#wip snip
WIP Snip (not) Sunday
Thank you to the loveliest @tackytigerfic for tagging me in your WIP snip! Sorry I got to it a bit late - between travels and moving and jetlag I’ve been a bit absent, but the WIP is actually coming along so here’s another little peek at this very, very slow burn enemies to ??? to best friends to lovers.
Draco turned to say something else about them to Harry, but was stopped when he saw the far wall: shelves and shelves haphazardly filled with all kinds of mugs and plates and vases, painted in shades of green and gold and blue—the colours of the landscape here, Draco realised.
‘You can, erm, take a closer look if you want. You don’t have to,’ Potter said, scratching the back of one arm. Draco nodded wordlessly and went straight to the shelves; there was a clear timeline to them all, to Potter’s improvement. Slightly wonky pieces glazed in block colours turned into stronger, more confident creations, with patterns carved into the clay, layering earthy tones of deep red and sky blue and forest green with gold leaf. Shelves and shelves of stories, of creation, of care. Draco could scarcely believe Potter had allowed him in here. It felt like looking at his soul.
Draco didn’t know how long he stood there, but eventually he turned back to an apprehensive-looking Potter and tried to articulate it.
‘This is…’
‘I know I have a long way to go.’ Potter said quickly. ‘But I’ve taken classes and I think I’ve improved—it’s something to do, anyway, so—‘
‘It’samazing,’Draco breathed, and he meant it; everything here—the blue wheel that looked well used and loved, the brick kiln just behind it, the colours, Enid and Lottie sleeping gently together on a bed of hay—all of it made Draco feel utterly at peace; filled him with a sense of bone-deep rightness.
How completely rightit was for Harry Potter to be in this place, away from the hurried rush of city life, being permitted to make beautiful things and not do much else.
no pressure tagging @pennygalleon@katie-alden@cavendishbutterfly@wolfpants@lqtraintracks@wheezykat@moonstruckwytch@makeitp1nk@phd-mama to share your WIP snips if you’d like!
Okay I FUCKING LOVE THIS STORY ALRIGHT?? *cries over this snippet*
wip snip
most of my writing energy (there is very little!) has been directed towards my wireless project, but blue’s breathtaking art reminded me that I want to write a Teddy/Draco follow-up to Surface Texture (Harry/Teddy, with background Draco/Harry), so here’s the first few paragraphs. cw: for implied Harry/Teddy & not (yet) explicit Teddy/Draco
Gooseflesh. I know he’s here in a second because I can feel his eyes on me as desperately as though he’s run his fingers over my arm. I’m trying to listen to the woman next to me — she’s got diamonds on two fingers and would certainly buy the lot — but all I want is to turn and drag him into the alley behind the gallery.
She says something about Muggle photography and I nod, gulping down the rush of heat at my throat. She gestures wildly to the painting between us — Vic in Evening Light — saying something about Mapplethorpe and I’m sure it’s worth listening to, but all I can think is: Can she hear my heart racing?
There’s breath at the back of my neck. Oh fuck. He’s close. She hasn’t reacted yet, tittering on, rings flashing, her voice too pitchy to make any sense of the words. Focus. I nod again, certain I look like a fool.
I feel it again, the barely there brush of someone behind me. The gallery’s almost crowded enough to justify this closeness, but I know this is no stranger from the way my body has already begun to call to him. Touch me, my hips beg, desperate to lean into him, to let him steal me away from this patron and the noise of the crowd. I am hardly in control of my own limbs, let alone my mind, as it aches for this man.
It’s only been a second, not long enough for my conversation partner to notice my distraction or the flush burning its way up my neck, but then it hits me. Whoever this is is taller than I am, by at least a few inches, and Harry– Harry’s my height. We stand eye-to-eye when I face him, when I ask Harry to give me everything I want.
This isn’t Harry.
I turn.
Draco.
Omg I almost fell over I sat up so fast when I saw this! Do you know how badly I want this sequel?? Do you know how breathlessly brilliant this snippet is?? Jesus.
Six Sentence Sunday
thanks so much for the tag @orange-peony! What fun! I’m going to give you a little piece of the upcoming chapter of Cocotte (disclaimer: this fic is very explicit- the six sentences are not explicit, but if you click the link the story you’ll be reading is.)
————-
Draco stretched his body, luxuriating in the soft comfort of the expensive sheets on the bed. He felt like an entirely different person than he had when he’d entered the room earlier that evening.
When he turned his head, he saw that Harry- no, Potter- was leaning with a hip against the doorway, watching him with a soft, almost indulgent look on his face.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked, aiming for haughty and waspish. His words came out sleepy and sated, in spite of his best intentions.
Potter shrugged carelessly, “I like you.”
———————-
We’ll get that chapter posted someday. The smutty bit isn’t done and I haven’t had the energy to work it out yet.
