#the entire reason im making this post instead of trying to write this fic

[pheonix-inside]

I have this vague idea in my head of like. Post the end of btsv - let's say there's a happy ending and everything's fine - Miles and Gwen get together. Bc I like them and I think that's gonna happen anyway.

However, you see, I am a multishipper. And I like polyam ships. And I like Miles and Hobie as well.

So let's say Gwen and Miles are together and very much love each other, their relationship is good probably not without bumps but not strained or anything. But Miles also, unbeknownst to himself, develops a crush on Hobie. But he also doesn't even realize he likes dudes. So he's just super oblivious to it. So let's say the first person to notice his crush is actually Gwen.

Bc my brain is providing me with a vague ass fic idea of Gwen trying to gently push Miles to realize he likes Hobie, while also still y'know wanting to date him herself.

Bc how funny would it be for her to say at some point "hey if you liked someone else and wanted to be with them I'm willing to try you dating them and me bc that's a thing" and him being very confused bc "where did that come from??? like ok cool great I'll remember that but huh???"

Especially if she eventually just starts trying to get them together. I feel like the idea of a girl trying to set her boyfriend up with one of their mutual good (if not best) friends is a funny concept, and with them would be super funny.

[seeingivy]

bsfs older brother sukuna asks!

HI SWEETIE BABY! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR SWEET WORDS LITERALLYYYY WTF. literallly it makes my head ginormous anytime someone tells me they read either my aot/jjk without having watched the shows or the characters like LITERALLY im just a girl wtf this is literally insane

ok ngl I was really irritated last night when I got that comment bc I genuinely do spend a lot of time on chapters - especially with trying to make dialogue that hits and a story that's interesting? and out of everything it was like one sentence that got fixated on and they were like yeah that's toxic I hope he gets over that. and then like after twenty minutes they edited the comment like still love the story tho! ike I will kill you (gothic font)

but anyways I saw this last night before I went to sleep and I was like THANK YOU YOU ARE SINGING TO MY PRAYERS RN and it made me feel way better I was really annoyed and tldr I love you

@telepathicheartss my sweetie angel pie you could literally never annoy me. literally one of the reasons that I love to write this fic as often as I do and why i've like lengthened it out (mind you the first chapter was a oneshot) is because people interact and talk to me about it and that's everyting as a writer 1

mini sidebar but I read this whole post lately about the reader/writer relationship and how fics used to be generally viewed as a craft and art rather than something to be consumed like they are now and people would genuinely interact and discuss as opposed to just commenting and asking for a part two and silent liking. tldr it makes writers entire world when you interact and gush and it makes me SOOOO happy. so many of my favorite writers have left bc of how razor silent it can be on tumblr sometimes, so just know you should never ever feel bad for it!

SOOOO GLAD U FEEL SEEN BY THE Y/N CHARACTER. randomly this is my most criticized story? and one time someone told me I gave y/n too much personality LMFAO so this also makes my day that its actually like someone seeing it as a full character that they find relatable instead of like a lifeless blob

anyways thank you again sweetie pie I love you sm 😭💌

SO REAL! (also sorry)

we are all y/n, we chant in unison

@wishmemel I get random spurts of such high quality hyperfixation and writing that I like that I start acting like im a fanfiction factory (and it's SO FUN I PROMISE this is literally a hobby to me and it never feels like work)

(i love you too sweetie pie i hope you're doing well <3)

@pickuptruck01 literally I am ur #1 fan ur always so sweet and I love you im SOOOO glad you're still here writing this goofy story

THIS IS SOOOOO FUCKING FUNNY I CACKLED OPENING THIS

(it's a link to that tik tok audio that's like GIRLLL FUCKKK THEM KIDS AND FUCK YOU TOO)

[fragileizywriting]

it's so funny to me bc irl i love blonde girls more than anything in the world, when i was younger i wanted to be chloe in bratz girls because i thought she was the cutest one (can you tell i'm brazilian with my mutt complex i was having at the age of SIX) but for some reason chloe in mlb is so uninteresting to me compared to marinette. maybe i've grown. hayley is my one and only girl in sdv though. what is happening. i think it might be chloe's entire color palette that throws me off and i just don't like how she's written ever blahblahblah

this isn't salt btw this is me trying to understand why a character i should ideally love is uninteresting to me. what is it. what did she do. i'm not even interested in being like "i could fix her" because i have no desire to

like in my fics i find her a really interesting character to write about (i've only ever added her in, like, 2. 3 fics total) and i write her as a solid lesbian. maybe that's what it is? chloe is comphet. you know? how in god's name is she not a lesbian. i headcanon that chloe has a ridiculous hardon for ladybug/lady noire/whatever, and imagines either getting chewed alive by kitty's alter ego or strapped to hell and back by ladybug. i don't think she's particularly mean to marinette, but rather i think she's kinda indifferent. i feel like marinette has enough stress in her life to make chloe an actual bully— let's let lila do that, or whatever. besides, not everyone needs to be in love with adrien. some people can be lesbians

adrien felix and chloe were best friends growing up and chloe is like their sister. i also wish her eyes were green instead of blue. are they blue? i think they're bblue. christ on god i don't even remember her eye color. i think it would fit more with the bee theme anyway, green as in flowers. idk what the discourse is about chloe if she deserved what happened to her because i haven't watched anything of the show past season 2 (hi did you know that? sorry if i'm repeating myself but i think i have some new people following me since the last time i said that. i get super anxious when i watch a tv show that i really like and things happen that i don't like.., so for my mental health i stopped watching because i don't like some of the twists and turns and it was making me unironically lose sleep. im sad about this i promise) but i really do think chloe being a lesbian would fix everything, i think.

kaagami is also a lesbian. the two of them are not interested in one another, though. i will only ever ship kagami with marinette because the two of them are my bread and butter. chloe i could probably ship her with marinette but i've yet to be sold. was there a point to this post or have i completely derailed my train of thought

hello can u hear me did you read all of this

[fionajames]

Hello there! I’m really glad you posted again. Loved it ❤️

Requesting time yet again (it’s okay if you don’t get to this soon. Life happens 🤷🏽‍♀️): May i please request a little (or lengthy if you want) fic about how the clones would react to a haunted house? Where I live we have these abandoned prisons and make haunted houses out of them and they scare the crap out of people, and I was wondering how our copy and paste boys would react.

Thanks, may the force be with you, sincerely Sha 🫡

HELLO AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I try write when I can and your concern is so... *sobs* tysm.

TYSM SO MUCH FOR THE REQUEST

I would have written this longer and in actual one shot form but fuck that im drained and writers' blocked so have some headcanons instead!!!!!!!

(writing below the cut <3)

Rex: 

Rex spends the entire time trying to make sure no one dies.

Secretly terrified.

When they turned up he saw the house and just went ‘oh shit’, like, he did not expect the level of terror he was about to experience.

He stands in front of the others but is shaking and is pure white.

Went in with a fear of clowns, came out with a horrified dread for clowns. 

Never steps foot in one again.

Screamed like a schoolgirl and got teased by Fives for the rest of the trip.

Fives: 

Fives was the goofy guy who jumped at the obvious jumpscare people, but was also scared sometimes.

He pushed Hardcase into a clown at one point.

Got scared but only occasionally.

Other than that, totally unfazed.

Teased everyone who screamed/jumped.

Goes back to haunted houses a lot.

Laughed at all the actors but the actors could all tell he was nice (most of them could…).

Echo: 

Tried to find a logical reason for absolutely everything.

Scared to the bone.

Hid behind Fives a lot - who didn’t tease him once.

Cried when a huge spider got dropped on him and had to leave. 

Vomited outside, and never went into another haunted house again.

Was shaking the entire time.

Jesse: 

Went in confident and came out a scared, traumatised mess.

Laughed at the funny costumes got terrified from like 90% of them.

Punched three actors in the face from being jumpscared.

Hid behind Rex but denied it the entire time.

Fives teasingly asked if he was scared and he immediately freaked and was like ‘NO NO NO’.

He ran out the door at the end, got in the car, and had a breakdown but pretended to be okay.

Kix: 

He was scared but not majorly, and physically appeared unfazed.

#Badbitch fr.

Comforted everyone when they were scared.

Was making cheerful chips into conversations the entire time.

Went with Echo when he vomited and got him some water. 

Yelled at a random passerby who teased him. 

Cody: 

Laughed the entire time.

Just laughing and cracking jokes the whole time.

Cheered up the group’s morale by like, 100%.

Befriended one of the actors.

Went to more haunted houses afterwards.

Absolutely loved it.

Was slightly upset by the people not having a good time, as it dampened his mood, but he never said anything about it.

Wolffe: 

Unfazed.

This man walked in there stone-faced and came out the exact same.

Glared at the actors who scared his friends badly.

Punched a guy who was rude to a shiny. 

Threatened a series of strangers who made fun of the others.

Just chilled basically.

Fox: 

He chilled with Wolffe too.

Except Wolffe was an angry chill, Fox is sleep-deprived chill.

Walked around with a cup of steaming hot caff.

He just stood in the corner and sipped coffee most of the time.

Didn’t say a word basically.

