#guess whose t is finally taking effect

[bigstupidmutt]

Testosterone is a DRUG that turns STRONG INTELLIGENT MEN into BIG DUMB MUTTS

[lou-struck]

Halloween Declassified

Kotaro Bokuto  x reader

Flufftober Day 11: Declassified

W.C. 2.5k

-After much prying you finally find out what happened to Bokuto at his Halloween practice two years ago.

Warnings: Mention of bare body parts, traumatizing young children for comedy, slightly suggestive behavior, use of the word sexy when describing halloween costumes. Almost nude bodies, elder abuse if you squint, scarring unnamed elementary schoolers for the polt.

"What do you think of this one?" Your boyfriend Kotaro Bokuto asks, rolling over in bed to flash his bright phone screen in your face. The two of you have been scrolling in the comfort of your bed, searching for a costume he could wear to this year's Halloween practice. "I think we have a winner."

"Let's see," you squint to readjust to his way brighter screen to see what kind of flashy, hopeful, functional costume has caught the wing spikers' attention. "Kou, are you sure you want to go with an inflatable T-Rex costume? I don't think you'll be able to move very well in that. And those suits can't get really warm, especially if you're in a gym."

" Ahhhh darn you, you beautiful voice of reason." he cries dramatically. Although he is upset that this costume is a no-go, he is growing increasingly thankful that you were there to help him plan this year. 

After two years of terrible costume malfunctions, his team manager told him that if he doesn't come to practice wearing an appropriate costume with a 0% chance of ripping or worse, he wouldn't be allowed to participate.

Your limbs are tangled together under the cool sheets as the large man decides that the costumes you are looking at on your phone are much more interesting. "Whatcha lookin' at?" he asks, blinking his owlish eyes up at you innocently. 

"The Costume shop's website to see if they have anything that looks cool." you hum, showing him the men's costume section. 

"Oh, what about that sexy ghostface costume?" he says, pointing to the Tumblr-coded, masked killer costume, complete with a model whose glistening abs peak through the stylish slits in the black robe. "After practice, maybe we could use that for laterrrr?" he wiggles his eyes at you seductively, but you just slide to the next costume.

"As cool as that looks, you won't be able to see in that mask," you say, much to your mutual disappointment. "Not to mention you're gonna trip all over that robe. Let's try something else a little more functional."

"Fine," he huffs, crossing his arms over his chest. "Why do you have to be so smart and helpful all the time?"

"I love you too," you giggle, pressing a soft kiss to his jaw, effectively pulling him out of his little mood so you can get this costume ordered before next Halloween. But as you return to scrolling, there is something lingering in the back of your mind as you scan costume after costume. 

What was he wearing two years ago when the unspeakable incident occurred?

The question has teased and tormented you for almost two years now. Bokuto has been silent on it, and out of respect for him, his teammates have been sworn to secrecy. 

You have thought long and hard about what has happened and have determined that it is more than just a simple wardrobe malfunction. Kotaro has had several over the years and usually laughs them off like when he split the skeleton-printed leggings, he wore last year in two. 

Not knowing is killing you, but you love your boyfriend, and you want him to open up about it on his own time without your interference. To distract yourself, you return to scrolling with one hand and play with his hair with the other. 

"Hey, Baby?" he asks suddenly, picking up on your quietness. "What are you thinking about?"

"It's nothing," you lie, "just tired today, I guess."

"Awe, come on, I know you way better than that." he says, nudging you with his elbow," talk to meeeee."

Fueled by his whining, you take a breath. "What happened to you at that Halloween practice two years ago?" His face immediately turns bright red, and his gaze flickers to the floor. You expect him to change the subject like he's done in the past, but his answer surprises you. 

"Do you really want to know?"

"I do," you say, and he slowly gets to his feet. And walks out of the room and into your bedroom closet, of all places. You watch as he gets to his knees and slides a black cardboard box out from behind his dress shirts. Flipping over the lid, he removes what looks to be a single DVD. He holds it carefully, as if it is about to explode, and looks at you with eyes full of worry.

"If I show you this, you have to promise me something," he says hesitantly. 

The distress written on his usually cheery features makes you pause, "what is it?"

"Promise me you won't break up with me."

"I'm not going anywhere," you say, and he nods, gently taking the disc out of its case and sliding it into the DVD player. The screen comes to life as you sit down on the couch.  

The orange head of Shoyo Hinata springs onto the screen, and you realize that this is one of the old vlogs the Jackals used to make for their social media page. 

Clearly, he wasn't put in charge of the camera very often for a reason, he is far too energetic, and the camera shakes so much that you can't even see his costume clearly until he sets the camera down on to the practice bench and shows off his werewolf costume, The ripped, cutoff jeans we were wearing makes you cringe a bit, practicing in those cannot be comfortable. 

As more players arrive to the gym, Shoyo leads the viewers through their introductions and has each one show their costumes to the screen, but it is hard to pay attention, not when Kotaro sits stiffly next to you, waiting for the inevitable. 

Soon, he appears on the screen, wearing a skintight leather catsuit you know he doesn't own anymore. "Awe, Kou, you were dressed as a kitten?" You ask, turning to him curiously.

"I was a cat burglar," he admits sheepishly. But you really don't know why he is so embarrassed. This is far more covered up than some of his other costumes. If anything, he looks pretty damn good in the suit.

You tell him such, but he just shakes his head, "Keep watching."

And you do, suddenly Shoyo grabs the camera from the bench and goes to introduce some very special guests at the court. A class of elementary schoolers was led through a tour of the stadium with their chaperone, Sister Maria, a sweet-faced elderly nun.

Oh great… Children and an actual Nun, what could possibly go wrong?' you think to yourself. 

The vlog continues, and your boyfriend fast-forwards through it, not wanting to suffer any longer than necessary. Watching a dozen players warm up and do run drills until they finally start to play a scrimmage at 6x speed is unbelievably funny. 

At a water break, the playback speed slows to normal, and you see him reappear on the screen. In the catsuit, he is sweating buckets, but he looks happy. "Someone pass me the water," he gasps as a training assistant presses one in his sweaty hand. "Man, it's hot in here."

"Bokuto, you are sweating like a pig," Sakusa says, wrinkling his nose in disgust. You notice that he is the only one in the gym not wearing a costume. 

"No, I'm just glistening," he jokes, earning a laugh from the kids watching the practice. "What do you think y/n will say when they see my super cool costume???"

"You are so cool, Bokuto," Hinata gushes. "I'm sure they will love it."

"Thank man," he grins, patting his friend on the back. When he sets his now empty water bottle down onto the bench. He looks into the camera and winks. "Hey hey hey, guess who's gotta pee?" He walks back toward the bathroom, and the vlog resumes the water break segment. 

Glancing at your boyfriend, his nervous expression tells you that the incident will be occurring soon. Back on the screen, you notice that he has not returned from the bathroom yet. After a few minutes, Meian grows concerned and turns to Atsumu in his superhero costume. "Can you go check on Bokuto? We need to get back to the match."

"Sure thing," the setter says, jogging away. 

In real time, Bokuto starts to fast forward again and you notice that he has still not come back from the bathroom yet. You watch at triple speed as Meian sends Kiyoomi and then Hinata to check on him. The latter of which decides to take the camera with him…

The speed returns to normal, and now that the camera is no longer inside the echoing gym, you can clearly hear the sound of yelling through the empty halls.

Even though Shoyo's hand is covering the speaker you know that scream belongs to your boyfriend. The camera wobbles as the shorter man begins to run. Meanwhile, Kotato's hands dig nervously into the couch cushions. 

Two sets of eyes are fixed on the screen as the screaming gets louder and louder the closer the camera gets to the locker room. Shoyo reaches out to open the door when suddenly it flies open to reveal both Atsumu and Kiyoomi trying desperately to help a wiggling Cat Burgular Bokuto out of his costume. 

His face is twisted in pain as the Ginger asks the question on the forefront of your mind "What the heck is going on right now?

"Zipper's stuck," he cries. "And I really have to pee. I feel like I'm gonna die here.

"That's what ya get for chugging all that water," Atsumu says with a snort.

"This is disgusting; why are you so slimy?" The black-haired man gags, holding the suit like it is a soiled rag.

Bokuto's face turns white as a sheet. And he says to his friends… "Guys, I don't think I just have to pee anymore."

"You mean like a number two?" Hinata says, still holding the camera for some reason.

"Hey, why is he still recording this?" you ask your boyfriend, "I feel like that is breaking a few privacy rules shooting in the locker room."

"There's a reason why we don't make vlogs anymore," he mutters. And you watch back to the screen. 

"Stop pulling it, Miya," Sakura scolds frantically. "It's gonna rip."

"M' tryin', but the damn zipper won't budge, and if this thing blows, I don't wanna be a part of this mess."

"Guys just rip it off. I don't care anymore," he yells, looking more distressed than you have ever seen him look. Clearly, this is concerning his teammates, too, and both men start to tug furiously at the elastic costume. It stretches in some places and pulls in the others like some kind of cursed straight jacket.

"God, it's stuck to him like glue," Hinata says, still recording for the plot.

"It's sweat," Sakusa says, wrinkling his nose in disgust, and you have to give him credit; although he looks like he is about to barf, the clean freak athlete is still trying to help his friend. 

They continue to struggle and tug at the costume until Asumu manages to free Bokuto's arms from the dark confines. "It's rippin'," the faux blonde man sighs in relief, and they tug at the outfit with newfound strength. 

Suddenly, the costume rips in two, and Kotatro stumbles forward, the momentum sending him past Hinata and pushing through the locker room door, crashing into a concerned-looking sister, Maria, who just happened to be wandering by.

When the nearly naked man lands on top of the nun, she lets out a terrified scream.

And that's not even the worst part. The second your boyfriend hits the ground, his body involuntarily lets out the longest fart you have ever heard. And his features twist from discomfort to relief.  "Oh, thank god, it was just gas." he sighs, but the second he realizes the predicament he is in, his face falls, and he gets off the nun as quickly as he can. 

"Sister Maria!" a child screams in horror, watching the athletes try to help the elderly woman up while also trying to hang on to his shredded clothing.

"What have you done to our teacher?" another cries as Meian bursts into the hallway. Looking around at the odd scene in front of him.  He immediately springs forward and helps the fallen woman, who is now blushing furiously. 

The Captain's eyes snap to Hinata. "What are you doing over there? Turn that camera off and help." The screen goes dark, and you stare at your boyfriend's reflection in the darkened TV screen in stunned silence. 

"So…What do you think?" he asks nervously.

"Was. was the nun okay?" you mumble out as your brain tries to comprehend what exactly you just watched. 

"She was a bit shaken up about the whole thing, but the kids were the ones freaking out," he says, fiddling with his fingers. "I keep waiting for the day they bill me for their therapy appointments."

You nod, but I doubt it will ever get that far. The situation may have been embarrassing for him, but the story overall was wildly entertaining. 

Out of every way this could've gone, tackling a nun and letting one rip was nowhere closer to where this story was heading. 

"So…Do you hate me now?" he asks, and he has this sort of raw seriousness on his face that makes your heartache. 

"Of course not," you laugh quickly, placing your hand over his own. "I'd never hate you. But I don't really understand why you didn't think you could talk to me about this."

He takes a deep breath and meets your gaze, "I was worried that you would just see me as the loud guy who just messes things up. You deserve to be with the guy who's got it all going on, not the guy who traumatizes children."

You pause for a moment and regard his words carefully. Kotaro Bokuto is many things; he's kind, funny, and extremely loyal. He is driven and knows exactly what he wants to do in his life. He is anything but a screw-up, especially to you. 

True, he will never win a round of jeopardy, and sometimes, he leaves the toilet seat up in the middle of the night, but he is a light in your life that you never want to live without. 

"I love you." you say at last, pressing a soft kiss to his fidgeting hands, "And there is nothing that you could do that would make me stop. Even if you manage to horrify a whole generation of children with your malfunctions."

The change in his demeanor is instant and he perks up like a golden retriever getting offered a treat. He places his hand on his heart and exhales boisterously. "Man, it feels good to get that off my chest. Thanks for that babe." 

"Anytime," you chuckle as he peppers your face with eager, thankful kisses.

Tagging: @pixelcafe-network @ambiguouslady42

[oodlyenough]

dw empire of death

spoilers ofc

hm. like many RTD finales, a bit of a mixed bag. i feel less certain of my overall thoughts than last week (which i thought was a blast, tbh).

the good: i'm... pretty happy with the ruby mom reveal. this whole mystery box set up turning out to be "she was just a scared young woman who couldn't raise her baby", an ordinary woman mythologized by ruby and the doctor over the season, etc, is an extremely RTD solution. and as a fan of his stuff I liked seeing that... well... pivot to his roots as opposed to her being part of the pantheon or something (which I admit I did wonder about myself).

the *idea* of her pointing at the sign to name the baby is nice, I like the meaning of it and what Ruby takes from it, but it is a bit of a clumsy set up. very dramatic pointing, ms miller.

also as much as i was dying to see what the screen said lol i DID love the character moment of ruby stepping forward to offer the name to sutekh, only to smash it, and then clip his collar (lmfao btw). i thought that was a nice character moment for ruby. in that moment i thought perhaps we'd never find out the answer, and that would be something ruby sacrificed for the greater good. i wasn't sure how satisfying that would be and I guess I'll never have to find out bc it's not what happened lmao, but it is where i thought we might be headed.

i liked seeing the gloves and the rope from TCORR come back. i like surprise tools that will help us later :)

loved the memory tardis from the time window and the use of that tales from the tardis set. how cool.

loved the time window playing clips of classic who that's so fun. mel's moment with six's outfit awwww. and i'm sure i missed some of the namedrops of planets etc that fifteen was going on about but i liked the ones i caught. shan-shen! oodsphere!!

i thought the effects of the dust wave and the insta-crumbling was pretty good and spooky

i really like having mel around! i hope we get to see her cameo again

the mixed bag:

'the death wave is eating memories and going back through family trees in reverse' is pretty cool as a concept, i thought. where i think this hurts the resolution a bit is that in the moment i thought, "ok, well, ruby's "safe" because there's the Mystery, there's no family tree for it to climb!" but like... there was. does sutekh need to personally be aware of your family tree to kill you?

i really liked the moment of fifteen and ruby watching louise outside the coffee shop, and i really liked the moment where ruby sits down across from her and then the barista calls the name ruby and they have this look. i ... kind of found myself wishing that it would stop there? i mean, i'm happy for ruby, and i think "ruby found her bio fam and now ruby and her big family are together" is a nice ending for the character. but there was something so emotional and bittersweet about that split second of wondering and connection between the two, and ruby having that choice to make...

the goodbye between ruby and fifteen was lovely. millie gibson is so good her big watery eyes make me so sad. i've enjoyed the two of them together and i think they have incredible chemistry as characters and actors, like, what a team of besties. i'll miss ruby on the TARDIS. but ... only 10 episodes, a couple of which didn't feature them much at all... a bond that didn't get super developed on screen ... I dunno. Left me wishing we got more from them through the season.

I do know we'll see more of Ruby next season, so I'm excited for that. an s4 Martha situation. but then I also worry about Varada Sethu's character getting development time too...

the not so good:

killing off rose, kate, etc in the first minute removes stakes, because while you might worry about characters like cherry or carla who won't necessarily stick around when ruby leaves or whose deaths will impact ruby, you know rose and kate are not going to stay dead permanently. also very infinity war (derogatory) where there was the same issue -- no these characters won't stay dead and i'm not going to humour it lol

rose temple sweetie it was nice to see you stand in the background and not speak. what was that about. she FINALLY got all of two lines. it just felt like she didn't serve a lot of purpose in this ep. I mean I liked seeing her but she did not do anything to the story in either part of the ep

the solution of "death kills death" was a bit goofy lol but it's doctor who the solution is always goofy. i didn't care too much about that i guess. but it was goofy

i really think we could've used a more decisive scene with carla and ruby. carla seems to understand ruby's desire to know her bio fam and be supportive of it and that's lovely. obviously ruby loves carla and vice versa. but i think it would've been nice to have a moment of on-screen explicit acknowledgment between carla and ruby that there might be weird feelings there, that louise isn't replacing carla, something like that.

related to the above, the Doctor says Ruby redefined the way he thinks of family, which is a huge thing to say, but I don't feel like I ever saw that happening on screen. it COULD have. all the pieces are there with foundlings and foster care and adoption...

[anarkittyuwuuniverse]

"We have to take what useful work remains and transform it into a pleasing variety of game-like and craft-like pastimes, indistinguishable from other pleasurable pastimes except that they happen to yield useful end-products. Surely that shouldn’t make them less enticing to do. Then all the artificial barriers of power and property could come down. Creation could become recreation. And we could all stop being afraid of each other.

I don’t suggest that most work is salvageable in this way. But then most work isn’t worth trying to save. Only a small and diminishing fraction of work serves any useful purpose independent of the defense and reproduction of the work-system and its political and legal appendages. Thirty years ago, Paul and Percival Goodman estimated that just five percent of the work then being done—presumably the figure, if accurate, is lower now—would satisfy our minimal needs for food, clothing and shelter. Theirs was only an educated guess but the main point is quite clear: directly or indirectly, most work serves the unproductive purposes of commerce or social control. Right off the bat we can liberate tens of millions of salesmen, soldiers, managers, cops, stockbrokers, clergymen, bankers, lawyers, teachers, landlords, security guards, ad-men and everyone who works for them. There is a snowball effect since every time you idle some bigshot you liberate his flunkies and underlings also. Thus the economy implodes.

Forty percent of the workforce are white-collar workers, most of whom have some of the most tedious and idiotic jobs ever concocted. Entire industries, insurance and banking and real estate for instance, consist of nothing but useless paper-shuffling. It is no accident that the “tertiary sector,” the service sector, is growing while the “secondary sector” (industry) stagnates and the “primary sector” (agriculture) nearly disappears. Because work is unnecessary except to those whose power it secures, workers are shifted from relatively useful to relatively useless occupations as a measure to ensure public order. Anything is better than nothing. That’s why you can’t go home just because you finish early. They want your time, enough of it to make you theirs, even if they have no use for most of it. Otherwise why hasn’t the average work week gone down by more than a few minutes in the last sixty years?

