It's been a while! I've been moving house and settling in a new place and generally just trying to get balanced again but I'm trying to get back to writing. I was tagged by @adventuresofmeghatron a few weeks ago when I was mid-move so trying to get back to it now!
tagging back @adventuresofmeghatron as well as @proserpinewrites and @theartofblossoming if you wanna join in!
this is a little snippet from a fic of Butch's first adventures outside the vault:
The shape presses close, the cold metal of the barrel now digging painfully into his cheek as it crowds him back against the wall, practically spitting in his face.
“Get. Out.”
Butch scrabbles for the doorknob behind him in the dark – when did it get so dark? – not daring to look away from the shape in front of him but finding nothing but cracking paint and damp crumbling plaster behind him. Finally, his hand meets metal and twists to open the door, only to have it ripped out of his grasp by the wind that suddenly roars through the open frame. Light flashes in, grey-green, from the sky outside, chased in by a deafening growling noise like the biggest engine he’s ever heard. He feels his breath leave his lungs; he can’t hear the sound it makes between the rumbling from outside and the renewed screeching of the Geiger counter. Can’t move his legs.
Something grasps his collar. The full-body flinch jerks his head right back around, ready to yell, ready to punch or kick or something –
it's been a while! I was tagged by the lovely @bardic-inspo (thank you Megh!)
I've been fighting to make some progress on Descendants, by Trouble on the Homefront FO3 fic. It's my first attempt at a multi-chapter fic, and getting the structure to a place where I'm happy with it is a struggle. Here's a snippet that will probably be in chapter one:
Sure enough, his intel is correct, and on cresting the hill there is a shabby wooden door in front of a rocky outcropping that overlooks the view back towards the city. He can’t see the river from here. Its absence pains him.
Carefully he pushes the door open, pistol drawn. Nothing greets him but an empty cavern and a grasping skeleton reaching for the doorway – and beyond that, a great vault door. Stepping cautiously over the skeleton, he walks into the cavern and lets the door close behind him as it swallows him in the earth.
I'll throw out some tags to @proserpinewrites, @theartofblossoming, and @kharonion for you to join in if you'd like, plus an open tag for anyone else who wants to jump in
(formerly known as The Modern Pygmalion. special thanks to @radioactive-synth who encouraged me to write this little fluffy piece this for my little rarepair Charon/Harkness ship)
Harkness’s feet move under him almost without conscious thought at a brisk pace, down to the walkways on the starboard side of the ship. Hidden as they are from sight from anyone either within the ship or on the riverbank, these parts of the deck are favoured by those looking to carry out more clandestine activities away from prying eyes. It has been many, many times that Harkness has run into kids off their faces on Jet blowing vapour into in the night air away from their parents’ watchful eyes, or startled couples in compromising states of undress – but this evening he finds the promenade deck thankfully empty of everything but the noise of the sea and a rare glow of golden sunlight in the late afternoon.
Finally, he is away from the ruckus of Rivet City: the constant hustle and bustle of the ship’s residents that threatens to overwhelm him today, the demands of his station, and his security team who look to him for leadership. Placing a cigarette between his lips and lighting it, his momentum carries him to the railing, but he’s barely there for a moment before he’s pacing again. He burns through the first cigarette in a matter of minutes, and barely hesitates before lighting another. Normally the nicotine helps him feel calmer and more focused, but today his thoughts are as restless as the rest of him.
It has been several weeks (two weeks, four days) since he and Charon had confessed that their feelings were aligned after all, and they had agreed to take things slowly as an emphatically mutual decision. After all, Charon had alluded that his last time in anything approaching a romantic relationship was a whole two centuries ago, and Harkness himself has only the fragmented memories of a failed marriage that was not even his. At the time, it had seemed a sensible and reasonable step to take.
Now, several weeks (two weeks, four days, eighteen hours and approximately eleven minutes) later, Harkness is beginning to think this glacial rate of progress was not quite what he had wanted.
