#fic: ttp

[christylove94]

As a celebration for making some progress with the kennecroft fic I've been working on (in the background because my anxiety demands that I only post multi chapter fics after they're complete 😅), I'm going to post another snippet from it.

---

“Wh-What did you do?!” she hisses with minimal movement of her lips, aware that she's bunched his sleeve tight enough to possibly cut off his circulation, but can't find the mental pathways to make herself let go.

His register drops low to match, a smooth rumble in her ears. “Turnabout’s fair play.”

Of course he's being purposefully cryptic.

“Of all the pointless th-things you could do— Leon. Don't r-risk your life and c-career over me,” she nearly growls, hoping to drill the demand through his brain with the force of her glare.

Her feet start moving as he twists his hand and closes it around her wrist to tug her with him, creating this unwieldy but secure bridge between them. “That was Alistair Thorne, Special Agent in Charge, by the way. You're gonna love him.” Dry ice would be warmer than the sarcasm dripping from his tone.

As foreboding as his statement is, she can't overlook his obvious sidestep.

“Leon. I-I'm serious.” They're just out of range of the conference room door.

In a move as swift as his draw, she finds herself stumbling into his side, his sleeve no longer within her grasp. Her head snaps up at the curl of his hand around her opposite shoulder, holding her against him.

His DSO facade vanishes, and the man who took up cooking as a way to stave off his growing alcohol dependency emerges. “So am I.”

[christylove94]

Here's another snippet from this long fic I'm still s l o w l y writing. Also for context Grace is on mute listening in.

---

“You still holding up?” Sherry queries lightly, and Grace has the epiphany to smash the record feature the DSO issued phone has quick enough to catch—

“Everything's in place. Just itching to get this show on the road. Tickets were sold out last week after all.”

—one of her favorite quirks he exudes without missing a beat. She unfurls with the tender predictability of it, feels it washing over her like a waterfall after only knowing fire for eons. Her smile is an unbidden, dream-like spreading of wings across her lips.

“Yeah, yeah…” Sherry chuckles with a fond huff.

“Not that I'm complaining, but you just checked in not long ago.” Leon points out a bit too cleanly. A man who's learned to question every oddity no matter how miniscule.

Grace draws his shirt up to her chin like a blanket she can hide behind, smile melting as nervous tension drives her bottom lip between her teeth.

“Leon—”

“And since you're not telling me I've been discovered…” he goes on with the momentum of a snowball barreling down a mountain, “is it… Grace?” From docile to fierce, he growls, “Sherry, has something happened?”

The collision knocks a curse from Grace's lips, sudden and inescapable. Her heart hammers against her ribs.

He can't know what happened. He'll worry or be distracted, or worse. He might try to abandon the mission.

“Whoa whoa, slow your horses.” Sherry tries to laugh, but it sounds a touch strained, even to Grace's ears, like a teen caught with the keys of the car they're banned from. “Your mind tends to jump to Grace an awful lot lately, don't you think?”

“Sherry.” He's as unswerving as a homing missile.

“Well, she… just…” Sherry lets out a full breath that makes Grace want to leap through the phone just to clap a hand over the woman's mouth, “wanted a check in. That's all.”

“A check in? Is she…” There's an audible sound like his breath comes short, then the steel is gone. The shield. The armor. And all that's left is the man who remembers he's just that, and not the unstoppable machine circumstance shaped him to be. “Grace, you there?”

A shiver spirals down her flesh, robbing the air from her lungs.

She ends the call in a flash, shoves the phone under the couch cushions and drops her face on top as dread makes her think swallowing a boulder would feel kinder than the weight her stomach bears now.

The muffled vibrations starts not long after. She winds her arms around her stomach where his shirt is bunched, draws her knees up, but doesn't move. Can't move.

Shouldn't.

Her phone goes to voicemail thrice in total before it finally falls silent.

The absolute nothingness that follows closes around her like a ravenous black hole.

She sniffles, but accepts this penance with open arms.

[christylove94]

I finished the second emotional act (of three) for these two! Over two hundred pages in, the ultimate slow burn, I swear. Here's a little snippet in honor of this milestone!

---

Her breathing is still doing the thing where it won't quite go all the way down her esophagus.

She focuses on the dolly instead. The boxes. Four stacked high. KITCHEN — misc. was scrawled across the top one in black marker. Below that: DISCS — Fragile. Her eyes tracked lower to a second KITCHEN — Fragile, before finally landing on the heavy base at the bottom: ELECTRONICS — Fragile.

