I have spoken on length about this au in the past so if you want more in depth commentary on it check out the #md_nesting_doll_au or #nesting_doll_au tags on my blog! Basically, this au is a partial swap where j and doll swap with n and uzi becoming the main duo (this is obviously to facilitate joll) and everyone else gets moved around them.
I have so many ideas for this, and I just hope I can eventually get them all down on paper at some point, if not in comic form, maybe in fanfic form idrk.
While I don't wanna commit to one date to post the next batch of pages, I assure you I'm will be returning to this in the future! I have just been super busy, I ultimately plan in changing up brushes and making the pages more comic page sized. I do have the scenes up to the door confrontation sketched out though! I just need to sit down and dedicate a Saturday to working on it heh.
tagged recently by @leashybebes @nzchance @owlgirl495 thank you!
no pressure tagging y'all back plus @apollabarnes @corporatebanana @setmeatopthepyre @geddyqueer @trombonechurchill @beanarie @sierranovembr @exhaustedpirate @thecarrott @adiprose @wee-fuckin-woo @frogsinflannel @winter-parrot @thegirlinthe118bubble @a-mel0n @cecilyv @liminalmemories21
Buck looked at him from the kitchen table. “You and Eddie were talking while I was playing Mario Kart with Chris. What were you talking about?”
“Just, uh, how you guys keep getting into trouble,” Tommy said.
Buck rolled his eyes. “I told you and Athena it's not on purpose.”
“No, but I think you're going to make me grey before my time,” Tommy muttered. He plated the steaks, turning off the stovetop and bringing dinner over to the table.
“I hear grey hair is in,” Buck teased. “Ever heard the phrase silver fox? You're welcome.”
Tommy sat down, shaking his head. “Yeah, and the matching cardiac events will get me all the guys.”
“Could meet a cute doctor,” Buck offered. “Michael did.”
“The only job with a crazier schedule than ours,” Tommy said dryly. “Eat your steak and stop worrying about my love life.”
“One of us should,” Buck cut into the steak. “When's the last time you went on a date, huh?”
“I'm doing fine,” Tommy said, ignoring that his last date has been the one Evan interrupted. He’d had a couple hookups since then, always at their places, but nothing beyond that.
“Uh huh, sure. You and Eddie should start a club, dudes without dates.”
“That comparison is offensive,” Tommy said. “I don't care that I'm not dating.”
Tagged by @harmonic-intervention 💕💕 (last week but shhhh)
Okay so this is from the same fic as the 'last sentence tag' I posted. I have a bunch of feelings about how the firefam continues to treat Buck and want to make them pay hold them accountable 😇 I had a bunch of little isolated scenes written for other fics, so I decided to mesh them all together into one. This is from the latest scene I wrote this morning 🙂↕️ Enjoy <3
“Thank you, Ravi. I-I know everyone thinks I’m an idiot. You didn’t need to stay, but I appreciate it.”
“Yeah, I did.” Confusion colors the hint of sadness that was in Ravi’s big, expressive eyes. “Look, did I believe that Bobby was haunting your house? No. But you did. And you’ve been having a hard time lately. You needed this, so I’m here.”
Buck feels a swell of emotion rising up to his throat, but to his surprise, it was not bad emotion. Not the kind that he’s become so familiar with in the past year. Not the kind that leaves a stinging, acrid feeling in the pit of your stomach. Not the kind that makes your skin crawl and makes you want to claw it off. Not the kind that makes you want to scream until you tear your throat up. Not the kind that makes you feel for a moment like the world would be better off without you.
It’s the kind of emotion that makes your throat tight, but feels warm going up your chest. The kind that makes your heart feel like it was softly, lovingly squeezed for a moment. The kind that makes your eyes glisten and the corners of your mouth go up against your will. The kind that feels like your soul is getting a hug. The kind that makes you feel for a moment like you’re not too much, like you’re enough.
Buck tries to get his voice to respond, but the ball of emotion has lodged itself firmly. And he must have been quiet for a beat too long, because Ravi sighs.
“I’m your friend, Buck. I care about you, you know?” The way he manages to look at him with both warmth and exasperation is so Ravi that Buck manages to let out a chuckle.
“I know. I guess I’m just used to a bit more teasing, that’s all.”
A strange look takes over Ravi’s face, but Buck can’t really read it. As much as they’ve gotten closer since becoming partners at work, they’re not at the point where they can read each other so easily.
“I wouldn’t use the word ‘teasing’, but okay,” Ravi says in that dry way he has.
