#project frequency

@ahordeofwasps tagged me in this and I love it! Thank you. It's the first time I've encountered this tag and I'm not massively familiar with Reddit-style stuff, so I'm going to give it a shot but forgive me if I do it all wrong 😆

Everyone character I write is the ashole tbh, but this is for Rafe from Bridge From Ashes...

AITA for picking up guys for no-strings pain play in my best friend's bar?

I (32M) don't to relationships. I'm totally up front and honest about it, never lead anyone on or let them think anything means more to me than it does. I also don't do one night stands in the traditional sense. I'm not into that. I'm into pain (receiving) and it gets pretty extreme, but I'm up front about that too.

I have encounters with strangers, mostly people I meet in the bar my best friend (31F) works at and I think she's starting to get pissed off about random guys coming in looking for me afterwards.

It's not my fault people don't believe me when I tell them I'm not interested in anything serious. I never asked her to make excuses for me and she hasn't straight-up told me she's annoyed about it, but I'm starting to feel bad that she has to deal with the fall-out.

AITA?

@spuddlespud tagged me to share my last seven lines. Thank you!

I was editing Bridge From Ashes and realised this paragraph that I just finished fiddling with has seven sentences, so here goes...

What we talked about before, how it feels different with a gun. It does. Not only the physical sensation, but the immediacy of it, how someone goes from alive to dead with nothing in between. No panic, no fear, no last-ditch attempt to hold a wound closed or look me in the eye at the end. Just alive and then dead, here and then gone. It’s different, but not in a bad way. It’s just another way to experience transition.

@the-finch-address tagged me to share a last line. Thank you, lovely!

This is so hard to do when I'm editing because sometimes I don't even have whole new lines, so I'm going with the last visible line on the screen right now, from Bridge From Ashes.

He kneels beside the couch and his breath on my face is fresh mint, as cold as his hands. I’m pretty sure my breath could start fires. I’m about to speak, about to move, about to do something, when he slaps me hard, then gets out of the way just in time as I finally manage to turn my head to the side and throw up. Right now, I hate myself. I feel worse puking on Gillen’s floor than I ever felt slicing someone's throat while they looked me in the eye and desperately tried to appeal to a sense of humanity that hasn’t existed in me for the longest time.

Tagging @kaiusvnoir, @oh-no-another-idea, @pertinax--loculos, @sergeantnarwhalwrites and @spellscribe, if you'd like to share the last line you wrote, or some other last line because fuck the system.

@kaiusvnoir and @autumnalwalker both tagged me in this. Thanks, friends!

Here are seven sentences from Bridge From Ashes because my creative brain needs a bit of time off and I haven't written anything new in the last couple of weeks.

“Do you trust me?” Gillen says, spinning the knife in his hand and bringing it to rest against my throat. I sigh and stretch, my feet reaching past the arm of the couch, my head in his lap. “I want to.” “That’s not what I asked.” He presses the blade into my skin for a moment, then spins the knife again and sets it on the table next to him. “It’s the best answer I’ve got.”

Corruption and cruelty pulse through the veins of an opulent metropolis, where every side is the wrong side and progress is fuelled by exploitation. Too useful for prison and too dangerous for freedom, underworld assassin Rafael Turner is sentenced to service with a secretive military agency. When a mission to infiltrate a criminal operation drags his past to the surface and someone he thought he'd lost forever unexpectedly returns, how much is Rafe willing to risk to settle old scores and have a chance at a future he'd given up hoping for?

📝 BASICS Working title Project Frequency See tags #bridge from ashes and #project frequency 💕 TAG LIST @drabbleitout @ezestreet @i-can-even-burn-salad @kaiusvnoir @manathen @thegreatobsesso If you'd like to be added to the tag list, send me a message or an ask, or comment on this post.

✅ GENRE Cyberpunk/Neon-noir

📖 AUDIENCE Adult

👀 VIBE High-rise buildings and low-life scum. Everything hurts, but not enough to feel good. Yes, that’s a gun in my pocket and no, I’m not pleased to see you. If mind control is real, why do I still have to make decisions?

⭐ THE MAIN CHARACTER Rafe Turner is a close-range weapon with a face full of scars. He’s a necessary evil, but all evil is necessary to someone. He knows fear intimately, he wrote the code, and you’re going to tell him the truth whether you want to or not. He’s a hardcore masochist with an addictive personality and a weakness for people with the guts to call him on his shit, not that he’d ever admit it. Anything he’s good at feels like a curse, and the only thing he hates more than the world and everything in it is himself.

💜 THE OTHER GUY Gillen Kane is a god tier holder of grudges and his trust issues have trust issues. His presence can lower the temperature of a room. Beneath the carefully constructed facade of calm control, he’s extremely fragile and self-protective. Do not disturb; already disturbed. Trauma? What trauma? That’s just who he is. Now shut up and do what you’re told (but please don’t leave).

Thank you for the tag, @spuddlespud!

➥ Include one character quote — of your choosing ⁠— from each chapter of your WIP (or as many chapters as you'd like).

➥ Give absolutely no context, save for what's between two parts of an interrupted sentence, should that occur. You may mention who said it.

➥ Have fun, no pressure! Tagging @wildjuniperjones, @sergeantnarwhalwrites and @i-can-even-burn-salad, if you'd like to do it 💜

A quote from each chapter would be a HUGE post because I'm working on drafts of a complete book, so here are some randoms from Project Frequency. These are all Rafe (it's first person present tense, so)

I’m drenched in the warm fountain of a stranger’s blood for no reason other than a man with too much power wants to see me this way.

We walk with synchronised steps down another corridor of simulated daylight through the bowels of the building, our low-level mutual antagonism pushed aside in the interest of presenting a united front.

He looks like he’s hoping for something from me, but I don’t give a shit for eye contact or fulfilling anyone else’s needs.

You could argue there’s a crossover there, that there’s always a little bit of art in murder, and always a little bit of murder in art.

And in this grimy hallway, by the light of a dying security strip, I think about telling someone I was ready to kill a few minutes ago how I turn the surface of my body into something no-one should want to touch.

I feel worse puking on Gillen’s floor than I ever felt slicing someone's throat while they looked me in the eye and desperately tried to appeal to a sense of humanity that hasn’t existed in me for the longest time.

@ahordeofwasps tagged me to share seven lines from my WIP. Thanks, friend!

These are from Bridge From Ashes (which will be ready to post here really soon!!!)

“Yes, you do.” His lips are almost touching mine when he speaks again, low and smooth. “There’s a difference between not knowing something and not knowing how to explain it. You do know and you’re going to tell me.” I look down to avoid his eyes, to create some space between us. He holds my throat with a hand like the ice that would be in my veins if I had better self-control. “I told you to look at me.”

@zmwrites tagged me to search my WIP for I’m so tired. Thank you! The closest I could get to the vibe was a whole lifetime of tiredness.

This is from Bridge From Ashes...

A wave of something like guilt, or maybe just responsibility, washes over me, clouded by an aggressive exhaustion that feels like a whole lifetime of tiredness all at once.