#noeavoiding

Jim Almonds/Pat Riley

Est. word count: 35-40K

Summary: Pat Riley frequents the BDSM club near his flat; Jim Almonds runs a bakery nearby. In the wee hours when Pat is walking home, he runs into Jim and they hit it off.

"C'mere," Jim says, motioning for Pat to come closer. He scoots back in his chair, knees wide, and Pat - nearly on instinct - gets up and stands between his knees, towering over Jim's seated form. He smiles down at him, reaching out to place a hand on his shoulder as Jim hooks a finger through one of Pat's belt loops.

Jim, still languidly leaning in his chair, takes his cigarette from his mouth and holds it up for Pat to lean in and take a drag. Pat does so without prompting, his heart skipping a beat at the indirect kiss. Leaning down slightly, he lets his eyes drift to Jim's face, noticing quickly how wide Jim's pupils have gotten, how pink his cheeks are.

36 - desert air, zinnias and chocolates

The evening was nearly suffocatingly dry, the sand in the air lingering in Reg's nose and throat and making him cough. He'd been meant to meet the others at this club over an hour ago, but the poker game he'd been playing had turned a little threatening, and he hadn't quite felt inclined to leave before he had to. It wasn't that he hadn't believed himself capable of besting the other men at the table, if it came down to it; it was rather that on this particular kind of dusty-hot, golden desert night, Reg would have preferred nothing so much as expending as little exertion as possible.

Well, perhaps there was one form of exertion he might make an exception for, considering they only had five more days of leave and he intended to make the most of it, but by this time of night he knew his chances with the girls in the club were dwindling.

Sure enough, of the six men he'd been meant to meet here, only one remained.

relics—Finan/Sihtrik (The Last Kingdom)

cw: non graphic descriptions of violence, mentions of slavery.

It is an angry red mark right above his shoulder. Tight, ugly, the skin never having been given the chance to properly heal even if though its outline has pearled with age. There are others, of course, scattered over his skin. Stray arrowheads and swords that stroke true enough to wound and mar his pale stomach, his slender arms. None, Finan thinks, can compare. It is not the worst scar Finan has seen by a mile, nor one that he gets the chance to look at often, hidden as it usually is underneath Sihtric’s worn hose and dark armour. Still, it is the one he keeps looking at the most.

Answering both you and @noeavoiding

Armitozer Ice!AU, also known as my Terror Permawinter!AU, which is a two-part post-apocalyptic AU set in an England that's been trapped in a perpetual winter for the past 3-5 years.

Tozer is a courier travelling through the country delivering goods from shelter to shelter in his van. Armitage a stowaway that popped up in his trunk one day, unannounced hoping to reunite with his mum. You can read the first part and a half of the series here!!

I do plan on continuing the series! The past year and a half has just been absolutely draining both personally and creatively, so as I slowly get back on track with older projects I do intend to, at some point, finish this one too!! (It's very dear to me+the following chapter is halfway done)

Here's a little unpublished snippet!

Armisolving—(18) broken windows, waist high grasses, and lit matches.

A fat crimson droplet blooms over the pale skin of his thumb where the glass has sunk in. Sol drops it reflexively, hears it fall into the deep grass in a low murmur.

“Ah, fuck,” he tsks in between clenched teeth before he puts the finger into his mouth.

This year spring has caught up to them too. The grass is overgrown in the back of the house, the path that leads from the yard to the forest barely suggesting where one should tread, engulfed by the weeds and wildflowers that John had so carefully put him to trim in the front weeks ago. No wonder a fox can sneak into the henhouse unseen. No wonder they have already lost three of the girls to the red devil.

Sol pities the poor thing, knows that in a day or two the grass will be lower, the undergrowth visible, and that John will have him or Tommy out with a shotgun at dusk the moment they go out for a smoke or a piss. Sol has never been good at not pitying the underdog.

The match he lights sparks dangerously close to the dry grass, the fag he’s holding between his teeth suddenly a stupid sacrifice to make for a scorched backyard. Nothing happens, though. The cigarette ignites. The match dies. John Irving’s grounds remain unscathed.

“Gonna get into trouble if you keep that up.”

Sol treats the lad with a wolf whistle, followed by an appraising look to disguise that he had not heard Tommy coming. He is wearing that long blue dress John had rescued from a half-hidden cupboard in his London estate, a crooked little bow tying his black curls back while keeping some ringlets astray to frame his pale face. Tommy looks nice like this, very nice.