A memory of when she'd moved into her last apartment, the one she'd been living in for four years comes to mind, unbidden. She'd labeled boxes with a red marker that had been running out of ink, the letters slightly faded on each.

She'd been listening to a podcast when she was packing. One hosted by two co-stars from a childhood show she'd watched religiously, even through moves across the country. It was a show with actual magic and high stakes, centering around a brother and sister who shared a strange, intense energy — an energy explained years later when she learned the actors had ended up dating and getting married.

She'd eaten cold pad thai out of the container while she worked, because she hadn't wanted to dirty a bowl she'd just washed.

That was a normal day. There were normal days, once.

[christylove94]

Been pecking at something since completing Stillness on Shaky Ground. Don't know if I'll finish it or not because it's more in-depth (and life can be draining) but I felt like posting a few sentences because why not?

---

“You might've got me beat…” he tells her ultimately, in a voice that's somehow both substantial yet like gossamer as it dusts over her. “Unless you wanna hear some of my old tales?”

She blinks a few times, not knowing, but sensing the significance of the offer as words wrought in torment play through her mind. 

When it all happened I couldn't — I couldn't make a difference. So I am here. Now.

Her hand itches with inactivity. Again. But she keeps it flat, visible, on the bed between them. “...O-Only if you want to?” she breathes out, small, with no weight.

He studies her for a long while, just breathing while thoughts circle behind his eyes. Then he nods the way he did when he was half dead, when he said “I trust you. I trust you.” like the first instance was a relief and the second made it evergreen.

[christylove94]

Chapters: 1/22 Fandom: Biohazard | Resident Evil (Gameverse) Rating: Explicit Warnings: Major Character Death Relationships: Grace Ashcroft/Leon S. Kennedy Characters: Grace Ashcroft, Leon S. Kennedy, Sherry Birkin, Jill Valentine, Claire Redfield, Chris Redfield (Resident Evil) Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Grace-centric, Slow Build, Extremely Slow Burn, the slowest burn you will ever read, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, lot of injuries, Mutual Pining, Touch-Starved, Canon-Typical Violence, Heavy Angst, Grief/Mourning, PTSD, Self-Harm, Suicidal Ideation, past stalking, Past Voyeurism, Trauma, Overthinking, multi-chapter fic, I didn't know Grace had a confirmed age the entire time I was writing this so she's 27 here, Leon is 49, Grace is a creation here as well, a B.O.W., The Ring does not exist in this story, cooking as a love language, Sexual Content, Eventual Smut, Like really eventual, explicit - Freeform, Dom/sub Undertones, Dirty Talk, Praise Kink, Begging, Loss of Virginity, Unprotected Sex, Multiple Orgasms, Female Ejaculation, Dissociation, Anxiety Attacks, Not Beta Read Summary:

Grace has the math figured out: love her and you die. At least, that's what she's always believed. Survival was supposed to be the hard part. Loving him without getting him killed is worse.

I started this fic from one question: What if Emily hadn't survived?

[christylove94]

I swear this long kennecroft fic has a mind of it's own. I wrote what I had assumed at the time would maybe be the ending way back in March. But then the story just kept expanding and expanding. I think I'm about 60-65% done. I just have to trust the process and hope nothing catastrophic happens that leads to it being incomplete. 🤞🙏

Anyway, here's another snippet from TTP (I don't want to give out the tile beyond the initials just yet 😜) for Six Sentence Sunday. Although this is actually nine sentences, I made an effort to keep it really short. I don't want to spoil things when giving these little previews after all.

---

An arch, gentle, feline flows through her. The thudding beside her heart becomes more prominent. Her upper half balances on a rhythmic rising and falling. A warm scratchiness prickles her face that she nuzzles her lips against. The tightening pressure spanning the fleshy expanse where her rear and thigh join stirs a lazy roll from her hips.

She presses her face deeper against the low vibration that follows, her fingers flexing around something sturdy while her leg hitches higher between a steadfast clamp. There's a steel-like ridge where her inner thigh settles which quickens her breath, makes the apex beside it hum. Like there's a resonance that goes deeper than skin, deeper than blood. An impatient rumble of instinct.

[christylove94]

The Transitive Property (or the long kennecroft fic I've been working on since late March) is a little over 400 pages. I finally finished it! 🥳

I just have to go through it and edit and set up scheduling, so still not quite ready to publish, but very very close! I am just relieved to have completed it.

The other titles I had debated over for this fic were:

Q.E.D. (Quod Erat Demonstrandum)

and

The Sum of My Parts

It was a really tough debate, but The Transitive Property won out.