I haven’t read this essay in… twelve years? I think? But someone (ETA: that someone was @whetherwoman who deserves the credit) linked it today and rereading it was a) a treat and b) honestly really helpful. If you, like me, want to write smut but often find it difficult, this essay may help a LOT.
Reblogging this as I periodically do because it’s still relevant (especially with so many new writers coming into fandom spaces who are SO ENTHUSIASTIC but maybe need some pointers?) and because I myself need the reminder. Wherever you are, Res, I hope you’re doing great.
I’m hoping putting a little bit of this story out into the void will help motivate me to write more, so here’s the first little bit of my clegan soulmate au! <3
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John fell in love in Walla Walla.
He fell in love with that split second on the runway when he pulled back on the yoke and the wheels of his B-17 left the ground for the first time. He fell in love with the shock of relief of the icy high-altitude air after spending too long taxiing the runway in the stagnant air of an enclosed cockpit.
He fell in love with a fort almost seeming to float through the air, all engines feathered.
He fell in love with messy golden hair tumbling out of the hatch and a smile as bright as the sun glinting off of metal wingtips.
So it was no surprise, really, that when Gale ran a hand across the hull of his plane gently, reverently, and said “I’m in love,” in that low awestruck croon, that his name was simultaneously etched into the pale skin of John’s wrist.
Ok but consider this: Bucky touching Gale’s prostate for the first time and Gale seeing god before coming so hard he blacks out, Bucky then proceeds to abuse this new found power to make Gale brain dead via orgasms
ok [cracks my knuckles] as a prostate enjoyer and someone currently fucking a man who has one i do have to say that touching someone's prostate does not immediately make them see stars upon impact which is NOT to say i don't support unrealistic porn bc what i'm abt to write is still kind of unrealistic but it IS to say, again, i am a prostate enjoyer and i think confusing gale with a prostate orgasm is actually hornier than that
gale has steadfastly not let john put his dick in his ass. he keeps saying he just doesn't think he would like it and he likes doing the other stuff and the other stuff is enough bucky seriously. but you and me and bucky and gale all know that he's lying. he wants that dick so bad but he's too hung up on everything all the time to admit he wants it
so maybe someday gale is like fine you can use your fingers ONLY okay fine. and bucky is like i'm going to destroy this guy. gale is hard before he even gets his underwear off and when bucky flips him around and starts eating him out he's like oh dear fucking god what have i gotten myself into
and gale probably grabs bucky's hand from his hip and tries to put it on his cock and bucky wordlessly refuses, and gale realizes at length that john is not going to be actually touching his cock, or not yet? or whats going on?? but bucky's having the time of his life tonguing gale to death until he's squirming
then finally he lubes up his fingers (or vaselines them up, if we're in the 40s/50s) and starts in on gale. gale almost tells him to stop because secretly he had put his own fingers in his ass before but someone else doing it is so different, he doesn't have control over how fast or deep or how many fingers and the angle bucky is getting at him from is so new and kind of terrifying
but he doesn't stop him because gale is not a quitter.
so bucky gives him a finger and then two and gale's cock is still blessedly hard between his legs and finally he's making some sweet little sounds, finally letting go and just appreciating the fact that bucky is inside of him even if it's just fingers.
but then bucky curls his fingers and rubs down and over and back and forth and gale's smart enough to know it's his prostate and he almost does ask him to stop. it's staring to feel insane. it felt fine at first but now he's squirming and scrunching his toes because it feels kind of like he has to piss and john doesn't let up for a second to let the pressure dissipate. it just holds there low in his body somewhere abstractly between where john's fucking into him and his still very much untouched dick
suddenly gale's moaning, whimpering almost, trying to speak through the sounds but he can't because what would he even say anyway? his dick is fucking leaking, he realizes, even though it's only three quarters hard at best now, and he wants to collapse entirely, like somehow what john is doing is sapping all his strength.
"jesus, doll" bucky says, like he's surprised, and gale glances at the clock to see embarrassingly few minutes have passed. bucky's fingers are aggressive now, pressing home again and again so it's all blurring into one long feeling and the thing building in him surely can't last that much longer, it's loud and alien and full. maybe if he can just get a hand around himself.
