobby. It turned into a research project (honestly, you would not believe the amount of mummy vlogs and legit scientific articles about child development I consumed). It turned into something that, at least I believe, was widely loved. 

Meaning 

I think it might be wrong to say that I don’t have AN idea of when I started to take the fic super seriously. For me, it was around the time someone commented something along the lines of saying my writing meant a lot to them, that they’d spent all night reading it and had been unable to put it down. 

Not to get too dark here, but I do have a past in writing a very long, somewhat popular fic (it’s still on my fanfic net profile if anyone’s interested, but I don’t recommend it). However, in the latter part of my teenage years, the depression struck. Writing was the love of my life, and I couldn’t bring myself to do it anymore. Maybe I’d be able to muster an idea or even a chapter at the best points of that, but I’d never completely finished any story. Starting to write again was a huge step in my recovery, and one of the reasons I convinced myself that life was worth it was being able to impact someone’s life somehow. Even to this day, I still remember the fics I read when I was, like, thirteen. How much I still remember them, and how much they meant to be at the time. I wanted to be that writer for someone else. To be honest, it was actually Yuri!!! On Ice that got me out of the super bad, but I still never wrote anything of real consequence. TINSITOGS was the first time in a long time I actually committed to something. 

And, to be completely honest, there were a lot of times I was tired of it, and wanted to just quit. But, the thing was, I felt like people depended on me in a way. I got so many comments that were just FILLED with support, telling me how much they looked forward to every update. It wasn’t just empty words, either, a lot of the times these comments would be super engaged with the actual writing. I can’t even describe just how much they meant to me, how much I would look forward to reading everyone’s opinions. And then discord happened, which was a lot of fun. 

TINSITOGS went a lot further than I ever thought it would. There were comments, discussions, fan art, fan FIC (which is honestly incredible to me). Someone even added it to TV Tropes, at one point. Not to mention the Cards Against Humanity deck and quiz It makes me so unbelievably happy that I could inspire that much creativity, but it’s a two way street. It was all of that which inspired me to write, too. 

Writing 

The only real goal I actually had was aiming for around 3000 words per chapter. I had a whole facebook log of plot points as planning, and I was mostly just trying to expand on them into prose. I honestly thought that, at its completion, the entire fic would be around 100k words, if that. Not, at one point, being literally the longest ass class fic on AO3. 

There are a lot of aspects that were directly adapted from the original messages, and I tried to stay faithful to it more so at first, even if I later removed some of the pure crack. But the style was also vaguely similar, with the story being told mostly from Nagisa’s perspective with swaps to Karma when it made sense. All the main plot beats, too, are pretty much identical. The plus to this was I was able to add a lot of really fun foreshadowing, and I feel like it’s a fun reread because of it. 

Honestly though, if there’s a demand to release those OG message logs, I will. Mostly because it’s kind of funny, and interesting to see. Isogai and Nagisa were engaged at one point, even. 

Obviously, it changed somewhat. 3000 was the minimum length, and the time to completion was whenever it felt right. One of my big concerns was about pacing, so it took a lot more fleshing out and maybe ‘filler’ content for some of the main arcs to work. 

There’s parts of TINSITOGS I don’t think aren’t written that well, and some that I’m still super proud of. I think you can definitely tell there’s a gradual shift in style, and I get a lot more comfortable with writing them as characters as it goes along. To be honest, my pride for the fic overall is what it represents. 

It is funny to think about the places it got written in, though. I started it when I worked at McDonalds with no life direction, then it went through my first year of university with me. It’s been written in at least four countries. Aeroplanes, night clubs, long haul buses, a train through the Japanese southern coastline. Even the start of covid. TINSITOGS managed to see a lot. I even turned a scene in (the boat scene during the India chapter with altered names) to my university as a legitimate assignment. 

There were also a few messages I wanted to achieve, once I realised I had the platform to put them across. One of them was, obviously, ‘use protection kids’. It was important to me that I didn’t glamorise it too much, and I think that came across. I also wanted to dispute some of the issues with ABO, and subvert the consent issues as much as I could. An arc I really ‘liked’ writing was how abuse doesn’t always look the same way, and that it can be a drawn out change in behaviour. How the most important part of ‘being a good parent’ isn’t perfection, but genuinely loving and doing the best you can for your kid. How love doesn’t solve everything, and effective communication can take a very long time to learn and build a functional relationship. I mean, there definitely was a lot I tried to put in, and you’re free to interpret it all how you want. But, I like to think some people learnt some of these things, at least. 

Daichi 

Honestly, Daichi developed almost of his own free will. I had a good idea of his appearance, and that he was smart. Writing him from birth until around nine years old (older if you read the sequel fic) pretty much allowed that fluidity. It was really fun to explore a nature vs nurture development, and let his own characteristics speak for themselves. 

He’ll always have a special place in my heart. 

This is the first image I ever made. When I was trying to figure out what Daichi looked like, I honestly just edited Karma’s hair (pretty well, actually? I’m impressed with my past skill). That’s where the ‘he looks just like Karma’ meme kind of came from. 

This was the first image I actually created of Daichi. I THINK it was on rinmaru games mega anime creator or something, but it’s literally not available on the internet anymore as far as I can tell, so I can’t double check. This was in the pre-piccrew days. His eyes are closed because they didn’t have the right tone of goldish/silver.  

His sister, Kaguya, didn’t even exist originally, even though I decided on that ending pretty early on. Actually, she was going to be called ‘Irina’ due to some hijinks. Initially, when Karma found out about Irina’s pregnancy, she was going to get super emotional and mad at him and basically force him to name his first born daughter after her. Karma agreed to shut her up, never intending to have another child, so when the surprise second child later came along they had to live with the pain. However, to be honest I just forgot to write in the actual scene that set it all up, and I decided against adding it anywhere else. The name Kaguya was a very last minute decision, and it was a chance for me to explore some ideas that didn’t fit with Daichi’s character. 

Interestingly too, Daichi and Nao were never intended to be a thing. I only decided that towards the VERY end. Even though the reason I named Nao that was because of a ship I had in a J Drama (Good Morning Call). It just kind of ended up happening because I won myself over with imagining the cute. 

The music 

I used to write with a lot of background music, though not all the time. Particularly towards the start, there was a lot that didn’t really make sense thematically, yet I would write to a lot. 

Here’s a link to the spotify playlist if you want it it’s basically all the ones I noted I’d listened to a lot. Not including the smut ones, though, I have a whole playlist for that. 

Some of the notable ones: 

Five String Serenade - the first scene I wrote of the entire fic, in Chapter 25 New Year Time where they fell asleep cuddling. 

Cosmic Love - when I wrote Nagisa’s love confession scene in hospital (I also wrote this pretty early on) 

Northern Downpour (though it was actually a cover by Emma Blackery) - The chapter after Daichi’s born (30) 

When The Party’s Over -  Confession Time Third Period, Chapter 69. I literally listened to this song on REPEAT when I planned and wrote the kind of ‘break up’ scene, and it’s one of the few parts that made me cry writing. 

Turning Page - I know I said no smut, but this song actually gave me the idea to have the “I love you” in chapter 108 be less on a whim and actually more built up. In the original plan, Karma really did just say it without thinking. I’m glad I changed that.  

Bury Me Low and Numb - pretty much all I listened to when writing the last few chapters, because Evil Nagisa core. So much so that Bury Me Low was in my top 2020 songs rewind. 

As for the title, there’s actually quite a funny story. I had no idea what to call the fic, and when that happens I usually just try and find some song lyrics. I really wanted to use something from ‘October’ by the Broken Bells. Not only because it’s my favourite song (has been for years), but thematically it really worked. The issue was, it worked as the WHOLE song, there were no individual lyrics that captured everything. And, if they did, they didn’t flow very well. And naming the fic ‘October’ would have been weird for a lot of reasons. There Is No Sweeter Innocence That Our Gentle Sin really was just plucked randomly, in a desperate search to find any snappy lyrics from any song that had some kind of meaning. After a bit of discussion, we settled that it kind of worked... if Daichi is innocent and they committed a sin or something. It also wasn’t the most obvious lyric from the song (Take Me To Church if anyone doesn’t know) so I just went with it. It works out, I think, because TINSITOGS turned out to be a pretty good acronym and pronounceable word in its own right. 

The merch  redbubble drama 

It’s a well known fact that I’m not very good at art. However, I decided to try pixel art because it seemed the easiest to not mess up. I made Karma and Nagisa, before deciding to also give Daichi a try. 

This, to this day, is the only good quality art of Daichi that I actually own. The only one I’m actually happy sharing and thinking it doesn’t look terrible. As much as I love people sending me fanart, it’s not ‘my property’, right. 

So, I was kind of joking about TINSITOGS having merchandise. At first I just made two funny quote things, and uploaded it to redbubble. I was never intending to actually make money from this, and I’d agreed to myself that if I did, I would just donate it to charity. I was joking with the quotes, but since I had this artwork I figured I may as well uploaded. Separately, there was also an image that had pixel Daichi next to pixel Nagisa and Karma (which I also created). 

Aside from showing up in a few people’s adverts across the internet, there was no real harm with this. In fact, I didn’t make money anyway. It was just... more the joke of it existing. I did, however, buy myself a Daichi phone case, which is one of my favourite possessions. 

The funny ‘drama’ comes in when they got taken down due to copywrite. Sure, the one with Nagisa and Karma, I understand. But the other three literally had no mention or anything to do with Assassination Classroom, aside from being from a fanfiction. So basically, someone who owns those rights claimed my OC as theirs. Which makes Daichi canon? Whatever the case, I found this hilarious don’t worry. 

How has TINSITOGS changed my life? 

This is quite a strange thing to think about. Because, in a lot of ways, it really hasn’t. As I’m sure a lot of people know, I don’t really consider myself to have any real ‘fame’, despite the impressive numbers. Whenever I tell people in my personal life, they seem to think I’m some sort of internet celebrity, but that’s never been the case for me. I mean, it’s hardly a cultural phenomenon. 

