sampler

[necessarian]

inspired by aroceu's sampler, here is my personal pick of favourites amongst my own fics, self-recs. i've sorted them by theme, not fandom, and i've tried to include fic from as many fandoms as i can in each category. this way, you can start with what you like, and branch out from there. so...

... if you like short and sweet one-shots, click here

• ... if you like novel-length works, click here
• ... if you like stories about friendship, click here
• ... if you like mile-a-minute comedy, click here
• ... if you like classic tropes, and lots of them, click here
• ... if you like melancholy, introspective character pieces, click here
• ... if you hate yourself and want to cry, click here

one-shots: small but perfectly formed

she could almost be a knight | T | 6,804w | a song of ice and fire (jaime lannister/brienne of tarth)

excerpt:

The red Priestess was already there, waiting with a patient smile on her face. "Your dress is quite worn," she remarked, glancing with what might have been disapproval at the garment.

"It is my oldest that still fits," Brienne admitted.

"But it is your favourite," Melisandre said, "and that is what matters for my spell."

"Your spell?"

Without asking, Melisandre took the dress and the needle from Brienne. She whispered words in a foreign tongue and the objects in her hands began to transform. Brienne watched with her mouth hanging open as the brocade of her dress became the detailed edges of plate armour, faced blue as her dress had been. It separated into a breastplate and a helmet, greaves and epaulettes, all in a steely blue metal, rent with scratches as though the armour had seen many fights already. The needle grew in length and thickness, sharpening itself to a long, pointed lance, painted in twining ribbons of blue and rose, the colours of Tarth.

slow down, you're taking me over | T | 5,568w | haikyuu!! (ennoshita chikara/futakuchi kenji)

excerpt:

But it’s kind of cool—having a crush, that is—which is why Futakuchi’s decided that they’re on a date. He’ll get around to telling Ennoshita later.

“I thought maybe we could go see a film this weekend,” he says, casual as anything. He’s not going to mention the Abs Incident if Ennoshita doesn’t.

Ennoshita doesn’t even do him the good grace of looking up from the menu. “Sure,” he says.

Futakuchi frowns. “Are you ignoring me because of what happened the other day?” he asks, breaking his own promise.

“No,” Ennoshita says. “I’m just reading the menu.”

Which is nonsense, because they’ve been here before, and Ennoshita gets the same thing every time.

“You sound bored,” Futakuchi says. “Don’t you ever get excited about anything?”

“Sure,” Ennoshita says again—his voice is flat, but Futakuchi can tell he’s trying to keep a straight face.

Futakuchi leans forward, resting his chin on his hands and switching gears to smooth-talking flirt in a matter of seconds. “So what gets you fired up, then?”

Ennoshita looks up over the menu, smiling conspiratorially, and their eyes lock. “Want to find out?”

broken hearts (make it rain) | T | 5,986w | raven cycle (richard campbell gansey iii/adam parrish)

excerpt:

“But knowing you,” Adam said, “you don’t need a computer to get started. You’ll have to tell me about your research sometime.”

Gansey got to his feet, stretching. They really had been there a while. “Oh, you already know the ins and outs of it. My advisor is very interested in my thoughts on Celtic mysticism.”

“She’s in for a shock. Have you told her about… ?”

Adam trailed off, pushing his chair out and standing up as an excuse. They never talked about what had happened to them in Henrietta beyond vagaries. Even in the immediate aftermath, it seemed somehow wrong to let that bit of their past continue to seep into the future.

“You know, I don’t think I will tell her,” Gansey said. “I don’t think she’d believe me.”

Adam laughed. “Yeah. Sometimes I don’t even believe it. Much easier to stick to universal constants.”

“You told me the Hubble constant is actually a parameter.”

“Some things really are constant,” Adam said. “The speed of light in a vacuum. The smallest possible unit of energy.” They stopped outside the coffee shop, and Adam rubbed the back of his neck, smiling self-consciously. “You and me.”

whenever, wherever | T | 6,625w | yuri!!! on ice (yuuri katsuki/viktor nikiforov)

excerpt:

Just as quickly as he’d started cheering up, Yuuri gets hit with another wave of inadequacy. Viktor is the world number one and he’s had all the time in the world to train. Yuuri has never had that—he’s always split his time between studying and skating, family and skating, working and skating. He doesn’t think he ought to tell Viktor as such, but he’s going to anyway.

“It’s not so—”

Viktor interrupts him with, “Hey, if I’m ever in Detroit, you’ll take me to a college party, won’t you? Will you join a frat? I’ve seen so many frat parties in American movies. I’ve always wanted to drink out of one of those red cups.”