The amount of time they are spending together is not an issue, despite Charon’s comings and goings with his former employer Billie. They continue to take their smoke breaks out on the deck together whenever Charon is on the ship as they had all along, taking as long as Harkness possibly could without compromising his duties as security chief. When his shifts allow, they often take meals together – sometimes with Billie and Butch present too, sometimes just the two of them – and talk.
Charon is still characteristically few of words but not uncommunicative, merely…economical with his choice of words. Perhaps a habit born of being used as an armed guard rather than a conversationalist for so many years or perhaps of a natural reticence, but the way that Charon has opened up makes him feel…things.
They knock knees under the table as they eat together. They talk, they joke, they share space in comfortable quiet as they smoke on deck. Their hands brush as Harkness lights Charon’s cigarette, and they linger in that close little space as they shield the tiny flame of the lighter and the smouldering end of the cigarette from the wind – but then their eyes meet and Charon withdraws without a word, and Harkness’s usual confidence fails him as he stands there with a lump in his throat and the moment dissipates like so much smoke.
Doubt is an uncomfortable sensation for Harkness. His life as a courser revolved around finding and evaluating all available courses of action and then following the path with the greatest chances of success. Uncertainty is unavoidable – outcomes are never assured, even with the amount of situational analysis he is capable of – but lingering on missed opportunities or wrong decisions beyond the point of learning from them is a drain on his energy that he has never allowed himself. Harkness has never been good at staying still, anyway. Perhaps it is only natural for him that now doubt has set in, it manifests in him practically pacing laps around the ship.
A heavy step echoes on the stairs about twenty metres behind him, and then another. Deliberate - not trying to hide their approach - and a familiar gait. The prospect of danger dismissed, Harkness holds his ground and turns to face the approaching footsteps as he exhales a lungful of smoke into the breeze. Through the haze, a tall figure with red hair descends the steps, and Charon’s face resolves through it as the smoke clears.
“You were not in your usual spot.”
“No. Today I needed my smoke break to be not be interrupted by any one of my junior officers that can’t manage disorderly drunks, or someone deciding I am needed for settling a minor dispute in the marketplace.” Harkness takes another drag and lets it go with a small smile. “How did you find me so quickly?”
Charon doesn’t move from the bottom of the stairs, but his lip quirks for a fraction of a second – a microexpression he seems to only indulge in private – and points a finger above Harkness’s head to where streams of grey billow away on the wind.
“Smoke signals.” His expression resumes it’s unreadable outlook – he places one foot back on the bottom step and starts to turn. “If you prefer not to be disturbed, I will leave you in peace.”
“No, Charon – wait.” Harkness quickly closes the gap as Charon steps up another stair. Now that Charon’s here with him, the prospect of him being left alone with his doubts is infinitely less appealing. Harkness pulls another cigarette out of his pocket and holds it out wordlessly – he’s not sure of himself in this moment enough to offer an open hand, but a smoke he can manage.
Charon is still for long enough that he doubts himself, but then the tall ghoul carefully takes the cigarette from Harkness’s fingers and steps down to the railing to return to where Harkness had been pacing. There’s not much room on this corner of the promenade deck – it’s really only a few metres from the railing to the side of the ship, part of which sits under the descending stairwell, and it feels even smaller now with two inhabiting it. Not claustrophobic exactly, but close enough to give a sense of intimacy to the space.
Harkness pulls his lighter from his pocket and shields the flame from the wind as Charon leans in to light up, feels his breath on his fingertips for a brief moment before he lights himself a third cigarette. However, the space between them has none of its usual ease – Charon’s posture maintains its rigidity even as he takes deep drags from his cigarette and blows the smoke out over the water below them.
“You alright?”
The next puff of smoke is a little brisker, but Charon turns his eyes to Harkness’s for a moment before turning them back towards the open water.
“If you wished to spend time apart from me, you need only have asked.” Charon’s tone is soft and even, carefully so, and it holds no bite. He seems almost resigned. Harkness is speechless for a moment.
“That”, he manages, “is not at all what I want.”