In a lot of ways, I’d much rather befriend someone than have them admire me. Possibly because being someone’s inspiration is kind of weird... I’m just an awkward duck who likes to write after all. I don’t mind it, though. I genuinely find it an honour, even if I don’t necessarily agree. I also want to take this time to say that if anyone ever wants to talk or message me, you’re more than free to do so. I’m usually super casual with people who do that, I promise. 

TINSITOGS was the first story I ever finished in the way I truly wanted to. Start to end, a full narrative. And it took a LOT. There were so many times I almost felt like quitting, or took super long breaks. For me, ADHD queen, actually finishing something was a huge deal. And I know I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t owe it to everyone who read it, and myself, to see it through. You know like, if I were to die tomorrow, at least I’ve left something behind. 

In a lot of ways, it’s changed me for the better. It’s helped me develop my writing styles, and way of thinking. It encouraged me to become more active in the fandom, and develop some important friendships. I always feel like my Tumblr and Fanfiction ‘known’ factor is separate. I think most of my Tumblr following is more to do with my theories/Japanese context research if anything, for example, but I know I wouldn’t be so interested in that if TINSITOGS hadn’t lead me to deeply examine character and really look into analysing source material for clues. I also think there’s just... a lot of myself in it. 

I was 17 years old, when I first came up with the idea. I finished the story when I was 20. Now, at the time of writing, I’m 21. That time has seen some pretty significant changes - just in general life facts and my own personal human development. For me at least, a lot of that was pretty turbulent, and TINSITOGS stands as a time capsule for that, in a way. 

I know I gained a lot of confidence, and it affirmed to me that writing is what I love. Telling stories and sharing them is what I love. 

Conclusion

Do I think TINSITOGS is an outstanding piece of writing, or the best fic ever? No. I really don’t. It’s strange to say because I definitely spent a lot of time on it, but it’s not like I put my full unbridled efforts into the story. I don’t fully plan, use a beta, or even read through on my own. And that’s okay - that’s not what I write fanfiction for. Fanfiction is my place to have fun with characters and stories I like, without the pressures of having to stand on my own complete originality. Yes, I’m fully confident that I can write at a “higher quality”, if I really wanted to. I’m also aware that some authors put their full effort into their fics, and that’s just as valid! 

It feels odd to say this about my own writing, but I honestly think there’s just something in this story. It might not be written in the best prose ever, and the premise might be kind of dumb for a lot of people. But, I think, there’s some part of this fic that managed to grab people. Somehow, at some point, many readers get captured into the emotions and so drawn in that ‘they just have to finish it now!’ Again, I’m not sure myself how I actually achieved that. Of course, that won’t apply to everyone, but I do feel there’s some truth in it. And it makes me happy, to have caused that. 

If TINSITOGS is your favourite fic, or if you genuinely think it’s the best story you’ve read, then thank you. I really appreciate your support, and I’m happy to have been a part of your life, I guess. I know how much fanfics can mean to a person, and that’s why I’m not going to take it down, or edit it at all. And it’s fine too, if you loved the fic for a while and moved on -i t happens. Whatever the case, I’m very honoured to have been able to occupy a moment of your life. Or if you find this fic in 10 years time, even, I still wholly appreciate you. 

This story was incredibly important to me, and thank you for reading if it was ever important to you too. 

You may ask, what now? Well, this is only intended to be a detailed look back for whoever’s interested, and it’s likely the only one I’ll actually do, a year after completion. Of course, if you ever want to ask me anything or just discuss the story, you’re honestly good to contact me in whatever way I have available. 

I’m still writing my ongoing stories, of course, despite taking a small break due to the university work load. I fully intend to complete the stories I’ve already started to tell, at least. After that... I’m not sure if I’ll still write fanfiction. Don’t panic, this isn’t a ‘I’m quitting writing’ thing. I may, however, have bled the Karmagisa genre a bit too dry at that point. Who knows? I am pretty interested in writing something original for once, so maybe that’ll work out. 

For now, at least, thank you to anyone who read this fic. To anyone who commented, liked, or interacted with me over it. To anyone who created or learnt from it. I’m really glad that I got to share this story with you all, and ultimately left some kind of mark, no matter how big or small. 

Happy birthday, TINSITOGS. I had a lot of fun writing you. 

[imgoingtocrash]

Made of Iron, Born of Fire: The Fanmix 

by @imgoingtocrash

Listen on Spotify and 8tracks

Read the series on Ao3

AKA: A labor of love for @savvysass’s birthday!!!!

What can I say that hasn’t already been said because we’re both incredibly sappy people in our Author’s Notes? Writing this series with you has brought me so much joy in the last two years, and I never could have hit over 100k words without you. Here’s to whatever we write next in the series...and all of the WIPs we’re working on right now...and only god knows what’s next for us personally and professionally...and most importantly, to you on your Birthday. Thank you for being such a good friend, in both fandom and outside of it. I’m so, so thankful to know you and love you. 🥰

Director’s Cut Below, because we all know I love talking about this series, and yes, that does extend to why I picked these songs. (And also maybe because these song choices only make sense in my brain and hopefully Savannah’s?? Who knows! Feel free to ask questions if you want but let’s be honest this series and fanmix are most importantly for us, because we love the series so dang much.)

My Wildest Dreams by Ron Pope

I spoke in riddles and in rhymes, but my time with you has taught me to simplify, you’re not quite what I pictured you would be, you’re better than my wildest dreams.

We’ve talked about this one before, and I’LL TALK ABOUT IT AGAIN!!!! Ron Pope is so good imo, and this song wowowow the father-child feels, but especially with Tony and newborn Peter a la A Foreign Feeling and A First Time For Everything.

Big & Scared by Raleigh Ritchie

I want to be better for you, let me do that now, you’re my favorite human, so you should be prepared, I’ll help you get through it, when you’re big and scared

We’ve mentioned Tony’s thoughts about legacy multiple times by now, and I think this song really represents Tony looking forward to the person Peter could be become and that “breaking the cycle” mentality of supporting Peter even when he’s not a perfect father.

Legacy of Sadness by Ron Pope

irrational as it may seem I guess I’m sorry, even though I know that none of it’s my fault, it is easier for me to count my blessings, than to cry for every single thing we’ve lost

I have 0 shame putting these two songs by Ron Pope almost back to back because they’re the opening and closing of an album dedicated to his child like...it’s so perfect for Tony and this theme of reflection on who he is and who Peter will become/is becoming and all that entails.

this is me trying by Taylor Swift

They told me all of my cages were mental, so I got wasted like all my potential, and my words shoot to kill when I'm mad, I have a lot of regrets about that

I wrote something...very sad but also soft recently??? and this is for That it’s about pre-CW Pepperony being separated and the road to them trying to come back together including Tony working on himself and I love it!!! It hurts really good!!! This whole song is perfect for it and I can’t wait until people get to read it.

Be Good When I’m Gone by Four Year Strong

I'm sorry I can't stop to listen, but I've got so much to do and I've got some place to be, the house looks like the aftermath of a hurricane, I hope it stays that way

Tony being a busy parent but doing his best to make time for Peter in his life and making that time count has been something super important to illustrate to us, especially the transition from being a CEO to being a superhero and how that changes how Peter sees Tony’s absence over time.

I Won’t Back Down by Johnnyswim, Drew Holcomb & The Neighbors, and Penny and Sparrow

Tony puts on the original version by Tom Petty in Home Is Where The Heart Is, but I think this cover has a very slow, emotional undertone that’s really great too. The interludes, if you didn’t catch it, have all been featured in a fic previously.

Let It Matter by Johnnyswim

So if it matters let it matter, if your heart's breaking let it ache, catch those pieces as they scatter, know your hurt is not in vain

Pepper in Never Tell Me The Odds ALL DAYYYYY. She’s the emotional rock of that fic (and of our Ironfam TBH) and it’s all because she allows herself to feel her feelings and encourages the Stark boys to do so as well.

Simmer - Acoustic by Hayley Williams

And if my child, needed protection, from a fucker like that man, I’d sooner gut him, cause nothing cuts like a mother

Post-Home Is Where The Heart Is...y’all know Pepper’s not that mad about what happened to Obie. Also just Pepper when someone hurts her family?? I always write it as her sort of putting all of her emotion into something she can control and doing it well, so, this song is all about that.

Tightrope by Nia Hendricks

one step after another, keep holding on to each other, don’t look back, move on and let go, that’s how you walk on a tightrope

Pepperony trying to navigate their relationship and the insanity of superhero stuff and also co-parenting. It’s all excellent, I love them so much, I enjoy writing it so much!!!!

Dancing With Your Ghost by Sasha Sloan

Never got the chance, to say a last goodbye, I gotta move on, but it hurts to try, how do I love, how do I love again?

This song is tilted towards romance, but if you’ll remember, we’re a Pro-Tony Survives Endgame AU series, so it’s not about THAT...but well...Infinity War sure will hit something fierce for certain non-romantic relationships in this series, huh?

The Bones by Maren Morris

Call it dumb luck, but baby, you and I, can't even mess it up, although we both try, no, it don't always go the way we planned it, but the wolves came and went and we're still standing

Post-Endgame Ironfam!!! Tony and Pepper married with their kids, their family and HAPPY...THIS IS WHY WE DO ALL OF THE ANGST...FOR A FAMILY...WE LOVE THEM

Carry on Wayward Son by Kansas

Considered Pepper and Peter’s ‘song’, as it’s referenced multiple times in the series, and was one of the bigger solidifying moments of their mother-son relationship as a whole.