Instead of all the sensible things Yuuri could say, he asks Viktor, “How will you know where to find me?”

“Oh,” Viktor says, “we’d better swap email addresses, hadn’t we?”

He says it without missing a beat, and so smoothly too. If Yuuri didn’t know better—wasn’t so painfully aware of his own shortcomings—he would’ve said that Viktor was flirting. The way he leans in closer, the excitement in his voice… but no, it’s just friendliness. Yuuri has seen that same friendliness in interviews with Viktor.

So it’s no problem for Yuuri to reply, “Yeah. Let’s—we should do that.”

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novels: for when one chapter just isn't enough

Before Destruction | T | 102,716w | a song of ice and fire (jaime lannister/brienne of tarth)

excerpt:

The gardens were beautiful by night. They could not compete with the pines of Winterfell in Brienne’s mind, but objectively they were much more stunning, much more majestic. She leant against a low wall and took several deep breaths until she became more steady on her legs that had just before seemed too weak to bear her weight. Perhaps in a moment she would feel well enough to return to the ballroom.

But when she turned around to look back at the house and its bright lights, she saw Captain Lannister approaching her and was struck again by a faintness. Surely he had spoken in jest! He could not really want to dance with her.

“Miss Tarth,” he said, extending his left hand, “might I have the honour of the next dance?”

There was no joy in his words, and Brienne knew instantly that he was only doing this because his sister had urged him.

“You do not want to dance with me,” she said, beginning to make her excuses, “you will find me to be a singularly graceless partner, far too tall, and unconversational besides...”

“And yet you are talking a great deal now,” he said, almost smiling, but not quite. “You are not much taller than I, nor do I wish to dance with you because I think you to be graceful and elegant.”

It was simply too much for Brienne. “Then I must entreat you to retract your offer.”

The Accidental Renaissance of Zacharias Smith | T | 87,500w | harry potter (mostly gen)

excerpt:

“I didn’t—”

“No, of course, you didn’t mean it that way,” Anthony said quickly. “You always have been insensitive; I don’t know what I expected.”

“I’ll leave,” Zacharias said. “Sorry. I shouldn’t be here, anyway. You’re busy.”

“Stay,” Anthony said, reaching forward and grabbing Zacharias’ hand, the quill he’d been holding slipping between their fingers. “You’re better company than McGonagall, anyway,” he added, the corner of his mouth turning up into a smile.

“Yeah,” Zacharias said, “I can stay. You probably shouldn’t keep working for much longer, though. How long have you been awake?”

“How long have you been awake?” Anthony shot back, his hesitant smile becoming a grin. “Did you get a good night’s sleep in the Hog’s Head, you coward?”

“Oh, yes, slept like a fucking baby,” Zacharias said. “You know, with all those screaming children packed in there.”

“I was joking,” Anthony said. “You’ve got bags under your eyes the size of—well, they’re more like suitcases, really.”

“And you look like you’ve been making out with a Dementor.”

Anthony laughed, and Zacharias squeezed his hand. The quill between them snapped in two.

Impostor Syndrome | M | 61,729w | yuri!!! on ice (yuuri katsuki/viktor nikiforov)

excerpt:

The sun is starting to set, and there’s low orange light coming in through the breezeblock walls of the stairwell. Yuuri dawdles, pausing on each step like he’s got a sprained ankle. He has his keys in one hand and his phone in the other, and his hands stuffed into his coat pockets so no-one can see him fidgeting. He meets Phichit on the landing below theirs.

“You have a leaf in your hair,” Phichit says.

Yuuri relinquishes his keys in his pocket and reaches up, patting his head until his fingers fall on a crinkled brown leaf. He picks it up by the stem and holds it out to Phichit. “A peace offering.”

He desperately wants Phichit to know that he doesn’t blame him for the photo. Or—obviously the fact that the photo is on Instagram in the first place is Phichit’s fault, but everything that happened afterwards isn’t, and they were all drunk anyway.

“I accept it,” Phichit says, taking the leaf and sticking it behind his ear, “even though you don’t know the half of what you have to apologise for yet.”

“I know he’s upstairs,” Yuuri says. “Isn’t that why you met me out here? So we could talk first?”

“Well, it is, but—”

“And you let him in,” Yuuri points out.

Phichit clears his throat. “I didn’t have much choice.”

