#bridge from ashes

[winterandwords]

✍🏼 Friday kiss tag (on a Tuesday)

Thanks to @k--havok for the tag!

📝 Post a smooch from your writing for Friday. It can be as light as a peck or as intense as a makeout. It can be romantic or platonic or familial. As long as a smooch takes place it’s free reign!

This is from Bridge From Ashes and it's one of my favourite kisses I've ever written. Rafe 💜 Gillen 4ever...

There’s barely space for air between our faces now and he whispers against my lips, “What do you want, cut-throat?” My breath falters and splits into shivers. “I don’t know.” “Don’t lie to me.” “I’m not lying. I don’t know what I want.” He grips the back of my hair and it hurts. “What do you need?” Nothing anyone ever did to me or made me do. None of that. Never again. But where else does this lead? What else is there without that? His teeth are sharp. I taste blood and reality melts into the space behind my eyelids, a hollow vortex. This isn’t like anything I’ve felt before and his arms may as well be chains. A minute or an eternity later, he pulls back, just enough to speak. “I said, what do you need?” I can’t let go of him. I don’t care where we are or why we’re here. The next move belongs to me, completely on my terms, for whatever that’s worth. “You. I need you.” And it’s true. And I have no idea what to do with it.

Tagging @revenantlore, @thegreatobsesso, @indecentpause and @pertinax--loculos if you'd like to do it, with an open tag for anyone else who wants to share a kiss from their story 💜

Reblogs, replies etc on my tag posts are always welcome, but if you're doing this tag yourself, please make your own post instead of using mine to start a reblog chain.

Want more of my writing than I post on Tumblr, with all my stories, blog posts, updates, and audio readings? Head on over to my Patreon! There's a free membership option and I'd love to welcome you to my cosy little queer fiction community 💞

[winterandwords]

✍🏼 OC in fifteen

Thanks to @ceribrennanwrites for the tag!

📝 Share 15 or fewer lines of dialogue from an OC, ideally lines that capture the character/personality/vibe of the OC.

i'm doing this for Gillen from the Cityverse series, with lines from Bridge From Ashes...

01 "I’m not going to let you live. I’m going to make you live, cut-throat."

02 "And I might have use for a weapon, but I don’t want one that doesn’t think."

03 "I put a gun to your head and you told me to shoot you. I know what you want."

04 “Poor unappreciated you [...] You have to break yourself worse than anyone else can break you to prove absolutely nothing to absolutely no-one.”

05 "Ask like you mean it, if you mean it. Otherwise, say no and mean that. You are free to refuse without explanation."

06 "You’ve eaten what you needed, but you aren’t accustomed to it. Don’t allow yourself to mistake it for too much, or you’ll never learn to believe you deserve enough."

07 "Ask properly. This is not about giving in. This is about taking."

08 "Breathe with me. Nothing but us."

09 "You used to hate everything. Now you’ve given up and you just hate yourself."

10 "Do you still want to kill me?"

11 "You look like you stole those [clothes] from someone who drinks even more than you do"

12 "And every day you walk out of there looking like another part of you got punished for existing."

13 "That sound [...] I want a hundred more just like it and I want you to choke on every one."

14 "What’s the goal here? Punishment or problem-solving?"

15 "Wanting to kill someone and being willing to die for them aren't mutually exclusive."

Tagging @aziz-reads, @cat-esper, @cervus-scribe and @cheerfulmelancholies if you'd like to do it, with an open tag for anyone else who wants to join in 💜

Reblogs, replies etc on my tag posts are always welcome, but if you're doing this tag yourself, please make your own post instead of using mine to start a reblog chain.

Want more of my writing than I post on Tumblr, with all my stories, blog posts, updates, and audio readings? Head on over to my Patreon! There's a free membership option and I'd love to welcome you to my cosy little queer fiction community 💞

[winterandwords]

✍🏼 Word find tag (consume, crown, clank, constellation)

Thanks to @oh-no-another-idea for the tag!

📝 Search for the given words in your story. If your story doesn't have a word, you can use a variation on it or a word with a similar meaning.

I had to pull in a bunch of stories for this one and get help from thesauraus.com but here goes...

CONSUME SWALLOW (from Spin Cylinder)

I tried to call after you, but my mouth was stuffed with thick silence that I couldn’t swallow down.

CROWN (from Darwin's Cliff)

I was halfway down the path lined with rose bushes when the door flew open and a girl an inch or two smaller than me with a crown of bright auburn hair bounded out to meet me.

CLANK BANG (from Bridge From Ashes)

What happens is more a violent crackle than a series of bangs. The boards shrivel and fall from the windows.

CONSTELLATION (from November Breaks)

Your shoulder beneath my head is rock wrapped in cashmere and I never learned to identify any constellations apart from Orion.

Tagging @dyrewrites, @finickyfelix, @i-can-even-burn-salad and @sakugraphia if you'd like to do it, with an open tag for anyone else who wants to join in.

The words to search your story for are bed, chair, table, and wall 🩶

Reblogs, replies etc on my tag posts are always welcome, but if you're doing this tag yourself, please make your own post instead of using mine to start a reblog chain.

Want more of my writing than I post on Tumblr, with all my stories, blog posts, updates, and audio readings? Head on over to my Patreon! There's a free membership option and I'd love to welcome you to my cosy little queer fiction community 💞

[winterandwords]

✍🏼 But can you cuddle them? tag

@aziz-reads tagged me to list some characters are how cuddle-able they are.