Mundane by Hardcastle

And I’ve been sinking into silence, dwelling on my thoughts, and in these months, I haven’t felt that most conversations have left me anything but blue

Peter’s selective mutism was something very special to us when we originally had the idea, and making sure we talk about it and utilize it in the right way is something we’re still working on, particularly with the Therapy Fic we’re brainstorming atm.

survivin’ (One Eyed Jack’s Session) by Bastille

What can I say? I'm survivin', crawling out these sheets to see another day, what can I say? I'm survivin', and I'm gonna be fine, I'm gonna be fine, I think I'll be fine

Spoiler Alert: Peter’s not fine, like, a decent amount of the time. But he’s sure trying, and we love him for that.

Jacob from the Bible by Jake Wesley Rogers

Mama, don't worry, it took me years, to say I'm sorry, to see your tears, Mama, forgive me, I grew up too fast, but it's not on you, it's in the past

Mostly part of Peter growing up to become a hero and realizing what his parents--particularly Pepper--have gone through for him to become the person he is today, but that sometimes he still doesn’t feel like he’s making them proud enough.

Compassion Is a German Word by To Kill A King

Don't be so arrogant, you ain't no different to anyone I've met, we're all the heroes in our own film, or maybe the villain in someone else's

Spider-Man being an excellent superhero boi!!! Being kind and good!!! We love it!! Also, I put a TKAK song on...a LOT of my playlists, because I think they’re great.

brutal by Olivia Rodrigo

And I'm so sick of seventeen, where's my fucking teenage dream?, if someone tells me one more time, "Enjoy your youth", I'm gonna cry

I mean...this song is such a Teenage Mood...I had to do it...

In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning by Frank Sinatra

So, I had this cute little scene in my head that went with this song for SO LONG but there wasn’t really anything for it to fit into so...yeah that’s part 2 of Savannah’s Birthday Gift, a little soft Baby Peter drabble. Fluffy Goop from top to bottom. That can be read here.

Home by Phillip Phillips

Just know you're not alone, 'Cause I'm gonna make this place your home

...I know it’s not original, okay? It’s found family, it’s great, I don’t care!

Comes and Goes (In Waves) by Greg Laswell

And this part was for her, and this part was for her, this part was for her, does she remember?

This song is good family angst in general BUT these specific lyrics made me think of Mary and that they never forget her in their lives despite the other stuff going on (because we refuse to let them).

I Have Made Mistakes by The Oh Hellos

I have made mistakes, I continue to make them, the promises I've made, I continue to break them, and all the doubts I've faced, I continue to face them, but nothing is a waste if you learn from it

No one in the Ironfam is perfect, but they all do their best to try and grow even when they’re scared they’ll never be able to. The ups and downs are all par for the course of this series to us.

Easy Days - Demo by Bastille

Cause I don’t wanna fall back again, back into the easy days, everything was so simple then, little fires burned away

Strife is a part of life, and the family in this fic growing through their loss and struggles and moving ahead as a unit to get to a better place is super central to making the fic what it is...but it’s easy for them to remember the old days before being superheroes and wishing it was simple again.

North by Sleeping At Last

Let the years we’re here be kind, be kind, let our hearts like doors open wide, open wide, settle our bones like wood over time, over time, give us bread, give us salt, give us wine

The way Tony went from feeling so alone to having an entire built family that’s so full of love and everything he never dreamed of...*screams into my pillow* I love this series so much thank you and good night!!!

[puppy-phum]

fic tag game

thank you so much for tagging me @i-am-just-a-kiddo ♥ i love rambling about my fics and my writing even if it always also brings up all the doubts and insecurities i have but. these are my children so i will show them some love :’) and it is always just wonderful to share this all with you my dear ♥

placing under cut bc i do ramble, as yall know to expect by now!

Name: VishCount i’ve already explained the origin of that name a couple of times so am sparing you from that but gotta just say that i never expected to get so fond of this username and the nicknames that followed ♥

Fandoms: wow ok so buckle up, this is gonna be a ride first i gotta mention the finnish fandom for this youtuber group called LaeppaVika. i adored them as a teenager and i still watch the videos sometimes :’) couple of the members still stream stuff even if the group has pretty much fallen apart by now and am just very fond every time. they feel like home in a way. those fics were my first ones and am still kinda proud of some of those?

then there’s this one random finnish utapri fic i once wrote... tbh i’m not sure why my anime fandoms never made me write anything? maybe it was the inexperience and the fear of using a second language lol 

after i got over that and got into BTS, i’ve written a ton for them. most of those are oneshots that vary from 1k words to 10k or something. a couple of longer ones have sprouted too and one is still in the making and i have sooooo many ideas. mostly just random aus. i adore to write those. 

lately MDZS has been my favored fandom and it has gotten some oneshots too as well as my gigantic xicheng fic that hangs somewhere well above 100k now. i wish to finish the last part for that soon but who knows, maybe it will take longer than expected sigh. and now DMBJ has pushed in as something that yells at me to write tho i’ve only posted a short oneshot for it for now. and oh, last year i also posted a couple of silly oneshots for 2moons! that was... weird tbh but am glad i did that. 

i wish i had more fandoms tbh bc there is so much interesting stuff there and i have so many ideas and inspirations but i’m very slow at writing. things don’t always just come out and some fandoms don’t grasp me for long enough that i would be able to tap into any projects. but i have no hurry, right?

Tropes: hmm do i have any? am not sure. i thought that maybe soulmate aus or some abo stuff was my thing but i’ve slowly drifted away from those. then it comes to just... idk. hurt/comfort? found families? i also adore slow burn these days and i feel like i’ve gotten a bit better at writing that but it’s still a struggle. also just, as already noted, all these different aus? mostly fantasy based ones. those are always so cool and somehow very whimsical? and lately i’ve also just fallen into this hole where i love to write some bittersweet tragedies or at least stuff that feels like a tragedy in some sense (and i blame my dear kiddo for that bc they’ve written the sweetest of tragedies and i want that too ok)

Fic I spent most time on: how do you count this? do wips count? bc if they do, then I feel like my xicheng fic called you’re the sunset and i’m the last purple left behind is it. it just keeps on going and i feel like i’ve given it all of my waking hours and heart and soul.  then it could also be my BTS abo fic My Lungs for You to Breathe that is slowly reaching its second year? am not sure. but it has been going for ages bc sometimes it comes and sometimes it goes and currently i’ve spent over six months without updating it and. yeah.  (it would be nice to mention some fic here that i’ve made some research for but tbh i never do any research. am horrible like that but i’ve never just. had the energy? tho i have hopes that i could go on this wild research spree for this one guardian idea i have but let’s see...) 

Favorite fic(s) you’ve written: (making a list bc am unable to choose, fight me)

and you remain - my pingxie oneshot that just helped me to get all of the feelings i had after tlt2 pour out. am very fond of it destiny tied us together - some introspection of lwj and jc’s relationship and how it changes throughout the years as they both mature, learn things about themselves, fall in love and realize that they share the same ppl in their hearts (and maybe develop a tentative friendship bc they’re so similar in so many ways). i had so much fun with this and it just felt like my brightest moment haha painting your skin with all of me - the xicheng soulmate oneshot i wrote at some point and still adore. it just seemed to work and in the middle of my xicheng struggles writing them so briefly and gently just felt right pouring love (growing flowers) - the ot7 oneshot i wrote bc of this one amazing twt prompt/moodboard. it was the last part of my mono series. i love it so much. joon was so nice to write throughout the whole thing ;;  lilies bloomed under your carpet - my god au for taejoon. it poured out of me so wonderfully and it was so amazing. still one of my favorite creations, this whole au.  Stories Untold / chapter 3 - this was a collection of taejoon oneshots that i was trying to make but am not sure if i will ever finish them all. but this one, where tae is a forest god and joon a human able to see supernatural things, is very dear to me bc it just feels complete

Fic I spent least time on: gosh i think it must be either my first wangxian oneshot we had it almost or my touch-starved joon oneshot show me my skin and touch my heart with very soft and lovely taejoon. both created themselves in a couple of hours?

Longest fic: currently my xicheng monster but i somehow expect my bts abo fic to get even longer if i ever manage to finish it

Shortest fic: it’s apparently my namseok fic for joon’s tokyo called missing you (i’m homesick). it created itself out of my own experiences of living in a long distance relationship and is one of my faves in that series.  

Most hits/kudos/comments/bookmarks: most hits and comments go for my bts abo fic which doesn’t really surprise me when it’s a multichapter fic :’D most kudos go for the already mentioned xicheng oneshot and most bookmarks go for the bts ot7 fic!

Fic you want to rewrite/expand on: hmm if i could rewrite something, it would probably be my first bts fic and my second long fic called Even the Universe Makes Mistakes. that soulmate au now feels a bit outdated and there are many parts i would like to change and things i would love to think again.  then if i was allowed to expand some world, i would love to write more for the xicheng soulmate au bc there are many other pairings i would love to explore there too or just to see lxc’s take on the events perhaps. other thing would be my namgi oneshot it passes (for us both) bc i adore namgi and the love they create in that brief moment. 

Share a bit of a WIP: it hasn’t been long since i shared snippets of several wips but let’s go with my pingxie which i’ve been working on and am just so damn excited about (especially now that i can use the bazaar photoshoot imagery as inspiration):

“He moves, pulled in by the darkness of the lake, mirroring the softly blue sky with its gray, heavy clouds. The snow lands on his nose, into his lashes, clings to his coat and his shoes. He doesn’t feel cold, doesn’t hear anything beyond the softness of the snowfall. Nothing exists and everything does, real and fake at the same time, comforting but still making him feel afraid.

He could lose himself here, could be lost from everything. He could stay and be forgotten, could join those people that tried to make him remain, could take the easier way. He could rest, just like he was supposed to do so many times before.

