emotions and tomfoolery since 201X

#snippet: short previews of my writing

#update: if i mention the progress of a fic, such as how far i am or when it might update

#chatter: me talking at length abt anything that doesn’t fall under #update, like answering asks

#posted: finished fics ao3 links

#spicy: smut tag for your filtering (or perusal) needs

#plot bunny: concepts for fics

#original: non fandom writing

He stands on the deck of the Bastards of None’s ship now, staring down into the dark abyss of the Shadowfell ocean, and feels absolutely nothing stir in his undead chest. The memory of that happiness is as muffled as all the rest.

“Please, make yourself comfortable,” Gerrard is saying, crossing toward the kitchenette and reaching into a refrigerator. “Want any water? Or a beer?”

“Uh—okay,” says Hardwon, more for something to occupy his hands with than anything else. Unsure of what else to do, he follows Gerrard a little, standing by the table but not daring to actually pull out a chair and sit.

He takes the can when Gerrard hands it over with an easy smile, popping the top and taking a steadying gulp. Distantly, he has the hope that being in Moradin’s Forge means that he won’t need to pee later at an inconvenient time. That would be just his luck.

Gerrard pulls out the seat Hardwon’s standing next to, then the seat across from it, turning it around so he can sit backwards with his arms crossed over the back of it. He makes the whole move look casual and effortless somehow, in a way Hardwon doesn’t think he’s ever managed anything in his entire life.

“By the way, you look great, man,” Gerrard offers after a moment—maybe noticing Hardwon’s nervousness, which is a thought that makes Hardwon’s insides shrivel up. “Wielding the Godshammer has served you well.”

“Um, thanks,” stutters Hardwon. “Y-You look great too, dude.” He reaches desperately for something chill and normal to say, only as he stares across the table at Gerrard’s chiselled body, the first complete sentence to pop into his mind is I want to put my mouth on your abs. Hurriedly, he shakes his head and blurts out: “Moradin’s Forge must be really good for the complexion…?”

Atom could feel Aux’s hand getting closer now to the bright source of magic pulsing steadily away in his chest, his arcane battery. It made everything around it more sensitive; it made Atom so much more aware of every tiny shift in his internal components as Aux gently moved coils of cable and stretches of tube aside, searching.

Then Aux’s finger nudged up against something, and Atom jolted as a spark of sensation echoed through his central processing unit. His hands resting on the metal table clenched suddenly with a loud clang that made himself flinch.

“Whoa,” said Aux, pulling both hands immediately all the way out, leaning back to meet Atom’s gaze. Atom’s automatic thought was that he missed the warmth of Aux’s paw inside him already. “Hey, you alright?”

“Moonshine,” Hardwon says, voice low. He meets her eyes pleadingly. “Can I go down on you?”

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Not Another D&D Podcast (Podcast) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Swag Daniels/Hardwon Surefoot Characters: Hardwon Surefoot, Swag Daniels Additional Tags: Campaign 03: ba2mia (Not Another D&D Podcast), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Porn Without Plot, Rimming, Pegging, Fingering, Non-Human Genitalia, Light Angst, Emotional Repression, Implied Moonshine Cybin/Hardwon Surefoot Word Count: 6,422

Hardwon keeps the hood of his cloak up as he approaches the downstairs bar of Le Lantern. Not only because he wouldn’t normally be caught dead in such a bougie-ass upper plate establishment—but because he’s here for a reason, and making a scene would not be conducive to his goal.

Sitting on a barstool, casually sipping at a glass of wine, is a middle-aged bullywug with glorious slicked-back hair. He’s chatting with the robot bartender—or, rather, chatting at the robot bartender, which simply clicks and beeps until given an actionable command. This doesn’t seem to deter the bullywug much, though. At least, he doesn’t let anything show behind his pearly-white smile.

Hardwon takes a deep breath, then sidles up to the bar, taking the empty stool next to the bullywug.

“About…ten years ago now.” Swag lets out a small laugh and sips at his drink. “Wow, do the years fly by.” He looks at Hardwon askance. “Though you’d know that even better than me, huh?”

