#set before

[cabbakansas]

Twintastic!

I’ve smooshed two art pieces here. Rachel - art by aquamareinex on DeviantArt Harry - art of canon!Potter kids by Minos336 on DeviantArt

Also the coffee cup is from the Clipart Library.

[katsidhe]

@tasteslikemolecules​ tagged me! rules: write the latest lines from your WIP and tag as many people as there are words in the (last) line.

He lingers half-in, half-out the door, while Nick pulls on the shirt.

“Does it fit okay?” asks Sam.

Nick plucks hesitantly at the cheap fabric, shifting on the cot with a self-consciousness so overblown that sometimes Sam is sure it can’t be anything but deliberate, an act carefully exaggerated for Sam’s benefit. Sam doesn’t even really mind. He does the same for Nick, after all. Their conversations are nothing if not an elaborate pantomime, mincing courteously around pits carved so deep and bloody that neither of them can see the bottom.

“Fits great, thanks,” Nick says quietly, in that gentle, careful tone that Sam would call mocking if he didn’t know better.

Question and answer were both unnecessary. Even from the doorway, the room bathed in shadow, Sam can see that the fit is perfect. It hadn’t exactly been difficult, holding up various Wal-Mart brand t-shirts and picking out the ones that looked right. Nick hadn’t been the only one he was shopping for—Sam’d had a list of shirt and pant and bra sizes, requests for boxers and briefs and razors and toothpaste. It’s just that Nick was the only person whose size he’d known without looking, without thinking.

“Let me know if you need anything else,” says Sam. “You’ve still got meds, right?”

“Yeah, I’ve got enough.” Nick hesitates. He’s watching Sam watching, and Sam sees his eyes flick briefly to Sam’s lips before he looks away quickly, politely. Those tentative, circumspect looks—Nick is, as always, on the perpetual, tortured knife-edge of some unspeakable question, of breaking their considerate, careful pretense. Sam thinks that he either knows exactly what Nick wants to ask, or he has no idea, and both possibilities make him giddy with nausea.

Sam can’t help the shameful, stomach-twisting urge that rises in him whenever Nick’s around. To do what, Sam isn't sure: run, hurt, or heal, he isn't sure; and he doesn’t know which his id would prefer, to tie Nick to his mattress and beat him bloody, or cradle him in his arms and gently coax him to eat more soup. They both hold the same uncomfortable, dizzying thrill of the forbidden.

Sam will do neither. Nick deserves a life. Sam is going to give it to him. The idea makes his toes curl.

I’m bad about tagging, so if you see this and want to play, consider yourself tagged!

[wizardingaesthetics]

You've Always Been Alone

(and maybe you always will be)

Bucky's alone and finding himself but every ray of sunshine that falls on him is quickly stolen away. Or, Bucky Barnes lets a homeless girl into his apartment and doesn't hate it

Read on ao3 or ff.net

[heartvictor]

"Say that I’m yours."

The tension between them was palpable and for the briefest of moments Victor fought the urge to reach out and touch Yuuri. Visible relief washed over him when Yuuri’s lips parted with words that quelled the rising feeling in his stomach that Yuuri didn’t want that from him. The water licked at the side of the rocks surrounding the pool when Victor moved, lifting a hand and wetting Yuuri’s neck when he stroked it. The steam came off the water in waves and trapped itself between them, it muddled their scents and made Victor’s mouth water. Was Yuuri his? He wanted him to be and he could tell from the way Yuuri leaned into him he wanted it as well.He didn’t realise he was growling till it broke through his thoughts and reached his ear to which he quickly cut it off. It was the sake, he told himself, if he pushed this Yuuri would never forgive him tomorrow morning, it was the sake and their riddled scents mingling in the air between them making Yuuri confused.“Yuuri.” He muttered, breath tapered. The Omega looked the picture of seduction, his cheeks flushed just enough to clue the Alpha in to his tipsy state, lips still shining from the touch of the drink and Victor could speak endless about how tempting it was to lick the taste from them. “You look like you’re feeling hot.” He laid the back of his palm against Yuuri’s forehead. “Maybe we should hop out?” The blatant scent Yuuri was giving off would no doubt eventually start offending other patrons even though for now they seemed the only ones in the outdoor hot spring.