Maybe he does belong, after all. Maybe he is part of this place, so awfully familiar with it, so willing to even stop his own heart to get here. And maybe he is not, this place only hungry for those who don’t yet remain, refuse to give into this dream-like space.”

thank you once more for tagging me my dear! this was fun even if looking back to my old fics and all the lack of updating and posting these days makes me feel kinda bad... i’ve just been in a slump lately and am slowly trying to get out of it even if i almost fall back in all the time. it’s funny when last spring i felt like i was at my peak sigh. but well, as i’ve already said, i have time right?

i dunno so many writers over here but i’m tagging @cross-d-a and @kholran bc i’m curious about your work. also tagging @inkblue-black and @jockvillagersonly if you want to blabber about something or if you just want to see this. and oh also tagging @wangxianbunnydoodles bc am always open for new ppl and i know that you write ^^ 

[ms-demeanor]

I appreciate your positivity posts a lot, but there are a couple things that make me instinctively angry when i see them One, it really frustrates me that i cannot be good at everything. I know it may sound kinda stupid, but i feel jealous when i see people learning skills i know I'll never master cause they arent a priority over other skills im already working on Two, when im angry/frustrated and i see positivity, it only makes me angrier None of this is your fault, just needed to vent a little

(This post requires a table of contents)

Frustration that you can’t be good at everything - A

Frustration with positivity - B

Do I contradict myself? Kinda but not really - C

Ah-ha, but I have fooled us all - D

A

That doesn’t sound stupid at all, it actually sounds exactly like the insta-rage that I get from being bad at something or from hearing “anybody can do X.”

I know that sounds contradictory, considering that I’ve been saying “anybody can learn artistic skills with practice,” but I’ll explain in a sec.

Okay so I’m learning guitar right? Like, with all the hand-pain and dyspraxia and all I’m still giving it a go and it’s taking forever and it’s really frustrating.

It’s more frustrating because I realized I had to do it alone - if I’m practicing around people or a person is sitting next to me while I’m trying to learn a skill or get the fretting of a particular chord down or (especially this one) trying to memorize a sequence of notes and movements it’s. It’s extremely not pretty. It’s apparently very upsetting for the people who are around me when that happens.

I get furious with myself and I get frustrated because goddamnit fucking children can do this thing and I’m an adult and it’s a simple fucking sequence of five movements and I’m just getting it wrong because I’m a useless idiot.

It takes about four minutes with a guitar teacher or jamming with a friend for me to devolve into “attempt sequence > fuck sequence up > apologize > try again but now while more mad at myself > fuck it up worse > apologize > forget beginning of sequence > try really hard not to start calling myself a fucking idiot in front of a friend who really shouldn’t have to handle this.”

And when I do that it feels terrible. It feels bad, feels like my skills have regressed, makes me want to put the instrument down and not pick it up again.

The thing is, I do this with every skill that I’m learning. You should see me when I’m trying to learn a new version of some kind of software. It’s terrible. I’m at my absolute worst and lowest when I’m trying to find the new place Adobe has hidden a menu or what the new command is to format something in Word.

But here’s the deal: I know what this is when I’m doing it. This is emotional dysregulation.

Basically finding out that I have ADHD changed my life and got me to really start examining a lot of my reactions to things and the behavior patterns I’ve lived with for most of my life.

I experience an impulse to be furious when people are more skilled than I am, I AM furious when I feel like my skills aren’t where I think they should be. But neither of those things are actually good for helping me learn to do the thing and I’d much rather learn to do the thing than be angry about not being good enough at it.

I spend a fair amount of time in therapy. I have worked on recognizing when I have the impulse to do something that is going to be unhelpful or reactive and attempting to approach that impulse with other options.

That’s not easy! And it doesn’t come naturally! My first response to a lot of things is still anger or frustration or despair.

But since I *know* that’s my first impulse and I’ve learned enough about my own behavior to understand that my first impulse is frequently the wrong course of action (grounded in panic or whatever) I’ve been working on accepting that my first reaction is typically negative and moving on more quickly to other, more helpful reactions.

(this has been really fantastic for increasing my feelings of agency and control over my own life; acting on your panic response all the time isn’t good for your long term stability)

You know you can’t be good at everything, you know that it takes a long time to acquire skills. That doesn’t make it any less frustrating that you don’t have the skills that you want to have. So it’s understandable that your first reaction to the skills positivity posts would be negative, and it’s understandable if you want to sit in that negativity for a little bit.

It’s also understandable to mourn the skills that you could have had. “If I hadn’t stopped practicing guitar in my teens I could be so much better now.” “If I hadn’t had to get a job with such a long commute I could be drawing daily and I’d be so much farther along.” “If I hadn’t been discouraged by my parents I’d have had so much more practice with music.” “If I hadn’t gotten injured I’d be such a good dancer right now.”

There’s a perfect you that lives in your head and they’ve had all the opportunities you missed and got to keep practicing when you couldn’t and have all the money you don’t and sleep you keep missing. I get wanting to be that person. I get wanting what they want.

But the you in your head isn’t real and it’s sad if you’re ignoring how wonderful the real you is because you’re not perfect in the same ways.

So if you can, I’d recommend trying to see if there’s a positive response you can practice remembering when you get frustrated about your skills.

(for me it’s honestly just saying “the next best time to plant a tree is today” and remembering that I’ve got a long time to learn to do all the things I want to do. It’s not a race, and if I can’t get to something now I can try later.)

You’re great. You’re great and you’re trying hard and if you wouldn’t yell at your friend for not learning a skill or being good at something you shouldn’t yell at yourself either.

B

So when I was like, 17, I wrote a bit of poetry that went like this:

I’m a casual cynicwho prays for optimistsbut it’s hard for me to be onewhen I’m talking with my fists.

I am a very, very negative, pessimistic person. Optimism and positivity irritate the hell out of me.

The frustrating thing about positivity is that it largely feels like criticism. It feels like “if you can’t do X, Y, or Z it’s because you choose not to.”

And I sure as fuck can’t blame people for being negative. I’m negative and the world is shitty and everything is difficult and expensive. I really, really don’t think that people are choosing not to do what they want to do.

So when you hear “you can do it!” it’s a very natural response to go “yeah, easy for you to say, you don’t have a million things preventing you from doing it.”

Part of this is that your brain is a filthy liar and it thinks that skills are easy to acquire. Your brain is going “if anyone can do it and I haven’t it’s because I’m lazy and I suck.”

I would like you to remind your brain that it is a filthy liar.

(I would also like to remind people that negativity that exists to the point that generic positivity posts upset you or make you angry is a symptom of depression)

But the other thing is that you probably DO have a million legitimate things that are keeping you from Doing The Thing and when you’re seeing someone else say “Do the thing!” you’re just seeing the shiny thing, not their million things that were in the way too.

Doing shit is HARD. It’s exhausting. It involves opportunity cost. If I want to make fanart I have do dedicate time to that that gets taken away from somewhere else and you know what sometimes it’s just better for me and more in line with my desires to re-read a 100k slow-burn than it is to make a drawing of the characters.

But it’s also really important to recognize which kinds of positivity actually contain criticism.

My initial statement in the Gru comic was “Talent is bullshit, nurture your skills with practice & make the content you want to see in the world.” This was in reaction to a simply-drawn comic that expressed that you need talent to make fanart and not everybody has talent.

A lot of people have seen that as criticism.

I am. Really, really not attempting to criticize people with these posts.

But also, yeah, being told “woah, hey, just calm down” when you’re already pissed isn’t going to make anyone’s afternoon any better. And there’s not much I can do about that (and I know you don’t want me to, you said you were just venting).

C

“You hate positivity and yet you make positivity posts, interesting.”

So the brand of positivity posts I hate are the “If I can do it anyone can!” posts and here’s why:

Not everyone can be on a Roller Derby team.

Breaking my back and having to quit roller derby made me reassess a lot of my attitudes about the world.

If you point to a specific activity and say “if I can do this anyone can do this” you are wrong. There are a lot of people who aren’t going to be able to do a thing. If you say “If I can lose the babyweight within three weeks of giving birth anyone can” there are a lot of people who can’t do that thing and there is a kind of implicit criticism there. “If I can get over my scoliosis and lift weights anyone can,” is kind of saying that the people with scoliosis who can’t lift weights just aren’t making an effort.

“If I can do this anyone can” is wrong. It ignores the fact that people are all in unique circumstances and have different limitations. No, not anyone can. Not everyone can be on a Roller Derby team.

But what I’m saying in my posts isn’t “anyone can draw” it is “if you practice a skill you will improve at it, so if you want to improve at drawing you need to practice.”

And I’ve been very clear in admitting that not everyone can do this, due to time constraints and low energy and physical limitations.

The one deviation I’ve made from that is to come pretty close to saying “anyone can do art” and again, I consider that a bit different because “art” is a very broad category and I do believe that pretty much anyone can create things that I would consider art, even if that art isn’t traditional visual media. And again, any of those kinds of art would also improve with practice.

D

The joke was on all of us all along, by the way. While I’m being pretty positive about the idea of practice and the fact that it will improve people’s performance at all skill levels there’s a secret:

That Gru post isn’t so much positive about practice as it is *incredibly* negative about the concept of talent.

Talent IS bullshit. There is a variable range of innate abilities that people can have that may jump-start a particular skill but proficiency in that skill is always going to be down to practice, not talent.

Talent was made up as a cover to explain the “brilliance” of people who had armies of laborers supporting them. I bet I’d be able to invent a lot of shit if I didn’t have to do laundry or worry about whether I was going to be able to afford both food and rent next month. Talent is a myth that pairs nicely with great man theory in that it is crap and I want people to understand that sucking at things for a long time is a part of not sucking at things eventually and also that you’re going to get a lot more done working with a group of motivated people than you are if you wait for one “talented genius” to change the world.

[cowboytaco]

So I just wrote my first fanfic. Hosie, because Josie is seriously so soft. I’ll also post it on ao3, but I wanted to post it here first to get your opinion. 

I was thinking of a real slow burn, not something where they get together after 5 chapters. I haven’t really found any Hosie ff to my liking lenghtwise, so I’d really like to write a long one (at least 100K). 

The story will basically replace everything after 1x12. 

Let me know what you guys think? Or if you have any idea or input. Writing remarks are also welcome!

