far gone in ancient decrepitude // being sad online since 2003
ao3: wowl | tiktok: ohwowitsawowl
✨️ Marauders Fic Links ✨️
WIP: Between the Lines
mostly canon compliant LONG fic, multi POV, jegulus leading to jily (no cheating, lily positivity), background fluff!wolfstar, lots of evan rosier apparently
Currently at: 353k words
Last updated: 22nd August 2025
✨️ One Shots (Complete) ✨️
At Least We Were Electrified
6k New Years Eve Wolfstar First Kiss all fluff and good vibes
Excerpt from the latest chapter of Between the Lines by wowl on ao3
Regulus lies there, breathing in the smell of James, the faint hint of sweat behind his usual fresh scent. Hears his heart beating in his chest, lets a current of delight run through him at the softness of James’s fingertips on his arm, the back of his neck, in his hair.
“You’re not up there, right?”
Regulus blinks up at him, at the underside of James’s jaw as he gazes up into the night. He follows James’s eyes, the sky never completely dark in midsummer here, a perpetual twilight.
“No,” he says. “Below the treeline. You can still see it, just above the horizon, if you’re in the Astronomy tower.”
“I’m not sure I recognise any of these. I dropped Astronomy at the end of Third Year.”
“Too many night lessons taking away from your extra-curricular fuckery?”
James laughs. “Pretty much. All the ones I remember are winter ones, I think.”
Regulus keeps looking up at the stars.
“I’d imagine so. Orion, Canis Major, right?”
James pauses so briefly it’s almost missable.
Almost.
“Right,” he says.
“Orion hunts in the winter. In summer, it’s Bootes.”
“Booties?”
“Boo-OH-tees. The Herdsman. There.”
He lifts a hand to point, for James’s eyeline to follow.
“Can you see? It’s a similar shape to Orion, just no belt.”
“I think so.”
“That bright one, that’s Arcturus.”
“No shit,” James says, sounding pleased.
“Shit,” Regulus says plainly.
He feels James turns his head to look down at him.
“So you’re the only one in the sky, at the moment?”
Regulus looks up at the stars.
“I suppose. Regulus Arcturus, fading in the brightness of the midsummer sun.”
James thumbs Regulus’s temple. “Are you ever up there with them?”
Regulus looks up at them: Ursa Major, Draco, Hercules, Bootes, faint in the midsummer sky. Thinks of their bedroom ceilings, painted with a group of constellations never found in reality. Their parents’ hopes for them in silver on dark blue, as though Regulus could ever come close to Sirius and Orion.
An excerpt from Between the Lines on ao3 (by me), new 14k Remus POV chapter just posted 💜
They lie there for a minute, Sirius’s fingers tracing softly against the skin of Remus’s back. Remus shifts an arm, tentatively brings it up to stroke Sirus’s cheek again, and Sirius closes his eyes.
Says, quietly, “I did ask him to leave with me, you know.”
Remus’s chest feels tight, his heart pounding so much that he’s sure Sirius will be able to feel it as they’re pressed against one another.
“Oh?”
He keeps his eyes closed. Says, “He wouldn’t come.”
Remus watches as a tingle tear escapes from under Sirius’s dark lashes, trails over his temple into his hair.
He leans forwards, kisses it softly away, salt on his lips.
Sirius rolls them, and Remus lets him, feels himself pushed over onto his side and then onto his back as Sirius shifts over the top of him, feels Sirius’s lips clash desperately into his own.
He slips his arms under Sirius’s as he braces his body above him, dark hair falling forward, feels the bones of his hips under his palms. Knows that this is just a distraction from what Sirius is feeling; that he’s not so much a person to Sirius right now as much as he’s Anything Else To Distract Me, but Remus doesn’t care. Sirius’s kiss is all pressure and heat, Remus yielding under him, opening his mouth for Sirius’s tongue, letting his bottom lip be tugged between his teeth, arching his back to push up into it.
Then Sirius breaks away, pulling the t-shirt he’s wearing up over his head, then fumbling for the bottom of Remus’s t-shirt, tugging it up to get at skin, and Remus shifts to let him pull it up over his head and throw it to the floor. Lets Sirius crash into him, a hand at his throat, lips on his neck, on his collarbone, trailing down his chest to where his other hand is frantic at the buttons of Remus’s jeans, and he lets him.
An excerpt from Between the Lines on ao3 💜 updating tomorrow with a 14k Remus POV chapter
James reaches out, brushes the curl off his forehead. Presses his lips into Regulus’s lips in the fading light.
“I couldn’t stay away from you,” James breathes, barely breaking the kiss to do so.
