#i've been trying not to call him ten in my head bc that's a dumb name but maybe i should just roll with it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[teencopandthesourwolf]

so i'm supposed to be working on my sterek wip—and i am! i wrote about 1k today—but bc of all you lovely mutual's and folk i follow now also into buddie (main culprits being @inell @rosieposiepuddingnpie @sortasirius and @angela-feelstoomuch) and ofc bc of bi!buck confirmed, i've started ploughing through 911 over the last few weeks like a bloodhound chasing a rabbit through the woods and have consequently, inevitably, started a buddie wip. fml. anyways, it's all your lot's fault so here, have just under 1k of my first buck pov buddie quarantine wip and everyone pls forgive my adhd writing brain lol.

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Eddie was so fucking drunk. And it wasn't really either of their faults.

Because daytimes? When they weren't on shift? They were easy.

In the daytime there was just so much stuff to do with Christopher. So many games to play and so many cool things Buck was finding he could teach the little guy. And there were things that Christopher was teaching Buck, too, like, did you know that a crocodile can't stick out its tongue? Because Buck didn't, not until Christopher told him. And how cool is that?

The three of them—Buck, Christopher and Eddie—had started a Strip Jack Naked tournament and they now played it every night that he and Eddie were home, just before bath and bedtime stories. Turns out Christopher loved card games, and loved the rude name given to Buck and Maddie's childhood favourite even more, because what ten year old wouldn't? There was obviously zero stripping involved; Buck didn't even know why it was called what it was called, only that it was super fun, and just about easy enough for Christopher to learn but not so easy he'd get bored too fast, y’know? And what was funny was that the little dude hadn't even won a single round yet, and that somehow hadn't seemed to deter the slugger in his efforts one bit. Quite the opposite, actually. He'd warned, “Just you two wait,” and had this look on his face that said he was determined to become a grandmaster and beat Buck at his own game—or, even better, beat his Dad and win the prize of Eddie having to tidy Christopher's room for a week (a suggestion of Buck's that Eddie had not been overjoyed about).

In turn, Buck and Eddie had now lost countless games of Mario Kart to the kid; been repeatedly humiliated at Pictionary (the kiddie version); and each had the least amount of kudos points for Misfits, a game that Eddie apparently used to play with his sisters. It was another drawing-type one, where each player took a body section on their turn—head, torso and arms, or legs and feet—and then folded the paper over to hide the result until everyone was done and Christopher would unfold the paper and they'd all cry with laughter at the results. Misfits didn't even technically have any winners or losers, but hey, try telling Christopher that.

Evenings, though? The few hours left between Christopher's bedtime and Eddie and Buck turning in for the night? They were tougher.

Tough on Buck, at least.

See, he'd had this dream, a few weeks back. A dream about—well.

About Eddie.

In the dream, Buck had been washing the dishes in Eddie and Chris's apartment after Eddie had made another attempt at cooking his abuela's delicious Barbacoa recipe (Buck had tasted the real deal once when Isabel had come to stay and Eddie had invited Buck over to dinner), and Eddie had suddenly crowded into him from behind, crushing the length of his body up against Buck's back and reaching around to circle soft but firm hands around Buck's wet wrists. Startled and confused, Buck had open opened his mouth to say something when Eddie had placed his hot mouth onto the sensitive spot on Buck's neck, just below his right ear and—

Buck had woken abruptly, writhing and twitching and groaning, jizz spilling all over his freshly changed bed sheets.

After that, evenings were a challenge.

They were now made up of all the usual fun and dumb stuff that Buck and Eddie got up to, plus the occasionally deeper topics in their lives that they both seemed to struggle with but tried their best to share with each other, but there was also Don't look too long at Eddie's hands, and Don't look at Eddie's mouth while he speaks, and Don't check out Eddie's ass in those jeans I'd told him he should definitely buy when the shops were still open and the world hadn't yet gone to shit and I wasn't losing my damn mind.

Buck had moved into Eddie and Chris's place when Quarantine hit because it had just made sense, and over the course of the last six months he had somehow managed to fall in lust with his best friend.

So, times when they both had tomorrow off work, and when the confinement got to be a little too much, they would drink. Sometimes a little too much. One of them always stayed relatively sober though, just in case Chris needed something in the night, and tonight, Buck had been allowing Eddie to enjoy himself because the guy hardly ever really let his hair down, and he deserved to.

