Nico knew that Matt looked good in anything. He was pretty sure it was established fact, actually, after the 2017 Vanity Fair spread. If Matt could be sexy in nothing but a garbage bag and couture sneakers, then he could be sexy in anything.
Except, apparently, clothing designed explicitly for that purpose.
“This is Kat’s fault,” said Matt, plucking at the lace bralette dangling limply from his chest. “She has zero taste in lingerie and the figure of a coat hanger, no wonder all her stuff is terrible.”
“Um,” said Nico, who was pretty sure the stuff Matt had lifted from Katya’s bureau wasn’t the issue. Katya may have been about as busty as an altar boy, but Matt was about as busty as the altar. “Maybe this was a mistake?” Guilt generally evaporated as soon as Matt started giving him smouldering looks in very little clothing, but the thefted lingerie, hanging awkwardly off Matt’s ironing board figure, was suddenly feeling not worth the wrath Katya would rain down on them when she discovered they’d been in her dressing room.
Matt narrowed his eyes. “This was your idea, Martin.”
“My idea?” Nico laid a hand to his heart, affronted and only 25% acting. “You are the one who said, and I quote, ‘Kat’s got a ton of shit in her dressing room and I steal it all the time.’”
“Yes but you’re the one with the boner for cross-dressing.”
“The only thing I have a boner for is your legs in a skirt. Or short shorts. Or boxer briefs. Or-”
“A lace paneled thong?” Matt jutted his hip and for some reason, made it worse. Where the cheerleading skirt had caressed those long thighs and drawn stark the flat panes of his stomach and vee of muscle leading to his groin, the panties bunched and snarled and let one ball hang out. Matt Rose, who could make literal garbage bags look hot, made panties look vaguely comical.
It was, Nico acknowledged, deeply disappointing to them both.
Matt curled a lip, bounced his hips, and let the panties slide to the floor, the most alluring he’d looked all evening. “Listen, flyboy, I’d like to see you make a Victoria’s Secret thong and bralette set look hot.”
Nico never turned down a challenge.
Everything was tight, of course. The bralette wouldn’t go over his shoulders for love or money (Matt tried both), so they swapped it for a sort of keyhole halter they found with the tags still on in Katya’s bureau drawer. The lace stretched tight over his pecs and the whisper of cool air through the mesh pulled his nipples taut. Matt watched him avidly as he wiggled the panties over his hips, hearing the elastic groan in protest and wondering how mad Katya would be if he tore them.
Probably on par with how mad she’d be that he tried them on at all.
“Damn,” breathed Matt.
Nico looked down. Lace and silk stretched over the bulk of his junk, just barely containing the length of his half-hard cock (so sue him, dressing up in lingerie while Matt watched him with blazing eyes was enough to stir the strongest man). The g-string, when he turned to check it out in the mirror, was drawn tight between his ass cheeks, and just barely held his balls in check.
Somehow, what had looked ill-fitting and goofy on Matt’s lean frame looked provocative as a strip tease on Nico.
Mostly because it was a strip tease.
“Who’s got a crossdressing fetish now?” he said, turning back to Matt, who had been sitting in the makeup chair, legs akimbo in the ubiquitous Lacoste boxers, and was now prowling across the room towards him. “Is it the transgressive thrill of-” He was stopped by Matt’s tongue, as Matt grabbed him by the hips and jerked him close, kissing him hungrily as his fingers played over silk, lace, and Nico’s growing erection. The boxers did little to conceal Matt’s own growing excitement, and Nico ground his thigh up against him, making Matt bite lightly at his lower lip.
“Fuck transgression,” said Matt, who could recite flawless monologues on cue but who mostly spoke in fragments when left to his own devices. “Fuck fetish. Let’s fuck.”
To his credit, when breathed out in that low, husky voice, Matt could make those two words as poetic as any apostrophe.
“Won’t Kat be mad about us hooking up in her dressing room?” asked Nico breathlessly, as Matt dropped to his knees and nuzzled the front of his package, his hot breath and even hotter tongue quickly seeping through the thin material. “And um, in her underwear?”
“She’ll be fine. I always buy her flowers after,” said Matt, indistinctly.
“You always - ?” Nico started to say, but broke off with a moan as Matt pulled the panties aside with his teeth.
~~~~
The white calla lilies had arrived first thing, and were waiting beside a dangerous looking Katya when Matt sloped into Makeup the next morning.
“You rotten little man,” said Katya, without preamble. “What did you do now? Piss in my shoes? Date my cousin? Fuck in my-”
“The last one,” said Matt, yawning and wondering if the boxers he’d pulled off the floor that morning were even clean. Or his.
“Matthew, we’ve talked about this!”
“It’s the ambience,” said Matt blithely, sitting down and taking a swig of his coffee. “The smell of White Shoulders. The soft light. The acoustics.”
Katya was wearing the fleecy microwavable socks she preferred ahead of a day in sharp-toed stilettos, and she kicked him with one downy foot. “Deviant. You’re heinous and foul and I don’t want to know. Tell me all about it. Who was it with, Nico?”