"can i-" gale tries to ask, doesn't finish, and bucky tells him no because he knows he's trying to ask if he can touch his cock.
before he can even process it gale is shaking apart. maybe it was being told no or maybe the pressure was just too much and oh god is he going to piss himself but no, he's coming, and he's collapsing, and bucky is doing his best to keep his fingers in, to keep pressing them where they need to go.
bucky's watching gale all but fall apart in front of him, completely in awe that it happened so fast, that it happened at all on their first try, that gale needed this so badly and wasn't getting it. he was going to touch gale's dick, eventually, to actually get him there. he didn't think buck could actually come. holy shit. holy shit.
gale is convulsing, jolting and whining and his voice is cracking and john tries determinedly not to think about how he's only ever seen women come like this. the cum is leaking out of gale, it's getting everywhere despite the way that it's not shooting in a tidy stream but overflowing out of him. it's unholy and and unexpected and bucky is the one seeing god just watching it.
gale's orgasm goes on for long enough that bucky is starting to worry if it's painful, that maybe he broke gale or something, and he relents with his fingers only to hear buck kick out a little sob about it.
"holy shit" john murmurs, staring at the puddle of panting gale and hoping that he becomes responsive now because he sure as hell can't take him to the hospital and 'hello doc, just gave my boyfriend an orgasm from his ass for the first time and i think he might be dying now'
"oh god" buck breaths, and there's a little laugh on it. and oh god is right, bucky laughs back, relieved that he didn't just give gale the worst experience of his fucking life lol.
"why have you been keeping that from me" gale asks
and john is almost annoyed when he tells him "because it's not usually that easy, buck, holy hell"
and then bucky's dick is as hard as a rock thinking abt this newfound power and how he's definitely going to abuse it.
In the spirit of encouraging people to comment on fanfics while also making it easier to do so, I feel obliged to share a browser extension for ao3 that has quite literally revolutionized the comment game for me.
I present to you: the floating ao3 comment box!
From what I've seen, a big problem for many people is that once you reach the comments at the bottom of a fic, your memory of it miraculously disappears. Anything you wanted to say is stuck ten paragraphs ago, and you barely remember what you thought while reading. This fixes that!
I'll give a little explanation on the features and how it works, but if you want to skip all that, here's the link.
Edit: Yes, this also works on mobile!
The extension is visible as a small blue box in the upper left corner.
(Side note: The green colouring is not from the extension, that's me.)
If you click on it, you open a comment box window at the bottom of your screen but not at the bottom of the fic. I opened my own fic for demonstrative purposes.
The website also gives explanations on how exactly it functions, but I'll summarize regardless.
insert selection -> if you highlight a sentence in the fic it will be added in italics to the comment box
add to comment box -> once you're done writing your comment, you click this button and the entire thing will automatically copied to the ao3 comment box
delete -> self explanatory
on mulitchapter fics, you will be given the option to either add the comment to just the current chapter or the entire fic
The best part? You can simply close the window the same way you opened it and your progress will automatically be saved. So you can open it, comment on a paragraph, and then close it and keep reading without having the box in your face.
Comments are what keep writers going, and as both a writer and a reader, I think it's such an easy way of showing support and enthusiasm.
What does big law Bucky think about when he’s alone in the shower? Is there something he really want to do with/to Gale?
ohohohohOHHOHOHOhoHOHO
ok so. pretty normal to jerk it in the shower to the thought of your boybestfriend on his knees sucking your cock. preeeeettyyyyy normal to want to be inside of him. pretty NORMAL to want to lick sweat off his body after he comes back from a run. weird but arguably still PRETTY NORMAL to want to bend him over a desk and fuck him in his barrister's robes.
the real freak shit (in bucky's opinion) ...
... are his fantasies about completely taking gale apart. having him spread out in front of bucky and being so overstimulated he's shaking and can't focus on anything except receiving pleasure. bucky wants hours-long edging sessions. he wants gale in a cock ring, squirming and unable to form proper sentences, begging for relief. he wants gale to be so overwhelmed he forgets how to speak. and so some of these fantasies take on a more kinky edge to get gale to that state (bondage, painplay, hell maybe even a little sounding, etc), but really, what does it for bucky isn't the method, it's more about getting gale to that point of complete surrender. he craves gale's full, undivided attention more than anything in the world, and so that's what he fantasizes about. being the sole point of focus in gale's entire world, so that time and real life just fall to the wayside. he wants gale to put that trust in him, to let bucky take him to that place of complete surrender. it's a power trip, but really, it's because in their world, giving your time to someone is the most meaningful way of showing how much you love them.