Next we can take a meat-cleaver to production work itself. No more war production, nuclear power, junk food, feminine hygiene deodorant—and above all, no more auto industry to speak of. An occasional Stanley Steamer or Model T might be all right, but the auto-eroticism on which such pest-holes as Detroit and Los Angeles depend is out of the question. Already, without even trying, we’ve virtually solved the energy crisis, the environmental crisis and assorted other insoluble social problems.

Finally, we must do away with far and away the largest occupation, the one with the longest hours, the lowest pay and some of the most tedious tasks around. I refer to housewives doing housework and child-rearing. By abolishing wage-labor and achieving full unemployment we undermine the sexual division of labor. The nuclear family as we know it is an inevitable adaptation to the division of labor imposed by modern wage-work. Like it or not, as things have been for the last century or two it is economically rational for the man to bring home the bacon, for the woman to do the shitwork and provide him with a haven in a heartless world, and for the children to be marched off to youth concentration camps called “schools,” primarily to keep them out of Mom’s hair but still under control, but incidentally to acquire the habits of obedience and punctuality so necessary for workers. If you would be rid of patriarchy, get rid of the nuclear family whose unpaid “shadow work,” as Ivan Illich says, makes possible the work-system that makes it necessary. Bound up with this no-nukes strategy is the abolition of childhood and the closing of the schools. There are more full-time students than full-time workers in this country. We need children as teachers, not students. They have a lot to contribute to the ludic revolution because they’re better at playing than grown-ups are. Adults and children are not identical but they will become equal through interdependence. Only play can bridge the generation gap." -Bob Black, The Abolition of Work

[litcityblues]

Doctor Whoquest Part Fourteen: The Whoquest Never Ends

OF COURSE, the Whoquest never ends y'all. That's the nature of the Whoquest. There's always going to be another regeneration and a new chapter to write and although we dipped back in to rank the 60th Anniversary Specials, Part Thirteen was never going to be the end... we've got a new Doctor to consider (Ncuti Gatwa) and a new (old) showrunner taking the reins once more. (Russell T. Davies).

And you know what? I'm not sure it's fair to judge this new Doctor's run quite yet. Every new Doctor- at least in the modern show- takes at least a season to really get stuck into the role. The possible exception to this may be Matt Smith whose debut episode (The Eleventh Hour) probably ranks as the strongest debut of any in Nu-Who. But Capaldi followed this pattern--I genuinely wasn't sure how to feel about him at first, but by the end, he had somehow managed to knock Smith off the top of my list. Whittaker also followed this pattern-- the Centenary Special was genuinely good and an excellent way for her to go out and even though the Flux was kind of a mess, it was a Whovian mess which is important to note.

So, I'm going to withhold judgment on Ncuti Gatwa's overall run as the Doctor for now. It's too soon to tell and as with any modern television show involving any kind of fandom, there's an instant helping of 'Durrrrrrr hurrr, it's gone WOKE!' that makes me cringe. That's not effective criticism, because a. you're dealing with an alien who regenerates their body every so often, and b. because of that, you shouldn't impose human hang-ups or beliefs about sexuality onto a character that's non-human. It doesn't make sense.

But, there are two lines of criticism I'm... leaning toward? (Pending subsequent seasons.) First: the whole big reveal on Ruby Sunday didn't land well with the fandom and while I get what RTD was aiming for, he didn't stick the landing at all. It didn't feel earned. It felt disappointing. There was such a build-up around the character and the snow and the DNA and then Doctor Who of it all that you were expecting it to be one thing (because we've seen RTD on Doctor Who before) and it turned out to be something else. I get it though: RTD wanted to zig where we were expecting him to zag and it's a good thing, if not well executed. (And I don't know: Mrs. Flood is still an open question at this point, so maybe there's a larger story at work we don't know about yet that could make this seem brilliant in retrospect. And maybe the whole 'secret hints of something big for the season finale' is either quintessentially Whovian in ways I don't know about or it's just how RTD structures all of his television shows. Either way-- it would be nice to see something palpably different structurally speaking from RTD, but I like the fact he wanted to try, even if he didn't stick the landing.)

Second: I'm curious about: The Doctor showing his emotions... you see this a lot in Trek Discourse these days too. One of the knocks against Discovery is that the characters spend so much time talking about their feelings and dealing in therapy-speak that it annoys portions of that fanbase and I'm curious about how Ncuti's portrayal of the Doctor is landing in Whovian discourse. I don't mind a Doctor who gets mad. I don't mind a Doctor who gets upset. But a Doctor crying? A Doctor screaming out of the TARDIS? I'm... curious. It could be that this Doctor is still finding their feet. I'm willing to go there and if we see the Doctor grow into the role even better. And honestly, it didn't really bother me in the context of watching the show, I just saw some criticism of it and I was like, 'huh, I guess that's true'.

All right, so let's break down Ncuti Gatwa's first season (Series 14 in the Nu-Who chronology, Season 1 for Disney/International Production-related purposes.)

Three Episodes I Liked

'73 Yards': This might be my favorite episode of the season. They land in Wales and the Doctor accidentally breaks a fairy circle containing messages for someone named 'Mad Jack.' He then disappears and Ruby realizes that she's being followed by a mysterious woman who maintains a constant distance of 73 yards away from her. Anyone who approaches the woman runs in fear from both her and Ruby which causes no end of distress to Ruby at first (UNIT tries to help but runs away. Her Mother does the same.) But gradually Ruby comes to accept the woman's presence and grows older, doing her best to maintain a normal life until she figures it out. I loved this-- in fact, I love it so much I won't spoil it for you.

'Boom': Steven Moffat returns and this time the Doctor steps on a landmine and has to stay there for the whole episode or risk triggering it. He's got a time limit to fight. He needs to save Ruby. He needs to figure out just who the hell is fighting who on Kastarion 3. It's tense, it's nervy, it's very good stuff.

'Dot and Bubble': Might be the best example/reassurance that Doctor Who still has it. Young, privileged people, in a happy alien bubble world, obsessed with being online all the time after being helped to freedom by the Doctor and Ruby because they're being eaten one by one thanks to their social media dots becoming sentient and generally becoming homicidal at the superficiality of it all and creating bugs to eat them. The twist at the end is delightfully dark.

Two Episodes I Didn't Like:

The Legend of Ruby Sunday/Empire of Death: I said it up top: RTD didn't stick the landing on the big reveal of Ruby Sunday. It fell flat: don't get me wrong- I like it when Nu-Who goes for the deep cuts and the return of Sutekh is a very deep cut from the vault. I loved that. The whole Doctor meeting a random lady in a desert because the universe spends months/years slowly dying feels a bit too much like Martha Jones walking all over the world before defeating the Master. It was broadly okay with hints at plot points to be explored that I'm curious about. (What did happen to the Doctor's granddaughter? Who the heck is Mrs. Flood?) But it just wasn't my favorite.

Space Babies: Love Golda Rosheuvel. (Queen Charlotte from Bridgerton.) The 'Look Who's Talking' Babies? Not so much.

One Episode To Consider:

The Devil's Chord: Jinx Monsoon was excellent as the Maestro. I loved the idea of the Doctor and Ruby dropping into the 60s only to find a world without music- or at least one that doesn't have good taste in music. I'm assuming the references to 'The One Who Waits' are about Sutekh, but... what if they're not?

Overall: Put a pin in it and let me see Season 2. There was a lot of 'oh, RTD is back' to this season, but there were definitely bright spots as well and plenty of room for Ncuti Gatwa to really grab ahold of the role and make it his own. (Which I'm not quite sure he's done yet-- whether that's because of the writing or just getting to grips with the character, I don't know-- but I'm also not worried about it because he's got time. It does take some people time to get stuck into this character.) My Grade: 7/10

[tobiasdrake]

Carve my heart out with a rusty knife, why don't you. T_T FINE. GO AWAY. I DIDN'T WANT YOU HERE ANYWAY.

Obviously. In fact, as the new official Headmistress of the Solstice Warriors, I declare this to be no longer a Solstice Warriors problem. Instead, it's a Whoever Wants to Deal With This problem. Effective immediately.

Congratulations, Garl and Serai. You're officially Solstice Deputies. That's a thing now, according to Edict #1 from our Headmistress. That's me. I'm Headmistress.

Coral doesn't make for a very good hammer. It's too soft. So. Uh. Thanks for the squishy hammer.

Oh, it's for a specialized function. My bad. I take back my snippy comment.

Sorry, I'm still emotionally reeling from the fact that you're abandoning us here. Somehow, I'm having difficulty processing this proclamation following you being one of two people in my life for ten straight years.

Kinda feels like my dad telling me to my face that he's not really going out for cigarettes. I appreciate the honesty but it still hurts.

Oracle of the Tides.

Huh. When Stormcaller summoned Hydralion, he called his move "Ruler of Tides". Wonder if there's any relation.

You said the Coral Hammer was our final gift from you.

...you can't bear to tear yourself away from us, can you? D'aww. That's really touching. Blunts some of the hurt.

We'll be sure to check out this shrine. I've been wanting to know what those things are about since we left Mooncradle.

Perfectly good village for people seeking out new beginnings, right here and waiting. I won't even make a rude joke about "inflicting" you on the people here.

Yeah, that'd be a great job for you.

Not in a leadership capacity or anything. You don't know shit about the world outside the Solstice Warrior lifestyle. For all intents and purposes, you're functionally an early twenty-something moving into his first apartment.

But a crotchety old man with a lot of esoteric knowledge who can shake a staff at youngsters and tell them to get off his lawn? That fits you to a T.

Plus, we'll know where to find you so you won't really be abandoning me. I can come by and guilt you for presents on future Fake Birthdays. Maybe even the actual Solstice if I'm feeling sassy.

HA! And you didn't want him to--

Oh, shit. We were gone for like eight or nine days. My week of insufferable smugness expired.

You got lucky, old man.

Three of us. Down to the three of us. Which sounds like I'm excluding someone but I really mean we're two and two halves.

As official Headmistress - don't @ me, I held a vote in my pocket and none of you submitted ballots - I am emotionally devastated but ready to get this thing underway.

Yeah, get me out of here. Great times to be had in Mirth but ironically it's also the source of one of my saddest memories now.

Hey, we never hashed out whose cabin the Captain's is now. Is it yours, mine, or Serai's? That's probably an important question to have an answer to, isn't it?

Aww, Yolande gave us cannons! She knows me so well. ^_^

Okay but seriously, who's our Captain?

I mean. I guess I have to assume our official captain is Captain Cliche. But. That's. Not. A real person. She's a character that Serai plays. And the crew isn't allowed to know that Serai is the Captain.

And Serai has taken to hanging out with the crew as herself, rather than wearing her costume. We haven't seen Captain Cliche since we left Brisk.

But her identity remains a secret to just the four of us. Five, counting Hortence. Even though we're out to sea, and she's... Herself.

...

I'm just saying, if our Captain is officially a fictional persona that Serai isn't even using then. That means. Nobody is using the Captain's Quarters. We have the naval equivalent of an empty throne with a sign on it that reads "OUT TO LUNCH" but remains there 24/7.

Seems like a waste.

[farb3yond]

Summer in Colombo/The remains of the revolution.

I am moving through spaces through all things dead or dying or being broken to be made anew in the image of a stranger's dream

The city is like the last song of a party everyone who can has already left is drunkenly making love in a stranger's home giggling probably living in the luxury of nothing being as serious.

Lately I am dreaming of my father of manhood of the impossibility of us being men together of how hard it is to find people I enjoy being men with

and I dream of a woman who must have cared for me very little

but that is an enigma love dangling out of the universe like a loose thread that I am pulling and pulling till it unravels and lies limp on the floor like it was never anything at all.

In my waking life I think over and over again about this night from my teenage years when I saw this woman in the back of a three-wheeler in jeans that had never considered they ought to fit and an imitation of a t-shirt crying because her nokia fell out of the vehicle and into the canal.

So what is a country when it takes so much and gives so little? And what is the effect of poverty on the spirit?

Like that time that girl my friend loved would spend her nights sleeping in the next room refusing to touch her and spend her days dragging us to taco bell.

Like all the overtures we all make to people we scarcely want to be around.

There is a howling hollowness to this city that was once ravenous but has since transitioned into defeat like the final pangs of hunger falling gently on a starving man who even if he were given food would not have the strength to eat.

Is beauty the first victim of poverty? or is it imagination? I cannot always make a distinction. Like these spirit-starved souls Born of loves neither beautiful nor imaginative.

The spirit is like a tree growing under the sunlight of love watered by the rains of our collective imagination its roots stretching deep into our histories personal and collective making no distinction

But spiritless we are floundering unable even to estimate how much has been robbed from us unable even to imagine what we might have been.

But who will cry for the dilapidation of a cafe? who will mourn for the fading of a spirit? who is left?

So now men sit across from men and have nothing new to say to each other

lovers pass each other in the street with mild disdain and never become lovers

And the loneliness slips into all things like smoke slips through the cracks and fills spaces, smothering the last suffocating breaths of these lives unlived

There is a desperation in the attempt to find words to fill the gaps that perhaps the loneliness may not seep into yet another conversation

two nights ago I dreamt of a city street cool in the shade and mild in the sun as vivid as a woman

But today this man is reaching across the table with his guessing at my being feeling for a foothold the words tumbling out of his mouth sounding like;

"I remember you said that love is important to you."

As if it is an eccentric hobby for the avant garde and I know now that I can no longer throw tantrums of outrage in the presence of those who have long since surrendered

still my body rejects the brief reliefs of beauty the city offers up the limited frames of magic I can no longer celebrate the flowers growing between the burning piles of refuse the singular wave breaking without any garbage on this beach that my hands have cleaned a dozen times.

I can no longer accept the spare change of the universe and call it a life.

I want to drown in beauty as if it is my right my right for loving it as much as I do for choosing it over and over for forsaking everything else, home, security, esteem, reverence, sleep.

I want to scream into myself.

I want to know strangers and have them call me by the anecdotes of our first meetings I want to die in a place Whose name I am yet to learn and I want to learn at least three-names for every place I am

I want to speak of the place of my birth as if it is a legend and then I will only talk of the ocean and the men who live in the mountains and the women who bathe in the rivers

And then all my desires will find space to take shape and grow like flowers in the sunlight courting the last generation of trees oblivious to the oblivion growing beyond the horizon

I want to fall out of love and walk through streets of mild sunlight in grief and know that it is a gift I want to know that it is all a gift always

I want to not belong, and be told that I am here instead of being here, and being told I don’t belong.

[freewilllife]

He most certainly did. This I find it quite funny too, because the whole first arc - the prophecy, the dragon warriors they are something of significance. She seemed to have taken Ik-soo's advice on where to find the dragon warriors but completely ignored the fucking prophecy!

But that is consistent with Yona´s character. Even though she did see certain miseries in Kouka Kingdom, she still seemed to kind of ignore some; above all everything in regard to the dragon warriors or her being the reincarnation of Hiryuu.

It is only a couple of chapters ago, that she finally seemed to have realized that she might have some influence on the dragon gods.

However her approach was just too naive. Without futhter consideration she jumped into this adventure and is now at a loss, what to do...Even though she could have tried to persuade the dragon gods...but her tries weren´t effective at all.

Not once across so many chapters did she question the reason of her existence. I have always felt that the time when Zeno's ability was revealed should have been the best time for Yona to seriously sit down and ask herself 'Since the dragon warriors are true to the legends, and I have red hair similar to Hiryuu in the legends and they did follow me - does that really make me the re-incarnation? Why was I re-incarnated?'

I agree. It is also sad, that there is literally no reason for Zeno to live so long. If there had been really a supernatural danger lurking in the shadows...then maybe Zeno´s misery would have had a reason.

The point is not to compare two different stories. It is to show that with Zeno as her starting point, she could have slowly unravelled and learned the past of the other dragon warriors, but she never once thought about it. Why? We see in the story, the dragon warriors sort of share their experiences with each other, but Yona has never been a part of that.

Even the dragon warriors cared for Yona like a child. She was overprotected by everybody, every negative effect was negated by the dragon gods powers.

So she has never learnt to take responsibility.

No kidding. Overall, Yona and Hak now is kind of underwhelming. She falls flat compared to even minor characters like Kang Tae-jun (the guy had more personality development in five chapters than the male lead ever had for over 200 fucking chapters— I don't know if I should laugh or cry.)

You are definitely not wrong.^^

Overall, I do guess that Kusanagi would have had problems, if she had developed Yona and Hak more...From what I can see, Soo Won is not well received, especially in Western Fandom...A character with nuance, neither a flawless hero, nor a sinister villain is difficult for many people with clear white- and black thinking.

Yona has flaws, but they are rarely addressed...Considering that Kusanagi also developed Soo Won, whose character still does make sense, I would say that she might have had a different idea for Yona, but understood soon that flaws would make her heroine unpopular and therefore Yona became this shimmering heroine without substance.

In the same way, it is strange how similar Hak and Yu hon´s way of thinking is...but nobody has ever pointed this out. They both would kill for the person they love in order to protect her...even though some people might be trampled under their shoes.

It is official - Yona is a Hypocrite!

A country swallowed in darkness, ravaged by endless wars and suffering - This was Yona's choice when she was asked to choose.

I would understand if none of these situations were of her own making. But what we are seeing is a sixteen year old brat who is not able to grasp the gravity of her identity or her actions and is going around immaturely throwing the fates of her country's people across generations to a complete toss.

I don't think many people and Yona herself comprehends what it means for Kouka Kingdom to be swallowed in darkness.

Imagine suddenly being engulfed by night, suddenly losing family & friends to sudden wars, and suddenly scrambling for survival because people will soon suddenly find out that they have nothing to eat (I guess Agriculture 101 was not part of the text books she read in Soo-won's office)— and all this because a sixteen year old, somewhere, screwed up her relationship with her ex-best friends.

