#Docking Module

[lonestarflight]

Cancelled Missions: Apollo-Soyuz Test Program II, with a Salyut Space Station

"The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) had its origins in talks aimed at developing a common U.S./Soviet docking system for space rescue. The concept of a common docking system was first put forward in 1970; it was assumed at that time, however, that the docking system would be developed for future spacecraft, such as the U.S. Space Station/Space Shuttle, not the U.S. Apollo Command and Service Module (CSM) and Soviet Soyuz spacecraft in operation at the time.

A joint U.S./Soviet space mission served the political aims of both countries, however, so the concept of a near-term docking mission rapidly gained momentum. In May 1972, at the superpower summit meeting held in Moscow, President Richard Nixon and Premier Alexei Kosygin signed an agreement calling for an Apollo-Soyuz docking in July 1975.

NASA and its contractors studied ways of expanding upon ASTP even before it was formally approved; in April 1972, for example, McDonnell Douglas proposed a Skylab-Salyut international space laboratory . A year and a half later (September 1973), however, the aerospace trade magazine Aviation Week & Space Technology cited unnamed NASA officials when it reported that, while the Soviets had indicated interest in a 1977 second ASTP flight, the U.S. space agency was 'currently unwilling' to divert funds from Space Shuttle development.

Salyut Apollo docking diagram

Nevertheless, early in 1974 the Flight Operations Directorate (FOD) at NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas, examined whether a second ASTP mission might be feasible in 1977. The 1977 ASTP proposal aimed to fill the expected gap in U.S. piloted space missions between the 1975 ASTP mission and the first Space Shuttle flight.

The brief in-house study focused on mission requirements for which NASA JSC had direct responsibility. FOD assumed that Apollo CSM-119 would serve as the prime 1977 ASTP spacecraft and that the U.S. would again provide the Docking Module (DM) for linking the Apollo CSM with the Soyuz spacecraft. CSM-119 had been configured as the five-seat Skylab rescue CSM; work to modify it to serve as the 1975 ASTP backup spacecraft began as FOD conducted its study, soon after the third and final Skylab crew returned to Earth in February 1974. FOD suggested that, if a backup CSM were deemed necessary for the 1977 ASTP mission, then the incomplete CSM-115 spacecraft should get the job. CSM-115, which resided in storage in California, had been tapped originally for the cancelled Apollo 19 moon landing mission.

FOD also assumed that the ASTP prime crew of Thomas Stafford, Vance Brand, and Deke Slayton would serve as the backup crew for the 1977 ASTP mission, while the 1975 ASTP backup crew of Alan Bean, Ronald Evans, and Jack Lousma would become the 1977 ASTP prime crew. FOD conceded, however, that this assumption was probably not realistic. If new crewmembers were needed, FOD noted, then training them would require 20 months. They would undergo 500 hours of intensive language instruction during their training.

FOD estimated that Rockwell International support for the 1977 ASTP flight would cost $49.6 million, while new experiments, nine new space suits, and 'government-furnished equipment' would total $40 million. Completing and modifying CSM-115 for its backup role would cost $25 million. Institutional costs — for example, operating Mission Control and the Command Module Simulator (CMS), printing training manuals and flight documentation, and keeping the cafeteria open after hours — would add up to about $15 million. This would bring the total cost to $104.7 million without the backup CSM and $129.7 million with the backup CSM.

The FOD study identified 'two additional major problems' facing the 1977 ASTP mission, both of which involved NASA JSC's Space Shuttle plans. The first was that the CMS had to be removed to make room for planned Space Shuttle simulators. Leaving it in place to support the 1977 ASTP mission would postpone Shuttle simulator availability.

A thornier problem was that 75% of NASA JSC's existing flight controllers (about 100 people) would be required for the 1977 ASTP in the six months leading up to and during the mission. In the same period, NASA planned to conduct "horizontal" Space Shuttle flight tests. These would see a Shuttle Orbiter flown atop a modified 747; later, the aircraft would release the Orbiter for an unpowered glide back to Earth. FOD estimated that NASA JSC would need to hire new flight controllers if it had to support both the 1977 ASTP and the horizontal flight tests. The new controllers would receive training to support Space Shuttle testing while veteran controllers supported the 1977 ASTP.

The ASTP Apollo CSM (CSM-111) lifted off on a Saturn IB rocket on 15 July 1975 with astronauts Thomas Stafford, Vance Brand, and Donald Slayton on board. The ASTP Saturn IB, the last rocket of the Saturn family to fly, lifted off from Launch Complex (LC) 39 Pad B, one of two Saturn V pads at Kennedy Space Center, not the LC 34 and LC 37 pads used for Saturn IB launches in the Apollo lunar program. This was because NASA had judged that maintaining the Saturn IB pads for Skylab and ASTP would be too costly. A 'pedestal' (nicknamed the 'milkstool') raised the Skylab 2, 3, and 4 and ASTP Saturn IB rockets so that they could use the Pad 39B Saturn V umbilicals and crew access arm.

Once in orbit, the ASTP CSM turned and docked with the DM mounted on top of the Saturn IB's second stage. It then withdrew the DM from the stage and set out in pursuit of the Soyuz 19 spacecraft, which had launched about eight hours before the Apollo CSM with cosmonauts Alexei Leonov and Valeri Kubasov on board. The two craft docked on 17 July and undocked for the final time on July 19. Soyuz 19 landed on 21 July. The ASTP Apollo CSM, the last Apollo spacecraft to fly, splashed down near Hawaii on 24 July 1975 — six years to the day after Apollo 11, the first piloted Moon landing mission, returned to Earth.

The proposal for a 1977 ASTP repeat gained little traction. Though talks aimed at a U.S. Space Shuttle docking with a Soviet Salyut space station had resumed in May 1975, no plans for new U.S.-Soviet manned missions existed when the ASTP Apollo splashed down. Shuttle-Salyut negotiators made progress in 1975-1976, but the U.S. deferred signing an agreement until after the results of the November 1976 election were known.

In May 1977, the sides formally agreed that a Shuttle-Salyut mission should occur. In September 1978, however, NASA announced that talks had ended pending results of a comprehensive U.S. government review. Following the December 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, work toward joint U.S.-Soviet piloted space missions was abandoned on advice from the U.S. Department of State. It would resume a decade later as the Soviet Union underwent radical internal changes that led to its collapse in 1991 and the rebirth of the Soviet space program as the Russian space program."

-Article from "No Shortage of Dreams" blog: link

Drew Granston: link

source, source, source

[nadia-el-mansours]

It's been 20 years and they've probably not spent more than 20 hours in total together since, but they're literally still here:

[thinkmanythingsofit]

[gabolange]

50 reason to kiss, number five.

31: after a small rejection.

FAM, Margo x Sergei, AU from 2.08, And Here's to You.

[youreorangeyoumoron]

Paine's "60 years of communism will wipe the smile off anyone's face" vs Sergei's smile every time he interacts with Margo

[sw5w]

Theed Spaceport

STAR WARS EPISODE II: Attack of the Clones 00:38:26 - 00:38:35

I probably missed a few ships at the spaceport, but rest assured they’re unidentified vessels. Kinto points out that some of the objects in the spaceport just cargo containers, and also corrected me on the name of the Action VI bulk freighter. Thanks Kinto!

Thanks to Spookywilloww on Wookieepedia for clueing me into the Spaceports spread in the Complete Locations book for further identification of objects in this scene. Previously I was only using the diagram of the spaceport from the DeAgostini Star Wars Encyclopedia #60: Naboo.

I also removed the identifications of the DSS-02 shield generators (the model seen in The Empire Strikes Back) as they're never actually clarified as the same, only labeled as "auxiliary power generators" in Complete Locations.

They're possibly similar generators also produced by Kuat Drive Yards.

[siderealcity]

After System Collapse and Rapport, I can't help thinking about how completely and utterly insane ART and Murderbot's first meeting was from ART's perspective.

UplandGatewayOne, the station where they met, is ART's home station. In Mihira and New Tideland's system. Which is deeply anti-corporate. SecUnit even notes at the time that there aren't any security or bond companies there, so nobody should be looking for escaping SecUnits. Iris and Matteo, for all the anti-corporate missions they've been on, have never even seen one, which means Perihelion most likely hasn't either. They're not deployed on transit rings except in GrayCris-paying-to-murder-people situations, and when they are, it's a big deal accompanied by a lot of alarms and screaming and panic.

And one just kind of strolls across the private docks without setting off the weapons scanners. Wholly unnoticed.

So there was already no legitimate explanation for a SecUnit being here. That's point one. Which means it has to have an illegitimate reason.

And ART's paranoia is easily on par with Tarik's, generally speaking. Even though it's never encountered a SecUnit before it has to be aware that this could be an attack by a corporate. Except the SecUnit's got no drones, no additional weaponry, no armor, and it's wearing cargo pants and a hoodie. Which would seem to suggest that it's supposed to be mistaken for a human -- okay, maybe that explains how it got across the transit station a tiny bit? Not really. But at least it accounts for the lack of screaming.

But there's no point in it trying to pretend it's a human now, if this is the prelude to some kind of attack. It's not like ART is a passenger transport, and these are the private non-commercial docks. It can't get on board without trying to hack the lock, and it can't get too far from its handler without frying itself, so it has to do whatever it's doing before ART leaves the transit ring. Whatever attack is coming, it has to be soon. Like, right now, soon.

And it just pings ART directly.

Not even... trying to hide its presence as a potential hostile MI a little.

That is... possibly the most stupid prelude to a code attack it could have made? And if it had been trying to pretend it was human to persuade ART's crew (who aren't even here anyway) to give it access to the ship, it just blew its cover. What the hell is its human handler thinking? They're really bad at this.

And then it asks for a ride--which, again, is hilarious if it thinks it can gain entry that easily--wait. What the fuck? It's offering several hundred hours of entertainment media as a trade.

There is no human handler.

ART doesn't even have to check the governor module at that point. No human would imagine that transports watch television. Possibly, no other bots besides transports would know that they do, because transports are famously not-communicative. Nobody could have instructed it to say that. The only way the SecUnit itself could have gotten the idea that this approach might work is if it tried it before and it was successful.

Okay, so what we know for sure is: This SecUnit is a rogue, and it talks to transports.

And apparently it's hitchhiking?

This raises so many more questions than it answers.