“Going to town? Can’t imagine a lass like you would do herself this pretty jus’ for me.”

The compliment makes Tommy blush, her hands fisting the hem of the skirt as he protests with a low. “Sol… stop that.”

“Just speaking things as they are, no harm in calling my favourite lass pretty, is there?”

“I’m gonna tell him you called me your favourite.”

The threat makes Sol laugh, his hands coming up to encircle Tommy’s waist as if he were cinching her stays, pressing just enough to make the lad gasp.

McDiarmid/Fraser 28 (exes, candy-wrappers, and a twin bed)

“Put it out.”

At first, Jock thinks he’s imagined the words. Part of a late post-coital bliss and all, their room still hazy with the pink light that precedes dawn. Children are running outside, down in the parking lot of the resort, surely about to leave for the day and not stuck here until a new truck is driven their way, or they get sent money for the bus fare, far lower South than any London fire brigade should venture. It’s stupid that none of them was carrying their wallets with them. Even stupider still that Stirling was able to get them a room, but no news of a drive back home were in the horizon just yet.

Not like Jock is complaining. He takes another drag of the cigarette, ponders for a moment staring at the yellowing ceiling if he’ll be able to go for a run before,they have to make their way back—and immediately gets slapped in the arm about it.

“Put it out!” Fraser snaps, blue eyes wilder than they should be this early in the morning. Not Fraser, Jock corrects himself; Bill. He had asked Jock to call him Bill when they were two kisses into the room and their mingling breaths still reeked of ale and the artificial tasting strawberries of their dinner ice-cream. “You’re a fireman for chrissake, you precisely should bloody know about the dangers of smoking in bed.”

Jock slowly blinks as Bill snatches the cigarette out of his fingers, watches the cigarette die a hissing death in the half full coffee cup that’s still lying in their nightstand along with the honey caramel wrappers Jock has seen leave Bill’s pockets many times before. Bill seems to relax a little after this small victory, his long wiry body curling underneath the comforter, preserving the infinitesimally minute gap that he had decided to establish in between their bodies the moment his pale lashes had fluttered awake.

“So…we’re not speaking about it,” Jock says, his decision of breaking the silence becoming an almost immediate regret.

“What’s it?” Bill dignifies the question with one of his looks, one that speaks more of sleep than annoyance.

“This,” Jock insists, waving a finger in between their faces. “Us”

“What’s there to speak about?” Annoyance creeps back in, so does the guarded look that Bill usually carries about himself. Jock needs it to go away, for now, needs to speak to the Bill that melted against him last night, the Bill that almost cried when they managed to get a kitten out of one of the burning bungalows unscathed before their truck broke down.

“Dunno,” Jock shrugs, thinks about his words for a second. This would be easier with a fag, and oh, does the thought make him laugh. “Jus’ wandering if you’d want to give it another go when we’re back home.”

“Ta, but no thanks. Already had enough Jock McDiarmid for a fortnight.”

Jock ponders his possibilities for a moment. Which words will get him kicked out of bed, which ones will give way to a possible future where he’s kissing Bill Fraser against his kitchen counter in a week or two.

“Does this have anything to do with that weird toff that tried talking to you before we left yesterday?”

Bill’s face contorts into something ugly, rage and utter misery flashing across his features before he gets out of bed with a sudden tug at the covers, leaving his pale body bare for Jock to gaze at while his voice breaks and composes in the same sentence. “That’s none of your fucking business.”

Bill slams himself shut inside the bathroom, a quiet pause that lasts for more than five minutes elongating until Jock finally hears Bill turn the shower on. For a moment Jock thinks about lighting himself another fag. For a moment he imagines how Bill must look under the water, wonders if he will be looking for the marks that Jock had left the night prior and regretting them. Or perhaps pressing his fingers to them, like Jock would.

OKAY, so BJ post canon is a fic for the 2009 mini-series Red Riding that I wrote last year when I thought I wouldn't be able to write again. It's a bit messy and wonky, but it was the fic that kept me writing for the second half of 2024 and I feel indebted to it in more ways than I can describe. The fic is finished, around 20k long, and I suppose that one of these days I will feel compelled to edit it and post it.

Until then!! Here's a snippet!!

🥖JimPat modern!AU