His companion is quiet but his hazy eyes flick to Harkness’s face for a lingering moment before dropping again without making eye contact, flicking the ash from the end of his cigarette and taking another drag, mouth hidden behind the hand resting on his jaw. He is otherwise still, but he seems compressed somehow – all of Charon’s normally towering physique appears smaller as if pulled inwards on itself by some great weight. Harkness leans in, trying to catch his eye, and eventually Charon looks in his direction, still partway hidden behind his hand.
“Will you tell me what’s wrong?” He keeps his voice calm. He has long since learned that trying to force answers from Charon is like getting blood from a stone, and that a slower and more patient approach is often more successful.
A beat passes, then Charon sighs a great billow of smoke through his fingers and drops his gaze.
“You weren’t on deck for a smoke after your shift last night.” His voice is low, hesitant. He flicks the ash from the end of his cigarette again, chin tucked down towards his chest. “Or this morning. Danvers said you skipped your lunch break.”
All the times where he and Charon normally catch whatever moments they can together – where he had withdrawn from, trying to straighten out his thoughts. Harkness is not used to being missed like that. But if Charon had gone as far as asking Lana where he was, then he’d been actively searching for him –
He thinks you’ve been avoiding him, the little part of human behavioural instinct that remains etched in his programming whispers, sending all his thoughts slamming to a dead stop. He thinks you’ve changed your mind about him.
Charon doesn’t say any more, keeps his eyes downcast and his arms crossed across his body and sucking on the cigarette stub that threatens to burn his fingers like he doesn’t want to let go of it – looking for all the world like a man trying to hide in his own body in broad daylight.
Harkness has been hiding too. Maybe neither of them is good at asking for what they want. Leaning over the railing he sighs, opens his hand, lets his own cigarette stub fall from his fingers into the water beneath them.
“I’m sorry. I just…I needed some time to think.” Harkness flexes his hand, not daring to lift his eyes, and lays it on the railing between them.
There’s a small sound as Charon exhales, then abruptly swears under his breath in an foreign language. A cigarette butt arcs out over the water in Harkness’s peripheral vision. A long moment of quiet passes where the doubt starts to creep in again. But then the tall shadow Charon appears at his side, blowing on his singed fingertips before laying his hand on the railing next to Harkness’s. Their hands don’t touch, but the closing of the distance lets the tension between them go slack in the continuing quiet.
“What is on your mind?” The question from Charon is hesitant. Harkness can’t tell if it is asking the question that is making him balk or the potential of the answer.
“Us.” Harkness answers simply, and he sees Charon go rigid. He tries to course-correct. “I know we had said that we should go slow-”
“Don’t explain.” Charon’s tone has gone terse. “If you have changed your mind about this – this thing between us then you need not suffer on my account.”
“Wait-” As slowly as he came he can feel Charon closing off and he knows his window of opportunity is rapidly disappearing. The hand next to his begins to withdraw and almost without thinking he grabs it, trying to close the distance, to give himself a little longer to make things right.
The full-body violent flinch that runs through Charon’s body at the contact shocks Harkness almost as much as it seems to shock Charon himself, and he lets go instantly. Charon’s shoulders are arched up almost by his ears, frozen in place where he had started to take a step back, eyes wide and wild and staring.
“I’m sorry. I - I didn’t mean to startle you.” His palms are raised in remorse, the words pulled from his open mouth in horror.
Charon hasn’t moved at all bar his noticeably heavier breathing. His eyes seem to be focused on something far away – catching in the evening light, the cloudy blue appears now like ice. Harkness knows there are things in Charon’s past that affect him to this day, but it’s more than a little horrifying to see such a pronounced fear response in such a large man and worse to know he caused it - even if inadvertently.
“Charon, if you want to go then I won’t stop you. But you got it wrong before – I wasn’t trying to call this off, not even close.”