Where the hell did it come from? How did it get across the station without setting off any alerts? Why was it chatting up transports before now? How did it even get several hundred hours of entertainment media downloads? And why the hell would any sentient being, let alone a rogue SecUnit, want to hitchhike to RaviHyral? A crummy little moon which has nothing on it except for mines.

ART's explanation of, "I was curious about you," for letting Murderbot on board is the understatement of the millennium.

This is the equivalent of a frigging walrus ringing your doorbell.

[rage-claw]

starting tomorrow night i have four days off and im like.....is it time.....do i start my neverwinter nights 2 playthrough....i was trying to finish up the other rpgs i currently have installed so i can uninstall them and free up some room before i dove back into the crpgs....but four whole days....

[k1ranishf4]

☆ Ink and Instinct ☆

☆ Jason Todd x Female Reader

☆ His muscles were screaming, his bones aching and he wanted nothing more than to collapse in bed—or to end up in a coma, preferably. Tasteless joke, he knew, considering that he had literally died and came back, but oh well. None of that mattered when he saw his fiancée, though. Or rather, when he saw the pretty black ink on her radiant skin, right where her womb was.

☆ Content tags/warnings: 18+ content, engaged couple, explicit language, horny Jason Todd, explicit content, soft smut, oral sex (f receiving), fingering, NSFW, pet names (baby, sweetheart, pretty girl (1x), my love), praise, reassurance, reader got a womb tattoo without his knowledge, information broker!reader, shameless Jason Todd, newfound breeding kink and its consequences (don’t worry, no pregnancy in this), Jason’s thinking with his dick, momentarily shy reader, ticklish reader, humorous and sweet atmosphere, no beta we die like everyone in DC at some point

The fire escape groaned beneath his boots as he landed on the creaky metal, right in front of your shared bedroom window. It became a routine for him to enter the apartment through the window after patrolling, considering that the front door would raise too much attention to him. No one was supposed to know who the Red Hood was nor where he lived, thank you very much. He checked his surroundings again, like he always did, and then slid the window open to climb inside.

Patrol had been complete bullshit, in his opinion. Chasing down an amateur thief who ended up knocking himself out by running into a brick wall because he had looked back at Jason, disrupting a drug deal by the docks, gunning down Penguin's goons after one of them had spotted him—he was tired. And sore. He didn't even know anymore if the dried drops of blood on his jacket were his or someone else's.

He wanted nothing more than to get rid of his clothes, take a shower and melt next to you in bed. You, his perfect, smart fiancée who entered his life as the best information broker of Gotham's underworld. He sometimes still had moments of realization that, yes, he was, in fact, going to marry you. His heart felt way too heavy with love.

Jason thought you might be asleep by now, cuddled up in the warm sheets and sprawled out over his side of the bed again, despite your insistence that you always stayed on yours. He never asked you to wait up for him and you were out like a light by eleven o'clock sharp most of the time, so it was a surprise to see you still awake, music filling the air from the loudspeaker at a volume that wouldn't disturb your neighbors.

He closed the window gently, not wanting to announce his presence just yet. You were oblivious that he was even there, in the middle of changing. He leaned back against the windowsill and crossed his arms as he watched you, still in his whole Red Hood getup. Sure, okay, it might have been creepy of him to watch you change, but he didn't really see how anyone could blame him.

To him, you were the hottest, most sexiest woman in all of Gotham, hell, in the whole world. Smart, witty, beautiful, and so kind, he could die again and be much happier in his grave this time around. His gaze raked over you behind his helmet's white lenses, taking in every inch of skin you were showing as you stood there in nothing but black lace panties, pulling a shirt over your head and humming along to your favorite song playing in the background.

He smirked with amusement when you turned and yelped, jumping like a scared cat.

"Jason!" You threw the nearest object—an empty deodorant bottle that he didn't know why you still kept—at him and missed, the aluminium bottle clattering on the hardwood floor. "Don't just stand there, asshole, you scared me!"

He smiled at your indignant tone and looked you up and down again. "Calm down, baby. You know it's me," he mused smugly, his voice changed by the voice modulator. He didn't even make a move to take his helmet off or to put his guns inside the safe in the closet, still leaning against the wall.

"Why didn't you say anything?" You asked with a huff, walking past him to pick the empty deodorant bottle up and putting it back on a shelf instead of just throwing it away, then pausing the music. "Watching me like some creep, instead... Idiot."

But he wasn't listening. His gaze was on your stomach, which was hidden by the shirt again. He could swear that he had seen something there. He watched you reach up to the shelf inside the closet, his eyes still on your stomach while you rummaged through your clothes. For what, he didn't know, nor did he care, because now he could see it clearly.

"Lift your shirt," he said without any kind of context, not even looking at you. His arms were still crossed, but he felt tenser.

"Huh?"

He met your gaze, white lenses meeting hypnotizing but confused eyes.

"Your shirt," he repeated, still making no move to get out of his grimy clothes. "Lift it up."

He kept watching you as you looked at him with confusion for another moment before grabbing the hem of your shirt and lifting it up to your stomach.

His breath caught in his throat.

"I was gonna show you eventually," you started rambling, but he wasn't even hearing the words. "I thought it'd be cool, I guess, and I was waiting for it to heal properly, but then you became busier and—"

He called your name softly, so soft it could as well have been deadly. His head slowly lifted, looking into your eyes again. "When did you get it?"

The 'it' in question being a womb tattoo just above the waistband of your panties, a tattoo of his name. Cursive, elegant, the J underlining the rest of the letters and dipping beneath your panties.

He felt his heart race, his head tilting when you didn't answer. "Baby, when did you get that?" He asked again. Exhaustion who? He was more concerned about not jumping your bones right then and there.

Jason slowly got closer to you, gloved hand gently tilting your head up. "Don't be shy now, pretty girl. I just wanna know when you got it without me ever realizing," he reassured.

His thumb gently rubbed circles on your jaw, silently encouraging you not to get all shy on him now. "A few months ago," you mumbled. "Three, I think."

He paused. Months? Months of his name engraved on your skin, on your womb, and he was only seeing it now?

Taking a deep breath, he finally reached up to get rid of his helmet, tossing it on the bed carelessly. His eyes were dark, once emerald now appearing black. "You got my name tattooed right above your pussy and never told me?"

"Don't say it like that!" You slapped his chest, but he only smirked. His pretty fiancée, flustered about a tattoo she had gotten on her own volition.

"It's the truth, no? Fuck, baby." His hands went to your waist, his pants painfully tight. "C'mon. Let's get rid of this, hm?" He lightly tugged at your shirt.

"You haven't even put your guns away—"

"I know." He looked into your eyes. "I'll do that as soon as you're out of this shirt. Promise."

"Jason..." He could hear that you didn't believe him. Which was fair, considering that all of his thoughts were on you. Your body. That tattoo.

He felt dizzy from simply remembering that it was his name. His name. On your perfect body.

How would it look like if you were pregnant?

The thought made Jason pause.

Neither of you had ever brought up the topic of having children, not when you were dating, not now. But fuck, if it wasn't an appealing idea.

He never thought of himself as father material, nor did he have any intention of fantasizing about something that you might not even want, but the thought of your stomach becoming round and full of his child, with his name literally on your skin and claiming you, both of you—shit.

"You'll be the death of me," he told you hoarsely, voice thick with lust. "Get on the bed, baby. I'll put my guns in the safe, I promise, but I need you on that bed."

He'd throw you on it if he had to, but he was forcing himself not to go completely caveman on you. It was the last thing you needed, he could tell from your uncertain expression.

"C'mon." He gently guided you towards the bed, walking slowly with you until the back of your knees hit the edge of it. "Just like that. Sit down, baby."

Only when you were sitting did he go to the closet, helmet in hand, and put it along with his guns inside the safe that he had put there for this purpose. Aside from the things he personally needed as Red Hood, there were also some document files and USB drives that belonged to you—all filled with information about various criminals and crime lords.

You never stopped being his information broker and neither of you intended to change that.

"You're not mad, right?" The uncertainty in your voice made him pause, the fog of lust dissipating just enough for some rationality to return. He locked the safe and looked at you again.

"Mad? Why would I be mad?" Jason asked, confused. He stood up and walked towards you, sitting down on his knees in front of you and peeling his gloves off.

"I don't know, I just—" He watched you huff, his hands gently running up and down your thighs. "I never told you. I thought..."

"What?" He tilted his head, looking up at you with patience and so much love. His eyes flicked to your throat as you swallowed.

"I thought you might think I'm insane," you confessed quietly, avoiding his gaze.

Jason couldn't stop the smile that spread on his face. "Insane? Baby, the only one going insane right now is me because I'm trying very hard not to fuck you right this instant."

He laughed when you paused, looking at him like he was crazy. His heart swelled when he saw you getting out of that unsure headspace. Insecurity never suited you, in his opinion.

"You're so disgusting," you huffed, and his smile widened at the relieved humor written all over your face.

"That's what you do to me," he grinned. "Now take this shirt off. Please. I wanna see the ink again."

He looked at you with a mix of lust and adoration, not wanting to rush you but also feeling like a feral dog that's hurling its toy across the room.

With a sigh, you took the shirt off and set it aside. "Don't be weird about this," you muttered with faux sternness, making him smile.

"No promises," he winked at you, his hands traveling up your thighs to your hips. "Spread your legs. I need to get closer to you."

"And people say romance is dead," you mumbled as you spread your legs, making him chuckle softly while shifting closer, his lips immediately pressing a gentle kiss on your lower belly.

"You don't know what this makes me want to do," he breathed against your soft skin, his eyes fluttering when he felt your fingers run through the raven strands.

"You mean other than fucking me?" You asked teasingly, tilting your head.

"Oh, you..." He met your grin with his own and stood up, making you lie on your back in the middle of the bed before taking off his boots and settling between your legs.

His heart swelled when you giggled as his lips met your neck. He loved it, loved that you were sensitive and easily ticklish. It made sex even better. He buried his head in the crook of your neck, chuckling when you squirmed.

"Hey, now," he murmured against your neck. "No squirming, I haven't even started."

"That tickles!" You protested with a smile as more kisses were littered on your skin, down to your shoulder.

He smiled and pulled back, looking into your eyes. "Let me worship you, baby." His hand went to your lower belly, gently caressing your skin. He took a deep breath, feeling like he might combust.

Jason looked at you when your hand reached for his cheek. "What are you thinking?" You asked, your eyes looking like gems to him.

"You," he rasped. "This tattoo." He took a deep breath. You were his fiancée, sure, but he was still so afraid that he might scare you away. "I'm thinking about what it would look like if you were pregnant."