Its like seeing a two-year old playing with a nuclear detonator.

And after reading the newest chapter. Do you know what Yona of a 100 chapters ago looks like? A solid hypocrite.

The next time she has the nerve to open her mouth to Soo-won posing with a moral high ground, missy better look herself in the mirror first.

That aside, what has become more annoying than her ability to overestimate herself is that accountability is completely lost on her. After choosing to damn the entire country, she wants to fly down, head first into the darkness and do what?

The absolute hypocrisy in this panel!

[love-toxin]

permafrost - josh washington

a/n: I'm replaying the quarry rn so u know i had to pay tribute to the og lil meow meow <33

plot: you weren't so keen on reuniting with your friends at the same lodge the twins disappeared from a year ago, but for Josh's sake, you decided to relent and just have a little fun. who knew Josh's crush on you would be the thing that makes it so terrifying?

(cws: f!reader, mildly yandere josh, takes place mid-canon, UD spoilers, horror elements, a little bit of a fear kink, chasing, nudity, confessions, mutual pining, implied smut [pt2 perhaps?], knives, a little angst w/ fluff)

word count: 3.2k

You had never screamed so hard in your life, but you had also never been so close to death before. It stared you right in the face and in your state, with the cold freezing you to your bones and nothing but a towel to cover your damp skin, you had never been as vulnerable as you were in this moment.

The events of the night flashed by you in a daze, much like you had assumed your life would when you were about to die. Sam had offered the bath to you first and you had taken it gladly, happy to get warm after freezing your ass off while waiting for Josh and Chris to get the doors open. You were one of the first to get there because you were generally the most punctual, but apparently all that "butterfly effect" bullshit Chris was on lately actually had some truth to it. Because if you hadn't come early and almost gotten frostbite, then Sam wouldn't have let you in the bath first, and thus you wouldn't have been the one tricked out of the bathroom and chased throughout the house by the maniac in the mask who now held a knife over your throat.

"Last words?"

He snickered in that tinny voice and you just screamed louder, tears flooding down your face as you squirmed underneath him. The psycho had straddled your hips and held his other hand up to the hem of your towel, and it was impossible to tell whether he was holding it there to keep you decent or just taunting you for when he would rip it off and leave you exposed. You couldn't imagine it was the former, though, and it made you hiccup as you prayed it would just be over quickly. Nothing in your short life could have prepared you for your last moments here–laid out on the cold concrete of the Washington's estate basement, crying, nearly naked, and pinned by a psychopath who had probably already killed all of your absent friends. You just wanted out, and begged for mercy in a shaky voice.

"Aw…okay."

The killer paused, and if you weren't still trembling from the cold you would have thought you imagined it. You squeezed your eyes shut, thinking it might have just been another game–but they shot open again as soon as you heard the clang of the blade skittering across the concrete, the psycho having tossed it haphazardly out of reach. He lifted his arms and stuck his fingers beneath the lower jaw of the mask, and with a flourish, it was gone. And you could not believe whose face you saw underneath it.

"You convinced me. I guess I won't kill you after all!"

Josh Washington, your close friend and former classmate, laughed in your face. Laughed. In the way he would laugh at a corny joke or a video of someone slipping on ice. Not in the situation where he had threatened to kill you, one of his dear friends, and absolutely humiliated and terrified you in the process.

You were stunned into silence. Your mouth hung open and you had no idea what to do, what to say…but when Josh finally got off of you and grabbed you by the arm to bring you back up to your feet, you finally found the strength to grit your teeth and shove his hands off of you. The words "Is this a fucking prank, you asshole?!" escaped you long before you would have the strength to rethink them, and while Josh sobered up quicker than you expected he would, he still had a whisper of that grin on his face that just made you even more furious than you could ever remember being.

"I thought it would bring us together. Y'know," He stood back, and gestured vaguely around the basement like you should have known what he was referring to. "...Like you and the others brought my sisters together. Remember that?"

The tone of his voice brought that boiling anger down to a simmer, tampered down by a feeling washing over you that you hadn't felt for a while–guilt pried your heart open and sank into a wound you thought had closed, only to realize that it was just as tender as the day that tragedy had happened. And in that moment, you felt your defenses go up.

"I had nothing to do with that, Josh!"

"You didn't stop them."

"I tried!"

You felt a quiver in your own voice again, and arguing like this with someone you used to call a friend while he stood there, stoic, just made a fresh set of tears well up in your eyes. And you had done enough crying for the night, so with your hands reaching up to reassure the strength of your towel's hem around your chest, you took a step backwards towards the stairwell and mustered up the worst glare you could manage towards Josh.

"Do me a favour, actually: don't ever talk to me again. We're not friends anymore!"

With that you turned and stomped back towards the steps and took each one just as angrily, the concrete cold enough to hurt as you ventured back up towards relative safety. You knew Josh was following you by his own footsteps hurrying to keep up, but as you stiffly marched past the doorway and through the home theater to climb the stairs up to the main floor, his hand hovered over your bare shoulder just long enough for you to move out of its way.

"C'mon," He sounded desperate, and as much as you didn't want to care, you knew you did. That sad, kicked puppy expression was probably making its appearance on his face too, and if you turned to look at him you might even crack for real. "Come back! Come on, it was a prank. I wanted to get back at them, really…I didn't really want to hurt you, though."

You made it around the railing in the living room, up the second set of stairs, and all the way up to the landing before Josh managed to catch up enough to walk alongside you. His needy attempts at coaxing you into laughing this all off were beyond frustrating, and when you finally managed to get on to the second floor you turned to face him again. He stopped only two steps from the top where you took your stand, but even that much distance was enough for you to feel like you towered over him even though the opposite was usually the case.

"You had no problem chasing me around and watching me in the bath!"

Your hands clenched into fists, mostly in an attempt to keep from just slapping him outright, and your shouting caused him to flinch but not back down.

"Well, that's because I like you. Wouldn't you do the same if you liked me, given the chance?"

"Shut up, Josh."

You waved him off with a huff, and retraced your steps back towards the bathroom that you had been chased out of just a little while ago. The prints left behind by your feet when they were wet from the bath were still visible outside of the door, and even though you pulled on it to let it close behind you, a certain someone let it hit his forearm as he pushed his way in after you.

"Do you like me?"

"I did, before you fucking traumatized me!"

You threw those words over your shoulder as you bent down in front of your gym bag, the one you had lugged all the way up the mountain just for Josh's sake. And luckily for you, he offered you the same courtesy and had simply kicked it out of sight behind the tub so you wouldn't think to dress before he started chasing you. While the clothes you'd changed out of still weren't there, you rummaged around and found something else to change into–not exactly as flattering, but anything that offered you some decency was better than what you had now.

"I like you. I really, really like you a lot. C'mon." You were only half-listening to Josh's drivel, and when you turned to see him holding a hand out to you at your place on the floor, you scoffed and got back to your feet with your clothes draped over one arm.

"Did I not just tell you to stop talking? And get out."

This time, you did smack his hand away from you, and he pulled it back with a soft enough sigh that it almost made you feel bad for him. Almost, but not quite.

"Do I have to? I mean, I've already seen you naked. You've got a really nice body…"

"Out!"

And as per usual, whatever shred of sympathy you had for him evaporated the second he opened his mouth, and especially when he whispered that part under his breath. You put your hands on his chest and pushed him backwards, walking him all the way to the hallway before slamming the door in his face the moment he was over the threshold.

"Fucking asshole…"

You muttered to yourself as you dropped your towel and pulled your clothes on. You were so strung out even upon realizing that it was all a facade, and though you were still tense without your other friends around, knowing Josh he probably sent them on all kinds of wild goose chases just to get them out of the lodge and running all over the mountain. At least, that was what he did with Mike and Jess, and even so you were sure they were having a grand old time with that cabin all to themselves. It wasn't a specific kind of jealousy you felt over them–you had no interest in either of them, at least romantically–but you did have a sense of desire for what they had. They were so carefree. If only you could be more like that, maybe you would have reacted differently to what Josh had put you through–maybe you really would have laughed it off instead of sobbing like a baby and blowing up once it was all over. It might not have been a healthy reaction, but at least you wouldn't be feeling an oncoming wave of tears like you were now, only to wipe them away as soon as they showed up and stop in front of the mirror to try and cool down before you left.

You expected Josh to do as you asked and leave you alone, and at least get out of your sight for a little while so you could calm down. But when you finally opened the door again, he was still standing there. And if anything, he seemed relieved that you were scowling back at him.

"Please give me a chance. I'll make it up to you, I swear." Josh looked into your eyes and your defenses already started cracking. Right then, you had a choice–you could choose to keep that anger you had close to your heart, or…you could let it go, because if nothing else, he did seem pretty sorry and he had expressed it in that awkward way of his.

"Fine! Fine. Just…don't fucking do that again."

"Which part?" He backed down the second you shot him your signature dirty look, raising his hands up as a show of his surrender with a guilty smile still plastered across his stupidly pretty face. "I'm kidding! Kidding."

With that, and with the tension eased up a little bit, you stepped out into the hallway and wandered over to the railing. It overlooked the living room below and the huge, sphere-shaped art piece that hung from the ceiling that his dad had bought, and you let out a deep sigh. Maybe of relief, or maybe not. But either way you weren't as stressed as you were a minute ago as you looked out towards the window and watched the snow fall outside, even when Josh joined at your side to lean against it himself.

"...You didn't answer my question, you know."

"You haven't answered plenty of mine, so maybe you should cool it, cowboy." You brushed him off not to be a bitch, even though you had every right to. Rather…there was something else that you hadn't quite accepted, even though it sat at the back of your mind day after day. It had been something that you once thought about daily, wondering when and where would be the perfect time to reveal it–but after everything with Hannah and Beth, you locked those feelings deep, deep inside so as to not complicate things for your grieving friend.

"Fair, fair. But…I really need to know. Do you like me?"

The fact that he just breezed right over your answer was not only irritating, but it was something you so rarely saw him do that you knew he was genuinely serious.

"Josh, I really don't want to be having this conversation right now."

A few moments of silence passed between you. You naively wondered whether that would really be the end of the conversation once and for all. If maybe he was finally pushed enough to just let it go.

"Well, if you didn't, I would’ve expected you to just say 'no'."

Your fingers curled around the banister and you gripped it tightly in frustration, before turning to face him completely with the words already spilling off your lips.

"What does it matter, Josh? Do you really expect me to pour my heart out to you right now? I'm tired, and I'm cold, and-" And before you could finish, Josh moved in and hugged you tightly, squeezing you hard enough to keep you close but not quite enough to hurt. His hands fell to rest on your lower back but not an inch lower, his unexpectedly full arms holding you like you'd been locked into place against his chest. He had always been a bear hug kind of guy, but it had been a long while since he'd given you one.

"I'll keep you warm." He whispered, and while you expected his voyeuristic self to snicker and cop a feel while he had the opportunity, but that moment never came. He just kept holding you, swaying a little bit, and you listened to the snow and the breeze outside the window until he finally pried himself off of your very inviting body.

"Did…you seriously expect me to just fall into your arms after all that?" You asked, a soft scoff inlaid between your words to try and sell it, but no matter how hard you would try you wouldn't be able to brush that off. As much as you wanted to pretend you could keep holding Josh at arm's length, it wasn't going to last forever at this rate. The man himself just shrugged, a faraway look in his eyes even with the newfound space between you.

"That's what they do in movies."

What a naïve answer, and yet so quintessentially Josh. You rolled your eyes in jest, and yet as you crossed your arms over your chest you knew your friend was looking places he shouldn't. But you weren't going to stop him this time.

"If you liked me, then you should have just told me. You've given Chris enough crap about that with Ashley, so you just look like a hypocrite now."

"It's different."

You gave him a look that just said "How?" without you having to say it, and Josh shrugged again, although this time he couldn't keep eye contact and just kind of looked everywhere but at you. Almost like he felt somebody was listening in, and he didn't want to be overheard.

"I couldn't tell whether you liked me or not. I was afraid you wouldn't, and I don't…want to lose someone else again. I can't lose someone else that I love. It would kill me."

"You love me?"

He scoffed in a way that sounded like disbelief, like even questioning him on his sincerity about this was a laughable offense. "Of course I do. How could I not? You're beautiful, and you're always sweet with me. You've never judged me. You're a kind person." He shook his head, finally able to clue in and meet your eyes this time–and maybe it was because you were smiling now, fear replaced by endearment as you let his compliments wash over you. Not that you knew about it, but Josh had always been a firm believer that you didn't get enough praise, and only now that you thought back on your friendship did you start to realize how often he alone was the one giving it to you when nobody else would. "And I love the way you laugh, and I think you look so cute when you're focused on something. I like hearing you talk, and, and…a million other things. You make me so happy, and you're not even mine."

"I could be yours." The words left your lips so fast you weren't given time to process them, to temper them as you usually did to make sure you were saying everything right. Your hand flew to your mouth on instinct, clearly shocked at your own outburst, but Josh just laughed and his hands drifted back up towards your hips for him to grab them a little more firmly.

"So you do like me back, huh?" Even another eye roll didn't stop him this time, you're pulled into another hug and Josh squeezed you even tighter than he did before. It often felt like he's the one always making up for lost time, which made sense considering all that had happened with Beth and Hannah. You were certain he wished for even a smidgen of more time with them, as would you if they were your sisters. As would anybody. You'd probably even kill for it if it came to that, and you wouldn't have been surprised if he would too. So in a way....it all made more sense.

Those grim thoughts didn't last long at all though–mostly because there was a more pressing matter at hand, which was coincidentally pressing right up against your thigh and only shifted when you piped up with Josh's name.

"Sorry." He pulled back enough to give you an inch of space, his nose a little darker to match his ears as he grinned the same way he did when he was getting up to something mischievous. "I like feeling you up against me…I'm lucky you've never noticed."

"What, you think I might've done something about it otherwise?....Maybe I would." Before he could answer that, you pulled away from his arms and sauntered off down the hall, clearly moving at a brisk pace towards the door of Josh's bedroom. This had not been in the cards for you an hour ago, but something stirred inside you that you just didn't feel the need to repress any longer. Your life had been a horror movie for too long now, but if it was going to be that way, then you could at least get some satisfaction out of it before you became the final girl. You stopped at the doorway, a hand on it to steady yourself, and you looked back in Josh's direction. "You coming?"

[fanfic-scribbles]

Crash Pad

Fandom: MCU Captain America/Avengers

Summary: You’re just minding your own business when the Winter Soldier crashes into your life. Literally.

Quick facts: Romance – established past Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes leading into Steve Rogers/Bucky Barnes/Reader – Nondescript Reader

Warnings: Fluff, slight mention of blood

Words: 7801

A/N: I started writing this a few months ago and almost finished when my life got fairly shook up. Still, I’m quite proud of being able to eke out an ending. For anybody who only cares about this story, feel free to skip this note, but for anybody following my other stuff: writing is going to be slow for the time being. My mom died and things are pretty topsy-turvy right now. Writing is still a comfort, but head to hands isn’t working the same right now. Thanks for your patience; I hope this is a pleasant read for you in the mean time <3

  ~

 You’re getting ready for bed and have just turned off the living room light when you hear a clatter on the fire escape. You haven’t gotten over to shut the window yet and you wince at the thought of maybe coming face to face with a giant rat, or a raccoon, although you haven’t yet seen a raccoon and you’re pretty sure they don’t live in the city but it would probably be better than a rat the size of a raccoon–

What you get is much, much worse as a fully grown man falls through the curtains, knocks over a side table and potted plant, and crashes onto your living room floor with a wheezed (but emphatic), “God damn it!”

You freeze, unsure of whether to run or yell or maybe both. However the man flounders on the floor, unable to otherwise move much as he holds his side and– is that blood on your floor?

“Are you okay?” you ask despite everything.

He yanks his head back to look at you and grimaces. “Fuck, I–” He tries to get up, slips in what you are almost positive is blood, and slumps over with a little sigh and a handful of muttered curses that might be in another language. “I am really sorry about this,” he says lowly, like he's embarrassed to be bleeding out in a stranger’s living room. Then he shifts a little more and moonlight gleams on his arm. His very…shiny…completely metal arm, and you find a whole new way to be concerned.

You should have known the reasonable rent was a goddamn trap.

You take a few steps back, barely avoid hitting the counter, and flick the light back on without taking your eyes away from the man on your floor. He squints at the brightness and shows you a face that is, both fortunately and unfortunately, familiar. Fortunately because Captain America and the Avengers somehow got him pardoned for potential war crimes and treason even without him being present for any of that circus of a trial. Unfortunately because…war crimes. And treason. And that is definitely blood.

“I’m sorry,” he blurts out and looks a little woozy. “There were sheets– I thought the building was empty.”

“The sheeting is for the building right next to us,” you say and sigh. “I’m going to guess you are not in favor of me calling an ambulance?”

He just blinks at you a few times. Maybe he is secretly a raccoon.

“Please don’t,” he says, some life returning to his eyes, and he looks you up and down. The rubber duck pajamas must put him at ease because, while he is still tensely holding his midsection, his shoulders relax a little. “I’m so–”

“Sorry, yes, I know.” You point at the bathroom. “I’m going to get the first aid kit and hopefully I won’t have to explain to the coroner’s office why Captain America’s boo bled out on my floor.”

You’re just opening up the cupboard that hopefully contains at least some band-aids when he calls out, “What the hell is a ‘boo?’”

~

Two old t-shirts, one and a half rolls of dusty gauze, and his own homemade stitch kit later, the man is finally all patched up. “How are you not passing out from blood loss?” you ask, eyeing the mess on the nice hardwood that has definitely just lost you your deposit. But there’s no corpse to deal with, so at least things aren’t as bad as they could be.

“I’m built pretty hardy.” He sits up a little more and groans. Before you can beg him not to split his side again, he extends his hand. “James Barnes. But you can call me Bucky.”