“Of course Nico,” said Matt, grabbing her by the toes and stretching out the ends of her socks. “What did you think, I deflowered Jordie in there?”
“I’d sooner think you deflowered Ted,” said Katya, swinging her leg back and reaching for one of her pigtail extensions. “No, I thought maybe, I don’t know, a production assistant, or an MMA fighter you picked up off the streets, or-”
“It was Nico.”
Katya studied the pigtail in the mirror. “How many times is that in a row?”
“None ya business.”
“You fuck in my dressing room and it’s absolutely my business. I was just curious. It’s rare for you to have one person this many times, unless it’s a longtime friend you’ve had on the hook for a decade, naming no names. But I guess Nico is pretty special, hm?”
“Hmm,” said Matt, noncommittally.
Katya abandoned her hair and gave the lilies a long sniff. “You could have splurged on chocolates, too.”
“Dana would have confiscated them. But there’s Veuve Clicquot in the minifridge.”
“Champers?” Katya twisted around to look. “Goodness, Matty, you did feel guilt, spill the dirt. Did you jizz on my Emmys dress or something?”
“Estella?” Matt laid his hand to his heart, thinking of Nico doing the same the night before. “Of course not! I promise it was on something you’ve never worn.”
“And never will, you filthy little lemur.”
They were interrupted by a knock on the door and a runner handing Katya a large white envelope. Inside was a handwritten note on FP letterhead, and yet another smaller envelope.
Dear Katya,
I (we!) are so incredibly sorry about taking advantage of your trust in us and in leaving us the key to your dressing room. I promise it will never happen again! It was totally overstepping boundaries and I feel just awful about it. I’m sure Matt does too. To make up for it, please accept this gift card to Victoria’s Secret, so you can replace the things we used ruined.
Lots of love and remorse,
Nico
“Wow,” said Matt, reading the note over his shoulder and ignoring the way that (we!) made his heart do strange things in his chest. “Way to make it weird.”
“Very weird,” said Katya, folding the note and sliding a pink gift card out of the second envelope. “Christ, doesn’t he know that ignorance is bliss? And that I only wear Calvins?” She tapped Matt on the nose with the card. “Still. He’s a very precious little thing, isn’t he?”
“He is,” said Matt, taking the note from her and letting his fingers linger on Nico’s signature, and Nico’s love and remorse. “It’s gonna be a problem.”
Katya regarded him with something like sympathy, and then tucked the gift card into his breast pocket. “Here. Clearly you’ll get more use out of it than I will. But not,” she punctuated the words with a wrap on his clavicle, “in my dressing room, you goblin.”
“I’ll do chocolates next time,” said Matt, and ducked out the door before she could kick him again.
Or: 3 weddings and a funeral. Weird things happen when you’re a celebrity. Mostly at conventions.
1. Katya
The girl was wearing Halley High knee socks and the ubiquitous plaid cheer skirt that Katya hadn’t felt the same about since Matt’s story about what happened after the cross-dressing photoshoot. The pigtails were a given. The extensions were off the rack, but the eyeliner was applied straighter than Katya could ever manage herself, and she told the girl so, eliciting a flustered giggle and a babble of thanks. Katya was glad she’d held herself back from making a joke about how hard it was for her to do anything straight, since it would have killed her publicist and made the girl turn an even brighter red. Plus, she’d stolen the line from Matt.
The boy was rather less effectively dressed as Wally, complete with cheap red wig, and Katya refused to examine him any further than that after feeling the bulge in his pocket when he hugged her for the photo opp. It wasn’t the first time, but it never got any less gross. At least he hadn’t made any comments about how hot it would be to see her and his girlfriend make out in matching outfits, but-
“Vanessa, there’s something I need to ask you. Um, and hopefully Katya doesn’t mind.”
Oh god.
Katya turned, ready to signal to the assistant standing off to the side of the backdrop, but then she realized the faux Wally was kneeling. The bulge in his pocket was gone, and in his hand was a small black box.
Katya let out an involuntary cackle of laughter, and clapped her hands over her mouth. Almost as mortifying as an erection in JCPenney khakis, but tragically longer lasting.
Next to her, the girl in pigtails burst into tears.
“Will you marry me?”
What followed was the predictable flurry of snotty affirmations, damp selfies, and fans still waiting in line craning their necks to see what the holdup was. Katya made as many exclamations of delight as she felt she could before warranting a SAG award, and then hustled the enfianced couple towards the exit.
But first….
“Wink twice if you need a way out,” Katya whispered to the still tremulous girl as she hugged her. “Totally understand if you only said yes because of the circumstances, it was a super weird position for him to put you in. And me. Romantic, of course. Sort of. But I can get you out the back door if you need an escape. No? Sure? Okay. Congratulations.” She released the girl, blew a kiss with a spangle-nailed hand, and turned to greet the next group.