Hardwon coughs. He takes a gulp of his cocktail, and tries not to make a face at how sickly-saccharine it tastes. “So how’d you end up in Irondeep anyway?” he deflects. “You’re pretty well-travelled yourself—” he catches himself; he’s not supposed to know that Swag came here from Ezry “—I bet.”

Swag graciously lets his awkward fumbles go, leaning back. “I mean, I guess I’ve been around this side of the continent,” he says with a casual shrug. “Grew up in Moonstone—er, found myself in Ezry for a bit. Lived at the Crick for a couple years before finding a job here.”

“The Crick,” Hardwon repeats, the wistfulness far more obvious in his voice than he intends. He swallows down more of his drink, trying to shake the sudden overwhelming sense of longing, of grief. “It’s—it’s a beautiful place.” He thinks about asking after it—asking after MeeMaw, and MawMaw, and the stumps and the bridges, and the trees and the mud and the water—but thinks better of it at the last second. Bites his tongue hard.

“—Now, this happened when I was a real young young’un—”

Hardwon listens to Moonshine’s story from the shore of the pond, lying on his back in the soft wet mud, soaking up the warm summer sunshine that streams through the trees’ canopies up above. He can hear the light rustling of leaves in the breeze, can hear the distant songs of birds, can hear the splashing of Moonshine swimming leisurely laps around the pond. Can hear his own slow, even breathing.

“—and my BFF at the time—like, we were joined at the hip—”

He closes his eyes, until the bright golden sunlight becomes just a glow of red through his eyelids. The wind is cool on his face, raises goosebumps up his arms. He keeps breathing, in and out.

“—I convince her it’ll be so fucking cool if we sneak out to the edge of the wood and try to—”

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Not Another D&D Podcast (Podcast) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Moonshine Cybin/Hardwon Surefoot Characters: Hardwon Surefoot, Moonshine Cybin Additional Tags: Campaign 01: Bahumia (Not Another D&D Podcast), Vampire Hardwon Surefoot, Blood Drinking, Menstrual Sex, Cunnilingus, Vampire Bites, Porn with Feelings Word Count: 7,007

Her skin was so soft. So warm, compared to his cold corpse body. Hardwon could sense the blood flowing through all the tiny veins in her fingers, only millimeters below the surface. He could suck her fingers into his mouth, run his tongue between them, bite them in half so her blood spilled all over his tongue in dozens of little rivulets—

Hardwon wrenched his gaze back up to Moonshine’s face. If he were a better person, he’d end this risky, ridiculous idea here. Yank his hands away, firmly refuse the offer, and scurry back up to the ship before he could further hurt one of the people he loved most in the world.

He wasn’t a good person. Had never been, compared to Moonshine and Bev, but now he truly wasn’t even a person at all. The outside reflecting a truth he’d always felt deep down.

I had to do something to make the Taumoeba palatable enough to keep down. I didn’t want to die a slow, miserable death to starvation, obviously, but maybe more than that—I couldn’t do that to Rocky. I couldn’t make him go through losing another crew member. I couldn’t leave him alone again.

So chemistry it is!

“What are you doing, question?” asks Rocky, tapping on the xenonite between us. A lot of the time, Rocky likes to bring his smaller, simpler projects up into the lab tunnels so we can work side-by-side. Sometimes we just focus on our own things in companionable quiet, but sometimes we’ll explain to each other the process of what we’re doing. The novelty of Eridian engineering hasn’t worn off for me yet, and neither has Earth science for Rocky.

Right now, though, Rocky’s voice is pitched slightly higher with concern. “Are your chemicals not toxic to humans, question??”

I remove the plastic pipet from my mouth, where I’d been about to squeeze a drop of liquid onto my tongue. “It’s safe,” I assure him. “Well, probably. I’m pretty sure. As long as I did everything right.”

“‘Probably,’” Rocky repeats flatly. “‘Probably’ safe to consume chemical direct from the apparatus. What are you even making, question?”