Lych has been so kind as to Beta-Read for 🌐7 Circles🌐 and I wanted to make a thank-you gift pertaining to his work:
But seriously, I love my beta readers so much❤️🔥 If you continuously show interest in my story or my OCs you may very well end up with me creating something for you (this is a threat). 😈
Lych, your thoughtfully made comments on my draft have given me a lot of insight and motivation 🙏💕 and I'm so happy to be reading through your WIP as well! (Which you can check out 👉HERE👈, btw.) Thanks bud.
Stealing the TNDA taglist (mwahahaa!):
@dyrewrites @the-golden-comet @fortunatetragedy @rotting-moon-writes @goodluckclove @cowboybrunch
Hit up @lychhiker-writes if you want to be added! (I highly suggest it)
(I own none of the pictures, I simply edited and arranged them)
I've explained this one in another answer so I'll post a snippet here! It'll be a long, long time before is sees the light of day outside Tumblr so it's a little rough and ready.
I couldn't decide where to cut it off so I've included basically the whole fucking thing lmao
He looks strange without glasses and she feels even stranger for staring; like she's caught him in his underpants and ought to look away. His shoulders are relaxed but his expression furrows a little.
"What?" he says.
Shepard opens her mouth. Closes it again.
She knows his handwriting by sight, how he folds his shirts, the most reliable way to make him laugh, how he likes his eggs, the scar on the palm of his hand from a prank Solana played on him when he was seven, his favourite pair of socks, the way he looks splayed out in bed at 4am - and what more is there to know about a person, really?
"Nothing," she says, quietly.
Maybe it's a trick of the light or the hour, but there's something melancholy in the small smile he gives her. A little like the subdued kind of longing she's been herding around for - well - God only knows how long now. Years.
Except this is Garrus. So it doesn't matter.
"You never took [name] out dancing, did you?" she says, without thinking.
The smile slides away and he reaches for his beer. "No."
"Why not?" she asks. He shrugs, non-commital. "She's smart. Pretty. You got along."
He stops with the bottle half way to his mouth. "Never got around to it, I suppose."
"There must've been something."
He huffs an exasperated sort of laugh. "It was months ago, I can't remember. It just - " He waves the bottle vaguely. "I don't know what you want me to say."
Me. Say it was me.
"Just wondered." Her voice sounds like it belongs to someone else. "I forgot to ask how it went."
He sets the bottle on his leg and picks at the corner of the label with his thumbnail.
Shepard swallows. There's something reckless creeping over her. The kind of feeling that pushes her to one more punch, one more shot, one more needling question to goad out an answer.
"Have you dated at all since Chloé?"
"A little," he says, without looking at her. "Not lately."
"How come?"
"Christ, Shepard - "
"What? You could've had your pick of the damn ward when I was in hospital."
"Yeah, that would've gone down well."
"I didn't mean - " They're steaming towards an argument. "Women like you, Garrus. "
He scoffs.
"Oh, bite me, you're a catch and you know it." Shepard takes a long gulp of her beer so the acrid, cigarette-butt tang sticks to her teeth. "And at this rate you'll have to wait for the good ones to start getting divorced."
Garrus just shakes his head. He doesn't look angry, exactly, but there's something coming off him that she can't get a read on. Shepard sets her bottle down on the coffee table.
"Honey, I don't know why you broke it off with Chloé and I won't ask you to tell me, but - "
"It's not about Chloé."
"Then what?"
For a long, slow moment, Garrus just looks at her. His face is set in stubborn lines but that mournful, affectionate look hasn't left him.
Years of case files and gunfights are stretched out behind them; brass knuckles, lemon muffins, broken bones, cold stake-out breakfasts, favours owed and repaid a hundred times each way, and threaded through them is that incessant, silent wanting. Like an itch. Like grit in her shoe.
Except it's Garrus. And she knows him. In all his vengeance and loyalty and bull-headed kindness, she knows him. The man who holds more of her in his hands than any other living person. Deserving of whatever kindness the world has to offer.
If he'd wanted her at all - in any of those moments - Shepard would've seen it.
"I'm sorry," Garrus says, and suddenly he's all soft, sad, blue eyes and there's an impossible, shivery feeling building in the pit of Shepard's stomach - in her chest - in her throat.
Surely she would've seen it.
Wouldn't she?
"I'm sorry," he says, quieter still, and this time it sounds like goodbye.
"Don't." Her mouth feels like radio static. "Don't."
And she kisses him.
He goes still as startled rabbit. The rain outside seems louder, suddenly, and it's as if everything - as if five long years of trust and loss and joy - is balanced on the head of a pin.
