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shaysplanet · 2 months ago

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about caldara— 490 A.B.

above is a general map that i made of my continent. give or take some details because i didn’t want it to get too cluttered oops. hopefully it serves as a good visual for my explanations of each region and its key city! anywho longgg ass post incoming!

NYSSAROS is the capital of the continent and crown jewel of house vangaros. it sits in the flatter heartland of eryndor which is the largest region on the continent. it is important to note that nyssaros is located where its most strategic but not where it is most safe. it’s connected to many borders but difficult to access or pass through all willy nilly. the capital sits where we, as the crown family, can see everything, steal anything and escape anything. it’s a very active city. as for looks, the whole city glitters and dazzles you in a way you can only dream. polished gold inlay is worked into the streets themselves. buildings are structured in tiers, with the higher you go, the closer you get to nobility. spires and domes dominate the skyline, crafted in a blend of obsidian, marble, and goldenstone. balconies overflow with vines and flowers, braziers line every street, and the palace is built directly atop a shallow rise. my family has held nyssaros for nearly 500 years, since the first raqiros dova established the capital post-binding. no one’s ever challenged our right to it either. we built this city.

TALVARIS is a wild thing. it’s overgrown and very old. clinging to the base of the veil peaks, where stone meets trunks of trees and dragons still pass overhead. the architecture here blends right into the land. houses are carved into cliffsides or built around massive trees, with rope bridges and winding stone steps acting as public paths. it’s governed by three houses: maroveth, vangaros, and rhadanis, each with their own domain within the city. the oldest temple, dedicated to the first flame, rests in the rhadanis-controlled quarter. maroveth’s section is known for its mineral forges and glasswork studios, while vangaros oversees the watchtowers and sky bridges. it’s one of the few cities where control is shared and not tested.

RAVENA, in the north of vysara, is unlike anywhere else in caldara. it’s built on stilts above the marshes, and its waterways are its roads. instead of streets, there are canals and bridges. houses here are tall and narrow, often with open lower levels to avoid flooding, and their rooftops are tiered like the petals of a lotus flower. it’s a holy city, controlled solely by house rhadanis for the last six centuries, and is home to the oracle temples and the drowned archives. you can only imagine how well secrets flow through this place.

ILLORIA is just off the mainland on the island of wynsereth and it’s considered the most serene (and slow moving) of all the major cities. the buildings are sculpted from pale stone and dark wood, with gilded lattices and canopies. every home and hall has a garden or water feature, and the roads are quiet, winding, and lined with flowering trees. house davenar has ruled here for over 600 years—similar to rhadanis with ravena. they’re the old money, old faith, old legacy of this world. while rhadanis may be known as the “first” of the great houses, davenar is the reason “great” even had to be listed to begin with. illorian trees have the sweetest fruits and the richest soils. when nobles retire or retreat, they come here. and—as a bonus—the surrounding lands of wynsereth are literally known as “the golden forests” due to the sheer abundance of gold and other precious metals found here. it’s truly a testament to davenar’s respect that the lands haven’t been excavated into oblivion yet.

THALORN is a forge city built in a goddamn caldera. the region of valdorra is volcanic, and thalorn was carved out of what remained after one of the last great eruptions. tunnels run beneath the city, used to avoid dragons since valdorra is their primary hunting grounds. it’s hot, always, and that’s saying a lot considering caldara is a continent of eternal summer pretty much. but caldarans are smart and not easily deterred! the stone buildings are vented and hollow, built to withstand intense heat. black glass, copper tiles, and a smidgen of smoke stained gold give thalorn its iconic look. house maroveth controls the region and has for about 200 years, ever since the last ruling line died out in a lavaflow (oops).

RHALENMOOR is the capital of house venakar, and it shows. it’s built in the fertile yet drier plains of nysara. the golden fields stretch in every direction and the city rises out of the land like a fortress of lush abundance. clay brick walls, green domed halls, and sprawling market squares aplenty. there’s irrigation channels that double as ritual spaces, and the storage houses are adorned with carvings that honor seed and harvest. venakar’s had it for multiple generations and they don’t share well. anyone who wants to eat in caldara knows to stay in venakar’s good graces. while a relatively young house, they’re surprisingly nifty—and ambitious which could read badly for house rhadanis whom shares territory with them.

AVENTHAL is a fortress first, city second. it belongs to house tharavos, who took control after a royal decree roughly 180 years ago. it used to be a torvane port, but was deemed too inland and got reassigned. it’s all stone and steel—walls within walls, like an inescapable maze. the streets are tight, but the surveillance is tighter. there are more whisperers here per capita than anywhere else in caldara because aventhal is where they train before they’re sent off to other regions. regular ole people live here, yes, but house tharavos has a thing about orphans. and there’s an abnormally high rate of orphans that end up in aventhal than anywhere else… they gotta find someway to survive, right? so they get really good at two things: hide and listen. just to then line their pockets with tharavos gold. that’s how aventhal became a city that never sleeps, but stalks.

KHALMAR, in othalar, is carved directly into the mountain. it looks impenetrable because it is. built like a vertical city, its homes and barracks cling to stone cliffs, connected by narrow staircases, lifts, and winding tunnels. valdryn has ruled here for over 300 years, ever since they won the southern wars and claimed it as their prize. firelight glows from within the rock faces at night, and the forges never go cold. it’s a warrior city, plain and simple. also the hub of many of our military operations. the region is directly under valdorra which makes for easy access to dragons and luckily (or unluckily, depending on which house you’re in) valdryn has an abundance of dragon power thanks to the events that took place in 340 A.B. they’ve accumulated six dragons despite not being an original bloodline to claim them. some whispers say house valdryn one day plans to overthrow vangaros and claim nyssaros for themselves…

VELMARRA is house torvane’s sea-wrapped gem. it curves around the coast like a blade, with harbor spires that double as storm towers. it’s not just a port—it’s a city raised against the deep. every structure is built to bend with the wind: narrow towers reinforced with stone that’s stood the test of time and obsidian anchors that moor the city to the earth itself. the buildings gleam in blues, pewter, and pale gold which is the one similarity velmarra shares with the rest of the great cities. sea monsters are carved into the walls like warnings, while prayers against drowning can be found in all of the temples. torvane has overseen velmarra longer than any other house has ruled a city singlehandedly. it has been their sworn duty since the beginning of, perhaps, time itself. they don’t just run trade. they guard caldara from what moves in the water: horrors only born from the tide like leviathans and sea wraiths that destroy ships without a second thought. without torvane, the southern coastline would be chaos. every storm is a test, especially in the harsher months, and every return to port is a small war won. every street leads to the sea. even the fishers carry knives. velmarra isn’t gentle. it’s not a beach town overlooking a calm ocean. it’s a siren’s song that drags you into your own blissful death.

#shaysplanet #shiftblr #shifting blog #reality shifting #shifting diary #shifting community #desired reality #shays multiverse

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fudgebuggyy · 1 month ago

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H E L L I C O N I A S P R I N G

Pairing: Thunderbolts!Bob x Thunderbolts!Yelena

Tags: Post-Canon, Thunderbolts Team Members Live in the Watchtower, Mutual Pining, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort

Warnings: Thunderbolts SPOILERS contained!, Implied/Referenced Past Drug Addiction, Sexual Themes

Word count: 7.298k

Chapters: 4/4

Previous Chapter

Summary: Three months have passed since the Void descended upon New York, and Yelena is getting used to the life her sister led--dealing with PR agents and working in a team she's only recently learned to tolerate.

And then there's the Bob thing. And the Bob thing is super fucking complicated.

✢ Chapter 4 ✢

Once, Bob had told Yelena about the time he’d seen God, or something close to it. A sign maybe, a miracle.

Bob had never spared her of the worst parts of his past. The time he’d almost OD’d in the bathroom at his brother’s, with his wife and kid in the next room. The nights he’d spent in overcrowded drunk tanks, halfway houses, hospital rooms. The things he’d done for cash and the things he’d done to avoid being sent back to the US. And then there was the withdrawal, all the piss and shit and vomit and spasms and sores and loneliness. The loneliness, he’d admitted once, that’s the thing that kills you.

Nowadays all the agonies of his body were tucked away. Sometimes Yelena ached all over just to untuck them. She was the magpie, slotting all these pieces of him into the person he was now, and the person he was then, the person he would become in a year, or ten.

She knew most of Bob’s “voyages” were strangled by the vice of powders and pipes. But he told them with such detail, like she could walk right in and follow him there, like he was inviting her into rooms inside himself without knowing he’d left the door open.

Sometimes the lines blurred, leaving Yelena wondering whose memories were whose:

It was back in Cambodia, he’d told her—before he’d followed some backpackers onto a cargo ship headed to Malaysia, having signed up for a medical trial that would pay enough for another three weeks at the beach and back-up funds for a flight back home.

