#notalone91

See A World, Beautiful And Strange (New chapter tonight. Or tomorrow. Ask Ao3)

In the meantime...

I’m dressed in seconds flat and fidgeting with the wall where I know it opens, even if I can see no evidence of it.  Once I’m in the hall, I come to the realization that there are no doors, just like the room I’ve been in.  There’s no one around.  No team.  No direction.  The first thought that crosses my mind is- 

GUYS LOOK AT THIS FUCKING COMMENT.

Title: You Won’t Break Me

Summary: Losers Club Big Bang fic 2021 - The Losers Club has been the Losers Polycule for a year, but one member has been too nervous to partake in most of those activities. That is until he realizes just how much it means to one of his partners and really hears him out.

Tags: Polyamory; Poly Losers; Body Image Issues; Non-sexual Intimacy; First Time Bottoming; 

For the Losers Club Big Bang 2021 ! @losersclubbang​

Will My Love Grow? is a new sequel to You Can Change Right Next To Me and X's and Oh!

(YCCRNTM Synopsis: Most people choose their bonds and initiate them through an elaborate ceremony. Sometimes, the universe gets impatient. Richie Tozier and Eddie Kaspbrak must have really pissed off the universe with their stupidity. Now, the boys are left to pick up the pieces.)

Fic Back Friday

Since I am currently writing but don’t have anything going up for the next couple of weeks, but am still a bit of an attention whore, I thought I’d use a different one of the prompts @ao3commentoftheday​ has for a little while, starting with this baby from a year ago!

To Me, That's What You're Worth

Eddie Kaspbrak came from a life of privilege but was smothered by his overbearing mother. That all came to an end when, at just sixteen years old, sitting on the bathtub with his high school girlfriend, he watched the little stick turn pink. 19 years later, he's been raising little Edie on his own in Derry and maybe, just maybe, he's lonely. And maybe he's got a thing for the diner owner, Richie Tozier. But there's no way Richie feels the same, right?

[a completely self-indulgent Reddie X Gilmore Girls AU]

Okay, so, for this week's @ao3commentoftheday prompted Fic Back Friday, I'm going with:

Feeling Like I've Missed You All This Time, the central part of my "they were together the whole time" universe.

“Not since you left,” came the voice on the other end. “Since…"

Richie looked down at his left palm and clenched his hand once or twice. Eddie had the same scar. “It…” Richie said hesitantly. He didn’t know what It was, not really, but what he did know was that It was bad. It meant death.

Unable to let the line go silent for too long, Mike added, “You gotta come back, man. It's starting again.”

//

He stopped and wondered, only for a moment, why he’d decided not to mention Richie…

“No. Home to Derry,” he heard Mike say.

Eddie closed his eyes and shook his head. “It's happening again isn't it?” He cursed his shitty memory and tried to pay attention to the road as he made the turn onto his street.

(Richie and Eddie left Derry together at 18. Richie and Eddie forgot Derry together at 18. Richie and Eddie remember Derry together at 40. Richie and Eddie return to Derry together at 40.)

Work in Progress Wednesday

Creators: work on or post something from your WIP. This is your weekly reminder to get something down on paper (real or virtual). It’s also a chance to share your progress with your followers and give them a sneak peek of what’s to come!

SO --  I’m coming up on my benchmark for where I wanted to be when I post chapter 1, so, let me present to you the first WIP Wednesday for Will My Love Grow?, the sequel to You Can Change Right Next To Me. Set a few years down the line, the boys have accepted their bond with poise and grace. When a biological adaptation granted to Septangular bonds such as theirs comes to light, they are sent another unexpected bonding experience all its own: Parenthood!  Yes, folks, you read that right.  Parenthood.  

Working at Gifted Insurance was never part of Eddie’s plan.  Not even for a moment.  But, the pay was good and he’d already had 2 promotions within the first 18 months of working with them.  He was good at his job.  

Even if he could do just about anything he wanted with a business degree.  It wasn’t even a question.  

But that particular day, with the New Year, New Plan rush, he was over it.  Really fucking over it.  His supervisor was up his ass, his coworkers were all still chipper with their post-Holiday rest.  Eddie, however, had the worst migraine and he was exhausted.  

As he stood over the printer, staring at the outgoing forms as though they’d personally wronged him, he hardly noticed the clicking of heels behind him.  Hardly noticed until it became a tap.  Then, the tap became accompanied by a huff.  

Well, unfortunately, 2 could play that game.  Eddie slowly, carefully pulled off the dotted edges of paper and inspected each and every word, running the slicing blade over in a perfectly straight line.  He stepped back, tapping the papers down once, twice, three times for good measure.  Then, he tapped it into the machine’s stapler.  Deciding he didn’t like the placement, he added a second to the corner.  Finally satisfied, and out of ideas for prolonging the punishment of the woman for so much as breathing in his general direction before he was ready to be done, he turned back to her, tiny, blonde and, if he wasn’t mistaken, the new secretary for his supervisor.  

Ooooh I love this question! I have a couple, though.

Instead, Richie found himself staring at the TV until Saturday Night Live came on.  Knowing that the pretty blonde girl from ...Married With Children was hosting, he’d left it on, hoping for anything to take his mind off of everything else.  As he drifted off, to the soft jazz sounds of the goodnights, he had a very strange but pleasant dream of himself and Eddie packing it all in and moving through the country in a van.  Weird.

Sometimes, I put pop culture references in to use as a specific timestamp for my fics. So, this one, specifically, dates this moment in the fic as May 8, 1993. It's helpful because it does give you a good benchmark for the passage of time. [You Can Change Right Next To Me, Chapter 8]

ALSO, because I do write a lot of aus, especially movie/music inspired crossovers, sometimes, I'll have them mention going to a movie or whatever and use it as a plot device because it's like, you know what, my mental health cannot have me coming up with a whole ass My Girl AU because "He can't see without his glasses on! Put his glasses on!" but you know what I can do? Work it in as an innocent first date for them and have them come out of the movie theatre like what the fuck that's not a funny movie!!