Before Yuuri can ask what he means by that, there’s a crash from the upper landing, and a lamp clatters down the stairs. It stays miraculously in one piece when it comes to a stop at Yuuri’s feet.

“Sorry!” Viktor’s voice calls. “Sorry, sorry, I was just going to balance it there while I set up the others—”

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genfic: because not everything needs to be shippy

Father Stannis | G | 4,200w | a song of ice and fire (gen)

excerpt:

The front door swung open with a clatter of wind and autumn leaves, and flew shut again just as voraciously. Father Robert jumped in his seat and muttered something unintelligible as a bedraggled Father Renly shuffled into the living room holding a newspaper. He shook it open and cleared his throat.

"Took you long enough," Stannis said pointedly, before Renly could even open his mouth.

Renly shrugged dramatically. "There were hailstones. I could hardly see the newsagency! Have we got any peaches?"

Ignoring him, Stannis snatched the paper from his wet hands and opened it up. "As usual, no news about the outside world," he said with a frown.

"It's the Craggy Inquirer," Renly said, "what do you expect. Have we got any peaches?"

"Tea!" Mrs. Arryn returned with a yellow-glazed teapot and two chipped cups on a faux-wood tray. Her pince-nez spectacles were fogging up from the steam.

"That doesn't answer my question, but thank you," Renly said, taking the tray from her and setting it down on the coffee table next to Father Robert's chair. Mrs. Arryn nodded and left.

"The tea's for Robert and myself."

"Father Rob doesn't want tea," Renly said with a roll of the eyes, "he wants this!" With a flourish, he conjured a bottle of whiskey from his coat pocket and placed it in Robert's lab. "Here you go, Father. Drink!"

eight hours in a metal box with wings | T | 5,095w | haikyuu!! (gen)

excerpt:

“I can’t tell if you genuinely don’t know that you’re ridiculous, or if every word that leaves your mouth is some sort of post-ironic performance art experiment,” Futakuchi says.

Tooru doesn’t quite know how to respond to that. He’s been called many things before—some of them flattering and most of them kind of offensive—but “post-ironic” is not one of them.

“I’m willing to put our differences aside if you never question my sincerity again,” he says.

“I don’t know if I can make that commitment,” Futakuchi says, laughing.

“Do it for the team!” Tooru says.

The closest bathroom door swings open, and Bokuto steps out. “Oh, hey,” he says, “fancy seeing you two here!”

Futakuchi gapes at him. “How long have you been in there?”

“Like, half an hour,” Bokuto says. “I love plane toilets. I love the weird flushing sound.”

“I take it back,” Tooru says, “what I said earlier. I think I prefer Ken-chan’s company.”

“Performance art,” Futakuchi says. “There’s no other explanation.”

full sun; chance of a storm | G | 1,834w | haikyuu!! (gen)

excerpt:

The sun-weathered purple of irises and hydrangeas line the path to the park, evenly-planted beacons to the spreading green ahead. The first lavender is beginning to bloom, too, and it makes Kiyoko’s heart swell a little with something poetic—an urge she suppresses. If she were asked, the only beautiful thing about the day is the picnic basket full of food that Daichi is hauling up ahead of her. There’s no poetry in the blinding sunlight or the swelter of the heavy air, nothing in the sparkling grass or the exuberant birds.

Of course, Daichi makes Asahi carry the food. With his first step off the bus, Daichi entrusts his picnic basket into Asahi’s unready hands. Asahi stumbles backwards with the heft of it, cradling it in his arms like the world might end if he dropped it. Beside him, Kiyoko has to refrain from laughing. Suga has no such qualms about decorum—he cackles and slaps Asahi on the back.

“It’s good to see you all,” Daichi breathes. There’s a flush to his face. It’s probably just the heat.

What he doesn’t say is, “After so long.” But Kiyoko thinks it. Two years, give or take a month—that’s how long it’s been since they last met up. They’re new people, compared to who they were two years ago. Kiyoko has been promoted to manager. She doesn’t tell them, yet.

if she wants me | G | 6,327w | yuri!!! on ice (gen)

excerpt:

“You won’t miss me?” Minako demands.

Despite herself, that annoys Hiroko. Naturally she’ll miss her only friend—there’s an awful, selfish part of Hiroko that she’ll never show to the world, a voice at the back of her mind that’s shouting for Minako to stay, to keep Hiroko afloat so she can keep that carefree confidence Minako has shown her how to feel.

“I will miss you,” Hiroko says, and that’s where her honesty ends. “But more than anything, I’m so excited for you. You’re living your dream.”