It had rained in Battambang for days, the overflowing canals and drains inviting pods of mosquitoes to loll over the streets. Bob was tripping on something he’d bought off a Polish guy who dj-ed down Pub Street. He never remembered the shit he was on, but he always remembered where he’d gotten it from; stolen from Russian tourists, bagged from Thai bartenders screwing over a white boy, a wet-market, the sandy backpack of a beautiful surfer on Railay Beach.

That night he set off on his own, following the muddy roads out of the city, trucks and motorcycles rattling past, spraying muck across his legs. He hadn’t eaten in days. He’d been high for so long there was no hunger in him, no thirst. Dragging himself off the road, he waded into the endless sprawl of the flooded rice paddies.

The sky was clear for the first time in weeks, stretching over the fields, the jungle in the blue wallow of night. He didn’t get far, falling to his back and disappearing into the water, the mud, letting the sticky heat settle on top of him. The mosquitoes buzzed over his motionless body. The water was deep enough it was in his ears.

And if he tilted his head just so, he could let the water in. He wouldn’t move and he’d let go and he’d disappear and he’d wanted to so desperately, he’d wanted to for so long he swore he must’ve been born with it, it must’ve been there since the very beginning, melded to him like a rind of fat, and when the desperation was at its strongest and biggest and most inescapable—there it came.

Its slow march towards him.

Bob had never seen a water buffalo up close before. Their black rippling bodies existing only on tourist pamphlets at check-in counters of hostels.

Looming above him, eyes beetle-back, its horns curved like a beast from the Odyssey, it looked like something to be fought by fleets of a thousand men. He lay at its feet, expecting its mighty hooves to pound into his skull. Maybe he asked for it to. But the buffalo waited and waited, and waited some more, until its heavy head bent down, parting the slick of his hair with a huff.

And then it just left. And then it was over. And I thought that was it, that I’d died.

A farmer’s son found him at dawn. They called Bob srauv leuk kbal—the white deadbeat. He got clean in a garage, on an air mattress with a red bucket beside it. Whenever he was strong enough to walk, he’d drag himself outside. He’d watch the farmer’s son ride the water buffalo through the muddy lowlands, patting its flank with a stick.

He’d later learn its name was Chivy. And Chivy meant life.

✢ ✢ ✢ ✢ ✢ ✢

Yelena didn’t know if she believed in God or signs or even miracles, but looking at Robert Reynolds slumped in this diner booth, the light of the neon sign by the window spilling across his face, his eyes so impossibly blue…Jesus Christ, maybe.

Maybe he was the closest thing to it.

“What?” Bob said, dunking a spoon into his milkless, sugarless coffee, unthinking.

She smiled staring at the way he stirred it.

“Nothing,” she said.

They were still wet from their mid-rain scramble through Hell’s Kitchen. Bob with his I love NYC baseball cap pulled low. Yelena in her I love NYC sweater, trying to hide her face beneath the hood. The sweater matched her I love NYC socks and her Yankees slides, which they’d gotten from a souvenir shop before closing, a dingy hole in the wall that would’ve managed to sell Bob a football-sized snow globe encasing a football-sized Statue of Liberty if Yelena hadn’t intervened. Bob was terrible at turning people down—which was why they were here in the first place, she supposed.

As far as disguises went, they looked so cartoonishly stupid Valentina would have a choleric episode if she were to ever receive photographic evidence that the media-evasion training she’d forced the team to suffer through had gone down the drain.

Bob slouched in his seat, fiddling with the napkins, his knee jumping beneath the table. It was his first time out in months.

It rendered him slouchier and more sarcastic than usual, and when the waitress asked where they were from, Bob mumbled something about a psych ward before Yelena scrambled to throw in, Paris! The one in Texas, begrudgingly shooting the waitress her press-friendliest smile. It was hard to pretend to be from Paris, the one in Texas, when Yelena’s face was plastered on a billboard not even a block away from here. And it was even harder to pretend when Yelena proceeded to order the whole menu in her droniest Russian accent.

Not even an hour ago, she’d tossed herself from the New Avenger’s Watchtower, trusting that one of the most calamitous beings on the planet would ensure she’d reach the ground in one piece. She had a Glock 26 strapped to her thigh, a flash charge and a tactical knife tucked into the shorts beneath her dress. She’d chosen the booth with the most advantageous vantage point, having tracked each possible entrance and exit of this 24-hour diner within the first five minutes of sitting down, because her life was as famously unpredictable as it was violent.

But just for a moment, just for this, Yelena wanted to look at Bob—sitting there, in this tacky red vinyl seat, with his rumpled suit and his baseball cap and his blue-blue eyes—and keep pretending.

She wanted to pretend they had nowhere else to be and nowhere else to return to. They were two painfully normal people, enjoying a painfully normal night.

The rain pattered against the window, and the place was empty safe for an old man hunched on a stool at the counter, and a group of kids at the back, still drunk or high or both, tiredly clucking at each other over a plate of fries. Redbone was playing from a glowing jukebox. Slices of strawberry pie sat sumptuous and gooey in the display case on the counter, beside a tip jar donned with a sticky note: For trip to Italy :)

Plate by plate, the waitress graced their table with chicken and waffles, pancakes soaked in rivers of warm butter, steak-and-eggs and stacks of golden hash browns, red velvet milkshake with a smack-red cherry on top, whipped cream dripping in dolloped globs down the glass.

God, how Yelena had missed this All-American junk.

“You sure you don’t want anything else?” She pointedly stared at Bob’s burger and fries.

“Uh—You’re saying that like you’re not going to share?” Bob pointedly stared at Yelena’s blatant attempt at cardiac arrest.

“You don’t think I can finish this?”

“My bad, didn’t mean to presume you’d fail at eating six plates on your own." Bob squinted.

“Don’t look so worried.” Grabbing the cherry from her shake, she popped it into her mouth, chewing. “I won the county fair pie-eating competition when I was six. Can you imagine? I was like three feet. There was a time in my life when I was ninety percent pie. I was designed for high cholesterol.” Before grabbing a fried chicken drumstick and biting into it with the fervor of someone who’d only had two crackers with caviar in the past six hours. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, smiling. Bob watched her from below the bill of his baseball cap, shaking his head, but smiling too.

“Can I try your burger?” Yelena asked.

Bob had just finished stacking two neat rows of fries on the patty. He cocked a brow.

“You just said you wanted to share,” she said.

He cocked his brow harder.

“Fine, I’ll order my own then—”

“Yelena—” Bob snorted, shooting her a warning look.

“Excuse me,” she was already leaning towards the waitress dashing past them, “could I order a bacon cheeseburger with curly fries—”

“She’s kidding,” Bob cut her off, before pushing his plate forward with a resigned: “Fine.”

“Never mind, thank you. But I will have another shake, please. Double-fudge Oreo.”

With an exasperated nod, the waitress dashed on.

Bob shook his head. “You’re going to be sick.” He used the same tone when he told Yelena to head to the med bay whenever any of her stitches popped.

“Counting on it.” She used the same tone when she said she’d go tomorrow.

And with that, she grabbed his burger and took the biggest, most obnoxious bite she possibly could, because Yelena from Paris, the one in Texas, was a real shit.

“Oh—Okay.” Bob spluttered a mean laugh. “Sure, man. Go ahead.”

“That’s fantastic,” Yelena declared with her mouth full.

“Good to know. Glad I’ll get to enjoy one bite of it.”

Bob shook his head, smiling, like he couldn’t help it, and she liked that he couldn’t, and she liked to think she was the only person who’d get to have him like this; head-shaking and tired and wry, openly annoyed but secretly delighted.

She shared her waffles with him, and her pancakes, stacking them on his plate and topping them with a swirl of butter as a peace offering. She sat in quiet fascination, watching his mouth peeking out from beneath the bill of his baseball cap every once in a while, the pink jut of his bottom lip. Slip of tongue and teeth.

She watched it eat, she watched it talk, and when she heard it say, “So this, uh, county fair pie-eating competition. Was it in Ohio?”, she almost didn’t want to answer, in fear it would stop moving, it would stop doing things.

A pause.

The bill of his cap swung upward, revealing his face.

Sometimes it startled her. How lovely he was.

“Hm?” She leaned back in her seat, vinyl squeaking beneath her.

“The county fair? That was back in Ohio?”

She nodded. He waited.

There was an unspoken rhythm to the way they spoke: Yelena coaxed—Bob followed.

It was…disorienting when it was the other way around.

“Did you go often? To the fair?”

Bob wasn’t tactful with his questioning, but he never prodded and he never pushed, and Yelena was always grateful for it. Right now, she might be grateful enough that maybe, just maybe, looking at a sweet brown curl of hair coiling behind his ear—maybe this time she’d give him an answer.