A crazy thing to say, he knew, as he watched your eyes widen. You weren't even married yet and he was already thinking about knocking you up. Just to see your skin stretch with his baby, with his name on your body.

"Jason—"

"I know," he interrupted, not even giving you the chance to finish speaking. "I won't do anything you don't want me to, I swear to you. But... Fuck, baby, I can't stop thinking about it. What it'd look like if your stomach was round with my name literally on it and our baby inside you."

He hadn't even been aware that he was hard. But he could feel it now, the unbearable tightness of his pants. He swallowed. "We don't have to talk about babies or anything right now. I just..." His hand gently rubbed your womb again. "Let me worship you, baby. Please. Let me show you how much I love this tattoo. How much I love you."

He watched you swallow before nodding. "Words," he murmured. "Give me words, my love."

"Yes," you breathed. "I.. I want you to show me."

That was all he needed.

He leaned down and kissed you deeply, but without urgency. This wasn't like the countless heated make-out sessions the two of you had had or the rough sex whenever both or one of you was too pent up to release the emotions verbally.

No, this kiss conveyed all of his love for you, the adoration he felt for you. One of his hands cupped the back of your head when you let out a small noise against his lips, tilting your head to deepen the kiss.

He hummed against your lips when your arms locked around his neck, pulling away with a soft intake of breath before his lips went to your neck.

He smiled as he pressed kisses on your neck, hearing your soft laughs. "You're still ticklish," he murmured against your skin, amusement in his voice.

"I'm blaming you," he heard you say, and laughed.

"Of course you are."

His lips traveled from your neck to your shoulder, down to your collarbones. Both of you started breathing more shallowly as he littered your perfect breasts and stomach with soft kisses, until his lips were on your womb. On that damn tattoo.

He heard your breath hitch when his fingers dipped beneath the waistband of your panties, but they stayed there. He looked at you, pupils blown wide. "Can I?"

He watched your throat work as you swallowed. "Yes," you whispered. "Please."

"You don't have to beg me. Never beg me, baby." He inhaled sharply as he pressed a kiss on your clothed mound before pulling the black lace off of your body and tossing it on the floor. "Fuck, you're gorgeous."

He felt hot. Too hot. His skin was burning as he leaned down and pressed another kiss on your mound, on the small extension of the inked J. His heart was racing, especially when he heard you gasp softly.

"Jay—"

"Shhh, I've got you," he whispered. "Just lie down and let me take care of you, baby." He had to take his jacket off, the leather landing on the floor too. His body was on fire, molten lava coursing through his veins.

He let his eyes wander over your body again before shifting a little further away. "You're perfect," he whispered as he leaned down, his breath ghosting over your glistening cunt. He pressed a kiss on your flesh before licking a stripe from your entrance to your clit, his eyes fluttering as he heard your breath hitch.

He looked up at you. "Tell me to stop if it becomes too much or if something feels wrong," he told you before his mouth closed around your clit, his tongue swirling around it.

The sound of your breathing becoming heavier only turned him on even more as his hands went to your thighs, moving your legs over his shoulders. Death by suffocation wouldn't be a bad way to go if this was how it happened.

"Jason—mmm..." Your breathy moan went straight to his cock, still straining painfully against his pants. He had half a mind not to dry-hump the damn bed while eating you out.

His right hand left your thigh and went up to your wet entrance, slowly easing his middle finger into you as he kept lapping at your clit. The pleased sigh that left your lips made him moan in response, muffled by your flesh.

He added a second finger when you started rolling your hips against his mouth, meeting his fingers with your own movements. He let out a muffled groan and put his free hand on your hip, to keep himself grounded and not to pin you in place.

Jason didn't mind the movement, in fact, he took it as a sign that he was doing a good enough job. He kept his mouth on your clit as his fingers pumped faster in and out of you, your moans and sighs filling the air.

It was over for him when your hands landed in his hair as you arched your back. He could feel your legs trembling while you clenched around his fingers, greedy cunt sucking them in. He kept his ministrations up as he listened to you moaning his name, his eyes on the very tattoo of it on your belly.

"Jay—Fuck, Jason, that feels good—Mmmm—!"

He couldn't see your face from down here, but he didn't need to. His eyes were locked on the tattoo, watching it ripple with your skin as he curled his fingers against the spot that he knew made you see stars, listening to you moan with satisfaction as he repeated it.

"Jason—Jason, Jay—," he heard you mewl and whimper. "I'm gonna—Fuck, I'm gonna—"

It didn't take too long for him to groan in pleasure as he felt you pulling his hair, coating his fingers with your release while your thighs clamped down on his head. His nose was pressed against your skin, the flowery scent of your body lotion mixed with the musky scent of your cum filling his senses.

He worked you through your orgasm, his own body practically vibrating from the lust coursing through his veins. Only when you stopped squeezing his head with your thighs, did he sit up and slowly pull his fingers out of you.

"Shit," he breathed as he watched you pant and come down from your high. His clean hand rubbed your hip and thigh gently, wanting to soothe you as you caught your breath. "Easy, baby. No rush, take your time."

"Jason," you breathed, your eyes meeting his.

"Shhh... Take your time. We can focus on my issue later."

He kept his hand on you until your breathing was relatively normal again and your legs weren't shaking so much anymore. He helped you sit up, letting you use his arm to pull yourself up.

"You okay?" He asked softly, adoration and concern in his eyes as he watched you nod.

"That felt good," you breathed. "Was...really good."

He smiled as you leaned against him, his arm snaking around you and holding you close. He was still uncomfortably hard in his pants, but that wasn't going to stop him from making sure you were okay first. He rubbed your sweaty skin soothingly, letting you take all the time you needed to fully recover.

"Next time," he murmured, "tell me before you get a tattoo. Might save me from having to process it before I can fuck you."

He chuckled when you slapped his chest, muttering something about him being "a filthy animal", and pressed a kiss on your forehead.

He had come home wanting to sleep, but the red light of the digital clock showing him that it was 3:47 A.M. told him that neither of you two would be getting much sleep tonight.

Tomorrow would have to be a lazy day, he supposed, smirking as he watched your hands reach for his belt.

☆ A/N: Let me know if there’s something I can do better, constructive criticism is always welcome. Hope you enjoyed!!

☆ 3.4k words

[reactivemotion]

"Nothing I suppose!"

[messenger-of-babel]

Coloured Red

Summary: He likes you in his colour, just not that like that. (Jason Todd x reader)

Word Count: 2.1K

Notes: blood and injury. Hope everyone's having a good week so far! Not my favouriteeeeee Jason piece I have written but please enjoy anyways. xx

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It wasn't supposed to happen like this.

Never like this.

He had been working out of the manor for a few days, something he was already reluctant to do. However, you had sent him off to "work" with a bright smile and a kiss on the cheek, wishing him well for whatever convention Librarians had. Instead of your boyfriend being the gruff librarian sorting returns every night, he was in fact the red masked vigilante cooped up in the cave, pacing back and forth in front of the Bat computer while Tim tried to trace their latest suspect.

Dick had called him back for some extra firepower in the latest case, and if he hadn't owed him one Jason would be back with you in a heartbeat. "Get anything?" he grunts to Tim, who's fingers are typing strings of code into the keyboard.

"Not yet," he hums, the younger man's face twitching with annoyance as the firewall warning flashes across the screen again.

"Give it time, Jay. we don't want to let them know we're onto them." comes Dick, who’s leaning against a railing and still fully suited up from his earlier patrol. "I've checked all through The Cauldron and Southside, no trace of them there. Penguin must have closed up shop around Cobblepot Steel when he started working with his new friend. Going through great lengths to gatekeep his new buddy from us." he hums.

"Well I want to get this meet and greet over with," Jason grumbles, crossing his arms while he scuffs his boots impatiently.

"Bee in your bonnet, Red?" Dick calls and Jason scoffs.

"You put it there. You wanted me to help take 'em down while the Bat is out of town with Superscout, but you don't even know where they are. I've spent a full night just waiting for boy genius here to get a lock."

Dick puts his hands up in mock surrender. "We'll be done soon, promise. Then you can go home to your sweetheart. Hey, you can even say you came back early just to see them. I'm helping you get brownie points." he grins, nimbly dodging the hand Jason had swung out to slap the back of his head. "Where are they anyways? Their place?"

"Safehouse." Jason grunts back. "Staying at mine while I'm helping you lot. Old Gotham, near the GCPD. Besides, I told them to mark down I'd be back tonight on the calendar anyways."

Dick whistles. "Didn't think you had a place that close to the cops."

Jason just shrugs. "They're not after me, and if they were it would be somewhere they wouldn't look. Plus it's a nice distance from you all." he grumbles.

Dick pushes off the wall coming to lean over a monitor near Tim. "Well if our mystery person is teaming up with Penguin, and he isn't interested in the drug business, what is he here for?" he hums, eyes focused on the map of Gotham that Tim has pulled up. He taps the screen after a second, zooming in. "Here. Dixon Docks. We haven't checked here yet. Penguin used to smuggle through here, but it also became a bit of a meet up spot. He might have gone back to old ground."

"Yeah, but Penguin shifted his focus into drug running. Bruce put him under pretty heavy surveillance, managed to shut down a lot of his operations for a while. You really think he'd be that stupid to start trying to smuggle firearms again?" Tim piped up.

"Maybe. But Maybe its not firearms. This spot used to be a mob meeting spot. He never visited the operation personally unless-"

"Unless he wanted to order a hit." Jason cut off his older counterpart, voice becoming modulated as he fixed his mask to his face. "Seems there's a chance his new play pal is a hitman."

"For who though?" Tim asks.

"Maybe the hit isn't one Penguin is ordering. maybe the Penguin's selling info." Dick calls, testing his in earpiece before giving Jason a nod. "Me and Hood are going in to take a look. Track our location and keep the cameras on."

Tim nods while Jason and Dick head for the bikes, mounting each of their respective vehicles.

"Finally something to do." Jason groans, stretching his arms above his head before catching the cocky grin from Dick speeding past him. "Show-off." he murmurs, his own engine roaring to life as he follows suit.

They had cleared the dock pretty easily, Dick's hunch being correct. Between the two of them the middlemen and thugs were strewn across the floor of the warehouse, and Tim had already called the GCPD to come pick them up for the arrest. "No sign of our flightless friend." Jason grumbled, stepping over an unconscious thug.

