#painterofhorizons writes

[painterofhorizons]

Sleep is for the weak, right?

I know I will regret this later, but hear me out. I'm in a flow, okay? Last night I have been going through all sorts of old writing stuff from ~2018-2021 for my beloved but long time hibernating Spiegelbilder fic (the once stared as a Criminal Minds fic and by now has at least a honorable main character in it but not so much to do with the series anylonger long time comfort writing project of hundreds of thousands words). And there were quite a handful of usable things in there, among a nearly finished 6.5k backstory fic. Which I have been dealing with all day today, rewriting it.

It's 11pm now, 8/12 pages rewritten, 4 pages left, and I probably should be going to bed - but I could also get up, grab a chocolate bar, and write those missing 4 pages, right?

I'm weak. I should sleep. But I did have enough coffee today and am excited enough about the writing that I might screw it and just write.

[painterofhorizons]

Human (a mass effect fanfic)

After priority: Thessia

Thessia fell. Shepard stands her ground, holds up against the Asari councilor, withholds Anderson telling her to shake things off and manages to answer politely when Traynor mentions just another facility attacked by Cerberus.

When Joker tells about his family on Tiptree though, the hairline crack inside her breaks.

(Shakarian, 4k, teen and up)

Read on AO3.

Snippet under the cut.

Thessia fell. The Asari home world burned, like Palaven did before, like Earth. Another world lost. Another one annihilated. Another planet she left for dead.

The prothean data was lost. The Crucible could not be finished. She failed. Miserably.

And Kai Leng won. Cerberus won, after all they went through.

But Shepard stood her ground.

She held up against the Asari councilor while the news about her home world caught her absolutely off-guard. She managed to give her crew a somewhat targeted speech that didn't show the brutal anger and deadly emptiness Thessia had left her with. She withheld Anderson telling her to shake things off and get over it, concentrating on what had to be done next. She even forced herself to a professional answer when everything Traynor had to say when she rushed through the CIC was that she located another facility attacked by Cerberus on Ontarom they should check out later.

Get the job done. Whatever happens, simply get the job done. And the next one. And the one after that. And the one...

She kept the hairline crack together when EDI started some kind of stupid joke to cheer her up on the bridge, making it even more obvious what had just happened. She had never heard EDI joking before and she was all but in the mood to make that experience right now. She reacted more sharp then she should, both to EDI and Joker when he dared to voice some kind of light-footed comment on Asari dancers.

But when he told about his family on Tiptree, the crack inside her broke.

[painterofhorizons]

There once was a post about how the writers personal background bleeds into fanfic both in expressions of they're writing in another language and in content.

Ever since I read that I cannot unsee how often I reference bread in my fic. 🙈 Buying bread as a casual everyday activity. Eating really good bread. Bread. Bread bread bread.

Guess I'm a little German about *that* indeed.

[painterofhorizons]

*big heavy defeated sigh*

I did not expect to fall victim to this scam sort with the first thing I've posted in years.

See, of course this kind of comment would be like, the best kind of comment an author could ask for, right?

Alas. We all know it's scam. And I think what bothers me most is knowing my story was fed to the evil to have a somewhat coherent review generated about it.

I don't want my story to be fed to fucking AI. I also don't want to retreat from posting my writing and I know the result is I cannot protect it from being fed to AI.

But for fucking real. Did this had to happen within twelve hours after I posted some of my writing for the first time in literal years? Is that how being a creative nowadays works?

*utterly disappointed muttering*

Just in case it wasn't super insanely clear by now, a friendly reminder:

KILL SLAY MAIM FUCKING GENERATIVE Ai

and scam bots.

End of PSA.

[painterofhorizons]

Spiegelbilder WIP - Stay

“Stay.”

Dave had watched Alex getting up a bare ten seconds after her alarm went off. A quick moment of rustling blankets and creaking floor boards broke the silence of the early morning - 5:35, both time of day and hours of sleep, too early and too little - routine as usual, and a sting somewhere in his middle that was becoming a little too familiar.

“Skip the workout.”

He wanted the weight back next to him, the warmth, the selfish moment of indulgence and escapism. They didn’t have to leave yet. She didn’t. Routine was nothing that couldn’t be broken, or adjusted. Or ignored, at least once, for the sake of it. They could easily add another hour in bed and a shared breakfast.