Eddie got giggly when he drank Tequila, Buck noticed.

They'd already sunk a few beers prior to cracking open the bottle of Cazadores Reposado, and after Buck had stopped at two shots but Eddie had continued, Eddie had become progressively loose and was now starting to giggle like a frickin schoolgirl. Which, embarrassingly, seemed to be doing things to Buck—not that Buck had a thing for school girls, jesus no, it was just that Eddie sounding so soft and vulnerable and happy was something that apparently really did it for Buck.

Fuck his life.

The guy also got very touchy-feely on tequila, too.

They'd migrated from the kitchen table to sitting so close to each other on the sofa that they were permanently touching, as well as all the times Eddie kept nudging his shoulder further into Buck's and squeezing his hand on Buck's knee. Then his thigh.

Seriously, fuck Buck's life.

The way Eddie had gotten so comfortable with touching Buck was becoming a majorly uncomfortable situation for Buck to have to deal with. Not because Buck didn't want the attention, but because he really fucking did.

And that was a problem, for a few reasons.

Reason one was that Buck wasn't gay, and didn't really understand these feelings he was having.

Reason two was, as far as Buck knew, Eddie wasn't gay either.

Reason three (and Buck's biggest fear) was Buck being terrified of losing what he had with Eddie. He loved Eddie, and Christopher, and he was pretty sure they loved him back—and he certainly wasn't about to let his rabid and confusing libido ruin any of that.

Drunk Eddie, though? It seemed Drunk Eddie really had it in for Buck tonight.

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fingers crossed i can finish it before buck goes insane! xp

[honeymouthedtales]

i don't think i've seen other people asking about this fic here but i wanted to say i've been thinking about "call it true, call it magic" (hc witch au) and i remembered that i love that story sososososo much could you perhaps share some lore/tmi about this story? 🥺

so technically that's one of my favorite aus and i just love loved the idea, but then i had kind of a bad experience with a beta reader telling me the part about dh trading secrets was dumb and it's been so hard to come back to it later bc i'm super sensitive and i liked the idea and now it gives me anxiety ;;

but in my original plan mk and dh don't get together for a long time, they start as friends with dh helping by draining the bad luck out of mk with his own presence (but they're not roommates). and i have a snippet of a later chapter where mk has been introduced to dh's gang and he's like part of that group of friends at that point and he wakes up one day after they went drinking and someone (rj) has been turned into a frog for losing a drinking game and mk crashed in dh's tinbox room because he was too drunk to go home and when he wakes up dh is drooling on the pillow wih the cat sleeping curled around his head and mk thinks omg i love him. and that becomes a very big thing because you know they still do the secrets thing and that's a secret mk is not willing to let go unless dh offers something very juicy in exchange.

there's been some details of this fic that have bled into other fics, for example dh's bad relationship with his sister worked as an inspiration for him and chwn in iotol.

i also really loved the secondary ships bc it was noren with renjun being a vampire webtoon author and jeno a werewolf whose sister is addicted to that webtoon and so jeno knows him by fame but doesn't know it's him when they start dating. there was also a jaemin ship that had a smut but we're not gonna talk about it because the other side of the ship is now not... someone i'm comfortable talking anymore, and idk if i should just trash the entire thing or trying changing it to another ship idk. also johnten with herbalist ten and jhny who has a tattoo parlor but he only does magical tattoos like runes or stuff like that to help protect wizards and warlocks, so the magical version or the florist tattoo artist thing.

[sylvaridreams]

snipping messages re: Alba at the end of EoD and leading into What Lies Beneath/What Lies Within/burning low (burning out & tiger tiger) and then after the end of that arc - I don't know if I'll ever get a chance/take the time to write any of this out for real so It's Goin Here. recommend reading at the link above First if you intend to at all bc obviously this is spoilers for it. here we gooooo:

at the very end of EoD he's very very fragile and vulnerable. I mean. He had Aurene in his brain and affecting him physically during that battle. Then she withdrew and it RATTLED HIM hard, like he was not coping well with that….. gaping hole where an elder dragon has been in his mind fully. he left feeling empty and just. Torn open exposed and VERY VERY LONELY And needed something to fill it in and not make him be all on his own in this vast open dark spot in his mind. I think he figured this out that he hated being alone in his head and. Kind of looked at his tiger. No, that's not possible… I don't know how to even do that…. (he'd never HAD soulbeast training. He was aware of their abilities, but….) looks at his tiger again and it lays its head on his shoulder. Well maybe I can just…. :grab2:

And ten minutes later his tiger is clawing its way back out and shits broken and Alba is bleeding and the tiger is snarling and growling and they're Both scared. What did he do, how did he do it so wrong. Neither of them LIKED that. His head aches. I think he tried it repeatedly. Kind of desperately, trying to fuse with a few things, different animals. Some took it better than others. by the time he tries the tiger again he has Ideas of how to work this power and handle it. And he feels like he needs it to Be the tiger, his one consistent pet since maguuma… And four hours later he's regaining conscious control of his body in the middle of Echovald. No idea how he got here. Who he encountered on the way. Blood on his face. Not his own. And this horrible taste of copper in his mouth. And he feels gross and sore and he has a migraine so bad he's seeing like auras around the few people he passes, but… he feels better too. Powerful. With this animal inside his head.

But he has to be careful. Show restraint, he learns how bad it hurts if he doesn't let the tiger out, so it's just. A couple hours here and there, of this RUSH of control and power that fills his mind. All these awesome super addictive happy chemicals in his brain! Then tiger gets hurt outside of his mind, bad, and he panics and just. Grabs and doesn't let go. You'll not die on MY watch. Which means he can't let the tiger out ever. This has to be a forever, permanent solution, because if he lets the animal go it dies. So they share control. The tiger hurts but it can live through his body. Alba hurts but he can survive, he can cope with this beast in his brain. And he's never certain what day it is, how long he's been out here. he thinks about a week. Maybe longer. And he should probably go home soon…

And then he gets a letter from Rama inviting everyone to sushi

Comes to the "party" and Rama and Gorrik are kind of like wow he lives! O_O same kind of tone as "well look who came out of his cave!" Rama takes him aside as they're saying goodbyes and is like "hey uh. Dude. What the fuck." :teensie: "what's wrong Rama" "Don't play dumb, where the hell have you been? You know how many letters and calls I've had asking me to track you down since you left? You can't just vanish for half a year and then show up looking like this and act like nothing happened, people were worried about you, man." Alba "🧍‍♂️ ah."

(Imagine 6 months of assuming the Commander is dead or being a cunt in his "I'm melting down and I want it to be everyone else's problem" kind of way and then the comms suddenly connects and Gorrik is like I just had dinner with Rama. And the Commander. And everyone at once is like HE'S ALIVE? and Gorrik is like yes but frankly he looks bad. 6 months and he's been aware and conscious for maybe 10 days of it. Tiger has been running wild. He's covered in cuts and bruises and sprains and his leggings all torn and his shoulder leaves are just wilting and lifeless. His foliage is the same. He just looks unwell. And he's become essentially a local Echovaldian cryptid. Weird guy who will attack monsters and gangsters on site)

(discord message snippets end here)

and then obviously things progress, everyone goes to the MINE to explore the mystery and figure it out and Alba is. weird and exhausted and twitchy and off putting the whole time. events of the fic above take place, and afterwards Canach takes Alba back with him to the Isle of Reflection, where he has kept a house since the guild captured it and Meisi FOOLISHLY offered "if anyone wants to lay claim on a house here," and FAILED TO CLARIFY that he didn't mean "and Canach too." (Joke. they hate one another but it's a mutual joke.)