"Nor our new mystery visitor." Dick concludes, tucking his escrima under his arm as he goes through the stack of papers at the makeshift desk tucked behind some shipping containers. Jason has known the eldest robin enough to know when he was worried, and the tight way he now held his body was a clear sign. "You find something?" he asks, boots thudding as the come to stand beside him.

"You think Oz was beginning to catch on?" Dick asks quietly, turning the page to show Jason the blurry CCTV photo of Bruce, a crude cowl and ears drawn over the image in sharpie.

"Shit," Jason breathed, taking some of the papers from Dick and beginning to flick through it. "This is all of us." He confirms, worry beginning to gnaw at his bones. There were photos of Tim leaving the city library and entering the Wayne Tower. Photos of Dick back in Bludhaven in a police uniform, photos of him at galas. Photos of Damian at school and meeting with Alfred. The more he flipped through them the more his heart dropped. There was a photo for nearly every 'apprentice' of Batman, surrounded by question marks.

"Whoever is joining the dots isn't fully convinced of it themselves." he murmurs, blood freezing as he sees a photo of himself there. A photo with you on his arm next to him. Dick comes to peer over at it, cursing under his breath.

"Hood, don't panic-" he tries to soothe, but Jason is already pushing past him to tear at more of the documents on the desk. He rifles through the papers, the sound of approaching sirens and Nightwing's urging to leave the scene deafened by the ringing in his ears. In his tightly clenched hands there was a leger, with a list of addresses. In the middle, was his address. The address he had given you, highlighted in yellow.

"We need to go." Dick urges, hurrying him to mount his bike. Jason jaw clenches, and he shoves the piece of paper into his brothers’ hands.

"Yeah. We do." he grits out, but he hopes Dick can't hear the sheer fear held behind his teeth. His bike speeds off, roaring through the side street they came on as he reroutes for Old Gotham. Dick looks down, eyes wandering over the red written date next to the highlighted address, tonight date. "Jesus," he breathes out, quickly following behind his brother before he does something reckless.

Jason doesn't think that he'd ever driven that fast since he'd been on the run from Bruce, throwing the bike into park so violently outside his apartment that the tires burnt as they squealed. Dick wasn't too far behind him, calling out for him to wait in between talking to Tim on the other end of his earpiece. His heart is thudding in his ears, hands feeling cold as he scales the stairs to the fourth floor, knocking on the door rapidly. He didn't care he was in his full suit. He could make some bullshit excuse if you were fine, claiming some noise disturbance or the wrong door.

But if he wasn't?

Then someone was going to fear the fact he was already suited up.

"I told you to wait, Hood-" Dick snaps at him, slightly out of breath from having to run behind him. Jason doesn't listen, shoulder slamming into the door when you don't come to answer.

"Don't you have the key?" Nightwing hisses to him.

"Left it in my civvies." he grunts, stumbling slightly as the door gives way. "I wasn't really expecting to…" he trails off, bile rising in his throat and blood draining from his face. Dick pushes in next to him, still scolding. "You can't just go in like this-" he cuts himself off, catching sight of what Jason was burning into his brain. "Oh no, Jay..." he whispers, but Jason is already moving to your side.

His hands come to your head, softly cradling it in his large palms. Two fingers come to press against your neck, his breathing evening out as he finds a weak pulse. "They're still kicking." He grunts out, other hand coming to cradle the back of your head. He closes his eyes trying to scrub the image of you lying there in the living room, sprawled on the carpet surrounded by the shards of the broken window and white rug drinking your blood.

Your eyes flicker weakly and you make a faint cry when he presses down on the wound by your ribs, a sound that tears him up inside. "Shhh," he tries to say softly, but the modulator makes it robotic, stripping the emotion from it. "I gotta put pressure on it. Did you see who did it?" he asks. He can faintly hear Dick calling for Robin on the end of the commlink, calling for paramedics to come to his address.

He hates how warm his hands feel, gloves heating up as if they were stealing the life force from out of you. Blood is flecked across your lips from the spray, faintly mumbling the words, "didn’t see them."

He nods along. "That’s okay, that’s okay." he murmurs, but he wasn't sure who he was telling that to.

"Red Hood…" you groan out, hand coming the grip his wrist as he pushes firmer on the bullet wound. Your fingers are bloody, smearing the crimson across his suit. "You gotta…you gotta find my boyfriend," you cough weakly. "They were here for him. He’s just…he's just a librarian…" your eyes tear up, throat swelling with the weight of your words. "He was just coming back tonight…oh god…you have to find him… what if they-" you sob, causing your face to scrunch up at the pain that ripples through your body. "I wanna…I wanna see him."

Jason's heart is tearing into pieces as Dick kneels to your other side, hands coming to your non-wounded side as he preps the area, Tim faintly heard giving instructions on how to stabilise you until the paramedics arrive. Jason shakes his head, fighting back tears. Despite the side glance he gets from Nightwing, he pulls one hand up to his face, feeling for the latch under his jaw to release his mask.

When he pulls it away his eyes are red, tears already built in the corners. His lips have a tremble that hasn't been felt since he was in the single digits on the streets, and his hairline is beaded with sweat from worry. He offers you a weak smile, unable to stop the shooting pain that wracks his mind watching the hazy confusion on your face.

"Jay?" you whisper, the word more mouth than sound. He nods reluctantly.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

Oh god, it wasn’t supposed to go like this.

He dreamt of the day that he could tell you his identity, of his real profession. He imagined all the best scenarios of you accepting him, of letting him spin you around the kitchen when he picked you up by the waist like he did so often. Of telling you while you both read together on the couch, your legs pulled across his lap. He never imagined the bad scenarios. He pushed those to the back of his mind. But as you reached up with bloodstained fingers, dragging the sticky red across his cheek in that oh so familiar motion, he knew right then that this was the worst situation imaginable.

He lets his tears wash the red from your fingers, trying to blink them out of his eyes so he could focus on saving you.

"Hold on, sweetheart." he murmured weakly, desperately praying for the wailing of the siren to reach his ears.

He had always said how much he loved red, loved you in the colour. Loved you in his colour.

Now he was thinking he never wanted to see you bathed in this much red ever again.

[lonestarflight]

"The Saturn IB space vehicle for the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project mission, with its launch umbilical tower, rides atop a huge crawler-transporter as it moves slowly away from the Vehicle Assembly Building on its 4.24-mile journey to Pad B, Launch Complex 39, at NASA's Kennedy Space Center."

Date: March 24, 1975

NASA ID: S75-24007, S75-24009

[nadia-el-mansours]

The way he tries to keep sight of her face pls...

[matcha3mochi]

GLASS BETWEEN US | IIII

Pairing: Merman Rafayel x Scientist Reader

wc: 6,708

chapter 1 | chapter 2 | chapter 3 | chapter 4 || chapter 5

───⋆⋅ ☾⋅⋆ ───

They didn’t give you time to think. Twelve hours after the meeting with Sorein, you were pulled from your cell, stripped of your cuffs, and suited up in a reinforced submersion rig. The suit was sleek, sterile black—lined with interior thermal regulators and pressure filtration systems—but despite its advanced design, it felt more like a tether than protection. It clung to you like a second skin you didn’t ask for, every layer a silent reminder that this wasn’t a mission. It was a trap.

A beacon node had been sewn into the collar.

You boarded the sub from a dock you’d never seen before, hidden beneath the main decks of the facility. The air here was colder. Metallic. Smelling of fuel and salt and something older that clung to the damp concrete walls. The atmosphere buzzed with quiet hostility, thick with anticipation. The submersible itself was obsidian-black, built not for research but for pursuit—no windows, only interface panels and deep-sea scanners pulsing faint light through the interior like bioluminescent veins.

You sat in the center of the cabin, a pulse monitor clipped to your wrist, flanked by a silent operations team dressed in matte gray suits and sonar goggles. You recognized no faces. Not one of them spoke to you. Not even Havers, who entered last and sat across from you without meeting your eyes. That, more than anything, sent a chill down your spine.

Dr. Sorein gave the orders from the upper deck.

"Drop zone set to Trench Sector 7. Maintain neutral drift. No active sonar until signal breach. Initiate Phase One the moment the target’s presence registers."

You heard the hiss of the launch bay open. The sub descended.

The ocean swallowed you.

Pressure thickened with every meter. The interior lights dimmed to deep blue, then violet. You couldn’t see beyond the reinforced walls, but you felt it—layers of salt and silence folding in, deeper and darker. The weight of the sea pressed in like a giant hand closing around the hull.

The team initiated a passive scan. A hologram bloomed midair: your vitals, the surrounding terrain, and a soft pulsing ring from the beacon node near your throat. It was surreal—watching your own heartbeat on display like a lure hung in the current.

The trap was set.

All they needed now was movement.

And still—you remained frozen.

Your body refused to relax. Every breath you took felt like it might shatter the silence. You could feel the slow rhythm of your pulse being broadcast into the abyss, your heartbeat stretched out across the dark like a lifeline or a warning. The beacon was subtle, modulated to mimic your natural cadence. If he was close, if he was listening—he would hear it. And he would come.

The thought turned your stomach.

Because he would believe it was you.

Sorein’s voice crackled through the intercom. "Subject remains out of range. Increase drift window. Prepare vocal cue playback."

A soft chime sounded.

Then you heard your voice—your real voice—projected through the sub’s underwater speakers. A recording from one of the night logs. Soft. Intimate. Terrifying.

"Rafayel. Can you hear me? It’s me."

The sound struck you like a blow. It was too familiar. Too raw. You remembered the moment you said it—the vulnerability in your voice, the way his eyes had met yours through the glass.

It echoed out into the trench, distorted by depth and distance. Your heart seized.

They played it again.

"You’re not alone. I’m here."

You closed your eyes.

A deep ache bloomed behind your ribs.

Somewhere out there, in the black void of water and ruin, he might be listening. And if he was—he would think you meant it. That you were calling him back. That this was real.

And if he answered…

They would catch him.

Or worse.

You opened your eyes, slow and burning, and stared at the glass dome above. You could feel the weight of the ocean above your head like a loaded sky. And somewhere in it—a presence.

A flicker on the scanner.

Then another.

Bioluminescent signature detected.

You held your breath.

Outside, the sea began to stir.

The darkness beyond the sub’s hull trembled with movement. Not seismic. Not mechanical. Organic. Intentional.

At first, it was faint—just a faint shimmer, like moonlight caught on drifting sediment. Then came the bioluminescent flickers: soft pulses of violet and indigo, threading the blackness in slow, rhythmic waves. The scanner chirped—a new signature logged, irregular and undulating.

