monthly word count - august

[askerian]

TOTAL: 10 598 words.

mnehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

was on vacation for three weeks and family everywhere oh god get away from me aaaaaa. and i still managed to laboriously rstart work on long standing WIPs, so! *forgives self*

POSTED
-Girl Genius: Sorin/Klaus for a kiss meme (1 736 words)

WIP
-ofic: landlord: the mafia fic. (3 285 words)
-Gundam Wing: wolfbrothers (3 333 words)
-BATTLEFIELD TERRA (1 291 words) fucking finished that blocked scene RAAA. ... now onto the... next ... scene... zzzzz.
-demon patrol chapter 28 (896 words)
-kankri/latula/mituna (57 words) (is it complete? the ending feels really shitty to me. urgh. imma sit on it a bit longer to decide.)

Comments

[krait]

...Late!reply is late, but: wolfbrothers GW fic, YAY! It is still dear to my heart even if it's been a while since my last reread. :D

[askerian]

♥ you're my favorite ;; here have a teaser.



"Bazookasbrother was right," old man Rosca said, dispassionate and pitiless. "Get your wolf to explore alone."

Duo winced, sneaked Killer a look. He and Rosca sitting on a bench under a gallery by the admin building; Killer was on the grass with a handful of other wolves, circling cautiously as they all orbited Folha. The ancient queen wolf lay on her side on top of a decorative bit of stone, probably some kind of memorial. It barely reached mid-thigh on Duo and was the highest point in the courtyard and Duo was surprised she hadn't fallen over climbing it.

The only reason Killer was letting the other wolves sniff him was that Folha radiated contentment to have the lot of them around her, and he didn't want to disappoint her by leaving or scaring those strange unknown wolves off.

"You're thinking 'what if he leaves the compound.'"

Duo didn't lie, because lying to a guy linked to his mind was pointless and also offensive, probably. (Also he didn't lie as a general rule.) "Well -- the security might stop him..."

Yeah, you could only open the doors to the outside with a passcard. That was totally going to stop Killer going up to the second floor and jumping out a window onto the street, if the fancy took him. Urgh.

"Is he too stupid to mind the cars?" Rosca said dryly.

"Of course not!"

"There you have it."

Even if he gets out into the town, Rosca's thought shared, so what? badge to his neck, police knows/has wolves, civilians like wolves (too many pettings? Oh no!) the front desk see a badged wolf, oh hello yes let me open the door for you.

Urgh. Duo leaned back, arms crossed, tried not to glower sullenly at the pack outside. One of the male wolves was starting to kind of... twitch forward-backward to Killer like he wanted to play.

"In fact, let's start now," Rosca said, and stood without warning. "Come with me, let's walk for a bit."

"What? But--"

"Folha will handle it. You will not get a better setup for a first attempt."

Awgh. Duo stood reluctantly, started walking, couldn't help but throw little glances back. Killer, ears tilted dubiously, was still standing firm on his feet and looking at the other wolf like he had no idea what the fuck. At least he seemed engaged. And it wasn't like he couldn't track Duo's scent if he needed to find him...

The second they turned the corner Killer abandoned the group to come galloping after them. He bounded around the corner, stopped in a spray of gravel, and stared at Rosca, who was meeting his eyes with an eyebrow up, fearless in the face of several hundred pounds of pony-sized suspicious wolf.

Danger? Killer checked, eyes flicking to Duo only briefly. Folha's human was making Duo feel weird-nervous-bad. Damn, Duo had thought he'd been shielding better than that, and that Killer had been sufficiently distracted.

No, buddy, we're walking, Duo replied, trying for reassuring. We're not going far, and we're coming back. Stay with Folha.

Killer snorted. You don't feel right.

It's human things. Silly things. It's fine. "Go on, shoo."

Killer lowered his head, still eyeing Rosca suspiciously, let out an image of Rosca's calf and his jaws snapping closed on it. Folha's human, he wouldn't kill, but if anyone touched his human...! Bite, he said firmly, and turned away with his tail high to trot back to the pack.

Rosca had both eyebrows up when Duo glanced over to check. Argh.

"Well. I see this isn't one-sided."

"... I did trigger it with all that worrywarting," Duo admitted, sighing.

"Still." They took a few steps; Rosca seemed deep in thought, wrinkles deepening between his eyes, around his mouth as he frowned. "The way you take turns being the protector is... hm. Has it always been like that between you?"

Duo shrugged. "Dunno. Since the war? Not when he was a puppy, obviously, but after the -- after my... my orphanage burned down, he started getting bossy, yeah. I kinda put it on the now-a-teenager thing. Also the fact that -- well -- we'd lost, you know, everyone else, almost lost each other and... Yeah."

"Yes, probably he was responding to your own feelings of insecurity at the time, and was never given a clear signal that he could stop -- huh. Wait."

"Uh?"

Rosca was frowning at him. "How old did you say the two of you were at the time, again?"

"Uh." Duo thought back. "Me, about eight, eight and a half, and he was... not quite two?"

Rosca's frown deepened. "So he was entering adolescence -- gangly limbs, growth spurts, losing his baby fur...?"

"Oh -- yeah, he'd been doing that for a while. Why?"

Rosca let out a long sigh and started walking again, looking all ... philosophical and enlightened, which was a bit annoying. It was like he'd deciphered the whole thing in about a second, and damn but that was irritating. If it were that simple--

"It's still not going to be simple to fix," Rosca said, gently amused. "But I just realized that while he was becoming an adult, you were still a cub, and stayed a cub in his eyes for another three to five years. No doubt you were a bossier, smarter cub, but there was a period of your lives -- a period without anyone who outranked the two of you, to make it moot -- when he was the adult and you were the puppy." He clicked his tongue. "No wonder neither of you seems to know who's in charge half the time."

Duo blinked, half baffled and half annoyed. "I know it's kind of weird, but I don't know why it's even such a surprise, I mean, I talked about this before." Come to think of it, they had reacted weird about it.

"Maxwell, of course it's taking us some time to absorb all the implications. Even the Vikings didn't allow a young man to approach a wolf cub until he was at least thirteen. Even then the median age for a first bonding was fifteen. There were reasons for that."

Duo frowned, and then winced. Yeah, he suspected that no one really wanted a nine-year-old in the middle if a bitch decided to go into heat. He supposed he'd been more lucky than he knew that they were pack-less for so long. Eugh.

"... More reasons than just that," Rosca told him in a quiet, gentle voice. "Though that's still a dang good reason."

[krait]

Aww, yay! Teasers!

Love Duo and his rambling that boils down to "so yeah my childhood was tragic but I'm hoping you won't notice that if I put enough ummm and uhh in my sentence for the facts to hide beyind" and Killer thinking he's the grownup! ♥

[askerian]

seriously tho Duo. :X it's just so awkward to bring up at a nice party that until he was eight he used to look in trash bins for food and stuff.

killer totally thinks he's the big brother. ;__;