And it's a slow... not so steady... one step foward, 3-10 steps back at times, attempt to rehabilitate Alba. Because the tiger is by then OUT of his brain and gone somewhere safe to recover. he lets it go (not out of want, not out of lack of trying, but because they force him.) and at times he's completely lucid, able to hold conversation. exhausted, but himself. he's.... okay.

and then at times it's like the switch flips, and some kind of beast is back in his brain. Canach doesn't say a thing about it for a while, cleans up whatever broken filthy mess he's created, repairs the paper doors, the walls, bandages him up. whatever it takes for Alba to get back to his baseline. maybe it just takes time. maybe he HAS to knock expensive antiques off of tables to get back to normal.

and then one night he wakes up and Alba's not in bed. and there are noises in the kitchen, snarling, growling. his instinct is not fear (he'll be fine, he can defend himself, Auru can defend himself too) but worry for Alba, that he might be doing something that'll hurt him-- so he tells Auruim to stay in bed, he'll be right back, grabs his sword and makes for the kitchen. finds Alba naked on all fours, tearing into the last of four raw chicken breasts that were in the jade fridge, eyes wild and not there. not Alba at all. and he kind of just stands there in shock, watching him choke down the meat, until Auruim tries to sleepily approach, asking what's going on, and he has to act. go back to bed, don't worry, he's just sick. go to bed. gets his comms device and stares at it for a long moment, listening to Alba snarl and lick whatever is left off the plates and finally calls someone. "Meisi. I need your help." "....Do you know what time it is?" "it's Alba. he's. not well."

and shit has been SO rocky between Alba and Meisi since... basically since Meisi came back from the Mists... Their relationship never recovered, never got back to the baseline where it was before Meisi died. They were never best friends or brothers again.

5 paragraph side note on what I mean by this:

[(a huge part of this being Alba sustains a major head injury at the end of LWS3 and suffers amnesia for a while. doesn't REMEMBER anyone, doesn't know who Meisi is, so when he shows up a week later Alba's reaction isn't to cry and hold onto him and let it all out and REUNITE, it's to say "hello! good to see you again." he fully did not know who this asura was or why he'd been gone or why it mattered. Canach yanked Meisi aside and tried to explain, "hey here's the situation with the commander, head injury and amnesia, it's him not you DON'T take it personally. he's trying." and it was like this for every person, reintroducing him to allies multiple times a day sometimes until his brain started to recover, by which point (as memories started to click back into place) he assumed (had to, he didn't remember that time period where he'd been injured) that he had already DEALT with all that stuff. Meisi's back! well I'm certain we fully reunited and I invited him to the guild and he joined. :) YAY!)

but FRANKLY, Alba also recoiled from people for a long while. he has some longstanding "ok he's always kind of dodged that kind of closeness" issues (see: hiding injuries, not allowing any friends close enough to know he's disabled and how badly it's fucking up how he lives) but at the end of LWS4 he hid. he vanished and stopped answering letters, turned his comms fully off for months, (and only let it be on after a while because Taimi was able to remote in and forcibly bring it back online to talk to him, but he'd hang up if someone called and asked something he didn't want them to) and he went and found a spot to pitch a tent in the middle of nowhere and HIDE. he had a lot of sorrow and pain to sort through and told himself he could work it all out, out here, and then he kind of didn't do any of that. he avoided the work. typical. but where else would I go, he kept asking himself. nowhere felt like home, and he couldn't go back to the Grove. (it's fair to say that by the end of LWS4, he is soundless and would absolutely hate being called that. how repulsive, how could you say that about him, etc.) No one was able to locate him until 6 months after the end of LWS4 when Aeris showed up at his camp and told him (lying) "you're not that hard to track" as if she hadn't been actively hunting for him for over half that time. at that point people were WORRIED but also trying to respect that Alba seemed to want distance. he wanted loneliness. he did not want to be approached or found, so we left him out there.

and then through Icebrood Saga, and afterwards, everything was so rocky. most of the guild was like uh.... this could be the end of us, huh.... Meisi wasn't interested in rebuilding anything with Alba and at best, cold shouldered him throughout that arc. Braham broke Alba's spine at Dragonstorm and wrenched his bad leg out of socket, and frankly he was lucky to survive the battle, let alone walk again after back surgery. there wasn't a lot of in-group talking afterwards. everyone drifted. there was just way too much to try to bridge all at once. it was very much... "alright, i'll have my comms, call or write me if another dragon wakes up..." from every side. the guild.... took a break.

they're only both in Cantha at the same time because Alba crashed with the airship, and Meisi is there with Kasmeer for diplomatic reasons. Meisi is not Dragon's Watch and does not represent the guild. he can speak on behalf of them as an allied faction (Vigil) when Alba fails to convince Empress Ihn that he's capable (he's just woken up from another coma (how many more of THOSE do you have in you?) after crashing an airship into a closed country and being kept on life support for (weeks?) and then Rama made him go workout!!!!!! CRUEL!!!!! and frankly he is in a lot of pain!) but he isn't DW. he has never considered himself DW because Alba didn't invite him!

