Look!!! This Is My Arm Now!!

Thank you guys ❤️

I ♡ readers

here’s to the readers who stay up past midnight reading just one more chapter

here’s to the readers who like one fic - so they go through our archive and read everything else

here’s to the readers who are still learning the language of the fic they’re reading, but they’re making it through anyhow

here’s to the readers who are too shy to tell us how much they love our story, so they just tell all of their friends about it instead

here’s to the readers who kudos - and then comment “kudos” when they can’t do it again

here’s to the readers who make rec lists or run fic reccing blogs

here’s to the readers who give out prompts and ask for metas and suggest ideas of things they’d love to see

here’s to the readers who hide their phones so that no one sees what they’re reading, but omg this fic is just so good!

here’s to the readers who keysmash, reaction gif, tag, comment, quote us back to us, and otherwise let us know that they loved our work

here’s to the readers

without you, we don’t exist

While I adore the Crowley sibs love, what about Az and Zira? What's their dynamic? Do they drink tea and gossip? ("Did I tell you about the time Crowley just slept for a 100yrs?") Do they compare their book collection? ("I haven't seen these scrolls since Alexandria!" "Oh! Crowley gifted them to me!" ) Does Zira try to teach Az to cook waving off Crow's warnings off Az making a mess of his kitchen? ("Zee, I swear, he burns water without even trying" "pishposh, everyone can learn to cook!" )

the angels are like cousins who share many interests. Zira looks up to Az and Az admires Zira, so there’s a lot of well meaning compliments and inside jokes going on. they definitely share book collections and food recommendations. and it’d be hilarious if Zira tried to teach Az to cook (to no avail of course, Crow is right XD)

i also think it’d be cute if they hooked ankles when they sit close together

HOW TO SPEAK WRITER: 

“my characters have a mind of their own!” - no i’m not mad and yes i know i made them up but i have no idea what’s happening anymore please save me

“i’m going to write today!” - i’d actually rather wash the garden path but the house is already pristine and i’ve run out of excuses

 “this is still a rough draft so go easy on me!” - i have spent what feels like forever pouring my very soul into this but i worry it’s terrible and if you’re mean i may just cry

“i’ll update soon!” - this is utterly killing me, i don’t know how to read anymore, what are words, help 

“i just had this idea and had to share it with you guys!” - this has taken me three weeks and countless hours please love and appreciate it

“feedback appreciated :D” - please, i live for validation! i need comments!! 

I know discourse is the word of choice in fandom nowadays but I kind of wish we would have stuck with “fandom wank” because it carries the implication that the anger involved culminated into effectively nothing and that the act was wholeheartedly masturbatory in nature rather than for any greater cause.

How Long is this Fic Really?: A Guide

Word count in the HP Series: 

Sorcerer’s Stones: 76,944  Chamber of Secrets: 85,141 Prisoner of Azkaban: 107,253  Goblet of Fire: 190,637 Order of the Phoenix: 257,045 Half-Blood Prince: 168,923 Deathly Hallows: 198,227

Word count in the LOTR Series:

The Hobbit: 95,022 Fellowship of the Ring: 177,227 Two Towers: 143,436 Return of the King: 134,462

I’ve been watching a lot of Mad Men because Jon Hamm and I cant stop thinking of like a sixties AU with Gabe and Beez, or just switching out broody Don Draper for Gabriel so could I suggest a domestic 60s set Ineffable Bureaucracy thing?

I decided to do 1968 because of the Apollo 7 mission (I think Bee is just a huge space nerd) and also because I have no idea what Mad Men is (thank you for giving me a new show to watch though, holy shit!! Jon Hamm is a gift). I tried very hard to do this in a 60s setting but it may come off more as 50s themed- I pulled some familiar stuff I know from The Help and read up on some careers before I hopped into this. Bee’s name is Beatrice in this because reasons.

*

Gabriel loved his life. He had a good job working as a Creative Director in a big advertising company, made enough money to be comfortable, got the weekends off to do whatever he pleased, and had a lovely wife to go home to. 

Wife. The concept was still foreign, still made him shiver and smile and feel mushy as could be. Bee would tell him to shove a sock in it, if she were here.

He and Beatrice Romanov had gotten married only a month ago, but only because she had insisted she was going to finish her college degree before he was allowed to strap her down. Gabriel would have liked to have married her the minute he had seen her under those trees in the college courtyard, but she had put her foot down. 

It took a lot more to court her than just a charming smile and a compliment, he had learned very quickly. In fact, the first time he’d done that, he’d ended up with a milkshake in his lap. 

“I’m not a cheap whore,” the soon-to-be love of his life had snapped, her dark eyes blazing with hellfire. “Don’t treat me like one.”

Gabriel had never been spoken to like that by a girl — or anyone — before. At first he was offended, so he made it his duty to try and outdo her in each of the classes they had together. Unfortunately for him, he’d found his match. She was whip smart, mean as a junkyard dog, and took shit from absolutely nobody. Many men had walked away with tattered dignity and a broken nose after attempting to tame this wildfire of a girl. 

