Stories I'm working on...sometimes really old ones. Also, if anyone wants a beta for anything, send me an ask. I'm a fast reader and I pay close attention to grammar, flow, and plot holes.
For @pauletteandrea28 who was so patient for the prompt given (gulp) 3 years ago (😅)
Tags: Depressed Carisi, Team Comfort, Death Wish, Semi-Suicidal Ideation, Injury, Hopeful Ending.
On AO3.
~ * ~
His alarm doesn’t wake him up so much as let him know that he has to get up.
Carisi groans, shutting it off and rolling over. He’s not sleeping. He’s having trouble sleeping lately, meaning he gets maybe an hour or two before he wakes up and just stares up at his ceiling.
It’s like his head is full of cotton and everything is fuzzy around the edges.
Carisi sits up and immediately winces as sunlight cuts across his face.
He hauls himself out of bed and stumbles to the bathroom.
It’s another day.
He brushes his teeth while he takes a leak and washes his hands. Then he takes a quick cold shower to wash away the last of the cotton, but it doesn’t really help.
Lately, he’s been in a fugue state, drifting from one task to another and barely able to function while he does it.
The shower today is the first one he’s had in a few days at least.
He stands for long minutes in front of the bathroom mirror, gel drying on his hands, his hair a mess, tangled and falling across his forehead in a way that reminds him of his college days.
He supposes he should eat something too, even though his stomach isn’t sending hunger signals.
He checks the time and sighs inwardly, not wanting to waste the energy it would take to sigh out loud. It’s already 7:45. He has fifteen minutes to get to work.
He won’t make it. His third time being late this week.
Carisi finds his cell phone plugged into the charging cable next to his bed and dials Benson’s number.
“This is Benson,” she answers, clipped, on the second ring.
“Hi, Sarge. It’s Carisi. I’m gonna be late again this morning. Missed my train.”
Benson sighs, a great gust of noise in his ear. “Fine. But, Carisi, you need to let me know if there’s anything going on.”
“Going on like what?”
“Like an illness.”
Like mental illness? Carisi wants to ask. He knows what’s wrong with him: he’s depressed. It happens sometimes.
He’ll get over it. He always does.
No, his mind supplies unwarranted, you don’t.
His mind is right. He sinks into a low funk, wallows there for a bit, and then something happens to bring him up a rung or two, and he’s able to function normally for a few weeks before the cycle starts all over again.
His good days are steadily growing less while the length of the cycles, the low periods, last longer.
Carisi digs around in his hamper until he finds some partially clean clothes. He dresses, puts his shoes on, and heads out to catch the late morning train.
He’s only an hour late when he gets to the precinct. Benson lets him drape his coat over the back of his chair before she pulls him into her office for a chat.
“What’s going on with you?” she demands, pointing at one of the chairs in front of her desk. She sits in her chair and leans forward, elbows braced on the desk, hands folded together beneath her chin.
“What do you mean?” Carisi knows exactly what she means, and Benson frowns at him because she knows he knows.
“Carisi, you’ve been late every day this week so far. Is there something going on that I should be aware of?”
“No,” he lies and sags in the chair, exhaustion sweeping over him.
Benson glares at him, hands dropping as she sits up straighter. “If you’re late one more time, I’m putting it in your file.”
Threats. Usually it takes longer to get to this point. Carisi nods. “Am I free to go now?” he asks.
Benson rubs at her temples. “Fine, yes. Go find Amaro and get to work.”
Carisi hauls himself up and makes sure to step lightly enough that Benson can’t claim he stormed out of her office.
Amaro is sitting at his desk, and Carisi makes his way over. “Benson said we’re working together today.”
Amaro raises an eyebrow. “You look like crap,” he says. “But, we caught a case. I’m driving.”
Normally, Carisi would argue, but he hasn’t felt normal for a long, long time. He just nods and trudges after Amaro as they go to the garage to check out a vehicle.