Saying the words is like trying to talk around a stone in his throat. Harkness hates this – feeling needy feels like an admission of inadequacy after a lifetime of having to be self-sufficient, feels like offering himself up to be turned into scrap, and every program in his head is telling him to get away from the situation and keep moving like he always has. But Charon is standing still in front of him, afraid, and he needs him to stay.
“I’ll explain,” – the overly human instinct to swallow with nervousness is still engraved in him somewhere, and right now he can’t resist it- “if you’ll let me.”
Charon has still not moved, but the sharp peaks of his arched shoulders are relaxing by degrees moment by moment as he inhales and exhales slowly and deliberately, and Harkness waits. Eventually he closes his eyes on an inhale and grasps the railing as he holds the breath for a few seconds before he lets it go, and his eyes open again. He nods.
The fact that Charon has allowed himself to be seen calming himself down is a show of vulnerability he knows that not many people get to see – a reminder that Charon is here because he trusts him. He joins Charon at the railing, and tries to continue where he left off.
“We agreed that we should go slow. I still think that was the right decision for both of us, considering our…unfamiliarity in this area. And I have enjoyed spending time together with you.” Communication has never felt so difficult before as it did in this moment, but Harkness pushes on. “However, I would like to have more contact with you. Touch you.”
A glance to his side reveals that Charon is still again, and staring down at him with an unreadable expression. Harkness considers, then clarifies. “If you’re willing, of course.”
Charon doesn’t seem to react at all. Harkness prompts further.
“Charon?”
This time Charon seems to startle slightly, and looks away.
“You do not have to force yourself.”
This conversation is getting further and further away from what Harkness expects.
“That’s not what I said. Do you not want to?”
“I do not want you to be making yourself uncomfortable.”
“I’m not. Why do you think that’s what I’m doing?”
Charon doesn’t respond, or meet his eye.
“Charon?”
The ghoul makes a frustrated noise in his throat, but he does answer.
“I did not want to make assumptions about what you wanted. You-” He breaks off and makes another noise. “-you have made it clear you don’t think of yourself as human. So I did not want to assume you would want the same things of a relationship as a human. Have the same desires as a human.”
That’s…unexpectedly touching. The answer makes something catches in Harkness’s throat. For all that he is synthetic, so much of the original human social and emotional reflexes remain, even without the memories of his human namesake riding shotgun in his head. It was something that the Institute had considered too, although from a different perspective - they had assumed that their genetic modification and programming of the synths would have erased any sex drive or romantic instincts from their human source material.
The number of escapee couples that Harkness had had to hunt down had proved them wrong - the scientists had been forced to re-evaluate to try and correct their mistake, and Harkness had been left feeling a little more hollow than before. He hadn’t understood those synths, not even after he had come to terms with himself and escaped the Institute, but the thought of them clinging to each other until they fell limp as he had spoken their recall codes one after the other made him feel nauseous.
Part of it was the foreign concept of desire, of love. For humans and synths alike feelings are all just electrical signals in the brain to produce an effect in the conscious mind, same as the ones that tell him the light coming from the sky on a cloudless day at an average wavelength of 475 nanometres is the colour that everyone has agreed to call blue. If they even agree at all – he remembers Charon telling him that in his mother tongue ‘light blue’ and ‘dark blue’ were separate colours with separate names rather than thinking of them as two different versions of the same thing. How does anyone decide, how does anyone know whether they are talking about the same thing? Fragments of implanted memories summon images of his namesake having a wife long ago, of losing her. Maybe what he feels and the old Harkness felt are different shades of the same colour, or maybe they are different. Maybe they are just fundamentally wired differently. How does anyone, human or synth, identify a feeling as nebulous as love?
Charon’s proximity makes his mouth and hands feel strangely empty, a kind of longing that pulls only in his direction, an urge to hold and please and protect and make him happy. He wonders if he’s starting to get it now.
“That’s – thank you.”
Maybe whether they call it blue or not, or love or not, is not as important as the feeling itself, or the acting upon it. He knows that he wants to feel Charon’s gaze on him, his hands on him.
