golden

“My Things”, Part 2 of this project complete! If the last one was an action heavy climax from Neil’s perspective, this is the cool down from Riko’s perspective. And what could cool down something better than Andrew and Neil’s icy stare?

My gosh, trying to capture Andrew’s ‘bored’ stare-down is like capturing lightning in a bottle. Neil’s shit eating grin, I can’t decide, is either trailing from his baiting Riko, or his exhilaration at Andrew’s definitive intervention. (probably both)

or the first birthday the twinyards properly celebrate together.

thank you to the anon who gave me a prompt for brother bonding!! this is my first fic in years so i apologize if it’s a little wonky, i swear they will only get better :)

what to expect: aaron’s pov, both boys being whipped for their respective s.o.’s, chaos, fluff, brief mentions of violence, swearing

“It’s nice, right?” Katelyn gestured excitedly at the screen of her laptop, which currently displayed a tastefully minimalist website filled with photos of fancy brunch plates. “The Vixens and I celebrate everything here. It’s the best, I promise.” 

Aaron would have eaten out of a dumpster if it meant she was going to smile at him like that, so he nodded. Katelyn closed her laptop and twisted her hair off her shoulder, letting it unfurl along her back. She was wearing the rose pink shirt that she always looked so pretty in and it was more than distracting. Aaron cleared his throat and glanced around the crowded library so he’d stop staring. “When’s the reservation?” 

“11:30. I made it, like, weeks in advance because your birthday’s on a weekend this year and they’re always booked.” Katelyn laid a manicured finger on the page of her planner. Her ridiculously neat handwriting designated his birthday in rounded capital letters and little hearts. “We’ll be super stuffed after–well, more like I will–so we can walk around. It’s kinda like an outlet mall. There’s other stuff nearby, too.” She rested her chin on her fist, and Aaron didn’t miss the little gleam in her eye. “And then we’ll be done at seven.” 

Aaron paused. That was technically almost eight hours together, but it was still much shorter than he was expecting. “Why seven?” 

“Because you’re spending the rest of the day with Andrew.” She answered.

“What?” Aaron said blankly. 

Both of them spend the first few weeks grumbling about how horrible it is to be trapped together. That’s a load of bullshit, so jot that down real quick. 

While Wymack feels a bit bad that Andrew is stuck away from Neil, he’s glad that neither Nicky nor Kevin are anywhere near him. Can you imagine what those two would be like with cabin fever? 

A lot of people think Wymack keeps Andrew close for fear of him hurting people. The truth is the exact opposite. Wymack keeps Andrew close for fear of a) what others will do to him and b) what he’ll do to himself. Even before finding out about Dr*ke or seeing his scars, Wymack knew Andrew had been hurt. It was why he’d worked so hard to make himself a person Andrew trusted to keep him safe. The court wasn’t a safe place for him the way it was for others but Wymack’s apartment was. As long as Andrew was in the apartment with him, Wymack could rest assured that his little monster was okay. 

On that note, Andrew feels a lot better now that he’s here too. He misses Neil so so much, though. The two of them call every few days just so that they can hear each other’s voices and know that the other is safe. But, make no mistake, it was no accident that Andrew got stuck spending quarantine with Wymack. 

Look, Wymack’s getting on in his years. He may rant and rave about how he’s in better shape than Andrew but they both know it’s a lie. In recent years, his joints have started to creak, something that can only be heard in pindrop silence and, more importantly, his immune system has been failing him. For the most part, it’s older people and the immunocompromised that are at risk for the virus. At this point, Wymack is both. Someone was going to have to go out into the world and buy Wymack his groceries. His supposed ‘allergy to cleaning supplies’ didn’t help. 

On Day One of quarantine, Andrew dumps out the ashtrays and clears up the living room. Day Two he forces Wymack to sit down and confront the disaster zone that he calls an office. There was a spare filing cabinet in the other room that they drag in too. It takes two whole days to organize everything but they get it done. In the days before the officially announced that Corona was a threat, Andrew had been stockpiling cleaning supplies like a maniac for fear of Wymack getting sick. He sets out on Day Four to actually scrub everything down. 

Wymack shouts at him for being overlycautious but know that it’s because he doesn’t know how to deal with this blatant show of Andrew branded affection. 

