#still 800 is more than 150 so I'm still winning

[folliesandfolderols]

Writing prompts day 6

From this prompt list. I set a goal of writing at least 150 words per day in 2024, which sounds pretty pathetic but if you take into account the fact that I haven't written any fiction since 2019 it felt like a feasible target. Anyway I've finished the first draft (it topped out at 88k words) and will be unlocking each post as I edit.

***

read from the beginning here

Day 5 here

***

7. “Can I… can I touch you?”

18. "You. Me. Bed. Clothes off. Now.”

***

Tim managed to keep himself so busy for the rest of his patrol that he only obsessed over what would happen later for fifty percent of it. Considering his brain's tendency to worry at any sort of uncertainty like a Chihuahua with a mail carrier's ankle, that was pretty impressive.

Once he'd showered and entered his patrol notes back at the Cave, he straddled his bike and waved goodbye to Steph, who was still typing at a workstation. Damian had somehow managed to be near him during their entire debrief period, although he betrayed no signs of tracking him or aiming for his side.

"See you there?" Tim murmured, bent to check his side stand as if he suddenly doubted his ability to raise it properly.

Damian appeared to be engrossed in replacing one of the Batmobile's armored panels, but the corners of his mouth tilted up almost imperceptibly. "Forty-five minutes behind you."

The ride back to the Nest and the wait afterward seemed to take forever. Tim finally flipped open his laptop and started working on the weapons trafficking case he, Jason, and Damian had been collaborating on just to keep himself from spiraling. He clicked from open file to open file, unseeing.

It isn't a bad idea. We'll have one more night and get it out of both our systems. This is just a weird interpersonal hiccup because we have too much proximity to really walk away. It doesn't mean anything.

If he'd been interviewing a suspect spouting the same nonsense his brain was churning out, he would have said they were full of shit. He decided he was going to be convinced regardless and went to prep. Efficiency was important, or something.

A soft knock on the door thirty minutes later had him rushing to open it. "Hey," he greeted, trying not to sound out of breath although he had no memory of the journey between his couch and the entrance. "Everything okay?"

Damian didn't look perturbed, exactly, but he did have a line between his eyebrows that usually signified confusion. "Father wanted to know why I was coming to see you."

Tim watched him kick off his shoes and line them up against the wall. After a brief hesitation, he pulled off his socks as well and tucked them into the shoes. "You told him you were leaving? Why?"

"I didn't. He just knew, somehow. I thought we were too discreet for him to have noticed. Anyway, I told him we were working on the weapons trafficking case." Damian shrugged. "He didn't seem overly interested in my coming here, but he did ask several questions about the case itself."

Tim scoffed. "So he was testing you out to see if we were really talking about the case. If he bothered to read our notes more often he'd know that we've been prioritizing it for weeks now. Oh, well. If he checks my activity tonight he'll see I opened up the files so that'll back up your story."

"As you say." He fell silent. Tim waited for a second, but just as he was about to suggest going to his room, Damian asked, "May I touch you?"

It wasn't like him to sound so tentative, but Tim thought it was a good sign that Damian, whose grasp on common courtesies was what could often generously be termed as "loose," knew that sex was one area where he couldn't make unilateral demands.

"Yeah." He stepped close enough to wrap his arms around Damian's neck. "Please do."

He expected Damian to kiss his mouth immediately. Instead, he brushed back a wayward strand of Tim's hair and then kissed the tender skin just below his ear. Tim shivered and leaned into his warmth.

Damian kissed down his neck, each imprint of his lips making more goosebumps break out on Tim's skin despite their heat. He didn't seem quite as overwhelmed as he had last time, but that would probably turn out to be a good thing. Still, the gentleness was feeling a little too intimate for a no-strings-attached type of night, so Tim decided to change the tone.

"C'mere," he said, holding Damian's face in both hands to direct his mouth up.

Tim took care to make this kiss unmistakably horny, biting his way past Damian's lips and pressing his tongue deep as soon as Damian let him in. Damian's groan resonated into his own chest as Tim slid one hand down to grab his ass. Tim dragged him flush against his body and parted his legs to grind against Damian's thigh, thick with muscle. Fuck, why did he have to feel so good? Tim's stomach was already melting into a churning mess of heat and want.

He pulled his head back to find Damian looking dazed, flushed with arousal and reddened lips parted. Tim wanted to destroy him. "Okay, I've got a plan," he breathed.

Damian's mouth quirked, and his gaze sharpened slightly with amusement. "Why am I not surprised?"

"No, no, listen, I think you'll like it." Tim stood on tiptoe to kiss him again, fully hard now and making no attempt to hide it. "You. Me. Bed. Clothes off. Now."Damian nodded. "You are a master strategist." And he grabbed Tim's hand to rush toward the bedroom.

day seven here

[libertyreads]

Book Review #15 of 2024--

Must Love Hockey by Sarina Bowen. Rating: 3.75 stars.

Read from February 29th to March 1st.

This wasn't my intended first read of March, but it's the first read of the month that we deserved. I've usually started a book at the end of a month that carries over into the next month. So with a couple days left in February, I picked up one of my TBR books for March and instantly realized I'm going to have to read that by a chapter per day to get through it. So, who should rise to the occasion but Must Love Hockey?

All joking aside, this is actually my favorite from Sarina Bowen so far. This is the third by her that I've read and also the shortest. Which makes it a total surprise for being my favorite. I'm usually the girl who looks at an 800 page novel and goes, "Okay, but what if there was more?" But I think there's something about the simplicity of the story and also lack of cringy sex scenes that did it for me in this one. It's less than 150 pages so we don't have time to dive deeply into each character's past and their friend groups, but we still somehow got a romance that really warmed my heart with some very wonderful hockey moments as well. There's one specific hockey thing that happens that I KNOW the author took from a thing that happened to my actual hockey team. So maybe that's part of what made this so great in my mind. Also, there is a sex scene but that's it. So even though there was a moment that I didn't love, it was easy to move past, because there weren't a lot of those moments. Also, this is a hero falls first story and tries to win over the heroine which is possibly one of my favorite Romance tropes. (Besides Fake Dating and Mutual Pining.)

It WAS short and I think that's what keeps it under a 4 star (or higher) rating from me. I know I just said that being short might actually have worked in its favor, but I am who I am. It made parts of the story feel flat which I didn't love but could go with in the end. I also wish that the heroine of the story had been more into the hero faster, if that makes sense? I think there was an opportunity for some angst here that never really got to develop. And I think her feelings in general just feel like a question mark for the reader most of the time. Maybe with a couple more pages we could have dived into where she was emotionally.

Overall, this was a fun and quick read to help me avoid a reading slump when the first book I tried failed so hard and so fast for me. (Still planning on finishing the damn thing. Just much more slowly.) I think I need to keep picking up works in this series because I might have found a Hockey Romance author that doesn't make me cringe all over the place.