[cannonadeastriction]

*After a day or two since the whole door blowing incident there is a piece of paper attached to Mindfang's door. It's a treasure map. It's a layout of the ship, along with some guidelines and hints as to where to go. Whenever she manages to get to the correct location, another map would be waiting. This continues all over the ship, in the most obnoxious nooks and crannies imaginable. It is a long one. In the end, however, it turns out all of her "borrowed" possessions were hidden just under her sleeping platform all along.*

[runningwithsourwolves-blog]

When hope dies... || Stiles

Stiles had stopped counting. He had stopped counting days, stopped counting messages he sent, stopped counting voicemails he left and stopped counting hours he felt miserable and way too small and insignificant to just go on. He had stopped counting how often he had felt wrong, stopped counting how often he gave up just to start over again.

It would have been great that he did all that, if not for the fact that the only thing he discovered through this was that stopping to count didn't make it any less painful. It didn't sting less every time he realized he wouldn't get an answer and it didn't make him feel any better about the time he couldn't even get himself to do anything.

Stiles realized that Scott was worried about him and he realized that his visit had been a good thing for him, but after he left it didn't do much to keep him in a better mood. It didn't ease his worry and the conversations they had couldn't hold him up, because nothing changed, even though Scott's werewolf senses had picked up on more than Stiles was even willing to just outright tell him.

In the end it all had let to him realizing there was maybe no hope left that he would ever just get an answer to all his attempts at communicating with Derek. There were definitely times when he felt annoying, he knew he probably was all the time and that made it just worse, because he couldn't stop. He also basically constantly felt pathetic, but when he thought about it, this wasn't him being irrational or overly attached or even just not getting it. He deserved something, anything really. At this point he would have been glad about a simple I just did it for sex and now you really annoy me.

Okay, glad was definitely not the word to go with – it was more likely that it would devastate him to hear what he was thinking anyway. But it would have been something. It would have taken the hope he still had.

The thing was, despite all, Stiles was almost sure it would be something like that. The first night and the most surprising thing ever just suddenly happened to him had been on the full moon and he was too deep in this all to not consider that this was the reason it happened in the first place. He wasn't sure and the person who could have talked to him about it did obviously not talk to him.

Scott had always wondered how he was able to keep up hope that seemed so futile, even though his best friend never tried to crush it. Not on purpose at least. About every damage Scott ever did was not on purpose and even though some people might have disagreed, that really made it better for Stiles – despite all fits of anger he had over the years.

Scott had wondered for ten years how he still could cling to the imagination that Lydia might just some day fall in love with him and decide she wanted to be with him and now he probably was wondering how he could hold on to this – whatever it was. But this was so much harder to let go. He had loved Lydia, honestly and truly loved her, but she never had given him anything in all this years. He knew she didn't know his name and didn't care, but it hadn't mattered. No matter how often she had ignored or rejected him, it just hadn't mattered.

One would think that this would have to be worse than what was going on now, but it wasn't. It was completely different.

Having given the impression that there was something, that there could be something, that they shared something, just to be ignored – this was worse. He had been used to the constant suffering, he had been happy despite his unrequited love, now he couldn't even try to be.

All ultimately had led to the fact that Stiles got sick of waiting and hoping for a reply that obviously wasn't about to come any time soon. That's how he ended up in front of an old, burnt down and very uninviting building.

Stiles had stopped his jeep, turned off the engine with a turn of his keys, which he just left stuck. Who would steal his car in the middle of nowhere? He remained seated, his hands moving over the steering wheel and both gripping it hard enough to color his knuckles white, making them stand out against the rest of his skin. He was staring straight ahead, perceiving nothing of his surroundings.

It was too late to have second thoughts about this. Still he had them. What if Derek actually was waiting for him and he would finally get an answer he didn't like? It was a fact that he was being annoying. Of course he was, but he had a reason. He had been repeating that to himself so often that he started to doubt it was true, instead of believing it more. He had a reason to write a hundred text messages, to call thirty times and he had a reason to be here.