~ * ~
Their victim, a young woman, reminds him of his sister Bella, and Carisi sinks into the background, mind spiraling as if she really is his sister.
Amaro asks the questions, and Carisi pulls himself together enough to write down the shaky answers she gives.
By the time they’re done interviewing her, Carisi is exhausted, dragging his feet. And they still have the rest of the day to get through.
He leans back in his chair at his desk, eyes closed as he tries to relax the tightening in his neck.
It doesn’t work, and he lets his head drop forward. He opens his eyes to find Amaro studying him with an unreadable expression.
“What?” Carisi asks, irked.
“Nothing,” Amaro says, turning his attention back to his computer. “We gotta go talk to the boyfriend.”
“You driving again?”
Amaro snorts. “I don’t trust you behind the wheel, so yeah, I’m driving. Again.”
Carisi plods after him, his coat loosely wrapped around his body. The wind whips right through him, chilling him so thoroughly his teeth don’t even chatter.
The boyfriend is a trove of info, revealing that one of his friends has expressed an interest in his girlfriend and that they recently kicked him out of the friend group.
Names, addresses, places of work, all of it gets recorded into Carisi’s notebook.
Then, he and Amaro drive to the next place.
They spend three days tracking down everyone who might have even looked at the young woman the wrong way, and every night, Carisi lays down and doesn’t sleep.
He’s stumbling more than walking now, and he continues to let Amaro take the lead with little to no input from him. In fact, if he doesn’t have to speak, he doesn’t. It helps him conserve his energy.
Benson’s looks grow increasingly worried. Even Rollins and Fin look like they think he’s about to break.
Maybe he is, who knows. Something’s got to give.
When it does, it’s ugly.
He misses something he should have seen and gets grabbed by their main suspect, Thomas Thatcher, the friend who wanted the young woman.
With a gun to his head, Carisi stares at Amaro, hoping his hand is steady enough for the shot they both know he has to take.
“I’ll blow his fucking brains out,” Thatcher says, tapping the barrel of his gun against the back of Carisi’s head.
“You don’t wanna do that,” Amaro says, calmly. “You don’t want to go down as a cop killer.”
“And why not? You’re already going to pin that rape on me!”
“What do you mean, pin?” Amaro asks.
Good, Carisi thinks. Keep him talking. Maybe he’ll forget to actually shoot me.
It doesn’t scare him the way he thinks it should, being this close to someone killing him. At least he’s not the one pulling the trigger. He knows he could never do that to his family. But having someone else kill him? Not the end of the world.
Well, it is for him. Still, he’d finally get to sleep. He wouldn’t ever wake up, but that’s a problem for the living, of which he won’t be a member much longer.
The gun taps the back of his head again, a steady staccato beat that makes it hard to think.
“We’re not trying to pin anything on you,” Amaro says, placatingly. He’s lowering his gun.
“You’re not?”
“No,” Amaro says, holstering his gun.
Carisi wishes he could see what Amaro sees, but he thinks it’s better this way. He can’t tip Thatcher off to whatever is going on.
“What are you doing?” Thatcher demands when Amaro steps back.
“I’m showing you that I’m no threat to you,” Amaro says. “You can let my partner go, too. He won’t do anything.”
Carisi silently agrees. He won’t do anything. Not even to protect himself.
The gun trails down Carisi’s neck and settles between his shoulder blades.
Thatcher inhales.
It’s the last thing he does consciously.
A bullet rips through his head, and his hand reflexively jerks the trigger. While the gun is still against Carisi’s back, it’s angled, and the bullet skims across his left scapula and into his bicep.
At first, the pain doesn’t register, since when Thatcher went down, he took Carisi down with him. Warm blood soaking into his shirt is the first thing Carisi is aware of, second is the line of fire across his back and the deep throb in his arm.
Amaro kneels next to him. “You okay?” he asks, muffled. Carisi squints at him, trying to parse out his words. “Are you okay?”
Slowly, he shakes his head. He hasn’t been okay for a long, long time. Amaro grabs at him, tugs him out from under the body, wraps him in a tight hug, rocking them both.