Got sarcastic when people asked for his opinion.

hope you liked!!!!!!!!!!!!!! REQUEST PEOPLE I SRSLY MEAN IT!!!!!!!!!!!111

[absolutekirbofool-archive]

thinking out loud underneath the cut-- just lots of mc/sm fanfic & general writing thoughts (sorta negative) :) and yeah that's old art of stella and aiden having a picnic

had 8k worth of aidenfic i don't feel like continuing bc. there's enough aidenfic out there for my tastes and id rather write stella instead. no shame to aiden fans out there, yall are great (/gen), but iirc there's Aiden's Memoir and the prelude to Misfit Mania... and if i just swapped perspectives in my aidenfic aiden's perspective would be the stronger one. plus. there's no stellafic out there that goes in her character in-depth outside of a ship. (i'd love to be proven wrong though!!!)

complaining abt it is laughable to write out tho because my aidenfic features stella and their relationship heavily!! (also. almost all of the aid/della fics on ao3 are rated e. imo eros is important to me but not that important to me lmao.) maybe no one's an island.

ugh maybe im being too hard on myself. i had this idea rattling around in my head for years but now that im writing it i don't believe in it much anymore. i'll posts the scraps for sure one day.

anyway. back to the point. im trying to adjust my mindset to write a story centered around stella. it's a lot harder, that's for sure!

one of the reasons being that i relied on a certain plotting method with the aiden fic. for a character-centered narrative with stella i really don't think it's good for that... and besides, there's not much canon set-up for a great adventure featuring stella *except* her rebuilding champion city, a place originally built thru exploitation... and most likely rebuilt again that way (due to this line appearing if jesse isn't kind to stella, and stella not changing because of their kindness). though im not entirely beholden to canon. but id like to be.

gah. im so picky on what to write! i'll have my thoughts together and maybe i'll finally complete a stella-centered longfic. or maybe not. i make no promises. if you made it this far and have some (please be polite) thoughts you'd like to share dm me on discord. i'm "drymouth."

[claudiajcregg]

S5 Pregnancy AU - I’d love to hear about!

Welp, this is embarrassing – mostly because this has been sitting in my inbox for almost two weeks, and I kept saying “I need to write something up!” and then… I didn't. (Or rather, I did, then I forgot to post it.) Sorry for the wait, Lil! Thank you for asking <3 (I'll divide this up because I keep writing about the process and how it came to be, instead of any actual, interesting facts.)

I have talked about this one in the past though I don't have a tag for it. The gist is what it says… (Early) S5 but CJ is pregnant. I had this idea over a year ago when I hit mid/late S4 in my rewatch. I thought it'd be interesting to explore some of her disappointment at that time if you added an unexpected pregnancy to it, even if I had the idea before even getting there, lol. Think, the ending-ish of Han, or parts of Disaster Relief. (Both of which do feature! I surprisingly focus a lot on Disaster Relief.)

The thing with S5 is that the timeline is so weird, and I feel I've also created one that isn't entirely realistic but I think it works within the story. (IIRC, the season starts in “May” but also July, then the Shutdown is in November, lmao. A few of the episodes are sneaky two-parters that flow into each other… See 5-6, 7-8.) I've finally gotten out of the no-man's-land I wrote myself into and the next chapter or two, knowing myself, will deal with 7-8! There are a couple of scenes that should be fun to write! (There are so many details I want to mention that are technically spoilers for early twists…)

Every time I had the urge to write it, I'd edit whatever outline I was working in, and though I kept some details… my muse decided to make a big change early on that completely changed the fic's direction. That, and my inability to write anything succinctly. No reason why this story will cross the 100k barrier in a couple of chapters, tops. (It's sitting at 85k across 12 chapters. I think it'll be less than 20 chapters total. Hopefully.)

This might be too long to share snippets, but I've shared some either on the server or here, a couple of months ago.

For more irrelevant details on the “process”…

As I hinted at, I wrote an outline or two around this time last year, because I couldn't stop thinking about it. When I say outlines, it's a general path for the story to follow – ideas, suggestions of dialogue and/or scenes I write to myself; all focused around some sort of chapter structure. I find it much easier to write if I write down where a chapter might go, even if it's just a few lines saying “This happens → then this → finally this;” otherwise, it takes me months. Some would say that I should post it and get encouragement that way but… I hate being dependent on something I can control even less than my muse? That's not for me, thank you. Mad respect for those who work like that.

It was meant to be short – 1-2 “long” chapters per trimester, more if needed, but then interludes in between trimesters. It's not that. Most chapters currently cover 1-2 weeks, but there is not really a pattern. I was afraid of having a fic that would take over my life like the WOWO did three years ago… And it has, but I've also taken breaks and not felt too guilty about them. I definitely don't want this one to sit in my drive and have me wondering what to do with it.

(The novel, aka WOWO, aka IM AU (2021): 150k written in a little over five months, even with extended breaks over the summer. Still hits, even with all its crazy decisions, maybe because of them, but it's also been too long, and it will always remind me of someone who kinda hurt me. Attempts to replace those memories by sharing the story with others, trying to gather whether it's worth posting, have failed, lmao. One day! Maybe!)

But yeah. Uuuuuhhhh. As I've said… Twelve chapters in ten months, 85k words… It's still not done. In fact, I've repeatedly said I am unsure of how to end it (beyond the obvious), but I'd estimate it to be under 20 chapters. I'm not posting it anywhere yet because I want to be able to edit it as a whole and try to make it more consistent; to add little details as I come up with them. There's also the fact that I am not skilled enough to write a compelling story that mixes politics and emotion into something remotely engaging. As a result, the story's politics are very surface-level, and probably repetitive at points, but it's also true I've always been more interested and focused on the emotional journey and the relationship(s) at its center. (Which should surprise exactly no one who's ever read one of my stories.)

But, as critical as I might sound of myself here, I am having fun writing this and I'm committed to seeing it through. I just keep having ideas for stories down the line, putting actual show events through a 'but she also has a kid' perspective.

[quietwingsinthesky]

for the fic writer asks!!

5, 9, 13, 15, 29?

hi hi aayo!!

[questions were here]

5. So, a while back, I was spitballing with my friends about Pokemon Black/White & the sequel, because I love those games, those are my childhood Pokemon games, and the story is so close to brilliant I can taste it. It would just need a little touching up, I swear, adjust a motivation here, add some more scenes there... But see the thing is, doing that would take. A While. and I just don't think I have the patience to do a full rewrite of a Pokemon game from 2010 so it'll probably remain an idea.

9. Yes! I do! I try to do a few hundred words a day, every day. Depending on how bad my depression is, I can be pretty consistent about it and get a lot done. And I did manage to do a little today for that nsfw lucifer/raphael fic I'm working on! Let's see here. Ahem. "Waiting, a front of perfect obedience betrayed by how hard he’s clenching his hands together behind his back to keep from touching himself." :) I am. doing things. to luci.

13. It depends on the fic. Some of them, I want to say Last Call and could have been anyone, anyone are good examples, start writing themselves in my head with absolutely no warning, and I have to jump to the nearest thing to jot down the sentences before they disappear forever. Others, like Honey, Don't Feed It, have literally been turned over in my brain for more than a year, twisted and changed until I've gotten a fic I actually like out of it.

15. Sometimes it's a song title, sometimes it's a line from the fic, sometimes it's 'it is 4am when im posting it and ive already typed up the fucking tags and the summary and i am so so tired whats the closest noun i can think of' and then i slap it on there and call it a day.

29. asjklajdksld my first thought was 'oh you know what fine i'll post what i had of that samifer fic before it gets deleted but uh It Is Literally Entirely Porn. so lets. lets go with something a little more PG, yeah? Not exactly polite of me to throw smut at you without asking.

So instead, have this bit from the original draft of my next Sarah/Lucifer/Nick fic that got cut because I switched the pov character from Sarah to Nick for. Reasons.

Sarah has had a lot more time to paint in the last few months. Enough that muscle memory she thought lost has slowly reappeared, making her hand steadier. Her art hasn’t become more neat as a result, but it has grown purpose in its mess. Her mother always wished she’d take after her grandmother and paint lush green forests and pretty meadows, but Sarah’s brushes led her down a different path. Intricate strokes litter the paper, testing to see how close she can bring the painting to the being curled around her spine before it devolves into a jumbled mess. Lucifer is not an easy muse. Sarah hasn’t managed to paint a piece that does her justice yet.

This one is barely recognizable as anything, more abstract than Sarah’s committed to in a long time. A lot of her paintings of Lucifer start somewhere she understands, with Nick’s face or her own, fragmented to better show the angel that lives inside them, openings in the skin like bloodless wounds through which eyes and feathers and teeth peek through. Someone else might find them terrifying. Nick thinks her paintings of Lucifer are beautiful. Lucifer, of course, is flattered and amused. She watches Sarah paint, enthralled the same way Nick mentioned her being the day he built Teddy’s crib. She hasn’t asked for a turn at the brushes yet, but Sarah hopes she does one day, if only so they can see what she’s capable of creating.

Sarah stretches. There’s no satisfying pop to her spine as she uncurls from her art, but in exchange, there’s also no lingering soreness from staying in one position for too long. Lucifer’s grace pulses, buried somewhere deep, utterly content. Sarah shuts her eyes as though she could listen to her.

Instead, Sarah hears a cry from the other room. She lets her head tilt towards the clock on the wall. It’s been a while since she put Teddy down for a nap. Lucifer is on alert the moment the sound hits Sarah’s ears. She’s still not used to the simple fact that sometimes, babies cry, and it doesn’t mean the world is about to end. Impossible to fathom wings flex under Sarah’s skin. Sarah suppresses a chuckle into a small smile and sets her paintbrush down. It rolls to join its brethren of various sizes, the only commonality between them all the teethmarks at the tip where Sarah chewed when she got frustrated or distracted. Lucifer’s wings flap, a wave of power rolling through Sarah’s body that’s asking one question, whether they can fly to the nursery rather than take the minute long walk there. Sarah lets her consent echo back through Lucifer, bracing herself.

Flight is a cacophony. Flight is like learning what it is to be a photon and forgetting again as her body hits the ground, human toes curling against the fuzz of the nursery carpet. Lucifer recovers like they’ve taken a brisk walk up the stairs. Sarah needs a minute more, as though she’s been thrown under the waves at the beach and needs to figure out which direction is up in order to stand. In his crib, Teddy turns his head to look at them, brown eyes seeking his mother, and when he knows she’s there to hear him, he scrunches up his face and starts crying again.

It’s Lucifer that takes them the first few steps to the crib, but Sarah who reaches down and picks Teddy up.

“Hey, hey, fussy,” she says softly to him, “shh, we’re here now.” Teddy cries out one more time, like he’s making sure she’s not going to put him down and leave once he’s quiet. Sarah rocks him.