“Oh hey! So great to meet you! You will not believe what happened with the last people who came through…”
2. Nico
Nico was still new enough to it that the meet and greets were both novel and incredibly weird. Matt and Katya didn’t even seem to register them anymore, viewing them with about the same lassitude they viewed comicon panels or table reads, but since Nico found panels and reads pretty fucking exciting, photo opps were still a definite thing. And, like having strangers touch your hair and face every morning to get you camera ready, a definite mixture of cool and intensely bizarre. He wasn’t sure if it was weirder to have people paying actual money to meet him - and hug him, and sometimes burst into tears - or to call him by Jack’s name instead of his own.
“You get paid either way,” Matt said, who’d just been Wally’d no fewer than a dozen times.
“Yeah, but,” said Nico, “they know we’re not them, right?”
Matt gave him a gentle, pitying smile, and then both were dragged off for the next round.
After some time, Nico got into the flow of it. He could almost always find something to compliment fans on - their costumes, or their memory for Halley High lore, on which he could generally go toe-to-toe, or their ability to quote his lines back to him word perfect. Katya and Matt had described all of it as vaguely awkward and mostly boring, but Nico liked it, up until the point something happened that he was pretty sure they’d been lying to him about.
‘At some point,’ Matt had said, ‘They’ll do something weird in front of you.’
‘Yeah,’ said Katya. ‘Like get you to roleplay with them.’
‘Or propose,’ said Matt.
‘Aw, fuck off,’ said Nico, who was used to them messing with him at this point.
“Sasha,” said the girl with purple streaks in her hair. “I’m asking you here, in the sight of the greatest thespian of our generation, to do me the very great honor-”
“Oh!” said Nico, and covered his mouth.
“Oh, Fern!” said Sasha, whose shirt proclaimed her a member of Wallack Nation.
“-of marrying me.”
Nico moved his hands from his mouth to his eyes as Sasha flung herself into Fern’s arms. “Oh wow! Oh my gosh!” He uncovered his eyes, saw tongue, and covered them again.
“Oh my god! Did you know that was gonna happen? Holy sh- Wow! Uh. It feels weird that I’m here. Should I leave? Kelsi, please don’t charge them the $75 for the photo opp, this one’s on me. Seriously, should I leave?”
3. Jordie
The rest of them always wrapped up meet and greets before Jordie did. Part of this was because Jordie was bad at ending conversations, and tended to let fans run riot over him, killing the time limit and the event manager’s soul. The rest of it was because Jordie’s line of fans was twice as long as anyone but Matt’s, and Jordie hated turning anyone away.
“Look on my works, ye mighty,” murmured Matt, forty-five minutes after the rest of them had finished and were still waiting for Jordie to re-emerge. He flipped his wrist, looked at his watch, and tilted against the wall. “And despair. I have seen the future, and it is blond, peppy, and nineteen.”
Katya was scrolling the #jordieswiftsdcc tag and perusing selfies from the line. “This person waited two hours to see him and is pretty much creaming herself for the opportunity. This person waited three hours and is getting his signature tattooed on her wrist. And this one looks like he’s had some minor plastic surgery to look more like him.”
“Jesus,” said Nico, horrified. He knew they sometimes forgot that their little cast member, who tended to have half the screentime and a third the lines the rest of them did, was not only a fan favorite but had amassed 5 million subscribers on YouTube for a reason. “Poor Jordie.”
Katya clicked ‘report’ on a Tweet that Nico couldn’t read beyond the handle, which was @jordieswift_tongue_my_taint. She slid her phone into her back pocket and tilted against the wall next to Matt. “Competition, Tiny. Your agency is gonna have a cow if he starts to surpass you.”
Matt curled his lip in what might have been a smirk. “My agency should just sign him and turn me out to stud.”
Katya slid down the wall until she was squatting on her heels, fringe from her boho vest brushing the floor. She dragged her finger through the dust on the ground. “Tiny ginger babies cropping up in pastures everywhere next spring. Seabiscuit, out of Georgina, by Matt.”
Matt prodded her until she tipped off her heels and sprawled on the floor. “I’m happy to sell my semen but if they actually need me to mount anyone-”
“Guys, please,” said Nico. He was getting antsy, ready to go get dinner, and bouncing a little on his toes to keep himself awake. “There are kids around. Maybe less with the semen?”
Matt dodged Katya’s attempt to pull herself up on his ankle. “How about the mounting, is the mounting okay?”
Katya grinned from the floor. “Oh, I’m sure Nico’s okay with you mounting-”
Matt yawned. “Where the hell is Jordie?” he said. “Seriously, they’re shutting down the venue any minute now.”
“Let’s go look,” said Katya, and clambered upright, scooping up her purse in one hand and Nico’s arm in the other.
Jordie was down to the last fan, but it was immediately clear why it was running over time. It wasn’t just a matter of exceeding the allotted five minutes so much as a ‘death do us part’ thing, given the fact the fan was down on one knee and Jordie looked about 30 seconds away from a nervous breakdown.
“Oh dear,” said Matt. “They got him.”
“I’ll call security,” said Katya.
Nico ignored them both and dashed towards the unfolding scene, where Jordie was babbling helplessly.
