#please don't say you love me

[dailyquotes6563]

How we feel is hard to fake, so let's not give the game away.

Gabrielle Aplin, Please Don't Say You Love Me

[forever-fixating]

Howdy, friend!

Here, you'll find a list of my completed projects, along with works-in-progress (both posted and ones I have behind the scenes.) Feel free to ask questions about any of the WIPs because I am a story nerd and love to geek out about what I'm writing!

Completed:

All I Want for Christmas is You (One-Shot)

“I’ve been talking with Catherine.”

Alex let out a wet laugh. “I don���t know whether to be excited or afraid.”

“Watch it, kiddo,” she chided with a light smack to the back of his head. “Anyway, we’ve been talking, and we both agree you boys deserve some alone time together.”

---

With the election drama behind them, Ellen Claremont and Catherine Fox conspire to give their boys an early Christmas present: three weeks alone in a cabin in the Rocky Mountains. Alex and Henry couldn't be more excited.

Click here to read!

if you guys only knew… (One-Shot)

Summary: Alex livetweets his and Henry’s reactions to the season two finale of AMC’s Interview with the Vampire

Click here to read!

Love on the Menu (Multi-Chapter)

Henry Fox has a side hustle at his job as a host in an upscale restaurant. He loves setting up romantic moments for guests who want a little something extra for their night out to dinner. A bouquet of flowers and a bottle of champagne for the couple celebrating their 50th anniversary? Easy. A special table with candles and a dessert with a surprise for the woman about to propose? Child’s play. But despite playing Cupid for the restaurant’s guests, Henry has never been on the receiving end of a grand romantic gesture. So imagine his surprised delight when anonymous gifts begin appearing just for him. 

Who is Henry’s secret admirer? Only Valentine’s Day will tell.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

Works in Progress

Posted

living in a new normal (Multi-Chapter)

Henry Fox could write an entire dissertation based on how much information his twin nieces Penelope and Grace have told him about their favorite band, Austin Heat. The girls peppered him with neverending facts since he surprised them with tickets and meet-and-greet passes to their concert at Madison Square Garden last Christmas.

Henry Fox takes his nieces to a concert of their favorite band, Austin Heat. He gets a bit more than he bargained for when he meets singer and guitarist Alex Claremont-Diaz.

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 |

Accompanied with Podfic

Chef Specials of Love

One-shots set in the world of Love on the Menu. These will include moments from the story from Alex's POV as well as follow-up moments to see the first year of the boys in love and beyond.

Part 1 |

A Tournament for His Heart

In the ancient island kingdom of Lerasea, Prince Henry is trapped. Following the tragic deaths of his parents and the poisoning of his beloved twin sister Bea, he has been living under the oppressive thumb of his grandmother, Queen Mary. Now she has informed Henry that he is to be the grand prize of the joust as the culmination for the month-long celebration of her Diamond Jubilee. But little does she know, Henry is aware that this so-called contest is a farse, that she intends the wicked Lord Richards of Heinsestadt to be the victor, no matter what.

But not all hope is lost…

In the fledging but progressive country of Ararbas, Prince Alexander Claremont-Diaz receives an invitation to attend the Diamond Jubilee celebrations and a chance to compete for Prince Henry’s hand. He knows the odds will be stacked against him, but Alex's love for the golden boy he once knew has never faltered. He accepts the invitation, determined to free his love from Mary’s sinister clutches.

Will the young lovers finally get their happily ever after? Or will the gods see their story end in tragedy and heartbreak?

Prologue | Chapter One | Chapter Two |

WIPs Behind the Scenes

Please don't say you love me (Multi-Chapter)

Summary: When Henry has his first heartbreak, he leaves England for the Southern comfort of his Granny Bea in his dad’s hometown of Hot Springs, Arkansas. There, he finds more than he was looking for in a queer community where he’s able to explore and accept his sexuality as he never had before and an infuriating server/bartender/barista Alex who challenges him at every turn. Can he set aside his heartbreak and allow himself to be truly loved for the first time? (My passionate passion project. I won’t post it until it’s done, but I’ve been slowly tinkering on it. I am beyond excited for this story and can only hope I can do its themes and my interpretations of these characters I love justice.)

Notes on International Relations (Multi-Chapter)

Summary: When First Daughter Alexa Claremont-Diaz decides to spend a year studying abroad at Oxford, her mom decides to “help” by arranging for her to room with Princess Henrietta Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor. This will prove to be very awkward as Alex can’t stand the Princess due to a terrible first impression at the Rio Olympics.

