Peeped at your wip post and wondering if I might sniff a little bit of content for the final installment in the kiss your baby fic? perchance? pleading extremely nicely if you can picture it
(From the draft of Chapter 6 of kiss your baby (goodbye), my on-going LH!Arthur/Charles mutual pining fic)
Charles saw Arthur—alive, sunburned and too skinny, but alive—for all of three heartbeats before the other man was swept up in a crowd of sobbing, grateful arms.
He could feel the warm breeze of swamp air tingle against his shaved scalp when the other man settled next to him on the rickety railing on the porch overlooking the moonlit swamp. Out in the night red eyes glittered on the river as alligators swam slowly by.
“So,” Arthur said, leaving a few painful, horrible inches of space between them. “Hearin’ that you and Sadie kept things together while we was gone.”
“Yeah,” Charles acknowledged, not letting himself look to the side. Still, he tracked the other man in the corner of his vision, noting the tension in his shoulders. “What did you expect? That I’d run off and leave them all on their own? Abandon women and a child, on account of my ‘hollow heart’?”
It was a low blow, and Charles knew it. The man was likely exhausted from his ordeal, and from what little Javier had said every one of the men who’d ended up on Guarma had reason to be shaken by what had happened there. Javier most of all, but. Arthur had taken his share of rough treatment.
Still. Charles couldn’t find it in himself to be sorry, or to be the one to reach across the strained, uneasy silence. Arthur’d been the one to set fire to whatever mess had been between them, and Charles had decided, kneeling in Hosea’s grave and choking on the red-hot pain of his own grief—
If he ever saw Arthur Morgan again, he’d find a way to forgive him. But he wasn’t going to go scrabbling in the ashes of his unrequited love for whatever warped, misshapen remains lay buried under the smouldering wreckage.
“I was wrong,” Arthur said, and the bluntness of the admission was enough to knock Charles out of his reverie. “When I said—you know a lot about loyalty. I’ve known that, always have. I just…”
“You wanted to hurt me,” Charles summed up for him. It was something he’d thought long and hard about. “You do that a lot. Hurt people before they can hurt you.”
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we are celebrating the first day of pride by getting daydrunk and re-watching the kaldur (the bisexual fishman of my heart) centric episodes of young justice
RULES: Make a new post with the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous, and tag as many people as you have WIPs (I will NOT be doing that). People send an ask with the title that most intrigues them, then you post a snippet or tell them something about it.
Tagged by @kaphzzz, who knows that it was very cruel to out me like this XD.
what the water gave me (charthur memaid AU, kaph's very over-due birthday gift)
Coercive Methodologies In Couple’s Therapy (kieran has to do some couple's counseling while tied to that tree in Chapter 2)
kiss your baby (goodbye) Chapter 6 (conclusion to the LH!Arthur/Charles mutual pining fic)
A Woman's Touch (continuation of a never ending kind of love, in which we finally get Sadie!)
Rough Rider (prequel to Dog Days of Summer, in which Charles teases Arthur for a full day and gets exactly the punishment he's hoping for)
Chapter 4 of Lie Back and Think Of Atlantis (the on-going and very belatedly updated Kaldur/Vandal Savage whump fic)
Mary-Beth the Marital Detective (modern AU crack fic of Mary-Beth thinking Arthur is cheating on Charles and investigating)
Chapter 7 of Corinthians 7-4 (modern AU charthur fic focused on a week-long force-fem scene, co-written with @cowboah-baby)
Unamed Young Justice/Magnus Archives AU
Interpersonal Communication and Advanced Team Management (Combined Course) (Young Justice, post Season 1, the Team plays a game of Assassin)
Surface 101 (Wynnde meets the team)
fish out of water (hangover, YJ edition)
Backdraft (Gertrude Robinson/Agnes Montague, mostly a Gertrude character exploration)
I am NOT tagging 13 people XD. But I do tag: @cowboah-baby, @writing-for-soup, @blackmantagirl, @cakeandpi
Anyone else feel free to join! And if you want a snippet from any of the WIP's just drop the number in my inbox and I'll hand over 200-400 words.
very fun for me personally that the red dead redemption folks who primarily have known me as a source of fluff and smut for the last two years are now experiencing the unforgiving angst I’ve been subjecting young justice fans to for fourteen years ♥️
OMG HI HELLO!!! Just wanted to say that ever since I've read 'A never kind of ending love', I've been obsessed, and it's incredibly rare for me to act this way about a fanfic since I barely read any, but that story never fails to make me squeal, bite my fingernail, and crash out in the corner of my room at the same time. It also makes me wanna write my own inspired by this where Charles and Arthur have a son a few years later (plot would be more developed when I actually take full interest/commitment). Either way, I look forward to reading more!!