“It was my favorite time of year,” she said, scraping a fork across the leftovers on her plate.

“Summer?”

“July,” she said, dropped the fork and wrung her hands in her lap. She looked through the rain-spattered window. The $1 pizza joint across the street turned its lights off.

“They had this stand with chocolate chip cookies and you’d get a bucket of it and this huge jug of milk, and I’d crumble all the cookies and jam them into the milk until it was all sludgy—” She remembered the Ferris wheel, how its perfect bulb-lined curvature rose into the night sky. She remembered praying for it to get stuck whenever she reached the top, hoping she’d get to sit there for hours and hours, “—you could see the whole town from up there…all the lights. It was so small. It shocked me every time to see how small it was.”

It was easier here, to tell him these things.

It felt a lot like giving them to him. Giving Bob the hellish Anderson twins who lived in the nice part of town where all the shops were covered by blue-and-white striped awnings. Giving him the one-eared class rabbit she’d set free because it looked so heartbroken sitting there in a cage at the back of a musty classroom. She gave him the gold tooth a kid found in their chocolate cupcake in the cafeteria. Her first soccer game, her first broken bone. The sound beneath the house one winter—

“—that turned out to be a raccoon. Alexei had to squeeze into the crawl space below the house. I mean the man’s huge, it was like watching a brown bear cram into a shower drain. We had to pull him out after. It was crazy…God, I miss that house. It wasn’t anything special, but it was the perfect shape? Like from a storybook. Square with a roof on top, with a fence and a tree in the front yard. It was full of weeds, and there was this patch of dandelions that grew by the porch, and I’d always water it. And the street was all messed up. It was all tar cracks, potholes, but it was lined with these big oak trees. Like huge. In summer it would look like—”

“—a tunnel,” Bob mumbled almost absentmindedly, playing with the spoon in his coffee.

Yelena wavered.

She’d been spewing for so long, it left her dazed. She took a breath, dizzy somehow.

“Yeah,” she said. “Like a tunnel.”

Bob’s head dipped, and once again all she could see was his mouth moving below the bill of his cap. Pink, thin-lipped. The curve of his Cupid’s Bow.

“I’ve been having the same dream every night.” Arms resting on the table, he rubbed a thumb along the center of his palm. He looked at her. The sputter of the neon sign by the window spitting its red light across his face.

“You had these pink socks with ruffles.” All of his tenderness. “They were so small.”

This feeling.

It blew through her like a roof caving in.

The unbelievable pressure of it in her skull, the back of her eyes. How much it pushed and pushed, pushed more than it had when she’d stood on the ledge of the helipad, waiting with her terror. But was it terror? Was it devastation? Was she really so devastated by how he made her feel? What he could make her feel?

How he’d caught her mid-air, and how she’d clung to him then, scrunched into herself until she was this tiny vibrating speck of everything.

She couldn’t look away. She stared at him, unblinking, until her eyes seared with the pain of it like looking into the sun.

What she felt next was impossible:

The distinct bristle of Nat’s hair against her cheek. Box-dyed, peppermint-blue. She smelled her. Here, in this dingy little diner in the bowels of Hell’s Kitchen, she smelled her.

She felt the thick syrupy heat of a summer on Whitmore Lane slop against her skin. The dry pelt of grass on their front lawn. She heard the hum of every fan in every room of that house. Felt the swell of each wooden doorframe that had burst and splintered at the bottom.

She’d kept her eyes open for so long everything was a blur. When was the last time she’d cried in front of anyone?

She missed her sister, she missed that time in her life, missed it with so much of herself, I miss you every day, every second, all the fucking time, sometimes I miss you so much it replaces all of me, I miss you, I miss—

It stopped.

It stopped like breaching the surface after a long dive.

Because what she had felt was impossible after all. Her sister was dead, and Whitmore Lane was a tiny redacted paragraph buried beneath thick black bars at the bottom of her file.

“I’m sorry,” Bob said.

Yelena didn’t know if was for Natasha, or the intrusion of him inside of her memories. Except it didn’t feel like an intrusion at all, not the way it had in that vault in Utah. This time, it felt a lot like he’d given her something.

Bob’s big hand was resting on the table, the fine hairs on the back of it. Yelena reached for it with the kind of desperation that threatened to topple her, and her chest hiccuped, huge and horrible, when he turned his hand beneath hers so they were palm to palm.

Yelena didn’t know if she believed in God or signs or even miracles—but she believed in something then.

She believed in it so much it undid her.

✢ ✢ ✢ ✢ ✢ ✢

This feeling this feeling this feeling this feeling this feeling this feeling this feeling

✢ ✢ ✢ ✢ ✢ ✢

They stood on the subway platform between early commuters and party-goers dragging themselves back home. A man was busking at the foot of the stairs, collecting loose change in his guitar case.

She liked to think they were still pretending: Bob and Yelena from Paris, the one in Texas.

They stood huddled close, toe to toe, swaying like drunkards. They didn’t speak. The wind of a passing train whipped Yelena’s hair into her face and she frowned at the sour waft of the underground. Reaching out, Bob gently unhooked a strand of hair from her mouth, his thumb lingering on her chin, the cuff of his nail as he dragged it across her skin.

When the busker down the platform started playing Don McLean’s American Pie, Yelena didn’t know if she’d laugh or cry.

So, bye-bye, Miss American Pie, drove my Chevy to the levee—

“—but the levee was dry,” she hummed. Bob’s hand squeezed her arm, once, then twice. In her head she tipped forward, imagined herself mashing her face into his chest to bury herself there until no part of her was left out in the open.

They didn’t part, even on the train. They sat side by side, arm to arm, hip to hip, leg to leg, staring at their scratched-up reflection in the window across. Bob in his rumpled suit and baseball cap, Yelena in her rain-stained dress and the hood of her sweater pulled low over her face.

She hummed American Pie all the way back to the tower, thinking then she didn’t want the night to end, thinking she’d slam herself across the ground to keep the world from turning.

Bob’s arm was warm and sure as it hooked around her waist. With her hand on his head to keep his cap from slipping, she squeezed her eyes shut like a child, imagining the terrifying dazzle of the lights going out. The hem of her dress whipped against her legs when they shot up to the helipad, the blast of it like a rocket, terrible enough it kicked a shocked cackle from her. Stomach slamming down, heart bursting from her open mouth. When she blinked, the night was big and black all around. How it was just as terrifying as it had been the first time. How much tighter she held him, how she ground her face into the crook of his neck, wanting nothing more than to press her mouth to it, her tongue, burry her teeth right there—

Loosen your grip, Yelena.

When had that stopped being an option?

There was an inevitability to the way she pulled Bob to his room with a hand around his wrist, past the skeleton staff cleaning up stray glasses and plates of food, left-behinds of a night the two hadn’t been a part of.

Yelena waited patiently with her back against his door as he punched in his code on the keypad. It took him two tries. Her quiet laugh. His mumbled curse.

And when it finally unlocked, Bob’s eyes flicked to Yelena’s mouth, and then he was nodding, leaning in closer, and the bill of his cap bumped against her forehead, and Yelena’s hand fumbled to push the door open, and she was so headless and so full of heart. She felt like all the women in the movies.

Stumbling through the dark, she slipped out of the Yankee slides and unhooked her heels from her wrist, letting them thump to the carpet.

She didn’t know if she was still pretending. All the things she wanted then, crowding her body until she felt swollen with it. Could he see it in the dark?

The back of her knees bumped against his bed. She let herself fall into it the way she never would have, never like this. In Bob’s room, she sat on the couch or the floor or the carpet; she never bunched his sheets in her hands or let her legs curl over the edge of the mattress, feeling it spring against her feet.

She felt drunk, full and glad, and she wanted to rub her face into his pillows and inhale, she wanted his thumb to touch her chin again, wanted to feel it catch at her bottom lip.

Every part of her rung.

Bob stumbled over one of her heels on the floor, snorting, his sweet little: “Shit—sorry.” He stood at the foot of the bed. Never looking away, boyish and bashful, he slid out of his suit jacket, tossing it carelessly onto the floor. The baseball cap followed. The collar of his shirt was undone. The shine of his belt buckle in the dim city lights.

Yelena went fidgety beneath the glare of his attention, felt so warm in it she was all clammy. She pulled the sweater over her head, the hem of her dress riding up her legs. She could’ve sighed from the cool air on her chest, could’ve stretched her arms out and reached for him, and just when she felt shameless enough to do so—Bob lowered himself to his knees.

A panic jolted her, different from the one she’d been feeling lately. It was searing, like a charge, this feeling that unfurled in her stomach and lower, lower, making her want to squeeze her thighs together. Oh, the things to be felt, Yelena—

“Bob,” she started, but she didn’t know what she wanted to say.

“Your socks are wet,” he mumbled. “Just let me….”