and I think we've determined that Alba apologizes at some point and tries to bridge this gap, like. I'm sorry that we never discussed this, the period of time when you came back from the Mists is so blank for me that I don't remember you returning, and I always thought that we HAD to have had all these conversations. I always assumed I'd invited you and you'd accepted, but people have told me that's not the case and I'm sorry. I wanted you in Dragon's Watch, I STILL want you in Dragon's Watch. You're my brother and I hate this feeling that we're not really allies to one another. I'm sorry. The offer stands, no matter how much time passes. (and then Meisi tries to say something, to take the offer or at least reply, and the communicator goes off like GUYS EMERGENCY HELP NOW RUN HURRY AAAAAAA and he loses the chance. and they never discuss it again! there's just no easy time to bring it up. eventually it felt weird to be like back to this convo! and then EoD wrapped up and that may have been a good time, but Alba DISAPPEARED.)]

but Meisi is Trying to give Alba a chance. Again. he needs help to recover so that he can even HAVE that chance, so he goes over in time to see Alba choke it all back up like a sick cat and faint, and is like ah. well. awesome. I see he's doing well. that's wonderful.

it basically. takes time. to get Alba back to Alba. because frankly he was backseat to a wild beast for half a year, and he didn't handle it well (although how well would anyone handle it, really.) there's got to be a lot of positive reinforcement... and negative. like hey! no treats unless you stop biting through the corner of the wall. Alba! no trea--I'm getting the squirt bottle. bad, bad Alba. and some days Canach has to let Meisi know, "he's outside and he thinks the bamboo grove is "his territory" again, so be careful if you head that way." and Meisi is like "no, I'm going to get the hose. I'll spray him." and Canach is like "you're going to make me deal with that. ugh. I'll get the bad towels out I guess." Alba is the YAMEROOOOOOOO wikihow coyote picture for a while until he starts relearning personhood.

and eventually he can get there again but I think there's... still some lingering issues? that Canach and Meisi are aware that he has. abnormal behavior. And Canach doesn't want him around anything he can fuse with, pets, mounts, any animal he can potentially take into his mind to go beastmode again. and the Isle is Meisi's skyscale reserve, so frankly that's not like... possible. there'll be animals. it's a matter of monitoring Alba to ensure he doesn't try to fill that slowly healing tear in his mind again. he knows how to do it and they can't force him to forget it, they can't make him unlearn that ability, but the hope is that if we keep an eye on him for long enough and keep him isolated from his pets, his mounts, he'll forget it naturally, and the empty spot in his mind will heal and he eventually won't even NEED to do it.

but frankly the SotO folks don't necessarily know allllll of that, or rather don't really care a lot about whatever progress Canach and Meisi had made on Alba's mental state by the time SotO started and he got "unwillingly" scooped up into another adventure. so they're likely handing him pets and mounts immediately like here use these in battle or to get around we don't caaaare.

anyway that's my long winding essay about alba before and after burning low. :) my little freak of a man is out here rotating wild cats in his mind and unlocking unlimited power forever because he misses his dragon baby so so so so so so so soooooooooooo muuuuuch!

Burning Low (on ao3)

hiiiii I'm finally posting a bunch of my finished stuff :) here's my "get worse" remix of What Lies Within in which Alba..........gets worse.

[lady-of-the-spirit]

I am this close to just naming the second protagonist in Ryoko's story "Ten" because I cannot think of a name for them and can't think of a name that would suit them better AND for the hilarity of the ageless immortal former Queen of the Heavens warrior death god Ryoko to be like "this is my traveling companion, Ten." And point to the tall scrawny person beside her who just waves and smiles and is happy to be here.

("I'm her best friend," Ten says.

"You are my traveling companion," Ryoko says stubbornly, glaring at them. "At best you are a colleague."

"I'm her best friend," Ten grins and whispers to the person they're speaking to. "She'll admit it one of these days. Yesterday she actually gave me a glass of water instead of telling me to get it myself or getting a glass of ice.")