Regulus sighs, his eyes staying closed, a tightness in his posture.
“I’m sorry, James. I just… it’s difficult.”
James reaches up a hand, cups Regulus’s cheek, and he presses into it, his skin soft and warm on James’s palm.
“I know. I just missed you.”
Regulus opens his eyes, all heavy-lidded in that way he does when he’s kiss-drunk, and James wants him more than he’s ever wanted anything in his life.
“Our parents used to make us learn French, you know,” he says.
James lets it settle in his veins: first Regulus using his brother’s name, now this, this reference to ‘our’ parents instead of ‘my’. Regulus puts the Map down, James letting his hand drop as he leans over to the nearest desk and places it there with his wand, the movement effortlessly gracefully as he bends back toward James.
“I used to try and read in it, to get a better grasp of it. To try and please our mother, not that anything has ever pleased her.”
He lets his hands rest on James’s forearms, caressing the fabric like he so often does, his eyes finding James’s, something reticent but determined in them.
He says, “In French, instead of saying ‘I miss you’, it’s ‘you are missing from me’.” He blinks. “It’s not so much that the meaning actually changes, just that things don’t always translate directly. Don’t come out right, when you’re speaking different languages.”
James lets him talk, his voice soft, the room rapidly darkening as the sky turns indigo, a smattering of stars strewing themselves across it.
“Still, I always liked that,” Regulus says. “That turn of phrase.” He swallows, James watching his throat move, watching his lips, watching the soft sadness of his eyes. “It’s how I feel, whenever you’re not there. ‘You are missing from me’.”
James could die, right then, in that moment, and he’d be happy for it if it wasn’t for the fact that he wants more: more of this endlessly, forever, always. He places his thumb lightly on Regulus’s bottom lip, strokes it softly.
He says, “Say it for me.”
“Tu me manques,” Regulus breathes.
James lets his eyes flutter closed, kisses him soft in the encroaching dark.
“Again,” he says, barely more than a whisper.
“Tu me manques.”
They sit there as the room goes black, lost in one another’s lips, in each other’s breaths; in the smell and the taste and the ache, the sky blooming stars above them.
James ducks under their star canopy, Regulus closing his book as he smiles up at him, a familiar illustrated eye on the cover.
“You’re on Return of the King again?” James says, warm with affection.
Regulus flicks through the pages of it, the little tabs he uses to mark his favourite parts seeming to be stuck to every other page, whole reams of it underlined in black ink.
“It’s just brilliant, honestly. Every time I read it I find something else to love, some other part that stands out to me.”
James smiles at him, sitting beside him, letting his thigh press close against Regulus’s.
“You should thank the wonderful person with incredible taste that gave it to you, then."
Regulus smirks at him, leans over to press a kiss against James’s cheek, and James feels himself flush at the feel of it, even after all this time.
“Thank you. Listen,” he says, finding the tab he was looking for, towards the end. He clears his throat slightly, reads aloud in a voice that’s like his normal speaking voice but more… reverent.
“‘And he sang to them, now in the Elven tongue, now in the speech of the West, until their hearts, wounded with sweet words, overflowed, and their joy was like swords, and they passed in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together and tears are the very wine of blessedness.’”
Regulus touches the underlined passage on the page, his fingertips seeming to caress the words.
“I like that,” he says softly, gazing down. “‘And their joy was like swords,’ ‘where pain and delight flow together’.”
James looks at the boy next to him, his hair falling softly forward, curled over his book, this gift. This gorgeous thing they’ve made together, kept in the dark, hidden away. The happiness and the pain all wrapped up into one, the delicious sting of it that he can’t get enough of. He reaches out, pushes Regulus’s hair gently back, soft between his fingers.
“It’s like us, a bit,” he says.
Regulus looks up at him, his face lit up.
“Yes,” he says. Something like embarrassment flashes across his face, that look he always gets when he feels too exposed, and James leans in and kisses him, puts a stop to it. He feels Regulus bring up the hand that was on the page, his fingers wrapping around James’s wrist instead, tender.
“How many times have you read it, now?” James says after the kiss breaks, their foreheads pressed lightly together.
Regulus laughs softly. “Merlin, I have no idea. Too many, some of the pages have started falling out.”
James leans back slightly so he can see Regulus’s face, that happy glow he gets in his eyes that James knows only he can make.
“I always think that’s a good thing in a book,” he says. “When the spine’s all cracked, and the pages are dogeared and it’s falling apart. It shows it's a really good book.” He reaches out a thumb, touches a tiny ink mark on Regulus’s pale jaw. “That it’s been really loved.”