“We’re here,” comes another voice from her mouth, still hesitant but less than it has been in a few months. Lucifer raises Sarah’s hand to pet a line down Teddy’s forehead. There’s no more than the ambient hum of her grace beneath Sarah’s skin, but between being held by his mother and watched over by his guardian devil, (Sarah’s mouth curls at the thought, and she can’t tell if it’s her or Lucifer reacting.) he quiets. He keeps frowning, scrunched up eyes and a wrinkled forehead. “Hello, Theodore,” Lucifer says, and it’s at Sarah’s prodding that she finally says, “Teddy.”

He’s a baby, Sarah teases, no need to be so formal.

Names mean something, comes the quick counter.

And this one means you love him. Lucifer hums, finger still drifting in absent circles over Teddy’s face. Teddy latches onto it when it’s near his mouth, and Lucifer freezes. Sarah laughs, and with control of her body falling back to her, it comes out without a care in the world. Teddy makes a frustrated noise when she pulls her finger away.

“That’s better than you needing a diaper change,” Sarah tells him. Teddy babbles at her, sounds that are beginning to have more distinct shapes but mean nothing at all. She’s going to have to put him back down to undo her button-up, or would have to, only Lucifer proves for the hundredth time how much easier parenting is with divine power backing them up. Sarah shifts Teddy around in her arms, enduring the tiny beat of an impatient hand against her chest, until she has him comfortably settled to feed.

He seems so small in her arms. He’s growing fast and will continue to for years and years, a prospect both terrifying and exciting.

It’s a short enough walk to her and Nick’s bedroom from the nursery, and she’s careful not to jostle Teddy while he nurses. There, she can settle down comfortably against the pillows, the blankets tucking themselves up around her legs despite her not reaching for them. It doesn’t do much against the ever-present chill, but Sarah doesn’t want that to go away. Besides, they bundle Teddy up warmly enough.

She does wonder sometimes what it’ll be like as he gets older. If his first words will be ‘dada’ or ‘mama’ or something else entirely, a string of syllables that seem like gibberish to her and Nick but mimic the language that Lucifer sometimes speaks to him off-handedly, the one that makes Sarah’s ears feel like they might pop from pressure if she listens for too long, the one that Teddy reacts to with kicking feet and responsive babbling. If one day Sarah will get teachers telling her about Teddy’s imaginary angelic friend who raised him, both those impressed that he could come up with something so elaborate and those worried that the angel in question is Lucifer herself. Maybe the funniest thing Sarah can imagine is if Nick ever takes little Teddy to church and what kind of menace they might unleash with a child who loves the devil like a mother. That, if it ever happens, is a long ways off, and until then, Lucifer is still the secret held between the three of them.

“You think he’ll still like me,” Lucifer says, dipping her hand into the stream of Sarah’s thoughts, welcomed but nibbled at by the fish that think she really should have asked permission first. Maybe a little hypocritical when Sarah has already let her in, “when he grows up.”

There is, always, this expectation of rejection that lingers in Lucifer’s words. A surprise when she finds connection instead that breaks Sarah’s heart.

“You look after him. You sing to him. You feed him.” Sarah looks down at Teddy, who takes his fill and rests his tiny fist against her skin. This caretaking is a communal effort, after all. “Of course he’ll love you.”

[izzy-b-hands]

Starting at approx 1240 PM today (don't at me I know. I know. I didn't set an alarm like a fool), I have managed to:

-start laundry

-unpack soaps that got delivered

-fix the robot vacuum bc he got stuck on a rug

-refresh the cat's water dishes

-refresh the cat's food dish

-start a playlist on YT

-have my brain immediately go scratchy over it for no good reason and switched to a different playlist

-fixed the robot vacuum again bc instead of going to his charger like I told him to, he instead redid his entire cleaning cycle and got stuck...on the exact same rug

-got robot vacuum to finally go to his charger

-started a fumbling attempt a grocery list online (fumbling for rn only bc what I need to do is look in the cupbooards and try and make sure I'm not missing anything that should be on there)

What was I supposed to be doing, before I started all of these?

*publishing my fic for the first event day*! But the Nerves! The Fears! That haven't hit in a good while re: my writing but are suddenly back again! I can be so stupid productive when im scared like a tiny rabbit in an open field lmao

Ooh, hang on, one last addition to The List of Things I Did Instead of Getting This Fic Published

-made list post on tumblr about putting off fic

[koocycle]

oh my god, OVER WINEEEESJHDHSJAJBSHDHSHWJWLALALAOWIWDYIDE !!!!!!!!!!ive been in a fanfic reading slump all these months and your fic got me going 😭 ive seen the teaser for this long ago and i remember feeling so excited for it to come out. i was so THRILLED to see part 1 finally posted!!

also can i just say that i would d word for miss y/n and I WILL STAND BY HER SIDE AND I HOPE SHE DOESNT GO WITH HIM ON THAT TRIP AND I PERSONALLY HOPE U MAKE JUNGKOOK SUFFER BCAUSE GOD WAS HE JUST A MANIPULATIVE ASSHOLE THE ENTIRE THING (the whole time i was just thinking GOD HES SUCH AN ASS CAN SHESERVE THEIR DIVORCE PAPERS) i really felt for yn bcs i could imagine being known as just the "wife of" must be so miserable. i was so happy for her when she did that shoot with Tae, u could really tell she loves modelling and i truly hope she pursues it in this fic 🥲🥲 oh goshhh i love her so much. i didn't like jungkook AT ALL in this part but im sure he would get like a character arc or something on the later parts bcs even tho atp i want them to divorce lol i still think their issues could be sorted out. (i actually kind of teared up a little bit on the first s*x scene on the table when jk asked her "are u gonna miss me" and then she thought "i miss you everyday" but didn't say anything instead it was so emotional for some reason. miss ma'am just wants her husband to come back to her but idiot prick over here thinks everything can be solved thru his money. oh god i hope he realizes that him being an overly workaholic is not doing any good in their relationship)

anyway YOU DID SO WELL!!! i love your writing I ATE THAT 35K-ISH WORDS UP IN ONE GO thank you for sharing your work with us!! hope you're having a great day ♥️

respect for you reading 37k in one go because i literally texted @latetaektalk nobody was gonna read this long ass dready fic but!! you did eat that up!! thank you bb 🤍

imagine nobody seeing you as anyone other than the wife of, and apparently being seen like that by your husband as well. especially when you look at the way he’s trying to show her off left and right. i get it was a very stressful chapter because they both just did and said things that made you want to slap some sense into them!! let’s just hope for the best and pray for the sake of their relationship that they’ll be working on themselves in the following chapters… also! that dialogue in that particular sex scene is one of my favorites!!! god that was so much fun to write and soso angsty

[chesthighwater]

by thé way. wips roundup that absolutely no one asked for

first of all in the daudmartin brainrot corner we've got

sequel to bctbk, as promised. i have a major "plot" point planned, and then it might go one of two directions... we shall see :3c

the high overseer martin/assassin daud fic that i've posted a few excerpts from. essentially daud manifests himself into the abbey suggestively asking for ~spiritual guidance~ (lol) and things escalate from there. this has to get finished at some point because its like one of the first things i started writing for them. it deserve to see the light of day

a mildly humorous high overseer martin/spymaster daud fic. kind of a challenge for myself also- i find spymaster daud hard to imagine, and am not that used to writing daudmartin where they're not constantly trying to one-up/double cross each other/at each other's throats flirtatiously. presumably will not be nsfw (or at least, i'm not planning on it, but i make no promises. can't know where the ol inspiration will take me).

oh heres another high overseer martin thing! who wouldve thought! this time with Responsibility and Abbey Politics and Decisions. and working through issues. so many fucking issues. this one is actually actively in the works so ill leave it at that for now ;>

daudmartin pwp with genuinely 0 plot. like, negative plot. this thing defies plot. i can barely even tell you if it's an au or what, i might sprinkle a few nonsexual sentences in if i'm feeling generous but that's it. other than that it's literally just about martin being very quiet during sex and daud trying every trick he has in his book (which admittedly isn't many) to change that instead of like, communicating

augh speaking of plot-defying pwps. "what if overseers had (some appropriate equivalent to) confessions". there is some lore in here obviously but the entire point of it is confessional dirty talk. i dont KNOW

[REDACTED] pwp which im not even gonna advertise itll just appear one day and if you find it you found it

mostly unplanned ideas that i might flesh out: sokolov portrait thing. some dunwall noir stuff purely for martin in a cassock reasons (and sexualising religious guilt reasons. if i knew anything at all about priests i'd be working on this much faster). something involving the outsider appearing to martin (this might just get absorbed in a more well fleshed out idea at some point). martin Suffering More, because i want him in a situation where his wit fails completely (more desperation! more excuses! i am weak for this i really am.). something involving some more Action- fighting together against an acute threat? i think there should be more fighty martin out there. i am the change i want to see in the world

(not including the various snippets for the eternal serkonan vacation au which i already laid out there)

in the thief crossover brainrot corner (i bet you forgot i allude to thief crossovers in my description!)

also a sokolov portrait thing, but i have it way more planned out. corvo really, really wants garrett to sit in for a portrait (especially now when he's officially the empire's shadiest most mysterious spymaster ever). he reluctantly agrees, but Under One Condition.

a sort of relationship chronicle via heart lines. definitely starts with corvo's diplomatic mission and possibly ends with some happy dh2 era content. obviously i have the heart lines planned out.

possibly something involving more political intrigue/royal drama type stuff? i'm lucky enough to have access to someone who can give me some really good examples/plots if i fail to come up with anything myself.