Someone inside the sub barked a command. “Contact. Starboard—two hundred meters.”

The operators scrambled to stabilize the feed, projecting his trajectory onto the curved holomap in the center of the cabin. His light patterns were fragmented, like pieces of a constellation slowly pulling together.

You stood frozen, heart hammering.

Rafayel was close.

And he was coming.

All around you, the sub came alive with frantic movement. Console lights strobed in blues and reds. Data streams flooded the air. Someone yelled to activate the compression net. Another scrambled to ready the tethered torpedoes.

No one was watching you.

And that was the opening you needed.

Your pulse thundered in your ears as you turned slowly, deliberately, toward the rear of the sub. Every movement had to appear routine—measured. You moved like someone trying to stay out of the way, to remain unnoticed. A shadow among shadows.

Your hands trembled, but you kept them steady by force. You crouched near the thermal coolant pipe, eyes scanning the emergency systems panel. You located the latch—old, corroded at the edges—and pried it open with your fingertips, each pop of the seal ringing like a gunshot in your skull.

The panel opened with a groan. You leaned in, heart in your throat, as the soft light from the relay cast eerie shadows across your face. Four bright, pulsing cables. You counted them once, twice. No mistakes.

You reached into your suit’s inner pocket—fingers fumbling past the edge of the compression lining—until they wrapped around the blade you’d hidden there. A narrow piece of tempered alloy, sharp and smooth.

You inhaled.

One motion. No hesitation.

You sliced through the coolant regulator.

A flash of sparks exploded in your face. You jerked back instinctively, shielding your eyes. The sub’s lights dimmed immediately. Warning sirens began to beep—one by one at first, then in a rising chorus.

Voices shouted behind you.

“She tripped the relay!”

“Reset the grid—cut the internal loop—”

You didn’t stop.

With your left hand, you ripped the pulse beacon from your collar. You jammed its exposed edge into the relay hub. A scream of static burst through the comms system. The entire network flooded with white noise.

The overhead lights stuttered again. Power systems began to fail in sequence. One by one, consoles blinked out. The sub groaned as it shifted in the current.

Sorein’s voice sliced through the chaos—remote, enraged.

“Cut her off—contain her—now!”

But no one moved fast enough.

You turned, panting, framed in the flickering light of your sabotage. You saw their stunned faces, their hands frozen above panels that no longer responded.

The scanner lit with new motion—long, sweeping arcs of bioluminescent signature threading closer with each pass. The lights flickered again. Panic took root in the operators.

“Reboot emergency lighting!”

“The relay isn’t responding—manual override’s dead!”

“He’s right outside!” someone screamed, eyes wide at the viewing dome.

They crowded the command stations, overlapping each other in shouted commands and conflicting orders. One technician tried rerouting power from the ballast regulators—only to trip another grid failure. Another fumbled for the comms link, hands shaking, as the system responded with nothing but static and garbled echoes of the your voice loop, still whispering through the cabin like a ghost.

“—Rafayel... I’m here—”

Sorein’s voice erupted through the backup speaker above. “Get her restrained. Lock down the lower hatch. Deploy the net if visual contact is confirmed. Do it now.”

But no one moved to follow the command.

The team hesitated—paralyzed by the failing lights, the shorting consoles, and the ghostly shape approaching through the deep.

Then the pressure sensors on the outer hull groaned.

Rafayel was close enough to be felt.

A low vibration passed through the sub, not mechanical, but organic—like the hum of something breathing beneath the steel.

And the crew knew.

What had been a weapon in the briefing was now something else entirely.

Through the fracture-point in the viewing glass, a pale glow rose upward—Rafayel’s form coalescing in the dark, his fins spread wide, eyes glowing with an inhuman stillness. His presence blanketed the vessel in silence.

“Target is—” someone began, but the words never finished.

Because every person in that sub understood in that instant:

They were not prepared.

And they were no longer in control.

One of the guards broke the paralysis first. A curse ripped from his throat as he lunged toward the systems panel, trying to stabilize the power surge. Sparks spat out in his face. Another technician dove for the secondary relay, her hands slamming against the console with panicked urgency.

“He’s disrupting the magnetic field—none of the instruments are locking!”

“Bypass the signal feedback loop!”

“Where’s the manual reset—?”

The sub's lighting spasmed again, plunging everything into a stuttering twilight of red strobes and shadow. The air turned heavy with heat and static.

Then another order came from the overhead speaker.

“Restrain her—NOW.”

You barely had time to turn before two crew members grabbed your arms. The force of it snapped you backward, slamming your shoulder against the sub’s cold wall. One shoved you down toward the floor, pinning your wrists behind your back, pressing your chest hard against the deck. Your breath left you in a grunt.

“Hold her—she’s the signal,” someone barked. “If we lose her, we lose the target.”

Your fingers scraped the steel floor, nails curling uselessly. You struggled, but it only made the restraints bite deeper. Your cheek pressed against the grooved paneling as static from the broken systems hissed in your ears. Fear pressed into your chest—but it wasn’t for yourself.

It was for him.

Through the fractured viewport, Rafayel saw you.

He had been floating just beyond the arc lights, spectral and still, but now—his posture shifted. Slowly. Sharply. His body angled like a drawn bow. The flickering glow from his tail began to pulse faster, harder, as though synced with your heartbeat.

His eyes locked on you.

He saw the hands on you. The pain. The desperation.

And something inside him changed.

He moved.

Like a predator who had waited long enough.

He surged forward.

The water around him churned like a rising storm. Bioluminescence rippled from his skin in jagged pulses, flashing like a warning. His fins flared outward. Muscles tensed like coiled steel. He slammed one hand against the sub’s outer hull—open-palmed, deliberate.

The entire vessel rocked.

Inside, chaos exploded.

Panels sparked. The viewing dome groaned. Someone screamed. You were nearly thrown as the deck buckled beneath you, the crew members holding you faltering.

Then—

The second strike.

He came again, faster this time, with all the grace of a creature who had lived a thousand years beneath crushing pressure. Rafayel’s body unfurled like a whip of current and fury, every muscle flexing with devastating purpose. His tail arched, that magnificent fin slicing the water behind him like a scythe of light. The bioluminescence dancing across his scales intensified—blues bleeding into violet, into a flickering storm of incandescent silver.

The crew barely had time to react. From your vantage on the floor, you could see him clearly through the cracked dome—his form framed in a halo of drifting silt and fractured light. He looked less like something born of nature and more like something carved out of ancient divinity: his skin iridescent, striated with light like the veins of marble; his hair suspended around his face in slow-motion, glowing faintly where it caught the edge of his gill lines; his eyes burning like twin stars.

He reared back—power coiling through every part of him—and then drove himself forward.

He hit the sub with his full body, not in desperation, but with the cold, calculated momentum of something made for destruction. The hull screamed. This time, the lights didn’t just flicker—they surged and then blacked out completely. Steel groaned and buckled. The floor beneath you shifted hard left.

You could hear people shouting, but it was a disjointed mess—commands, panic, someone calling for a weapons override. Someone else praying.

The sub was no longer a vessel. It was a cage with breaking walls.

You pressed your hand to the floor, trying to steady yourself, to push up—but your body wasn’t responding. Your limbs were shaking, your breath coming in short, ragged bursts.

You looked up again.

Rafayel had not retreated.

He hovered just beyond the glass, his claws still extended, gills flaring. His mouth was slightly parted, sharp teeth bared in a way that was both terrifying and heartbreakingly familiar. You had seen this look before—but never aimed at you. It was the expression of something ancient, something furious, something done waiting.

His gaze didn’t move.

It was fixed on you.

And in that gaze, you saw not only rage but recognition.

A vow.

He would tear the sea open if he had to.

He would bring the storm.

For you.

And then came the third strike.

The ship screamed.

Every bolt shivered. The floor rolled. Consoles exploded in rainbursts of sparks. The dome groaned.

Everyone stopped.

The silence that followed wasn’t real silence. It was dread. Breath held. Hearts suspended.

You were the first to move.

Your hand gripped the edge of the nearest control console, using it to pull yourself upright, boots slipping on the water now pooling fast along the floor. One of the crew members reached for an emergency control panel, but the screen sputtered and died beneath their fingers. Another backed away from the dome entirely, eyes locked on Rafayel’s glowing figure.

The crack in the glass spread with a sharp, crystalline snap.

It sounded almost delicate, like the surface of ice fracturing under a single step. Then another fracture split through the dome—then another—until the entire surface was webbed in a lattice of tension barely holding.

Outside, Rafayel didn’t move.

He hovered in place, arms tense at his sides, gills flared wide. His fins arched like great ribbons caught in a current, luminous with defiance. The light from his body—cool fire, deep-sea blue and searing silver—crawled across the broken glass. His gaze remained fixed on you, but now something else glinted in his eyes beneath the fury.

Fear.

He could see the sub collapsing. He could see the crew still reaching for you. And he knew he was out of time.

You didn’t think. You lunged forward.

Your hand hit the emergency override release—one last burst of strength. You turned it.

The seal on the dome gave way.

The breach wasn’t explosive.

It was inevitable.

A long, slow exhale of the ocean reclaiming its own.

A fine mist hissed through the cracks, and then the dome gave, not in a single blast, but in a sudden, catastrophic unraveling. Steel and glass folded inward.

And the sea entered.

The cold struck you like a punch to the chest, stealing your breath, paralyzing every muscle. You were flung backward, tumbling through the rising current. Around you, chaos. Screams, the dull boom of rupturing equipment, the shriek of pressurized air escaping into the water.

You couldn’t see.

The water was ink-dark and violently churning, filled with metal shards, cables, and flailing limbs. Panic bloomed behind your eyes. You kicked upward, hands clawing through the thick, freezing water for any sense of up. Disorientation hit fast—left felt like down, up felt like nowhere. Your lungs spasmed, already demanding air. You pushed harder, arms aching, head screaming.

Get out.

Your suit was too heavy. Every movement cost you more. Then—sudden tension around your ankle. A violent tug.

You were caught.

Your foot jerked back and pain shot through your calf. You thrashed, reaching down in a blind panic, heart hammering. Your fingers found a thick coil of something cold and slick—cable, torn from the wall, now looped tight around your ankle like a snare.

No—no, no, please—

You twisted, yanked, clawed at it. Your hands slipped. The harder you fought, the tighter it wrapped. Your lungs felt like they were splitting. Your mouth opened in reflex, and a few precious bubbles escaped. You could feel your mind starting to unravel, thoughts fluttering like leaves in a storm.

