#wrote out the entire plot scene by scene in my notes app on the way home

[cattons]

this has to be some sort of diagnosable condition

[uchihaharlot]

CEO! AU Where their employee is too naive about innuendo 😅

Too pure and these guys wreck her during a personal "meeting" in their office.

(Separate scenarios please 🙏)

Me dearest moot,

I apologize this took me so long. 😅 I find it hard to write ooc scenes, but then again everything written outside the Narutoverse is considered ooc. So I just rolled with it, didn’t feel it at first. Sat on it, went back edited it — added more and hopefully the outcome is to your standards.

I truly am committed to writing almost any ask that is sent my way.

I do apologize, this got lengthy. I cannot not write anything less than 3k it seems when in the mood. Lmao. I give you smut with minor plot, because I love a bit of backstory and I adore characters that have a familiarity between them or some fluffy shit like that.

(When I wrote this, I was not aware of your preference for Itachi at the time. Shisui CEO was already in the works. Honestly am not entirely convinced this is good. I would be willing to do Itachi in a separate ask, I just didn’t want this to be like 15k of figuring my shit out).

NSFW; airhead-ish intern; smut w/plot; praise kink; oral; vaginal; unprofessional work environment; sex at work; Enjoy!

wc: an exorbitant fucking 3.4k; fuck and I’m not editing it much more right now. Will go back, I just felt like the worlds biggest piece of shit for taking so long lol

As fresh blood in the world of accounting, credentials meant everything. Especially if you want roll with the big boys. Which is why when accepting an internship nearly six months ago from the most prestigious accounting firm, you didn’t hesitate to accept. It would look good on your resume and if lucky enough, you’d be offered a job and avoid the hassle of sending out hundreds of applications.

So far things have been mild and mundane.

Coffee this, tea that. Dry cleaning. You hardly even made an appearance into the conference room except on few occasions.

Today was one of those days your presence was requested. Shisui Uchiha, CEO, owner and founder of Tomoe LLC. An accounting firm for high profiled clients.

Yea, your designated boss was that guy.

The one who made tabloids left and right with his fuck you money and all. The guy who probably had every woman in the office, including yourself, humid and longing. Didn’t even have to try, and there was no lying. How unfortunate you had the hots for him. Regardless of your stance, you retained the upmost professionalism in his presence.

When Shisui walks into the conference room, all eyes are on him. Composed, clean cut and admirable. As an intern your job is to take minute notes, jot ideas he spouts off and anything of importance. At the end of his hour and a half long ramble. Everyone is dismissed.

‘Except you.’ Words you didn’t really expect, but nonetheless did as you were told.

Once the room is cleared, Shisui’s gaze catches yours. Sharp and observant, you felt under the microscope of his heavy dark eyed gaze. ‘I need your help on something.’

Which was great, usually.

This is what you’re here for. If it was coffee, you’d fetch it. If it was picking his dog up from the groomers, that too. You got to use his shiny new car, which was a treat. He made sure you knew nobody before you had that privilege.

‘I’m listening, Uchiha-san.’ Submissive and severely cute as you retained his attention. Even if unintentional, it made his eyes flicker whenever you called him that and he straightened up a bit. A smug grin on his face.

Ever the good girl.

Shisui taps at your laptop, quickly you open its notebook app, ready to record his thoughts. ‘I want you to draft your own document on project of your choosing. Consider it a ‘review.’ How can you make this company grow?’

Oh, it was one of those reviews. The preliminary ‘give me your thoughts and maybe you can have a job’ situation. He continues, ‘on one condition… meet me in my office after work. And we’ll discuss it more personally.’

‘Anything specific I should focus on?’ It wasn’t confusing, but you had the sense there was something particular he was looking for.

He smiles and gazes over you. Shisui always said he appreciated your tenacity and go-getter attitude. ‘Just whatever comes to mind; nothing too serious…..when you write this document, just remember it's for me. It should be tailored to suggestions you think I would….be interested in.’

‘Right, for you…for the company.’ You sheepishly smile back. Why was the room hot, why did your stomach disappear and leave you feeling sick almost. Not in a terrible way, but well….no. He’s your damned boss!!

‘Good girl.’ Something crawled up your spine when he said those words. Your body treasonously gushed, and it was hard not to flush warm in the cheeks. ‘Make sure to send this off before you stop by my office. It would be…beneficial for me to know before we further discuss this in a personal setting.’

A personal setting. After work.

You weren’t stupid by any means, part of you truly believed your boss was hitting on you and the other half was partial to the fact Shisui just knew how to get what he wanted. So, for the last few hours of your day, you focused on real issues within the company. You didn’t want to insult him, but there were things that could improve the numbers and have an impact. Small minute details you picked up the last few months. The document was sent off the last half hour of the day before you walked down to the elevator and took it three floors up to where the higher-ranking individuals in the company were stationed.

Maybe you could be up here. Maybe your ideas would actually mean something. A small smile spreads your face before you knock on his office door.

When Shisui opens the door, he immediately steps aside and motions for you to enter. That’s good sign, right? His gaze lingers as you take in the office that you see maybe three times a month. Your actual duties are handed down to the secretary on your floor directly from him.

A soft click of the door closing has your nerves striking flint at one another.

‘I like how you took this assignment so seriously….’ Taking a seat at his desk, hands folded together. He takes her in.

‘You’re not offended?’ Of course not! The numbers didn’t lie, you had found a hole in his company’s bottomline. Money was being filtered out. If anything, he was grateful you did this so thoroughly.

Shisui’s eyes seem almost piercing, ‘I’m not offended at all. In fact, it’s impressive. Very impressive….now exactly how did you figure this out?’

Oh, that was a toughie. It was by accident, really, you explain. Within the first few weeks of your internship, you were granted access to classified information. Unsure if this was even allowed, you figured that if a potential job was to be had. You needed to know the numbers. Unfortunately for Shisui, undoubtedly, someone was stealing money from him. He had his suspicions prior to your upheaval, but no real way of confirming without causing the perpetrator to become aware. Aside from that it was intricately encrypted, meaning you were incapable of providing further details of who.

Shisui eyes you the whole time, his unwavering gaze felt unkind almost, but sincere. ‘So, you were just casually going through the inflow and outflow. Just so happen to discover…. money missing?’

You exhale heavily, this sounded like it could backfire. ‘Y-yes. I’m sorry if that was a breach of my contract, I figured if I was granted access—’

Shisui’s light chuckle interrupts you, a sort of calm, almost relieved feeling washes down your nerves. ‘You’re fine, I admire your determination and commitment to this company. It seems I can’t trust everyone here…’

‘I suggest, if you’re open to it…. calling tech support, they might be able…’ the words hit your face from the floor. Someone in tech support would be the perfect position to lay low and hide or dispose of backlogs. Shisui quirks an eyebrow at your acute observation. ‘Tech support would be able to see behind all of that.’

At first, he is surprised, then perturbed. Tech support would be capable of seeing behind the encryption or worse. Creating it. Leaning back in his chair, he folds his hands under to his chin. ‘A smart observation….that is….unfortunate. For them, if so.’ A hint of admiration in his voice has you smiling at his praise.

Shisui can’t help but stare at you for a moment. That smile is adorable, even more when you’re not completely flustered by him. When you’re almost comfortable in his presence. ‘You’re a very sharp girl…and you have a good grasp of this business despite being just an intern….’

‘It’s nothing….really. I was just…trying to get on top of the game.’ A soft shrug is all you manage. What else could you say? Now wasn’t the time to toot your own horn.

Shisui leans forward in his chair. He can't help but notice you’re a still bit shy, reserved and overtly quiet in his presence. More times often than not are you loud and boisterous with the friends you’ve made here. Something lurches in the back of his mind; his tone of voice softens.

‘I’d like to commend you for your efforts. You’ve outdone yourself and even figured out someone is potentially funneling money from me.’ He pauses briefly, ‘just out of curiosity though….why did you accept this internship?’

The harsh truth resurfaced with a prejudice. You were bitter the first few weeks, though you were grateful for this opportunity here. Not a word back from a single firm within the five great nations when you sought them out. It was nearly a month later after you had sent out the portfolio did Shisui’s firm respond. ‘You were the only firm to return interest and extend an offer.’

This was not something Shisui expected to hear. It disheartened him and left a foul taste in his mouth. Surely other firms would have been interested. He hadn’t sent a reply as quickly beforehand. Thinking you would take an opportunity in another country. Most people wanted to leave their home cities; he responded solely on the fact he was too eager in his selection for you. The portfolio, while small, was exceptional. Organized and precise. His stubbornness made him hold off but the business side of him does what’s best for itself.

He had to have you, to see the woman behind the mind. Even if you weren’t the spectacular woman before him, he still would have hired you. He wasn’t discriminatory in that matter, only if you would be beneficial to the firm. He knew from the initial interview that you would be, it was just a bonus that you were drop dead gorgeous.

‘No other company reached out?’ The irritation in his voice was severe and brought blasphemy in his eyes.

The hardened look on his face softens once more as you continue, ‘I was shocked to receive your extension to interview.’

Another unexpected answer. Shisui didn’t expect that the other internships went unanswered, but he never once turned down the free labor hours of an internship. There wasn’t a damn thing that made you unworthy of a position here. Intelligent, well calculated….submissive. You did every thing he threw at you from silly errands he couldn’t be fucked with, to listening to him bitch about Genma’s vacation in the Land of Tea being two weeks.

‘So here I am. Almost the six month review. I was hoping that this recent development would…be a retainer for a full time position…’ the words taper off. Hearing how silly you were.

Scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours was not at the forefront of your mind.

But it was his and, well, the funny thing is. Shisui’s back, is on his cock. That’s exactly the kind of back scratching he was referring to earlier when he asked for you to come up with a minor presentation for him. He figured this one wouldn’t fly over the crows nest, but it had. You didn’t quiet catch his intentions.

He would just have to be more…direct.

A small smile spreads his face, the fact that you were just so bashful with your request. Shisui rounds his desk quickly, his hands at your forearms. Sights sharp with intent. Deep baritone grows soft when he addresses you, ‘consider me impressed.’

You quickly dial in at his hands holding you so, so intimately. ‘Why?’ Is that really all you can manage? Though you didn’t understand, ‘why do I impress you? I did something that someone else should have been doing.’ Your brows pinch.

Shisui doesn’t answer right away, he takes the time to consider you. He thumbs small circles on your left arm, as if he is trying to properly convey the words of adoration without scaring you off. ‘You’re right, I should have someone doing this. I am just impressed you were that person when it should have been someone more experienced in this company.’

‘But…?’ Waiting for it. For the let down of not having a position here.

Shisui runs a hand through his hair, the other still on your left arm, ‘this is the first time I’ve ever thought about extending a full-time position to an intern in awhile. But…from now on, you will not be an intern…’ a pregnant pause makes the air thick and stale for a moment. ‘You’ll be my assistant.’

‘Assistant?’ That wasn’t working with numbers, ‘that’s not…numbers or anything close to it…’

Shisui’s laugh fills his chest and reverberates in his throat stopping at a light hum, the grip on your forearm tightens a little to capture your undivided attention wholly. ‘Do not worry. I never said that you would stop working with numbers. That will still be part of your position here. But, moreover, I want your input on other aspects of this company. Marketing, communication, etc. a more….intimate experience at my side.’

You gawk. ‘How can you consider that from a near bare portfolio. I surely haven’t worked my weight in ryo here, not even close.’

In this moment, you look adorable to Shisui. Exasperated and uncertain. Almost undeserving. ‘You’re forgetting exactly why I chose you for the internship. I knew from the moment I interviewed you that you were a very sharp young lady. My trust in your abilities has grown exponentially these past few months, and hence…this new position for you.’

A soft click of your tongue, it was all coming full circle now. ‘This sounds like a curated position that was just made up.’

Shisui’s lips curl into a devious smile, that slips below subtle smirk. He narrows his eyes a bit, those eyes ever intense and drinking you up like the finest whiskey. That calm and composed side of Shisui is replaced by a commanding and dominant presence. Unholy even.

‘Uchiha-san?’ A sharp exhale as Shisui snakes a hand around her waist.

He brings you flush to his chest, running a hand through your hair. Drags his nose along your jaw and up to your cheek before his lips stop at your ear. Hot and raspy, Shisui’s intentions are more than clear. You notice how tall he really is, just towering over you. How much older he is too.

‘What…are you doing?’ A whispered hiss of astonishment at his direct approach.

‘What do you think I am dong?’ Sweet like honey, his voice is deep. Commanding. Possessive.

‘I’m partial to believe this is not in my job description….’ Your soft breath fans the his cheek as he rakes a hand up the nape of your neck.

‘I never suggested it was….’ The words send shivers down your spine, his thumb traces down your cheekbone. His warm breath smells sweet, you know this is not appropriate. Against policy. And as much as you’d hate to admit it.

You enjoyed it. ‘Then what is this for?’

You graze your nose in return over his cheek, the boldness amuses Shisui. How much did you like this? ‘This is part of the perks that come with your new job. If you haven’t noticed by now… I tend to enjoy your company.’

Well no, you didn’t notice. Not until now, ‘no, how could I when I’m hardly doing as an intern should?’ That was cute.

The small moan from your lips is even more adorable as Shisui dragged his lips down your neck. Delirium filled your head space, this was moving too fast. Before you knew it your tight pencil skirt was shucked to above your hips and you were laid on his desk.

Subservient to his desire, fueled by your own deplorable greed within. You could just let Shisui have his way with you, not that you saw it this way. Sex was currency, was also free and felt fucking good. The part of you that may or may not have fantasized this exact scenario unfolding was in charge now.

Spread out, legs over his shoulders holding his head in a vice squeeze. How did it get far this fast? Nose in your heat, lapping and twirling his tongue over your clit. Fingers curling in the confines of your taut muscles. Muscles that ached for it; were drenched for him. If your knocked a few things off his desk, Shisui would forgive you. This was the reason why he’d drawn you in after hours, the sounds you made were no less than a few doors in range: if anyone was still here after hours. They’d hear and pretend they didn’t the next day.

When his cock stretched you, molded you to him. He reamed a hand around your neck and pressed your back into the keyboard. Every time you came close to coming, he squeezed and stopped thrusting. Making you writhe and submit further to him.

‘..please.’ Your desperate whimper.

‘Please..what?’

Those soft eyes of yours caught his attention, ‘..please let me come Uchiha-san.’

He kissed you sweetly, but fucked you like an office whore as you came all over him. ‘Such a good girl…’ rang your ears every so often as he softly panted out between thrusts. Shisui flipped you to your stomach once you succumbed to his relentless pounding. Wrung his hand in your hair and craned your neck back to expose the delicate flesh. Nipping your pulse point, he sheath himself once more. Slower, needier. On the verge of filling your sweet hole with his genetic markup. Gripping your waist to steady your body, he whispered many things of promise if you accepted his job offer.

His bed, car and money. What on earth had gotten into this man? Shisui couldn’t figure out for himself exactly what he was saying either, but it was all forgotten the split second your salacious whimper and saying you were coming again. Had his hips steam rolling and slamming into you harder. Pumping his thinking length as he coated your insides. Holding your back to his chest as you both moaned out loud.

Surely, this was unprofessional. The entire time you fixed your clothes, you expected him to rescind his decision. That didn’t happen. Not when he fixed his tie, adjusted your skirt and covered you with his coat. Not once did his resolve change as you both walked out the dark office and got out of the elevator. He took you to dinner, paid an extraordinary amount of money for too little food and ushered you home. Opened your door and lead you by the small of your back to your front door and gave you a chaste kiss.

‘See you in the morning, ill be here at 6:30am’ It was fully decided by now that you did have a a full time position now, and he handed you a check for the firsts three months salary, and then some that had your head spinning.

‘This is unnecessary..’ It was money that you’d only ever seen on paper, let alone now held in your hands.

