sliding in real late to throw some love to the writers whose work has touched or otherwise influenced me these past two years. thank you, thank you for sharing your words with us.
if you check any of these out, please leave them a nice comment and tell them i sent you!
Soul Eater:
Fire and Light by @adulterclavis If we have ever exchanged polite greetings, you have heard me yell about how much I love this fic. It’s got action, high fantasy, and that enemies to friends to lovers vibe soaked in blood that I absolutely cannot get enough of. Check this art I commissioned for it, too, and know that my inbox is always open for F&L yodeling. While you’re at it, binge the rest of her fics because they have some of the best writing around, and nowhere else will you get to read such prime AU mashups as Ocean’s 11/Fast and the Furious and Mean Girls/Jennifer’s Body.
Quantum Entanglement by @marshofsleep Marsh is another one where it’s like you read one thing, and then another, and then suddenly it’s 4:27 AM and you had last looked at the clock at 6:15 PM and you’re laughing but just finished crying??? This one has a soft spot in my heart for how natural all the relationships feel and the way Marsh’s minimalist-fuck-you-up style has you laughing at how useless Soul is one moment and then crying about existential family relationship bullshit the next. Oh, and please read her Princess Mononoke AU thank u goodnight.
Lethal Weapon by @victoriapyrrhi A fandom classic, and rightly so. Action, mutual pining, and UST you might actually choke on, LW will keep you up all night because you just need to know what happens next.
NOT LOVERS by @makapedia This is a big comfort fic for me. There is such a nice domesticity going on with these absolutely useless nerds, and I love every tortuous moment of ‘oh my god will they FINALLY talk about their feel–oop, nope, there they go off into the emotional woods.’ And if you’re a thirsty ho like me, Kat also p much supplies like 75% of the fandom’s smut, so.
and to what thoughts by @myrkks SO. I love love loved this because as someone who also struggles with OCD, it was a literal cloud-parting, angels-singing moment to see Kid written this way. Someone else gets it, and gets him, and it has stuck with me ever since. The imagery throughout is gorgeous and haunting, too. EDIT: haHA I just reread it and now I’m crying, so, yeah.
The Hybrid Theory by @silly-twin-stars Silfic heals my soul. This is her ongoing longfic and I love everything about the banter, the mutual pining, the drama. Also check out her past two Resbangs because they have that same lighthearted, uplifting feel.
Misc
you and me and the ocean by @scarfblogs (Noragami) /sweats so the real problem here is that I have not read nearly enough of my fandom wife’s works, but this one has always stuck with me for its poetic phrasing and bittersweet tone. Anyway, go mine her entire AO3 page, she is a work of art.
Boys by @caseyvalhalla (Kingdom Hearts) KH1&2 were formative games for middle and high school Madi, but they came at a time when I thought I had to be an Adult™ and do the Adult Thing of looking down on all forms of online fandom and fanfiction and of course *I* could never allow myself to produce such content, either. You cannot imagine the amount of retroactive shoulder shaking I wish I could inflict on past me. ANYWAY, this fic smacked me in the face with all of the feelings for these kids I so foolishly thought I had ‘’’’’outgrown’’’’’ and it’s so incredibly situated in time and place. I suggest you do what I did and, immediately after binging this, go through the rest of her KH fics and cry strangely cathartic tears.
Deceitful Above All Things by Quillslinger (Kingdom Hearts) This one is Bones’s fault. After I finished crying to her about Casey’s stuff, she was like ‘here, take this’ and then sat back and smirked at my increasingly distressed keysmashes. Anyway, just….if you like gut-punchy bittersweet Akuroku, this is your jam.
But That Was In Another Country by Guardian1 (Kingdom Hearts) Confession: I haven’t finished this yet. In fact, I haven’t even made it past the first chapter. But the writing and the content has already made me cry and need to stop and walk around, so it deserves its place here. I intend to finish it soon so I can then finish FFIX so Bones can sic this person’s apparently devastating FFIX fic on me.
L’appel du Vide by Xov (Persona 5) I’m just….so incredibly invested in Akeshu, and I really like how this writer gets their neuroses and I love how much of a fucking mess my boy Goro is and just, it’s another comfort/catharsis fic.
“Maka,” he said, much further behind than she’d realized, slumped against the wall, eyes spiraling back into blackness as she watched, and it was only the second time he’d said her name in direct address.
I am trying my very best to keep on keepin’ on with whatever momentum I acquired writing the last chapter, because I really want to see this through, so HERE YOU GO. What a mess these kids are.