Buck’s skin prickles, an ugly sensation taking hold of his stomach, but he pushes it aside. It’s the same sensation he used to feel all the time back when he was a probie and someone told him off for doing something wrong. It’s the sensation that makes him feel dumb and small and desperate to prove that he’s not a failure, that he can learn. That he’s worthy. But he learned long ago how to ignore that feeling, how to push it down until he could pretend he doesn’t feel it anymore. He plasters a smile on his face, the way he’s perfected in the past six months.
“N-no, it’s fine. It’s just jokes. It’s how—”
“How they show they care?” Ravi interrupts. “Right.”
taking advantage of additional tags on this from @gayjaytodd, @o0anapher0o, @curlyboys and @sugarpenchant to share some more from love in stereo because i feel human enough to write for the first time in three days and because i think this is cute.
Tommy grabs his lunch from the fridge and stakes a claim to one of the stools around the high table opposite Okoro, who's the ground crew lieutenant. She looks up from her bowl of cereal and gives him a nod.
"Hey, new boy. Mom pack your lunch?"
"Boyfriend," Tommy says, opening the bag, hoping it sounded as casual as he was aiming for.
"Cute," she says.
"He certainly thinks so," Tommy says, and bites back a laugh when he sees Sal has included a note: have a good first day sweetie, I'm so proud, don't let the bigger boys steal your cookies!!
He places the note down where she can get a look at it if she's so inclined and sure enough, he's only one bite into his pastrami salad sandwich when she cackles.
"Okay, I love him already. He on the job?"
"Yeah, at my old house," Tommy says.
Her eyebrows go up. "Must've been tough."
Tommy shrugs. "Not really."
Barton barrels into the kitchen then, and he seems fine, but there's a certain old-school gruffness about him that makes Tommy want to cover up the note. He doesn't let himself, though.
"Hey, Bart," Okoro says. "Kinard's got himself a little househusband who makes his lunches."
Tommy chokes back a laugh at the idea of Sal being a househusband and not losing his entire damn mind in the space of three days maximum.
"Yeah?" Barton asks. "That's cute. My daughter and her wife, neither of them can cook for shit."
It's such a transparent I'm a safe person gesture, and it both reminds Tommy viscerally of Bobby and makes him want to die of gratitude.
"He's Italian," he says instead.
"Yeah? Well, hell, anytime he wants to come in and cook for the crew…" Barton says.
"Okoro's chatting shit, he's a firefighter," Tommy says. "Besides," he says, nudging the brown bag, "This is his idea of a joke."
"Shame. Okoro, that probie of yours is - "
"Again? God fucking damn it." She picks up her bowl, slurps the last of the cereal directly from it with an impressively disgusting noise and dumps it into the sink before stalking out of the kitchen.
"Nice flying earlier, Kinard," Barton says and Tommy grins, finishes off the last of his sandwich. "You got anything good in there?"
"Split a cookie?" Tommy offers.
"What the hell," Barton says. "Why not."
Tommy digs past a pack of chips, an apple, some string cheese (fucking Sal, he thinks affectionately) to find one of those micro-sleeves with two cookies inside that his mom sometimes used to slip into his school lunches if she'd been able to afford them that week. Tommy does not want to think about how much Sal spent on kids' food for the sake of this little gag. He guesses he should be grateful he got pastrami and not a good old fashioned PB&J.
He slides the cookes over towards Barton and finishes the second half of his sandwich. He thinks - god, helicopters aside, even - he thinks he's really going to like it here.
Break (me) down by the mountains, I know I'll survive
Ch. 1 The Tower
Dying Light au
Link to pinned post -> 🔪
Link to masterpost -> 🎶
The eyes of the world have been glued to the city of Torrance following the outbreak of an unknown virus—infection twisting those it touched until a quarantine wall was erected around the city; a desperate attempt to discourage the waves of infected people attempting to escape from Torrance. The question is, after months of silence and continuing disaster relief efforts; if there were any non-infected survivors still in the city—and if so, whether or not it would be kinder to wipe out the city in order to eradicate the virus.
Robert couldn’t stop staring at the man.
At the stupid, stupid, man currently lying unconscious. The sheer height of stupidity that must have led the man to be so moronic to simply fly into Torrance in the middle of a city-wide quarantine while shambling husks that used to be people ripped through the sorry few survivors. He scoffed, turning away from the idiot, glancing up at the sound of footsteps. Robert smiled.
“Any change?”
“Well, he hasn’t turned yet if that’s what you’re asking.”
Mandy walked up to him, her soft face tired and concerned as always for other people. Hopeful even as every day brought more and more hardships. If not for her, Robert was certain of that, most of the people still alive in the tower would have found themselves lost to the growing hordes of infected. Their minds warped by the virus as they turned on friends and family, biting and shredding flesh with teeth and nail. The fortunate were those who died before the infection took them, spared from the violent change that seemed to come over every infected as they wandered through the streets of Torrance.