After having scrambled through the rainy streets of New York, her feet felt swollen and achy as Bob gripped her calves, one at a time, before rolling off each sock with such care it broke her heart a little.

She didn’t breathe once as she waited for him to let go, but he stayed there, kneeling between her legs. The brush of his thumb along the joint at her ankle, a slow wonderful circle atop the bone.

Yelena didn’t like to think of herself as vain.

There hadn’t been much time to be. Until there was. She'd caught herself staring longingly at all the womanly cleanness of bodies in the look-books the image consultants kept tucked under their arms, donkey-eared and index-tabbed, like bibles. Sometimes she looked at herself as she sat curled on the counter in her bathroom, legs in the sink while she scraped a blade across the little hairs. Sometimes, she’d touch the scars on her skin, chart them like an explorer, their strange jagged valleys and bursts of pink blistered fields.

Bullets. Knives. Teeth. Shrapnel.

She bled like a human. She healed like one too.

Bob was looking at her left knee. She thought of the particularly harrowing scar an IED had left there, her skin mottled into a sickle right below the kneecap. The warm hand on her calf slid to the hollow of her knee so lightly she barely felt it, so lightly she could’ve died right then, in this room, with the lights off, and his breath pushing hot and honeyed beneath the hem of her dress.

Sometimes Bob had this look on his face, eyelids heavy, face foggy with feeling, that thick inescapable attention that made her wonder about all the things he wanted, all his mindlessness, all his urgency.

And when he tipped forward to brush his nose along her knee, his breath a damp spill across her naked skin—was it so wrong to arch into it? Was it so wrong to need it with so much of herself?

All her life Yelena had been taken apart and put back together, her body sealed with surgical screws and metal plates, and Robert Reynolds had the fucking nerve to press his mouth to her knee with such care, as if he was afraid she’d fall apart.

She wanted so much she didn’t know where to put it.

She wanted so much.

She wanted—so much.

She wanted to point at all the spots his mouth should be next—here and here and oh please here please here pleaseplease—she’d chart it for him, she’d pull and pull, she’d drag him to them with a hand fisting his hair—

“Sorry.” Bob jerked back.

He shook himself like a dog. He shook the moment. She saw the panic on his face. Was it the searing kind too? "Fuck—I didn’t meant to.” His voice cracked. “I’m sorry—I wasn’t thinking. I just—”

“Come here.” Come here. Please. Come here. Pleasepleaseplease.

Yelena hadn’t been allowed to want. She'd been deemed unfit and so they'd tried to take it from her.

But it was here now, in every corner of the room and her body, and she didn’t know what to do with it or where to start. She wanted, and her want was so big she felt it plume in her mouth, solid enough to bite down on.

Slowly, Bob crept up the bed. The sound of his shoes as they thudded, one by one, onto the floor. His weight made the bed dip. Yelena imagined all of her sliding into him. She imagined curling around him in all the ways she’d been too ashamed to think about. On hands and knees, he moved up her body, her legs parting for him, bending enough for her dress to shuck up further.

They’d sparred countless of times. She knew his body in a very tactical way, where to push to make him slip up, where to yank to make him yield.

But this…

It felt different like this.

Yelena was so muddled by the feeling of him looming above her, that when Bob’s knee bumped against her leg, it took her far too long to remember the Glock strapped to her thigh.

Her leg shot up on reflex, foot landing square on his chest to stop him from moving any further.

Bob went still, eyes wide in the dark. He looked like he’d been slapped.

“Wait. I should probably—” Yelena was all out of breath.

Her dress slipped down her thigh to reveal the holster. Swallowing, Bob stared at it. “You were wearing that the whole time?” he whispered.

She nodded, moving slow as if she was trying not to scare him off, unhooking the holster with practiced ease, checking the safety of her Glock, before pulling out the knife and the flash charge. Bob didn’t move once as he watched her carefully place it all on his nightstand.

Something about it made him laugh, that throaty lilting hiccup. Her foot was still planted on his chest, the starchy white of his dress shirt, the heat of him as he took one breath after the other.

Yelena realized he was waiting. For her, he was waiting, and the understanding of that settled something inside of her.

Snaking, slow, her foot slid down his chest to the warmth of his stomach, toes catching along the buttons of his shirt, along his hip, the snag of his leather belt. She bowed back for balance, dress tight around her chest, and with a heave, she hooked her knee under his arm, dragging him down to her.

Come here, come here—

Bob stuttered a breath. The wavy strands of his hair, loosening from behind his ear, heavy with gel. She reached up to curl it back behind his ears. He huffed another low lilting laugh. She smiled. And it hurt to smile like this—hurt, because she meant it so much, with all of herself. Holding his face in her hands, she brushed her thumb along the delicate skin beneath his eye. She wanted to run her pinkie along the swoop of his lashes. She wanted to blow at them, touch them with the tip of her tongue.

Look at you, she thought. How are you not the center of every room and every conversation? And attention? And gravity? How doesn’t everything on this tiny planet spin endless circles around you?

Bob’s arms bracketed her head. That sweet flounder of his when he ran his fingers along her hairline, tracking the movement with his eyes. Until his thumb found its way to her chin—there—dipping right below her bottom lip. He stared at her mouth. It opened for him. She opened for him.

Leaning forward, his nose ran along the bridge of hers. Supple. Soft. His breath pooling when he grabbed her chin, gently guiding it up and up—

Had anyone in the world ever been kissed so carefully?

It left her unfurled, that plush little peck, gentle and dry, and she wanted another, then another. What she’d give for another. His hands cupped her jaw. Her mouth so open. The slip of his tongue against hers. Their teeth clacking once. All of her uncertainty, her unstoppable eagerness. The wet press of his lips, so flush with heat she was gasping for it, clutching at him, her hands in his hair, down his neck, and his shoulders, everywhere. She wanted to be everywhere.

She felt like something that only writhed, she was the needing thing in his bed.

Bob made a strangled sound when they parted. Yelena’s head followed his when he leaned back, her elbows digging into the mattress as she pushed upward, straining her neck toward him. She felt so dizzy with it. She couldn’t stop, didn’t want to stop. And with a final push, her leg wrapped over his hip—the bulk of him hot against her bare skin—and with a move she would’ve decked him with on the training mat, she flipped him onto his back, his head hitting the mattress with a surprised exhale.

She leaned over him. She liked the way his eyelids twitched, liked the way his attention slid from her mouth, to her throat, to the neckline of her dress dipping open.

Yelena felt in control of something she hadn’t felt in control of before, straddling him with all of her nervousness, frazzled, buzzing, her shaking breath, her want so huge it throttled her like a hand around her throat. She wanted and she wanted, and she grabbed his hands, sliding them up her thighs, showing him—here, please, here—until they roamed on their own, gripping into her hips, her shoulders, before clutching the back of her head and pulling her down.

Their foreheads knocked against each other a little too hard. It spluttered a laugh from her, from him. “—fuck, sorry!”

“Ow.”

He mashed sloppy kisses across her forehead. “Sorry—” kiss. “—‘m sorry.” Kisskiss. She was laughing. He was lovely.

“I don’t break that easy,” she murmured.

“Tell me about it.” His thumb on the corner of her mouth, pulling.

She kissed him hard. His deep in-breath. And it was so warm, everything was so warm she spiraled right into it, letting her mouth stray, kissing him and kissing him and kissing him. His head cradled in her hands, she scattered her mouth across his face, from nose to chin to the side of his neck, his ears, the soft skin at his hairline, until Bob was laughing again, that sweet throaty thing that swept through the room and swept through her, swept her whole.

✢ ✢ ✢ ✢ ✢ ✢

What a surprise it was to find out that kissing was as much for jewelry commercials and horny poets, as it was for Yelena Belova.

✢ ✢ ✢ ✢ ✢ ✢

Yelena woke to the sun warm on her cheek and the sight of the back of his smooth pale neck.

Maybe there was a version of her that carefully peeled herself out of his bed, collected her heels and her sweater and her socks and her silly Yankee slides, and left.

But this version of her was tactless.

With an unabashed sigh she buried her face in his hair, inhaling…shampoo, hair gel. She was curled around him, conjoined, like a whelk to its sea snail. Huffing, she grazed her nose against the hot curve of his head. She wanted to kiss him there. So she did. Mind gone gummy from so little sleep, she wanted too many awful things, wanted to open her mouth, spoon his hair into it, wanted to take big bites from the soft skin of his throat—

“Good morning to the gremlin eating my hair,” Bob grumbled, his voice low and frayed from sleep. If she could spoon it into her mouth as well, she would. Buckets worth of it, bathtubs.

She wondered if there was a version of him that would’ve asked her to leave.

“Mm-hmm.” Yelena nuzzled further into his hair, and she felt tired and silly enough to try and gnaw at his skull, imagining the headlines: Deranged Carnivorous Superhero Eats Planet-Ending Lover—Bones and All.