‘Consider it a bonus, and a reward.’ Shisui lifted your chin, and kissed your cheek.

You watched as he waited for you to go inside of your apartment, then he left.

[rweoutofthewoods]

hiii just wanted to pop in here and ask what do you use to write (I've seen you mentio notion and Google docs but it would NOT be the first time an amazing fanfic writer wrote the entire thing in notes app lol) ? As well as what your writing process is like (for example if there are specific Pinterest or playlists you create/listen to to get ideas) or do you just go in, no background and sit yourself at a desk. Aside from all of that, I LOVE ALL YOUR FICS AND YOUR SUCH AN AMAZING WRITER <3 And you definitely deserve to be a published author if that is what you strive to be

Hi!!

I’m a Word diehard. I use Word to write everything (the amount of documents in my one drive is insane). I use google docs to send chapters to my beta just because sharing is easier that way, but it’s usually mostly done at that point. I just do the last read through on there and leave her questions and concerns (tho tbh mostly just random silly commentary and jokes). I do use my notes app sometimes, usually if I’m out. If I have an idea for a scene I write it down immediately. I’ve even tried to use speech to text to write while driving. SPOILER ALERT it doesn’t work at all 😭

I don’t usually have much when I sit down to write a fic at first. Usually it’s like a song I’m looping and a blank document. But with longer fics i eventually make a playlist and sometimes a Pinterest board, but usually that’s just to save pics to use for my playlist and maybe notion if I make a page. Though honestly out of my 40-something fics only 4 have a notion page and only one of those has actual plotting in there. The rest is just vibes and to get all my links, playlists, etc. grouped together.

For me I really work best while I’m writing if that makes sense. So I don’t often plan before I start a fic, I just start writing and things just come to me while I’m typing. Sometimes I wind up writing huge different plot points bc they just come out while I’m typing and then I have to sit back and be like where tf did that come from.

Hope this answers your question well enough. Tysm and I hope you have a great Thursday!!

[celestie0]

when you plan out scenes for a chapter how do you do it? like do you make bullet points for every major scene that happens? or do you also map out what you want the dialogue to be, or that just comes as you begin writing the chapter?

yeah sort of!! i just get intrusive thoughts of certain dialogue/scenes or even certain ways to put things, and i jot it all down in my notes, n then when i’m ready to write the chapter, i go back and organize my notes in chronological order n then write the chapter out while cross referencing my notes

sometimes these notes will literally just be one liners or exposition, or they’ll just be stripped down dialogue, or they’ll be like literally 2k words of an entire scene (this is what happened w the hotel bed sharing scene in ch8 of kickoff, i practically wrote that entire scene in my notes app before i wrote any of the other chapter lol)

i’d say i do come up with some dialogue sporadically here n there, and then i build the other dialogue around it? honestly one of my favorite things about writing is starting w an out of context dialogue that is cute or silly, and then finding ways to organically build up to it w what i have planned storywise for the chapter 🤣 like i’ll just have the most random dialogue and i’m like 🤔 how tf can i make this work w the plot. it’s like a game to me hahah and when the answers come to me, i get so excited (i did this a LOT with the next chapter of kickoff, since it first started off as just a bunch of lil dialogues, but now i’m really happy w the way the whole convo takes place as a whole, which i think is a flow of like 5k words now all build from like little pieces of random dialogue)

but yeah i hope this answers!! its just chaotic in my brain tbh.

[bbyboybucket]

1, 3, 13, 18, & 24 for the ask game 😁

1. I write in default but I don’t think the notes app has fonts to chose from actually 😭

3. I don’t really have a ritual 😭 but if we’re talking about cursed ways to write, there’s been 10000 times where I’ve been driving and I’ll have an idea for whatever I’m writing so I’ll just pull my phone out and start typing out like an entire scene or chunk of dialogue. No, I do not wait till I pull over. I think it’s self explanatory why this is so bad.

13. I feel like missions and action scenes are my hardest area. I’m not very good at coming up with them nor describing them, so I try to avoid it. I actually have a genius fic idea that I wanna write but I prolly never will bc it’d require all that mission stuff. Maybe I’m just bad at it because I have no experience, since most of my fics are mundane, random, little life moments rather than actual stories with plots lmao.

18. Honestly I had a hard time picking a passage bc most of my fics are so old that I don’t remember writing them or I straight up just think they’re cringe now 😭 so basically I just chose one from the last thing I wrote

Nakajima didn’t get the joy of having more holidays with his family. Collins didn’t get another Christmas. Weaver, Hudson, Gannod, Hauser, Whitaker; not a single one of them saw the light of Christmas morning again. The nameless faces didn’t either. They all got nothing ever again and their last breathes were filled with terror as his own merciless form stood before them. Bucky had no right to complain as his heart was still beating, his windpipe wasn’t crushed nor was his brain matter splattered on the walls.

The reason I chose this one is because I spent soooooo long looking, like literally scouring the whole internet, for a clear picture of Bucky’s notebook so I could use the actual last names written. The paragraph itself was nothing special and mainly just to play up his guilt some more, but the process of finding those names in his book was weirdly difficult. Like I swear it took me over 20 minutes.

24. My prep work is the bare minimum. I’ll have an idea for dialogue or a prompt and I’ll write it down, then I’ll make a really really shitty outline. Honestly idek if what I do qualifies as an outline. But then 99% of the time I won’t even end up following it.

[asleepinawell]

Found your Endlings series browsing the bayojeanne tag on AO3, and I absolutely loved it! It was much appreciated after the disaster of Bayonetta 3. The way you characterized Jeanne and Bayo was fantastic and there were some great story moments. I wanted to ask, as a writer who struggles sometimes with getting my planned stories out on paper, do you have a process? Like, do you structure a story, then write it out, do it piece by piece, or something else? The Endlings stories were all fantastic.

I have no structure at all. :') Basically if I have an idea I just sit down and start writing without any real plan and just write straight through it without outlining or going out of order. Drives my other writer friends nuts. I used to post each chapter as I wrote it with no idea how it would end and the plot always seemed to work itself out, but I switched to pre-writing entire fics so I could edit them as a whole before posting which I think improves the quality. I'll generally do 3-5 full editing passes before posting and often keep editing chapters right up until i post

The one thing I sometimes do is sketch out top-down maps of areas especially if there's action stuff going on. I find it helps me keep track of what's happening where. We're talking really rough maps that are a bunch of lines and circles mostly. I also did some "sketches" of some of the bosses I designed for the bayo fic series...which like...i'm not an artist and i did them in a sketch app on my phone so yeah. here's one:

I was having a really hard time describing the boss and doing this helped a lot

On a similar note, I often use reference images. For Endlings I went and took a ton of screenshots and for other stuff I've done in the past I've looked up whatever I'm writing about and found pictures. I just find it easier to have visuals to glance at

There are a lot of different ways to go about writing a longer piece and I think it's just a matter of finding the way that works best for you. I will get bored and quit if I try to outline first (I do sometimes have very specific scenes in my head ahead of time and I kind of look for a place for them as I go), so I just sit down and write. I can't really explain how that works. I think it might be worth trying a range of different planning strategies. Like try writing with no plan and then with a detailed outline and then try to look for the sweet spot in the middle if those don't work. I'm not sure that helps much but it's all I got

and thank you do much and i'm really glad you enjoyed my fics! i think we're all pretty bummed out about where bayo 3 went but that's what fandom content exists for

[scoops404]

18 for I was your willing accomplice, honey (or any fic you'd like) & 46!

From [X] this ask game:

18. If you wrote a sequel to [insert fic], what would it involve?

I haven't thought about this much, but I think it would deal more with the fandom side of things -- explaining to their fans that Dream was moving to London with George temporarily until the visa came through and then like the ache of missing their family. Maybe some hilarious Drista (Chloe) & Tommy moments. I think the plot would be like settling into London and living in a too small flat and like figuring out how to settle into each other -- george's family and Dream meeting them. Maybe Nancy and Chloe and Sap would come visit. VERY soppy and i probably won't write it but I imagine that DNF are happy and thriving

46. Do you prefer writing on your phone or on a computer (or something else)? Do you think where you write affects the way you write?

Actual writing happens on my laptop (where i am now) but the creative juices usually get flowing when i'm falling asleep so ill craft an entire scene of dialogue and write that into my notes app and then fill it out the next day (most of Fallen was written this way, especially the big talks with Kate and George in chapter 11 and between Dream and George in chapter 12) and sometimes they aren't in order. So I might picture the ending of the fic and have that scene outlined ages before I get there (very true for every multi chap i've written in this fandom) -- which is fun but does require some editing work when i finally get there. As for where I write -- yes, absolutely. It also depends on the time of year/season. Lol, lately my most successful days have been at Panera with an outlet. But most of the original novel i wrote was written at a picnic table outside like a couple miles from my house. Depends on the vibe, I guess. I can't stay writing at the same place too long. I actually moved my desk around my apartment (my dog thinks I'm crazy) just last night so my brain thinks I'm somewhere else. Lots of Presently in London was written sitting up in my bed when I hurt my back and couldn't sit. I very rarely write in the same place.

Fun to think about, thanks for sending!

[ladywaffles]

hello fellow enjoyer of things >:)

😈 Has there been a point in a story where you did something just to be playfully mean to your readers?

🛒 What are some common things you incorporate in your fics? Themes, feels, scenes, imagery, etc.

🛠What tools/programs/apps do you use to write?

💖 What made you start writing?

👀 Tell me about an up and coming wip please!

💞 Who's your comfort character?

✅ What's something that appears in your fics over and over and over again, even if you don't mean to?

😈: i am so bad at writing smut scenes so i always fade to black, even when it feels like there should be a scene there and i've built up to it, and it just feels cruel. i would say like 60% of the time there was a sex scene there but i just couldn't get it right so i always end up cutting them out before posting. also i wrote a story once where the entire thesis was "what if the villain deliberately broke the rules on bioethics, as a character study and worldbuilding exercise" and well. readers did not seem to like that. conversely, i also have not updated either of my big WIPs in over a year, so like, that too.

🛒: music and sound are a very big part of my life, so they come up in my stories pretty often! i really enjoy writing to set the place of a scene/story, so i do a lot of touch/smell/hearing similes and metaphors. in terms of feelings, there's a lot of contemplating of loneliness, but not the kind that is, "i am alone in my room," rather the, "i am the only one who has this set of experiences and circumstances, and i cannot explain myself to this person who i care about so they can understand my actions/affections/choices fully, and that makes me feel isolated."

🛠: i primarily use scrivener to write fic, although if you catch me without my laptop, i'll sometimes use google docs or just a plain old fashioned pen and paper. if i'm plotting something out for a longer story, i might use a handwritten timeline on a blank sheet of paper and then just cover it in highlighter and sticky notes as i tack on addendums, if i'm not just screaming about it in a friend's DMs. thesaurus dot com is my best friend.

💖: i started writing fic when i was maybe 11 or 12, right around the time that i first learned that fic existed when i was looking up pictures to make my nook wallpaper, and you could do self-inserts and change the story around to suit your desires, like play-pretend but better. there were just so many permutations to explore, and i really liked that idea! i didn't start publishing fic until i was about 15. that first fic is still out there on ao3 somewhere, but i've since anonymized it so i don't have to look at it on my profile anymore lol. (not because i think the fandom is cringe, but rather because i've grown a lot as an author and it's not necessarily representative of my ability anymore!)

👀: so i know the answer you want me to tell you about is the comphet iceman accidental lovechild aaron tveit AU but sadly i have no more words on paper than that which i have already told you (iceman, very gay and upset over breakup # 3 with maverick, comphet rebounds with a woman who is also very gay and rebounding comphet style and whoops there's a baby now and here comes a bouncing baby aaron tveit). i'm still working on the timelines, because the top gun timeline in relation to the actual universe timeline of when everyone got married/how old aaron is versus when CMIYC was on broadway/aaron's nearly 10-year long absence from broadway is a hot mess and i'm trying to piece things together in the way that is the most true to form/makes the most sense.

💞: donald scripps from the history boys ("I have never particularly liked myself but the boy I was, kneeling in that cold and empty chapel that winter morning, fills me now with longing and pity," spoke wonders to my eighteen-year-old self who was also off to university and questioning reality) and obi-wan kenobi from star wars ("until this very moment, he had never realized he’d always expected, for no discernible reason—that when he died, anakin would be with him." his place in the series as a man who fights for good because it is the right thing to do, because he believes in goodwill, even as the world crumbles around him because it is inevitable that he fail in his mission and ultimately lose everything and everyone he loves, and we all know that he must fail so that others will succeed where he did not... i eat that shit RIGHT up.)

✅: there are at least three separate instances where i have used the righteous brothers' unchained melody in my writing, and two of them are because the song plays on a jukebox in a greasy spoon diner. it was completely unintentional, that's just a song that keeps popping up lol.

fanfic writer emoji ask

[myloveforhergoeson]

hey there! i was wondering - how have you already written such a LONG fic in only so few chapters? did you extensively plan this story ahead of time? make a beat sheet? please reveal your writerly ways 🙏 i struggle even reaching a decent word count for a single chapter 😭

hi!! oh my gosh thank you so much for your question!!! the first question about that's all she wrote ever!!! i have kind of a long answer for you; please find it under the cut

so, the idea for thats all she wrote came to me in november of 2021, and that was the first month that i ended up putting words on a google doc and creating roxy as a character. until a few months ago, this fic was just a silly little thing i could write in my free time so i had accumulated quite a few chapters just from writing whenever i felt like it! i never actually intended for this to be something i published until i had a friend who wanted to publish their own fic in a different fandom and we thought it would be fun to do together. so, i haven't actually written 75k words since the beginning of march, i've been slowly chugging along since the end of november 2021. as of now, since i've seriously began to write to make sure i can meet my every two week posting mark, i'm now writing the very last chapter of the first season - so I've got 17 full chapters written and i'm about 1/4 of the way through the last one (which i'll probably have to split up bc its already super long)

as for the extensive story planning... that is certainly one way to put it. i'm pretty acquainted with the first two seasons of the show, so as i remembered more and more plot points that happened i would just figure how to fix roxy into them and write it down in my notes app. i had major milestones (a plot point in the 7th chapter i cant spoil, a plot point for the dance episode i can't spoil, when she gets together with james... all the way until the end of the big time movie!!) in my head and worked from there. if i knew a major plot point was coming up, i did my best to kind of build the story around that as well as the main plot of the episode. it's kind of hard to explain, but yeah extensive story planning in the way that this story lives in my mind rent free and i love the little character i have made. it's kind of like a beat sheet, but it mostly lives in my brain. honestly, the worst part is writing something in my ideas note and then coming back to it like three months later and having no idea what i meant - for instance i'm trying to figure out what "Mona Lisa, when the world comes down aar finale, obvious westlife" means right now... probably something about the title of the chapter, but maybe i meant i wanted her to play mona lisa by the all american rejects on her guitar... maybe she was listening to obvious by westlife bc she loves '90s boybands... i don't know... we'll have to wait a few chapters to figure it out

when it comes to word count, i don't really have a goal or a cap, but most of the story is already written for me - i do follow most of the main plot and dialogue, just adding in spaces for roxy to exist both on her own as a character and in relation to her band :) a lot of the gags in the show are visual too, so i have to take extra time to make sure i'm able to write that out. plus, the world they live in isn't really fleshed out in the show and that drives me CRAZY, so i like to put my own spin on what i think different parts of the palm woods or rocque records look like... in the 7th chapter i think i went a bit crazy and invented the entire plot of the varsity vampire movies... plus i have little scenes that i either wanted to include in the episode from the get go so the readers can learn more about roxy and her thoughts/feelings about her crazy new life or that i just thought would fit within the episode. i'm really trying my best to give her her own character plot lines and motivations outside of the band, especially outside of james, to make sure she's just as fleshed out as the guys characters are!

tl;dr: i've had literal years sitting on this fic and lots and lots and lots of time to think about how i want it! if you have any more questions/comments/one-shot ideas please do not hesitate to send them my way :)) thanks for your support, i hope you'll like what i've got coming up!