“You’re okay,” he chants into Carisi’s ear. “You’re okay.”
Vaguely, Carisi is aware that they aren’t alone. He doesn’t have the energy to care. Instead, he turns his head, lays it on Amaro’s shoulder, and closes his eyes.
~ * ~
Carisi wakes up with a headache and a dry mouth. He groans as he stretches, feeling the pull of something even though everything’s pretty numb.
“Easy there,” Benson says. Her hand hovers over his arm, and he blinks up at her.
He’s on his front, legs crooked to the side. He’s shirtless, clad only in a pair of oversized sweatpants. “Wha happ’ned?” he croaks, and she lifts a large, clear, plastic mug with a bendy straw to his lips.
“Drink,” she says. “You were shot. Do you remember that?”
Carisi thinks of the last thing he remembers: being held by Amaro. “Yeah,” he says after a couple sips of the tepid water. He waits, drinks again when she doesn’t move.
Finally, he asks, “Did he do it?” Benson pulls the mug away from him, keeping a hand on his uninjured shoulder while she sets the mug on a table-tray.
“Yeah, he was our guy. No doubt about it. Fingerprints matched, blood type matched. We’re just waiting on DNA to come in.”
“Where’s Amaro?”
“At the precinct.”
“Is he okay?” Carisi recalls Amaro telling him over and over again that he was okay. Carisi knows he was probably in shock.
“He’s fine. In fact, we’re all fine.” Benson stands up, and he realizes that she’d been sitting pressed to his side, because when she leaves, he feels cold. He warms quickly enough though. “But you’re not fine.”
The lies that usually come so easily choke him because, he knows, she knows he’s not even remotely okay.
“I was okay with him killing me,” he confesses quietly.
Benson leans over him. “No,” she says, quietly, horrified. “No, you don’t mean that.”
Carisi blinks, blinks again, slower. His head sinks into the pillow, and his eyes grow heavier.
“I do,” he mumbles, letting the weight of sleep cradle him and carry him under.
~ * ~
Benson calls an emergency meeting with her detectives. They all crowd into her office, Fin claims the couch while Amaro and Rollins both take the chairs. Benson can’t sit down, pacing in tight circles, Carisi’s words running through her head on a loop.
“Was anyone aware that Carisi was suicidal?” she asks suddenly.
Fin, who had been lounging, sits up, feet thumping onto the floor to emphasize his aghast “What?!”
“Carisi said he was okay with Thatcher killing him.”
“Is that why he looked like he wasn’t all there when Thatcher had his gun on him?” Amaro asks. “Because he wanted to die?”
“But why does he want to die?” Rollins asks. “I mean, it’s not like we’ve been bullying or ignoring him, right?”
“Depression is a nasty thing,” Benson says.
“How do we even know he’s depressed?” Rollins shrugs when they look at her.
“He’s been late to work several times,” Benson says.
“Not recently,” Rollins points out.
“He doesn’t look like he’s getting any sleep,” Amaro says.
“I don’t think any of us look like we’re getting enough sleep,” Rollins counters.
Fin holds up his hands. “Argue until you’re blue in the face,” he says, “it doesn’t change the fact that Carisi expressed a willingness to be killed by someone.”
Rollins flushes. “I’m just saying, wouldn’t it be more obvious if he was, you know, suicidal?”
“I had a friend,” Amaro says. “We served together for one tour. Two months after we came home, we were hanging out, and he was happy, happier than I’d ever seen him before. That night, he went home and blew his brains out. Depression manifests differently for everyone. Who’s to say that the Carisi we think we know isn’t really the depressed Carisi?”
Fin points at him. “That’s the point right there,” he says. “We think we know Carisi, but have any of us truly sat down and talked with him?”
None of them have to say it, but the answer is no. They made a split second decision on who Carisi was, and they haven’t adjusted it since then.
“Let’s assume that the only Carisi we know is the depressed side. How bad do we think it is?”