She smiled when she felt his hand blindly batting against her head.

Bob snorted, then sighed. “‘Time is it?”

Yelena groaned. She didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to think about the next disaster in the never-ending line-up of disasters, waiting for them in front of Bob’s bedroom door.

She was so tired and all she wanted was this.

The mattress wallowed when Bob twisted in her grip. She couldn’t let go of him, looping her arms around his neck, curling her leg around his hip, feeling all of herself give way when the warm weight of his arm pulled at her waist, hand splaying across her back, picking at her dress. She liked the press of his rumpled shirt against her front. She closed her eyes for a moment, humming when she felt his mouth against her brow, her cheek, her chin. His breath was acrid from sleep, but she didn’t care.

Was any of this even allowed?

Was it supposed to feel like this?

She touched him like a compulsion, like the needing of it was an irrefutable, unshakeable fact. Were they still pretending? Were they meant to go back to the way it had been the second they unlocked the door? Would she ever be able to forgive herself for it?

Opening her eyes, Yelena met Bob’s blue stare, unyielding in a solid bar of sunlight. She let him run his fingers along her jaw, all the way down to her throat. She let him feel her swallow when he pressed gently against her jugular.

And then the moment was over, and Bob's expression tensed, and he turned, reaching for his phone on the nightstand. He gave her a look, as if to ask: Okay?

She took a long breath, then nodded: Okay.

Staring at his phone, Bob’s eyes furrowed. She watched him thumb the screen a couple of times. “Fuck…”

“Don’t tell me.” Yelena squeezed her eyes shut. “Don’t even tell me what time it is.”

“Okay.”

“Is it bad?”

“Define bad.”

“All-Avengers-to-the-jet bad?” She opened her eyes just in time to watch Bob toss his phone back onto the nightstand. Knocking against the same paperback she’d spotted around him on and off for weeks.

He shook his head. “Maybe Strat-Ops drank themselves under a table last night,” he mumbled, flopping back down to the bed. They were quiet. She knew Bob was thinking. She shouldn’t have let him check his phone. With a thumb, she rubbed at the furrow between his brows to smooth it out, reveling in the way he snorted. Her attention trailed back to the book, its crinkled spine illuminated in the morning light. She angled her head to read the title printed above the image of that strange bird: Helliconia Spring.

“What?” Bob turned to check what she was looking at.

“What are you reading?”

“Hm?”

“Your book,” she murmured in an attempt to distract him. He followed her line of sight, then gave a huff.

“Oh, uh—sci-fi. Gift from my aunt.”

It took her aback.

Maybe it was ignorance, but Yelena hadn’t expected Bob to own anything from his life back then, the same way she hadn’t. Of course they all had things of their own they’d brought to the tower, and of course some more than others. Alexei and his Red Guardian memorabilia. Bucky and his stack of yellowed letters. Yelena had brought boxes upon boxes from safe houses all over; her vinyl player and colorful coats, her flamingo-pink lava lamp.

She felt ashamed for assuming Bob didn’t have anything to bring.

“It was her favorite book,” Bob said.

Yelena imagined scouring through herself, searching for the few morsels of information she’d saved on Bob’s aunt: Eleanor, she remembered, with the fringe vests and the yellow house at the end of the cul-de-sac and her slew of broken hearts.

“She gave it to me on my birthday. I was, uh—eleven, I think.” He laughed. “It’s pretty dry. I mean, I try to read it every once in a while hoping the older I get, maybe the more I’ll enjoy it?”

“What’s it about?”

Bob looked at her for a moment, taking a breath. “Uh—So, there’s this planet called Helliconia, and it orbits this binary star system,” he made a circle with his hand like he was painting it above their heads, “like, two stars that are gravitationally bound, and so the seasons last for millennia. They call it the ‘Great Year’. And it’s this endless cycle of whole environments and religions and cultures and lives changing, and there’s this part where a winter that lasted like six-hundred years—which is, you know, forever—it ends. And then spring comes around,” he said, staring out the window, past the skyscrapers, into the sky, “and it changes everything.”

His voice a low scraping ache.

The furrow between his brows returned. Yelena had to stop herself from reaching out again.

"I think my aunt was the only person who knew how to deal with my mood swings. Especially the lows. She'd kind of just sit with it. Like, she'd wait for me to come out the other end.” He nodded, and then he smiled so softly Yelena would’ve missed it if she weren’t so close. “Every time I felt better, she’d call it Helliconia Spring. And if the weather was nice, she’d pull me out into the garden—mostly so she could smoke," he added, "and we’d waltz, and it would feel stupid until it didn’t.”

The kindness with which he told her this, as if excavating only from the sweetest, most meaningful memories of childhood, conjured a woman who had loved him from start to finish. (Which was, after all, a grand gesture usually reserved for the likes of the Pope or the son of “The Crocodile Hunter”.)

Bob turned his face away from the window, turned his face away from her, until all she could see was the swirling shell of his ear, the tip of his nose peeking up from the mound of his cheek with each breath.

“Bucky’s right," Bob said, and something about it made her sad. "This is the first time in a really long time that I have this thing I can fall back on, and sometimes it gets to my head, and other times…I float in the gym and break Park Avenue in two.” He snorted, shook his head.

Yelena reached for him, carefully pulling his face back towards her. He blinked. She rubbed her thumb over his cheekbone in smooth circles. Show me, she thought.

“I don’t know where the middle is most of the time.” Bob looked past her. “But sometimes I do, and it’s like...that’s the fucking spot. You know? It’s perfect. And it’s everything. And it makes me think that maybe this is where I’m supposed to be.” He looked right at her then, that bar of sunlight grazing his eye, its swirl of impossible blue.

He was so beautiful she wanted to die.

Here was someone who’d come into this world left behind. He could’ve punished it for that, and yet he’d chosen not to. Every day, he made that choice.

Clutching the back of his neck to pull him close, Yelena—the mortal with her breakable bones, and the screws and metal plates padding her body—made a pact, one she would live by like doctrine:

If Robert Reynolds had to fight alone, it meant Yelena Belova was dead.

Bob’s hand was so warm as it curved along her cheek, fingers combing into her hair before carefully scraping along the piercings in her ear, like he was counting them. All she could look at was him.

“What about now?” she mouthed.

“Hm?”

“What season is it now?”

Looking at her, eyes painting shapes across her face, he smiled. And there it was, that secret dimple that popped on his cheek. How much it delighted her, how much it killed her.

There would always be other versions of this. Versions of life where they’d made the right choices and done the right things. Maybe there were versions of her that had been born happy and remained happy, who still had a sister and a home with the perfect shape, who’d never regretted a single thing, who’d never known shame or terror or loneliness or agony. Versions of them who could lie in a bed like this and know with such resolute surety that nothing would change and life would go on and always be easy.

In this version of life, everything was so uncertain Yelena didn’t even know what was waiting for them outside of this very room.

But for a moment, this version of her kissed this version of him, and when the sun touched her cheek, it felt a lot like being loved.

✢ ✢ ✢ ✢ ✢ ✢

Later, when Bob lolled back into sleep in a patch of sunlight, Yelena reached for the paperback. Tracing carefully the loopy writing scribbled across the title page:

For Robby:

Put on your dancing shoes. It’s Helliconia Spring.

—E

✢ fin ✢

Previous Chapter

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vhstown · 2 years ago

Text

hobie green

— hobie brown x gn!reader

summary: You never knew punks could be into gardening — or into you.

word count: 2.9k

warnings: mentions of underage drinking, brief mentions of politics, fluff, not very edited

a/n: based on a silly headcanon me and @qiuweyballs came up with. 99% identical to my tag team fic arrest me i love friends to lovers (just lovers in my drafts prommie)

There were a lot of things you didn't expect about your friend Hobie. The first thing was that he was Spider-Man (but you kind of figured after all those patch-up sessions at your place.) Second, was that he lived on a boat — not the most outrageous thing; somewhat non-conformist, somewhat Hobie-like — he wasn't the only boater in Camden. The third thing you didn't expect, however, was that this “hero”, non-conformist, punk, anarchist and whatever other label he'd projected, would have so many… plants.

“You're lookin’ at me funny.”

The “hero”, non-conformist, punk, anarchist and now plant dad in question sat with his feet propped up against one of the many windows of his canal boat, an unassuming eyebrow raised.

“…Nah, don't worry about it,” you muttered, shifting awkwardly on your feet as you tried not to knock anything over, taking in the overflowing greenery of the room.

There was pretty much every plant you could think of: regular household plants under the windows, a tomato stalk in the corner, small cacti in odd places — he even had a pretty well-maintained chilli plant, bathing more gloriously in a patch of sunlight than you ever could. The boat felt more like a disorganised plant shop than a home, if it weren't for the rowdy radical posters and punk collages peeking in-between. Maybe these plants were as much like your friend as all the anarchy-themed decoration he’d made himself — or Hobie had just stolen a boat with a lot of plants in it.