[buckets-and-trees]

BELLA! THIS COMMENT WAS ONE OF THE MOST INCREDIBLE GIFTS! You and a few other dear friends have ... well truly gone above and beyond to give some immense amounts of love (unprompted) to this chapter, and I can't even tell you fully how much it means to me. This story I know is not for everyone because it's dark and angsty and hard, but it's been one of the most beautifully challenging things for me to write, and easily is one of the narratives I've become most proud of. And this chapter in particular I spent a lot of time on wanting to write it in a way that felt true to the characters and this plot journey I've been putting them through. So just THANK YOU for this.

You pulled out so many of the lines or moments that were really important to me while writing! That first line you identified about the White Wolf in particular was something I actually wrote in my notes for this at the end of last summer. I knew it would always be in there, and it was the tone I wanted to set for him - that he's grown infinitely more than who he was as Hydra's Winter Soldier, but that it's a side of himself that he hasn't maybe embraced because he'd rather not be any of that, he would rather leave the assassin, tactician, and hunter behind. But the other important thing I wanted this line to lay the groundwork for was the side of him that could deal with a Captain Hydra, because CH did lay a trap that Bucky and his omega willingly walked into, and so he needed to put his game face on in a way he never had before.

Techie Bucky - I felt that it really would be in line with a 1940s Bucky who went to the Stark Expo the night before he shipped off to WWII to have totally taken advantage of getting immersed in technology in Wakanda. Yes, we see him tending goats, but there are plenty of hours in a day and plenty of days in a week - he can do both. AND yeah he has like a flip phone in TFATWS, but I feel like that's more because he might think why do more with a phone than talk and basic text + not want a device he doesn't trust able to track his every move, because we also see him engineer a tablet in TFATWS to take control of that senator's car AND comment on what a good app the flag smashers have in the final episode. He's tech fluent.

The moment when Bucky has the idea to tamper with the camera footage was something I wasn't planning until I got to that exact point in the narrative, and then I was like... duh, Bucky CAN do this, and he WOULD do this to give him an advantage over anyone who will go back and try and figure out what happened to the pair of them, and it's an unconscious first moment that Bucky is investing in backing Steve in any way again, even if he doesn't see it for that at the time.

And sorry not sorry for making you cry during Bucky and Omega's reunion but it was one of the most important scenes to me, and I needed it to just be this collision of their longing and hurt over the separation AND her being upset that he had pulled back part of their alpha-omega bond connection but both of them talking about it and that it was kind of a damned-if-you-do/damned-if-you-don't situation, but that it has hard for both of them. And then I wanted them to be so immersed in reconnecting on every level physically and emotionally, and so I wanted to show it was about the intimacy that included to but also exceeded the smut - sharing feelings, sharing proximity, sharing secrets, sharing information openly, asking tough questions and holding space for each other... I wanted it to fully bring them back together, no questions of fissures between them. If I made you cry reading it, I think I might have done what I hoped I could do for Bucky and Omega. 🥹

AND THE STEVE PART REUNION

Bucky and his reunion with Omega Reader were so important, but the conversation with Steve and Bucky was the most important element in this entire plot up to this point. There were moments that were vital for the evolution and potential recovery of the relationship for Steve and Omega during Steve's chapter, but this was make or break for the alphas. There were a lot of points that I knew I could have just kind of gone ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ because plot, so just go with it, but I didn't want to cheat even a moment of that. Bucky saying their bond was in his bones felt so accurate, and yet with that being the case, he needed to know whether or not he could maintain any semblance of that, or if he would have to painfully abandon or re-evaluate it all.

Now that they're at this point, there are still important revelations and connections that need to happen, but they're not all in complete emotional peril anymore. Still questions, still pieces that need to be mended, but even if it's not a happy ending, we're not headed to a devastating heartbreak for any of them any more. At least probably not. But... who knows? Maybe Captain Hydra is playing Bucky and the Omega on a chess level while they're still playing checkers? NO. No. I could not do that because I do not want an ending of ultimate betrayal.

Bella, again, this is such an immense gift. I'm clearly not speechless over it, but absolutely moved. You are a wonderful friend, and I know it takes time and effort to comment like this, and that means the world to me.

Warm Shadows - Carving Through the Dark (3/4)

Fandom: MCU Collection: Warm Shadows [ part one | part two ] Title: Carving Through the Dark Characters/Pairings: established Alpha!Bucky x f!Omega!Reader, Alpha!Steve x f!Omega!Reader Word Count: 14.4k

Summary: Worse than a nightmare because it's real, Bucky has to track down his kidnapped omega and the man - the super soldier - who had been his closest friend turned into the dark, rival alpha, Captain Hydra.

Content Warnings: DARK, a/b/o dynamics, angst, explicit smut, vaginal intercourse, consensual forced orgasm

Logistical Notes: Shhh - yes this was the final story update I had planned for the Dark Forest Fest and it's the first week of January! But. Well. The word count. But we're here now, okay? Title taken from Hozier's Who We Are.

Additional Notes: Okay, I know that I did a poll asking last month if folks wanted the final chapter split into two parts or just one long chapter and - er - I kind of did both. I did not split this chapter, but a couple of days ago I realized we needed a fourth and final part. Lastly, @biteofcherry has been an absolute lifeline during the composition of this chapter - thank you for putting up with my conjectures and letting me piece together some of the elements. And even a little thank you to @rookthorne for cheering and bullying me over how long this got.

↠ Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest

“I can’t help you,” Shuri states, though there’s the flicker of it almost being one final question of it in her eyes.

“No,” Bucky confirms. “No more than you already have.”

He knows she says it as one last opportunity for him to change his mind, but also in acknowledgment that he must do this on his own. They clasp hands and then he turns to walk up the ramp of the aircraft.

“James,” she says when he’s nearly gone. He turns back to look at his friend, one who has seen him at the best and worst of times. “Whoever he is now, he knows Bucky, he knows the Winter Soldier, he will have learned everything about the Soldat from their archives, so you must truly be the White Wolf. She knows the wolf, but he does not.”

He nods and then walks further into the aircraft, leaving Shuri behind.

After you’d been violated and taken from him, Bucky had lain in anguish until just before dawn, raging over the loss of his world and everything he’d worked for, built, found, cherished. He would find you again – when he’d sworn, “There’s no corner of this earth you can go where I won’t find you,” it had been a promise to you as much as a warning to the monster – but none of you three were the same after that night.

To be the White Wolf…

It will take all the tactics he learned in the army, that he was forced to acquire as Hydra’s finest assassin, and since he escaped and then truly reclaimed his freedom. As angry as he is, as desolate as he feels, he holds the emotions at arms’ length, he needs to be at the eye of the hurricane so he can maneuver the way he needs to.

Bucky hasn’t been able to feel you. His desperate hope is that it’s because you’re sedated and unconscious and not … not anything else.

In Wakanda he and Shuri hadn’t been able to find even a sliver of a trace of the jet that had come and gone for Steve to enact his plan. It was a statement that whoever he was now, Captain Hydra was utilizing every ounce of knowledge Steve had and blending it with whatever Hydra hat put in him.

Bucky won’t leave a trail either.

It will take Steve time to figure out how Bucky left Wakanda – on foot, ground transport, or air transport – if he can figure it out. But Bucky was the untraceable ghost over fifty years of missions for Hydra, and he didn’t have the motivation he does now.

Bucky devised that going on the already-scheduled aircraft to the Wakandan Outreach Center in Oakland gave him the best options. He assumes Steve would have managed to get into the networks used by the Avengers and SWORD, and since he flew an aircraft in and out of Wakanda undetected and Bucky won’t be able to use Wakandan technology to best him either, so landing in Oakland also puts him in proximity to the hardware, software, and network resources he would need to build his own tech. During his convalescence in Wakanda before the Infinity War, it had been days of goats and technology research and development in the most advanced science facility in the world. He is not the expert that Shuri is, but he knows enough. His aversion to much of “modern” technology has always been due to how primitive it was compared to anything from Wakanda.

It takes weeks, but Bucky acquires the hardware he needs, modifies software, creates the network and protocols he needs to start Hydra hunting, and puts it all to work. He knows what to look for – the patterns, the seemingly innocuous inconsistencies – and he knows it because he was running data point for the team of analysts dedicated to Hydra hunting before this. He had taken more responsibility at the base of operations and fewer and fewer field assignments to be home and build his life with you.

Bucky doesn’t hesitate in ignoring any ethical limits whatsoever for his surveillance protocols. When he was working within the system, they had established some lines they weren’t willing to cross.

With seven billion humans in existence and him alone looking for two, lines to cross no longer exist.

He knows he will never get his life back, but he will not let anything prevent him from getting you back.

He puts every piece into play immediately as he builds, sleeps only the bare minimum. Truthfully he had only indulged in more than the minimal sleep a super soldier needed these past years because it was time spent blissfully with you.  Without a reason to rest, he didn’t have any problem cutting back to short sleep allotments to keep him operating at peak condition.

In putting his own tap into the Avengers’ database, he studies the work that had gone on while he was gone for his annual retreat away with you. He discovers that Steve and Sam followed leads in Europe.

“Damn you idiots,” he murmurs.

The reports show his two friends go dark after losing comms nearly a month ago. A team went in after them and their debrief says they found only their communication devices. ‘Search ongoing…’

That was a month ago.

He knows the status of Steve.

Sam could be a live asset in play, an asset still being trained and molded by Hydra, their prisoner for torture, or he could have been eliminated already.

It takes him sixteen days from the beginning of his build to finish – he’d been collecting intelligence, but once everything is in play and he continues to hone in on incoming results, things progress systematically, satisfyingly, in a foreign familiarity that evokes memories of this time hunting as the Winter Soldier.

Two more days and he’s got enough evidence in the intelligence to confirm you’re somewhere in Europe. Within two hours Bucky recalibrates calculations based the new findings, conducts new searches, gets confirmation of a face on a traffic camera in Gdańsk that looks like Steve, and when he’s able to piece a clear trail that follows him through the city and then to an aircraft that he’s further able to track until it disappears over northern Italy. He knows this for what it is – a trail tempting him closer to the trap. A challenge, an invitation, but only if he can put together more pieces to find you. How many times did he set beautifully complex traps for some of his prize targets when he was the Winter Soldier? Breadcrumbs to entice, to drive his opponent to work harder, to put their prowess to work, to make them feel confident so he could trick, trap, and kill them in the end.

This monster of a man tricked him in Wakanda. It will be the only time. Expert and intricate traps of this sort are something his opponent has been playing with for a few weeks. Bucky has more practice and expertise, infinitely more motivation, and no distractions.

He travels under cover of transports between Wakandan outreach centers from Oakland to Washington DC, and then from Washington to Bilbao. When he touches down in Bilbao, his information relay device has a new lead based off a visual of Steve in a bookshop in Turin twice in the previous week.

He takes the train to Turin. Within twelve hours he finds the location of the Hydra facility, and Bucky makes enough noise to reveal to Hydra that he’s in the city and trigger the personnel to raise the facility to its red alert security status. He plants a false trail indicating that he’s given up and gone further north, all the while watching every aspect of the base, making plans to infiltrate, and ensuring sure none of the vehicles or teams moving in and out look like they’re transporting you somewhere else. They drop to an orange threat level, and then yellow – standard caution and operating procedures.

Bucky would have been floored that they believed he’d missed them in Turin and moved on to search somewhere else, but it spoke to one of the weaknesses of Hydra’s organization: the arrogance. Instead, Bucky hacks into their base network as well as their external communications channels.

This observation, research, recon, and analysis Bucky does not rush. Everything he cares about is at stake. If he’s going to be successful in getting you back there can be no room for error as he’ll be up against Hydra and the only other super soldier on the planet who could potentially match or outmatch him.

And as the weeks wear on, the other thing he cannot deny, that he’d known from the beginning of this nightmare even if he’d wanted to try to ignore it, it that he isn't in this to rescue only you.

When all is said and done, the reality is he has to get Steve back, too.

Bucky knows the longer it takes, the more dangerously close he gets to your next heat. He knows an omega being in a distressed environment will affect the heat cycle. It could bring it on early, or potentially also push you to the extremes of a dry heat depending on the conditions they are keeping you in, and how you’re feeling. Once he determines he knows enough to start putting together a plan of extraction, he also determines it’s too close to when your heat might hit, and he can’t risk trying to extract you if you’re in heat – it becomes an element he can’t predict and ensure that his plan will still be successful.

His own senses are strained with the tenor of your unease in a way that’s different from before. It’s driving his alpha side mad, and he wants to storm the facility and reclaim you, and that’s one more element contributing to the volatility of the situation. He knows he can’t gamble on so many unpredictable elements.

He must wait.

But when he sees Captain Hydra leave in his jet right when Bucky is certain you are close to your heat, Bucky is stunned.

It might be too damn close to your heat, but clearly you’re not in heat yet or the other alpha would not leave you. This was not his plan, but it is a prime opportunity he can’t ignore – not if he can get to you alone and save you from a heat away from him. His heart can’t deny this unexpected opportunity.

After Bucky had hacked into the Hydra base’s network, he’d discovered that the small jet Captain Hydra had exclusive use of had been excluded from all navigational tracking and that the man only communicated by radio with one individual whenever he left. He’d further discovered that Captain Hydra was a weapon still cloaked from most of Hydra, with nothing about him other than his existence as a new asset available on the network. Even his former identity was not yet disclosed or recorded anywhere digitally.

This means Bucky has no idea where the man is going or when he will be back, but he hears Captain Hydra and his liaison discuss and confirm his time of arrival and his estimated time of return. Bucky must work quickly, but there is a window.

As he had not anticipated infiltrating so soon, he still has to finish putting things together for the actual extraction – like transportation, supplies, and thoroughly planning out three escape routes and destinations – and while he works quickly, he does not rush those final preparations, and so that takes him a significant amount of the window of time he knows he has.

But he only needs long enough to get you out.

He will have that.

He ambushes the delivery truck bringing in the week’s food shipment with no trouble and drives it right into the base as he has all the proper credentials on his person and its still pre-dawn hours, so lack of light works in his favor to get through the first gate.

But of course when he doesn’t follow delivery procedures once he rolls up to the shipping and receiving dock, that’s when his limited time really begins. The first decision he must make is whether or not to take out a man of average height but portly build that approaches the truck – one of the cooks, Bucky has studied the personnel files for everyone registered on this base – and Bucky evaluates as he steps out of the truck. He could kill him, but this man should probably be spared. Bucky doesn’t want unnecessary blood on his hands. So with lightning fast moves and a choke hold, the man goes down. But next are two security personnel, and them Bucky shoots point blank, taking each of them out with single shots. He leans down to lift the comms off one of them, putting the piece in his ear so he can hear everything as it unfolds across the base.

He yanks open the first door and moves down the hallway. And then there’s a frantic message over the comms, “Code Red! Winter Soldier, loading docks, two personnel down, in pursuit!”

Bucky growls and turns back down the hallway and swears when he sees the man putting comms in his ear and squaring up a gun he’d clearly lifted off one of the security guards was the cook he thought he’d put out cold. Apparently the man had more in him than Bucky had accounted for, and so now Bucky takes aim and shoots him once he’s close enough to secure the kill shot, only having to dodge two close but errant bullets himself as the cook had tried to run him down.

Lethal force for everyone it is, he thinks.

He’s irritated he wasted extra time on this man trying to keep down the body count.

He does not make that mistake again, killing everyone who comes across his path. The silver lining working in his favor is that this base in Turin is a science facility, not a military facility, so he has fewer muscle personnel to deal with than other places you could have been kept, and he can hear over the main comms that scientists and researchers are being given orders to shelter in place while there are instructions given over the security comms in Bucky’s ear that prime-level scientists are to be evacuated. It’s the directive he expected, which benefits him as the security personnel are split between pursuing him and evacuating those individuals deemed indispensable.