Aw! I'm so sorry for how much time has passed, anon, but thank you so much! I'm really glad this story has been able to touch you. I'm working on the next chapter (which has been dogging me for a year, honestly) and am going to be re-focusing on the series once I wrap a few of my other current WIPs up. Thank you so much for the lovely message, this meant a lot to hear/read!
If you ever want to talk about your own fic (kid fic is adorable) let me know! I'm always down to yap about these cowboys!
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i've been working on my 'season 2 kaldur corruption-arc, enemies-with-benefits kaldur/savage' fic for. uh. six years, I guess? And I guess this will count as spoilers of a sort for where everything is going but!
Kaldur's whole season 3 arc, to me, is spent highlighting the lessons he took from the invasion-arc and how they've permanently altered the way/with who he interacts closely with. Those lessons being:
lying to your friends is a reasonable strategy that yields pretty good results under the right circumstances
brutal self-sacrifice is something you should commit to and never willingly talk about
the people that love you will do so to their own detriment and its not your fault if they trust you
that killing people (or brain-wiping your friends) is 100% justified under the right circumstances
that allowing the masses to make their own choices against their best interest is less important than global security
that ethics are well and good but results (avoiding mass-enslavement/extinction) are a perfectly acceptable reason to sell your own soul and put your loved ones in danger
that none of the high stakes you're playing for absolve you of the fact that everything you do is 100% still your responsibility and that, as the person making decisions, you are 100% culpable for everything that happens and are, in fact, a bad person
The conversation with Dolphin mid-season (when Kaldur is actively deceiving his friends, again, and putting them in danger because he sees their own innocence and the current stakes as too important to let them be active participants in the choices he is making on their behalf) about how Kaldur clearly believes himself to be a bad man really drove it home for me: Kaldur thinks the shit he pulled in S2/S3 makes him evil, but he's still 100% committed to the path he picked because he sees it as the only safe option for protecting the world AND he's arrogant enough to think he has a right to make those choices on everyone's behalf.
All this to say: he and Vandal Savage would have a FASCINATING sexual/intimate relationship.
Short version of why I think Savage and Kaldur should hate fuck:
Savage and Kaldur are narrative foils, esp in S3
It gives Kaldur a legitimate target for his increased propensity towards brutality/violence
Savage LOVES manipulating people and Kaldur would make a very juicy target for 'future chess piece'
it would add a spicy extra level of angst to Kaldur's swing towards utilitarianism that would be very fun to watch him angst over (a 'we're not so different, you and I' speech would be DELIGHTFUL)
its hot, okay. I'm a sucker for villain/hero dynamics where the mutual respect for competency is a big part of the attraction and while they are enemies there's a respect for one another as threats that is just. really, really hot.
Long Version:
During Summit (penultimate ep of S2 when Kaldur does the big reveal about his duplicity), Savage singles Kaldur out as the person who has done the most damage to his plans in 50,000 years. As a character who habitually collects/forms friendships with highly competent rivals, I think him and Kaldur having a hero/villian relationship would be FASCINATING.
Kaldur is a utilitarian. Savage is one, too. How do you balance the potential of many with the agency of those who need help now? If your central ethical tenant is to do the most good for the most people, how do you apply that in a scale that stretches across 50,000 years and several galaxies without becoming a monster?
If you're the guy charges with assigning the League's limited resources to an increasing number of climate disasters, wars, and alien incursions, how do you sleep every night knowing you've, in very real terms, decided who will live and who will die on a daily basis? Add that to putting your friends' and young mentees' lives on the line.
Kaldur is pulled back and forth during the entirety of the show by his loyalty and attachment in opposition to his sense of duty and lack of self-empathy. Just because he loves someone or something it doesn’t mean they get to be more important. Just because something hurts him personally it doesn’t mean it outweighs the harm to others. It's why he’s an excellent spy—and its why Vandal Savage would conceivable want him as his next chess piece.