“He’s not talking as much,” Amaro says. “He’s not offering up any opinions on things. He’s not even arguing when I say I’m driving.”
“He hasn’t really been gelling his hair for at least a week, maybe two,” Rollins adds. “Does that mean anything?”
“Maybe he has manic depression,” Fin says. “Like, he goes in cycles of ups and downs.”
“Like bipolar disorder?” Rollins asks.
“No,” Benson says, shaking her head. She points at Fin. “I think you’re right. But, I also think we shouldn’t armchair diagnose Carisi. Let’s see how receptive he is to therapy and go from there.”
“Is he up for visitors?” Rollins asks. She flushes when they all look at her. “What?”
“I’m just surprised that you’re the one asking,” Benson says. “But yes, he should be cleared for visitors.”
“Who’s going first?” Fin asks.
No one volunteers.
“Well, I’ve already seen him,” Benson says. “How about you go next, Fin? And then you, Amaro. Rollins, you can visit after that. Does that sound okay?”
She gets a few weak ‘yes’s. She’ll take it.
Somberly, she dismisses them, and Fin immediately clocks out.
“Get it over with quickly?” Amaro jokes.
Fin shoots him a dirty look. “No. I figured the sooner I visited, the sooner the rest of you would too.” He stomps off, heading for the door.
Benson returns to her office and sits down. Her hands shake as she pulls up a report, and she stares at them. It’s not quite real that she almost lost one of her detectives, but worse than that, her detective wanted it.
She covers her face and stifles the sob she can feel welling up from her chest.
How can she help Carisi if he doesn’t want it?
~ * ~
Carisi is half asleep when Fin enters his hospital room. At first, he thinks that he’s just another apparition come to tell Carisi that he’s useless, should have died with Thatcher, would have been more useful dead than alive.
Fin sits in a chair he drags closer to the bed, and Carisi thinks even his brain wouldn’t punish him with that horrible scraping noise.
“Hi,” Fin says quietly. “How’re you holding up?”
Carisi doesn’t respond. His head is so heavy that his tongue is stuck, forced down by gravity. Fin doesn’t seem to mind, continuing to talk at him.
It’s almost like Fin knows that Carisi welcomes death. Curse Benson and her sense of righteousness.
Carisi unsticks his tongue long enough to whisper, “Fin,” and make him stop talking.
“Yeah, Carisi?”
“Are you visiting because Benson told you to?”
“No.” Fin shakes his head. “I’m visiting because I want to see you, to make sure you’re okay. You were a hostage, you got shot. You’ve been depressed for a long time.”
“What does that last thing have to do with anything?” Carisi tries to feel a spark of rage, but if it’s there, it sputters out before he can kindle it into a fire. He just sounds tired.
Fin points at him. “Let me guess, you were upset by the inclusion, but you can’t seem to muster the energy to fight me about it.”
Carisi swallows the ‘Fuck you’ he wants to say. Instead, embarrassingly, he tears up. Fin leans close, sets his hand on Carisi’s. He doesn’t say anything. He just sits there, letting Carisi cry quietly while their hands touch.
It’s a comfort Carisi hadn’t realized he’d wanted until Fin checks his watch with an apologetic frown.
“I need to go,” he says, unnecessarily. “Someone should be in to visit you soon. Has your family been called?”
Carisi shakes his head. “I didn’t want them to know,” he whispers hoarsely.
“Why not?”
Carisi shakes his head again. He has no concrete reason to not confide in his family except he knows his parents are old-fashioned and his sisters have enough on their plates already. He doesn’t need to be more of a burden than he already is.
“Can I call them for you?”
It’s on the tip of his tongue to say no, but to do so would take more energy than he currently has. So, he settles for saying nothing, not sure what the fluttery feeling in his chest is.
He closes his eyes, settles more firmly in the bed. “Bye,” he whispers when he thinks Fin leaves.