But dealing with those who are in pursuit of him is simple. When he’s out of ammunition, he makes quick work dealing what should be lethal wounds with his knives. Every man or woman down is one less he will need to contend with while trying to safely get you out, and while he’s reasonably sure he’s dealing death to everyone, there are a few he thinks may survive.

He has studied every aspect of this facility while making his preparations, and he sends a message to Captain Hydra that he was prepared by shooting glances cleanly into every camera he knows he passes.

There’s a flash of fear that ripples through him – it comes from the bond he’s tried to keep dormant between you since you were taken, but this is too powerful, and it’s a barb he can’t ignore. It flares and then dies out, which could be either a good thing or a bad thing. He squares his shoulders and moves more quickly.

As Bucky reaches the quadrant they’ve been keeping you a few moments later, the words, “The Omega is secured, sedated, and ascending to the roof with team Foxtrot, thirty seconds until air evac.”

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

He knows he can’t make it in time, but Bucky still races down the hall to the stairwell, launching through the door and then hurtling up the stairs, taking them three and four at a time. His super speed isn’t enough to scale four flights of industrial facility stairs, and he bursts out on the roof to see the coaxial helicopter already twenty meters up in the air and navigating away to the north.

He wants to shout until his lungs bleed because he was so close, but he knows he can’t afford to indulge in emotions that strong in this moment. Instead, he takes huge gulps of the fresh air, pulls the door from its hinges, and hurls it across the roof before going back down the stairs.

He does not engage with anyone but comes across few through his retreat. Instead, his focus now is decimating what he can of the facility without wasting time or going out of his way as he escapes the base, rigging explosives quickly in key areas on his way out.

While he left destruction in his wake, and he leaves alone, he was precise in how much damage he dealt. He left the area of main logistical operations intact because he didn’t want to destroy their network and communications, eliminating his ties to tracking their next moves.

Bucky immerses himself in tracking and monitoring everything the second he’s back in his hideout with his tech. He sees the Captain return. He watches the final evacuations. They send him to Geneva, and Bucky is ready to follow, knowing exactly where the Swiss facility is located since he’s fully infiltrated the Hydra network of information. He can’t travel as quickly since he doesn’t have access to any Hydra aviation, but he makes it there by sundown.

He wouldn’t risk trying to disrupt your heat now, not with everyone moved and on high alert, it would be dangerous for you. Instead, he works on setting up his new undercover observation point in Switzerland. He fine tunes his information tap into the Hydra system. As he works, he notices the rise of an anxious feeling pulling at his hind brain. He’s felt the press of you trying to reach across the bond while you’ve been apart, but this is different – there’s a frantic, wild tug, and while it’s insistent, it’s more erratic, like the flickering of a flame, as if you aren’t even concentrating on the connection to him.

He knows so much of you that he knows you have to be on the brink of your heat but that you must desperately be trying to fight it. The discomfort he can sense continues to ebb and flow. It morphs. It becomes tinged with more discomfort. Then there’s a lick of desire that is almost imperceptible. That’s followed rather quickly be a flare of adrenaline – or is it fear? Another shift a few minutes later, and tone of this is pure arousal, the feeling he’s shared so much of with you, and the thought that you…

He grits his teeth, shuts his eyes, and abruptly stills every muscle in his body. You are his omega. Another alpha bonded you. Your heat is undeniable. His brain knows that – it’s one of the things he’s been focusing on, acknowledging the various scenarios that could play out for this heat, he just did not want this, nor was he prepared for what it might feel like. And so, with forced, measured breaths, he does everything he can to concentrate on shutting down the connection, to put his alpha side to sleep, because he can not bear this. He has suppressed so much of everything since losing you, only holding onto the faintest tether, but he cannot endure this – not and keep his rationality and do what he needs to do now, which is to formulate the next steps, the things he needs to figure out and watch for now that this cruel game has changed. Emotion will distract him, but there’s also the flow that could go the other way and throw you off, and he swore to keep you safe.

Diving into the network databases of this new Hydra facility, Bucky notices something he noticed in Turin: there are no records that contain any of your names on file – not you, not Steve, not Sam. He thought it was strange before, but he had a theory it could have been the nature of secrecy around all the projects at the research facility in Turin – there were very few data files on the science being explored on that base. But in transferring the Turin personnel out, with a contingent of them going to Geneva, he pours over all the documentation and the only he finds is the transfer of a high-level asset referred to only as Waffe SR4718. He easily knows the German word for weapon, and without missing a beat Bucky knows the letters and numbers are supposed to seem random but clearly refer to Steve Rogers whose birthdate is the fourth day of the seventh month in the eighteenth year of the previous century. It’s innocuous to anyone coming across it, but abundantly clear that it’s specific for those who were supposed to know.

With all Bucky knows of his own time with Hydra, how there were always layers within layers, secrets buried, hidden, withheld, he’s certain the acquisition of Steve and metamorphosis into Captain Hydra is as dark and as quiet as his own existence as the Winter Soldier.

There are quarters assigned to Waffe SR4718, and Bucky tags it track all status alerts – comings and goings, services, requests. He also puts the cameras for that hallway up on a constant feed monitoring protocol with the AI he’s adapted to bring up the imagery if there’s any movement in or out of the door.

Knowing you’re in heat, Bucky concentrates on new extraction tactics and mapping out escape options from this new facility.

But at three in the morning during the second night in Geneva – the second night of your heat – the door movement alert goes off, and Bucky immediately turns his attention to watch as Steve slowly emerges.

Why would he have any reason to leave you during your heat? He knows he could order food, clothing, bedding, medical personnel if absolutely necessary…

A quick check of the log shows that there have been no such requests.

And then he sees the unthinkable.

You’re right there behind him, following as he starts to make his way down the hall, dressed in darker clothing as he is. He has a small tactical pack slung across his back.

“What the hell are you doing?”

The question is only uttered out of frustration and disbelief because he could immediately decipher what is happening.

As precarious as it is to interfere with your heat, the two of you are clearly on the move.

The other alpha has no intention of staying at this base.

But why?

His mind begins deciphering even as he’s pulling up security cameras as the pair of you move through the facility, tracking your movements and actions.

The calculated risk is to get out when you’re supposed to be in heat. Bucky did see that status reported on the log – omega in heat. The protocols were to leave alpha and omega Hydra personnel undisturbed unless a priority one situation developed – typically reserved for life or death and rarely anything less urgent or pressing. It meant no one would think to check after the asset immediately. Even if an alpha skipped regular ordering for a meal or two to the living quarters, that wouldn’t be taken as out of the ordinary, merely unnecessary or forgotten due to being otherwise occupied, or deciding to make do with the food already with them.

The movement logically progresses toward the transportation hangar under the building – intending to employ ground transport.

On the way, the two of you duck into a room and close the door. Bucky accesses the schematics to discover it’s a data analytics workspace – cooperative computer sharing area. There weren’t any goons to hide from, so Bucky works quickly, trying to pull up the specific workstations in there. He sees the log in for a science officer. The user accesses the personnel transfer files for everyone from the Turin base submitted due to the evacuation. Four names are brought up on the roster and their locations are changed from Turin to the other the other bases anyone from Turin was reassigned to – a pair of them to Odessa, the other pair to Trondheim.

Subterfuge. He’s displacing security agents – or at least their location statuses.

Bucky frowns.

The rest of your course takes you directly to the vehicle hangar. Moving in the dead of night has capitalized on as few people as possible moving around the base for you to encounter, and it paid off. The other alpha selects a smaller SUV, loads some readily available weapons and supplies from the nearby vicinity into the back and then – faster than lightning – he withdraws something from a pocket near his chest, presses it over your mouth, and Bucky can see you seize up and then slump into his arms. He tucks you in amongst the supplies before throwing a canvas over everything and closing the hatchback.

Clearly you had been cooperating with this escape, so why was it necessary to knock you out?

Then he leaves the vehicle, leaves the hangar, goes back up two floors to the security personnel floor, and knocks on one of the doors.

Bucky accesses the database to see who’s assigned to that room as he watches this man converse briefly with whoever answers the door.

The two names assigned to the room match the two names reassigned to the Trondheim base on the evacuation transfer records.

“What larger game are you playing, Captain Hydra?” Bucky murmurs.

Because it’s back down to the hangar and the SUV with you stashed in the back, but then he waits.

And within five minutes, two men in full tactical gear get in the vehicle as well, and only then does he start up the car and leave. There’s a tracking device on this vehicle, so Bucky starts to pack up his tech, and pulls up the tracking on his smartphone.

He’s about to shut and pack away his laptop when he thinks of doing one more thing. It will take time, and this is why he knows Captain Hydra didn’t do it, but it will be worth it. But after his time in Wakandan labs and building up his own robust systems, within twenty-five minutes, Bucky has gone through the security camera system and successfully removed all footage of you and the captain moving throughout the base, rewriting it with the empty hallways from just before and after, effectively erasing the evidence of your escape. This will buy more time. No one may have thought to look for any movement in and out of Waffe SR4718’s quarters, but now they won’t find it when they ultimately go back and try, extending Bucky’s time to tail you without Hydra in the mix. They will assume the alpha and omega are still in heat seclusion now without any reason to doubt it.

Bucky leaves his temporary Geneva hideout with the essentials he arrived with. He chose this location because it was two streets down from one of the larger private car services in Switzerland. Bucky knows he can pass as a mechanic with his clothing, and the service staff works overnight to keep up maintenance for the large fleet of vehicles that provide VIP transportation, airport pick up and drop off, limousine transfers, corporate chauffeur services, ski transfers, and event chauffeuring. Acquiring a non-descript vehicle is as easy as he hoped, and it’s more than simple to de-activate this car’s GPS tracking system.

Within half an hour, he’s comfortably in pursuit. The vehicle he’s tracking has maintained its course and is an hour out of the city now, but an hour ahead is reasonable.

When the Hydra vehicle is three hours outside of Geneva, it makes its first stop. Bucky presses a button on his phone to pin the location. The stop is for less than five minutes, and then it continues, but Bucky will stop there as well to assess the purpose and glean any information he can.

Bucky is an assertive driver, making up speed, but not at a point to draw attention. When he reaches the pin he’d set on the route for the stop your vehicle had made, it’s on a bridge.

There’s only one reason Bucky can think of to stop on a bridge.

A reason that could make Bucky’s heart stop with devastation, but he must continue to operate under the assumption it wasn’t your body dumped into the river. Anything else wouldn’t make sense.

Unless the other alpha has become completely unhinged and all of this is an elaborate game to drive Bucky beyond all limitations of his own reason.

Within the next two hours, he sees you pass the border into Germany, and then another stop is registered on the GPS tracking near the city of Albstadt. Bucky has made up a significant amount of the head start the other alpha had had. When he arrives in Albstadt, he finds the SUV. It is most likely that this vehicle had been abandoned for another, but Bucky has to stop at this point and tap into security feeds for the city to see whether you’re here or not. He picks a spot that advertises wifi with their sandwiches, refueling his body while setting up his tech in a spot most won’t question him to hunker down for some serious work on a laptop. He gets into the city’s street cameras, sees Steve steal another vehicle, pulls the license plate, and then he programs his algorithm to watch for the number to track the route now. He won’t be able to smoothly follow the route of a GPS-tracked vehicle anymore, but Bucky knew this would grow more difficult. As long as his goal was to draw out the Soldat, Captain Hydra will still leave a trail of breadcrumbs, but it will be scant if he’s trying to evade Hydra.

While Bucky has questions of intent, he has no question that it’s what the Captain is doing now.

Bucky is able to pick up the trail with license plate tracking and route mapping into Stuttgart. All the way to the train station. But this is where the other alpha shows incredible skills for blending in. It’s a busy station. Bucky will have to run thorough security camera assessments of the Stuttgart station, figure out when – or if – they got on a train, and then continue tracking from there. If the alpha and omega got on a train, Bucky can at least narrow his search to that route and its stops for that schedule, but Bucky used train stations to cover his tracks as well, and sometimes that involved never boarding the train but leading anyone tracking him to believe that he had.

With that much information, he writes new coding into his overall system, sends it back to the larger machine he left in Oakland to do the heavy computing so it can start the work he’ll need to fine tune once he can settle in a more permanent stopover, pays for his meal, and then drives to Stuttgart. The hacking into facial recognition has been so enhanced beyond boundaries though – especially because he can tailor it to look for only two faces he knows as well as his own – that he sees the two of your board a train headed west, targets the route, sets up the watch parameters for the schedule, and catches you getting off in Paris.

Another smart move blending into the vibrancy of a large city, but Bucky is sure it’s not the final destination either. But Steve knew enough French to blend into the country, as well.

It takes Bucky and his systems six more days, but he confirms three separate facial recognitions for the other alpha in a town outside of Bordeaux small enough to be off the beaten path but big enough to blend in and go unnoticed by its people.

Bucky travels there as quietly as possible. He does not want to tip his hand. He’s too close now to have you slip through his hands again.

After two more days and with the assistance of satellite imaging, he has found the small house in a forested area outside of the town.

Bucky grips the edge of the small desk he’s been working at, grounding himself. Adrenaline had immediately surged through his veins, but he must keep everything contained. He has practiced so much control and restraint that if his heart betrays him now, he’ll carve it out himself and leave it behind. He cannot compromise this delicate situation.

He drives out to the area and leaves his vehicle well-hidden a kilometer out from the house and approaches on foot, circling at a large perimeter and slowly moving further in, cautiously, taking in everything. He doesn’t want to trip anything the other alpha may have set up to alert him to intruders.

What he discovers is minimal, and all old tactical elements – things they’d done as

Cap and the Howling Commandos back in the old war.

Effectively things that would have worked on anyone from this day and age but that only Bucky would know to look for.

He doesn’t trust it.

This is another trap.

But he has to walk into it and fare as best he can.

That’s what Captain Hydra had said was his plan from the beginning – draw out the Soldat.

The White Wolf would enter the trap but would need to control it and come out on the other side with his omega. 

He can’t even think those words without his pulse racing now, and he digs his vibranium fingers into the trunk of the tree under his hand, splintering the wood while he closes his eyes and stamps down everything that wants him to sprint to the house he can see, break down the door, and launch himself into your arms.

He timed his approach when he’d seen the other alpha leave – likely for more food and supplies – but he knew the time alone would be limited.

Bucky takes measured but determined steps to the green wooden front door of what’s essentially a little cottage.

Straining his ears and focusing on his enhanced hearing, he doesn’t pick up anything beyond ambient noises – and your soft, slow breathing.

He takes a deep breath, slowly twists the doorknob, and opens the door.

There you are, curled up in a cozy armchair, dozing, hand pressed up against the spine of a book that has fallen to your chest after you clearly fell asleep reading, and this.

This simple scene nearly knocks him to his knees.

The way you’re there, feet away from him, it’s the most beautiful sight of his entire life.

But still, he is quiet, cautious.

His entire chest aches for you.

He shuts the door softly behind him, then crosses the small living room and kneels next to you. He eases the book out of your hands and puts it on the small side table. He’s done this before so many times. You make a slight hum through your sleep.

Brushing his fingers over your cheek is almost enough to make the nightmare of the last six weeks vanish as if it really had only been a nightmare.

He almost doesn’t dare to breathe.

But the warmth of his hand against your skin evidently reaches in to stir something in your subconscious, because you shift slightly, sigh, and tilt your head into his touch and murmur, “Bucky…”

The stutter of his chest is both painful and euphoric at once, and everything wells up in his chest, everything he’s been holding back.

He drops his hand from your cheek to your shoulder, gently trying to nudge you awake.

Coming back into consciousness, you take in a deep breath before blinking your eyes open. Your gaze drifts to him, and then your body seizes up one moment, and the next you’re scrambling up and away from him, whipping over the back of the armchair you’d been curled up in.