This is a passion project of mine at the moment because it is a topic that I feel strongly about. Please note that the intention of these posts is to mainly draw awareness to and educate on the patterns and attitudes directed towards black characters that I have personally witnessed in my time across multiple fandoms. I will not be tagging these with the main fandom tags or any characters mentioned, but you are more than welcome to in any reblogs. For ease of use, I will be pinning this post and updating it with what is basically a table of contents to help you navigate to the part of the essay you're seeking. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.
Also, remember that I am a human, imperfect and flawed as anyone else. These are my observations and musings, and are not to be interpreted as a generalization to any one group. Thank you for understanding. 💙
If you want to filter this out by tags, the one I will be using is "#antiblack racism in fandom".
Part 1: Respecting Black Characters You Don't Agree With
Part 2: The "Boring Black Man" Phenomenon
Part 3: Taking Back Black Stories
Ask: Writing Vivienne
An Aside: Avoiding the Extreme of the "Perfect" Black Character
Part 4: The "Straight-coded" Black Man
Eldrin Should Have Been Black: A Take on Bioware and Black Fatherhood
Bucky whisking half-dead-burntout-but-in-heavy-denial-borderline-suicidal Gale [aka the best kind of Gale] off to the mountains and that being the last (or only?) time Gale felt truly alive just for him to get back into his healthy ways of coping the literal nanosecond he gets internet connection and cell service is such a Gale move though. Never change tortured tax guy Gale, never change<3
truly gale is the most deliciously tormented tax guy ever
so it goes like this: Bucky knows Gale is Not Well. and I mean, he's known Gale is Not Well for a while, but it's only after he starts cracking jokes about wanting to get hit by a car just so he can get a break that Bucky is like: holy fuck I need to do something about this.
(at this point Bucky is going through his own reckoning as well. he's good at his job and he enjoys the insanity of an all-hands-on-deck 48hour closing sprint-- transactional M&A guys live for those moments where they're pulling 16 hour days and then the deal closes and they get to pop champagne and make merry until they collapse and then do it all over again in a few months. But around the same time as Gale is going through his Simoleit Trial From Hell(tm), Bucky is realizing he can't keep up anymore. It's not the coke or the vyvanse that's the problem-- it's the champagne, the top shelf liquor, the scotch. He hasn't completely acknowledged he has a drinking problem, but he's starting to realize this isn't the life he wants for himself. He's a romantic at heart, and he wants a partner and a dog and to travel to cool places and to have space to breathe and also maybe finally put the fucking moves on his best friend who he's been in love with for years and who is lowkey the reason why all of Bucky's relationships end horribly, because his partners all eventually realize that they'll never be priority #1 for bucky. and yknow what, they're right)
And so. Bucky realizes Gale is on the edge of a burnout so severe it will probably take years to recover from. And even if he won't do anything just yet about his own issues, this is Gale so It's Different.
Gale is in the office the day after the trial. He's literally vibrating (preworkout mixed into white monster and zero actual, non-liquid food in his stomach). Bucky asks Gale if he's taking time off. Gale is like, yeah I'm taking the full weekend! Saturday AND Sunday! I might not even check emails Friday Night :D :D :D
So Bucky marches down to managing partner Harding's office and is like. You're giving Gale a week off starting tonight. Figure it out. Get the other associates to cover his desk. He's gone, zero cell service. [This type of request is very unusual/not done for many reasons I won't get into, but Harding sees Gale literally looks like death warmed over, and he doesn't want to lose a really good senior associate, so he agrees. Not out of any kindness in his heart, but because the tax group can't afford to lose Gale.]
Next step in the plan: kidnap Gale.
Bucky brings Gale's legal assistant a venti iced matcha latte, a dozen artisinal cupcakes, and a Saks Fifth Avenue gift card. He bribes her to change Gale's outlook to say he is out of office with zero access to emails. [the legal assistant groupchat POPS OFF. the assistants know everything about everyone and are #clegantruthers-- theorizing abounds. will this be the weekend they finally confess their feelings??? is bucky whisking gale away to a romantic honeymoon suite??? vegas wedding when??????]