You shake his hand (gently) and tell him your name. “Do you let everybody call you Bucky, or just the people whose floor you bleed all over?” Something moving catches your eye and you sigh at the sight of your inexpensive (but still nice) curtains blowing slightly, showing off their new stains. “Floor and drapes…”

“I’ll clean it,” he says. “I can get blood out of anything.” He winces. “I…that sounds worse than it is.”

“I imagine getting blood out of anything is a good skill for an international spy-assassin to have,” you say.

Bucky scowls. And, you think, blushes a little, though how he has enough blood to do that you don’t know. You look at the spot again. It looks big to you but maybe you’re making a fuss over nothing. No, wait, there’s still dried blood on your floor. You’re allowed a fuss. “So you know who I am.”

“Your boy made it hard to miss,” you say.

He grumbles to himself, then says, “He’s always such a drama queen. I didn’t need to be pardoned.”

“Really,” you say and look at the bloodied handkerchief wrapped around a bullet he dug out of himself. “Looks like at least one other person disagrees with you.”

“This was Steve’s fight, not mine.” He huffs. “Story of my goddamn lif–”

He suddenly falls back and you reach out instinctively to catch him. He recovers quickly, wild-eyed and stiff and you scoot back just in case. He takes a few deep breaths and seems to force himself calm. It doesn’t look very effective and you’re honestly starting to worry. “You really–”

“I did not faint,” he snaps and maybe he has more blood than you thought, or maybe absolutely all of it has come to collect in his face.

“I was going to say you really need a hospital,” you say. “But yeah, you did.”

He grumbles under his breath and then, as if predicting your protests, stands up quickly enough to waver. Serves him right, you think, but when he scowls at you, you wonder if maybe he’s psychic too. “Try not to pass out on your way home,” you say, because if he wants to leave there’s really nothing you can do to stop him.

“Funny,” he says. He clears his throat and adds, much more sincerely, “Thanks.”

For the t-shirts, for the first aid kit, for not calling the cops, for not calling the Avengers so Captain America can hone in on him like a cartoon hound, for not bitching about the floor too much– the list is many and varied and so you give him a simple nod and hope you can get even a little bit of sleep tonight because work tomorrow is going to be hell without it.

He goes back to the window and before you can point out you have a perfectly good door, Bucky slips out onto the fire escape again. You shrug to yourself and go over to firmly flip the lock. You’ve done your part– in the event he slips and hits his head, someone else can be the good Samaritan. You’re going to bed and tomorrow this is going to feel like a weird dream, if there is even a single good deity in existence.

~

You’re not sure if it’s proof of or a mark against the existence of said single good deity when Bucky shows back up in your fire escape the next evening and taps politely against your open window before he lets himself back in, scooting your new plant just an inch out of the way.

“I have a door,” is the first thing that comes out of your mouth.

“Your hallway’s too well lit,” he says, much more hale and hearty and obviously not suffering major blood loss. His hair even looks like he just got out of the shower, all soft and shiny and bouncing a bit as he twists his upper body to start pulling stuff out of a backpack hanging off one shoulder. “I got stuff to clean the floor, and a replacement first aid kit. You outta keep it better stocked, so I got you one of the good ones.”

“O…kay,” you say, for lack of anything better. There’s a hysterical laugh building up in the back of your throat as the Winter Soldier brings out some rags and a cleaning solution for your bloodstained hardwood floor, but you cough it out and say, “Thanks,” when the formerly-feared international assassin looks at you like you’re crazy before he gets on his hands and knees and starts scrubbing.

It’s not fair no one would believe you. You’re not quite sure this isn’t an elaborate daydream, but then, you like to think you’d imagine something more fun than this. You clear your throat. “Would you like something to drink?”

“No thanks,” he grunts, glaring at the floor and rubbing at the stain like it has offended him personally. It’s a little worrisome when he goes at it hard enough to maybe rub a hole right through the floor– you’d rather deal with the stain– but there’s a hard edge to his eyes that make you think maybe it’s a good idea for him to work it out in a productive, non-violent way. And if it turns violent, hopefully he has some home repair skills to make up for it.

You busy yourself with making tea, using the nice pot and the nice cups you never get to break out, and by the time it’s almost done steeping Bucky isn’t rubbing quite so hard and, in fact, seems to have made the stain do a disappearing act.

“Nice,” you say. “You want some tea? I made plenty.”

He lifts his head and tilts it as he squints at you, like he’s still not sure of you. But he shrugs, says, “Sure,” and stands up, rolling his shoulders. He looks down at the floor and nods appreciatively before coming to sit on the other side of the counter. “It’s almost gone; just a little bit more and it’ll be like I was never here.”

That last part could have been a decent joke, but he said it so seriously you just clear your throat. “Thanks,” you say and start pouring. “My landlord is going to have to find some other excuse to try and keep my security deposit.”

Bucky snorts but otherwise makes no noise. At first it’s nice, if a bit awkward, as you don’t really feel the need to fill the silence, but it becomes clear by the way Bucky glares at the plant sitting in front of him on the counter that something is eating at him. You’re not sure whether or not to pry, but it seems polite to at least ask, “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he grunts and leans even lower to the surface of the counter.

You stare at him. “I appreciate what you did, but you didn’t have to come back,” you say gently, because a pissed-off former-assassin isn’t really a problem you want to have on your hands. “I’m not awful enough to actually expect you to clean up your own blood the day after you nearly bled to death.”

“What?” He blinks and then scowls and shakes his head. “No, it’s not that; it’s…” He picks up his cup and downs all of it, despite the fact that it was still steaming. Tentatively you pour him another cup, to which he says, “thanks,” before loading it with sugar again. “It’s good,” he says and this time he sips it.

“It’s one of my favorites. Very soothing,” you say. “Normally.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “I wish anything was soothing. You know Steve almost ran into a goddamn minefield today?”

You didn’t know that, you don’t think anything the Avengers do is any of your business, really, and where does one even find a minefield in New York City– you don’t say any of that, but you apparently don’t need to, because Bucky is off like a shot saying more words than you’d have thought possible for him. All of it is ranting about what a reckless dumbass Captain America is, and a Brooklyn accent increasingly comes through, egged into existence by sheer aggravation. You sit and listen, transfixed not so much by the details (they’re too fleeting and sparse) but by how annoyed Bucky is with Captain Amer- with “Steve goddamn pain in the ass Rogers” and you’re never going to be able to see him again without snickering.

Bucky sighs heavily and rests his chin on the table. He looks very tired, all of a sudden. Maybe a relaxing tea and enthusiastic rant wasn’t the best combination. Then again, he also looks less tense, so perhaps it’s fine. “Why don’t you stop for the night and go get some sleep,” you say and take away his cup. “You can finish up tomorrow.”

He squints at you, squints back at the floor (that you honestly can’t tell is any different from the rest), and looks back at you. “You don’t mind?”

“Not at all,” you say and stack the cups. “When you come back refreshed you can tell me why Steve Rogers can never walk past that animal shelter without ducking his head in shame.”

Bucky’s smile is lopsided and he shakes his head. “Maybe,” he admits and hops off the chair. “I’ll just…leave the stuff here then, if that’s okay?”

You nod and he quickly picks up and puts the supplies in the empty bottom space of your side table. He goes for the window.

“I have a-!”

And he’s gone. You roll your eyes. If Steve Rogers really is as much of an asshole as Bucky says he is, then those two deserve each other.

~

For all that the Captain America mythos has been debunked for you, you’re still brought up short when you suddenly encounter Steve Rogers the next night.

On your fire escape.

He knocks his head against the railing in his scramble to simultaneously get up and face you, curses, and lifts his hands defensively. “I can explain.”

You rub your face with both hands. They definitely deserve each other. “I doubt that,” you mutter and sigh heavily. Thank goodness there haven’t been any actual fires; you don’t know how you’d get out with all these buff superheroes hanging around outside your window. “Have you lost something?”

Captain America looks at the ground for a moment, and then flashes you a smile. “…Yes?”

God, he is a smartass. “Do you want to come inside or do you want to risk some Nosy Nancy from the building across the street seeing a big shadow and calling the cops?”

That would never happen, but he slips inside almost immediately and then there he is, in all his uniformed, shield-holding glory. It’s too weird to think about, and you step back to give him (and you) space while you close the curtains. “Thank you,” he says politely and looks around. “Your apartment is lovely; it’s very…green.”

You’re not sure why he hesitates, until you see him looking at your yellowing majesty palm. “He’s coming back,” you say and go to adjust the plant for lack of anything else your nervous hands can do. “Would you like something to drink?”

“No thank you,” he says and stands with his feet shoulder wide and his hands clasped down in front of him. It is perhaps the least comforting thing he can do and for one ridiculous moment you wish Bucky was here to be in between you. You wish the Winter Soldier was here. To protect you. From Captain America.

You clear your throat. “So,” you say and grab yourself something. “Do you lurk outside everyone’s apartment at some point, or am I just special?”

For all his military posturing, Captain America squirms like a schoolboy. “I swear I wasn’t– okay, I guess I was but not intentionally? I was…looking. For something.”

“Something you dropped?” you ask him.

“A person,” he says, staring elsewhere. For a moment you have a paranoid thought he’s staring at the space where Bucky had fallen in that night, but no, he’s just looking at the window. At least you remembered to change the curtains.

“Pretty sure you can see one of those without squinting into the grates,” you say.

“He might have passed through on his way somewhere else,” Captain America says. “Have you seen a man outside?”

“Other than you?” you ask. He blushes even harder than Bucky does– and think of the devil, you have a moment where you’re not sure what you should say, but quickly come to realize that whatever is going on between the two of them, you do not want to get stuck in the middle.

You’re prepared to lie your ass off, but he apparently takes your response as a rebuke. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to make you feel unsafe.”

“It’s fine,” you say. Despite his previous answer, you lean into the fridge to get him a bottle of water. “I’m pretty sure Captain America isn’t going to murder me. And if you decided you wanted to, well, there’s nothing I could really do about it.”

He chokes on the drink he’s just taken. You instinctively lean in so you can slam his back but after a couple of hits he covers his mouth and waves you off. “Sorry, sorry,” he says and grabs a nearby dishcloth to wipe up what he just spit on the counter. “That was just…really dark.”

“I guess it’s a good thing I’m not the one lurking on fire escapes,” you say.

He rolls his eyes. The nerve. You laugh and he actually grins. Asshole. His smile softens though and he says, “I’m really–”

“Sorry,” you finish for him.

“Am I that predictable already?”

You shrug. You want to tell him it’s because he and Bucky seem very much alike in that respect. You want to but…you don’t. Whatever Bucky’s problem is, he seems to want to deal with it himself, and it’s not your place to get in between them and start snitching. “You seem the type. Don’t worry about it so much. You…look pretty worried. I’m not going to hold it against you.”

“Thank you.” His lips turn into a sad sort-of smile and he takes a slower drink. “I guess I am pretty worried. This man I’m looking for, he’s…important to me, and he’s been through a lot, and I just want to know he’s okay.”

You stare at him. He looks down. And looks down. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to babble like that,” he says and glances at you with a strained smile. “I don’t normally do that.”

“Hm.” You stare at him for several seconds and notice he is blinking an awful lot. “You look exhausted.”

“I’m a little tired,” he says, quietly, and some of the posturing seeps out of him and he lets himself slump a little more. He suddenly shakes his head and sits up straight again. “Thanks again for…” He looks around and settles for shaking his water bottle.

You hold back a laugh. “Sure. I uh…do you need me to call you a cab?”

He shakes his head firmly and, to his credit, he’s pretty excellent at pretending to be okay. You almost believe him. “I can get home all right.”

“Well, please make sure you do. I can think of a lot of people who’d be sad to think of you collapsing on the way home because you wore yourself down to the bone,” you say. “And from how you seem to worry about your friend, I bet you can think of at least one.”

He blinks, like he’s surprised, but a smile curls onto his face, warm and true. “Good night,” he says, and because you’re so nice, you don’t stop him when he goes back out the window. At this point, it’s beginning to feel like a lost cause.

~

“What did you say to him?”

“I know you don’t like the door,” you say, not even turning away from the plant you’re watering. Any time you put down the canister you forget where you left off and you are not going to kill these plants by overwatering. Not again. “But maybe you could at least tap on the window when you decide you’re going to enter my apartment.”

“Why do you leave your window open?” Bucky huffs. You can hear him sit at the counter behind you. “You know what kind of creeps can take advantage of that?”

You finish watering the last plant and turn to stare at him. “I’m starting to get an idea.”

Bucky scowls. “I’m not a creep,” he mutters.

“Polite society encourages doorways instead of windows,” you say. “It’s okay. Captain America, apparently, is also a creep.”

Bucky sits up straighter. “What did he say?”

“Not much,” you say. “He was squatting on the fire escape like he could make you spontaneously materialize. I invited him in for an explanation and after a little while he went on his way.”

“After a little while,” Bucky repeats and squints at you suspiciously.

You shrug. “He likes to vent to complete strangers, apparently. But I didn’t tell him anything about you, it doesn’t seem fair to tell you anything about him. If you want to know, I get the feeling you can go ask him.”

Bucky rolls his eyes but he stands up and stretches. “You said I bled on the drapes?”

“I already scrubbed that out, if you can finish the floor,” you say and go for the tea pot. “Do you like green tea?”

“As long as you do it right,” he says and starts scrubbing again. “I hate it all bitter.”

You go for the good matcha and start preparing it while he works out his frustrations on your floor. You glance at him a couple of times but he seems fully focused on his task, until you finish the tea and call him back to the bar.

“Steve Rogers is a pain in the ass and don’t let anyone tell you different,” he grumbles, but it’s soft and there’s a troubled look on his face as he takes his cup.

“Do you miss him?” you ask and blow gently across your drink.

Bucky shifts uncomfortably. Just as you're about to apologize for overstepping, though, he speaks. “It’s hard to go back when you’ve done the shit I have, you know?”

No. You have absolutely no idea what it’s like to live as a free man after decades of literal objectification and being used as a murder weapon for fascists. But it doesn’t seem very helpful to say that, so instead you say, gently, “I can’t even imagine.”

Bucky bobs his head and takes another sip of his drink. You’re delighted he seems to be drinking it fairly quickly, but also a little dismayed because a good matcha latte takes a decent amount of work and it’ll take a little time if he wants another cup. “I want to go back but I can’t yet. I wish he wouldn’t be so goddamn stubborn about it is all. Just because he thinks I didn’t do anything wrong doesn’t make it true.”

You nod, like any of this makes any goddamn sense to you. But maybe– maybe it doesn’t have to. Maybe Bucky’s saying all this because you’re an outside entity with no personal stake in, or knowledge of, what counts as treason, or what’s needed to lack culpability, or what it means to be an absent friend.

He rambles, a little bit, and though about half the words are proper nouns you don’t recognize, you nod along, and when he finishes his latte you make him another one, and when he leaves, you don’t mention the door. Even though you want to.

~

You’ve actually forgotten how nice it is to have someone come through the door. Case in point–

“Um, I hope this is all right,” Steve Rogers, dressed in casual civilian fare and holding a small pot of flowers, says as you can do nothing but stare at him. “I just wanted to stop by and thank you again for being so understanding. May I…come in?”

That snaps you out of your funk and you quickly stand aside. “Of course; sorry, I just…wasn’t expecting you.”

“I was just going to leave the plant with a note if you weren't here, but I’m glad you were,” Captain Rogers says and walks in, and sets the pot down on the counter.

You walk over to the fridge. “Would you like something to–” As you turn to finish the question you see him glance furtively at the window. Ah, of course. He looks down guiltily and you can’t help but roll your eyes and laugh. Well, he did come through the correct entrance and brought some pretty flowers. “All right, you did knock on the door this time; go sniff around the fire escape all you want.”

“I’m just checking something I forgot,” he says quickly and goes to the window. He’s only outside long enough for you to brew some tea and he comes back in just as you’re pouring his cup. It isn’t until he’s about to take a sip, however, that he says, “Oh– I know it looks bad, but Bucky– sorry, James Barnes– I swear he isn’t dangerous.”

“I know. I saw some of the trial stuff,” you lie. Well, you did see some of it, but it wasn’t until you heard Bucky mutter “Martha Stewart was right,” while fussing at some of the blood on his shirt that you felt safer. Strange as it is to think.

Steve relaxes his shoulders like some of the weight is off of them. “You have no idea how good that is to hear. You wouldn’t believe some of the things people say to me. I can’t really punch people anymore because I’m so much stronger now but it’s so tempting sometimes. At least when it’s online I can mime punching them.”

His annoyed tone allows you to laugh a little. “Maybe imagine the block button is a punch in the face?” you suggest.

He grins. “My friend Clint suggested printing out the most irritating comments and taping them to a punching bag. It didn’t really work but the thought was nice. The block button as a punch to the face though…”

The guy doesn’t really need more violence in his life, but he genuinely seems pleased with the idea, so you let it be. And when he starts ranting in detail about some of the comments he gets about Bucky, you make a new pot of tea– chamomile. For the both of you.

~

You don’t know how the flowers are dead already– it seems like Steve just brought them and they were so pretty you immediately looked up care instructions and followed them to the letter. Or so you thought. But now, only days later, you have a pot of dirt and withered petals.

And Bucky sulking at your counter.

“I told him I was fine,” he says petulantly.

You sigh and bring the pot over to the sink and think about what to do. “Did you tell him in person?”

“In a letter. He knew it was from me.”

The soil looks nice, so you’ll dig out the remains and try to plant some replacement seeds. Maybe that was the problem– maybe the flowers were sick or something. “Well reading and seeing are two different things.”

“He knows I cover him in fights.”

You slowly look at Bucky. His oh-so intelligent response is to bristle like a cat and go, “What?”

You roll your eyes. “He’s desperate to see you, knows you’re near when he’s fighting, and you wonder why he’s “so goddamn reckless?’”

Bucky just glares. Yeah, these two morons absolutely deserve each other.

You hope Bucky figures it out sooner rather than later.