Squeezing past some more foliage, you sat beside Hobie on his tiny canvas couch. He gave you a glance of acknowledgement before reaching for his guitar, setting it between his kicked-up legs as you tried to get more comfortable. The red coating of the instrument had almost entirely peeled off, instead covered by loud stickers and scratchy writing. You weren’t sure what any of it really meant, or why his guitar wasn’t tuned in the first place (it never seemed to be when you two were hanging out) — but right now, you were wondering why he was being so quiet. The silence was nice, though, so you didn’t let yourself think of anything else to ask.

Swaying gently from time to time, the canal boat hummed with the splashing of water and faint strumming of Hobie’s guitar. These quiet, almost tranquil moments were unexpected for someone as spontaneous as Hobie, but they were also welcome, you decided. The world was falling apart, but it was nice to be away from that in the middle of a canal with your best friend — even with his many plants.

You felt a tug behind your back, realising Hobie was trying to get something. Mumbling a quick sorry, you moved to let him get the thing you were sitting on. It was a pink jumper — much too small to be his. After carefully draping it over the backrest, he cracked a smile at you.

“Gotta give that to Gwendy,” he told himself, nails tapping on the back of the guitar neck.

Gwendy (Gwen? Wendy?) was a friend he'd made recently, and you’d never seen a trace of her despite the fact that they supposedly lived together. That was until now; the sweater looked nice, soft, high-quality — nothing like anything you could afford here. Maybe she was well-off. How old even was she? Did Gwendy like plants too?

“Yeah? Is she your roommate?” you inquired, leaning forward to look at him. “Boatmate?”

“You sayin’ this isn’t a room?” Hobie set his guitar against the wall as if the conversation was suddenly more important.

“More like a garden.”

He tilted his head to the side at your response, finally meeting your eyes with his own glinting with amusement.

“You want a tour, then? Private — totally elitist.”

“Have you got more plants or something?”

He crossed his arms at you. “You’re actin’ like it’s a problem.”

It wasn’t a problem, per se, you just couldn’t imagine living with so many plants. Maybe it was his superhuman reflexes that kept him from slipping and smashing his face into a plant pot; you almost tripped on some dead roots earlier.

“Nah nah, it’s not. You got uh… free oxygen.” Clearly there wasn’t enough oxygen going to your brain at that moment if that's the only thing you could come up with. You held back a sigh; you’d never be as fast as Hobie. He just snickered.

“They privatise oxygen too?” Not his most clever quip, you thought.

“Maybe. Is that why you have so many plants? To breathe better?”

Hobie gave you a frown. If you didn't know better, you might've felt bad. “You don’t want the tour?”

“Go on,” you beckoned, dryly.

“Get up, then.”

“Can’t be bothered.” The sofa creaked as you leaned back on it, folding your arms as if you were going to sleep. If it was still quiet, maybe you could’ve actually fallen asleep to the gentle rocking motion of the boat.

“You come over to have a snooze?” he teased, leaning over until you pushed him away — one of his usual ways of driving you mad; you wouldn’t have it. “Want to be my boatmate too?”

“Wouldn’t mind.” The words came out by themselves, but you figured they might be true.

“Gwendy’s only here sometimes — you could.”

“I’d miss my place,” you objected, feeling slightly uncertain at the idea now. It was probably better if that weird feeling in your chest whenever you saw Hobie wasn’t a constant in your life anyway.

“Your place is only good for the pub down the road.” Maybe so — you two certainly weren’t good for the pub, though. All you did was shrug in response.

Hobie tapped his foot for a moment, appearing to muse about something. Before you knew it, he slid his hand between your back and the sofa and you were suddenly your feet in one swift motion.

“Hey—” The floor creaked as he started walking you out to the front of the boat, arm slung around your shoulder. You sighed reluctantly at him, but his grin just widened.

“You starting the tour from here?” Despite the cool wind now rushing past the two of you, your tone came out less energetic than you’d like.

Your heart dropped for a moment as Hobie let go of you, suddenly jumping up backwards onto the barriers. He crouched easily on the edge as you let out a small breath of relief. Even if there was no chance he’d fall into the water, you’d never get used to that.

“Nah, no tour,” he replied, hands on his knees as he looked down at you with squinted eyes. “I ain't no elitist.”

The lingering fear in your chest from Hobie’s stunt died down, and the way the late-day sun was hitting his face replaced it with that weird swishing sensation you could never get used to.

Honey-gold sunlight reflected off of his skin, his face shimmering where there were angles and glowing softly where there weren’t. His eyes glistened like copper, your own face in the reflection like the rich people on coins as you searched for any trace of amusement in his expression. You couldn’t find anything; he was just looking at you. The swishing became more like a crashing tide, your chest growing tighter. Maybe you should’ve feigned interest in the plants when you could.

“…Okay,” you managed, after realising that you’d been staring for a while. Tearing your eyes away from the tall, glistening silhouette of your best friend who was sitting like the figurehead of a sailing ship, you looked back into the boat house before another little plant caught your attention. It was the only plant sitting outside — a young rosemary with a paper tag attached to it.

You squatted down to look at it, figuring that Hobie had nothing to say right now. Taking the tag in your hands, you read “Helen”, written in lovely cursive writing.

“Helen… you name your plants?” It was too nice to be Hobie’s handwriting, but you decided to joke a bit anyway.

“Yeah,” he answered, deadpan, and you tried not to let him catch your eyeroll. “Some lady comin’ through Regent’s gave it to me.”

“People give you plants?”

“All the time, actually.”

Huh… It made enough sense. You did see your fair share of plants in other boats; maybe people wanted to give Spider-Man a thanks or something, or just get rid of some plants they get lying around. You recalled aloe plant you saw earlier, having almost slipped on the pile of dead roots beside it — interesting to gift a rotting plant. It looked like it needed a lot of care; you wondered who could get an aloe to that point.

Deciding to sit by the much nicer rosemary plant with your back against the doors, you caught the faint aroma of the leaves. If Hobie already had vegetable plants, he’d probably make good use out of this one once it got a little more mature. Maybe as a seasoning, or make it into an oil somehow, or just leave it as decoration. There was a lot you could do, you realised, and having plants was starting to look just a little cool. Everything Hobie did was cool — as much as you didn’t like to admit it.

“…What’s up with you?”

Hobie’s voice caught you off guard. You looked back to see that the figurehead was now sitting opposite you on the floor of the little outdoor cockpit, hands loose between his bent knees.

“What do you mean?” He couldn’t just tell like that, could he? Nothing was different… until recently. Until you realised you had that feeling.

“You're quiet,” he stated, though his tone wasn't all that serious. “Y’don’t come over, or come see old Hobie.”

“Old Hobie,” you repeated, half of a laugh coming out of your mouth. “Like Old Tom?”

Tom was the bar owner of the pub you frequented — if your antics could be considered “frequenting”. The two of you were probably the reason why he was “Old” Tom.

“Need to see that geezer,” Hobie mused, leaning back against the wood with a creak.

“A lot of people you’ve gotta see.” It came out far too sardonic, and you held your breath like you’d just placed a bet.

Hobie stuck his bottom lip out, lip ring catching the light. “Like you.”

The sun had faded by now, but that feeling hadn’t, you realised.

“I'm right here,” you replied.

“I brought you.”

“It’s not like I knew which out of the hundred boats was yours. Half of them’ve got plants anyway.”

“You do now.”

“I guess.”

Stretching a little, you shifted to sit more like Hobie, leg brushing against the rosemary leaves for a moment. Hobie cracked his knuckles in the meantime, and you realised you hadn’t really seen him in a while. It wasn’t all your fault, he just kept disappearing. Maybe you should stop waiting for him to come to you all the time.

“I’ll see you again before you have to go to the care home, Old Hobie,” you muttered, getting a snicker out of him.

“They’ll never get me in one of those.”

“You don’t wanna be an elder punk?”

“Not in them institutions — I’ll bail you out as well.”

You never imagined the thought of growing old with someone would go in this direction. Well, it was Hobie.

“I appreciate it, Old Hobie” you replied, though not too enthusiastically. Hobie smirked.

“Come pub with me, then. Don’t need ID if I’m retired.” Despite your best efforts, you smiled just a little.

It wasn’t like you gave Tom ID anyway, but you found it amusing regardless. Maybe it was the idea of being like those old people at the pub: loud, obnoxious, opiniated… Nothing much would change, actually.

“Don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“How come?” Hobie leaning forward on his knees, as if to taunt you. “Scared you’ll get pissed like last time?”

“I did not get pissed!” you retorted, face aching with an incriminating smile. Your stomach churned with the memory of that night — or lack thereof.

