#downmoonwrites

Yuuri’s face is cradled by his kneecaps when he hears the knock at the door.

Victor stands up from the bed and strides across the room to answer it; Yuuri sucks in another slow breath, and stretches his back just a bit more. But the voice at the doorway is familiar, and Yuuri sits up abruptly before he completes the stretch. 

“Mari nee-san,” he says, fumbling his glasses on so he can see, “what are you doing here?"

He’s not sure how she even got here in the first place. The skaters are more or less isolated in this big hotel, tucked away from everyone else for a whole list of reasons Yuuri’s never been interested enough to research. A movement catches his eye behind Mari, and he just catches a glimpse of Christophe- her likely escort- waving, before Victor smiles and slips out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

She looks nervous, peering around the room with big eyes, patting over the folds of her jacket absentmindedly. Her nerves are making him nervous in turn.

“Is everything okay?” he tries prompting. Mari finally looks at him, her expression flat and unimpressed.

“Why do you always assume something is wrong when I come to see you?”

“It usually is.”

“Well-” she starts, her mouth pressing into a tight line when she has nothing further to say.

Instead, she looks down, and pulls Yuuri’s hands into hers. 

“I came to wish you luck,” she says. It comes out forcefully, like she’s reciting something that’s been on her mind for a while. “And to tell you that I’m proud of you.”

Mari has been supportive of him since the day he first stepped onto the ice. She’s patched up his scrapes and wiped away his tears when he was too young or too slow or too clumsy, too himself to thrive, and her actions over the years have spoken loud enough, but to hear the affirmation-

Yuuri is left speechless.

She lets go of his hands, and sweeps him into a hug. Her arms are strong around the slender slope of his shoulders, strong and warm and comforting, and Yuuri finds himself leaning into it, fighting back the sudden tears in his eyes and the lump in his throat.

“You’re the most amazing little brother anyone could ask for,” she says. He sniffles against her shoulder.

“Now,” she says, dropping her arms and straightening herself out. She swipes quickly at her own eyes, as subtle in her emotions as Yuuri is not. “Go out there and kick some ass.”

He’s trapped as soon as he gets off the ice, trapped in a whirlwind of well wishes and back slaps and camera flashes. He’s still dizzy with disbelief, mouth warm, cheeks warmer, sweat cooling down the length of his spine, and he answers questions and comments on autopilot, forcing the smile, the happiness. He is happy, he is, he just-

Victor is there, suddenly. When Yuuri spots him in the crowd, he can’t tear his eyes away.

“Excuse me,” he mutters under his breath. He pushes lightly through the cameras and faces, charming with his best smile, until he’s by Victor’s side. He doesn’t say anything when Yuuri snags his arm, doesn’t say anything when they’re weaving through more people, so many people, down to the garage where they’d hidden before. They make it halfway down the stairwell before Yuuri stops. Victor is a step below him, and for once, Yuuri is looking down on him. 

He moves on impulse, running his cold fingers through Victor’s silver hair. It curls loosely over the side of Victor’s face, until Yuuri brushes it to the side.

so, I didn’t finish the halloween fic I was working on this month, so take a spooky rare pair instead

word count: 947

He’s just about to take the last left towards home when he catches a whiff of it.

A tang of a strange magic on the air.

There’s a pervasive sharpness to this scent, like glitter and glass mixed with the warmth of a fireplace, sliding across his tongue and down his throat like heady wine.

Tetsurou stops in the path, turns, inhales.

A breeze picks up, a soft, spring-heavy wind that carries the scent even closer, sending a shudder down his spine. He shifts, the pack of roots and herbs across his back pulling heavy, reminding him of his as-of-yet incomplete task, but the smell, the magic.

It calls him.

Tetsurou licks the corner of his mouth, and inhales again, then takes one decided step in the direction of the scent.

Tagged by: @flenserfics Tagging: anyone who sees this and wants to do it! seriously! I TAG THEE

Total number of completed stories: (going off of ao3 for this one) 8

Total word count: (again, on ao3) 54,344

Fandoms written in: haikyuu!!, free!, yowapeda

Looking back, did you expect to write more fics than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you’d expected? i think i wrote more fics that i actually published than i had expected to. i wrote a ton of drabbles that i’m not counting for this particular question, but posting 8 out of 12 total fics on ao3 in one year was a lot for me! 