“Bucky?” your voice comes out in a wounded whimper of a tone that pierces him, confounds him.

“Yes, it’s me,” he answers, brow furrowing. He hadn’t allowed himself to think over what this moment was going to be like – he knew the fixation would have been too painful to hope over – but it was not supposed to be this, with you looking at him with caution, with hesitancy, with your guard up.

“Omega?” he questions tentatively, rising from where he’d been crouched on the floor.

You don’t move your position, but you draw yourself up to your full height as well.

Bucky maneuvers around the furniture, wanting to remove the barrier between you, but he changes his position slowly, allowing you time to retreat if you feel compelled to. You hold your ground but do keep yourself squared off facing him as he moves. He does what he hasn’t done since this ordeal began and definitively opens up the gateway of the bond between you, tentatively reaching out, trying to read you.

Your mood is hard, and it doesn’t fluctuate. There’s a steady mix of fear, doubt, and what he thinks is exasperation there.

No, it’s more than that.

“You’re angry with me?”

“I’m more than angry with you!” you hurl the words at him and cross your arms over your chest. “I’m livid.”

“I came to you as fast as I could!” He steps closer, and now you step back. He moves closer again, but with a smaller step.

“It’s not that, I know you worked as hard as you could–“

“Then what else could you possibly be upset about, Omega?” His tone is desperate, earnestly seeking the answer, but also tinged with a warning he can’t help from bleeding into the question.

“I couldn’t feel you.” The anger gives way to let the anguish of your words bleed through, and they sweep over both of you. “You cut yourself off from me. I was desolate and scared and alone, and you withdrew any hint of our connection.”

He steps forward once more, finally close enough to reach for you, and as he continues to close the distance, you unfold one of your arms and backhand slap him. “I needed you!”

Bucky staggers a step back from the raw force you hurled at him, but it only takes him the space of a breath for him to recover enough, and he surges forward and pulls you into his arms, uttering your name the way one pleads in a fraught prayer. You try and push against his chest and squirm out of his arms, but he only secures you more firmly, holding you dearly and desperately to him.

“I needed you,” you sob out. Instead of continuing to try to struggle away from him, to hold your hurt at bay, he feels you stop fighting and the turn as you let everything out. He holds you, soothing you, but not trying to quell any of this yet. He knows everything you’re feeling is warranted, can feel now that you held back as much as he did while you were apart. Endured as much hurt as he did – more in many ways. He won’t tell you to settle down, because the hurt needs to be acknowledged and not minimized.

Once your chest is no longer wracked with sobs, when your crying has abated from steady streams of tears to the small sniffling, he gently wipes the tears from your cheeks. Then Bucky decisively nuzzles his face down into the crook of your neck. Slowly, tentatively, he presses his lips to the place he claimed and bonded you as his omega, his mate. You whimper, but your hands clutch at his shirt, and the immediate flood of relief, of love, of devotion, washes over you both. He can feel it, he knows you feel it.

His large hands are planted firmly on your back, one at the curve of your spine, and one between your shoulder blades, pressing you as close together as he possibly can. He plants a longer, more concentrated kiss to the mark, and your right hand slides up to thread your fingers into his hair and press him closer.

The more he kisses into your neck, the more whole he feels. He had ignored the hollow, empty feeling in his chest, had truly rejected all feeling, as cold and empty as he’d operated while being the Winter Soldier. He’s feeling human again. Himself again – or at least it’s all coming back to him now.

He doesn’t even realize when your body has fully melted into him, too caught up in the mending of the connection, but then you’re urging his face up away from your neck, but only so you can press your forehead to his, and you say, “I need you, Bucky.”

He nods, and then you kiss him. In a movement familiar to you both, his hand moves down, curving over your ass and to the back of your thigh, and he picks you up. Your legs wrap around him as you deepen the kiss, nipping at his lips. He carries you across the big open space to where there’s a bed in the far corner.

He sets you down gently on your feet, and his hands are already reaching for the hem of your shirt, and you readily lift your arms so he can pull it cleanly off your body. You’re reaching for his belt, and he’s pulling his own shirt over his head. Your lips eagerly seek each other as much as they can. You push his dark jeans down, and he huffs and sits down at the foot of the bed so he can hastily unlace and yank his boots off, so he can shuck his pants off all the way. When he raises his head, you stand before him in nothing but your simple underwear, one hand pressed against your torso, biting your lip.

You’re so damn beautiful to him, his heart aches again at the sight of you nearly naked before him again after so long torn apart.

He reaches for you, and though you don’t hesitate to take his hand, as he tugs you into his lap, your thighs straddling either side of his hips, he doesn’t miss the slight tremble of your body, and it kills him but there’s a deep part of him that resonates, recognizes the feeling. The separation had been hell on an alpha and omega level, and this is still too much, overwhelming, and altogether not nearly enough to soothe the deep loneliness he had pushed beneath the surface. His arms wrap around you again. While your left arm wraps around his neck, your right hand roams over his bare skin – shoulder, arms, chest, neck, face – questing to rememorize him.

He wants to be inside you, but having your chest pressed into to his chest, it’s like your heartbeats are syncing back together, and he almost needs this more. The side of your face rests against his, and the way he can hear you breathe in and out right next to his ear, can feel the warmth of every exhale, it’s yet another inimitable balm he didn’t know he longed for.

He murmurs your name softly against your shoulder.

“Mmm?”

He knows you can tell he’s working out something to say. Every season you two had been together had been time you had worked to only continually knit your souls more tightly to each other, not only to love each other more, but to understand each other, to work together, to support and lean into each other as true partners.

It had made the separation all the more painful.

He squeezes you more tightly for a moment, then inhales to speak. “I need to tell you why I put up the walls I did.”

He feels you tense slightly in his arms – of course he does, there’s no way for him to miss it any more than there was any chance for you to try and hide it when this intimately entwined. He bestows a soft, light kiss to your bonding mark, and you whimper, but turn your head to brush your lips over his cheek, and then both of you draw back just enough to look at each other.

“I’ll never know if it was the right or wrong thing to do to you, but it felt like the only way I could hope to survive navigating back to you. Immediately I knew I couldn’t allow the anguish of pain and anger I was feeling to flood to you when I knew you were living your own nightmare. When I held that back, the way Hydra had conditioned me to repress all feelings when I was their fist resurfaced, and I knew shelving the emotions would leave me to focus and be more effective in everything I was doing to track you and find you.”

“Bucky,” you start, but he shakes his head slightly, his eyes pleading for you to let him continue. You give a little huff. “Okay.”

The corner of his mouth lifts, and he pecks your lips before going on. “When I was closing in on where they were keeping you, I didn’t want to alert you and have you have to worry about how to hide that.”

“That’s a fair strategic tactic,” you grudgingly admit.

He grins at your tone, but it abates quickly. “I also…”

He pauses for half a beat and takes a breath to steel his resolve because you deserve his raw honesty as it’s still a concern in play.

“Also what?”

“I didn’t know how much of our bond he would feel. I didn’t want to tip him off, but I – I didn’t want to feel what might go the other way and bleed from him through you either.”

“Oh, Buck,” you bury your head into the crook of his neck now, nuzzling against the bonding mark you’d given him. “Our bond is ours, not his.”

“It’s not?”

“No, no,” you press quick successive kisses against your bonding mark on the juncture of his neck and shoulder. “You might feel the wake of what I feel from his bond to me, but the ties to each of you are very distinct within me. I’m especially sure of it now that ours isn’t dormant anymore.”

He holds you close while he sorts through this revelation from you. “I didn’t know – and I was worried if I felt him it would either devastate or enrage me and either way make me overrule logic and slip up, do something rash.”

“Now I understand,” you speak right into his ear. “Concentrate though, what do you feel right now?”

He breathes in. Breathes out. Another breath in. Out.

“Only you,” he says, no question.

Your lips drift back down his neck, and you press an insistent kiss to your claim on him this time, then you open your lips and suck over the spot.

Bucky shivers and groans, and you wince and laugh when his arms flex around you so tightly it actually hurts. Because he reacts so strongly, it doesn’t shock him in the slightest that you’re spurred on to seek more, but now he’s ready, so when you’ve satisfied with your initial torment and he feels you slot your teeth over the mark, he bares his neck, ready when you bite down to renew your claim on him, and he shouts – euphoric, flooded and overwhelmed with the way everything opens in such a raw way when a bonding mark is refreshed.

It drives you to rock your hips against him. You’re both still in those last pieces of underwear, but the friction of your cunt against his cock is glorious, and he can’t help the satisfied rumble in his chest in answer to the simple action.

His hand clamps on your plump, round ass, and he pushes you hard against him and holds you there – he doesn’t want the rocking, for a moment he just wants the intense pressure, the reality that you’re here with him.

You crash your lips to his desperately. He slants his head and works his tongue along the seam of your mouth, which willingly parts for him, an open moan passing between you both, your tongue inviting him into your mouth, stroking against his. Both of you fiercely hold onto each other, keeping that close chest to chest contact while you kiss more than you breathe. When you ultimately have to break off from each other to get air back in your lungs, the heaving expansion of your ribcages against each other is such a simple but intense intimacy, breaths mingling – another moment that adds to the replenishment for how much his soul had been depleted without you.

“Need you inside me,” you plead.

He nods while turning and tossing you onto the bed.

As he climbs up to join you, you quip, “No more clothes, Alpha.”

“Bossy Omega,” he chuckles, but complies in pushing his boxer briefs down and tossing them away.

You quirk your lips. “Give me what I need, and I won’t need to be so demanding.”

He growls, but it’s teasing, the feeling in his heart is a light one, a feeling he feels echoed in you, lines of it running through the overwhelming need.

Bucky moves up the bed, hooks his fingers beneath the band of your underwear, and you lift your hips so he can remove them immediately. He leans down and presses a broad flat lick of his tongue over your hip bone, causing you to squirm – desire and a sensitive spot of skin he discovered on your years ago. “I know what you need, Omega.”

“Yes, Alpha,” you nod eagerly, and he flips you over onto your stomach

He hears your breath hitch. He knows you love roughness and to be handled as often as you love softness, but the latter isn’t what you need right now. He crawls up over you and plants his left arm up by your shoulder while he slots himself between your legs. Your left hand finds his, twining your fingers together while he lines up his cock with your slick entrance, and the sigh of ecstasy that escapes you as he pushes his length in sings in his ears. The feeling of your warm channel gripping him is better than he remembered – or at least it feels that way – and he tries to push in as slowly as he can to savor coming home to where he belongs inside you, but it’s not nearly as slow as he wants it to be.

Once he’s fully sheathed in you, he kisses your shoulder, then nips along until he’s at the juncture of your neck, and you keen and bare your neck to him. He licks over his bonding mark, then bites down, reclaiming you, and you cry out, body thrumming beneath him. He starts to move behind you, pulling his hips back before thrusting back in. Your right leg hitches back to tangle up and over his, urging him on. He grips your hip, and then he fucks you. It’s the most primal it’s ever felt with you, the force of it rocking the bed to knock against the wall, and he almost worries about whether or not it’s too much, but you rock back against him, meeting his thrusts as much as you can in your prone position, eagerly taking all of him.

“That’s it, darling, take my hard cock inside you,” he urges you both on.

You sob out a breathless, “Yes,” that makes his chest rumble in satisfaction.

He can feel your cunt fluttering around him, can feel you on the edge of ecstasy, but it also feels like you’re refusing to fall over the edge.

“Come on, darling, let go.”

“No.”

That shocks him but doesn’t slow him down.

He maintains his pace and slips his hand down between you and the mattress, cupping your pussy and finding your clit. “Yes.” He starts to rub quick, concentrated circles over your tight bundle of nerves.

You shake your head desperately. “No, I don’t want it to end,” the words tumble out, and he hears the sound of you crying again.

“Omega, I will give you more. I’ll give you as much as you need, but I need you to give in to this, surrender and fall over the edge with me again.”

“Bucky!” you cry out as you’re unreservedly flung over the edge. Your cunt clamping down on him was the last of what he needed to reach his own climax, and so his shout echoes your own, and he exerts those final thrusts to pump his seed deep within you.

He stays sheathed within you but rolls both of you to your sides, brackets his arm around your waist, and keeps you close, nuzzling into your neck. You sink back against him, resting your arm over his and threading your fingers together.

“That was…”

He nudges your chin for you to turn your head back so he can kiss away the tears that escaped during the emotions that came through there at that end.

“Intense?”

“Yes.”

“We both needed it, Omega. I need you as much as you need me. Do not doubt it.” You shiver in his arms, and he swears, “I’ll make sure you never question it again.”

“Never let me go.”

“Never again.”

You shift and turn over to face him. He’s just as content to wrap you in his arms this way. You tangle your legs with his as you have so many times before. This is so familiar.

You brush your fingers over his face, retracing the lines and angles that define him, and he watches your face as your eyes drink in his features.

“I’m yours, Omega,” he says in a quiet, low tone.

A soft smile lifts the curve of your mouth. Your hand cradles his jaw and beckons him in to kiss you, and he is happy to acquiesce. The kisses he shares with you now are slow, solemn promises of lips and tongues, heated but not demanding.

When you eventually come up for air, you tuck yourself more closely into his chest, humming with contentment. He’s half hard again, and the frantic last moments of the sex he shared with you flashes back to the forefront of his mind. “I promised to give you more. What do you need from me? Tell me how I can please you, how I can love you.”

You reach up and press your fingers delicately against his bonding mark. “Just this. Hold me. I only need to be with you.”

He can feel how true it is as your fingers stroke lightly over the place where you claimed him all those years ago, reclaimed him here in this bed, flooding him with more peace. His brushes his lips over your forehead. “Whatever you want, sweetheart.”

There’s a little chirp that bubbles up out of you when he calls you sweetheart again, and it makes him just as happy as it does you. He slowly caresses your back, hand moving up and down, up and down, in a soothing motion, soothing himself as much as you.

There is still so much ahead for you both, but this – your connection to each other – he can feel that again so strongly. He never doubted it, but after being deprived, the return of how powerful it is engulfs him. This will anchor him through what’s coming.

“Buck?” you murmur against his neck.

“Mmm?”

“I can tell your brain is beginning to work away from here.”

He sighs. “Can you blame me?”

“No, but talk to me, take me with you if you’re going to think.”

“There’s so much to think through.”

“Start with one thing.”

You’ve done this with him before – late nights, afternoons, mornings, on a drive, on a walk, sharing a meal – you could always feel when he started to get tied up in his brain with his thoughts, and you’d listen, ask questions, sift through with him. He was perfectly capable of sorting through things on his own, but sharing with you made it altogether different. It was one of the best parts of having you as his mate.

“Why…?” He frowns and trails off. “No, nevermind.”

“No, Buck. I worked hard to soothe and relax my alpha. I want this gift of respite with you, however brief it is, and whatever string you don’t want to tug on first clearly is one that’s important.”

He nips your shoulder. “My gutsy omega.”

“Alpha,” you press, also literally pressing a finger insistently against his chest.

“Alright…” His tone turns serious. “Why didn’t you try to escape – especially here where he leaves you alone sometimes?” From the way he’d found you, it was clear this wasn’t an anomaly.

You cluck your tongue impatiently and roll your eyes. “First, how was I reasonably supposed to outrun him, hide from him, and try to find you? I don’t have any of the tactical skills or training you two do.”

“Fair enough. And second?” The first point is obvious now that he’s asked it and heard you answer, but he wants to hear the rest of what you have to say.

“Second,” you continue, your tone altering to something more somber, “he took me to lure you to him, so the most logical thing was to stay and wait for you.”

“Ah,” Bucky nods, the smallest of smiles taking over his mouth. “My smart omega.”

“And third,” you continue, though your words tone is cautious now, and you drop your eyes to his chest.

“Yes?” he urges you to finish the thought.