(this is just a thief thing but i have had a viktoria/lt. mosley thing running around my brain for AGES. i want to explore how their relationship develops so bad. i know they have literally one interaction in canon but they are my blorbinas and i have mentally expanded their backstories so hard the story is basically begging to be written at this point)

anyway if you read this unreasonably unnecessarily long post i love you. i am sending you a kiss. wanna get married

[nooradeservedbetter]

I know you write bl but please do not defend Emma. She is known in our fandom as a transphobic asshole. She has been openly transphobic to harries and larries because they think Harry MIGHT be trans. She is also homophobic with how she as a cis het white woman thinks she has more say in how a gay fandom needs to operate. There are years worth of receipts of this. She harassed my friend because they tagged Harry as a princess on their own blog and tried to call them homophobic for doing so. Im mutuals with authors who had to drop out of the bl fest for personal reasons, and then Emma and her friends started harassing them for joining a non bl fest months later. You should see how former blouie authors are treated by her after they dont write exclusively bl fics anymore. The reason BLP is not well liked in fandom is because of her. There is literally a top Harry fic fest run by an actual trans person and much more supported by larries. Louis bottoming isn't the issue. For years blouies have made that their only personality and harassed and sent so many larries death threats (me included) because we blog on our own blogs about Harry wanting to be pregnant or singing about sucking dick or anything that doesn't make him "a top". Blouies have ruined themselves for their entire fandom and that anon is a perfect example of how they are.

Whew anon.

Okay, thank you for the ask and the respectful tone, I will try to maintain a respectful tone right back.

I don't exclusively write bl, I like to think I write fics where Louis gets taken care of one way or another. By bottoming, by subbing, by being cuddled; rn I have 2 smut fics, both of them sub Louis, one of them is them being vers (i.e. penetrating each other), the other *can* be considered bl, I did tag it as such, but the only penetration that happens is two lines of cockwarming. My current unpublished fics and ideas are:

The a/b/o fic fest that is Omega Louis/bl but has references to bh;

Exploring the idea of topping from the bottom: i have a petplay sub Harry fic that's half-written, currently plotting a vaguely Dom transrry fic. First one will be Dom!bl, second one Dom!bh. Might have a third one, but I still haven't decided;

The blff, I mean that's the name of;

The 1d fantasy fic fest that will be both vers and switch but it's darkfic so I don't think that's a great example to have here tbh lmao.

Okay, that said.

I did have run-ins with Emma back in the day; idk if you were there in 2015/16, but I have a whole tag where I actively fought people on Harry's possible gender identity, together with Angela and Jay (godspeed to both of them, they're much happier now believe me). It's been 8 years, I don't know what Emma is doing right now, besides managing the blff, and I don't know how she changed in eight years; eight years ago I was a staunch anarchist, and look at me now. You can come off anon and send me anything you might see fit, that would actually be great, and it would give me something to operate on. And on that point, I don't--think? That telling someone "hey yo instead of sending anon hate go and support the people who write/rec the fics you wanna read" is defending anyone? But it's understandable that if she's currently harassing people, that's a knee-jerk reaction.

Then to address your points about Louis bottoming... Again, I'm not sure, like. Feels a bit like you're barking at the wrong tree? One of my favourite smut authors is devilinmybrain (oh my god that 5+1 gross-hot fic nnnn) and I read, and to some extent write, quite happily everything as long as it's good. Like, both of them canonically have a prostate. It's a shame if they never use it. And Harry being feminine has nothing to do with Harry bottoming (or topping ;) of course), but this is something that needs its own post to be expanded.

With that long-ass rant in that post I wanted to make another point, and that point was directed to some of the reblogs, and that point was: stop wokeifying the gay community, because you--general you--will have a stroke if you ever go to a gay bar one day.

I won't reiterate the stuff I said there, but that should have been the main takeaway, not that I prefer writing bl or bh. I don't consider myself a blouie, by virtue of the fact that not only I read and write whatever, but also because I genuinely don't agree with a lot of the, like, ideological stances. On smut. I could talk about what hardcore bl/sh do and say probably all day, and Raf/Niv know what I'm talking about because they're usually the ones I fill with audios, but this post is already really long.

[patchdotexe]

while ive been transcribing the old mirror fics ive been Thinking about like, the modern version of mirror we started writing (before some Stuff happened that made it uhhh. difficult to work on) and what we want to do with it

because dominic's entire plotline in it is Hugely changed out of necessity, but i really gotta like. analyze his character in the context of This Specific AU and what's vital to distinguishing him as "this is mirror!dominic" vs "this is limoliverse!dominic"

and the weirdest choice i might have to make is "fuck you [singlets your dominic]"

BC LIKE. Dominic K aka limoliverse!dominic is plural! BUT THE THING IS. both dominics are the Original roleplay!dominic split in half, but the "dominic being plural" thing was originally established in Mirror. the original plot of mirror 2010 was that like as a result of chain of memories not getting Properly Resolved for him he ended up with like. a factive of himself but with the fabricated backstory namine gave him. and so dominic's plotline in the kh2 part was him struggling with clashing identities and Two Of Him

(and also a fun part about mirror 2010 that i Cannot reasonably transfer over into the modern version is that due to crossover bullshit, dominic knew how some of the plot was going to go because he knew the non-AU sora and so he kept trying to like, find a solution to problems that was best for everybody, and making it Way Worse and knocking stuff even further off the rails, and i am losing focus on what this post was about)

(actually no that IS what this post was about, i just decided to focus on the nicolai thing instead of the plot-derail thing and then i started talking about it anyway OOPS)

anyway. when my reworking of dominic turned into "okay im gonna just rip this guy in half and see what happens", limoliverse dominic ended up with the "being plural" thing but. reworked to make sense with his life situation in limoliverse. and it became pretty integral to how he fits in with the rest of the group and nicolai is a very fun character and etc

but MEANWHILE back in mirror, we were trying to figure out What To Do With Nicolai because thats where hes FROM, while also not overcomplicating stuff too much because There Is Already A Lot Going On because even before getting dominic involved this is gonna be hella AU, and the answer might be "uh. what if we didnt"

god i wish i had sushi rn

[dont-justdont]

here i am again, annoying as ever (but for a good reason this time around, i promise)

so i decided to write a cannon divergent marauders fic (set around the time of GoF) and here are my favourite parts of the chapter im writing (i havent posted it so far, idk if i will but i wanted to share those parts)

context : mary got obliviated after james and lily's death, and sirius finds her after he runs away from england following PoA, she doesnt remember him. these make it sound like they're gonna be romantically involved, but rest assure they wont, she's just confused by the situation and sirius is the first reminder of home she has

1.

“I don’t know you, and you don’t know me. Leave” was what she said. What she meant was Please, please look at me. Who are you? I want to hear about it. What she meant was Why do you know my name? Why do I feel like I should know yours? What she meant was Why do you feel like home?

2.

Who is he? she asked to the sky above her.

Sirius. Sirius, Sirius, Sirius, Sirius, Sirius. The name rolled of the tip of her tongue with ease, as if spoken a million times before. Who are you? she asked the stars.

The stars did not answer.

3.

She knew those features. Of course, she didn’t know them, but they looked, familiar. Like déjà-vu. His entire presence screamed of déjà-vu, as if her soul recognized him, but her eyes couldn’t. Like he’d known her in another life, in maybe all of them, and yet they met for the first time.

He broke the silence first.

“You truly don’t remember me, do you?’ he asked softly, as if trying not to scare her away. Oh, if only he knew.

“I feel like I should.” She’d answered truthfully, stealing a glance. Her tone was sad, and she didn’t know why. Maybe that was the worse part, not knowing. Or rather, feeling like you should know, like you did know, at one point.

She saw the tear that rolled down his cheek, and the way his eyes seemed to beg her. Remember me, they asked. Know me, they demanded. She couldn’t answer their prayers.

She didn’t comment on it.

4.

They walked for a long time, that night. Until the last rays of the sun disappear beneath the horizon, until the freshness of the night buried itself deep in her bones. That’s when she spoke again, softly. A whisper, really. “Sirius.”

She had meant it as a question. Instead, it came out as a promise.

[bringcal]

I'm going to be repeating similar criticisms I had on my post I had a bit ago so yeah but I'll try to flesh them out a bit, I do not analyze homestuck so sorry if I fuck up the information a little.

I feel like a lot of people forgot why the epilogues and Homestuck 2 are the way they are so let me just say that when homestuck ended there was actually a lot of unsatisfied and upset people because they think the ending sucked and wanted more from it. Instead of fighting the Big Bad (tm) they take an alternative ending and escape the narrative, creating a new path for themselves. People really wanted Hussie to continue it at the very least and didnt want it to end this way and kept pestering them about it. That is your rundown. The epilogues in a way is a massive troll. a way to say " Oh you want it to continue no matter what? sure. here you go " It was meant to piss you off and it worked, many people hated the epilogues and homestuck 2 because it was so shitty and ruined their characters when that is the entire point. Some people know this and still think it was done in a really stupid way but personally I loved it.

So this is kind of why I dislike where the new team is going with Homestuck 2 because at its core its going against the entire reasoning or Homestuck 2 existing. The entire thing has been a fix-it fic so far, where it feels like everyones getting their highlight and attention and suddenly things are going well. Fans are getting a lot of headcanons and desires for homestuck 2 made canon, and that.. is exactly why I dont like it.

They're trying to do so many things and tie up so many "loose ends" that things are being rushed and the writing is not great. I enjoyed the first update and it began to go downhill from there. I maybe laugh a little, but I don't feel connected to any of these characters or what theyre dealing with because a lot of it is just not.. shown? and some of it is just so out of the blue? You're telling me jake is just like.. Okay now? we needed a single update where he talks to BGD to make him okay and maybe reach ultimate status, which is ultimate dirks entire desire to never let happened and is why jake gets some of the worst treatment narratively? And the whole thing with vriska... Years are passing by in these conversations, yet the only taste we are getting is that core moment things were supposedly building up to, yet we dont get to see the build up were just supposed to infer shit happened and she knows better now. We are rushing vriskas development which is like.. Attempting to give vriska a redemption wouldve failed no matter what, not every character in a piece of media needs a redemption , she just needs to stop being a 16 year old about everything, i think she is allowed to be a bit of a bitch, amen. I have so many thoughts about the handling of vriska and thats all how ill summarize it.

The references and jokes are also like.. So new generation and listen, I never thought homestuck was as "timeless" with the jokes and references as people say it was, but Homestuck 2 is going to age horribly fast. The characters like davepeta and whatever are all quite fanonized and it really feels like fans puppeting empty characters. I feel like there is a huge push to bring back the essence of homestuck but it just cannot be replicated.