~

He doesn’t, but he keeps coming by, as does Steve, and you resign yourself to hosting two pining idiots who keep dancing around each other.

Bucky drinks anything you give him without complaint. However he drinks the lattes and almost anything green tea a little quicker, though he tries to hide his cup from you when he does. Whether he’s ashamed of going through them so fast or embarrassed you don’t know, but you start to give him bigger cups, and that seems to help.

The first time you give Steve a cup of apple pie spice, he gives you a severe glare– which he then completely undermines by liking the blend immensely.

“I swore the next person who offered me apple pie would get popped,” Steve says, an amusing mixture of half-bluster and half-shame as he sips from the classic teacup you hope not to regret handing him.

“Lucky for me it’s not actually apple pie,” you say. “Do people really make that joke?”

The eyeroll Steve gives that is 200% sass. “You have no idea,” he says, deadly serious, “–how funny people think they are.”

~

This becomes…oddly normal. Listening to Steve talk about anything that’s on his mind, giving Bucky new tea blends just to see how he reacts to them; your apartment is no longer just you and a bunch of greenery that seems to wilt more often than not. Everything seems warmer, and better– even your plants seem healthier. (For that, though, you suspect Bucky is giving them a special mixture of something after you catch a glance of him messing with one of the pots. You want to ask him what he’s doing, but you don’t want to admit that he’s better at taking care of them than you are.)

It’s so normal, that you feel the silence only after the first few nights without a visit. They don’t visit every night, but they visit often enough that you know they’re off somewhere even without them telling you. For a couple of weeks you try to pretend the quiet doesn’t bother you, but you check the fire escape twice every night, and then once more before you go to bed.

~

The next time you see Bucky is during one of these checks. There was no tapping, no noise to otherwise alert you, he’s just suddenly back, sitting next to the window, hunched over in black clothes nearly blending into the darkness and staring out at nothing in the night.

“What’s wrong?” you ask and crawl out to kneel next to him. “Are you hurt again?”

“No,” he mutters and continues to glare at some imaginary point in the distance. “Steve was, though.”

It’s a little harder to swallow. “Is he going to be okay?”

“Yeah,” Bucky mumbles and buries his mouth further against his arms. “He’s fine, strutting around the hospital like a- like a- …” He huffs and sits back to wave his arms before he curls back in on himself. “But it was close, and he’s an asshole.”

“Mm,” you say. “Chamomile mint?”

He sighs heavily but he gets to his feet and starts to enter, only to stop and hold open the curtains for you.

“Thank you sir,” you say with only a hint of sarcasm and go on ahead to get the tea started. Bucky snorts but doesn’t say anything and you use the time the water needs to heat up to take care of some of your plants.

“Stop it.”

The snap comes so fast from Bucky you immediately stop what you’re doing. He doesn’t look as angry as he sounded, but he’s frowning pretty hard. “You're overwatering that one; jade plants are succulents. You don’t need to drown it.”

You look at the plant and set the watering can down. “Oh.” You knew that. You think. You’re just nervous. “Did you see him? In the hospital?”

“Briefly. I didn’t talk to him; just made sure he was all right,” Bucky says. “And he is. I wouldn’t leave him if he wasn’t.”

That does assuage some of your concerns. Steve is nice. You want him to be okay. And Bucky is– also nice, but god, they’re both so fucking frustrating. “You couldn’t have just–”

“Don’t start with–”

“I’m just saying–”

“And I’m telling you not to say–”

“I pay the rent for all that you sublet my fire escape; I’ll say what I want,” you manage to finish to Bucky’s consternation. You lift your head proudly and he frowns to one side. And then he…smirks. You’re not sure you like that.

“Crappiest space in the city,” he says and sits up. “You could at least get a chair.”

You roll your eyes and dole out the tea, fixing it the way Bucky likes. No sugar for this one, but plenty of honey. “If I ever have to leave for an actual fire, I’ll be in enough trouble trying to get around you.”

“Nah. I’d carry you out,” Bucky says and lifts his cup in a silent ‘cheers.’ He takes a sip and the sigh sounds content, so you assume you did it right. For a few moments a comfortable silence settles between the two of you as you sip warm drinks surrounded by greenery (that is mostly green) and life goes on in faint sounds outside the confines of your home.

Bucky sets his empty cup down with a sigh. “Do you think, if I show up to throttle him, that he’ll actually start watching his own fucking back?”

You give that some serious thought. “Will you give him time to moon at you first?”

Bucky sighs with disgust and flumps back onto the counter. “This is stupid. This all feels so stupid.”

You open your mouth because you do have a lot of opinions about honest communication and using innocent civilian apartments to dance around each other, but Bucky shoots you a glare to let you know that a, he knows, and b, he doesn’t appreciate it. You roll your eyes and go back to drinking your tea. It is a very good blend, and you’re not going to let it go unappreciated because two early 20th century boys can’t get their shit together.

Not that you’re complaining, really– you’re starting to feel like less of a disaster by comparison. Or maybe letting two strange men into your apartment makes you just as bad by default. You rub the bridge of your nose. Yeah, no one is getting out of this looking sane. You feel like that should bother you more than it does, but it’s just a fleeting thought before you go back to worrying about Steve and pouring Bucky’s cup back to full.

~

The next night when someone knocks on your door, you’re only mildly surprised to see Steve on the other side. And most of that surprise is because you can see fading bruises on his face, and also because he is holding a fairly big potted plant with tall green and yellow-edged leaves.

“Hi,” he says and lifts the pot slightly. “I got you a present.”

“Uh, wow; thanks?” you say and quickly step back to let him in, momentarily forgetting he can probably carry it around with ease. Steve places the plant on the floor near the end of your couch, where it actually looks fairly nice. He gestures at it proudly. “It’s a snake plant. The man at the nursery said it’s very hard to kill.”

“You’re not funny,” you say but you look at it appreciatively. It is nice, and you could do with ‘hard to kill’. Speaking of– “Should you be up? You look like you should be in a hospital.”

He shrugs and his face goes neutral. “I’m healing well enough that there’s nothing a hospital could do for me. And I felt so…restless.”

You nod. “Want some tea?”

“Please. I really like what you make,” he says and immediately takes a seat at the counter. Oddly enough, it’s not the one Bucky always takes. You don’t realize you squint at the space for too long until Steve looks curious and asks, “Is everything okay?”

You squint at the countertop. “Yeah, just…trying to figure out if that’s a stain or a spot.”

Thankfully there is a spot of spilled something and you quickly grab a towel and wipe it away. You think it’s a pretty good save, but Steve looks at you with a raised brow, like he’s figured something out. You freeze. “What?” What are you going to say? How is he going to react? What will you–

“Was that a coffee ring?”

You blink a few times, and then roll your eyes as your chest practically deflates. He smiles and winks. “I can’t believe you.”

“I am a layered human being who can drink many things,” you say defensively. “And if you want coffee you’ll have to ask another time. I’m not giving you anything with caffeine in it when you look like you got hit by a truck.”

“Train,” he corrects absently. “It barely clipped me.”

You sigh and go for the sleepy blend. One of you is going to have to bow out of this conversation due to exhaustion and at this point you don’t care if it’s you. However it might truly come in handy as Steve keeps looking out the window and shaking his foot. You set the cup in front of him and before you can ask what’s wrong, he takes the cup in both hands and blurts out, “I think I saw him.”

You look at the window and squint. “Seriously?”

“Not here.” Steve rolls his eyes. Like you’re the crazy one. He blows gently across the surface of the liquid and says, “Though it’s strange you’d think I saw Bucky out of your window.”

“Isn't that why you started showing up here in the first place? I distinctly remember someone with a big red, white, and blue shield lurking on my fire escape.”

“Oh, right,” he admits sheepishly, hunched over his cup. His eyes glimmer with mischief as he looks up at you through long lashes and asks, “Did I ever apologize to you for that?”

You’re brought up short by the amount of boyish charm this giant walking wall of muscle manages to pack into that look and you have to find your tongue to say, “I– y-yeah…”

Steve chuckles to himself and you give yourself a mental slap on the face. “Troll,” you mutter and sip from your mug. The liquid is piping hot and burns your tongue, giving you an excuse to grimace when Steve flashes you a beautiful smile.

~

You’re in trouble.

Not physically, not immediately, and perhaps someone on the outside might say you’re being dramatic about it, but they wouldn’t know shit about the situation. They wouldn’t know about how your hands felt as they slid over Steve’s when he handed you a new small pot of flowers; they wouldn’t know about the feeling of serenity that settled over you when Bucky abandoned some of his oh so careful control and rested his head on your shoulder for four long seconds; they wouldn’t know how it feels like you’re missing something until someone shows up at your door or taps at your window.

You’re falling in love with two people who have always been, and still are, desperately in love with each other.

Isn’t that just your luck.

~

In the end, Bucky takes your advice more to heart than you ever expected he would– you and Steve are quietly enjoying each others’ company, with you standing in the kitchen and Steve sitting at the counter as per usual, when the curtains move dramatically for Bucky to slip in, which makes Steve whirl around, and your hands jerk so hard from all the sudden surprise that your cup slips out and crashes to the floor.

“Shi-” You forget to watch your step and immediately catch a jagged shard that embeds itself right under the ball of your foot. “Ow, fuck!”

Your name is said in different voices but very similar tones of alarm and you suddenly find yourself gathered into Bucky’s arms, bridal style, and he carries you over to the couch. “Wh-” You swallow at the close proximity to Bucky’s chest and the way he holds you so effortlessly but so securely. “I’m fine; it’s just a little–”

Bucky sits down on the couch and doesn’t move you, which means you are basically sitting cross-wise in his lap. This is not something you need after your recent revelation, and it doesn’t get any easier when Steve comes back with the heavy duty first aid kit Bucky got you and gingerly takes your foot to examine the injury. His sympathetic look towards you gives you the warning you need to brace yourself before he pulls the shard out. It doesn’t hurt too terribly and he’s almost tender as he cleans your foot.

“Look at us, matching blood and all,” Bucky says lightly.

“It’s my floor I’ll bleed on it if I want,” you grumble, but you’re too distracted by how focused Steve is on fixing you up. “You…seem to be taking this well.”

“I knew he had been here since the first time I came,” Steve admits as he rolls the gauze around your foot. “There was a bloodstain on your floor still.”

“Seriously?” You had thought Bucky was being overdramatic about the supposed stain and humored him, but it…makes sense. Why else would he come back the next night. Why else would Steve continue to come by. And because Steve had kept coming, Bucky had kept coming, and…they won’t need to come back anymore, will they? They now have what they’ve wanted. Each other.

Someone says your name and you force yourself back to neutral as much as you possibly can. Steve looks curious though and Bucky says, “What’s with that look?”

“There’s no look,” you say. “And if there is, it’s only because you two have devised the weirdest meet-cute ever– decades after you actually met.”

“Hm.” Bucky continues to stare at you, but doesn’t say anything else.

~

They come back. And they both use the door.

You don’t know what you’re more shocked by– that Bucky and Steve, having come back to each other, are still coming around to you, or that Bucky is actually walking through the designated threshold. You don’t have a lot of time to think about it though because the place is…a mess.

“What happened here?” Steve asks as Bucky’s shoulders go up to his ears and he looks around the place like he’s going to find something unpleasant.

“It’s not that bad,” you say and glance around. You’ve cleaned out a few of the pots already and stacked them away in the closet, but some of the plants are still…slightly alive, for a little while. A couple are even doing fairly well– one of which being the snake plant Steve got you.

“What happened to the jungle?” Bucky asks, looking around shrewdly. You don’t like the sound of that. It feels so…probing, and raises your hackles. Why should he care?

“I wasn’t keeping them alive for very long.” You flick a yellowing leaf and keep your tone light. “I just got tired of it. What are…what are you doing here?”

You don’t look at Steve, but he clears his throat and his tone is similar to Bucky’s when he asks, “Is now a bad time?”

“For what?” You square your shoulders and face them. Like an adult. Like an adult who had two other adults just sort of crash into their life one day and start sharing space until such time as the two window-crashers decided they…didn’t need to come around anymore. “I’m happy you both found each other. You didn’t have to come back.”

Steve looks…well, he looks hurt. You don’t know any other way to describe it; it doesn’t show in his face so much as in his eyes, in the feeling you get watching the line of his shoulders lower. But before he can say anything, before you can explain yourself, Bucky speaks up.

“It isn’t like that,” he says.

You look down. It’s easier than looking at a man who feels rejected, and a man who has you completely pegged.

“What?” Steve asks.

“It’s okay,” you say, in perhaps the biggest bald-faced lie you’ve ever told.

“That’s not– no,” Bucky insists and lifts your chin. His fingers are warm and gentle and linger too long.

You pull back from his touch before you can embarrass yourself further. “You guys were literally circling each other.”

“Please.” Bucky rolls his eyes. “I don’t need to keep coming back here to be near Steve. I know where he lives.”

“And I leave my window unlocked,” Steve says. He aims a cheeky grin at Bucky and adds, “Guess I should have left it open though.”

“Shut up,” Bucky tells him but looks at you and says, “Point is: we weren't using you.”

Steve blinks. “Oh– no, of course not!”

“It’s all right,” you say, trying as hard as you can to assuage their discomfort even though you can’t put much into it. Even though you did very much want this meeting to happen, somehow you don’t feel very ‘all right.’

“No,” Bucky says and takes your hand in his. The flesh hand, which he runs up to the middle of your forearm. His touch is gentle and light, even when he grips. You can break away, but you don’t– you let him pull you in, close and closer, until there’s barely any room between you.

Steve crowds from the side and puts one arm behind Bucky, and one arm behind you. “If you only think we’re here because of each other, then it’s not all right,” he says softly.

“I know it isn’t– I know you weren't ‘using’ m–” You swallow hard. “And I know it’s not–”

They both swoop in for a kiss– for a kiss with you. Somehow they avoid bumping heads and the lip-lip-lip contact is barely there, with Steve at the corner and Bucky barely catching one side of your upper lip, but they're both there for a glorious moment that leaves you stunned.

“Oh…” you say, dumbly. You try to fight it, but a smile pulls at your lips. “Oh.”

“That good already, huh?” Steve asks quietly, slowly forming a small smile of his own.

You let out a little sigh that is immediately undermined by an uncontrollable laugh that swells from a bubble of relief at the base of your throat. “Bucky’s right, you are insufferable,” you say but you reach out to sweep your fingers in a gentle touch down Steve’s cheek and under his chin.

“You get used to it,” Bucky says.

You think about that. Even with how you’ve been, entertaining these two rotating planets over the last however many weeks or months, this would be an entirely new normal.

You think you can’t wait to get used to it.

[tantanpopo]

DCS Chapter 74 thoughts *SPOILERS*

Hands down this is probably one of my favorite chapter so far. 

I have been a bit on edge with the direction of the story is going , especially with the latest chapter (73) but chapter 74 came and untangled all the characters’ thoughts and event up until now. 

Warning: This chapter contains so much angst and heartbreak  ༼ಢ_ಢ༽

I recommend reading this chapter with some angsty kdrama music playing in the bg for maximum painful effect.

So the beginning of the chapter start with the bf finally hang up right when Ahjussi told Euijoon to put it on speaker. At this point, Euijoon is very upset at the situation. In the meanwhile, Ahjussi just realized that he ...f#$cked up. We finally received a text from the bf saying that he still loves Euijoon very much and has an excuse to why he has been ignoring Euijoon for the past month. 

This is interesting because I was suggesting a direction of the story where the current bf is actually in love with Euijoon and maybe care for him in my previous blog

Mind you, my theory and author-nim is not completely the same, just a tad similar. 

My guess is that the bf is trying to work hard and get into a good company (as one of Euijoon’s friend group mentioned in the chat in chapter 60. But we’ll see when he finally appears and find out his actual reason). 

At this point, Euijoon felts extremely guilty that’s it’s suffocating. Ahjussi then appears and asks Euijoon to get onto the car for him to take Euijoon home. Euijoon then got really mad and ask why did Ahjussi do it (make Euijoon pick up the bf’s call and put on speaker while they are .... having sex) 

But then Euijoon stops and says 

“No ... In this situation , it’s me who is the worst”

He finally cries out saying he can’t break off the relationship properly with his current bf yet caught up in an affair with someone whose relationship is still uncertain with (Ahjussi). 

Also, why is Euijoon still so pretty even in his upset state ?  ╰(ɵ̥̥ ˑ̫ ɵ̥̥ ╰)

I am gonna repeat myself over and over that Euijoon deserves the world !!  

Then Ahjussi finally convinces Euijoon to get on the car so he can drive him home. On the way, Ahjussi asked what Euijoon meant when he said he hasn’t properly broken up with his bf yet. Euijoon explains that the break up was one-side from him, which means it’s not official. Then he plans to confess everything to the new bf and if the bf accepts his apology and forgive him, Euijoon will go back and do his best to be a good bf. 

I saw some people express frustration towards Euijoon , with his decision of leaving Ahjussi and going back to the current bf. And I honestly think that what Euijoon is doing is understandable. Euijoon feels tremendous guilt after reading the text from bf. He already feels guilty getting into this relationship just to fill the void that Ahjussi left. Sure it doesn’t make sense for him to go back to someone whom you do not love and the other person also barely putting effort into the relationship so far. However, Euijoon is someone who tries to act morally right. So he’s trying to make it right by confess about his affair with Ahjussi and if the bf forgive him , Euijoon will “atone” by being a good bf (despite not loving him). If not, they will break it off. Also, Euijoon is someone who yearns for love and loving relationship. He has spent 3 years wondering why Ahjussi left thinking if it’s something he did or if Ahjussi has stopped liking him. 

Seriously , Euijoon slanders need to stop T-T I know you all love Ahjussi but both are in the wrong and Euijoon do NOT deserve the hate

Ahjussi was ticked off by this and asked how can Euijoon can go back to someone who hasn’t been in contact with him for a while ? *see where this going v(・∀・*)*

Euijoon then explaining that the bf at least get back to him finally and then proceeds saying that the bf at least didn’t give up on the person whom he really likes. 

when I read this part, i can feel the tension that Ahjussi is feeling after hearing Euijoon says so.  I can also feel the frustration that Euijoon has toward himself / Ahjussi / and the situation.