[Edit: here's the ao3 link https://archiveofourown.org/works/24014470/chapters/57774139]

--------------

Hope had always known she had a thing for Josie. Ever since they were little and she observed the twins from afar. The brunette had a softness to everything she did, always so attentive to everyone around her and caring. Really, who could not fall for that.

So that is what Hope did. She fell in love with Josie, without being able to put words on this feeling. They rarely spoke, but her heart felt strange each time Josie would look her way or send her a shy wave from the other side of the room. 

And then they grew up. And her life got turned upside down. And her room almost burned down, and things changed. She became the target of Lizzie’s snarky remark for no apparent reason, and Josie would look at everywhere but her whenever they found themselves in the same vicinity. 

Hope spent nights trying to make sense of what she could have done, laying on her bed in her room that still had a faint smell of burn. No matter how long she thought about it, she never was able to come up with an answer. So after some time, she gave up. 

Her feelings for Josie never really went away though. They were buried, deep down, but still present, as a reminder of what she’d never have. 

Until that night, when Josie admitted having started the fire because she had a crush on Hope. And what was she supposed to say? So she smiled, and before things got awkward, she excused herself to leave the twins “to talk”, throwing a small smile Josie’s way and wishing both girls good night. 

*********

After leaving the twins’ room, Hope found herself in a position she had not been in in some time, on her bed, looking at the ceiling, and thinking about every last encounter she had with the brunette witch. 

It was a weird feeling, knowing you could have had the one thing you always wanted if you had just tried to get it. But Hope knew she may be brave when it came to fighting monsters, but she was petrified of dealing with any kind of emotion. 

Was she that scary to Josie? She must have been for the girl to nearly burn down the whole school in fear Hope would find out about her crush. But who was she kidding, she never really made any effort to fit in, to make friends. She never spoke to anyone unless she had a specific reason to, ate in her room for most meals, and looked like she carried the weight of the world on her shoulders. Of course she looked scary, and she had only herself to blame.

Deciding dwelling on the past would not do her any good, she changed into her pyjamas and went to the kitchen to get some food before going to bed. As she got closer to the kitchen, she heard someone digging through the cupboards.

“Lizzie?”

“Oh shit”, the girl yelped, turning around and almost spilling the content of the box of cereals on the floor, “wear some bells around your neck, would you”.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you”, Hope said softly. Lizzie was looking at her expectantly, but Hope had no idea what to say to her after the day they had, and the silence started to get awkward.

“I’m…”

“How are…”

“Sorry, go first”, Hope told her.

“I’m sorry about what happened. About the fire, about being awful to you for something you were also the victim of. For everything.” It was one of those rare times that Lizzie looked like she meant every word she said, so Hope listened, trying not to cry.

She felt so much lighter, without knowing in the first place that something was weighting her down. Finally knowing that she wasn’t the one at fault for the tense situation between her and the twins made her feel like a big part of her worries just vanished. For once, she was not blaming herself. And it felt good.

“Please don’t be mad at Josie, she really didn’t mean to cause you any harm, we were young and stupid”

Hope gave her a watery smile, “I don’t”, and she meant it. “Tell her. If she worries, which she probably will. Please tell her I’m not mad?”

“I will”, Lizzie smiled. “But maybe you could also tell her yourself? Breakfast tomorrow?”, the blonde asked hesitantly, not knowing what was the proper etiquette for their situation.

And Hope will blame the dust, but a tear fell down her eye as she starting laughing “yeah, I’d love that”.  Lizzie was extending her an olive branch, and she’d be stupid if she did not grab it with both hands.

[leviathanlazarus]

Show Me

Pairing: Danny Wagner x (F) Reader

Word Count: 2943

Warnings: smut [fingering; penetrative sex], 18+, read at your own discretion.

Thanks to @peacelovekiszka for the beautiful gif; thanks to the wonderful anon who indulged me in such a fun request. I really enjoyed writing this--my first oneshot Danny smut! The longest oneshot for my most favorite boy! <3 

---

“You’re such a dork, Danny,” you teased, nudging his arm as he showed you his golf stats on his phone. You still weren’t privy to the game itself, but you always got a kick out of him trying to tell you about his latest wins and seeing how excited he got about it all. “Show me more pictures of you in your cute outfits.”

He laughed and turned his cheek a bit, blushing as his hair got in his face. 

“Daniel, stop boring Y/N with golf,” Sam instructed from the opposite end of the table, the game of Life in the center of you, Danny, Sam, Josh and Jake. “It’s your turn anyway.”

Danny put his phone back in his pocket and spun the little white wheel, the arrow landing on the number 7. He moved his blue van and landed on the tile that said “Get Married.” 

“Boy or girl?” Jake teased, holding up the bag of minuscule pink and blue plastic pieces. 

“Shut up, Jake,” Danny retorted. “I get a Life tile, too.”

As he reached for the tile Jake was handing him, Danny’s side brushed against you and you quickly adjusted so you weren’t touching. What you’d said about his golf outfits had been more truth than joke--you really did think he looked cute--hot, even--on the course, his look of total concentration captured in the pictures. But the slight sexual tension, if you could even call it that, between you two had always been a joke, too. More joke than truth, you figured, anyway. 

You’d all gone through all the hoops of life--college, career, home, marriage, kids (except you and Josh somehow managed to skip that hurdle while Jake got stuck with three of them and Sam had twins, which was extremely ironic and hilarious to you), and retirement, finally. You’d stockpiled all your Life tiles and your cash, settling down at Millionaire Estates, feeling confident you’d be the winner, especially with how little your competitors had in comparison.

Once everything was counted though, Danny ended up being the winner by a hair, and you huffed next to him.

“You only won because you kept stealing my salary card,” you protested, going to recount your earnings.

“A teacher can’t make 100k a year anyway,” Danny grumbled next to you.

You nudged him with your elbow. “They deserve to. You were a cop! You don’t deserve it.”

“Well, I’m sorry,” Danny replied, surveying the Life tiles in his hand. “But I also won because I wrote a best-seller and I won a Nobel prize.”

“Oh, I’m so sure,” you scoffed.

“God, could you guys just fuck already?” Jake groaned, instantly causing both you and Danny to avert your attention from your bickering.

Danny seemed too stunned to say anything so you went first, simply--and harshly--asking, “What?”

“You two really do seem like you’ve got this, uh,” Josh interrupted before his twin could go on. “This sexual tension or something.” 

“It’s been getting worse,” Sam chimed in.

Your whole body felt overheated, sweat already threatening to overrun your pores. You weren’t sure what to say and still Danny was silent. “That’s weird,” you finally managed to respond. “I don’t see it that way.”

“I honestly thought you already had,” Jake explained. “But Daniel told me you hadn’t, so now I really think you should.”

Finally Danny became verbal. “God, Jake--”

Thankfully Sam broke the tension by accidentally spilling all the leftover tiny blue and pink figurines onto the floor, and you started to disassemble the board and put it away. You weren’t going to touch that one. You were embarrassed they’d picked up on it--you and Danny had always been good friends, but the good friends that got in each other’s hair and annoyed one another from time to time. Which was normal, right? Yet apparently the tension had become so palpable that the Kiszka’s couldn’t keep their mouths shut and Jake had even asked Danny if you two had, what? Fooled around? Fucked? 

Not that you would be opposed. Danny was sexy. Silly, sweet and sexy. But you still weren’t going to engage, not after all that. Besides, you were still pissed you lost the game.

Later that night though, it ended up being just you and Danny. Well, Sam was still there, but had passed out early on the couch after the nonstop board games and him having one too many daytime beers, and Jake and Josh had trotted off to get more snacks. You and Danny were alone then, the music in the background and Sam’s soft snoring intercepting what would otherwise be dead silence between you two.

“Sorry about that,” Danny said abruptly, cutting through your daze as you observed Sam’s steady breathing. “That was--uncomfortable.”

“It’s okay,” you replied, not needing a reminder. 

“I shouldn’t have said anything to Jake, it’s just, he got on me about it,” Danny continued, running his hand through his hair. “But he’s an idiot.”

You laughed. “Sometimes friends just have sexual tension, right? That’s just how it is.”

Danny nodded silently in agreement.

You laughed again, silently to yourself. “Although you do look really hot in your golf outfits.”

He smiled at you. “Really?”

“Yeah, it’s so different from what you normally wear,” you said, feeling flushed again. “But in a good way, obviously.”

There was a pause and then Danny said, gliding his fingers up your thigh, “I like the jeans you have on.”

Your heart felt like it had stopped, then it was racing. “Why?” you asked, unable to take your eyes off his hand.

“They just--um, they show you off nicely.”

You chuckled and placed your hand on top of his, stilling his movements, then dragged it up his arm and to his chest. It was happening. The possible break of all that pent up sexual tension was finally happening. Danny leaned in, both of you looking at one another for the first time in a few minutes, and he looked expectant yet hesitant--you were sure you looked the same. Still, neither of you hesitated for too long before your mouths met. 

His lips were softer than you imagined. Quite soft, actually, and warm. His hand squeezed your thigh a little as you both deepened the kiss, with your hand pressing harder against his chest. You were finally able to feel those hard muscles under his shirt, and you couldn’t stop yourself from bringing it down to his abdomen to rest there, again taking in the sensation of his body. Danny did the same, moving his left hand down to your hip as you leaned into him and moved his right from your thigh up to your chest. He hesitated--you assumed to see if you’d protest--and then gently squeezed your breast, cupping it as you continued to kiss.

A particularly loud snore from Sam took you both out of your consumption of one another. You paused against Danny and he did too, lowering his hand from your breast and peering over your shoulder at his sleeping friend.

“I forgot he was there,” you said.

“Me too,” Danny replied with a laugh.

You looked at him again. He really was so beautiful, so beautiful it made your heart ache. No wonder it had been years of bickering, getting under one another’s skin and hasty, seemingly irritated touches and shoves. Jake was right--you wanted to fuck.