I hope, I truly hope, that homestuck 2 is going to do a 360 and end like " hey the fandom fuck you were doing this for you and look how much your desires for more homestuck suck and whatever ! " a sort of "taking the comic back from the fandom" thing and all the characters act more normal afterwards, but I do not see it, and I will be a little sad If i predicted the entire thing.

Sorry for the typos and whatever we are at a brunch and im just putting my train on thought onto paper.

what if i dont like Homestuck 2 anymore. what if I said i thought the old version was better

[sineala]

Tony Stark and Arthuriana

Coming to you by special request, a very long post about 616 Tony's interest in Arthuriana, with a focus on all of Tony's run-ins with Morgan le Fay!

I feel like I should disclaim the extent of my knowledge here, which is that I still haven't managed to read anywhere near every issue of Iron Man -- at least, not yet, anyway -- so I'm just going by the things I know I've read, and Morgan le Fay's Marvel wiki entry is frustratingly under-cited, so it's very possible I've missed something relevant, but I'm pretty sure I've got the big stuff down. My other disclaimer here is that I'm not as big an Arthurian nerd as Tony is, which is to say that most of my familiarity comes from modern retellings -- T. H. White's The Once and Future King, Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Mists of Avalon, Mary Stewart's The Crystal Cave, Rosemary Sutcliff's Sword at Sunset -- and not so much the usual classic sources on the Matter of Britain, though I've read bits and pieces of them.

(This is because I wanted to read versions of them that were as close to the original as possible but so far have not ended up finishing any of them because, well, that's hard. So I've never read the Mabinogion because I do not know Welsh. I've got the Norton Critical Edition of Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, which is probably the best student edition if you're looking for something without modernized spellings, as I was. I've also got -- well, okay, it's my wife's but I'm borrowing it -- a relatively recent Boydell & Brewer edition (ed. Reeve, tr. Wright) of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (History of the Kings of Britain), which is, you guessed it, in Latin with a facing English translation. I haven't gotten very far in it because, in case you didn't know this about Latin texts, the beginning is pretty much always the hardest, so I gave up and read some Plautus adaptations instead. Anyway, if for some reason you too want to read Geoffrey of Monmouth in the original Latin I'd recommend that one, but I can't recommend any particular English translations because I've never read one by itself. I bet you didn't think you'd be getting Latin prose recommendations in this post. I mean, maybe you did; it is me, after all.)

Okay. Right. King Arthur. Here we go.

We've got:

Flashbacks to Tony's childhood in late Iron Man volume 1

A brief discussion of Morgan's origin story and Avengers #187

Iron Man vol 1 #149-150: Doomquest

What If vol 1 #33: What if Iron Man was trapped in the time of King Arthur?

Iron Man vol 1 #249-250: Recurring Knightmare

Iron Man: Legacy of Doom #1-4

Avengers vol 3 #1-4: The Morgan Conquest

Civil War: The Confession

Mighty Avengers vol 1 #9-11: Time Is On No One's Side

In terms of universe-internal chronology, we know from Iron Man #287, from 1992, that Tony has been a fan of King Arthur since childhood. This is an issue of a fandom-favorite arc which features Tony having a lot of childhood flashbacks, including the famous "Stark men are made of iron" line (in #286) that for some reason MCU fandom decided it loved; I mean, seriously, I've seen that quoted in way more MCU fic than 616 fic. But slightly later, in #287, we get an entire page devoted to Tony's love of King Arthur.

The narration reads: "Over the next few years, I learned as my father intended. Discipline of body. Strength of character. But in what free time I was allowed, I worked my way through the school's library. At thirteen, I discovered Mallory [sic], who showed me a whole new world. A world of dedication to a cause greater than oneself. Of chivalry and honor. And the fantastic deeds -- of armored heroes."

The art shows Tony as a child sitting under a tree, reading a book labeled Mort D'Arthur by Mallory [sic] -- no, don't ask me why nobody at Marvel checked how to spell either the name of the book or its author -- and daydreaming of King Arthur, the Sword in the Stone, knights, et cetera. Just in case you somehow missed the extremely blatant hint that we are meant to understand that Tony's knight obsession heavily influenced him becoming Iron Man as an adult, we see one of his armors mixed in with all the drawings of knights. So, yes, canonically Tony is Iron Man at least partly because he's a giant King Arthur nerd, which I think is so very sweet. I love him. He's such a dork!

(This issue is currently in print in the Iron Man Epic Collection War Machine, should you need your own copy.)

This isn't actually the only reference to Tony as a King Arthur fanboy in this era of canon, either; a little later, in IM #298, we see that one of Tony's passwords is actually "Mallory." (Yeah, no, they still couldn't spell. But it's cute.)

But in terms of actual publication order, this is definitely not the first time we have seen in canon that Tony is into Arthuriana, as I'm sure you all know. I would assume, in fact, that giving Tony a childhood interest in Arthuriana is because Doomquest is one of the most beloved Iron Man story arcs of all time, and that all started at least a decade before IM #287 here was published.

The villain of Doomquest -- the one who isn't Doctor Doom, at least -- is Morgan le Fay. Yes, that Morgan le Fay. Yes, Arthur's evil half-sister Morgan le Fay. Yes, all of this King Arthur stuff is canonically real history on Earth-616. Morgan's first appearance in Marvel, per the wiki, was in Black Knight #1 (1955), which I have not read, and judging by the summary I feel like this is probably just supposed to be a straight-up comic retelling of Arthurian legends for kids; I don't think Marvel really had the whole Marvel Universe in mind as a concept in 1955, so I'm not sure this was meant to connect to anything else. I feel like this is another one of those instances of Marvel discovering that they can write comics about characters in the public domain for free -- like, I'm pretty sure that's how we also ended up with, like, Norse, Greek, and Roman mythology wedged into 616.

As far as I can tell from the wiki, the first time Morgan tangled with the Avengers (or indeed the larger 616 universe) in any way actually predated Doomquest -- it was in an early arc in Spider-Woman (#2-6) and then Avengers #187, which came out in 1979, actually right when Demon in a Bottle was happening over in Iron Man comics. If you read #187, Iron Man is not in it because he's off the team due to his drinking problem and also his accidentally murdering the Carnelian ambassador problem. So Wonder Man's filling in instead. This issue is part of Michelinie's rather sporadic Avengers run, which makes sense, I guess, considering where we see Morgan next.

Anyway, Avengers #187 is the classic issue where Wanda is possessed by Chthon, but what you may not remember from Chthon's backstory (I sure didn't!) is that he was summoned by Morgan le Fay because she was the first person who tried to wield the Darkhold to summon him. As you can imagine, this did not work out especially well for her and her followers and they had to seal Chthon away in Wundagore Mountain, which was where Wanda found him. (The Spider-Woman stuff is only slightly earlier and also appears to be about Morgan and the Darkhold; the Darkhold is not one of the areas of 616 canon I am especially conversant with, alas. It's on my to-read list.)

Doomquest, as you probably know, was a classic Iron Man two-parter in Layton & Michelinie's first Iron Man run that set up Tony and Doom as rivals; Doomquest itself was IM #149-150, in 1981, and then in their second IM run they came back and did a sequel in 1989, Recurring Knightmare (IM #249-250), and then the much later four-part sequel to that was the 2008 miniseries Iron Man: Legacy of Doom, which was also by Layton & Michelinie but generally does not seem to be as popular as the first two parts. They've all been reprinted, if you're looking for copies; I have a Doomquest hardcover that collects the first four issues and then a separate Legacy of Doom hardcover. Currently in the Iron Man Epic Collection line there's a volume called Doom, which confusingly only collects the 249-250 part of the storyline (as well as surrounding issues), because for some reason the first Layton & Michelinie run isn't in Epics yet but the second one is. So the beginning of Doomquest isn't currently in print, as far as I can tell. I'm sure you can find it anyway.

So what's Doomquest about? Okay, so you remember how Doctor Doom's mother's soul is stuck in hell for all eternity? Well, Doom's obviously interested in getting her back, and the strategy he has embarked on is to try to team up with other powerful magicians who can help him out, and he thinks Morgan le Fay would be a good choice, for, uh, his quest. Doom's quest. A Doomquest, if you will. (If you've ever read Doctor Strange & Doctor Doom: Triumph & Torment, you're familiar with the part where he later ends up waylaying Strange for this and they go to hell together. And if you haven't read Triumph & Torment, you really should, because it's amazing.)

So Doom is off to his time machine to go team up with Morgan le Fay and Tony thinks Doom is up to something -- Doom has been stealing components for his time machine from a lot of people, including Tony -- and he follows him and it turns out one of Doom's lackeys has a grudge and wants to trap Doom in the past forever, and Tony gets caught up in it. Now they're both in Camelot. Surprise! #149 is actually all setup; they don't get to Camelot until #150.

IM #150 begins with Doom and Tony thrown back into the past; there's a fandom-famous splash page of them locked in combat, only to realize that they have found themselves in Camelot.

They are then discovered by knights; Doom would very much like to attack them, but Tony, who naturally would be happy to LARP Camelot forever, persuades him to play nice. Also Doom thinks Iron Man is only Tony's bodyguard so he keeps referring to him as "lackey," much to Tony's annoyance. Somehow everyone thinks they're sorcerers. Can't imagine why. The knights take them to meet King Arthur himself, and Tony has clearly had his introduction all ready to go, as he introduces himself in a timeline-appropriate manner, says he's here to apprehend Doom, and demonstrates his "magic" by levitating Arthur's throne. Doom's response is essentially "I'm the king of Latveria," which is, y'know, also valid. So they're guests at Camelot for the night while Arthur figures out what to do with them.

We then have a page devoted to Tony alone in his room, musing sadly about how alien he feels, how he doesn't know if he'll ever get home, how he could never fit in here without his beloved technology. Then a Sexy Lady shows up to keep him company for the night, and he decides maybe it's not all bad. Thanks, Marvel. I guess they can't all be winners.