Charon’s eyes remain averted. His response seemed genuine, but the tension in his shoulders doesn’t seem to have eased – something is still missing, and he knows he can’t solve the problem without all of the puzzle pieces. Harkness swallows down the thickness in his throat and presses on.
“I appreciate you thinking of me, really. But I get the feeling there’s something else you’re not saying.”
It’s the kind of leading statement he might have used as a courser to interrogate someone, on the rare occasions that it was necessary – and using it in this context feels wrong, but at in the face of Charon’s stonewalling Harkness is starting to feel a little helpless. Charon twitches like he wants to squirm in discomfort, but the prompt fulfils its purpose as he finally gives his answer.
“I know that my appearance is…not pleasing. If you did not wish for intimacy with me, I would understand.”
The admission comes with obvious difficulty, though not with any apparent bitterness. Charon’s reticence isn’t borne of dishonesty. Harkness wonders at this moment if it has come of years upon decades upon centuries of holding things within himself, out of necessity and then out of habit, layers upon layers of wounds scarring over like a shell around the person within. Every time Harkness gets Charon to open up like this, it feels like cracking open a rock to find a perfectly preserved fossil of some ancient creature inside.
Charon still won’t look at him, and he senses that any clumsy attempt to mollify the other man’s discomfort will only make this worse. All of the doubt that brought him down to the outer decks in the first place comes rising up within him again, and Harkness knows he has a confession to make.
“Sounds like an assumption about what I want to me.” He lays his hand on the railing right beside Charon’s and just barely touches his little finger to Charon’s.
“Hey.” The red-headed ghoul twitches his head slightly, and he knows he’s got his attention. “The reason I came down here was because I needed to figure out how to say that...I wanted more intimacy with you, not less. I just didn’t know if you wanted the same thing. I didn’t know how to say it.”
He can practically feel the weight of Charon’s eyes on the side of his face, and when he eventually turns around he meets the waiting gaze with equal weight. This is a moment that counts, and flinching now might cost him everything. Harkness gazes steadily into the blue eyes looking back at him, and makes a move.
“I need to ask something of you.”
The response in Charon is immediate, and not at all what Harkness wanted – the sudden straightness in his spine is an aborted stand to attention that the rest of his body tries to follow, limbs rigid and eyes sharp. It is not a command, but close enough to it that it taps into the same muscle memory - Charon stays where he is but just barely, the tension holding him in place. Harkness hesitates – backtracking, analysing, recalculating around his misstep - when Charon softly speaks a word that makes him pause again.
“Anything.”
While the tension of his body seems to signal a warning, the tender intensity of his tone coils around Harkness’s gut in a not entirely unpleasant way – compels him forward still. He commits to his course, and follows the pull where his hands lead him.
“I need for you to believe me,” he says, “when I say I want to touch you.” Harkness moves gently but deliberately, pressing the edges of their fingers together before sliding his hand over Charon’s. He breaks eye contact for a moment to look at their joined hands as he folds their fingers together. “I need for you to believe me when I say I want you to touch me.”
When he looks back at Charon’s face, something in his typically stoic expression has fractured.
“Can you do that?”
There is a slight click and a movement at his throat as Charon swallows, and there is silence between them for a moment. When he speaks, his voice cracks, little more than a whisper.
“I am trying.”
The coiling in Harkness’s gut continues and the floor seems to tilt under him, but the solid dry warmth of the hand around his tightens minutely. Before him, Charon hasn’t moved beside the breeze ruffling his russet hair, staring at him with wide eyes. In the waning light, the colour of his eyes remind Harkness of sea glass.
The world is still moving, but he has a tether to ground him, and so he moves with it. He reaches his free hand to frame Charon’s face, but stops short of making contact.
“May I?”
For a moment Charon doesn’t react, and Harkness wonders if he has pushed too far. Then, slowly - like the crumble of a weathered cliff face into the sea - he moves, dipping his chin down to push his marred cheek into Harkness’s palm, his eyes shuttering closed.