Similarly, Savage displays genuine sentimentality towards his children even when killing one of them to maintain his power. You (and Savage) could make the argument that, 50,000 years down the line, Kaldur would be the exact kind of villain that Savage is right now.
I've long HC'd that when Kaldur made the choice to go undercover he mentally cut out the parts of him that could get him killed or cause the mission to fail. Sentiment, self preservation, any dream or hope for his own future. He’s always lacked in self-regard or empathy, and now he’s weaponized it into a blade that cuts three ways.
So Savage’s utilitarian appreciation of him would flatter the tatters of his ego: Kaldur is a sword, and Vandal Savage appreciates nothing better than a well-honed weapon. This is where some of the mutual attraction comes from.
Then, in the aftermath of Endgame,while Kaldur tries to handle the stress of re-taking the team and building his shattered relationships, Kaldur is also dealing with unraveling the mental construct that got him through the war.
These are the options for his new, post-Invasion reality:
His relationships are important, because he is not a weapon. If he is not a weapon, then he had choices. If he made choices, then sometimes they were the wrong ones and he bears the responsibility for that.
If he willingly engaged in a violent, mutually destructive relationship with Vandal Savage (a man who is free and is under no obligation to protect Kaldur’s reputation), then that was a choice. There is a part of him that wanted it or needed it.
Alternately, as I think we saw a glimpse of in S4:
Kaldur is still a weapon, he is still a tool, his purpose remains utilitarian. He doesn’t have to rebuild relationships or reconcile because he, unlike real people, does not need love. He performed excellently without it.
He does not need support (aka vulnerability). If he isn’t a person, not really, then he doesn’t have to deal with what happened to him. So there is a part of him, in the aftermath, that would like everyone to stop. Stop talking at him, to him, stop pretending to care. When did they ever, before his farce? It's not his fault that his actions make others uncomfortable. They’re alive because of what he sacrificed, so he will not sit here, in the safety of a peace he bartered himself (soul, body, and mind) for and be lectured.
And who is the person, esp during S3 while Kaldur is the head of the league, who is posed diametrically opposite Kaldur but who still ultimately has similar goals re: maintaining Earth's independence?
Vandal. Fucking. Savage.
Esp if we didn't have the third-act introduction of Wyynde and Dolphin as Kaldur's emotional anchors (both of whom are only able to fulfill this role because they didn't KNOW Kaldur pre-Invasion and Kaldur can't hold the idea that they're clinging to memories of the man he used to be against them), Kaldur would be incredibly vulnerable to a mutually-violent hatefucking thing with Savage, in part because Savage is someone who respects Kaldur's prowess and would never, ever pity him (we saw in S4 with both Dick and Kaldur's parents how much Kaldur recoils at even the SUGGESTION of pity).
Anyway, that my incoherent spiel on why Savage and Kaldur should have a mutually destructive hate-boning thing. Hope you enjoyed, and would love to hear any other takes.
I have read all of your Charthur content on ao3 and loved all of it - currently working through the comments I need to leave because each piece is phenomenal in its own right and deserves individual praise.
Your style and the dynamics you show between Charles and Arthur has been really inspirational for me and I definitely want to write some Charthur smut with bottom!Charles getting the pillow princess treatment.
Saying that - I want to know if there are any terms/ideas you would be uncool with seeing someone else write for this pairing? (Charles being called 'princess' etc).
I certainly wouldn't want to write something that felt like it was trying to be your work but I want to know ahead of time if there's anything specific I should avoid because I'm definitely really influenced by you.
Hey! I'm so glad you're enjoying the series and the way I've written the fellas so far! Your comment meant a lot and I really look forward to seeing what else you have to say/liked about the individual fics!
I'm glad I've been able to help inspire you--we need more bottom!Charles and generally more of Charles being treated as an equal partner to Arthur rather than a caretaker or weird 2004-yaoi-seme stereotype. There's plenty of great top Charles too, don't get me wrong, but I've been having fun trying to balance the scales a little and explore a mode of their dynamic that doesn't get as much attention.
That said--use whatever you like! The iterative nature of fandom is one of my favorite things about writing fic! Nicknames, little quirks--if there's something super specific that you truly feel you're pulling from my work I'd love a shout-out in the author notes, but that's all I'd ever ask!
I see fandom as an fantastic mixing pot of ideas and I'm happy that you wanna add some of my specific flavor to your personal soup! I can't wait to read whatever you've got cooking!