Alex was wearing nothing more than the old Led Zeppelin shirt he’d loaned her when she’d first spent the night at his place unscheduled, looking down on him like she was seriously considering it.

5:36.

“If I do, I might not leave again.”

It was a quiet, a vulnerable confession, fragile words unfit for the loud, hectic, demanding life that waited for them outside these bedroom walls.

Dave returned her glance calmly. “I think I wouldn’t mind that.”

5:37.

With the head slightly tilted and the tiniest of head shakes Alex said: “I worry me neither.”

She turned to the chair next to the window to grab her cloths and started to change.

With her voice was louder, morning mode activated, she asked “Not really what’s our plan, huh?” Routine as usual, and all the intimacy and quietness and bitter sweet what if’s vanished into thin air again.

She was back at what they’d both agreed was “normal” for them now. Back at what they’d both were taking for granted. Come and go. Day job, night job, a few hours of whatever they were doing with only so many strings attached every other night, and then back to work. In between being friends and colleagues and pretending that nothing had changed and they were still acting just like they’d done over the past few years - it was play pretend. Building themselves an island and trying to fit it into the life outside these walls while not giving it too much weight because of the fear of what it would change and how it could ever fit into their way too busy lives if it was more than this.

So she wasn’t staying.

She was getting up early heading to the gym, while he would sit at his desk at home trying to write a page or two for the current book before heading to work in separate cars, pretending they hadn’t seen since leaving work last night.

“Stay”, Dave said again.

“And then what?”

“We’ll figure it out.”

The snort he earned for that added to the sting Dave felt this morning.

5:39.

She was done getting changed.

“We won’t. Do you want coffee before I leave?”

“No.”

If he showed a niggle of hurt, Alex was good at pretending not to notice it - or not to care. She shrugged and threw a quick glance at her wrist watch. “Sure. See you in two hours.”

5:40.

Silence returned when Alex had left, relentless and all consuming.

Routine as usual.

Dave was still sitting in bed, motionless and mad. Mad on himself for being mad at her for leaving, and mad on both of them for doing this.

This sure wasn't working.

[painterofhorizons]

[fic] meeting strangers: a home is a house with good people

[10k, G, no trigger warnings] set in 1995 - Starting over is never easy. When Alex Dancy moves from Russia to London for academic studies on a scholarship, she has a hard time finding her place - quite literally.

Read on AO3.

***

It's hard to believe that after five years I have finally finished a second english chapter for my beloved somewhat-adjacent-Criminal Minds-comfort-fic-of-12+years Spiegelbilder. This is your sign to believe in miracles. This time, we get a little glimpse in the backstory of Alex Dancy.

Big shoutout to @sheeplessthings for her continuous support of this story throughout the years and to @chyrstis for being the BEST enabler over the past few weeks and before. <3

***

Snippet under the cut. Link to the edit. Link to the masterpost. Please yell at the author, it will make them very happy. <3

1995

Twenty minutes.

That’s how long Thomas had said it would take her to get to the farm once she’d reach the outskirts of London. Maybe thirty since she was no local and didn’t know the way. Thirty-five after sunset. Max.

It took Alex almost two hours.

Two hours full of detours, turns, detours from detours and from turns, muddy sideways she wasn’t sure her car would be able to handle without getting stuck - and being stuck in the mud in the dark in the rain in a territory she didn’t know was the last thing she needed on top of everything else right now - two hours and three times she cursed fuck it and almost gave up, and tons and tons and tons of rain, until she finally, maybe, hopefully, naively dared to think she might have reached the address Thomas had given her earlier that day.

The one for the fucking twenty minute-ride.

If it wasn’t the right address after all, she would just sleep in the car right where she was and fuck off with sunrise from where ever she had ended up on, because the past two hours had definitely come to an end right now. But she had eventually crossed an old red post box on a wooden post at a small crossing a mile ago, which Thomas had said she should look for and then turn left, so maybe this was the place he’d given her after all? Anyways, it didn’t really matter, since she wasn’t willing to drive a single additional mile tonight.