“That’s a relief,” she smiled, “getting to save at least one more person… it really means a lot to me that you brought him here, Robert. I’m sorry about what happened to Chase, I know he was very important to you, is important to you.”
Robert looked at her.
“Can I be honest with you?”
She hesitated, her bright blue eyes meeting his, already knowing what he was going to say before he opened his mouth.
“Rob—"
“We should have left him there.”
She flinched, her expression shuttering as she looked at him, devastated.
“Robert—”
The man on the mattress shifted, restlessly turning and twisting under the thin sheets the moment that she raised her voice. Robert ignored the man, reaching out to grab Mandy’s hand, grasping it gently until she met his eyes again.
“I know, I know,” Robert told her in a whisper, lowering his voice for just the two of them, “but he’s infected now, and every day our supply of suppressants gets lower—”
“Robert,”
“Mandy,"
He sighed.
"I don’t know how we’re going to be able to keep people safe if we have to ration it any further than we already have—Royd’s already having a hard time trying to figure out what’s the safest way to decrease the dosage, and forget about trying to reverse-engineer it, we don’t have the equipment or the people to help us with that.”
Robert watched her close her eyes at that.
“Mandy,” he squeezed her hand again, needing her to look at him, to listen to what he was telling her—to what he needed to tell her. It was why she had asked him to be her right-hand man, her second, a voice of logic, reason. The person who would help her make the right decisions, the hard decisions—someone to help her cope with the heavy burden resting on her shoulders as every survivor in the tower looked up to her. Their shining beacon of hope as she offered gentle hands to help the fortunate few to survive the growing masses of infected in the streets.
“They cut communications with Galen yesterday. I don’t think we’re getting any more supply drops.”
He smiled bitterly, “They’re not sending suppressants anymore.”
Her eyes blew wide open, horrified.
“No,” Mandy gasped,“Robert, please tell me that’s not—”
“Anything we didn’t grab on this last run,” he saw the realization finally dawn as her face paled, “Shroud got his hands on it. Last time I checked in with Royd, he said that we might have enough to last us maybe three weeks,”
“And that’s if we stretch it by decreasing the dosage.”
The last thing Chad remembers clearly is dark eyes staring down at him—brows furrowed as he spoke into a microphone. Screaming and howling coming from the distance, as he was supported down a hallway, shadows lurching through the windows as they came to a stop behind a half-collapsed wall. Steady hands holding on to him as he faltered.
“I need help—I have a man with a bite and a headwound—Chase is—down,” his voice had broken on the last word, those eyes darting back to him, “I—”
“I don’t know.”
The man turned way from him, “I’m bringing him in—"
He lost the fight, his consciousness slipping from his fingers like sand on water as the man looked at him again. A faint whisper following him into red-stained dreams.
“You better have been worth it.”
“Is he dead?”
“Shhh!”
“Mandy’s gonna be so mad!”
“Just poke him!”
There was giggling near him, hushed little voices coming from somewhere next to him as he tried to fight off the heavy fog of sleep, clawing a hand over his burning eyes. There was a scream, his eyes flying open as he saw the blurry shapes of children running away from him, their voices rising in fright, screaming about a zombie.
Zombie? That’s not—
Chad let out a low groan as he pushed himself upright on a trembling arm, swearing as his elbow buckled under his weight.
“Awake and already going out of your way to scare children? How nice of you.”
Chad jolted, his brain lurching in his skull painfully as he turned to look at the doorway the children had run through. The man’s scarred face frowning down at him before he scoffed, turning away from him. Chad scrambled to get off the bed, almost braining himself on the wall as he got his feet under him. The other man already making his way down the hallway in a brisk pace as Chad struggled to keep up.
“Hey—"
“She wants to see you.”
“Who?”
The man started walking faster, ignoring him as he tried to catch up to him, to the man he now recognized as being the one that had helped him. The man who had saved him.
“Hey,” Chad tried again, “you—”
The man looked back at him, “you’ll find out soon enough.”
He stopped, staring back at Chad as he finally reached the other. The man gave him a thin smile, jerking his chin towards the door at the end of the hall. “She’ll talk to you inside.”
“Wait,” he reached out to the man, “can I—”
“Robert!”
A woman ran through a door, her eyes wide as she ran up to them, “We need you; we have another—”
The man, Robert, swore.
“On my way, get Herman,” Robert turned to him, frowning, “go, she’ll explain things to you.”
Robert paused.
“I hope that you understand exactly what you’ve just gotten yourself into,” his eyes searched Chad’s. Then they hardened, turning cold as they glared at him, “Saving you better have been worth it.”
Chad didn’t know what to say to that, and watched the man walk away from him. Leaving him standing there, full of questions without answers as he was left alone.