“He’s my alpha, too.”

This isn’t news – he’s known it from the second he witnessed that bite to claim you, he thought of it frequently while he was hunting for you both, he knew it would be the new reality, you’d even discussed the two bonds together in this bed – and yet having to think about it yet again in this light is still straining on him.

Clearly you feel his unrest, because your hands come up to cup his face and basically attempt to soothe him with gentle but insistent strokes along his jaw. “Bucky, I’m always going to be yours.”

He sighs and angles his head down to touch his forehead to yours. “I know.”

And it’s not jealousy that drives his unrest – it’s the not knowing what this means, not right now and not for the future. He’s started thinking about possibilities, but he’s limited until he can confront the other alpha. So, he decides to concentrate on what it has meant so far.

He makes sure his tone is soft but serious when he asks, “Did he hurt you?”

You’re quiet for a beat, then say, “I don’t know how to answer that.”

Bucky starts to sit up, but you pull him back down to the mattress, trying earnestly to soothe him. “What he did hurt us both, and it was meant to hurt. It was absolutely calculated. But they broke him, Bucky. They tortured him and tried to make him comply for weeks. They were experimenting on Sam, trying to pull the science they could from old records on you and what they could pull from analyzing Steve’s blood, but they weren’t having success, and so they enacted their last use for Sam – and they killed him in front of Steve. It destroyed him.”

Bucky’s own chest aches as he listens, throbbing painfully at this reveal, and his vibranium hand fists the sheet.

“And when he was at his most devastated and spent emotionally, what I have been able to piece together is that that’s when he couldn’t stand to feel anymore, shut off his emotions – or his humanity more like, and it’s his humanity that made him Steve. That’s when they were able to take over and mold him into the fist they wanted in Captain Hydra.”

Hurt, anger, the horror of his own past life as the Winter Soldier, it’s surging through his veins, but you continue.

“So that night in Wakanda? That was Captain Hydra at his height of cruelty. I haven’t seen that iteration of him since that night. It’s been slow, but he’s different now. He’s not our Steve, but he’s not Captain Hydra.”

It’s a few moments before he registers that you’re done – at least with that piece of sharing.

He cups your jaw and looks into your eyes. “Do you trust him?”

He sees you clearly put thought into your words before answering, worrying your bottom lip. “The heat he and I shared was intense in every way. It changed things fundamentally between us, but since the heat our connection has still been very tenuous. We’ve both been very guarded with each other. I know he’ll keep me safe, but I’m still wary of him.”

He nods.

“Where is he right now?”

A wry laugh tumbles out of your chest. “I don’t even know where we are right now, Bucky. I know we got off a train in Bordeaux, but then he moved us here while I was in one of my heavy end of heat sleeps. From the food, books, and supplies he’s brought for us, I know we’re in France, but that’s it. There’s not a lick of technology kept in here while I’m alone. We don’t even a radio.”

Bucky grunts at this news. He doesn’t like this, but other than being kept here cut off from the rest of the world and having claimed you and separated you in the first place, it seems you’ve been appropriately cared for.

“Wait, no radio?” He growls. Bucky had looked away to consider the new information, but his eyes snap to you again. “Have you had any music?”

“No,” you groan, and he can feel the pained irritation.

“That won’t do.” 

He quickly rolls off the bed to a small whine of protest from you, but it was so rare that he’d ever been in a space with you and there hadn’t been music playing – loud for you to sing, or low in the background keeping you company – and this is something he can fix easily.

He fishes the small communications device he had put together out of the pocket of his discarded pants, then comes back to sit on the foot of the bed and begins typing away. You’re quick to crawl up behind him, and you wrap your arms around his chest and settle your chin on his shoulder while he works. You don’t see the smile that breaks across his face as he feels your excited impatience radiate off you, having figured out what he’s doing. It’s so palpable he wouldn’t have needed your emotional bond as alpha and omega to sense it.

Once he’s modified his device to play music, it doesn’t take him much longer to hack into your music account. He pulls up the list of your most-played songs, picks one that he thinks will be perfect for this moment, and hits play.

You croon with joy and then fall back on the bed, arms spread out in pure rapture. He beams and then crawls up next to you, handing you the device. You hold it close to your chest with one hand and pull him in for a kiss with the other.

You break off the kiss so you can sing along to the chorus, and he laughs. He knows exactly the last time he felt this happy: the last day by the river with you in Wakanda. When the chorus is over, you actually kick your feet in delight, grinning at him. You kiss his nose, scoot your body as close to him as possible, then settle back into the mattress and pull his arm to rest over your stomach.

The two of you talk, sing, and continue to hold each other for a while. A string of two or three softer songs play, and you and up drifting into sleep, late afternoon sun pouring over both of you, its warmth too much for you to ignore after the physically and emotionally exhausting afternoon. He watches the rise and fall of your chest, his hand over your heart, no thought for time. He doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to take his eyes off you. How did he survive without you for all those weeks?

A flare of light across the room pulls his focus though. It’s a repetitive flashing coming through the window to the wall.

Morse code. His blissful mood evaporates.

C-O-M-E  O-U-T-S-I-D-E

The other alpha is out there, summoning him.

He identifies which window the light is being directed into, then pads over, and releases the drape to cover the window, pulls it back, covers it again, and then secures it back in its open state. The other alpha will know he’s received the message.

Bucky has referred to him as the other alpha for so long now, but he’s ultimately about to discover who this man is. You say he’s no longer The Captain Hydra that he was, but not yet his Steve either.

He doesn’t hurry getting dressed. The other alpha isn’t going anywhere. He’s waited this long. He can continue to wait.

Bucky takes a long look at you from across the room before he leaves.

He’s relatively sure he will come back to you. There’s only one outcome that will keep him away, and now that he knows the potential danger, he won’t let this man ambush him ever again.

Bucky stalks as carefully to the tree line where the signal had come from as he had when he’d first approached the little house. He can smell the other alpha on the breeze that rustles through the trees. He tracks him in a kilometer or so – not in the direction Bucky had left his vehicle, but that works fine for him because if he needs to cut and run, he’ll be able to get to you in the house and then continue on to get to the getaway without having to double back and without the other alpha being able to cut off the route.

Bucky will think through every possible scenario as each moment of this unfolds.

His brain got him here.

His brain can get him out.

He will keep you safe.

The scent he’s known nearly his whole life grows stronger, and when he reaches a small pocket of the forest devoid of trees – not quite large enough to be called a clearing – instead of slipping silently out of the shadows, the other alpha steps out unabashedly to meet him.

“What took you so long, Buck?” he has the gall to ask, his voice barely covering notes of anger.

Bucky roars and hurls himself at the man standing before him, taking him to the ground easily, and they scramble against each other. They’re so closely matched in skill, prowess, and power, and the energy they’re both exuding is raw, primal, and angry. Bucky is incredulous that the other man is angry with him.

His own rage lands him a punch. He takes a blow to the ribs, and the other alpha gets a hand on the collar of his shirt, resulting in a tear, but it allows Bucky to grab his wrist, twist him around harshly, and pin the arm behind his back as he decisively thumps him into the ground, pinning him there.

The man beneath him only makes two attempts to struggle and shift out from under his hold, but then he sighs and sags into the tall grass they’ve been tussling in.

Is he feinting?

Bucky honestly doesn’t know.

“Who am I talking to?” he asks – the same line of inquiry Steve used on him in an abandoned warehouse outside of Berlin.

He knows it, letting out a guffaw beneath him. “I’m not him anymore.”

“Not who?”

“I’m no longer their Captain Hydra,” he pauses before adding, “but I’m not the kid from Brooklyn either.”

Bucky knows they’re not going to stay like this forever, and he needs to see this man’s face and look into his eyes if he’s going to be able to sort out any of this, so as swiftly as he can, he releases the alpha, pushes himself up, and takes a wary stance a few meters away.

Steve remains on the ground, but rolls over and sits up, planting his feet on the ground, and leaning forward to rest his elbows on his knees. It’s almost a casual.

Bucky will have the advantage of already being up on his feet if the man before him tries anything.

Bucky needs to know how to read whoever this is, so he decides to go with a different line of questioning – things that are more cut and dry.

“When you left the base in Geneva, there were two Hydra security with you. You stopped over a bridge two hours into your journey, and they weren’t with you when you switched vehicles in Albstadt. Who were they, and why the elaborate ruse only to drop them in a river so quickly?”

Rather than being surprised, it seemed he was satisfied that Bucky knew this much about what had played out. “Alright, we can start there. Leaving under the initial guise of a mission on security footage was supposed to be helpful when they started looking for me.”

“And why move the records of their transfer files to other facilities with two others?”

“I’m glad you picked up on that, too. Buying more time for some missing personnel before it was suspect and they figured out they really didn’t know where they were.”

“And why them?”

“Arbitrary.”

“Bullshit. You’ve gone on solo missions as Captain Hydra and you didn’t buy enough extra time by leaving with a two-man team to make it worth the set up only to drop them in the river without a reason.”

Steve’s brows knit together, and he chewed on the inside of his cheek for a moment before answering. “One was arbitrary. He just happened to be the roommate of my target. The one I was after? He was part of the extraction team who took our omega out of Turin. Specifically, he’s the one who handled her so roughly she had bruises from his casual brute strength. I watched the footage to figure out who hurt her.”

Bucky cocked his head and studied the man before him.

“I had only been an alpha to her for a month and I was willing to kill someone who harmed her. What are you going to do to me, Buck?”

Bucky turned and paced way, running his hands through his hair. He didn’t want to show this much unrest in front of the other alpha, but he was thinking and feeling so much, trying to read and decipher too many pieces.

He lets out a long exhale and just speaks the truth. He can’t try and take any other angle. “I haven’t decided yet.”

Before all of this, if there had ever been a situation in which Bucky would have needed to trust someone else to keep you safe, Steve would have been his immediate answer.

Steve waits silently.

There are so many questions he wants answers to, and so he starts asking them. The answers don’t shock him, and he can see that even when Steve doesn’t tell him the full truth, it’s a cautious guarding of information, but he detects no lies in any of it. That Steve has some guards up also seems tenuous, possibly temporary, like if he can only ask the right question, the tide will turn.

But it couldn’t be that simple with Steve, could it?

And when did he start to think of him as Steve again?

Bucky deals out one of the questions he’s had the longest, since the very beginning of this. “What you said that night in Wakanda – you did all of this to draw me out. Why?”

Steve lets it hang in the air for a moment, but Bucky can see this is a crux for this conversation with him, too.

“I can’t explain everything that went into that plan – I don’t know if the machine of Captain Hydra was fully in control or if part of the old me was trying to grasp at you as a lifeline, but as the weeks wore on, the strategist in me knew he needed either the Soldat to join him or his best friend to save him.”

Those words sink into Bucky, and he can understand that explanation as no one else in this world can.

“What took you so long?” Steve asks again, but this time it’s tinged only with angst, not anger.

The accusation in it unsettles Bucky.

He’s still not sure how to address the question, but he starts with, “The Soldat is gone. The Winter Soldier? Not who I needed to be to get here either.”

Steve pushes up from the ground but maintains the distance Bucky put between them. “Who are you now then?”

Bucky narrows his eyes. “Depends on who’s standing in front of me.”

Steve looks off into the trees for a moment – in the direction of the cottage.

Bucky’s instincts have failed him less than a handful of times.

They’re telling him now that’s where to start, even though he’s not sure exactly where it will end. “I’ve seen a lot of versions of you – my childhood best friend, the punk who couldn’t stay out of trouble, the stars and stripes symbol, Captain America, the target who wouldn’t let me assassinate him and then refused to finish me off in the hellicarrier, the Cap who went against the Accords, Nomad in exile – but always Steve. You’ll never be who you were before – I never was. Doesn’t mean you’re irredeemable.”

Steve scoffs. “It’s not that easy.”

Bucky gives a wry laugh and shakes his head. “I more than know that. But you’re shades of all those men right now in front of me. She sees it, too.”

“God, she…” Steve shakes his head, puts one hand on his hip, and scrubs over his face with the other.

“If you can be you, if you can be Steve, she will have you.” He’s not sure where the words came from, but he himself believes them as he says them.

“I don’t know if I can be.”

“Do you want to be?”

Steve doesn’t answer immediately. Bucky can see him sincerely work over the question in his mind. It’s a simple inquiry, but one that will define everything, and Bucky knows he will be completely behind whatever answer he gives because that is the core of who this man is and always has been – fully committed to his convictions.

When Steve says, “Yes,” Bucky can hear the heaviness in his voice. Bucky nods.

“What about you?” Steve asks.

Bucky shifts his weight from one foot to the other as he digs back into himself and where his head, his heart, and his gut now sit with all of this. But the answer is clear enough. “Till the end of the line,” he answers.

“Even after I–“

“Stop,” Bucky cuts him off. “I’ve had little more to think about over the last six weeks than us – all of us. And it felt like my heart started beating again when I found her, but you… Before this I never fully understood why you fought so hard to get through to me when I was trying to kill you in DC all those years ago, why you searched for me for years, why you were a goddamn pain in the ass who wouldn’t abandon me in Berlin and believed in me without question, but now I get it. We are in each other’s bones.”

He doesn’t move, but Bucky sees the look change in Steve’s eyes, and he can practically feel the air alter between them. They’ve always had an acute awareness of each other, and Bucky can feel the tentative return of it, like déjà vu even though he’s still figuring out who this Steve is or who he will be.

“When did you start giving Captain America speeches?” Steve finally asks.

Bucky shrugs. “One of us had to do it.”

“What now then?”

Bucky has sketched out many scenarios for how things play out from here, but every stage of this, every new revelation shifts the direction they’re heading. Even in the last two minutes things have significantly shifted again.

Bucky licks his lips and stares at Steve for another beat before he decides to head down a path he hopes is the right one. “You’re always a man with a plan, so you tell me. Tell me where this started, when it changed, where you think it ends. I figured out a lot, I have theories, and I still have questions.”

“We went to Italy to investigate a lead that came up on our radar. We thought it was an innocuous enough whisper about a couple of Hydra scientists. And don’t,“ Steve pauses to pointedly look at him because Bucky was already opening his mouth to argue. “I already know you’re going to say we should have involved you, I thought of it every day they were holding us captive. I thought it the second I heard their boots. It was a week after you left for Wakanda, and Sam–“

He pauses again, and his shoulders fall just a fraction.

“Sam and I weren’t gonna bother you.”

“She told me about Sam,” Bucky says.

Steve closes his eyes for a moment, pressing his lips together. “I told her enough about what happened, but I didn’t tell her everything.” He opens his eyes and meets Bucky’s again. His face is truly haunted, and Bucky nods, his own chest tight. He knows more than enough about that. He had still had to face the demons of his past, but when he was ready, and he had fought to find his way to do that. Steve would find a way, but it would take time, and not likely be the same journey.

“After they killed Sam, they got a raw version of me, shut down, and they went to work conditioning me, shaping me into Captain Hydra. I was too lost to fight anything. I couldn’t save him. I failed us. I didn’t want to be me. It was easy too easy for them to get the version of me they wanted when I was like that.”

There’s a full shift in how Steve lays everything out – and as he shares, Bucky knows it’s still not everything, but he can feel that it’s everything Steve can bear to tell him.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

Steve tilts his head and looks off into the forest. “It was and it wasn’t. It will always haunt me.”

“It will, but less and less.”

Bucky walks to the edge of the small clearing and sits on a fallen log. Steve follows him.

“When I was trying to find you after DC and taking down S.H.I.E.L.D. I read everything they had on record about you, how they conditioned you. They used some but not all the same methods on me.”

“I couldn’t find anything on you, and I found more than enough other hidden monstrosities in their networks these past weeks.”