She pulls away. He looks flushed and dumbstruck in the soft, orange light, and the shiver in her chest feels like it's gone to her bones. Her heartbeat is pounding in the base of her skull.
Shit.
Fuck. Fuck.
"Garrus, I'm - "
Then his hand is under her chin and he's dragging his thumb across her bottom lip, and when he kisses her Shepard thinks she really, truly might burn up on the spot. It's like sinking into a steaming bath; like coming home.
It's gotta be Flux; the one that started it all back up again after a 2-ish year break from writing.
I'm really chuffed with how it works as a standalone fic and the way it slots into the wider Normandy Detective Agency series, and I feel like I got the ✨vibe✨ right for the setting.
Basically it's the post-Sidonis angst I think we deserve, with more cigarettes and slow-dancing 😙👌
23. fics you wanted to write but didn’t
the next instalment of tNDA rip
@shepgarrus and I are currently pooling our collective braincells into a shakarian formula 1 probably human AU which I'd love to make into something publishable but. c'est la vie.
Key points for your consideration:
- baby Shep and Garrus growing up racing on the karting circuit together
- a friendship based on both a fierce, long-established rivalry and a genuine respect for the other persons' ability
- TV interview banter, publicity photos where they always manage to stand next to each other somehow, and internet speculation about whether they're fucking on the sly
- the inherent potential for angst in a very dangerous sport
- kick-ass afterparties
- sweaty post-race Shepard in a half-undone race suit 👀👀
- sweaty post-race Garrus with messy helmet hair 👀👀👀
3. favourite line/scene you wrote this year
oooooh tricky! I got this one twice so I'll pick one published and one unpublished.
Unpublished: introducing tNDA-verse Castis.
The part of AU - particularly human AU - that I love the most is picking apart the characters. What changes? What's essential about them? How does what we know about them already - their motivation, their backstory, the way they dress - translate into a new setting?
I put Castis through the human AU wringer and he came out an expensively-dressed defence lawyer from New York, who has a somewhat contentious relationship with his bull-headed son and he's also a DILF thank you for coming to my ted talk
Under the cut because it's Long (also part of a longer scene with Garrus which I’ve written but haven’t included)
Ask me more questions about fic!
"Garrus, your car's outside I know you're in there."
Nobody walks anywhere in LA. Shepard pounds the door with her fist again, and at last a key turns and the door opens.
"Christ - finally, I was - "
Shepard registers the cane first. Then the moustache.
"Uh - "
"Good morning," says the man who isn't Garrus.
He's in his mid-fifties, Shepard would guess, in brown suit pants, a white shirt and suspenders; all well-tailored and immaculately pressed. The cane is a subtle, glossy dark-wood thing with silver at the handle, glinting in his fist.
"Morning - sir," she adds hastily, because he seems like someone who's used to it. "I'm looking for - "
"Garrus? He went to get a paper."
"Oh," she says. Trust him to walk to the damn store. "Right."
They must be related. They've got the same nose, the same scratchy voice, the same lean build, though Garrus is a few inches taller.
"I can - uh - come back later," Shepard offers into the stretching silence.
"You seem in something of a hurry."
"It can wait."
If she's quick, she could catch Garrus his way home.
"You always knock with such vivacity, do you?"
The man has a benign, amicable sort of expression which Shepard knows better than to take at face value. His eyes are keen behind the pleasantries and she gets the feeling he's not going to let her get off easy.
So Shepard settles on a personable smile.
"I suppose so."
He returns the smile and it feels like she's passed some kind of test.
"Garrus won't be long. Come in - please - Miss - ?"
"Shepard. Jane Shepard - really, it's not - " But he's already standing aside and waving her in.
"Castis Vakarian. Coffee?"
Shepard resigns herself to not having the morning she expected. "That'd be great. Thanks."
So this is the infamous Vakarian patriarch. Shepard knows the name from the digging she did when they hired Garrus. Castis has the same East Coast lilt as his son, though much more pronounced, and there's an old-money look about him. He wouldn't seem out of place in a grand old colonial house out in the country.
I got this one twice so I'll cheat a little and pick a my first foray into fanfic from 2018: Different.
If you told me 6yrs ago that I'd be writing Mass Effect fanfiction in my downtime I would've laughed you out of the room lmao
I was the right sort of age for the FF.net golden era and definitely should've been into Harry Potter fic in a big way, but it just never crossed my radar when I was a teenager for some reason.
21. most memorable comment/review
I think about all of them a lot so it's hard to pick! I got some really lovely, thoughtful comments on Dress Blues and it's always nice when old fics get a new ping too.
I've had a couple of comments on The Normandy Detective Agency from people who wouldn't usually read human AU but enjoyed the series anyway, and those are definitely stand-outs. It's nice to be the reason people are reading outside their comfort zone a little.