Tagging@phoebe-delia,@drarrywords,@april-thelightfury115,@tackytigerfic,@nv-md, and anyone else who’d like to participate!
WIP Snip
Thank you for the tag @drarrily-we-row-along - absolutely loved the delicious snip you posted, read it here!
100k into my current WIP and having a crisis as it just occurred to me that maybe none of it makes sense… talking myself down very gently but it means i can’t post the latest bit i wrote in case i find myself spiralling further into confusion so here’s a snip from an older extract i’m just about to edit!
i’ve missed loads of tags recently so apols if i’m missing anyone - off the top of my head i’m going to tag sprint buddies etc @coffeedrgn87@corvuscrowned@katie-alden@maesterchill@makeitp1nk@mintamintathings@oknowkisskiss@onbeinganangel@shealwaysreads@thesleepiesthufflepuff@the-starryknight@sweet-s0rr0w@teacup-tai@wolfpants and also please anyone else who fancies doing this and distracting me from my misery!
Wartime AU, Voldemort still knocking about, Wolfstar lives, Draco deserted the Order and then came back. Harry has just returned from multiverse-travelling and accidentally brought a Malfoy from another universe with him, who’s been telling them all about his world.
“I can’t believe everyone just left him to die!”
Sirius was in a rage, prowling restlessly around the room, black hair gleaming in the shivering light from the sconces.
“Dumbledore—yeah, I mean, I can see that,” Ron said consideringly. “But there’s no way our Sirius or Remus would have ever let Harry die. Your versions must be absolute incompetents,” he said, looking at Remus and Sirius. “No offence.”
Remus rolled his eyes.
“Not to dwell too much on my equivalent’s shortcomings,” he said to the other Malfoy, “but how could they have been so careless? Albus, yes, I can see that. He always wasambitious when it came to Harry. But if our world is so close to yours, I just can’t imagine how…” His eyes flickered momentarily, and Harry realised that other Malfoy had flinched the tiniest bit. Remus, wolf-sharp, had noticed of course. “Oh. Oh.”
“Oh, what?” Sirius said crossly. “There’s no ohabout it, Moons. If they let Albus talk their Harry into walking to a certain death before he’d even finished school then we should take Malfoy’s Time-Trip thing and go and kick their arses ourselves.”
“To be fair to other me,” Harry said. “It does sound like the sort of thing I might do.”
“Which is exactly why Moony and I keep you on the straight and narrow,” Sirius told him, grabbing his hand. Sirius was a bit too thin, always, from the nervous prowl of him and the long nights of no sleep and the hunt. His fingers slipped around Harry’s smoothly, tight at the knuckles, ropey with tendons as he clutched harder.
“Pads,” Remus said quietly. “I think what the other Malfoy is trying to tell us is that, in his world, we’re—what, both of us?” He eyed other Malfoy, who nodded. “We’re dead, I think.”
“You went first,” other Malfoy said to Sirius, “which is what started it all for my Harry. And then you—” Remus sat back heavily in his chair “—went and got yourself killed in the battle, and you two—” he stabbed a finger accusingly at Ron and Hermione “—weren’t even around when he decided, like a twat, to trot off into Voldemort’s camp and thus face certain death. Anyone with a modicum of sense would have known he’d do something epically foolish, and yet…” He spread his hands out dismissively, and settled back into his chair, shoulders relaxed, spine soft.
He was, Harry realised, enjoying himself, the bright eyes of an adventurer. Sirius’s fingers twitched in Harry’s grip, nose wrinkled in irritation as he listened to other Malfoy. Across the room, real Malfoy was watching, eyes flat as they lingered on his-face-but-not. He looked paler than usual, though it might just have been the contrast with other Malfoy and that red, red thread of scarring that tugged his lips into a smile and threw the line of his cheekbone into sharp relief.
Katie’s WIP Snip
Thanks for the tags @academicdisasterficand@corvuscrowned for the tags. Check out their snips if you haven’t already!
The following is a snip from my drarry fic where Harry has a chronic illness.
Carefully, so as not to disturb Harry more than he already was, Draco slipped out of the bed, tucking the covers back around his husband. Padding through their little cottage, Draco paused to grab his dressing gown from where it laid haphazardly across the back of the sofa. Yesterday had been a good day and well, they tended to discard clothes a lot more readily on good days.
He really should have seen this coming, Draco mused. Harry’s health had been better in the last month than it had been for almost a year, but Harry had a tendency to push himself. There had been produce to harvest, jams and chutneys and pickles to be made. Even now, their small kitchen was full of this autumn’s work, jars littering every surface and garlands of onions and garlic hanging in the windows.
