#kaysno

Prompt: “I was trying to protect you.”

Jeremy’s laughter echoed throughout the penthouse as both he and Trevor busied themselves on customizing their characters in the video game they were playing. This game had just came out, and the two had decided to have a game night together, to play through the co-op. They hadn’t had very much time to hang out together recently, honestly, as they had been busy with planning for the latest heist, and really didn’t have any time for themselves.

Trevor glanced at his boyfriend’s half of the screen to see what exactly the green-haired man had been laughing about, and chuckled to himself to see that his character’s height had been heavily edited, to make him a more… realistic height.

-

Later on in the night, when they were halfway through the multiplayer story, Trevor gave a panicked yell when his path was blocked by a bunch of enemies, all holding SMGs and aiming right at his unprepared character. Jeremy, Caleb-ing for just a moment, saw Trevor’s dilemma and gave his own determined “Hap hap!” as he forced his character to sprint to his teammate’s side, equipping his gun and beginning to shoot at the guys alongside Trevor’s character. Unfortunately, Jeremy’s character was just too short, and Trevor’s character still got shot to pieces, even with the minuscule help of his boyfriend’s pint-sized character.

After Trevor’s howling fits of laughter ceased, he turned to face Jeremy, whose face was just a little red, either in embarrassment or in anger, he couldn’t tell. “Looks like you… fell a little short on the job, didn’t you?”

“… Shut the fuck up. I was trying to protect you, like a decent boyfriend.”

This earned him a kiss to the cheek from the taller man. “Oh, don’t worry, I still appreciate your efforts, as small as they were,” The man’s grin grew wider, if that was possible.

“Fuck off, Trevor! Enough with the short jokes!

“Jeremy, don’t be so short tempered! You have so little patience for the arts, despite having majored in them.”

“Fucking- God damn- Shut the hell up and respawn so we can try again.”

“Fine, fine, whatever we say. Hopefully, our chances this time won’t be diminished.”

“Babe!”

read it on AO3!

“Million dollars,” Gavin piped up as they reached the last set of stairs. “But you have to star in a porno.”

“Jesus Christ,” Ryan cursed, readjusting his grip on the couch. “Gavin!”

“Don’t you dare drop it, Haywood!” Meg threatened from down the hallway, unlocking the door to their apartment. She stared at Gavin contemplatively as she held the door open. “Do I get to pick what kind of shoot?”

“Sure,” Gavin grunted as Ryan heaved the couch up the last steps and the weight redistributed. “It has to be with a partner though.”

“And I get to choose my shoot partner? And the producer?” Meg inquired thoughtfully.

“Why not?” Gavin dropped the couch in the middle of the room and leaned against its back. “Actually, I insist that Ryan be your partner. I don’t want some stranger touching you.”

“Hey!” Ryan protested, sitting down on the couch with a sigh. “What do I get out of this?”

“You get to fuck me,” Meg laughed, dropping into his lap. She pouted down at him, arching her back. “Don’t you want me?”

“I mean,” Ryan started with a smile, letting his hands settle on her hips. “In general, yes. But you’re getting a million out of this, I feel like I deserve a share. Or-” He dropped his head on the backrest, staring bemusedly up at Gavin. “-do we both get a million?”

Gavin shook his head, grinning down at them. “Just one mil. And the producer gets all the profit.”

Ryan tipped his head down and caught Meg’s eyes with a mischievous grin. She arched a brow questioningly.

“Maybe we should convince Gavin to film it,” he suggested in a low voice. Gavin shivered.

“A guaranteed one million for our homemade sex tape?” Meg asked with a wolfish grin. “I’m in.”

(2/?) The fakes search high and low for her while Jack stays as calm as she can. The others are coming, she is certain of it all she has to do is hold out until they can find her. Jack has loyalty engraved into her bones. She's got this. Then they bring out the knives, and the shock therapy (and doesn't that just bring back pleasant memories) and all Jack has is the thought that surely they will come from her. They have too.

(3/?) but then slowly more and more time passes and while the fakes are tearing their hair out and slowly burning blocks of the city down Jack is still waiting. Jack is waiting for what feels like years. The meals they give her are irregular at best and nonexistent at worst and slowly even the torture starts to stop. Jack reminds herself minutely how important she is to them. How a great driver is nigh impossible to find in Los Santos, how Geoff replays loyalty.

(4/?)Finally the Fakes manage to find her after two hellish weeks and the entire crew(including b-team)all race to get her and race through the entire warehouse deathly serious and quiet. "Where is she?!" Michael roars in the face of a pale faced man. He raises a finger and points down to a door and is promptly ripped in half with a machine gun for his time. He and Geoff race down there and Jack is standing staking in the middle of the room. "Well," she says, a little. "About time you got here."

(5/5) "Sorry," Geoff says, close to crying. "You know that traffic can be a real bitch in Los Santos." Then Jack is in his arms and they're both crying and there's still the sound of gunfire and screaming in the distant and their crew systematically dismantles the people who had kept her here. "I wanna go home," Jack whispers into his shoulder. So home they go and she is treated like a queen for as long as she can stand it. But more importantly she gets hugs and cuddles anytime she asks for them

It’s not rude at all! We love getting questions about our stories :D

And no, while from what I hear the one-person one-chapter approach seems pretty common (which makes sense, in that the author remains in control of their part), @kaysno​ and I write Prince very differently!

See, when Kays originally conceived of the idea, we started spitballing some ideas as we do, but it was absolutely her story and I was just throwing in suggestions. I was just her beta at first - correcting typos and making a few re-phrasing suggestions and additions. Halfway through the second page, she offered me co-authorship.

It took us a bit to find our groove, but we’ve been working together on this and betaing/cheerreading each other’s stories since so we figured out a system of sorts :D

The most important part is, we plotted the story out together. And when we think of a side-plot or an idea we wish to implement, we check in with the other first.

Sometimes we both are on at the same time and watch each other write a scene, only occassionally inputting a choice of phrasing or added words.

Sometimes we are both online and writing at two very different scenes, only checking in on each other when we get stuck in our own writing. (Sometimes this ends with us continuing each other’s scene instead because inspiration lol).

Most of the time, due to timezones (and lack of motivation at times), we work on a scene on-and-off when we each have time and then leave the other a message that we added some paragraphs. Then the other goes over it, edits it to their heart’s content and maybe adds a couple sentences if it inspired them. Editing in this case means, fixing grammar, typos and phrases that seem weird or a concept where we *know* what the other meant but they got stuck, but now we recall the word they probably meant.

When making suggestions about alternate phrasing about sentences or paragraphs that don’t sound wrong, or where the new one is of equal quality to the old one, we use gdoc’s suggestion mode to add it in and then leave the other the choice of picking which they like better.

One example that comes to mind is the first dream sequence - when Jeremy has a nightmare about having to choose between Matt and the Hunters? Kays started that off and then I edited her original dream ending because I got a sudden bout of inspiration about running in darkness and symbolism :’D

Or for a more recent example, Kays did the Gavin druidcrafting a flower for Jeremy paragraph.