The breath catches in his throat, like he’s caught a wild creature in his hand instead of a man, all of him suddenly hypersensitive. The skin beneath his hand is softer than he expected, the intact layers of skin like warm, well-worn leather outlined with rough seams over the exposed flesh beneath. He feels the faint puff of breath on his wrist as Charon exhales like a sea breeze across his body. Charon blinks and looks down at him through half-lidded eyes with the barest hint of a smile, and Harkness cannot help himself.
Stepping in, he exerts the slightest pressure where his fingers meet the edge of Charon’s jawline to draw him in, lightly enough that it’s little more than a guide to let him know what he wants without forcing anything. But the slightest pressure is all he needs and Charon’s usually rigid frame yields with the smallest sigh, bringing his head down so that Harkness can reach up and bring their mouths together.
The first press of lips is testing, hesitant. While Charon had willingly leant in enough for Harkness to kiss him, he has stilled again and Harkness’s implanted memories don’t give him enough guidance to go on. So Harkness does what he does best – and investigates. He presses in again and moves his mouth a little, feeling the sensation of Charon’s lips – they’re dry and a little rough, like they’re perpetually chapped, but they are warm and yielding against his. It’s…pleasant. He wasn’t sure how he thought this would feel, but there is a warmth, an intimacy in this that draws him in. He draws his hand down along Charon’s cheek, tracing the line of his jaw with his fingers where the skin lays thin over the muscle.
Suddenly the seal between their lips breaks, in the split second before Harkness can panic that he has done something wrong he feels a hand grasp the front of his shirt and pull forward as Charon exhales a quiet, shuddery noise into his mouth.
The feel of Charon’s breath in his mouth changes something, like he’s breathed a spark into a smouldering ember, like a wind catching in a sail. Harkness doesn’t need the hand at his front pulling him in – he just has to follow the turn of Charon’s breath from exhale to inhale back to its source, back to his mouth.
Everything becomes a mass of sensations overwhelming his senses – the surprising softness of the tufts of hair on the back of Charon’s head, the taste of cigarettes in his mouth. Charon’s breath flares out from the remains of his nasal cavity and tickles his whole face. Harkness keeps pressing into Charon, the solidness of his chest, running his free hand over anywhere he can reach just to feel it. Charon shifts back once, twice, his foot slipping against the deck as he keeps pressing forward, holding on to his shirt all the while. All at once, the earth moves beneath him and Harkness’s back meets cold metal as he is held against the hull of the ship within the circle of Charon’s arms.
And there, Harkness is lost in a deluge of scent and sensation and warmth, in breath and skin and the heat of Charon’s mouth, and blue and blue and blue.
At least for a little while.
“Chief! You down here?”
Harkness startles with such force that he smacks his head against the wall behind him, and he has to stifle a grunt of pain. Commander Lana Danvers’ footsteps ring out just inches above their heads – Harkness realises that Charon has pressed them into the space beneath the stairs, and the pair of them freeze still tangled together. Somewhat deliriously, he realises that his hand is still clasped with Charon’s where it is pressed against the riveted sheet metal wall next to him.
“Hark?”
Between the treads of the stairs he watches Lana reach deck level and carefully look around, and then - to his horror – their eyes meet. Her expression goes from confusion to recognition to shock to embarrassment in quick succession, flicking her eyes from Harkness’s face upwards to Charon’s and back again.
“Ch-Chief.” Danvers chokes, and turns to look purposefully away at some point in the distance while attempting to wrestle her face into a more professional expression. “Sorry to disturb you sir, but there’s a situation that requires your immediate attention in the Muddy Rudder. It seems Sister had a falling out with Flak and Shrapnel.”
Harkness closes his eyes for a moment and takes a careful and controlled breath while he wishes that Rivet City could have given him a break just this once, and hopes his voice is more composed than he feels.
“It can’t be dealt with by the other security officers?”
“Unfortunately not, sir. Sister has refused to talk to anyone but you.”