“I think they got smarter after we were hunting them after exposing them – they couldn’t keep everything off the databases, but they have projects now that they keep paper-only, small teams. There was the team that captured us, but after they put us in a holding cell, we were transferred. From that point through the torture, the breaking point, and the conditioning I only saw four faces – three scientists and one officer who became my liaison. When they sent or let me out into the field, I never went with a team of more than four of their men, always the same four. Two of them I ended at that bridge.”

Bucky nods.

Already his mind is calculating – this means they could potentially contain and eliminate all of the people who knew any specifics about Captain Hydra.

“One of the scientists was killed when you stormed the facility in Turin.”

Bucky raises his brows. Even better.

Steve goes on to tell him about how he was sent on a few missions to test his loyalty before he was given the task to bring back the Soldat.

“I didn’t have a chair, and they were very adamant that my point person was my liaison and not a handler, they gave me a fair amount of autonomy. They didn’t want me to drag you in. They wanted you to join me. I think they felt like an asset who had to be controlled could break free as they saw with you the first time around, and this time they wanted operatives who weren’t giving controlled compliance, but allegiance instead.”

Bucky grunted. “A tether rather than a leash.”

“Yeah.”

“But you knew who I was tethered to.”

Steve’s head drops. “Yeah.”

“And you knew I’d be the most vulnerable and off my guard in Wakanda.”

“I did.”

Bucky lets him sit with that discomfort.

Bucky has replayed that night in his mind so many times.

“But your plan changed that night. I didn’t register it in the moment, but everything about you changed the moment you bit into her neck to claim her.”

Steve doesn’t deny it.

“Before you sunk your teeth into her, you were taunting me, dangling her like something to be smashed and discarded, you didn’t even know if it would work, and I think part of you thought it might even kill her.”

Bucky sees Steve’s jaw tick.

“You were in no way prepared for how a bond would change you fundamentally as an alpha.”

“Obviously it didn’t flip a switch immediately, but yes, it altered what I intended to do,” Steve admits.

He goes on to explain some of the things that happened in Turin – missions he went on, how things had developed with you, the clothes, and the books.

“The books were for her?” Bucky breathes. “I saw security footage of you in the bookshop.”

“I wasn’t worried about exposing myself because you were already taking longer than I wanted you to take, but when you didn’t access any of the Avenger networks, bases, or safehouses, I expected you were underground and untraceably hunting for us.”

“What else did you expect?”

“I wanted you to get foolish in your desperation and tip your hand.”

“Not with her on the line.”

“No.” Steve narrows his eyes. “You never left Turin once you showed up on our radar, did you?”

Bucky scoffs. “Course I didn’t.”

Steve nods. “A ploy to see all the defenses of the base.”

“But you left dangerously close to her heat,” Bucky shoots, the disapproving accusation blatant in his tone.

“And that’s when you made your unsuccessful move to get her back. If you’d killed everyone you’d encountered from the beginning, you probably would have made it to her in time.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

“No, I know you do.” Steve sighs. “You know, back in 1945, I thought you were dead when you fell off that train.”

Bucky doesn’t interrupt. He knew Steve knew he knew this. They’d touched on it before. But clearly there was more and a reason for Steve to bring it up again now.

“The thing is, when they found you, I know Zola did what he did to you because of me, your tie to me. When they took me and Sam, they tortured him and killed him because of me, again. You were both people I cared about, and you were hurt for it. I was not going to let it happen to her. The sense of responsibility I felt for her had already been growing and evolving, but when I felt that surge of adrenaline and fear through the bond when you attacked the base and they moved her? It had been a slow melting of ice, what was developing there, but that shattered the ice. When I found out they had moved her, I kept my personal weakness guarded, and I knew I would do everything I could to get her out of their web and keep her safe.”

At this admission, Bucky is quiet. So is Steve. Bucky knows Steve is letting him think. There’s so much to consider there – the guilt Steve has still carried for him for years, the fresh hell of Sam, and the fervent determination to keep you from being another victim by association.

He could think over this for much longer, but there are more pieces he still needs context for, so next Bucky asks, “Why did you leave the Geneva facility during her heat?”

“Best cover for time – alphas are given room to take care of their needs during rut or care for omegas if they’re bonded during their omega’s heat.”

It verifies what Bucky had theorized himself.

“But it’s been eight days since you came here.”

“Yeah,” Steve nods.

“And you’ve just…been here.”

“Yeah.”

This is the piece Bucky has been suspicious of now.

“Explain.”

“When I took her to Turin, yes, it was a trap to lure you. When I brought her here, it was to wait for you to find us. I couldn’t find you when you went underground before, and I couldn’t find you this time, and if I tried too hard, I didn’t want to risk Hydra finding us, but I knew if we stayd in one place and I focused on keeping us hidden from Hydra, you could find us.”

Bucky furrows his brow, frowning.

“Simple as that?”

“Simple as that,” Steve confirms.

Bucky studies him for another quiet few seconds, then says, “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

“So, what now?”

“Her,” Bucky replies simply. “We’ve still got a lot of shit to figure out, but we’ve got to do it with her.”

↠ Masterlist | Aspen's Ask Box | Field Guide to the Forest

Still with me? This was a lot. I hope I've answered some of your questions, and there are some more that have been brought up, but... we're here. We're this far.

This is the single longest story/chapter I've ever published. You can see where I've left off, and there's clearly more story, but Bucky reuniting with his omega and with Steve were the primary objectives, and both of those elements I didn't want to cheat or shorten as they began to unfold. I hope they've truly done justice to these characters and relationships, and we'll see how they can possibly move forward together in the conclusion. These three still have big things ahead.

read more from the Dark Forest Fest

[some-kindofgnome]

Do u have any fic recs? Nsfw or sfw?

hi anon! sorry it took me so long to get back to this, I’ve been sitting on it for a while as I compiled a list of my favourites for you! 

These are all nsfw to varying degrees, but many of them have lots of delicious plot and romance alongside the smut! (those are my favourite kind of stories, so I’m drawn mostly to that kind of writing) And they're all x reader, just in case that was unclear!

Some of these fics do contain dubcon elements and other darker themes, so please heed the warnings and proceed with caution!

Additionally, these are all BNHA. But if you have any jjk or haikyuu recs that have the same overarching tone or genre, please send them my way!

For your convenience, I’ve sorted them by character below: 

Katsuki Bakugou

surrender (whenever you're ready) by @ofmermaidstories : if you haven't read this one yet, you must. it's absolutely transcendent. it made me weep. there is an essay sitting in my notes app that i'll pluck up the courage to post in mermaid's comment section one day but- BIG FEELS.

Opposites Attract by @mindninjax : This is an INCREDIBLE soulmate/college AU that Marquie wrote for a Secret Santa exchange because she is an absolute angel. It's sweet and sexy and so, so well-written. Marquie does the college AU thing so well. I just wanted to live inside this story.

Smart Mouth by @dymphnasprose : This story is boiling lava, hot-pocket-filling-fresh-out-of-the-microwave hot. Bakugou is your next door neighbour with a SERIOUSLY bad attitude and you've got the eponymous smart mouth that knocks him on his ass. The banter in this fic and the dynamic is ADDICTING and the smut will make you throb.

how to set fires by @hawnks : This is another really gorgeous slow build of tender affection and intimate fondness. I really liked the way that Mint captures Katsuki in this. The imagery in this is really soft and special and the romance is sweet but subtle.

Shouto Todoroki

Siberia by @hoe-doroki : Another one that you NEED to check out, even if you've never felt so much as a tingle for Shouto before. Beta-ing this story for Ana was the best thing that ever happened to me. She makes you fall in love with Shou through the eyes of a reader that you also want to fall in love with. It's an incredible ride and you will love every moment.

Izuku Midoriya

one single thread of gold tied me to you by @spacelabrathor : This is A/B/O like I've never read it before. Cee toes the line between soft alpha!deku and ALPHA alpha!deku with devastating precision and the resulting story will sweep you off your feet. It is a masterclass in sexual tension and sweet pining and again, even if you've never spared Deku a single thought, you need to read this one.

Sunlight by @hoe-doroki : This is a quick little read that captures some sweet post-nap loving with an older-coded husband!deku. Ana's crafted an incredibly vivid scene here and I've re-read this story sO many times because it's such a lovely little world. It captures peace and soft love and I am in love.

Hanta Sero

Hero Santa by @lord-explosion-baku : This is the fic that made me fall for Sero. I really love the way he's captured in this as the sweet, funny and nurturing best-friend-turned-lover. There are lots of sweet moments in this and some heartwarming, goofy, giggly sex that turns me to mush every time i read it. If you read this, you'll fall for him too- guaranteed.

Words on Glass by @whats-her-quirk : This is a VERY sexy quarantine roommate fic with some really lovely moments of tension and desire. All culminating in some steamTASTIC shower sex. Sero is absolutely irresistible in this fic. And the roommates trope will absolutely never get old, especially with somebody like him.

Denki Kaminari 

Finish Line by @whats-her-quirk : This is another one of my favourite college AUs! Denki stars as your sexually-experienced but tender-as-hell best friend who finds out that you've never had an orgasm before. The friends-to-lovers softness in this is supplemented by some iNCREDIBLY sexy smut. another fic that you should read, even if you've never crushed on Denki before.

Keigo Takami

What's Said Is Said by @shadowworks *dubcon : This is a REALLY incredible Fantasy AU that features Fae!Hawks, which is a great characterization for him. The imagery in this story is out of this world- it's extremely rich and evocative. There's an eerie undertone to the entire story that is absolutely thrilling and very sexy.

Priorities by @keilemlucent : This was one of the first stories of Salem's I ever read. And even though it doesn't often show I am a SUCKER for angst. This story does a really incredible job of illustrating some of the tougher elements of a relationship with a pro like Keigo, but also walks you through a gentle (and tender, loving, sexy) solution afterward.

Dabi

Compulsion by @shadowworks *dubcon : This is one of my favourite Dabi stories out there. It's a black comedy/thriller mafia au that takes place on a chilling winter evening in the city. Dabi's characterization in this is spot on and totally irresistible. Every time he's even mentioned my heart flutters a little. And there are some guest appearances from some of your other favourites as well. This story is part one out of a series to come and I can't wait to read the rest!

[blarrghe]

Ooooh. For the ask game: The idea that got you to All Hail West Thedas or Twelve Nights?

funny you should pick those! Both of those fics were planned out in more or less one go, so it's a little harder to say which scene was their raison d'etre.

For Twelve Nights, I spontaneously wrote out the plot of a stereotypical Hallmark movie (only make it Pavellan) on my phone one day on a whim. It was very brief and silly, but I think it was the stereotypical "turning point" of that kind of film that hooked me into actually writing it. You know, the "BusinessMan McMoneybanks' business is a threat to LocalArtsit OutdoorsyGuy's small community!" of it all. The scene that really solidified first, and had the fullest pre-planned notes (literally the entire conversation word for word was written in my notes app I just had to fill in the scenery), was this one:

“I don’t want your help,” he said, and as he said it Dorian’s face fell into a frown, and another one of Taren’s agitated thoughts settled into place, “or your money.”

But Dorian kept his arm, and kept his eyes in their uneasy connection with his own; grey storm clouds of fear and longing pulling his heart into faster beats.

“Taren, please.”

He snapped his own eyes away, pulled back his arm with deliberate purpose. “What?” 

Dorian looked at first like he had a whole speech to give, but then he swallowed, the lump in his throat bobbing up and down before he opened his mouth, and all that came forth was a hoarse, quiet stutter. “I — I’m sorry.” 

Taren sighed, a vice around his heart, and whether it was because he was too tired to think or too full of thoughts to be reserved, it wasn’t clear, but he opened his mouth and out they came: the words to begin a conversation he wasn’t at all ready to have. 

“I care about you, Dorian.” His voice came out now with a sudden clarity, and from there it was really all over. He’d be honest, and he’d say everything, whether it was wise to or not. Dorian flinched with the confession, and Taren tried to keep from watching what was sure to be a trembling avalanche of guilt again in his eyes. “You might be the most interesting person I’ve ever met. You’re charming, you’re impossibly smart, and passionate, and I” — he shook his head — “I like you.” The word sounded juvenile and insufficient for what he felt: impossibly connected; fate-twined and breathless. His face full of smiles he couldn’t help every time Dorian’s glance fell on him, besieged by the knowledge that he’d risk his stupid heart over him from the moment he’d complained his way into his life. Like one of a pair of blushing pilgrims, and in the wrong play; "too much, probably.” he said.

Dorian reached for his arm again, and this time he didn’t draw back.

“But you’re so obviously unhappy, uncomfortable in whatever life it is that you have, and I think you deserve better.” Taren risked a glance up into his eyes, and found them quivering, a glint of distress mixed with that heady pull of want, “I believe that you're sorry, that you mean well, I just wish you had told me.” 

And that was that: all he had to say. He watched Dorian register the words and sigh, shaking his head as he took a turn now in tearing his eyes away. 

“I can't have better.” Dorian breathed bitterly, “I didn't tell you because, I don't know, because you’re right. I hate this life, and I hate that everything in it is about my father and his company. Even if fighting from the inside is the best thing I could do with my life, it somehow never feels like it. And I have such a history of just being that poor little rich boy, but…” It was more from him than Taren had expected to hear. He watched Dorian take a deep breath, and whether it was due to that pull on his heart or Dorian’s grip on his arm he couldn’t say, but he stepped closer. “With you I'm not. I'm just me, and you're so real and I've never had anything like this and I just wanted it to be mine.” Dorian continued, so close to him that Taren could fall, if he let himself, just collapse right there into the dark sea of longing waiting for him in Dorian’s eyes. “For just — fuck — for just twelve fucking nights.” 

Dorian took another deep breath, and then both of them fell — and it was still unclear who had the pull on who —  into a long, deep kiss. It filled him; shook his soul and cleared his mind and warmed up every ache left by the fight in the snow and the night on a cold bench in a cell. He closed his eyes and sank into it, Dorian’s hands firm at his sides the only thing keeping him standing. It felt like it might never end, like he might just keep falling into him forever.

But it did, and he pulled back and looked once again into Dorian’s lonely eyes, and then away. “I’m not your fantasy, Dorian.” He whispered. Twelve fucking nights, he’d said. Just something to have for the sake of having had it, a taste of freedom to remind him that somewhere in the world, things were still real. “I don’t want that.” 

(sorry that was long, I was gonna format it somehow but tumblr sucks)

For AHWT, similar thing. I had a couple conversations with @gaysolavellan where we came up with some hilarious ideas and then I basically plotted the whole thing out point-form in one go. The things I really wanted to include and looked forward to writing most were 1) All of the Satinalia chapter, especially Dorian Finding Out, and 2) Ehsaan feeds a baby goat.

[crowned-ladybug]

1, 6 (ik you do but I'm very curious on the process), 9, and 21 for the writers asks! ♡

As typical it's taking me ages to actually get to these I'm sorry!!!! Thank you for the ask tho anyway <3

1) Who is your favorite character to write for and is this the character you find easiest to write for?

With all the characters over the years this is a tough one to pick out but proooobably Benrey still. He's got very fun internal monologue in my hands and you can fuck around a Lot writing him, and that does in fact also make him Easy. He's always come pretty naturally to me which explains a thing or two about my HLVRAI fics i'd say sbhdcbhdcbs

(Recent honorable mention to Sam bc he's also been proving surprisingly fun and then Dima destroyed me by saying his POV is the closest to how i talk on discord out of all the characters they've read me write so far)

6) Do you outline your fics? If so, how?

