may all your trials end in full bloom

Thanks @claire8216 for the tag!

Rules: Share something old - a snippet of a favorite fic you wrote, that you are proud of; OR share something new - give us a sneak peek of something new you are working on. Feel free to do both, if you want to. Then tag (or not, your choice) other writers!

Something Old: An excerpt from a Julie and the Phantoms fic I wrote (gulp) five years ago. Luke and Julie's first conversation in the TAs AU, Rearrange the Stars. One of my favorite versions of them I wrote!

She traces her fingers over the tips of his. And indeed, there are calluses on his four fingers. Thick calluses, the kind of leathered layers that only embed in the skin over years of playing. The kind of calluses that immediately remind her of her mother sewing a Halloween costume and joking that she didn’t need a thimble because her skin was too tough to feel the prick of a needle. Julie peers up at him, and her head spins. Partially from the alcohol, but partially from his proximity. Luke makes a lot of faces—sometimes outraged, sometimes joyful, sometimes dismissive—but they’re always exaggerated. Like his emotions are too big to be expressed without the exuberance of a cartoon character. But right now, his face is smooth and his eyes wide. Unusually still and sincere. Normally Julie would try to say something clever or coy, but her brain is dizzy with alcohol, and all she can get out is, “Liar.” Luke snorts, but his nod is serious and honest. “Yeah.” There’s an expression on his face that she can’t read, but she remembers having these conversations with people back in high school and not wanting to be pushed. So as she traces her soft, sensitive palm across his rough fingertips, she tries to reassure him. “I’ve been there.” “Lying?” “This kind of lying.” She pokes his thick calluses. “Don’t worry. Your secret’s safe with me.” A breath huffs out of him, like he wants to snort but doesn’t want to be too loud at this proximity. “You don’t know my secret.”

Something new: An excerpt from the next chapter of my Lockwood and Co. Buffy AU, That’s The Living (All Messed Up). The chapter has been torturing me for four months, but I keep returning to this scene to remind myself why I’m fighting through it, so have this zero context snippet!:

Lockwood’s hands jump to her cheeks and he rests their foreheads together, his breath trembling against her cool face. ‘You’re alright,’ he whispers. ‘You’re alright. You’re alright.’ Each time he says it, it sounds different: first a prayer, then a command, then a reminder. She’s not sure whether it’s meant more for her or for him. His clammy skin is still warmer than hers, a stabilising comfort that cuts through the panic storming in her chest. She tries to steady herself with a deep breath, but that stabbing sensation radiates between her ribs again and she hisses with pain. ‘I’m sorry,’ he murmurs, thumbing the apples of her cheeks. ‘Figures that the only thing you’d ever apologise for unprompted is the one thing you don’t have to apologise for.’ He smooths her hair back from her eyes, his touch unbearably gentle. She risks a shallow inhale, letting sweet oxygen roll over her tongue, and he mimics her, their breaths slowly falling into sync. His soft nose rests against hers and his exhales puff across her mouth with a heated tingle. She’s all too aware of the mere millimeters that separate their lips, and if she wasn’t so very fond of breathing right now, she’d close the gap, consequences be damned. ‘Are you okay?’ she whispers, trying to look him over for injuries without separating their foreheads. He chuckles wetly. ‘I’m not the concern.’ ‘You are for me.’ His eyes meet hers, dizzying from this close. ‘Are you okay?’ ‘I asked first.’

In honour of finishing my first Heated Rivalry fanfic, have a fanart that I've been staring at entirely too long. Affinity and I are slowly getting better at communicating but we're still mere acquaintances.

Read The Weekend on AO3!

Scott and Kip get a lot of invitations now that they're the one couple everybody talks about. But this invitation is just a little bit different from the usual. At least neither of them had expected to be asked to spend a weekend at Shane Hollander's cottage, with Shane. And Ilya Rozanov. Especially since there's a little bit of history between Scott and the other two players. But sometimes, a relaxed weekend in the middle of nowhere is just what you need.

alice is dragged from place to place without warning, forced to play stupid games with no good prizes, grilled over her schooling and manners and recitation and dress, scolded, judged, insulted to her face, sent away, given gifts she didn’t ask for and doesn’t like, corrected incorrectly, been subject to shifting and arbitrary rules, and then when she gets snappish with all this bullshit everyone acts like a little girl’s temper is the end of the fucking world.

So from then on whenever one of us called something problematic, he would make us talk it out until we could name the “bad” thing we were hinting at. In this particular class, 7/10 it was some type of oppression, and the remainder was like, “I’m uncomfortable because this is very new/confusing/pushing boundaries that made me feel safe.”

Once we stopped calling things “problematic” and stopping at that, class got way more interesting and... we all had to say, like, “that’s racist” or “that’s misogynistic” or “ew capitalism gross” out loud, which a lot of us had never done in a classroom before. Or we had to be like, “Uhhh... I’m not sure what’s so bad?” and confront our own beliefs and that was maybe even more useful.

Imagine a human leaving her kid with an alien friend because her SO is sick and none of her human crewmates are able to act as babysitter and she’s got an important meeting. So she goes to the meeting and the alien takes her kid to one of the rooms in the ship that acts as a sort of play area.

Then, when the human comes out of the meeting, she picks her phone up and sees that she has some missed calls…

1st call: “Hey, Katie, it’s me, Grit. I know you’re probably in the meeting by now and can’t answer your phone, but I was just wondering… Jackie’s been chasing the other kids a lot, is she hunting them? Is that part of the whole predatory instincts thing? They all seem to be having fun— at least I think so, they’re all making that weird noise you guys make— but I just thought I’d let you know. And, um, listen… she’s not going to try and eat the ones she catches, is she?”

2nd call: “Hi, Katie, Grit again— look, I know that you guys are descended from tree climbing mammals and so your offspring need climbing equipment to satisfy those instincts— but there’s no way she’s supposed to be that high, right? None of the other parents are doing anything and I can’t go up and get her down because my hooves can’t get a grip on the frame. She’s right on top and— NO!<incomprehensible noises that sound like a cross between the moo of a cow and the bray of a donkey>— okay, so she’s swinging from the bars. One of the other humans just explained that that’s normal. He’s offered me some coffee, but I said no because I’m pretty sure that stuff’s toxic. I’ll try not to call again unless there is an emergency.”

3rd call: “I’m so sorry, Jackie’s been injured. She tripped over and seems to have lost a layer of skin from her knee. She’s making these noises and there’s liquid coming from her eye sockets and I don’t know what to do! Please pick up! There’s blood and the coffee offering human keeps saying she should suck the blood out or something. Is that a thing? Does your species’ saliva have healing properties? Shoud I call a medic?! Please pick up!”

#spike after learning Oz plays guitar: why İsn't he in the band? #buffy: he's already in his own band. which is actually a real band unlike our fake band that you keep forgetting is just a cover story #spike: we're never going to make it in the music industry if you don't stop calling our band fake

Spike (with reluctant but knowledgeable backup from Giles) finally convinces her that "Slayer" risks bringing copyright lawyers down upon their heads, a fate worse than vampires