Here goes with the cast of my Cityverse stories...

ARIA Good luck. You'll have to earn it and even then it'll probably be wildly uncomfortable for everyone involved.

GILLEN Oh fuck no. Not unless you want a knife quietly slipped between your ribs.

RAFE Probably not, but he does a good arm around the shoulders if you're feeling anxious.

TAF Yes, definitely. And he will feed you expensive sandwiches as well.

VIANDE Sort of. Maybe. Depends on the day. Shut up.

ZOLA Eventually and it'll be worth the wait.

Apparently I write very emotionally and physically closed off characters in case anyone hadn't noticed 😅

Tagging @karkkidoeswriting, @kaylinalexanderbooks, @kingragnarok-writes and @livums if you'd like to do it, with an open tag for anyone else who wants to join in 💜

Reblogs, replies etc on my tag posts are always welcome, but if you're doing this tag yourself, please make your own post instead of using mine to start a reblog chain.

[winterandwords]

📢 New Patreon post today: digging around in the life and mind of Rafe from the Cityverse stories

➡️ READ IT HERE ⬅️

This post is for paid supporters only (paid memberships start at only £1 per month) and there's loads of content on my Patreon for free members - including all my web serials and short fiction, past and current - and plenty of public posts too.

Patreon is the only place where I share my stories and I'd love to welcome you to my cosy little queer fiction community 💜

[winterandwords]

✍🏼 WIP acrostic tag (QUEASY)

Thanks to @oh-no-another-idea for the tag!

📝 Share a sentence from your WIP that starts with each letter in the word given to you by the person who tagged you.

These are from Miles From Morning, with a sneaky one from Bridge From Ashes for Q because that's not an easy letter to find at the start of a sentence...

Quiet as a promise. Quiet as time.

Unseeing. Unfeeling. Unremembering.

Even after everything he’s done to me here, after everything he’s made me do, there are still rooms I haven’t been hurt in yet.

Anyway. He died.

Some of the blame is going to Agent de Armas too because she looked at my analysis abilities and saw an “exceptional” agent in the making instead of a particularly experienced criminal.

You don't have to do this.

Tagging @sunset-a-story, @tragicheirs, @aziz-reads and @aalinaaaaaa if you'd like to do it, with an open tag for anyone else who wants to join in.

The word for your acrostic is SUPER 💜

Reblogs, replies etc on my tag posts are always welcome, but if you're doing this tag yourself, please make your own post instead of using mine to start a reblog chain.

Want more of my writing than I post on Tumblr, with all my stories, blog posts, updates, and audio readings? Head on over to my Patreon! There's a free membership option and I'd love to welcome you to my cosy little queer fiction community 💞

[winterandwords]

✍🏼 Dead darlings tag

Thanks to @somethingclevermahogony for the tag!

📝 Share a part of your writing you love that got cut for the greater good.

This is from my sketches folder for Bridge From Ashes. I can't remember if it was ever part of an actual draft or if it was just a bit of character work I was fiddling with, but here it is anyway...

I am clothes someone tells me to wear. I am a smile someone wants to see. I am a body I can’t feel and a face I don’t want to look at because other people do want to look at it and I hate those people. I am empty. I am hollow. I am dressed in someone else’s demands and there’s nothing underneath. And I think maybe I used to give a shit about that, but I don’t remember when.

Tagging @aziz-reads, @cat-esper, @cervus-scribe and @cheerfulmelancholies if you'd like to do it, with an open tag for anyone else who wants to join in 💜

Reblogs, replies etc on my tag posts are always welcome, but if you're doing this tag yourself, please make your own post instead of using mine to start a reblog chain.

Want more of my writing than I post on Tumblr, with all my stories, blog posts, updates, and audio readings? Head on over to my Patreon! There's a free membership option and I'd love to welcome you to my cosy little queer fiction community 💞

[winterandwords]

To avoid making assumptions … rafe : top, bottom, somewhere in-between?

Ooooh this is complicated 😅

I don't even know where to start. OK, late teens and early twenties crime gang Rafe is so accustomed to his value being contingent on being used and hurt that he internalises it in a way that fucks with power dynamics. Like he knows people find him hot and he knows how to manipulate that. In a guy-in-a-bar situation, he lets them think they're in charge, but he's usually low-key directing the action because he's getting what he wants out of it (which is usually some form of self-destruction by proxy and free drinks or frequencies)

With Gillen it's like...it's not like anything else. Gillen turns his world upside down and instead of "hurt me for fun" it's "hurt me until it wipes away everything I've ever experienced and everyone I've ever been until there's nothing left but us". Gillen is the exception to everything.

Post-Gillen, like at the start of Bridge From Ashes, it's "You're hot. This is how I want you to hurt me. Do it right or we're done. And don't fucking talk to me." Any potential emotional connection is immediately rejected and he doesn't give a shit how that makes the other person feel.

In terms of actual sex, it's kind of a non-issue. Mostly due to extreme early-life trauma and being forced into sex work during his crime gang days, he's not into sex-sex (pretty much a genital-free zone, but never say never, I guess). He's into pain and violence. Really good pain and violence. Ideally on the receiving end, but occasionally it goes in a different direction and he's novelty-driven enough to let it happen. And when it comes to orientation, he's "into the sensation, not the source". It's mostly been men just because that's where his drive for pain and violence usually leads.

I'm not sure if anything is any clearer now. I've never actually tried to put this into words before, but here we are.