He quickly found that instead of wanting to defeat her, Gabriel wanted to impress her. He wanted her to give him that sharp little smile she got when she won. He wanted to hear that laugh, wicked and graceless, that she would let loose on occasion when she was around her friends. He wanted those dark eyes to be on him, always. He wanted.

That wanting turned into a game of cat and mouse very quickly, both of them doing things that had society frowning and the other taunting them to continue. Heated looks across classrooms. Stolen kisses against the bookshelves of the library. His hand on her thigh, her back pressed to the cold stone wall of her dorm building. 

One night, Gabriel took the bait, and had his world shattered by his name broken on her lips, her body bare against his, those eyes looking up at him like he was the only thing that mattered in the world. 

Gabriel woke up the next morning with his vessel of hellfire next to him in bed, her inky black hair spilling over his pillow and tickling his nose. The sunlight streaming in the window made her skin look like porcelain, her body ethereal and too perfect to belong in even Heaven. The frustration and pent up tension that remained in him quickly gave way to something that melted his insides, took his breath, and made him pull her closer and press a kiss to her hair.

Three years later, he knelt in front of her with a small velvet box and watched those beautiful dark eyes glisten with tears and love and the promise of a future.

And now he got to go home to his future every single night.

“Leaving already?” Comes a teasing call as Gabriel packs his things up for the weekend.

He looks up, then gives his co-worker a polite smile. “Ah, Sandalphon. Yes, it’s my night for the dishes and Bee wants to watch the Apollo 7 launch with me.”

“You’re whipped, you know.” Comes the predictable laugh, accompanied by others in the office who were bad at pretending to not listen in on conversations. “That wife of yours has you on a leash.”

Gabriel shakes his head, unable to help his smile. “What can I say? I like a girl who takes charge. Evening, gentlemen.”

He leaves with wolf whistling and whoops following him out, but his mind is focused on calculating how much more time it would be until he got to go home to his wife. If he stopped at the supermarket and bought her favorite bottle of wine and some flowers, it would only add another fifteen minutes…

*

“You’re late!” Comes the call when he closes the door. He winces — he had been trying to be quiet so he could surprise her. Nothing got past Bee. 

“Sorry, my love.” He calls, slipping his shoes off and treading carefully into the kitchen. 

The sight that greets him is one he’d come home to for the rest of his life, but one that would always make his heart swell and his knees weak. 

His wife was standing at the stove, stirring what smelled like spaghetti sauce, a red gingham apron tied around her neck and waist. Her hair was pulled back from her face, piled messily on her head and stuck through with a knitting needle (his mother had gotten them for her, trying to insist she needed to be more ladylike. Bee wore them in her hair out of spite. Besides, they did well in a pinch).

“Hello,” Gabriel walks over, pausing to kiss her cheek before fetching a vase to put the flowers in. “I brought you something.”

Bee glances up, surprise flickering in dark eyes, before she smiles. “Sap. Put the wine on ice, we can have it with dinner. It’ll be ready in a little bit.”

“It smells good, Bee.” He does as he’s told, then pulls up a chair at the table to sit and talk with her while she finishes dinner.

His wife blows a stray hair from her face, her brows creasing. “Your mother sent the recipe to me. No, she showed up to my work to give it to me. Spent twenty minutes going on and on and on about how a good housewife always makes her husband’s favorite things…” Bee makes an irritated noise. 

“At work?” Gabriel sits up, frowning. “I’ll talk to her…”

“No need,” she says, with that grin she used to give him just before she dragged him behind a building at school and kissed him senseless. “I took care of it.”

“Bee,” he says, a rush of fondness and exasperation rolling over him. And maybe a bit of dread. “What did you do?”

“Oh, she’ll call you about it later.” She waves a hand, her smile growing. 

Gabriel didn’t even have it in him to be upset — his mother was insufferable about everything Bee did. About how she dressed, how she behaved, how she treated Gabriel. When Bee’d refused to marry her son in a church, that was when Gabriel accepted that he was going to be stuck in the middle of an eternal feud.

But watching his wife move around their kitchen and complain about her day, he found he couldn’t mind. It was amusing to see his wife come up with petty ways to get back at the people who annoyed her. It was definitely a good reminder that she would put up with none of his shit, not ever. 

“Are we watching the launch during dinner?” Gabriel asks when she turns the stove top off. 

She brightens. “Yes! And the newest Star Trek comes out tonight, too. You don’t mind if we watch both?”

Gabriel gives her a fond look, getting up to get them both some wine. “Not at all. Whatever makes you happy, darling.”

Bee grins, blocking his way and leaning up on her tiptoes for a kiss, her fingers snagging and wrinkling his work shirt. He bends to meet her, his hand resting against the curve of her spine and tugging her closer against him as their lips meet.

The chase had been well worth it, Gabriel reflects, as his wife hooks a hand around the back of his neck and pulls him down farther to her mercy with a wicked smile. He wouldn’t trade any of this for anything.

A man stands on the corner of the street, screaming hateful things and wearing a sign that shows his contempt.

I remember the way she smiles at me moments before she kisses me, like nothing could be better. The way she runs across the house just seconds before my mom arrives, giving me the sweetest, most mischievous kiss she has to offer.