But little does Alex know, two semesters in close proximity with Hen will bring a whole new meaning to “international relations.”

a love time will lie down and be still for (Multi-Chapter)

Summary: To be a child of the 90s is to love this movie. Henry and Bea are siblings bound by a family curse that dooms the ones they love to an early grave. Can love really travel back in time and heal a broken heart? Will Henry and Bea defeat the curse that has plagued their family for generations? Will Henry get the mythical impossible boy he cast a spell for as a child?

[burymeinmelodies]

Working on a short multichap and it is. Not Fanfiction. And I know you can post original works on AO3 but I don't really want to and also I want to use a site where I can link fundraisers in my author's notes so. Wattpad it is. I could defend myself but I think it's funnier if I describe it how I think people think Wattpad stories tend to go.

"Connie is not like the other girls. The only time her life really makes sense is when she's playing Music. She's been back in her hometown in Wisconsin for a year now, reconnecting with her high school friend Alaric. They hang out all the time, and she loves them -- right?

Alaric is used to being misunderstood. They have a decent job now, but it's not leading anywhere. At least Connie is back. She gets them in a way other people don't. When they look at her, they have to hold in the words I love you. They do -- but it's more complicated than that."

Guess what tropes I'm gonna include bc I bet you're gonna be wrong

[inkskinned]

this is just my opinion but i think any good media needs obsession behind it. it needs passion, the kind of passion that's no longer "gentle scented candle" and is now "oh shit the house caught on fire". it needs a creator that's biting the floorboards and gnawing the story off their skin. creators are supposed to be wild animals. they are supposed to want to tell a story with the ferocity of eating a good stone fruit while standing over the sink. the same protective, strange instinct as being 7 and making mud potions in pink teacups: you gotta get weird with it.

good media needs unhinged, googling-at-midnight kind of energy. it needs "what kind of seams are invented on this planet" energy and "im just gonna trust the audience to roll with me about this" energy. it needs one person (at least) screaming into the void with so much drive and energy that it forces the story to be real.

sometimes people are baffled when fanfic has some stunning jaw-dropping tattoo-it-on-you lines. and i'm like - well, i don't go here, but that makes sense to me. of fucking course people who have this amount of passion are going to create something good. they moved from a place of genuine love and enjoyment.

so yeah, duh! saturday cartoons have banger lines. random street art is sometimes the most precious heart-wrenching shit you've ever seen. someone singing on tiktok ends up creating your next favorite song. youtubers are giving us 5 hours of carefully researched content. all of this is the impossible equation to latestage capitalism. like, you can't force something to be good. AI cannot make it good. no amount of focus-group testing or market research. what makes a story worth listening to is that someone cares so much about telling it - through dance, art, music, whatever it takes - that they are just a little unhinged about it.

one time my friend told me he stayed up all night researching how many ways there are to peel an orange. he wrote me a poem that made me cry on public transportation. the love came through it like pith, you know? the words all came apart in my hands. it tasted like breakfast.

[bean-spring]

Hot take and not to be a killjoy or the shipping police but people treating Viktor or Jinx's aroace headcanons as if they were canon is not the revolutionary take people think it is.

Headcanons are always all right but we have to acknowledge that they are somehow damaging when they apply to stereotypes. It might not be the case for everyone but most of the time people unconsciously assume that disability/mental illness=asexuality. These headcanons erase the freedom of attraction from people who are already seen as unable to have sexual/romantic experiences/desires, when it's completely untrue and harmful.

You can headcanon Viktor and Jinx as aroace, but I have seen people changing their minds once Viktor is no longer disabled (s2 with all of his other forms) and Jinx is no longer as mentally ill (alternate universe Powder). And it speaks wonders of how people see these characters.

"I never thought about Jinx being able to feel romantic/sexual attraction until s2!" To believe she's actually only capable of that when she's not "damaged" is incredibly disturbing. Especially since Jinx has always had a bit of a flirty personality too.

"I've always seen Viktor as asexual, I don't know why!" That's fine. You can headcanon him as ace. But I believe there is a reason behind it, most of the time, if for some inexplicable reason the "vibes" of the disabled character are making you think he's ace.

I say all of this being aroaspec myself, by the way. Headcanon all you want but going to people's posts commenting how "it's weird for you that they have romantic/sexual plots when they're clearly aroace" is not a win at all. It's a headcanon, after all, and it should be treated as such, and that's fine. But it also is damaging to spread stereotypes like these.

Of course the disabled character is asexual. Of course the mentally ill character is aromantic. It's not as revolutionary as you might think, tbh.