Just his luck. Just his damned luck. Harkness glances quickly up at Charon’s face before then realises that Charon has frozen in place while pressing Harkness against the wall and decides that he really can’t have this conversation while looking at him.
“Alright, uh. Just, uh, give me a minute to finish here and I will meet you on deck.”
Danvers’ self-restraint seems to waver, and a flicker of amusement passes over her face for a moment before it passes.
“Understood, sir. I’ll let you finish.”
And before Harkness can even parse the implication in her tone she’s already gone, and the furious rush of blood to his face doesn’t come until her echoes of her footsteps on the stairs have long since gone.
Finally, finally, Harkness looks at Charon properly. While he had jerked back slightly when Danvers had called out he hadn’t gone any further, seemingly stuck between the startled urge to recoil and the instinct to stay hidden under the staircase. All the movement and pliability that he seemed to have gained in the moment got startled out of him and his normal rigidity has returned. From this close angle it’s easier to see that his expression is almost sheepish, his clouded blue eyes wide.
However, Harkness is still caught within Charon’s arms where he is pressed against the old ship’s hull, and Charon continues to not move. He thinks about how Danvers is waiting for him upstairs with a mischievous expression on her face and how Sister and Flak and Shrapnel are all somewhere in the bar below them and how Rivet City never stops, not even for this. Harkness closes his eyes with a small groan and drops his head forwards until his forehead meets Charon’s chest.
There’s a beat where it feels like he might have broken the moment somehow. Then there is a twitch against his forehead as Charon snorts, and then a hand is resting comfortingly on the nape of his neck. When he looks back up a moment later, there is a hint of a smile showing through his usual stoic expression like a vein of gold in a rock face, and Harkness wants to know how it feels against his mouth. Before he can follow through on that thought, the hand on the back of his neck slides away and Charon steps back.
“Go. I will meet you later.” Carefully he moves away to regain some semblance of a professional distance and let him pass, which is undercut by the fact he has not yet released Harkness’s hand from his own. Harkness’s heart squeezes, and he squeezes the hand in his in return.
“Dinner? After my shift?”
Charon dips his head in acquiescence, that almost imperceptible smile still there.
Slowly, hesitantly, he disentangles his hand from Charon’s as he steps away. Once he starts up the stairs he turns to look down only to find that Charon has stepped back out into the main area of the deck to watch him as he goes, his hair glowing a coppery gold in the waning sunlight as he places a cigarette between his smiling lips.
That image stays in his mind as he carries on up the stairs and back onto the upper deck, as he catches sight of Lana and the wicked grin that emerges on her face that lets him know that she is never going to let him live this down. He turns back just before they go inside to catch the breeze on his face and take a last look at the remaining patch of blue sky, and he swears he smells a trace of cigarette smoke on the wind.
tagged by @adventuresofmeghatron (thank you! lovely to see you writing again!)
I’ll tag @persephotea , @proserpinewrites , and @its-sixxers in case y’all have stuff you wanna share 😊 (no worries if not)
yay, it’s been a while since I’ve done one of these! I’ve had a long weekend and put it to good use in making a start on writing a fic I’ve been planning for a loooong time, working title Universal Translator. It’s gonna be a long one and I wanna make sure I get a big old chunk of planning and development done before I post any chapters so it probably won’t see the light of day for a while, but I’m really glad to actually start writing the story properly.
Here’s a little over six sentences from chapter one - Billie is having a bit of a bad time, to say the least.
It’s not Autumn. Her father smiles weakly up at her. His nose is bleeding.
“It is done, darling.” He cups her cheek as he smiles, red dripping out of the corner of his mouth across the wet skin of his face. The water reaches their shoulders, then their necks. Their blood mingles in the water.
“I am the Alpha and the Omega,” He kisses her forehead, and holds her close. She couldn’t move even if she wanted to. “The beginning and the end.”
The flood comes over her, inescapable as the arms around her. The water fills her mouth, her nose, her ears, unfathomably loud. The water covers her eyes, and she knows nothing more.