“Wait, me? You’re asking me? Oh no! I thought this was about - I thought you were going to propose to someone el- Please stop kneeling. I have - Listen, I have a- Okay, my agent didn’t tell me what to do if this happened? I think my contract says no. I’m sorry! Okay, please don’t - um, please don’t - ”
Nico took one look at the ardent worship on the fan’s face and their outstretched hand, one look at the panic in Jordie’s eyes, and leapt into the fray. “Whoa, hey. Yo! I object!”
“Wh?” said Jordie.
“I’m so sorry,” said Nico, grabbing Jordie’s arm and securing him protectively against his side. “I’m so sorry, but he can’t marry you. Bigamy’s illegal, you see, and he’s already engaged.”
“He is?” said the fan blankly. Nico could almost see them scrolling Jordie’s Wikipedia page in their mind, searching for the ‘personal life’ section.
“I am?” said Jordie, looking as terrified as if he’d actually forgotten.
The fan’s mental scroll had clearly come up blank because their eyes narrowed. “To who?”
“Whom,” said Nico, because children of English professors never missed a cue. “Uh.” He hadn’t thought this all the way through, but realized at once he couldn’t go for his first instinct and throw Katya under the bus. For one thing, it would only encourage the #katyathecougar hashtag, and for another, she might hurt him. He’d deserve it, too. “To me, of course.”
“Wh?” said Jordie.
“Come along, dumpling,” said Nico, and swept him away.
Katya and Matt watched as Nico hustled them both through an ‘emergency exit only’ door, Matt with arms folded, Katya with her phone still out and security ringing through on the other end.
“Well,” said Matt. “If Jack/Silas wasn’t a thing before, it sure as hell will be now. Quick, Kat, bookmark the tag on AO3.”
“Be honest, Matty,” said Katya, as con organizers descended on the still-kneeling fan. “You’re a leettle bit jealous that Jordie got the proposal before you did.”
“I’ve been proposed to no less than five times, Kit-Kat.”
“But never,” said Katya, with a sly smirk. “By Nico Martin.”
4. Matt
The woman clutched a silver urn in one hand and Matt’s fingers in the other. It had been at least five minutes and Matt’s smile was at risk of becoming a rictus, so he changed it to a look of quiet sympathy.
“He would have loved to meet you,” said the woman, pressing Matt’s hand even tighter. “Gloucester Lost was his favorite movie. And we had the box set of NICU: NYC. Watched it nightly.”
“I’m so glad he liked it,” said Matt. He eyed the urn, in which resided the last earthly remains of Milton Heslop, apparently Matt’s biggest fan. His agent would not be pleased to know that one of Matt’s most dedicated viewers was dust, but he supposed this was what came of approaching thirty. An aging fanbase was just what a turn on Halley High was supposed to prevent, but he supposed a woman holding her dead husband was better than yet another red wig and loosely glued protuberance. “Would you like a picture?”
“I’ve been going to all his favorite places,” said the woman, still latched to Matt’s hand like she was one of the parasite wasps from episode five and he was - well, himself. “I scattered some of his ashes at Yosemite, and some at Dollywood. He always wanted to see the Space Needle, but they wouldn’t let me through the metal detector. I thought of the beach at Gloucester, of course, where Vincent tried to drown himself, but-”
But that particular beach didn’t exist, since they’d done all their shooting in Rhode Island for tax reasons.
“-but then I thought I could do one better.”
“A photo?” said Matt again, a little desperately. The pill he taken with breakfast - ‘breakfast’ might have been a generous description, but with his morning coffee and kahlua, anyway - was wearing thin, and he would have given a finger for the chance to smoke a cigarette. Going cold turkey this week had been a mistake, no matter how much he liked being able to kiss Nico without brushing his teeth first. “We can take a - There’s a photographer right - ma’am, do you-”
She’d finally let go of his hand and was busily unscrewing the top of the urn.
“Ma’am,” said Matt, but he didn’t leap back in time. Slowed reflexes, another sin imparted by the cold turkey.
“This is for you, Milton,” said the woman sorrowfully, and upended the urn at Matt’s feet.
“Well,” said Matt later, brushing grey dust off his lapels, “I’ve had two proposals and one break-up at fan events, but I can say that was my first consecration of human remains. Slightly less awkward than the proposals, honestly. Kelsi, do you have a wet wipe? Or a vacuum?”
As the event manager hurried over with some hand sanitizer and a damp paper towel, Matt shot a glance at Katya, who was shaking helplessly in the corner with tears streaming down her face. “Kitty, if you don’t get me something to smoke and I mean now, I’m doing to sneeze Milton all over your McQueen.”