Heaviness weighs his limbs down, and behind his eyelids his eyes burn. Must be the salt from his tears. He’s beyond exhausted, but he still can’t sleep.
He sighs, letting his eyes crack open.
“Hi,” Amaro says. He looks out of place, sitting in his blazer and dress pants. He must be uncomfortable with how he’s twisted his legs to the side, his butt pressed against Carisi’s left leg.
“How are you?” Amaro says when Carisi doesn’t speak. “Stupid question,” he immediately amends. “I mean, how are you feeling?”
“Do you mean, do I still want to die?” Carisi asks flatly. Curse Benson and her meddling. He was handling things just fine on his own.
No, you weren’t, his brain supplies helpfully.
“Yeah, that.” Amaro closes his mouth into a thin line. His eyebrows pull low as he thinks.
Carisi waits him out.
“So,” Amaro breathes out a great gust of air, “I guess you’re not doing so well?”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because you’re, you know, not looking so hot.”
Pale, face drawn, bags under his eyes, Carisi wonders what kind of a figure he makes if even Amaro thinks he looks like shit.
“I don’t mean to be blunt or upsetting,” Amaro begins.
“No, no,” Carisi says. “Tell it like it is. I’m fucked up, and I’m making everything awkward now.”
“You aren’t, and you are not the awkward one,” Amaro says vehemently. “I’m not doing a great job of being a friend, and I want to remedy that. I’ll say the wrong thing more than the right thing, but I hope you can understand that I’m trying.”
“Yeah,” Carisi says. He means to be encouraging, but it falls flat between them, the singular syllable digging a chasm that is too wide for any bridge.
Amaro reaches out and grabs Carisi’s hand, building the bridge anyway. “Please don’t shut us out. We do care for you, I promise.” His hand is sweaty, over-warm, and…comforting.
Carisi doesn’t pull away, extending his own bridge. “I can’t promise anything in return,” he says, and Amaro nods.
“We don’t need you to. We just need you to hang on while we figure out how to help you.”
“Okay,” Carisi whispers. “I’ll try.”
“That’s all we ask.”
They share the silence, hands still joined. Carisi doesn’t think he’s held hands for so long since he was a cadet in the academy and had his first official girlfriend.
Somehow, holding hands with his coworkers feels more meaningful.
He relaxes, fingers going lax. Amaro adjusts his hand to more securely hold on, and for some reason, that’s what makes the knot in Carisi’s chest unfurl, eyes growing heavy enough that he can’t keep them open any longer. Finally, he slips into sleep, the first time in nearly three days that he actually rests.
~ * ~
Rollins hangs back, waiting for Carisi to wake up. It’s been almost twenty-four hours since he was admitted after the surgery to repair some of the damage the bullet did. He’ll probably be discharged later today. Still, she stalls.
It’s not that she doesn’t want to see Carisi. It’s more that she doesn’t know what to say to him.
It’s true, they haven’t been on the best of terms. She thinks he’s too brash and quick to say the wrong thing while he probably thinks she hates him.
Does she hate him?
She ponders this over a cooling cup of hospital coffee and a pit in her stomach. No, she finally decides, tossing the coffee away. She doesn’t hate him. He has promise, and he’s getting better at staying quiet when he needs to.
She enters his room, notices that he’s already half-awake.
“Hey, Sonny,” she says, surprised when his name doesn’t stick in her throat.
“Hey,” he grunts, blinking slowly. She thinks he’s about to go back to sleep when he shakes himself and sits up. His eyes are still unfocused, sleep clinging to him, but he smiles at her as if to let her know that he’s ready to visit.
“So,” she says, sitting in the chair she knows Amaro left by his bedside.
“So,” he parrots back when she doesn’t say anything else for a long moment.
“I’m sorry you got shot.”
She flinches, horrified that she’s just reminded him of being held hostage by Thatcher.
“I’m sorry I got shot too,” he says, a little too flippantly.
She narrows her eyes at him. “Are you lying to me right now?”