“Had to actually peel you off me. My Spider Powers didn’t even help.”

You groaned and laughed at the same time, trying to ease the embarrassment by putting a hand on the plant pot; it was cool, and you felt a chip near the rim.

“Don’t lie.”

“Never did.”

“Fine, yeah.” It sounded like a bit like an admission to a crime; maybe getting that drunk was a crime. “Don’t wanna get pissed like last time.”

Hobie’s smirk faded a bit, before he let out a sigh — those were rare for him, you thought.

“Seriously though, we gotta go again sometime — it’s on you, yeah?”

You frowned at that, but it got no reaction out of him. “You’re the worst.”

“Like I don’t know.”

“You don’t know the half of it.” You weren’t exactly sure what you meant by that, but Hobie didn’t seem to question it.

Maybe he did actually know what was going on with you, even if you never tried to make a move. It was possible — the observant prick. A prick with a green thumb and looked like he’d been kissed by the sun itself and that you couldn't get out of your head.

If he did know, you wished he'd say something, at least.

Your hand lingered on the pot, and the paper tag found its way into your hands again.

“Helen,” you stated, glimpsing at the nice handwriting.

“You gonna call it that now?”

“Got a better name?”

“Yours,” he replied, too easily.

You weren’t sure what a rosemary plant was like, but it sounded enough like a compliment. Did rosemary have a meaning? Hobie wasn’t thinking that deep, of course. Not about things like labels, no matter how many you had for him.

“Am I like a rosemary?”

“Dunno. If you were a plant, I’d keep you though.”

That made you laugh, albeit awkwardly.

“…What are you on about?” you muttered, shaking your head. “Random… You keep like, any plant anyway.”

“I keep the ones I like.”

“Your boat's a greenhouse. Maybe you just like every plant.”

“Maybe I just like you.”

A jolt of pain ran in your mouth, eyes almost squeezing shut — you’d bit your tongue. Hobie was silent, so you couldn’t be.

“Maybe,” you murmured through gritted teeth.

“Maybe,” he repeated, with his usual unbothered amusement that drove your feelings back into hiding. Hobie Brown — “hero”, non-conformist, punk, anarchist — your best friend.

You’d get over it, you told yourself — not for the first time.

Now with a weird attachment to the plant, you tried to seem interested in the tag again — you could say it’d… grown on you. Would he make a joke like that? You wanted to crumple the tag. It looked too nice to do that, so you turned it around to look at the back instead.

“ROSEMARY — remembrance, friendship, love.”

A dry laugh escaped your mouth; even this plant was mocking you. Maybe it felt sorry.

“What’s got you laughin’?” You almost forgot about Hobie; that would’ve been nice. No, you’d get over it soon.

“You better name this plant after me,” you joked, more so to yourself, and in a very much self-pitying way even though he wouldn’t get it. As Hobie’s gaze trailed to the tag, that feeling in your chest threatened you, so you ripped it off before he could see it.

Thwip! Mistake. In a second, the tag was in Hobie’s hand. His face was unreadable as he looked at the back, no longer gold with sunlight.

“Yeah,” he mused, folding over the edge with his nail as his eyes met yours. You tried not to bite your tongue again.

“Yeah…?” You couldn't even give him an awkward laugh.

He held up the tag to show you the folded bit. There was a single word, the rest cut off — “love.”

“Your name fits pretty well.”

Your mouth was so dry, not even a cactus could live in it.

“I’d rather you not be a plant, by the way,” he continued, despite how lost you must’ve looked. “Be yourself, at the pub, tomorrow — opening time. Dress how you want.”

No words were coming out of your mouth. Hobie didn’t need you to say anything, though.

“It’s on me.”

You couldn't leave him hanging. You also couldn’t shy away forever, not when it was right in front of your face. Not when he'd just asked you out.

”…Like a date?”

“Better than a date.”

A smile formed on your lips. After that feeling had been buried under the soil for so long, it was starting to blossom, like the little blue flowers on a rosemary bush.

“Okay,” you replied, winning something that was neither a grin nor a smirk from him — a smile, warm like sunlight, and just like yours.

“Okay.” Hobie chucked the tag back to you, the edge still folded over as you took it in your hand.

“ROSEMARY — remembrance, friendship,”

“love.”

“I’ll let you keep it, if you want.”

Your smile turned into a grin as you brushed your fingertips over the leaves. “I’ll think about it.”

Spice, oil, decoration — this plant had one more use: getting you a date.

Maybe you liked plants more than you originally thought.

🕸️🔭🎸

thank you for reading !! honestly the friends to lovers thing was so not planned i just wrote this for fun (intended to be a drabble / imagine but it turned into this) less friends more lovers in the future hopefully?

thank you again to my friend chewy ^^ tom is actually his chr + the aloe plant detail

reblogs & feedback are super appreciated <3 catch the rest of my atsv stuff here!

#hobie brown x you #spider punk #hobie x reader #hobie brown #hobie spiderverse #hobie brown x y/n #hobie brown x reader #atsv hobie #hobie brown headcanons #atsv fanfiction #across the spiderverse #atsv #atsv x you #vee at 3am #vhstown

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heedra · 4 months ago

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today i learned i need a root canal and i cried during a conversation with my parents AND my water heater overflowed but i'm still going to eat these four pieces of crusty bread with cheese on them. i can have this much at least.

#and im going into what is functionally a 6 day workweek

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erisenyo · 2 months ago

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A little snippet of my current WIP for @atlararepairmonth that I am definitely not going to get up in time but that's okay, the spirit of rare pair month will live on into...early June

Inspired by the amazing @sooz-art's amazing art!

Hahn is plucked from the ocean by the Ocean. Plucked from the weight of water and armor and blackness so deep not even a speck of moonlight remained. Plucked from the numbing, thunderous quiet and set back on his feet, saltwater in his gut and throat and eyes like fire, and told that he has work yet to do, Son of Water. That there is more to be done, Child who has the Sea in his veins and his heart and his lungs. Child who holds within him the vastness of the Ocean, the darkness of its depths and inexorable reach of its tides, the strength of its waves and boundless fury of its storms—that there is work yet to be done, before drowning. ~*~ Sons of Water, as it turns out. Children. It was hard to hear, over the coughing and choking and burning of saltwater gushing from his lungs. And over the bruising rush of his own blood in his veins, resounding through his skull and into his bones, a sudden deluge against his ears like that time when he was still young enough to hang onto his mother’s kuspik and the sea surged just wrong against the ice gates and broke through, overflowing the locks and roaring up the channels of the canals before the waterbenders could push it back, like La himself was trying to burst them apart for the hubris of— But Sokka’s cursing—“frozen fucking monkey feathered mother fu”—is unmistakable, as it turns out. Even half-muffled through the sound of his own pounding pulse in his ears.

Very excited to share this one with you guys :)

#WIPs #Sokka/Hahn #atla rarepair

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hepdenerose · 1 year ago

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Wood Top Heritage

A patchily sunny mid-February Sunday, we walked through the park beginning to bloom with almonds and cherries, up to Wood Top, in search of new lambs. On the ascent, recent research enabled us to place the long-gone Victoria Mill and the station warehouse and further up, to speculate on the origin of the farmhouse. Date stamped 1657, tall arched doors either side signified it started out as a…

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rabbitcruiser · 5 months ago

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Columbia Lake, BC (No. 1)

Columbia Lake is the primary lake at the headwaters of the Columbia River, in British Columbia, Canada. It is fed by several small tributaries. The village of Canal Flats is located at the south end of the lake.

Columbia Lake is a fresh water lake located along Highway 93 and 95, between the centres of Canal Flats and Fairmont Hot Springs in British Columbia, Canada. Its average July temperature of 18 °C makes it the largest warm water lake in the East Kootenay. It has a mean depth of only 2.9 metres (9 ft 6 in), to a maximum of 5.2 metres (17 ft), with excellent water clarity as it enjoys a much smaller volume of boat traffic than its northern neighbour, Windermere Lake.

The Kootenay River, a major tributary of the Columbia, passes within a few thousand feet of the south end of the lake. In freshets the Kootenay, here already a large stream, sometimes overflows into Columbia Lake, and historically the Baillie-Grohman Canal connected the two bodies of water to facilitate the navigation of steamboats (although only three trips were ever made through it).

Source: Wikipedia

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igorlevchenko-blog · 1 year ago

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Morrowind: Hircine, Lord of Hunt and Beastly Transformations

Having poached from reddit new ideas on how Hircine makes the moon Secunda appear red, I'm returning with an update.