“Do you wanna keep going?” you asked Danny.

“Do you?”

You nodded. “Yeah.”

Danny looked like he was trying to pull back his excitement, but you still saw it. “My room?”

“Sure,” you answered, standing up. “Let’s let sleeping Sam’s lie.”

Danny’s bedroom felt immensely different to you then. It wasn’t just a room you’d pass in and out of if he was running late, or where you’d first listened to Led Zeppelin. It was his room, an open, physical manifestation of his aesthetics and interests, his scents and sensations.

He shut the door and immediately moved back to you, grasping your arm with one hand and the side of your face with the other, and kissed you hard. You kissed back, your kisses becoming sloppier and more eager, then you were back on the bed, working your way to the center with Danny never removing himself from you until he took off his shirt.

You parted from his mouth then, running your hands down his torso, biting your lip as your fingers traced his happy trail, lingering on the fly of his jeans. You could admit to yourself then that you’d thought about this before--the feel of his skin, the warmth of his body, the sight of him bare and ready for you. 

You eased your shirt off yourself then Danny started to pull down the same jeans he’d complimented, stepping off the bed to yank them off from around your ankles. He dropped his own jeans to the floor, leaving both of you in just your underwear. When he returned to you, he brought you back into a kiss and pulled your leg over his, both of you lying on your sides.

“You can tell me when to stop,” Danny said quietly as his hand slid from your hip to between your legs, his fingertips grazing you through your underwear.

“I don’t want to stop yet,” you assured him, running your fingers through his hair and kissing him again. You moaned a little when the pressure of his fingers increased, rubbing them up and down over you, and you could feel yourself getting wetter with each passing touch.

You took it upon yourself to take your bra off, unhooking it and dropping it on the floor. Danny’s kisses moved from your lips to your neck, him moving his free hand to your breast again, caressing your skin as he placed gentle kisses down your throat. You could feel him getting hard against your thigh, and you eased him back onto the bed to straddle his hips.

“I actually thought about this a lot,” you admitted, placing your hands on his chest and starting to grind yourself against him.

Danny moaned quietly before replying with, “I did, too, Y/N.”

Your wetness was soaking through both of your layers of fabric as you kept grinding, working a slow, steady rhythm on top of him. You bent down to kiss him and, as your lips just touched, Danny rolled you over and slid your underwear down your legs as he did so, everything taking place in one swift movement.

You stifled a chuckle. You hadn’t expected him to be so smooth. 

Danny clasped his hand to the side of your face and kissed you so profoundly he literally took your breath away, and your hands found their way around the back of his neck, tangling in his hair. You kept your mouths on one another’s, the synchronicity deep and fluid, as his free hand found its way between your legs. You moaned into his kisses when he circled your clit with his middle finger, then slid it down slowly, even more slowly as he slid it inside you.

“Is that okay?” he asked, taking his hand off your cheek to brush his hair out of his face.

“Yeah, that’s great,” you replied. He started to pump his finger gently, working you around him, just slightly pressing the tip of his finger against your g-spot. “I didn’t think you’d have such skilled fingers.”

Danny chuckled, lowering his face to your shoulder. “Why, just because I’m a drummer? What would I be skilled with, then?”

You moaned quietly again when he slipped in a second finger. “You show me, Danny.”

He smiled and lifted himself off you, taking off his boxers before wrapping your legs around his hips, aligning himself with your center. He held your hip as he leveraged himself above you and slid himself in your wetness, coating his hard-on, sending a shiver through your whole body. When he leaned forward and started to grind himself against you, you shuddered under him and gripped his biceps.

“Jesus, please,” you begged quietly. All the sexual tension built up, that was for sure, and you were bursting then, the desire becoming more desperate as he took his time. 

Danny smiled at that, a proud smile that made you even more anguished, and you dug your nails into his arm. He rubbed against you for a moment longer, still holding your hip down, then leaned over and fumbled around in a drawer. 

As he slid the condom over himself you thought of the absurdity of it all. You’d never even thought of Danny having condoms, though why wouldn’t he? He was the full package. In more ways than one, too, which was completely apparent when he started to ease into you. 

“Oh my god,” you moaned, going right back to digging your nails into his bicep. “God, you’re fucking--” You couldn’t complete the sentence, caught by a whine in your throat.

“Are you okay?” Danny asked, looking incredibly concerned and ceasing his actions. “Need me to stop?”

“No, don’t stop,” you said, easing your clawing of him, you other hand moving to the back of his neck. “You’re good.”

He carefully continued, slowly but evenly sliding inside you, and kept his eyes locked on yours. You bit your lip--Sam may have still been asleep but you didn’t know when Josh and Jake would be back--and inhaled deep breaths through your nose. Danny felt like, well, a lot, but he felt fucking good, especially when he was finally, fully in, he was already pressing against your g-spot.

“Fuck, Danny,” you moaned, louder than you’d planned. “That feels so fucking good.”

He smiled, looking a little surprised. “I haven’t done anything yet.”

You inhaled another deep breath. “So show me, drummer boy,” you told him and pulled him down into a kiss, using his mouth to quiet yourself as he started to thrust.

Danny started slowly again, barely moving his hips back and sinking them back in, but after you felt yourself get even wetter, your fluids all around him, he got more comfortable. He pulled you into him by your hips and gave you another long kiss before you brushed his hair away from him and kissed his neck, both of you folded into one another.

It was bliss--pure and all-consuming bliss, and not just because of the sheer size of him. Danny’s rhythm was unmatched--totally stable, heavy enough for you to be biting down on his shoulder to keep yourself from moaning loud enough to actually wake Sam up--but considerate enough to keep you entirely comfortable around him, your body in total acceptance. 

His breathing was heavy, as was yours as you kept your teeth on his shoulder. He went for a particularly deep thrust and you released him, clenching his bicep, your other hand around the side of his neck, your thumb at the base of his throat.

“I want you to cum first,” Danny said quietly, reaching between the two of you to run his fingers through your lingering fluids and begin to rub your clit.

You clenched around him and frantically moved your hand from his bicep to his ribs, sinking your nails in there. “Danny, I’m gonna--” you started to say, your words getting cut off again by another whimper welling in your throat. He continued, thrusting deep, circling your clit, and you hurriedly pulled him back down on top of you, shaking around him. “Fuck, Danny.”

“Oh, fuck,” Danny breathed as you came. You could feel how tight you were around him then, so you could only imagine how it felt for him. He turned your face back to his, holding your jaw in his hand, and quieted you with his mouth, sliding his tongue against yours, a mess of saliva and stifled moans. 

He bit down on your bottom lip as he came, one final, deep and hard thrust radiating through your core, dense enough to bump the bed frame against the wall. When he released your lip from his teeth he groaned, nestling his face against your neck, and his hips shuddered against yours. He ground himself into you after he’d stilled, neither one of you seeming to eager to be free of the other, with his hips flush with yours and your arms still tight around him.

After a couple minutes, with Danny still in you and you bringing him to you for a slow, soft kiss, he rolled over, still breathing heavily. He grabbed the crumpled blanket from the foot of the bed and wrapped it over the two of you, sidling up to you and wrapping his arm around your waist, your foreheads pressed together.

“I actually wish we’d done this sooner,” you admitted, reaching up to play with his hair, a little damp with sweat by his ears.

“No,” Danny murmured, adjusting himself so he could nuzzle your neck. “I like how this worked out.”

You laughed. “Relentlessly picking on one another until we fuck years later?”

Danny laughed too and wrapped both arms around you, pulling you almost completely on top of himself. “Yeah.”

You brushed his hair back with your fingertips, tucking strands back behind his ears. “Did they have like, a betting pool on us or something?”

He looked sheepish for a moment before giving you a quick kiss. “I think Josh might owe Jake some money.”

You laughed again. “Whatever. They were right, I’ll give them that.”

Danny smiled past his post-orgasm exhaustion. “So, are you impressed by my skills?”

“Very,” you answered, resting your head in the crook of his neck. “I’d like it if you could show me again sometime.”

---

Tagging: @mountainofthesunn @bigthighsandstupidguys @camomillacatalina @kiszkawagnergvf

Let me know if you’d like to be added to the taglist ~ I will not tag you in smut if it’s not your gig; I will also not tag you in it if you’re under 18. 

[lesbeet]

Hi! Just out of curiosity, which of those writing tips did you like, and which ones did you not agree with? I've seen a lot of them before and thought they were pretty common tips

i'm sure this is more than you were asking for but i'm just gonna go through em one by one and add a bit of commentary bc i have nothing better to do

1. every character’s first line should be an introduction to who they are as a person

generally a good rule to follow - personally, i try to make every element of my writing work on more than one level. dialogue for the most part should be used to reveal character (as opposed to exposition). like, obviously sometimes characters will reveal information aloud to each other which advances the plot, but well-written dialogue for a well-rounded character should reveal some combination of information that character intends to communicate as well as some information they don't (eg someone saying one thing and their body language or expression saying something else, which not only provides the information the reader needs, but also provides information about how that character wants to appear to others vs how they actually are/how they actually appear, etc)

2. even if you only wrote one sentence on a really bad day, that’s still one sentence more than you had yesterday

yes 100000%

3. exercise restraint when using swear words and extra punctuation in order for them to pack a punch when you do use them

i'm ehh about the swear words part bc they can be used to demonstrate character info, but definitely re: exclamation points and the like. idk if by "extra punctuation" they mean like "!!" which is something i personally never do - exclamation points should be used sparingly as is, but if what you're writing requires more than one right next to each other, your dialogue isn't strong enough.