Its Day Seven by the time that Wymack gets too stir crazy to bear being at home anymore. Since the top two floors of the apartment are empty, Andrew let’s him go on jogs up and down the stairs and only across those floors. That being said, he doesn’t really trust Wymack to follow orders so he goes with him. Wymack complains about not needing a baby sitter but the company is actually kinda nice. 

I’m taking a few creative liberties here but every four floors share a gym. The people on the floors beneath Wymack never use it so Andrew starts allowing him in there too. He Lysols every piece of equipment before he’ll let Wymack near it tho. Is he being paranoid? Maybe a little but Wymack is the only older man he trusts and he’ll be damned if he loses him to fucking Corona Virus

Anyway, there’s a boxing ring in there and Wymack makes a few jokes about how he could take Andrew in a fight. After a while it starts getting under his skin and one thing leads to another and Andrew ends up finding himself in the ring with Wymack. 

He gets his ass handed to him by a man more than twice his age :’) 

Another thing the two of them do to pass the time is bake. I mentioned in one of my Dadmack fics that Wymack bought both a stand mixer and an ice cream maker for Andrew to use as he pleases.

They end up baking a shit ton of cakes and sweets. Once a week Andrew will drop the excess on Abby’s doorstep so she can distribute it to the rest of the Foxes. Neil finds out about this and surprises him by waiting inside the house and waving at him through the window. 

Andrew wants to be cool and stoic and nonchalant but he misses Neil so much. He caves and ends up pressing his hand up against the glass and waiting for Neil to do the same. It’s as close together as the two of them are going to be for a while. 

Two weeks into quarantine, a package arrives at Wymack’s. It’s a play station that Wymack sets up in the living room. Andrew comes home from a grocery store run to find it up and running. There’s a headset on the table too. As soon as he puts it on, he hears a familiar voice. “Took you long enough, you ass,” Aaron snaps. In an attempt to salvage the progress the twins have made in their relationship, Wymack took it upon himself to buy Andrew a gaming system so they could bond over video games :’)

Andrew teaches Wymack how to play so whenever Aaron isnt around, the two of them play instead. Wymack isnt the best but he puts up a good fight.

the upperclassman:

•After Drake and Proust and all those years they’d spent apart, Aaron’s relationship with Andrew changes because now he knows. In true Minyard fashion, no one says a word but there are subtle changes.

•Aaron is a lot more careful of his brothers’ space now. He has seen Andrew blink wide awake in the middle of the night eyes filled with a terrible fear, breaths still heavy from a nightmare (now he knows why) and he dares not not touch him without consent and will never let anyone else touch his brother either.

•Consent is another thing that changes, that he learns. He has seen Andrew and Neil in those rare quiet moments of almost stillness, heard their careful ‘yes or no’s’ for the barest of touch and Aaron learns too.

He starts small.

It’s a drowsy morning when it first happens, when everything is quiet, Neil and Kevin still passed out after last nights’ tiring game. Aaron lounges on the couch, back pressed to the arm rest and legs pulled to his chest. Andrew sits on the same couch, a warm mug of hot chocolate in hand, idly changing channels on the T.V.

Aaron thinks he has never seen his brother this calm and relaxed. It’s almost as if he is happy content and then, “Andrew. Yes or no?”

Andrew stiffens and he thinks I'veruineditI'veruineditI'veruinedit. But then Andrew looks at him through the corner of his eye and Aaron still can’t get over the thrill of seeing himself looking back and-

“Yes.” It’s cautious but he is hopeful.

Aaron’s feet slide against the couch and settle against Andrew’s thigh, cold toes tucked under his steadying weight. Nothing else is said but the morning doesn’t lose its relaxing drowsy state until Kevin gets up, demanding they get ready for practice.

•Later in the year, as they stand outside the court house, still haunted by the shadows of the demons of their pasts but undoubted victors, Andrew quietly brushes his hand against Aarons’ and hesitantly hooks their pinkies together.

Some past version of Aaron might’ve thought this childish but this version, the version who has learned to stand beside his brother rather than behind him looks at the act as nothing but a step forward.

“The scent of Cabeswater, all trees after rain, drifted past Adam, and he realized that while he’d been looking at Ronan, Ronan had been looking at him.” 

FAVES OF THE DECADE: 2012 ⭐️ The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater

The Challenge: Comment on every fanfic you read and enjoy in the month of January.