I got tagged by @pchberrytea and @radioactive-synth a couple of weeks ago so I’m filling this in late!! thanks pals :)
tagging @trashkingnyx , @civilization-illstayrighthere , and @adventuresofmeghatron if you have anything you’d like to share (no pressure!) and anyone else who wants to join in
I’ve been in holiday mode with Christmas stuff going on so haven’t done much writing but I’ll share some stuff about my courier six Rye (he/him) whose story is still very much under development!
- Age at game start: late 20s
- Affiliations: Independent New Vegas, Followers of the Apocalypse, the Kings
- Closest people: Veronica, Arcade, Christina, [REDACTED]
- Strengths: very quick and dextrous and light on his feet, generally good at judging others moods, good at thinking on his feet and talking his way out of a sticky situation.
- Challenges: partially deaf and impaired vision on his left side, migraines, and tinnitus from gunshot wound to the head, suffers from bouts of depression and dissociative episodes. Impulsive, lies to avoid confrontation or uncomfortable truths, stubborn.
- Quirks: suffered from aphasia (difficulty speaking) after Benny shot him, and for some time could not speak at all after he woke up at Doc Mitchell’s, which led to him learning sign language. He still reverts to sign language sometimes when he is having trouble expressing himself (often if he talks about something that makes him feel vulnerable).
I was tagged by @adventuresofmeghatron - thanks Megh!
tagging forward @trashkingnyx , @its-sixxers , @theartofblossoming , @radioactive-synth and @pchberrytea if you want to join in (but no pressure if not!)
Rules: Post the names of all the files in your WIP folder regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet of it or tell them something about it.
I have some WIPs in the folder which have been sitting untouched for *ahem* months...maybe listing them will give me motivation to work on them! Some of them are being integrated into other storylines so I’ll just list the ones I plan to finish.
I got tagged last Sunday by @adventuresofmeghatron (thank you! sorry I’m late!) but didn’t get round to posting due to time zone fuckery and being busy so I’m doing it a week late. I’ll tag @trashkingnyx and @pchberrytea to share if you want to!
I’ve been all out of whack with writing recently cause I’ve been busy lately but I started writing a fic that’s been on my mind for months now set around Butch leaving the vault and exploring the wasteland for the first time:
A big fat drop of water hits the middle of the screen right as a great booming sound echoes from behind him. Cursing, he scrambles for his gun and looks around but there’s nothing moving in sight. Butch is desperately trying to remember the lessons Billie had taught him about shooting straight when a huge bolt of electricity forks through the clouds overhead, followed by another deep rumble that seems to come from everywhere around him. More drops of water hit his face, his shoulders and arms until it’s a downpour. Another streak of lightning arcs above him, and then another. The dark sky starts to get a green cast, and the Geiger counter on his Pip-Boy starts to scream.
Butch runs.
(at some point I’ll finish one of the other million wips I have but idk 🤷♀️)
I got tagged a few weeks ago by @adventuresofmeghatron (sorry friend...better late than never??) and I’ve had a good week for writing so trying to celebrate all my baby steps of progress that I have made
after several weeks of getting barely any writing done I’ve finally made some progress on my Charon/Harkness wip (tentatively named Galatea) after a bolt of inspiration from my favourite podcast so here is a wee tiny snippet
He thinks you’ve been avoiding him, the little part of human behavioural instinct that remains etched in his programming whispers, sending all his thoughts slamming to a dead stop. He thinks you’ve changed your mind about him.
Charon doesn’t say any more, keeps his eyes downcast and his arms crossed across his body and sucking on the cigarette stub that threatens to burn his fingers like he doesn’t want to let go of it – looking for all the world like a man trying to hide in his own body in broad daylight.
Harkness has been hiding too. Maybe neither of them is good at asking for what they want. Leaning over the railing he sighs, opens his hand, lets his own cigarette stub fall from his fingers into the water beneath them.
tagging back @adventuresofmeghatron and also @theartofblossoming, @trashkingnyx and @radioactive-synth if any of you have anything you want to share! no pressure if not
