#vampray

tagged by @skeletonsonmars

I don't have a ton of progress on much stuff due to [waves my hand at my looming graduation] but here's a recent chunk from vampray (because of course that's what i choose to work on with my limited time...)

no-pressure tags for @heaumeaux @dick-hardboiled @peanutbutterangelic @squidinkblot annnnd uh idk im tired thats who ive got

"Wait, wait, stop," Ray gasps, his hands landing firmly on Sand's shoulders. Then, panicky, "Sand." Sand considers, only for a moment, and it's less of a consideration and more of a—a thought: so Ray gets a choice?

And from the FadelKant follow-up:

"Style said you were noisy in bed," Kant remarks against Fadel's chest. He slides a hand up from his waist to cup his chest, gives it a firm squeeze that has Fadel melting into him.

And a little bodyguard preview for youuuuu:

S - Sand bolts across the street without checking for traffic and then he's right there in front of Ray, taking him by the shoulders with an expression of absolute incredulity. His eyes search over him, flooding with tears, hands squeezing his shoulders with bruising force. With a choked sound, he yanks Ray into his arms and buries his face in his neck.

"Ray," he weeps, tears steadily soaking Ray's shoulder. "Ray, Ray, Ray, Ray….."

Ray stares out over Sand's shoulder, lips parted and hands rigid at his sides.

C - Confusion fills Sand's eyes, the inner corners of his eyebrows lifting. "What do you mean?"

"I think he—" Ray laughs one humorless breath and makes himself plow through and just say it. "I think he killed me. I don't know how long I was trapped there. Everything was so confusing after the change and I… I wanted so badly to go home, but I couldn't find it and I was so hungry all the time and…"

"Killed you? Ray, what do you mean he—"

E - Everything is exactly as it had been prior to his disappearance. The same pictures on the walls, the same couch and rug, all the lamps in the same spots. It's eerie how the place has been seemingly frozen in time.

"It looks the same," he says.

N - Naked, he pauses before getting into the shower, his fingers tracing out the pair of wounds on his left thigh. They're long and deep, but they don't bleed, the clearly visible muscle a reminder that everyone is just meat beneath the skin. With his index and middle finger, Ray gently presses into one of the long gashes, spreading it open. It doesn't hurt, though he can feel a pull in the muscle and skin. He peers into the opening and spots a flash of white. Bone. His fingers jerk away as a sudden phantom pain slashes across his thigh, animalistic fear sluicing through him and—

T - They haven’t fucked since Ray came back to Bangkok. They should now, he reasons. It would help. Maybe they’ll both calm down and be able to better see one another’s side in the post-orgasm clarity. So he kisses Sand back. They've kissed a handful of times since the one they shared in the alley, but never so passionately. Sand licks up along the inside of Ray's upper lip, and need sparks along Ray's skin, his dick twitching in his pants. But then Sand's tongue pushes further into his mouth, and the last time Ray had a tongue in his mouth it had been one that he bit off but it was a monster's so it grew back and he stopped fighting the inevitable because—

lololololol thanks <3 um here's some. sad bullshit

ooo yes yay! thank you!

So a fun fact about me is that I have very, very vivid dreams with lots of heavy-handed symbolism, which obviously influences the way that I write dreams. I pull a lot of... if not the content of my dreams as inspiration, then the vibes for this fic. That weird consistent inconsistency and dream logic. Since my dreams are so vivid, I tend to remember them pretty well (and I write them all down) and I think that helps me with writing them. I just think dreams are really cool with the weird ways that they try to process waking thought and experience.

So for Sand's dreams, I wanted their meaning to be pretty obvious, though obfuscated just enough that if you don't think about it too much you could just brush it off like, well, weird dream huh?

I started with visuals for both dreams and teased meaning out as I wrote them. They both flowed very naturally for me (third one doesn't really count here lol). Just kind of taking into account Sand's mental state and how that could manifest in a dreamscape. In the first one it's a familiar space that gets distorted, and the second it's bright and beautiful and peaceful right through their drowning.