I start with the notepad app and trying to do a relatively basic lineup of just what scenes are gonna happen, so that I can have the pacing and order of things down. I hardly ever go in with a full lineup of scenes/plot already laid out in my brain, so this is where the fic is first actually born

This works half the time, giving me about a sentence for a whole scene, and then other times i end up outlining an entire scene on the spot

Then comes copying the thing over into an actual document that isn't fuckin exhausting to look at and thus the second pass of rounding out the scenes I haven't accidentally outlined well enough already

My outlines have been getting more detailed lately, so here's to believing in ghosts in specific had a Lot of bits near the end where i was just copying notes over almost word for word bc i had entire paragraphs laid out already. Other times stuff gets left at "and then they talk about [topic]" level of detail until i get to it and have to suffer

A lot of fleshing out also happens on the fly while I'm writing a completely different scene or not writing at all and then have to tab back over to the outline and add like two sentences that i cannot allow myself to forget

It's hard to pick a good example without drowning this post but this was the outline for the first scene of poison in the ashes, for comparison's sake

(I very rarely use any dialogue tags at all when outlining unless they're Significant already. I either just know who's talking anyway or if there could be any doubt, I use a chat format instead)

9) Do you visualize scenes in your head before you write them? (Can you picture the setting, character body language etc)

YES

I am a Very visual person so a Lot of the times I'm trying to put entire movie scenes onto paper and even when that's not so painfully the case, I always have the visual counterpart in my brain. Things are always pictured. Hanging onto very Very specific line deliveries which i cannot convey in text is what's less often tho, and thus sadder to forever only be in my brain, unable to hand to anyone

(I've gotten compliments on specific scenes feeling movie-like before and every time it's such huge thing to hear, that the image not only got onto the paper but also into someone else's head)

21) Writers choice - pick any of these questions that you want to answer.

14) What is something you wrote in a fic that you are hoping readers picked up on but you don't know if they did? And/or, what is something that you were excited that readers did pick up on?

There's always stuff and hardly any confirmation one way or another, however very specific example from recently: the way the first collapse scene in poison in the ashes is arranged was very much a callback to the concussion scene in and what comes tomorrow that I never expected to be picked up on and then Dima screamed at me about it so much :D

Also from poison in the ashes: when in one scene they talk about bad tea, and Rafe tells Sam to just tell him to make some next time, and then the next day Rafe is in fact the one making the tea while Sam loiters. Very on purpose. Of all the things Sam has to fill Rafe in on every morning he's decided to include the tea

[brookbee]

I’m not sure if what I do counts as pantsing or vaguely outlining, but I tend to write down whatever I happen to think of (often dialogue, or just turns of phrase that I think would sound neat, sometimes longer scenes). These all go in my notes app for a long time until there’s enough there to piece together some semblance of a plot structure.

For example, one of the first notes I wrote for one story was:

This interaction didn’t even happen in the story, but it gave me something to build on because I knew what the general feeling of the story would be. And sometimes these first notes are a lot longer. Sometimes they’re entirely fleshed out scenes. It depends what details have come to my head that I got to write down immediately.

After that I fill in the gaps, I don’t worry about if it flows seamlessly at this point, but I’ll write what transition scenes I think could go in between. This is around the point when I feel comfortable writing down the major beats in the story, which might look something like this:

(And even after this outline some of the story details still changed a little bit).

I find that this process works really well for me because it lets me focus on the writing instead of worrying about creating a perfectly crafted plot, which I’ve gotten stuck on when I’ve tried to use firm outlines in the past.

It also means I can build upon specific ideas all throughout the story at once, because I know where it’s going to go and I have a good idea of what the major emotional beats will be (since those tend to come to me first, and thus get written down first). Like for example if I know there’s a conversation happening towards the end about grief, then I’ll usually add a couple more conversations earlier in the story to establish that this is a Thing that’s going to be talked about (and/or have the characters’ feelings develop on the subject over the course of the story).

I think this way of working is kind of similar to drawing in a way. As it starts with a vague sketch and bare bones structure and the fine tuning happens as I gradually define what the story is really about.

writers, PLEASE reblog this with your outlining styles. i want to pick your brains, reveal to me those creative techniques i beg.

[melatovnik]

hi, can u rec other sbwy fics?

yes i most certainly can!

below under the cut is a selection of very good sbwy (and sgwy) fics, i.e., wangxian fics where wwx experiences compulsory heterosexuality. by no means is it a comprehensive list of all the excellent fics of this genre, because i'm a super slow reader and simply haven't gotten to them all yet, but these are just the ones i've read and enjoyed so far. of course, mind all tags/content warnings etc you know what's up

~ the Straight Boy Wei Ying universe series by raitala | rated E | 36K words total | i know this ask was prompted by my earlier rec of this series but i'll include it here anyway. a very charming wonderful story, with extremely massively hot sex scenes

Sit down next to me | 7K words

Lan Zhan has been in love with his tragically straight best friend Wei Ying forever. So what if some girl says Wei Ying is a bad kisser? Lan Zhan has to prove to Wei Ying that this is incorrect. Because Lan Zhan is a good friend. He out does himself.

If I hadn't seen such riches | 29K words

Sequel to "Sit down next to me" - if you haven't read this all you need to know is that Wei Ying thinks he is straight. He just really likes his best friend Lan Zhan. Who is incidentally a really great kisser. Who also made him come in his pants one time. Who also has a *really* big dick, which Wei Ying sucked one time, but, like, in an experimental way, not in a gay way. They are just really good friends, right? Lan Zhan is the best. Lan Zhan is crying inside.

~ Keep Up by mimilamp | rated E | 27K words | i actually just read this one today and wwhfoohgkhdghihHHHHHHhghhhhhhgh 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 INSTANT FAVE. MUST READ.

“She was going to kiss me,” Wei Ying says, muffled, into his hands.

Lan Zhan makes sure he keeps his breaths even. “Hm,” he says. Wei Ying looks up at him, wild: a little tipsy, perhaps. Confused, in a panic. His mouth is red like he’s been kissed—he hasn’t. He’s a lip biter, has a habit of picking at his dry lips, the winter sores at the corner of his mouth. It drives Lan Zhan to madness. He dreams of Wei Ying’s puffy mouth, often, sometimes with the real Wei Ying in a sleeping bag on the floor next to his bed. On mornings like those he wakes up in a cloud of embarrassment—hobbling to the bathroom at dawn, running a loud shower to hide the sounds. Wei Ying sleeps on.

“How do I—” Wei Ying starts, stops. He then lets out a single laugh, another. He says: “Oh my god. How do I kiss? Lan Zhan, how do I kiss?”

*

Or: Wei Ying has a girlfriend now. Wei Ying doesn't want his best friend to lag behind.

~ A Brilliant Idea by FrameofMind | rated E | 25K words | good for you wei ying

The one where Wei Ying (straight) and Lan Zhan (gay) make a shared tinder account to save money, because Wei Ying has brilliant ideas.

(Wei Ying has terrible ideas.)

~ worth it for the feeling by occultings | rated E | 8K words | they're both girls in this one! "straight" girl wei ying 🥰

“I’ve never gotten off with another person,” Wei Ying says that night, apropos of nothing.

~ ready to run by detectorist | rated E | 21K words | really really enjoyed the plot and atmosphere and everything in this story

“You should make a Tinder account for campaigning,” Nie Huaisang says.

Wei Ying chokes out, “What?”

“Sounds like an absolutely terrible idea,” Jiang Cheng says flatly.

“No, it’s a great idea!” Nie Huaisang insists. “You just swipe right on everyone and then send them a message about how they should vote for you. You’re hot, Wei Ying! People will definitely match with you and then you can swoop in and hit them with the politics!”

“I don’t even have Tinder,” Wei Ying protests. He’d downloaded the app in first year but had quickly deleted it after a girl responded to his message of wanna get a drink with yeah sure, what time?

“That can be easily fixed,” Nie Huaisang says.

—

Wei Ying downloads Tinder to help him campaign for his student union election. He gets a little more than he bargained for.

~ drop the game by martyrsdaughter | rated E | 28K words | cheerleader wwx + jock lwj + fake dating + practice kissing + insane sexual tension = me, flattened like a cartoon character after getting run over by a truck

Wei Ying grabs a pen from Lan Zhan’s desk, curling his legs into a lotus pose under the arms of the chair so he can easily spread the journal out across his lap. Even upside down, Lan Zhan can read his large, messy characters scrawled across the top: Lan Zhan + Wei Ying’s Rules for Dating.

Perhaps this was a bad idea.

~ big hands (i know you're the one) by martyrsdaughter | rated E | 8K words | WHOOF 🥵

“Not a big talker, hm?” Wei Ying tilts his head to one side. “That’s okay, I’ve been told I’m a good enough conversationalist for three. My tongue is multi-talented and—”

He has just enough time to feel her palm on the back of his neck and think, oh, her hands are so big, before his words are being stolen into her mouth.

~ Boy Trouble, We've Got Double by saltyfeathers | rated E | 60K words | LAN ZHAN???? BETHROTHED???? NOT TO WEI YING??????? it's less likely than you think! canonverse casefic, featuring tons of pining and wwx taking outrageous liberties with lwj's person, as is his right

Lan Zhan stands there in his immaculate, cloud-patterned Lan robes, watching him calmly, one fist tucked up against his back. “I am betrothed.”

Wei Wuxian blinks. “Are you…” He tries to laugh. Again, it sounds inhuman. “Is this about last night? Are you mad at me? I only remember some of it, Lan Zhan. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable. I’m sure whatever I did I was just—” He gestures uselessly. He remembers being warm in Lan Zhan’s lap. He remembers fitting snugly in Lan Zhan’s lap. Wrapping his arms around Lan Zhan’s neck. Nosing at his jaw. “…playing around.”

“This has nothing to do with you, Wei Wuxian.”

~ cherry ass wei ying (Chapter 3 of threadfic) by saltyfeathers | rated E

wei ying is so straight he sucks lan zhan's fingers about it.

~ all(e)y (Chapter 11 of threadfic) by saltyfeathers | rated E

prompt fill on twitter for straight boy wei ying + fake dating that ended up being too long for twitter so now it lives here in stupid silly shame. sorry the fake dating is a complete flyover state in this. to make up for it, i wrote out an entire blowjob for some reason.

~ lan zhan has fallen in fuck-love with the straight toad boy (Chapter 14 of threadfic) by saltyfeathers | rated M | there is no chapter summary provided by the author. the title says it all, really

~ wei wuxian loves mysteries! (Chapter 15 of threadfic) by saltyfeathers | rated G | a canonverse character exploration of wwx, set pre-CR (before wangxian first meet). soooo good

~ the mall that has it all by saltyfeathers | rated E | 8K words | 😳 wrow

She introduced herself in the food court, breathless after sprinting across it in Lan Zhan’s direction and vaulting over a table only to crash into the seat across from her, ask, “Can I have a sip?”, spring forward with both elbows on the table to wrap her burgundy lips around Lan Zhan’s smoothie straw, wrinkle her nose, and say, “What is that, kale? Not really my thing, as like, a mall goth. Oh!” A pleased, chaotic exhale. “My name’s Wei Ying.”

Lan Zhan said, after taking a moment to fully process the last forty-five seconds, “What?”

or;

mall goth au

~ I Wish You Would by brooklinegirl | rated E | 52K words | lan zhan fucks guys, wei ying pines, and lan zhan also pines

Lan Zhan takes a breath. His hands are in fists on his thighs. He stares down at them hopelessly, then carefully unclenches them, one finger at a time, before taking another breath and reaching for his lukewarm tea. He'll go out, tomorrow. Maybe in the late afternoon. Something quick. Something easy. He'll text his brother first, the short note of when he should be home, so he'll know to track him. He'll be fine, just like he said.

~ all that and more by Euphorion | rated E | 20K words | hot hot hot! and a classic

Wei Wuxian locks his phone and puts it down, blinks at his ceiling, and picks it up again. The pictures are still there.

His first thought is that Lan Zhan meant them for someone else. That he just woke up at—he checks the timestamp—6:30 am on a Sunday and decided to go absolute full nuclear seduction option on some poor boy he met on Grindr, who would now be missing out on the best thing to ever happen to him because Wei Wuxian had a bad habit of distracting—of—oh.

Pieces of last night start to resurface and paste themselves together in his head. He winces.

~ dreaming and getting a glimmer by verseau | rated E | 27K words | THE comphet gloryhole fic

Wei Ying discovers himself.

~ wanna feel a different kinda tension by verseau | rated E | 10K words | THE comphet watching-porn-together-and-also-wwx-jerks-lwj-off-with-his-own-freshly-used-fleshlight fic

Four times Lan Zhan walks in on his roommate masturbating.

that's all for now! happy october!

[vampire-himbos-of-santa-perdita]

#showyourprocess tag game!

Rules: When your work is tagged, show the process of its creation from planning to posting, then tag 5 people. Use the tag #showyourprocess so we can find yours!

Full disclosure, I’m not directly tagging anyone, but if you see this post and think it’s cool, consider yourself tagged!

Thanks so much @mr-writes for the tag! This one sounds super fun!

Inspiration: It’s no secret that Heaven’s Tiny Daggers is my My Chemical Romance novel... It didn’t really start out that way though. I jokingly started rumbling about a girl punk novel after watching Mad Max: Fury Road and seeing that three second shot of the pyromaniac guitarist harnessed to the stereo rig. I knew I wanted to write some sort of rival girl gangs novel, but it didn’t wind up that way...

As any OG emo might tell you, MCR’s breakup was a true tragedy that took several years to recover from. I couldn’t listen to “Welcome to the Black Parade” without having a complete breakdown until 2019, where I finally decided to bite the bullet and listen to their entire discography. I started catching myself up on all the MCR lore I missed over the years and stumbled upon the story of how they wrote The Black Parade in a haunted mansion. All the pieces started coming together from there...! It somehow became this novel about grief and the intensity of that feeling when you find out your favourite band breaks up. ...and then MCR promptly got back together a few months after I started writing it...

Preparation: I didn’t know anything about punk rock music beforehand, so I took about a year to listen to so much music, reading so much music history, and generally  immersing myself in the culture. The fun thing about writing a music-centric novel is any reading you’re doing can be easily supplemented by listening to whatever artists you’re reading about at the same time. So it was a lot of that and a lot of learning how to put on messy eyeliner and red eye shadow and sobbing it all off, watching old MCR concerts on Youtube. A lot of that.

Art Process: Prior to Heaven’s TIny Daggers, I was something of a pantser, but I was just coming out of a year of query rejections and a lot of editors telling me my best bet would be to start planning my plots more thoroughly. So, this is the first novel I really put my head down and plotted everything. I downloaded Scrivener and plugged in the Save the Cat 3 Act Structure into separate folders to keep everything in order. To keep myself on task, I would write every morning on my ipad Notes app and then copy/pasted scenes into Scrivener when I was done. First draft was just getting it all out of me and onto the page and then when I had wrung myself out of as much plot as I could get, I went back and refined and filled in scenes here and there, moved things around... all that good stuff.

I think one of the biggest changes that happened between the three drafts is I had this one scene that happens reasonably early in the original draft that I couldn’t figure out, so I just kept pushing it back until I realized it was sequel fodder. I had this idea that the main villain would be behind this big scheme where they were creating doppelgangers of female artists whenever they started standing up for themselves too much. I was feeling the Avril Lavigne is Dead conspiracy fantasy, but it wasn’t gelling with where I was going with the characters over all, so I moved it to the second book.

 The original plot was going to end a lot more tragically, and I’ve changed the ending about ten times by now and I’m still not 100% sure what is happening yet (which is why I keep going back and playing with more drafts instead of actually finishing it, RIP). I also don’t think it was going to be a murder mystery until the second draft. Once I cleaned out the doppelganger angle, the main concept was just a bunch of punks in a haunted house. As soon as the mansion became sentient and started fucking with everyone’s nightmares, it all came together in this demonic crescendo between drafts 2 and 3.

...and now I’m just finishing up Act 2 so I can finally fully write up Act 3 and send it out for querying by September!

Thoughts: I think in this whole process, it’s been so important for me to write something I love because it’s what teenage me would’ve been obsessed with reading. When you get stuck in a rejection spiral, it’s easy to forget why you’re writing what you’re working on. At the end of the day, it should be for you, and if you love it, you will find people out there who love that same topic too.