“I’ll see what I can rustle up at the crematorium,” said Katya, and dissolved into laughter once again.
if a fictional character gets stabbed, they have only 2 valid options:
1. slowly raise their hand to the wound and/or pull the weapon impaling them out while everyone stares in horror before collapsing to the ground from shock and/or blood loss and being caught just in time by their friend/sibling/love interest
2. hide the wound beneath a dark item of clothing in preparation for the dramatic reveal later where another character touches them and their hand comes away bloody or they overexert themselves and they stumble and wince but still try to insist they’re fine, even though they’re clearly in pain and struggling to stay on their feet, and as the other character peels back their jacket it becomes clear that they’re badly hurt and have been for a while (bonus points if they’re wearing a white shirt underneath)
We emerge from the frozen mud of winter hibernation* to remind you we aten't dead. And that we are looking for betas! We've been using our frozen mud time to write some small press stories (<10k words) and we're looking for input on our latest. It's 6,800 words and best described as The Hunger Games meets The Devil Wears Prada meets old school parable.
When petty crook and reformed thespian V. Kalcith Arshimbo discovers that naive, monoymous designer Gene claims to be able to spin invisible cloth, she knows a scam in the making when she sees one. Get paid a fortune to dress the kingdom's despot in nothing at all? She wants in. The only question is whether Gene actually was taught his craft by the fairies, is totally mad, or something else entirely is going on...
Message us or reply on this post if you're interested in beta-ing!
*eternal publishing limbo
We emerge from the mists of Ireland - where we’re on retreat with next to no internet - to lay this offering at the feet of one of our favorite people and wish her a very happy birthday! @brazenbells we love you, thank you for two consecutive years of helping us write our boys, and for letting us throw them at your own.
Without further ado, the crossover smash the fans (us, mostly) have been clamoring for! Thanks, Ted.
-
King Abran's throne was as vast and glorious as his kingdom. Made of teak, varnished until the wood seemed to glow with an inner fire, inlaid with gold and etched with scenes from myth and legend and the founding of his dynasty.
And upon it, his wrists heavy with bangles, his fingers dripping rings, his eyes dark with kohl, lounged the crown prince, golden and glorious as a lion at rest. His eyes were lion-tawny too, and his neck was straight and proud, easily bearing the weight of the shining crown that rested upon his brow.
“See,” said Matt, angling his phone so Nico could get a better look at himself. “You look way better in all this sparkly shit than I do.”
Nico slid off the throne with a gentle chinking and untangled the gold-ish polymer crown from his hair. Beneath the gilt, it was dark brown, but for the stark white streak Makeup had sprayed there two hours ago. “Yeah, the casting choices feel a little strange. I can see why everyone on Twitter was pulling up those fanart comps to complain about it. Still not as bad as the, uh - ”
“I know,” Matt said morosely, taking the crown back and putting it on wonky. “I don’t even tan.” They’d dyed his hair again but thankfully drawn the line at trying to make him any less pasty. Manufacturing sexual tension with someone who looks like a stretched out Oompa Loompa might be beyond even Nico’s prodigious talents.
“I’m billed above you though. That’s progress.” Nico tried to get the crown to sit right but succeeded in tilting it drunkenly to the other side. “And, hey, it’s not every day you get a big-budget fantasy epic with a queer romance.”
“They cut out the incest. And most of the sex.” Around them, the studio walls yawned tall and green; the only solid things onset were them and the throne, and the throne was mostly resin.
“There wasn’t that much sex in the book,” said Nico, who’d picked up the novel as soon as the casting call went out and gone through making characterization notes on every page.
Matt, who’d read the first draft as it was posted on AO3, complete with thirteen chapters of kink that hadn’t made it into the published version, sniffed and forbore from commenting. Some hauteur was probably in keeping with playing Gael anyway. More in keeping with Tigris, though, which was further evidence Ted Nord couldn’t cast to save his life.
“I mean, I love it, it’s a really interesting role, but I’m finding it hard to get to grips with,” Nico had said, on the first day of shooting. “Spending your whole life pretending to be being vain and shallow, because it’s not safe to be anything else. Wearing a mask so long you must start to wonder whether you’ve become it. What does that do to a person?”
“Dunno,” Matt had said. “Did you see Ray Lelacheur’s Vogue cover yet? Terrible shoes.”
Now that Nico had abandoned the regal warmth that had settled on him as if it was second nature while draped over the throne, he was stirring the pages of the script again, frowning at his lines. Tigris had been the most he’d had to stretch for a character to date, he’d told Matt, though he’d earnestly added he liked the character’s ‘chewiness.’
Matt, who’d struggled equally hard to locate the generosity of spirit and ease of power that was Gael, continued to think that Ted was just as bad at casting to type as he was to aesthetic.
Nico tossed his white-streaked hair back from his forehead and dragged on his black velvet cloak. “Will you run this scene again with me? I keep not getting the timbre of his ambition right.” He mouthed a few lines, twisted a green gemstone on his finger, and cast an agonized, kohl-rimmed look at Matt. “How do I channel the appropriate volume of petulance, the feeling of a man deprived what by all rights should be his?”
Matt draped himself over his rightful throne, trying to arrange his limbs with the same boneless grace Nico had achieved so easily. “Remember when we were at that falafel truck last week and it took twenty minutes for your order to come and you started cursing god?”