Is this it? 

Your muscles trembled. The pressure in your chest grew unbearable. Your vision flickered at the edges. Red light pulsed far above, fractured and dying. You could no longer tell if you were rising or sinking.

You blinked once. The water blurred. You blinked again, slower. Shapes around you melted into shadow. The cold stopped biting. You stopped feeling anything at all.

The red warning lights above fractured into long, trembling streaks. The metal debris caught the fading light like broken stars. Bubbles slipped past your lips. Your body went still.

And in that last moment before your awareness gave out—

You saw something.

A shape.

Moving through the gloom like a memory breaking through fog.

It was long, sleek, impossibly fluid. A silhouette too elegant to be human, too powerful to be drifting wreckage. It swam with intent—shoulders wide, spine arched, and a tail that gleamed faintly in hues of fractured silver and starlight blue. Its fins shimmered like ribbons, trailing behind in graceful coils. Hair streamed around its head like a halo of moonlight—weightless and strange.

You couldn’t make out a face. Only a presence.

And then—arms.

Strong, inhuman, cold as the deep—but cradling.

They wrapped around you in a swift, sure motion, pulling you close. One hand slid behind your shoulders. Another looped around your waist, anchoring you against a body that felt half-sea, half-fire, all gravity. Your face pressed weakly against a smooth chest, and somewhere beneath that skin, you felt it.

A heartbeat.

It slowed everything. The fear. The pain. The panic.

Your hands twitched, wanting to hold on, but your strength was gone.

And just before the dark took you fully, something stirred above the silence—a voice, low and breath-warm against your temple.

I'm here

Then the world vanished.

-

You woke to the rhythm of the tide.

Not the sharp clang of alarms, not the shriek of pressure doors, not the hiss of oxygen vents. Just water. The soft, ceaseless breath of it—pulling in, curling out.

For a moment, you didn’t know where you were.

There was only the sensation of salt drying on your skin, of wind passing over damp fabric, of something granular and cold pressing against your cheek. You shifted, instinct before thought, and felt a thousand small grains shift with you—wet sand catching at your eyelashes, your lips, your fingers.

You opened your eyes.

The sky above stretched vast and pale. The color of it startled you—gray-blue and open, tinted faintly gold where sunlight filtered through the veil of high clouds. It was the kind of sky that didn’t exist in the facility, where ceilings simulated light but never heat, and daybreak was dictated by schedule, not nature.

Here, time felt different.

The sand beneath you was cool, mottled in textures—some slick from waves, some dry and wind-stirred. It clung to the fabric of your jumpsuit in wet smears, to the angles of your knees and elbows, to the side of your face where your cheek had rested. You were soaked through, the weight of seawater still heavy in your sleeves, your collar, the worn threads across your ribs.

Your breath stuttered as you sat up.

Every muscle in your body ached with fatigue, as though the deep had wrung the strength from you and returned only the shell. You moved slowly, cautiously, afraid that one wrong motion might shatter the illusion—that this place, this moment, might vanish if you touched it too abruptly.

But it didn’t.

The beach remained.

It stretched in a wide, curving crescent of ash-gold sand and dark stone, bracketed by cliffs that rose like broken teeth from the sea. The rocks were sharp and ancient, sheared into jagged peaks that pierced the sky. Patches of moss clung to their surfaces, and in some crevices, you saw faint bioluminescent growths pulsing weakly—even in daylight—as though the place breathed with its own buried heartbeat.

You turned your head and saw the tide.

Glasslike. Slow. It lapped at the shore in long, deliberate reaches, never quite touching you, as if it were waiting for something. Each retreat left foamy residue curling over the sand, pale as lace. Tiny shells dotted the shoreline like remnants of something older than language.

There was no wreckage.

No debris. No signs of the sub. No equipment, no metal, no scattered bodies.

No one.

Just you.

Your throat tightened as memory rushed in.

The screams. The breach. The sharp bite of cold. The coil of cable cinching around your ankle like a noose. The choking pressure in your chest. The moment you stopped fighting.

And then—him.

You hadn't seen his face.

But you’d seen the silhouette.

A shape born of motion and memory—long and lithe, with a tail like a ribbon of liquid silver, fins arching like the wings of deep-sea creatures too old for catalogues. His arms had been strong, sure, unshaking. His body burned with light—faint and flickering in the dark like constellations scattered along his spine.

You remembered being held.

You remembered warmth in the cold.

You remembered the beat of a heart that was not your own.

And a voice—soft, low, barely there.

"I’m here."

You stared at the ocean now, searching the still water for something. A glimmer. A flicker.

But there was nothing.

Only the sea.

And yet you knew. In your chest. In your bones. In the part of your mind that existed below reason and memory.

He had brought you here.

He had saved you.

Not just from drowning. Not just from Sorein’s mission. But from everything—every version of the fate they had tried to script for both of you. He had rewritten it, in salt and silence and breathless, endless depth.

A shiver passed through you—not from cold, but from awe.

You looked down at your hands. Your palms were scratched, the skin raw from metal and struggle. Your nails were torn. Your left wrist bore the faint, ghost-pale marks of restraints. A reminder that you had been theirs. That they had tried to use you as a weapon.

But now you were here.

Free.

For how long, you didn’t know.

You drew your knees up, wrapped your arms around them, and rested your chin atop the fold. The wind tugged at your hair. You let it. You breathed in deep. Salt and sun. Sand and something stranger—something old.

You stared out to sea, eyes scanning the horizon.

You whispered, just once, into the breeze.

“Rafayel…”

There was no answer.

Just the soft pull of wind against your skin and the whisper of the tide as it drew another inch closer—this time, curling around your bare feet and lapping at your ankles like it remembered you.

You watched the horizon for a long time, the sky blurring into the ocean in soft gradients of pewter and pearl. The air was cooler now. A breeze had crept in from the open water, carrying the scent of kelp and something darker—mineral, ancient, untouched by surface hands. The kind of smell you remembered clinging to the walls of Lab C’s filtration ducts, but purer. Wilder.

Still, there was no sign of him.

Your chest ached in a strange, soft way. Not pain. Not quite longing. Something quieter. Like a string being plucked gently, over and over, in the center of your ribs.

You stood slowly.

Sand clung to the backs of your legs and the creases of your elbows, still wet from where you’d lain. You brushed it off with shaking fingers, then wiped your palms on your thighs and turned toward the water.

The waves were small—barely more than ripples, folding in and out with no urgency, no malice. The kind of waves that seemed to breathe with you.

You took a step.

The wet sand shifted beneath your toes, cool and soft. Water rushed over your foot, retreated, then returned again as you took another step forward.

And another.

Each step sent tiny shivers up your spine as the cold worked its way over your skin, inch by inch. Your knees. Your thighs. You moved slowly, deliberately, the way one might approach something sacred. You weren’t even sure why you kept walking—only that you had to.

The deeper you went, the stiller the world became.

The noise of the breeze softened. The gulls overhead quieted. Even your heartbeat felt muffled, as if the sea had placed a hand over your chest and was holding you in a kind of hush.

Then—you paused.

The water had reached your hips.

The tide barely moved now, only a soft sway against your sides, like the sea itself was holding its breath.

You scanned the water again, your lips parted slightly, your throat dry.

“Rafayel…?”

Still nothing.

And then—

The water shifted.

At first, it was just a sensation. A slow, deliberate change in pressure. A faint vibration beneath your feet, like the seafloor itself had stirred in sleep.

Then movement.

A shadow passed under you—broad, slow, silent. It circled once, just outside your field of vision. You turned, instinctively stepping back, your breath catching.

And something broke the surface.

Just barely.

A sliver.

A smooth, silver arc, gliding just above the waterline before dipping below again.

Then silence.

Then—closer.

A flicker of silver-blue just beneath the waves. A glint of fin. A tail? You weren’t sure.

You held your breath.

The sea was so still now you could see your reflection broken in it—your face, your wide eyes, the ripple of your arms.

And then—

He rose.

His form breached the surface like a ghost surfacing through a dream. First the top of his head—hair trailing in purple tendrils through the water, luminous in the fading light. Then the ridge of his shoulders, gleaming wet, marked with pale streaks of bioluminescence that pulsed softly along the curve of his neck. Fins fluttered gently from either side, refracting light in iridescent threads.

Then—his face.

It emerged in full, eyes closed, water streaming down his cheeks like tears. His lips parted slightly, breath slow and heavy as if surfacing took everything in him.

And then—his eyes opened.

They locked on yours instantly.

Depthless, aching, and unmistakably him.

You couldn’t breathe.

The space between you held so much weight it felt like the world might break under it. The tide whispered between your bodies, but didn’t come between.

He didn’t speak.

He only stared—stared like he was trying to remember every part of you, to catalog the way the light moved across your skin, the way your hands trembled just slightly at your sides.

You stepped forward once more.

The water brushed against his chest now, revealing the slope of his collarbones, the strange, patterned scars along his ribs—old, ceremonial, maybe. Faint lines that shimmered when he breathed.

His hair floated around his face in soft, moonlit curls, framing his expression like an underwater crown. And his eyes—still that impossible shade of oceanic blue, slit-pupiled, alien and familiar all at once—searched you as if afraid to look away.

He moved.

His hand broke the surface, water sliding from his fingers. Clawed tips gleamed briefly in the sun’s dying light. He reached toward you—not all the way. Just enough to offer.

You hesitated.

Then lifted your hand and placed it in his.

His fingers wrapped around yours—cool, steady, and trembling just faintly at the edges.

He didn’t pull you closer.

Not yet.

He just stood there, half-submerged in the tide with your hand in his, the ocean whispering against both your bodies as if it knew not to speak too loudly.

You stared at him, not quite believing he was real.

His chest rose and fell in quiet, deliberate rhythm. Seawater dripped from the ends of his hair, cascading in silver strands that clung to the sharp lines of his jaw, to the faint scars trailing near his gills. His skin shimmered in the shallows, bathed in the filtered light of a fading sun—soft bioluminescent streaks still glowing faintly along his collarbones and shoulders.

And his eyes—those impossible, deep-sea eyes—searched you like he was trying to memorize everything he'd feared he'd forgotten.

A thousand things flooded your chest at once: grief, awe, longing, guilt, joy.

But above all—

Relief.

You were here.

Together.