What’s your own favorite story of the year? yours is the light | the shinkai/toudou drabbles

i’m trying not to repeat stories on this list, so yes, i am acutely aware that yours is the light shows up again, but i really, really like that story. i love the concept of myth in the modern world, the hazy line between reality and dream, and the mix of humor and drama. and the shintou drabbles because i love me my rarepairs, and i also love the warmth and joy those drabbles all have.

Did you take any writing risks this year? not really? i tried some new styles and wrote a bunch of pairings i don’t like for lazy fills, but i wouldn’t say those were risks. maybe working on things i’m actually excited about posting on ao3, since i don’t do that often, but i don’t know if i’d call that a risk either.

Do you have any fanfic or profit goals for the new year? i’ve started a list of fics i intend to work on this year, which i hope will help keep me interested in what i’m writing, so that those nasty doubt thoughts don’t creep up on me. for profit goals: i’ve thought about doing commission stuff, but i a) don’t know if i would generate enough interest from people to do that and b) don’t know if i’m at the point where i could do that. writing can be a very circular process for me, and i just don’t know if the added pressure of commissions would work efficiently.

Best story of the year? personal opinion: the iwasuga one shot where oikawa noses around trying to figure out who iwa’s dating. i suspect myself of subconsciously basing this off of one of @lemedy ‘s headcanons, which was funny, because i posted the story and then prowled through the iwasuga tag months later and re read lem’s headcanon and it was like reading my story in a different format. but yeah, this was a fun one. i always love writing from iwa’s perspective, and i always love some best friend interaction.

Most popular story of the year? the perfect stranger | the tsukkiyama prompt that was about porn stars but i didn’t fill it that way

these both make sense lmao

Story of mine most under-appreciated by the universe, in my opinion:

THE KENHINA + HEAT LAZY FILL. oh my gooood i can’t believe there wasn’t more reaction to this. i mean, it’s short, so i get why, but maaaaaan. it’s a tiny tease, a little hint of sticky sensuality between two characters who i rarely see in any situation that isn’t 100% innocent.

Most fun story to write: yours is the light. god, this was a joy to write. the idea clicked together, the rest of the fic flowed so smoothly. i wrote it in like five days, pulling like 2,000 words a day. man was that fun.

Story with the single sexiest moment: I’ll be yours + you’ll be mine

i chose this one because i wrote it with the intention of making it sexy. there are a couple other drabbles i can think of that fit the bill, but hey, let’s throw in some more pedal fic. Sweetest story: anything having to do with cat dads | daisuga daddies one shot

basically, give me adults turning into fools over pets or kids, and i’m gone

”Holy crap, that’s wrong, even for you!” story: UH.

i don’t really have stories like that? i wrote kagesuga fucking the shower and breaking oikawa’s door………that’s about the best i got

Story that shifted my own perceptions of the characters/Most unintentionally telling story: I’M CHEATING & I’M ALSO DOING WHAT I WAS TRYING TO AVOID.

yours is the light.

alright, first of all, the characters: i love this kuroo. i love him. i love him as a big hippy witchcrafty spiritual type of character, i love him with a deep perception of other people, i love him with seeds of kindness in him. i love seeing the clash between iwa and oikawa, but also seeing them repair the rift between them (kind of). i love the internal workings of oikawa’s mind. i love it.

and the telling stuff: there’s a lot of personal stuff in this fic, feelings and thought processes and behaviors. i don’t know if other people got as much from the story as i did, but i’m counting it i don’t care.

Hardest story to write: HMMM

i think brain robbers from outer space. it was a gift that i had no prompt for, and i was in one of those funks where i couldn’t think of what i wanted to write, so i kept starting over and over. i think i was on the third or fourth rewrite when i finally settled on the story, so it was kind of a frustrating experience, but i really like how it turned out. so that’s cool.

Biggest disappointment: ah, i think the one shots i did for rare pair weekend? none of those seemed to garner a lot of attention/feedback (which, rare pairs, i understand) but i still really liked all of those, so it was kind of a letdown to be all excited about them, and then just. not. get noticed much for them.