Regulus’s eyes smile more than his mouth does, that look of trying to keep the happiness inside himself. Like if he lets it out he’ll not be able to hold onto it.
“I always feel like I’m being cruel to them,” he says. “Defacing them, you know?”
James looks at him. The elegant bow of his lips, the flawless skin.
He forgets all about the books.
“You’re perfect,” he says.
Regulus does blush, then, as much as he ever does. Tiny pink blotches blooming on pale cheeks.
“Thank you."
James bites his lip, tries not to laugh.
“Thank you?”
Regulus tries to glare at him, but it’s not working.
“Well, what else am I supposed to say?”
James kisses him softly, letting his lips brush across Regulus’s like a whisper.
“If you were a book, Reg, I’d underline every fucking word of you.”
Regulus laughs a little, his eyes closed. “That’s such a line, Potter.”
James grins. “You love it.”
Regulus’s eyes flutter open, finding James’s. All grey and gold in the light, something soft and aching about how he’s looking at him.
“Yes, James,” he says, quietly. “I do.”
---
Link: Between the Lines on ao3
A Big Gorgeous Romantic Tragedy
Multi POV Long Fic
Years 4/5 Hogwarts to End of First War
Jegulus with Endgame Jily (No Cheating, Lily Positivity)
Background Fluff Wolfstar
LOTS of Black Brothers Angst and lots of Evan Rosier, apparently
Mostly Canon Compliant, CCMCD Only
WIP at 162k, updating with 10kish chapters every 1-2 weeks depending on the author's fragile mental health ✌🏻✨️
To be aware you might be trans but unwilling to do anything about it is to create endlessly bigger boxes within which to contain yourself. When you are a child, that box might encompass only yourself and your parents. By the time you are a gainfully employed adult, that box will contain multitudes, and the thought of disrupting it will grow ever more unthinkable. So you cease to think of yourself as a person on some level; you think not of what you want but what everybody expects from you. You do your best not to make waves, and you apologize, if only implicitly, for existing. You stop being real and start being a construct, and eventually, you decide the construct is just who you are, and you swaddle yourself up in it, and maybe you die there. There is still time until there isn’t.
This reading of TV Glow’s deliberately anticlimactic, noncathartic ending cuts against the transition narrative you typically see in movies and TV, in which a trans person self-accepts, transitions, and lives a happier life. Owen gets trapped in a space where he knows what he must do to live an authentic life but simply refuses to take those steps because, well, burying yourself alive is a terrifying thing to do. The transition narrative posits a trans existence as, effectively, a binary switch between “man” and “woman” that gets flipped one way or another, but to make our lives so binary is to miss how trans existences possess an inherent liminality.
Humans’ lives unfold in a constant state of becoming until death, but trans people are uniquely keyed in to what this means thanks to the simple fact of our identities. You can get lost in that liminality, too, forever trapped in a midnight realm of your own making, stuck between what you believe is true (I am a nice man with a good family and a good job, and I love my life) and what you know, deep in your most terrified heart of hearts, is real (I am a girl suffocating in a box).
And yet if you want to read the film as being about the dangerous allure of nostalgia, you’re not wrong. I Saw the TV Glow totally supports that interpretation, too! But in tempting you with that reading, the film creates a trap for cis viewers that will be all too familiar to trans viewers. Somewhere in the middle of Maddy’s story about The Pink Opaque being real, you will make a choice between “This kid has lost it!” and “No. Go with her, Owen,” and in asking you to make that choice, TV Glow is simulating the act of self-accepting a trans identity.
See, the grimmer read of the film’s ending truly is a nihilistic one. It leaves no hope, no potential for growth, no exit. Yet you must actively choose to read that ending as nihilistic. If you are cis and the end of I Saw the TV Glow left you with a gnawing sense of dissatisfaction, a weird but hard-to-pin-down feeling that something had broken, and a melancholy bordering on horror — congratulations, this movie gave you contact-high gender dysphoria.
In an infinite number of possible universes, there is at least one where I am still living “as a man,” embracing my fictionality, avoiding looking at how much more raw and real I feel when I “pretend” to be a woman. I think about that guy sometimes. I hope he’s okay.
Consider, then, my cis reader, that TV Glow is for both you and me, but it is maybe most of all for him. I hope he sees it. I hope he breaks down crying in the bathroom afterward. I hope he, after so many years locked inside himself, hears the promise of more life through the hiss of TV static.
Emily St. James, “I Saw the TV Glow’s Ending Is Full of Hope, If You Want It to Be,” Vulture. June 4, 2024.
oh wow it's ash @ohwowitsash - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
