created a kind of inverse of the usual situation for myself by having TJ's family openly aware of his identity as a vigilante, while he's also closeted about being a masochistic kinkster...
guy who uses vigilante injuries as an excuse to explain away his bruises from BDSM 😂
tagged by @traincat / tagging @cannibal-wings but consider yourself informally tagged if you see this lol
Bit more than several sentences but I don't currently have any active fanfic WIPs since I've been going OC-sicko-mode so here's an unpublished scene from the unfinished AU clone-fic, aka "The Scene Where Ben Beats Warren To Death"
—
"He's not really my son, you know."
Even with Cain's cheeks sunken and eyes hollowed, reddish-brown hair falling out and skin peeling… It was obvious.
Yes, of course. He and Peter had the same eyes, the same nose. The same chin and jawline, albeit a little softer and rounder on Cain, and more sunken between juts of bone. Like looking into a mirror and seeing himself terminal. At least, the last time they'd spoken face-to-face, on Christmas. Now, Spider-Man looked toward the long-limbed starving body on its plastic bed, unmoving except for a slight rise and fall of the chest, head lolling, the barest flutter of eyelid, misaligned facial features. Like part of his face had been caved in.
("This is what will happen to you if you misbehave again.")
Cain and…
"…Abel."
Dr. Warren glanced down at Abel's costume, so similar to Peter's and yet so different.
Another roar, and Abel flung the Jackal toward the ruined door.
He had to get out of this room and away from all of its exposed sins.
"You lied to me!" As if that were the most heinous crime here.
Let them grapple up the stairs, slam into the walls and crack the plaster, a boy in crisis and a naked beast in gleaming second skin tearing Spider-Man's spandex mask off just the way he'd torn off the Jackal's. Unmasked.
Abel shouted, and heaved the Jackal over his shoulders.
"You manipulated me!"
The living room window shattered, a rain of sparkling glass in the idyllic morning, and the Jackal landed in the yard, ripping furled moonflowers from the trellis as it snapped in half. Not down for long. He leapt back up to meet red-clad Abel.
"Did I?!" He growled, "Look me in the eye, whelp!"
Abel looked Miles Warren in the eye, a brief frozen moment with their hands at each other's throats. Forehead-to-forehead, heaving for air, he looked him in the eye in front of the house he'd lived a lie for a year and change.
Warren's still-gloved hand, claw-tipped fingers, seemed almost to caress. Skin-crawling affection, drawing forth revulsion.
And he said to Abel, "I made you… Clone."
Abel shoved him away.
The Jackal, bare-faced, punched him in the jaw and Abel hit back harder, ears ringing.
And he didn't stop. Clavicle, solar plexus, traded.
Bone cracked and he didn't stop. (His bone?)
Claws dug into his skin, tearing gashes, and he didn't stop.
A burst of organic webbing— The Jackal faltered, fell, and Abel still didn't stop at first. Not right away, barely a cognizant being. Mostly just a bundle of exposed nerves and rage in the shape of a person who he wasn't and could not be, barely heeding of the crunch of foot or fist connecting with body again and again.
Abel stopped, and it was dead silent.
Not even the birds chirped, fled from the commotion.
He realized his face was wet, and slowly sank to his knees. Tears, not blood, just as salty. Eyes hot, face sore from his grief, costume sticking to his sweaty skin and weeping cuts, clutching fingers in unmarred pseudo-latex in an attempt to gain some purchase. He bowed over Miles Warren's unmoving body and felt his entire being collapse into a guttural sob. Something like a moan of pain, a wounded animal.
Unseeing eyes stared up at the sky as he clutched his maker to himself in a desperate embrace, lespedeza and datura blossoms scattered on the lawn and driveway in pink and white.