“Suck my dick, Rose,” said Nico reflexively, but looked thoughtful.
“Later,” murmured Matt, and closed his eyes to wait.
-
“Spy,” snarled the prince, rounding on his cousin. Tigris stood his ground, jaw set against the taller man’s fury, lip curling with defiant derision. “You intrude here, in my father’s house, not content to be left to your life of indulgent luxury, so desperate for attention -”
Tigris’s eyes flashed, enraged despite himself. “Attention? You think that is what I crave? Heavens forbid I seek a world beyond the gilded cage my uncle keeps me in, indulging me like a spoilt puppy and giving me just as much freedom. Attention? I would give my eyeteeth for less! If one could trade condescending oversight for actual knowledge of how our kingdom is run-”
“Our kingdom,” repeated Gael. He cocked his head to the side, curiosity warring with the outrage in his noble features. “You truly think it so, do you? But our father-”
“Uncle,” said Tigris, under his breath.
“Our uncle -”
“My uncle,” said Tigris helpfully. “Your father.”
“My - okay, your -” Matt stopped. “Gawd. This doesn’t work at all.”
“See? It doesn’t work half as well without the incest.” Nico flicked a gem-encrusted finger at Matt’s nose.
Matt wrinkled it and adjusted the hang of gold chains over his collarbones. “You say this like I’m the one who made the script changes. And for the record, Cindy was as cut up about it as you are.” Cindy, script doctor extraordinaire, had also lurked the story on AO3 as it sailed up the ‘Original Fiction’ rankings, and was as distressed as he was about the loss of the throne sex scene. “It’s not my fault transgressive familial kink hasn’t crossed over from the hets yet.”
“Kink shmink, it totally shifts the dynamic.” Nico flapped his cloak emphatically. “Adopted cousins isn’t close to the same sort of layers of resentment and entitlement being a bastard half-brother would be.”
“Right,” said Matt, who’d definitely only re-read chapter 12 seven times for the entitlement, and not the way Tigris hissed ‘brother’ while bound to a bedpost. “The morality groups would lose their shit, though. Probably it was the right call.” It was impressive enough his agency had let him sign the role at all; he’d already rocked the boat enough asking if his casting was whitewashing.
“The morality groups are gonna lose their shit over the gay factor anyway,” said Nico stubbornly. “In for a penny...”
“What about the negative associations of homosexuality with sexual taboos?”
“What about double standards?”
“Sure, it’s a double standard and it sucks, but you gotta start somewhere. It’s a story about being an outcast and fighting for scraps of dignity, fighting to be seen as human by people who want you to be less than that, and that’s gonna resonate with a lot of kids. You gotta lay the groundwork then fuck your brother.”
Nico raised an eyebrow and Matt shut up quickly; he, or rather his agency, had made a point of never letting him be drawn into these kinds of debates. “And I think compromise robs art of its power. What does the author think?” They both glanced across the set to where a woman in a peacock-print dress watched as Ted struggled to coral the child actors for the carnival scene. Her expression, behind her glasses, was unreadable.
“Dunno.” Matt ran his hand through his hair. The dye had dried it out and he winced at the brittle, dead-grass feel of it. “Only time we spoke, we both tried to get each other’s autographs and it was really awkward. Bet she’d have some notes for you, though.”
“D’you know, Rose, that’s not a bad idea.” Once resolved, Nico was all action and he stood, script pages fluttering to the floor, velvet cloak swirling around his ankles. The jut of his jaw said that nothing short of poor falafel truck service would defeat him.
“Ask her to show you the predicament bondage scene,” Matt told him helpfully. “There were some really important character beats in that, I thought.”
-
“You think you’re too good for me, don’t you?”
“What?” Matt looked up, taken completely off guard. He was stretched out in Nico’s window seat, deeply absorbed in a thinkpiece on why Kai Bourke would have been a better casting choice for Gael, and thoroughly agreeing with it. Seeing his boyfriend prowling towards him with a look of cold fury and a bare chest was enough to stop him mid-anonymous comment.
Nico stalked across the room towards him, the taut anger etched in every muscle creating a frayed grace that was almost violence. “That’s the worst of you, your highness. It’s not that you hate me. It’s not that you think less of me. It’s that you think nothing of me at all!”
Finally cottoning on, Matt swung his legs around and tried to remember his lines; it was hard, he truly couldn’t remember what part of the script this was. That in itself was unusual. Matt would hardly claim himself a natural thespian or even a diligent professional, but memorizing lines had been a skill drilled into him since he was eight years old and it was a tough habit to shake. Still, while Nico’s words - Tigris’s words - sounded vaguely familiar, he couldn’t for the life of him place them in Ted and Cindy’s script.
“But I’m going to make certain you don’t forget me, brother,” whispered Nico, and that was just it, Matt realized. It wasn’t the script at all. It wasn’t even the book. It was the original.
“You read it?” he mouthed, as Nico’s hand wrapped around his wrist.
“Shocked to learn I’m literate?” spat Nico, but favored him with the shadow of a wink. No shadow around his eyes this time, no gold woven into his hair, but he was more Tigris than he’d been on the soundstage.