Doom is using his evening much more productively; he compels one of the servants to tell him where Morgan's castle is, because he's still interested in having that team-up. Then he jets off. Literally. He has a jetpack.

The next morning Arthur's like "one of you is still here and one of you has punched a hole through the castle wall and flown off to join Morgan so I guess I know which of you is more trustworthy." He then explains to Tony who Morgan is, because Tony professes ignorance, because clearly we had not yet retconned in Tony's love of Arthuriana. Tony offers to go fight Doom and Morgan with Arthur; meanwhile, Morgan and Doom have teamed up and Morgan has offered to help get Doom's mother out of hell if he commands her undead armies against Arthur because for Reasons she can't command them herself anymore. So that's a thing that happens.

So, yes, it's Tony and Arthur versus Doom and Morgan. Fight fight fight!

Tony tries Doom first but then decides to hunt Morgan down, and in the ensuing fight we get what I think is Tony's first ever "I hate magic," a complaint that we all know he still makes even to this day.

Anyway, Tony freezes a dragon with Freon (mmm, technology) and Morgan gets upset and disappears, so the battle comes to an end, and of course Doom is extremely mad at Tony because he blames Tony for Morgan not sticking around to save Doom's mom, because I guess Doom trusted her to keep her word? Weird. (Like I said, for the next chapter of Doom saving his mother, go read Triumph & Torment.)

Doom says if he and Tony work together, the components in both of their armors can send them both home. So Tony has to trust Doom. Which he does, because he really has no other choice. They build a time machine and Tony makes Doom agree to a 24-hour truce when they get back, so they can both get home. So it all works out okay, and they end up in the present, and Doom tells him, ominously, that they will meet again. Okay, then. That concludes the original Doomquest. It's fun! You can see why fandom likes it.

So that's all well and good, but you might have noticed that Tony's ability to get home hinged on Doom actually being trustworthy. And Doom was. But what if Doom hadn't been? What if he'd just stranded Tony in Camelot forever As you may have surmised from the form of that question, that is in fact a question Marvel asked themselves, because, yes, there's a What If about this! What If v1 #33 is "What if Iron Man was trapped in the time of King Arthur?"

The divergence point from canon, as you can probably guess, is the very end of Doomquest. Instead of Doom bringing Tony home, he deceives him and leaves him in Camelot. And since Tony cannibalized a lot of the tech from his armor to make the time machine, he doesn't have a way to go home.

This is not a story where Tony comes up with a way to go home after all. He really doesn't get to go home. But instead of drowning his sorrows in mead -- because, remember, Demon in a Bottle has already happened and Tony is sober now -- he decides he might as well just play the hand he's dealt. So with what's left of his armor, he defeats some enemies that Morgan rounds up to send against Camelot. And for his services, he's knighted. He is now Sir Anthony.

Tony acknowledges that he is both living the dream and would also like very, very much to go home.

He does end up having some fun in Camelot; it's not all miserable. But he obviously doesn't want to be there.

So if you're at all familiar with King Arthur, you know how this goes, right? Arthur fights Mordred and Mordred kills him. And that does happen in this version. Except Tony is right there, and with his dying words, Arthur asks Tony to rule Camelot... and Tony agrees.

So, yes, Tony Stark becomes king of the Britons after Arthur's death and he never goes home again. The end. Man, I love What Ifs.

Heading back to main 616 continuity, there is still more of this arc to go. The original Doomquest was only two issues, yes, but it was popular enough that Layton & Michelinie did a sequel a hundred issues later, in their second run of Iron Man, and that's Iron Man #249-250, Recurring Knightmare. (In the intervening issues were Denny O'Neil's IM run, specifically the second drinking arc (#160-200), and then Layton & Michelinie came back and most famously gave us Armor Wars (#225-232). I would have to say that Armor Wars is definitely the standout fandom-favorite arc of their second IM run; for their first one, I think a lot of people would have a hard time choosing between Doomquest and Demon.) But anyway, yes. Recurring Knightmare.

Recurring Knightmare is... well, the best way I can describe it is "a trip." It is definitely a sequel to Doomquest, and it is also definitely not a sequel you  would ever have expected to see for Doomquest.

Much like #149, #249 is pretty much just setup. Fun setup, but the big action is in the next issue. We open with Doom in Latveria, on his throne, pondering which of his servants he should have disintegrated. Anyway, he's just hanging out there when a mysterious object appears. In California, Tony is suited up and entertaining the crowd at a mall opening when the same object also appears! He takes it to his lab. Please note that this is after the Kathy Dare incident, so Tony is still recovering and is walking with a cane. Doom sees on the news that Iron Man has found the same object, which cannot be carbon-dated, and he shows up at Tony's house. He criticizes Tony's taste in art.

Anyway, Doom basically orders Tony to work with him. Tony refuses, and then Doom sends some robots to attempt to steal Tony's version of the object because he thinks if he has them both he will be powerful. Doom manages to steal it, and when he puts the pieces together, both he and Tony disappear.

So where do they go, you might ask? Camelot?

Not exactly. The future! There is a great callback to the Doomquest splash page.

It turns out they are in London in 2093. Merlin brought them there. Tony still hates magic. And in the future, King Arthur is still there, except he is now a child, because he has been reborn. But he does remember Tony from Doomquest, at which point Tony kneels. Doom, of course, is not impressed. He asks why they have been brought to the future.

The answer is that things are going wrong in the future. If you do not personally remember United States politics in the 1980s, I need you to google the words "Strategic Defense Initiative" right now. I'll wait.

Back with me? Okay, so this is a future where Reagan's Star Wars program actually happened the way he wanted it to, and the satellites are still hanging around the Earth in the future and messing everything up, and Arthur and Merlin need Tony and Doom's help to stop them. Doom once again flies away with his jetpack, of course.

Tony is game to help, but he's not in an armor that can stay in space for long. This is when Merlin takes him and Arthur to the mall and Tony manages to get everything to upgrade his armor at Radio Shack. You see what I meant about this issue being weird.

Tony is out in space trying to disarm the SDI platform, which is where he runs into his future descendant, Andros Stark, who is in armor you will probably recognize from Iron Man 2020. He is referred to as "the resurrected spawn of Iron Man 2020" so I assume he's actually directly related to Arno rather than a direct descendant of Tony; Wiki confirms that Arno is his grandfather. This is all from way before Arno was contemporaneous with Tony in canon. Anyway, he's fighting Tony.

Oh, by the way, Future Doom exists. Future Doom would like to rule this future Earth and for some reason Andros would like to help him. Meanwhile, Present Doom finds out from Merlin that he can't leave except by magic and he can't leave without Tony, so he is reluctantly on Tony's side.

They need help from the Lady of the Lake, except the lake has been paved over and is now a parking lot. Merlin makes the lake come back and then of course they get Excalibur. Arthur is a kid, so he can't wield a longsword; Doom assumes he's going to take it because he is basically a king, and he's pretty grumpy when the sword picks Tony. Tony then uses Excalibur to destroy the space lasers, and I bet that is a sentence you never thought you would read. It's pretty cool. Tony concludes that magic has its good points. Tony stops Andros and Doom stops, uh, himself, and the world is saved and they get to go home. Also, Doom finds out Tony is Iron Man, but when Merlin sends them back he conveniently erases their memories, so neither of them remember anything about this and Tony's secret is still safe. And that's the sequel to Doomquest.

And if you think that's weird, wait until you see Legacy of Doom.

Iron Man: Legacy of Doom is a four-issue miniseries from 2008, also by Layton and Michelinie. Even though it's from 2008, it's set during a much more classic time in Iron Man, continuing on from where we left off in this Doomquest saga. We start with a framing story in 2008. Tony, who has Extremis now, is busy scrapping some of his older armors and reviewing his logs when he suddenly remembers that there was a whole thing with Doom that happened that he seems to have forgotten about until right now. So the whole thing is narrated by Tony in flashback.

Tony's in space fixing a satellite when a hologram of Doom shows up and summons him to Latveria. It's not really clear why Doom needs Tony's help in particular here, but Doom tells Tony that he's discovered that Mephisto would like to bring about the end of the world, which Doom finds, and I quote, "presumptive." So Doom has his Time Cube, and with it he takes Tony to hell.

(Yes, I promise this is relevant to Doomquest. There will be some Arthuriana shortly.)

Doom brings Tony to Mephisto, and it turns out it's a setup! Doom trades Tony for an item he wants from Mephisto, leaves, and Tony's going to be trapped in hell forever! Oh no! (I mean, he's not. But it's quite a cliffhanger.)

At the beginning of issue #2, we find out what the Arthurian connection is, which is that we learned that after the events of Doomquest, Morgan had been granted sanctuary by Mephisto in exchange for a shard of Excalibur that she had somehow stolen. Doom still wants Morgan's help with some magic -- he doesn't mention what it is here, but he says he needs someone of Pendragon blood, and that'd be her -- so he traded Tony to Mephisto in exchange for, I'm guessing, Morgan and the Excalibur shard.

I have probably mentioned this elsewhere, but Legacy of Doom #2 is one of my favorite issues of Iron Man ever, solely because of the next scene. We return to Tony in hell. Howard Stark is also in hell, and he is now a demon, and Tony has to fight him. Mephisto brings popcorn and watches. This is the one time in canon when Tony actually confronts his father, and okay, yes, it's a fistfight in hell and Howard is a demon, but that's comics for you. Howard spends several pages insulting Tony -- specifically insulting his masculinity, but that's a whole other essay -- until he finally insults Maria too, and that's when Tony fights back, because his mother taught him to be good. Honestly if you're a Tony fan I'd recommend this issue just for that scene.

Anyway, we go back to the Doom and Morgan plot, and Morgan casts the spell Doom wanted, which was fusing the Excalibur shard with Doom's armor. Then Doom sends her back to Camelot rather than hell, because he's still mad that she never helped him get his mom out of hell like she said she would.

Tony freezes Howard with Freon -- yes, the same trick he pulled on the dragon back in Doomquest -- and tells him, "You're no father of mine." It is immensely satisfying.