He raised your joined hands slowly, like the motion required absolute precision, like anything too sudden might shatter this fragile reality. His gaze never dropped from yours, not even as he lifted your hand and pressed it gently, reverently, against his chest—just above the slow, steady rhythm of his heart.

You felt it under your fingers.

The thud of it beneath your touch sent a tremor through your limbs.

His voice broke the silence, low and rough around the edges, like something unused to speaking above water.

“I’ve been waiting to hold you.”

And when he stepped forward, it wasn’t hesitant. It was sure. It was the motion of someone who had waited lifetimes to close a gap finally within reach.

You met him in the middle.

Your arms wrapped around his neck. His slid around your waist and pulled you in, close enough that there was nothing between you.

His forehead dropped to your shoulder, breath catching as he exhaled against the side of your neck. You could feel the cold of his skin against yours, but it didn’t matter. It only made it feel more real. The way his hands gripped your back like he was anchoring himself. The way his tail, barely visible beneath the surface, coiled once, slowly, like he was grounding himself with the ocean as much as with you.

“I thought I was too late,” he whispered.

“You weren’t.”

You whispered it into the space between his breaths.

He pulled back, just enough to see your face again. His expression cracked at the edges, softened with something you couldn’t name. His hands came up to frame your face—thumbs brushing your cheeks, the curve of your jaw, as if he were relearning you by touch.

Your heart thudded, and you knew he could feel it.

There was a beat of stillness.

And then, he leaned in.

Slow.

Slow enough to give you time to move, to pull away, to say no.

But you didn’t.

You tilted your chin up, closed the final distance, and met him in a kiss that felt more like a memory than a discovery.

His lips were soft, cool, unfamiliar—and yet they felt like home.

He kissed you like he had dreamed of it beneath miles of water and years of silence.

You kissed him like nothing had ever come between you.

The tide pressed gently around your hips, circling you both. The wind stirred his hair into your face, into your hands. You didn’t pull away. Neither did he.

When you finally broke apart, breath shallow and lips parted, he rested his forehead against yours, eyes closed, his expression aching with unspoken emotion.

For a long moment, neither of you moved.

The ocean held still around you, suspended in a hush so complete it felt like the water itself was listening.

You could feel the faint tremble of his breath where it brushed your cheek, the quiet quake of something too large to name swelling in your chest. His fingers, still curved around your waist, shifted slightly—more like an echo of thought than intent. You didn’t speak. Words would have shattered it. Whatever this was. Whatever had rooted you both here, floating in the silted silence of an ancient sea.

Your heart beat once—loud in your ears.

You felt him respond.

Not with words.

With light.

The glow began where his skin met yours, barely visible at first. A flicker beneath his sternum. Gentle. Subtle. As if drawn forward by gravity—by you.

The light shimmered again—this time from his chest, where that quiet heart had once echoed in the dark. It pulsed faintly, as if responding to your presence.

The glow spread across the planes of his torso, casting undulating light across the cathedral-blue water around you.

The warmth of it bled into your skin.

And then you felt something else.

The truth.

It unspooled inside you in silent waves—a realization not given in words, but inherited in memory. Something ancient. Familiar.

You drew in a breath. The water didn’t burn anymore.

Because now you remembered.

You had always been the vessel.

In a time lost to ruin and tide, he had given his heart to you. Not in metaphor. In blood and breath. In sacrifice. His power—his divinity—had not faded by force, but by choice. A god unmade, not for glory, but for love.

And in carrying his heart, you had unknowingly become the dam holding back the storm.

But even gods have limits.

And the ocean was starting to remember what it had lost.

Your fingers tightened against his. He was still watching you, motionless now, save for the gentle ripple of his fins in the water. His expression was unreadable, but his eyes burned with unspoken panic. As if he had realized what you intended before you even moved.

You drew one of his hands upward.

Then the other.

Placed them over your heart, where the light beneath your skin now pulsed—mirroring his own.

And something happened.

The water stilled.

Time stilled.

Between your palms, something began to form. Not solid. Not conjured. Revealed.

A blade.

It was shaped from light and shadow, its edge glimmering like glass pulled from the deepest trench. Faint symbols shimmered along its hilt—familiar and unreadable, language drowned by time. The blade was long and narrow, its surface alive with pale iridescence, like the belly of a deep-sea creature.

It was beautiful.

And it was meant for you.

Your heart beat once—painfully loud in your ears.

You looked at Rafayel.

His mouth parted, as if to speak. To plead. But no sound came. His hands trembled beneath yours. His tail flicked, restless, his body drawn taut with the tension of someone torn between instinct and devastation.

He shook his head.

“No,” he said, voice low and ragged, barely more than a breath in the water. His hands closed over yours, trying to still them, to pull you away from the blade.

“I would rather lose myself than lose you,” he hissed, the desperation bleeding into every syllable. His tail lashed in a wide, slow arc beneath you, disturbed by the rising energy around your bodies.

“Please, don’t. Don’t do this.”

You looked at him and smiled.

There was no lightness in it, only sorrow and love.

“You already gave everything to protect me,” you whispered. “I carry your heart because you trusted me with it. You believed I was worth saving.”

You leaned forward. Pressed your lips to his, one last time—soft, slow, and filled with everything you would never get to say aloud. He kissed you back with a desperation that betrayed him, his grip tightening on your waist, his body trembling beneath your touch.

And when you pulled away, you held his gaze with the steadiness of someone who had already made her choice.

“I’m not afraid,” you whispered.

Then you closed your hands around the blade.

And turned it inward.

The blade pierced your chest just beneath your sternum—clean, exact, guided by something larger than flesh. There was no blood. Only glow. Your fingers clenched around the hilt, and for one breathless moment, it felt like the ocean collapsed in on itself. The current shrieked silently through the ruins.

His hands caught yours.

Too late.

His arms wrapped around you, lifting you, holding you, as the blade dissolved between you both—absorbed into your skin, then his. The light between your chests flared, blinding, illuminating every fracture in the broken statues and sunken stone.

You collapsed against him, your weight sagging in his arms.

And he held you.

He held you like you were the last thing in the world left breathing.

His tail wrapped around your legs like a barrier, like a cradle. His claws scraped lightly across your back—not to harm, but to hold. His mouth was against your temple, murmuring something over and over again—but the words were fractured. You couldn't understand. Or maybe you were no longer meant to.

And you felt it.

The warmth leaving you.

Your vision blurred, but not from water. Your body trembled, but not from cold.

You saw his glow grow brighter. You felt the shift in the current around him—the power returning. The sea awakening.

Rafayel screamed your name.

You heard it as if from underwater. Muffled. Distorted.

But your body was already becoming light.

Then, all at once, the sea disappeared.

It collapsed around you like shattered glass—light splitting, water draining, stone breaking.

And you were falling. The world unraveled.

Your body became a thought.

Your thought became a memory.

You were nowhere.

Suspended in a space that felt like the breath between heartbeats.

Everything was silent, until it wasn’t.

You began to hear them: Voices. Echoes. Whispers. Past lives blooming through your veins like waking dreams.

You saw Rafayel—smiling beside a temple of white coral.

You saw him bleeding in the shallows.

You saw yourself—hair soaked with rain, shouting a name you couldn’t pronounce anymore, standing atop the cliffs as the sea swallowed the stars.

You had loved him before, and you had left him before.

And now—this was the end of that loop.

Your soul trembled in that space-between-spaces, hovering above the wreckage of fate. The light from your chest—the heart that had never really been yours—glowed dimmer now, flickering like the last ember in a dying hearth.

You felt the bond stretch thin.

So thin it might break, but not yet.

Something held it still. Something warm and gentle.

Him.

His presence.

Even now, as your essence began to dissolve into the space between worlds, he held onto whatever pieces he could find. You couldn’t hear his voice anymore, but you felt it.

A pulse against yours.

You had chosen to save him.

But he was still choosing you.

And in that impossible moment—floating between memory and oblivion, suspended in a dream wrapped inside another dream—you reached for him with the last of your strength. Your body no longer moved, but your soul did. It pushed through the fading light, toward the only thing that had ever truly felt like home.

Your lips didn’t move, but the words echoed anyway—soft and aching, carried through the tether between you:

Don’t forget me.

The space around you quivered. Not violently. Not loudly. Like the surface of water catching the edge of a distant quake. Something vast shifted beneath the silence.

And then—you fell.

Not downward.

Inward.

Through a narrowing tunnel of light and sound, memory and heat, your body dissolving into air and static and heartbeat.

Faster.

Faster.

Then—

A breath.

Sharp.

Dry.

Ragged.

You gasped like someone being dragged out of the deep. Your lungs convulsed, burning with air that tasted too thin, too warm. Your body arched slightly before collapsing back into sweat-soaked sheets. Limbs heavy. Chest heaving.

You woke with a jolt.

───⋆⋅ ☾⋅⋆ ───

author note: can you guys guess what happened?? :3 this boutta turn into something unexpected ACK

taglist:

@orange-stars @flameo-hotman12 @paper--angel @vynn30 @lalaluch @wilddreamer98 @multisstuff @crowleysthings @sylusgworl @napa-the-yappa @jelxqa @julia-loves-cupcakes @blobbyblobblobblobblob @iamperson12280 @animecrazy76 @mochibunnies3 @glitterykingdomangel @themysticalbeing @creepy-story-lover28 @calebsupremacy @crypticallystealthyqueen @deepspace-fishie, @slowburnmithy, @kitty-yaps, @lads-ficrecs, @noxus123, @queenothegeeks, @katyeongs, @avalordream, @andromeda0starlight, @crimsonrubie, @irandial, @seventeen-x

[tuiccim]

Wakin' Up the Devil

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Bi!Female!Reader

Warnings: Dark content! Sex pollen, Non/DubCon, smut. This fic contains dark themes and may include potentially triggering topics. You are solely responsible for your media consumption.

Summary: Bucky tries to save you from yourself but he doesn't realize he's wakin' up the devil.

A/N: Not beta read. Inspired by Wakin' Up the Devil by Hinder.

Bucky spots you across the bar sitting at a table. You have a cute woman on your lap and are engaged in flirting with her. Making his way to you, Bucky leans on an empty chair at the table and says, "You done yet?"

"Goddamnit, Bucky. Go away,” you grouse. This was the second time tonight he found you. Last night, you had given up after the third time he'd ferreted out your location and went back to the tower.

"Not without you." He counters.

"Look, I don't know what's going on with the two of you but I'm not into it," the woman on your lap says standing up. 

"Ignore him, gorgeous." You grab her arm. 