All he could think was "Why?"Why did it have to be me?
something they don't tell you about being a freak for detail and making a character whose superpowers mostly involve chemistry and molecular structures is that it will have you looking up local soil composition for a specific area to determine what chemical elements might be present for transmutation
logically i understand that what i'm doing is technically "writing a novel" but it's weird/hard for me to think of it that way, probably partly because it's not that different from the way i write anything else and probably partly because the last time i "wrote a book" was when i was 12 and filled one entire spiral notebook with a handwritten story about elven shapeshifters
i mean i guess I wrote one william words of AU spidey fanfiction but that's not finished and is probably more akin to a serial than a novel in some ways due to the way it's separated out
If you want to read TJ and Lilith's first (and second) kisses—
—here's a little-to-no-context snippet:
Valentine's Day
2023
"So it is you…"
A familiar form, and a familiar face; narrow-bodied, blue-eyed, pale-skinned and slightly flushed from anger or maybe something else. A sharpness in her eyes.
"Oh, don't act like you knew this whole time!" Lilith glowered at him.
The hint of a grin tugged at TJ's mouth and he said, "You've been stalking me."
Lilith flushed a deeper red. "I—"
"You liiike me…" TJ let himself smile, a teasing lilt to his voice.
"Why would I like you?! You're—" Lilith fumed as she searched for the right words. "You're insufferable! And stupid! And I wasn't stalking you! I was just keeping an eye out! You know, covering all my bases—"
TJ kissed her.
She tensed at first, startled. Then softened, one gloved hand coming to rest on TJ's face.
Tensed again— shoved him away with a grunt.
Then she disappeared, vanishing into the air with a rustle, the only indication of her trajectory a loose stone that skittered away from an invisible foot.
For a moment, TJ just stared in that direction."…Shit."
***
Three months later
May 17th, 2023
12:45 am
TJ sighed as he turned out the lights [at work], making his final detour to change into a spare set of clothes in the bathroom.
Outside air— what a relief from the humid stuffiness of the dishwasher and sinks. No chemical smells, no mish-mash of wet food. Just the brisk night, clean and clear and…
TJ lit a cigarette with a snap of his fingers and a little spark of light, and took a long drag, glancing up at the under-lit clouds before letting the smoke drift from his mouth.
Of course, it mostly came out as breath, a thin mist. The weirder side of his powers, filtering and purifying the toxins he'd grown so accustomed to. As long as it didn't purify the important part (nicotine) he didn't really give a shit either way, but even after a year, that didn't make it any less strange to fill the negative space with… what? Warm, dry air? Vaguely, faintly acrid, but more like stale days-old smoke lingering in an enclosed space than anything freshly smoldering.
…He couldn't help feeling like he was being watched.
A familiar feeling at this point, and a familiar car parked in front of the restaurant…
An olive green Mercedes, a head of curly crimson hair, and a sharp stare tracking him as he sauntered over with his cigarette dangling between his lips.
Lilith rolled the window down and before TJ could say anything, snapped, "I've been sitting here for almost two hours. Get in."
TJ huffed. "You really are a stalker."
Her face pinched, but she didn't rise to the bait for once. Just said, "Let me give you a ride home."
"You literally parked next to my truck." Blued-out Datsun, directly beside her Mercedes.
But TJ paused, then said, "…Ah, fuck it."
He tossed his backpack into the footwell and slid into the passenger seat anyway, letting a cloud of smoke halo around his head and dissipate strangely as his lungs processed it and the gentle breeze thinned it away, half steam.
"Next time, maybe you should…" TJ twirled his cigarette between his fingers, reaching into its fibers to waterlog the embers until it fizzled out, and pocketed it as he shut the door.
"…I don't know… text me or something?"
Lilith grabbed him by the collar and tugged him close.
TJ's turn to be slightly surprised by a kiss, but he immediately relaxed into her touch with a soft, curious sound in the back of his throat, and reached up to tangle his fingers into her hair.
She didn't seem to mind.
Though she briefly parted from him to mutter, "You smell like dog food," before a sudden shift occurred in the interior of the car and his body— As if someone had just skimmed all the foulness from the air and fabric, trapping it in a filter to leave behind something much cleaner, albeit slightly empty and vaguely synthetic (illusory).
TJ laughed under his breath, and Lilith kissed him quiet.