My mother and I sit across from each other in a quiet restaurant. She asks if, when I find "the man of my dreams", if I will put my plans on hold to please him. I have to swallow the bile rising in my throat at the thought of diminishing myself for one who she could possibly think would be the anyone of my dreams.

Her touch on my bare skin is so soft and gentle, holding me in a way I've never been held and always craved. She makes my body relax and my head fill with cotton, making me love myself in a way I have never learned, in a way I have always needed. She won't let me hide away - she sees me in all my beauty and begs me to see it, too.

I see the look in people's eyes when I tell them I love a girl. The laughter that comes from the girls who tell me that it's fine, as long as I don't develop a crush on them, is a double edged sword. It's as though my desire is constant and insatiable and easy to throw away. As though the intimacy we share is unreal and made up - despite knowing each other's every habits and favorites and midnight thoughts.

My presence is so comforting to her that she could fall asleep on my chest or in my lap at any moment. I am weak for her - aching and tingling limbs are a small price to pay to run my fingers through her hair and listen to the soft sound of her breathing. I have never known such casual intimacy, never wanted to be still for so long so that nothing disturbs her.

The fear that floods me when I am with close friends or family who I know will hate me, who I know will try and tell me how disgusting I am and how wrong I am cuts me to my core. I'm afraid to tell them of her, terrified to be vulnerable enough to profess that I want to marry this beautiful creation who has chosen to love me.

I shouldn't be the one who is ashamed of myself. I shouldn't be the one trying to reform with every time I have to tell a person that I'm taken, or sit through conversations about blow jobs, or listen to boys joke about the privacy of my sex life.

Being in love with her is the most exhilarating thing I have ever experienced. Every day it's the thing that makes me press on, the thing I cling to when my day is terrible and all I want is to curl up in her arms and never leave.

It's not trivial. It's not a chore. We do everything we can to make each other happy - we commit, we tease, we talk, we laugh, we collaborate to come to the best agreement.

So is the issue really that we are two girls in love? Do you really hate us so much for holding hands and kissing and sharing our lives?

Or do you envy the way we devote ourselves fully to the other person?

In this world, in this society - every single day is another test. We fight every day to prove to the world that we love each other, that we're in this for the Long haul.

That does things to a relationship. It changes you. It makes devotion and communication and affection second nature.

So while you sit across the way from us, glaring at us while we hold hands and go about our day - think about this.

Are you really so bothered by our relationship?

Or are you just jealous?

Okay I lied I'm good at procrastination and bad at progress...

I got some new records yesterday and I actually have my journal out so… Who knows, maybe I’ll have something up this weekend!

(special visit from my dad’s Lego replica of Voltron and Darth Goofy)

Your klance fics give me life

Thank you :)

Klancetober Day Two: Autumn Leaves

So... I did fall behind. Midterms are coming up and I forgot about time management!

*

Keith steps back to survey his work, wiping a sleeved arm over his face to rid it of the sweat. He leans on his rake, smiling faintly at the massive pile of leaves he had managed to gather. It had taken him a couple hours, but the leaves were gathered and he could put them in the compost pile Lance was lovingly tending to, along with their garden.

“Cannonball!” Comes a happy shriek, moments before the pile of leaves he’d so carefully constructed went up with a puff of wind and a body falling heavily into the middle.

Keith stares at the leaves in disbelief, gaping. “Lance!” He whines, dropping the rake.

The perpetrator looks up at him with sparkling blue eyes, crumpled bits of leaves stuck to his hair and clothes, his grin mischievous and wide. “Oops,” he says.

“You- You did that on purpose!” Keith whines, stomping over and putting his hands on his hips to glower down at the Cuban.

“Did I?” He gasps, feigning surprise. “Oh, no, whatever will you do…”

“Now I have to start all over again!”

“Or…” Lance wiggles his eyebrows, reaching up and yanking on his hand, pulling him down. Keith falls with a yelp, landing on his boyfriend’s chest.

“You could stay here,” Lance finishes, pressing a sloppy kiss to his cheek and picking a leaf from his hair.

“But I just finished and now we’re ruining them…” He bemoans, closing his eyes.

“Yeah, yeah.” Lance grins, rolling over and pinning him in the leaves. Keith looked good like this; his ebony hair spilling over the red and gold and brown leaves, skin flushed from the cold, his lips holding the pout that his eyes matched with fond annoyance. “You really need to relax, babe.”

“But my leaves…”

“...Will be here all month.” He laughs, brushing his hair from his face and leaning down to give him a kiss. “Don’t worry,” he coos, “I’ll make it up to you later.”

Keith accepts the kiss with a huff, settling into his ruined pile of leaves to accept the affection given to him. “You better.” He mumbles, reaching up to brush bits of fallen leaves from Lance’s hair.

Lance ends up getting his way, and the two roll around the leaves, the wind picking them up and scattering them around the yard once more. Keith had the feeling his boyfriend was going to make a habit of this each time he pulled out the rake.

Oh well, he decides, it was a good way to lure Lance outside for some fresh air. If the fallen leaves were what it took, then he was happy for the chore.