Stiles sighed as his eyes slowly focused again and his hands slid off of the steering wheel. His head felt heavy, when he turned it to look at the old, burnt house right next to him. If Derek didn't want to see him, time was not important. He would have been gone when the jeep had pulled around a corner two miles ago. That meant he had all the time in the world and the only thing taking longer would do was make him look even more miserable. So there was absolutely no rush and he wished for a moment there had been, so he hadn't felt like he couldn't move at all.

Opening the door of his jeep he climbed out and just left it as it was, key still stuck and the door hanging open. Once he was out it was easier to actually follow through with his plan, but his steps towards the house still felt unreal. There was a feeling of dismay settled deep in his stomach that made his head feel lighter than it should have.

A quick look over the exterior revealed nothing to him. He couldn't hear anything and he couldn't see anything or notice anything moving around behind the dirty, bleary windows. Sure he knew that didn't mean there was nobody inside and he was still hoping that if he couldn't meet Derek here, there would at least not be Peter waiting anywhere in the house. That was the last thing he needed right now.

The door was unlocked. It always was. Everybody who entered without permission would probably regret that decision fast enough. The wood felt rough underneath the tips of his fingers when he pushed it open and stared into the thick darkness behind it. Squinting he looked into the twilight, but as he suspected there wasn't anyone waiting for him.

He walked inside, his steps tentative while he was turning around himself, looking up the stairs and through doorways. “Derek?” Nobody answered. “Derek!”

There wasn't as much dirt and dust on the ground as there used to be. Well at least it used to be more the times he had been here before. How this place looked before it had burned down was a faint memory and he had never actually been inside of it.

“Anyone? Nobody? Okay...” Stiles looked at the staircase and sighed, his eyes wandering towards the ground. “Then nobody will mind if I stay a while and look into everything there is to see, right? And touch a few things. Especially the ones that look like I shouldn't touch them.”

It was a faint hope that he could actually taunt Derek into appearing with this. A faint hope that he had held in vain as it turned out. Nobody appeared and the only thing he could hear was his own breathing.

He waited a few minutes, unsure about what to do now, before he grabbed at the handrail of the stairs – or what was left of them. Everything was still so obviously burned and damaged that it depressed him even more to be here. It smelled of wet, decaying wood and other unpleasent things he didn't have a name for. After another moment of hesitation he let go again and walked into what appeared to have been a living room before the fire had taken it's toll instead.

Stiles looked around, turned like he had before in the hallway and then just sat down in the middle of the room, folding his legs and letting his head drop forward to cradle his own face with his hands.

In the end this didn't help him figure his situation out any more. He didn't know if Derek just wasn't here or had deliberately tried to avoid him by hiding or leaving or both. Nevertheless he felt like he was about to lose a battle and he didn't even know what this was about. He lost fight after fight and it was like competing with water. No matter how much you struggled or how hard you punched, you just couldn't win because it wouldn't take effect. All he asked for was that Derek took his place in this instead of letting him hanging like this.

Derek didn't come.

Stiles sat on the ground for an hour, watching night fall and feeling like he spent a whole day. Anxiety settled because he was afraid that it wouldn't be Derek who'd come home and find him, eyes watering, staring onto the ground as if he would hope to find his answers there.

At the same time that he wanted to leave before that happened he asked himself what if he got up and left and if he had waited ten minutes longer he'd have met Derek. What if all it took was ten more minutes of patience?

He dragged his fingertips over the dirty ground in front of him and watched the small tracks they left.

I'm not in the mood to talk to an annoying boy like you.

Maybe that was it. Maybe Derek just never again would talk to him, would never again be in the mood to do it. Maybe he just had all he wanted and was moving on by getting rid of him and Stiles just blatantly ignored that by breaching protocol and trying to get in contact.

He was an idiot. How he could even think that it had mattered to him was probably something he would be asking himself the rest of his life now.

Stiles stood, slightly staggering on his legs and taking a deep breath. It was time to go.