Euijoon continues to refuse Ahjussi and say that they should not stop contacting with each other then he exits the car.

Ahjussi calls out

“Please wait Euijoon... I’ve never abandoned you. I have never once given up on you. I really want to be with you ...”

Which was cut off by Euijoon asking why didn’t he call Euijoon at least once. 

We then proceed to the flashback of the incidence 3 years ago. And Ahjussi finally says

“I didn’t think ... you’d wait for me. Eujoon-ah, I am just a gangster yet I fall in love with you. That’s what I have been thinking all this time. If you can accept being with a gangster like me, please stay with me ... Fuck... Please don’t leave ... Euijoon-ah”

And ... Euijoon left with visibly tears in his eyes

*i decided to put their expressions parallels to each other to intensify the pain 

FUCK!!! CAN YOU HEAR ME CRYING TT____TT . Ahjussi , I am crying with you  (இ﹏இ`｡). 

I can feel the pain and anguish from Ahjussi just calling Euijoon’s name... 

On top of it, Ahjussi’s inner dialogue is killing me

Leaving you is the price I have to pay. I have nothing left, but you. Can this excuse be anymore unreasonable ?

AAAA .. These lines are like daggers to my heart. 945-nim, you’re a fucking genius in writing heart-wrenching monologue. 

Ahjussi feels that he doesn’t deserve Euijoon’s love. Ahjussi has always been hating being in a gang forcefully ***curse you Cha Chaehyun ’dad (╯°□°)╯( ┻━┻ ***** He also hates how he’s slowly actually turning into a gangster himself . After seeing how scared Euijoon was 3 years ago , it really took a toll on him. He just didn’t run away for only Euijoon’s safety. He’s afraid to face Euijoon because he think he doesn’t deserve to be with Euijoon.  

I think this also explain with all the physical/sexual interaction from Ahjussi with Euijoon. He’s not good with words. He love Euijoon so much but whatever he says to Euijoon, he feels like it will just feel like an excuse to win Euijoon’s sympathy. Therefore, he can only show how he feels toward Euijoon through physical affection. 

Now who else also thinks that he does not deserve love ? That’s right, it’s Euijoon (chapter 65) 

And this just breaks my heart. They had spent the past 3 years in pain , loneliness and both feel like they don’t deserve love/each other’s love and I just hope that they will realize that they are meant to be together soon (˃̣̣̥⌓˂̣̣̥ ) 

[homemade-ghosts]

/post/695523193287557120/i-thought-if-rina-ended-the-season-together-id The last sentence changed the trajectory of my life, no but really wow I didn't realize that you open a third eye on me

Lmao, I’m glad you liked it. I think makeup & wardrobe can be a really effective storytelling device & it’s too often underutilized. Personal style is something that’s constantly evolving and it can be a reflection of a person’s age, personality &/or how they’re feeling in that specific moment.

For instance, can you imagine the Ashlyn of s2, the girl who lived in constant fear of not being good enough for the leading role & the spotlight it comes with, sporting those split platinum blonde & red bangs she has after the time jump? Because I can’t. I think, after discovering/realizing she’s bi this season, she gained this newfound understanding of herself. & when you know yourself, when you’re sure of yourself, you become much less afraid of how people might perceive you & that can manifest itself in taking more risks with the way you look.

Even Ricky, whose entire wardrobe consists of t-shirts, jeans & every color of Converse to ever exist & whose most “out there” outfit ever has probably been the one he wore to Camp Prom, that he seemed to be vaguely uncomfortable in (“I have never shown this much cleavage” lmao) is wearing this insane two-pattern suit. It’s loud, in the best way. It projects an air of confidence.

Or Gina, who, while a naturally self-assured person, is wearing the most daring outfit we’ve ever seen from her (stunning, btw) at the premiere. This might be a reach, but to me, it kind of represents a display of confidence & risk-taking in her confession to Ricky. Confident because she knows he’s always been a “yes” to her, that for her, it’s always been Ricky. After years of never knowing what the future holds, never knowing where she might end up, she finally has something she can be sure about: her feelings for him. There’s also an element of risk to the moment though because, while Gina has an idea of how Ricky feels about her, she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know if he’ll stop her from walking out of that theater, if she’s opening herself up to heartbreak, if this will be just like last December. & I really admire her for taking that chance, for being so vulnerable.

I guess there’s just something kind of beautiful about Ricky & Gina both being in their boldest looks of the series for that confession & kiss because loving somebody is kind of an act of boldness & bravery in and of itself. Love requires risk.

&, just like some of these other outfits & hairstyles the characters wear to that post-time jump documentary premiere, growing up is kind of a risk, too.

(also, side note: we can thank Sofia for most, if not all, of Gina's amazing looks this season because she worked with the costume department to create her outfits. So, thank you, Sof <3)

[amjustagirl]

CHAPTER 2 - FALLEN

Fic Summary:

The sky Oikawa Tooru’s heart seeks is a world away from the earth yours is buried in. You are a fool to trust him with your heart anyway.

Where Oikawa Tooru tries to recapture your heart. 

Chapter 1 // Chapter 2 // Chapter 3

Pairing: Oikawa Tooru x fem! reader

Genre / Wordcount : Angst (7k words), cameo from MSBY 4

Warnings: One non-explicit bedroom scene.

Masterlist link here!

Tag list link here!

You catch sight of Oikawa Tooru as you bustle through the hospital’s sliding doors, your usual cup of coffee in your hand that you buy on the way to work. He’s seated in the waiting area next to a middle aged man you guess must be his manager, from the way he jumps to his feet immediately to act as a human shield as you call out breathlessly - 

“T - Oikawa? What are you doing here?” 

Tooru’s head swivels around to meet your gaze, and you’re shocked by the lifelessness in his eyes until you glance at the bandages wrapped around his swollen knee. 

Oh. 

You try not to stare, but you do so anyway. The sight of your ex-boyfriend makes you feel as if you’re seeing a ghost, a specter from some past life. You last saw him when he was twenty one, young and proud, wax wings fully spread, a speck in the skies. What a difference five years makes. His shoulders are still broad, and the tilt of his jaw is still proud, but the light in his eyes has faded to darkness, and the pallor of his skin suggests far too much time spent away from the sun. 

Icarus, Icarus. Your hubris has led you to such heights, but look how far you’ve fallen. 

It’s surprising there’s no news of his injury, considering he’s one third of Japan’s trifecta of setters in the volleyball scene’s monster generation. With the Olympics rapidly approaching with just over a year to go, an injury must be devastating, especially to Oikawa Tooru, with dreams of Olympic greatness and victory on his native shores. 

A nurse materialises to usher Oikawa away for surgery before he can respond to the pity in your gaze. You look around. He’s alone, save for his manager. No one deserves to be wake up alone after surgery, so you call after him - 

“I’ll check in on you after you’re done! Gambatte!”

He responds with a thumbs up and a weak smile. 

You flip through his medical files once you get the chance. 

Oikawa Tooru, twenty six. Pro-volleyball player for EJP Raijin previously, currently playing in the Argentinian league. Narrowly missed out on making the cut for the previous Olympics, but went on to represent Japan in the last three World Cups, alternating with Miya Atsumu and Kageyama Tobio. Obviously hoping for another shot at the Olympics, but that’s looking bleak from what you’re gleaning from his medical records. 

His right knee has always bothered him, even during his high school days. Now, a decade later, it looks like he’s managed to tear his tendon to shreds. 

Volleyball is a cruel, demanding mistress, especially for one not born a genius. 

The surgery to repair a torn knee ligament is delicate work, requiring an experienced surgeon, and the road to recovery requires extensive physiotherapy. It’s no wonder he’s resorted to the modern Tokyo hospital you work in rather than returning to his native Sendai to recuperate. The downside of doing so though, is that he’d have to recover alone. 

You wrinkle your nose. He may be your ex-boyfriend, but he doesn’t deserve that. 

The sun is setting when you finally find the time to slip into his room. 

As expected, he’s still asleep. The anesthetic will take some time to wear off. From the looks of the surgeon’s notes, the surgery was a success - though you know from the nature and extent of the injury that his road to recovery will be long and winding.   

So you seat yourself in the visitor’s chair with a hot cup of tea and an onigiri to stave off your hunger at not finding time for a break any earlier. You had an awful day at work today, two of your patients puked on you, another tried to fight you when you drew his blood, and the senior registrar in the ward assigned you a mountain of paperwork that you only just managed to complete, so you give in to sleep yourself as exhaustion settles into your bones.

“Princess?”  

You snap awake at the familiar nickname, ignoring the flush working its way up the back of your neck as you leap to his bedside to check his vitals, only relaxing when you’re satisfied everything’s fine. 

“You’re just waking up after a surgery, Oikawa”. When his forehead crinkles in confusion at the sound of his surname, you correct yourself. “I mean - Tooru”. The corners of his cracked lips tilt up in satisfaction. 

“Will you stay with me?” Tooru murmurs, eyelids beginning to droop again. 

You smile fondly despite yourself. “Do you want me to?” you ask. 

He manages to pout even as he’s falling back asleep. “I asked, didn’t I?” 

You smooth his hair from his forehead, slotting your hand into his. “Fine, fine. Go to bed, sleeping beauty”. 

He huffs an amused breath from his nose before he closes his eyes, contented. Trust Tooru to be shameless enough to cling on to his ex-girlfriend without a shred of awkwardness. You end up staying in his room for hours, watching him sleep.

The heart that you’ve locked away behind bars of bone and steel twitches, just once. 

You frown when the nurse catches your sleeve. “A patient’s looking for you” she says, just as you’re about to go off on a short break. 

“Who?” you reply, wondering whether it’s Sato-san who vomited this morning, or Imai-san whose blood pressure niggles at your mind. You do not expect the nurse to flush pink as she replies - “Oikawa-san”, describing the sweet young man with lovely brown eyes and such a charming voice. 

You slip back into his room when your shift ends. You expect to see a shadow of a man with broken wings, and you do catch a fleeting glimpse of Tooru staring wistfully out of the window, face tilted towards the sun before he turns to you with a wide smile and a pleased - “you came!”  

This is the Oikawa Tooru you are accustomed to dealing with. “Stop flirting with the nurses”, you tell him briskly, bustling over to look at his files. “They have jobs to do, don’t use them to carry messages to me.”

“But I’m boredddd.”

“I’m sure you have volleyball videos to watch.”

“I watched them all day today. ‘Sides, I watched all the matches on today already, twice – and I have plenty of time to watch them a third time. I have plenty of time to catch up with you, I haven’t seen you in so long!”

Five years since you broke up to be exact, but you sidestep that fact neatly, pouring over his medical file instead. His doctors’ notes indicate his recovery is promising. He brightens up when you tell him so, playfully complaining that hospital food is shit in a thinly veiled attempt to steal your food, a habit he’s clearly not outgrown. But you’re not all that hungry anyway, so you split your pork bun in half and hand it to him, dropping into the visitor’s chair. 

“So how’re you feeling?” 

“Like shit. My knee hurts so muchhhh.” 

You shrug, careless. “That’s pretty expected, to be honest.”

“Hmph. I thought they’d have taught you some bedside manners in medical school”, he snipes, though the effect is rather lost when his cheeks are comically round and full of food. 

You laugh, the stress from your day lifting from your shoulders.  

“I seem to forget them when it’s you.”

“So mean”, he pouts, hiding the familiar gleam in his eye that appears whenever he’s trying to analyse his opponents, take them apart. “As punishment, tell me about yourself. What have you been up to these days?” 

You decide to treat him like any old friend, giving him the condensed run down of your professional life,  how you’ve graduated from medical school (with top marks I bet, he interjects), how you chose to stay in Tokyo instead of returning to Sendai (your parents must miss you he says, and you brush him off with an airy they have other children, they’ll survive), how you chose to work in this hospital because you’re considering a specialisation in Orthopedic surgery (because of your grandma, I bet, he says, and you choose not to correct that, using your silence as a lie).  

He in turn tells you about the highlights of his career, how he’s spent a year at EJP Raijin before he was headhunted to the Argentinian league, how he spent four years overseas save for summers back in Japan to train with the national team, how he’s hopeful, even now, of recovering and fighting for his spot on the Olympic roster next year. 

You already knew all of that from news alerts on your phone you never forced yourself to delete, diverting him instead with a question about life in Argentina, nodding as he reminisces about his apartment in San Juan where he gets to watch the sun set over the Andes mountains, the kitchen that he stuffed full of Japanese groceries like daishi and mirin and sake and miso in his first year there just so he has a tangible reminder of home. 

You stop yourself from wondering whether he thinks about the little home he shared with you with such fondness. That time has passed. 

His voice wavers as he spins you stories about his teammates - Matteo, whose family owns a vineyard and taught him to appreciate wine like a proper Argentinian, Miguel, who makes the best empanadas and gets roaring drunk every time they win a match, Gabriel, who takes him to his family’s home in the mountains every other weekend because his grandmother is convinced that a single young man without family in the city will starve if he’s left to his own devices. 

It seems his wings were durable enough for him to soar across the oceans, his grit and determination the foundation of the new life he’s built, whole continents away. 

“It’s funny how the world works”, you remark off hand. “I never expected to see you again.”

His eyes gleam again. “The universe seems to work in funny ways.” 

You start spending breaks in his room, scarfing down your lunch and dinner while he talks your ear off about the horrible sitcoms or ridiculous game shows he’s watched today. You catch him watching a video of Kageyama’s serves and you’re amused when he practically hisses when you comment idly that his kouhai has certainly improved since his high school days. 

You ignore his spluttered protests that service records aren’t everything and besides, his own spike serves have definitely won Japan a game or two last year until, with the air of a boy king, he commands you to sit next to him on the hospital bed so he can pull up a compilation of his serves and his best moments. 

Years might have passed, but you’re still hopeless at refusing him. Besides, isn’t it better that you distract him from the sorry state of his knee? So you do as he says, ignoring the faint flutter of your traitorous heart as he leans into your side. 

“See? I told you my spike serves are amazing?”

“Yes, yes. I already knew that. I watched so many of your practices in university, remember?”

He looks at you strangely. “Did you?” he asks, leaning his head on his hand, eyes boring into yours. 

You think of evenings spent sitting on the bleachers, homework in your lap as you watch as the boy you love builds the strength in his wax wings in preparation for his eventual flight. “Yes”, you admit, sheets rustling as you shift away from him, avoiding his perplexed frown. “You were probably too focused on practice to notice.”

You already know you shouldn’t spend so much time in his room, but you’ve spent most of your life doing what you should instead of what you want to so just this once, you ignore rational thought in favour of sentiment.

After all, he’ll be discharged from hospital in a week, then you’ll never see him again. 

Tooru promptly proves you wrong the day before he’s scheduled to be discharged. 

“I need someone to help me move into my apartment.”

“Hire a mover”, you tell him. You don’t even look up from your notes. 

“Already did”, he chirps, undaunted by your apparent disinterest. “But it’d be nice to have a friend who I know will be nice enough to help poor old crippled me put my stuff away.” Then he grins cheekily, “plus I checked with that pretty nurse – Yuna-san was it? Anyway, she told me you’re off tomorrow, so you might as well spend the day with me.”

There goes your excuse to wriggle out of having to spend your rare day off with your ex. 

“I have a mountain of sleep debt to pay off”, you protest, but faced with wide brown eyes and an embarrassing wobble of his lip, you comply. Still, you manage to get the promise of a free dinner out of him, so you suppose it’ll do.

Tooru doesn’t have much to unpack, a couple of cardboard boxes of clothes and books, probably because most of his belongings are still in Argentina. He laughs and raises his hands in an attempt to placate you when you lift an eyebrow, first at the lack of kitchen equipment in his furnished apartment, second at the weights and volleyball he tries to smuggle in behind your back. 

“You’re not supposed to exercise for at least a month or two”, you cluck your tongue, sighing with disapproval at the furtive look he casts at the volleyball sitting at the corner of his living room.

“I can set while sitting on a stool! Don’t scold me, my heart can’t bear it”. He throws a hand across his face, brow creased dramatically. 

Icarus, Icarus. You’ve already fallen once. Will you seek out the sun again? 

A string of familiarity loops into a knot over your heart. If you close your eyes and count to ten, you can imagine that you’re eighteen again, chiding the boy you love for practicing too hard. But you’re twenty six now, a full fledged adult who should know better than to dabble in sentiment again (especially when it comes to brown eyed boys who only dream of the sun), so you slash through the threads connecting you to him with a flash of your teeth, bury your beating heart deeper into the dungeon you’ve built years ago of white bone and solid steel.  

“Do what you want, but your neighbours will hate you if you keep thumping that damn ball against the wall.” You say, simply, dismissively. 

“No one could ever hate me”, he declares with bravado. “I’ll charm them all with my charm and good looks.”

“Ridiculous”, you huff, dumping the last of his clothing into the cupboard. “Where’s the dinner you promised? I want ramen and gyoza at least.”

“So demanding”, he lilts. “I’ll order in. Tonkatsu ramen with char siu, bamboo shoots, extra spring onions with gyoza on the side?” 

Your heart struggles against its shackles. He still remembers your order.  

“Yes”, you finally say. “You got that right.”

He grins at you cheekily, as if to say of course. 

After you gulp down your ramen, devour your gyozas, you pack up, ready to leave. You have an early shift tomorrow, and you’re already dreaming about your soft bed whilst dreading the cup of coffee you’ll have to down tomorrow morning just to stay awake. 

He catches your wrist, presses the spare key to the apartment into your hand.  “Come back. I want to see you again”, he says, an order and not a plea. 

You are about to make up an excuse, tell him anything but the truth that you suspect it’s bad for your heart to keep seeing him again. 

“Please” - he adds with a tint of fragility to his voice. 