“You already said that.” Minako scowls. “Go on then. Why don’t you tell me to stay?”

“I don’t want you to stay,” Hiroko says. This time she almost means it. “Do you want to stay?”

Minako puts on a very affected nonchalance. “It doesn’t matter, does it? I’m leaving forever. There’s nothing for me in Hasetsu. There are no stages big enough for my talent.”

“I know that.” Hiroko doesn’t want to argue. She doesn’t want this to be her last conversation with Minako. “I know that the rest of the world is going to love you.”

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comedy: my mum thinks i'm funny

Mutually Assured Distraction | T | 4,128w | haikyuu!! (akaashi keiji/konoha akinori)

excerpt:

Konoha’s the first one there on Saturday. He knows it’s because Bokuto and Akaashi live on the same train line, and because they probably texted each other to co-ordinate, and because he looked up their timetable and the most convenient train got there ten minutes later than his.

Not that he’s jealous, or anything.

Right on time, though, they appear from the direction of the station, walking side-by-side and matching each other’s stride. Konoha pulls himself up to his full height—still shorter than both of them, but it makes him feel more like he’s capable of pulling their weird relationship to shreds.

When Bokuto catches sight of Konoha, he breaks into a run and outpaces Akaashi. Konoha relaxes a bit.

“Hey, hey, Konoha! Did you wait long?”

“Not at all,” Konoha says. “Just a few minutes.”

Akaashi catches up, and narrows his eyes. Konoha wonders if Akaashi looked up his timetable too.

How (Not) To Share A Bathroom | T | 9,808w | haikyuu!! (oikawa tooru/sugawara koushi)

excerpt:

A month and a half after moving into his dorm in Tokyo, Suga finally puts his finger on what had initially bothered him about the idea of a shared bathroom. The thing is, each door to the bathroom has two locks—one facing the bedroom, so you can stop your neighbour from waltzing in when they please, and one facing the bathroom, so you can stop your neighbour from trying to come into the bathroom when you’re busy.

A couple of times, Suga’s accidentally left the door locked on Tooru’s side, but he’s remembered pretty quickly and unlocked it so that Tooru could get into the bathroom. And a couple of times he’s forgotten to lock the door from his room so that Tooru couldn’t get in—although, why would anyone do that without knocking?—but again, it’s never been for long.

Now, though, it’s six-thirty in the morning, Suga has a class at eight, and he can’t get into his own bathroom.

First, he tries banging on the bathroom door. It’s still early, so he’s sort of aware that he’s going to wake other people up, but Suga’s never been a morning person. He wakes up after a shower. And if he can’t get into his bathroom, he can’t shower, so he bangs even louder.

There’s no response, so he hangs his lanyard with his keys around his neck, slips on a pair of sandals, and slings a towel over his shoulders to keep himself warm. He steps out into the drafty corridor and knocks on Tooru’s door.

“Tooru,” he calls, leaning with his forehead against the door. “Tooru, please, wake up. I need to shower.”

Play To Win | T | 8,264w | merlin (merlin/arthur pendragon)

excerpt:

This weekend, CEOs of Albion’s top businesses gathered together to sleep rough in the Forest of Balor to raise money for homelessness awareness campaigns. The event didn’t last as long as planned, however, when stray magic from a nearby game of blasters sent a plague of locusts onto the sleepout campsite. The Camelot Herald has been informed that the plague was cast by Morgause Gorlois, a member of the Camelot University Competitive Magic Society (BlastSoc). It is understood that she has been temporarily suspended from the society.

BlastSoc is currently conducting a joint training camp with the Camelot University Cricket Society (CUCS) in an attempt to reconcile differences between the two societies. Questions have been raised, however, whether the Forest of Balor was an appropriate site for this dispute to play out. “This makes a mockery of everything our country stands for,” tweeted former President of Albion, Uther Pendragon (@PendragonPres). “Proper precautions must be taken to ensure magic does not get out of hand again.”

The president of BlastSoc, Merlin Emrys, told The Camelot Herald that the society would be restricting the zone of magical activity while the training camp takes place in the forest. “We’re doing our best to keep it safe,” Emrys assured us. “You have to understand, even when things like this happen, blasters isn’t a harmful sport. There are rules against spells that last longer than twelve hours. Those locusts will be out of everyone’s hair in no time.”

Some sources disagree, however, on whether this spell was part of a game of blasters, or whether it was aimed at members of the cricket team.

cancel your reservations | T | 5,481w | yuri!!! on ice (yuuri katsuki/viktor nikiforov)

excerpt:

“Wow.” Viktor pulls off his mask with a flourish and tips his head back. “I’m exhausted. I had no idea swinging a sword around would be such hard work.”