The smile he gives her seems genuine, but she also notices that it doesn’t reach his eyes. He doesn’t seem at all honest when he says, “No.”
Rollins doesn’t press him, too aware of just how fragile things can be. Normally, she’d have ribbed him and pushed harder, but she sees the shadows in his eyes, knows that he isn’t out of the woods yet in regards to his depression.
They sit in silence for almost twenty minutes before a nurse comes by to check Carisi’s vitals and shoo Rollins out for the day.
“We’ll be back tomorrow,” she promises. He waves goodbye, and it almost doesn’t feel like a finality.
~ * ~
Carisi is released shortly after the nurse recorded his vitals. The doctor gives him some banal instructions and then sends him to the hospital pharmacy for some pain medication that Carisi absolutely has no intention of taking.
Once he’s finally outside, breathing in the fumes of New York, he sighs, shoulders drooping. Rollins had all but promised that his coworkers would be back tomorrow, but Carisi doesn’t see how they can since he won’t be there himself.
He tips his head up to stare into the overcast gray of the mid-afternoon, just waiting. For what, he doesn’t know.
“You gonna keep staring at the sky like it owes you money?” Amaro says suddenly, and Carisi snaps his head down, fixing him with a confused glare. Amaro grins, but he’s not the only one there. Rollins is behind him, Fin to his left, and Benson to his right.
Carisi frowns at them, uncomprehendingly. “What are you doing here?” he asks.
Fin steps forward, takes the prescription bag from fingers Carisi hadn’t realized were lax. “We came for you,” he says, and it doesn’t sound as patronizing as Carisi thinks it should.
He stares dumbly at them as they stare back at him. Finally, after a long moment of New York silence, Fin reaches out, holds his hand steady for Carisi to take or not take. It’s a moment of panic, of a precipice yawning between them, before he grabs onto the lifeline Fin offers.
It’s weird, and a bit warm, but as soon as he touches Fin, he’s pulled into a tight embrace, all of his coworkers surrounding him, wrapping their arms around him and each other. It feels…right. Something settles in his chest, something intangible that makes the permanent dullness of his depression recede just a bit, just enough for him to see the way tears cling to Rollins’ eyelashes, the way Amaro breathes in like he’s trying to memorize their scents, the way Benson studies them all, her gaze kind and fond, and the way Fin keeps an arm looped around Carisi’s shoulders, keeps him grounded.
When they finally release him, it doesn’t feel like they’re letting him go. No, it feels like they’re letting him collect himself, letting him come to the conclusion that they aren’t going away, that he’s not alone. Not anymore.
When the smile breaks across his face, for the first time in what feels like forever, he knows it’s genuine, that it reaches his eyes, that it lets them know he’s accepting their help.
And that it will be enough for the moment, but that when it isn’t anymore, they won’t disappear. They won’t let him fall again.
Derek has stopped counting by the next repeat, mostly because he's lost count. He thinks it's been a month by now, though it feels like it's been a year.
Or, Derek gets stuck in a time loop, watching his friends die day after day after day until he feels like he's losing his mind. His salvation, as always, comes in the form of Stiles.
Note: For gremlins-came-and-got-me, who asked for anything, but also specified they loved AUs, getting together and bottom Derek, which same. I hope you enjoy it!
How do we feel about time loops? I've got a hankering.
Also have you seen the xena episode been there done that? Or the supernatural episode mystery spot? That'd be the vibe I'd go for, so there'd probably be (temporary) MCD, is that ok?
Time loops are okay. Temporary MCD is fine as well. Thanks for asking 🙂
Additional Tags: Jennifer Blake/Julia Baccari Warning, Magic, Turning into an animal, Swan Princess Remix, Turning to stone - Freeform, physical disabilities, Brief Vomiting, Derek and Stiles are the Same Age, Embarrassing Situations, Sheriff is a King and Magic
Summary:
Derek spends his nights as a beleaguered prince dodging proposals and thinly veiled insults in turn and his days as a cantankerous swan, thanks to a curse by an evil sorceress. To break the curse, he has to find true love or be turned to stone at the end of one year. The only thing is, the sorceress never said he’d turn to stone all at once. So, now Derek has to find his true love while he drags along his stone appendages. Perhaps the strange traveler who comes knocking one night can help him?