These past twenty minutes fit perfectly in with the three months prior and once more made her regret coming here at all. What an absolute clusterfuck of decision had driven her here, madness with no reason, as if life hadn’t been bad enough before that. So far, it had been nothing more than self-inflicted torture 2000 kilometers away from home, with no way to go back.

That, and the endless fucking rain.

[continue on AO3]

[painterofhorizons]

Floating WIP Day - Spiegelbilder edition

Chess nights were a lot of different things on different days, but mainly they were as much an abstract concept as they were a promise. The first because more often than not they simply did not happen, getting delayed, postponed or altogether canceled due to work, or work, or life. And even if they weren’t, that work and work and life didn’t just cease to exist and hovered above at least one of them to some annoyingly present extent. But they were just as much a promise for one another to try to push that aside as much as possible and to keep it out for as much or little time they were given or could defend for the sake of their own sanity.

Chess nights were holy moments of blissful indulgence, ignoring the real life background noise constantly buzzing in their heads like a really nasty tinnitus, saying right here, right now, for as long as we get - this is it. This is important. I am. You are. In all of this, we’re here. We’re alive. We matter, too, you do, and I.

Chess nights carried a lot of weight in that sense, and quite frankly sometimes it was just about drinking all that noise away.

Alex cracked an awry grin when Dave opened the door at twenty past eleven. “We can pretend it’s still eight, right?” There was a stubborn ease in her voice that went astray, as well as a certain extent of despair and annoyance she was too tired to cover up. 

Their long planned Friday night date had first gotten postponed twice over the past weeks due to the day job and then delayed another day on short notice through the night job so that the few extra hours this night should really carry no extra weight whatsoever - but by now, Alex was, well, not necessarily complaining, but really close to being seriously flustered. She had been looking forward to this, as a treat, and needing it. But now the outlook of a few relaxed hours of mindless fun were already overshadowed by counting minutes until her next day shift at the club was about to begin.

“Long day, huh?”, Dave greeted her with a kiss on the cheek as usual, being met with a grumpy “More like a long month” while Alex followed him inside. Given it was June the third, Dave didn’t need to do any math to be able to tell exactly what kind of day it had been.

“Do you-“

She cut him before he could even come close to finish his question. “I have done enough talking for the day. All I want is to stick to our plan and have a careless eight to twelve.” A quick rumble through her backpack and she pulled out a cheap bottle of wine. “I did pick that up on the way here but I’ll drink whatever you provide.”

He took the bottle from her with a mixture of bewildered amusement and open pity. “Appreciated, but I think we can do better than that. When do you need to leave?”

Alex groaned. “Don’t make me think about leaving when I barely arrived.”

“I’m just organizing.”

A quick flustered snort. “Yah, fine. Ten, maybe ten thirty if I’m being really ignorant.”

“So more like nine thirty.”

“I don’t wanna leave at nine thirty” she objected, but got shushed by Dave.

“Ten is fine, so is nine, and until then do turn off your phone and that pretty head of yours and just trust me to keep the schedule for you, okay?”

Exhaustion got the better of her and made her shoot back impulsively. “Dave, we don’t have time to argue-“

This time, Dave cut her more determined. “Okay okay okay, hold on for a second. It might be eleven instead of eight but that doesn’t mean we ain’t got time and need to rush, right?”

Alex stared at him for a moment but was met with a far more relaxed pair of eyes staring back at her with that incredible even temper she both valued and that amazed her so much about him, and another inquiring “Right?”

Even if she wanted to win the stare down, she wouldn’t win it tonight - and quite frankly, she didn’t want to either.

“Right”, she said, letting out a long sigh. “Fine. I know. It’s just really-“

“Been a month”, Dave finished for her. “Understood. And that’s one more reason to take a breath and unwind. Can’t rush through that, can we?”

“Guess not.”

“You’re here to take a breather, not to cross off a to-do list. So undress and make yourself a home, and I’ll go get something to drink.”

Alex rolled her eyes with a defeated grin. “Yes, Sir.”

Dave smirked. “Good girl.”

[painterofhorizons]

I took my first writing lunch in exactly a year today. Did I write a lot? Nope, but I dug out the fic notebook, I read through 50 pages of old writing in it, added a little line here and there, and just been happy about the overall situation (and that I found the notebook at all because that was quite a struggle!).

I hope there'll be some writing again at some point.