Yuuri has to laugh. “You shouldn’t have applied for this job, then.”

“Oh, I don’t mean it like that,” Viktor says, his blurry features softening into a smile. “It’s rewarding. I’m already looking forward to our next lesson, Yuuri!”

“Me too.”

As much as Yuuri hates to admit that Celestino was right, coaching someone is a lot of fun, especially starting from the basics. And Viktor is amiable, a receptive learner. Yuuri feels like he should reciprocate that communication; he bends down by his bag, thrown against the wall just next to where Viktor is sitting, and fishes for his glasses case. Then, he pulls off his mask.

When he fixes his glasses onto the bridge of his nose and looks up at Viktor, he discovers something incredibly important: Viktor is handsome. Yuuri hastily revises his age estimate down another few years. Viktor has impossibly blue eyes and a pointy nose and lips that are just asking to be kissed and, more importantly, he’s looking at Yuuri with the exact same wide-eyed awe Yuuri knows is displayed on his own face.

In fact, they are both staring. Yuuri is not a romantic, but in this precise moment he decides, for better or worse, that falling in love mightn’t be such a bad thing, if it’s with Viktor Nikiforov.

It’s a good long moment before either of them manage words. Yuuri opens his mouth to apologise, but Viktor beats him to it, saying, “Can I take you out for dinner?”

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tropes: the fictional equivalent of eating fairy bread

101 Uses for Cornstarch (Culinary or Otherwise) | T | 2,646w | haikyuu!! (ennoshita chikara/futakuchi kenji)

excerpt:

“Want to talk about it?” Futakuchi asks. “I mean, if you’ve had a bad morning, getting it off your chest can help. Literally, in this case.”

This time, Ennoshita lets himself laugh out loud. “You’ll think it’s stupid.”

“Probably,” he says breezily, “but if I laugh I give you full permission to splash me with some of that gross coffee-coloured water.”

“Well,” Ennoshita says, fully prepared for derision, “I came here to do some research for a screenplay I need to write for a course I’m taking at uni. I dragged my friends with too, which was probably a bad idea, because all they’ve done is laugh at me, but I feel a bit weird trawling my way through the coffee shops of the city on my own.”

“What sort of films can you research in a coffee shop?” Futakuchi asks.

Ennoshita breathes in deep. “Romantic comedies.”

Instead of laughing, Futakuchi grins a little slyly. “I get it,” he says. “The kind where a coffee shop regular shows up one day to find a cute new barista behind the coffee machine. There’s flirting, numbers on take-away cups, that sort of thing—right?”

The breath that Ennoshita was holding makes its way out all out once, sharp to compensate for the words he can’t quite string together, not for a few more moments. “Yeah,” he says, “that sort of thing.”

feels like the real thing | T | 7,234w | haikyuu!! (tsukishima kei/yamaguchi tadashi)

excerpt:

“You really care about seeing the stars, huh,” Tsukishima muses.

“You think I’m here because I like your company?” Yamaguchi jokes. “Come on; I’ll race you there!”

He doesn’t give Tsukishima a chance, sprinting ahead—and Tsukishima never makes an effort with running, anyway, so he arrives a few seconds after Yamaguchi looking like he hasn’t even broken a sweat. He clicks his tongue, taking off his jacket.

“Tsukki, won’t you be cold?” Yamaguchi asks.

“Not really,” Tsukishima says. “Anyway, I can’t let you sit on wet grass. That wouldn’t be very romantic of me.”

“I get it,” Yamaguchi says, because he thinks he might, “you just wanted to go on this date so you could get some practice acting like a romantic.”

“Something like that,” Tsukishima says.

“Well, I should practice too,” Yamaguchi decides, dumping his bag on the ground and slipping out of his jacket. “Here—you can sit on this.”

“That sort of defeats the purpose of the gesture,” Tsukishima says. “We may as well just sit on our own jackets.”

had to start it somewhere | T | 1,873w | raven cycle (ronan lynch/adam parrish)

excerpt:

Ronan grabs the box of Trojans before anyone can see and nearly shoves them under his hoodie and walks right the fuck out. No eye contact, no crime. Of all the things to take from the toiletries aisle, why did his hand have to land on these? But he’s not here to steal condoms. He’s here to make eye contact and maybe small talk with Hi My Name Is Adam, the star of his last few dreams. He heads straight for Adam’s lane and practically slams the box down onto the conveyor belt.