(I had been going to mention that I thought it was a shame that neither canon nor fandom seems to have really engaged with this confrontation, and I know canon never believes in narrative closure but fandom sure does -- and then, anyway, it occurred to me that since the framing story of Tony remembering this is set when Tony has Extremis, there's a very good chance that he no longer remembers remembering it. Goddammit, Marvel.)

(If I got to retcon one canon thing about Tony, I think "the entirety of World's Most Wanted" is up there. I mean, okay, a lot of things are up there, but WMW is definitely on the shortlist.)

Okay. Tony has now engineered his way out of hell, and he's back with Doom in Latveria. Doom has Excalibur. Doom would very much like to fight him. While wielding Excalibur. You get the sense that this is going to be bad. Another cliffhanger!

Legacy of Doom #3 opens with Tony destroying Doom's lab to buy time and running away from Doom and Excalibur. I should probably mention that Doom still doesn't know Tony is Iron Man (anymore), so he thinks he is dealing only with Iron Man, Tony Stark's lackey. Meanwhile, some scientists at SI think there's something weird going on with space. Meanwhile meanwhile, Tony is in a forest taking a breather when a mysterious old man walks up to him.

It's Merlin! Surprise! Merlin wants Tony's help to stop Doom from doing whatever he's doing with Excalibur. The sword makes you invincible and the scabbard makes you invulnerable, so Merlin sends Tony to Scotland on a fetch quest for the scabbard. Doom has now magically sent the sword in search of the scabbard, so the sword flies away to meet it and Doom follows. Turns out the thing that's wrong with space is a thing that's going to hit Earth at the exact place Tony and Doom are. What a coincidence! So Tony and Doom get trapped in a stone circle and fight some stone warriors and then Tony ends up with the scabbard. And by "ends up with," I mean it fuses to his armor. Next issue!

Legacy of Doom #4 is when things really, really get weird. A giant demon made of eyes (???) appears, and this demon is apparently what Doom had been preparing to fight (because it's mad that Doom stole one of its spellbooks), and now he can't, because the sword and the scabbard aren't together. Thanks, Shellhead.

That's when Merlin shows up and says all is not lost. They can defeat the demon... if they put the sword into the scabbard.

"But I'm the scabbard now!" Tony says, uncomprehending.

"Yes," Merlin says. "You are."

Then Tony gets it.

So, yes, Doom has to, um, penetrate Tony. With Excalibur. I love comics. I love comics so much.

So that's a thing that happens.

And then Tony flies off and, I guess, resolves to never, ever think about any of this again.

We head back to the framing story, in which Tony, now having remembered all of this, flies to Britain, buys the land the lake is on, and paves it over, presumably so it will be there for Merlin to bring back in Iron Man #250. The end.

Whew.

Okay, yeah, I know I didn't have to summarize the whole thing, but Legacy of Doom here really is one of my favorite Iron Man miniseries. And I just want to share the love. Please read it. It's great.

But the Arthuriana fun doesn't end there! In fact, now we get an Arthurian-themed arc that actually isn't in Iron Man comics. It's in Avengers! Iron Man is involved, though.

(There is also apparently a Morgan arc in Avengers #240. I actually haven't read it. It seems to be yet another Spider-Woman arc. I get the impression that this isn't really Arthuriana other than having Morgan in it fighting Jess, though, so it doesn't seem quite as relevant. Morgan also apparently has some appearances in FF, Journey into Mystery, and Marvel Team-Up, but those seem like more of just basic villainy. Also, probably not involving Tony.)

Kurt Busiek's 1998 Avengers run, volume 3, is in large part the kind of Avengers run that is a nostalgic love letter to older comics. Heroes are heroes and villains are villains and good triumphs over evil. The Avengers all live in the mansion and are BFFs. I love it. It does assume that you are already a fan of the Avengers, because it starts out by summoning pretty much everyone who has ever been an Avenger and is available to the mansion, and that is... a lot of people. Thirty-nine, by my count. Also, when the entire team is magically whisked away, we are treated to the following narration, as Steve disappears: "And Captain America's last thought, as the world goes white around him, and he with it -- is that Iron Man would hate this."

The narration doesn't tell you why Iron Man would hate this, or how Captain America would know that Iron Man hates this. This is not explained later on. But if you have read comics -- or if you have read the above summary of Doomquest -- you know that Tony is absolutely, one hundred percent, thinking, "I hate magic." And Steve knows it.

The reference is not relevant to the plot; if you don't get it, you'll be fine. But that's what I mean when I say this is a nostalgia run. There are definitely Easter eggs for people who have read a bunch of comics. Busiek does this a whole lot in his work -- there's a reason you can buy an annotated edition of Marvels -- and, yeah, it happens here too. Just know that there will be references you're not getting, if you're new to comics.

Anyway. So Busiek's run actually starts out with an Arthurian arc, #1-4, "The Morgan Conquest." The name is a dead giveaway. Yes, Morgan le Fay is back. Again. For once, Doom is not involved.

The Avengers are all back from their sojourn on Counter-Earth after fighting Onslaught -- don't worry about it -- and mysterious things are happening. There are a lot of monster attacks. So pretty much everyone who has ever been an Avenger is summoned to the mansion, at which point we learn from Thor about some mystical artifacts that are being stolen. (They are the Norn Stones and also the Twilight Sword. That sounds like something from a Zelda game, doesn't it?) The Avengers go to try to stop this, end up in Tintagel, and then they run into Mordred. He wants to capture Wanda, presumably for Magic Reasons. Morgan le Fay casts a spell on all of them, reshaping reality. Yes, all of them. Surprise!

So now all the Avengers are living in a medieval castle and/or town; Morgan is their queen, and thanks to the power of mind-control they are all basically living in Ye Olden Times. The Avengers are all some variety of knight, except for Wanda, who is chained up in the dungeon so Morgan can steal her magic and use it to fuel all this reality-warping.

Wanda calls for help, and that snaps Steve (Yeoman America!) out of the mind control (or altered reality or whatever you want to call it) pretty fast, because Steve's always been very good at resisting mind control, and then Steve promptly goes and snaps Clint out of it, because I guess Steve is also good at inspiring people to snap out of mind control. "Oh, man!" Clint says. "Not another alternate reality! Not again!" (I assume he's referring to Counter-Earth? Maybe?)

So Steve and Clint go around reassembling the Avengers and orienting them as to reality. They get Jan and Monica easily, but then Steve insists on trying to get Tony because, I guess, he likes Tony and would really like to hang around Tony, who is half-naked and asleep in his bedroom, and certainly I am reading nothing whatsoever into this. Clint tells Steve it's not going to work. Tony has historically been fairly susceptible to mind control; it was only pretty recently at this point that he'd been doing Kang's bidding in The Crossing. But the more serious impediment is that this is Tony Stark and he would obviously like to LARP being a knight forever and ever. Tony, therefore, does not believe Steve, and throws him and Clint out of his bedroom and into the barracks.

"Iron Man's a good guy, normally," Clint says. "But he's waaay too into his whole nobleman/lord of the manor trip. That spell musta hit him right where he lives!"

Clint speaks the truth, clearly.

Anyway, they go around and manage to make pretty much every Avenger in the room other than Tony snap out, and attempt to rebel against Morgan while Tony is stil fighting them because he is Still A Knight. There's a lot of punching, because some of the Avengers still aren't free; they weren't ones Steve found.

The day is saved when Wanda manages to channel Wonder Man and break free. This gives the Avengers a fighting chance against Morgan and the Avengers are all lending Wanda their power when Tony finally snaps out of it and is on the side of good. 

Then they take Morgan down, go home, and attempt to figure out which of these thirty-nine people should be on the active Avengers team. Hooray.

But that's not the end of Morgan le Fay showing up to screw around with Tony's life! There's more to come! Not much, but there is one that I know of, and at least one more memorable reference. 

(I haven't read all her appearances or anything, but one of them definitely involves Tony; I can't swear that he doesn't appear in any of the other books Morgan shows up in, but it'd be a cameo for him, because I only know of one more arc that she's in in a book that Tony stars in.)

In a few more years, we have now entered the part of Marvel Comics history where Brian Michael Bendis writes all the Avengers books at the same time for, like, seven years running. It was sure A Time. There were a lot of word bubbles.

And the thing about Bendis is, Bendis looooooves Doomquest. If you're familiar with the very end of his tenure at Marvel where he made Doom be Iron Man after Tony got knocked into a coma in Civil War II, you have probably figured out already that he likes Doom. But he also likes Doomquest, specifically.

I mean, if nothing else, the giant splash page in The Confession where Maleev redrew the climactic Doomquest fight while Bendis had Tony talk about how deeply meaningful to his understanding of the world this all was -- and how it allowed him to predict Civil War -- was probably a big clue, right?

As far as I am aware, Morgan le Fay makes exactly one more appearance in Tony's life. And that's in Mighty Avengers vol 1 #9-11. Only one of those issues is named, so I'm going to assume the arc is named after it: Time Is On No One's Side.

You remember Mighty Avengers, right? The deal with the Avengers books at the time was that after Bendis exploded the mansion and made the team disband in Avengers Disassembled, the main Avengers book was no longer called just Avengers. Instead, the main Avengers book was New Avengers, and that was the only Avengers book. Then Civil War happened, Steve got killed, and New Avengers became the book about what was left of the SHRA resistance (i.e., Steve's side) after the war. So about halfway through New Avengers, Mighty Avengers starts up, and Mighty Avengers is about an extremely fucked-up and grief-stricken Tony Stark trying to run the official government-sanctioned Avengers team, with Carol's help. This is the comic with the arc where Tony turned into naked girl Ultron. You remember.

So, anyway, there's this Mighty Avengers arc where Doom is Up To Something (there are symbiotes and a satellite involved) and somehow Tony and the Avengers end up in Latveria, punching Doom. Also, by the way, Doom is visiting Morgan in the past because he likes her. The Avengers attacking his castle made him have to come back to the present, so he's kind of cranky. And he fights Tony, and in the course of the fight, his time platform explodes and sends Doom and Tony and also the Sentry to... the past.