Bucky's next step is to somehow convince Gale to come with him. Gale cannot be persuaded to leave his work phone at the office, but he does leave his laptop which is ... something, I guess. Bucky hustles Gale into his car and is scheming on how he's going to stop Gale from launching himself out of a moving vehicle to get back to the office when he realizes where they're going ... except Gale completely socks out minutes into the drive. Full on ugly sleeping, mouth open, head jammed onto the passenger window.
Gale only wakes up when they pull into the campground parking lot, and by that point, they are in the mountains and out of cell service. He's PISSED when he realizes what Bucky's done, and also when Bucky threatens to swallow his car keys to stop Gale from stealing them and driving back to the city. You can't swallow your keys. They're keyless entry and the battery is going to eat through your stomach lining. -- Just watch me. Oh, and there's no Uber in the mountains either, so you're trapped, asshole! Gale is so pissy he sits in the car with the AC on and refuses to lift a finger to help Bucky set up their tent. But then he sees Bucky about to fckn impale himself inadvertently on a tent pole, sighs, and goes to save him.
The first day is torture. Gale can't stop checking his phone. He knows there's no service, that he won't get any emails out here, but it's compulsive. He can't stop himself. (and when he finds out about what Bucky did to get him out here-- with Harding and with his assistant-- he blows his lid and gets into a one-sided shouting match with Bucky, who's stubborn as a mule and refuses to apologize).
But then Gale sleeps it off, they go on a hike, they relax at their campsite, they eat hot dogs and smores and campfire popcorn, they stay up late and he teaches Bucky about the constellations, and he finally feels okay. He feels human. He didn't realize he hadn't felt that way for a long time until that little part of him unthawed. By the third day, he feels so incredible he never wants to go back. And the feelings he'd been pushing down for a long time are starting to rise to the surface. He can't stop watching Bucky. Listening to the little snuffling noises he makes in the morning when he's waking up. The gentle shoulder squeezes and casual touches. Bucky's freckled back, turning red from the sun and exertion a few hours into a hike. His ridiculous designer sunglasses. His big, stupid smile, his big, stupid ass, and his big, stupid, devastatingly huge heart.
But by the fifth day, Gale gets jittery again. Reality creeps back in. He has to go back and deal with the rescheduled meetings, the emails, the missed deadlines, the billables-- and so by the time Bucky drives them back to civilization, and the emails start rolling in, Gale sinks back into that adrenaline-jitter-beat, and forgets how good it felt to just be him. Him and Bucky, together, away.
Thanks, anon! Going to make this my last one for now so I can actually finish the first chapter of something and post it. I never write in order, so here's a piece that should be at the beginning of the fic.
Gale's pretending to read when John finally bursts through the door, fresh from the colonel’s office and clearly pissed off.
“They’re making me air exec!” He shouts, immediately beginning to pace between their bunks, and Gale has to pause because the words don’t seem to match the tone.
“That’s an honor,” he points out, but John’s not hearing it.
“Air execs don’t fly! What was the point of all those hours of training if they’re just going to make me a glorified babysitter,” he continues without even acknowledging Gale’s spoken.
“You know as well as I do that nothing gets done if the logistics and the boys aren’t taken care -”
John turns on him immediately.
“Do you want to do the job, then?” He asks angrily, and well, no, Gale does not want to do it, and he gets being disappointed or frustrated, but he’s only seen John worked up like this maybe one other time in the years they’ve known each other. “I’d say you should go volunteer for it - we both know you’d be better at it - but they won’t give it to you, because being an omega apparently gives me an inherent talent for order and homemaking that the position demands.”
And oh. Oh. “Shit, Bucky. They really said that?” John wouldn’t be this upset if they hadn’t, but fuck. Gale can’t believe they’d be that brazen about it after all that pomp and circumstance surrounding making John the first omega major in the Army.
“God, it’s almost word-for-word what they said to my mom when she applied to be a chemistry teacher and they shoved her in home economics instead,” John says, running his fingers through his hair. He’s panting now, still angry but starting to come down from it. Gale stands and clasps John by both shoulders.
“That’s bullshit,” Gale says firmly. “For them to do it to your mom and to you.”