He doesn’t see Adam’s face, but he hears his stifle a laugh.

“Shut up,” Ronan says.

“I didn’t say anything.” Adam pauses to scan the condoms. “You know I could get you thrown out of here for talking to me like that.”

It’s not a question.

Ronan doesn’t respond—his best option is so often silence, when what he really wants to say will get him in more shit than he has the energy to deal with. He manages to stay looking down and with his mouth shut until Adam asks him to pay.

“Shit.” It’s more expensive than he’d noticed, not that he can’t afford it. It just feels extravagant, unnecessary, a stupid length to go to just to be in the vicinity of the most attractive boy in all of Henrietta.

“What,” Adam says, “wrong size?”

do something pretty (while you can) | T | 39,697 | yuri!!! on ice (yuuri katsuki/viktor nikiforov)

excerpt:

It’s Halloween, and all of Viktor’s friends are single. His bathroom has black smudges everywhere, and his hair is parted in the middle and dark as night with temporary dye. Chris’s moustache is half-eyeliner because he couldn’t get it to fill out in time. At least his pinstripe suit perfectly matches Viktor’s long, low-cut dress.

(At times like this Viktor is thankful that all his friends are artists too. If he went to the local public school, androgyny would be out of the question. Here, he can paint his lips blood red and bring out his fair eyelashes with mascara, and no one bats an eyelid.)

There’s no question that their costumes will be the best at the party. Last Viktor heard, Yuuri hadn’t even decided on a costume. Georgi is keeping his own as a surprise. He’s invited half the school, with the exception of Anya and her friends, since he’s nothing if not petty. And cutting out the acting students means less competition for best-dressed.

For once in his life, Viktor is fashionably early. Georgi’s parents asked him to come over the night before and help with the food, and he can never refuse Georgi’s parents. They made Halloween-themed snacks, equal parts adorable and tacky—things with grapes as eyeballs, spaghetti as brains, ketchup as blood. Now, Viktor is here early to put it all out on tables. Chris isn’t much help, but Viktor doesn’t chip his black-lacquered nails, so he considers it a victory.

Georgi, when he emerges, is dressed in a deep purple robe and covered in body glitter everywhere else. He stalks around bringing a touch of darkness to his path, and by the time the sun is actually setting, the rest of the guests start arriving. The costumes range from fictional characters to mythical creatures, from elaborate disguises to a sheet with eye-holes cut out of it.

To Viktor’s utter dismay, the ghost under the sheet is Yuuri.

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introspection: welcome to character study hell

Coincidence | T | 10,513w | haikyuu!! (oikawa tooru/sugawara koushi)

excerpt:

“I wouldn’t have pegged you for the type who takes risks, given how you are on court.”

“Ah,” Koushi says. “No, you’re right, I prefer things to be planned and structured. I guess it’s boring to always stick to a routine, huh?”

“Not really,” Tooru says. “If I didn’t come here every morning—”

He cuts himself off abruptly, before he says something embarrassing.

Koushi is grinning, though. “Let’s head off,” he says.

Before Tooru can reply, a large drop of rain lands on his shoulder.

“Weather permitting,” Koushi adds.

A second raindrop lands between them, broad and heavy as it turns the pavement a darker grey, and then a third on the hand that Koushi is using to steady his bicycle. Then it’s raining proper, the sort of downpour that follows a hot and humid day and has steam rising from the ground. Tooru has always loved the rain, and he leans his head back to let it fall on his face.

Koushi gives a giddy laugh. “Maybe we should go inside.”

“We should,” Tooru agrees, tilting his head forwards.

They don’t.

maybe i dreamt you | T | 17,847 | raven cycle (ronan lynch/adam parrish)

excerpt:

He and Ronan both dealt in magic, and with Cabeswater. Ronan was the forest’s right hand—strong, uncompromising. Vicious when it needed to be. Hoc tamen infelix miseram solabere mortem: Aeneae magni dextra cadis—they had studied the Aeneid with Whelk. Adam didn’t remember when he’d last thought of that name. He was surprised he remembered the phrase; but then, they had spent so long analysing it, an example of epithets and significant word order and a classic ascending sentence structure.

“Let this, however, give you comfort in your miserable death, unlucky one,” Adam said to the darkness of his bedroom, “you have died by the right hand of mighty Aeneas.”

Most people in their Latin class just memorised a translation for their seen passages in exams. Not Ronan. Ronan spoke fluently, learnt the language with an intimidating precision. He read every word anew each time he saw it. Adam envied that ease.