No-pressure tagging @orange-peony@moonstruckwytch@makeitp1nk@phd-mama@tackytigerfic and anyone else who wants to join in
Six Sentence Sunday
Hello from beautiful Blocksville, population me. Writer’s block has hit, hopefully only mildly. Very little new stuff that i can share but i did vow to keep posting snips so here we are. It’s a little saucy Legilimency action between Harry and Draco, in which Draco distracts Harry away from the memories Draco doesn’t want him to see. Unedited.Tagging everyone who wants to do this!
“Fine. You want to see what I’m hiding? Here,” Malfoy whispered almost gleefully, and Harry wasn’t sure if the words were spoken aloud or just in his mind, because he was surrounded by Malfoy’s thoughts now, the mental link between them pulsing open wide, a flood.
Harry himself was there, looking tired and worried in Lucius’s study, then disappearing under the sweep of the invisibility cloak, just a recent memory, and then more, older ones these times but Harry remembered them vividly—himself on a broom, flying low over the eaves of the Grimmauld roof, laughing down at Malfoy who was lying back on the rough tarred surface under the casement windows, so high up, both of them drunk, they must have been crazy. Harry drinking tea, hands meeting around the cup, eyes lost to thought as steam rose, Padfoot running in. Harry again, this time in school, a split lip, blood on the front of his torn shirt, looking furious about something.
“What are you doing?” he whispered to Malfoy.
“You were the one who went snooping through my memories,” Malfoy said, sneering, and then they started up again, times that Harry didn’t even remember but that he knew must be from before, because he looked so young and so stupidly happy and hopeful.
Harry with a wand, practicing something over and over, sparks filling the air of the blue drawing room.
Remus, a fresh unhealed wound under his left eye, arms tight around Harry’s neck, whispering something into his ear while Sirius rubbed Harry’s lower back in circles, and along with that a feeling of wistful jealousy that Harry realised was Malfoy’s.
Harry on the old horsehair couch at one end of the library in Grimmauld Place, waving a wine glass as he talked, face so bright and interested and alive.
And then the memory began to shiver a bit, Harry’s young unlined face and shorter curls shifting into something different, making him look more like he did now but with something not quite right about it. He looked… handsomer, he thought, eyes a brighter green than he knew they were, the flush of stubble making him look dashing rather than unkempt, a glossy sheen to his long hair.
“Malfoy…” he began, but then the version of himself in Malfoy’s mind smiled, not the sweet interested smile of the earlier vision, but something altogether different, his teeth catching on the wine-reddened curve of his lower lip, something promising and dark and vulnerable in it. He lay back against the arm of the couch, and now the background had faded into an indefinable nothingness, and it was just this image of Harry with his head back, throat bared, back arching just a little before he reached down to the button of his jeans and flicked it open carelessly with one thumb.
WIP Snip
Tagged by @wolfpants last week and I am perpetually late. Tagging @veelawings@corvuscrownedand@oknowkiss to share if you’d like.
This is an excerpt also from my untitled Bodice Ripper fest fic. Note: Harry does not think Draco is receiving these letters.
If we’re meant to be lovers, here’s a list of things you should know that I probably should just hand over to every new person I date:
I dislike small, enclosed spaces.
I am deathly allergic to kiwis.
Taking a second glass of Clarence Granger’s eggnog is always a mistake.
I see a therapist twice a month and take an anti-anxiety potion daily.
My favourite city in the world is Tokyo.
Because of Luna’s midwinter party in 2002, I have a lifetime ban from the Knight Bus and it is the only time I’ve ever paid the press off.
The most money I’ve ever spent is on an original Silver Arrow I bought at auction. I built it a special archival case with a magical voidsafe.
Once a year in June I go to a chicken shop in Surrey and that is as close as I will ever get to my aunt & uncle while they still live. My cousin Dudley sends a card every Christmas and I’ve never replied.
wednesday wip snip
From my upcoming Dronarry fic Tiny Home, a little Dron moment for you. I. am. weak. for. Dron. Ahem.
“The rest of your life?” Ron asks him gently after a beat, his summer-pink mouth tucking up in a gentle smile. He smells heady; like a field of wildflowers bleached under sunlight. “Really?”
Draco tightens his fingers over the key still held in his hand, feeling the bite of rusted metal against the skin of his palm.
“You say it with such wonder,” he whispers quickly, almost accusatory.
“Should I not?”
Draco closes his eyes, and when he opens them again, Ron is somehow even closer to him. Draco can feel the heat of his breath, the slow sway of him coming closer still.
The helpless way his own body turns toward him.
The weakness of his knees.
“How could you want this?” Draco asks him, strained and small.
Ron’s fingers wrap themselves fully around Draco’s, and Draco stares at him in frozen astonishment as he lifts Draco’s hand to his mouth and kisses the back of his knuckles, the metal of his rings; like a knight courting a prince.
A huffed breath. “How could I not?”
This is so goooooood!!! I want it NOW