“I’ll be back when I can”, you finally say. 

“Tomorrow?” he looks up at you with hopeful eyes. 

“We’ll see”, you pry your hand loose from his grasp, slip out the front door. 

You stay away for two days, citing your work schedule as an excuse until he wears you down with a barrage of cutesy line stickers aimed at driving home how lonely he is and how much he misses your presence. You’re being dramatic as usual, you text him dryly, but you turn up anyway at his apartment on a Friday night, letting yourself in with an armful of reports and a bucket of oden. 

“How’re you doing? Are you listening to your physiotherapist? Eating properly? Sleeping well?”

“You sound like my mother”, he grouses, rolling his wheelchair to the dining table. 

You flick at his forehead, he slumps back in his wheelchair.  “Stop bullying the cripple’, he wheezes through his chortle. 

“You deserve it”, you retort. “Don’t run away from the question. How’re you feeling?”

“It still hurts”, he admits with a mock sniff. “It should stop hurting by nowwww.”

You push your glasses up the bridge of your nose. “That’s to be expected. Your sinews just got stitched together two weeks ago. Not sure why you’d expect any less.”

“Bah, rude. At least you didn’t say I told you so”, he grumbles, spooning oden into his mouth. “That would be insufferable.”

“Well, maybe you’ll listen to me now that I’m actually a doctor”, you inform him pertly, batting away memories of a teenage boy with hazel eyes shouting indignantly at you after practice in the Seijoh gym.

Tooru snorts. “I can’t believe my eighteen year old self was dumb enough to open my future self up to a jab like that”, he complains, chewing on a cabbage roll grumpily. 

“We’re all dumb at eighteen”, you remark. “You’re no exception.” 

“You were dumb enough to date me”, he teases with a mocking smile.  

Your spoon slips from your hand momentarily. It’s the first time he’s alluded to your past relationship. 

“I was, wasn’t I”, you say lightly, before turning the conversation to Tooru’s physiotherapy sessions. 

You have no wish to delve back into the past, but you’re willing to be his friend since he seems to need one for now.  

Tooru’s knee recovers enough for him to shift from his wheelchair to crutches, which he points at you playfully, mimicking a gun every time you pop by for a visit. He seems to plan his physiotherapy session around your schedule, just so he can wheedle you into paying him yet another visit when your shift at the hospital end, bribing you with a cup of coffee with a hint of chocolate from the café across the street that you’ve never found the time to visit. 

“Thank you, kind sir”, you say, accepting the coffee with a laugh. 

“You’re welcome, my lady”, he answers with a smirk, motioning you to follow him for yet another evening to be spent in his home sitting across him, red ink smeared on your hands as you mark up the reports in your lap. 

His façade that he’s coping with his injury just fine slips every so often. You catch him more often than not watching compilation videos of Kageyama and Atsumu at the World Cup this year with a strained expression on his face, or resting his chin on the windowsill whilst staring wistfully at the birds in the sky. 

He does not confide about his worries to you. You’re not sure you want him to. 

But you can’t explain to yourself the impulse to purchase a bird feeder for his balcony, nor the glow-in-the-dark poster of the constellations that you cart into his bedroom until your heart has to scramble for equilibrium when he thanks you, his smile soft. 

“In exchange for all the coffee you’ve bought me”, you reply, turning away to hide all evidence of your heart’s betrayal, the diffusion of blood in your cheeks.  

A month passes. Then another. 

The crutches get kept in the storeroom. A limp remains, but the degree which his knee can bend increases by the day. His mood improves even further, and you constantly find yourself swerving to avoid his affectionate gazes, his attempts at flirtation. 

“You’re looking so pretty today!” he lilts, fitting his arm snugly into the crook of your elbow as you walk down the neon lit streets of Tokyo. He insisted on this outing, and in the custom of your rekindled friendship, managed to convince you to accompany him on your off day so he can get crepes from Harajuku notwithstanding the fact that it takes forty five minutes on the train and his knee still acts up from time to time.  

“It’s my first time downtown in a month”, you tell him. “Of course I’m going to dress up.” You don’t tell him you spent far too long in front of your closet, tossing outfits on your bed until you found one that complements you just right. 

He buys you trinkets, hair accessories that you’ll never wear, tries to win you ridiculous stuffed toys from the claw machine. 

“You’re wasting money”, you scold, wiping the whipped cream from his mouth. 

“It’s not a waste if it’s for you”, he tells you, with startling sincerity that you still doubt.

He doesn’t mean it, you tell yourself. It’s just Tooru being Tooru. 

You refuse to admit what’s staring you in the face until you have to duck your head to avoid his attempt at pressing his lips to your cheek. 

“Goodnight, Tooru”, you manage to say before you bolt off into the night. You check to make sure your heart is still under lock and key. 

It is, but it beats resentfully. Tooru, it beats against its bars with frightening intensity. Tooru. Tooru.  

You ignore it. You know what’s best for it.

You stay away from him for a fortnight, requesting for a change in your schedule without updating him, taking the other exit from the hospital so you don’t have to see him. You stay away until he manages to wear you down yet again, texting you the most ridiculous conspiracy theories about your absence from his life – you must be abducted by aliens, he texts you once, or your mother forced you to marry some stranger, I can break you out if you just say the word. 

He has a guest, you hear another voice, deeper, filled with gravel and intensity, so different from Tooru’s lighter lilt. You do not mean to eavesdrop, but you don’t want to interrupt Tooru when he has a rare guest over, and there’s nowhere else for you wait save for the dusty front step, so you settle yourself in, pen poised to continue your work. 

“What did the doctor say? When are you coming back for practice?” 

“I’m doing good! The physiotherapist thinks I can try light exercise next week. If all goes well, I’ll be back to practice in a month.”

“Sounds promising.”

“I had a good medical team. And I’m actually resting properly!”

“Shittykawa. Stop sounding so proud about doing what’s necessary for your recovery.”

“Iwa-channnn, stop being mean to meeee!”

Ah, Iwaizumi, of course. You haven’t seen him in years, but you remember him from school, a stoic boy with a good heart. You wonder if he’s changed. 

“Are you planning on heading back to Argentina?”

Tooru answers without hesitation. “Of course”, he says airily. “As long as they take me back.”

Your foolish heart shudders with disappointment. Of course. If you run your fingers down his spine, you’ll probably find blooms of wax attached to his very bone. 

You are about to stand up and leave when Tooru speaks up again. 

“But I’m going to enjoy my time in Japan while I’m back. Did I tell you I reconnected with my ex? She’s great, it feels like I never left.”

The firestorm of blood in your ears nearly drowns out Iwaizumi’s growled ‘piece of shit’ (he truly hasn’t changed after all), the clatter of glassware as Tooru protests that he’s not playing with your heart, he truly cares about you, his sullen silence when Iwaizumi demands what’s going to happen when he leaves Japan for Argentina, when he inevitably leaves you behind (yet again).   

Of course. 

You know his heart longs for the sky. There is no space for you. 

You barely have time to react when the door swings open, Iwaizumi on the verge of storming out. You plaster a smile to your face that does not fool him, but you hang on to it nonetheless, cracks appearing only when he gives you a wide eyed look of sympathy that only pours oil onto the flaming war between your brain and your heart. 

“It’s fine”, you say, and though he clearly does not believe you, he bows and leaves anyway. 

Tooru stares at you, mouth open, stumbling over himself with apologies and demands for you to tell him what you’ve overheard, but you motion for him to just stop with your hand, wave aside his protest that he means what he said, he truly likes you.  

Your heart screeches in delight, but your mind is firmly in the driver’s seat. 

“Let’s just pretend I never heard you say that, and we can continue just as before.”

“As friends?” he says, twisting his lips as if the words taste sour in his mouth. He clutches at your shoulders.

“I want more. I want you.”

Your heart thrums in agreement, but you recall assembling the remains of your heart back into your chest whilst kneeling on the cold bathroom floor half a decade ago. The span of five years should have molded you to view your shared past with pragmatism, but your heart seems to have forgotten its lesson. You shake your head.

“There’s no way you truly want me. I don’t think you’ve only ever had space in your heart for anything but your goals.” 

Your response emerges more bitter than you intend. 

“That’s not true”, he weakly protests. “I care about you.”

Not enough, you refrain from telling him. “Let’s remain friends”, you do say, and he opens his mouth to object again, but at the hard look you give him, he slumps back with a defeated nod.

He tries to respect your decision, never complaining when you keep a careful arm’s length distance from him, though you can feel his heated gaze on you whenever he thinks you won’t notice, hear his quiet sighs whenever you shy away from any accidental touch. He droops when you turn down his invite for lunch with his family when they come down for a visit, citing work even though he knows you’re off for the day. 

Still, it’s manageable and he says he needs you, so you return for visits, at least twice weekly, offering encouraging smiles and friendly words when he returns first to light exercise, then to rehabilitative practice a month later, just as he predicted. 

He carves out time for dinners with you, taking care to ask about your day, preferring to spin you stories about the pigeons and doves and crows crowding his balcony rather than talking about volleyball or his practice. He insists on escorting you to his apartment after work when you allow him to, offering you his arm with a soft smile that disarms you, dissolves any resistance. 

It’s an uneasy equilibrium, but it’ll suffice. 

The careful balance you’ve maintained in the space between you and Tooru is shattered when you find you’re not the only one who’s decided to pay him a surprise visit on a Friday night. 

“Tooru, ya didn’t say ya got yerself a pretty girl during yer break”, a man with bleach blonde hair wolf whistles appreciatively when you step into the apartment. 

“I’m just a friend”, you reply confusedly before Tooru’s shout “Shove off, Miya” confirms that one Miya Atsumu has decided to invade Tooru’s apartment. Well, him and what seems like half the MSBY team, with Hinata Shoyo, Bokuto Koutaro and Sakusa Kiyoomi squashed uncomfortably on Tooru’s tiny sofa, long legs stretched across the living room. 

It turns out the MSBY team just finished a game in Tokyo, and Hinata dragged his teammates to visit Tooru in a wholesome bid to cheer him up. You try to excuse yourself after exchanging nods with Sakusa (he hasn’t changed much from his university days) when Miya Atsumu blocks your retreat with a drawled invite for Izakaya and the promise of karaoke after. 

Tooru mouths playfully at you don’t leave me alone with these clowns (you’re tempted to point out that he’s very much one himself), and before you can even blink, you find yourself dragged along to the nearest Izakaya, impressed by the amount of food each man polishes off - skewers of chicken hearts and cartilage, bowls of potato salad and rice with braised pork belly, listening to stories of their exploits on the national team together, stumbling into the karaoke bar tipsy from the beers that Miya Atsumu pressed into your hand, head heavy enough to allow him to wind an arm around your waist. 

“She’s too old for you, ‘Tsumu-kun”, Tooru trills, inserting himself in between you and Atsumu, mouth taut with aggravation. 

“I’m not old, just a year older”, you roll your eyes, as the blonde setter backs away, lips turned up in amusement. Tooru is not placated, muttering how the younger setter is a douche and a sleeze bag as he drapes his jacket over you like a blanket. You nestle against his side, head on his shoulder as his arm rests protectively around you. 

Atsumu watches this with raised eyebrows, whistling slowly, opening his mouth to remark that he’s never seen Oikawa so smitten before when Hinata interrupts with a chirped  “‘Tsum-Tsum, join me!”, handing him a microphone while bouncing on the balls of his feet. 

Karaoke is the most fun you’ve had in ages. Hinata and Bokuto and Atsumu sing all their favourite anime theme songs with gusto - Atsumu even gets misty eyed when he croons Sparkle by Radwimps, reddening when everyone teases him for being a romantic sap, Bokuto shaking his hips to Western pop hits, Hinata showing off his Spanish skills. Sakusa refuses to even touch the microphone but you suppose it’s a win that he’s even in the karaoke booth with all of you. 

Tooru slaps away Atsumu’s attempts at handing you any further alcohol, forcing you to down cups of water until you are no longer glassy eyed, but still tipsy enough to agree to sing ridiculous K-On songs with Hintata and Bokuto, not stopping even when Tooru whips out his phone to video the entire performance with an indulgent smile. 

“Delete it!” you squeal, losing your balance when you try swiping the phone out of his hands, tripping into his lap instead.  

“In your dreams, princess”, Tooru chuckles, his arms snaking around you like a vise. 

“Anndd that’s our cue to call it a night”, Atsumu quips, herding Hinata and Bokuto out onto the street, Sakusa heaving an audible sigh of relief. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, kids!” he calls over his shoulder, throwing you a wink. 

“I’m technically his senpai, cheeky brat”, Tooru mutters, the irritation in his voice washing away as you giggle. “C’mon, it’s too late for you to get home and my place is nearer to the hospital so you might as well stay over tonight. You can take the bed, I’ll take the sofa.”

You shake your head, arguing that you couldn’t possibly turn an invalid like him out of his bed but he huffs at the insinuation that he’s anything but well, his knee almost whole again. You give in after he convinces you that it’d be more inconvenient for him to escort you all the way to your own home rather than put you up for the night, and you allow him to loop his arm around yours and lead you back to his apartment. 

It’s not the first time you’ve been in his apartment this late, not by a long shot, but it is the first time you’re over with the intention of staying over. The t-shirt you borrow from Tooru hangs off your frame, the scent of the fabric softener Tooru uses is familiar. You would’ve preferred being tipsier to dull your senses, but alcohol would only impair your logic, allow your heart to prevail, so you try to quell the thrumming of your blood in your veins by curling up on a seat by the window with a cup of tea when Tooru emerges from his shower. 

“Ready for bed?” he asks, towelling off his hair, frowning when you shake your head. “It’s late, you have work tomorrow, even if it’s the afternoon shift.”

“It’s fine”, you say without turning your head to face him. “Go to bed, I’ll take the couch.”

“I’m insulted, princess. What kind of a man d’you think I am to make his guest sleep on the couch? ”

It’s less dangerous to ignore him, so you pay him no mind, choosing instead to lean your chin in your hand and look up towards the night sky. It soothes you, the moon an old friend, reminding of five years’ worth of quiet nights spent in your own flat, filtering your younger self into adulthood. 

“What’re you looking at?” He takes a step forward, kneels down next to you. 

“The moon and the stars”, you say dreamily. “They’re pretty tonight.”

A myriad of weather conditions must coincide to allow the stars to even be visible in the polluted Tokyo night sky, but tonight of all nights fate intervenes, the stars align. The sky is cloudless, the full moon hangs heavy, the stars shimmer and dance.  

“Are they?” Tooru whispers. “I haven’t noticed.”

You finally turn to look at him. “Why’re you staring at me?” 

The unconscious echo of your past - a boy and a girl, falling in love under the same night sky makes his mouth twist wistfully, eyes faded gold.

“Because you are my sun, my moon and my stars. I love you better than anything in the sky.”

Your mouth falls open, your heart suddenly roaring, pounding against its restraints. 

“You can’t mean that”, you whisper. “Don’t say it if you don’t mean it.”

“I do”, he says, with heartbreaking sincerity. “And I always will.”

Nostalgia, aided by the lingering alcohol in your veins opens the gate to your foolish heart. You want to pretend that you are eighteen again, without a care in the world, indulging in the warmth of his hand on the small of your back, the caress of his breath on your cheek. Your lips beckon his, swallowing the catch of his breath when your hands slide under his shirt. 

“Are you sure about this?” His eyes are hungry, almost ravenous, but his hands still hover at the hem of your top. 

“Yes”, you murmur, pressing open mouthed kisses to the column of his neck. “Please, Tooru - please.” 

He carries you into the bedroom, undresses you with shaking hands, chanting your name with reverence, almost a prayer. His eyes darken with desperation and need, unwilling to allow himself any release until you fall apart boneless, caged in his arms.  

“Stay with me”, he murmurs, after you’ve both cleaned up a second time, tugging you into bed. 

It’s laughable. Five years on, Oikawa Tooru still has the power to make your mind lose all reason (however temporarily). With a single heated look, he commands your heart to break willingly in his hands. How could you not have learnt your lesson? The conversation between him and Iwaizumi merely confirms what you’ve known all this while.

(The sky his heart seeks is a world away from the earth yours is buried in)

Even now, you can see the glimmer of golden wax feathers budding along his spine, gleaming under the pale moonlight. 

You lie under the covers until his breath evens out, then you stumble out of bed. You force your heart to relinquish the keys to its freedom, handing it back to logic and rationality, pulling on your clothing, folding your borrowed clothing aside.  

Tooru mumbles your name, his hand outstretched towards you. “Come back”, he says in his sleep, fragility tinting the edges of his words. 

Your fingers miss the doorknob by an inch. You dash your foolish hopes against the darkness of the room, put on your resolve like armour, leave your spare key on the kitchen counter. 

Without looking back, you slip out into the night. 

​

[amyscascadingtabs]

darling, you should know i’m a helicopter

a healthy dose of hurt/comfort with added baby snuggles, because i truly felt for amy in this episode. it's been a long time since i just wrote something quick but i hope you enjoy! 🥰

oh and if you want a picture this is the pajamas mac is wearing, okay cool

read on ao3

 Amy doesn’t mean for it to be a breakdown.

 She’s not surprised when Mac’s familiar piercing cries wake her up again a mere hour and a half after she’s fed him and put him to sleep for the night. As miraculous as Charles’ methods seemed, she still believes some babies are just fussy, and her son is one of them. It’s the only logical conclusion she’s come to after six, eight, ten, and twelve weeks all passed without any notable improvement in Mac’s ability to sleep longer stretches, and now he’s five months old and defying every single baby book and website that informs her he should be well settled into a sleeping schedule by now. He’s just fussy, or a high need baby, or whatever other term with needlessly negative connotations there is to make Amy feel like she's doing a bad job. It’s who he is and it’s what she’s used to, so she just scoots to the edge of the bed and picks him up from his travel cot in her still hurting arms before he can wake up the rest of the house.