This is one of those times where you should definitely look up the comics if possible because the way the past is visually indicated here is that it's colored with halftone dots the way you would expect old comics to be colored, although they have modern shading and color palettes. It's very charmingly retro.

So the three of them are stuck in New York in the past, and naturally they would like to leave. There's one person in this time who has a time machine and it is, of course, Reed Richards. Doom and Tony have a lot of banter in this arc; I think it's entertaining.

Sentry has to be the one to break them all into the Baxter Building because of that power he has where no one will remember him. So they do that, travel forward in time, and end up in Latveria in the present again except Doom is gone and also things are currently exploding where they are.

Doom, of course, has made a side trip to visit Morgan again and he asks her to help him build an army, because I guess this is what their relationship is like. So the rest of the Avengers are captured by what look to me like Mindless Ones and are in a cave in magic bondage, because comics. Jess comments that at least they aren't naked, because she too is remembering that memorable New Avengers trip to the Savage Land. Doom threatens Carol in some creepy sexist ways and eventually it turns out that Tony and the Sentry are fine and everyone kicks Doom's ass. Business as usual.

And the last page of the arc is Morgan alone, wondering where Doom is. So technically Morgan and Tony don't come face to face here, but I think she counts as being at least partially responsible for ruining Tony's day here. And then Secret Invasion happens and Tony has a very, very bad day.

There are a few more Morgan appearances after this, but, as I said, I don't think any of them involve Tony. She shows up in Dark Avengers, apparently, which was one of the post-Civil War Avengers titles I didn't read, and I know that recently, on the X-Men side of things, she's been in Tini Howard's Excalibur one, which I have only read a little of. No Tony there. Just a lot of Morgan and Betsy Braddock and Brian Braddock and the Otherworld.

If you are interested in Morgan's other appearances, you might like this Marvel listicle that is Morgan le Fay's six most malicious acts. I pulled some of the Darkhold backstory from their discussion, but it's not really focused on Morgan and Tony.

So there you have it! That's everything I know about Tony's love for King Arthur and every run-in I know about that he's had with Morgan le Fay! One of two terrible people in Tony's life named Morgan! Actually, I don't think we've seen Morgan Stark in a while. I wonder if he's alive. There should be a Morgan & Morgan team-up. I should probably stop typing and post this.

The tl;dr point is that you should all read Doomquest and its sequels, especially Legacy of Doom. They're great!

[blacktofade]

pls oh god of fics pls grant thee touch starved Shane and oblivious Ryan in shyan ship *bows down* (i sent one before and donno if u actually got it cuz it showed error so im sending in another try)

I didn’t get your other ask unfortunately, but this is an idea I’ve been wanting to write like 10k for, but I know I’ll never have the energy. So it’s a little ficlet instead.

CW: Includes post-kidnapping, malnutrition, and an embarrassing lack of touching for a touch-starved prompt.

*

Shane disappears on September 17th. Ryan only remembers because they’d been scheduled to shoot an episode of Weird and/or Wonderful World and he’d had to eventually make the uncomfortable call to the Los Angeles County Arboretum and Botanic Garden to cancel their tour and interview.

It had been funny at first with Shane’s habitual lateness. They’d all assumed he’d slept late, forgot what day it was, and completely blanked on the filming schedule.

It’s less funny a week later when a missing person’s report is filed and Shane’s parents fly out to stay with Scott while they wait for any kind of news.

Detective Flores finds him two states over, a month and a half later. There are six hostages in total, as part of some elaborate heist that’s foiled before it comes to fruition. Shane’s kept in hospital for almost a full week, treated for malnutrition and a few general injuries, the news passed to Ryan through Scott via a DM on Instagram.

For the first time since Shane’s disappearance, Ryan sleeps through the whole night.

On the Saturday following Shane’s return, Ryan wakes to a phone call at eight in the morning.

“Hello?” he answers, voice rough from sleep, brain barely online.

“I’m sorry,” Shane apologizes, but his voice alone is enough to wake up Ryan the rest of the way. It’s the first he’s heard from him. He’d been trying to give the family space and knew Shane would find him once he was ready. Apparently, now is that time. “Can you come pick me up?”

“Sure,” Ryan agrees instantly, shoving back the covers and getting out of bed. “Where are you?”

“My apartment,” Shane admits and Ryan pauses from where he’s trying to dig out a pair of clean pants. “I just need a break.”

“Sure,” Ryan repeats. “I’ll be there in twenty.”

It’s quiet on the other end of the line before, quietly, Shane says, “Thanks, Ryan.”

*

Shane’s waiting at the curb when Ryan pulls up.

Ryan unlocks the door and watches Shane fold himself into his seat, waiting a moment for Shane to settle before reaching over to set a hand on his knee, squeezing gently.

“Hey man,” he says gently. “Long time no see.”

Shane startles at the touch, but glances over, offering a small smile in return.

He looks different. His face is thinner, his cheekbones a little more prominent, and there’s a new scar on the right side of his forehead that disappears into his hairline.

“Hey,” Shane replies, buckling his seatbelt and giving Ryan a view of his right hand, which has two fingers splinted together. “Thanks for coming.”

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah, why wouldn’t it be?”

Ryan stares at him incredulously and eventually Shane looks away, out the passenger side window.

“It’s just hard being surrounded by everyone right now,” he says, clearly talking about his family. “I need a break.”

Ryan checks over his shoulder and pulls back onto the road.

“Is my apartment okay? Or did you want to go somewhere else?”

“Your place is fine,” Shane tells him, and from the corner of his eye, Ryan sees him turn his head, staring as though Ryan won’t notice.

At the next red light, Ryan glances over. “How are you doing?”

Shane looks away, clearly caught. “Getting tired of people asking me that. It’s all anyone asks these days.”

“Guess they just want to know you’re okay.”

Shane glances back towards him. “Could be better,” he says bluntly and Ryan can’t help but let out a quiet huff of laughter.

“Yeah, no shit. But the hospital cleared you?”

“Yeah,” Shane sighs. “Apart from a few broken fingers and some weight loss, I’m okay.”

“I missed you,” Ryan admits. “It’s probably the longest I’ve gone without seeing you since we started at BuzzFeed.”

Shane frowns like he’s thinking and then the frown deepens. “Jesus, you might be right.”

Ryan laughs again. “Horrifying thought, huh?”

“Puts things in perspective.”

“Didn’t you miss me?” Ryan asks jokingly, but Shane doesn’t answer, just laughs quietly.

“It’s weird,” Shane says. “I was never alone, but it feels like I have to relearn how to be around people now.”

Ryan had read the news after Shane’s rescue. There had been five others saved alongside Shane, so he suspects they might be the reason Shane wasn’t alone.

Ryan shrugs gently. “Adjusting is hard, and I’m sure it’s even harder with your family refusing to let you out of their sights.”

Shane shakes his head. “You have no idea. I was in the shower for twenty minutes this morning and they started knocking on the door to see if I was still alive.”

“Rough,” Ryan laments. “Well, you’re welcome to chill at my place for as long as you need.”

“Can I move in?” Shane jokes, but Ryan just shrugs.

“If that’s what you want.”

It’s silent for a moment before Shane says, “Thanks, I appreciate it.”

Ryan offers him a smile. “Of course, dude. It’s what I’m here for.”

It’s quiet for the rest of the drive until Ryan pulls into his usual parking spot and glances over. “You good?

Shane nods and carefully unbuckles his seatbelt. “Yeah, I’ve got it.”

Ryan’s chest tightens watching Shane limp his way towards the front door, but he knows the last thing Shane needs is more helicoptering.

“Can I get you anything?” Ryan asks as he shuts the door behind them, watching Shane glance around as though he expects Ryan to have redecorated during his disappearance, but ultimately Shane shakes his head. “Okay, well, make yourself at home. You know the drill. I’m gonna go grab a drink.”

He knows Shane can find his own way to the living room, so he moves around him, heading in the direction of the kitchen instead.

“Ryan?” Shane questions and Ryan pauses, turning back.

“Yeah?”

Shane hesitates like he doesn’t know how to get the words out, but after a moment, he takes two steps closer and draws Ryan into a hug instead.

Ryan isn’t entirely expecting it. Shane’s not a touchy-feely guy, which means Ryan can probably count on one hand the amount of times they’ve hugged. But Shane folds around him so tightly that it startles the breath right out of him.

“I did miss you,” Shane mutters and Ryan lifts his hands to reciprocate, holding Shane as hard as he dares when everything feels so fragile.

“I was really worried,” Ryan admits. “I thought you’d been killed.”

He finds himself rubbing one hand along Shane’s spine, trying to soothe him as Shane tucks his face against his shoulder.

“You were gone for a long time,” Ryan continues.

He can feel the warmth of Shane’s breath through his shirt as he exhales shakily. “They broke my fingers when I tried to escape.”

Ryan holds him tighter, needing them both to understand that Shane’s safe again. Having the weight of Shane leaning against him is grounding in a way he never knew it could be. About a month into Shane’s disappearance, Ryan had gone through a mourning period, assuming he’d never see Shane again. He finds tears prickling his eyes as the relief hits him solidly in the chest.

“God, Shane,” he murmurs and he’s not sure who’s comforting who.

The warmth of Shane spreads through him, all the way down to his toes, like a cup of hot soup on a cold day. Except that Ryan never realized he was too cold until this moment. He feels alive and whole again, and he knows he can’t even begin to understand what Shane experienced. The fact that he can feel every ridge of Shane’s spine as his hand passes along it says enough.

When he finally starts feeling like Shane’s probably ready to let go, he loosens his arms and shifts, one foot lifting to take a step backwards.

“Just a little longer,” Shane requests and Ryan’s more than happy to comply, a noise of agreement escaping as he nods.

“I’ll stay here as long as you need,” Ryan tells him. “It’s just good to have you back.”

“It’s good to be back,” Shane replies and tightens his grip again like he might never let go.

To be honest, Ryan’s okay with that. He holds on just as tightly and settles against Shane, finally feeling happy again for the first time in months.