Fandom is not activism and it's all right to have any headcanons you want BUT some of them are filled with damaging stuff and perhaps we should look into ourselves more before treating these assumptions as something canon.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Happy one year anniversary to In Stars and Time!

[what-am-i-doing-in-this-fandom]

Yeah, I don't know about you, Fidds, but I'd fold at this 🙏

Previous!!

Next!!

First!!

[lazylittledragon]

what if i broke all the bones in your legs actually

[makemycitybreak]

So please hurry leave me

[asukachii]

"Why don't YOU drive for once?! Ya idiot!"

"BECAAAAUUSE! I... can't.. drive these things!"

[bonus]

(I don’t like putting watermarks so, PLEASE, if you want to post these gifs somewhere GIVE CREDITS! Also, don’t use them in edits/videos. Thanks~)

[gongyussy]

forget the horrors and think about this baby achieving everything he wanted and more (first goal, 2005 vs 600th goal, 2024)

[deep-space-lines]

okay but like. I just had the weirdest thought about that ‘don’t look I’m naked’ comic. Which is that that’s essentially the same thing Adam and Eve did after they ate the fruit of knowledge of good&evil. So I feel like the theological implications of that could kneecap Gabe if he doesn’t think V1 is a being with free will.

yeah ok. i dunno man. is this anything

((side note. this isn’t necessarily meant to be in-character or story-accurate or take place at any particular point in time, just a way to explore some Thoughts. i was also imagining more that V1’s words aren't actually spoken, more like Gabriel’s more articulate interpretation of whatever garbled mechanical noise V1 is using to communicate. I think an angel could do that.))

and then they fucked nasty the end

[inkskinned]

because sometimes there are invisible tests and invisible rules and you're just supposed to ... know the rule. someone you thought of as a friend asks you for book recommendations, so you give her a list of like 30 books, each with a brief blurb and why you like it. later, you find out she screenshotted the list and send it out to a group chat with the note: what an absolute freak can you believe this. you saw the responses: emojis where people are rolling over laughing. too much and obsessive and actually kind of creepy in the comments. you thought you'd been doing the right thing. she'd asked, right? an invisible rule: this is what happens when you get too excited.

you aren't supposed to laugh at your own jokes, so you don't, but then you're too serious. you're not supposed to be too loud, but then people say you're too quiet. you aren't supposed to get passionate about things, but then you're shy, boring. you aren't supposed to talk too much, but then people are mad when you're not good at replying.

you fold yourself into a prettier paper crane. since you never know what is "selfish" and what is "charity," you give yourself over, fully. you'd rather be empty and over-generous - you'd rather eat your own boundaries than have even one person believe that you're mean. since you don't know what the thing is that will make them hate you, you simply scrub yourself clean of any form of roughness. if you are perfect and smiling and funny, they can love you. if you are always there for them and never admit what's happening and never mention your past and never make them uncomfortable - you can make up for it. you can earn it.

don't fuck up. they're all testing you, always. they're tolerating you. whatever secret club happened, over a summer somewhere - during some activity you didn't get to attend - everyone else just... figured it out. like they got some kind of award or examination that allowed them to know how-to-be-normal. how to fit. and for the rest of your life, you've been playing catch-up. you've been trying to prove that - haha! you get it! that the joke they're telling, the people they are, the manual they got- yeah, you've totally read it.

if you can just divide yourself in two - the lovable one, and the one that is you - you can do this. you can walk the line. they can laugh and accept you. if you are always-balanced, never burdensome, a delight to have in class, champagne and glittering and never gawky or florescent or god-forbid cringe: you can get away with it.

you stare at your therapist, whom you can make jokes with, and who laughs at your jokes, because you are so fucking good at people-pleasing. you smile at her, and she asks you how you're doing, and you automatically say i'm good, thanks, how are you? while the answer swims somewhere in your little lizard brain:

how long have you been doing this now? mastering the art of your body and mind like you're piloting a puppet. has it worked? what do you mean that all you feel is... just exhausted. pick yourself up, the tightrope has no net. after all, you're cheating, somehow, but nobody seems to know you actually flunked the test. it's working!

aren't you happy yet?

[egophiliac]

CROWLEY SSR THOUGHTS

there is zero basis for this, but I can't get this thought of my head

I don't know why I decided to draw it this way

[thekittyokat]

you ever just have a lot, a LOT of feelings all at once about a character and not even remotely enough words or brainpower to FORM the words to describe everything you're feeling. so it feels like you may explode. yeah