John deflates further. “I just - it was supposed to be me and you up there together,” he says. “If not in the same plane, at least in the same sky and now -”
Gale’s never been particularly touchy, but John is, so Gale pulls him into a tight hug. “It will be, John. Maybe not right away, but we’ll figure out a way to get you up there with me. I promise.”
When asked he wanted to do when he grew up, Gale at thirteen said he wanted to study outer space. At fifteen, he wanted to study mathematics. At sixteen, he just wanted to make it to eighteen.
At seventeen, after getting caught fooling around with Michael Dover behind the football bleachers and getting thrown out of his house three weeks before graduation, Gale just wanted to make it to the next day.
At thirty-two, he didn't know what he wanted anymore. He had a cat, a condo, and a job he was good at. The petty, childish goal he had set for himself when he first moved to Vegas no longer held its appeal. He'd long since made more money from a casino than Neil Cleven ever could. It didn't make him feel any better. It didn't keep him warm at night.
for @le-perce-neige-bleu, who commented 🏠 on the emoji game post!
“It’s private,” Gale snaps, arms crossed and shoulders hunched up to his ears. “Leave it alone.”
John scoffs and moves around the kitchen table so he can catch Gale’s gaze. He’s standing over Gale now, boxing him in. Gale retreats into himself when he’s upset, but he’s still an alpha. It may take more to provoke him, but he’s incapable of completely tamping down those instincts to dominate when he feels cornered.
“Since when am I excluded from what’s private?” John demands. Gale sighs like he’s already tired of John’s antics. “We slept next to each other every day for five damn years. Hell we slept in the same bunk for months, showered side by side. What could possibly be so private that you can’t tell me of all people?”
“I can’t get it up anymore,” Gale snaps, exploding up out of the chair and into John’s space. He crowds into John until he’s got him up against the wall, not touching him but close enough that John can feel Gale’s hot breath across his face. “That what you wanna hear? Something happened in that last rut, and I haven’t -”
Gale turns away suddenly, like the words are finally catching up to him, and John knows there’s a correct response to this situation but fuck if he knows what it actually is. Gale’s last rut was in the Stalag, but that’s all he knows, because they shoved Gale in solitary for the entire week of it.
Two black, iridescent feathers fall out of the letter.
“What are those?” Cassie demands immediately. “They don’t smell like Ziph.”
“Patience,” Gale scolds, but he still skips to the bottom of the page, where John’s drawn what Gale assumes is supposed to be a bird in the margin of the page.
We fought our first battle within hours of landing, when a couple of ravens building a nest near our bunks took offense to our presence and launched an aerial assault. Happy to report Ziph was victorious in driving back enemy forces.
She insisted I send these feathers from the fight to you and Cassie. I know you don’t believe in luck, but I figured you’d make an exception for her spoils of war and keep em with you.
See you soon,
Bucky
Cassie’s laughter drowns out Gale’s own quiet huffs. “I wish we could’ve been there to see it,” she sighs.
Gale agrees softly, running his hands along the soft strands of the feather. He tucks one of them into the pocket of his flight jacket, in with the portrait of Marge. He takes the other over to his footlocker.
“We’ll put yours in here for safekeeping,” he tells Cassie. She leans heavily against his side as he tucks it between the pages of his poetry book where it won’t be crushed on the trip over to England.
But it's all he can smell, mixed with Gale's natural odor and the omega scent drifting towards them from Crank. John aches.
"I need-" he gasps. Gale is still pressed to his back from nearly head to toe and he needs distance and an escape from this humiliation.
But Gale has his lips to John's ear and is whispering low and soft, "I know. I know what you need, it's alright, but you've gotta stop struggling."
John didn't know he was still struggling. He tries to take deep breaths to calm his raging heart, but it just pulls in more of that burning-pear-sweat-Gale scent that is the thing sending him into this spin in the first place.
“Didn’t know you felt so strongly about me, Major,” Crank tries to joke, but it comes out shaky. They were warned about trauma-induced early heats and ruts during basic, but no one mentioned the possibility of unprovoked violence John just displayed. He’s never looked at Crank with anything other than brotherly camaraderie, hadn’t really even registered he was standing next to Gale.
extra words to make up for the lack of Gale in this scene!
John’s stomach twists with dread and relief when he opens his mailbox to find an ivory envelope postmarked Casper. He’s been waiting to know the wedding date like a man on death row waiting for the warden to schedule his execution. But it’s also the first sign of life from Gale since they got back two months ago, even if the handwriting on the front clearly isn’t his.