Every chapter. Every one shot. Every drabble. Every ficlet. Whether it’s on a personal website, a blog, or an archive. Whether you’ve read it a hundred times before or you’re reading it for the first time. Whether the fic was posted years ago or minutes ago. Whether you sign your name or leave your thoughts anonymously. Whether your comment is paragraphs in length or a few short words. Comment on every fanfic you read and enjoy in the month of January.

The Philosophy: Comments are what keep a fandom thriving and growing.

We don’t see comments as a transaction. They’re not a price paid for reading a fic. We see comments as an interaction, a way of building relationships. Comments are a courtesy, not a currency. [x]

Fandom is a relationship between dozens,hundreds, thousands, maybe millions of fans, and the only way for the greater fandom relationship to function, is for those fans to interact. One way to interact is by writing and reading fanfic. A writer prompts an interaction by posting their work; it is up to the reader to then acknowledge (or not acknowledge).

As one of our favorite blogs, @ao3commentoftheday​, said: [x]

“Comment if you can, but don’t be bullied or pressured into it. A comment should be written in the same spirit as the fic itself: wanting to reach out to other people who love the same fandom as you do. It’s not easy to do that, I know, and I don’t hold it against you at all if you can’t.”

The Only Rule: Be kind.

Be kind to your fandoms’ writers.

Please note that this challenge is to “comment on every fanfic you read and enjoy in the month of January.” As our fandom forebears were fond of saying, “Don’t like, don’t read.” For FaFiCoWriMo, we have taken that one step further by saying, “Don’t like, don’t comment.”

No matter how well-intentioned, critique is useless unless it comes from a place of trust. Unless you know an author personally and they have specifically asked for your critique, please keep it to yourself.

It costs zero of your currency and zero of your time to not be a jerk.

Be kind to yourself.

i entered college last year and fell inactive but new year calls for new times so i’m trying to be active again! my dash is dead so please like/reblog this post if you post the following and I’ll check out your blog:

Six of Crows

The Raven Cycle

The Song of Achilles

Harry Potter

The Cruel Prince

All For The Game

Books by Victoria Schwab

Books by Rick Riordan

Generally a lit blog please

The Foxes are a bunch of Vigilantes, freeing Pokémon from abusive trainers and owners, wanting to dismantle the Moriyama organization for their experiments on innocent Pokemon. They dream of finding their respective patrons along the way everyone with different questions in their minds.

These broken hearts invoking dreams in broken lives by @yunatheanimelover18

READ HERE

my piece for the @aftgbigbang

for @kevinyard for the @aftgexchange: a trans neil kandreil soulmate au

warnings: child abuse, implied/referenced manipulation done by riko, implied/referenced transphobia

read on ao3

I.

Andrew climbed the steps to the attic of his midwestern foster home, the only room certain to be empty of the hoards of starving children the Jacobson’s employed to pull in those monthly checks that they couldn’t seem to get enough of. Hungry dogs were never loyal; that was the first lesson Andrew had learned.

All the lost boys went hungry to their beds, so none shared their scraps. Andrew’s stash was hidden behind the two battered copies of HG Wells books on a shelf too high for him to reach without something to prop himself up on. He’d gathered a granola bar, a few KitKats from the prize box at school, and a half-eaten sandwich kept preserved in a ziplock bag.

He fully intended to go for the KitKats, but there was a boy blocking his path from the attic door to the bookshelf. His skin was too dark to be tan, hair cut close to his head. He was crying, or had been recently, brown eyes red and puffy.

“Leave,” Andrew ordered. He didn’t have time to deal with another kid’s problems. He only cared for the gaps between his own very visible ribs and the gap between him and his sugar.

“This is my room,” the other boy sniveled angrily, glaring at Andrew through his tears. He had an accent on his Th’s that made them sound like hard Ts.

“This is the attic,” Andrew deadpanned.

“It wasn’t a second ago,” the boy protested. “S’not my fault. I didn’t even do anything. I was just sitting on my bed and then I was here.”

Andrew blinked.

He’d read books about fairytales and happy endings for as long as he could remember, not because he enjoyed them, but because those were the only stories he could ever get his hands on. They spoke of this; true love’s kiss, lovers born with one soul, the soul snapping like elastic after being stretched too thin, snapping its pieces all to the same frame of reality for brief and passionate meetings.

Andrew knew this; soulmate traveling was a bit like having a blot of light in your eye, they were visions only shared by those connected through the bond. Your brain told you they were there in the flesh, but in reality they simply zoned out of wherever they’d left their bodies when they visited their other halves on the astral plane.