4. if your characters have to kiss to show they’re in love, then they’re not in love

absolutely

5. make every scene interesting (or make every scene your favorite scene), otherwise your readers will be just as bored as you

easier said than done, but a good goal

6. if you’re stuck on a scene, delete the last line you wrote and go in a different direction, or leave in brackets as placeholders

this one is a good piece of advice, but ive seen people say (and have found out for myself) that usually the problem is further back than the most recent line you've written. rarely do you detect the problem so soon after you write it, so it helps to go even further back in the scene to find where things got muddled

7. don’t compare your first draft to published books that could be anywhere from 3rd to 103rd drafts

this is one of the most difficult items on the list and also one of the most important lol

8. i promise you the story you want to tell can fit into 100k words or less

sure, but Can doesn't necessarily mean Should. concision is the best practice, especially for less experienced writers (and i include myself in that), but i would caution that some stories work better with a little bloat or with a tasteful amount of subplot or scene that doesn't necessarily move the plot forward; however, you still need to be able to justify a scene's inclusion in the story. if it's not advancing the primary plot, it should be advancing a subplot and/or revealing more about character or even some slight worldbuilding.

i hate to mention jk rowling here because she's not that great of a writer, but think of all the people who talk about how much they love the scenes that don't show much more than the hogwarts daily grind. studying in the common room, meals, classes, just adding to the worldbuilding of hogwarts and student life and showing us what the main characters do when they're not saving the world or trying to solve a mystery. the hp books would be significantly shorter without those scenes and maybe readers wouldn't have even noticed if they'd never been added to begin with, but so many people (again, including me) love and appreciate those scenes. they make the world and the characters feel more real, more relatable, etc.

this one got long (lol irony) but basically, shooting for an arbitrary number of words should really only be a rough estimate (also unfortunately if you're trying to get picked up by a publisher then you're probably better off sticking to the status quo of your particular genre in terms of average word count). take out what isn't necessary, but maybe open up your definition of "necessary" - just a little (seriously, just a little)

9. sometimes the book isn’t working because it’s not ready to be written or you’re not ready to write it yet; let it marinate for a bit so the idea can develop as you become a better writer

idk how i feel about this. im good with writing a draft and then taking a break for a while before going back to it, but this just seems like a really effective excuse for not writing something.

maybe it's just how this tip is phrased idk i just feel like the idea of you or the story "not being ready yet" is kinda silly. if you've been hacking away for a while and getting nothing out of it but frustration, then yeah take a week or two off. but this makes it sound like "oh you haven't matured enough to tell this story yet. try again in a few years." imo it's always better to write a steaming pile of shit and make it better through editing than to put it off until you feel "ready" - bc, at least in my own experience, it's very easy to convince yourself that you're not ready yet instead of taking the plunge and just getting started

10. a story written in chronological order takes a lot more discipline and is usually easier to understand than a story written with flashbacks

this one is confusing to me bc i'm not sure if they're referring to the writing process or the story itself. i agree that writing it in chronological order takes more discipline than writing whatever scene tickles your fancy at a given moment, but just because you WRITE it in chronological order doesn't mean the final product has to be structured that way. likewise, chronological order is usually easier for a reader to follow, but you don't necessarily need to WRITE the story in order. do what works best for you.

personally ive found over time that i prefer to go in order unless i get stuck somewhere, in which case ill move on and go back to it later. so there are a lot of holes in my drafts, but i do try to write in order so the timeline of the story stays clear in my mind, and also so i can get up close and personal with the mechanics of the story, like how different events and scenes lead to what happens next, etc. and like the tip mentions, it's a fantastic disciplinary practice - otherwise you could write all the fun/easy scenes and be left with very little motivation to write the more complex or less favored scenes (which, contrary to that tip up there, are sometimes necessary even if they're not AS exciting as others)

~~

as usual sorry my answer was so long djsksksksk

[adamsvanrhijn]

tagged by @meryton-etc ! tagging: @wirkmood, @marschallin, @somepaperclips !

ao3 name: smithens !

fandoms: just downton abbey at the moment! in the past: les misérables (rewind like 5+ years) homestuck, harry potter, twilight, maximum ride, whatever the fuck, i discovered ffn at like 8 and that was a bad recipe.

number of fics: published on ao3, 35 for downton abbey and ~50 for les mis. 

fic i spent the most time on: honestly i have no idea. i don’t really have a way of measuring that, especially with downton abbey because i’m basically just constantly writing and switching between google docs... i can say however that   strange how I fit into you (there's a distance erased with the greatest of ease) and like foals, unsteady on their feet were both written in intense fever dream like circumstances where i just worked on the one thing for hours on end.

fic i spent the least amount of time on: same as above? i’ll say vulnerary just because as far as i remember, it was in my head and then it was published, just a very breezy writing experience. i wanted it to be up by christmas and i actually had to stop myself from writing some stuff though lol. (in retrospect, wish i hadn’t done that.)

longest fic: the in progress thomas/richard accidental-erotic-novel when to my soul, the body would say. it was supposed to be like 10k words and 3 chapters, and now it’s going to be 11 chapters and approximately 100k words, so, i underestimated to say the least.

shortest fic: i write drabbles so like... yeah lol

most hits: ok get ready for this. it’s you will not take my heart, alive.

most kudos: it’s you will not take my heart, alive.

most comment threads: what we must to get by! shocker. i............ adore comments with all my heart. please give me comments i eat them for breakfast. i am really bad at replying to them as of late unfortunately - although that’s actually another thing i got better at with now being able to breathe again? amazing.

most bookmarks: it’s you will not take my heart, alive.

total word count:  400,886........ i’m ...... okay and 285,158 are from the last seven months or so, so that’s fucking wild. that’s the power of brain worms!

favorite fic i wrote: hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh? i think it’s actually love shall be our token.... i’d make some changes as with everything but i just... really like the vibe... i have good images in my head.

fic i’d rewrite / expand on: lmfao like all of them? i rewrote ywntmha and i still want to keep going in and fixing stuff, so, womp womp there; i’m in the process of a what we must to get by rewrite/major edit (so no one reread it!!!!! it sucks right now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). i would LOVE to do more with vulnerary & that’s kind of what i’m most itching to get to but i’ve also got uhhh unfortunately lots of things in progress and i need to brain dump before i get around to that.

share a bit of a WIP: stickin em under a cut, going for several as reassurance that I Promise I’m Still Working On These:

He's also absolutely dripping with not-from-around-here, and when he gives Thomas a once over it's with a very familiar look in his eyes.

Wishful thinking, maybe, but he has an air of something more than new in the Big Apple, so Thomas shakes his hand when it's offered. "Thomas Barrow."

They've somehow managed to be the only lone men left in the place; the bar stool next to Thomas's own was the last one open.

He hasn't had anything to drink yet; he'll humour his new friend until he has.

That or until he knows more.

(certain liberties)

"Somebody's been looking happy, since Mr Molesley turned up…"

Phyllis jumps.

When she turns around she sees it's Thomas, of course it's Thomas, but did he really have to sneak up on her like that?

"You frightened me," she says, accusing. She sets down Her Ladyship's dancing shoes and lets her hands fall to her sides, idle. She doesn't want to dignify the remark with a real response.

"Door's wide open same as always," he returns, smirking, and he leans against the frame. "Maybe you should've been paying better attention."

"To the door?"

"I do," self-righteous as ever, but these days it doesn't bother her...All the same, she raises her eyebrows. "You weren't in the brushing room yesterday."

Paying attention to the door.

"Can't watch it when I've got my back turned, have I?" He shifts back and forth on his feet, turns to look toward the passage, and she wonders if she chose the wrong thing to say. "The royal people've made a mess of the cupboards," he adds lamely. "And Mr Carson's not gonna put things back the way I like them…"

Which doesn't explain why he and Mr Ellis went from one foot apart to five when she entered the room.

(persistence)

"...but yeah, it's understood some places, isn't it, most of the blokes who get very far in service are the type not to marry." He paused. "Makes folks more accepting than they'd be otherwise, I reckon, if we're a devil they know."

"Most," Barrow repeated, incredulous. Richard swallowed, uncomfortable; his hands were looking for something to do again and so he let his left fall back to the gearshift, preparing. "You come from a very different world than I do, Ellis, I'll say that."

But he didn't, and that was the real tragedy.

"Same world," Richard murmured. "Different parts of it."

"Wish I'd seen your parts, then."

"Yeah, me, too."

They fell silent.

The road was different at night, as all things were — he'd not driven in Yorkshire since the war, and he was lucky to be doing so again under the circumstances. Lucky that skies were clear and the sun was out, that everything to be seen could be, and that it was summer and the night wasn't pitch black and dreary.

Beside him Mr Barrow was staring out the window, head to the side, hat in his lap. He was still full of nerves, so much so that Richard felt he could feel it, radiating like heat from a fire.

(hope keeps us standing)

"What a shit year."

"Seen worse."

"And?"

"Well, we got through this one same as all behind it," says Richard, and then he sips at his champagne. He's smiling, just a little turn at the corners of his lips and a hint of something in his eyes, but enough for Thomas to know he believes the words coming out of his mouth, same as always. "We'll come out the other side of the next; you'll see."

Same as always when it comes to things such as this, at least.

"Nothing's ever going to fuck with your optimism, is it?"

"What has the army done to your sweet mouth," Richard returns, grinning, now. He touches his thumb to Thomas's lower lip.

"My what?"

Richard leans forward to kiss him, but Thomas pulls away, laughter bubbling up in him. He's a little drunk, hasn't had anything but champagne and wine since dinner some hours ago, when he didn't eat as much as he might have. It's a choice he'll regret in the morning, but it's already been made. No use taking it too seriously at the moment.

"You'll have to wait," he tells Richard, as sternly as he can. "You'll have to wait…" He looks at his wristwatch, squints at it. "Three minutes."

"I don't think that's the tradition."

For some reason this strikes him as the funniest thing he's ever heard said in his life.