Rating: T+
Relationship: Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski
Characters: Derek HaleStiles StilinskiTalia HaleAlan DeatonPapa HaleLaura HaleCora HaleSheriff Stilinski (Teen Wolf)Jennifer Blake (Teen Wolf)
Additional Tags: Jennifer Blake/Julia Baccari Warning, Magic, Turning into an animal, Swan Princess Remix, Turning to stone - Freeform, physical disabilities, Brief Vomiting, Derek and Stiles are the Same Age, Embarrassing Situations, Sheriff is a King and Magic
Summary:
Derek spends his nights as a beleaguered prince dodging proposals and thinly veiled insults in turn and his days as a cantankerous swan, thanks to a curse by an evil sorceress. To break the curse, he has to find true love or be turned to stone at the end of one year. The only thing is, the sorceress never said he’d turn to stone all at once. So, now Derek has to find his true love while he drags along his stone appendages. Perhaps the strange traveler who comes knocking one night can help him?
I got stalled on Hellbound, but Chapter Four is finally up!
I do plan on keeping up with updating at least a few times a month. The next update should be a chapter of Your Tired, Unfamiliar Face Says It All (but, no promises).
I always have a couple fics going at the same time (in this case, it's Hellbound, YTUFSIA, a story called A Matter of Time, and as usual Looking for a Place to Call Home. I also have a gift/request fic in the works along with a few events I'm participating in), so I am ambitiously optimistic that I will reach at least a hundred thousand words posted for the year (so far, I'm at a touch over 32K).
Anyway, you're always welcome to send me an ask or a message if you want more updates.
Bids placed before 8am EST on Feb 25 or after 8pm EST are NOT valid (please let us know if you see an early bid and we'll delete it)
The tag page is the easiest way to find auctions within your fandom. This post explains how to search multiple tags at once.
The auction-tracking spreadsheet we shared last year will not work for this year's auctions, but here is an updated version! Make your own copy of the '2025 FTH Watchlist Template' and replace the example auction info with the details of the offers you want to track. Copy and paste the formula that checks the auctions for bid data into as many rows as you need.
Unfortunately, notifications are NOT working for individual auctions this year, so please check those bid sheets regularly.
This year, I want to finish my works in progress (I've already got one done for January). I am participating in Fandom Trumps Hate again. I'm signed up for one fandom event and plan to sign up for another when it opens.
I also want to write a few other stories that will wrap up my incomplete series.
I'm keeping my options open, but I think I'll be able to work on 10-12 stories: 5 WIPs and the rest will be new.
So far, I've added just shy of 25,000 words, and I have no plans to slow down (although life may have other plans).
If you like my writing, please let me know. I enjoy sharing my writing, but I often get discouraged because people click on the stories but they don't leave kudos or comments so I have no way of knowing if they actually like my story-telling.
The stories that will be completed this year include:
Stumbling in the Dark ('cause I can't find the light) (Completed 31-1-25)
Happy new year, everyone! Even if a lot of things about the future are looking grim, there's lots to look forward to, including the good work we can do together.
We'll roll out this year's auction calendar and supported organizations in the next few days, along with some more information about and plans for @fthaction.
In the meantime, you can help us get ready in two ways:
1) Spread the word around your fandom! The more fanwork creators we have in a given fandom, the more fun the auction is for folks in that fandom.
2) Help us figure out what new fandoms to add to this year's list. As always, you can sign up to create fanworks for literally any fandom at all; still, it's easier for everyone if that fandom is included in our dropdown. So if you think something is going to be popular in the coming year, let us know in the notes!
We're looking forward to running the auction for again for our 9th year, to raise money for great causes via your fandom talents.