RakaiaWriter composed a hitherto unknown 104th cantata of Vivec: Vvardenfell was plagued with a swarm of scribs, overrunning the towns and overflowing the rivers and canals. Vivec in his wisdom asked them nicely to "Get lost" - the scribs had very low disposition and taunted him with their obstinate presence. He whisked out a lute and merrily strummed a tune leading them all up into the sky, to settle upon the boring desolate wastes of Secunda. Every era or so he allows Hircine to do his little hunt, with a single white guar. The poor, normally peaceful guar, now driven mad in terror, rampages across Secunda trampling hapless scrib underfoot, turning the surface into a mash of scrib jelly, and tainting it red. Well pinkish sort of. But the Nords like to embellish things.

Gel filter—suggests RamoTheRedditor

JaxMed believes Hircine uses some artifact associated with Lorkhan, corrupts it with blood, and that allows him to manipulate the moons, similar to how it works in Skyrim with Auriel's bow.

Genjimitsu said: for all we know half of the moon could always be Red and he just schedules his hunts for when it turns around.

Previously, @hervissa suggested a magic ritual where Hircine lets the blood drop onto the moon's reflection in water.

@theseventhoffrostfall said Hircine hunts equine monsters of Oblivion to make a "paintbrush". The time it takes to make such a brush would indeed account for the time interval between bloodmoon incidents.

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youwouldntdownloadapizza · 1 year ago

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The Gates of Jackson | Joel Miller x F!Reader | Chapter 6 - The Lodge

masterlist | ao3 | follow @youwouldntdownloadapizza and turn on notifications for updates

You showed up at the gates of Jackson with hands covered in blood and no memory of how you got there. That was two years ago. Since then, you've become Maria's right-hand woman and the person in charge of Jackson's logistical backend. Patrol schedules, inventory—all your purview. When a patrol gone wrong forces you to get to know Joel, memories of your past begin resurfacing—along with their consequences.

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pairing: joel miller x f!reader

rating: 18+, minors DNI

word count: 1.1k

tags: no use of y/n, eventual smut, no beta we die like sarah, jackson era, other additional tags to be added, slow burn, ellie needs a hug, joel lives, good parent joel, reader-insert, reader insert, forced proximity, only one bed trope, nightmares, childbirth, hurt/comfort, emotional hurt/comfort, angst with a happy ending, soft joel, cuddling & snuggling, fluff, masturbation, pining, joel falls first, possibly demisexual reader (tbd), ptsd, ptsd flashbacks, panic attacks, amnesia, sexual braiding

Chapter 6 - The Lodge

A light rain had begun to fall by the time you reached the lodge. The dirt trail quickly turned to mud, and the horses’ hooves squelched with every step. You braced yourself, sliding off Bailey’s back and landing in the stuff with a resolute plop .

Though you’d had the foresight to waterproof your boots, water and mud were two very different beasts. You’d probably be scrubbing dirt out of your laces for a good long while once you got home. Which at this rate felt like it may not happen until well after you died of old age.

Sodden and starving, you tethered Bailey to a post and approached the front porch.

“More breaking and entering?” Joel asked as you crouched to a squat before the door.

“Nope.” You flipped up the corner of the doormat to reveal a hidden key. “Consider us lodge-sitters.”

“Aren’t you worried about break-ins?” Joel asked.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Joel, but this region isn’t exactly overflowing with people. And if any do find this place…” You trailed off as you slid the key in the lock, glancing up to meet his eyes. “Well, has a locked door ever stopped you?”

Before he could answer, you pushed through the door and stepped into the mercifully well-insulated structure.

The place was pretty bare-bones, with empty storage shelves built into one wall and a threadbare couch pushed up against another. The worn-down dregs of what had once been carpet covered the concrete subfloor here and there.

Despite it all, the sofa beckoned. You sank into it, backpack sandwiched between you and the rear cushions, and sighed.

Then Joel had the audacity to block your light.

“Can I help you?” you asked, opening one eye to glare up at him.

“What’s the plan?”

“Logbook. Linner. Leave.” You counted out the steps of your incredibly thorough plan on frozen fingertips.

“Linner?”

“We’re well past lunchtime. Not quite to dinner. It’s linner, the brunch of the afternoon.”

“That is so goddamn stupid.”

Even with your eyes closed, you could hear the smile in his voice. That is so goddamn adorable .

Joel trailed off towards the only other thing in the room, an old podium atop which rested the dusty, leather-bound logbook. A clicky pen sat nestled between the pages, bearing words he’d never expected to read again, let alone here:

Dr. Neil Henry, DDS - Austin Community Dentistry

He laughed, holding up the pen to show you.

“You know this used to be my dentist, back in Austin?”

“Did it now?” You smirked.

“Dr. Henry. Always used to nag me about flossin’,” he reminisced.

“Did it work?”

“No,” he chuckled. “Not ‘till after the outbreak, anyhow. No one’s around to give you a root canal nowadays. I’d rather not need one.”

“Fair point,” you said, well aware of the hypocrisy as you gnawed on an extraordinarily tough chunk of jerky.

Your eyes swept the stunning vista visible through the lodge’s massive windows. They reminded you of the ones in your office, and in the lookout tower. There was something about them that put you at ease, which made no sense whatsoever. They were glass, and not even particularly thick glass at that. Much like life before the outbreak, they were an illusion of security at best.

But still, you liked them.

Joel followed your gaze, and his breath caught in his throat at the view. It was beautiful. Not quite as magnificent as this morning’s sunrise had been, but still breathtaking.

“Wow,” he whispered.

“Pretty, huh?” you answered without looking back.

“It’s like a screensaver. Or a wallpaper or somethin’.” Joel mused, eyes wide in awe.

“Hmm,” you mused. “Mine used to be a picture of the Great Wall of China.”

“Why’s that?”

“It was the default,” you sighed, picking out the raisins from your trail mix. “But also I’ve always thought ruins were cool as shit.”

“Plenty of those to be had nowadays,” he said.

“Too many, if you ask me.”

You both chewed in silence for a minute, watching the birds coming home from their winter vacations.

“You know Eugene leaves jokes in here?” Joel broke the silence.

“I did.”

“You hear his latest?”

“Hit me with it.”

“Alright,” Joel turned to face you, smile wide. “What do we want? Low-flying planes! When do we want ‘em? Nyeowwww.” He mimed a plane diving with his finger, eliciting a chuckle from you.

“That’s one of his better jokes.”

“Yeah, the man’s no Will Livingston.”

You smiled. You were intimately familiar with Livingston’s work, ever since Ellie decided to thank you for her new light-up sneakers with a selection of the punster’s greatest hits.

There was no need for a security sweep after you’d finished eating. The whole place was only a couple of rooms, and you’d already checked the perimeter before entering.

“Go get the horses ready,” you instructed. “I’ll finish up here.”

You scribbled your report in the logbook and tucked away the remnants of linner, swinging your pack over your shoulders before taking one last look at the view.

It was golden hour, and the sun hit the clouds in a way that transcended any screensaver comparison. It was as if you’d been granted a glimpse of heaven itself.

* * *

You watched from the porch as Joel took a drink from his canteen. The way his Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed, the chiseled scruff of his jawline–from an objective standpoint, the man certainly had a rugged charm to him. But he was far from the only cowboy type in Jackson. And this was far from your first rodeo.

As Joel tucked the canteen away, he remembered the outside pocket of his pack. It held loose bullets and some of Ellie’s hair ties, but most importantly, it held a ballpoint pen.

As he heard you turn the key in the lock, he called out.

“Hang on! I forgot something.”

Unlocking the door once more, you ushered Joel inside.

He jogged over to the logbook with his offering, swiftly swapping it out for the one with a touch of home. He was halfway to the door when his brain caught up with his eyes and he turned on the spot to inspect your logbook entry.

All clear, no signs of raiders or infected.

It wasn’t the description that jarred him. It was the names. His, of course, was transcribed in loopy cursive, the standard, un-misspell-able ‘Joel Miller’. Beside it was a nickname–no, a last name –preceded by a first name that brought everything into focus:

Jane Doe.

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chapter notes:

New chapter! Yay!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry for the long gap between updates, life has been cray.

Big Jane Doe reveal oooh!!! I would never blatantly rip off Yearling like that don't worry!!!!!!!!!! @justagalwhowrites BIG FAN THO

Curious to hear everyone's thoughts on this chapter and what's coming next, I legit have been planning out this whole fic with a very elaborate color-coded notecards-on-corkboard setup (I am, in fact, a virgo). So more fun stuff coming hopefully sooner rather than later.

Comments make me type faster!

Love you all so much, and thank you for reading! I got really creatively blocked during the writers' strike and getting back into fanfic writing has been incredibly healing. Grateful for you all.

taglist: @aspecialgreenie

#joel miller x reader #joel miller x you #joel miller smut #joel miller fluff #joel miller angst #joel miller series #joel miller fic #the last of us #tlou #joel x reader #joel x you #no use of y/n #joel miller x f!reader #jackson era #joel lives #ao3 #fanfic #fanfiction #pedro pascal

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