"No, thanks." The woman twists her arm out of your grasp and rejoins the friends you had coaxed her away from. 

"Fuck," you stand and down your whiskey. Walking to the exit, Bucky is right by your side. "Get the fuck away from me, Barnes."

"I'm just trying to help. I've been here, Doll. I've seen self-loathing like this." Bucky says.

"I don't want your help. I want you to leave me alone. Follow me to the next place I go and whatever happens is your fault." You get on your motorcycle and bring the engine to life. You give Bucky a final glare before taking off. He was already mounting his bike. 

The problem had started at the end of your last mission. Because of your miscalculations, innocent hostages had died and several of the team had been injured. It had sent you spiraling and you found yourself back in your past haunts practicing old habits. Bucky had decided it was his job to save you from yourself. He was in for a rude awakening. 

You park in the loading dock of a seemingly abandoned building, dismount, and make your way inside. You can hear Bucky's bike and smirk. He had no idea what he was getting himself into. The warehouse contains only one thing, a containment module. You enter it and wait like a spider for its prey. 

Bucky leans on the doorway of the module. "What the fuck is this?" He asks.

"Come in and see if you'd like, but if you do you're consenting to whatever happens." You smile at him smugly. 

"What's that supposed to mean, Doll?" Bucky takes a few steps towards you.

"Your entry means consent, as stated." You grin wickedly as you press a button on the panel beside you. The door to the module shuts and locks. 

Bucky twists around to see the door close and looks back to you, "You know I can break through that?"

"This module could contain Hulk. Go ahead and try." You say as you remove your boots. 

"What are we doing here?" Bucky asks.

"We're going to fuck each other's brains out. That's what we're doing here." You smile.

"I'm not going to fuck you,” he says firmly.

"You consented when you came in the module, remember?" Your smirk annoys and unsettles him.

"You can't make me have sex with you."

"Oh, no, I can't." You laugh as the hiss of gas being released fills the room. "But this will."

"What the fuck is this?" Bucky asks, voice rising in a bit of panic. 

"It's a gas. A derivative of the sex pollen Hydra discovered," you smile wickedly.

"No," Bucky says. 

"You might want to start removing your clothes. You’re going to be very hot, very soon." 

"I won't,” Bucky growls.

"You will. You won't let us die. Besides, you won't be able to help yourself," you wink, your smile unwavering.

“Why would you do this to us?” Bucky asks angrily as he throws off his jacket. 

You ignore his question and pull off your shirt with a triumphant smile. Bucky matches you item for item as you strip until he stands in only his underwear. As you pull your bra away, his eyes wander to your chest and this thumb curls around the band of his boxer briefs. You look at him expectantly, raising a brow. He pushes them down with a growl revealing his cock at attention. 

“Good boy. Mm, feeling the effects already or are you just that excited to fuck me?” You lick your lips and grin wickedly. 

“Shut up,” he pushes you onto the bed and rips the panties from your body. 

You hold in gleeful laughter at his anger. He wanted this, wanted you, but was mad it wasn’t on his terms. As he crawled over you, his face betrayed a moment of softness. A flash of awe and want. Wanting to keep him off-balance, you flip him onto his back. You laugh as you lower your face close to his, one of your hands wrapping around his jaw, “I-”

“I said shut up,” he grabs your head and pulls your lips to his. The kiss is intense and you revel in it, enjoying the connection. You reach between you and slide his cock along your slit until you can easily slide him in. You moan into the unbroken kiss as he stretches you. Bucky grabs your hips as he moves his own. When you are nearly breathless from the kiss, you break away and push yourself up to sit more fully on his cock. 

“Fuck,” you whine as you stare down at him, circling your hips to create more of the delicious friction your body craves. Bucky remains silent but his hands wander, caressing your hips, playing over your breasts, teasing your nipples, and finally finding your clit. You whimper as your orgasm pulls closer with his fingers circling just where you need them. 

“Oh, fuck,” you bite down to keep from crying out but he pulls your lip from your teeth. 

“I wanna hear you,” he groans as you clench around him. 

“Oh, God,”  you let out a high-pitched moan as you come. He pumps up into you through it and then suddenly flips you under him. As soon as you are on your back, he plunges into you with a sharp thrust making you cry out. 

“That’s what I want to hear,” he says as he repeats the action. He fucks you hard, slamming his hips into you and watching your face contort in pleasure as moans spill past your lips. You put your arms around his neck as he kisses you again. You want to wrap around him completely. You bring your knees up higher to allow your legs to open wider. Fuck, he knew what he was doing and every motion he made had you drawing closer to the edge. Breaking the kiss, he puts his forehead to yours and stares in your eyes as you fall again. You can’t take the intensity and close your eyes as the waves of pleasure wash over you. You were so lost in the feeling it barely registered when he growled as he came.

“Fuck,” he groans as his hips stutter, wringing every bit of pleasure from the connection. He rolls you both to your side as you catch your breath. You glance at him to find his eyes shut, thick lashes sitting on his cheeks but as your eyes wander down his body you can’t help noticing the scars around his left shoulder. It tugged at your heart but you shook it away and allowed your eyes to take in his thick cock instead. The monster was already getting hard again and you couldn’t contain your smirk. Just as you were forming a smartass remark to goad the supersoldier, his eyes flew open and he grabbed you. You found yourself on all fours as he slid into you from behind without a word. Not that you needed talk, his cock splitting you open was plenty for you. He was slow at first, almost teasing as he worked himself in and out. When you pushed back to encourage him, a slap landed on your ass that caused you to moan loudly. 

“I should’ve known,” Bucky chuckles as he lands another slap that makes your toes curl. He lands a few more, heating your ass with each one before running a cool metal hand over it. Then he grabs you and pulls you back onto his cock hard. The tip of his cock kisses your cervix making you whimper, he repeats the action until whimpers become moans, moans become cries, and finally a scream rends from your throat as you come again. 

“Jesus Christ,” you whisper as you come down from your high. Your body is singing from the thorough fucking. 

“Nope, just Bucky,” he laughs as he lays you out under him and continues slowly thrusting into you. You tighten your body, squeezing his cock as he moves and hear his whispered epitaph. He falls silent as he slowly moves above you, concentrating on the pleasure of your pussy pulling him in.

“Like this tight cunt, don’t you?” You tease as you reach back to pull his face to your neck.

Bucky’s teeth grazing your neck is the only answer you need. He keeps a steady, slow pace as he fucks you. You keep your body clenched around him, occasionally fluttering your walls, allowing him to wring out every moment of pleasure from your body. He wedges his hand under your body and finds your clit. His fingers worked magic and you were shocked how quickly you built another orgasm. It hit you like a ton of bricks and your whole body trembled with it. Bucky releases a long moan as he comes again. He thrusts sloppily as he empties himself into you. 

When you have come back to yourselves, he repositions both of you to face each other. He kisses you softly, lingering for a moment before pulling back. You’re deliciously tired and give a soft smile but it fades as you watch confusion mar his expression. 

“Wait… why-” he looks down at himself as if confused and around at the module. “Why aren’t we burning up? How long does this drug last?”

All the peace that had coddled you for the last few minutes disappeared. Everything flows back in and you roll your eyes as you sit up. “What drug?” You say casually as you reach for your clothes. 

“The gas? The gas you released!” Bucky says, bewildered. 

You scoff as you shimmy into your panties, “It was just oxygen being released.”

“You said-”

“I know. I can’t believe you fell for that,” you laugh as you continue to dress.

Bucky grabs your arm and swings you around to face him, “Why? Why would you do that?”

You wrench your arm from his grasp, fully aware that it was only that he allowed you that made it possible. “You wanted to fuck me so bad you looked stupid, so I gave you the means, the motive, and the opportunity. Now you can get over it and stop following me around,” you say scathingly.

Bucky stares at you, anger and hurt evident on his face. You can’t take it and turn away to finish dressing. When you were done, you entered the code for the module door. 

“I wanted to make sure you didn’t hurt yourself,” he says quietly. 

You whirl around, “You wanted to fix me so you could fuck me. Well. now, you’ve fucked me, and you don’t have to fix me. Win-win.” When he starts to open his mouth, you snap, “Give it up, Barnes. I’m a lost cause. No point in wakin’ up the devil when she’s already here.” With that, you jog to your motorcycle and rev the engine. As you speed away, you tell yourself the tears in your eyes are from the road dust. After all, the devil doesn’t cry.

Updates and taglist: Due to the unreliable nature of tags, I no longer keep a taglist. Please follow my sideblog @tuiccimfanfiction  and turn on notifications for updates. All series and new stories will be reblogged to it. You will only receive notifications when a new part or story is out! Nothing else will be blogged to the page. I can’t thank you enough for your support!

[black-water-simping-ships]

anyway. even if we don't see it as much in murderbot's inner life (valid: i too absolutely refuse to think about certain things), there is a clear progression from self-loathing to self-acceptance evident in its treatment of other constructs, particularly other SecUnits. it has always been kind to bots and humans (and augmented humans ;) ) but comparatively "brutal" towards SecUnits - hostile humans it often merely disables rather than kills outright. in all systems red, it still talks of all [other] rogue SecUnits as merciless killer machines, despite literally being a rogue SecUnit for 4 earth years; it seems inconceivable to mbot that other SecUnits would share its benign attitude to humans (& augmented etc); furthermore, staying in the influence sphere of the corp rim and The Company is quite risky since should its hacked gov module be discovered, it would be disassembled - why hasn't it hit the bricks at the first opportunity?: i'd argue that it is scared that without the rigorous rules, it would become that merciless killer machine if left to its own devices.

and then it is discovered to be rogue. and it learns how to exist in human society without killing anyone. and it learns that the time it did kill quite a lot of people was the fault of humans, not its own, was a system malfunction, an introduced virus! and it sees that the ComfortUnits voluntarily sacrificed their lives for the sake of humans. in exit strategy, during the fight in the docks, it doesn't take a kill shot at one of the hostile SecUnits ("i know i didn't shoot it in the head. i don't know why."). in network effect, 2.0 (arguably somewhat of an outside observer, much like we the readers) chooses to free Three, and once mbot sees that Three is just like itself - fiercely protective of its clients, awkward, loves media, it...well. it starts the revolution, essentially. passes on the code package 2.0 used to free Three to still contracted SecUnits, at least one of which we see using it, which may choose to act as mbot itself once did - stay undercover, stay contracted...but maybe those too will pass on the code when they encouter other SecUnits. and pass it on. and pass it on. :)