(but level, in time)

[kyluxtrashpit]

2019 Fic Recap

So I’ve done this for the past few years and I started doing it at the end of 2019 but never managed to finish it. I think between TROS and IRL and then I got really, really sick, I just haven’t had the chance to do so. But fuck it, I decided to finish it anyway even though it’s now 3 months late lmao. So anyway, a recap of my 2019 fics

Total wordcount: 96 419 words. Which is less than last year, but still not too shabby. I wish I could’ve banged something out to get it over 100k but eh, it just didn’t happen. I definitely have enough wip words and whatnot to get me over that bump, though

Tough Love, 6572 words, posted Jan 17

So this was an experimental one. As you all know, I’m pretty hard on the sub!Kylo/dom!Hux train. But I had a conversation with a friend and it turned into one of those ‘okay, I don’t like x dynamic because of a, b, and c. But is it possible to write x without those and make it into something I like?’ and as it turns out, yes, yes it was. Thus this fic happened and here we are. I still really like it and I have a lot of Feelings on this dynamic vs the one I usually write, but that’s an essay in and of itself lmao. It got some great feedback too, which was cool

Take My Breath Away, 1230 words, posted Feb 7

Ah yes, this one, which was based off a throwaway KOTOR ability but was an excuse for me to write Kylo getting stuffed from both ends with some asphyxiation thrown in. And also extremely rough sex + softer aftercare is a weakness of mine haha, so I just had to do it

Fix You, 1994 words, posted Feb 10

So this was my first piece for Bad Things Happen Bingo, which is an event I’m still planning to finish at some point lmao, and that I’ve had a lot of fun with so far. This fic was another that I tried for a more ‘classic’ feel with, though it’s a lot softer. The uncomfortable intimacy. The ‘feelings are happening but we won’t talk about them’. The shaky trust. All of that good stuff. I had fun with it

Keep Your Enemies Closer, 1657 words, posted Feb 24

Another for BTHB! I just love when Hux wins, okay. And I think this was one of those time periods where Kylo was doing all the winning in fics and I just. Needed something different lmao. Emperor Hux remains one my all time fave ideas and it’s still a shame canon never gave it to us. But I have the power to make it happen, so I did. Plus Kylo in a shock collar is always fun >:)

Indulgence, 17 357 works, completed Apr 19, first posted Mar 28

So! This was a continuation to my experiment from above and really it was just an excuse for lots of smut and pampering lmao. Much as I had thought I had said everything I wanted to say with Tough Love, apparently I had not, and this monstrosity formed. There may be a third, more serious piece to finish off the series this year, but I haven’t decided yet. Although, I have to admit, I’m still surprised how poorly this fic did feedback-wise, especially compared to its predecessor and considering it’s the more popular dynamic these days. Tbh some of my best smut is in this fic imo, but ah well, sometimes people just don’t like things and I suppose I have to accept that, even if I’m really, really proud of that thing

(Okay and the rest are behind a cut for length)

Best Served Bloody, 2666 words, posted Apr 29

Another BTHB and, again, not much deeper to it. Beating up Brendol is always fun though lmao. And when I was writing this, I really wanted Hux to be the one to strike at his father. A lot of pieces have Kylo doing it, which is great, but I wanted to do something a little different. I wanted Hux to have the power to save himself. It was fun to write in that way, as a powerful revenge fantasy

The Best, 6450 words, posted May 12

Ah, now this was a fun one lmao. It was born of a horny crack idea but I can’t do real crack, so it ended up as crack treated seriously. And really, I just wanted an excuse to have Kylo sucking dick. A lot of dick. All the dicks he can find lmao. Slutty Kylo fic remains my favourite pwp, so I gotta contribute to the cause, you know. It was a delight to write, though challenging cause it kept turning me on LMAO. Totally worth it though. It was one of the most fun this year for sure

Be My Outlet, 1003 words, posted May 23

There’s not really much of a story behind this one haha. I was horny and I wanted some classic, Not Nice Hux and hatefucking, thus this exists. Plus I miss Kylo getting choked and it’s rare these days to see stuff quite this rough. I also have a bit of a somnophilia thing, which this sort of fits in to. And I’m always a fan of messy, masochist Kylo. So yeah. Idk it’s smut lmao what else could we want? It’s just a short little pwp, but I had a lot of fun with it and it was nice to revisit the classic kylux days

Safe Harbour, 1616 words, posted Jun 13

This one was for kyluxomegaverse week and it was very fun. A/b/o is one of those tropes where I really, really like a lot of it, but there’s also some stuff that’s much less my cup of tea. So I don’t write a lot of it, even though there are aspects of it that I adore. Which this one includes a lot of lmao. I think the nesting is fucking adorable and I wanted to write something soft, so here we are. Plus omega!Kylo is just delightful. Also looking back on it now, this one did really well? Holy shit, I had no idea it was that popular!

With Dignity, 4475 words, posted Jul 1

This was the last for BTHB that I managed last year (and I still intend to finish my card eventually, it’s just been a rough go so far this year lmao). I’m actually very proud of this one because this is the exact sort of angst I love to write. I didn’t intend for it to be as heavy as it ended up being, but when I started looking up the mechanics of force-feeding and reading about the experience of it, the plan changed drastically because holy fuck. I had never thought of it as that much of a torture before. I also enjoy with Hux like, making the reader feel bad for him while also actively reminding them he’s awful and getting that perfect cognitive dissonance. So this was a great excuse to do exactly that. And I love how tough he is even in such circumstances. Despite the heavy subject matter, I had a blast with this one

Greener Grass, 3389 words, posted Jul 14

This one was originally a twitter thread that really got away from me lmao, so I edited it and put it on ao3 because I really liked it. I’ve always liked self-cest as a concept and I thought it’d be interesting for Kylo to interact with a version of himself that made some different choices. One that was happier. And then we see Kylo through Ben’s eyes, see what the dark side has wrought for him. And then, of course, some smut to pull it all together lmao. It was a really fun character study and I had a grand time with it

Subliminal, 5719 words, posted Aug 23

This one! Okay so I’m pretty sure I sent in a couple of khk prompts over the years that were basically this, but no one ever wrote them so I finally did it. I’m honestly surprised hypno kink isn’t actually used more in kylux, considering Hux is canonically in charge of the brainwashing program. So much potential. So I had to write it. I also went down quite a few rabbit holes in researching this (with mixed success lmao) and learned a whole lot about hypno kink in the process. I may have even acquired it as a fetish lmao. But anyway, this one’s a bit darker and it’s fun to write those every once in a while. I think I pulled it off well too

Ashes Among the Stars, 36634 words, posted Dec 1

Ah and my big bang this year! I had a blast with this one although it was quite the challenge. My first fandom was gundam so when I saw this prompt I was very intrigued and ended up getting it. This fic had a lot more world-building than I usually do, which was the primary challenge as I basically had to take aspects from both franchises and sew them together into a new world of its own. I think I did that rather successfully tbh. The plot gave me trouble too but also gave me some of my best eureka moments haha. My partner was also wonderful and made the experience that much better. I know crossovers don’t tend to perform as well, so I was expecting that, though I do wish some more people had given it a chance since I wrote it specifically so that no prior knowledge was needed. But alas, I’m still incredibly proud of it. It’s also my second longest fic ever!

Filthy, 5657 words, posted Dec 9

And here it is, the gangbang fic I’ve always wanted to exist lmao. I had wanted to write this one for a long time, but I could never figure out how to end it, what circumstances would lead to the gangbang. Then a convo with friends gave me the idea and boom, I could finally write it. This fic is just straight up smut and I fucking love it lmao. There needs to be more Kylo gangbang fics tbh

What have I learned?

Last year wasn’t as successful for writing as I’d hoped, given that I wrote less in 2019 than I did in 2018. But also a lot of things happened to me last year. I got a new role at work. My dad had a heart attack (he’s okay though). I had a pretty rough time with my mental health. And then there was the lead up to TROS and the frankly unnecessary amount of stress that caused me. So there was a lot going on and working against me, which is a large part of why I didn’t manage to write as much as I’d hoped I would, and there’s a lot in my folder that I started but just wasn’t able to finish before the end of the year. I worried for a while I was losing interest, but looking back, no, it was definitely the IRL shit lmao. That said, I’m also extremely happy with all of the pieces I did finish, regardless of how well they did. I’m proud of them and I loved writing them, even when it was difficult

One of my goals from last year was to write more, which I didn’t manage, and to get better at answering comments, which I think I did well on for the most part up until post-TROS lmao. I also wanted to do the big bang again (and I was hoping for a reverse, which it was!) and I did. And I also wanted to have fun and keep my confidence with my writing, which I think I was the most successful at. I feel really good about everything I made and I really enjoyed writing them, even if I didn’t manage to finish everything

Goals for 2020?

I think part of the reason I didn’t finish this post in 2019 is because of my TROS breakdown and subsequent stresses associated with it. Because I wasn’t sure what I wanted or what I was going to do. Sometimes I wanted to give up and find a new fandom/ship, other times I was sure I was over it and going to just do whatever the fuck I wanted, and then there was every emotion in between

Now, though, I’m sure I’m going to keep writing here. I haven’t managed much this year yet, but I can feel it coming back to me. I have a post-TROS fic I managed to solve a major problem with the other day. I also have renben as a new ship to excite me. And I still have a lot of wips and BTHB and various others I desperately want to do. Right now, I feel good about my writing and my interest in it is back to normal, which is great. So this year? I’m not going to set a hard goal. I’d love to write more than last year and maybe I will, but it’s okay if I don’t. I’d love to do another big bang this year, but I’m not going to kick myself if I can’t handle it when that time comes. I’d love to finish BTHB, but if it stretches into another year, who cares? My only goal is to just keep writing and keep enjoying it. I want to have fun with it. I want to be happy with whatever pieces I do manage to put out. I want to set aside time to read more fics from others, if I can. And I think all of those will really help with my mental health, which is starting to recover right now, and that’s what’s most important of all

Also thank you all for your patience with me. I know I’ve not been responsive, here or on twitter or to comments, but I am trying my best. It’s been a rough go and I don’t like to whine too much in my fandom spaces. I don’t know when or even if I’ll get back to normal, but I’m trying, and that’s what matters. I love every one of you on here <3