And what did Cabeswater leave for Adam? Its eyes, and its left hand.

Sinister.

You didn’t need a Latin dictionary to know what that meant.

it's the side effects that save us | T | 71,437 | yuri!!! on ice (yuuri katsuki/viktor nikiforov)

excerpt:

The flush creeping down Viktor’s neck aside, it’s a pleasant day, the sun dipping below dappled clouds and the scent of the ocean carried inland on a fresh breeze. Gulls call out across the shore and the sea is so, so blue—it reminds Viktor of Saint Petersburg. The exercise is a good distraction from the creeping homesickness that threatens Viktor’s peace of mind, but it’s a double-edged sword. If he had to pick anywhere to spend his retirement, he’d rather it was somewhere more like home than anywhere else.

Viktor does slow down eventually, letting the others race across the sand, challenging each other to sprints and running into the foam of the waves. He finds an outcrop of rock to sit on and watch as they tire each other out.

When they do stop, Yuri Plisetsky sticks his jacket down on the sand and sits there checking his phone, and Yuuri Katsuki ambles over to join Viktor, taking his time, his eyes on the horizon. He sits down on the rocks next to Viktor, not even winded.

“Is running supposed to make me more… appealing, or something?”

Viktor thinks about the single bead of sweat hanging off one of Yuuri’s eyelashes, the colour dusting his cheeks. “Running is good for lots of reasons,” he says.

“I know,” Yuuri says. “Part of a balanced training regime, and all that.”

“Tells you a lot about an athlete’s stamina, too,” Viktor says. “Yours is exceptional.”

Yuuri looks surprised at that, but he recovers quickly. “Can you think of any other ways to find out how good my stamina is?”

sternitur arcadiae proles | T | 2,532 | brideshead revisited (sebastian flyte/charles ryder)

excerpt:

Charles knows him too well, now. He is the world-renowned expert in Sebastian Flyte, and in turn Sebastian is his keenest follower, able to tell that Charles can tell there is something wrong. The cycle feeds the snake its own tail and in no time both of them will let it unsettle them, and perhaps, Sebastian thinks, this is the tragedy of love, or of this adequate forgery.

Charles knows also not to attempt to remedy the situation with words. He kisses Sebastian in the briefest of gestures and then gets to his feet, locates his clothes. They’re never hard to find; he makes sure to sling them over the back of a chair or some such. Charles steps over Sebastian’s trousers, tangled on the floor, to reach the door, letting in the sun—had it been sunny before? Charles casts one look back at Sebastian before closing the door behind him.

That is it for the day, then. Sebastian's hours of charity, in which Charles convinces himself that he can still do something worthwhile to help his old friend, poor Sebastian, addled by drink and so far from home. This is not the version of him that Charles had kissed, not the Sebastian deserving of those looks.

In short: Charles will come back tomorrow, and he will find Sebastian gone.

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darkfic: or, like, as close as i can get. sorry lads

blue and white, and black | T | 1,358w | a song of ice and fire (jaime lannister/brienne of tarth)

excerpt:

A part of him is still in the Riverlands, chained hand and foot and forced through a cruel Autumn with Brienne by his side. Cleos has faded from the memory, a mere ghost who occasionally appears to fill a silence with his dull words. Mostly, it is Brienne. It is everything she never said to him filling his mind. Time has made a mess of his recollections, and they are sailing the river one moment, bathing together in Harrenhal the next. And then before he has time to exhale more white air into the world, they are in King’s Landing, and he’s handing her Oathkeeper. The look on her face has kept him warm many a night.

Sometimes he’s not with Brienne, but Cersei. Cersei is almost as transparent as Cleos, just another character written between the lines on his page in the White Book. She is as beautiful as ever, but her eyes are blue. Always blue. He’s not sure if that means his own eyes are blue too, since she was ever his image. He’s not sure if that means he is now half a ghost as well.

His mind wanders but his back stays pressed to the tree. In a heartbeat, he’s back on the road North. He can’t remember who suggested it, but somehow they ended up sharing body heat on the frosty nights, and somehow they ended up sharing more. Words. They spoke to each other, she kept him awake and kept him from drifting as she had always done, held him to the ground so that he would not float away and disappear. He told her everything, everything he had to tell. She became more a part of him than Cersei had ever been. He saw her blue eyes, clear as day among the white.