On another night, she might have tried to walk around with him first, play some white noise or bounce on the yoga ball with him, but she’s tired and dejected and scared to wake up anyone else, so she goes for the easy option. The buttons of her pink striped pajama shirt are easily accessible for this exact purpose, and resting Mac’s head in the crook of her right arm, she gently guides him to her chest and exhales in relief as the crying comes to a stop. At least this, she can do, and the idiots who write advice pages about how you shouldn’t get your baby used to falling asleep at the breast have probably never even met a real baby.

 She leans back against the pillows when she’s sure Mac’s found a good latch and she can hear his content grunts and swallows. His hand has found a steady grip on her newly washed hair, probably getting drool in it again, but she can’t be bothered to try and unclench his little iron fist when he’s finally happy. Watching his perfect chubby cheeks as they hollow and fill, stroking the soft baby curls that are getting lighter and more like Jake’s every day, Amy’s overcome with another wave of that crazy all-consuming love that keeps surprising her, and then she’s the one who can’t stop her tears from falling.

 The only thing she ever wants is to keep him safe. In a world of pandemics and injustice, where the news gives her anxiety attacks more days than not and everything she thought she knew keeps changing, at least she can make sure Mac has his every need attended to. It’s been her life while staying home for the past five months, and she likes to think she’s handled it well all things considered, but after Charles’ nip tips and three-hour imprisonment of her child, Amy can’t help but feel like she’s done it all wrong.

 Her son is at his happiest when she can’t bother him. Once again, her high-strungness and failure to just be chill have proved her unfit for motherhood. She’s too anxious, too stressed, too overprotective, and the baby in her arms looking up at her with the warmest, roundest brown eyes she’s ever known is seriously unlucky and he doesn’t even know it.

 She doesn’t know where the negative thoughts are coming from, but sometimes breastfeeding has this effect on her – another sign, the self-hating voice in her head whispers – and it’s been an exhausting day, so she lets the tears come and hopes Jake is too deeply asleep to notice her mini-breakdown. Why is this so hard for her, and why can’t she just relax? How come Mac seems to be the only child she’s heard of whose sleeping habits at home have gotten worse and not better after his first few weeks at daycare, and how come even the most gentle of sleep training methods break her heart when Mac cries like he’s been abandoned?

 She’s wiping her tears with her free hand before wiping Mac’s cheeks with the muslin blanket when Jake begins to stir next to her, and even that makes her feel guilty, because he’s had a long day, too. He rubs his hand against her upper arm as if sensing that something’s off, yawning as he pushes himself up into a half-sitting position.

“Hey,” he mumbles in his softest sleepy voice, a worried crease appearing on his forehead. “Are you okay, Ames?”

“Yeah,” she tries, but her voice breaks, so she shakes her head. Mac is starting to pull away, so she unlatches him and sighs when she realizes that the shirt she’d packed clean already has milk stains on it. She rests him upright with his head on her shoulder instead, patting him on the back and trying to stop the tears that won't stop coming.

“Whatever it is, you can tell me. Is it Charles again? Because I really think he felt bad, but I’m happy to tell him off again if you want me to.”

“It's not Charles.” Amy sighs. “Well, it kind of is, but it's more that... I can't believe the best Mac has ever slept was when I wasn't even there. I try everything and nothing works, and Charles straight-up locks him in a room, and that makes him fall asleep? It feels like more proof I wasn't meant to do this,” she says, and she can see him immediately opening his mouth to protest. “Like even Charles is a more natural mom than I am.”

 Mac makes a hiccuping noise, spitting up a little bit of milk on the muslin blanket Amy put on her shoulder. Jake wipes it away before laying an arm around them, half-hugging them both.

“No offense, but that's the worst lie I’ve heard today, and that's including the stuff Terry said about me.” He strokes Mac’s back through the blue pajamas with little moons and clouds with faces as he begins to whimper again. “You're the best mom to him ever, Ames. You do everything for him. You literally kicked down a door to get to him today. Why do you think someone would be better?”

Amy sighs as she adjusts Mac in her arms, swaying him slightly and being surprised when it actually makes him go quiet. He has his eyes closed, fists up in front of his face, and just the thought that she could be doing something wrong by him makes her heart shatter.

“Because I try too hard,” she whispers, just loud enough for Jake to hear. “When he was locked in by Charles, I couldn't check on him, and it was the best nap he's ever had. All because I worry too much about him. Because I don't know what else to do. I want to keep him safe, but instead I’m somehow not doing enough and doing too much at once.”

She tickles that adorable baby chin with her index finger. Mac grips it, bringing it to his mouth with determination, and it makes both parents laugh. Why he likes this but rejects every single kind of pacifier Buy Buy Baby had to offer, she’ll never understand.

“He knows you love him,” Jake says, as if that was an obvious fact. He likes to claim he can read Mac’s mind about these things, a skill which Amy thinks would have been a lot more useful if it had also worked to figure out what it is their son needs during their worst nights of crying. It's what she needed to hear right now, though, and she leans her head on his shoulder as a silent thank you. “And just because he might be a little introverted sometimes doesn't mean he doesn't love you like crazy, too. I mean, that's what you tell me when I interrupt you when you're reading, right?”

She smiles. “I guess.”

“I know you worry,” he continues. “But just because Mac likes his peace and quiet sometimes doesn’t mean you’re doing a bad job. Maybe we could even let him start sleeping in his nursery at night, you know, just see what happens?”

Just the mention of not having her son within arm’s length at night makes Amy freeze and a million nightmare scenarios flash through her head, and Jake laughs a little as he feels her shoulders tense. “Okay, I can tell that was too big of a step and you’re freaking out, so maybe not. But one day?”

“We’ll talk about it later,” she decides, carefully trying to pull her finger out of her son’s mouth. “Thanks, babe. I just really want to go back to sleep.”

 Mac’s eyes are fluttering, a telltale sign that he’s starting to fight his sleep, stretching his legs and letting out the most adorable of baby-sighs. Jake runs his thumb over his son’s forehead and nose in an attempt to make him relax, and shakes his head as Mac only forces his eyes open again.

“He’s lucky he’s so cute, isn’t he?”

“He’s lucky we love him,” Amy mumbles, trying and failing to stifle a yawn.

“Yeah. I mean, who needs a full night’s sleep anyway, right?” Jake says, and Amy just stares at him with a blank expression.

“I know you’re joking, but I would almost leave him in Charles’ hands for a night again if it meant I got a four-hour stretch, and that’s saying something.”

“Yeah.” Jake grimaces. “I shouldn’t have said that. Now I’m kind of thinking about it too.”

 Thinking that maybe Mac will repeat his magical streak of at least managing to fall asleep on his own, Amy tries to put him down in the cot again, but she’s barely moved before he lets out another unhappy cry. She lifts him upright against her chest again, biting her lip and trying not to feel defeated as she starts the hushing and rocking all over again.

“Hey, I can take him,” Jake says, reaching for him. “You need to sleep so you can stop crazy-spiraling, and I’ve barely held him all day. I’ll walk around with him outside for a while, that might do it.”

 It’s not the typical declarations of love they used to share, but as he puts the muslin blanket on his shoulder before taking Mac and getting out of bed with him, Amy’s confident that she’s never loved her husband more. This, right here, watching him with sleep-tousled curls in just his t-shirt and pajama pants as he adjusts his son and bounces him slightly in his arms while the crying turns into a more gentle fussing, is far hotter than any sex dream about Sanjay Gupta could ever be.

[concentratedbitterness]

The Inheritance

December 1, 2022: Houston, Texas

***

“I think ya’ worry too much.”  Leroy insists, swatting the old man’s crow off the windowsill as he leans back against the wall beside it.  She chitters her disgruntlement and flaps off to find another perch across the room; beady black eyes fixed upon the hunter from afar.

“Well, I don’t hardly sleep, so I’ve got the time,” Malcolm replies dryly, pausing his search to glance up from the stacks of books, tomes, scrolls, and the veritable cornucopia of beakers and vials laid out on the Spaniard’s worktable.  Santiago has apparently been busy while his apprentice has been away in Purgatory.  “An’ besides, somebody’s gotta’ worry about you.  You’re clearly not concerned with doin’ it for yourself.  I know I don’t have t’ describe what woulda’ happened if anybody had caught ya’ there.  You know.  This’s a dangerous game you’re playin’, Leroy.” 

“Says the fella workin’ for the thing who murdered our whole family an’ wore him like a fuckin’ party dress for forty five years–”

The alchemist’s silent stare is laden with half a dozen retorts, though they go unspoken.  Leroy might have punched him in the gut and not knocked the wind out of him so efficiently.  His nephew isn’t wrong, and if anyone has the right to rub his nose in the shitcastle he’s built it’s the boy whose whole wretched life has been one long consequence of other people’s choices.  

“--I get it.  Some stuff’s bigger’n settlin’ scores.  I understand why you’re doin’ it,” Lee concedes, reaching with one meaty hand to the table beside him, “Still fuckin’ insultin’.”  He plucks a pistachio from the little bowl Santiago keeps there for Magdalena, and flicks it across the room at the bird.  She caws indignantly as it hits her, and flaps over to perch on Malcolm’s shoulder.  “You don’t gotta’ just bend over an’ take it, ‘course I guess that’s your thing now...”

“You’re just like your father sometimes.”  Mal hears himself say before he can restrain the thought; almost second guessing that he’s spoken it aloud until the expression on his nephew’s face darkens.  It’s a sore spot neither of them like to talk about.  “Look,” he proceeds with a breathy sigh, “I know it was just some harmless fun from where you’re standin’, but it ain’t that simple Leroy.  Whatever you’re doin’, you’ve gotta’ start considering the broader impact.  Like it or not, Hannah’s connections, an’ your connections, are tyin’ you both into this twenty-dimensional chess game that’s gonna’ determine the whole existential future of everything.  It ain’t fair t’ neither one of you, an’ I’m sorry for that, but the choices you two make have got a disproportionate effect on the fate of several realms, includin’ ours.  You’ve gotta’ start doin’ things the right way from now on…Do you understand what I’m sayin’?”   

For a long moment he’s not certain Lee does understand; the hunter only nods vacantly, seeming to mull over his uncle’s words, until finally he smiles.  “Yep.”   

“Yep?” he echoes, one eyebrow quirking upward unsurely.  “That’s it?”

“Yep.” Lee says again, and shoves his hands in his pockets as he pushes away from the wall and turns toward the door without another word.

Malcolm watches him go, and can’t help but wonder why one step forward always feels like two steps backwards.  Sometimes talking to Leroy really does remind him of the futile conversations he used to have with Marshall, and the notion brings with it a pang of guilt.  It’s a marvel Lee turned out as well as he did; and for that small consolation Mal knows they both have Marcus to thank for it.    

Magdalena caws loudly in his ear before flapping over to the table with her treat bowl, and it’s enough to shake the alchemist from his thoughts.  “--Shit,” he mutters, glancing down at his phone.  There’s a message from Ig, and he has somewhere important to be.  Hurriedly, Mal sifts through the piles until he retrieves what he came here for–a thin, tattered vellum notebook with a woven binding–and tucks it into his bag.  [On my way.  Meet you at the clinic in 5.], he taps out onto the phone’s screen and replies.  As quickly as he can, Mal scrawls a short note to Santiago and leaves it where he knows the old warlock will find it before opening a portal to New Orleans.

The crow looks up from her snack, watching as it closes behind him.  She gulps the pistachio down before hopping over to steal the scrap of paper from her master’s table and flying off to add it to her collection of treasures.  

[tickle-bugs]

One of a Kind

@amazingmsme I didn't want to post the thing you sent just because of the minor minor spoilers (I hate that we've lost a grip on spoiler culture on the internet so I am overcorrecting to keep my blog safe!) but what you sent was too goddamn cute. Have an unedited thing I wrote in one go. This takes place in the nebulous, non-existent gap between episode 5 and 6! I still haven't see the finale so....this is canon-adjacent-adjacent I guess. Enjoy!

Spoilers for the Loki series under the cut!

Cataloguing variants had always been time-consuming, but somehow Loki was making it take longer. Mobius knew that Loki should’ve gone through his stack already, especially with his reading speed, but he was just staring at one particular file and huffing at increasing volumes.

Alright, I’ll bite.

“I’d ask what you’re thinking about, but I know you’re gonna tell me.” Mobius thumbed through his file on another Loki, one who’d defected from Thanos in 2012 to join the Avengers. They’d pruned him pretty early. Mobius still regretted not being able to pick his brain for a little while longer.

“These other variants are incredible,” Loki scoffed.

“I agree.”

“I don’t understand it.” He stared at Mobius, brow furrowed, and alright, they clearly weren’t getting any more work done.

“Lokis tend to be extraordinary. It’s kinda a thing with you guys.” Mobius slid his files aside.

“Right, but in comparison, I am at the lower end of the bunch.” Loki frowned, gesturing as if this was a matter of grave importance.

“Okay, you lost me.” He folded his hands on the table and squinted at Loki.

“We have an alligator, an illusionist whose powers dwarfed my own, a child who killed Thor, a President--though I can’t fathom wanting to be a part of the American political system--and an enchantress. Those are the variants that we know about. So why am I here helping you?”

“You’re the best of the bunch.” The simplest and truest answer. Loki didn’t seem to buy it.

Mobius dragged his chair around the table and put it in front of Loki, effectively pinning him against the table--well, he could just stand up and walk away, but Mobius knew he wouldn’t. It was part of their thing.

“What are you doing?”

“Just gettin’ closer.” Mobius slotted his knees between Loki’s and pulled his chair as far in as it could go.

“I can see that. Why?”

“I just wanna be close to you, that’s all.” He gave his best convincing grin. Loki visibly softened.

“Loki, you are a genius with a good heart. You’re here because you are, at least in my book, a hero.” Mobius gave his knee a steady pat. Loki puffed with pride.

“Go on.”

“Wow, you are on a perfect swinging scale of narcissism. From self-deprecating to king of the world in no time flat.” Mobius laughed.

“Thank you.” Loki adjusted his tie, missing or ignoring everything but the word ‘perfect’. Mobius bit his lip on a chuckle--he really shouldn’t inflate an already dangerously-large ego, but Loki needed it, he thought. His confidence was all air, after all--smug posturing designed to fill the void of something genuine. Loki could use genuine, for a change.

He looked Loki up and down slowly, deliberately, and an absurd little idea took root in the back of his mind. It had worked in the Time Cell, so maybe...

“Why are you looking at me like that? Wh--Mobius. Mobius. Stop it.” Loki leaned back as much as he could. Mobius grinned and hovered his fingers just over Loki’s torso, dangerously close. Loki sucked in his stomach, looking frantically between Mobius’s hands and his face.

“This r-really isn’t necessary.” The wobbly smile on Loki’s lips told Mobius the exact opposite.

“Nervous giggler, huh?” Mobius twitched his fingers and Loki jumped.

“No.”

“Perfect! Then you’ll hear what I have to say.” Mobius set his fingers adrift, passing languidly over Loki’s spots but never landing anywhere.

“Sylvie’s my favorite because she’s wild and unpredictable. I can never quite figure out what’s goin’ on in that head of hers, regardless of her being a Loki, and it fascinates me. You know I love my puzzles, and cracking open her head like a walnut has been a real highlight of my career.” Mobius’s fingers over Loki’s knee got the first giggles to bubble out, sweet and fluttery, and it took all of his strength not to chase them down.

“But you? You’re incredible. Quick wit, a quicker knife hand, and a will to survive that I haven’t seen in--” Mobius whistled lowly-- “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it. Plus, you’re pretty cute. Or, so I’ve heard.”

“You had me wrapped around your finger when we brought you in. I mean, you could talk a desert into bloomin’.” It was the first time in a few thousand Loki’s that he’d genuinely almost been fooled--something about this one, his Loki, just got to him in a way that the others never could.

“I still have you around my finger.” Loki’s smile and rosy cheeks ignited a gentle warmth in Mobius’s chest. Gentle, rolling chuckles flowed steadily from him, walls completely broken down, and if Mobius could keep one memory forever, it would be this.

“Oh, and that laugh. I’m almost jealous. Literal music to my ears. Y’know, the other Loki’s never laughed like this? It was always this fake, snooty chuckle that used to make my skin crawl.

“But not you. You’ve got this damn beautiful giggle. It’s like the old saying goes: every time a Loki laughs, a puppy is born. Or angels get their wings. A little bit of both.” Mobius let his fingers drift upwards to Loki’s ribs and he whined, pitching forward until his forehead hit Mobius’s chest.

“T-That’s not a thing.” The color on Loki’s face had matured into a wonderful shade of cherry, his voice pinching from the sheer volume of emotion--Mobius could actually see him working through it in real time. Another favorite thing that he could never express aloud--how earnestly and easily Loki wore his emotions.

“He speaks!” Mobius swooped his hands in, never touching but threatening, and Loki yelped around some more giggles.

“Stop it.” Loki swiped at his hands, but even at close range, he couldn’t coordinate enough to catch Mobius.

“You’re right, my bad. It’s rude to keep you waiting.”

“Wh--no, nonono, that’s definitely not what I meant--”

“You make it so easy for me,” Mobius sighed wistfully, seeking out Loki’s trick rib as easy as breathing. Loki shrieked, crumpling in Mobius’s arms, and Mobius held him as he deftly took him apart.

“You are a Loki, alright? There’s no doubt about that. But you’re you, and I like ya. Stop worryin’ about the others.” He wormed his fingers under Loki’s arms, then spidered across the backs of his ribs and up towards his shoulders.

“M-Mobius!”

“Excellent point. You also have me. That’s a pretty big deal--I’m one of a kind, y’know. Limited edition. So there’s that.” His hands found solace beneath Loki's jaw, pulling forth jumpy squeaks between...purrs? Huh. He made a note of it as he scribbled his fingers up Loki’s thigh, dodging swatting hands like a stubborn bug. Loki pulled his knee up to his chest, head tilted back in open-mouthed laughter, and Mobius followed him.

“Who’s got an ego now?” Loki smirked, eyes crinkled, and Mobius summoned his best dramatic gasp.

“You take that back!”