Madi, I think I could have probably written several thousand words of this, but I wanted to actually get it posted before the fucking End Days, so you get this instead.
***
The first time they meet, it’s in a little
coffee shop, one of the local ones far away from the Strip and the hordes of
tourists that are Vegas’s life blood. Maka’s got a shift at the Bellagio
starting at 7:00pm and she’s desperate to get as much caffeine into her
bloodstream as possible before she’s gotta plaster on her costume and her smile
and cozy up to patrons while she keeps an eye on all of her father’s business
associates, too.
It’s exhausting being the daughter of Spirit
Albarn on the best of days. It’s worse when he’s got a big deal brewing right
under the noses of his competitors.
She’s focused enough on her quadruple shot
espresso that she bumps right into the back of someone – he’s just a little bit
taller than she is, but his shoulders are broad and he’s solid enough that she’s
the one who bounces a little bit on impact. She watches her life’s blood slosh
over the side of the cup, and lets out a quiet, heartfelt, “Fuck.”
The guy stumbles forward just a little, and
turns around with a scowl on his face. “Hey, you okay?” he asks, and
Maka blinks because she was definitely expecting to be screamed at. Turns out
she’s not the only one with severe resting bitch face.
“I’m…fine? I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean
to run into you like that, are you okay?”
He shrugs. “I’m not the one who spilled
my coffee, so I think I came out on top.” He smirks a little, and it’s an
expression she’s seen on enough men’s faces that she can automatically feel her
hackles rising, but it seems more self-deprecating than smug. “Can I buy
you a refill? I feel kind of bad, I was just sort of standing in the middle of
the walkway.”
Stuff like this doesn’t happen to Maka. Dudes
don’t offer sincere apologies or admit they’re wrong or buy her drinks in
coffee shops. She huffs a little laugh, but he just gives her a mild look.
“Oh, you’re serious? Ahah, I mean, you
definitely don’t’ have to do that.”
“I know, but I’d like to.”
She shrugs a little. “Whatever floats
your boat. That’s…really decent of you…”
He holds out the hand that doesn’t have a
coffee. “Soul.”
“Maka,” she offers with her own
firm handshake.
It’s the first time, but it’s not the last
time. She doesn’t try to run into Soul, but after the fourth time they
see each other at the coffeeshop, she can’t deny that her day seems a little
less shitty as a result.
After their fifth run-in, she knows his order
– places it with hers when she sees him step inside the doors and holds it up
teasingly while he’s still in line. His smile’s just naturally crooked she’s
learned, and she feels a little warmer when he grins at her.
“My treat,” she says, handing it
off. Their fingers brush and Maka feels her face heat for the first time in a
long while.
“You sure? I’d like to pay you
back…maybe with lunch?” She’s gotten dinner and lunch offers from a lot of
dudes over the past couple of years, with varying degrees of sincerity. She’s
turned down all of them, but there’s something about the unsure tilt of Soul’s
mouth, about the way he knows not to ask her to dinner because they both work
evenings…
“I – yeah. I’d like that,” she
says, and she doesn’t think she imagines the way his eyes light up and his
smile softens.
***
They have a year. A year of lunch dates and
coffee runs and matinee movies, day trips to the Hoover Dam and late night
breakfasts and early morning dinners. She has half his closet and the spare
keys to his apartment; he’s got half her dresser and his favorite brand of
peanut butter in her fridge.
They talk about everything except work.
He’s got a ring in a shoebox when he gets the
call.
She’s not expecting to see a new player in
the piano lounge, not expecting to be intimately familiar with the broad set of
his shoulders or the shock-white of his hair, with the hands skillfully playing nnnnnnn. Her heart lodges itself into the back of her throat. They don’t
talk about what they do for a living, and this, she thinks, is why.
She can’t stop. She has drinks to get and an
Italian business man that her father wants her to get information out of and
Maka isn’t stupid. She’s known who Soul was since their first lunch, but she’d
been stupid enough to think it wouldn’t matter, that their paths would never
have to cross professionally. She’s the heir apparent to the Albarn crime
family and there’s an Evans in her father’s casino. Her Evans.
She worries until her shift is over, and
Soul’s already gone. She thinks about just going straight to her little apartment,
her own safe hideyhole, but it’s like she blinks and she’s already parked at
Soul’s place. She’s not sure what to expect when she slides her key into the
lock, but her hand drifts into her purse, fingers twisting around a familiar
handle.
Soul’s sitting at the breakfast bar, two
steaming cups of tea in front of him.