It was, simultaneously, extremely Nico.
Matt tried, experimentally, to free his wrist and found he couldn’t. He shivered, feeling his pulse jump, knowing Nico could feel it too. “Was that an attempt to dig deeper into the artistic truth of the work, or to mine it for weird, kinky shit?”
“Yes,” said Nico, bearing him down onto the cushions, beautiful and vengeful and careful not to knock Matt’s laptop off the seat.
-
One of the advantages of shooting a gay film with your boyfriend - one Arose had certainly never intended - was that when Nico turned, grabbed Matt by the lapels, and kissed him on the red carpet, everyone laughed and smiled and Matt knew the gossip mag headlines would be jokes about dedication to the craft and not shock sexuality scandals. His father probably wouldn’t- okay he’d definitely mind but it’d probably be a side note in a meeting about how to capitalize on the film’s success.
And it was a success; some desperately hot sex aside, reading the story - the real story - had apparently been what Nico had needed to pull it together. All the pride and fear and desperate clawing longing of a tiger caged that had risen like a heat haze from Tigris’s story, and Nico had captured it, had reveled in it, and put it on the screen for all to see.
Matt straightened his tie and winked to the paps - just a joke between bros, nothing queer here - and resolved to fuck Nico senseless in the restrooms after the premier. Nico laughed and stuck his tongue out. He’d left the white streak in his hair for the red carpet, as stark as the collar of his suit, and Matt had to say, it was growing on him.
In honor of father’s day, an update! And, more importantly, a new story. With The Fairy Dealer off with our agency, we’ve turned out attention to revisions of our very first manuscript …
happy father's day! Is your father a tree? Wish he was a tree? Does he at least make bad branch puns? We got you
Wes had told Pidge repeatedly that they didn’t need the porch repaired, everyone knew not to step on the three boards that were rotted through, or to lean against any of the railings. He hadn’t been all that surprised when his boyfriend insisted, even though his iron sensitivity meant he had to do it in heavy gloves with a scarf wrapped around his face.
To show his support, Wes had come out with him to read journals on his phone, tease the neighbourhood cat, and enjoy the weak spring sunshine and Pidge’s biceps because, allergy or not, Pidge would die before he wore long sleeves.
But as had happened so frequently since acquiring a magical boyfriend, Wes’s attention had wandered from schoolwork and his fairy specifically to the fae in general. With the cat dozing in his lap and Pidge cussing whenever his elbow brushed a nail, he thumbed away from JSTOR and opened Wikipedia.
“Pidge,” he murmured, five minutes later.
“Westopher,” said Pidge, wiping his brow and putting down the hammer with the same care with which one handled a loaded gun with a broken safety.
“So I’m on Wikipedia - ”
“Uh oh.” Pidge hissed something at the cat, which made a mrowling noise back but obligingly climbed out of Wes’s lap. Pidge took its place, draping his arms around Wes’s shoulders, smelling of tar, sweat and weed, and making more of an impression on Wes’s joints than the cat had.
“Oof,” said Wes and then, putting the talking to animals thing aside for another day, “So, I was reading the thing about changelings, and it says sometimes- Sometimes- ” Wes cleared his throat. “‘In rare cases, the very elderly of the fairy people would be exchanged in the place of a human baby, so that the old fairy could live in comfort, being coddled by its human parents’.”
“Huh.” Behind Pidge, the patch of slimy, rotten wood he’d cleared of nails looked significantly less mouldy than it had half an hour ago. Wes knew, without checking, that the boards were sound again, even though they were starting to put out leaves.
Wes started into his boyfriend’s opaque, inhuman eyes. “Is that true? It sounds really weird, like, aren’t you immortal? Why would you need a retirement plan?”
“There are some questions better not asked, bud. Some truths too awful for the human mind to hold,” Pidge said mysteriously, and Wes thought of every horror he’d witnessed in Faerie; thralls with their minds gone more rotten than the deck and their fingers worn to bone, or minds left whole in bodies transfigured into monstrosity.
“Oh no, do the fairies that do it, like, maintain their immortality by draining people’s life force? Do they eat the real baby? Is it like parasitic wasps?”
“No, nothin’ like that.” Pidge wrinkled his nose, and Wes tried to prepare himself for a revelation his mind was unequal to. “They’re just some creeps into that adult baby fetish thing. Shit’s freaky.”
What do you think makes a sex scene really good? Like the kind of good where lots of people agree, where readers say ‘this isn’t even usually my thing, but...’
There are three things you need to make a sex scene work; strong characterisation, a source of tension, and a sense of humour.
Characterisation: If you could replace the two+ characters in your scene with any other characters and have it play out the same, you’re doing it wrong. You chose to write this scene about these characters for a reason. Who are they? What do they want? (Aside from orgasms, presumably.) Make sure whatever it is that interests you about the characters and their relationship comes through in how you write the scene; in how they act and react to each other, and in how they describe everything if you’re using 1st or 3rd person limited PoV. Don’t be afraid to step away from conventional characterisation and explore what interests you. Don’t assign a weird value to who tops/bottoms. In fact, don’t assume sex begins and ends with some sort of penetration, which is straying from my point but needs to be said.