“He was allergic to bees,” the dad answered.  And chocolate.  And cashews. And cats.  And ragweed. And soy. And Penicillin.  The mental list in Richie’s mind started to roll and he shook it away.  It was just a movie. Just a movie.  The little boy wasn't Eddie, despite the slight similarities and his own panic.

The little girl’s brow furrowed.  “He’s okay, isn’t he?”

Eddie pressed his face into Richie’s chest.  He couldn’t watch. “There were just too many of them.” Eddie was nearly killed.   In the back of his mind, Richie was sucked back to the summer of 1989, the rotten, crumbling floorboards of that fucking house on Neibolt street beneath him, trying his best to get Eddie out.  If he couldn’t get him out, he was going down fighting because if Eddie wasn’t leaving that house alive, neither was Richie. He’d begged for Eddie to look at him because he couldn’t imagine the last thing Eddie saw being Pennywise.  He wouldn’t let that happen. Fighting with Bill on the street that day felt like the one thing that had to happen. It had to. He was so scared and he couldn’t take it out on the clown. Bill was the next best thing. Bill had dragged them down there.  They were all there for him. He couldn’t imagine what he would have done if Eddie had died that day. He didn’t want to think about it. Instead, he dug his fingertips into Eddie’s shirt, pulling him as tightly to him as he could manage.

They were both too wrapped up in the movie now to go back to ignoring it.  Eddie’s tears left wet marks on Richie’s shirt where his cheek was pressed to his chest.  Richie had kicked up the armrest on Eddie’s other side so they could lay like they were on one of their couches.  As the little boy’s funeral came around, Richie shifted, looking for the little girl. When she slowly started to make her way down the stairs to the parlor, Eddie whimpered.

“Wanna go tree climbing, Thomas J?” she asked, nearly climbing into the coffin with her best friend.  “His face hurts! And where are his glasses? Put his glasses on!” She dissolved into sobs, leaving both of the young men in hysterics.  Richie laced his hands into the back of Eddie’s shirt and tried not to insert himself into the movie. “He can’t see without his glasses.”  Eddie, on the other hand, was succinctly wrecked. He hadn’t quite had the immediate fear of Richie’s death put into his head, but he still knew just how close they’d come to this being one of them, what felt like a lifetime ago.

And things like that are some of my favorite ways to work in a pop culture reference because it's a good way of using something familiar to hammer home an emotion without having them have a really heavyhanded conversation. A conversation about those fears that have been there so long would have probably come out like an afternoon special if they'd had that conversation. Plus, at 15/16ish, neither of them would have been having that conversation unprompted, but when, later, they're talking about why they were crying so hard, you have that "He was allergic to bees" to call back to and realize that Richie knows all of Eddie's allergies by heart and the near-death experience of your childhood best friend and if you know My Girl, you have that second layer of emotion to guide where the pain is coming from. [Feeling Like I've Missed You All This Time, Chapter 4]

But, sometimes, it's just something offhand that I sit there and smile like an idiot when I write because it's just so perfect. like the comment about Richie being disappointed that he couldn't make jokes about Lance Bass's Ass being out of this world.

Eddie was quiet for a moment.  He thought it over, knowing that Richie meant it.  “But wasn’t one of them going to be an astronaut?  He had to be-”

Nodding evenly, Richie answered, “Yeah.  I was disappointed I wasn’t going to get to mention that his ass was out of this world.  Not that I had anyone to talk to about it.”  It was a quiet, lonely thought.  But Richie didn’t much care.  It didn’t matter anymore.

“Rich-”

Especially in that context, it's a little more like an in-joke with myself because I WAS the boyband girl when I was younger, but like... This one clicked so well when I was writing it, I felt like I just had to stop and pat myself on the back for the setting. Like, even Repression Era Richie had some Real Richie in him and like, I think that specific joke is something that is just... It's so telling that that's like 100% something he'd have said to Eddie at 15 for sitting on a rocket popsicle, or at 40 because Newly Out Eddie is getting adventurous and got a pair of underwear that has all of the planets on and Richie would not have been Richie if his boyfriend was going to /space/ and he didn't make at least one joke like that, but he didn't have anyone to make that joke to. That wasn't his world. And that's why it would never have worked, no matter how self-conscious Eddie gets about it because like... Richie may have loved Lance (or something) but Eddie is Eddie. I think, sometimes, it's fun to have a useful way to highlight that contrast, especially with a character like Richie. [Show Our Dedication]

To be honest, one of the reasons I think I love writing for It more than any other fandom I've been in is because I get to flex those nostalgia muscles that are all things that have been living in my head since I was way too young to be watching TRL and E!, you know? Like, I'm a little younger than the Losers, but my siblings are all right around the same age so, if any of you have older siblings, you know about the trickle-down pop culture knowledge, the ambient stuff that you know you're too young to remember but you DO and then you think about it and it's like oh... yeah. That's because my brother used to watch that, so even though I wasn't "watching" it was on in the background. Or, yeah, I'm a little young for this to be my specific memory of this videogame, but we were broke so my sister's old genesis was the one console i had until i got a used ps2 years and years after it was relevant. Like, I'm the baby in my generation of the family, plus, my parents are on the older side, so I have a lot of weird knowledge and memories that it's like "well why did you see the first scream movie in theatres. ditto to titanic." "because my sister that lived with us the longest was born in 1980, so my mom took her and i was just kind of... there."