“How’d you know I’d show?” she
asks. She puts her purse on the counter, and withdraws her hand. She doesn’t
miss the way he’s watching her.
“I didn’t,” he says, sliding her
mug over. “I did hope, though.” His smile is perfectly crooked, and
she wants to kiss the worry away from his brow, but –
“What were you doing at the
Bellagio?” It feels weird to talk about it, after a year of so carefully
avoiding the elephant in the room.
“You know I can’t tell you that.”
His voice is soft, but she knows the steel underneath it. It’s for your own
good, it’s for both of our safety. If I told you, I’d have to do something we’d
both regret.
She swallows. “Can you…not?”
“Can you?”
She laughs a little, strangled and sharp,
tries to imagine telling her father that she’s leaving, that she’s out of the
business. She’ll always be his little girl, his angel, but family ties can’t
transcend what she knows.
“What are we doing?” Her mug warms
her hands, but she thinks if she drinks anything right now, she’s going to just
throw it right back up.
“I don’t know, Maka.” He exhales,
shaky, his hand uncurls on the countertop, and Maka knots her fingers through
his. Her hand is warm, strong and firm. He knows the calluses on her palm as
well as he knows his own. He squeezes. “But we do it together, yeah.”
Two years ago, Cat Ibarra stumbled headfirst into a case of political corruption. Rather than spill the beans, though, she wormed her way into the scheme for a cut. Things only get more complicated when the FBI starts sniffing around, but Cat quickly seizes control once more. The FBI agent assigned to the case is easy enough to play, especially when she discovers that his latent sadism matches her greed for pain.
But lies are hard to keep track of, and deception has a habit of turning on the deceiver. Soon the control that Cat was so sure of begins to slip through her fingers. Can she straighten everything out before her own actions trap her?
The Loophole is a literary fiction novella with elements of BDSM erotica. It explores themes of power and power imbalance and features a bisexual main character trying to navigate and survive in a world that’s not made for her. You can check it out on Amazon! Feel free to ask me any questions you may have about it.
admittedly I don’t often read a whole lot that doesn’t involve soulxmaka at least in some fashion, but hands down coz I can easily recommend:
spectrum beneath, by raining-down-hearts [ @raining-down-hearts] (white star/black star’s mother, minor black star’s mother/nygus) coz this is badass. Olivia (b*’s mom) is a young spy who gets mucked up with star clan, the dwma, and discovers a secret about herself that just makes everything go to hell exponentially. this is a story around an OC that will set the bar high for OCs in fic, just saying
day-old grease stains, by triplestar [@blackstar] (black star/dtk) this is ALSO badass B* tries to figure out his life and this story is comedy gold wrapped with heavy internal struggles, and it strikes a perfect balance of the two. Which is pretty much Black Star in a nutshell anyhow, isn’t it? Good shiz, A+
so i stayed in the darkness with you, by [@monkkeyslut] (black star/tsubaki; a prequel to iotwcs) AND THIS IS ALSO BADASS TIMES FIFTEEN BECAUSE I’M BIASED. Black Star! Zombies! Tsubaki! Zombies! B* and Tsu KICKING ASS like ok even beyond the incomprehensible fact that someone not me wanted to write a prequel to a fic i wrote and friggen did it, Tsubaki curbstomps a zombie in the first chapter, ok, this is important to me
Anyway I guess this could be considered another in my ‘Adventures of The Socially Awkward’ series that I just now came up with there a second ago.
–
Soul doesn’t know how to bring it up, and because his parents slyly made Stephan, Wes’s husband of just about six months, go take Maka on a ‘turn about the garden’ he can’t get her to bring it up either. He’s been backed into a corner of this ridiculous, lavish gazebo and he has no escape.
Well, obviously, it’s a gazebo and it’s surrounded by plenty of open space and it wouldn’t be too difficult to vault over the railing and make a break for freedom, if it weren’t for two things: 1) He doesn’t want to be rude and, 2) he left his iPod up in his room and he wouldn’t have a time for a detour.
Heistception is, I know, completely saturated with ridiculous references and memes and song lyrics and all kinds of utter nonsense. I WANTED to do footnotes. It would have been SO GREAT. No one would have had to be confused, the references would have been RIGHT THERE, a bare click away as you read.
Yeah, well. That was not to be for a lot of reasons beginning and ending with formatting problems/impossibilities. That said, I am compiling a list of everything, complete with links for easy access, in roughly the order in which it appears (except for the cars).
part-time recluse 