There’s a piece of paper tucked between the RSVP and the actual invitation that was penned by Gale, at least. Bucky, it reads, I’m holding you to being my best man. Come up a few days early, so we can catch up? The lack of acknowledgement of the four letters John’s sent and Gale hasn’t answered sours his mood further, and he pours himself a drink as he studies the date he’s been asked to save for the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Gale Winston Cleven.
The wedding is three months from now, and he’s halfway through the glass of whiskey before the niggling in the back of his mind transforms into a coherent thought: the date is nearly two months after Gale’s annual rut, and it doesn’t make any kind of sense for them to wait until after that to get hitched. John throws back the last of his drink and heads upstairs to pack.
Something is rotten in the state of Wyoming, and John’s going to find out what.
Thank you! It's been too long since I've worked on this one.
“Does the puppy want the stick?” Ziph taunts from the air, a mesquite branch clutched in her feet. She drops it, then dives down to snatch it just before it gets low enough for Cassie to catch and takes off down the runway. Cassie takes off after her with an outraged, “hey! I’m not a dog!”
“We’re here for training, not horsing around!” Gale shouts, jogging behind them to keep the distance between them from growing.
John clasps Gale’s upper arm to prevent him from following. “The horsing around is the training,” he says. “It’s a good distraction from feeling like your soul is getting ripped out of your body.”
Ahead of them, Ziph is doing barrel rolls and flipping the stick between her feet and beak as Cassie jumps after her. It doesn’t take long for the soul-sucking despair to start creeping in while their daemons get farther away. John doesn’t show any signs of discomfort, even as Gale’s heart rate kicks up.
“How’d you learn to get so far away from her, anyway?” Gale grits out, but his focus is still largely on where Cassie is slowing down, ears pinned back and crouched low again.
John shrugs like all of this is normal. “Wasn’t allowed on the roof or to climb trees. Had to sit through a Catholic mass every Sunday without fidgeting too much. Look at me, Buck, not at them.”
"My granddaddy used to tell me to watch for ravens circling," he says, bending down and grabbing John’s left foot to begin tying his shoe. "They used to find a cow that wandered off from the herd and call the wolves over to do all the hard work. Then the ravens would swoop in for the free meal." He punctuates the point with a barely visible smirk and a pat to John’s calf.
"Work smarter, not harder,” John says, tucking his clasped hands behind his head in what he hopes reads as casual smugness and not an effort to hide his shaking.
Gale tied John's shoes. John feels 14 years old again, getting hard at the brush of elbows in a school hallway. He'd be more embarrassed if Gale didn't have the ability to make just about every person on base a little tongue-tied, instructors included.
And he'd gotten a story. John collects bits of Gale’s history the way Ziph caches shiny baubles from around base, plucked quietly in broad view of everyone and then safely tucked away and admired from the privacy of their bunks each night. Gale had a granddad that taught him things about living off the land, more than either of John's grandfathers had ever taught him. Was Gale just trying to get a rise out of him with that story about ravens and wolves, or was he trying to tell John something more - that he was willing to follow John the way wolves watched the sky in the wild? John Sr. always said John's romantic heart would be the death of him, and he always scoffed and laughed it off before now.
The ish in three-ish sentences is doing some heavy lifting here 😬
Gale doesn’t try to stop John a second time, because the knee-jerk reaction to fix things immediately fizzles as he realizes he’s not sorry for what he said. He hadn’t meant to be cruel, but there’s also an anger in his belly building faster than he can stamp it out.
They’re only a couple of missions away from going home. He doesn’t understand why John’s suddenly so eager to throw away everything they’ve worked for, the hell they’ve put themselves through, for something that can’t start inside the military and won’t last outside of it.
After that stunt tonight, Gale wouldn’t be surprised if Harding is looking for a reason to boot John, and even the suspicion of a relationship between them would be enough to have them both courtmartialed. If by some miracle they didn’t get caught before they made it home, it would only be a matter of time before some alpha swept John off his feet and far away from Gale. John should know that better than anyone, considering they’d just spent the evening watching his omega ex-girl hanging on the arm of Dye, who only had to be an alpha to steal her away from John.
They had a good thing going. Gale is furious John would risk it.