A lot of ME fandom spaces don't seem particularly interested in AU (which honestly blows my mind a little but that's another post lmao) so getting comments on tNDA is definitely extra special.
24. favourite fic you read this year
I'm rubbish at remembering to bookmark things and very behind on reading, so I'm definitely missing some gems BUT
oh no by thistleraven - awkward Shepard; hotboy Garrus. Funny and endearing, with spot on characterisation and absolutely no answers to all your questions about quarian teeth.
It's Better When It Feels Wrong by worstcommander - a quick and dirty Kaidan / Zaeed. I'm not usually interested in M/M or dub-con but OHHOHOH BOY. This person could write literally any ship and I'd read it.
reconstruction by motorboats - post-control ending shakarian and just absolutely fucking superb you funky little author. I can't say enough good things about this fic.
Cultural Exchange by @otemporanerys - weird AU my beloved......... species swap; for all your big spiky alien gf and human!garrus needs. A really heartfelt and original take on their relationship, and I can't wait for the next part :D
The Normandy Detective Agency is a series of non-chronological Noir AU one-shots
They've spent an hour talking about everything but this morning, and Shepard's had nothing but two strong drinks since lunch. Garrus has had - well - more than that, certainly, if he's asking her for a dance.
for the WIP Game! I've been the barest inklings of Idea Soup, but enough to know I'll be intrigued by whatever you stick a fork in!! Let's see what randomness you pull out of it this time :D
idea sooouuuuuuuuuuupppppp :DDD
I scrolled through with my eyes closed and stopped at random, then found the closest coherent thing: i.e. a very sad fresh-outta-WWII Garrus and Solana ruling the Vakarian household with an iron fist
"You can stay here as long as you want but you'd better make yourself useful. No schlepping about on the couch." Solana says, upending the washing basket onto the kitchen floor. "You tidy up after yourself, get out of bed - before midday, Garrus," she adds, when he opens his mouth indignantly. "Eat dinner at the table, and help out with the kids."
He wrinkles his nose. "Dad babysits for you, why d'you need me?"
"Because he needs to go back to work and you need a routine."
"Who made you the family shrink?" he mutters.
"Garrus," Solana closes her eyes for a moment with a handful of dirty socks halfway into the washing machine. "I'm about to hit you so fucking hard you'll wish the Nazis blew your head clean off. I am trying to do right by both of you," she continues, with the air of someone having a very circular argument with a toddler. "I have a house to run, I have a job to hold down, and I have kids to raise. I just wanna keep everybody above the water and ideally on speaking terms."
"I don't know anything about kids, Sol." And the last thing he needs right now is any kind of responsibility.
"Nobody does." She stuffs the socks into the back of the drum. "It's practice."
"But if something happens - "
"Nothing is going to happen," Solana says, soothingly. "Stanley runs rings around Dad - he can't keep up anymore with his leg the way it is - and trust me, the most dangerous kind of three-year-old is a three-year-old who knows nobody's looking."
Thanks @skjeter for the tag and for unwittingly helping get me over a bit of a block!
Tagging @shretl @shipsnthenight @shudder-shock - for fic or art or whatever you want, whenever you want.
I've hardly touched my fic for a week or two now, so I'm using this tag to force myself to get something fresh down.
From the next work in The Normandy Detective Agency, some (or all) of a chapter titled Six:
About the only thing Hannah has over on Otto is bedtime stories. Jane says he doesn't do the voices right.
Hannah draws witches and smugglers from the lamplight; builds her castles and boiling seas out of blankets. She keeps a book open in her lap - one of the four or five they have in the house for Jane - but it stays on the same page.
One night, when Jane won't settle for love nor money, Hannah plonks a kitchen sieve on her head and they go to the moon in a flying car. They sled down craters and throw snowballs - because it must be cold up there, after all - and then Jane wants nothing except more planets for three weeks.
They visit a knobbly little orange world with big tortoise people and giant worms. Another - huge and misty purple like a blueberry - full of aliens with tentacles for hair. Shooting stars with molten centres and glittering tails. Worlds full of trees as tall as mountains and tin robots with bright eyes.
"You know, she's going to be upset when she finds out books aren't actually different every time you read them." Otto says, some time during the second week of space travel.
Hannah just pats his cheek. "Jealousy doesn't look good on you, sweetie." And she scurries away grinning when he snaps the dishcloth at her.
Hey! Some of you may have noticed that TNDA has been marked complete- Chapter 10 is the end of the first 'arc', and so I've opted to make the next installment a separate fic to make the reading order clearer. The series is still ongoing!