Tension: If there’s no source of tension in your story then you might as well be putting together well-lubricated Ikea furniture. Even PWPs need something extra, even if the conflict being explored is just ‘man, can I really cram this whole spaghetti squash in there?’ Usually, there’s going to be some sort of emotional conflict being explored (though that’s not to say you shouldn’t include a kraken attack) even you don’t resolve it by the end of the fuck. Are the characters trying something new in bed? Is one of them stressed by a tough day at the office/on the battlefield? Is this a calculated seduction?
Humour: Sex is inherently kind of silly. You’re doing awkward physical things, there are unfortunate noises and smells, and things just don’t always work the way they do in your head. Showing your characters dealing with spilt lube and accidental hair pulling is showing they’re comfortable enough with each other that they can be vulnerable and have fun together. And that’s really important to conveying intimacy, and intimacy is often what makes sex sexy. I’m not talking Three Stooges here, but sometimes making the choreography just a little bit less flawless really helps to make a scene feel real.
Bonus fourth tip courtesy of my best beloved @imindhowwelayinjune on how to get that coveted ‘this isn’t my thing but’ reaction; don’t be afraid to make it weird. Think of something, anything - boning down on a magical artefact, sexy tax avoidance schemes, sensual embroidery - and commit to writing porn of it with your whole heart. Write it, believe in it, and your audience will follow you into the pit.
Also, and this is most important, do not say ‘elfhood’.
Or ‘manhood’, or ‘glistening folds’. Or ‘pucker’.
To illustrate my rambling, under the cut is a scene June wrote a while ago about the guys from our first novel trying anal for the first time. There’s humour and awkwardness, tension that arises from Matt’s discomfort with being awkward and human, and that is important characterisation - the scene wouldn’t play out the same way between two people who didn’t have this specific issue. The story offers a short term payoff (they successfully have sex, sorry to spoil it) but the central issue of Matt having a deeply unhealthy attitude to…a lot of stuff remains an issue. (Honestly it’s just a really hot, perfectly executed scene that I wanted an excuse to share with the world)
1. Fairy dust is largely composed of shed skin and hair fragments from fairies, just as human dust is largely composed of human skin and hair fragments. One key difference, however, is that fairy dust contains flakes of lost hopes and dreams that the fairies have stolen from humans and then carelessly allowed to disintegrate.
2. Many apparent fairies are in fact insects which have adopted a humanoid form as a means of protection against enemies. If you look carefully, you may be able to see that what appears to be a dress is in fact the third pair of legs, neatly folded across the thorax; that the real eyes are located under the chin; and that the antennae are cunningly disguised as a flower crown. The most sophisticated disguises may also include a vestigial bug spray organ or a swatter appendage.
3. The stars on the end of wands are real stars. They have been snatched from their place in space by pointed sticks carelessly struck against the sky; snatched away from their planetary systems, which are left to drift free, alone in the dark. The magic to wrench them loose and pen them in their pointed enclosures is ancient and terrible and wholly unknowable save by those that use it. This applies to all wands, including the plastic ones in shops.
4. According to physics, fairies should not be able to fly. Meanwhile, biology has shown that fairies have a secondary brain at the base of their tails, which contains the ten percent of their brain that they actually use, the other ninety percent in the head organ mainly functioning as a counterweight. This is why they only have a three second memory, which is unfortunately also the time that it takes signals to reach their mouths from the bottom brain; these science facts may be useful in explaining that conversation with a fairy that you had.
5. If you find a fairy in a flower, always remove it at once. Many plants are able to trap and dissolve fairies which visit their flowers to lick the pollen. The resulting fairy liquid provides nutrition to the plants in their second phase, the one where they unroot themselves and fly South for the Winter. The fairy will not grant you a wish, but then again neither will a bee.
6. Fairies are not in fact responsible for rings of mushrooms. Rings of mushrooms arise by themselves. Although fairies sometimes have inadequate hygeine by human standards, these practices are unrelated to mushroom growth.
7. You cannot take a photograph of a fairy. A real fairy will steal your camera and also magic you up so far that you forget you ever had a camera and also forget the names of all of your left toes and the route to the fairy hive. Fairies also will never take photographs, instead preferring to eat cameras. Because of this, youcan be sure that any photograph of a fairy that you see is fake.
8. Fairies are superb navigators and have a highly-developed magnetic navigation system. One side-effect of this is that fairies themselves are slightly magnetic and can become stuck to metals, including iron. This is where the myth about fairies being repulsed by iron arose from. Fairies will usually keep a large distance from iron items to avoid embarrassment and potential injury.
I keep trying to get serious about inventing myself a Kingdom of Rust universe faesona because I’m a dork like that but I keep derailing myself with the intrusive thought “hi my name is Cockatoo but my friends call me Cock”