(don't) turn around | T | 2,468w | raven cycle (ronan lynch/adam parrish)

excerpt:

At so many miles an hour, the rain is lost the moment it hits the car, a steady downpour dispelled like Ronan is drawing a knife through it. He thinks if he cut this night open, it would burst out like flowers in full bloom and every sound, every light, every word that had passed between the group of them. Between Ronan and Gansey, Ronan and Adam. He winds down the windows, all the windows, and invites in the rain. He switches tracks on the CD player. Rivulets run down his arm as the Murder Squash song blares a death fugue, marking his processional—the BMW his hearse, Ronan its undertaker, its corpse. He turns up the volume.

The mountains claim the skyline as their own. Ronan stops the car before he gets to Cabeswater—where Cabeswater used to be—unable to bear being any closer. This is close enough, here, on the ley line, in this presence of so much magic. And it’s surprisingly easy to fall asleep like this, rain on the roof of the car keeping a steady crescendo with electronica that should be loud enough to drown it out, but isn’t.

Ronan closes his eyes.

It isn’t immediately apparent that he’s dreaming. He can feel the shift in his presence, that familiar lucidity—he curls his fingers into a fist just to check that he still has control over this landscape. He does.

When he opens his eyes again, it doesn’t look the same. It looks like the absence of colour he sees when he closes his eyes, and all the tiny points of light that populate his vision. Dizzying and so inherently wrong, it takes Ronan some time to acclimatise to the way this dream feels. He reaches out to steady himself on something, but there’s nothing.

so darkness i became | T | 10,087w | haikyuu!! (gen)

excerpt:

Every full moon, the entire coven would gather in the courtyard. This ritual was as important as any coven meeting, but carried a different gravitas for some witches. It was, indirectly, a test of strength, and the younger witches were always cautious about putting forward their best showing, risking embarrassment to do it.

Hitoka didn’t see why they worried. It wasn’t as though this was the sort of coven where they’d be mocked for falling behind. Hitoka had found her new peers nothing but supportive—she didn’t like to think that it might not always have been that way, that one day it might not be anymore.

Tonight, the privilege of starting the ceremony was Hitoka’s.

“By the light of the full moon,” Saeko proclaimed, “we ask that no other light grace us.”

On cue, Hitoka channelled everything she could into her lights-out spell. This, she was nervous about—not the ceremony itself, but this. She had passed successfully to level six using her method of focusing on the brightest source of light, usually some sort of lamp. Tonight, though, that source was the moon itself, and that thought pattern wouldn’t work. With her white quartz held out in front of her, not positioned on any specific light, she cast the spell.

It took longer than usual, but it worked. Before she even opened her eyes, she could feel the colours around her fading to something pale and dim, only the full moon to illuminate them.

“Well done,” Kiyoko whispered.

Hiroka stood up taller as she put her white quartz back in her crystal pouch.

shadowplay | M | 30,091w | harry potter (sirius black/remus lupin)

excerpt:

West of the Iron Curtain was just the same as the East; the streets this late at night were cloaked in the same dim glow and the sounds were the same, scuffling strays, distant cars, the odd gunshot to keep everyone on their toes. The light of a full moon—last night, waning gibbous now through a gauzy screen of cloud—didn’t care where in the world it found you. The bars of the cage which protected the outside world from the wayward wolf were solid as ever.

The only difference, Remus reflected, was which cadre of tyrants had drilled their flagpoles into the concrete. Although he supposed it didn’t matter as much now that the Wall lay in ruins.

He had woken early that morning in a cage in West Berlin. Not one of the public cages, thank Merlin, but a private cage at the home of a fellow agent who Remus had never met. Certainly, though, the agent was well-off enough that they could have such an expansive attic in the middle of such a highly-strung city. There had been other oddities in the attic, marble busts atop antique cabinets and cardboard boxes packed tight with empty frames and blank canvases. Remus’ immediate superiors had deemed it unsuitable for him to undergo the transformation in his own home, a bedsit in East Berlin for some years now, when he was due in West Berlin the following evening. Although he resented the imposition on his autonomy, they provided him with Wolfsbane as one of the perks of the job, so he could hardly dissent.

Remus’ rendez-vous was a short walk from the affluent townhouse, down an alleyway between blocks of flats with no front doors, only garbage cans and stale smoke in the air. It could’ve been anywhere in Remus’ neighbourhood, but it was tinged with surreality. This was more surreal than waking up in an attic with a sculpted bust of a handsome young man eyeing him louchely. Less that the KGB would consider partnering with the CIA in the shadow of the Curtain, more that James—

James was alive. Lily was alive.

Sirius was, unfortunately, alive.

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